Lineage and Soul
A short message related to Matthew 1:1-17 and All Saints/Souls Day Summary: Lineage matters to the Soul As a resource for learning, healing, and empowerment As a connection to Life and Spirit Matthew 1:1-17 A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham: 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. 3 Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Aram. 4 Aram was the father of Amminadab. Amminadab was the father of Nahshon. Nahshon was the father of Salmon. 5 Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. 6 Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. 7 Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asaph. 8 Asaph was the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was the father of Joram. Joram was the father of Uzziah. 9 Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of Ahaz. Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah. 10 Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Amos. Amos was the father of Josiah. 11 Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers. This was at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12 After the exile to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel. 13 Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud. Abiud was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor. 14 Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Achim. Achim was the father of Eliud. 15 Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob. 16 Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary—of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Christ. 17 So there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen generations from the exile to Babylon to the Christ. For the word of God in Scripture For the Word of God among us For the word of God within us I grew up Protestant with an early teaching about not worshiping ancestors. I guess it was one of several lessons to distinguish us from Roman Catholics (of whom I knew none) who seemed to name and look up to a lot of people other than Jesus. And in my home church I didn’t really understand why I had to listen to long boring lists of strange names of who begat who like the list we just heard that opens Matthew’s Gospel. Later I learned that Matthew’s author had a purpose to show his listeners that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and kingly, and that God was working a plan for Good News. This plan included surprising stories and unexpected people. Matthew’s audience would have known those names and remembered their stories. It wasn’t as boring to them as it was to me as a kid. With apologies for the excessive focus on patriarchs, let’s just say that Matthew knew lineage was important for his storytelling purposes. I’ve learned that lineage is also important for the soul’s enlivening and enriching, for the soul’s liberation and loving. I credit my mentors and teachers, including lovers of myth, teachers of depth psychology, and First Nation people who revere their ancestors for that learning. In a few moments we will celebrate a brief ritual of Totenfest. Totenfest is a distinctive practice that grows out of the Evangelical Church side of the United Church of Christ. It has deep German roots. Indeed, Totenfest is a German word that means “Feast of the Dead” or “Festival for the Dead.” It was established in 1816 by Prussian Emperor Fredrick William III as a day to remember that nation’s soldiers who had died in the recently concluded Prussian War. Totenfest became an important observance in the Evangelical Church in Prussia (established by the same emperor in 1817) as a day to remember not only the war dead, but also church members who had died in the previous year. We have associated it with the other similar church traditions of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. These are all practices of lineage connection. There is wisdom in this commemoration and connection, food for the soul. And that’s what I want to briefly share with you this morning: the importance of lineage connection for the life of the soul. Let’s use our imaginations to touch into this truth of lineage and soul: Take a nice deep and easy breath and settle in to where you are. I encourage you to close your eyes and engage your imagination. Imagine your parents standing behind you, mother on the left and father on the right. If had parents of the same gender or gender non-conforming, place them where it feels right to you. (If you’ve been adopted, place your birth parents there as well as those who raised you.) Settle in for a moment. See how that feels. Imagine gently leaning back into them. Any resistance? Any negative blocks? Make note of that. Now imagine the next generation standing similarly behind your parents. Again, note what you feel. And so on and so on until there is a massive pyramid of people, one generation behind the next, stretching into the horizon. In this great generational pyramid of people and stories, there is all of humanity; truth and deceit, courage and cowardice, foolishness and wisdom, tragedy and triumph. It’s important for each one of us to come to a kind of peace with our family lineage. Making peace with this lineage and accepting it does not mean condoning its painful parts, the wounding actions and life denying behaviors of those in it, including our parents. Coming to peace means accepting being human, and their being human, and appreciating whatever you can, even if that is only appreciating the gift of life and the chance to have your life now in your time and to make your own choices, some of which may even be to heal the past which is still present. So just pause for a breath, contemplate this pyramid and note how you feel about it. Ask for God’s grace and peace to be with you and your lineage. And I’m happy to connect with you and support you further if this image raises painful and unsettling