All Good--Sermon 6/19/11

All Good

I want to begin this morning by sharing with you a story. You see, I collect stories, I love to hear them, I love them well-told, I love when the synchronicities within them lead to greater truth, and comfort, and peace.

When I was in seminary each of the seniors in our small community would lead a chapel service throughout the year. And in my first year in the Bethany and Earlham School of Religion communities I heard one of the truest and clearest and simplest stories of grace I had ever heard. I confess now that I have no idea who preached the sermon. I can tell you with some degree of certainty that his first name was Dean, but wherever Dean went after seminary or where his life journey took him I have no idea. Dean began his sermon that morning telling a funny story about growing up in a conservative Lutheran church, one of those traditional churches where all the pews faced the front and the altar was raised and set apart. As a young boy Dean would sit in worship and stare at that ornate altar, complete with its gold candelabras and towering cross. He decided in the way of only the most creative of four-year-olds that God must live behind that altar, else why did everyone bow down to it, face it in worship, pray toward it? One Sunday, his four-year-old, curiosity got the better of him and after worship he untangled his hand from his mothers and snuck away from and made his way down that long aisle to take a gander behind that altar, to see this God to whom he had learned to pray. He went forward, full of trepidation and awe, and cautiously and as reverently as a four-year-old can he looked behind the altar, where he found, stored, no doubt in a convenient place, by some dear church custodian an upright vacuum cleaner. The puzzled four-year-old backed away with a great deal of certainty and clarity, and Dean shared, jokingly that throughout his preschool years he truly believed that God was a Hoover.

His story, of course, got a chuckle, for we all know silly stories of misunderstandings we had about the nature of the church in our younger years. But then this masterful preacher quickly changed the subject and shared a different story, one which wasn’t as whimsical and silly. With a tentative voice, Dean shared painfully of what a difficult semester it had been. As a young seminarian he was working as a chaplain for three months in an intensive Clinical Pastoral Education unit at a trauma hospital in Dayton. He struggled with issues of doubt, grappled with questions of suffering and loss and the nature of God. And felt as if he were losing his faith. The painful horrors that he had seen in the trauma bays of the emergency rooms had left impressions which were hard to shake. And his supervisors were critical of him and his ministry. He felt all hope was lost. After a particularly bloody trauma call which involved two gunshot wounds on an overnight shift he made his way to an out of the way hospital waiting room, and sat, his head in his hands and began to weep quiet tears. Questioning his vocation, questioning God’s existence, questioning the world we live in where brothers shoot brothers. In the midst of his tears quietly a cleaning woman had entered the room to straighten and tidy it for the next day, and with her she brought, of course, a Hoover vacuum cleaner, symbol of Dean’s young faith. And Dean said that as he sat there, inwardly smiling at God’s sense of humor in that hour, he raised his feet to allow the cleaning woman to clean around him, and this saint of a woman put her hands on his shoulder and said, “No, you’re good. You’re good right where you are.”

Dean reflected later that he probably frightened that instrument of God with his sobs as she touched his shoulder and shared her divine proclamation (even if she only referred to the placement of his feet). But this young minister was certain of the message from his God. He had been reminded by his quirky creator, the God who has a sense of humor, of the truth of the matter. He was good. He was good right there. And it was both confirmation and creation, for Dean began a new career in his ministry. And his story was told, and is told again.

Creation stories, the origins of how things came to be are always fascinating to me. Often when I worked at Hospice, and spent time with patients who were near the end of life, I found that the richest conversations happened when we talked about how things began, or when new things came to be. Where were you born? How did you come to live in Fort Wayne? How did you meet your spouse? What led you to start that project, that business, to travel that life path? As a parent, I’ve learned that our children love few stories more than the stories we tell them about their own beginnings--where each of them were born, how Brynn spent her first nine days of life in the NICU at Lutheran, how Grayson turned to look at his daddy’s face as he lay in that incubator only minutes old, how Robert introduced Tess to trees in the car on the way home from the hospital. Creation stories fascinate us, for we love how artfully they weave the stories of our lives, how they proclaim the wonder of how we got from there to here. How they give us hints about who we would become, or how we were led to this spot on the map of our lives.

The Ancient Israelites were no less entranced with stories of creation and origin, and they were mindful of how those stories should be told to their children. At the time that the book of Genesis was recorded, the Israelites were held captive by their Babylonian oppressors. The stories the Babylonians told themselves and others about the creation of the universe were filled with violence and blood, stories of domination and power. The Israelites had a different sense of the creation of the world and in an act of counter-cultural revolution they knew in their bones a different story, a creation story with a different twist. The tale woven around the fireside that was shared with each generation of Israelite children, and the story documented by our forebearers in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a different one. It is a story of blessing and grace, a story where humanity is created after the universe was put into motion, woman and man created in the image of their loving and adoring God who looks on them with tender eyes and sees them as good. All good. The Spirit of God hovered and brooded over deep water, hopeful and yearning, and brought forth the blessing of our created bodies. All blessing.

Don’t ask me how this began to get twisted, how the idea of original blessing became original sin. Some say it was the first taste of the fruit Adam bit, or that pesky snake, or Eve wanting to have a teeny tiny bit more knowledge. But no word is mentioned in these accounts of sin, and God seems less angry Dad and more disappointed and reluctant parent as the tale continues. And so I think that original sin stigma came even later and forever shaped the history that grew up around it. Augustine, who wrote in the fourth and fifth century was the one who really claimed that there was a fall, or a break from our relationship with God. And the idea of original sin was expounded on, then by other early church fathers intent on maintaining order and demanding that children of the church repent of the sins of Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, original sin is never mentioned in the Bible. Nowhere.

Which raises the question again? How did we drift so far afield from this idea that humanity was created “all good,” that our inherent nature, the spark of God within us is made with a default “good” switch? How did we stray so far away from our scriptural roots? And how do we find our way back to that idea of original blessing?

If we know we are created in the image of God, created good, then what is our responsibility now? How do we live into this goodness? How do we accept this unimaginable gift of being loved inherently, just as we are?

I think we can offer two responses. The first is this: Knowing we are loved, we are required to love. Plain and simple. Knowing that God chose each of us as a vehicle for the divine, so much so that God chose to become mortal and walk the earth as Jesus Christ, reminds us of our mission. We are created in love, and so we must love. Even when we are afraid, even when we have doubts, even when it is difficult. The poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “There are a hundred different paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?” May this be our mantra. We don’t need easier. We need to love. And so this must be the first response we have to our original blessing: love.

And the second response is like it: we must recognize our place in creation. Frederick Buechner wrote in his book Wishful Thinking, “Using the same old materials of earth, air, fire, and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If you think you’re seeing the same show all over again seven times a week, you’re crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again. And the you that wakes up was never the same before and will never be the same either.” (Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Harper San Francisco, 1973). As images of God, as original blessings, we must recognize that we are part of all creation, and that our role on this planet is not coincidental. We have a unique task to do here, and a God who whispers to us through all of creation, or through old upright vacuum cleaners, as assurance of our place here, and our goodness in it.

Make no mistake. Discipleship is difficult. Doubts and fears will impede us at times. But we are made all good, and our creator delights and hovers over us offering us gifts of grace at every turn. It’s all good, friends. May it be so.

Amen.

When Pentecost is Personal--Sermon 6/12/11

I speak this morning from a unique vantage point, for I am both pastor and candidate for new membership. I am both welcomer and welcomed. I am both seasoned in Peace Church’s ways after being your pastor for almost a year, and one of the new kids on the block. It isn’t often that a preacher can speak from that perspective. It’s humbling, actually. And to do so on Pentecost as we celebrate the birth of the institutional church, as we imagine that gust of wind that shook the foundations of that room in Jerusalem, as we consider what tongues of fire are, seems even more overwhelming.

There are a lot of sermons I could give this morning on Pentecost, on the rich symbolism of the story, on the beauty of those speaking in different languages and all understanding one another, on the passionate joy in that congregation, joy which bubbled over so much that bystanders believed that the early church members had been tipping the bottle well before 9:00 a.m.

But I’m hoping I have many Pentecost Sundays in years to come to preach those sermons to you. So, instead I’d like to share a story.

In the most chaotic times of my life there is a recurring dream that I have. I’m sure a Jungian analyst would have fun with the symbols that flow out of my subconscious mind at night. When things are askew in my world in whatever capacity I dream of tornadoes, that Midwest flat-land funneling phenomenon. In the dreams I am running from them, seeking shelter, trying to find safe haven. And usually, thankfully, the dream often ends with my finding a cellar door open, or discovering a firmly-rooted tree that I can hold on to. And then, often the nighttime panic is averted. And I ride the storm out, only to awaken in the morning wondering how my mind had tangled itself into that dreamworld mess the nightbefore.

There was one night, though, when the tornado finally found me, caught me in my dreams. It was a snowy night in January of 2004. During that time I was leaving my first pastorate after having been together for six years. I left with a great deal of ambiguity, loving them, but knowing it was time to move to a new chapter. Wanting to hold on to the past, but knowing that there was no future for me in that congregation, or indeed, in that denomination. Swirling with emotions for a variety of reasons and feeling even angry at God for calling me into ministry and then leaving me in the wilderness. On that night in January I dreamt that I was driving a car which safely protected my new family, for Robert and I had only been married a few months, and that the four of us were being chased by a tornado together. I so clearly remember the sense of urgency, the sense that I needed to protect not just myself now but Robert, and Tess and Brynn. And in that dream landscape a church showed up on the horizon, and I ran to the door and jiggled the locked handle, and banged on the stained glass-windows and demanded to be let in. And someone yelled out to me that there was no room for any of us, and that I needed to go away. And before I could return to the car it was gathered into a whirlwind and scooped into the belly of the twister, everything scattered this way and that. I awoke that night in a sweat, and felt slammed back into the real world, disoriented and distraught.

But this haunting dream, accurately named my reality. For at that time in my life, for a variety of reasons, there was not a church which had sheltered us. While there was a God who I believed sustained me, there was no community to call home. And in a sense, I felt unmoored, and untethered.

