The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Mark 10:17-31 Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ Fort Collins, Colorado
[The sermon was preceded by a “Stewardship Moment” from the Wray family, including three-year-old Faith.] First, thank you so much to Curtis, Jackie, and Faith for your Stewardship family reflection this morning. Truly, my theology tells me that your words were the most important sermon today by the power of testimony. Your story of generosity is the best Word we could receive on giving. This testimony to the power of finding a home in God’s house, especially at Faith’s age, is priceless indeed. Thank you!
As I attempt to add even a small light to the beacon of hope we have already encountered through Jackie and Curtis, will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the offerings of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and the Great Steward of our lives. Amen. When I was Faith’s age of around three years old, I also remember experiencing my very first lesson on Stewardship and the reason for giving. Having a younger sibling helped one learn early the difference between “mine” and “ours” and “hers”! Ironically, early lessons on giving didn’t come from the Church. While I do remember church things like rummage sales and coloring pictures of Bible stories in Sunday School at First Presbyterian Church of Manasquan, New Jersey [I was very bad at coloring in the lines even then], Stewardship and the church are not connected in my early memory. My first formation on Stewardship, giving, philanthropy (“philanthropia” a word that literally means "the essence of being human" or "kindness" or "giving for the love of people"), and collective social responsibility didn’t come from a pulpit or Sunday School classroom. As was the case for most of my generation, early lessons about giving, sharing, and philanthropy came not from church but from PBS and Sesame Street’s The Reverend Big Bird in particular. Sesame Street in the late 80s and early 90s was at the peak of its success and was part of the daily if not hourly lives and early memories of most of us early American Millennials. Yes, my first memory of Stewardship Sermons came from The Rev. Elmo, The Rev. Big Bird, The Rev. Cookie Monster and The Rev. Grouch. For the record, I did consider dressing-up as Big Bird this morning for the sermon, but then decided against it after looking into copyright laws. Maybe next year. At the end of every program, after Elmo and Oscar had signed off, PBS had one more word for us, a ritual of sending, a benediction of gratitude that went and still goes like this: “This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. [Long Three Second Pause] Thank you!”[1] You mean that these friends and educators, Oscar, Elmo, Big Bird, The Count, Reading Rainbow, Ken Burns, NOVA, The American Experience were made possible, realized, enabled, brought to life, animated by someone like me? Someone else is out there like little old me? That is such a powerful, political thought. With our powers combined, we can make things like TV or community happen. Really!? The little phrase, “viewers like you,” had two huge effects! The first was an immediate visualization of all of the viewers “like me” out there. Even as a young gay kid, I remembered this lesson from the fundraising wing of PBS that there are others “like me” out there sitting in front of screens wondering the same thing I was about Bert and Ernie. Are they? Could they be? Viewers like me. The first lesson was that you are not alone as a viewer out there and you are collectively powerful. I believe that subconscious message was probably why this meant so much to so many. What can the church learn about fundraising from PBS? We can learn the power of reminding you that you are in fact the institution. Viewers, worshipers, prayers, contributors, congregation… it is all you! Viewers like you make this possible. Amen! The second lesson is the power of thank you and gratitude. There is a full three second silence before the words “Thank you” flashed across the screen. There is so much power in saying thank you well, at the right time, and repeatedly. And, yes, the church like PBS does need to say thank you every week and every day. Nothing is owed to us as an institution from our members as expected. It is all in the category of miracle of philanthropy: for the love of humanity! Everything is given in freedom and love. So, yes, thank you, no matter what you pledge, for making this possible. A Confession: This is why I run our stamp budget way WAY up over the past four years with thank you notes—thank you! I have a compulsion for writing thank you notes. I believe that Thank you is always worthwhile. “This worship service, FFH and N2N, Habitat, Christian Formation course, sermon, song, organ, choir, building, community, potluck, Open and Affirming lifesaver of a place and theology was made possible by the Holy Spirit, and by contributions to your local church from viewers, people, individuals, faithful few like you. [Long Pause] Thank you!”[2] AMEN! I then dug a little deeper. When I did a search for this phrase, “viewers like you,” on Google, the true impact of that campaign and its value on how we give and understand Stewardship became apparent with over 153 MILLION search results and articles about this PBS impact statement alone. Then I dug a little deeper yet finding several YouTube videos consisting of nothing but the original PBS “Viewers Like You” clip that so many of us grew-up with. The one clip alone that I watched had over 300,000 views and many comments. I read the comments and realized that there is a theological lesson for the church for Stewardship (Philanthropy… for the love of the people as they are) here… an important one. Here are just five of the responses from my generation to this PBS statement: “Who remembers feeling special as [heck] when they would say, ‘thank you!” “I had a huge obsession with this funding since I was in 5th grade.” “I literally looked this up just to watch this. I miss it!” “Every time I hear or see ‘made possible by’ I always think of this.” “Grew up on this.” The Church could be so lucky to have comments like these. Do you hear the sense of belonging, ownership, community, engagement in these quotes? This is about something bigger than Sesame Street. This is what we need for the church! We must recapture the idea that all of this is made possible by you. Our worship, our community, our work, our vision, our, program, our mission, our radical agenda of LOVE of all people here at Plymouth is made possible by people like you. This is all yours. Stewardship isn’t a trap, or pressure pledge campaign. Imagine if, like PBS or NPR, we sang the first half of the hymns this month then abruptly stopped. We will keep playing the other half of the hymn when we receive ten more pledges! No, we don’t do it that way. Rather, it is the enactment of what we are called to do most in this life—commit to something bigger than ourselves and let go of worry. This is an invitation to living. Philanthropy. Speaking of loving people as they are, let’s look at verses 21 and 22: 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money[a] to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving. The man says leading up to verse 21 that he has it all made, but he is still so worried about his possessions. He comes to Jesus and claims that he has already finished God’s Ten Commandments and all other to do lists. Does the Scripture say that Jesus said, as it is often misremembered by some lucrative ministries that you should sell what you own and give all of the money to me…to Jesus? This text has been misused by the church to mean that Jesus wants the man to give his money to Jesus. Really, Jesus is saying that he is inviting the man to follow him and to not worry about his belongings. Jesus’ loving request is an invitation to greater discipleship rather than a demand. Jesus isn’t asking for the man’s money. Jesus is offering a sense of belonging in his movement regardless of material possessions. Jesus looked at him, really saw the man, and he loved him… “you only lack one thing.” If you say you have really done it all already, then here is a challenge. I don’t know about you, but I am not yet at the spiritual point where that man claims was! He only had one more thing left to do—sell all his possessions and follow Jesus. Boy, I have a long way to go before I claim that I need a bigger to do list from God. Most of us will never get to that point, but we too are invited to be part of the solution, the cause, the movement with Jesus. Viewers like you…wherever you are! I have one more thing in closing to add as a critique or further wisdom for the church and PBS/ NPR. For years PBS and NPR and the Church liked to use the language of “sustaining gifts.” How many of you have heard an ask for “sustaining gifts?” Most of us, right! The phrase “sustaining” means fundamentally that we have been looking for gifts that are adequate enough to maintain the status quo. By its very definition, sustaining is a conservative, life support, status quo sort of effort. Looking at the world around us today, how many of us want to sustain what we see as the status quo environmentally, economically, socially, politically, or ecclesiastically? [Congregation responds.] For generations, Stewardship has been done in terms of sustaining gifts—gifts that are offered in the hope of an outcome of the status quo being maintained, managed, or sustained. Two years ago, when Obama was still president, I was invited to spend a Saturday at a regional HUD[3] [Housing and Urban Development] meeting about the direction of housing and urban development around the world, and my entire understanding of what the goal of Stewardship of resources should be for governments, churches, and non-profits changed radically forever. I was offered a new framework. One of the speakers was the dynamic director of the Department of Local Affairs Office of Resiliency at that time. I remember vividly as she explained the difference between a sustainability framework and a resiliency framework. “The Department of Local Affairs' Colorado Resiliency Office supports and helps empower Colorado communities in building stronger, safer and more resilient in the face of natural disasters and other major challenges. The CRO coordinates overarching recovery and resiliency activities by collaborating with numerous multi-disciplinary local, state, federal, and private partners in setting priorities, leveraging resources, communicating transparently and delivering measurable results to shape an adaptable and vibrant future.”[4] Isn’t Colorado cool? In the face of the adaptive change in our state and world and climate, our state understands that sustainability and sustaining gifts is no longer the way to problem solve. We must think bigger, reconceptualize what our viewership, participation means. It is only viewers, Plymouth members like us, like you, like we that can make this institution resilient. Cleveland and the National UCC won’t save us. The National Council of Churches won’t do it. Our Association or Conference won’t do it for us. It is up to us to make this place resilient. Imagine our Stewardship this way: Plymouth Congregational Church coordinates overarching spiritual and community resiliency activities by collaborating with numerous multi-disciplinary local, state, federal, and private partners, non-profits, and members in setting priorities, leveraging resources, communicating transparently and delivering measurable results to shape an adaptable and vibrant future for the sake of God’s Realm on Earth and in peoples’ lives.”[5] Jesus calls us to not just give to the church but to transform our own lives. This is the same message that my generation received from PBS’ ending to Sesame Street—this is bigger than just you and thank you for being part of it. Philanthropy—the love of people—takes resiliency now. Resiliency is not about saving what was, as our state has already recognized. It is about creating a future in a time that doesn’t even see or value tomorrow. It is no longer the time for sustaining gifts, but now is the time for gifts of resiliency. Resiliency gifts are for a vibrant institution that is comprised of none other than us, than you, than me… than we. We are the resilient ones. It is time for me to return to my Jersey Shore roots and learn to color outside of the lines of traditional sustainability again. Today is the day for us to give and vision a time in need of resilient communities. I think that would finally make The Rev. Big Bird proud! This program was made possible by the Holy Spirit, and by contributions to your church from viewers, believers, the faithful like you. Thank you. Amen. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TexDW6nEhgU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TexDW6nEhgU [3] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-trending-062016.html [4] https://www.coresiliency.com [5] https://www.coresiliency.com 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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The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph As a minister, it is of paramount importance to know the difference between a sermon (like what one might do on a Sunday morning) and a memorial service homily! A sermon on a Sunday morning is a reflection primarily grounded in the Word, Biblical narrative, and Scripture. A memorial service homily likewise has Scripture, but the Scripture, the sacred text, the stories and narratives that give a funeral homily life don’t come from the Bible or from Christian tradition. Rather, our Scripture today is the life, the love, and the legacy of the one we are remembering: Geri Stutheit. Today, we reflect on the lived Scripture of a life well lived. We remember the life, laughter, smile, grace, and love of Geri Stutheit, and honestly I cannot imagine a better Scripture to reflect on for this or any day than the life Geri led. The first verse of today’s Scripture According to Geri is a verse about her love of nature. Happily may I walk… may it be beautiful before me. May it be beautiful behind me. May it be beautiful below me. In beauty it is finished. This Scripture of Geri begins in the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming as one of Hildred and Loyd’s five children. As a family, they traveled together through Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park where her father worked as a park ranger. It was in these early years that Geri found a deep love for the mountains and cultivated her eye and keep perception of the beauty in this world. Her love of nature, the mountains, and for God’s Creation is a narrative that played out throughout Geri’s life. On the walls of her home, the homes of friends and family, and down the corridor of learning in the North Wing of this church, one may find testimony of this sustaining gift in Geri’s life. Her artwork and connection with beauty is profoundly felt. For Geri, art wasn’t just something commercial or the process of applying paint to a canvas. Rather, Geri’s canvas was her whole life. Her paint was her connection with others and the relationships she nurtured. Geri’s art legacy exists in the art of living. Art. The second verse of Geri’s life, and the most important verse, is her vocation and dedication to her family. It is in this part of her life that we hear the resonances of Scripture: 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. Wil, for almost 70 years you and Geri walked together in Christian love, marriage, and as parents to four beloved children: Brian, Paul, Kendy, and Lynn. This love that you shared and that was a Hallmark of Geri’s life and philosophy of loving never ends and will be with you always. Geri was an activist, an artist, a friend, a favorite parishioner… but most of all she was mom and sister and daughter and spouse and family. Love. There is a third verse of Scripture according to Geri that connects with what Hal read to us from the Book of James. 