Sermon, "Apple Valley Dreams: Fruitful," Matthew 7:15-29

Sermon 6/21/15

Matthew 7:15-29

Apple Valley Dreams: Fruitful

            Many of you are probably familiar with the musical My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle, the unrefined flower seller with a heavy Cockney accent is taken on as a project, by a snobby professor, Henry Higgins, to see if he can convince others that she is an upper-class educated woman. Along the way, though, a thoughtful suitor named Freddy Einsford-Hill falls in love with Eliza, and serenades her outside her door. Freddy sings, “Speak, and the world is full of singing/And I am winging higher than the birds/Touch and my heart begins to crumble/The heaven's tumble/Darling, and I'm …” but what he is, we don’t find out, because Eliza, frustrated with the men in her life, cuts him off, singing: “Words, words, words! I'm so sick of words/I get words all day through/First from him, now from you/Is that all you blighters can do? Don't talk of stars, burning above/If you're in love, show me!/Tell me no dreams, filled with desire/If you're on fire, show me!” Eliza Doolittle has had quite enough of words. She wants to be able to really see if Freddy loves her.

            Today we’re wrapping up my part of our series on Apple Valley Dreams. I’ve told you that I hope we are: prayerful, invitational, and missional. Today, I want to talk to you about what holds them all together, these dreams. I dream that we will be a fruitful people. In our text from Matthew, Jesus says we are known by our fruit. Good trees can only bear good fruit, not bad. Bad trees, conversely, can’t bear good fruit. We’re meant to bear good fruit, and not be people who call on the name of Jesus, but don’t actually do any of the things he commands us to do. If we do that – listen to his words, promise to follow, but then do our own thing, producing bad fruit, we’re like a person who builds a house with no foundation, which cannot stand against a storm.

But this text from Matthew is just one of many that I could have chosen for our “fruitful” focus. Aside from the gospel text we already shared today, the gospels are full of Jesus talking to us about being good fruit. When John the Baptist arrives, preparing folks for Jesus’ arrival, he says, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance … Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Speaking to the  chief priests and elders, after sharing what we call the Parable of Wicked Tenants, Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” At the end of the Parable of the Sower Jesus says, “These are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” He tells this short parable in the gospel of Luke: “‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”” In John’s gospel, we read about Jesus saying, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” In one of his vivid “I Am” statements, Jesus teaches, “‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Jesus declares, “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Beyond the gospels, the writers of the letters and teachings of the early church echo Jesus, emphasizing the aim for young congregations to bear good fruit.

            Do we have good fruit to show? Many churches are struggling with how to be in this 21^st century climate. How do we exist as church in a society that is deeply changed from the culture in which many of us grew up and first started following Jesus? In the midst of these cultural transformations, not just individual churches, but the whole the denomination is struggling with clarifying our mission, our purpose, our direction. As a denomination, we’ve been focusing a lot on “church vitality” – what makes a church vital? Church leaders have been working hard to see if they can figure out what makes some churches thrive and others struggle. Are there commonalities among vital churches? As part of this push, some church leaders have pushed for better metrics – better ways of measuring what churches do. Churches have been encouraged to keep track of – and focus on increasing numbers of – visitors, new members, worshippers, baptism, people involved in small groups, people involved in outreach ministries, and so on. By certain measures considered meaningful by the denomination, then, churches can see how healthy they are, how vital they are, just like you might figure out if a child is in the right height and weight percentile for their age-group. There are parts of this that make sense to me. Sometimes it isn’t so easy to see what is healthy or unhealthy in a congregation, without really doing some close examination. But sometimes I wonder about what the best things are to measure. Are all churches that have more people worshipping than they did before healthy? Are all churches that are smaller than they used to be unhealthy? Probably not.

            What I wonder, then, is if we can start figuring out whether or not we’ve got good fruit. Jesus is really interested in our fruit. Jesus wants to know what we’ve produced with our life’s work, with our ministry, with our faith, with our community. After all we’ve put in, what do we have to show for it? Are we producing fruit at all? Is it good fruit? Or do we keep planting and planting and planting, but whatever we’re doing is resulting in nothing that grows, or nothing that’s good? I think those are the metrics, the measures, that Jesus comes back to again and again. I think that’s both simpler, and more challenging, than other measures we might use.

