Sermon for Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, "Welcome"

(Sermon 7/12/09, Mark 6:1-13)

Welcome

What does it mean to welcome someone? What do we mean when we say welcome, “you’re welcome”? It’s a word we use often, hopefully. My two year old nephew already knows how to say “you’re welcome,” although he occasionally confuses it in place with “thank you.” He has a sense that it’s a word he’s meant to use when he’s giving something, or that is said to him when he gets something, but I wonder what he really thinks it means. Do we know what it means to talk about welcome?

“You’re welcome.” I had to look up a little history of the phrase. After all, in many other languages, when someone says “Thank you,” the response is not exactly “you’re welcome” but something more like “it’s nothing, don’t think of it.” “You’re welcome” is a relatively unique phrase. I discovered that something like “You’re welcome” has been used for hundreds of years, with Shakespeare using something close in his plays, but as a standard response, only dates back to about 1907. But the word welcome on its own is from two words of Old English origin – willa – which means will or choice, and Cuma – which means guest. Welcome literally means then “one whose coming or arrival is in accord with another’s will.” (1) In other words, welcome means something like, “I’m glad you are here, because I think we want to go the same path together.”

Welcome. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, as you might imagine, in these last couple of weeks. I’ve certainly experienced many ways of welcome here already: I’ve had emails from people sharing that they’re excited for my beginning in ministry with you, I’ve had kind words and offers of lunches from clergy colleagues in the area, I’ve had an interim pastor willing to share and encourage me in the transition, I’ve had help preparing and arranging my office, and meetings to get to know people. I’ve had people showing me around the church, helping me to find the things and the information I need to get started. I’ve felt an eagerness from you to begin a new phase in the ministry of this congregation, an eagerness to begin our journey together, and it has certainly been a welcoming feeling to know that people are so ready to have me here. Welcome. “I’m glad you are here, because I think we want to go the same path together.”

We find this theme of welcoming in our gospel text for today, in our gospel lesson from Mark. Technically, this scripture was in the lectionary, the schedule of scriptures, for last Sunday, but when Rev. Johnson chose a different text, I decided to use this one for our first service together, because although it may not seem like it at first, I think it is a great text for getting started in ministry together. It’s a tricky text – Jesus’ teachings are always challenging to us. But in his words, as always, are life, abundant life, for us.

Our text begins with Jesus returning to his hometown after having been away for the beginning of his preaching and teaching ministry. He’s already been out healing and changing lives and going through the towns and villages. He’s called his disciples, who have followed him home. He’s already got a bit of a buzz about him, an excitement about his name, curiosity about what he’s doing. And on the Sabbath, he comes to the synagogue, the gathering place for studying God’s word, and he begins to teach. And the people are astounded, and begin to chatter about this Jesus they’re seeing in this role of power and authority. After all, they remember him as a child! They’ve known his parents – Joseph the carpenter, Mary, his mother, and his brothers and sisters. They saw him grow up – from a little child, as an awkward teen, as a young man. And now he’s teaching them? We read that “they took offense at him.” The word here is actually the Greek word skandalon, which sounds like our own English word ‘scandal’. It meant a trap or snare or a stumbling block. They heard Jesus preaching and teaching and since they couldn’t accept this message from one they knew as a boy, Jesus was like a stumbling block to them, to their way of life. He tripped them up. And so Jesus notes that prophets are never welcome in their own home town, and he heals some, but mostly is amazed at the unbelief he finds, and our passage continues.

Jesus leaves his hometown again, and now prepares to send out the twelve disciples into the area villages to teach about the good news that God’s kingdom has come near. He gives them authority over unclean spirits. He tells them to take nothing for their journey. He tells them if they don’t find themselves welcome somewhere, to simply shake of the dust from their sandals, and move on. And so equipped with Jesus’ words, but little else, the disciples go out, and call people to repent – a word we’ll talk more about later this summer.

So what does this passage mean for us? Well, even though Central New York is home to me, I don’t think we connect into the hometown part of this passage – after all, none of you ever knew me in my kindergarten days. And I don’t think this passage means that if I don’t feel welcome enough, you should expect to see me packing my office back up and shaking the dirt off my shoes. I think this passage says more than that if we take a look at the passage again. As Jesus sends out the disciples, we can take note of what he does to learn how we are called to live.

First, Jesus sends them out two by two. He sends them out in pairs, not alone. With such a small group of disciples in this first missionary journey, he could no doubt have reached more people with his message about God’s kingdom if he’d sent the disciples separately, with servants, with other recruits. But Jesus sends them in teams. They must work together. As we begin our journey together, we also must go together rather than each our own way, pastor and laity, or this committee and that, this group and that. We’re meant to go together, the same way, the same direction, with the same purpose. Remember, that’s at the heart of the meaning of welcome: people going together who have the same will, the same pleasure. For this congregation, you’ve already spent time figuring out your purpose in crafting your mission statement: "Growing together in our knowledge and love of God through Jesus Christ and sharing this with others.” Now, our task is to make sure that when we’re involved in different programs and projects, we can see how, at the center, they’re working to live out our mission of growing in and sharing this knowledge and love of God through Christ. We have a common purpose, and so we go together in our work, listening to each other, supporting one another, and encouraging each other to be servants of the living God.

Jesus sends the disciples with authority. That’s another powerful word that we’ll need to look at more closely down the road. Jesus gives the disciples authority. He gives them power to do things – we read that they, imitating Jesus’ own actions – bring healing and wholeness to many people they encounter. We, too, have different kinds of authority to be in ministry. When I was ordained as an a clergywoman, then-Bishop Violet Fisher laid her hands on me and said, “Take thou authority.” I was given the authority to celebrate communion and baptism, to care for the order of the church and to serve and lead in pastoral ministry. When you are baptized or confirmed, you are given authority as members of the body of Christ to use the gifts God has blessed you with. We minister with authority that we must learn to use as Jesus used his authority, with humility and confidence. We, like the disciples, must seek to imitate the Christ we serve, living as he lived, with an authority that seeks to serve the neighbor rather than rule over.

Jesus also sends the disciples empty-handed: He tells them not to take anything for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money, no extra tunic. Imagine leaving for a long trip without packing a suitcase, making detailed plans of what to do and where to stay and how to get there, and making sure you had enough money and resources to make the trip! We’d consider it quite foolish to do such a thing. But this is how Jesus sends the disciples out into ministry, and it is certainly intentional. Jesus puts them in a position where they cannot rely on themselves and their own means. They must work with, interact with, depend on others in order to survive, in order to sleep, eat, and live through their mission work. We tend, particularly living in America, to prize our independence and privacy. We like doing things on our own, and not having to ask for help. But Jesus sets up a situation where the disciples must ask for help. They must trust God, they must be in relationship with those they serve in order for this whole plan to work, and they must be willing to risk setting out on this journey without having all the answers.

These same things are key for our ministry together as well. We must learn to rely on God, and God’s direction, rather than our own plans and desires. We’re disciples of Jesus Christ, and so we seek after where God leads us, not where we’d like to go ourselves. And we must be in relationship – really learn to trust and know each other – pastor and congregation, member to member, and member to those we seek to serve. And we must be ready to take some risks, even when we don’t have the answers and can’t see clearly how things will work out. If you and I are always comfortable and sure about how things are going to go as we vision and dream and hope for our future, then we probably are following our own plans, and not God’s. We have to be ready to be risk-takers, trusting that God who sends us out in love will give us a purpose worth serving.

In the end, when Jesus tells the disciples that if a place will not welcome them, to shake the dust of their feet and move along, he’s not telling them to make people either get with their program or forgot about them. Jesus, who was filled with such deep compassion every time he saw the crowds, certainly never behaved that way himself. What I think he’s saying is that the work he’s sending the disciples out to do is so important, so critical, that they can’t get bogged down when people are not ready to go the same way – they have good news to share, they have God’s love and grace to tell about, they have a message that’s waiting to get out. And so they need to keep at it, keeping working at it, keep following Jesus. And when they find those who are ready to go the same way – that is, God’s way – that’s a welcome indeed.

So friends, I’m glad to be here, to be welcomed here, because I think we’re ready to go the same path: God’s way – together. Welcome.

Amen.

(1) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=welcome

from Dan Dick: "Cranky Christians"

It's been forever since I've blogged - in the meantime I've moved from Franklin Lakes, NJ to Fayetteville, NY, to serve a church in East Syracuse, NY. I will hopefully write about my transition soon! But meanwhile, here's another great Dan Dick post, called "Cranky Christians."

