Sermon – 1 Samuel 8.4-20, 11.14-14, P5, YB, June 10, 2018

Tags

choice, covenant, faithfulness, foundation, free will, God, king, leader, redeem, relationship, Sermon, theocracy, trust, worry

Today we encounter one of the most pivotal moments in our faith history.  The story from First Samuel may not seem that momentous.  Surely the Flood, or the crossing of the Red Sea, or the arrival at the Promised Land, or, I don’t know, the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are more pivotal.  But this short piece of scripture contains something quite theologically significant in the covenantal relationship between God and God’s people.  Samuel has been a righteous prophet and judge for the people, but much like his predecessor Eli who we heard about last week, his sons have become corrupt leaders and the people are unhappy.  And so, the people suggest a solution:  a king.  In their minds this is a great solution.  A king could solve their problems, and most certainly would help protect them from enemies.  A king would dispense justice and mercy to foster right relationships among the people, would hold fast to the covenantal law, and would be appointed by God.  And they would still have prophets to act as their system of checks and balances.[i]  Besides, all the other nations have kings, why shouldn’t they?

The request sounds innocent enough.  As twenty-first century Americans, having no governing leader is inconceivable.  For us, the idea of a theocracy is so foreign, we almost have a hard time imagining the concept.  A king, or at least a president, sounds perfectly reasonable.  But for the people of God, a theocracy is all they have ever known.  “Since the time when Israel first became a nation, Israel had been a theocracy, a community guided and protected by YHWH.  They were set apart, distinctive from other nations, and they had no king as others nations did.  Israel was led by various judges whom God raised up in times of need.  These leaders included, among others, Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Deborah, Samson, Gideon, and Samuel, who served not as kings or queens but as mouthpieces for God as they arbitrated disputes, saw that justice was done, or led the people to victory over a threatening enemy.”[ii]  So this request for a king is a huge shift.  As Walter Brueggemann explains, “Their request is nothing less than a change in Israel’s foundational commitments….This request for a king is one more step in [a] continuing performance of mistrust.”[iii]  In other words, the people of God do not trust God, and out of their mistrust, they are willing to change the entire basis of their relationship with God.

Now if you were to ask me about my greatest spiritual struggle, I would likely say worry.  I have told countless people how much the Matthean text about worry has been a spiritual guide for me, “Consider the lilies of the field…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”[iv]  My whole life I have thought my greatest struggle was worry.  But in reflecting this week, I am not sure my greatest issue is worry.  My greatest issue might be trust.  I worry because I do not trust – I do not trust God to make a way, so I strive and fail and strive again to make my own way.  I suspect I am not alone.  We all fail to trust God from time to time.  And any logical person would quietly support your lack of trust in God.  Because to trust in God seems naïve, lacks self-responsibility, and discredits our agency in the world.  Most of us read today’s Old Testament lesson, and secretly we agree with the Israelites.  Sure, there is no perfect form of government, but you have to have something!  We may jokingly or even figuratively ask Jesus to take the wheel, but we all know that we still need to drive the car.

But when we step away from a theocracy, when we change the foundational covenantal commitment between us and God, we must face the same fate as the Israelites.  Samuel tells them what having a king will mean.  Having a king will mean giving up their sons for service in battle and for the tending of the king’s fields, giving up their daughters as cooks and sexual servants, giving up their best land, livestock, and produce.  And worst of all – worst of all – they will be the king’s slaves.  Now for a people who have been enslaved before, this should be the ultimate warning.  All they need to do was think back to those days with Pharaoh – no rights, no power, brutal labor, no hope.  But then, God says something even worse.  When the Israelites finally see God is right and that the new king they wanted is a mess (and spoiler alert:  the new kings will be a mess – the kings do all that Samuel predicts and even more horrible things); when the Israelites cry out, God will not answer them.  This critical part of their relationship with God will be over.

These are the words that have haunted me this week, “…in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”  Are there things I could do that would make God not answer me?  Is there a chance that on the two millionth time I refuse to trust God, our relationship could finally break?  Is there a chance we could have a government so broken by ego and lack of compassion and compromise that God would refuse to exert God’s power to redeem us?  A couple of years ago, we talked to our pediatrician about discipline and our frustration with our children’s constant pushing of boundaries.  The pediatrician recommended the “Three Rule.”  Instead of threatening punishments and consequences, instead of engaging in lengthy explanations about why behaviors were unacceptable and what the consequence would be, we should follow the “Three Rule.”  When a child does something unacceptable, the parent says, “one.”  No words are exchanged, no threats are made.  Just the number one.  If, or I guess I should say when, the behavior continues, the parent simply says, “two.”  Finally, when the behavior still continues, the parent says, “three,” and the child immediately goes to their room for a period of time commiserate with their age.  But, and here’s the kicker, when their time is up, there is no discussion, no scolding, just a return to normal.

Now I get a little wary of comparing God with a parent, since parents are just as flawed as kings, but here is what I appreciate about God in this text today.  God strikes me as a person who calmly works through the Three Rule.  So, although Samuel breaks the rule by going on an on about the consequences of a king, God does something extraordinary with the people of God’s request.  God says “okay.”  In a wonderful combination of “grace and judgment, the Lord commands Samuel to ‘listen’ to the people but also to ‘warn them and show them the ways of the king.’”  God does not smite the people or abandon the people.  God, as God always does, respects their free-will and allows the people of God to choose their fate – even if their choice is a fundamental altering of the very basis of their relationship with God.  There is something reassuring to me about a God who allows us full agency in our relationship – whose love is not tied to us making good decisions – and who can remain calm even when we are catastrophically proposing a fundamental change in our relationship with God.

But even more than God’s reaction, I am not convinced the judgment of God is as final as Samuel predicts.  We know God is a God who judges.  Lord knows the Israelites do indeed suffer the consequences of taking on a human king – their sons, daughters, and property are decimated, and eventually the kingdom is divided and ultimately destroyed, with the peoples scattered all over the world.  But we know a few things more about God.  We know that God’s mind can be changed.  We saw this reality firsthand when Moses advocated for mercy with the sinful people, or when Nineveh repented of their sins, or when some of those earthly kings changed their ways.  But mostly we know that God sends a Messiah – God’s only Son to redeem us.  Though judgment is a part of our relationship with God, so is redemption, forgiveness, and grace.  I am not sure I will ever master trusting God fully.  Perhaps I am just too human.  But our invitation this week is to keep trying.  Our invitation is to pause in those moments of mistrust and recount the wonderful deeds of our God.  Maybe you start with a scriptural mantra, “Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Hannah, Jonah, Ruth, Peter, Paul.”  But perhaps more importantly you start your own mantra, “That time when I walked away from God, that time when I blamed God, that time when I…”  We have seen God’s faithfulness, even through the sacrifice of God’s only Son.  But we have also seen God’s faithfulness every day of our earthly life.  Our invitation is to listen, as God listens to God’s people everyday.  Amen.