I've had on my mind this week my first time at General Conference, the global decision-making meeting for United Methodists that takes place every four years. I attended in 2000, when I was a lay delegate from our annual conference. That year, we participated in an Act of Repentance for our history of racism as a church. If you don’t know our denominational history related to African-Americans in this country, I encourage you to do a little research, or ask me about it. Unfortunately, the church as a whole was not leading the way to say that slavery and racism and segregation were wrong. Some African-American leaders, fed up with being told to wait, to be patient, to be happy with what place their white brothers and sisters in Christ were willing to give them, started their own Methodist denominations. The African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal are Pan-Methodist churches connected to us that were formed in response to racist practices perpetuated by the church. Representatives from these historically black denominations were invited to our Act of Repentance Service in 2000, and at the end of the worship, Bishop Clarence Carr, from the AME Zion Church, said that folks from these denominations were not set up to be our judges, as they watched to see how much our Act of Repentance really meant; rather, they would be "fruit inspectors." What I heard in those words wasn’t someone saying they were going to be “checking up” on us, waiting for us to fail. What I heard was: “Please, please, please, don’t let this whole service, this whole act, all these words, amount to nothing. Show us your fruit, and then we’ll know you mean it.”

These words have been on my heart and mind this week, as I was preparing my sermon, and reading about the horrific act of racism committed at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where a white man shot and killed nine black men and women on Wednesday. I can’t help but feel like we, as a society, don’t have much to show to our fruit inspectors. What can it say for us, for this atrocity to happen – and for us to be unwilling to talk about violence and weapons? For us to be unwilling to look at the ways racism exists today? For us to be unable to look into our own hearts at our prejudice and stereotypes and yes, racism, without getting defensive? For us to be unable to really want to build relationships that break down walls and cross boundaries? For us to be unwilling to be uncomfortable and ill at ease if it means we might have fewer massacres born of hate? Can we produce some fruit, here? Any fruit? Some good fruit? I know that we can. But I also know that it takes work, beyond words. An unwavering commitment. Serving, rather than being served. Following Jesus, as he invites us to join him out of our comfort zones. Prayer without ceasing. We can bear good fruit. God knows it. 

Friends, I have such hope for this congregation and community. Such hope, such dreams for you and for me. And I believe that every dream God has for us can absolutely come true. But too often it is easier to just keep on keeping on than to actually follow in the ways of Jesus. It’s easier to say we’ll pray than to pray. It’s easier to come here and be with people we know and love – and we do know and love each other – than to push ourselves into unfamiliar places and move among strangers in order to share God’s love. It’s easier to give a little bit of help without asking too many questions about why people are poor and hungry and homeless. Easier to worry about what we like, what we want, what we need, than to work for others first. Easier to plant seeds and hope for the best, without working the field, without watering, without weeding, without pruning. Easier to let our dreams be the stuff of imagination and fairy tales. Friends, please, please, don’t let the dreams God is planting in our hearts amount to nothing. Please, please, don’t let us build a house on sand, only to have it wash away after the first storm. In everything we do, Jesus calls for us to bear fruit. To have something to show. To mean what we say. To actually practice what we preach. We’re disciples. Followers of Jesus Christ, seeking to do the will of God. Right? Let’s show it, do it. We’ll be known by our fruit. Amen. 

Sermon, "Apple Valley Dreams: Missional," Mark 10:35-45

Sermon 6/14/15

Mark 10:35-45

Apple Valley Dreams: Missional

We’ve been talking about my dreams for Apple Valley over the past couple of weeks. The first week, our memory verse was, “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you, Search, and you fill find, Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” And I shared my dream that we are a prayerful people. That we’re comfortable praying. That we’re persistent, and full of expectation that God loves to hear what we have to say, and has something to say back. That we’re praying, everyday, for ourselves, and our congregation, and our community, and God’s vision to come alive in us. Last week, our memory verse, from the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, was, “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost,” and I talked about my dream that Apple Valley is Invitational. Not just that we wait for folks who cross our paths, but that we live out in the world an expression of the welcome of Christ, who is always on the move among the most vulnerable.

            This week, I want to talk about my dream for Apple Valley to be a missional congregation. Mission is one of those words we can use in a lot of ways. Sometimes we talk about people going on a mission trip – this could mean going to build homes or schools, or just going to a different community or country to build relationships. In our jurisdiction, the Northeastern body of United Methodists in the United States, for example, young people go every year on a Mission of Peace, a mission trip with a focus on breaking down walls of misunderstanding and separation between people. But sometimes, especially historically, and still today, a mission trip meant a trip where missionaries would try to convert people to the Christian faith. Historically, Christians have sometimes confused sharing the faith with sharing a culture, insisting that new Christians needed to adopt a new language, new dress, new traditions to be Christian. When we engaged in the Act of Repentance at Annual Conference this year, part of our repentance was remembering and rejecting the ways American Christians insisted native peoples must abandon their culture to follow Jesus, often forcing native people to do so. The result is that today people are sometimes very wary of the word “mission.” In congregations today, you might find that there is a “mission” committee. Usually, this is the group of folks in the church who think about how to best serve others on behalf of the church. They do the work of outreach through service. And finally, mission can mean “purpose” – the reason for something’s existence. We have, for example, a mission statement for the denomination. It’s “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” That’s what United Methodists claim as our purpose, the reason we’re in existence. More broadly, our book of order, The Book of Discipline says that the mission of the church is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor, thus seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign and realm in the world” and further that that mission is carried out by “send[ing] persons into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming a compassionate, caring presence, and working to develop social structures that are consistent with the gospel.”