Excerpt:

How the worship bulletin is designed, where the baptismal font is placed, who gets to choose the hymns — these are only important issues to those who have no real understanding of the gospel. Those who reduce our faith to such insignificant issues are those who have no real desire to be the body of Christ — laity or clergy. How to make a difference in the world, how to save a person’s self respect and dignity, making sure a person has a safe place to sleep or a warm meal — these are the things our faith tells us God is interested in...

The reason this came to mind is a short email I received last week that asked me the question, “Why are you so dedicated to helping people who don’t live good lives, when there are so many good Christians that need comfort and care?” I don’t know how to answer this questions. Those who are Christian have got it all. The people who need us are the whole reason we exist! I can’t waste time dealing with coddled malcontents. My ministry is to the lost, the damaged, the sick, and the oppressed. I thought that was what it was all about…

Cranky Christians? I’m trying to love. The world? I wish I loved it better. My goal? To make those who know Jesus care more about those who don’t.

Sermon for Third Sunday After Pentecost, "Open Wide Your Hearts"

Sermon 6/21/09

2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41

Open Wide Your Hearts

I feel like I should have been able to connect in with the gospel lesson from Mark this week, set in the midst of a windstorm and waves on the sea with the disciples’ boat being swamped, what with the nearly nonstop rain we’ve had this week, this month really. But I’ve been caught, as I mentioned in my newsletter article this month, by this final phrase in our passage from 2 Corinthians: “Open wide your hearts.” What a beautiful verse, and what a perfect focus for my last Sunday here.

As I began looking at this passage more closely, I realized that it was even more appropriate for my last Sunday with you than I thought. Paul was really the first itinerant pastor, serving in different faith communities for periods of time and then moving on to establish new ministries elsewhere. His time in Corinth? 18 months. If my time here seems brief to you, remember, I’ve got Paul by nearly half a year! Paul does visit Corinth again, while he’s serving in Ephesus, but this 18 months is the time he builds his main relationship with them. But of course, he continues to hold them in his heart, and continues to seek out the best for them as a growing community of faith. 2 Corinthians is written after he has spent his time in Corinth, probably while he’s serving in yet still another community, like Philippi or Thessalonica in Macedonia. They’re words of wisdom that he’s sending their way to keep them on the straight and narrow as they struggle to be faithful disciples.

Our reading from 2 Corinthians picks up immediately following our passage last week, about being made new creations in Christ when we start to see things not from our human point of view, but from God’s point of view. Paul starts by urging the Corinthians not to accept the grace of God in vain, not to accept God’s grace without, in a sense, putting in good work and reaping the benefits. “Now is the day of salvation!” Paul says, quoting from Isaiah. Paul then goes on to describe the suffering he’s been through for the sake of the gospel, which is where I lose my ability to compare myself to Paul(!), telling the spiritual means by which he has remained faithful: he’s been through afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, treated as imposters, punished, and more: but Paul and his companions have sought to remain pure, knowledgeable, patient, kind, holy, genuine, and truthful by the power of God. Then Paul concludes this section saying, “we’ve spoken frankly to you; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return – I speak as to children – open wide your hearts also.”

I’ve been thinking about what Paul says here – that he and his colleagues have no restrictions on their affection – their hearts are wide open. He wants the Corinthians to do the same – to open wide their hearts. This is what Paul means when he speaks at first about not accepting God’s grace in vain. In order to get the full effect of God’s grace, God’s free love, your hearts have to be open wide enough to receive it. No restrictions. And so I’ve been wondering, how wide open are our hearts?

In my newsletter article, I told you about a young woman in my congregation in Oneida who was having a particularly hard time with my move. She was convinced that she would not like the new pastor, and that nothing would ever be the same again. But I knew she would like the new pastor, and I told her why: We are created by God, who is love, to love one another – to love and to be loved. And so, even though she would try to keep herself from liking a new pastor, I knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from loving yet another spiritual leader in her life, and letting yet another person into her heart. I can tell you that she’s spending this summer working as his intern. When I see her, I’m happy to say to her, “I told you so.” Our hearts expand like that, just as God’s heart has infinite room to expand to love and hold each one of us, flaws and all. Our hearts aren’t meant to function with restrictions. They’re meant to be wide open. Actually, you can even think of the medical, physical analogy when we think about our hearts: people get sick when their arteries are clogged, when their heart can’t pump blood through our bodies like it is supposed to. The heart works best when all the avenues in and out are free and clear and wide open.

So, the question for us, what we have to ask ourselves is: Do we have restrictions on our hearts, or are they wide open? In our ministry, here or there, in our faith journeys, in our discipleship, that’s the question to ask: are there restrictions on our hearts? What if, at the core of everything we do, every decision you make as a congregation, every choice we made as individuals, every juncture we came to, we asked ourselves: how would “opening our hearts wider” look in this situation? Are there any restrictions here? What could we do here to open our hearts wider?

Imagine what that might look like in different situations we encounter as a congregation. A new person or family comes to worship here. How do we respond? How would we open our hearts to them? Opening our hearts is more than just being friendly and polite of course. How do you open your heart? Look around you in your pews – who is it that you don’t know well, or haven’t met even. What does it mean to open your heart to them without restriction? What does it mean to keep our hearts open, after the Sunday they join the congregation, after they’ve been here a few months, but don’t know this community of faith yet like we do? Imagine what might happen if, in all of our outreach programs, with CUMAC, with the homeless shelter, with CROP Walk, with all of them, we asked ourselves: “How can we open our hearts, and remove any restrictions?” when we were thinking about how to get involved, how best to support these missions? Imagine what might happen to this congregation if there were never restrictions on our loving. Imagine what might happen in your life – to you, to me – if we never put restrictions on love but just opened wide our hearts?

To me, this is really what the journey of discipleship is about – we follow Jesus best when we work on opening our hearts wider and wider. I believe that Jesus was God’s son because Jesus most opened his heart to God’s love, God’s will, God’s plan. Jesus opened his heart so wide that there was room for everyone – everyone in his heart. And so if we want to follow Jesus, if we want to be like him, if we want to know what God wants us to do, it’s simple really: open your hearts. Wherever you find yourself, whatever you’re doing, ask yourself how you can be more open in your heart. Sometimes, we’ll find that opening our hearts is a risky thing. Paul certainly did. He literally put his life on the line to open his heart. He wasn’t always popular. He was run out of town more than once. He was thrown into prison. He made other church leaders mad. But Paul didn’t consider those things particularly important, because he wanted most of all to take full advantage of the grace given him by God.

Don’t you, too, want the full measure of God’s grace? Then open wide your hearts. It might be risky. Sometimes you’ll find it easier to put restrictions – subtle or explicit – on your heart, who you love, how you love them, when you love, how much you love. Sometimes, opening wide your heart will put you in conflict with others who aren’t ready for it. But I promise, an open heart is worth all the risk, because an open heart is something God can fill up again, and again, and again, when we realize our amazing, limitless capacity to love and be loved.

Open wide your hearts.

Amen.

Sermon for Second Sunday after Pentecost

(Sermon 6/14/09, 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17, Mark 4:26-34)

The Eye of God

Point of view. I think it’s somewhere during late elementary school where you first start learning about different points of view in writing. There’s first-person narrative, where the story is told by a narrator, using the “I” pronoun – “I want to tell you about what happened to me last summer.” There’s a much rarer second-person narrative, maybe used in something like a choose-your-own-adventure book. “You find yourself in a big room with three doors and you wonder which one you should take.” And there’s third-person narrative, using pronouns of he/she or they. “He had something really important happen to him last summer.” There are some other aspects to narrative modes, as the chart shows, but these are the main ones we encounter in literature, and it’s what we usually call “point of view” – whose eyes, whose mind, whose perspective are we viewing a series of events through?

Point of view is important, of course, because we know that point of view dramatically affects the story being told. If you read five different newspaper accounts of an event, you’ll get five different perspectives. When detectives try to piece together what happened in a crime, several witnesses are interviewed because each one has a different point of view, a different perspective, on what happened. Even in our own scriptures, we see points of view at work: We have four gospels that all describe the same three years of Jesus’ life. But they are dramatically different gospels, aren’t they? Even the same events are told in starkly different ways by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And while it is hard to reconcile all the details together into one account, most of the time, their accounts are just emphasizing different pieces of the same story. Mark is brief. Matthew wants to highlight Gentiles. Luke wants to be comprehensive. John wants to be philosophical. Points of view are important. What’s your point of view? What shapes the way you look at things?