feelings for you. Allow this pyramid of family ancestors to fade into the mist of your mind’s eye. There is second image I invite you into. Imagine making a lineage pyramid of the saints, the saints that inspire you. This is a pyramid of choice. I invite you now to fill in such a pyramid, imagining all the saints from all the ages and from any faith tradition who have inspired you, a spirit family who can be wind and support at your back. I can imagine Martin Luther King and JoAnn Robinson, a member at King’s first church who encouraged him. I can imagine St. Francis and Clare. I can imagine Gandhi behind me and Wangari Maathai of Africa. I can imagine some people at my hometown church and a college chaplain. I can imagine others who stood up for marginalized people and Creation. I can imagine mentors and teachers. Build your own spirit family right now. Fill it up with those who can support you as an inspiring example and a presence. In your mind’s eye, look back at all these, living or dead, and receive the blessing of these saints. And, in your mind’s eye, turn back around and gently lean back into it. Feel its support. Receive that support. Take a deep breath and anchor that in you. And now turn forward and see the younger ones and those yet to come, generation after generation forward, children, nieces and nephews, children of the community and larger world. Know that they are an extension of your lineage, of human lineage, of life’s lineage. Send love to them. Pray for them and commit to act for them and their world. Now take another full and easy breath and gently come back from that imaginal space. These lineage images and journeys are a kind of prayer practice that can show us where we can get strength and where wounds persist and need God’s grace and healing. When we do that healing work, we can release more love and energy and freedom for our lives now. Looking forward helps us locate where we are and give us perspective on what is important. Please, talk to me if you want to know more about this process. Furthermore, being in the connection to lineage reminds the soul that we are not the originators of life, but recipients of life participating in a great chain of life where life is in some way living us, coming through each of us. Our culture has so often defaulted to individual power and choice of the individual that it has neglected a deep spiritual truth that we are in a great river of life not of our making. There is much that we do not choose. God so often chooses us and calls us. Spirit is moving in us and around us in a great lineage of life. God can move in our lineages of family and faith even amidst the painful passages. The soul needs a real connection to that Great Lineage of Life, human and beyond. We are all called by God to cultivate our gratitude for the lineage of life and to serve its healing and vitality. AMEN
Isaiah 25.6-9
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Fort Collins, CO The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson On this mountain the [Holy One] of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples a rich feast, a feast of choice wines, of select foods rich in flavor, of choice wines well refined. [She] will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples, the shroud enshrouding all nations. [He] will swallow up death forever. The [ONE God]will wipe tears from every face; God will remove the people's disgrace from off the whole earth, for God has spoken. They will say on that day, "Look! This is our God, for whom we have waited—and God has saved us! This is the ONE, for whom we have waited; let's be glad and rejoice in the Holy One’s salvation!" Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 27223-27235). When I lived in Denver, the drive I took to First Plymouth UCC church where I served had not one, but two, major scenic vistas of the mountains as you came to the top of big hills on Hampden Avenue. It was stunning to watch them each morning and see how they changed with the seasons. I often thought to myself, “I live on the edge of a great feast of beauty. Yet I’m not partaking of the nourishment!” My family and I rarely went to the mountains. Busy lives of church and work and school activities distracted us from participating in the feast. I guess we feasted in other ways. I know that so many of you make the feast of our Rocky Mountains a regular part of your lives! Good for you! And I realize now that I always feasted my eyes on the glory of the mountains as I drove to work and often remarked to my children about the views. Our brothers and sisters of Mexican heritage have such a beautiful feasting tradition in their Day of the Dead celebration which takes place on November 1st and 2nd, the same days as All Saints and All Souls Days from European traditions. They lay out a feast for their ancestors who have died, remembering them with all their favorite foods, golden marigold petals and candles to light their way home and envisioning the spirits as butterflies who fly joyfully in for a visit. They do not sanitize their grief or push it away. Instead, they ritualize it with tangible, touchable remembrances. They invite both tears and laughter into the celebration. Our scripture today brings us healing images of a great feast of abundant life served by God on the top of God’s holy mountain, Zion. And the context for this prophetic healing feast is grief. Isaiah’s poetic prophecy is set against the backdrop of the Hebrew people’s physical and spiritual devastation after they have been conquered by a foreign empire and seen the destruction of their city, Jerusalem and its beautiful temple built by King Solomon. Families were pulled apart as captives were taken into slavery in exile. Homes are torn down around the people still living in them. There was death all around. Don’t you know that the people felt that God had abandoned them? Death cast a shroud