I share that story with you as one who will make vows this morning that bind me in covenant with you, as one who represents the voice of so many in this world. There have been times and there are currently times when for whatever reason, the institutional church has failed and will fail to meet the needs of some. And there have been times and there will be times when for whatever reason the institutional church has not welcomed others and will not welcome others. There have been times and there will be times when this human social institution which we call “The Church” has disappointed us or betrayed us or abandoned us. But, when any of those times come, the Holy Spirit will sweep in and do Its fancy, sacred, passionate, Holy Spirit dance among us. And we realize that we can be more. The power of the Pentecost comes when we realize that within the church there is an unquenchable fire which has not stopped burning for two thousand years. And we realize that we are part of that flame.

The theologian Renita Weems has written, “We are the church, a ragged band of miracle workers: ragged because we are often contentious, scared, lazy, undependable and—in a word—flawed; miracle workers because we’ve had to take straw and build a cathedral of hope for every generation that crossed our threshold.”

Today we celebrate the birth of the church, church with a capital “C.” And we realize that with all of its imperfections and all of its faults, it has the capacity for miracles and we see them. We see them when we baptize children, and then when we watch them grow into beautiful high school graduates. And we know that the Holy Spirit is with us. We see it when the call goes out that someone is in need, and then casseroles are baked and paper products are collected. And we know that the Holy Spirit is with us. We see it when the still speaking voice of God urges us to speak out against oppression or injustice, and our voice is echoed and magnified by our brothers and sisters. And we know that the Holy Spirit is with us. We see it when our brother or sister disagrees with us and emotions run hot, and then reconciliation is sought and forgiveness is offered. And we know that the Holy Spirit is with us. We, this ragged band of miracle workers.

I have not had any tornado dreams in the past year. Ironic, isn’t it? As your pastor, and as someone who will be binding her troth with that of this church in the next few minutes I offer thanks to you and praise to God for that. For you are a welcoming, gracious people, and the Spirit is alive here.

May we, as the people of Peace United Church of Christ on this Pentecost Sunday, feel the wind on our faces as the Holy Spirit whips through this church to refresh us with its power, and if the wind ever feels too strong, may we know that we can always find solace in the shelter of one another’s love. May the fire of the Holy Spirit be kindled in us that we may live out our mission and be the church of Christ today. Amen.

Where Are You Looking?--Sermon 5/29/11

Where Are You Looking?

When I was in college I had a roommate who grew up in the rolling green hills of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (and just as an FYI, it’s pronounced Lancaster, and not Laancaster, as my Hoosier lips wanted to say it). And so I got to know this part of the country a bit better than your average midwesternern. Rebecca’s family were Church of the Brethren, one of the Anabaptist sectarian movements in those parts, but her family were close with Amish families, and Old Order German Baptist families, and Mennonite families. And so I learned more than the average a bear about life among the “plain people.” Rebecca and I were perhaps anomalies among our college friends and liked wandering around the tiny towns in Lancaster county looking at old antique stores, or Mennonite-owned quilt shops. And at that time I was fascinated by these folk who call themselves, “plain people.” One weekend in June, however, when I was visiting, and Rebecca and I were out galavanting we noticed that all the shops were closed. It was a weekday, a Thursday it seems, and it made no sense to us…what had we missed? Had the rapture come and we didn’t know it? Finally, on our third stop at an Amish bakery we saw a hand-written sign that said, “We are closed, to celebrate Ascension Day.” We both puzzled over the sign, having never heard of Ascension Day celebrations, or Ascension Day hooplas, or Ascension Day picnics. Even now, Hallmark hasn’t picked up Ascension Day theme with cards or gift wrap (and what would that look like exactly? Probably clouds?) and we don’t sing Happy Ascension Day to one another. I wondered then, and I continue to ponder even ten or twelve years later, “What’s this Ascension stuff mean? And how have I grown up in the church without ever really noticing it before? How have I allowed this liturgical obscurity to pass me by?”

This year I decided to make up for nearly forty years of Ascension Day ignorance by doing some remedial theological learning, and because whenever I get enthused about a theological topic I preach about it, guess who gets to come along on the journey with me? That’s right…you do! Wahoo!

The first chapter and first verses of the Acts of the Apostles are classically known as “the definitive” story of the ascension. The writer of Acts, who it is believed was also the writer of the book of Luke, was so amazed by the story that he actually wrote about it twice, once in Luke and then with more detail and four-part harmony again in Acts, and so it is this second scripture that we’ll look at this morning.

Picture if you will a motley crew of assorted characters. A band of followers who had lost their leader, and were at loose ends, sort of like the mice who have lost the pied piper, or a bee hive that has lost its queen. They were a scruffy band of folk who had had their hopes shattered by the death of this one they thought was the Messiah. They’d been in mourning for a good forty days, a little over a month after watching Jesus die. And not only did he die, but he died in an incredibly violent and agonizing and cruel way. And then, puzzlingly, strangely, there had been that cryptic message from the angel in the tomb, and those sightings of him, which were hard to wrap your head around. While it seemed Jesus was popping up here and there, or at least people were saying they had seen a fleeting glimpse of him (think of modern day Elvis sightings), there hadn’t been any clear directive from the disciples en masse. There was no clear movement or direction that could be agreed upon. There was no master plan, no mission statement, no grand vision. There were just some folks, scattered here and there, aimlessly wondering what was next for them, and what they should do with their remaining time on this earth.

And then, (and you already knew this, since Bev already read ahead in the story for you), lo and behold, there was a sign. Out of nowhere word came from this one who they knew as the Messiah, speaking on behalf of their God. Jesus appeared to the disciples and told them not to leave Jerusalem. They were to stay put, hang tight, just wait patiently. For there was something exciting and unanticipated on the horizon. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was imminent.

I love thinking about these disciples then…I have a pretty irreverent picture of them in my mind’s eye at this point. I see them as sort of like the Keystone Cops, fumbling and muttering to themselves, running into one another and bustling back and forth in a commotion. Not entirely understanding, not entirely catching Jesus’s drift, but still feeling the need to act. Perhaps I see them this way because it is I would see myself in their shoes, laughing along with jokes I don’t quite get, and wanting, desperately wanting to do the right thing, which would lead to lots of fumbling movement and accidental incidents.

The disciples didn’t understand. Not yet. They asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of heaven?” Such an eager question. And the response they got was a perplexing one. Instead of answering the question he told them, politely, that the coming of the kingdom of heaven is in God’s hands. Jesus doesn’t give a yes or no answer, he doesn’t tell them an exact date and time and then encourage them to hand over their savings accounts to him so that he might create billboards and pass out flyers so that they might neglect the needs of this world and instead focus on the next one. Instead what Jesus says is this, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.”

I wonder what the disciples thought of that response. Did they understand? Did they furrow their brows and scratch their heads? Did it make any sense to them? Does it make any response to those who follow him some two thousand years later?

Jesus’s response was a crafty one. If I were a disciple, I might have been inclined to want to grab his shoulders and shake him and say, “Just answer the question! The question is this: Are you, or are you not, here to restore the kingdom!?!” But Jesus has a wisdom which offers a depth that mere mortals like me don’t understand. The fact that Jesus didn’t answer this question, and moved on to another topic makes me think that the disciples were asking the wrong question. For if the disciples were simply continuing to hope for a cosmic ruler who would command the people and bring a new kingdom, if they are simply looking out into the distance and waiting for the next world, they are missing the point entirely. They are looking in the wrong place.

The kingdom language that Jesus spoke of throughout his life, throughout his ministry is not about another place and time. The kingdom language that Jesus uses has much more to do with how we bring about the community of God today, and tomorrow. And the job of furthering the mission, the task of ushering in the kingdom is the responsibility of us all. The reign of God is ushered in when we love. The reign of God is realized when we go about creating spaces of sanctuary for those in need. The reign of God is alive here when we practice compassion and tenderness. And this reign isn’t about tomorrow, and it isn’t about looking up. It’s about today. And it’s about looking here.

Listen to Jesus’s response to his disciples again, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all of Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” What he says, in the common vernacular is, “It’s not just about me now, friends. This ushering in of the kingdom of God, it’s up to you now too.”

And after these words he was gone. Poof. As the disciples watched he was lifted into a cloud. He ascended. Voila, the first Ascension Day! And disciples are left with his words, and with a mission.

But there’s one more part of this story that I really love…the part that assures me that God has a twinkling sense of humor and a sparkle in the eye—as well as the patience to get through to even the densest of followers. While the disciples are still standing there, looking up, gazing heaven-ward two new men show up. Two mysterious men in robes and ask pointedly, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” And the disciples must have wanted to point at Jesus’s still rising feet and say, “Well, um…duh!”

But the question seems to be the moral of the story, the way to sum it all up. Why stand around waiting? Why focus so much on the next world, when there’s a world right in front of you hungry for God’s touch? Why stand looking up when right down the road there is a beggar who needs help, when there is a blind man who needs healed? What are you looking at? The community of God needs to be ushered in here, my brothers, and it’s not going to get done if you just keep standing here staring at the sky.

I find it ironic that when the Church, and I mean Church with a capital “C” celebrates ascension, much more time is spent considering the rising, when what the writer of Acts documents, the words spoken from the lips of Jesus seem to have more to do with the witness that happens down here…in this world…in this place.

Friends, there is a hungry world waiting for out gifts, and the followers of Jesus don’t have the luxury of resting on our haunches. Friends, there is a planet which needs our attention, and the followers of Jesus can’t simply ignore it while we await the heavenly realm. Friends, justice is still slow to come to our nation, and to our world, and the followers of Jesus aren’t permitted to excuse ourselves from the cause.

Instead, we must stand together, and imbibe the power of the Holy Spirit. We can gaze fleetingly at the Christ who rose, but then we must get back to work building the kingdom on this ground, just as Jesus did in his ministry.

I want to close by sharing with you the words of a Nicaraguan song taught to me in college:

Enviado Soy de Dios
I am sent by God. My hands they are ready. Ready to build a peaceful loving world. The angels, they were not sent to change a world of pain into a world of peace. God has called me, to make it a reality. Help me, God, to do Your work.