We have three scripture lessons to study today, and all three focus on how we look at things. Our passage from 1 Samuel focuses on the process of choosing a new king for Israel. God first chose Saul to be King, but Saul has turned away from God, and corrupted the office of king. So God sends Samuel, a prophet and spiritual advisor to the king, to anoint the new chosen king from among the many sons of Jesse. Samuel assumes that the oldest, best looking, tallest son will be anointed king. But God says to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” So Samuel continues looking through all of Jesse’s sons, until finally, the youngest, a youth who is out tending the sheep, has to be called in to be presented to Samuel. And God says, “Rise, and anoint him; for this is the one.” We read that spirit of the Lord comes mightily upon David from this day forward. And so it is that David, the most famous and beloved of the kings of Israel, is chosen by God for the throne.

In our lesson from 2 Corinthians, Paul is talking about being “at home in the body” and “away from God” – in other words, Paul is talking about this human life, where we are away from God, in a sense, and the hope we have to be “at home” with God, when we will be away from the body. But Paul says that wherever we are, our purpose is to please God, urged on by the love of Christ. Paul wraps up the passage saying, “From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Paul argues that once we become followers of Christ, we start to see things not from our own point of view, but from God’s point of view. And from God’s point of view, everything is a new creation.

Finally, we turn to our gospel lesson from Mark, where we find Jesus in the midst of teaching a series of parables. He’s got a crowd gathered around him as he’s teaching by the lake, and he’s talking mostly, as usual, about the kingdom of God and what it is like. And specifically, in this passage, Jesus is talking about seed, talking about how the kingdom of God grows and moves in ways no one knows. Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which, he says, “is the tiniest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shades.” Here Jesus is exaggerating – the mustard seed in neither the tiniest seed nor does it grow into the greatest of all shrubs – Jesus is overstating, but he’s obviously trying to make a point – the kingdom of God can grow into something quite large, pervasive, even from the tiniest starting point. We might see a tiny mustard seed, of little use. But Jesus sees the potential of the kingdom of God.

I see these three texts as dealing with a similar theme – points of view – and more particularly, the difference between our point of view and God’s point of view. In our Old Testament lesson, through the account of the choosing of David as King, we’re reminded of our human tendency to focus on the surface things when we’re looking at someone. We only have to think of the recent rage about Susan Boyle, a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, to believe that we still tend to judge books by their cover. Boyle didn’t “look” like a singing sensation. And so when she opened her mouth, everyone was astonished at her powerful voice. We tend to look at the surface levels of a person. But God looks at heart and soul.

Paul, in Corinthians points out that looking with a human point of view is for those who don’t know our loving God. God looks and sees all things as new – new creations in Jesus Christ – while we tend to look and see the same old thing, without seeing new possibilities. Just this week in the news I read a story about a young girl who diagnosed herself with Crohn’s Disease while looking at her own intestinal tissue in her Advanced Placement science class. Her doctors had tried and failed to diagnose her for some time. Pathologists had missed the diagnosis using the very same slides that the girl used to discover her disease. In the article, one expert noted that sometimes you really need fresh eyes to look and see something new in the same old thing. The young girl brought fresh eyes, and was able to make a diagnosis that will help her get the treatment she needs. We look over our own lives sometimes with tired eyes that see the same old, same old. But God looks at us, and asks us to look, and see that in God, in Christ, all things are made new. Can we look with fresh eyes?

In Mark, Jesus teaches and preaches about something familiar but does it in a way that makes us listen in, and “look” at the picture he’s painting again. As I said, when Jesus talks about the mustard seed, he’s exaggerating greatly. And the crowds would have known it – they would know, as we might not, without googling it, that a mustard seed does grow into a good sized plant or bush, but it is certainly not the tiniest seed or the greatest of all shrubs. So Jesus’ first hearers would quickly tune in to Jesus’ exaggeration and ask what he meant by his hyperbole. The kingdom of God can come in life-changing ways with even the smallest of starting points. One of my pastor friends recently shared with me a project in her church where people were given $10 as “talents” like the parable of the talents to use however they wanted for the church. An 8 year old in her congregation asked his parents to help him organize a talent show with his $10, during which he gave a sermon on overcoming fear with faith. The event not only raised money, and garnered great publicity for the church, but it also touched people in the community in special ways. Can we look and see how much God can do through us with the things we see as so insignificant that we tend to overlook them?

These three passages are about our point of view in this world. Can we see beyond the surfaces? Can we see new plans and dreams made possible by our new birth in Christ? Can we see the kingdom of God in the tiny seeds planted in our lives? Jesus wants to change how we see. He wants us to see with God’s eyes. How do you think God sees you? Sees your neighbors? See your enemies? How do you think God sees this congregation? I hope if you reflect on those questions, you come to the conclusion that God can see more hope, more goodness, more potential, more life in us, in those around us, and in this congregation than we can. And so our aim, our challenge, is to start rereading our lives and our experiences from a different point of view – from God’s point of view.

After all, Paul reminds us that as followers of Jesus, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” It’s a different point of view. What might happen if we could let ourselves see as God sees? When Samuel saw like God saw, he anointed David as King. Because Paul sought to see as Jesus saw, the church at Corinth became a thriving community of faith. What can happen here if we see, as Jesus sees, that the kingdom of God can come where there are tiny seeds of hope? What can you do, what can you be, how can you live with God’s eyes as your eyes? Who do you see that you didn’t? What do you see in yourself or in this congregation that you didn’t see before?

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” What’s your point of view?

Amen.

Farewell Party: "We're Really Gonna Miss You"

Today was my 2nd to last Sunday at Franklin Lakes UMC, and also my farewell party after worship. The congregation got me this gorgeous print of a work by He Qi, who has become one of my favorite artists with his beautiful pictures of scenes from the Old and New Testament.

The choir also sang me a song, "We're Really Gonna Miss You," written by member Roy Meyer, and sung, naturally, to the tune of "I Don't Know How to Love Him," from Jesus Christ Superstar:

We're really gonna miss you,

Rev. Beth, you should know this:

We've been blessed, you are the best!

Yet it seems like only yesterday

Since you have joined our nest.

We're really gonna miss you,

For you not only preached here,

But you sang in Chancel Choir.

Plus you sang those gorgeous 'Mary' parts

From J.C. Superstar, the besty by far.

We were so concerned when at first we learned

That Rev. Dave would leave us after twelve long years

But then you entered all of our lives,

Easing all our fears.

Then there's the extra service

Eight fifteen Sunday mornings.

Plus the time you always spent

Meeting at Panera's Restaurant

To get to know us all, was heaven sent.

We have never seen such creativity

For the Children's Sermon every Sunday morn.

These are the things they'll never forget.

You should be so proud!

Then, there was your devotion

To the slides you created,

To enhance your messages.

Seems we'll ne'er forget what we have learned,

We truly pray for you 'the very best'!!!

Thank you, friends, for a wonderful and thoughtful time this afternoon!

Festival of Homiletics: Fred Craddock

Next up in my slowly-but-surely-coming Festival of Homiletics notes: Fred Craddock. Craddock is certainly a favorite at the Festival, with good reason. He has a sweetness and joy in his preaching and lecturing that is just so endearing that it is also quite persuasive.

Notes: Judges 13:1-7, Acts 14:8-18, What Shall I Do with the Gift?

What shall I do with the gift?

1) Deny it. “Gift, hell! I worked hard on that sermon!”

2) Give it back. “No thanks!”

3) Take the gift and divide it up among the members of the congregation. “Ministers: The Congregation.”

4) Take the ribbon off, unwrap it, and tell it what it is: necessity. Paul: Destiny, compulsion, summons, divine pressure. Trying to lay hold of the one who already laid hold of us. Paul: I can’t brag about it – it’s God. I won’t charge – I can boast about that Little ribbon of freedom. J How do you work it?

5) By just complaining. Jeremiah. “You enticed me and I was enticed.” God gave me too many gifts. Poor souls. “What a blow, to gag on your favorite pie.” Some complain because they get the call in impossible situations. “Sometimes God is too mischievous.” His complaint, “God did not speak loud enough. Speak up!” Quoting one of my favorite poems: “Batter my heart, three-personed God.”

6) Want everyone to know we have the gift. Saul.

7) Try to get rid of the gift. Samson. That God could still use him. Grace of God.

What shall I do with the gift?

Jesus: “I must needs go to Jerusalem.” “Must needs go.”

