Sermon for 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, "Run With It"

Sermon 10/31/10

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

Run With It

            I’ve never preached on Habakkuk before. It’s just one of those books of the Bible that doesn’t get a lot of play. You know, ones that, if you aren’t a regular Bible-reader, you might not have heard of before this morning. Habakkuk is one of the books in the Bible in the collection we call “minor prophets.” Minor prophets are just shorter books of prophecy than major books – they aren’t any less important. Not a lot is known about Habakkuk, the person. He was a contemporary of the more well-known prophet Jeremiah. His writings seem to come at the time around the 6^th century BC when the kingdom of Babylon was becoming a greater and greater world power, and their takeover of Israel was a threat that was forming on the horizon. In other words, the people of Israel probably had a bad feeling about what was coming.

            Habakkuk’s writing is a dialogue between him and God. He has some questions, hard questions, to pose to God, and then he waits for God to answer. Our reading for today gets right into that conversation. Habakkuk wants to know: why is justice so long in coming? Why are bad things always happening? If God is just, why isn’t God intervening in this situation? Pretty timeless questions, right? “O Lord,” cries Habakkuk, “how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.” Habakkuk says he’ll wait for God’s answer: “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

God does answer. In the next verses we hear: “Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

Earlier this month, as you know, the Parish Council went on a retreat at Vanderkamp. Paul Spero, the council chair, besides getting us lost in the woods, spent some time talking about and asking us about what our vision for the church was. We have a mission statement. I hope you are a bit familiar with it, because it appears in our bulletin insert every single Sunday. Our mission is “Growing together in our knowledge and love of God through Jesus Christ and sharing this with others.” That’s our mission. But what’s our vision? How do we expect to put our mission into practice?

Each person shared some thoughts about their own vision for the church. I won’t name names, since I didn’t ask everyone about sharing their words in advance, but I think I can give you the content of what was lifted up. Our vision is: Service, and doing for others. Being a helpful church. Reaching out. Being challenged, communicating Jesus and growing. The church is only as strong as its youngest members. Sharing our story and creating a space that makes that happen. Seek God’s view. Love. Joy. Think about long-term viability. Try non-traditional things, try blending old and new practices. Respecting a diversity of opinions. Forgiveness. Just because we’ve always done it or tried it before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it or try it again. God’s love, our love for each other, families, community. Respect, dignity, humility. A church you can come back to. Welcoming and family-oriented. And here’s what I said: I want this church to be a place where people’s lives change because they’ve encountered Christ. I want people to hear God’s call and learn how to respond to it.

“Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time.” Is there a vision here, friends? What do you see for this church? The last couple of weeks, as we’ve talked about giving and stewardship, we’ve been talking about the why questions. Vision is all about the why-questions. Why do you come here? Why is it important for you to come to church? And why would you want someone else to come here? What do you hope happens to you because of coming here? What would you want someone else to discover because of being in this place? Do we have a vision? Is it plain? It is visible? Is it apparent? Can we all be a part of it?

            Let me tell you more about how I would answer those questions. First, and foremost, we come here to worship God. We give thanks to God for our many blessings. We offer gifts back to God. We pray to God. We meditate on God’s word. We sing our praises. We come to worship. My vision is that we would worship with our whole hearts. With passion. With enthusiasm. With joy. How we do that, what form our worship takes, is not nearly as important as how invested our hearts and souls are when we’re worshipping. Honestly, I could find worship meaningful with only traditional music, or only contemporary songs, or only printed prayers, or only spontaneous prayers, with drama and dancing and noise, or with quiet, contemplative reflection – any of those work for me when I feel that I’m surrounded by people who are here to joyfully give thanks to God with their whole hearts. If there’s a way I can help you connect more in worship, please, seriously, let me know. What would capture your heart in praising God? Last night, some of us were treated to a wonderful concert by Richard Koons and friends. He sang quite a mix of songs – show tunes, ballads, hymns, show-stoppers. But everything he sang, he sang with a passion and commitment to what he was doing that was clear in his expression, his every gesture, and his tone. No one doubted his sincerity. That’s what I think worship is about – offering our whole hearts up to God.

            We come here – I want you to come here, to come here myself – to have our lives changed. Time is one of our most precious commodities, isn’t it? It seems like there is never enough time. We are such busy, busy people. To come here, to be a part of this church – that’s a commitment of some of your precious resource of time – to come for worship, for meetings, for activities, for youth group, for Sunday School or Bible Study. You commit your time. And yet, time is such a precious resource, why would we give it unless we’re a) required to or b) really consider what we’re giving our time to a priority in our lives. You aren’t required to be here. Ok, maybe some of our younger members have strong parental influences for being here. But mostly, you are here by choice. Some folks long for days when going to church was a cultural expectation – you just went to church because you were supposed to. But, although I’m sure that was great for attendance figures, I don’t wish for that. As we heard Rob Bell say last week – God wants nothing less than our hearts, freely given. God wants you to want a relationship with God, not to force one on you. I want my relationship with God, and my relationship with the church of Christ to be life-changing, or why bother? How has being here changed your life? If it hasn’t been changed, for you, in ways you can articulate, I encourage you to wonder: is there a way you can put more into your relationship with God? Can you make getting to know God a higher priority in your life? If you do that, and you still don’t see change in your life – talk to me. Seriously. I’ve said before and I’ll say again: I love helping people figure out how God is calling them. I’d love to talk with you.

            And if, if the first two are true – if you come here to praise God, and you praise God with your whole heart, and if you find that your life is changed by knowing God more, then why wouldn’t you want to share your experience with others? My vision for this congregation is that we’re a community of faith where being a part of God’s family is so meaningful that you can’t help but want to talk about it with others. I don’t mean that I want you all to be moved to going door-to-door or preaching on the street corner. I mean that I hope you are so grounded in your faith that it is simply a part of how you live and move and exist in the world, so that is it part of every decision you make. You feed the hungry because you were deeply moved by Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 and can’t stand to see more people starving in the midst of abundance. You care for children because you understand that children have the easiest time seeing God, and you want to see through their eyes. You visit shut-in members because you understand what the apostle Paul means when he talks about us being essential parts of the body of Christ. If your life has meaning it didn’t have before, if you have purpose, and if you have this unfailing love of God – how can you not share that, share your life with others? I want your life to be your witness in the world.