            When I talk about wanting Apple Valley to be missional, I mean primarily this last thing: I want us to be a people who are clear about our purpose, and clear about the way in which we are meant to live out our purpose in the world. What’s our purpose, and how do we get it done? I believe that our purpose is to share in the task of communicating Jesus’ message – his good news – and to be a people who are working hard, together, to bring our lives into line with the transformed set of values that Jesus offers as an alternative to the values of power, money, and position that the world claims most important. I believe that our mission is to change our lives so that our values match God’s values. My dream is for us to be a missional, justice-seeking congregation full of servants of Christ.

            So what does that mean exactly? Our key verse today is from our gospel lesson, and we have to commit it to memory even without a children’s sermon: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Like I said last Sunday, when Jesus tells us so clearly what his purpose is, our best bet is to do likewise. Jesus comes to serve and to pour out his life for others. We’re meant to do likewise! Just before our text in Mark’s gospel, a man approached Jesus asking what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus talked to him about the commandments, which the man said he kept, and then Jesus told him he should sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor and then follow Jesus. And the men went away grieving, since he was very wealthy. Jesus then talked about how difficult it was to enter God’s kingdom, and the disciples wonder how anyone could enter the kingdom. Jesus tells them that with God, nothing is impossible, but that the last will be first and the first will be last.

            Somehow, just after this, apparently not absorbing the previous conversation, we encounter James and John saying to Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus presses them, asking if they could really handle all that is implied – if they could face what Jesus will face in order to claim those honored seats – and they insist that they can. Naturally, their claim to seats of honor causes a fight among the twelve, who are mad at James and John. But Jesus says to them, ““You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

            Throughout the gospels, Jesus talks about these role reversals, about flipping things upside down in the expected order of the world. The exalted are humbled, and the humbled exalted. Last first and first last. And here, Jesus, the teacher, the master, comes not to be served, but to serve, to give his life. Whoever wants to be great must be a servant, he says. This past week in our Clergy Book Study Group we talked about the gospel lesson from John where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. It has some parallels to our text for today. Listen: “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.”

            One of my colleagues was talking about how hard it is to do the right thing as pastors when people come seeking help. We’re a bit out of the way here, but in more urban churches, often people seek help from the local church, and it is hard to know what to do, what to give, how to help, how to help in ways that will really transform people, rather than leave them in the position of needing to ask, to beg really, again and again. We talked about how it was hard to serve others well in these situations. And I began to wonder why Jesus never seemed to run into struggles like this. We never see him trying to decide whether or not to help someone. And then I realized why: Jesus never had to make these kinds of decisions, and didn’t have folks asking him for the same kinds of material help, because Jesus had already completely poured himself out as an offering to others. He’d opted out of having the power of giving or withholding charity. He’d decided already that he would be the one relying on the welcome of others, rather than being the one with the power to invite or not into his home. No one asked him for things because Jesus kept no things, nothing, for himself. Jesus tells us that to be great, the way God sees it, we must be servants, not those who seek to be served, seek to be masters, seek to have power. We must be servants. Jesus does this to the extreme – he gives his life as a ransom for many. He even gives away his very life. We’re called, too, to give our very selves away as we serve others. The less we hold onto, the less we’ll struggle with how we’re best supposed to serve, because what we’ll have to give will simply be ourselves, and that’s the very best we have to offer.  

            I’ve been working with folks from Apple Valley and other churches for some time on understanding the differences between charity, where those who have possess all the power over those who are in need, choosing when and what to give, and justice, which is God’s vision, God’s dream, for relationships that are set-right, that reflect God’s love for wholeness for humanity. Justice is when God’s reign, God’s kingdom, God’s dream is made a reality on earth. Justice is the work that’s involved in making God’s dreams come true now. When I talk about our mission, being missional, that’s what I’m hoping we can do, in our corner of the world: work with God to make God’s dreams come true for all people. We’ve been thinking in particular about hunger and poverty and how we can have an impact on the need in our community. We’ve talked about knowing what skills we have to offer – like teaching classes on canning, or gardening, or maybe evening putting a community garden in right in our backyard. We’re meeting with Barb K from PEACE at the end of the month to learn more about the needs in our own neighborhoods. I hope we will develop some clear and specific plans for seeking justice, carrying out our mission of getting ourselves in line with God’s values. But to be a missional church, we start with our hearts. We need to seek servants’ hearts, not seeking out what can be done for us, but how we can offer even our very selves to God and neighbor. I dream of a missional church, full of servants, giving even their whole hearts to the work of God. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Amen.

