Matthew 17 .1– 9
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning Plymouth Congregational UCC February 26, 2017 The season of Epiphany opens with light: the magi seeing the brilliant star in the dark night sky that leads them to Jesus. And today it ends with light, as well, as Jesus is robed in radiance. We follow the star throughout the season of Epiphany, and if you think about the hymns we often sing during this season, many have something to do with light: “Arise, Your Light Is Come,” “Jesus, the Light of the World,” “Many Are the Light Beams,” “O Radiant Christ, Incarnate Word.” Perhaps, it’s because of the short days and long winter nights in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, but there seems to be a cycle of lightness and darkness in the seasons of the church year. As the days get longer in the spring, we enter the season of Lent, which culminates with the Office of Tenebrae (or shadows) on Maundy Thursday. And after the crucifixion on Good Friday, the risen Christ emerges again in the brightness of Easter Sunday. We go through cycles in our own culture as well: seasons of light and seasons of shadow. It is what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week called the great pendulum of American political culture, which swings back when it veers too far in either direction. But I diverge from the metaphor of light… There are other ways in which we identify light as the image of divine presence or of divine favor. The halo that we often see in artistic representations of holy people are clearly a representation of the light that emanates within them. If your someone who believes in auras, the halo can be a visible reality. Because I’m a visual learner, and I know some of you are, too, I’ve prepared a few slides of artistic representations of the Transfiguration…described in today’s text as Jesus’ face shining like the sun and “his clothes became dazzling white. So, I’d invite you just to look at these images and try to be observant of the light in these different paintings. [LIGHTS OFF] The first three images are Orthodox icons from Russia and Greece and Byzantium from the 13th through 16th centuries. One of the things you’ll notice in icons is the use of gold leaf to project light, and you can see Jesus surrounded by a circle of light, as well as the prominent halos of all three figures: Moses, Jesus, and Elijah:
The second image shows the circle of light and actual beams projecting out from the center, and there almost seem to be spotlights illuminating Jesus. And if we could see the gilding on this icon, it would seem even more radiant.
You’ll notice in several of these images from the medieval period that Jesus is surrounded by an almond-shape frame called a mandorla (Italian for almond).
Duccio was a 14th century artist born in Siena, and was the most influential Italian artist of his day. This painting has the feel of an Orthodox icon with its extensive use of light, halos, and even the positioning of Jesus’ right hand with two fingers extended in the position of teaching.
This fresco by Fra Angelico, who was both a Dominican and a brilliant painter, adorns one of the monastic cells at the monastery of San Marco in Florence. Look at how Moses and Elijah seem to be peeking in at Jesus from some other dimension. And there is also a mandorla, which seems like the source of light.
You may know this painting by Raphael, which is in the Vatican, and if you look at where the light is, again, it comes from the cloud of divinity behind Jesus and it’s blinding the disciples, who are there on the mountaintop. It’s strange, though, because this one seems to blend the transfiguration with the ascension of Jesus…or the antigravity field stopped working, because Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are airborne.
This is an altar painting in Venice by Titian, who was known for painting with light and there is radiance all over Jesus and behind him. Look at the contrasting darkness in this painting.
Images of the Transfiguration didn’t stop in the Renaissance. This one is by the 19th c. French painter, James Tissot Look at where the light is in this image. Jesus is wearing dazzling white, but the great source of light is no longer behind Jesus…it IS Jesus.
In this modern representation of the Transfiguration from Cameroon, there is a swirling cloud of divine light surrounding Jesus. And it’s interesting that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are all portrayed as Africans. So, the hue of our skin has nothing to do with the way light is identified as divinity.
This transfiguration by Cornelius Monsma is almost abstract, and maybe that is one of the fundamental ways we experience Christ…as an abstraction.
