Rev. J. T. Smiedendorf
Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, CO
Isaiah 65:17-25*

What do you want?  I mean what do you really want?
We are moving into a social season of intensified appeals to want. Advertisers will increasingly try to entice your wants, shape your wants, even redirect your wants. Although what is most powerful is when an advertiser can get us to see their product or service as a fulfillment of a want we already have, especially a deep want, a deep intangible want. It’s not just a car, it’s security and reliability. It’s not just a truck, it’s power and manly status. It’s not just a toy, it’s happiness. These are the deepest wants, the intangibles, the deep ones that have to do with meaning and purpose, values and identity, love and acceptance.
 
Something that is offered to us as a community of faith is the journey into life giving depth. It’s not that living life in a sacred manner might not involve the delight of a desired product or service, a needed new car, a comforting massage.  It’s that there is a call of faith to living into a depth that sees through the illusory or shallow aspects of stuff and amusements into what is of lasting or life-giving value, what we really deeply and truly desire and need.
 
A faith of resilience and wisdom knows that there are things such as enough, and such as when and where, and such as first things first, and such as beauty and truth.  Such a way of life knows when it is the right time for a new car or a massage.
 
From the place of the soul, the question of what do you want can also be phrased, ‘what do you long for’? In your heart of hearts, for what do you long, for yourself and for others? Or even what do you dream and desire for the world to be? I like that term desire. I have a sense of desire as calling forth something that we feel in the body, something deep in us.
 
And deep want is the place to which we are faithfully invited when we consider the identity and the expression of being a steward. Stewardship is more than just our October theme. It’s an ‘always theme’ of being a person or a community of faith. Next Sunday, Consecration Sunday, we are asking for each of us to pledge a contribution for 2022 so we can plan responsibly for our ministry and mission in 2022.
 
Yet, all of this occurs within the larger, ‘the always’ context of faith and stewardship, the context of valuing and trusting and serving something greater than ourselves. Some years ago at a church retreat, the congregation I was serving summarized that something greater as the flourishing of life.  We could call it the Realm of God, or the Body of Christ, or Shalom, or justice, peace and the integrity of Creation. Isaiah called it a “new heavens and a new earth.” We could call that kind of something greater a faithful vision of what we really want, what inspires us, touches us, and calls us to celebration and action.
 
This talk of of vision and hoping for something reminds me of the book Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. This book has a subtitle: How to Face the Mess We are in without Going Crazy. In it, Macy invites us into facing the global environmental crisis by viewing hope not as a feeling based on a prediction of what will happen, hope based on a likely outcome, but into hope based on desire, based on intention, based on our highest vision of what we want for the world, what we most deeply value becoming real. Out of that vision of value and deep desire, we act out our hope. Our hope is active in our living out of and into the vision of what we deeply want.
 
As noted by Macy in Active Hope and by others in the field of change, starting with the end in mind may be the best way to begin. Starting with what we really want, starting with a deep imagining of what we want to see happen. We can do that now. Perhaps for Plymouth Church, perhaps for Fort Collins, perhaps for Colorado or for all Creation. The Strategic Planning Team has offered a vision of five years forward. Review their vision.
 
And you can move into the future perhaps 10, 20, or even 50 years. Close your eyes and see if it deepens your imagining. Imagine with all your imaginative senses what it is like to have our deepest hopes come to be. In positive terms, not imagining what you don’t want or what isn’t there, but focusing on what you do want and on what is there, imagine what you desire for the flourishing of life. What is that like? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you touch and taste? What do you hear?
 
Those who research this process encourage us to set aside “the how” in this phase of the process and just focus on the what. When we have filled that positive picture up, we take time to feel in our hearts the desire for it and the joy in its coming. Only then do we ask the question, how did we get here? The imagination is used to trace backward in time the steps that led to that change until we come back to the moment in which we stand. We come back to the now moment and are able to more adequately act with effectiveness to move on the path toward that greater something we seek.
 
I can think of instances in the life of churches I’ve served and even my own life where I couldn’t imagine how I would get to somewhere or some way, but those churches did and I did. Somehow the vision did manifest. With a focus on the vision and persistent steps, and sometimes with unexpected gifts and graces, the new was and is birthed, even the hard-to-believe "NEW."
 
This morning’s sacred reading from our Scriptures is an example of vision, a description of what (Third) Isaiah understood God really wants to have happen with human beings; to have fairness for those who labor, that they be rewarded with adequate fruits of their labor, that people are healthy and live full life spans, that there be an end to violence. Described beautifully in images that we can use to more deeply enter this reality, this desire, these images invite us to see elders and children together, to taste fruit and feel the shade of the vines, to hear the pounding of the swords into plowshares (Longmont UCC).
 
And, here and now, as much as ever, we are called to have a vision of the Realm of God, a place where there is balance in the relationships of humanity and in Creation so that we see polar bears walking on plentiful ice, and hear the songs of songbirds aplenty, and see the sight of whales breaching, and of students filling classrooms in productive learning, and of workers performing jobs with good pay and benefits, and smell good nutritious luscious food in the air, and hear the sound of music and laughter.
 
If our prayer that heaven may come upon the earth is to manifest, we must be on the path of stewarding our individual and communal lives, and that includes feeling and holding that vision of what we truly deeply want: the flourishing of life that the God of Grace and Justice wants for Creation.  
 
What do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine that vision of what God wants for the world? What vision do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine what God wants for Plymouth Church? What can you do with your time, talent, and treasure to help manifest it?
 
May we be about the business of vision, the imagining that opens us and guides us and sustains us being vital, joyful, and wise stewards of the life that we have received.

Amen.

*Isaiah 65:17-25 (Third Isaiah, back in Judah but struggling)

17 For I am about to create new heavens
    and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
    or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
    and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
    and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
    or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
    an infant that lives but a few days,
    or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
    and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
    or bear children for calamity;[a]
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord--
    and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
    while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
    but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.
For the word of God in Scripture
For the word of God among us
For the word of God within us
Thanks be to God

Mark 10.17-33
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
 I begin today with a story about a man and his wife, who in some ways are very different from us and in some ways very much like you and me. Let’s call them Paul and Theresa. They lived in Bordeaux, France, and they were from wealthy families. Perhaps they were more influential than most of us, but like us they were two people who had been moved by their faith in God. And that potent kernel of faith was a driving force in their lives. For many of their contemporaries, faith was just sort of there…it wasn’t central to how they lived their lives, and it existed more or less in the background of their day-to-day affairs.

Paul and Theresa were unlike most of us, though, because in addition to their property in France, they had large land holdings in Italy, and Theresa’s family also owned some of the best and richest land in Spain. This is a true story about real people who lived not in our time, but in the later years of the Roman Empire, in the late 300s. Their wealth and influence were difficult to calculate, because they had such vast properties, scattered across southern Europe. One historian writes that their wealth was comparable to a modern multinational corporation.