over everything. Does that sound familiar? A shroud over everything? I think that is an apt description of our times after 18-19 months of pandemic. We have felt death, many kinds of death, as an active force of negativity, a shroud, a pall, during these months. We already knew that grief and death were not one-time visitors in this life. They thread their way through our lives in so many ways. We grieve many losses that are small deaths as well as the big deaths of loved ones and friends –job loss – relationships loss – loss of meaning in the midst of despair and depression – loss of health in a diagnosis – loss of community in a move– the loss of a beloved pet – then all the losses of the Covid 19 pandemic piled on top. And in the midst of pandemic, the grief of racism came to us with renewed force as we were already grieving so many injustices in our political system. Sometimes we feel so helpless when we are caught in the grip of grief, so disgraced that we cannot lift ourselves up from the mire, that we cannot change the circumstances that caused us or others to grieve. We feel very alone. Yet we are not alone. The Hebrew people were not alone. They had a prophet telling them that God was preparing salvation for them, salvation as abundant as a feast with fine wines, perhaps all their favorite foods! Salvation as amazing as wiping away every tear and conquering death forever. Death will be no more! Suffering will be no more! Now that is salvation!! While we are caught up in profound lamentation and grief, God, the Holy ONE, brings hope in the assurance of God’s presence and God’s ultimate deliverance of all people, not just the Hebrew people, but all of the God’s people, from the power of death. Scholar, Christopher Sietz, tells us that is what the phrase, “God will remove the people's disgrace from off the whole earth” means….all the people, not just the Hebrew people. And I would add all of God’s beloved creation, for we cannot be separate as human beings from creation. We are creation. God will deliver ALL from the power of death. This is a vision of hope and the vision we celebrate today in Totenfest here at Plymouth as our Mexican sisters and brothers prepare to celebrate the Day of the Dead. On this day that we remember those in our Plymouth family and in the wider communities of our individual lives who have died since when we last celebrated this day together. We speak their names. And we are not alone. We “feast” with one another this day as we do throughout the year, that is we companion one another. In an echo of God’s companioning presence, using the example of Jesus, God-with-Us, we are with one another, in joy and in sorrow, in all seasons, in pandemics and in times of health. In times of justice-making and in times of injustice protesting. We are not alone for God, who has the power to in community. Grief experts around the world will tell you that the best thing you can give someone who is in grief is your presence. Simply being a companion. Here we are today in the great communion of saints. We are all saints of God, my friends, not because we are something extra special. Those designated saints of the church by our Catholic siblings were simply ordinary people following God in extraordinary circumstances. And their stories inspire us. Let us recognize that we are all followers of God today as we companion one another and acknowledge the journey of life’s mystery that extends through and beyond physical death. As we remember those who have moved beyond us on that journey this year by speaking their names in this sacred time and space, we gather in the company of all God’s saints, the living whom see around us and those who have moved into the life with God that we cannot see with earthly eyes. One of the early saints of the Christian faith, St. John Chrysostom, says to us, “Those whom we have loved and lost are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are.” Let us be gathered in God’s companioning presence to speak the names of our loved ones. By this simple act we open ourselves to the transformation of our grief. It does not cease, but it allows God’s love and forgiveness to enter our hears. And this empowers us to companion those in our Fort Collins community, in our state and nation and around the world who are shrouded in grief, who raise their voices in lamentation. As we feast together in God’s transforming and companioning presence, remembering those we love so dearly, we bring the hope of love and forgiveness to all the communion of saints, the living and the dead, now and in every time and place. Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted only with permission. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
Romans 12.9–18
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado The family I grew up in was very antiseptic about death. They didn’t like funerals…they preferred memorial services after the fact. They didn’t talk about death, and I’m not sure they really knew how to grieve and mourn. I knew something about that was not healthy, especially after my dad died when I was 25. About ten years later, I was a Stephen Minister at First Congregational UCC in Boulder and a first-year student at Iliff. I was paired with Roy Brammell, a delightful, wise man in his 90s who had been the founding dean of the School of Education at the University of Connecticut fifty years earlier. And when I joined the family to visit Roy’s body at the mortuary, as I saw his tall, thin body, and it struck me that this was an empty shell…that Roy was no longer there. To me, it seemed that the body and the spirit were no longer connected. The senior minister, Bruce MacKenzie, asked if I’d like to help lead Roy’s service, and I said I’d be glad to. For the service, Roy’s adult children collected some of the things he had written over the years on a wide variety of topics like citizenship, education, duty, faith, and