In the name of Jesus, may it be so.

Amen.

Words Whispered Over Water--Sermon 5/22/11

A special thank you to the brave and wise Hannah Moore who allowed me to share her story this morning.


Words Whispered Over Water

In the United Church of Christ there is perhaps no greater day in worship than the Sundays in which we welcome those newest on the Christian journey through baptism. We welcome them when they are infants, or children, or adults. We welcome them by sprinking water from an ornate baptismal font, or pouring it from a pinky smooth shell, or even dunking in a river or lake. We UCC folk are not too particular about the details, we would rather dwell on the meaning. And the meaning is about new life being nurtured by God’s love. New life is about knowing that wherever you are in life, you are named as kin with Jesus. New life is believing that what was written is true, resurrection is possible, death does not have the final word. We baptize as a symbol of our belief in the power of resurrection. Just as John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan, we choose to be baptized as a sign of our connection to the one who was called God’s beloved. The words we whisper over the waters, the invocation of God’s blessing, and the act of baptism are some of the most profound words which can be uttered.

And so this morning, knowing that Matt and Marcy will be making covenantal vows about how Clara will be raised, we dare not forget that Matt and Marcy aren’t the only ones making promises, for we the living church, the church which loves and supports which weeps and holds which comforts and sustains will be making promises to them which are no less binding or powerful.

I love those moments of syncronicity in the lectionary when the verses which I am scheduled to preach on match perfectly with the world in which we are living in here at Peace United Church of Christ in little Fort Wayne, IN. I sort of feel as if it’s one of those serendipitious moments when God winks at us, as a way of saying, “Yep, I’m still watching…” For of all the texts that could have been assigned for this day, the text which we have been given is one from a letter to a group of people who were newly baptized.

This epistle, a fancy way for saying pastoral letter, was written by a leader of the church in Rome in or around the year 79. Some attribute the writings to Peter, but current Biblical scholarship suggests that Peter would have already have died years before. And so this unknown leader is writing in Peter’s name, sharing Peter’s thoughts, which was actually a quite common thing to do in the early church. This early follower of Christ was writing to a people in Asia Minor, people who had been raised in the Pagan ways, to worship the Pagan gods in the Pagan temples. Their fledgling devotion to Jesus and their new baptisms had not been well-received in their lands, and they had been mocked and slandered for their faith. At this point the taunting and discrimination had not become violent, the state had not taken a side on the issue, but there were fears about what proclaiming Jesus Christ meant.

The unknown author who is named as Peter reminds them that they are to crave the teachings and word of God just as a child craves milk from its mother’s breast. With the same intensity, and with the same fervor. And that the milk of that word is meant to sustain them, and strengthen them, and knit their spiritual bones together. But then our friend, also known as Peter, goes on to switch metaphors rapidly (its clear this writer was not an English major) and begins a lengthy treatise on the metaphor of stones, particularly living stones.

Living stones are not something that make much sense in our world. For us, with our tidy rational Western ways of thought, a stone is a stone. It is inanimate. It is hard. It is stable. And so there are times when the power of this metaphor has been lost on us. But, let me try to explain here…those who read this scripture were people who came from the tradition of the temple. The places where the worshipped were the most important thing. Pilgrimages were made to temples. Sacrifices were offered there. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed only twenty to forty years before this letter, and the smoldering ruins must have been a memory that had been told. And so to utter the words to those new Christians, new Christians who were in a captivity of sorts, and living on the margins of society, to utter the words that they were to offer themselves as living stones was to alter their reality radically. The writer of the letter said to them, “No more are you people of the temple, but you yourselves are the temple. It is you, you who must become the church. There is no longer a place; instead there are a people.”

In January of 1998 I was called to pastor a church in North Manchester, Indiana. Fresh out of seminary, bright-eyed and hopeful, filled with new ideas and passion, I was called to pastor a historic old church well ensconced behind walnut trees in a small town. And a week before the call service, I received a call at 4:00 in the morning that the building was on fire, and would likely not be salvaged. I got in my car and drove the three hours there, and walked along the fire line barricades and wept with my future parishioners. I remember the audible gasp in that cold sleeting day when the last beam of the sanctuary fell, and then the cross behind it. And I confess that I began to ask the question, “How will we be the church now? Where will go know? Do I still have a people to pastor?” How naïve and unbelieving I was…for twelve hours later we stood on the front steps of the still smoking building, a sea of umbrellas and sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and recommitted ourselves to God and to this family of believers.

My hope is that none of you ever have to learn what it means when your own temple is destroyed to discover how to be living stones, that rather our discovery of that is born not out of crisis, but out of hope for new life.

This morning, as we baptize Clara Catherine Blundall, we must remember that we have become the living stones which are used by God to build her faith. We must allow the Holy Spirit to build us, to shape us, to create structures of haven and strength that we could never have imagined before. And we need to allow ourselves to be built not just for Clara, but for all our children, and our youth. We need to allow ourselves to be built because we have a purpose in this world, to feed the hungry, to support the homeless, to nurture the downtrodden. We need to allow ourselves to be built because we have been called by Jesus to bring about the kingdom of justice, to welcome the stranger, to offer grace. We must be the living stones which become the church, and today we start simply by being those living stones for Clara.

This week I heard a poignant story from some good friends of mine. It is the story of a fifth-grader here in Fort Wayne named Hannah. As can happen in any fifth-grade classroom, kids can be cruel, comments can be catty, people can be hurt or humiliated. Hannah was on the playground with her friends who, as her Dad pointed out, are all good kids, good students involved in lots of extra-curricular things at school—Math Bowl team, Spelling Bowl, Dance, band, art. These are girls who have been to one another’s homes to parties and for sleepovers. And on this particular day they were doing what they do on the playground—singing their favorite songs, telling jokes, talking fashion, and adding in the inevitable snark and gossip. And one of the girls in that close-knit circle began to speculate on the sexuality of a boy in their class, a young boy who was standing just out of earshot. Others playfully joined in commenting on his style of dress, how he talks, how he moves. And at first Hannah became quiet and sad as she listened. Aware of playground politics and the fast political and social rules of who is in and who is out it would have been easy for Hannah to have said nothing, to allow the rising tide of cascading laughter to roll over her, but she realized another emotion rising in her, that of righteous indignation and anger and she said later to her father, “It’s like I couldn’t control myself.” And she stood up and said loudly, to get everyone’s attention, “Hey! You guys are being mean. And ignorant. And he’s a person.” Her outburst was met with derisive laughter and then another girl said, “Well, I’m a Christian, and in my church I learned that being gay is a sin and you go to hell for it. So you must not be a Christian.” And Hannah paused, and thought about this, Hannah a child of Plymouth UCC where she was born and baptized and welcomed. And then she said with equal conviction, “In my church gay people are still people, and they’re great and kind, and we accept people for who they are, and I’m a Christian too.”

Hannah’s words of unequivocal love and welcome in the face of adversity speak of this call to allow ourselves to be built as living stones, but more than that, the thing which made my voice catch in my throat as I heard her story was the other piece. Because Hannah had been nurtured in a church, because she had seen the power of those living stones who have sheltered her, and taught her, and shaped her, she was empowered to follow the call of Jesus to give voice to those who are voiceless.

This morning we baptize a tiny infant. If we can become the living stones which create a solid church for her than we can give her the wings she needs to fly into this world. By rooting ourselves in the solid ground of God’s mercy and grace, By tending to the soil of peace and justice, and laying our foundations deep and strong and true, we have the power to be the living stones which continue to create the kingdom of Christ. The words we whisper over the water today radically alter our worlds. May it be so. For Clara and for us all.

Amen.

Wonder Boy

“He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
--Robert Blake

From where I sit at my computer at home, I can see out the window into our backyard where our green wooden swing set sits. It is a breezy, albeit chilly afternoon, and we have had a brief reprieve from rain as the sun has slowly settled out for its late afternoon debut. And on that swing set, flying “Superman style,” that is, lying on his stomach across the swing and kicking his green frog galoshes behind him, is my just-turned four-year old son.

This is Grayson’s favorite place to be in the whole world--in his own backyard, wearing his rain boots and a grubby gray sweatshirt, with our dachshund cavorting around him.

While I was sitting inside in front of my computer screen, cup of coffee at my side, laboring over a turn of phrase for a sermon, pondering the meaning of the words of Jesus, trying to find the perfect way to convey what it was I thought should be said, and fretting all the while and taking myself very seriously, I heard something in the backyard. I peered through the lace curtains and saw Grayson, smile on his face swinging near the branches of the pine trees yelling at the top of his voice, “I love the world! I love this world! I love it!”

While I, intent on my book-learning and heady theologizing, was puzzling over the wonder of God’s word, a four-year-old was experiencing God’s world. When did I forget how to be rather than to do? When did I become so mired in my adult world that I forgot the simple and truth of the child’s universe? How is it that I have neglected to kiss the joy as it has gone flying by?

As the weather turns warmer (we hope!), and as the grasses turn greener, and as tulips poke their heads out of the soil, may we each find at least a few moments to make our way into that place of wonder, and may we too remember to kiss the joy.

The Discipline of Keeping Sabbath--Sermon 3/27/11

The Discipline of Keeping Sabbath

Sabbath is mentioned in the Bible 157 times. In 157 different locations the word Sabbath is used. And anytime something is mentioned this often, we might do well to perk up our ears and listen. The Bible is filled in minute detail with how important Sabbath is—which is very. The Bible can tell us exactly how we should celebrate and remember the Sabbath—which is by resting and turning our hearts toward God. And The Bible can tell us exactly what happened to some people who forgot, or who had no use for the Sabbath—they were struck dead. Need the scriptures be any clearer about Sabbath? Probably not. But do we listen?

On our Lenten journey we are talking about different spiritual disciplines. We have already talked about the importance of turning toward God in reverence and awe, the importance of singing our praises to God, and this morning we will be talking about the discipline of keeping Sabbath. Of course we take our cues from our Jewish ancestors here who begin their Sabbath from the time one could see three stars in the sky on Friday evening until Saturday at dusk. From dusk to dusk observant Jews do no work, including for some orthodox, even the work of tearing toilet paper off the spindle, or pushing buttons on elevators or phones. The rules of the Sabbath could be just as strict in Jesus’s day, and we 21st century Americans for the most part have grown pretty lax about what we can and cannot do on Sundays, the cultural Sabbath for Christians.