22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves[b] in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. Geri’s sense of right and wrong, her sense of what her Christian faith called her to do, her internal courage to stand-up for the LGBTQ community, for those in need, volunteering for non-profits, working for women’s rights, the environment and gun control. Geri cared deeply in the same way that Jesus showed us to care about this realm. Her whole life, and especially here at Plymouth UCC, Geri was not one to simply talk about doing things, talk about making changes, talk about impacting the world for good. No, Geri was a doer of the word. This is the Gospel of Life According to Geri Stutheit: Love of God and Church community, Love of Family, Love of Nature, Action for Others, Dedication to cause and conscience. She didn’t just talk the talk, but Geri also walked the walk. Action. Three verses of Scripture this afternoon: Art, Love, and Action. What we can see immediately today is the impact of Geri’s love for her family. And so it is with God’s love for us: as Paul wrote: “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Even if we aren’t perfect spouses, mothers, siblings, grandparents, and children –- nothing can separate us from the love of God. It’s kind of reassuring to know that in spite –- or because –- of our imperfections, God is always there reaching out a hand, yearning for relationship with us. We continue to hear the voices of those we’ve lost over the years. The cherished folk in our lives continue to live on in us and through us day by day. The advice they give us stays with us. The love they showed to us continues through future generations. None of us knows exactly what the next world looks like. But do we do have the gospel hope that we will get to be with those who went before us again… and you know—I bet that Geri is painting or smiling and bringing joy to everyone today in the Realm of God. Geri has left us in this world, but her legacy and love remain with us in this place today and in the years that will follow. None of us know exactly what comes next of course. But God has brought us this far; why wouldn’t God bring us along on the next step? Geri was never alone at birth, she was not alone in life, she was not alone in death (Geri’s husband and children were with her), and she is not alone in life beyond death. Geri had a saying that is printed in your bulletin along with some of her favorite quotes and prayers. “What’s important in life,” she would often say, “is not what you have, but what you give.” Geri believed this. She believed in a Gospel of giving, of openness, and of beauty. Art, Love, and Action. May the Scripture and the memory of Geri, her love, her presence, her teaching, her love of the mountains and rivers, her love for Wil and her children, and her life be a blessing to all of you both today and in all your tomorrows. This is the sort of Scripture… living Scripture some ministers only get to preach on once in a career—so may we all learn to live and love and believe in something like Geri did. Amen. 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.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Thorny Theology Themes Series Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Fort Collins, Colorado *Preceding the sermon, the Time with Children was a telling of the Disney story of Frozen and singing of Let it Go. Our hymns in the service are referenced in the sermon: There is a Balm in Gilead and Nearer My God to Thee. From the earliest advent of storytelling, the question of salvation, deliverance, renewal, and liberty have all been at the root of our storytelling: from the Vedas of Hinduism, Sacred stories in the Bible, to those of The Iliad, folktales around the world, and even Disney movies, the question of salvation is at the root of our spiritual/ethical discourse as humans. Our Scripture today comes from the Gospel of John which was written by people [The Johannine Community] who didn’t actual know Jesus as human but were many years later, like us, trying to make sense out of this religion without the founder present in person. They were a persecuted people, threatened daily with total destruction by the empire. Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of night in fear (a story only mentioned in John). Nicodemus is understood by scholars to represent a group of people rather than an individual. He gets at the root of salvation: it is something deeply personal, a coming-out process from the night, wholeness, and also the idea of rebirth for all. This story of salvation Jesus tells Nicodemus is both deeply personal and also completely communal. Since I am about to preach on one of the most controversial and sensitive topics in all of religion and humanity, I really need your prayers. Will you pray with me? God, I ask for your blessing and assurance before preaching knowing that all of my words are inadequate to describe your love, completely insufficient to explain your grace, and unable to fully announce your salvation. Therefore, O God, in urgency I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts may be good and pleasing to you, our Rock and our Salvation. Amen. In 2013, I was in the middle of my Systematic Theology coursework in seminary. When we got to the section about Soteriology (The Study of The Doctrine of Salvation) it was time for spring break. I left on my annual pilgrimage to Boston to visit my half-brother and my two wonderful nieces still thinking about salvation and its meaning. No sooner had I arrived in their home and sat down than my nieces both, simultaneously, started singing loudly at me! Let it Go… Let it Go…! They were extolling, laughing, and preaching a new “gospel” of their new favorite thing in the whole world: Disney’s Frozen. A story that on the surface was filled with all of the usual Disney tropes of princesses, talking snowmen, assorted villains, and a happily ever after. As I listened closer, I realized that this was no normal children’s movie. In fact, I am convinced that it is Disney’s MEA CULPA to the universe for all of their previous work. In Frozen, Disney subverts almost all of its traditional characters, values, genders, and norms in one film. **SOILER ALERT** First, the price “charming” is the villain with political motivation for his courtship and declarations of love. The closest thing to a “Wiseman” is a talking snowman named Olaf with a penchant for warm hugs and melting, and the “witch” who causes winter to overcome her realm, who lives in the ominous North Mountain [The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe], and who conjures monsters… is actually the one being oppressed, isolated, and denied her true self. It is the winter witch character who needs saving. It is a story of salvation, of coming out of the closet about one’s true self, about finding true authenticity, and about the empowerment and power of sisterhood—without help from men. The men are mostly either villains or in the way. It is about the complexity of the categories of good and evil. As I listened and learned the “Gospel of Frozen” from my 8- and 10-year-old Jewish nieces—the most important part was that salvation, rebirth is something that comes from finding truth and acceptance from both inside and outside of self. It is something that starts within, but it requires family and friends to affirm and make whole. Salvation in Frozen is both personal affirmations, but it also takes others allowing us to live publicly in affirmed spaces. When she sings the song, Let it Go, Elsa comes-out to herself and finds empowerment… but that self-affirmation is only the start of her isolation and an outward winter. Salvation is both personal and social. Salvation needs community social justice, but it also requires true inside work, affirmation, rebirth with God. This is a little different from the salvation narratives many of us grew-up with: Have you been or are you saved? Have you asked Jesus Christ into your heart to be your personal Lord and Savior? [Evangelicals are good at consistency and regularity of elevator speeches.] Are you born again? For many of us Progressive Christians, either born into churches like Plymouth and/or especially those of us converted to the mainline from more evangelical or fundamentalist backgrounds like mine in the Assemblies of God “The A.O.G.,” these phrases are more than thorny theological themes. They are theological-PTSD trigger words. Amen? The wounds of picking the thorns of those theologies out of our hands [gesture and gaze down to look like picking thorns out of hands and chest.], feet, ears, eyes, and especially our hearts [Pause and look around] … remain forever. What those of you who grew-up in progressive theologies like ours at Plymouth might not really understand is how long, decades even lifetimes, it takes for the anxiety and fear associated with questions about personal salvation to dissipate. What if they were right? What if when I said my salvation prayer, I didn’t do it right? What is what they said was true? To convert from a Christianity focused on personal salvation and that worldview (salvation vs. damnation) to Plymouth and the UCC’s communal or societal “social justice” or “Social Gospel” understanding of salvation is a challenge. It is a true change of religion…a rebirth. This is because we have been offered, consciously and subconsciously, a dichotomy and dual worldview. Either you are in the Christian Camp of Personal Salvation and Personal Faith through Jesus Christ as a way to avoid damnation… OR a Christianity based in Social Justice, Communal Culpability, Social Sin, Social Gospel, and the example of Jesus as a road map for living in communities where we seek heaven while living. In the former, Jesus Christ is the vehicle of salvation to carry us through life and death; while in the latter, his life and example are simply a divine roadmap for us to attempt to follow for salvation in this life. Biblically, we find evidence for both interpretations. May I suggest, my dearly beloved, that one may be fundamentalist on either side of this divide? Are we fundamentalist social gospel Christians? Perhaps, the best understanding of salvation falls somewhere in the middle. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”[b] 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, [I like it better in the KJV… VERILY…] I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.[c] 11 “[Verily], I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you[g] do not receive our testimony. This passage from the Gospel of John is used by Evangelicals as the proof text for a born-again theology. There is a sense of being born in a new way through Spirit when we come into a place of faith. There is also in it a deep sense of community: “We speak… (not I speak) of what we know and testify to what we have seen.” This text is both personal and communal. I bought a house and inherited a pet that bites: a rose garden with red English roses, yellow, and pink roses. On the first day tending my roses, for the first time in my life, a plant bit me. Still, after a lot of practice, I regularly get bitten by these thorny, beautiful, symbolic flowers. We may not have the roses, the flowers without the thorns. While our Social Justice/Social Gospel salvation is mostly roses, it too has thorns. While a personal salvation understanding has its many thorns (which many of us know all too well), I have learned to also embrace the roses of the theology I grew-up with. So, briefly, let’s compare and contrast the roses and thorns of both ways of seeing salvation: Progressive/UCC Salvation Theology and Evangelical Salvation Theology: Roses of the UCC: Starting with the UCC: When we say social justice or social gospel in the United Church of Christ, we are talking about our soteriology—our theology of salvation. Systematically, we progressive, Mainline Christians interpret the Bible as an arc of narrative and human experience in community working itself out in the here and now (this lifetime). We look for heaven in this life and salvation in how to treat people and the planet. It is expressed in freedom, and liberation from systems of oppression. We do this through our participation in God’s arc of justice, equality, and improving living conditions for all people. What are the roses of our theology? The rose of this theology is that we live this life fully, Amen!? For us, the word salvation is a synonym of wholeness, of liberation, or authentic life on a communal or corporate level. We do tend to be corporate. At best, we do not, as a matter of theology, focus on individual behavior or values as problematic or sinful. The roses are beautiful in the UCC! We really believe that we can make this planet into God’s Realm here and now. Wow! That is truly beautiful and remarkable—something to own and recognize. We can save people through living authenticity. We can make salvation come through reconciling communities