[i] Carol J. Dempsey, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays for Year B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 3.

[ii] Marianne Blickenstaff, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays for Year B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 1.

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation:  A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preach, First and Second Samuel (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 62.

[iv] Matthew 6.28, 34

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Homily – Mark 16.1-8, EV, YB, March 31, 2018

Tags

covenant, Easter Vigil, God, Jesus, learning, relationship, resurrection, silent, tomb, wonderful

I once worked with a parish who wanted to tweak their outreach efforts.  Instead of simply volunteering together with an outreach ministry or donating funds, they wanted to partner outreach and formation – what the secular world would call service learning.  And so, we experimented.  We gathered a team for six weeks in preparation for service with a transitional home for women coming out of prison.  The first week, two clients came to talk to us about their experiences with the ministry we were serving.  We heard stories of abuse, addition, and authority.  We learned about the things within their control and the things outside their control. Then we spent four weeks reading about a woman whose ministry in a prison led to her live and serve among the prisoners, guards, and families affected by the prison.  In the final week, the parishioners served a meal for the women in the transitional house, engaging in meaningful conversation as we ate.  When we gathered after our days of service, each participant felt as though their experience at the transitional home was much richer than the experience would have been had they simply showed up at the house with a hot meal, having never thought much about who they would encounter and why.  With old assumptions gone, parishioners were able to ask meaningful questions, understand how hard the road ahead would be, and share their own journeys.

Easter Vigil is a bit like that service learning group.  You see, we could gather tonight, and ring in Easter, happily celebrating the empty tomb the two Marys discover.  The miracle of that event, and the consequences of Christ’s resurrection are cause enough for a tremendous celebration.  But what we do tonight is not just jump into the resurrection.  First, we learn together why the resurrection is meaningful at all.  We start at the beginning, when the world was a formless void.  We learn about the creative God, who makes order out of a disordered world, who creates the beauty of the world around us, and who trusts us to care for that beauty.  But, of course, we fail at being stewards of God’s creation, and fall into sin so deep that God destroys most of the created order, saving one family from every species.  And God gives us a covenant – to never destroy the world again.  Generations later, as God helps us flee suffering and enslavement, God does the impossible – parts an entire sea so that we might be forever free.  Later, God is able to restore a valley of dry bones to life through God’s prophet Ezekiel.  God teaches us that even death and destruction can be restored.  Even as they are scattered in exile, God once again promises to restore the people.  Story after story after story tells us tonight that we belong to a God who creates us in beauty, stays in relationship, and restores us to wholeness.

When you know the breadth of our walk with God – when you remember all the pieces of what we know about God – then what happens to God’s Son this night makes more sense.  We can move from singing, “this is the night,” to singing, “how wonderful.”  “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.  How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away.  It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn.  It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord.  How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.”[i]  What is shocking about this night is not just the empty tomb.  What is shocking is the empty tomb in light of all that has gone before – despite our sinfulness, the breaking of covenant after covenant, our unfaithfulness and lack of gratitude, God stays in relationship.  God keeps making creation new.  God goes a step further in the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

That is why I love that we get Mark’s gospel to close our learning tonight.  Ever the succinct writer, Mark describes for us perfectly how overwhelming God’s love and commitment is to us.  Despite all the drama of our relationship with God, despite all the unfaithfulness, and despite all the waywardness of our behavior, God’s love never ends.  That realization leads to the same sort of terror, amazement, and fear that the Marys experience – the experience of a theophany – of an encounter with or a revelation of God.[ii]  The women flee the tomb tonight and remain silent because they are completely overwhelmed by their encounter with God and God’s love.  On Palm Sunday we were silent at the tomb in grief and despair.  Tonight we are silent at the tomb in unspeakable joy.  The women at the tomb give us permission tonight not to describe the experience, but simply to allow the blessing of this night to overwhelm us.  We can go and tell the news to others tomorrow.  But for tonight, hold on to that marvelous, wonderous feeling of knowing that Christ has been raised.  Amen.  Alleluia.

[i] BCP, 287.

[ii] Gail R. O’Day, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 357.

Sermon – Jeremiah 31.31-34, Psalm 51.1-13, L5, YB, March 18, 2018

Tags

clean, comfort, communion, covenant, exile, God, heart, Lent, persistence, Psalm, relationship, repentance, Sermon, sin, sinfulness, ten commandments

As we heard our psalm today, you may have thought the psalm sounded familiar.  And you would be right.  Just under five weeks ago, we said this exact same psalm on Ash Wednesday.  After we were invited into a holy Lent – one of fasting, self-examination, and repentance, and ashes were spread across our foreheads, we said this psalm.  “Have mercy on me, O God…For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…[I have] done evil in your sight…” we confessed.  We begged God to create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.  I wonder how saying these words again, just several weeks later, feels today.  Perhaps after weeks of following your Lenten discipline, you feel closer to that clean heart and renewed spirit.  Maybe you are making your way out of Lent and the repetition of Psalm 51 feels unnecessary because you have completed your repentance work.  But maybe Psalm 51 feels unattainable, because your sinfulness feels like something you cannot shake.

If you are in the latter category, and if, in fact, you are beginning to wonder if you will ever master this sinfulness thing, take heart.  I actually say verse eleven of this psalm every time I celebrate the Eucharist.  Week in and week out, whether we are in Lent, Eastertide, or Ordinary time, even after I have prayed and confessed with the community, before I approach the altar to celebrate holy communion, I say these same words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  Whether in a season of penitence or not, whether I have already celebrated Eucharist two times earlier in the morning, I still pray Psalm 51.11, longing for the God of mercy and hesed, or loving-kindness, to create in me a clean heart.

That is why I think the beginning of our liturgy was so hard today.  As part of the penitential order, we prayed the decalogue, or the ten commandments.  With each commandment, we responded, “Amen. Lord have mercy.”  Reading the decalogue in scripture, as we did just a few weeks ago in Lent is a bit different – somehow having them in paragraph form makes them more palatable – with only certain commandments jumping out at us as areas of improvement.  But praying them is more difficult.  With each commandment receiving a closing petition, the idea is hammered home – we struggle with every last one of these commandments.  Now I can imagine what you are thinking – but I have never murdered.  While that may be true, the poor and the oppressed die every day because no one cares enough to change policy or ensure each person gets help.  Or maybe you are muttering that you have never put any gods before our God.  But we commit idolatry every day when we believe money or even we ourselves are in control instead of our God.  Each petition we pray in the decalogue reminds of how deep and diverse our sinfulness is.