            That’s my vision. Habakkuk was wondering, in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty around him: did God have a plan? Did God have something good in store, even still? Maybe you are wondering that too. I believe God answers us, as God answered the prophet. There is a vision. What do you see?

“Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time.”  Amen. 

Sermon for 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Gratitude Sunday (non-lectionary)

Sermon 10/24/10

Mark 12:38-44

Putting In Your Two Cents

           

Last Sunday, I mentioned to you that even in Paul’s day, a lively debate about ministry and financial giving was already taking place. Today, we opened our worship service with a deeper look at some of those issues. Connie read for us 2 Corinthians 9, a chapter where we read Paul talking about a financial gift for the Christians in Jerusalem that has been promised by the Christians in Corinth. Paul writes here to encourage them, essentially, to have the gift ready when his missionaries come to pick it up, and to have the gift ready with a good attitude. Paul wants them to stay firm to their commitment to give, and wants them to give it cheerfully. Paul is smooth in his persuasive style. He says, “So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion.”

Paul goes on to say, “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. ⁷Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. ⁸And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. ¹⁰[God] who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us.” 

Essentially, Paul encourages the Corinthians to give by telling them that God blesses you abundantly always, but that you reap what you sow, and so if you sow abundantly, freely, you’ll also reap an increased harvest. At first read, I get a little nervous about this. I’m not a big fan of what is called the “prosperity gospel” – this theology basically says that if you are faithful, God will bless you financially, provide for you materially. And not only do I think that there’s not a lot in Jesus’ teachings to support that theology, I also think it is incredibly presumptuous in the face of so many faithful and generous people I know who have struggled for years just to keep their homes, pay their bills, make ends meet. But what Paul actually says is something different: he says that when you give generously and freely, with an open heart, you are blessed because you will have enough to share in good works, and you will find you have an increased harvest of righteousness. You do get more when you give more, he says. You get more blessings, more abundance, more riches in your life, of the kind that last eternally.

As I prepared for our stewardship focus the past month, I went to my ready audience of thoughtful contributors to my sermon-writing efforts: in other words, I posted some questions for readers of my facebook page. I asked people, was there ever a time in their life when they heard something that really inspired them to change the way they give? Let me share with you some responses.

One wrote: I was feeling guilty about not giving to the church. Later I promised God that no matter what if there was $100 in my account on Sunday I would give it to the church. Well Saturday night there was like 17.00 in my account so I figured oh well. That night [my husband] did some computer work for someone and made $60 so I decided I'd give $20. I had the $60 in my purse and then during church [a member] gave me $40 he owed me for doing a cake for [his son’s] wedding. When the offertory started I had exactly $100 in cash. I never have $100, especially not in cash. I went back and forth not knowing what to do. There is so much we could use the money for. I put the whole $100 in the plate and that week I got a small, but unexpected raise at work. I know it sounds silly, but it validated everything everyone had preached about giving coming back around.”

Another wrote: “My pastor told us of God's challenge in Malachi 3:10:"Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing." I was unemployed and facing unpaid bills, but I started giving. The following week I got a full-time job - an overflowing blessing indeed! Tithing seemed easy after that.”

A pastor friend wrote: “It might sound silly but a woman in my last church shared her personal struggles with being able to give what she thought was enough to the church. She actually gave up cable in order to give to the church. That might not be much of a sacrifice to some people but for others it is. I thought about how many people just say they can't give without really giving much thought to what they put before God. I think that the way we spend our money and where we put our money says a lot about our beliefs and what we value.”

I don’t believe that if we give more money to God, we magically get more money somewhere else. If that were the case, everyone would be clamoring to give in order to get, and that certainly isn’t the spirit of giving I think God wants to stir up in us! But I believe that God loves it when we love to give, and that we’ll find ourselves counting blessings we couldn’t see before when we free up our hearts. I can’t say that I’ve ever met anyone who regretted their generosity. I’m sure there’s always an exception. But God says that giving blesses us in ways we’d be hard-pressed to regret.

But let me push us all a little farther. Our reading from Mark is the story of the Widow’s Mite. A simple story – a poor widow puts pennies equivalent into the temple treasury collection box, and Jesus remarks on her gift, saying that what she has given amounted to more than what many rich people had given, since for her she gave all that she had to live on. We can quickly draw conclusions from this: it’s not the size of the gift that matters so much as what it costs you to give it. We should be like the widow, give like the widow, and know even our small gifts are important, like the widow’s. Okay, but is there more to this story?

Our reading actually starts a few verses earlier, with the context, the why-Jesus-told-the-story part that we usually forget about. We begin with Jesus talking about the practices of the scribes. The scribes were professional interpreters of the religious laws. They were educated men who could read and write. And having these rare skills and this knowledge gave them power and status over others. It is this status, this position that Jesus is talking about. He warns the crowds against the scribes, who would have been respected and esteemed by most, criticizing them for making their faith for show. He calls them insincere, calls their intentions into question, and accuses them outright of unethical practices. All this they do while still saying long-winded prayers to God, Jesus says. This hypocrisy is what most troubles Jesus – he’s upset because the scribes act like they are faithful Jews, but in reality, what they do is just for show.

Then we hear the part of the story we know well: Jesus sits opposite the treasury at the temple, and he sees many rich people putting in large sums of money, and then sees a poor widow putting in two small copper coins – like a penny or two in our terms. He calls his disciples to him and says “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had.” Unlike the scribes, it is apparent that her faith is what compels her to live justly and sincerely.

Are we like the scribes? I fear it is still easy to only look like a faithful disciple instead of actually being one. What does the good Christian look like? I once read a quote that said something like, “character is what you do when no one else is watching.” It is so rare in today’s world that someone isn’t watching what we’re doing. And so it is easy to end up doing everything because we think we have to, because we want to look good, because we want to fit in. But when it comes to discipleship, what God sees in our hearts is what matters.