and learning our history and claiming it and trying to make it better. We find roses of the Salvation of Jesus Christ in the UCC as a salvation from meaninglessness. God gives us purpose and judgement. Jesus is our salvation from a lack of purpose. If you don’t believe me or think you need more saving, ask the Nominating Committee. We can find more purpose for you. This is a communal view of salvation. Salvation is worked out through how we act as communities over time. Deliverance is a gift from God, but we are called to be Christ in the world building God’s realm here and now: feet, hands, and presence. A rose for us is that we are empowered by our theology to seek a better world, make change, be educated, and to never stop trying for better society. UCC Thorns: But we too have thorns, friends! Our thorns are that we can focus so much on the communal, the reconciliation of communities, and societal sins and ills in Washington DC and Denver (We enjoy finger pointing at the lies and societal sins of others in capitols without remembering our own internal untruths and lies.) that we forget about the ministry of people with their real lives and real need for personal healing and hope. Likewise, our sense of God and God’s salvation power gets tangled up and confused with our own works and actions to save the world. I call this one “The Tillichian Thorn” after Paul Tillich[1]. This thorn is that we forget that we and our denominations are not God. As your pastoral care minister, I know that people are miserable, alone, wrestling with life. Our message of “work harder” and to give more to change the world only works to a degree before it too can destroy lives from a sense of powerlessness or failure. What is wrong with me? Why isn’t our work changing the systems? Does this mean God isn’t real? In our theology it is also much harder to start over. There are really no fresh starts, no new beginnings in the UCC. Everything is too communally, historically, and politically situated for that. We all own the burdens and sins of the past of our communities without hope of redemption in our lives—because salvation isn’t up to one person to solve. Salvation is generational work for us. Our thorn is that we are all bearers of the sins of our communities over the eons. Finally, the saddest part, the thorn that hurts me as a former Evangelical and former hospice and hospital chaplain is that for many within our UCC theology of salvation—we don’t dream of, imagine, and hope for true tangible reunions with our beloved and with God and Jesus after death. If you grew up in the UCC, a vague sense of afterlife is commonplace, but it is hard for converts. While we might hint at it as possible…perhaps…maybe, we don’t claim that hope in the same way—and that is our loss. Mostly we picture floating energy masses. We don’t imagine a hug and a recognizable embrace from an embodied loved one, a son, a mother, a mentor. We are so embodied in life as progressives, yet we don’t allow ourselves to imagine God’s incarnate power after death. Our post-mortem imaginations are super boring in the UCC and our after-death expectations usually revolve around hoping that its peaceful! We set the bar low for God’s possibilities. That is perhaps the biggest thorn. Salvation is not part of our thinking about death. We speak more in terms of transitions than salvations. Okay, now for the Evangelical reading of salvation thorns and roses. Evangelical Thorns: Many of us, including myself, are here today because of the all too deadly and painful thorns of evangelical salvation theology. Because these theologies focus on the individual person, it has developed a set of “good and bad” behaviors conveniently supportive of institutions and The Patriarchy. These rules define the need for this salvation. Yes, I said it—many of the traditional “sins” can be traced to political power, especially Victorian norms, and its maintenance by certain social groups over history: white, male, straight, able-bodied, and married. For some of us, that means Bible as weapon used to abuse and destroy lives and to keep others in line. Love the sinner, hate the sin. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that. As a result, two more thorns exist for this understanding of salvation. One is a resistance to modern, good, intellectual Biblical interpretation that casts doubt on their ancient list of sins. That list is too precious to their power to question even if it has little to do with their core faith. We know from text study and history that many of the things called “sins” by Evangelicals are modern superimpositions on an ancient text. Recognizing intellectuals challenges their entire system of power. Lastly, Evangelical salvation is so focused fundamentally on the individual that they become blind to the great social sins, political expediency, and they ignore whole parts of the Bible that are crystal clear on social orders for equity, care of widow, refugee, orphan, and communal response. The Evangelical Roses: The evangelicals have a rose, however, something sacred and wonderful. They carry a beautiful rose of a deep sense of God’s presence, comfort, and work in their lives. They live with their ears close to their hearts and observe life with keen interest looking for communication from God. For this reason, while sins are easy, mistakes are almost impossible for Evangelicals. Conversely… for the Mainline Progressives mistakes are easy and ridiculed (whispered about as “poor strategic planning…”) while sins are hard or impossible. This shows where we locate power. For an Evangelical, there are no mistakes. This makes them much better and more faithful risk takers. Try, try and try again with God and there is no wrong. Even a sin can be used by God for learning and good. While us liberals use the word “intentionality” and “intentional living” like it’s going out of style, the Evangelicals actually do it. God is active, and they are attentive to details like Sherlock Holmes detectives. While many cradle Mainliners like to ride this off as “fake” or “pretense,” I can tell you that the Evangelicals I know live that reality in authenticity and conviction. Let’s see what God will do? God is Good… God is great! Those are some upbeat and honest phrases Evangelicals utter when they are at their theological best. They are very good at intentional living. Finally, the biggest and best rose is a rose that triggers many of us progressives to tune out and run away right when we should be leaning in. They have is this “born-again” language about Salvation that comes from our passage today in John 3. It is the language of rebirth. What the Evangelicals mean when they say “born again” is a fresh start in faith and in life. They mean a new life in Christ. They have an expansive understanding of what is possible in restarting life in faith that we rarely have. When someone tries to tell you their born-again story, listen, because they are trying to share something intimate… akin to a coming-out story. This is why they are so much more effective at running 10-step programs, at running prison ministries, running rehab programs, and ministering to those with economic diversity and hardship. They meet people when they actually wish that they could be reborn. Statistically, as privileged upper middle-class churches, the progressive church can rarely imagine wanting a rebirth—because life is good. We don’t minister to people at the bottom of their lives because our theology doesn’t offer as much. Because in the Mainline, we focus on big systems and social sins (big solutions and movements) …we are good at giving money, starting programs, etc. We write letters or are in DC lobbying from the top to create better policy and improve the prison systems from the top, while the Evangelicals are in the cells changing lives from the bottom. Can’t we say that both theologies are necessary and maybe part of God’s work? While the Mainline has roses in systems, the Evangelicals are really good at and have roses of giving people at the lowest, hardest points in their personal lives hope at starting over from the point of birth. It is never too late for God. It is never too late—no matter what systems of oppression you were born into. Never too late. Friends, in seminary in Georgia and as a geriatric hospital chaplain (CPE), I had to find a way to speak to the born-again Christians around me. I found that in silently naming my coming out experience of personal liberation as a moment when I was born again… saved. It was my Elsa moment of admitting that I had a gift, a blessing, a skill in this life to celebrate rather than hide. Hiding it was only causing winter for myself and others. Yes, I have been born again many times—once in first grade at Heritage Christian School down at Prospect and Ellis (and, yes, it was a powerful moment of love and grace), and again in high school in my family’s living room saying, “I’m gay and God loves me!” I was born again when you ordained me and renamed me “Reverend” with a laying on of hands. Rebirths through God’s power for wholeness are endless. How many born-again moments have you had in your life when God offered you a fresh life? Do you need one? I want to tell you of what I know… and testify to what I have seen. We are shown a way for us to hold our progressive theology, our social Gospel, but to also honor the good that a more personal understanding of salvation holds. Our language of coming out and authenticity is compatible with the theology of being born again. The Evangelicals won’t make that translation, nor do we need to aggregate them by telling them we are translating into our language—but it is a way to reinterpret what they intend by that salvation language. We can have conversations about salvation theology with Evangelicals—if we translate their language into ours. The only difference is for us, we believe that sin means falsehood both in society and in our personal reality, and we also believe that we can be born again (start over) many times in our lives rather than just once. Coming Out as gay and being reborn in Christ are similar experiencing of claiming wholeness and promising to move forward in love with God and Christ. If we can be the church to name the common human experience of both of these, we will have a rose garden for all people. Forcing the Gospel and Scripture 100% into either communal social justice or 100% personal salvation will cause a winter for us either inside or outside. This is Elsa’s lesson in Frozen. Why can’t we believe in social and personal deliverance and community possibility? When they translated the title song from Frozen called "Let it Go" from English into French, they had a problem. “Let it go” is too long in French for the tune. So, instead they translated it into: "Liberated, Delivered/Saved… I won’t lie anymore. Liberated, Delivered/Saved… it is decided that I am leaving!” [More information on translating this song.] Libérée, délivrée (Liberated, Delivered/Saved) Je ne mentirai plus jamais (I will never lie again!) Libérée, délivrée (Liberated, Delivered/Saved) C'est décidé, je m'en vais (It is decied… I’m leaving) Et me voilà ! (And here I am!) Oui, je suis là ! (Yes, I am there!) Libérée, délivrée (Liberated, Delivered/ Saved) Le froid est pour moi, le prix de la liberté (The cold is for me the price of freedom.)[2][3] Frozen is about what happens when we find acceptance of self but don’t follow that up with claiming the gifts of community and family. We might know who we are, but the process of salvation for Elsa is frozen until her sister Anna comes to let her know that she is loved in her new identity and power. Salvation, friends, is both personal relationship with God and self, but as today’s Scripture shows us, it also requires the “we.” May we always be un-fundamentalists from every perspective. Amen. [1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Tillich [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQP9XZc2Y_c [3] Translate by Jake Miles Joseph 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. The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-15 August 5, 2018 Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our great chef and manna baker—who provides in the wilderness. Amen. Isn’t it interesting when the stories we remember from when we were all kids as “Bible Stories” have almost nothing to do with the actual stories we find printed in the Bible? This happens so often! Christmas, Easter, Noah, Jonah… all are not what we expect when we actually read Scripture, but today’s story of manna particularly deviates from the actual text in the way we popularly tell it. When we think of the idea of “manna,” we think of God’s blessings, of easy bread falling (pre-baked) from the sky, and we think of something appetizing, delicious, and obvious. We tell ourselves a story about ease, about answered prayers, and about grateful community living in abundance. All of these things come to mind with the utterance of the word “manna.” This is the myth that has been derived from our Scripture this morning: a myth of contentment and the image of the manna story looking something like a Panera Bakery counter. Croissants, banquettes, and pastries… O my! When we think of manna we think of fulfillment, but the real story is a lot less delicious. There is blessing and there is abundance, but it comes at a cost and it comes in the form of a surprise from God. God rarely behaves in the way we prescribe or expect. God loves surprises. The reality of the story goes more like this: God leads the people out of servitude in Egypt and into an extended period of discernment, of wondering, of aimlessness and starvation (physical and spiritual) in the wilderness. This feels like a betrayal of the people by God. Have any of you ever felt betrayed by God? All of us have had that experience in some form or time. A job/ opportunity that wasn’t what you expected? A spouse who didn’t live up to covenant? A family member who died too young? A home that was flooded out or burnt down? That is the kind of feeling of “WHY GOD!!?” that we are talking about today. The Israelites have a rightful sense of frustration with God, and so they cry out for meat, for bread, and really for survival. They wonder what all of this freedom and liberation business is about anyway when it only leads to death in the dessert! What is the point of being free is there is nothing to eat, no help, no sustenance? Amen? Often, when we tell this story as a happy narrative, we get mad at the congregation