Then tragedy struck the family. Like so many of us, when big changes happen, doors close before us and new windows of opportunity open. Do you know the kind of changes I’m talking about? Those moments test our mettle and sometimes provide the occasion for metanoia, for changes of heart, and new beginnings. Here is what happened: Paul and Theresa’s only son died. For them it must have seemed like the end of their world, because to them – like many of us – family was everything. For three long years, Paul and Theresa searched their souls and eventually reached the decision that they would live lives devoted to Christ, living essentially a monastic existence. They thought about Jesus and how he had said to his followers when his own family wanted to get through the crowd to reach him: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Not quite the modern family values some of us espouse.

In the course of this decision, Paul and Theresa essentially renounced the family ideal that was absolutely central in their culture, in other words, they committed “social suicide.”[1] They were what many considered Franklin Roosevelt to be: traitors to their class. They opted out of the uppermost stratum of Roman society for something even more powerful.

But that wasn’t all…Paul and Theresa knew what Jesus had said about wealth: that it was easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for them to enter the kingdom of God. They began to dismember and sell off their estates and to distribute the money to the poor. Can you imagine a multinational corporation, dissolving itself, and giving the proceeds to the poor?

Paul and Theresa moved to Barcelona, and in the cathedral there on Christmas Day in 394 Paul was ordained as a priest. He was the first member of a Roman senatorial family to be ordained not as a bishop, but as a mere clergyman. More social suicide.

Soon thereafter, Paul and Theresa sailed across the Mediterranean to a village called Nola, outside Naples. And it was there Paul had visited the tomb of St. Felix when he was much younger. It was there that Paul and Theresa used all their remaining wealth to build a shrine to St. Felix, a Syrian immigrant who had been tortured for his faith in an earlier era. The fine mosaics at the shrine of St. Felix were excavated by archeologists in the 20th century, and they are beautiful. Paul and Theresa built a basilica there dedicated to St. Felix. They built hostels for pilgrims to come and visit the shrine, and they provided monastic hospitals for the free healing of those who were ill or dying. They made it possible for even the poorest to come to this shrine for worship and healing.

What would you do with all that wealth? If you were going to give it up, how would you craft your renunciation so that it did the greatest good? And what factors inform your choices?

Paul and Theresa saw themselves as imitators of Christ, the Christ who an ancient Christian hymn says, “though he was in the form of God…he emptied himself taking on the form of a slave…and humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”[2] That is the life they tried to create for themselves.

Paul (who is actually St. Paulinus), was interested not just in getting rid of his wealth, but doing so in a way that he thought was like transferring his treasure to the kingdom of God.

What would you have done if you had wealth at your disposal…even if it wasn’t immense wealth? How does your faith inform and influence how you would fund something to do what Christ did?

-  -  -  -  -

Going back to Mark’s gospel, what is your reaction when you hear Jesus pause — feel compassion for the rich man — and then tell him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor? Are you somebody who thinks that Jesus is being unrealistic? Does it seem like Jesus is always talking about money? Perhaps you think Jesus is being too demanding with the young man…after all, Zacchaeus the tax collector (also described as a rich man) gave up only HALF of his wealth and won favor with Jesus. What is YOUR reaction? How does it make you feel? Do you wonder what it would be like to stand face to face with Jesus and to have him ask you to renounce your wealth? How would you respond if that were the case?

Jesus isn’t easy on those of us with possessions, and by the standards of the ancient world, almost everyone in this room is rich, which means you have food, housing, access to education and medical care…it doesn’t mean having two cars, nor two houses. Jesus seems to intuit that this rich man is deeply, unhealthily attached to his possessions.

Here’s the bottom line: virtually all of us are rich compared to the rest of the planet, and we live far better than royalty in ages past. So, what are we called to do with our wealth if we want to be faithful followers of Jesus?

Imagine what we could do in terms of mission and outreach at Plymouth if we had an annual budget based on every member tithing 10% of their income. And we do have members at Plymouth who tithe! Median household income in Fort Collins is $74,300. So, if 350 average-income families gave $7,430 our budget would be $2.6 million — more than two-and-a-half times what is being proposed this year. Do you know what kind of impact we could have on homelessness in Fort Collins with that income every year? Imagine how many kids in South Africa, who have been orphaned by AIDS, we could feed, clothe, and educate. Think about how many more kindergartens in Ethiopia we could build and support. Closer to home, we subsidize housing for one housing-insecure CSU student each year…what if we made it 10 students?

For most of us, giving ten percent wouldn’t kill us…and it might actually save someone else…and maybe save us in the process. We do a good job of talking our progressive talk, but I for one could do a better job of putting my money where my mouth is…and where my heart is. I wonder if there is a disconnect for those of us living in the affluent society not simply about how we can make a difference, but how we are called by Jesus himself to share our wealth, and how it might liberate us.

Here is the question I put to myself, and I also put to you to wrestle with: Where is my heart…and what am I going to do about it? Jane Anne and I are still talking about our pledge for 2022, and this year we have pledged $12,000 to Plymouth. We could probably do even more, because we are blessed by being compensated well for our work, and like some of you we have a kid in college, we are saving for retirement, and we have some extraordinary healthcare costs.

What I'm trying to do is hold up a mirror not to embarrass anyone or make anyone feel guilty or to exclude anyone because they aren’t in a financial position to give anything. Rather, I'm trying to introduce us to the possibilities that we can make a difference…that the kingdom of God is among us and that we are called to form Beloved Community.

We can write Jesus off and say that he was simply using hyperbole when he told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, or we can try and take it seriously.

We can write Jesus off when he says that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich woman to enter the kingdom of God, or we can try and take it seriously.

We can write Jesus off when he commends Zaccheus the tax collector for giving half of all his possessions and distributing them to the poor, or we can try and take it seriously.

We want faith to be easier…and it just isn’t. There is no magic bullet, no pill we can pop, no creed we can recite, no confession of faith we can offer that will make the narrow way of Jesus any less rigorous. But here is the good news: we are here to walk this road together. We are “All Together Now”…forming Beloved Community. We are here to seek new ways of being faithful, to live transformed lives and to work together for the kingdom of God.

Amen.

© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Peter Brown, Through the Eye of the Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD. (Princeton: Princeton, 2012), page 209.

[2] Philippians 2.6-12

Psalm 8
The Rev. Dr. Ron Patterson
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, CO

A week or two ago while I was weaving, something many of you know I always do when I visit Ft. Collins, I took a lunch break, left my loom bench, and took a seat at the large knitting table at the local yarn store where I spend a lot of my free time.  Often there are a dozen or more knitters or crocheters sitting at the table.  That day there was only one and this person likes to talk and so as ate my lunch I listened.   

They said that I would not be seeing them in the next week or two, because they would be home baking for a large church meeting to be held at the local non-denominational church they attend.  I began to listen at that point rather than just politely nod while they talked and I ate. 

I could not help myself.  I shared with them that all the church meetings I have attended for over a year now have been online, no pastries, no cake, no cookies, not even coffee.  In fact, I told them that our entire General Synod, over 3,000 people, met online this summer.  Did their church expect many for this meeting?  Hundreds, they said; and they planned to be baking for the next two weeks to prepare.  