But here’s the funny thing about those commandments – the Israelites could not follow them either.  The Israelites had been rescued from slavery and protected relentlessly.  Once the Israelites were finally in safety and heading to the Promised Land, God created a new covenant with the people.  God sent Moses up the mountaintop and had Moses write the law on tablets – the law that would guide the people into faithful, covenantal living.  But before Moses could even get down the mountain and deliver the covenant to the people, they had already created the golden calf – an idol in the place of God.  They people would struggle so much with the ten commandments that a whole generation of God’s covenantal people would not be allowed into the Promised Land – not even Moses himself.  Although God intended for the decalogue to shape the lives of the people and to create the boundaries for the covenant, and although none of the petitions are all that unreasonable, yet still the people would break their covenant with God time and again.

We are just like our ancestors.  I was just retelling a parishioner this week about my Lenten discipline in college.  You see, in college I picked up a bit of a potty mouth.  It got so bad that my freshman year, I decided to charge myself a quarter for every curse word I uttered, with the plan of giving the proceeds to church on Easter.  By the end of week two in Lent, I had to reduce the fee to a nickel because I could not afford the fee!  And the funny thing was that every year in college was the same.  “This year!  This year I will master my filthy mouth.”  And every year I would have to reduce the fees.  We are creatures of habit, masters of repeated sinfulness, just like our ancestors.

That is why reading Jeremiah is so powerful today.  Jeremiah writes in a time of desperation for the people of God. The Babylonians have razed the temple and carried King Zedekiah off in chains.  Effectively, the Babylonians have “destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity.”[i]  Sometimes we talk about the exile so much that I think we forget the heart-wrenching experience of exile.  Being taken from homes and forced to live in a foreign land is certainly awful enough.  But the things that were taken – the land of promise, the temple for God’s dwelling, the king offered for comfort to God’s people – are all taken, leaving not just lives in ruin, but faith in question.  But today, in the midst of the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation, Jeremiah’s reading says God will make a new covenant.  God knows the people cannot stop breaking the old covenant, and so God promises to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  Instead of making the people responsible for the maintenance of the covenant, God goes a step further and writes the law in their hearts, embodies God’s way within the people.

The words of Jeremiah in the section called “the Book of Comfort,”[ii] and this new covenant by God, show a God whose abundance knows no limits.  God offers this new covenant to a people who surely do not deserve another covenant.  God has offered prophets and sages, has called the people to repentance, has threatened and cajoled, and yet still the people could not keep the basic tenants of the covenant established in those ten commandments.  But instead of abandoning the people to exile, God offers reconciliation and restoration yet again.  And because God knows we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, God basically says, “Here.  Let me help you.  Let me write these laws in your hearts so that you do not have to achieve your way into favor with me, but you will simply live faithfully, living the covenant with your bodies and minds.”  And when even that does not seem to work, God sends God’s only son.  God never gives up on us or our relationship with God.  Even all these years after Christ’s resurrection, God is still finding new ways to make our covenant work.

I have had parishioners attend two services in one day – maybe they were a speaker at two services or maybe they sang in two different choirs.  Invariably, one of these multi-service attendees will ask me, “Should I take communion again?  I shouldn’t, right?”  I always chuckle because I have to remind them that I take communion three times every Sunday – sometimes four or five if I take communion to someone homebound on a Sunday.  I confess all those times, I pray all those times, I say those words of Psalm 51 all those times, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Lent is the same way – sometimes we are confessing multiple times in one day.  Sometimes we need to say the decalogue, and we need to confess our sins, and we need to hear Psalm 51.  And before we go to bed, we may need to confess to God again.  We do all those things with confidence because our God is a god of mercy, hesed, and restoration, always looking for ways to renew God’s covenant with us.  God’s persistence with us is what inspires our work this Lent.  So yes, create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us – every week, every day, every hour.  Amen.

[i] Richard Floyd, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 122.

[ii] Jon L. Berquist, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 123.

Sermon – Matthew 21.33-46, P22, YA, October 8, 2017

Tags

balm, comfort, covenant, darkness, forgiveness, generosity, God, goodness, grace, Jesus, Journey to Generosity, light, love, mass shooting, mercy, parable, scripture, Sermon, tenants, vineyard, violence

One of the things I love about coming to church week in and week out is the practice setting time aside to discern how Holy Scripture is speaking to our everyday life.  Whether I have had a stressful week or a week of celebration, whether I am struggling in life or am experiencing a time of joy, or whether I am pained by the world around me or encouraged by the world around me, the Holy Scripture that we hear on Sunday always finds a way of speaking to me – of comforting, encouraging, challenging, and journeying with me.

But I confess to you I have been struggling to hear a good word from God through Holy Scripture this week.  You see, six days ago, we awoke to the news of the deadliest mass shooting in our modern history.  I cannot seem to shake the awful images and sounds of that night – the rapid sound of gunfire, the screams of terror in the crowd, the panic created in a crowd who had no idea how to escape the unseen shooter, and the sheer volume of deaths, injuries, and psychological trauma.  A week later, having no real leads on motive, all I am left with is the reality of violence in our society that seems inescapable – of one more city to add to the growing list of instances of mass violence:  Columbine, Blacksburg, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Orlando.

With the weight of the sinfulness of our violence upon one another, what I really wanted from Holy Scripture was a balm or a promise from God that love would win.  Instead, our gospel lesson today feels more like a mirror of our modern violence.  Jesus tells the leaders of the faithful a parable about a landowner who plants a vineyard and entrusts the tending of the vineyard to tenants.  When the time comes for the tenants to proudly show the landowner the fruits of their labor, instead the tenants do something awful.  They beat, kill, and stone the servants sent by the landowner.  And their action is not a one-time occurrence.  The landowner sends even more of his servants to the tenants, and they beat, kill, and stone them too.  The landowner even sends his own son; but filled with greed, entitlement, and violence, they kill the landowner’s son too.  Instead of redemption at the end of the parable, Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

Because this is a parable, we know that Jesus is trying to tell the people of Israel something about themselves.  Stanley Hauerwas interprets the parable in this way, “The parable of the wicked tenants can serve as an outline of Matthew’s understanding of the life of Israel.  God [calls] Israel to be his vineyard fenced by the law, grounded in the land, and protected by worship of God in the temple.  God [sends] his prophets to call the people to faithfulness, but the people beat, [stone], and [kill] them.  Finally God [sends] his very Son, but even he [is] rejected…Jesus [leaves] no ambiguity about how this parable is to be understood.  The chief priests and the Pharisees [realize] that they are the ‘rejected.’  Yet they are not in any fashion to repent.”[i]

The starkness of Jesus’ parable has left me wondering whether we have become like the tenants in this story.  Not knowing the motive of the shooter in Las Vegas, we can somewhat distance ourselves from him – perhaps blaming mental illness or labeling him as an outlier in an otherwise healthy society.  But what concerns me more is that this is not an isolated event.  This is not the first time I have had to talk about a mass shooting from the pulpit.  We have not just beaten, killed, and stoned a couple of servants.  We keep committing awful violence, and what is worse is I fear we are becoming desensitized, accepting violence as the status quo – a consequence we are willing to live with in order to have the things we want in life.