of the Israelites for daring to complain so soon after liberation, but in my reading of the story—they had every right to complain to Aaron (their minister) and to Moses (their tour guide). While we cast ourselves as Aaron and Moses in the story with a righteous indignation about the complaining, really, we are more like the crowd than we know! All of us for our own good, deeply personal reasons. It is only human to cry out, “Why God?” What in your life needs a surprise from God right now? What makes you cry out, “Why God?” We are all Israelites in this story. The people need food, need support, need manna. They took a leap of faith to leave Egypt, the Status Quo, the norm, “the way its always been done,” and now the new adventure isn’t providing better results as promised. They are tempted to turn back. The word found three times in this text, translated as “complaining” in Hebrew also means murmuring or nervous talking. If read in Hebrew, one can almost hear the people shaking. They are literally quaking in fear. What we find in this story is a people in the midst of confusion, starvation, and estrangement from God… all for good, valid reason. The repetition of that one word shows us that through Biblical form analysis. The repetition makes the text itself seem unstable. We really shouldn’t blame them for being upset, for that is where it gets interesting! What is God’s response to our worries, our fears of change, our murmuring for our lives? How does God respond? Does God simply end the time of discernment and lead them out of the wilderness. No, God provides nutrition in the time and place of the unknown. This is where we start to learn something. Aaron and Moses intervene with God, and God sends manna from heaven to sustain the people in the wilderness. Let’s look to the text because this is the part I want us to focus on this morning in our own time of great change: “In the evening, quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew [slime] around the camp. [If I didn’t know better, I would think that we were reading an excerpt from the screenplay for movies like The Fog or The Mist… its creepy!! We can call this a hermeneutic of Stephen King.] Anyway, “When the layer of slime lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flakey substance, as fine as the frost on the ground. When the people saw it, they said to one another, “What is it??” [Can be read either in a grossed-out voice or a fearful, trembling voice.] For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” Bon Appetit! O Manna! What is it? For they did not know what it was? Friends, manna, relief, and God’s blessings in the wildernesses of our lives never take the form we ask for or expect. Additionally, the manna (the relief the new sustenance for the new emerging church) we are looking for might already be all around us, but we haven’t yet identified it as the bread of God. We haven’t named it manna yet. The solutions are here already, but we haven’t named them as our manna. For example, we haven’t claimed the manna of the heart, mission-driven patterns, change-focused character of the millennial generation as manna yet. It has that potential energy to change us for good and the better! We likewise haven’t leveraged the full potential of data systems and online communication yet as manna for a new and different reality of church. Sometimes, manna looks to us, at first, like bird (poop) shit. Yes, that is what the story shows—sometimes manna is not at all what we want—like an election that really wakes us up and alerts us to the seriousness of our cultural issues and apathy, like a rain on a wedding day that eventually yields rainbows, like church pledging pattern changes that makes us pay more attention to theology and mission than history and status quo. Manna is what we get -- not what we ask for. This is such an important theological lesson for our time—maybe the most important! God is alive and active with us, but the manna we seek (the relief, the blessing, the affirmation, the resources) are already here, and we simply need to name and claim them as such. This is a tough time and a difficult process. The manna might not be easy to swallow or understand, but the needs of the people of God are being met in new and unexpected ways. Here at Plymouth that means new relationship with the campus next door. It means new apartments being built all around us. It means seeing the changes in attendance as something to celebrate as church goes from a Sunday social sport to an everyday lived practice. The manna is here, and it is abundant, but it isn’t like the bread in Egypt. It isn’t the flesh pots of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s of the church. It is new and looks and tastes different. Personally, as individuals, this might look like God having brought you a new friendship (potential manna) that still needs an infusion of time and care to nurture into the sustenance it might become for you. Institutionally, it might look like the process next month of implementing the new database portals for the congregation members. One more note is that manna is also mentioned in the Book of Numbers in chapter 11. The story in The Book of Numbers picks up the story a little bit later after the Israelites have been eating the manna for a while, and it reads, “ We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; 6 but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. 7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin. 8 The people went around and gathered it, ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, then boiled it in pots and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. 9 When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna would fall with it.” So, two more lessons about manna that are different from our childhood remembrances. First, manna isn’t always exciting, and it isn’t delicious, but most importantly--manna and blessings sometimes come with hard work. Manna is like buying something awesome from Ikea, but then learning that you have to assemble the darn thing. Batteries not included. In Numbers we learn that the manna wasn’t pre-baked. In fact, the manna was simply a ground coriander-like powder meal on the ground that took the work of the community [again, the full and engaged effort and work of the community to turn from the preliminary blessing of God into something actually sustaining and useful.] Manna won’t save us, even in abundance, unless we do our part to make it into food. Let me make a prophesy of sorts: God is sending manna again in our time. We are living in the age of the second coming of the gift of manna. The technologies that connect people offer so much blessing for community and the Gospel, but it won’t be easy. Thanks be to God! We are living in the age of manna, but the blessing and renewal and hope of God in our time and in the time of children and our children’s children won’t be easy, it won’t always be tasty, and sometimes it might appear unappetizing. It takes work to transform the grains and flour from heaven into a bread of community and communion. It takes work of everyone living with purpose to overcome the wilderness places in all of our individual and collective lives. It takes coordinated work to identify, transform, and stomach the changes in our world and to bear witness to those changes as potential blessings rather than curses. What is it when the nominating committee asks you to join or chair a board of the church? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! What is it when a new opportunity emerges in you or your spouse or partner’s life? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! What is it when we are asked to connect with the campus in new ways that change our normal relationships? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! What is it when the church launches a new online portal for the church database (as we will be doing in September)? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! What is it when a new and challenging neighbor moves in next to your own home [and immediately violate all of the HOA covenants]? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! What is it when you are forced into conversations with conservative evangelicals or fundamentalists? It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat! Isn’t it interesting when the stories that have become so familiar to us, still have something new and different, weird, and life affirming to teach us? It is weird, but O Manna, it is also reassuring that God provides manna yet today, yet in our midst, yet in ways we are still striving to understand! Oh Manna, I know, feel, and sense God is sending manna in this place here and now. Look around, find it, taste it, and live into the promises of God. What is it? It is the gift of community grounded in the Word of God. Amen. 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.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Psalm 24 Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Fort Collins, Colorado Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good, pleasing, and whole to you, O God, our rock and our swim coach. Amen. We live in a shallow world that is scared of the deep-end of life! Our world these days is terrified of truths about death and mortality, about the emotions we all share as humans, about the deep places: rage, fear, frustration, joy, confusion, wonder. The real stuff is out there, friends, in the deep-end of life, yet culture, technology, even how we travel in our isolated cars in this country (how most of us got to church this morning), all drive us towards the shallow, self-centered-end of the wading pool. Nobody really wants to dive off the high dive anymore into the mysteries of life, of love, and of wonder. We are scared of the water. It is just too dangerous to be real with each other. What if we don’t have all of the answers? What if we might be seen as vulnerable? What if we make a mistake somewhere between the diving board and the surface of the water? What if we embarrass ourselves with loud laughter, with tears, or with honest confessions in public? What if someone doesn’t like us? No… no, it is safer to just stay in the shallow, thin, barely moving waters of the easy side, shallow end, of the pool. Learning to swim spiritually and emotionally in the complexity of life and death and real feelings isn’t even necessary anymore anyway. We don’t have to actually live life to observe it. We let the characters on TV and on Netflix do that “Olympic swimming” work of “feeling” life for us on the screen instead. It is safer to be an observer of others in the pool than to jump in ourselves. We stay in the bleachers either cheering or booing. We can just watch the world swim by on Facebook, on Instagram, or from the safety of our couches—we can watch the world treading water. But is that a Christian response to the deepness and mystery and wonder and possibilities of the gift of living? No. Christians, Baptism is a deep-end sort of promise to God as community. It is a promise that springs from the deepest founts of our souls. It is a promise to jump in the pool together. It is a promise for when life is way over our heads. It is waterborne promise to accompany, to provide the swimming lessons, and to dive off the high dive of life with each other. Moreover, we are the lifeguards for one another in times of struggle. As a community preforming and administering the Baptism, we likewise promise, to each other, and the children brought to us to share in this ancient rite, to stay with each other in hope and togetherness. Likewise, and most importantly, God through Jesus the Christ also accompanies us as our swim coach for this swim team called Plymouth and wider Olympics of the Church Universal. We are not alone in the deep-end or on the high dive. We can rest assured that Jesus is with us. Baptism historically and in most Christian traditions represents being buried with Christ when descending into the water and then resurrecting into a promise of eternal life with Christ. While this can be seen as morbid of part of traditional theology, there is a kernel of something reassuring and beautiful in that image isn’t there? There is something worth keeping. We are raised with Christ in Baptism: This is why Baptisms traditionally happen on Easter Sunday. In our progressive tradition, we think of this in a broader sense than that older theology of a sacrificial atonement and burial. We think of it as a promise of God to be with us through every step of life and into death but also the community’s call to stick with each other through the good, the bad, the ugly. Amen? It may not surprise you to learn that our denomination’s official statement on the question of, “What does Baptism Signify?” is only two sentences long! “The sacrament of baptism is an outward and visible sign of the grace of God. Through baptism a person is joined with the universal church, the body of Christ. In baptism, God works in us the power of forgiveness, the renewal of the spirit, and the knowledge of the call to be God's people always.”[1] This is one of the gifts and beautiful things about the United Church of Christ: our simplicity in explaining what we believe. We are sort of the United Church of Elevator Speeches. In Baptism, in joining each other and Christ in the waters of Baptism, we claim a new and deeper connection, an ongoing renewal, and an understanding of our sense of purpose to be God’s people and to do God’s work of justice and inclusion in this short life on earth. In Baptism, according to the UCC, we are given a promise of purpose, of hope, and of togetherness. This is indeed a great gift from God. [So many are looking for a sense of purpose these days, and Baptism really is the root of that sense for us.] Why talk about this symbol like Baptism on a Sunday when so much preaching is needed on social justice issues in the world and in the news? What a deep-end time we live in! Because we are in a time, friends, when words have failed us. We are in a time when it is hard for us to measure how deep, how VERY deep the waters have become around and under us. We are in a time when we seem to be treading water socially more than swimming forward in community and God’s call for liberation. In short, we are in a time when our Baptisms and the ecumenical, connectional, timeless, promise of Baptism is more important than ever. We are in a time when we can reach out for that reliable “floatation device”/ “life saver” of God that is hope, togetherness, and purpose. Baptism can be our buoy in the deep end. We are in a time when words have failed us. We are in a time when words have reached their limit of usefulness, so symbols must keep us afloat. We are not communicating well in 2018 with words, so maybe it is a time when symbols, Holy Gestures of Blessing, like Baptism and Communion, matter more and offer us understanding in ways that words cannot right now. The Sacraments can help us keep the faith! I am convinced that the least important part of a Sunday Christian service in 2018, not always but right now, is the sermon. This makes me a very VERY bad Reformed/Calvinist Christian—which is our UCC history. That is a difficult thing to admit as a minister, especially in the UCC where our hiring process and retention is measured by this sport of preaching, but it is what I believe for right now. [Imagine if you hired clergy based on sending a couple members into a mock pastoral care session and then had the congregational vote based on their experiences!?] 