Festival of Homiletics: M. Craig Barnes

Finally getting back to Festival of Homiletics notes. Another standout was Craig Barnes, Presbyterian pastor and faculty at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I heard Barnes lecture and preach, and he was funny, pastoral (and grounded in pastoring, rather than some speakers that have been faculty only and out of the congregational ministry for long enough that they don't connect as strongly with everyday life), and inspiring. Notes below:

Lecture: “Finding Your Congregation in the Text”

Trying to give “application points” at end of sermon to reach each person’s needs actually not helpful. Sermon begins long before you step into the pulpit.

*You* are the one who has the authority to preach to your congregation – no one else! Because you are the one who knows them, who carries them, etc.

The holy spirit works on applications in people’s lives.

“Bad, bad dog” sermons. Only “golden retriever” congregations like that!

We’re trying to present conversations so that the sermon spirals between text and context. Text is what you are trained in. Context is what you know because you gave the congregation your heart. If you are talking about word of God without talking about how it *is*, you are violating incarnation. But if you only talk about how it is, you are wallowing in hopelessness.

Figuring out subtext all week – move to what is beneath the text. Preachers are parish-poets. See everything that lies just beneath veneer of ordinary, and can express this in ways received not only in brain but also in soul.

What is said and what is meant. Can’t find out what it means unless you find your congregation in text. It is kerygmatic – living word for this time in this place. TS Eliot – “Major poets” like Elijah, Augustine, MLK. Most of us are “minor poets,” making sense of the “Major poets’” poetry. Pastor-poet makes sense of words from our tradition in light of dust and grit of daily parish life.

What it means to be ordained: open the doors of soul to the pathos of people pastor has vowed to love.

Mixing of sacred visions and ordinary experiences. All week long, spinning the poetry.

Presenting issue is seldom the real issue. Vision.

Pastors get a “license to eavesdrop.” Collecting lines! And then when you approach text, you see congregation there. Must preach the narrative that you are given both from the congregation and the text.

Sermon: “When Christians Are Embarrassing”

Philippians 1:12-18a

Intolerant. Intolerant of intolerance.

Paul: Even if they embarrass the church, it doesn’t matter, as long as Christ is proclaimed.

Younger Paul might have complained, but not in later years. Has discovered that JC is the only Savior of the church, and he can use anything to bring about salvation, even those who distort the message. Rejoice that Christ is proclaimed at all.

The mission of JC is not thwarted by those who distort message, nor is it particularly helped by those who are right! It succeeds because JC is resurrected, ascended, and reigns!

“You will be my witnesses.” – Jesus. Mostly what witnesses do it witness! But we’ve turned witnesses into saviors/messiahs.

The witness just talks about what he/she sees. As a judge would say, the last thing you want is for a witness to get creative. Action, yes, throwing self into midst of Justice, KoG, of course. But we are not the ones creating the salvation.

Even when we get it right, we are not “all that necessary” to the work of Christ.

Some proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, says Paul, and some out of love.

We are more worried about being right than we are about being loving, and that is always wrong.

Why does the church not have the capacity to reflect the capacity for gracious inclusion of Jesus Christ? Jesus is dying to love those who nailed him to the cross. That’s what’s at the center. And when you know what’s at the center, you don’t have to worry so much about the boundaries. Which is our biggest focus, energy waster, in the church. But when you don’t know where church stops and world starts, that’s good. The church will hold by its center, and the center will hold, which is Jesus Christ, otherwise definitely would not still be around.

Sem prof – “If you want to be the light of the world, you have to expect to attract a few bugs.”

Pulling apart passion and conviction – that’s embarrassing most of all to Jesus Christ.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday/First Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon 6/7/09
John 3:1-17

Prayers, Presence, Gifts, Service, Witness


Today, shortly, we’ll receive four new members into our congregation – Amanda, Sami, Lexi, and Steven. They will join a long list of those who have been members here at Franklin Lakes. They, like hundreds before them, through the years, have stood before you and said that they want to be part of this community of faith. These four young people took part in a confirmation program this year using a curriculum called “Making Disciples” – this program pairs confirmands and mentors together, and instead of meeting together as a class as the primary component, they met on their own with their mentors for the most part, supplementing that core piece with group sessions, assignments, and service projects. I especially want to thank Rose, Michele, Rachel, Meg, and Brian who have served as mentors – this program required much more of our mentors than programs we’ve done before, and they were willing to give it a try, and give of their time, and share their own stories with our youth without really knowing what they were getting into. I also thank those of you who were willing to be interviewed by our confirmands for their essay project – I loved reading about your faith stories through their eyes. In a little bit, these four young people will stand before you, and their mentors and families and I lay hands on them, I will say, “the Holy Spirit work within you, that having been born through water and spirit you may live as a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.”
“Born through water and spirit.” Hopefully this language rings a bell – these words, this language we use in baptism and confirmation is lifted right from our gospel lesson today, from Jesus words to the Pharisee Nicodemus. In our text, Nicodemus, a Pharisee leader, comes to Jesus at night to ask him questions. You get the impression that Nicodemus doesn’t want the other Pharisees to know what he’s up to – but it seems he is intrigued enough by Jesus to just need to have more information. Jesus tells him, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus – he seems so sincere you have to smile, so earnest – asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Today we may be familiar with Christian language of being “born again,” but for Nicodemus, this was new and strange talk. So Jesus continues – “very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” He continues to talk about flesh, wind, and spirit, the wind blowing where it chooses. Nicodemus seems even more confused. “How can these things be?” Jesus answers, typical in his response to Pharisees, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus wonders how Nicodemus will get heavenly matters, struggling so much with earthly matters. But still, Jesus concludes, the message he has is about love and grace, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Why? Because “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, was a person who was an educated man, a religious leader, one known, as Pharisees were, for his understanding, command, and practice of the laws of the Torah, the laws the guided the Jewish people in faithful living according to the commands God has given them. And yet, despite all this, he couldn’t grasp what Jesus was talking about. “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus points out with his question how little Nicodemus understands, though he is one who would claim to know everything that was needed for faithful living. Jesus tries to reorient Nicodemus. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes,” he says. “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” In other words, though you can’t describe it, you know the wind is there and at work and you know what it does and what effect it has, as we talked about last Sunday. So it is with those born of the Spirit. So God calls us to be.
Among many other things, today is also Trinity Sunday, the day when, if we didn’t have so much else going on, my sermon might mostly be about understanding the Trinity, this God-in-three-persons thing that is unique to Christianity. We might talk about the doctrine of the Trinity – our Christian understanding of God that tells us God is our Creator, God is our Savior in Jesus Christ, and God is the Holy Spirit that Jesus talks about in today’s texts. I could tell you about the history of this doctrine, the technical language, how confusing it is to understand, how much fighting the early church did over “getting the doctrine right.” The Trinity is an important and central doctrine of the church. But our confirmands will be glad to tell you that they didn’t have some test on explaining the Trinity in order to be confirmed today. There is no test with scores and passing or failing in order to be a member of the United Methodist Church. I love for you to know and understand our doctrine and theology. I want for you to know what we believe as United Methodists. But that’s not the point.
For persons to become members of this congregation on the United Methodist Church, we ask them to take vows. We ask them not to declare doctrines and explain United Methodist theology, but we ask them to become part of the community, and to commit to a path of discipleship. Every time a new member joins the church, and every time a person is baptized, and every time a parent takes vows on behalf of a child when a child is baptized, they all answer this question, which to me is more important than getting the doctrines “right”: As members of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service. And now, we’ve decided to add a new word to the list, that our young people will include today: witness. Prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Responding to this question, committing to participate by your prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness is, to me, is the spirit of being a United Methodist, a member of this congregation.
Will you pray? Will you be in conversation with God? Will you talk to God about yourself, your dreams, your fears, your worries? Will you listen to God? Will you be open to God’s leading in your life? Will you lift before God the joys and pains and celebrations and struggles of your friends, your family, this congregation, and those beyond it?
Will you be present? Will you show up? Will you be here, be in this place of worship? Will your membership mean that you are a part of the active life of the congregation? Will you be present in less tangible ways – will you be present in your relationship with God? Will you show up for God, and participate in a relationship with God? Will you do more than just go through the motions?
Will you share your gifts? Will you give of your money and resources? Will you give of your time and your talents? Will you give of yourself and use your gifts in service to God in this congregation?
Will you serve? Will you serve God? Will you serve this church? Will you serve your neighbors, near and far? Will you serve those you would otherwise call enemies? Will you serve even those who have done you wrong? Or those who are least, and last, and lost?
Will you witness? Will you share about God’s love with the world? Will you share God’s love not only in words but in action? Will others know about God because of the witness you make with your life?
In my mind, if you can answer these questions in the affirmative, or at least with an honest commitment to try to say yes to these questions, then I’m not sure it matters so much if you can recite the books of the Bible, or if you know who John Wesley is, or if you can draw a diagram of the Trinity. There is a place for all such knowledge. But our foundation lies elsewhere – in our desire for a deeper relationship with God, in our desire to be disciples of Jesus Christ. For “indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn us, but in order that we might be saved through him.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday B