Once again, I could not help myself.  Did that mean that those attending would all be vaccinated?  And then I realized that I might have overstepped from curious to nosey and so I apologized for asking.  But they responded, well, some of them might be wearing masks.  And then I went full nosey and said “Are you vaccinated?” and this person smiled and said: “Let’s just say, I’m taken care of.”  At that point I silently picked up my lunch, put on my mask and left the room.  
​
I’m led to make a few observations before I get into my sermon this morning to set stage for what I hope to communicate.  First, I am not particularly proud of that interaction, and might even suggest that the devil made me do it.  However, that would not be fair to the Prince of Darkness, because I over-reacted, perhaps unfairly, all on my own to a couple of things this person said that gripe my heart and fry my spleen.  

Calling a church ‘non-denominational’ is often, in my experience, code for conservative, non-inclusive, male-dominated and guilt driven.  And often, the participants in these congregations have no idea of what their leaders believe, because they conceal their message in user friendly packages that include tons of catchy music and lots of warm fellowship, unvarnished patriotism and messages designed to make everyone feel good.  We have our faults in the United Church of Christ, tons of them, but we don’t try to hide who we are behind an innocent sounding word like ‘non-denominational’.   My guess, perhaps incorrect or even judgmental, is that her church has a denomination, they just don’t want you to know about it.  

And second, the evasive answer to my way too nosey question might be covering an attitude that does not reflect the unconditional love of Jesus and the call of Jesus for us to love God and love one another.  There are good excuses not to be vaccinated, but for the love of God, don’t cover it with some sickeningly sweet varnish that implies that God has you covered in such a way that suggests you bear no responsibility for your neighbors.  Wear a mask or take other precautions.  

This person said that they are taken care of—and once again, this might be terribly unfair of me, but what they might have meant was that their church peddles anti-vaccination conspiracy theories or that their pastor has told them that if they love Jesus they don’t need a vaccine to be safe or they might even believe that their faith can keep them well.  Maybe, but maybe not.  I got my shot hoping that it might protect me, but I got the shot because I believe in loving others enough to keep them safe.  

Thank God I belong to a church that says upfront that I don’t have to leave my brain at the door to find a faith home or to grow and that this preacher and these pastors don’t try to tell you what you have to think or do, but insist that you join us in prayerful, respectful dialogue with one another and with the best scientific thought available, because I believe that reflects what it means to love God, one another and ourselves.  

And I open this sermon with that story which might reveal too much of my rudeness and too little of my compassion or understanding, because I want to talk about who God is and who we are and what I believe we need to be about in this world as followers of Jesus; a world where some of the follows of Jesus seem to be up to something entirely different and dreadfully dangerous that threatens not only our future, but our freedom with a belief system that turns the way of Jesus into a power grab and a tool of repression and a direct rejection point by point of what Jesus said and did. And those are strong words but let me tell you what I mean.  

My text this morning is Psalm 8. This is the Psalm that went to the moon on Apollo 11, and this is the Psalm that shows up a few times each year in the lectionary because this Psalm weaves cosmology, anthropology and theology into a powerful tapestry truthfully answering the three questions that I think define human existence, the same three questions that too many religious traditions glibly fib about.  

Question one:  who are we?  The Psalmist says we are just a tad lower than the angels and that you and I stand at the pinnacle of God’s creation.  Question two:  who’s in charge?  A creator who acts in love and calls us to respond to life and to circumstances within and beyond our control with the same love.  Question three and this one is a bit tricky:  What are we supposed to do with our lives?  How are we supposed to respond? How are we supposed to live?   Now the faithful answer as Jesus suggested it, is to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  

But there is a tiny problem.  The Psalmist throws the word “Dominion” into the mix which seems to suggest that the creator God has given all of us a job description that we might not like, might not really want and might as a collective humanity have messed up royally by misunderstanding what it meant over the last few millennia, especially in the Western European thought world. 

Here’s what I mean by that.  This Psalm celebrates the reality of the Genesis mandated role of the human being as God’s partner in creation.  The theology of our Western Christian tradition suggests an anthropomorphic cosmology, which I know sounds like baloney to those of scientific mind, but that is history and that is why for centuries in places where Christianity dominated, human dominion was too often seen as human control of the earth with tragic consequences for the environment.  This view encouraged the idea that humans had the God-given right to control, to subjugate and to dominate the creation. Dig it out, drill it out, develop it, exploit it, burn it, transform it, mass produce it, market it, sell it, throw it out and then start over.  Western Christians in one sense crucified the earth without seeming to know or understand what they were doing.  And this idea spread empowered by Western colonialism.   
 
But all was not lost, because in so many places and in so many traditions, some of the followers of Jesus and other faiths and often no faith, have begun to take a second look at what dominion over the earth really means, and many of our sisters and brothers, many of us,  have repented the old idea of dominion as domination and partnered with the best scientists to understand that human actions, energy policies, agricultural policies and all the rest have consequences short and long term for the health of our planet and the survival of our species.  Many of our best leaders in the church and elsewhere are saying that to be a Christian or to be a human, demands that we become environmentalists realizing that the actual witness of the biblical writers insists that the earth and all of creation is our neighbor as fully as the person sitting next to us.

Many years ago, I watched as a minister baptized a baby.  As the minister held the little one lovingly, surrounded by the proud parents and grandparents and a supportive congregation.  The minister said, “You and I have borrowed the future from this child. In how we treat one another, in how we live our lives, in how we take care of this earth, we make payments on a mortgage we hold on this baby’s future.”  That’s how I understand the gift of dominion you and I have been given by God. 

Now, let me return to the story of my bad behavior at the knitting table and about what I heard and understood, perhaps incorrectly about my table companion’s response to my nosey question about their vaccination status.  
What I heard in their answer was a different understanding of dominion.  What I heard, and perhaps projected on to their comment was a set of ideas held by some conservative Christians.  

They are known as dominionists—they have taken the gift of dominion or partnership with the Holy One in the sacred task of co-creation and turned that idea into a license to dominate and control not only creation but human destiny.  

They believe that it is the destiny of the United States to be dominated by Christians and that biblical law should determine the law of the land.  They deny the separation of Church and State.  They reject freedom of conscience.  They defend their ideas by claiming religious freedom for themselves while at the same time denying it for others who do not share their political beliefs. This is a Christian nation they argue and if you are not a Christian in the same way they are, you should have limited rights or perhaps no rights at all.  

One of the strangest sights if you were paying attention to the insurrection on January 6 was the number of Protestant Christian flags and crosses being carried by the rioters that day.  Did that surprise you?  

It was not a coincidence because dominionist ideas were driving that crowd, ideas that include the notion that certain anointed politicians will hasten the domination of this country by Christians. Sure, January 6 was political, but politics partially driven by religious fanaticism is a terrifying undercurrent revealed that day and since in the actions and attitudes of several prominent politicians, including several sitting senators and members of the house.  We need to know that.  We need to act as the followers of Jesus who know better. 
​
In one sense, I know that I have gotten a bit carried away by all of this. Our progressive and inclusive stands in the United Church of Christ on so many issues urge us to be God’s tolerant people, accepting of all, inclusive of all.  But when one way of looking at the Christian faith slams the door shut on the rest of us or enables conspiracy theories that threaten others or the earth or the poor or people of color or immigrants with ignorance or white supremacy disguised as patriotic piety, then we are called to sing the words of Psalm 8 with renewed devotion.  