2018 is not a time for words because nobody is listening. It is a time for symbols. That is because we are talked at (not with but at) all week, all day, all night (if we let it). You are talked at all the time from the alerts on the phone, from the computer, from the TV, etc. People can only hear so much of even a good sermon like love and inclusion and absorb it, BUT I believe that symbols like Baptism can be reclaimed and refocused to give us the meaning and feeling and truth that words are failing to provide. The problem, as my colleague The Rev. Sean Neil-Barron from Foothills UU once told me during a conversation about 21st Century Church Communications, isn’t that people aren’t getting information or communication or publicity—it is that they are sinking from the weight of too much information. As the church thinks people aren’t hearing, rather than retreat to our symbols of meaning-making, we talk faster and more. When the words fail us or are drowning us, let us allow the symbols of buoyancy float us until such a time as we can swim again. I believe the progressive church and all church is drowning in words, in blogs, in newsletters, etc. We need our symbols like Baptism, the water, the waves of love more than ever. Speaking of words, let’s look at the Word from Scripture this morning: Our Scripture today, Psalm 24, is an ancient hymn that predates our Christian tradition by about some 1,100 years and comes from the Ancient Israelite Hebrew book of Psalms or songs. It also speaks to a community looking for the meaning of community and how to find truth in a confusing time. It is a classified by scholars a “Festival Celebration of Faith”[2] Psalm regarding the question of entrance into the temple. It is a song of praise to God for God’s enduring presence and power in their lives, but it also has a specific purpose. It is intended to name what matters in community. Verses 3 and 4 have a question and response about this: “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in God’s Holy Place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully [tell lies]. They will receive blessing from the Lord.” The word of God. “Do not lift our souls up to what is false.” Today, friends, we are being called to the deep end, to waters over our heads, to live life with fullness, with truth, and with togetherness in community and with purpose. We are not permitted by the Gospel to stay in the wading pool or walk around the shallow waters. Together, we dive into the deep, real, true stuff. The Psalm for today tells of the importance of not giving in and giving up to what is false or untrue in the world. If we take it a step further, it would also mean that we cannot give into the easy way out of the water called pessimism. Pessimism isn’t learning how to swim… it is a submarine of deception. It is a faulty and temporary flotation device that guarantees an eventual floundering. Hope in our Baptisms is what keeps us afloat. In a time when lies seem more commonplace than truth, when words threaten to overwhelm us in confusion, backtracking, and deception we know that God is with us in the pool of life through the Baptism promise of Jesus Christ to teach us to swim and then to swim with us. We do not have a God who watched us from afar. God is with us in the pool. Words might not be our salvation in this time, for words have proven to be unreliable at best. Symbols, however, offer us something to hold onto. In this deep end of the pool with Jesus and with each other, we can rely on the silent beauty, the assurance of hope, and the call to authenticity, realness, and truth that comes through Baptism. We are Baptized with Christ into new life. We are baptized into lives of authenticity. We are Baptized in the deep end, over our heads, wild, emotional, real life we live together. This is what Church is at its best: we are a swim team moving through life together, following in the wake and the waters of the greatest one to ever live. So, when my sermons get boring, as this one definitely did [joking], remember that what matters isn’t the words we share but the symbols we embrace as we swim forward in uncharted waters as this swim team of Christ. Amen. [1] http://www.ucc.org/worship_baptism [2] Bruce C. Birch, Walter Brueggemann, Terrence E. Fretheim, and David L. Petersen. A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2005), 119. 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.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph,
Plymouth Congregational Church UCC Fort Collins, Colorado Mark 2:23-3:6 Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, our God, our rock, and our redeemer. Amen. I bet by now you can guess what I am preaching on today: Sabbath! Today, preaching on Sabbath, I am really having to admit that I am very worried. I am worried for all of you. I am worried for our country and our world. I think we need a bigger Sabbath than just Sundays in pews. I believe that many of you are nearing burnout in one part of your lives or another—with how much you do, with the stress of work, the stress of keeping up with technology alone, the stress of caregiving, and the stress of carrying the political burn of an unprecedented time… all need Sabbaths. Perhaps we are even at a place of cultural burnout. Today, I will share a humble word on this topic, but I hope that you make it your own. As a minister, my starting place for these hard topics is always to go to Scripture: “On the sabbath, he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.” I love this passage of the Gospel of Mark about Jesus and his disciples on a road trip. Imagine with me what this would be like if it took place in modern times! Let’s retell this story together: Picture Jesus on a car trip with his best friends! Can’t you picture them making their way through the cornfields of an ancient Iowa in the same way that many of you will on trips of your own this summer. Iowa is the promised land after all![1] I mean, who doesn’t love a good summer road trip with their very best friends? Right? Imagine Jesus and the disciples piled into the equivalent of an ancient church van, which I guess we could call be more of a “caravan.” They have a favorite book on tape in the cassette player (maybe Deuteronomy), and a road trip custom mixtape. For those who don’t know what a mixtape is; think of a Spotify station that repeats itself every hour! Finally, we envision the open road ahead of them. We can almost hear them singing along to their favorite track as they went along the countryside. [Singing to Congregation]: “On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again. The life I love is making disciples with my friends. Just can’t wait to get on the road again.” You always knew that Willie Nelson looked a lot like Jesus for a reason—both like car trips! Like any road trip with friends, there is always one person who needs to stop at EVERY gas station or camel watering hole, right? This person in the group needs to stop at every oasis rest stop to use the restroom. In Jesus’ group, I imagine that person was Philip. Philip calls out, “Can we stop again please. I need to use the bathroom?” “Of course, you do,” sarcastically grumbles Judas, who is stewing in the back row. He is sitting next to a very carsick James and John. Judas isn’t much for these group trips anyway. Peter, who was always hungry, replies from the co-pilot seat next to Jesus, “Yes, please, let’s stop… I need a snack!” “We haven’t stopped since Nazareth at that Runza.” Who here is the one on a road trip who likes to stop for a snack? So, Jesus pulls the camel caravan over to the watering hole, and the disciples get out/ or off. At this cornfield rest stop, the disciples try to buy some ancient near eastern popcorn and crackerjacks before hitting the road again. When they go to pick the grain, however, the local minister is standing guard at the door of the 7-11. “Who are you and what do you think you are doing on the Sabbath?” They are scolded by the local authorities because it is the Sabbath, the day of rest—and the old rules say no snacks allowed on this day! This town’s clergy have decided to not allow the sale of food on Sundays to the traveling, hungry group of disciples and their leader Jesus. They would rather see this group just move along hungry than break a rule. “Get out of here now, the ministers say, 'it is the Sabbath, and we don’t like sinful eating today.'” Jesus steps-up and confronts the local minister in the cornfield, who looks startled by being confronted and backs away, “Hey, Sabbath is for people, for rest, for good things, and not just for the sake of self-denial. What is this nonsense about not snacking on Sundays?” “Come on friends,” Jesus says turning to his unhappy disciples, “let’s get back on the road, this isn’t our kind of town anyway.” They pile back in the caravan, and they leave the town in the dust! Jesus yells out the window as they drive away (tires squealing), “The sabbath was made for people, and people were not made simply to serve the silly, antiquated rules of sabbath. I am the lord of rest…” Our story continues in the next village. Since it is Sunday, Jesus and his disciples decide to stop by a local church as part of their cornfield car trip adventure. I mean, it is never a bad thing to go to church even when on vacation, right Plymouth? Everything was going fine until coffee hour. That is when all of the trouble started. It usually is. During coffee hour, a man starts to choke on a donut. Now, this sounds like a joke, but I have heard of people choking during coffee hours. How many of you know the Heimlich Maneuver? Well lucky for that church, Jesus knew the Heimlich and rushed over and saved the man’s life! This was all much to the horror of the minister who came over to criticize Jesus for saving a life on Sunday! This was the day of rest after all. “How dare you.” “He would have been lucky to die on a Sunday… in church!” Jesus replied, now a little spooked because all of this was just a little Children of the Corn, “Is it okay to do good or bad on the day of sabbath rest, to save a life or to kill?” The whole congregation, holding their coffee cups, just stared at Jesus in zombie-like silence. Now, this just made Jesus angry and deeply sad to see how rigid they were about some antiquated rules! Jesus didn’t have much patience for extremists or fundamentalists, you see. He didn’t have patience for them 2,000 years ago and doesn’t have patience for them today either. As Jesus and the disciples ran back to the van to get away from the crowd and sped at full speed out of the church parking lot, the congregation followed them determined to kill them. Like I said, this story is VERY Children of the Corn. For the word of God in Scripture… for the word of God among us, for the word of God and stories made relevant for our time. Thanks be to God. How did we all become so dogmatic about Sabbath and what makes “good” sabbath behavior and what makes “bad” sabbath behavior? Yes, even in the progressive Church this is a problem. In preparation for this sermon, I read several Christian blogs on the subject from Christians on both the progressive and conservative side of the spectrum, and you know what they all had in common: dogmatic views. Yes, especially the UCC clergy people were dogmatic about this topic. Sabbath, in their opinion, is about removing ourselves from stress but not allowing ourselves to be distracted. Basically, my clergy colleagues from many traditions have made sabbath unattainable for the average 21st Century Christian. Again, the way Sabbath is being defined as “done well and correctly” is unattainable for modern life. Only those who are naturally introverted, have a lot of spare time, and are good at centering prayer can achieve true sabbath. Do you all know this Sabbath is for Introverts narrative? That, Plymouth, is a bunch of hooey. It is the same sort of extremist nonsense that Jesus and his car-trip friends encountered at the rest stop and in the coffee hour. One minister Christian blogger[2] has laid out three rules for Sabbath: 1. Sabbath is not about entertainment. 2. Sabbath is not about being lazy or sleepy. 3. Sabbath is not only about going to church, although that is a big part of her argument. 