(Sermon 5/31/09, Acts 2:1-21, John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15)

Pentecost

As you may know, I recently had a bit of a significant birthday: I turned 30. Of course, turning 30 is probably not actually any more significant than 29 or 31 or any other age, but there’s something about a mile-marker age like that that causes one to stop and think about life – where’ve I been so far, what have I accomplished, and what’s been left undone that I’ve been meaning to do? What do I want to do in the year ahead? What do I want to accomplish? What are my hopes and dreams for the year ahead? This year, I decided to actually write some of my thoughts out, and posted some of them on my blog. I’ve been working on a list of 30 things I want to do in the year that I’m thirty. I’m only about ½ way through even making up the list, but I’m taking my time with it because I want to carefully think about what I want to accomplish, what’s within reason, and what I really have been putting off doing. The list includes things like getting back on a plane again in the next year – many of you know I have quite a fear of flying, but I’m trying to challenge myself to keep trying to conquer that fear. Another thing on my list is to try to gather together a large group of young people to attend an event for United Methodists interested in exploring a call into ordained ministry, because encouraging young people in leadership development, and particularly in responding to God’s call on their lives, is something I feel meant to do. Yet another item is to make sure I find some place to be in hands-on mission work once I move back to Central New York that stirs my spirit as much as I feel moved and compelled by the work we all share in at CUMAC in Paterson. These are just a few of the things I have in mind for the year ahead of me. Maybe I won’t check off every item on my list. But I want to be intentional, I want to have goals and a vision, and I want to be serious and thoughtful, always, about what God is leading me to do, how God can help me claim the abundant life Jesus promises in the verse from John I so love.

Today we celebrate another birthday – and this one is for all of us. In the Christian Church we celebrate Pentecost Day as the birthday of the church universal. And even if this church birthday isn’t a mile-marker year, it’s still pretty significant, because Pentecost is the biggest birthday celebration I can think of, next to that birthday we celebrate on December 25^th. Today is the birthday of the Church. Not just our local church, not even our denomination, and not even Protestantism – today, we celebrate Pentecost, which is a day we’ve labeled as the birthday of the whole Christian Church. Today, we read about the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit. Today we read about that strange experience where the sound of a mighty rushing wind broke into the house where the followers of Jesus were celebrating Pentecost. Today, we read about the beginnings of Church as we know it – where Peter steps up and finally does what Jesus had been preparing him and the others to do all along: he shares the gospel – tells the Good News about God’s grace to anyone and everyone he can get to listen. Today indeed is a day of celebration, this day of Pentecost.

Our text from Acts opens with the disciples already gathered together. They are gathered together for the celebration of Pentecost, a Jewish festival set out in the Torah, the law books for the Jews, which make the first five books of our Bible today. Pentecost was a celebration taking place fifty days after Passover, and was called also “the feast of weeks” or Shavuot. The festival celebrated the “first fruits” of the early harvest in spring. So the disciples were gathered together for this traditional celebration. Suddenly, we read, a sound like the rush of a violent wind came, and filled their gathering place, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, which seemed to them like divided tongues of fire. And they began to speak the gospel message to all who were gathered in such a way that everyone in the city could understand them. Many people from many places were gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, and it seemed that everyone could understand the disciples. Some were amazed at this, but others were a bit cynical, and accused the disciples of being drunk. Peter stands and raises his voice to the crowds: We’re not drunk – we are speaking as the prophets spoke – and he goes on to speak to them of visions and power that will come to all – young and old, men and women, slaves and free.

Today, when we celebrate Pentecost, our focus is on not on the feast originally celebrated, but on this event we read of in Acts – the giving of the Holy Spirit. This is the gift that Jesus has promised the disciples they would receive, the thing that would be their Advocate, their Comforter, helping them to make the transition from followers of Jesus to those who would be leading and guiding and sharing with others. The Holy Spirit is the gift that helps them with all their other gifts, in a way. It’s the foundation for their work, the source of their confidence in their abilities. After all, being filled with the Holy Spirit is being filled up with God’s own self, right inside of you. God dwelling in you certainly should inspire you with confidence! On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is the gift that is available to each one of us.

But what do we do with this gift? What do we do with this Holy Spirit thing? Jesus promises the Holy Spirit as a helper, but how does it help us? The description of the coming of the Spirit in Acts is so strange, so unusual, how can we relate? Personally, after reading the text from Acts, about this very significant birthday, I wonder what we would find so appealing about this Advocate from Jesus: the wind described has a violet sound, “tongues as of fire” rest on each of the disciples, and though the artwork I find of this is event is beautiful, I still can’t think quite what that means, and the disciples start speaking out of their own control. What do we do with this unpredictable gift of the Holy Spirit? It’s a question Christians have been wondering over since this first church birthday, and you can even see it reflected still in books like the popular The Shack, where the narrator confesses the Holy Spirit has always been confusing, and the author has a Holy Spirit that can’t quite be pinned down. And so it’s to imagery used in children’s sermons that I find a little bit of understanding, although I chose a different, more tasty approach to children’s time today. The Holy Spirit is like wind in a sailboat – you can’t see it, but you certainly need it to make your boat go. It’s like batteries in your flashlight, or the electricity running through anything you need to plug in. It’s what gives you that juice you need to keep going, the energy that helps you sprint to finish a race, the midnight oil that helps you complete a task. With these metaphors, we dance around it, and get a sense of this Holy Spirit thing, even if we can’t completely define it.

It’s something we see usually see in the effects it has on something, rather than seeing God’s Holy Spirit itself. It’s what makes an unlikely group of uneducated disciples able to handle the loss, even back to God, of their teacher, and to go about changing the world and making disciples of others in a way that results in Christianity spreading beyond numbers they could scarcely even imagine. It’s the Spirit that enables a congregation like this one to pick up the pieces after a fire burnt down a sanctuary so many years ago, and to literally build a new place of worship stone by precious stone. It’s the Spirit that I’m certain you’ll feel at work next Sunday in the lives of four young people as they make their confirmation, even though you can hardly imagine how they became old enough to be making such a significant decision in their faith journeys, and the Spirit we’ll know for sure is present when we baptize baby Bradley in two weeks, even though he can’t speak for himself yet in a language we can understand! We start to understand the Spirit when we see the impact of the Spirit at work.

So how is the Spirit at work here today? When I think about my birthday list, I can tell you that if I can complete what I’ve set out to do, it will be with God’s help, with the movement of the Spirit in my life and in the life of those I’m working with, that will close the gap between what would be a reasonable list and what’s an ambitious, a bit extravagant list I’ve got going. My list isn’t full of things I know I can certainly complete with ease, but a list made up of things that, if completed, will give me one very full and rewarding year indeed. Maybe I’d feel better knowing that I would certainly end up checking off every item on my to-do list for the year. But I think I’ve been reasonable in my goals for too long. This year, I’m looking for ambitious. Extravagant. Maybe even inspired – a word that means literally “taking in breath,” which also then means, “taking in the Spirit.” Don’t we want to be inspired? That means to be infused with spirit – God’s Holy Spirit. This year, I’m hoping for inspired.

So how is the Spirit at work here today? How do we want it to be at work? How are we asking God for the Spirit to work at in-spiring us, filling us with God’s Holy Breath? We can set out to complete some tasks that make a reasonable list of expectations for ourselves. After all, we’re in transition, Pastor Juel is soon to arrive as I am soon to leave, the economy creates a sort of shaky environment, and we don’t know what to expect. So we can reasonably try to play it safe. But I hope that instead, we’re seeking after being inspired, spirit-filled. I hope we try to fill up on that abundant life Jesus offers. I hope we take the help we can’t even quite describe to be ambitious, a little bit extravagant in our plans for this congregation, this year, this ministry that we share in together, whether we’re working side-by-side or across the miles in the same one body of Christ.

This Tuesday night, from 6:30-8:30, members of the Administrative Council will meet for a process called Asset Mapping, a process that I hope will help us dream some extravagant dreams for the church, be inspired by some God-led movement in the congregation. I invite you to join us, if you feel ready to witness the Holy Spirit at work in a new way in your midst.

May it be for us as the prophet Joel spoke, and as the disciple Peter claimed for a new church, and as we can claim for today’s church: “God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams.” Amen.