In the spiral of darkness between our news feed and Holy Scripture, I had to take a deep breath, praying for some glimmer of hope.  So I started with where we started in worship today – with our collect.  We prayed, “Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior…”  The collect today reminded me that no matter how dark things seem, there is always light to be found.

With the encouragement of the collect, I was able to go back to the parable.  I realized that perhaps the tenants, or perhaps even ourselves, are not going to be the origin of our hope.  Instead, our hope in darkness rests on God.  The landowner in the parable is marked by goodness.  The landowner plants the vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a wine press, and builds a watchtower.  Then the landowner allows tenants to use the land, having given them the tools they need, trusting them to care for the land.  Heard another way, we hear all the good news of our creative God.  God creates this beautiful land which we are given the privilege to tend – our own breathtaking vineyard.  And because tending vineyards is hard work, God gives us the “fence” of the law – a set of guidelines to order our common life.  God gives us the tools for work, protection, and worship, knowing we will need those things too.  God even sends us prophets, knowing we will likely go astray.  Eventually, God sends us God’s Son.  This parable is the story of God’s covenantal relationship with us – a relationship marked by love, forgiveness, and grace.  And just like the whole of our Christian story, there will be moments of faithfulness, and moments of repentance.  There will be moments of honor and moments of shame.  In spite of the winding nature of our journey, God is ever present, pouring out love, abundance, mercy, and grace.  Even on our darkest days, when we crucify God’s Son, God does not answer violence with violence.  As one scholar conveys, “… rather than return violence for violence, in the cross of Jesus God absorbs our violence and responds with life, with resurrection, with Jesus triumphant over death and offering, not retribution, but peace.”[ii]

In the midst of stewardship season, I have been wondering all week how in the world I could talk about stewardship today.  But I think stewardship might be the perfect response to the seeming hopelessness of the world and this parable.  A Journey to Generosity is just that:  a journey.  Each one of us has been gifted a vineyard to tend, is surrounded by the gift of God’s word to root us in love, is given the tools needed to tend the vineyard, and is promised that even when we are pretty terrible farmers, Jesus will redeem our darkest days.  God has given us all we need, walks with us in the darkness, and makes a way for us toward light.

The invitation for us today is two-fold.  The first is to go back to the beginning – whether we go back to the collect we heard today, go back to the covenantal stories of our walk with God, or go back to our own vineyard to look around at the abundance in which we find ourselves.  Sometimes in order to appreciate where we are in our Journey to Generosity, we have to look back at the faithfulness of God that is often only evident in the rearview mirror.  After we have immersed ourselves in the abundance of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness offered by our God, then we take the next step on our journey.  What that next step is will be different for each person in this room.  But if we can envision each person in this room as agents of God’s light and love, imagine the collective power we have to drive out darkness, and transform the world into goodness.  We do not do this work alone.  We are encouraged today by fellow companions on the Journey to Generosity.  I cannot wait to hear the stories from your adventures in generosity.  God is doing great things through you.  And that is reason enough for hope.  Amen.

[i] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew:  Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 186-187.  Verbs in quotation changed to present tense for preaching purposes.

[ii] David Lose, “Pentecost 18A: Words and Deeds,” October 6, 2017, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2017/10/pentecost-18-a-words-and-deeds/ on October 6, 2017.

On Dancing and Identity…

Tags

Christ, church, covenant, disciples, dreamy, everyday, identity, life, moments, mundance, ordinary, romantic, wedding

Photo credit:  https://apracitcalwedding.com/first-dance-wedding-songs/

This week I was visiting a parishioner at a retirement facility.   I was waiting in the lobby to meet the parishioner when I suddenly realized they were playing Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade on the speakers.  I was catapulted to another time and place as I listened.  You see, Moonlight Serenade was the first song my husband and I danced to when we were married.  It had been the same song his grandparents had danced to when they were married 55 years earlier.  Not long after we started dancing, they joined us on the dance floor.  I remember catching a glimpse of them together as I danced with my husband, hoping we could enjoy such longevity and happiness in marriage.

Of course, little of our everyday lives are that dreamy.  We spend much of our marriage tending to the “stuff” of life – juggling work and family time; shuttling children to school, activities, and parties; tending to household duties; and trying to squeeze in sleep now and then.  There are certainly great moments – watching my husband engage our children, listening intently as he passionately talks about his vocation, and laughing heartily as he jokes about things only we get.  We are piecing together a life full of wonderful memories and chapters, but that life is also full of the mundane, everyday, ordinary stuff too.

I think that is why I was so grateful to hear that song this week.  That song reminded me of my identity – a moment in which I covenanted to live in a certain way with a certain person.  Though our dance together was just one part of that day, the song is a tangible reminder of identity.

After my visit and quick note to my husband about “our song,” I found myself wondering what other markers of identity we experience.  In the Episcopal Church, I would argue the sacraments are our biggest ones – the weekly celebration of Holy Eucharist, and the periodic celebration of Baptism.  In fact, Church is all about helping us define our identity as disciples of Christ – reminding us who and whose we are.  But I wonder, in your mundane, everyday, ordinary lives, what moments or events remind you of that identity?  What are those moments that halt you in your steps in a lobby and make you feel affirmed, rooted, loved, and empowered?

Sermon – John 13.31-35, E5, YC, April 24, 2016

Tags

baptism, child, Christian, command, covenant, God, hard, identity, Jesus, live, love, neighbor, parent, Sermon, simple, speech, work

A few years ago, some friends of mine engaged in the elevator speech challenge.  The idea was simple.  If you were stuck in an elevator with someone for thirty seconds and were asked to tell them about your faith, what would you say?  The challenge was to explain to someone your faith in Jesus Christ in thirty seconds or less.  I remember when my friends started sharing their elevator speeches, I was totally intimidated.  First, I knew that if someone actually asked me to do this in an elevator, I would probably stutter through some answer, mostly filled with “ums” and “you knows,” and not much of substance.  But more importantly, even when I tried to sit down and give myself way more than thirty seconds to formulate my thirty-second speech, I could not do it.  I could not figure out how to distill everything that had happened to me in my faith journey, why I still believe and am so devoted to church, and who I believe the three persons of the Godhead to be.

The last night in the upper room that we hear about in our gospel lesson today is a little like Jesus’ elevator speech.  Although the disciples did not fully grasp the importance of that night, Jesus certainly did.  If you remember, back on Maundy Thursday, we joined Jesus and the disciples on this night.  Jesus tells the disciples many things.  He teaches them about the importance of servitude as he washes their feet.  He teaches them how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  But when Judas leaves at the beginning of our reading today, Jesus knows he is out of time.  The end is coming and he desperately wants to leave the disciples with a few words of wisdom.  Knowing his time is up, Jesus does not tell anymore parables or give them any convoluted metaphors.  He keeps his words simple and direct.[i]  “Love one another,” he tells them.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  That is all he gives them.