This week as I was thinking about Sabbath I was remembering a long standing argument my ex-husband and I used to have. The argument often happened in the spring, on those sunny first Sunday afternoons in late April or early May. In those days when the weather first hits the upper-60s and we realize that winter’s grip has finally and truly been broken. On those days when your fingers itch to get outside and dig in the dirt. Ken and I lived in a small town, in a small brick house right off the main street. And as any pastor of a church in a small conservative town can tell you, there are eyes on you at all times. The argument would often start like this, on that first sunny Sunday of the spring season I would wander out from the bedroom decked out in my old overalls and gardening clogs and say, “Well, I’m headed out to the yard to have a go at the first weeds of the season.” And Ken, who was raised in a more traditionally conservative faith tradition than I was, would get a pained look on his face and say, “But it’s Sunday!” And I would stare back at him, perplexed and confused, or wondering if I was supposed to be proud of him for remembering the days of the week or something. And then every season the same argument would be rehashed. He’d pause and say logically, “You can’t work in the garden on the Sabbath, because what if someone from your congregation comes by and sees you?” To which I often suggested a variety of disguises I could wear, including my Groucho Marx glasses and nose. But, if, heaven forbid they did see me, I would tell Ken, I will just wave at them. At this point in our seasonal debate he would remind me not to be duplicitious and would then explain again why he felt so strongly about this. You see, when Ken was growing up he wasn’t allowed to mow the lawn of the church or parsonage where his parents were pastors on Sunday, he couldn’t mow any lawn on Sunday, and that was incredibly difficult for him, because he had a riding lawn mower, and well, he really, really liked to fly through that grass on a sunny Sunday. But, his parents were sticklers about this, and Ken had decided that there were some Sabbath rules which were inviolable. Some things which were simply struck in stone.

I joke about that argument now, but with ten years of hindsight, I feel a deep sense of regret over that debate. Because I could not articulate my understanding of Sabbath, I could not articulate then what I have come to believe. Sabbath-keeping should draw us toward God, simply put and end of story. And if there are things that draw you into relationship with your creator, and if they rejuvenate your soul, then why could that not be a way of celebrating all of creation? There is a poem called “Welcoming Sabbath” from the New Union Prayer Book which names Sabbath in this way, “On this day we shall not do, but be.”

The word “Sabbath” derives from the Hebrew word “Shabbat,” which means, literally, to cease or desist. On Sabbath, one is called to cease from all working, to cease from all worrying, to cease from all the weekly concerns which ensnare us and keep us from focusing our energies on nurturing our souls in God’s grace. The origins of this Sabbath time are found in Genesis 2, where God stops creating and rests, where the action ceases and the blessing occurs. Old Testament scriptures tell us that there are certain things which must not be done on the Sabbath. Things like gathering food, plowing or reaping, kindling fire, or chopping wood. Preparations for most of these things must be done the previous day so that the Levitical laws could be obeyed. In the earlier times, even in the earlier times of some of you in this congregation, Sabbath meant a day when games were not played, when heavy meals were not cooked, when the house was kept in quiet. Sabbath was a day of dread for some children as they had to keep wearing their church clothes and sit quietly. As Barbara Brown Taylor said in her book, An Altar in the World, “for all practical purposes the commandment might as well have read, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it boring.’ (p. 127). For those who follow this rigid interpretation of Sabbath, mostly it seems to mean, “obey the rules” as if we creations of God are all just timid children.

The New Testament, however, paints a very different picture for us. Jesus, rule-breaker that he was, threw the Pharisees a few curve balls about the Sabbath. Jesus colored outside the lines a bit and recreated for us what the Sabbath ought to be. Throughout his ministry, Jesus used several opportunities to speak, teach, and even (gasp) heal on the Sabbath. The man with the withered hand, a demoniac, a man with an unclean spirit, Simon’s mother-in-law, the bent-over woman, and countless others all benefited from the lax laws that Jesus observed, and the grace he invited about Sabbath keeping. And when Jesus was tested by those same Pharisees and the priests of the law his answer was a jubilant “yes!” He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath!” Jesus gave a joyful affirmation to the Sabbath as celebration, as liberation, as invitation to intimacy with God. The God who smiles down on this Sabbath is a God who is humored by our delight, a God who welcomes whatever attempt we make to connect, at whatever time we can find.

I have become convinced of the need for Sabbath, especially now, as one who uses her Sabbath to preach to you about Sabbath…hmmm…I think that we all need Sabbath in some capacity or another, whatever the day is, for however long we can carve out the space for it, because, friends, life goes by quickly. And we are so, so frenetic. Our culture goes fast. There are 24-hour-news cycles and Facebook updates and Twitter feeds and more information being transmitted to us than we can absorb. Our day-timers are penciled in to the margins and rule our existence. We judge our successfulness on how many hours we spend each week at the office, or on how many widgets we counted. Productivity is our goal. To stop or slow down is guilt-inducing. We keep running around on our little hamster wheels, running and running and running as fast as our little legs can carry us. And so perhaps, to honor the Sabbath the first thing we need to learn how to do is to just say no every once inawhile. Barbara Brown Taylor says it this way, “I know that saying no is a more difficult practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row—because while all of those worthy activities may involve saying no to something else so that I can do them instead, they still amount to doing more instead of less.” (125). Sabbath, the need to have times when we do less, doesn’t jive with our culture. And to tell someone that you’ve penciled in a spot on your calendar to simply come out and play with God could result in some skeptical looks.

Friends, as followers of Christ we have an obligation to say no to the chaos of our lives, and say yes to the one who invites us to rest and relationship with God. There is a purpose for it, an urgent need. And Sabbath is not meant to be some passive activity, but is an active way of reclaiming our lives and bringing ourselves back into right relationship with God. I don’t think it matters when we do it, but I think it matters that we do it.

And so my commission to you in this week is that you say no to the distractions of the world, even if only for an hour or so, and say yes to strengthening your ties with your creator. I wish I had answers for each of you for how you can best renew your spirit in Sabbath space, but I have the sense that it comes for each of us differently. For some it has more to do with digging fingers in loamy soil, and for some it means lying on backs at night watching stars. For some it is a simple as closing one’s eyes and sitting in pure silence for an hour or so, and for others it means losing oneself in a Bach cantata. For some it is feeling your feet pound on pavement as you walk or run into God’s world, and for others it is kneading dough and watching it rise. For some it is that long afternoon nap and the luxury of curling up like a cat in the sun, and for some it is the words on the page that beg to be read. I can’t be you own personal spiritual trainers recommending your Sabbath renewal exercise, but I trust that in your heart is already the answer of what deeply needs to be kindled in you in your own spiritual life.

In closing, let me offer you these words as we each contemplate what Sabbath means for us personally and corporately, words from the theologian Renita Weems. She writes, “The Lord’s day allows us to bring our souls, our emotions, our senses, our vision, and even our bodies back to God so that God might remember our tattered broken selves and put our priorities back in order.” I couldn’t have said it better. My hope for each of us, indeed, for this body of Christ which is Peace United Church of Christ, is that we can offer to God our tattered and broken selves on this particular day of rest so that we might renew our vision and dream God’s dreams. For Sabbath is not about the rules and regulations, not about the laws and restrictions, but about the call to deepen your faith, and to come out and play with the one who delights in our creation.

May it be so.
Amen.

The Spiritual Discipline of Waking Up--Sermon 3/13/11

The Spiritual Discipline of Waking Up

And so we have begun our Lenten journey together. We will be walking through these longer spring days and allowing the light to lead us. Historically, the early church fathers called people to fast during the Lenten season, giving up one’s portion of meat or fish to give to the poor. It was a way to remember the generosity of Christ’s all-inclusive love and care for those in need, but somehow throughout the centuries the focus was more on the fast and the idea of self-sacrifice. The focus was on deprivation and not on grace. This is a shame, I believe, for I don’t believe God wants any of us to suffer, just as I don’t believe he wanted his own son to suffer on the cross. Instead, I believe that those who first adopted the practice of Lent in about the 4th century had it right. Let’s choose to do something in these six weeks that helps those in need, or let’s choose to do something that calls us into deeper discipleship. Rather than simply refraining from something which we know in our heart of hearts we will simply revert to doing again in six weeks, thankful that the six weeks is over, let’s add a new dimension to this Lenten season and grow into our faith in ways that shape us for the journey throughout the rest of life.

During the next six weeks of Lent I invite you on a journey of finding the sacred in the ordinary, of allowing yourself to be drawn deeper into your faith, of recognizing that our faith is a deep pool of grace that we have the chance to dive into in each moment. During the next six weeks of Lent we will be exploring scriptural examples of holy disciplines, and the thoughts of homiletics professor and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Altars in the World, which is what we will be studying in our Tuesday evening Lenten book group as well. We will explore all sorts of spiritual disciplines—some as simple as walking, connecting with nature, and observing Sabbath and some as messy as being part of community, physical labor, and finding vocation. And it is my fervent prayer that our Lenten season may be one not of depravation, but one of growth and focus. And so it only seems right that we begin this morning with the first discipline, that of waking up to the sacred in our midst.

This morning’s scripture is jam packed with juicy details and strange nocturnal imaginings. The main character of the story, Jacob was still a young man. And as we pick up the story in the twenty-eight chapter of Genesis he had just left Beer Sheba, on the run because his “whole screwy family had finally imploded.” (Taylor, p 2). Jacob’s father was a classic Hospice candidate, dying a slow death, and hungry to pass his wisdom and blessing on to his sons so that he could die in peace. But, Jacob had colluded with his mother to steal the birthright and blessing from his twin brother, Esau. And as sometimes happens in deeply dysfunctional families, Esau had flown into a rage and Jacob quickly realized that there was no way for him to keep his life and remain with his family of origin. Jacob really was sort of a scoundrel at this point; he hadn’t exactly been honest and upright in the whole inheritance thing. But, he is not the first person, nor will he be the last who falls short of God’s hopes and then is still called by God. It is refreshing, actually, that those of us who have made mistakes have Jacob as a model. For if rascally Jacob can find the divine, than surely we can as well.