Why do you give? And why do you give what you give? What moves you to give your money to this church, or to anything? Our readings today ask us seriously about the whys of our giving, the whys of our discipleship, beyond what’s apparent on the outside, to what’s going on in our hearts. Jesus wants us to be genuine and be giving of our whole selves, not for the sake of what others think of us, but because our loving and generous God also wants us to be loving and generous. And I think Jesus wants us to make sure that what we give our all to, what we give our whole lives to, is worth our giving. The issue today isn’t giving what you think you are supposed to be giving, what we think must be giving to qualify as a good Christian. You don’t have to find out what the person next to you in the pew gives and make sure you’re giving more than them. There really are no bonus prizes for the highest pledge or biggest increase. God wants what is real, what is in you, and what is all of you – that is what you are called to give.

            And, so most importantly, I want you to ask why you give to this church. Like Paul says, I want us to move beyond giving because we feel an obligation that weighs us down. I think we’re called to give because we have this abundance from God that we want to share, and I want us to give to this church because we have this passion, this commitment, this hope and vision for the message, the gospel we have to share with the world, that makes us excited about supporting the mission and ministry of the church. Why would we give our all to something if what we’re giving to is not worth the sacrifice, not worth the generosity? I want this community of faith to be the very place that captures your heart and soul. But I also want you to know that if you want to be a part of the mission and ministry of the gospel, if you want to be a disciple, God is going to ask you to give everything you have.    

Wherever you find yourself answering God’s call, God will require your deep generosity, your giving your last two cents for God’s purposes. But please, know that God wants your generosity for all the right reasons. Whether you think you’re a modern-day scribe, or you relate to the widow with her coins, God wants your generosity for all the right reasons. Whether you’re a pillar of the church, or a Sunday School student, or up front for Children’s time, or trying to go unnoticed, God wants you, wants your heart and soul, and wants you for all the right reasons. Amen.

Sermon for 21st Sunday after Pentecost, Inspiration Sunday (non-lectionary)

Sermon 10/17/10

Luke 12:32-34, Matthew 25:14-30

I’ve been struggling with just how to approach my preaching for this our stewardship campaign on this Inspiration Sunday. I find it difficult because so many things are tied together for us, emotionally and spiritually when we talk about giving. For example, as we talk about what makes up our church budget, salaries and benefits make up a huge chunk of what we pay. It puts pastors in a bit of an awkward position, trying to encourage people to support a church financially, when that support provides their livelihood. This isn’t a new consideration – the apostle Paul considered that very issue in his ministry, and had some lively conversations with his churches about ministry and money. I find it challenging because when we talk about giving in the church, we usually also happen to be talking about giving to our church specifically, when, in reality, giving and supporting our church financially are not one and the same. I find it difficult because I know for some people, people who are struggling people who have lost jobs, people who have made do without, money is such a stressful topic. My own childhood includes a time when we made use of food stamps, when we were recipients of the church’s thanksgiving basket, when we opened Christmas presents with our winter coats on because the heat had been shut off. I know the stress, the anxiety that the lack of money can cause. I find it challenging because I also know the power that having money can have over us. I know what it is like to always want just a little more. I know what it is like to have a larger income than before and not be giving anymore away, and to have nothing important to show for my spending. I find it difficult because for a society that leaves very little to the imagination anymore, where nothing is really off limits, where so many public topics were once private affairs, talking money is still one of the most taboo topics there is, especially when we’re talking specifics. What do you do with your money? What is your income? What do you spend it on? How much do you give? Do you tithe – give a tenth to the church? A percent? Why? Why not? Taboo. And yet, I also know, that as people of faith, we must respond to the overwhelming witness and message of the gospels that call us to seriously consider our stuff, our money, and what it all means in relation to our faith.

What I want to do is untie things a little bit, so we can get to what I think is at the heart of our stewardship campaign. First, stewardship is about giving to God, because God gives to us, because we are thankful for our blessings, and because God calls us to give. In this, it doesn’t really matter if we’re talking about giving to this church or not. Even if our entire budget were cared for by some grant, or some anonymous donor, or some magical windfall of money, we’d still be called to give, and give as generously and freely as ever. And second, stewardship in our particular setting is about who we are as a community of faith and who we feel God is calling us to be. We’re called to care for this faith community if we are a part of it, to hope and dream and vision all the ways in which we can serve God in this place, and then to act to see those visions carried out.

In our video, we heard Rob Bell speaking about our text from 1 Timothy, and speaking about what it means to blessed and to be a blessing, to take hold of that life that is really life. We also heard two gospel lessons this morning. The first was a short lesson from Luke’s gospel. Jesus has been telling the crowds and disciples not to worry, and he follows up with these words: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I love this verse, and I love it because it is deeper than it sounds. It’s easy to remember, and I think sometimes we forget to really think about verses that we might know by heart. Why does Jesus order this sentence this way? He doesn’t say “where your heart is, there you’ll find your treasure.” No, he says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I think the difference – the order – is important. We’d probably like it to be that where our hearts are, our treasure is, because it’s easy to think of where our hearts are – with our loved ones, with God, with friends, and family, right? But Jesus says that where our hearts really are is determined by where our treasure is. And what is it that we truly treasure? If we looked at where our treasure was, what would it say about our hearts? We might answer one way – try to define treasure a certain way – but Jesus seems to see it differently: Our treasure is what we store up, what we gather and collect and keep for ourselves. So what are you storing up? What do you treasure? What do you spend the most time storing up? What in your life do you hang onto most tightly? What are you working for, what do you spend the most energy accumulating? Because that’s what you really treasure, and where your heart really is, Jesus says.

Our other gospel lesson is a parable – the Parable of the Talents. Like most of Jesus’ parables, this parable is meant to tell us something about what the Kingdom of God is like. It appears late in Matthew’s gospel, in the midst of several other parables. A man going on a journey calls his slaves to him and divides among them care of his property. One slave receives one talent, one five, and one ten, each, we read, receiving according to ability. The slaves who receive five and ten talents immediately take them, trade with them, and double their money to present to their master when he returns home. But the slave who received just one talent dug a hole and hid the money, and returned it to his master on his return. When the master returned, he praised the faithful servants for their stewardship of his talents, and said, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave. You have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.” But when the third slave returned the single talent to his master, explaining that he thought his Master was hard-hearted and harsh, taking what was not rightfully his; the Master rebuked the man, and took the one talent from him and gave it to the one who had already been given ten. And so, Jesus concludes with that strange sentiment: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what we have will be taken away.”