We are God’s children called co-creators by the divine.  We are a little less than the angels, bearing the very image of the Holy One.  We are sisters, brothers, siblings of one human family.  We are not miserable sinners worthy of hell, saved by the cross alone, rather we are joyful saints invited by Jesus to follow the way of life.  We come to a world table today not as strangers but as welcome guests.  We remember that our wholeness is guaranteed by the one who was broken because of a love that will never let us go.  O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

​Amen.  

Numbers 11.1-23
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
“The stories we tell [including the stories we tell ourselves] shape how we experience everything.”[1] That’s quite a story in Numbers, isn’t it? The way the writer tells it, the complainers — “riffraff” in the translation I used this morning — have lost sight of the fact that God has given them freedom from slavery in Egypt and has provided food for them, as well as sending Moses as a leader. They are archetypal complainers who see scarcity when they should sense God’s abundance.

In our adult ed. forums and in Jane Anne’s sermon last Sunday, we’ve been looking at an important book by Gareth Higgins called “How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying.” I really wish that the Israelites had a copy of this book, because it would have helped them improve their attitude, but it was published about 3,600 years too late. Two questions Higgins asks about every story is 1) Is it true? and 2) Is it useful. If a story is true but not useful, he invites us to tell ourselves a different story — or to tell the same story differently — if we want to shift our outlook. Psychologists, who would also have been helpful to the Israelites, call this reframing.

So, you’ve heard the story as it’s written, and perhaps it is an admonition to us to stop whining and be appreciative for what God has provided. The writer’s message is pretty clear: quit your kvetching and stop demanding perfection! But what if the Israelites had told themselves the story differently? What if they had the emotional intelligence and insight to tell the story this way:

Even though there was a strong craving for meat among the Israelites, they savored the freedom and deliverance God had provided. Even when they remembered the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic they had eaten while in bondage in Egypt, they were sustained by the manna that God had provided to keep them alive, and they were grateful.

The manna was like coriander seed and its color was like a beautiful resin. The people would roam around and collect it and grind it and then boil it in pots and make it into cakes. It tasted like cakes baked in olive oil.

And sometimes, when it was mixed with just the right amount of water, it tasted kind of like chicken. It sustained people in the wilderness for 40 years and cost them nothing.
Milk and honey awaited them, they knew, and beside that, they had something that tasted sweeter than the produce of goats and bees: God had provided them with freedom from bondage.

What would have happened to the Israelites if they had told the story differently? How might their experience have been transformed? How might Moses’s leadership have changed? Do you ever have stories in your own life that need to be told in a different — a more helpful — way? This is not about being a Pollyanna, but rather about surviving your own fears and insecurities and turning them into gifts rather than curses. Sometimes we simply aren’t ready to tell the story differently because we have become attached to the old story, even if it’s an unhealthy narrative. What do I mean by that? It’s in the text this morning: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for free!” Yes, dear Israelites, but do you not also remember the existential oppression of being enslaved for generations? …building pyramids in the hot sun for pharaohs who erroneously considered themselves living gods? Is your whining story helpful?

Are there some less-healthy narratives that you keep telling yourself, simply because you’ve become used to the old, unhelpful story? Maybe the story you tell yourself — or even recount to others — has lost its usefulness. I’ve fallen into that trap and did so again last week.

As I was preparing for my trip to UCLA for a very fancy scan, I reframed the language of diagnosing my cancer. Initially, I was saying, “I have to fly out to LA and have a huge amount of radiation in this scan, and my insurance probably won’t even pay for it.” That is true, but it is not a life-giving story. So, instead of telling myself that I HAVE to get a PSMA PET CT scan, I started retelling the story with a twist: I GET to have a PSMA PET CT scan. What’s more, I have an oncologist who is so far ahead of the game that he sends his patients our to LA instead of waiting for Anschutz to start doing the scan sometime in the future. And even further, I have enough money to pay for the scan and the travel expenses, and I get to stay with my sister and brother-in-law, who are really supportive.

So far, so good. Even when I was anxious about the scan, I kept telling myself the new, better story. But early last week, I started feeling anxious about hearing the results, which could have been not-very-good news. And on Tuesday, I heard some pretty good news from my oncologist: “Hal, there are three lymph nodes in your pelvic region that are cancerous, and there is no evidence of metastasis in your bones or organs. And it’s very treatable.” Phew! Grateful for that! And then Jane Anne and I met with him on Wednesday to talk about the treatment plan. He described two different approaches, and together we opted for the more aggressive approach that has about a 50-percent cure rate. I was fine when he said six weeks of radiation treatments five days a week — it’s a 15-minute drive from my house, which makes me really grateful to live in Fort Collins! My attitude took a nosedive when he said that it would also involve between six and eighteen months of androgen-deprivation therapy, which I did for six months last time, and it made me feel miserable: hot flashes, mood swings, hair loss, muscle loss, weight gain, and other unmentionable side effects. Here is the story I started telling myself even before I left the oncologist’s office: I’m going to feel like crap again, and maybe for an even longer time. I’m going to gain back the 35 pounds I’ve lost. I’m not going to be able to deal with the hormone-driven emotional roller coaster on top of all the stress of doing pandemic ministry at Plymouth. I’m going to be too tired to do what I need to do.” Now, I ask you: do you think that’s a helpful story to tell oneself? I feel sorry for Jane Anne, who got to hear me whine like the Israelites! And it took a good night’s sleep for that story to get stale and for me to tell it differently.

Thursday morning, I read Richard Rohr’s daily email entitled, “It’s All a Gift.” He contrasts our meritocracy with what he calls “the gift economy” that God has set up. “If we call ourselves Christians, we have to deal with the actual Gospel. The only way we can make this turnaround and understand [the gift economy] is if we’ve had at least one experience of being given to without earning.” What have you received without earning it? Most of us “earn” a salary, we “earned” whatever education we got, we “earned” that vacation we took. What have YOU received without earning it? Think about that for a moment. Who gave you life? Biologically, your parents did, but who provided the gift of life itself? Did you earn that? Does God require a quid pro quo for the gift of life, of enough food, of enough education, of enough faith, of enough health? Rohr concludes, “We don’t ‘deserve’ anything!” It’s all a gift. And that changes the way we tell the story.

If we see it all as a gift, the Israelites tell the story of God’s abundance in freeing them and feeding them in the wilderness for 40 years and for providing a leader. If we see it all as a gift, I get to tell the story about how lucky I am: I GET to have another shot at my cancer being cured, I GET to have excellent healthcare and treatment, I. GET to have a faith that sustains me spiritually…. I even GET to learn to tell a better story to myself and to you about something as difficult as cancer.

What stories are you telling yourself? Are they true? Are they useful? Stories about the pandemic? About your responses to it? About where God is in your life? About things that scare the hell out of you? Do you need to tell a different, a more helpful story? How would God tell YOUR story? Perhaps you should tell it that way, too. The stories we tell ourselves shape how we see everything.

Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid, (Minneapolis: Broadleaf, 2021), p.29.