4. Sabbath is not for recreation. She then lays out what sabbath is: 5. Sabbath is for purposeful, undistracted, pure rest. What I see in this is something called clergy-privilege. The focus of our lives in Spiritual formation. We even get time in our contracts for retreat and restorative practices. That is not the case for most of you. How many of you have paid time off for retreat? Okay, I am an extreme extrovert, and when reading what that minister describes as “Sabbath,” self-isolation, meditation, maybe some church attendance, but basically quiet introverted peace sounds like it would leave someone like me more exhausted than refreshed. Sabbath is for all people and not just for introverted people. Sabbath friends isn’t God’s way of showing preference to one personality type over others. It isn’t an unattainable level of enlightenment borrowed from other traditions and applied to Christianity. The Christian or Jewish concepts of doing Sabbath right is not the same as Buddhism’s idea of enlightenment or Karma. While we should find common ground with other traditions, false equivalencies don’t do justice to either tradition. In Christianity, there is no such thing as a “correct” way to do Sabbath. Sabbath is rather whatever makes you heart sing and brings you closer to God. It doesn’t even have to be confined to Sunday. Jesus wants to liberate all of us from guilt, from shame, from self-imposed oppression on the subject of Sabbath observance. Plymouth, as your minister, it is my observation that many of you live stressed, full to capacity, busy, complicated lives. You juggle so much, and yet still find time to be in fellowship with each other and to bless this congregation as volunteers. The last thing I want to give today is a sermon that says that anyway you spend your Sabbath is wrong. Sabbath is for people. Sabbath is for how you need to spend your free time in order to feel whole, to be well, to be complete with community, with yourself, and with God. Never let anyone tell you that your way of doing Sabbath work isn’t right. Jesus shows us otherwise in this story today about his car trip with the disciples. As an extreme extrovert, Sabbath for me is walking door to door for political campaigns in my free time and talking with random strangers. Every new door to knock on is endless opportunity for random conversations. FUN! Don’t worry, I won’t ever knock on your door. I skip Plymouth houses out of principle as your minister. That certainly is NOT real Sabbath behavior according to the sages of introverted Christianity like Dianna Butler Bass, Belden Lane, and others. Retreat is only as restorative as the human interactions I have. Some of you are introverts and need quiet, neutral time. If that is you, embrace it. If that doesn’t sound like you, then find your own way to restore your soul. What does your Sabbath look like? What do you need to feel whole? Are you taking the time to get coffee or tea with a favorite friend? Do you take the time to be alone if needed? Do you know what Sabbath means for you? I know that some of you work on Sundays, or you are nearing burnout from caring for a spouse who is aging faster than you, taking care of parents or grandchildren who need your support and your financial resources, being responsible for whole local movements for justice in areas from food to homelessness to youth. I know some of you are nearing technological burnout as yet another data reboot upends your computer or phone. Some of you are at burnout at work either from over work or being in the wrong field for your skills or maybe a lack of institutional vison that you need to thrive. Burnout, remember isn’t when things stop happening—it is when things speed up in the wrong direction: divorce, break-down, hurt, loss, etc. Burnout isn’t running out of gas, it is usually hitting the peddle to the metal full speed ahead in whatever direction you are facing. Jesus and the disciples went on a road trip. They found different communities with rigid rules and concepts about what made for a correct Sabbath. What they found was that nobody could make their rules for them, so Jesus inadvertently started Christianity over this issue above all others: Sabbath. It was his changing the rules around work-life balance that made them want to kill him in the first place. This Sabbath business is that important. It is so important that a whole religion, ours, was partially founded over its substance. What will you do with your Sabbath? Amen. [1] I went to Grinnell College and loved Iowa, so this comment is in all seriousness and love. [2] https://notaboutme1151.wordpress.com/2018/02/16/sabbathing-is-that-a-word/ 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. The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado Immigrant Rights Sunday: May 6, 2018 (Lectionary) Will you pray with me? May the humble words of my mouth, the meditations of our collective hearts, and the call to justice we all feel be good and pleasing to you, O God, our freedom-maker and liberator. Amen
Before I really preach this morning on one of the most pressing, alarming, and hurtful subjects of our era, that of Immigrant Rights and Justice, I want to first reflect briefly on the delicate art of being an ally. It takes a lot of intentional work to be in solidarity with a community of the oppressed, from a position of privilege, without speaking over or for that community. The risk is to overshadow those whose voices are already marginalized.
As a parallel to illuminate what I mean by the art of being an “ally,” let me offer an example of a time a place when privilege wasn’t checked. One day back in seminary, the school I attended decided to have “dialogues” on the issue of LGBTQ rights in the church. Sounds straight forward enough on the surface, right? They brought in panelists from what they termed as “fair and balanced” on both “sides” of the “issue.” [I always love being an issue.] The person they brought in to speak on behalf of the LGBTQ community, however, wasn’t an LGBTQ community member himself, but rather a well-meaning retired United Methodist Bishop who had a strange warming of the heart after his retirement towards his disenfranchised gay church members. He spoke so beautifully from the heart (not to take that away from him) and maybe, I must admit, related better as an advocate to the mostly straight, conservative audience than one of us out people like me might have been able to do; but something did not feel right. You know that feeling that something isn’t right in your gut? It is the feeling you get when someone does not name that they are simply an ally, a co-traveler who, while speaking, doesn’t have the first-person experience of the oppressed community. I never forgot that feeling and promised myself to never do the same to others in oppressed communities. It was a hard lesson on social justice advocacy to always stop and check privilege. He forgot to check his privilege at the door. So today, I want to start by checking my own privilege. While I am the son of an immigrant from Canada (certainly not a difficult story… although we struggle to find good Maple Syrup in this country), the great-grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (a distant story), and I married a beautiful man with his own harrowing immigration story to tell from Venezuela, my efforts to speak on this issue, as passionate as I am, are that of ally and solidarity force. Even Gerhard’s story isn’t mind to tell. It is his alone. I know I am preaching to the choir today, so if you remember nothing else from this sermon remember to be careful as an ally not to silence or overshadow. As the church working on this issue, that is one of the most important reminders we all need as advocates. We are there to support the community, but not to take over the justice movement. The UCC is particularly guilty of this. The most powerful stories don’t come from us allies (even if we are necessary for the struggle), but from those whose immigration stories are their own. It is only the immigrants themselves who can share the experience the horrors of injustice, the palpable and real impacts of racism and cultural supremacy wrapped in the light veneer of “immigration policy,” and the experiences of indignity, suspicion, fear, micro-aggressions, and overt racism that continue even after citizenship ceremonies are well in the rearview mirror. Having said that, let me see if by relying on Scripture today, I might do a little more than simply preach to you as a progressive choir. Anyone remember CliffsNotes? They were these little pamphlets that summarized books for those students that… well didn’t want to do all of the reading. Do CliffsNotes still exist? I remember being the student who would get so upset when others would use CliffsNotes instead of reading the whole book. I was sort of the teachers’ pet. So, given my dislike of CliffsNotes, what I am doing to say today might surprise you! Our Scripture except for today is basically Jesus’ CliffsNotes (JesusNotes) to the entire Bible and Christian faith! Yes, today, we just read a CliffsNotes summary of the point of all of this religion business! Let’s hear it again: “As the Father [The Creator] has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. I do not call you servants[a] any longer, because the servant[b] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from [the Creator]. “This is my commandment [note the singular rather than plural tense], that you love one another as I have loved you. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” What is the main message here if this is Jesus’ shortcut to Christian faith and living? Yes, love each other already, people, and don’t treat anyone as a servant. Amen? Now, I am not the only one who has seen this Scripture and seen God’s CliffsNotes in it for the Bible. Love each other already, people, and don’t treat anyone as a servant. A whole movement of Black, LGBT/Queer, and Latinx Liberation theologians have been saying this is the point of it all for decades. The arc of the universe bends towards love, towards freedom/ liberation, and towards justice for the oppressed: the migrant, the immigrant, the poor. Between all of the complexities and contradictions of the Bible (and there are countless of them), if we really look at the driving force of Scripture—it always comes back to the least of these, the forgotten, the excluded. God has a preference for the poor and the oppressed. This is an undeniable common thread through all of Scripture. Our religion is a religion of and for the oppressed, the migrant, the immigrant, the depressed, and the lonely. Our job is to align and support. Last Saturday, Professor James H. Cone of Union Seminary in New York City died. He was part of this movement of liberation theologians who see religion and scripture as a vehicle primarily for an arc of liberation, hope for the oppressed, and God’s preferential treatment for the poor and those in most need of love. He was the guiling light in North America for this movement for decades. Dr. Cone will be very missed in the world of ministers and theological thinkers. I want you to hear some of Cone's words on the matter today on Immigrant Justice Sunday: “God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts.” ― James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power “And yet the Christian gospel is more than a transcendent reality, more than “going to heaven when I die, to shout salvation as I fly.” It is also an immanent reality—a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst, “building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side.” The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” ― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree “The scandal is that the gospel means liberation, that this liberation comes to the poor, and that it gives them the strength and the courage to break the conditions of servitude.” ― James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed[1] That last quote in particular should give us pause today, “The scandal is that the gospel means liberation…and it gives the poor strength to break the conditions of servitude.” I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from [the Creator]. We have all probably heard a lot of talk these past years about the doctrine of America First. It is a statement about our understanding of God and what God promises and to whom. “America First” is a theological/religious statement about how we understand the nature of God’s promises and ourselves. It is a false prosperity theology and a wicked and even evil doctrine of servitude. It does not see or understand the world, and our culturally, artistically, economically, linguistically, musically, and religiously beautiful neighbors/equals in Central and South America, in particular, as friends. It is not a theology of friends but one of servitude. But I have called you friends… I am giving you these commands, so you may love one another. If in our passage today, the embodiment of God, Emmanuel, God-with-Us can say that we are friends… with the creative energy that sparked existence, that the love of God is for all, that common life shared is the goal (the CliffsNotes of God), then certainly we should do the same with our policies. A public policy of friendship. With all of our wealth and privilege, the question ought to be: What more can we do to support, ally with, lift-up, check our privilege, inspire, collaborate with our neighbors? I married a man from Venezuela—a country I have never been to and really cannot visit with him because of the violence, food shortages, and dangers. I know the struggles his family faces there, and I know the feeling of helplessness we have to do anything about it. I also know that they are proud, brilliant, educated, beautiful people with deep faith, family roots, and yet still hope. Even if we don’t see them as friends, they still see us as their neighbor. I cannot take “America First” rhetoric seriously as a Christian. God says that all of God’s people come first—so what are we waiting for? Why is friendship so hard? Why is selfishness so easy? Why is scarcity winning over faith? Why aren’t we doing much about it? We are in deep theological waters, friends. With immigration policy being used as a tool of racism. With the church, most of it in America, rolling over and playing dead, yesterday almost 60,000-90,000 hard working Hondurans and Central Americans lost their protected status for no reason, we have been playing politics with the lives of young dreamers—God has a word for us…and its harsh! “The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” -James Cone As those called to accompany, not to overtake, may we check our privilege as individual to see if we might reawaken a Gospel of love, of mutuality, of hope, and of selflessness in our time. What an interesting word: Selflessness. This is the only Gospel we have. We can’t choose another one, and it is time to take it (even the CliffsNotes version) seriously. Amen [1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17438.James_H_Cone 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. The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph April 8, 2018 (Lectionary) Will you pray with me? May our meditation on the idea of sacred community together, the words of my mouth, the silences we share, the music we sing, and our time together today help us all to live in unity and compassion with all your people. Amen. How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore. -Psalm 133 A meditation is different from a sermon in much the same way that today’s Psalm is different from other lectionary readings of Scripture: it is shorter and more focused...purposeful. Rather than being a long, showy narrative, a meditation has