His words are simple, perfect, and beautiful.  I am sure those words were in many of the elevator speeches I read.  God is love.  Our call is to love as Jesus loved us.  That is how others will know us to be Christians – through our love.  The problem is this:  though “love one another” sounds simple, perfect, and beautiful, loving one another is really hard work.  Think about that one family member who is so difficult – the sibling who always tries to start a fight, the family member who always has some story about why they need to borrow money from you, or that aunt who is just plain mean.  Jesus says we must love them.  Or think about that classmate who started a nasty rumor about you, the coworker who took credit for your idea, or that friend who shared your confidence with someone else.  Jesus says we must love them too.  Or think about that political candidate that you cannot stand, that religious leader who constantly says offensive things, or that homeless person you tried to help who was completely ungrateful.  Jesus says we must love them too.  Jesus words, “Love one another,” are simple, perfect, and beautiful.  But Jesus’ words are also hard, frustrating, and sometimes seemingly impossible.  Loving one another is at times the most wonderful, rewarding thing we do in this life, and at times is one of the most challenging, difficult things we do in this life.  But we love because that is what Jesus taught us to do.

Today we will baptize a child into the family of God.  Baptism is our sacred initiation rite.  During any initiation rite, we normally summarize what is most important to us so that the newly initiated person knows what we expect from her.  In this case, the parents and Godparents will be reminded of our ultimate priorities so that they can teach her in the years to come.  Most of those promises and priorities come in the baptismal covenant.  We ask five questions:  Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?  Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?  Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?  Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?   The questions are big questions – the guiding principles of our faith.  But most of the questions boil down to that night in the upper room:  love one another.

As we think about baptizing Elaina today, and teaching her to love, some of us may feel overwhelmed.  We know how hard loving is.  Elaina will even teach her parents and godparents how difficult loving is:  when she learns and uses the word “no!”, when she throws her first epic temper tantrum, or when she first utters those dreaded words, “I hate you!”  But Elaina will also teach the parents and godparents how wonderful love is:  when she first calls you by name, when you first see her helping someone or tenderly comforting a crying friend, or when she finally learns those wonderful words, “I love you!”  Everyday her parents and godparents will have the chance to teach her about what her baptism means by showing her how to love.  They may not have a patented elevator speech, but Elaina will understand what her Christians identity means when she sees what “love one another” really means.

But today is not just about Elaina, her parents, and her godparents.  Today is for all of us.  Today is a day when we too can take stock of how well we are living into our own identity as baptized children of God.  Every day we can take a moment to remember where we have failed to show love and where we have excelled in showing love.[ii]  The moments will be small and sometimes seemingly inconsequential.  But all those tiny moments add up to a lifetime of loving one another.  And today we will promise to, with God’s help, keep trying to be a people who love another.  Loving one another may not be a fancy elevator speech.  But loving one another might be much more powerful in the long run than any fancy words we can assemble – because Jesus’ commandment today is not so much about what we believe, but about how we live.[iii]  Jesus did not tell us to love one another because he knew loving one another would be easy.  But Jesus did tell us to love one another because he knows that we can.  He has seen each one of us do that simple, perfect, and beautiful act.  Today, he invites us to keep up the good work.  Amen.

[i] Gary D. Jones, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 468, 470.

[ii] David Lose, “On Loving – and Not Loving – One Another,” April 21, 2013, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2542 on April 20, 2016.

[iii] Jones, 470.

Sermon – Mark 6.1-13, P9, YB, July 5, 2015

Tags

baptism, Christian, covenant, disciples, faith, identity, Jesus, liturgy, protection, purpose, seek, Sermon, serve, share, vulnerability

A few weeks ago, as we were planning liturgies, we were discussing the fact that we had two baptisms in a row – last Sunday and today.  A few people in the group kind of groaned, “Two in a row?!?”  I laughed at the time.  But the more I thought about their exasperation, the more I wondered why they were exasperated.  Certainly baptisms can take longer.  Between the blessing of the water, the renewal of vows, and the baptism itself, the service is a bit longer.  And perhaps to groan came out of a place of wanting to spread out the requency of special services – much like one rations out Halloween candy instead of eating it all at once.  But the more I thought about having two baptisms in a row, the more I liked the idea; in fact, the more I thought about the baptismal liturgy, I began to wish we had one every Sunday.

Now before you all issue a collective groan of exasperation, let me explain.  You see, the baptismal liturgy is one of those foundational liturgies.  In baptism, we ritually welcome someone into the family of faith.  But the baptismal liturgy is about more than the cute baby (though Rose is very cute, I admit!).  The baptismal liturgy is the time when we declare who we are, how we are to live, and how we will accomplish that ideal.  In this liturgy, we retell the story of our history – how God moved over the waters in creation, how God split the waters to free the enslaved people of Israel, and how God used the waters of baptism to mark a new way through Jesus’ own baptism.  In this liturgy, we also talk about our nature – how we are prone to sin, how we (despite the fact that we are saved by the waters of baptism) are on a continual journey of repenting and returning to the Lord, and how we need each other if we are ever to keep turning toward God.  In this liturgy, we also declare the radical way that we will live our lives in Christ – what being a Christian actually means.  Being a Christian means regularly gathering to learn together, to pray together, to eat at the Holy Table together, and to join in fellowship together.  Being a Christian means sharing the good news with others – not just by example, but by our words too.  Being  a Christian means seeking and serving Christ in others, loving our neighbor, striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of others.  I don’t know about you, but regular worship, regular evangelism, and regular mission sounds like a lot of work!  And yet, here we are (for the second week in a row!) proclaiming that we will do these things.

So if today is all about defining who we are and who we are going to shape little Rose into being, what might be the best way for us to prepare her for her new life in Christ?  Some of us might imagine the story we heard a few weeks ago about David and Goliath.  If you remember, David was just a boy who agreed to take on the enormous Goliath, that everyone feared.  When King Saul agrees to let David fight Goliath, he first wants to suit up David.  Saul clothes David with Saul’s armor; he puts a bronze helmet on David’s head and clothes him with a coat of mail.  By the time Saul puts his sword over the armor, David cannot even walk!  David realizes the protection weighs him down.  So he removes the armor and weapon and instead takes only a staff, five smooth stones in his shepherd’s bag, and his sling.  Goliath (and if we are honest, probably everyone else gathered, including the people of God) laughs at David’s puny preparation.  The funny thing is that in our gospel lesson today, Jesus does the same thing for the disciples when he commissions them to go out in the world.  Jesus tells them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; they get a staff, one pair of sandals, and one tunic.