It’s that concluding sentence that makes me think I don’t really understand the rest of the parable. I think the parable is about using the gifts God gives us, and being good stewards. But then, with that last sentence, I’m confused. “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what we have will be taken away.” I can understand God wanting us to use what we’ve been given – but taking away from those who have nothing? Giving to those who already have so much? Even if we’re talking about more than just money here, isn’t that just a spiritual version of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer? Will God take anything from those who already have nothing? Does that make any sense? 

Author Luther Snow reflects on this parable, focusing in on this very troubling. He writes, “How can you take away something from nothing? It’s impossible. So maybe ‘those who have nothing’ do have something after all. Maybe the point is not how much we have, but how much we think we have. The [slave] with the one talent had more than nothing, but he acted as though he had nothing. He did nothing with the talent . . . He may have looked at the other two [slaves] and thought, ‘Compare to them, I’ve got nothing’ . . . It is as if the master is saying, ‘You had my valuable gifts in your hand, and you didn’t think they were valuable.’” (1) So maybe we can better understand what Jesus is saying when we think of it in this way: From those who think they have nothing, what they really do have will be taken away. And from those who feel like they’ve been richly blessed, they’ll be blessed even more. The slave with one talent didn’t have nothing. He had something precious – he just wouldn’t see it.

Our Parish Council spent the last two days at a retreat at Vanderkamp. There was another group there, and a woman from the group, before saying the grace at dinner said, “People never know when they’re getting a gift.” Something about that statement really struck me, because I believe that is particularly true when it comes to gifts from God. We seem to know what to do with gifts we get from others. We say thanks. We open the gifts. We use the gifts. We encourage others to try out what we’ve been given. We take joy in sharing. Why is it that we don’t know what to do with our gifts, our blessings, our abundance, given to us by God, who loves us?  

Today is Inspiration Sunday. Inspire – the word comes from a root word that means to breathe into or blow into something. Think of the creation story in Genesis 2 when God breathes into Adam to give him life. You might say that something that is inspiring is something that is life-giving. Think about what gives us life in this congregation, and how we can give life to things in and outside of this congregation. Be inspired by God’s generous heart.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your [God’s] good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Amen.

Sermon for World Communion Sunday

Sermon 10/2/10

1 Corinthians 11:17-26, 1 Corinthians 12:12-27

            When I was a child, and in my early teens, I used to get excited on Communion Sundays because it usually meant that my pastor would preach either a very brief or no sermon at all. I knew that some faith traditions practiced weekly communion, though, and I couldn’t imagine that. I was sure that doing something every week like that would take away the meaning, the special quality of celebrating communion. Years later, though, when I was in seminary, I experienced living in the midst of a community of faith 24/7 in a way that I hadn’t before. And we had chapel services offered three times a week, with the biggest service being the weekly celebration of Holy Communion. And I found that I loved it. I found that it was moving in a way I didn’t expect. It was a bond that held us together as a community. It was a sacrament that drew me closer to God. It was a ritual that made the words that were preached just before make more sense. Over my years of ministry, I have found that celebrating the sacraments – baptism and communion – is one of the greatest blessings of ministry. There is nothing that compares with baptizing someone, and such intimacy in saying, “this is the body of Christ broken for you. This is the cup of Christ, poured out for you, for the forgiveness of sins.”  

            This summer, I took my first Doctor of Ministry class, “Continuity and Change.” The course was taught by a New Testament professor, who encouraged our detailed study of the early church as a way to examine our church settings today.  New Christians in the early church – they had to work everything out. Everything was new. Everything was a learning process of living out the faith of Jesus Christ. How would they be community together? What of their old ways of living had to be left behind? Paul, the planter of so many of these communities, writes in detail to address concerns he has, teachings he feels each place needs, conflicts that already arise in the young churches. That’s the content of most of Paul’s letters in the New Testament. In class, I was immediately drawn to what we learned about first century worship, and particularly, the practice of sharing the Lord’s Supper, holy communion, in the community of faith.

            Paul writes in most detail about communion and worship in his first letter to the church at Corinth. Churches – just a fancy word for the gathered faith community – met in homes of church members. For practical reasons, they met in the homes of the richest members because they had the largest houses and the most resources, and could provide the best setting for getting together. The church at Corinth met at the home of a rich man named Gaius. We can glean some knowledge from verses of scripture about worship and communion practices. They probably met weekly, on Sundays. They did many of the things that we do still – they prayed, both spontaneously and with ritual prayers. They sang. They read scripture. They shared testimony – their own experiences of God at work in their lives. They celebrated the sacrament. And all of this happened over the course of a meal. Worship was a feast – a meal shared together. The bread, the Body of Christ, was broken early on. The cup was given after the supper. But the meal, the feast, and the sacrament intricately tied to it, was the primary, central act of worship.

            In our first reading from Corinthians, Paul is writing to address concerns he has about disturbing practices that have come up in worship and especially in sharing the sacrament. In Paul’s day, like ours, people came from many different economic backgrounds. But proper roles for people according to their classes were more structured. We still have plenty of class difference. But in Paul’s day, when people of all different backgrounds came together to feast and worship – things got complicated. In an early Christian household of a wealthy person, like at the home of Gaius, the host of the Corinthian church, a home would have an open air center atrium, and a room called the Triclinium – a dining room with three-sided couches, and an open side for servants to bring in food. There were places for about a dozen people to sit – to recline actually. Imagine meals taking place while everyone stretched out on lounge chairs. But worship feasts would bring in many more than a dozen people. So everyone who couldn’t sit at one of the dozen seats had to be served their food in the atrium. Guess who got the dozen seats on the couch?

Of course Gaius, the wealthy host, and his wealthy friends. Not only that, but Paul indicates that he’s discovered that those seated in the Triclinium were either arriving before the working poor or slaves who were members of the church, to start their meal early, or actually eating in front of them, first, while the others looked on. And further, food of different quality and quantity was served to the wealthy church members. So Paul says that some members are getting drunk on good wine, while others are going home from a worship feast hungry. Can you imagine, at worship, if we sat according to economic status, and served better communion bread to those of a higher status. Outrageous, right? What a horrible distortion of the beautiful meal left to us by Jesus!