Jacob’s advance into the wilderness and away from the wrath of his brother led him into a desolate place, and as it was dark and there was no where else for him to go, he made a bed under the night sky with only a stone for a pillow. And that’s when the dreaming began—the dream of the angels traveling up and down the ladder. But perhaps more than this bizarre image was the power of the words which were spoken, the words of God saying, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Even scoundrels like Jacob are not abandoned by God.

But the story continues. Ushered in to the holy of a dream, Jacob chooses to trust that the vision was from God. It would have been easy to write off those angels traveling up and down that ladder as the remnants of that funky left over beef jerky the night before, or to discount the dream as the wild nighttime ramblings of a busy mind. But Jacob wakes a believer. And more, commemorates his revelation by creating a stone pillar and pouring precious, expensive oil on it and declaring it a holy place.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes it this way, “Even if Jacob could never find the exact place where the feet of that heavenly ladder came to earth—even if he could never find a single angel footprint in the sand—his life was changed for good. Having woken up to God, he would never be able to go back to sleep again.” (Taylor, p. 4).

And so I believe our first Lenten discipline must be to wake up to God, to wake up to the divine which lurks all around us. Too often in our world we have demarked the sacred and the profane. We draw a line in the sand between what can be holy—church, well-behaved children, butterflies, rainbows, teaching the world to sing and what we would see as mundane—a common streetcorner, a piece of trash blowing next to the highway, the woman in front of us in line at Walmart. By creating the designations in our heads, the labels of where we plan to see or not see God, we but on spiritual blinders and we forget to look for evidence of our creator. There are ways that our ideas and definitions of what is sacred keep us from holding God’s creation at arm’s length.

Throughout scripture we see God show up in any number of guises…God is found under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the top of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes and perfect strangers, (Taylor, p 13) and so who are we to define where God would and wouldn’t be now?
When I turned thirty-four, and after Robert and I had been married for three years, the yearning for me to have a baby was palpable. I mistakenly assumed that now that the time was right for me to conceive, that now that our universe was at rights, that it would be a simple process to have a child. I was wrong. I was heartbreakingly wrong. And month after month would pass with mourning, and rage, and a sense of loss I could barely contain. We did the round of doctors visits, and met with fertility folks, and investigated reproductive technology options. And after two years of trying, I was miserable. One day during that time, I wandered into a little store on my lunch hour and found a basket full of stones with the word “hope” etched on them. I practically snarled in derision and anger, the irony of that word an insult to my raging sense of injustice, but I still bought all eight of them. And then I found myself putting them everywhere that I could see them. By my phone at work, on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, next to my bed where they would be the first thing for me to see in the morning. It was the only way that I could hold my prayer and my intention tangibly. The only way that I could wake myself up to the reality that there was a world of sacred hope that was still beckoning me. I could not control the outcome of our infertililty. And I could not make a baby magically appear in our lives. But, I could remind myself to rest in hope, and I could remind myself that God was hoping along with me. By placing those stones in my daily path, I was, unintentionally, creating my own sacred altars. Crying out to a God who promises us that all will be well, and that we are not abandoned, whatever the outcome, whatever the path.

Barbara Brown Taylor talks of her own waking up in this way, “I can set a little altar in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome that place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven—one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it—where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to where I am due next.”

This morning during the final hymn I will be wandering among you passing out smooth stones, smooth stones to create altars of your own. Altars to place somewhere in your home, or to carry with you and rub your fingers across. Altars which are meant to draw your intention to God’s presence. When you see these stones, remember the sacredness of the one who told Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Use these stones as reminders, lest you forget, that God promises the same to us. In short, allow these stones to invite you to wake up!

I want to close this morning with a poem by the Persian poet, Rumi.
The breeze of dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

On this first step in our Lenten journey may we walk with intention across that threshold where we meet our God, and may we know that “the earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” (Taylor, p 15).

Amen.

Works Cited
Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. Harper One Press, 2009.

Aglow--Sermon 3/6/11

Aglow

As a church, this morning, we gather with Christians across the world on this Sunday in remembrance of the Transfiguration. On this last Sunday before the Lenten season begins we remember that trek Jesus took which led to a mountain top revelation. While in New Orleans this week, the Mardi Gras festival will come alive with the attaining of beads and wearing of masks and assorted debauchery, and early this week on Shrove Tuesday thousands upon thousands will gorge themselves on pancakes and other assorted sweets as a final hurrah before they get down to the business of fasting, this Sundays meaning often gets left in the dust. While pre-Lenten overconsumption and madcap shenanigans play prominently in our religious psyche for the next three or four days, our secular world will likely neglect the story of the Transfiguration, leaving it in the dust of antiquity. There are times, I think, when our post-modern world seems to think it has outgrown this quaint story of metamorphosis and transformation. This story where Jesus shines with an almost eerie light and communes with the prophets of old. One wonders if we haven’t dismissed this story for it is hard for our 21st century minds to adopt the visions of those four disciples who traveled with Jesus that day. Hard for us to imagine what occurred on that mountain top two thousand and something years ago. We are too rational, too skeptical to wrap our heads around whatever it was that happened on that hill in the middle east. We question whether the sacred could truly burst into the ordinary with such force.

We all know the story. Accounts of it are listed not just in the gospel of Matthew, but in the gospels of Mark and Luke as well, and the perspectives of each writer are all very similar. Obviously it was a story that “made the cut” into the final version of the Bible and so the early church believed in making sure the account was told. And, yes, there probably was a bit of a political agenda to the sharing of the experience as well. The writer of Matthew was adamant about trying to convince a Jewish audience that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. And so what better way for the authority of Jesus to be conveyed than by making sure it was known that he kept company with Moses and Elijah? And then to have God pronounce again the words first declared at the baptism of Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved.” Well, it is a pretty spectacular moment, filled with all the lights and wonder we have come to expect from a majestic God. And surely the disciples who saw it were stunned too, for they knelt in silent awe and fear. And their only response was to want to build monuments to the moment, to capture it for all time. Too much light, too much of the sacred can leave us awestruck and speechless I believe, or leave us yearning to somehow control the encounter by wanting to freeze it in our memory.

When the holy comes knocking, aren’t we often, like the disciples reluctant to accept it for what it is? Afraid of what it might mean? And how it might change us? And wanting to somehow capture it, rather than allowing it to capture us?

William Willimon, a United Methodist pastor and homiletics professor names the importance of the transfiguration in this way, “For a brief shining moment on the migration to Jerusalem and the cross, God gave the disciples what they needed to believe.” And perhaps that is the truest message of the transfiguration experience, that there are times when we see the divine clearly, and with stunning clarity and there is a sense of the ineffable which gives us reason to continue to believe, even if we cannot explain what happened. There are those transformative moments when the veil between heaven and earth is thin, and the sacred pierces our soul and hurts our eyes, and we have to hold on to those, to protect them and allow their memory to lead us when days are dim.

I may feel a special affinity for this story this week for a reason. As many of you know, I spent three days this past week on retreat. And while I was not on a mountain top in the desert in Israel, I was in my own netherworld in the hills of Michigan. I have stayed at GilChrist retreat center in the woods outside of Three Rivers for more than ten years on various excursions. Each hermitage, a one room cabin, of which there are ten on the land has its own flavor and feel. And because I was late in making reservations this season, I ended up in a new cabin, and for someone who isn’t keen on change this was not a welcome transition. I was housed in a place not nestled in the heart of the valley in woods where I felt safe and protected, but instead atop the highest hill in the area. My little aerie was called “Hawk’s Nest” and there were times when I looked out the window and literally thought I was going to tumble forward, because I was perched so high and could see so far. It was my own personal mountain, right in the heart of Michigan.

Being away on a retreat allows the world to slip away in bits and pieces, and allows for a clarity of vision. I pondered often as I planned for our Lenten season in the silence what it means for the sacred and profane to cross paths, for the mountain-top experience to immerse itself in the daily world. I wondered what the transfiguration would look like to our modern eyes. What it would take for us to see Christ in dazzling form in this time and place.

On my first evening away I was feeling especially raw. Silence, I’ve found, can do that. A few hours in the wilderness has the power to unnerve me and shake loose all the chaos and craziness of my mind. Buddhists who meditate regularly like to call this “monkey mind,” which makes perfect sense to me. A mentor of mine, a wise woman and pastor named Louie, once told me that in the first hours of retreat the only thing one can do is allow one’s mind to go blank…to stare out the window and let yourself soak into the landscape. And so after unpacking, I simply sat in the rocking chair and slipped into the quiet as I watched woodpeckers and robins and bluejays dart between the trees and onto my deck to gingerly feed from the birdfeeder not six feet from my window. But my monkey mind was not drifting into studied meditation on the transfiguration, or into disciplined prayer, but was instead dwelling on this friend, Louie. For Louie died tragically in a car accident two years ago, and it is a grief which still is quite raw for me. And a grief I push away in my day to day life.

One of the things I was remembering about my friend was her love of bold color. She grew up in Africa and she basked in the warm sun, in seeing the batik prints of the Nigerian villagers. Louie’s philosophy was “the brighter the better” and so when I picked out gifts for her I always veered toward the red spectrum. This has morphed into a ritual of sorts since her death of pausing when I see a cardinal, honoring those reds that Louie loved, and stopping short in my path and holding her memory and wisdom near me.