When we think about preparing ourselves for the life of faith – of going out into the world to seek Christ, serve Christ, and share Christ – most of us think about preparing the way that Saul prepares David.  We want some armor for all those times that we are rejected when we share our faith; we want a sword in case we run into trouble while seeking Christ; we want some heavy mail so that when we serve others, nothing or no one gets too close[i]  But instead, Jesus sends out the disciples with a staff to steady their walking as they share the good news, a pair of sandals and one tunic so that they can humbly encounter others as they serve Christ, and empty hands and bellies so that they can seek Christ in others.  On this day when we proclaim who we are and how we will live, one might imagine that we are readying ourselves and gathering our supplies, and especially that we are arming this small, vulnerable child for walking the way of Christ.  But instead, Jesus basically tells us that there is no way to protect ourselves; there is no way to prepare.[ii]  We go with our trust in the Lord, with vulnerability, and with a sense of identity and purpose.

That is why I think we could stand to have baptism Sunday every Sunday.  Our tendency would be to find the biggest backpack we can and load that bag with all the things we think we need for our journey.  But Jesus tells us to put that bag down and start walking:  walking the way, the truth, and the light; walking by seeking, serving, and sharing Christ.  In many ways Rose has more to teach us today than we have to teach her.  She came into this world with very little.  In fact, she even came here with very little – sure her parents might have a monster diaper bag with all the “just in case” stuff babies often need.  But Rose herself cannot carry a bag; she is not self-sufficient; she is vulnerable with us all.  Instead of giving Rose an armor for Christ today, she encourages us to take off our armor and swords, and get back to the basics: our staff, sandals, and tunic.  That is the beauty of baptism.  Baptism helps us remember that we need each other.  Rose needs us to teach her the way.  We need her to teach us how to gat back to basics.  Together we find our way to living the faithful life in Christ.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[i] Michael L. Lindvall talks about the anxiety that evangelism produces in all of us in his article, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 216.

[ii] C. Clifton Black, “Commentary on Mark 6:1-13,” July 5, 2015, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2502 on July 2, 2015.

Sermon – Mark 4.35-41, P7, YB, June 21, 2015

Tags

afraid, asleep, boat, care, Charleston, comfort, covenant, disciples, gun control, Jesus, Kingdom, Mark, miracle, oppression, other, racism, relationship, scared, Sermon, storm, suffering, violence

A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We were not really sure what was going to happen while we were out to sea, but we got on the boat because we were curious.  We had an experience, or maybe multiple experiences with a man named Jesus, and something about those experiences compelled us to get on the boat.  Maybe the experience happened as early as Sunday School, maybe the experience happened when we were confirmed, or maybe the experience happened as an adult.  We may not even be able to articulate the reason why we got on the boat.  But all of us, at some point, step onto the boat, however tentatively or boldly, and we sail with Jesus to the other side.

The disciples have that same experience in today’s gospel lesson from Mark.  After a long day of preaching and teaching, during which Jesus pulls them aside and explains parables to them, Jesus says, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Now if the disciples had been smart, they would have asked some questions: “What is on the other side?  What if a storm comes?  Can’t we just stay here and get a good night’s rest?  This place is familiar and comfortable.”  And they should have asked questions.  The “other side” of that body of water is exactly that – other.  The other side is Gentile territory, the land of the Gerasenes.  Jesus is taking his first journey into what might be considered dangerous, and even inappropriate.  Jesus is beginning a ministry beyond just the Jews.[i]  “Let us go across to the other side,” is no “Hey, let’s mix things up this year and go to Cabo.”  Yes, the disciples should have asked a lot more questions.[ii]

But they do not.  Something about this Jesus compels them forward, stepping on and manning that boat without question.  That’s the funny thing about Jesus.  We too got on a boat because of him, probably having no idea what we were getting into.  Suddenly we find ourselves cooking casseroles, watering gardens, and bringing in men’s undergarments for our needy neighbors.  Suddenly we find ourselves getting asked by the Rector to serve on some committee.  Suddenly we find the news of the day is not so simple when we remember all those words we said in our baptismal covenant about seeking and serving Christ, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and sharing the Good News.  We really should have asked more questions before we got on that boat to follow Jesus.

I have been thinking about that boat a lot this week.  You see, some of our fellow disciples were murdered this week – nine to be exact, in Charleston, South Carolina.  They were praying and reading Holy Scripture – just like we do every Thursday.  They even welcomed in a stranger that night – like Jesus always tells us to do.  That very stranger turned out to be crazy, filled with racist rage, and willing to kill nine people before fleeing.  At least that was how I saw the episode at first.  At first, this was another instance of a crazy person, senselessly killing other people.  But then the prophets of our time began to speak.  The prophets reminded me that violence proliferates in our society.  The prophets reminded me that because we cannot agree on a reasonable gun policy, more and more people die in our backyards.  The prophets reminded me that our African-American brothers and sisters in this country experience very fragile and virtually non-existent safety – they cannot even be safe in church.  There was a part of me that wanted to stay on the shore this week and say, “Oh, Jesus, that was just an isolated event by a crazy kid with extremist views.”  But I had already gotten on the boat.  It was too late.  And a storm began to rage.

That storm for me was the storm of our time:  a storm of violence, racism, and suffering.  No longer could I contain each story:  Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Sandy Hook, Baltimore, Columbine, Selma, Charleston.  One story bled into another, and as I was reminded of each one, I felt the buckets of water dousing my face.  As I thought about every conversation I have had about how racism is not dead, I felt the water creeping up to my waist.  As I thought about the historical shadow of the oppression of others in our country, I wanted to cry out to God.  And all I could think about was Jesus on that stupid boat, asleep on a cushion in the stern.  Who can sleep at a time like this?  Doesn’t Jesus care about us at all?  Why couldn’t we have just stayed on the shore in that comfortable, familiar place instead of getting on the God-forsaken boat with a man who does not seem in the least bit bothered by our suffering?

The disciples know that feeling.  They are experienced at life on a boat.  At least when they get on the boat, they knew how to manage a boat.  They know the dangers and the perils, and have learned to navigate them for the necessity of survival.  But even these experienced fishermen are scared.  They have tried to control the boat, they have scooped out as much water as they can, and they know they have met their match.  And so they go to their last resort.  They wake up Jesus and shout, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?!?”  When they got on that boat, this is not what they were expecting.  They were expecting the fulfillment of a promise – the fulfillment of a different life and a different world:  the kingdom of God here on earth.  Instead they were going down fast with a man who could not even stay awake and fight the good fight with them.

I shouted those words this week too.  Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?  Maybe we brought all this violence on ourselves, but surely you care?  Surely you did not lure me onto this boat – into this relationship with you – only to watch us perish?  Though I wanted more than anything to think this was an isolated event of a crazy person doing something ungodly, I could not ignore the storm swirling around.