But we can’t blame the people of the Corinthian church too much. They were only replicating in their brand new faith community exactly what happened in the rest of the social lives. In the other clubs, organizations, and associations they were a part of, this pattern was exactly how things functioned. You might all be part of the same group, but the societal divisions were still firmly in place.

Paul writes to remind the community what it means to be the one Body of Christ. He is passionate about this. He can’t say enough about how important understanding what it means to be the Body of Christ is. He says that if the Corinthians continue practicing the Lord’s Supper as they have been – well, it isn’t actually the Lord’s Supper at all. You can’t call the practices they’ve engaged in the Lords’ Supper. Paul says, repeatedly in his writings, that when we are in Christ, we are new creations. They are baptism words – in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul means this with a sincerity, with an urgency that I find it hard to even convey to you. In Christ, we are new creations, and we are part of One Body. People were used enough to participating in religious ceremonies that had symbolic meanings. But Paul – he understood that the power of belonging to Christ was real change in your life and in the world. Real change. Real transformation. For Paul, that meant that your identity, so entrenched in societal standards – your gender, your ethnicity, your status – it was nothing, nothing anymore, because of Christ.

Paul wanted the community at Corinth to know that being a Jesus follower meant real, actual, concrete changes in the way you would live in the world and treat other people. If you come to the table together, if you feast together, if you share in the One Body of Christ together, you better expect some real changes in how you live. And so when we look again at our second reading from Corinthians, this imagery you know well about us all being different parts of the body, hear Paul’s repeated emphasis: we are one body, one body, one body in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t say it lightly. He doesn’t say it to sound pretty of poetic. He means it. We are part of each other if we are part of Jesus. We have to act that way, live that way, act to make the world that way.

We still struggle to get Paul’s message. But on this World Communion Sunday, I want us to think about what it would mean if every time we celebrated the sacrament, we remembered that if we want to be part of Jesus, we’re part of each other too. Not symbolically. Not to be forgotten as soon as we leave this building, or even just this time of worship. Not to be forgotten when we’re stuck in traffic, or in classes, or at work, or at the store, or confronted with racism or poverty, not to be forgotten when we want to put up walls between ourselves and those who are other. Because of Christ, because we are One Body, there is no Other. There’s only all of us. What if we remembered?

Amen. 

Sermon for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, "Parables of Jesus: The Virtue of Shrewdness"

Sermon 9/19/10

Luke 16:1-13

Parables of Jesus: The Virtue of Shrewdness

            There are many parables of Jesus that I find challenging, difficult, because I know exactly what Jesus is asking of us, and what he’s asking means changing my life in a way that is hard. For example, when Jesus teaches about our life not consisting of our possessions – well, that’s some pretty direct language that I can figure out. Our lives are filled with stuff that we value too much, more than we value people, sometimes! But I consider today’s parable to be the most challenging of them all – not because what Jesus is saying is so hard, but because it is simply to confusing. This is, to me, the most mind-boggling parable of them all. It’s called the parable of the Shrewd Manager, or sometimes, the parable of the Dishonest Manager.

Jesus directs this parable at the disciples, his close followers, although the scribes and Pharisees, to whom he told the Parable of the Lost Sheep that we heard last week, they’re standing close enough to listen in to this parable too. So tells the disciples that there is a rich man who has a manager or steward of the rich man’s property, a fairly typical arrangement in Jesus’ day. The person was usually a slave or a former slave, but they had a great deal of power, too. They were responsible for all the affairs of the master’s household. They oversaw all the finances, and had authority over all the other household slaves, and sometimes even over the children of the master. The Greek name for them is oikonomos, and that’s where we get our English word economy.

Someone reports to the rich man that the household manager has been squandering his property. We’re not told exactly what that means, but probably, the manager was using the rich man’s property, money, and possessions for himself and his own benefit – acting as though what he was simply in charge of was actually his. So the rich man calls the manager in to give an account. The manager is worried – he realizes that if he has to present the accounts, the rich master will figure out that the manager has been mismanaging. So the manager acts shrewdly, frankly, sneakily, to protect himself. He calls in each of the debtors to the rich man, and slashes their bills, sometimes by fifty percent, so that he will ingratiate himself to them and find favor with them – maybe he’ll be able to secure a new position after he is fired by the rich master. He’s thinking ahead and trying to make sure he lands on his feet. Mosaic law didn’t allow a lender to collect interest, and so it seems perhaps this rich man got around the law by charging for more than was actually given. Essentially, then, the steward cancels the interest on everyone’s bills, which will result in a lot less profit for the master of the house.

            Now, we expect the manager to be fired for his actions, for his sneaky behind-the-scenes maneuvering. But instead, and this is where things get confusing, his master commends him – because he has acted shrewdly, a word that means astute or sharp in practical matters. And most surprising of all: what Jesus tells us we should learn from this story. “The children of this age are more shrewd than are the children of light . . . Make friends for yourself of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Jesus holds the shrewd manager up as a model for us to follow. Does he want us to behave like this? Are we meant to be sneaky like this? Will God reward us for this kind of behavior?

Parables are not always easy for us to understand and interpret with our contemporary ears. We try to solve parables like a puzzle, and figure out what each thing means, what each piece represents. But parables are not always “this equals that.” But they’re really not meant to be picked apart that way. Instead, they’re meant to be read as a whole, and gleaned for what they tell us about the kingdom of God. In his parables, Jesus is always telling us what it is like in the kingdom of God – not what it is like in heaven, but what it is like if we live here on earth as if God’s kingdom is already here. That’s what the good news was for Jesus – God’s kingdom being here already. So, what does this parable tell us about what the kingdom of God is like?

About forty percent of the stories in the gospel are about money, our stuff, our material possessions, and what we should do with them. That tells us something – what Jesus has to stay about this stuff is super important to him. He talks about it all the time. It’s a big issue. So what is Jesus saying here? First, he’s telling us that a manager had responsibility over a lot of resources, and he misused those resources. They weren’t his, but he used them like they belong to him. Second, we learn that when he was called on the carpet, the manager acted quickly – shrewdly – to make amends, which had the good result of helping others, clearing his own name, and pleasing his master.