1 Corinthians 8:1b-3
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

Today our scripture text is quite short. It comes from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. He is responding some tangible issues in the young church that is made up of Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor. It seems there is a debate over whether it spiritually harmful to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols when you visit someone’s house. Paul speaks specifically to the wealthier Gentile Corinthians who feel they have enough excellent spiritual knowledge be able to eat this meat when hosted by pagan friends and not fall back into pagan practices. He bypasses the whole tussle saying, “Your knowledge that this meat won’t hurt you because the idols are false gods that do not exist and you know the One God revealed in Jesus the Christ, is correct and not the point. The point is, will your practices influence those who have been Christ followers a shorter time than you and lead them back into pagan practices? How will your “superior” knowledge affect and shape the community?” Paul says to them that the beloved community, its unity and spiritual nourishment is more important that any special spiritual knowledge that any of us might have. We are all called to love the One God, the real God revealed in the love of Jesus the Christ. Hear this brief text with me. 

1 Corinthians 8:1b-3:
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God. [1]

And again:
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.

For the Word of God in scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us …. Thanks Be To God!
 
Do you love God? What does it mean to love God? Do you believe/understand you are known by God? I wrestle with these questions. I share some of my wrestling with you today.

The piece of Gareth Higgin’s book, How Not To Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, that stunned me, took my breath away, comes from the chapter in the book titled, “The Fear Of Being Alone.” After telling a childhood story of being lost on a bike ride with his father, not knowing which turn to make to find his dad and feeling quite alone, Gareth writes, “ … true knowing is a two-way street between us and the divine (or higher power, or universe, or God, or whatever may be the best synonym for Love.) The way to overcome the fear of being alone is to find friendship with God and with yourself. Knowing isn’t as valuable or life-giving as being known. Being known is not something to be achieved but experienced.” [2]

Is Gareth echoing Paul here, knowingly or unknowingly? Paul wrote, “If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.” Knowing is something we seek to achieve. And well we should in many circumstances. Being known, however, … Loving … that is to be experienced, isn’t it?
 
I like to know things! I even strive to know things. I have strived to be well-educated, to know stuff! I strive to create the best sermons and programming possible to help individuals and church communities on their journeys to being God’s kin-dom on earth, strived to know God so I can share God! However, I had to ask myself as I read Gareth’s words, have I ever known that I am “known,” particularly “known” by God. 
Are some of you – out there in the pews, watching at home– “strivers”? Do you strive to know things in life, to know God? Perhaps, you are better than I am at being with God, accepting that God knows and love you? Accepting that you love God? 

There is a something about these questions that I am grasping to understand. Like I want to understand/experience Gareth’s words about being known is an experience far greater than knowing, I want to understand/experience Paul’s word’s “if someone loves God, then they are known by God.” These words speak to me in such deep place in me that I can barely articulate what I sense or feel. I thought I desired to know God. It seems I desire to be known by God. 

This desire brings me to the question, which may seem odd given the fact I have been in the Christian church all my life, baptized at 10, working in full-time ministry for over 20 years, if I desire to be known by God, then how do I love God? I love my family, I love my friends, I love my husband, I love my dog, I love my church. I know the choices I make because of all this loving. I can feel these loves tangibly inside of me. I love these things without a lot of striving because they are tangible in my life and because they love me back. But how do I love the Mystery that is God? How do I know that I am loving God? How do I do it right so God can know me? 

And see - I am back to the striving, striving for knowledge, for achievement, for excellence. I can think and ponder my way into and around this desire to be known by God, to dwell in God’s love, until I have worn myself out. And worn you out as well. What else did Paul say? “If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. [That’s me.] But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.”  

Being known by God is about loving, Being in the loves of this world that are real and tangible. Being in the Love that is God that may not be as tangible at first. Paul knew that the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures commanded us to love God, neighbor and self. And I include creation, all its animate and inanimate beings, as well as humanity, as our neighbors. God, neighbors, self – these three things are the very substance of life and when we intentionally dwell in loving with them we dwell in Love, in the Divine, the Holy, and  are somehow, beyond our knowing, we are known. 

To be known by God, is a mystery, is a given, is not something we can strive to achieve. It is a relationship experience. It is dwelling in Love. Gareth reminds us that being known by God is not knowledge, but experience. He writes, “And it can be experienced right now through a practice that is often called prayer but is accessible to everyone, no matter your tradition or belief. … Any practice that unfolds love to you can be considered prayer.” He continues, “Prayer is not a chore. Prayer is one way to community. Prayer literally remembers us into the experience of not being alone.” [3] If we are known by God, we are not alone. 

I recently was given a poem by a friend in a contemplative writing group that I am in by a contemporary poet that I did not know, Alfred K. Lamotte. Like Paul’s words, like Gareth’s words, this poet’s words struck me to the core. “Fred”, as his publisher referred to him when I wrote for permission to share this poem, titled his poem, “Gospel.”  Remember that “gospel” literally means in New Testament Greek, “good news.” In the poem, which I will conclude with today, I think the poet offers an experience of prayer and of being known. There is one line that gave me pause, “There is no bad news.” How can he write this? I have definitely received news that seemed bad, very bad, at times. I know you have as well. Keep listening, though, to the end of the poem. The next few lines will juxtapose that line with meaning in the surrender of prayer and being known by God. I invite us all into this place of surrender in relationship and being known, even if just for a moment, this day.  

"Gospel" by Alfred K. Lamotte 
Nothing is wrong.
You have never not been free. 
This is the good news. 
Every photon of your flesh 
Is the boundless sky. 
This is the good news. 
You lost yourself
In the shadow of beauty 
So that beauty might 
Find you again
There is no bad news. 
Healing comes
From a heartbroken place 
Where you’ve breathed out 
Everything you carried. 
Stay there.
The next breath
Is God’s love. [4]

So it is. Amen.

©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May only be reprinted with permission.

1. Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 44157-44159). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.

2. Gareth Higgins, How Not To Be Afraid, Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, (Broadleaf Books, Minneapolis, MN: 2021, 88-89.)

3. Ibid, 89.
​
4. Alfred K. Lamotte, “Gospel,” Savor Eternity One Moment at a Time,(Saint Julian’s Press, Houston, TX: 2016, 13.)

Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, Colorado 
​Lection:  Psalm 46, "Easter, 1916" (Yeats)
    
Trying to make sense of something that is senseless is not easy.  You already know that I think.  

When someone we love dies, when our lives are turned upside down by something the doctor tells us, when the phone rings in the middle of the night or when a relationship breaks apart, we are left stunned and at a loss for words.

That’s how I feel when I think about 9/11 and about much that has happened in our world and in this country since 9/11.    It’s been twenty years, but for me it seems like yesterday.  

As a few of you know, Charnley and I were living in New York City on September 11, 2001.  She was working for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Hospital in Human Resources, and I was on the staff of Marble Collegiate Church on 5th Avenue.  That day was election day and we voted at P.S. 116 on our block and left one another on the corner of 33rd Street and 3rd Avenue at around 9:00 a.m.   She headed north to her office, and I headed cross town to the church at 5th Avenue and 29th Street.  What neither of us knew at that moment, was that an airplane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. and that another plane had flown into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.  When I reached Park Avenue South and 32nd Street, people were looking downtown at a large cloud of smoke.  A man with a cell phone said that he thought a small sightseeing plane had hit the World Trade Center.  