Sermon, "Apple Valley Dreams: Invitational," Luke 19:1-10

Sermon 6/7/15

Luke 19:1-10

Apple Valley Dreams: Invitational

            Last week I started sharing with you my dreams for our congregation. Do you remember the first one? Yes, I hope we will be a prayerful people – a deeply and thoughtfully and powerfully prayerful people! A second dream I have for you shouldn’t be too surprising: I dream of an Apple Valley that is full of invitational people. I want us to be inviting. This shouldn’t be surprising, because I’ve given you homework assignments before – invite someone to church – and at Advent and Lent I’ve handed out cards about our worship times for you to use to invite others to church, and I’m constantly asking you to share our facebook event invitations with others for whatever we’ve got going on in the community. So I’m sure you’re not too surprised that I think a lot about us being an invitational people.

            But today I want to tell you about my big dreams about being invitational, and why it is so important to me. When we talk about being inviting or invitational, we say this in a few ways. One way of being inviting is in the sense of being appealing, welcoming. We might say that a room looks inviting if it looks comfortable and warm and like you’d want to spend a lot of time there. And so sometimes we think about our churches being inviting in this way – how does our space look? How easy is it for people to come to worship here? If they visit, will they stay? Will they come back? Will people be able to find important things like the sanctuary, and the snacks, and the restrooms? Part of the focus of being inviting as a church is on being welcoming, offering hospitality. The scriptures, particularly the Old Testament writings, stress the importance of being welcoming to the stranger, the foreigner. God reminds the people again and again to welcome others because the Israelites, too, were once strangers, and relied on the welcome of others. They were meant to remember what it was like to need a warm, hospitable welcome. People were commanded to welcome whoever might show up at their door needing shelter, whether they were family, friends, or complete strangers. And people also had a sense that in welcoming others, they were possibly welcoming God into their homes, entertaining the divine in disguise. They had to be welcoming, because you never knew when God might show up at your house for a stay.

At Annual Conference this year, Bev and Dot attending a workshop on being A Welcoming Congregation, and I know that they have things to share with us from that experience. For example, you can set up a “mystery guest” to come to worship and then give feedback: did people say hello? Introduce themselves? Sit with them at coffee hour? Complain that a newcomer was sitting in their pew? We implemented this program at one of my former congregations, and learned a lot about what kind of first impression we made.

So, one part of inviting is thinking about drawing people in. But that’s just a piece. If that’s the only way in which we seek to be an invitational congregation, I just get this picture stuck in my head of a Venus Flytrap. Do you know what that is? It’s a carnivorous plant, a predator plant. But obviously, plants can’t get up and move to catch flies! So, they try to look very alluring and inviting, bright and eye-catching, and then snap, they’ve caught their dinner! Most of the time, though, the plant just has to wait, and wait, for someone to come by. It’s a very passive way of being invitational. And as I look at the life and example of Jesus, I’m reminded that there’s nothing passive, nothing “sit back and wait” style about how he practiced being invitational.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus is on the move, going into new places and into homes and into neighborhoods that were considered “shady” and among people who were considered sinners and outcasts and rejects and unclean, and Jesus was even on the move among the wealthy and elite and the scholarly. And everywhere he went, he was inviting people, offering hospitality, even though he wasn’t the one at home, but the one who was the guest. Jesus carried his welcome with him, and from nearly his first interaction in the gospels, he’s calling disciples: “Come, follow me.” And he just keeps on inviting people.

That’s what we see happening in our gospel lesson today. This is story that is etched on my brain from childhood, when we sang about Zacchaeus climbing the tree to see Jesus, complete with hand motions. Jesus is passing through Jericho, and a crowd is pressing in on Jesus, as usual, including a wealthy man, a chief tax-collector named Zacchaeus. Tax collectors were despised – more so than we might joke about IRS agents today – but despised because they were Jewish people working for the Roman government, who was the occupying force controlling the lives of the Israelites. So Zacchaeus and other tax collectors were essentially working for the enemy for their own financial gain. Zacchaeus, we read, is short in stature, so he climbs a sycamore tree so he can get a look at Jesus. We don’t know what his reason for wanting to see him was – if he was curious, or wanted to keep an eye on him, or was interested in his message. But Jesus spots Zacchaeus immediately, and calls out to him. “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Jesus has just invited himself over. And Zacchaeus responds with joy, happy to be able to welcome Jesus. Others start grumbling though, upset that Jesus is going to eat with a sinner. Such an action would make Jesus ritually unclean, but the real issue is simply that people look down on Zacchaeus, and they can’t believe Jesus would associate with such a lowlife. Zacchaeus seems unfazed, no doubt use to such grumbling. But he looks only at Jesus, and offers to give half of his possessions to the poor, and offers to payback fourfold anyone he’s wronged. It’s above and beyond the requirement of the law, by far. But this is the impact Jesus’ invitation has on Zacchaeus. It changes him. It changes everything. And Jesus says to him that salvation has come to Zacchaeus, and that Jesus’ purpose is to “seek out and to save the lost.”