Festival of Homiletics: Anna Carter Florence

One of my favorite preachers/lecturers at the Festival of Homiletics was Anna Carter Florence, who has been at the Festival before, but who I missed last time I attended. She was really excellent, inspiring, and encouraging.

Notes: Preaching in a Recession: Rick Warren, Charlemagne, Survivor-man & you" - I found this session particularly thought-provoking, because I recently have been struggling with the knowledge that one of my colleagues has been 'borrowing' a great deal from other sources in theological reflections. I've struggled to understand this, and her lecture really helped me think about the spiritual implications, and the spiritual consequences we put on ourselves when, as she put it, we cease to "strive." Following are my mostly unedited notes -

Plagiarism – Rick Warren makes his sermons available online. Should we use them? Issues. Emperor Charlemagne’s project was to get everyone preaching the same at the same time, so he could control what was being said.

Most efficient way to educate was to make people go to church every week and hear the “right” sermons. Ordered a common lectionary to be used, with a “Homiliary” of sermons to be used. People had to go to church, pastors had to use the texts and sermons. “Carolingian Renaissance” was notable for its “renewal of preaching,” says history books. Centralized control of pulpit is not renaissance, but its death.

You have to cross the line, to use someone else’s work to really know where your line is, to feel it, using a chunk of someone else’s text.

Challenges that have crept up with internet – not just plagiarism, but trading access for interpretive freedom. Internet can’t mediate wisdom, love. We have to sort through volume to find value.

Preaching another’s sermons is bowing down to emperor, and not to JC. To create well-behaving citizens of the empire. Trying to convince you, the tempter, that you can’t do it yourself. “If you were a real preacher . . . you would have the numbers, not have a leaky roof, people would like you . . . real preachers have growing churches, multiple campuses, etc.” Preaching someone else’s sermons is an act of surrender to the emperor, the tempter, giving up our right/responsibility to interpret scripture. An act of resistance, a fresh act of interpretation. Not because you are so great at it, but because God is great, and grace is real.

Survivor-man. (Les Stroud) Survive in extreme cultures for a week.
This is not the antidote to empire. Does not require us to enter text with nothing. If we are just trying “to stay alive on camera,” then we need a new model. Don’t have to do it alone. Couldn’t talk/preach without going over ideas with one another (live/online.)

Striving. (Waldorf model of education – strive – teachers, and so students.) We can’t stop striving in our preaching, or our congregations will stop striving too.

Eyes of a preacher who has stopped striving, and stopped believing grace is real.

1 Samuel 17: David & Goliath

When you are striving, and someone offers you a suit of armor that does not fit, don’t wear it! Especially if emperor offers it. Go instead with friends to search for smooth stones that fit in your own slingshot! “I am a preacher, and a child of God.”

Festival of Homiletics: Desmond Tutu

We were blessed to have Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu preach on the opening night of the Festival of Homiletics. My notes don't really do his message justice, which was wonderful, but there was also just a spirit about him that was wonderful, a presence and a preciousness that is rare. Really great to hear him.

Psalm 85:-13, 2 Cor. 5:16-20

“Under this cassock, we’re all the same.”

Apartheid – asked for support/prayers, and you gave it.

Humor to poke fun at system in midst of oppression.

Joke about God and an oven for creation – over and under done cookies, creating black and white people.

Or: “This university is reserved for people with large noses only . . .” Or, “apply to minister of persons with small noses affairs.”

To say to people who are treated like rubbish – “You are a God-carrier, you stand-in for God.”

If we believed each one was a God-carrier, we would bow, as Buddhists do, “The God in me greets the God in you,” like genuflecting in the presence of the reserved host.

This one is a person of infinite worth – no exceptions!

Died with Christ, raised with Christ, ascended with Christ, given life to be what we already are.

Because God loves you. I am lovable because God loves me.

Festival of Homiletics: Barbara Brown Taylor

Now that I'm at Annual Conference, I finally have time to write up my reflections from the Festival of Homiletics which I attended in Atlanta last week - it was fabulous.



First up: Barbara Brown Taylor, who lectured on Day 1, preached Day 2. Mostly unedited notes:

Lecture: Quoting: People in the South conceive of humanity in theological terms. Not Christ-centered, but “Christ-haunted.”

Quoting: “To live in the South is to be marinated in religion”

Quoting, “evil is less a problem to be solved than a mystery to be endured, especially when the evil is in you.”

The Bible, for Southerners, is not just a book for sinners, but a book for losers.

Not only proclaim what we read in the Bible, but how we read it.

The scriptures we turn to most often are usually the verses that describe our own situations the best. (As individuals, as groups.) Remembering there are many pages in the bible that do not have your fingerprints on them. Can’t really read the Bible until you can read your own life.

People give up on Bible, seeing it too fluid. “If two people hear it differently, one of them must be wrong” mentality.

“Prophets saw the apostles as institutional stuffed-shirts and apostles saw prophets as . . . democrats.”

“They read differently . . .”



Preaching:

Ezekiel 3:1-3, Revelation 10:8-11

“Eat This Book”

Literally drinking chalk that has been used to write words of scripture. (What country?)

Taking the word of God inside us must be good for us somehow.

“Edible bible”

Learning letters by honey on slates, licking slate.

Mixing up Bible, Shakespeare, and Poor Richard’s Almanac

Absorbing the Bible.

You need to look before you eat, because you are what you eat.

Ezekiel: “Eat this scroll.”

404 vs. in Rev, 275 of which contain references and allusions to the Old Testament.

Wafers – “harder to believe it is bread than it is to believe the body of Christ.”

Abrupt endings. (This was my comment on the fact that everyone seemed to be concluding their sermons/lectures by just abruptly stopping and slipping out of the pulpit. This seemed a bit weird to me. I like to have a clear wrap-up/denouement of sorts, and say, "Amen," when I'm done preaching. How do you end your sermons?)

Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter

(Sermon 5/21/06, John 15:9-16, 1 John 5:1-6)

Commanded

This past week, I travelled to Atlanta for a conference called The Festival of Homiletics, which is a preaching conference. As unappealing as it mind sound to many lay-folks, about 1600 clergy gathered to hear several days of back-to-back sermons and lectures. It’s one of my favorite events to attend – the preaching is excellent, given by some of the best, most well-known preachers in the Church. One preacher who was new to me, Julie Pennington-Russell, preached a sermon called “Picking Us Out in a Crowd,” that focused on texts similar to the ones we read today, focusing on Jesus’ teachings about us loving God and loving neighbor. Pennington-Russell said that according to Jesus, love is how you “pick Christians out in a crowd.” The authenticating mark of who belongs to Jesus is love. She said that there are no substitutions for love of course, and yet, we try to make them all the time. She imagined three well-known scripture verses about love and substituted other words: The steadfast niceness of the Lord… For God so tolerated the world… Faith, hope, respect abide, these three… Obviously, she said, love is the only thing that works.

Today, again, our lessons from John in the gospel and the epistle are about love. The language these past few weeks in our texts is so repetitive that it is hard to miss the point. Three weeks ago both texts repeated the phrase “laying down his life” or “laying down our lives” several times, as John sought to show us what it means to put love into action. Last week, the word “abide” appeared eight times between the two passages, teaching us clearly about the intimate relationship we have with God, at home in God’s love. This week is no different. Between our two passages, either command, commanded, or commandments appears a total of eight times in our readings. What could the theme be this week? John, sharing Jesus’ teaching with us, wants to make sure we don’t miss the message. We are commanded. So what is it that we’re commanded to do? Let’s look more closely.

In the epistle lesson, we continue in the chapter following last week’s reading, where John concluded by saying that we can’t truly love God, who we can’t see, if we don’t love our brothers and sisters, who we can see. In this chapter, our author picks up with continuing to expand on these family images. He says Jesus is born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child – the child being both Jesus, and all people, adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus. And, John argues, we know that we love God’s children if we love God, and we love God is we obey God’s commandments.

In the gospel lesson from John, we hear similar language. We again pick up immediately where we left off last week, when Jesus was describing himself as the vine and us as the branches. Jesus was telling us that we should abide in or be at home in him, and let him abide or be at home in us. Today, we listen as Jesus describes in more detail what this means. He explains how we go about getting this abiding love – “if you keep my commandments,” he says, “you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” And Jesus is clear about what commandments he’s talking about: “This is my commandments, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Jesus concludes, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

I think I’ve shared with you before about a book by Gary Chapman calledThe Five Languages of Love. Chapman talks about how problems in relationships happen because people have different understandings of what it means to show love. We all might be able to say “I love you.” But for some, love is only really communicated to another in certain ways. Chapman outlines such ways of showing love as quality time, acts of service, receiving of gifts, physical affection, and words of affirmation. He talks about how knowing someone’s “love language” can help you better show your love. We often tie love to other things – and Chapman urges us to believe that figuring out how we can best communicate love to others is essential for strong, lasting relationships.