the simple goal of helping us unfold a specific image, word, or idea for our spiritual wellbeing and nourishment. Today, I want us to meditate on this one sentence and to allow it to empower our living: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” I want to tell you the story of one place on earth that has striven to turn Psalm 133 from a poem into reality: a place of living Biblical poetry. In the wake of one of the darkest periods of human history, The Second World War, a monk named Brother Rodger returned to a small village in France to begin a grand experiment in grace. It was the same village where he had with his sister, during the war itself, helped rescue refugee Jews and others from the grips of the Nazis and the Vichy Regime. After being found out to be part of the resistance, he was forced to flee, but after the war he was called back to that small hilltop rural setting to start something new: The Taizé Community. It is a place that I call a grand experiment in living grace. Brother Roger was raised in the Protestant tradition in Switzerland, but he had discovered his true faith in ecumenism—a word that is the living out of the idea that it is good and pleasant when kindred live together in unity. He is reported to have said when visiting with the pope that, “I have found my own identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone.” Brother Rogers’s vision started small in nothing more than a rural French farmhouse in an extremely isolated corner of the country. Believe me, the only thing within an easy distance is a small farm that sells cheese and bread to pilgrims. This small vision for a place of meditation, of welcome, of poverty, hard work, and radical grace started on the smallest of scales, but then it grew into something that has changed the face and sound of Christianity the world over. On Easter Sunday of 1949, Rodger and 9 others committed themselves to lives of mercy, hard work, and simplicity. Now over 100,000 pilgrims (mostly young adults under the age of 30) make their way to this small village in Southern France every single year. They sing simple, joyful, corporate, deep, amazing a cappella songs, work hard, and engage in meaningful Bible study and conversation with each other and the monks in what seems like 100’s of languages and traditions. I was one of those pilgrims once. I took my spring break from university on the other side of France to journey on an all-day train and bus ride from Nantes through Paris and down… way down to Macon-Village and Taizé. I arrived in the middle of a March rainstorm during evening prayers. I remember standing outside the giant pilgrimage-church and hearing the chants flow through the open doorway… the flickering of candles lighting the way inside. Once inside, I was immediately surrounded by a sense of peace and welcome. “This place is your place. This is a place where all kindred live together (eve if only a week at a time) in unity!” Oh, friends, how good and pleasant it is! It is like God, through the tradition of the lectionary, knew exactly what we needed on this Second Sunday in Easter in the year 2018. Even as it is now Easter, I have to admit with the news around the world and in our own community (on campus); it still feels very much like Lent—a time in need of prayer and reflection. We need this reminder both in scripture and in collective song that a better world where people live in harmony is in fact possible and promised. We too are called to begin small experiments of radical grace and mercy in our own time that sometimes looks very dark and cruel indeed. This vision of a world where all live together in unity should inspire us, yet our pessimism has gone from being occasional and short lived to chronic and epidemic. Today, as we continue on our Eastertide Journey of hope and resurrection with Christ, let the story of Taizé, its music, and its legacy give you hope. May the vision of a place where all God’s people gather in peace give us pause to look at how we are seeking to create those spaces in our lives and in this congregation. We need this reminder both in scripture and in collective songs together that a better world where people live in harmony is in fact possible. That is if we believe in the promises of God. I know it because I have seen it, and I don’t mean in a dream or as a metaphor but in a real place. I have seen this vision enacted on a hilltop surrounded by cows… and this time I am not (for once) talking about Iowa. Picture yourself deep in the countryside in the smallest of all imaginable towns perched on small hill: farms, barns, cows, lots of cows, sheep, goats, and all of the smells associated with them. Picture yourself on a hill in the French countryside. Picture an old church. Picture now a tall gate with a bell tower perched at its peak. This is where God’s dream is possible. Now picture yourself in your own home, how can you start small to create your own communities of peace and hope? What are you doing at Plymouth or in your own life that welcomes diverse people into your space? You don’t have to be a French monk to live a life of Taizé. You simply have to be ready to experiment with mercy and take risks with grace. This is also where God’s dream is possible. How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! Amen. 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.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Text: John 3: 14-17 March 11, 2018 Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado Note: This Sunday, for the first time in decades at Plymouth, we sang Old Rugged Cross and In the Garden as our focus hymns. Thank you to our liturgists this morning for leading worship and reading the Scripture. Will you be in prayer with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Have any of you heard or sibling rivalry? How many of you have experienced it? [Ask for a show of hands for both.] Well, today we are going to talk about why talking to other Christians, siblings in Christ, is often so much harder than interfaith work—basically sibling rivalry. Today, I am preaching a different kind of sermon. I want us to think about how we can stay in conversation, in dialogue, or maybe even in community with those who believe very differently than we do. It isn’t easy work, but it is the test of progressive Christianity for our time. I am going to do this by a little bit of honest testimony about my own experience and then conclude with a concrete practice that is sort of a take-home exercise. How does that sound? I remember the rooms—a yellowing hand-embroidered pillow with the words from the King James Version neatly, yet obvious hand-stitched: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It was on the chair I was offered. The chaplain was always offered the chair with the John 3:16 or other verses embroidered pillow on it, of course, as a sign of respect. The patients almost always cried. So many elderly patients get far too few visitors—getting old can be lonely. I remember one patient. She buckled over on herself in the wheelchair every time I would visit, tears flowing, and was overcome with tears and I just kept singing and singing. It was all I could do, for I was without words for the first time in a year. I had discovered a secret language of communication, however, that could overcome dementia, Alzheimer’s, differences of theology, and age—a couple of singable, simple hymns that always said what I could or would not. I had, up until that point, been a smart-ass seminarian, a self-described and self-righteous social justice warrior, a progressive firebrand who believed that he was somehow sent or cursed by God him or herself to be one of the only out gay liberal voices at a Southern, United Methodist Seminary. I was, needless to say, a miserable seminarian for three years completely out of my element in a world of bowties, suits (seersucker), big hats, and conservative/politely closeted formalities of Emory University. Don’t let me even get into what I thought of the subtle racism, Coca-Cola idol Worship, and the coffee hours at local churches (I kid you not) complete with chocolate fountains and tiers and tiers of cucumber or pimento cheese finger sandwiches every single Sunday. After my first full year of seminary, I had a transformative experience that reshaped how I now hear and see “traditional” or conservative Christianity not as a sworn enemy but a potential partner for if nothing else healthy conversation. That is when things took a turn for the better. I entered a full time three-month summer program called CPE with Emory University Healthcare and Emory University Hospital as a chaplaincy full time intern for the summer. This is where I found or reclaimed my calling after having lost it somewhere in Atlanta during that turbulent first year of seminary. My call to ministry wasn’t primarily social justice advocacy (even if I am good at it) as I had expected, but geriatric and elder care, nostalgia nurturing, and old time religion translation and meaning making for the progressive church. In addition to being assigned to overnight on call shifts at the main hospital and weekly shifts as the chaplain for Emory’s shocking Electroshock Therapy program (ECT), I spent most of my time at Wesley Woods—Emory’s geriatric hospital and nursing care campus. It was there that I discovered the power of these hymns, “Old Rugged Cross” and “In the Garden” among others to literally create common ground, common language where it wasn’t before. Even as some of the theology in them made and still makes me cringe, I was able to see the meaning they have for others. It isn’t all about my liberal theology and me. This is also the case for our passage today: John 3:16. As I was willing to let go of just a little of my pride and perfect progressive pedigree, learn to sing these simple, personal, nostalgic rural hymns…. I was able to reclaim a call to ministry after that first year of seminary. It is with this same gratitude and attitude of openness that I learned singing hymns with the elderly in Atlanta that have been able to survive Christian ministry as an out gay minister in my 20’s. The humility to know that people may dislike what I stand for, but I can still work to find ways to relate is powerful. These hymns remind me what is a stake: a sense of the humanity of the other and a willingness as a progressive to laugh at myself. This is not something we remember how to do often on the progressive side in these times—and it matters more than ever. I learned that these old folksy hymns, Scripture like John 3:16 from the KJV, and other signs of traditional faith were tools for pastoral care, conversation, and being with people in the hardest times of their lives and deaths when words and lectures and difference no longer matter. If someone is dying alone and you are his or her only companion as chaplain or you as friends or family, what do you say? I know some of you have experienced this. What did you say? Do you lecture them about not being liberal enough even then? No, you sing. No, you find common ground in this one life to live. We have been rejectionists of tradition for a longtime, and that is good. A lot of it needed to be rejected. We have learned, through trouble and toil, a new way to be Christian and progressive (Amen!)… but now comes the hard part for the UCC (the next step)… still remaining in community with those who are different without being condescending. Often when we talk about our sister and brothers in other Christian traditions, we do it with the condescending tone of the older brother. We love our sisters and brothers, but they are just so misguided… wait till they grow-up like us. My patients, like the one with the John 3:16 pillow, probably didn’t vote the way I did. They probably would not have been kind to my husband, and me but they were vulnerable humans for whom their faith had kept them all the day and nightlong. Their faith could have kept them, helped them survive and endure situations in life beyond my understanding and often beyond words. Who am I to take that from them? Let me use a recent example of where the UCC missed the point entirely! When Billy Graham died last week, there was an outpouring of emotions on social media and Facebook in particular. Mostly the attitude I saw was extremely negative. Most of my clergy friends took time away from sermons, budgets, and whatever the heaven clergy are supposed to do to write long diatribes and Facebook post polemics claiming that Billy Graham ruined American Christianity and pointing out homophobic statements he made in the 1980’s as a reason to discredit his entire ministry. It made me wonder how many of the people I love now and who love me now [silently look out at our mostly older congregation] said or thought something homophobic in the 1980’s. Have we developed such a litmus test for “good progressive Christian” that we have forgotten about grace, about falling short, about forgiveness, or even process? Where did this litmus test for perfection come from in our circles? Are we any better or more holy than any other Christian because we have declared ourselves enlightened? Have we forgotten about grace and redemption? This is a question I would like to ask our denominational leaders in Cleveland. I sure hope that I am not judged, my life is not summarized, and my entire ministry isn’t evaluated based on my worst moments. Don’t we all hope our lives aren’t summarized by our falling and tripping? As Progressive Christians, unlike other Christians, listening, inclusion, unity, and trying to build bridges is central to how we understand Jesus—so being the ones who are willing to stay in conversations, even the hardest conversations, fall on us (the Otis) as progressive Christians to find ways to be in relationship rather than cut off. For us, it is fundamental to our belief, so it is our job to stick with it. See it is our faith to be bridge builders even if it if harder on us than the others. Verses like John 3:16 and hymns like those we are singing today are hard for us, but it is our job to stay present and find the good even if hard at times. I want to leave you today with a simple tool I call “The Great And” as a method of learning to speak with those with whom you disagree. “The Great And” is something I learned at a workshop called “Identity Bowling” this past summer at General Synod’s National LGBTQ Coalition pre-conference. Here is how it works: Whenever you want to say “but” in a sentence… instead say “and” –then see how the sentence comes