When Jesus tells us a piece of his purpose, part of what it is he came into the world to do, I think our best strategy is to help in that task. We don’t have to do the saving part – Jesus has that covered. But seeking after the lost? That’s what it means to be invitational.

Whatever Jesus says he came to do, our best plan it to help Jesus in that task. That means to seek out others, not for us to save, but for Jesus to save. My dream is for us to be more and more like Jesus in the way we move in the world. I don’t mean we have to travel from town to town. But I mean that I dream that our impulse is to seek those who are lost, who are on the fringes, who’ve been hurt or excluded or others have written off, who people consider in some way beyond redemption – I dream of us being people who see and seek and invite and love and share God with those whom we encounter.

My dream for Apple Valley is that we keep asking ourselves, with whom can we share this? How can we share it? When we think about our church and inviting, inviting, inviting people, I’m not compelled by asking people to come to church because we are worried about surviving. Surviving is not a very inspiring dream. I don’t remember one single time Jesus talked about simply “continuing to exist.” My dream is that we’re invitational people because what we experience of God’s love is too good not to share. Too hard to contain, and keep to ourselves. This spring I read a book called Exponential by Dave and Jon Ferguson. They’re church planters who function on the principle of multiplying everything they do in ministry. If you start a small group, you immediately identify a leader in the small group who will eventually form a second small group. If you find a gifted worship leader or musician, that person immediately starts to find another gifted worship leader to be an apprentice. Each pastor is always mentoring someone else to be a pastor. Each disciple is always seeking a group of disciples to guide. There’re parts of the book that frustrate me, but the way they write is so full of enthusiasm and joy and confidence that I couldn’t help but imagine what Apple Valley would be like if every time we had a Bible Study, the expectation was that some person in the group would be preparing to teach one of their own with different people, or if every lay leader was recruiting another person to become a lay leader and every new worshipper was immediately sharing the good news with someone else, because it was all too good not to share, about this God who seeks and seeks and seeks after the lost and broken-hearted.

I dream of being invitational people. And I think we can do it. And I want to be clear – sometimes we confuse being invitational with being extroverted, door-to-door type people, charismatic, bold people, and those of us who are shy and reserved start to panic. I get that. Since I’m up in front all the time, people often assume I’m a confident extrovert, but I’m actually very shy in social settings. I think of my Uncle Bill, pastor and district superintendent, who I hope to get here to meet you all someday, and he’s pretty incredible to watch in action. He’s about 150% extrovert, and he’s charismatic, and people just follow his lead. We’re lucky he uses his powers for good, because he’s a charmer! And he just can’t stop inviting people to follow Jesus. He talks to everybody everywhere we go. That is one way to be invitational. Maybe it is your way. But I think, too, about my grandpa, my Uncle Bill’s father, my mom’s father. He was a much quieter kind of guy than my uncle. Not shy, but quieter. But he always wore this clip on his sweaters that said “Jesus loves me.” Pretty much always. He went through so many of them though. He worked after he was “retired” as a gas station attendant. You might think that was a “nothing” kind of job, but he loved it, like he loved most everything about life, and he made it something special. If people asked about his clip, he’d hand it over to them. A small gesture of the big love he wanted to communicate.

All of us can share God’s love. All of us can be invitational. All of us can value the lost and look at people through Jesus’ eyes. Some of you might remember filling out some time ago an information sheet for me called, “Apple Valley is Talented.” I asked you questions about what you were good at and what you liked doing. I asked you about whether you liked to read scripture in worship or if you played an instrument or if you would be in skits during worship if we had them. And I asked you one question that might have seemed a bit strange: I asked you to tell me about the last thing you invited someone to do with you. When did you last ask someone to come with you to something? What was it? Here’s how you responded: You invited someone to go to dinner, to go for a bike ride, to go to the movies, to have a girls night, to go out to lunch, to drive together to a work function, to go on a house tour, to come over for dinner, to hang out together, to knit together, to go to the theatre together, to go to Buttermilk Falls, to go on a Senior Citizens trip to the Catskill Mountains, to come meet a new nephew, to attend a concert, and yes, even to go to church or Bible Study. I asked you this question in part, so I could share with you all what I think you might doubt: You are already an invitational people. You know how to invite people to do something! You invite people to do things all the time! My dream is that we channel what we already know how to do. That we make it a part of our discipleship. That we remind ourselves that we’ve experienced something, or are learning to know something in our walk with Jesus that’s too good to keep to ourselves. And that we seek out the people who most need to receive an invitation. We need company in our faith walk. We need companions on the journey. And there’s a world around us, just waiting to be asked. Amen.   