           Still, what does this tell us about how we should live? We try to plan for our future don’t we? Even though I hope to have thirty-something more years in the ministry before I retire, I’m already contributing to my pension plan and trying to choose what is best for my future. Most of us do that – think about retirement, think about our Social Security income, think about our benefits, plan for our future. Do we take as much care with our resources when it comes to wisely investing in and for our relationship with God? Are we good stewards, good long-term investors, when it comes to discipleship? Jesus says that people seem to act shrewdly when it comes to matters of business, but disciples, children of light, don’t seem to act with the same sharpness when it comes to matters of discipleship. Disciples are managers – all that we have responsibility for is not our own, but are things put into our care by God. And we, like the manager, have been caught in the act – we are squandering what God has given to us. Now what will we do? Can we act shrewdly?

I think I’ve told you that John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, very early in his ministry, fixed a budget for himself to live on, setting aside a certain amount to save, an amount to give to the poor, and so on. Over the years, his resources expanded. He had income from preaching and teaching. But his budget – the amount he would spend on things for himself and his personal needs – never changed. He used what he needed to meet his expenses, and the rest, he gave away. He always said that if he died with any money or possessions to speak of, he should be considered a robber, because those things would not rightly belong to him. How truly remarkable was his position! I wish I followed his example. I find that it is so easy to squander what I have for nothing.

These days, I seem to carry less and less cash with me. Everywhere you go, you can use your debit card for purchases, and have money deducted directly from your checking account. I find it so easy to hand over my card, and pay very little attention to what I’m actually spending on what. A swipe of the card is all it takes. There’s something about paying with actual currency, with cash, that makes me pay more attention to what I’m spending. But as I use my debit card more frequently, I find that it is easier and easier to squander and spend carelessly.

But I think Jesus is thinking even deeper than that. Don’t we sometimes squander ourselves? When we think about ourselves, all the gifts we’ve been given, all the ability and potential we have, all that we could be making of ourselves, don’t we often squander ourselves? Waste what we have? Don’t we squander our time? Don’t we squander our relationships? Don’t we squander our energy? It is so easy to squander our resources, isn’t it?

            Jesus says that we are good at handling business, but disciples aren’t good at handling what they have been given responsibility over. So, what have we been given responsibility for? Are we squandering what God has given us? Using it for our own benefit? John Wesley wrote in his sermon, “The Use of Money,” that this parable means for us “"Render unto God," not a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is God's, be it more or less; by employing all on yourself, your household, the household of faith, and all [humankind], in such a manner, that you may give a good account of your stewardship when ye can be no longer stewards . . . Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all [people]!”

Jesus says that we can’t serve two masters. We can serve our ourselves first. Or we can serve God first. We have to make a choice, because if we try to do both, we’ll find ourselves in trouble when we are called by God to give an account of what we’ve been doing with all the abundance we’ve been given. I wish I could work out all the puzzles of this parable – when all is said and done, I still do find it confusing! But I think that we can take away some things. First, we need to be a little shrewd, a little smart, about what God has given to us. We have so much. I’m not just talking about things and money and possessions. I’m also talking about our other resources – our gifts, our talents, the things we do well, the people in our lives, the time we have and how we use it – these are all resources we have responsibility for. And they are resources given by God to us – we are the stewards, the managers, of what God has brought into our lives. We may not have a good management record so far. We might have been squandering what God has given us. But now is the time to be shrewd. It isn’t too late for us to start taking better care over what we’ve been given. Second, we can understand that God is endlessly forgiving. What boss would forgive a manager as sneaky and underhanded as the one in the parable? Only one brought to us by Jesus. Only God could forgive such behavior, and try to turn it into a blessing for us. God knows our hearts, knows that we’re anything but perfect, knows that more often that not, we outright ignore what God has asked us to do. But God loves us anyway, and is so eager for a relationship with us. We try. We fail. We do less than we’ve promised for God. We squander the good and precious gifts we’ve been given. But God loves us still and always, and is ready to bless us again and again.

            Have you been a faithful steward of what God has given you? Faithful with the blessings you have? How have you cared for the money, the time, the talents, the family, the friends, the faith, the love that God has worked in you? Chances are an honest assessment mind find that you haven’t been managing too well – that you’ve been squandering, even, what you’ve been given. Now is the time to take action. Why pass up a chance to make things right when we know that God is ready to forgive, ready to help us try again? Be smart! Be shrewd! Be forgiven! Be loved!

            Amen.

Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, "One of One Hundred"

Sermon 9/12/10

Luke 15:1-10

Parables of Jesus: One of One Hundred

            Have you ever been lost? I’ve told you before that my mother has a horrible sense of direction. This has resulted in many stories over the years of her being totally and utterly lost. For example, there was the time when she was driving home from visiting me in New Jersey, and she accidentally ended up in Massachusetts. Or, how whenever she was trying to go someplace in the greater Utica area, she would always end up at Hapanowicz’s meat market. When she used to come visit me at college, I would simply have her meet me at the campus center, because it had a bright green roof that you could see from anywhere in town. I knew she couldn’t get lost, but that she would never make it to my dorm if I tried to steer her there directly.

            Have you ever lost something or someone? When I was a child, I had an experience where I didn’t think I was lost, but my mother thought she had lost me! I had gone to deliver my newspapers – I had a small share in my older brother’s paper route, and then I had gone to ride my bike in the cemetery next door to my house – it was a popular bike-riding location in the little town of Westernville. I’d told my mom of my plans, but she’d thought I would stop home in between, and then she saw a little girl in a van that drove by the house that looked like me. She thought I’d been kidnapped. She, of course, freaked out, making calls, and generally panicking. Meanwhile, my big brother rode his bike into the cemetery, looking for me. To this day, I can exactly picture the expression of urgency and alarm on his face as he approached me. We raced back to the house, and all was well, when my mother realized I was safe.