together differently. How many of you have ever caught yourselves saying, “I love you, but you drive me crazy” or “He is a good minister, but he is so young?” Anytime you end a sentence or start it with “but” you are negating whatever came before it. If you hear something you disagree with, if you respond with “and” you are not negating what they just said… rather you are adding your own thought on top of it. This is a radically different way of dealing with disagreement. The need to say but is the need to define yourself in your sentence rather than the need to communicate and community. If you are confident in whom you are in the discussion, then you don’t need “but” anymore. Examples: Billy Graham was a conservative, evangelical minister who said some terrible things about LGBTQ people in the 1980’s and he transformed many lives and brought American Christianity new vitality. We can even say that the Mainline progressive congregations wouldn’t be what they are today without him. The Old Rugged Cross is a song about personal salvation, blood, gore, and the word rugged can mean something durable, changeable, natural, organic, enduring and that helps me sing that hymn in my own progressive way. Rugged is a word I relate to as a Coloradan. In the Garden is an outdated, bad theology, terrible hymn we should never sing, and for many it is a powerful hymn that reminds people of their grandmother’s love of nature or finding God in nature. Beards are itchy and some people like wearing them. Or here are some harder examples formulated as what someone might says to us, and then I provide an optional response. Note that humor, irony, and play is helpful in disarming tension and keeping relationship intact. Gay people should never be ministers… and it’s a little late for that. The UCC is just Unitarians Considering Christ… and boy do we spend a lot of time considering him. You would almost think we were Christian ourselves! Deportations are part of a fair legal system… and so should being allowed to take care of your neighbor, bring water to the refugee, and exercising our Christian values of love for the stranger. Guns are part of the American dream, and for some of us that is feeling more like a nightmare. The CSU stadium has ruined Fort Collins, and it has provided a space for the community to gather for music, marathons, and other events. Being Christian, even a progressive Christian is a waste of time… if God existed there wouldn’t be such mess in the world… and some of us still find comfort in religion, in church community, and believing in a higher purpose. These are hard conversation, but the simple word “and” can allow engagement without agreement. “The Great And” does three things—it leaves what the other person said intact (you aren’t going to change their mind with a but and a negation), it keeps the conversation going, and it allows you room to have a sense of humor. It does not mean that you agree with what they said, but it allows for relationship even in the hardest time. Of everyone at Plymouth, I am probably the most hated and vilified member of our community by those on the outside as your proud and out gay liberal minister. If I can engage these conversations, humorously deal with the barbs, show up at events with people who really think I somehow symbolize the end of the religion as we know it, and attempt to stick with the “great and” responses rather than “but” retorts, then I promise you can do it too! It just takes some time and self-assurance, and it is worthwhile. May we never give up the effort of building relationships, especially with others in our faith, even if it is hard and painful. After all, we are all in the same garden. Amen. 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.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, CO Little Boxes: Transfiguration According to Mark, Chapter 9, February 11, 2018 Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Have you ever been driving down the road when something you see sparks your imagination? I mean something that does more than catch your attention in passing, but it opens-up entire insights into how you see the world. I would call it a mini or micro “transfiguration.” It is a moment of transformation (which is another and more relatable way to translate the Greek word used for transfiguration), and I am all for the church using more understandable language like lobby instead of narthex, but I digress. I recently read a story about someone for whom this happened: A sudden moment of vision or inspiration, a clear view on the reality of things, changed her life and has inspired others to see clearly as well. Her daughter tells the story from 1962 of driving with her parents from San Francisco through Daly City in the Bay Area on their way to a political organizing gathering organized by local Quakers. Her mother suddenly, upon looking at the hillside where development was happening, threw the steering wheel to her husband who had been in the passenger seat. “Take the wheel honey, I have a song to write,” we can imagine her saying. There and then somewhere in the suburbs, south of San Francisco maybe using the dashboard as a desk, a song was written. An activist, one of the founders of the Women’s Institute for the Freedom of the Press, musician, dedicated Unitarian, Malvina Reynolds, wrote a song that has come to epitomize the rebellion against conformity and being boxed-in.1 Her song was later made famous by singer Pete Seeger:
“Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All went to the university, Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same, And there's doctors and lawyers, And [ministers]2 and executives, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all [think] just the same…”3 And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry. And they all have pretty children And the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp And then to the university Where they are put in boxes And they come out all the same. And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same, There's a pink one and a green one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.” - Malvina Reynolds
1 https://web.archive.org/web/20071222231203/http://music.homegrownseries.com/?p=5
2 Wording changes made in brackets for context and effect. 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM
Protest song perhaps, anthem of nonconformity, yes… but this is also my favorite (and this might surprise you) Transfiguration Sunday hymn. Every year on this Sunday in the lectionary, every single time I read Mark, Chapter 9, I always find myself humming [hum the song] this great song. "Why?" you might ask.
Jesus takes his closest friends to hike up a hillside with him, and when they reach the summit the disciples, as the story goes, witness a glimpse of reality: love embodied. They see Jesus, for the first time in the Gospels, reveal himself to be a sign and symbol of God’s wildly untamed love. This is a glimpse, not a whole picture, but it is a glimpse into the power, freedom, and the burning love beyond appearances. God’s voice echoes from the clouds: “This is my son, the Beloved, the One Whom I love—in whom love is invested! Listen to him.” Not only is Jesus there, but the representatives of tradition Elijah and Moses also appear for a glimpse of a different dimension. And we thought Colorado was the only place with people having special visions! Our Christian tradition is filled with rich and far out stories, but there is none as strange and fabulous as this one. In response to seeing something new, seeing the Transfiguration of Christ, the disciples don’t celebrate something new happening, but they revert to something old. They attempt to put Jesus in a box. There in the glowing radiant white, their shocked instinct is to take him and say, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and for Elijah…” There is a pink one and a green one and a blue one… The dwelling places or booths or boxes (also translations) the disciples want to build for Jesus and his companions are highly symbolic here. They symbolize a tradition found in Ancient Near Eastern religions of that time that gods and demigods (Greek, Eastern, and others) would have portable tent-like alters and shrines (literally little boxes) built so that the people, a specific tribe, could own and claim and keep that god with them. And by doing this the people, especially nomadic people, believed they would have favor with that god and control its love in a way. Another symbolic part of this story is the mountaintop. Jesus appearing on the mountaintop in his true form is another way that the author of Mark borrows from Greek literature of the “coming out” of new gods to their human followers borrow a trope. With this the author is putting Jesus in the company of familiar stories, but then Mark inverts it entirely. The disciples’ response, however, is deeply rooted in the Ancient Near Eastern tradition in which they are embedded. The disciples’ first instinct here, upon learning that their mountain climbing buddy, Jesus, is actually a manifestation of the Divine is to do what? When we read this passage, we often laugh (Ha Ha Ha) and think the disciples are dumb, while in fact they are just ancient opportunists. [See, see that is what happens when you read the Bible literally instead of narratively as it was intended… you miss really cool stuff.] What the disciples are suggesting they want to build in this dwelling is really a god-trap! They want to build a trap, a box, and capture this new god in it before he can get away! Not so stupid after all in context… What they don’t know though is that the religion they are unconsciously part of founding, this Christianity business, is something new…or should be something new when not confined inappropriately and incorrectly by boxes of dogma and doctrine and pews and other traps like that! Jesus rejects the disciples’ offer of building a box for him. We in the United Church of Christ as in other progressive Christian traditions understand Jesus as the bearer of something new—liberation for the oppressed, the opening-up of boxes, and the embodiment of a Love that cannot be held by anyone’s box or church or dogma or confine or definition. Instead of accepting the traditional god-in-a-box role, in this story God is doing something different for the first time. This story is supposed to signal to both the Greek and the Jewish communities that this new tradition is something new, weird, far out, and different—Jesus refuses the traditional boxes. “This is my son, the Beloved, the One Whom I love! Listen to him.” Rather, this whole Jesus business is supposed to be about a LOVE that is free and out there in the world. It is radical, it is wild, it is new, and it won’t get in a box. Our faith tradition, at its best, is one that was intended to breakout of the little boxes on a hillside, no two loves are the same, and to set God and people free. So, what happened to Christianity? What went wrong? By 1962, when Malvina Reynolds wrote Little Boxes, this religion that was supposed to be all about getting out of the boxes was the one that had become more about little boxes than any other. We became the box factory. It is the subtext of her songs. We have denominational boxes. We have belief boxes. We have good and bad check boxes. Many in our religion have boxes for love they will accept and love like mine that they will not accept. We have boxes for the saints and boxes for the sinners. We have boxes for the high pledgers and boxes for those who don’t pledge. We have endless boxes—believe me—I just helped design our new database. We have so many boxes now in Christianity that even UPS is jealous! FedEx called and they want their boxes back, friends. We are called, by a loving God in this passage, to be those who reject boxes and traditional boundaries like Christ does. What reason does God give for us to listen to Jesus in Mark Chapter 9? We are only told that that he is the one whom God’s LOVE is channeled through. “Hey, I love this guy, listen up.” That is our job now in 2018 as the Body of Christ in the world—a channel of love and liberation. Valentine’s Day is this week when we get a very normative view of what love looks like, and I have to say that it looks awfully straight to me from my vantage point. We all know that love is hard work, we know that it comes in many forms, we know that for some it includes having kids, and for others of us having children isn’t in the picture, for some it means being single and for others married, for some local and others have to be long distance for a time, for some in an RV and others in a house, for some communications comes easily and for others quiet is key, for some dogs for other couples cats (don’t ask me why). Valentine’s Day would tell us that everyone’s love and relationship should fit in an identical red, heart-shaped box made by Russell Stover. Our Scripture today from Mark 9, however, says otherwise. Transfiguration or Transformation Sunday says otherwise. It is the time when we see a colorful world, where God rejects traditional boxes for deities, and when we are invited by God’s love to find new ways to define our belief, our relationships, and our own identities before a God who calls us, calls you beloved. Malvina Reynolds saw something that day on the hills outside of San Francisco. She saw a physical manifestation of the attempts of society to cubical our lives, our loves, and even God. That moment of clarity, her own Transfiguration vision, led to the creation of a simple song, one that many of us know, that stands as a prophesy of counter-culture to anyone who might want to box God, you, or me in. “Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.” Little Boxes is a song about the uniformity, the compartmentalizing, the cubicalization of our lives and our society, but it can also be about what has happened to the church, to religion, and what we still today, just like Peter, James, and John, attempt to do to God. We try to put God into a box—a box that only serves only our tribe, our viewpoint, our people, our style of love, those like us already. Today’s story from Mark deconstructs that box. May none of you ever find yourselves boxed in, and know that Jesus…that guy we talk about once a month at Plymouth… ya… he refused “the box” in the name of love on Transfiguration Sunday so many years ago… and so can you! Amen. 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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