[LIGHTS ON]
--------------------- So, those are the visual identifications with light. Some of the most amazing passages of scripture also have to do with light. The Psalms have great images: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” (Psalm 27) And Isaiah’s prophecy: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” And in the gospels, Luke and John tend to use the most light imagery. John’s prologue tells us that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” And the gospel writer tells us that John the baptizer “was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light which enlightens everyone.” And John’s portrayal of Jesus includes the great statement, “I am the light of the world.” So, why am I telling you this? Why does it matter if light is used frequently to portray the presence of God? For me, God is less anthropomorphic and more like a source of energy. One of my favorite metaphors for God is The Force. (In fact, you saw an image from the end of The Return of the Jedi, there is a scene in which three Jedi masters, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi, and Yoda, all appear in spirit form, bathed in light. Sounds like the Transfiguration to me.) That may sounds kind of strange to you, but light is energy. Photons are elementary particles and the basic unit of light. And it’s the sense of the mystery of God that we get in this image that makes it so rich. Perhaps for you, different images – more concrete images – of God work well. But there may be some among us who don’t relate as well to Mother or Father, who need a sense of God as being more elemental, more pervasive, and less describable or identifiable with an anthropomorphic image. Too often we put God in a box…a box that we define. Even the name “God” over-defines the reality of the divine. -------------------- So, where do we connect with this fairly abstract notion of God? How do we have a relationship with light or energy or the Force? There are times in our lives when we seek mystery and other seasons of our lives when we find a need for more intimate human connection with the divine – the times when Mother or Father or she or he are more congruent with our experience of the sacred than “it.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our language had a special pronoun for the divine that could embody both the immanent relationship of parent and the transcendent mystery of light? Sister Joan Chittister, one of the wisest voices of Roman Catholicism today, says that “Our role in life is to bring the light of our own souls to the dim places around us.” And if we see that we are created in God’s image, we have the flicker of divine light within us. “There two ways of spreading light,” wrote Edith Wharton, “To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” And when we, as the church, are at our best, we illumine the way for each other and we reflect the light of God, holding a mirror to shine the light in the shadowy corners of each other’s lives. So, how does this play out in your experience? Are there times in your life when you have been the recipient of light from another person? Are there moments when your light has brightened the life of another? In these days when our society is in the depths of political anxiety, how might we be a beacon for one another? And on a larger scale, how can Plymouth be a beacon of hope for the community? May we, all of us, use the light we’ve been given to illumine the path for each other and for all God’s people. To close, let me share with you a prayer I learned from Marcus Borg more than a few years ago…it’s one of the prayers I say every morning: Lord Jesus Christ, You are the light of the world, fill our minds with your peace, and our hearts with your love. Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
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Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 and Matthew 5:43-48
February 19, 2017; 7th Sunday in Epiphany Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-1819:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. 19:9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God. 19:11 You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 19:12 And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD. 19:13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. 19:14 You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. 19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. Matthew 5:43-485:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 5:44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 5:45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 5:47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 5:48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. I am reading The (Un)Common Good; How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided by Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners community in Washington DC, a Christian community dedicated to living out the gospel together in social justice. Wallis tells the story of Mary Glover. Mary was a cook in a day-care center in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC where Sojourners was located in their early days. Only twenty blocks from the White House, Columbia Heights was at that time one of the poorest and most violent areas of DC filled with people considered pejoratively by society to be the “least of these.” But we know how Jesus considered the marginalized, those who are poor, hungry, without shelter, sick, in prison. They were his beloveds and part of his family. Mary Glover, who was poor herself, was one of the consistent volunteers in Sojourners grocery give away every Saturday morning to help poor families make it through weekend. She was the designated pray-er, because given her Pentecostal roots, she was the best pray-er in the group. Every Saturday before Sojourners opened their doors to the 200 families that lined up at the door and around the block to receive the free groceries, Mary prayed. Wallis confesses that he got up almost every Sat just to hear Mary pray. “We would hold hands, and Mary would thank the Lord for waking us up that morning and that we were all still alive: “Thank you Lord for another day! That the walls of our rooms were not the walls of our graves! And our beds were not our coolin’ boards!” Then Mary always ended her prayer by saying, “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.” For me Mary Glover in this story is an embodiment of the instructions we hear in our texts from Leviticus and Matthew today. Instructions to be “holy” and “perfect” as God is “holy” and “perfect": “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. “ “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How many of you think of yourself as holy or perfect? Go ahead, raise your hand! Yea....me too. Not many of us would say we are perfect. Though we may drive ourselves and our loved ones nuts trying to be perfect...without fault...without mistake or blemish. And that word “holy” has real difficulties for us....because we associate it with arrogance...”holier than thou.” The Hebrew word used in Leviticus for holy, qadosh, does not primarily mean pure or sanctified. It means “set apart.” God says to the people of Israel, “You are set apart as my people for my work.” And in being set apart, God invited them, and invites us today, into a very intimate relationship of holiness. “Be holy, as I am holy.” The people of Israel knew from Genesis that they were made in God’s image. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery and oppression. They knew they were God’s people created to love the God with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. “Be holy, as I am holy.” This is a relationship of trust and accountability. As God’s people they were and we are accountable for:
And if these sound a bit similar to the Ten Commandments....that is the writer of Leviticus’ intention! Jesus was steeped in the knowledge of the people of God that we discover in Leviticus. Remember the Torah, the prophets and the psalms were his Bible. He knows the deeper meaning of qadosh, fo being God’s holy people set apart for God’s work. Throughout collection of teaching we call the Sermon on the Mount, he tells the crowds on the mountainside that they are God’s people. They are in an intimate relationship of trust with God. This is not entirely new information to them. Yet Jesus is reinterpreting the law of the Torah in light of the times they were living in, times of oppression of the people of Israel by the Romans. He tells them as God’s people here is how you are accountable to God in this intimate relationship. “Love even your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In New Testament Greek the word translated as “perfect”, teleios, does not mean “without fault or mistakes”. It means be “healthy, whole, mature, complete.” Jesus gives his commandments to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors in the context of an intimate, growing, healthy, maturing relationship of wholeness with God. I am privileged, humbled and challenged to be serving a community such as Plymouth who already strives to be holy and perfect. We strive to take seriously our intimate relationship with God that propels us to be holy and perfect in relationship to God and to one another, and to the strangers, and the “least of these” that Jesus loves. John Wimberly, the consultant with us last week, described our congregation as one of the healthiest that he has work with as a community in relationship to one another and to God. He observed that it is in Plymouth’s DNA as a community to do hands on work for God’s kingdom. And I would add to accept the challenges of our texts today. Taking the Leviticus text and its list....Let us continue to ask ourselves how do we use only what we truly need from the work of our hands and apportion some of the harvest for those less fortunate? Can people glean in our fields? How do we deal justly with all people no matter their economic status? How do we love your neighbor as yourselves through our actions and through extravagant welcome? Let us continue to ask ourselves, where can we reach out in genuine love to our enemies?” Do we have “enemies” as individuals, as a community? Here’s the thing about enemies, we may still not like them....but we have to ask how we find a way to love them as our neighbors, as we love ourselves? What does that love look like? Respect? No slander? Honesty? Can we pray for those that we vehemently disagree with? Not that they change their minds to think like us! But pray for their highest and best as children of God. And leave them as much without judgment as we can in God’s hands for God to guide their hearts and minds. We will never to do any of this without mistakes. We will forget at times in the frustrating details and logistics of our life together and our work for God’s realm that God has calls us into intimate relationship and think we have to do everything by ourselves. But that’s the thing about God...the thing about God we know in Jesus the Christ....God keeps coming back over and over offering us God’s love and justice, mercy, grace and presence. The words of scripture today are words to live by in our troubled times. Yet they boil down to more than following a list of commandments. Being holy, set apart for God’s work, loving our neighbor as our self, and striving to be perfect, to live into wholeness and maturity because we belong to God boils down to the prayer of Mary Glover. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.” Look around you this week. Look for God’s “least of these.” Look for those who may seem to be your enemy. Look in all the lines your encounter as Mary did in free groceries line. Look for the stranger, the marginalized, the ones who seem so different from you in values and lifestyle that you think you could never be in relationship with them. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through the lines of our lives this week; keep us accountable to you in holiness and wholeness; help us to treat you well.” Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, Associate, Minister, is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. She is also the writer of sermon-stories.com, a lectionary-based story-commentary series. Learn more about Jane Ann here.
Hal preaches on Deuteronomy 30:15-20.
AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado February 5, 2017 Matthew 5:13- 20 * I love teaching the new members’ classes with Hal and Jane Anne because they always help remind me what this work is all about and how special our approach to ministry is at Plymouth. I was reminded this week about what covenant and church means here in the UCC. In the UCC, we covenant to journey together, but do not promise to always agree. Today, I am preaching a sermon that came to me from my discernment with the Holy Spirit. You do not have to agree with me, but I pray that you will listen and find what rings true for your heart. Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the prophesies, visions, awakening of our hearts be good, complete, and new in your sight, O God, our rock and our alarm clock. Amen. The time for complacency is past. The days of blissful ignorance are long gone. The Church’s long and comfortable slumber in the satin sheets and down, feather-filled bedspreads are coming to the dawn of a new day. The comfort found with the mattresses of padded endowments, pillows of unquestioned cultural dominance, and blind sleepwalking through superficial, easy acts of charity are finished. The harsh sound of the alarm clock of God’s call for ethical speech, awakening to a need for virtuous leadership, and prophecy has now rung for the Church. Can you hear it? God’s alarm clock rings loud clear in all of our hearts this morning. Don’t you hear God’s call for action sounding in your soul? It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We might well believe this is the first time God has sounded this great awakening alarm. As Congregationalists, however, this is our legacy and our heritage. Awakenings are our business in the UCC. While we no longer espouse the retrograde theology of the time, we in the United Church of Christ are the direct inheritors of the First Great Awakening that began in Northampton, Massachusetts in the church led by Jonathan Edwards. He was the author of the famous, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” How many of you remember reading this gem in school? The UCC has come a long way since that sermon title, hasn’t it? While today the words of Jonathan Edwards strike us as conservative and awkward, we must recognize that it was revolutionary and even progressive in 1741 when it was written! Edwards was the leader of the Congregationalist “New Lights” or reformers who sought to revive a faith in God’s grace and in active belief. The “Old Lights,” on the other hand, were the Congregationalists who had become more of a complacent political institution running the affairs of small towns in New England than a church of faith and action. They wanted nothing to do with passionate belief. The Old Lights despised Edwards and his First Great Awakening followers’ passion, penchant for grace, outspoken nature, and they preferred that the church go back to sleep as a pacified and placated institution of polished pews and polite picnics. Now, Edwards was very concerned with what he called the “wrath” of God. There is an ugly English word: Wrath. It isn’t even fun to say. This makes me wonder, as progressive Christians today, being woken from our sleep, can we handle our claim on the wrath of God? There is no doubt that God’s anger is Biblical. Even Jesus demonstrates wrath in the temple at those abusing the system by turning over tables in a rage. This is a word that, for many of us including me, brings up what I call Evangelical Church-PTSD from our youths in more conservative and less loving places than Plymouth. The wrath of God is tough to embrace. So how can we re-appropriate and reclaim God’s anger as a righteous and holy wrath? Can we reclaim the legacy of our direct ancestors Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening for a new time and a new need? Why is God waking us up now and calling us all back to the real work of the church? Today, as progressive Christians, we associate the word “wrath” as meaning a hateful or a conservative God, right? The word wrath actually just means “extreme anger” or “vexation.” We must, sisters and brothers, believe that God is capable of extreme anger if we also believe that God is a God of social justice and radical transformation. In the words of our ancestor of Congregationalist faith, Jonathan Edwards, “You had need to consider yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of Sleep; you cannot bear the Fierceness and Wrath of the infinite God…Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come…Let everyone fly out…”[i] Regardless of party affiliation, if we believe that lying and making up fake facts makes God angry, then we must know of God’s wrath. We must reclaim virtue and ethics. If nobody else is going to claim that lying is wrong, then it has to be us. Lying is just as wrong for progressive Christians as anyone. Deceit is no virtue, Amen? If we believe that neglecting the poor of the earth, marginalization the other, and making the poor and hopeless poorer and more hopeless for our own enrichment, wealth, power, and money makes God angry, then we know of God’s wrath. If America First means that everyone else goes last, then God has wrath in store for us. If we believe that belittling others, mocking the weak, discrediting the educated, insulting the hopeless, undermining world peace, or promoting or protecting hatred is a sin (falling short of what God hopes for us), then we must know of God’s wrath. Yes, I said sin. If we believe that discriminating against the LGBTQ community is wrong and enabling the hateful and violent, then we know of God’s wrath. If we believe from the depths of our hearts, our faith, and our theology (belief in the nature and fact of God’s very existence) that fundamentally… sexism, the objectification, abuse, unequal pay, and double standards for women is fundamentally a cultural sin, then you know in your heart what wrath means. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when your spouse, sister, or mother is passed over for a promotion. If we believe that abusive reverse mortgages, predatory scams and financial schemes, rampant elder abuse, underfunded and understaffed nursing homes for those who cannot afford private pay, and disrespect for our elders and elderly is a cultural sin, then you know the wrath of God. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when you cannot get proper care for your parent or sibling. If we believe that having ethics matters and that creating alternative ethics that makes everything okay is wrong, then you feel the core of the wrath of God. If we believe that outlawing immigrants, dehumanizing other religions, rejecting the refugee, and building walls between God’s children based on race and language is a sin, then we know the wrath of God. Maybe we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God anyway for our slumber and complacency. This is not however a time to blame, but it is a time to waken the sleeping Church. That choked up feeling, fear, anger we feel in our guts as all that is good and right and Scared in the world is put at risk is God’s alarm clock inside of us. We feel God’s wrath and it is Holy. As your minster for pastoral care and outreach and mission, these two job responsibilities often merge as these cultural sins cause our own members’ pain. As inadequate healthcare, mental health support, elder abuse, and immigration worries bring us and you to tears, my call here to care for your outreach work and your spiritual care merge. Usually I preach pastoral sermons about the love of God, the peace of God, the acceptance of God through Jesus Christ, but today (While all of that remains true… truer than ever…and my next sermon will probably be again about loving our enemies and I might could even sing again in my next sermon…), I am called by my ordination vow to help us reclaim and awaken to the wrath we know in our hearts comes from God. Wrath is, after all, extreme and Holy, DIVINE vexation, frustration, and anger. If I don’t preach this today, then I am not worthy of the title of The Reverend Jake Joseph. If I don’t speak the truth, take away this title. New Lights, Christians, Church, Friends, Leaders of the Great Awakening… of 2017, today we start here in Fort Collins, Colorado… like what was started in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1730, but this will be the First Progressive Great Awakening. “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to the father.” Salty Christians, what does that mean? Historically, in the text, it means those with a unique flavor who are effective at their mission of preserving and transforming. I especially love this passage because of what else salty means as an adjective in modern English parlance. To be salty means to be irritated and irked… vexed! This is what our scripture is calling from us today! We must harness the wrath of God for the good of the word in order to lead. Other branches of Christianity have given-up their saltiness or capitulated to power, and have therefore given-up their claim on Christ’s message and hidden their flame. Others have decided that Christianity is simply a vehicle for political oppression of the weak and powerless. We are called to be salty, flaming Christians! We must again be new lights in a world of darkness, newly awakened as others are now going or being put to sleep. Now, since we are already talking about progressive Christian wrath and cultural sin, why don’t I also say a word about what Progressive Christian temptation looks like? I mean, might as well go all in! This very likely is a once in a career type sermon. The first temptation I call, “The Snooze button.” I mean, who doesn’t like to go back to sleep? When confronted with a Great Awakening of God, who wouldn’t instinctively hit the snooze button!? I confess that I LOVE the snooze button on my phone alarm. We see this in effect in the Bible with Jonah and his reluctance as a prophet, Paul before his conversation when he was Saul, and even with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (take this cup). SNOOZE! God, can’t we just hit Snooze for another decade or millennia? Can’t we just hot the snooze for the next four years? The first instinct is to ignore the fierce urgency of now, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and LBJ called it. That is a grave temptation. The second temptation I call, “The roll over and pass the buck.” The other temptation, and I can attest to this and am also guilty of it, is when the alarm goes off, you roll over in bed and tell your spouse or partner, “hey honey [yawn] go let the dog out.” Then you pass back out. “Hey honey, go get the kids ready for school.” “Hey honey, go attend to the issue I don’t want to deal with right now,” and I am going to hit the snooze button for a while. Amen? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Does this sound like anyone’s spouse or loved one? This is the temptation, when you see an announcement about a march for social justice or have an idea for action that must be taken (when God sends you an alarm), you email Betsy or me from the Outreach and Mission Board and write with lots of exclamation marks, “Somebody should be doing something about this!!!! The church should organize this march!!! I am indignant that you are not leading this charge!” I have been getting around five ten of these emails a day from you and they all center on the phase, “someone else should, but I am too busy to take any leadership right now.” You should be doing something about this. If I turned all of my attention to organizing all of the marches for you, you would have no pastoral care or communications or sermons from me. So when the alarm goes off, don’t pass the responsibility, but take action and provide leadership. An email to the board or me is a good start, and please keep emailing us, but it is sort of the “roll over and pass the buck” and go back to sleep response to God’s wake-up call. Plymouth, we are called to be new lights once again. The alarm of grace and action that stirred so many years ago is sounding again. We are called to this time for waking-up. We are called to this time of being salty, whole and H.O.LY. irritated Christians for God. It is time for the to waken from our sleep, risk losing our endowment mattresses and our pillows of peace, and our blankets of blandness. The buck stops here. We cannot roll over and say that this morning task is someone else’s responsibility. We cannot hit the snooze button. We are the leaders we have been waiting for and that God, Jesus Christ, the universe has been looking for. It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We are the New Lights for a new time. Shine on. Amen. © 2017 Jake Joseph, all rights reserved. Please contact jake@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit use [i] Jonathan Edwards. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page. |
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