so on. They took turns reading these heartfelt pieces Roy had written, and it seemed to bring Roy’s presence back, even to revivify his spirit. (And I started crying in the chancel, and I had no Kleenex…so that was a lesson learned…never lead a memorial service without Kleenex.) Roy’s community of faith gathered to offer thanks to God for his life, to send him off prayerfully, to remember him, to surround is family in a loving embrace, to “rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.” Everybody has a story, whether we are homemakers or professors or deans or clergy or laborers or physicians or farmers or unemployed or businesspeople. God knows our stories…and I think it is a natural sentiment that we want others to know our story, and I suspect that we all want to be remembered. That’s an important function of a funeral or memorial service, or even of the bronze plaques honoring those buried in our memorial garden at Plymouth. Sometimes when I go by those names at the end of our gallery, I touch the bronze plaques, intentionally recalling the people named there, and I remember their stories and pray for them. I have a strange affection for old cemeteries, especially those attached to Congregational churches in New England. Looking at the artwork and reading what people chose to record on gravestones makes me curious about the stories of the people they commemorate. One of my favorite cemeteries is at First Congregational Church in Kittery Point, Maine, where I served as the sabbatical interim minister during the summer when I was in seminary. It’s a beautiful location on the shore, overlooking the harbor where the Piscataqua River flows past Portsmouth, New Hampshire into the Atlantic Ocean. I did some gravestone rubbings when I was there, and one struck me particularly, and I have a rubbing of it hanging in my office. It is the headstone of The Rev. Benjamin Stevens, who lived from 1721 to 1792. Stevens had to walk a fine line during the American Revolution between Tories and Patriots, and in 1776, the wealthiest family in the church, the Pepperells, left Maine for England, never to return. (The church still uses the communion silver and baptismal bowl given by their patriarch Sir William Pepperrell.) Everyone has a story, and here is what we know of Benjamin Stevens from his gravestone: “In memory of the Rev’d Benjamin Stevens D D Pastor of the First Church in Kittery, who departed this life in the joyful hope of a better, May ye 18th 1791: in the 71st year of his age and 41st of his ministry. In him, the Gentleman, the Scholar, the grave divine, the chearful Christian, the affectionate, charitable & laborious Pastor, the faithful friend & the tender Parent were happily united.” With that eulogy in stone, Stevens’ story inspires me as a pastor 229 years later. When Stevens died, a minister from nearby Portsmouth preached at his funeral, and accounts say that Kittery harbor was filled with boats from near and far, and that the crowd overflowed from the meetinghouse. This is one of the things that churches do: we help to remember the people whom we have loved and who have died. We help to provide a ritual that helps those in grief to have a place to mourn with others, to receive love and support from friends and fellow parishioners, and to be the church for one another. And there is more…we offer prayers for those who have died. We commend their spirits into the arms of God, asking for them to be received “into the company of the saints of light.” Maybe if you’re young or if you’ve never had a brush with death, it may not seem terribly important to you, but when I die, I want someone to pray for me. A funeral or memorial service is more than a celebration of life, it’s also an act of giving thanks to God, who entrusted the gift of life to us. As a church, we gather on this Sunday every year to name those dear ones who have died since last year at this time. It is a poignant and deeply meaningful rite that we observe. Year after year, we come together to name the names, to recall the people and their stories, to lift them up to God in a spirit of love and remembrance. This is another reason it’s almost impossible to be a Christian without a community around you. Even when we have to wear masks…even when we’ve used more hand gel than we could have imagined using in a lifetime…even when we are worshiping together via Vimeo, even when we can’t give one another a physical hug…we are here for one another not only for ourselves, but as the hands and feet, eyes and ears of Christ in the world today. “Let love be genuine; … hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection…Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer…extend hospitality to strangers….Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another…and live peaceably with all.” Paul gives us a tall order, but I know that this congregation — even in the midst of a pandemic, even on the cusp of a divisive election — this congregation will be there for one another and for our community. I’ve seen you hold the light for one another when someone is experiencing the shadows of grief and despair. God calls us to be there for each other, and you do that with grace, openness, and generosity of spirit. So, let us enter a time of remembrance for the people we’ve loved and lost these past twelve months. Let us remember their stories, and let us hold one another in our hearts. © 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
Isaiah 43.1-7