By the time I reached my office, traffic was beginning to stop, and the street was full of people pointing and crying.  We hooked up a T.V in the lobby of our office building and for a time just wandered around in shock.  I walked over to Sixth Avenue where you could look downtown directly at the Twin Towers.  I was there when the South Tower fell, but it was hard to tell what was happening because of the smoke.  When word rippled through the crowd, people reacted with shock and anger and tears.  People hugged total strangers.  

Meanwhile, Charnley’s office closed, and she went back to our apartment with a consultant who had just arrived in the city by train and a young girl from her staff who lived outside of the city and was terrified and had nowhere to go.  They turned on the T.V. and heard that blood was needed at the hospital two blocks from our apartment, so they headed over there to give blood.  After a short time standing on line, they were turned away because the hospital had figured out by that point that they were probably not going to need blood.  Outside of the Emergency room on the street, dozens of doctors and nurses stood waiting with wheelchairs and stretchers for the injured who never came.  One of the saddest truths of that day was that almost no one made it to the hospital.  People either escaped or they died.   

By the time the north tower collapsed, we had organized ourselves at the church to do what we could.  We began to list the people we knew might be working in the Twin Towers.  We opened the Fifth Avenue doors, we set up land-line phones that people could use, we put together a prayer service for noon and set up a table to give people water.  We put on our robes and stood outside in the crowd milling around on the street just talking to people.   

The next eight hours are a blur and the next few days are a bigger blur, but by noon, people covered with dust from the building’s collapse began straggling up Fifth Avenue walking home.  Many of them stopped to talk.  Many of them went into the church just to rest and pray or use the facilities or to make a phone call since nobody’s cell phone was working at that point.   And that’s what we did for the next several days, we listened, we tried to give comfort, we worshipped—we rang the bell and the sanctuary would fill beyond capacity with people anxious to sing together and pray, and we stood on the street just talking to people who needed to talk.

Looking back from the perspective of twenty years I want to share a few observations.  In the limited time I have, I can only scratch the surface, so these remarks come with an invitation for further conversation with any of you.  

Observation one:  the human spirit is amazing and when evil runs into the human spirit—which is exactly what the people who hijacked those planes were up to, the human spirit may flounder for a time, but the human spirit comes through because the human spirit is really one with the Divine Spirit.  That’s how I understand the fire fighters and other first responders who ran into those buildings.  That’s how I make some sense of what happened that day and that’s how I understand and deeply appreciate the scientists and the first responders and all the medical people attempting to help during this time of Pandemic. When we trust one another and the facts, we are all capable of a lot more than we think.  

Observation two, when something bad happens, the worst part is the fear.  I spent the first few hours after the attack working in the shadow of the Empire State Building. I found myself glancing up afraid that I might catch sight of another plane.  Rumors abounded.  A mosque in our neighborhood was excavating a basement, were they really planting bombs?  Don’t ride the subways, there is an attack scheduled for Friday on the trains.  Some of the same conspiracy theories born then are still festering in the dank ignorance that empowers the science deniers and fear mongers today.  

One of the biggest challenges in this life is to live by faith and not by fear and that is a decision we are called to make every single day of our lives.  Fear is real and worry is fear’s best friend but living by fear is not living—living by faith is living.   So many angel messengers appeared that day and in the following days with that message, that I became convinced that the Holy One was speaking.   

Observation three, it's OK to be angry—in fact when something like that happens, it is downright healthy to react with anger.  There was plenty of anger, but since anger is what flew those planes and killed all those people to begin with, the anger we were feeling in response to the attack needed to become a pathway to healing and not an excuse to join the people who live their lives angry.   Whole groups of people in this nation are living that way and that is tragic.  Anger is either a dead end with the emphasis on the word ‘dead’ or a passage to the positive.  Dare I suggest that being angry enough to do something loving is the way of Jesus?
​
Observation four, and this relates to the one about anger:  there is no future in revenge. I suggested a few days after 9/11 that we offer to send every young person in the Arab world to Harvard rather than seek revenge for what happened.   That sounds crazy I know, but it’s hard for me to see what we as a nation achieved with our twenty-year wars that thank God might be ending.  One recent study (Watson Institute, Brown University) revealed that these wars have cost $6.4 trillion dollars—a number beyond comprehension, but in simple terms around $20,000 for each person in this nation.  And that is not counting the 800,000 human beings lost in the process, including so many of our beloved young people whose service and sacrifice is beyond measuring.  I am not a foreign policy expert, and I am not a politician, but I do follow the Jesus who talked about the futility of revenge.  

Observation five, bad religion leads to bad politics and crazies are crazies no matter which religion they practice.  When human beings confuse their ideas about God and what they believe God might want them to do, with God or when human beings justify what they want to do anyway by appealing to their understanding of religion, you can almost guarantee that the religion being practiced has very little to do with the transcendent reality that is glimpsed from time to time on the far side of our human experience.  

God is not what is in the book whether that book is the Bible or the Quran or Vedic scripture.  God is love and where love abides God resides, God is forgiveness, and when we forgive and find a way to give, God is hovering near.  God is present when humans embrace one another across borders and find ways to break down walls that separate or differentiate based on race, ethnicity, or orientation.  

If pride or patriotism drives love out the door and creates enemies to enhance identity or to preserve privilege, then the amazing ability of the human ego to justify its behavior takes over and people are bound to get hurt and God will once again be found weeping on a pile of smoking rubble left behind by the next act of human idiocy or idolatry. 

Observation six, when you find yourself caught up in something overwhelming, do something human and whatever you do it will multiply.  Two stories.  Shortly after we got started talking to people on the street, a member of the congregation in her late eighties showed up to help.  She just showed up.  The water table was her idea.  We did that every year in June for the Fifth Avenue Pride Parade, because that’s what Jesus said to do with thirsty people.  And so following her lead we began offering ice water on that hot day and pretty soon, people trudging up Fifth Avenue covered with ash from the falling buildings and many people who needed to be with others joined in to help.  Total strangers were helping her hand out water.  It wasn’t heroic, it was tiny compared to what others were doing at Ground Zero, but it was the love of Jesus.  That’s one story and here’s another.  
​
Most of us on the staff of the church and many of our members were customers at a tiny drug store on 29th Street just off Madison.  The pharmacist was a devout Moslem.  At our first staff meeting after the disaster, one of the administrative assistants brought up our pharmacist and ask for prayers of understanding in our community.  She then decided that it would be her mission to stop by his store everyday to assure him of her friendship.  Many of us joined her.  It wasn’t dramatic, it wasn’t heroic—it was just the love of Jesus.  

In the next few days, leading up to the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday, I hope you will take some time to remember the people who lost their lives on 9/11 and the people who have died since because of the hate that burned on that day.  May our mourning and our remembering bring meaning to our living and to our loving.  That’s the way of Jesus.  Amen.  