Our gospel lesson today is about losing things too. Jesus shares two parables with the scribes and the Pharisees, one about losing a sheep, one about losing a coin – two parables that are probably fairly familiar to you. Jesus describes a shepherd who has a hundred sheep, and discovers that one has gone astray. He searches for and finds the lost sheep, rejoices, and lays it on his shoulders to carry home. Arriving home, the shepherd calls friends and neighbors together so that they too can rejoice in his good news – “I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the second parable, a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. She lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully until she finds the lost coin. She, like the shepherd, Jesus says, would rejoice at her find, calling together friends and neighbors to rejoice that she has found the coin that was lost. In both of these instances, Jesus says the parables – the rejoicing that takes place by all involved in each story – are like what happens when one sinner repents and is found by God who is searching and seeking.

Have you ever been lost? Do you remember what it felt like to be lost – really lost? Jesus, in his teaching of these parables, is not only trying to get us to see how much our loving God will seek us out, but he’s also trying to show us how painful and scary and alone it can feel to feel like you are lost from God’s sight, wandering on your own path, turned away from where God wants to lead you. How many times in your faith journey have you wandered away from God? How often do you feel like you are just going through the motions of life, living each day without a particular purpose or direction? These parables are for us, to comfort us, to remind us that God never stops looking for us, and to remind us that we can, should, always seek our way home again.

            But beyond knowing that God always seeks for us, beyond knowing that we can be found by God even when we feel completely lost, Jesus actually tells this parable primarily for another reason. This isn’t a parable about being lost as much as it is a parable about losing things. We have to go back to the text and remember why Jesus is telling these parables in the first place. What made him tell these stories? When he sets the scene to tell these parables, Jesus is responding to the grumbling of the Pharisee and scribes. They’re upset with Jesus, because everywhere Jesus goes tax collectors and sinners seem to surround Jesus. And not only do these sorts follow Jesus, but Jesus even sits and eats with them – he welcomes them, makes them feel important. In Jesus’ day, the act of sharing a meal with someone was a personal, intimate event. You wouldn’t eat with just anyone, and the scribes and Pharisees, religious leaders in the community, certainly wouldn’t want to be seen eating with tax collectors and other known sinners. And let’s face it: even today, we’re not so different. How many meals do you share with those who are not part of your family, your workplace, or your place of worship?  

When we read the gospels, I think we should always remember that Jesus is talking to us. But in this case, I think we can get confused. Jesus isn’t leading us to see ourselves as the ones who are lost. Instead, Jesus is asking us to move ourselves as the one who has lost something. So Jesus uses one of his favorite tactics in the teaching of this lesson. When he describes the woman and her lost coin, the shepherd and the lost sheep, he begins with a tone that says, “who would not do it this way? Who would not react like this?” “Which one of you would not,” he begins. He sets us up to feel that if we don’t react like he has indicated, that we’re not acting as a normal person would respond. In this situation, Jesus says: who wouldn’t go out and have a search party for a lost sheep? Who would let the poor sheep wander lost and alone? Who wouldn’t rejoice at this sheep being found, and call up friends and family to let them in on the good news? Well, the answer is: we wouldn’t, his audience wouldn’t have, shepherds probably wouldn’t have! What shepherd would have left the 99 sheep open to attack just to seek out one stray? He says, “who wouldn’t call together friends and neighbors to rejoice over a coin that was lost but is now found?” The answer is: we wouldn’t! We wouldn’t be so excited; we wouldn’t bother our neighbors with this kind of news. But Jesus challenges us to set a new norm. The old norm is to reject people when they stray or when they behave differently than the rest of the fold. The new norm is to seek out those who are lost and alone, and to welcome them back with open arms, with celebration. We tend to see ourselves as the lost victim at the center of all these stories – it always us that God is seeking after. But Jesus wants us to be filled with the sense of loss at not having those who are thought of as less-than as part of our lives. Jesus is implying that when we don’t widen our circles to include everyone, we are missing out. We’ve lost something essential, worth seeking with all our energy.

Jesus, by directing his story at the Pharisees and scribes, he is talking to people who already consider themselves faithful, who already see themselves at the center of the fold. If he was telling the parable today, he’d be talking to us – the church regulars, the people who have already been ‘found’ or who never strayed from the fold to begin with. He’s not talking to the lost sheep – it is the very people the scribes and Pharisees look down on that are the lost ones Jesus seeks after. Our presence here today, for most of us, signifies that we are more like part of the 99 sheep than like the lost one.

The real question Jesus wants to push on in these parables is not a question of why or how we stray from God, but of how we respond when others find themselves outside of the sheepfold. How does Jesus respond? In the gospels, he simply goes where the lost sheep are, and settles in. Notice that Jesus isn’t trying to convert the lost sheep or tell them how sinful they are. In fact, Jesus’ teaching and preaching: he directs most of that at those who already claim that they’re in the know. Jesus has to spend most of his time preaching and teaching to the religious folk who are already supposed to know how to treat one another. Jesus doesn’t spend so much time preaching to those who have found themselves outside the acceptable places. Instead, he heals, forgives, love, and simply builds relationships with those no one else even wants to see. Jesus says that there are sheep lost from the fold that should create a void so deep in our lives that we cannot rest until we’ve found them. We’re not the lost. We’re the ones who are losing out, every time we exclude someone, overlook someone, or judge someone.

“And 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.’”

Amen.

Sermon for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, "Hymn of Promise"

Sermon 9/5/10

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Hymn of Promise

In a summer when we’ve been learning about and singing our favorite hymns, on this day when we conclude with our tied-for-favorite hymn, Hymn of Promise, it seems only appropriate to talk about a few other songs this morning. We just heard a reading from Jeremiah where the prophet sees God acting as the potter at the wheel. We love this imagery – it shows up in many of our songs: “Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the potter; I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.” We also have “Spirit of the Living God,” where we sing for God’s spirit to melt us and mold us, or the contemporary worship song, where we sing about putting things in our life “In the Potter’s Hand.” We also sang this morning, “Change my heart, O God”, which includes the words: “You are the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me. This is what I pray.”