I struggled to find hope today in our gospel lesson.  All I saw was Jesus scolding the disciples for their fear and their lack of faith.  And then I saw disciples even more afraid than before – which is saying something given the awfulness of that storm.  Straining for some strand of hope – some glimmer of redemption – I came back to that invitation from Jesus, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Jesus does not tell the disciples to go to the other side alone.  Jesus does not say, “Go to the other side without me.”  Jesus says, “Let us go to the other side.”[iii]  Whether the disciples felt like Jesus was with them during that storm or not, Jesus was with them.  That may not seem like much, but that may be the biggest miracle of all in this story.  As one scholar writes, “God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them.  [God’s power] isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world.  God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build a kingdom out of love, peace, and justice with God.  God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world.”[iv]

A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We did not know where we were going, what we would see, or who we would encounter.  All we knew was that Jesus was inviting us into a different life, and we felt compelled by this passionate, nonsensical man.  Oh, we had clues.  We knew that the “other side,” was not a place we wanted to go.  We knew that going there might change us, and change our entire worldview.  We knew that getting on that boat would mean stepping away from the familiar, comfortable coastline, and sailing into something different and scary.[v]  But Jesus said he would go with us.  Jesus invited us on a journey with him and something deep inside us, despite the little devil on our shoulder telling us to stay put, told us to step onto that boat.

I am still scared of the storm.  In fact, I am a little afraid of Jesus too.  But what brings me comfort this week is that Jesus is with us.  Jesus does not invite us onto a boat and let us sail alone.  And though Jesus may have an ability to sleep through a storm, with complete confidence in the direction of God, I also know that Jesus will wake up and respond to me when I call out his name.  He may not say what I want to hear.  He may leave me feeling more uncomfortable than getting soaked in a storm.  But he is here.  Jesus is here on our boat, and can make things right.  We just have to be prepared to go to the other side.  Amen.

[i] Beverly Zink-Sawyer, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 165.

[ii] This train of thought comes from Karoline Lewis’ writing “The Other Side,” June 14, 2015 as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3645 on June 18, 2015.

[iii] Lewis.

[iv] David R. Henson, “When God Sleeps through Storms (Lectionary Reflection for Mark 4:35-41),” June 15, 2015 as found at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2015/06/1804/ on June 18, 2015.

[v] Lewis.

Sermon – Matthew 3.13-17, E1, YA, January 12, 2014

Tags

baptism, consent, covenant, God, Jesus, John, prevent

Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.  All three synoptic gospels have an account of Jesus’ baptism, but Matthew’s version that we hear today is the only one that has a dialogue between the John and Jesus.  Though there is debate about why the conversation is present in Matthew’s gospel[i], I find much more interesting the content of their conversation.  When Jesus comes to John to be baptized, John tries to prevent Jesus from doing so, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”  Jesus responds to John, by saying, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

John has been out in the wilderness for a while now, and has been preaching all along about the Messiah.  I imagine he has a pretty set idea of who this Messiah is how the Messiah will behave.  So, when Jesus comes, asking John to baptize him, John pushes back.  We are not sure exactly what John expects Jesus to do or say, but we can tell by the way he actively tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized that Jesus’ actions do not fit in John’s mental image of how things are supposed to go.  In fact, John feels so strongly that he does not just protest or argue with Jesus.  The text says John tries to physically prevent Jesus from being baptized.

What I love about this interaction is how very human and familiar John’s response to Jesus is.  I can think of hundred of times we have equally tried to get in Jesus’ way.  We couldn’t possibly invite our unchurched friend to church because we have heard their tirades about religion and those who go to church.  We cannot imagine going on a foreign mission trip because we cannot get the time off, we don’t speak the native language, we love hot showers too much, or mission trips just simply aren’t our thing.  We refuse to take our problems up with God in prayer because we think we can solve the issue on our own, that God is too busy for our minor issues, or we have yet to hear the answer we want from God.  We cannot possibly take on that new ministry invitation because we do not have the time, we cannot imagine what good the ministry will do, or we just simply do not like change.  Like John the Baptist, over and over again we prove ourselves to be experts in attempting to prevent Jesus from doing something in our lives.

When we were preparing for Church in the fall, we shared several videos on our Facebook page meant to spark some thought and conversation about how we invite people to church.  Most of the videos were funny, using satire to highlight our discomfort with inviting others to church.  My favorite is one where two guys meet in their yards after church.  One has his Bible in his hand, having just returned from church.  The other is working in the yard, tending his garden.  As the two chat, you can hear the inner monologue of the gardener, wondering why his neighbor never asks him to go to church.  He even admits, in his thoughts, that he would totally go if he were invited.  But instead, the best the churchgoer can do is to invite his neighbor over for lunch.  You can see the disappointment in the neighbor, but how both men try to skirt the issue.  Essentially the churchgoer prevents his neighbor from feeling truly welcome to church.

To John, and to us, Jesus’ response is simple.  Jesus basically tells John, “Just trust me and do this now.”  Jesus does not explain why John must get out of the way or how baptizing him will somehow fulfill all righteousness.  Jesus does not tell John what will happen when Jesus is baptized.  Jesus does not even really offer reassuring words.  To this dearth of reassurance, how does John respond?  The text simply says, “And John consented.”  But more fascinating than John acquiescing is that John really does have a choice.  Like Moses, Samuel, Mary, and Joseph, God always offers the choice to respond.  There is always the choice of saying no.  I am reminded of the story of Naomi and her daughters-in-law.  She gives them the choice of returning to their homelands when her sons, their husbands, die.  Orpah chooses to go home; Ruth chooses to stay with Naomi.  That is the beauty of our relationship with God – the affirmation of our freewill and the mutuality of the relationship is always present.

Today, like we do multiple times during the year, the Church will invite you to make a choice in your relationship with God.  We turn back to our own baptisms and we reaffirm the choices that were first made on our behalf, but we have now promised for ourselves every time we renew our baptismal vows.  Those promises include proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, and striving for justice and peace.  Those promises are not promises the church created from its own imagination.  Those promises come out of invitations from Jesus’ life and ministry.  Like Jesus asked John to just trust him and act, so Jesus invites us to trust him and act through our own baptism.  Our invitation is to be a people who consent.

Now some of you may be like John, Mary, or Joseph who receive a challenging invitation from God and respond with a hearty, “Here I am Lord,” or a simple consent.  Others of you may be more like Samuel, who hear God’s invitation but do not quite understand the invitation – like when Samuel goes to Eli in the temple multiple times thinking Eli is calling him in the middle of the night instead of God.  Or maybe you identify more with Moses – who argues with God in myriad ways, trying to convince God to ask someone else, anyone else, to take on God’s invitation.