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado I know that for some of us, this is the most difficult Sunday of the year, because it provides an occasion when our grief can come to the surface again. Some of us have lost spouses, moms, dads, grandparents, children, dear friends. And though it is a difficult day, it is one of those rites of the church that acknowledge what we might rather sweep under the rug and ignore: that we are grieving, that we ache, that there is a piece of us that has died, too. And I stand with you this morning: I grieve, I ache, and a piece of me has died. And one of the reasons I love this place, this congregation, the church in all its failings and its glories is that we know how to come together and get real. We mark births with baptism. We mark marriages of opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We even have a rite in our UCC Book of Worship for the ending of a marriage! We know how to name things…to say “died” instead of “passed away” …to say “wife” or “partner” instead of “special friend”…we say “money,” instead of “benevolences.” I love this church because we know how to distinguished unvarnished truth from polite BS…because we aren’t afraid to be REAL and genuine with what we are experiencing and how it meshes and sometimes tangles with our faith. I love this church because we are a people who tie together personal faith and social responsibility. Yes, we are here this morning as people who are grieving or as those who are here to support them, and we are also here acknowledging that there is a sickness in our American culture that resulted in the violent deaths of eleven faithful Jews worshipping God at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. And we lift their lives up to God with love and light. Sometimes churches go astray when they become esoteric, with ritual and liturgy that say nothing to people or perhaps even to God. Sometimes churches reinforce the cultural norms of Empire and afflict the oppressed instead of providing them comfort. Sometimes churches are afraid to talk about controversial topics like sex, race, politics, and money. I am grateful that we try to avoid those pitfalls and that you are here today to be real…together. I love this church because we are not letting go of a central theme of our faith, which is to confront fear and to know that God is with us. God knows that we are going to be challenged, and God reminds us again and again: “Do not fear, for I am with you.” I love this congregation because when you come here you cannot help but know that you are not alone. In virtually every memorial service I lead, I include the New Creed from the United Church of Canada, whose refrain repeats like a heartbeat: “We are not alone…we are not alone.” And I say to you this day, welcome to this place, because we are not alone. Do not be fearful, because God is with us, and we stand together. I read and hear so much about loneliness and the absence of community in postmodern society, even as we are supposedly more connected by technology. WebMD claims that “Loneliness is a growing health epidemic.”[1] In fact, they say that loneliness rivals obesity and smoking as a health risk. The New York Times reports that loneliness affects longevity and causes imbalances in stress hormones like cortisol.[2] Part of the genius of church is that we still provide face-to-face relationships; we provide one of the only places where intergenerational community is the norm. Literally, for God’s sake, ministers still make house calls! This is not to say that we can all come to church more regularly and start smoking and eating more saturated fats…but most of us have known all along that we feel better when we connect with God and neighbors at Plymouth. And, yes, it is still possible to feel lonely here. So, if you are looking for a place to plug in at Plymouth, come and talk to one of your ministers…we’d love to help find a place where you feel at home here! Another truth for this Totenfest is that we all want to leave a legacy, to leave the world in better shape for having been here. And God knows the world needs our help. Earlier this week, I received a large envelope from a law firm here in town, and as I went through the pages I learned that one of our members who died last year, Lynn Richards, had included in her will a bequest for Plymouth. And I’m telling you this with her wife, Stacy’s, permission. The gift of $48,000 will become part of Plymouth’s endowment; it is the largest bequest our church has ever received. And I am deeply grateful that Lynn’s legacy includes a way to affect the mission of this congregation in perpetuity. Her caring will continue beyond any of our lifetimes…it’s a warm and wonderful reminder of Lynn, and it was particularly poignant to receive that letter during this week when we observe All Saints Day and Totenfest. I asked myself the question, “What legacy will I leave behind?” and I think it’s a good question for us all to ask. How do you want to be remembered by friends and family and community? What can you do today to affect the impact you will have on the world? How can you leave this planet a better place for having lived here? Life really is short. We really don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who are on this journey with us. So, we must be swift to love and to make a difference. And we must celebrate those whose lives we remember this day. Mary Oliver writes: “To live in this world You must be able to do three things: To love what is mortal; To hold it Against your bones knowing Your own life depends on it; And, when the time comes to let it go, To let it go.”[3] And for me, what makes the letting go possible is knowing that we are not alone, that God loves us, and has called us by name. I invite you to come forward if you wish, along the window aisle, and to speak aloud the name of someone you have loved and lost this past year. © 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. [1] WebMD, May 8, 2018. https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20180504/loneliness-rivals-obesity-smoking-as-health-risk [2] “The Surprising Effects of Loneliness on Health,” NYT, December 11, 2017 [3] From “A Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal. |
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