These songs draw this ‘God as Potter’ imagery from the text from Jeremiah that we have shared today, a passage that is well loved – God calls Jeremiah down to the potter’s house, and there Jeremiah watches the potter working a vessel. I wonder, though, if we look at this text more carefully, why it is we like this passage so much? We have, I think, in our minds these peaceful images of a God who gently molds us into this wonderful vessel that we have the potential to be. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a potter at work, but when a vessel goes wrong, the process of correction is usually anything but gentle. The clay pot may be completely smashed down, until it resumes a non-descript clay lump form. If things have gone too wrong, if the design is too far off from what was planned, the potter may simply start over again. If we really want God to be a potter, and if we really think we are clay to be molded, then it means that we’re saying we are giving God control over who we are and what we will become. Is that what we’re saying? “Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Hold o’er my being absolute sway!” Absolute sway! Are we giving that power to God? Do we want to? Are we able to?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a planner. That’s not to say that I’m particularly organized, or neat, or detail-oriented, because I’m not. Right now, since I’ve just been unpacking into my new home, I can pretend that my house is a disaster area because I’ve just moved in. But since you’ve seen my office here, you perhaps already know that my desk is almost always messy, and I always have as many important papers on the floor next to my desk as I do on the desk. But still, I am a planner. I like being prepared, and I like figuring out what will happen, what I want and hope to have happen. I remember getting my course catalog when I started college, and immediately I sat down and mapped out which classes I would take each semester for every semester of my entire college career. This was all before classes actually started my freshman year. That’s what I mean when I say I’m a planner.

Of course, even for those of us who are planners, real life, real life events have ways of breaking in. I did take a lot of the courses on my map for college, but some of them I took at different times than I expected, some I just never took at all, and some classes I never dreamed of wanting to take I took and loved. And my life is richer for those unplanned experiences. Are you a planner? Even if you don’t think you are, I’m guessing that you’d rather be responsible for planning your own life than letting someone else do it for you. My roommate in college, for example – her mother had a copy of the course catalog, and I remember vividly my roommate on the phone with her mother while her mother tried to pick classes for her. It’s one thing for circumstances to have made some classes unavailable for me. It’s another for someone else to want to make my decisions for me. That wouldn’t sit very well with me.

And yet – God is the potter, we are the clay. As people of faith, one of the things we actively seek to do is to let someone else make decisions for us. We say – we sing, we claim – that when it comes to plans and futures and hopes, that we’re letting God guide us, show us a path to follow. As people of faith, we’re committing to hand ourselves over, as unformed lumps of clay, into the Creator’s hand, asking God to shape us and mold us, because we believe and trust that God can draw out of us something more beautiful than we can imagine and plan for ourselves. Do we mean it? Do we really want God to be the potter that shapes us?

I think people of faith are always making such wonderful plans. Church people make great plans – we have committees to make plans, and conference about our plans, and teams to figure out how to plan. We plan all these different ways that we will serve God, share God’s love. And plans are important, they really are. We wouldn’t go very far without them. But I wonder, how often do we do what we think is best, what we have planned, and then ask God to bless our work instead of letting God decide what we should do and so already knowing we’re blessed in the path we’re taking. If we’re the clay, and God is the potter, then we need to stop asking God to be with us where we are, and start trying to follow where God is going, where God is calling, where God is leading.

When I served in Greater New Jersey, all churches were asked to read a book called Power Surge by Michael Foss, a pastor. I confess it wasn’t my favorite book. But it had one theme that I thought was right on. Foss said that churches must move from being making members, to making disciples. Too many churches, he said, are on a membership model, instead of a discipleship model. To me, that phrase says: churches need to move from trying to be the potter, to remembering that God is the potter, and we’re the clay. A membership church is a church that can function well-enough as its own potter. A church that has plans that keep it going on the same path like clockwork, a church that is more of a social organization than anything else – that’s a membership church that can take care of itself pretty well, and invite God to join in sometimes. There are many churches that can be successful for quite a long time doing that. But Jesus never mentions membership. Instead, he calls us to be disciples. The word disciple means students, pupils. It signifies people who are ready to learn, to be taught, to follow, to take instruction. A student doesn’t write the curriculum or create the lesson plans. A student learns and is shaped by the teacher.

What we want to do is be disciples. That’s starting off in the right place, because we’re signaling that we’re trying to be open to God’s will for us. And who better to set a path for us than Go, who created us? No two vessels a potter creates with his or her own hands are exactly alike. Each detail has come from the potter’s own touch. Each curve and pattern and shape is a result of the potter’s work. If we are clay, and God is the potter, then we are intimately known by the one who has created us, and all that we can be is there in God’s creative, creating mind. And when we fail – and we always will struggle and stumble – if we are clay, if we are open and flexible and moldable, God can always and will always start over with us, create again from us, rework us into something new.

            Our hymn for today, Hymn of Promise, was written in 1986 by Natalie Sleeth. Sleeth was born in 1930 in Evanston, Illinois. She was a gifted musician and organist. She wrote many anthems and hymns, and one other is in our hymnal: a benediction song called “Go Now in Peace,” and another, based on an anthem, “Joy in the Morning,” appears in our hymnal supplement. Sleeth wrote Hymn of Promise in 1985 as a choral anthem, at first, and later adapted it into a hymn. Sleeth said that she was “pondering the death of a friend (life and death, death and resurrection) pondering winter and spring (seeming opposites), and a T. S. Eliot poem which had the phrase, ‘In our end is our beginning.’” These seemingly contradictory ‘pairs’ led to the “thesis of the song and the hopeful message that out of one will come the other whenever God chooses to bring that about.” Her husband, Dr. Ronald Sleeth., a professor of preaching, requested only this hymn for his funeral when he died.

            The beauty of this hymn – or one of its many beauties – is that it speaks of the mysteries of life, the miraculous way life unfolds, and trusts that things are revealed in time, according to God’s vision, known to us only as it comes. And yet, as the title suggests, as the words suggest, there’s a promise to us: beginning, infinity, believing, eternity, resurrection, victory. Those are the promises, even though the journey is the mystery. “From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

            I know, it’s hard, being the clay, when we are so used to be being potters, so used to being in control and in charge. It’s hard to be the created, the bulb, the seed, the cocoon, instead of the creator. But God draws out of us, as only God can, the flower, the tree, the butterfly, the beautifully crafted vessel. It is the only way I know of that we can be disciples. And in God’s hands, we’ll find much love, revealed in seasons, and much grace, as we let God shape our lives. Amen.