Sermon for Local Pastors Licensing School, based on John 15:1-12

I had the opportunity this week to preach and talk about preaching at Upper New York's Local Pastors Licensing School. I really enjoyed thinking about my preaching process and figuring out what I would most have wanted to know about and ask about as a new preacher. 

Sermon LPLS

John 15:1-12

           

My grandfather was a gardener. He had a huge garden in his backyard, and in the garden is one of the easiest places for me to picture him, in his jeans and denim shirt, with a red handkerchief to wipe his forehead, and his garden hoe in hand, carefully tending his rows of vegetables, even on the hottest of days. As soon as I was old enough, my grandfather gave me a little corner of the garden for my own, where I would plant a mix of flowers, like my grandmothers, and a patch of vegetables, like him. And my garden always did well. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood, and had pretty consistent failure with my own gardening attempts that I realized how much work on my little plot my grandfather had done. No doubt, he was tending and weeding and carefully cultivating while I wasn’t paying attention.

            For several years, I’ve tried to have a successful small garden, but I have a tendency to be eager at first, and then forgetful, or I wait too long to plant, or too long to transplant, or I forget to let newly-outdoors seedlings harden before giving them too much sun, or I let one setback make me give up the whole project. This year, I’ve kind of done a combination of all of those things. But what’s surprised me is that, despite my apparent best efforts to destroy my plants, they are remarkably resilient once they’ve got strong roots and a strong stem. I’ve lost some where a stem has snapped altogether. But if I’ve just lost some leaves, wilted and withered, the plant, eventually, with some sun and rain, will produce new leaves. It sooo wants to be a strong and healthy fruit bearing plant. A couple of years ago, I was given a Christmas cactus by a thoughtful parishioner who didn’t realize my bad tracker record with plants. I kept it in my office for about two years, not really close to a window, and remembering to water it once a month. It didn’t exactly bloom, but it didn’t quite die either. Finally, I brought it home, and it has grown new leaves – segments – whatever you call them – at nearly every possible juncture. Like it was just waiting for a little care, and now it can’t stop growing. And as it grows, near the base of the plant, the segments of cactus get more and more like a tree trunk, closer to bark, stronger and stronger, as they support more and more segments.

            I’ve had all this on my mind as I’ve mulled over this text from John 15. This passage features one of Jesus’ many “I Am” statements in John. This is one of my favorites. Jesus tells us that he is the vine – the true vine – and God is the vine-grower. In that role, God removes from the vine branches that don’t bear fruit. And God prunes healthy branches. Then, says Jesus, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” He tells us that when we keep God’s commandments and bear much fruit, we abide in his love. We’re commanded, in fact, to love one another, as Jesus loves us, with this deep, abiding love. And Jesus tells us that he shares all this so that his joy may be in us and so that our joy may be complete.

            We don’t use the word “abide” very much in our everyday conversations – but it appears over and over in this chapter. It means literally “to remain at home” or “to stay at home,” “to wait at home.” It’s like we’re being told by Jesus to make ourselves at home, and to understand that God expects to be at home within us. It’s an extremely intimate verb. Although we might tell guests to “make themselves at home” when they visit us – we don’t often mean it. We don’t want them to stay too long or get into our things too much or see the messes that we didn’t quite get to clean up yet. And when we’re visiting someone, even if they tell us, “make yourself at home,” in most situations we still want to be a good guest – making sure we leave nothing out of place, not opening cupboards or helping ourselves without asking, careful not to break or damage, not relaxing completely. To really feel at home someplace, to be comfortable enough to act at a host’s house the way you would act in your own house? To really make yourself at home somewhere, or mean it when you ask your guests to make themselves at home? It suggests the closest of relationships. Family. Our closest, dearest family. Best friends. And that’s pretty much it, I think. And that’s the level of intimacy of relationship between the vine-grower and the vine, between the vine and the branches, that Jesus wants us to aim for, to be so close we can say, “you’re at home” to Jesus and mean it. To hear God saying, “Make yourself at home,” and to believe it.

            Jesus uses this language – being at home – to describe, of all things, the relationship between vine-grower and vine and branches in the vineyard that is the kingdom of God. Thankfully, God is an infinitely better gardener than am I. And thankfully, in this garden, in God’s garden, we can’t damage the vine. But, friends, just like in my garden, the vine Jesus describes doesn’t rely on the branches the same way the branches need the vine. The branches grow from the vine, not the other way around. The leaves are so delicate. Fruit is so susceptible to damage, to attack, to going bad. New leaves that grow strong and healthy can replace leaves that are shriveled and more fruit can grow to replace what’s been lost. God the vine-grower is going to grow a vineyard with Jesus the vine. And God longs for us – longs for us – to be a part of the vineyard. To be intricately, irreversibly, completely woven into the vine. But God will work with us – or without us, if we’re not able to make ourselves at home with God, to make God at home within us.