All afternoon on Tuesday I worked in my little hill-top nest. I read. I wrote. And that night after thinking about the message that Jesus gave on that mountain, after he revealed to the disciples the light which radiated from him, I stopped and reflected again on Louie and the gaping hole her death has left in this world of the light that was extinguished for me on the cold December day when she was killed. I put my laptop aside, and got out my journal and began to write about her and the legacy she left, and then, suddenly something caught my eye. And I share this story with all the conviction of a woman who has never really been all that convinced of “ooh-wah” signs from God. Despite the title of “reverend” in front of my name and that certificate claiming I have a masters in divinity I still tend to lead with my head. But this occurance I cannot deny. For there on the deck outside my patio doors alit a bright red cardinal, almost iridescent in the last blues and pinks of the dusk sky. And I held my breath as it turned and cocked its head at me, watching. It was the only cardinal I had seen all day. Indeed, the only cardinal I saw from my window after that.

And for this reason, the story of the transfiguration came alive anew, and I could almost imagine the shimmer of the face of the Christ aglow. For in that time and place on that mountain the holy and the ordinary had somehow found its way into the human world to those disciples. And while we may not understand it, we may not be able to wrap our brains around the details of it, there was power in it. And we can, and do, in our own way have our own little wee tiny mini-transfiguration moments which call us into places of holy awe. There are still times when we stumble into those thin places where the instersection of the sacred and divine meet. And there are still fleeting glimpses and signs in our lives where we know that something surely more than just coincidence and logical linear fact are at work.

And so I have to ask, “Does it matter if Jesus really appeared to those disciples? If there were indeed Moses and Elijah, alive and in the flesh, all actually communing with Jesus? Does it matter if heaven and earth truly and factually met in those moments so that radiant and blinding light was cast around?” Perhaps instead of seeking the science of it the answer lies in what we allow ourselves to believe. Perhaps the answer lies more in how we allow the story to change us. Perhaps the wisdom of the transfiguration is in how we allow ourselves to trust in the blinding light that shone from the face of Christ our teacher. And how we allow that light to reveal itself in our daily life even now.

In her book, “Home by Another Way” Barbara Brown Taylor says, “There is no shortage of epiphanies in this world. Those of us who have not yet glimpsed the brightness of the Lord may still behold his glory, reflected all around us.” And so as we discipline ourselves to journey with Christ again in this Lenten season, I invite you to immerse yourself in the light of the mystery of the one who shone dazzling white for all, and scan the horizon for your own cardinals. For we are awash in the glory of God, may we have the eyes to see the glow.

Amen.

Salt and Light

Salt and Light

In my last year at Bethany Theological Seminary I was part of a musical acting troupe which presented a month’s worth of productions of the Steven Schwartz musical, “Godspell.” A musical which recounts the entire book of Matthew in song. Most of you have probably seen it, perhaps some have even acted in it. The catchiest number, by far, is the rollicking “Light of the World,” and each night I sang the words with enthusiasm. But as I found myself reflecting on the words this week, and humming the song incessantly, unceasingly, it occurred to me that that salt part, the part about being salt didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. Light on a hill, sure. City of God, yep. But salt?

I did a little research and learned that salt was considered a most valuable commodity in ancient times, in fact if you were a worker circa 20 or 30 A.D. you may have been paid in salt, rather than coins. And that little fact has led to the etymological twist of the word “salary.” Which, I would not advise you to share with your employers as the current market value of salt won’t enhance your 401K much…it might be better to stick to the dollar for now…

What Jesus was sharing with his disciples in his continued foray on that mountain is that those who teach about the kingdom of God, those who live into the coming world of hope, those who act as if the reign of God has come down now, will be valued and their lessons will be as common and useful as that commodity which seasons and spices our foods. Indeed, that we must be salt, by seasoning the culture with the vision that Jesus offered.

I want to share with you a story this morning, this morning as we remember our call to be agents of healing, and proclaimers of the kingdom, and actors of the Word. This morning as we think of light and salt.

In a time before time, when the world was young, two brothers shared a field and a mill. Each night they divided evenly the grain they had ground together during the day. Now, as it happened, one of the brothers lived alone; and the other had a wife and a large family. One day, the single brother thought to himself: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly. I have only myself to care for, but my brother has children to feed.” So each night, he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery to see that he was never without.

But the married brother said to himself one day: “It isn’t really fair that we divide the grain evenly, because I have children to provide for me in my old age, but my brother has no one. What will he do when he is old?” So every night he secretly took some of his grain to his brother’s grainery. As a result, both of them always found their supply of grain secretly replenished in the morning.

Then one night in their evening sneaking the brothers met each other under the moonlight halfway between their houses and suddenly realized what had been happening. They embraced each other in love there in the darkness. The story is, that God witnessed their meeting and proclaimed, “This is a holy place, a place of love, and here it is that my temple shall be built.”

I think just as likely God could have said, “In this holy place my community is being established, or in this holy place my light is being shone, or in this holy place you are being seasoning salt by allowing yourselves to be used sacredly.” The point is that the brother’s sense of generosity and authentic love was ushering in the kingdom, right there, in that space between their homes. They were on the threshold of heaven as they embraced under the moonlight, as they lived into a vision of equality and abundance, each putting the others needs first.

This morning we have been waltzing among our own kingdom thresholds. Our children gathered all those cans of soup, soup that their parents and grandparents and friends purchased, soup that will feed hungry bellies. Pantries will be filled to overflowing which will undoubtedly relieve worried parents who may wonder where the next meal will come. We usher in the kingdom of God in this way as we respond to the needs of the hungry in our community. We act as salt and as light.

And as Christians we must, for The Christian Century magazine last month reported that the total number of people in poverty is 43.6 million—the highest number since the 1950s. But unlike the 1950s, the greatest increase in poverty is among children. One in five children is affected. One in five of our youngest and most vulnerable don’t have enough to eat! One in five. And with all the resources and technology of our world, with our abilities to send satellites into space and to fight wars in countries who struggle with their own issues of destabilization we cannot yet feed that fifth child who stands before us hungry? Think about that. We are the wealthiest nation in the world and we cannot feed our children? How is that possible? And how far must we be from the kingdom that Jesus envisioned if we have those kinds of numbers? He who welcomed children and sustained those who were hungry.

David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, talks about the disparities in our country and the problem of hunger and says that he believes the problem of poverty in the US is uncomfortably close to us, and it overwhelms us, so in frustration and fear we simply turn away. It could be us, we think, there but for the grace of God go I we sigh, and we choose to shield our eyes because it is just too overwhelming.

And so what can our Christian response be? How can we be salt in this world? How do we shine the light? Where is the holy threshold which will bring us back near the kingdom? This morning is a start, these cans of soup, these dollar bills and quarters. These are wonderful first steps, and they are important steps but I think that there is more. More that can happen to draw the community of God near.

David Beckmann argues, in his role as advocate for the hungry, that there is one other thing we can do as committed Christians, and I share it with you at the risk of sounding too political in the pulpit, so I beg your understanding and grace in advance. Regardless of your political affiliation, wherever you stand in your beliefs about how our country should be run or who should run it, there is, I believe an imperative as Christians which we must take seriously. Beckmann reports that when he asks Christians how they help the hungry, most claim to contribute to food charities, as we do faithfully here at Peace. But when he asks them how many have contacted their elected officials to urge support of food stamp programs and school lunch programs, very few people raise their hands. It seems to me that wherever we are politically this is a reasonable and important response, another way to affirm our role as disciples to usher in the kingdom so that that fifth child gets fed, another way to draw the kingdom of heaven down to earth. A place where under the moonlight we meet our brother and know we walk on the sacred ground of God’s grace and love.


This morning there is a table set for us as well. A place where we can come to have the aching sense of discontent, and frustrated feeling of powerless soothed. There is a place for you at the table of our Lord, the one who welcomed all to the table. This is a place where we sit arm in arm with the hungry and know ourselves as no different. This is the sacred table where we break the bread and divide it so that all are fed and filled. Around this table we shake off our shackles of disillusionment and judgment and imagine ourselves as salt, pure and worthy. And as we look around the table, we gaze into the eyes of our brothers and sisters and know that in those eyes we see light, the light of our God.

Amen.

Admiring Instructions, Fearful Implications

I’m not sure when it was that the signs started popping up in our neighborhood. Perhaps two or three years ago, Grayson was still in a stroller. I began to notice in my evening walks one summer through our neighborhood that there were more and more plastic signs in front of houses which said, “We believe in the ten commandments.” And there right there, like their own little personalized tablets from Mt. Sinai, pressed in blue ink onto plastic yardsigns were the commandments given to Moses from the book of Exodus. I was intrigued, at first, and thought, well, okay, good to know. Nice for you to affirm that as I’m walking in front of your house with my child in a stroller you will not kill me, or covet my stroller (as I am your neighbor and all…). With each evening’s walk more signs seemed to be popping up first here and then there like dandelions in August. I wasn’t sure who was giving them out, a local church? A neighbor? It was theologically intriguing, but puzzling all the same. But what was even more puzzling was that in almost every house I surveyed often right next to these ten commandment proclamations, there stood a few feet away, maybe to the right or the left another sign, the sign which identified the security system that protected the house, or in a few cases even a third sign that reminded people that “no tresspassers” were allowed on the property. And so I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps these yard declarations of faith might be less about proclamation of hope, and more about defensive statements of fear. Less about claiming their desire for unity and more about holding brothers and sisters at arm’s length. Hard to say, really, but something to chew on this morning. Especially on this morning when we study what has been understood by theologians to be Matthew’s attempt to connect Jesus to Moses. The sermon on the mount being claimed as the new ten commandments. Not to replace, but to fulfill.

This week, I had a brilliant idea. I thought, as I pondered this Moses-Jesus connection what would it mean for me to name my faith. And, also start a trend in the yard sign movement in our Crown Colony neighborhood. What if I called 1800-yard-signs and ordered my statement of faith. What would I say? What if I posted the Beatitudes on a big sign in my yard? But then I quickly realized that if I wanted to be true to the intent I’d have to really act on it, so there’d have to be another sign, maybe a sign welcoming people into my home, where the door stood open to embrace anyone who came. And the ability to offer to offer shelter to anyone who asked, and the grace to listen to others without reservation or hesitation, and the willingness to be persecuted for what I believed. Could I ever be that brave? Would it be naïve? I think, if nothing else, it could be a theological science test of sorts. For what would it mean for our nation, for our world, to be saturated in proclamations of the coming community of God rather than restricted by a list of “thou shalt nots?”