Lucky for us, Jesus tells us straight out what his love language is – and it’s not one of the ones listed in Chapman’s book. Jesus is pretty specific. Jesus very plainly ties love and obedience to his commandments together. He tells us how he wants us to love him, and tells us how he loves us. He says, “if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love . . . this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you . . . You are my friends if you do what I command you.” It sounds very much like Jesus is saying our relationship with him is contingent on our following his commandments. In other words, Jesus says we’ll get along great as long as we do what he says. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” In any other situation, we’d call this setup a pretty unhealthy relationship. It doesn’t work this way! How can love work if one person is in control? Our independent natures bristle at the thought. You can’t make us love! You can’t command love, can you? But there it is: “This is my commandment, that you love one another.”

Perhaps some perspective is in order. Jesus lived and taught in a day when being a faithful person meant following the laws of the Torah, the laws that had bound the community together from generation to generation. The people Jesus lived among also were people who lived in a very highly structured society, where masters and slaves and every status level in between lived according to rules and customs that governed behavior. Commandments? The teachers of the law counted over six hundred that faithful Jews were meant to follow. So Jesus comes along, as one more person who talks about commandments. But is he talking about the same old same old? Instead, Jesus’ idea of making rules is to require love. Commanded to love.

In the epistle lesson, John also ties love and commandments together, saying almost the same thing as Jesus said in the gospel. “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments.” And John adds a tag, as if prepared in advance for our complaints, “And his commandments are not burdensome.” Today, we’re not so different from the Jews Jesus was teaching. We just think we are! We, too, live our lives surrounded by rules. We can live by laws and maybe grudgingly but usually dutifully obey household rules, school rules, rules at work, rules of order for the church, rules for society, national rules, rules for the international community. We manage to live under so much law – so many commandments. Really, to be commanded to love – indeed, how can we find this burdensome? If we obeyed this command, this one – to love – how many of those other rules would we need? And, what’s more, we’re being commanded by Jesus simply to do the very thing we most want to have.

Thinking again of the Languages of Love book, the real point of it is that no matter what way we want to receive love, we do want it – we want to be loved. Rev. Edward Markquart, a pastor whose sermons I love, writes this, “It’s about love, love, love. From the moment you are born until the moment you die; and every second and every minute and every hour and every day and every month and every year and every decade, the purpose of life is God giving you and me the time to learn how to love, as God loves. The purpose of time, of every moment and every day and every year is that God is teaching us what it means to be truly loving people. That’s what it is all about. That is what it has always been about. God commands us to love one another in these ways. It is like God commanding fish to swim. It is like commanding birds to fly. It is like God commanding daffodils to be beautiful. When God commands us to love as God loves, God is simply commanding us to be the kind of people that we were created to be in the first place. We were created in the image of God; we are like God; and God is love.” (1)

So Jesus takes it a step further than John in his epistle. It is not just that obeying Jesus’ commandments are not burdensome. Jesus talks about something much more than that. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Complete joy. Have you ever experienced such a thing as complete joy? Think over your life experiences. Think about the times in your life when you have felt the most joy – the most sheer, unblemished, undiluted joy. I’m going to guess that these experiences of joy probably have something to do with experiences of love as well, that our experiences of joy are never just about us, but always have something to do with the relationships in our lives. Jesus speaks to us of commandments, not to burden us, but to free us, because he wants us to have this joy not just in fleeting moments, but in complete, as a regular part of our living. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” So let’s be followers of the rules. And of all the rules we’re bound by, of all you can choose to follow, why not choose obedience to the one commandment that promises everything in exchange for your obedience. Let’s love, and be loved. Amen.

(1) http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_b_its_about_love_love_love.htm

Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter

(Sermon 5/10/09, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8)

Love According to John: True Vine

I’ve mentioned to you before that I’m a planner. I’ve generally had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do in my life and when I wanted to do it by. I like having plans and schedules, and completing what I’ve set out to do. If you’re a college student, or the parent of a college student, and lamented to me about not knowing what you or your child will major in in school, searching for direction, trying to choose a course of study, I will tell you that tons of my friends in college changed their majors many times with no problems, and went on to have wonderful careers in fields they’d never imagined that they’d fall in love with. But I can’t really tell you that about myself, because, after a little initial confusion over what to study when I was thinking about college as a senior in high-school, by the time I actually enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan, I knew that I wanted to be a pastor, knew exactly what steps I need to take to achieve that task, and went about getting it done. I literally had a pamphlet hanging on my wall that listed the steps into ordained ministry that I kept posted all through college and seminary. I planned it, and made it happen. I haven’t been such a planner because I’m just so superior in my organization skills than everyone else. I’ve been a planner because it give me comfort to know what direction my life is headed, to have a specific goal and know exactly how I’ll get to it.

And yet, despite my careful planning, when I look over my life, some of the times that God has acted most clearly in my life have been times when my plans have been upset, when my decisions have been vetoed by God in favor of something I hadn’t been expecting, or wanting. I’ve told you before, for example, that I wasn’t expecting to move to New Jersey to this church when Bishop Devadhar called and asked me to come here. Truthfully, I was planning on coming to New Jersey eventually – I wanted to go back to school and pursue a doctoral degree. But I had a different timeline in mind, and I planned to simply take an appointment to school, not pastor a church, while in New Jersey. But my plans and God’s plans were apparently not the same, and I found myself here, serving among you. And once I was here, I adjusted my plans, started to make new plans to accommodate my new situation. And now, quite outside of what I had planned given my new situation, I find myself heading back to Central New York. Once here, I planned on staying in New Jersey for a while, and planned on returning to Drew for more schooling at some point. And while certainly my return to my home conference is driven in large part by my desire to be near my family, I must tell you that I’ve also had a sense of trying to force my plan, to make my new plan be God’s plan for me. And I can tell you that forcing our plans onto, over, through, or around God’s hopes for us and calls on our life is pretty much never a good idea – it never works out for us like we think it will. And so I’m making new plans for myself yet again, but I’m learning, or trying to learn, that things will be more deeply rewarding for me if I keep myself open to truly following God, instead of following the map I sometimes too carefully craft for my own life.

Hold that thought for a bit, as we take a look at our scripture lessons for today. From our gospel lesson, we find another one of Jesus’ “I am” statements. Throughout John, Jesus spoke about his identity in everyday images that his contemporaries could have related too, instead of describing himself in the sometimes-distant theological language. Two weeks ago, for example, we heard about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, an image that meant a lot to the agricultural community where Jesus lived. Today, Jesus presents us with another image that ties into the land and the people that were close to him. “I am the true vine,” Jesus declares. “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” God is the vinegrower. Jesus talks about how the branches – us – can’t have live if they are separated from the vine – himself. And as branches, we’re meant to be the bearers of much fruit – fruit that we’re able to grow because we abide in him as he abides in us. We literally take our life from the vine, and through the vine, we can become fruit-bearing disciples.

From the epistle lesson, John picks up the theme of abiding in one another, God and God’s children. John focuses his passage on God’s nature – God is love. We love because God is love and we’re born of this loving God. If we don’t love, we don’t know God. The best love we can know is in God’s loving us, and because we know this love, we ought to love one another. When we do this, even though we can’t see God, John says, we get something better – God lives in us, and God’s love dwells within us. So God is love, John says, in case we missed it, and abiding in love we abide in God because God is – that’s right – love. Not just any love – perfect love – love that is so perfect that there is no fear in this love. And we love because God loves us first. And we can’t love God if we don’t really love our brothers and sisters, John says logically, because we can’t even see God, and we can see our brothers and sisters. How could we more easily love that which we can’t even see? So, if we claim to love God, we know how to show it: in loving others.

You’ll notice that in both passages today, the word “abide” appears repeatedly – six times in the epistle, eight in the gospel. The repetition helps signal us of the importance of the concept. The word ‘abide’ here is from the Greek word meno^, which means literally, “to stay or to remain at home.” So when Jesus and John speak of “abiding,” we can think of them as speaking about ‘remaining at home.’ If we go back through the passages and substitute this phrase where we see the word ‘abide,’ we get a clearer picture of what these passages are about. In First John we would read, “God is love, and those who remain at home in love remain at home in God, and God remains at home in them.” In the gospel, we would hear Jesus saying, “Remain at home in me as I remain at home in you . . . those who remain at home in me and I in them bear much fruit.”