            I think for pastors, it can be so tempting to forget what role we play in the vineyard. God is calling forth leaders – but we are never going to be the vine. We can’t be our own vine. What we’re called to do is to be like the vine – as like the vine as we can. We can aim to be those parts of the plant that get so strong that it almost seems like they’re becoming part of the trunk. That’s a good aim. But the part of the vine is already taken, and we don’t need to do that. Just this week I was talking with a colleague in ministry who reminded me that it wasn’t my role to provide the entirety of spiritual life for the whole community. We agreed to continually remind each other of this. There’s one vine, and it isn’t me. It isn’t you. Be relieved and be thankful!

            We’re also tempted to try our hands at pruning. We can see the branches that need to be cut away, trimmed off, that we deem beyond repair. We see the bad fruit – not us, of course. And if we were given the opportunity, we could really fix things up. Only we’re not the vine-grower either. Branches aren’t in charge of other branches. Leaves aren’t responsible for other leaves, for any fruit but that which we produce ourselves. Branches never have the job of cutting off other branches. Only the vine-grower knows what will produce the best fruit, no matter how many names pop into your head when you think about bad fruit and weak branches! But branches that are worrying about the fruit produced by other branches are diverting energy that should go into their own good fruit. And there’s only one vine-grower, and it isn’t me. It isn’t you. Be relieved and be thankful! 

            So what is our task? Actually, this part is simple. First, we give thanks: God wants us on the vine! God is growing things with us or without us – but God has made it crystal clear that the preference, the deep-longing of the heart of God is to grow with us. With that going for us, we’re off to the best of starts. And then, we seek to be as much like the vine as is possible. And Jesus told us the not-so-secret secret to that. We love like Jesus loves, and make ourselves at home in God’s heart. When we do that, we won’t be able to help but to produce beautifully good fruit. When we do that, Jesus promises, his joy is in us, and our joy is complete. Amen.

Sermon, "Apple Valley Dreams: Prayerful," Luke 11:1-13

Sermon 5/31/15

Luke 11:1-13

Apple Valley Dreams: Prayerful

            For the past several weeks, we’ve been studying passages of scripture where someone has a dream which God uses to communicate a message, a call, a purpose, a plan. We thought about Jacob, beginning to open his heart to God’s dreams, and Joseph, and his dreams that were sometimes too bold and audacious for others to understand, and Solomon, who had the good sense to seek God’s wisdom before anything else, and Daniel, who wasn’t afraid to speak out even to a king who could end his life, and Mary’s Joseph, who was willing to follow God’s dream even if that dream put other players at center stage. Last week, on the day of Pentecost, we talked about God’s Holy Spirit, God’s Holy Breath, the inspiration that helped the disciples believe it was possible that they could carry out Jesus’ dream and become messengers of the good news even to the ends of the earth.

            And alongside our sermon series, many of us have been studying Mike Slaughter’s book Dare to Dream, Creating a God-Sized Mission Statement for your Life. Slaughter has encouraged us to think about what it is the God is calling us to do, that which will honor God, bless others, and bring us joy. He encourages us to get rid of all the lame excuses we come up with for not dreaming alongside God, and get to living out our dreams, using all the tools with which God has equipped us for just the purpose to which we’re called. And so now, we’re shifting gears a bit over the next month, as I begin to share with you what I think God is dreaming about for Apple Valley, what I’m dreaming about for Apple Valley. At the end of the month, as we say goodbye to Pastor Penny, she’ll leave us with her picture of what God is dreaming up for us too. And then it will be your turn: this summer, I’ll be asking you to think about sharing, in one form or another, what you think God is dreaming for your life and for our church. I want us to be dreaming, be ready, so that our summer is not a not a time of checking out of our relationship with God, but instead, letting God’s Spirit, God’s dreams, percolate within us so that they are bubbling over, overflowing, come September.

            So what am I dreaming for Apple Valley? This week, I want to talk to you about my dream, my hope, that we are a prayerful people, who engage in soul-tending practices to nourish our relationship with God. I want us to be a prayerful, spiritually-engaged congregation. Maybe that sounds boring to you, or like a not-very-big dream. We pray all the time, right? We have lots of prayer time even during each worship service. Today, we’ve already said three or four prayers. And we’re blessed, here, to have an active prayer ministry – a prayer chain, and something I particularly like: even a part of our prayer ministry that focuses on taking note, taking count, when prayers are answered, something we often forget to do! With these kinds of prayer ministry already in place, what kind of dream, then, is dreaming to be prayerful people?