James 1.17-27
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
​Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

 Sometimes the lectionary used by most mainline churches serves up just the right text on a given Sunday, and this piece of the pastoral epistle of James is one of those passages. It begins by acknowledging that God is the source of all good things. And given that, our response is likely to involve gratitude and the desire to do what is pleasing to our Creator.

I don’t know if you remember a staff reflection I wrote about two years ago, but I wrote about the “secret sauce” that I had discovered while going through radiation and hormone treatment for cancer. I was surrounded by an amazing team at the Harmony Cancer Center, and I could not help but be grateful for their outpouring of loving concern for my wellbeing. And the gratitude I experience changed me: it empowered me to have a better attitude about facing something scary and new. I certainly didn’t have a perfect attitude of gratitude, and I had some miserable days, but gratitude made life better. Have you had that experience with gratitude? Do you ever imagine what you are grateful that God has given you?

The second thing we hear about in the letter is that to take three steps in attitude: 1) be quick to listen; 2) be slow to speak; and 3) be slow to anger. This is sage advice, especially during anxious times like those where we currently find ourselves. 

This summer, I’ve been doing an online class from Tufts University that has two facets: the first is weight loss, which has been a challenge for me for a long time, and I’ve lost 30 pounds this summer. The second facet involves Positive Intelligence, learning to take difficult situations and respond to them in the most creative, positive way possible, even learning to see the gift in adverse situations. Part of what I’ve learned from this part of the course comes from the brilliant psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who while imprisoned in Auschwitz noticed that there was nothing he could do about what others did to him or his fellow inmates. Here is the golden kernel: he noticed that what makes a difference in psychological outcomes is the way the prisoner responded to what was happening. There is a stimulus from a guard, there is a millisecond when the prisoner’s brain absorbs that message, and there is a response from the inmate. What Frankl discovered is that if one can delay the response time even by a few seconds, it gave the person a chance to rely on their higher levels of thought in creating a response. Imagine a guard yelling something foul and cruel at a female inmate. Our immediate response might be to lash out in anger physically or verbally or to become totally dejected and simply accept it. But what if one can pause and use one’s intellect to create a more strategic response? Imagine the insulted woman saying to herself, “He is just trying to goad me, and I know that this lowlife is not worth my upset and anger. I’ll take a few breaths and know that I am in control of my reaction and move on.”

So, there is a stimulus, a message, and a response. Practicing the pause allows you to react not from the reptilian brain stem (which urges fight, flight, or freeze) and instead respond from the prefrontal cortex, providing you with insights about how you react. 

At La Foret last week, I had a conversation with our conference minister, Sue Artt, and I learned that conflict in our congregations is rampant at the moment, and I’ve heard the same thing from clergy colleagues on Facebook. All of us have experienced some trauma with Covid, political divisiveness, wildfires near and far, climate change, and the state of racism in our nation. It can look like the world is falling apart. What do you think that compound trauma does to our ability to practice the pause and not react from our reptilian brain? I’ve said it before… our fuses are shorter, our thoughts aren’t as clear, our sense of compassion may be wearing thin, and we’re looking for someone to blame. And it won’t last forever, so long as we take steps to recognize and heal some of our own trauma.

Do you remember those three pieces of sage advice I read a few moments ago? 1) be quick to listen; 2) be slow to speak; and 3) be slow to anger. The epistle writer knew about practicing the pause, the way human emotions work, and steps toward Positive Intelligence! Can you remember those three steps? 1) Listen. 2) Speak later. 3) Slow your anger response. “If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless.” (v. 26)

Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson (no relation) has a bit in his standup routine that provides sage advice in practicing the pause. He said that he and his former wife were in therapy for quite a while and that he developed a three-part question that he posed for himself before responding: 1) Does this need to be said? 2) Does this need to be said by me? 3) Does this need to be said by me right now? If you ask yourself those three questions in the affirmative, you can say it! And you’ll have given yourself enough time for your prefrontal cortex to wrest control from your reptilian brain. And let’s face it, nobody wants to react like a lizard!

Both of those elements — gratitude and practicing the pause — won’t just help your relationships, they will enliven your faith. Slowing down a bit, trying to see things in broader perspective, taking time to notice what God is doing in the world and in your life will deepen your experience of the sacred.

The third piece of the puzzle listed in the epistle to living into your faith, bringing theory into practice. “You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.” (v. 22) One of the pieces of wisdom I learned in the nutrition part of my summer class is that 20 percent of the process is knowing what to eat, and 80 percent is developing habits in doing them. So, it’s important in this program to know that I need to eat more protein, more fiber, fewer simple carbs and very few sweets. Developing new eating habits means that I’ve started to love, even to crave, half of a Kirkland protein bar as my afternoon snack! I no longer have to think about it…I just do it. Habits work when you’re trying to DO something. I’ve tried to be a DOER of the diet, not just a HEARER of the diet.

It is similar with faith. We can have lots of theological knowledge, but if it isn’t put into practice, what is the use of it? So what if we think that Jesus was a healer and teacher of alternative wisdom within first century Judaism? If we don’t put his teachings into practice, they are just a curiosity. What are you going to DO about it? Are you going to emulate Jesus’ compassion to the extent it becomes habitual? Is being here at Plymouth or on our livestream every Sunday a habit, or do you have to cogitate and make a decision each week whether or not to attend? Are you someone who is habitually engaged as a volunteer, or do you need to debate with yourself about whether to participate? Are you somebody who is in the habit of acting for social justice, or do you sit on the sidelines and let someone else do it? It takes a lot of extra work to weigh every decision about how you are going to participate…unless you’ve simply made it a good habit.

Good spiritual engagement habits enliven our faith in ways that help the rubber meet the road. It takes a two-dimensional faith journey map and brings it into three dimensions, adding depth to your pilgrimage through life. Our faith in the UCC is a lot less about creeds and a lot more about deeds.

It occurs to me that the epistle writer charts a course for Beloved Community for us. It is our job is FIRST to live in gratitude to God, SECOND, to listen and delay our urge to blurt things out or to be reactive, and THIRD to engage our faith with love and compassion. Together, Plymouth, this is how we form a healthy church and Beloved Community. Amen.

© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
​

Rev. Dr. Ronald Patterson
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, CO
I Kings 8:1,6,10-11, 22-30, 41-43

Several weeks ago, on my first Sunday with you, I had one of those moments. I had the sense that I was suddenly in what the saints call a thin place. That Sunday was the first time I had been in a meeting house for worship in over a year. It moved me to tears because I had not realized how desperately needed and deeply missed communal worship had been. To sing my faith with others, to listen to a group of people who are happy to see one another, to hear the words of the Bible in a community on a shared journey had been absent from my life since a year ago March. It was understandable and necessary, and zoom and live stream were soul savers, but it just was not the same. Zoom is sort of like eating an ear of sweet corn or a half-ripe tomato shipped up from Florida in January. 

And I have heard similar thoughts expressed by others around the country as congregations bolstered by the vaccinated; gather, as those who understand that loving Jesus, means loving your neighbor enough to be vaccinated, or to wear a mask, as they too begin taking baby steps toward gradual reopening.  

We aren’t there yet. We are still taking precautions, listening to experts, and attempting to use the best information available. Given the Delta variant, this whole business is not easy. We are not out of the woods yet. But as people of faith, we know that we are on a journey and as St. John Lennon said, “Everything will be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay it’s not the end."