As a little aside, I actually did spend a little time googling this week, in my nerdy quest to follow this theological yard sign hypothesis and found that my brilliant beatitudes yard sign idea had alas, already been patented, patented by those same people who make the ten commandments signs, but whereas the ten commandments sign google search yields 56,800 options to adorn your home, the beatitudes only yield 19,800. So what, a ration of about, roughly, five to one? I still don’t entirely understand why the beatitudes are given such short shrift in the yard art business? Perhaps because if we really followed them it might be too revolutionary.

Many of us know the beatitudes, if Jeopardy named it as a category, we could probably clear the board, right? [“Alex, I’ll take beatitudes for $800, please...who are the pure in spirit?”] Some of us have them cross-stitched on pillows, or calligraphied in frames in our homes. They are that beautiful, and that poignant, and that meaningful. But I confess that sometimes even while I have memorized them and can recite them by rote, that perhaps I forget their radical message. And if I do that, I wonder if perhaps you do too.

The Sermon on the Mount occurs in the fifth chapter of the book of Matthew. It happens immediately after the calling of just four of the disciples, and so those who climbed up that mountain to hear Jesus could have been anyone, and if we consider the scriptures alive and moving work than it could be any of us today. The sermon is one of Jesus’s first teachings, an inauguration of sorts, and for his first homily, I’d say he picked a doozy. Jesus was speaking in a way familiar to his listeners, those who would have been steeped in the ways of Jewish wisdom traditions. Jesus spoke here as the devout priests and leaders who had gone before him did. A beatitude, or a makarism as it is called in the Greek is an interesting way to use language which was very familiar to those who lived two thousand year ago. And there are ways in which it has been confused in translation for readers of our time. Beatitudes were spoken not as commandments or as entrance requirements but as reminders and blessings for a world in transition. People didn’t have to be persecuted to receive a blessing, people didn’t have to mourn to be welcomed in the kingdom of heaven. These were not rules for being disciples. To understand fully what they were we must remember that the audience to whom Jesus spoke were living in a land occupied by Roman oppressors. Those in power were elite imperialists who had no use for the common masses. The common people who followed Jesus were hungry for a new way to live, and for a realm of justice, and the craved redemption from oppression. The beatitudes offered them words of comfort and hope. The beatitudes said, “I know, my beloved community, I know what you face, and I promise it won’t always be this way. I offer you a new vision of how our world can be if God is at the heart.”
We need to remember as we read through these axioms that the translation of the word “blessed” or “happy”, do not hold as their opposite the word “unhappy.” Instead, the opposite of “blessed” would be “cursed.” And so just as surely as Jesus was offering a word of hope to those downtrodden and hungry, he also, in a not too subtle way was making a political statement about how different the nature of God’s kingdom is. In God’s reign the hungry will be fed, the last will be first, the poor will be wealthy, those picked last for the dodgeball team will be the captains. It is radically different from the realm in which those with power rule with an iron hand and where those with might sneer at those whose voices cry out for justice.

The first thing it seems Jesus wants desperately to offer in these twelve short verses is spiritual bread for the journey, and assurance that even in the most difficult times there is hope. Jesus must have looked out over his meager band of followers and seen those who were mourning, or poor in spirit, or meek, or yearning for something more and known that they needed a reminder of what God wanted for them. But just as surely as Jesus offered hope, his words also rang with revolutionary zeal. What he said was this: we must make the kingdom of heaven here on earth, even if we are reviled and persecuted, even if we are seen as daydreamers and unrealistic fools. Even if we put beatitudes signs in our yards and open our hearts and minds to all without reservation or hesitation.

In 1964 the artist Sister Mary Corita was asked to submit a piece of art to the New York World’s fair and the piece she created was filled with vibrant color and said, “On a mountain, Christ said these words, the Beatitudes. Ever since then men [sic] have said these words to each other each time with different gestures. Said yes, this is how it should be. This is the way to be happy.” And then she used the bold colors of yellow, and orange, and cobalt, and magenta and added the words of peacemakers and prophets throughout time: Anne Frank and Dag Hammarskjold, Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy to name a few.

And so what brave gesture will we use to make the world more congruent with the vision Jesus offered on that mountain? How brave can we afford to be and how revolutionary? Perhaps, simply, we start in our own lives.

Brendan Freeman, a Trappist monk from Iowa, says this, “[The Beatitudes] draw our hearts out of themselves into a new way of understanding our lives…they are deliberately incomplete. They await the inclusion of our lives. Each person fills in the blank spaces with the details of his or her own life situation.”

Perhaps, we walk this journey step by step by first rediscovering the beatitudes in a new way, having them spoken with different voices and in different translations. Hearing them as a rallying call to be more true in our discipleship. Listening for the nuances of the language, and being ready to live out the truth of their meaning.

This week I read Eugene Peterson’s version of the beatitudes in The Message, a contemporary version of the Bible. And while I had read bits of The Message before, I’m not sure I had ever read the fifth chapter of Matthew before. And I was startled into newness as the beatitudes issued forth with a new translation. Let me share them with you now:
You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat. You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for. You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete and fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family. You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak likes about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Gospel Medicine, says this, “Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them. They sound different from on top than they do underneath. They sound different up front than they do in back. Upon front with the religiously satisfied and self-assured, they sound pretty confrontational…but way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers and the fools, the Beatitudes sound completely different…They are the same words in every place, of course. It is just the ears that change.”

This morning may you embrace the Beatitudes anew as you embark on the ministry that Christ calls you to do. May you hear with new ears the promises of the coming reign of God. And let there be no mistake, we are the ones who are called to make that world a reality.

Amen.

Breaking Light--Sermon 1/23/11

I’m sure I was introduced to the poetry of Emily Dickinson earlier than my junior year of high school, but it was in that year, that Ms. Longtine piqued my interest by reciting Dickinson’s poems with such ardor and passion that despite my fellow 11th grade friends’ snickers and whispers, I was transported. She has remained one of my favorite poets. Her writing is as fragile and as sensitive as she was. She who never worked a regular job her entire life. She who never married and lived as a recluse in many ways. She who wrote thousands of poems alone in the bedroom of her father’s house showing them to hardly anyone until they were discovered on scraps of paper after her death. Her whole life has been shrouded in secrecy, and she never referred to anyone by name in her poems. But her biographers have of late pieced together the story of a crucial even in her life.

It is believed that when she was 28, when her father was a congressman in Washington, that she stopped on the way from the capital to her home in Massachusetts to visit family friends in Philadelphia. There, apparently, she met and fell in love with a man who was to dominate her thoughts for many years. But this love story is a tragic one. For he was unattainable. He was married, and he had a family. And therefore, both being noble during those Victorian times, they prohibited themselves from being together.

Dickinson returned home, having been awakened to love, but aware that this love could never be hers and penned one of her first poems, scratching her grief and depression into these words:
Will there really be a ‘morning’?
Is there such a thing as ‘day’?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Oh some scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called ‘morning’ lies!

Her question was not fanciful. It was real. “Will there really be a morning?” Will there come a time when light will break upon the darkness of my soul? Will I ever see the first rays of the sun?

And so in this season of Epiphany as we ponder the light of the Christ, as we ponder the meaning of light in a season of cold and darkness we do well to consider what we can learn, and where we can be led by God into light.

Have there been times in your own lives when you have asked “Will there be a morning?” Have you ever waited through the dark hours of a long night wondering if you could make it until dawn? Have you ever known a night that lasted a week, or a month, or a year? A time when hope was hollow and you had to ask whether you could even go on?

When I ask myself this question I think of a particular night in the fall of 2007, a night when I was awakened from my sleep with the hacking seal-like coughs of a six-month-old baby who lay feverish and gasping. It was my first experience of croup with a child and in that dark night I remember rushing with a crying child from steam-filled bathroom to bundling him in blankets while we stood in the cold late October air. I remember feeling so alone, and so helpless, and the darkness felt especially close. And as I walked up and down the front walk, trying to coax Grayson into taking big gulps of that night air I wanted nothing more than to see the light. For I trusted that with light things would seem clearer, life would seem more orderly. If I could simply wait for the light to break.

The scripture from the book of Matthew this morning tells a story of light breaking, and of hope coming. The story opens in a time of darkness. Jesus had just come out of his wilderness sojourn where he was tempted and alone. And word had just been received that John, the one who inspired Jesus and baptized Jesus and was kin to Jesus had been arrested. And Jesus made his way from Nazareth to the lakeside village of Capernaum. Times were hard then. The people were oppressed. Taxes had gone higher and higher, not out of necessity but to punish the people. There was a foreign government that ruled the people with an iron fist and used espionage and threats and wrongful imprisonments to harass and punish them. And a revival leader like John the Baptist had been imprisoned, never to be released again. The people were scared. It was a time of darkness.

And it was there, into that landscape, and that political situation that Jesus burst onto the scene. It was then that Jesus, he who had never spoken a word publicly, never yet soothed a broken body with his healing touch, never told a single parable about his elusive kingdom, began his ministry. In a dusty town nestled on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum. It wasn’t a big city, wasn’t a place of culture, not somewhere well-known. Just some buildings overlooking a lake, really. A place with a reputation for being un-religious, actually. Matthew tells us that Jesus went there because it was what the Old Testament predicted. Listen: People who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in shadows, light had dawned. And so it was, in that place of darkness light began to shine. With no fanfare, no showmanship, no triumph. In this place Jesus began his public ministry and began to invite others to join him. And these people who he asked, they weren’t the “Who’s Who” of Capernaum, they weren’t big names, they weren’t high profile kind of guys. Instead they were laborers, common folk, fishermen. And so it was into this world, into this out-of-the-way place with these everyday people that the first rays of light first shone. And that shimmer would grow, and spread, brightness that arose from a world of darkness. Morning did come. Light did break.