            When we celebrate the sacrament of baptism, or celebrate confirmation, or receive new members into the church, we recite our membership vows, which includes this phrase: “As members of the body of Christ and in this congregation of The United Methodist Church, we will faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers.” That’s one of the vows we make in this congregation. Being a part of the body of the church and participating in its ministries – those are things we uphold in part through our prayerful relationship to God. If you’ve made the commitment of membership in this congregation, you’ve said those words. And likely, you’ve renewed them again and again. What does it mean when we say it?

My prayer life has certainly changed throughout the years. My mother likes to share the story of a time when I was very young, young enough that I hardly remember this happening myself, when she found on my night stand a letter to God that I had written in red crayon. It went like this, “Dear God, I have lots of questions. I know you have the answers. Can you please write them here?” Then I had left a big blank space, and left the red crayon for God to answer with. My mother sat down and talked with me about the different ways God talks to us, and that God might tell me things in my heart instead of on paper. But she always says she regrets telling me this – I had faith God would answer in crayon. And she wonders, if she had the same childlike faith, maybe indeed God would have written all the answers for me! When I was a bit older, later on in elementary school, and I was having a hard time with questions about God, my mother told me that I should pray by telling God about my day. I took her at her word, and did exactly that, in a very literal way. “Dear God” – always ‘Dear God’ as if I was still writing God a letter – “Dear God, today I got up and had cereal and went to school and at lunch and had recess and came home and did my homework and played outside and . . .” If I made it through this recitation, I would then do my “God blesses” – “God bless my mom and dad and Jim and TJ and Todd, God bless Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Bill and Aunt Shari and cousin Becky and Ben” – and then, if I made it through all of that, I would end with the Lord’s Prayer, because, well, we always say the Lord’s Prayer! Usually, though, I fell asleep somewhere between telling God about my day at school and telling God about my evening. But it was a daily routine that I stuck to faithfully for a long time.

Sometimes I think my prayer routines as a child were more meaningful than my adult prayer practices. When Jesus talks about prayer, he talks about persistence, and he talks about a deep and abiding trust that it is God’s good pleasure to answer our prayers. I think children live into those attributes of prayer without even trying. One of my high-school friends this week shared a story about her twin girls on facebook. She writes, "The girls were having a discussion and Brooke told Addison "I only believe what I can see." I asked Brooke if she believed in God because she can't see [God]. Her response blew me away! "Mom, look around. [God is] in every living thing. We see [God] EVERYWHERE. (as she spreads her arms around to point to the world) So of course I believe in God." Yup, out of the mouth of my 6 year old.” Jesus teaches us to pray to God with the confidence and faith of children that God hears, that God listens, that God responds.
When I dream about a prayerful Apple Valley, I dream of a congregation that knows that God listens, and that God wants to respond, when we’re ready to listen. This week Pastor Penny and Dot Reagan and Bev Fishlock and I spent time at our Upper New York Annual Conference session, our yearly business meeting. And our Bishop, Mark Webb, shared that he prays for each church in two of our twelve districts every day. That means that every week, Bishop Webb is actively praying for the ministry and people and life of Apple Valley United Methodist Church. That’s a powerful and comforting thing to know. And I feel like if the Bishop has time to pray for us that often, we have time to pray for the life of our congregation and the individual lives in it at least every week, beyond our prayer time in worship, and hopefully, each and every day. Trusting that God wants to hear from us, and believing Jesus, who urges us to persistently, again and again, bring our prayers before God, imagine what might happen if we prayed, everyday, that for God’s will to be done, for God’s dreams to unfold at Apple Valley.
In the months ahead, I plan to offer us opportunities to learn more about prayer, to be more comfortable with praying, and to spend time praying together. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood we develop a lot of hang-ups about prayer. Many of you who have been in study groups or committee meetings know that I’m encouraging you to be willing to offer prayer when we gather. One small piece of my dream about a prayerful Apple Valley is that we’d have a congregation full of folks who are ready and willing and eager to share a prayer when we gather together, to offer our hearts up to God on our behalf. And I’m appreciative and proud of those of you have already been pushing yourself out of your comfort zones to do just that. One of our study groups in the year ahead will focus on prayer, and learning more about the prayer practices that have shaped our Christian faith throughout history, practices that you might find meaningful to your spiritual journey still today. Looking almost a year ahead, to Easter 2016, one of the dreams I’ve had throughout my ministry is to engage in an Easter Eve Prayer Vigil, where we would pray through the night, maybe together, maybe in shifts, and be ready to greet the Easter morning with hearts well-prepared for resurrection. I’ve been thinking about it for all of my ministry, and even before I was a pastor, actually, and have just never done it. But I think this is the time, when we’re planning for our dreams with God to come true. What would a deeply prayerful Apple Valley look like? I’m dreaming of some pretty amazing things that God can do when our lines of communication with God are wide open. I hope you will join me in seeking to become a prayerful people. “‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Thanks be to God. Amen.