Another repeated word in our epistle lesson is this weighty word “perfect,” and this week I just kept coming back to it. Every ordinand in The United Methodist Church is asked the so-called historic questions that have been passed down since Wesley’s days: “Are you going on to perfection?” and “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” The expected answer to both questions is “yes.” John Wesley was known – and ridiculed – in his day for his belief in the doctrine of Christian Perfection. His peers thought what many of us would think on hearing the phrase – how can we be perfect, or even bother trying to be perfect? But John Wesley insisted they didn’t understand true, scriptural perfection. Answering a hypothetical question about perfection, Wesley wrote, “But whom then do you mean by 'one that is perfect?' We mean one in whom is 'the mind which was in Christ,' and who so 'walketh as Christ also walked;' [one] 'that hath clean hands and a pure heart' . . . To declare this a little more particularly: . . . one who 'walketh in the light as [God] is in the light.” (1)

Wesley’s words about walking in the light as God is in the light are right in tune with our text from 1 John. John writes here that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and [God’s] love is perfected in us . . . Love has been perfected among us . . . there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear . . . whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” For Wesley, for John, being made perfect is a process we go through as we learn to let God’s love – God’s very essence – completely take over our lives, so that as God is love, we too are love, made bold by God’s love, casting out fear and being filled with God’s perfect love. The more we love, the more we become like Jesus, the more we are filled with God, and the more we are, in the best sense of the words, being made perfect. “Are you going on to perfection?” and “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” With God’s help, yes.

If we turn back now to our gospel lesson from John, we can read these images of the vine and branches and pruning and good fruit in light of this understanding of perfection. Jesus tells us that we are the branches, and that the branches can’t bear fruit unless they abide in the vine, Jesus himself, and in turn, the vine abides in the branches, and unless the branches are pruned by God, who is the vinegrower. When I hear Jesus talking about being pruned to bear good fruit, abiding in him as he abides in us, I see it as another way of saying that we’re being perfected in love, as John says, as Wesley says. Pruning, as you might know if you are familiar with gardening or landscaping, is a way of removing certain branches and leaves from a plant to make the plant stronger and healthier overall. Sometimes branches that are removed from a plant are diseased or weak, but other times, branches that seem healthy enough have to be removed because the pruning will make for a better, more fruitful plant or tree over the long run. Pruning, then, is a way of perfecting a plant, you might say.

What does that mean for us? How do we get pruned? For me, the most important thing for us to remember here is to remind ourselves who does the pruning, who does the perfecting, in our texts. We’re made perfect by God’s abiding love. We’re pruned by God the vinegrower. We are the branches, and branches don’t prune themselves, or prune other branches. God does that. So often, we look at our neighbors, and feel like we know what branches we’d cut in their gardens, so to speak. We know what decisions they should make, and are ready to call them out for the bad fruit we see. But we’re not the vinegrower, not the gardener of their souls. And what’s more, we’re not meant to do the pruning in our own lives either! And that’s harder control for us to give up. As branches, with God living right within us, abiding in us, we’re meant to be open enough to God’s perfecting love that we can trust God with tending to our lives, pruning where things need to change and be redirected, guiding us on a path which will help us bear good fruit, even if we can’t see the way yet.

John says that we have hope of being made perfect, hope of living a life free of fear. We can be perfect! – if we’re willing to be perfected, pruned. As I look at my own tendencies in planning out my whole life, I’ve found that the best things seem to come my way when rather than doing the planning, the leading, the scheduling, instead, I do the following – that’s discipleship after all – when rather than filling my life up with my own plans, I try to remain open enough to be filled up with God instead. If “abiding” means “being at home in,” I have to have enough room in my soul for God to find a place to dwell within me. If I’m already full of my own stuff, already unwilling to let any pruning happen, where will God make a home in my life?

So how do we start? How do we begin to get back into the right place – to let ourselves be branches instead of trying to all be the true vine, or the vinegrower? How do we move towards this perfection that casts out fear? That part is easy. John reminds us that God is love, and that to know God, you must know love. The more we love, the more we know God, who is love, and the more we love, the more we imitate Christ who is love. John leads us in the direction that Jesus was always leading us – through loving one another – those we see around us – is the only way we can really love God – who we don’t see ‘face to face.’ The more we love, the more room we make in our lives for something other than our own wants and desires, the more we make room for God, the more we understand what being made perfect in love is all about.

So, I ask you the questions that are asked of all who seek ordination in The United Methodist Church, because they’re really more questions about discipleship than questions about being a pastor: “Are you going on to perfection?” and “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” I hope your answer is yes.

Amen.

(1) http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/Wesley/perfection.stm

Revgals Friday Five: Friends

I decided to play the Friday Five this week - Jan writes: As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The way to have a friend is to be a friend."

So today let's write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.


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1. Long lost friends - I've written before about the struggle I have with what I'd call "long lost friends," those relationships you have in life that were once so important, but for whatever reason, have disappeared. It's less common, now, to completely lose touch, I guess, or lose awareness of what someone else is up to, thanks to thinks like facebook (see #2), which I truly treasure, even as these mediums drive others crazy. I love that something like facebook at least lets me answer the "what ever happened to..." question, even if we don't remain in contact. Who are my lost friends? My elementary school "boyfriend" who gave me a stuffed chesire cat for my birthday (which I still have,) and then moved to Florida. The Norwegian boy who came to the US for a year with his family and was in my third grade class - Oystein Pritz. Are you out there? Countless camp friends - they should really have their own category - those friendships you make for a week that are so intense, but you mostly never talk to again: Star Berry, Kerri Sessions, Jen Lee, Sarah Kerley, Casie Salmon, Becky Parker..., the Italian exchange student who stayed with us for a month when I was in 9th grade, Michaela Tafuni. The really intriguing Jacob DeSoto from Junior High. Where are you people?

2. High-school Friends - I've only maintained unbroken contact with a very few friends from high-school, but thanks to the wonders of facebook, I've now reconnected with many more old friends. Some, a handful, I'm surprised I ever lost contact with, since we were pretty close in high-school. (I'm talking about you, Candice Torres!) Others, I was never really friends with in high-school to begin with, as far as I remember, but unlike others who hate getting requests from these folks, I enjoy it. To me, it says, "Hey, we're thirty now, high-school was a long time ago, we're adults, and we can make the connections we wouldn't make then." I can accept that, and appreciate that. There's also a couple of people that I've liked becoming friends with because they just grew up into such different people than I expected. One person, in particular, has just been such a kind, sweet person to me, and I never would have guessed that would happen a dozen years ago.

3. College friends - My roommate my freshman year of college and I really did not get along our first semester. But we got over it, became very close, and have been good friends ever since. We still visit each other whenever we can. I have a handful of very close friends from college that I keep in touch with outside of facebook-type exchanges. The longevity of these friendships, the strength of them, above and beyond both high-school and seminary (unexpected) friendships has often surprised me. In seminary, for example, a basic common purpose, and ending up generally all working in the same field, makes it seem more likely to stay in touch. But in actuality, it's my Museum-Studies-friend and my lives-on-a-reservation-in-Arizona friend who I stay in better touch with.

4. Seminary friends - I loved Drew. I love my seminary friends. I had a hard time settling in at Drew my first year. I graduated from college a year early, and I missed the friends I would have been graduating with a lot. I kept to myself a lot my first year. But eventually, I became friends with a really wonderful group of people. We don't always keep in great touch, especially since I spent the first 4 years of my ministry farther away than most of the rest of them. But I love the chances I do have to see them, and I'm proud of all the neat things they're doing in their respective ministries, including one who leads speical multimedia worship, a campus ministry chaplain, an associate general secretary at a UM agency, one who's incorporates a fitness program into a spiritual disipline for her congregation, some working on doctoral degrees now, a pastor taking leave to spend 4 months in Nigeria, friends working in social services, serving in Idaho, Arkansas, etc.

5. Colleagues - Over the last six years, I've realized that one of my favorite things about being United Methodist is the connectional system and the unique collegiality that afford me as a UM Clergy person. I know not all UM pastors feel this way, I'm sure, but I know many do just treasure times where we get together. I really enjoy attending annual conference, district days, even mundane meetings, because of the people I get to be around. Lately, I'm enjoying a newly started young clergy group connecting under-40 clergy in my soon-to-be-new conference. I enjoyed my probationary covenant group, and the district clergy women's group I used to meet with monthly, and some of my dearest friends in the world are also my colleagues, deepening our relationships.