I have recently finished the book Home by the British historian Bill Bryson, some of you may know of his writings. He is a social historian who makes the past come alive. And in his latest book he examines the origins of domestic life, and how the common things that we take for granted came to be. As Bryson spoke of the discovery of electricity, he told a story about life in London as the war began. The Germans would bomb the city at night, and the only protection that the British had was to blacken their windows and turn out all streetlights so there were virtually no targets for the Germans to attack. The people lived in darkness and Bryson notes that more people died in auto accidents, or by mishaps that happened because of the darkness than those who were killed by the bombings themselves. The explosions would rock the city but because of the fires that the bombings could start, fires which could trap people in basements the call when bombing started was “to the roofs!” There the people of London would place themselves, one or two to a roof, protected only by tin helmets, searching for any fires that might spring up, and then stamping them out as quickly as possible, all in darkness. Winston Churchill told the story once of looking out across London and seeing all those figures, perched on the top of the buildings, anxious and tired as the first light of dawn would break over the city. And how, more often than not, as the rays of sun would pierce the horizon audible cheers would ring from roof to roof. For morning had come, and they had made it. Light again broke the darkness.

On this chilly Sunday, on this frigid morning, we again welcome the unquenchable light that breaks upon us even in the dark nights of our own souls. The one who has been called the light of all people again walks among the common folk, and invites us to follow him, to use what gifts we have in this broken world to bring more light to the darkness. Jesus invites us, just as he invited the first disciples to cast aside our nets and walk into the first pink and orange rays of the dawn. For a new day awaits. And there is work to be done. Morning has come. And Jesus calls.

Amen.

The One Who Claimed--Sermon 12/19/10

The One Who Claimed: A Movement in Three Parts

As we near the end of our Advent journey, as the anticipation builds, and the prospect of the holy child’s birth beckons, we linger one more Sunday with the people who live the Advent story. And while last week we looked at Matthew’s account of the impending birth of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, this week we look at them through the eyes of Joseph.

We aren’t accustomed to thinking about Joseph as much, are we? The early church especially placed so much focus on Mary, given that she was the chosen vessel to carry God’s child. And Joseph, poor Joseph, he got a little left behind in all the fuss. Instead, he was the one to accompany, he was the one to take the back seat, he was the one meant to lead the donkey. In my mind’s eye we’ve sometimes relegated him to the role of body guard, surrogate, groomsman. As I was sharing about this week’s sermon topic, and talking about the role of Joseph with a group of you on Tuesday, a true confession emerged from a beloved member of this congregation. And the revelation that she shared was this: in the late 1960s she found a crèche on sale at Murphys downtown. And that crèche was a beautiful thing, and it’s price was dramatically slashed, and this self-proclaimed frugal person, who didn’t want to miss a bargain, and whose name will not be mentioned but who might be singing in the choir, and who might have a name that begins with a “P” and rhyme with “Mat”, decided to take that crèche home and make it her very own. There was only one little tiny issue with the crèche, only one small hang-up…turns out it was on sale at such a deep discount because there was no, well, no Joseph. No male role model in that holy family. And so each year the figurines come out at the Sterling home on Homestead Road, Mary, and the wise men, and the angel, the sheep with the broken ear and that sweet little baby Jesus in the manger and each year lest Mary look like a single mother, a shepherd stands in as understudy for Joseph, I mean they both have that same burly Joseph-like working class quality, right?

Of course I’m teasing about Pat’s crèche, but isn’t it true that the Christian church has often overlooked poor Joseph? In the Catholic Church especially Mary has been elevated, dressed in blue, a look of serene piety on her face as she holds that tiny Christ child. And Joseph, well, if he’s lucky he’s relegated to a corner of a cathedral with a modest icon nearby. In fact it wasn’t until 1870 that Pope Pius IX declared him a Patron of the Universal Church. Poor Joseph, he gets no respect!

So let’s delve into the text, shall we? And I want to warn you ahead of time that the text may sound a little familiar to you, for it is the exact same text as last week [rest assured, I did that on purpose]. But this week, I’d like to read the scripture throughout the sermon for Joseph’s journey is more a movement in three parts, and there are places where we need to pause and allow the depth of his character to sink into our own souls. This morning I’ll be reading to you from Eugene Peterson’s contemporary translation of the Bible, The Message.

The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.

The writer of the book of Matthew doesn’t mince words as he tells the story of the birth of Jesus, does he? While Luke’s gospel which we focused on at the beginning of December as we fleshed out the stories of Elizabeth and Mary waxes poetic with all sorts of juicy details and unfolds the story of Mary’s impending pregnancy with astounding poetic description (remember the angel visitation to inform the young Mary? And then that harrowing journey she took through the hills to see Elizabeth for wisdom? And the leaping of the baby in the womb, and then Mary’s eloquent operatic aria of the Magnificat?) Matthew is more a “just the facts, Ma’am” kind of writer. Matthew gives us the who’s and how’s, straight up, unvarnished and raw. There are these two people. Mary and Joseph. And they were engaged (which in Jewish tradition was a binding legal agreement already, to be engaged carried with it all the responsibilities and commitments to fidelity that marriage does in our culture). And lo and behold, Joseph learns an uncomfortable and startling truth, this woman that he loves, this woman who has committed himself to him, is pregnant with another’s child.

And the very first thing we learn of Joseph, the first claim that we can make of him is that he is sensitive and discreet. In the face of what must have felt like betrayal and perhaps even deceit, he does not condemn Mary. He does not lash out at her or try to tarnish her reputation. Instead, he chooses to do the honorable thing, and privately release her from her vows of betrothal. He does not do what the law would allow or perhaps even encourage him to do, for the patriarchal legal system of the time would call for the stoning of any woman found guilty of adultery, and certainly Mary’s pregnancy would have been proof of her infidelity. But instead he offers her a tender mercy, and a quiet grace, and even as he must have been nursing his own broken heart, and asking his own anguished “why?” He chooses to release her quietly from her bonds to him. There will be no disgrace. There will be no condemnation. There will be no judgment. Joseph’s choice will be a merciful one. And he will claim no call for retribution. Instead his claim will be that he will be a man who offers grace.

While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic sermon to full term: Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son, They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God with us”). Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby.

And so we move into the second movement of our story.

Many of you already know that for the past three years or so I have struggled with insomnia. While my dream life used to be rich and rewarding, now I am either restlessly tossing and turning or completely zombified by the Ambien I allow myself to take every third night or so. My husband, however, has a glamorous and elaborate fairy tale world of dreams that he allows me to visit as he regales me with the stories of where his dreams took him. When he’s not flying through the air, one of his common dream-time reveries, he is enjoying the company of famous celebrities. A few months back on a Saturday morning we lay in bed, Grayson climbing over us, and Robert said, “You know, last night Barbara Bush and I were singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ in the hallway of the college administration building. It was really quite touching.”

I miss my regular sleep habits, but the truth is, I miss the dreaming. For I believe our souls need to dream. I believe that it is one of the few legitimate ways that we allow God to get our attention sometimes. Where else but in this liminal place, the place of moonlight and hush, are our hearts soft enough to allow God to drop into them? Where else do we free ourselves to trust that God is really afoot and that answers may come?

While Joseph isn’t granted a burning bush moment, or a face-to-face angel encounter as Mary had, he still gets a subtle word from God. The angel appears to him and lets him in on the secret that Mary already knew. And Joseph asks no questions, doesn’t utter a word, but implicitly trusts God and immediately acts. How many of us would be tempted to brush off those night-time musings and assume it was just our imagination, or just too much strange food we’d eaten. God comes to Joseph and Joseph stakes his claim on God’s word. And claims his destiny as the earthly father of this newborn. Joseph will chose to claim trust.

And finally the third movement. And it is a simple and profound one. One sentence.

He named the baby Jesus.

It was not Mary who named the child. It was Joseph. In ancient Israelite culture, to name a child was to offer a blessing. Naming was a powerful symbolic gesture in which the hopes and dreams of the child were placed upon the young. And when you named someone you claimed them as well. It was not Mary who claimed the child as her own, but Joseph. And by so doing, Jesus was adopted into the whole Davidic lineage which came through Joseph’s blood.

I am remembering this morning a Sunday when I stood in the front of the congregation of the Manchester Church of the Brethren on a sunny fall morning and held in my arms a then nine-month-old Elliott Beecher Tae-Soo Shaum. Eli was the son of one of my closest friends and he was a child who was long in coming to his family. His mother, Lynn, had been through years of fertility treatments and two surgeries and when interventions were not successful she and her husband, Steve, had begun the lengthy process of adopting a child from Korea. Perhaps some of you have walked your own journeys through adoption, or been with those who have wanted so desperately to have a child to call their own. And as I held that child in my arms on that morning, speaking his name and offering him a blessing, my eyes also rested on his parents, who wept their own silent tears. And years later when Robert and I also struggled with infertility it was Eli’s mother who said to me fiercely, “Eli is my son. He is my child. And what you need to remember, Christen, is that while my son did not grow in my body, he was conceived by my dream. And that makes him no less my own.”

Joseph’s message is the message of Eli’s mother’s as well. And the message is this: it is our task in this world to expand our definition of family. It is our job to extend our arms wider to invite others into our hearts. It is our mandate as children of the One God to cradle all babies as our own babies, nurturing them and comforting them. It is our commandment as children of the One God to nurture all youth as our own youth and raise the next generation with love. It is our commandment as children of the One God to welcome all people as our own sisters and brothers and encircle those in need. It is our commandment as children of the One God to care for all of our elderly and wise ones as our own parents and grandparents and protect their dignity and honor their history. It is our responsibility as children of the One God, our responsibility and our privilege.

And we do this not in some namby-pamby, Coca-Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” Hallmark photo op moment, but through consciously making decisions which we believe align with God’s dreams for humanity. Through our charitable giving, and through our lobbying for affordable health care for all. Through our demand for an end to poverty and through setting our sights on declaring war on hunger, which is a much more formidable enemy right now than terrorism.

This morning we follow in the footsteps of our brother Joseph, who acted as father to the Christ. And we walk this road of discipleship with intention. We walk this road knowing that it will not be easy. We walk this road with deliberation. We walk this road with obedience. And we walk together, placing our trust in God. And allowing ourselves to be divine instruments who claim the ways of peace.

May it be so.

Amen.