Luckily our baptismal vows give us some clue about how we can manage to consent to God.  “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?” is the question you will hear today.  The more you steep yourself in Scripture and the fellowship of this community, the more you will be empowered to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ.  The more you consume the body and blood of our Savior, the more you will be able to see and then serve Christ in others.  The more you immerse yourself in a life of prayer, the more you will find opportunities for striving for justice and peace among all people.  Today you choose, you consent, to live your life within the community of faith – and that choice will have an impact not just on you, but on others.  But Jesus cannot do the work alone.  The choice is yours to consent.  Amen.

---

[i] Troy A. Miller, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 239.

Sermon – Jeremiah 18.1-11, P18, YC, September 8, 2013

Tags

change, covenant, God, Jeremiah, potter, pottery, Sermon, transform, vessel

I am a huge fan of pottery.  I have been given many gifts of pottery, my favorite being a chalice and paten upon my graduation from seminary.  When most of us think of pottery, we immediately think of a beautiful finished product:  the smooth texture, the radiant glaze, or the hands that carefully formed the bowl or other item.  We imagine the potter at his wheel, gracefully shaping clay into a work of art.  We might even recall the intimate scene from the movie “Ghost” where Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze romantically shape a piece of pottery together.

But the more I have read about potters and pottery this week, the more I realize how flawed this romantic image is of a potter.  First of all, potters begin their work with about a two pound chunk of clay that they then have to knead and work into a more elastic form.  They eventually have to throw the clay onto a wheel and get the clay centered.  This work is so difficult that new potters can take hours just to get the clay centered before they even begin the messy work of forming the clay.  Once they figure out the centering, then there is the work of using water, the spraying of wet clay everywhere, and of course the endless mistakes.  Exerting too much or too little pressure, making a wall too thin, or creating an unintended shape can mean starting all over.  One woman watched a man form a beautiful bowl, only to have the whole thing collapse when he tried to take the bowl off the wheel.  The man destroyed five bowls before he finally removed a perfect bowl properly – each time having to start from the messy beginning.[i]

This much more realistic version of a potter making pottery is what the Lord uses as a metaphor today for how God will treat the Israelites.  The Lord sends the prophet Jeremiah down to the potter’s house to hear God’s words.  Jeremiah says, “So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel.  The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  Jeremiah immediately recognizes the metaphor God is trying to communicate.  God is the potter and Israel is the vessel.  Clearly Israel has veered off course – in fact, Israel has already fallen at this point in history, and Judah is the only group of God’s people left who are still in active covenantal relationship with God.  So this people, who have journeyed from Sinai to the present, who have lived a covenantal life of reciprocal obligation and blessing, have hit yet another point in life where they have fallen away from their covenantal promises and face the option of being destroyed and discarded or being taken back to that compressed version of clay and being shaped into something more pleasing to God.[ii]

Knowing what we know about the potter’s work, we immediately see that this will not be easy work for God’s people.  Life as they know life will be collapsed, and new life with God will take a very different shape.  That transformation will be messy and uncomfortable, and in fact may take multiple attempts at reshaping.  Though the Israelites are offered a way out of destruction, the way out will be painful, disheartening, and disorienting.  All that is familiar will be changed, and though God is holding the Israelites in God’s hands, those hands do not promise to be gentle or permissive.

I have been thinking a lot this week about St. Margaret’s journey with the potter these last fifty years.  We were first centered as a rag tag team of Episcopalians at a local American Legion Hall.  Then the potter reshaped us time and again with various vicars.  When we called our first rector, we started all over again, finding new life and new ministries, God’s hands exerting pressure on us in various ways.  Even as we faced difficult times with our second rector, God’s hand was ever with us.  I am sure many of us felt like we were being compressed down into a clay heap, only to start being shaped again by God in these last couple of years.

Of course, all of that sounds a bit too much like the glossed over version of some of our favorite hymns.  In “Spirit of the Living God,” we hear, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.  Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me…”  Similarly, in “Have Thine Own Way Lord,” we hear, “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Those are the old timey hymns I grew up singing, and I always remember singing them with heartfelt desire.  Of course, now that I know a little bit more about the pottery-making process, I am not sure how wholeheartedly I could sing those hymns.  Those hymns are calling on God to do exactly what God suggests in Jeremiah – that God will reshape us, remold us, and require us to be pliable, cooperative subjects in the process.

Since I entered the search process here about two years ago, we have been talking about change.  Change is a word we throw around a lot, that most of say we are ready for, but the majority of us secretly and not-so-secretly hate.  We know that change is necessary and inevitable, but we will fight change with every ounce of our being – even sometime unconsciously or at least without malicious intentions.  And yet change is what we have all been undergoing for the past two years, and the change does not seem to be stopping.  If we were to imagine St. Margaret’s on God’s Pottery Wheel, we might be able to think about the ways God keeps adding water to us, keeps exerting pressure, and keeps pushing us this way and that way.  It is entirely possible that God has even crumpled us down into a heap again and started afresh with us within the last two years.  I know we have all felt that potter’s work.  Every single person here, including me, at some point in the last two years has groaned under God’s constant shaping and molding.  This kind of shaping is not pretty, is messy and painful, and quite frankly is hard.  Most of us do not prefer to stand, “waiting, yielded and still.”  We prefer that God back off and just go ahead and declare us a beautiful bowl, and be done with us.

Now you have probably learned by now that I always like to give us a bit of good news on Sundays to take home.  I am going to try to give you a little taste of good news, but I have to warn you that today’s good news is a little bitter sweet.  The good news is that the metaphor the Lord gives to Jeremiah is one of promise.  God does not say that the potter takes the spoiled vessel and throws the vessel into the trash.  The promise to Israel is that God, despite all their sinfulness and evil ways, still gives the Israelites another chance to return to God and to the covenantal promises they have made to be in relationship with God.  But God does not promise that their misshapen selves get to stay misshapen.  They will still need to bend to the potter, and be willing to be shaped into something new and beautiful.

This is the colored promise for us as well.  God does not abandon us when we resist God and the changes God wants to make in this community.  God does not lose hope on our complaining selves that would much rather do things the way we have always done them.  God promises to keep God’s powerful hands around us, holding us with the seasoned hands of a potter.  God will be with us.  But God is also going to keep pushing us, and keep painfully shaping us, and artfully bending us into beautiful vessels that can glorify God and show Christ’s light to our community.  So maybe this week, we need to pick up our Lift Every Voice and Sing hymnals and start singing “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Perhaps if we sing that old hymn enough, we might actually start yielding to the potter who loves us, is always with us, and who desires for us to be a beautiful vessel of God.  Amen.

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[i] Christy Jo Waltersdorff, “Centering the Clay,” Brethren Life and Thought, vol. 50, no. 1-2, Wint. – Spr. 2005, 53.

[ii] Bruce C. Birch, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 29.