This congregation has wisely prepared for this gradual reopening, and I am really impressed that your leaders have embraced possibility with the new lighting on the way and the new cameras so that what we do here can be multiplied through media to enlarge our faith family and leave no one behind. We don’t know what might come next, but what you have done makes what might be less challenging. So let me say: “Thank you!”

Let’s start with a question: Do any of you collect things? Stamps? Beer cans? Barbie dolls? I collect church buildings and other places of worship. When we travel, I visit churches. I visit old churches, unusual churches, historic churches, and new churches. I visit great cathedrals or adobe mission buildings or churches with the simple colonial lines of a New England meeting house. And for some reason, I usually remember any church I visit or even pass by and often, when I am driving, I navigate by churches—once I’ve seen a particular church building, I just don’t forget it.   

Over the years, a few of the people I have traveled with, including my beloved, have grown tired of this fixation. I tour an old city from steeple to steeple. Years ago, traveling with four college friends touring Rome from church to church to church, they figured out what I was up to and the whole group rebelled and took my map away. They had had enough while I was just getting started. On another trip I learned that the great gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany is surrounded by a dozen large Romanesque Churches, and I became obsessed with visiting all twelve. 

If I had a bumper sticker on my backside it might say: “Edifice Obsessed” or “This Vehicle Stops at All Houses of Worship.” Now before you think that this is a sermon about my personal neurosis, let’s engage the text.  

Today we heard another piece written by the anonymous Hebrew storyteller who’s book we name I Kings. We heard the story of the dedication of the first fixed non-movable worship space in our religious tradition—the Temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon.  And it is an interesting story, full of things to consider. 

Let me point out a few. According to this story, the priests cook up a grand celebration for the dedication of the temple. They bring the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies in the new Temple—and according to their tradition God is present in the Ark of the Covenant. But at the very moment in this big celebration when they manage to localize God, just when they imagine that they have tamed God so that they will know where to find God and where to come to seek the presence of God, God makes a U-turn. God fills the temple with a cloud and drives the priests right out of the temple.  

In other words, God says: look, I don’t care how wonderful your building is, I don’t care how much time it took you to build it, I don’t care how magnificent it is, I am more wonderful still and I am not contained within any shrine you might build for me no matter how beautiful that shrine might be. 

Lesson one:  like Solomon’s temple, this place is a house dedicated to God, but God does not live here. God is here when we are here. And God travels from this place to wherever our journey might lead us. God is the one who walks the lonesome valley and takes us by the hand when the shadow of death comes calling.  

God is here when we are here, because you and I bear the image of God and Jesus said that when ever two or three of us gather in one place (whether on zoom or through the live stream which some of you are watching), God is there with us and we are not alone.  

This place is holy not because it is beautiful, it is holy because you and I are holy—the very children of God’s love and holy is as holy does—and being holy as God is holy is about loving others and making sure all God’s children have enough to eat and a warm, safe place to live.  

I think that most people would agree that this space is pleasing to the eye—the first time I visited here many years ago, I found this place beautiful in its simplicity—but its true beauty is the beauty of a community of people seeking to follow the way of Jesus who just happen to meet here. For example, God showed up here a week ago Saturday to meet some of you in the form of kitchen towels and kitchen gadgets and volunteers and students from around the world and that’s a fact—that was a genuine God sighting!

I sometimes come into this space during the week alone and I love to do that—but I must remind myself that the thing which makes this a sanctuary—a holy place—is the gathered presence of the people of God whether they are physically here or present on the other side of that camera.  

It is beautiful because here we find the strength to go out into this community and into the wider world and find ways to let the Christ light shine. It is beautiful because we discover ways while we’re connected here to be neighbor to one another and to hold one another’s hands when the going gets rough. It is beautiful because in our gathering in person (or virtually), we are reminded that the true holy places are wherever we lift up our eyes to see the goodness and the beauty all around us in this world and beyond this world in the mystery of a universe still unfolding. Beauty is as beauty does, goodness is as goodness does.  

Lesson two, when God filled the temple with a cloud, it was a warning about idols—don’t worship idols—you know that, don’t localize God and whatever you do, don’t make some image of God and bow down before it. This is just basic Christianity 101, Judaism 101, and Islam 101. Moses said it, Jesus said it, Mohamed said it!

Don’t ever get caught creating God in your own image or hemming God in with ideas that are too small or too local or that look too much like the backside of your own fears about the future. Don’t be seduced by conspiracy theories that are idols dressed up in ego-driven pseudoscientific costume. In my mind, that’s just the latest manifestation of the same old sin and there’s lots of it going around.

I have noticed that some people seem to believe that God is a conservative Republican. Others imagine that God is a liberal Democrat. I have noticed as well that some folks confuse their politics or their way of life or their contrary attitude with the will of God and call it freedom and that others are convinced that “God Bless America,” means that the rest of the rest of the nation and world with other ideas can just take a long walk off a short pier. That’s idolatry.

This text is a cautionary tale about religion or attitudes that create God in your image or mine because that is much more comfortable and comforting than the awesome deity who will not be built into a box or contained in my feeble brain or yours. 

This temple text teaches that opinions and behavior that are too small, too narrow, too certain, are the dirty dishwater approximation of the Holy that filled the Temple and taught through the voice of Jesus. This story is a reminder that when we are certain about where God is located, when we’re ready to confine God to one type of building or hang the deity as a graven image above one altar dedicated to a particular way of life or thought system, God moves. God moves inviting us to expand our understanding of the mystery of God’s love. Simply stated wherever love abides, God resides, and love knows no borders and God’s love is bigger than anybody’s politics or palaver.   

Lesson three, when it comes to God—when it comes to knowing God and following the way of Jesus, it is never about a place, it is about a relationship—our relationship with God, God’s relationship with us and our relationship with our neighbors and a place that makes relationships happen is a holy place. That is why we do what we do as a congregation.  

Do you remember what Jesus said when he was asked what we needed to do to become the inheritors of eternal life? He said that we are to love God with our whole heart, with our entire soul and with the totality of our mind and find a way to love one another with the same depth with which we have been loved. Solomon calls it steadfast love: the love that will never let us go; the love that will never abandon either us or this beautiful world. The apostle Paul calls it grace: the unconditional acceptance of each of us no matter how unacceptable we might believe ourselves to be.   

And so, here we are in this place, this place of beauty. And it is good, it is very good, but like that temple long ago—this beautiful place is not a destination. This place is a way station on the path that leads to life. Here we find renewal; here we are reminded of God’s love and mercy, here we can be recharged for the life journey, here we can meet a neighbor we need to love. Here we can work together, to accomplish great things, but here is not the destination. The journey is whatever comes next. Amen.  

Rev. Dr. Ron Patterson
​Plymouth Congregational, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
I Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

This morning I want to talk about dreams.  I am not an interpreter of dreams, and I am not a psychologist or a mystic, but I am a dreamer and I believe with my whole heart that when I trust my dreams and listen to them, I am healthier and that when I ignore them and don’t pay attention to my dreams I am in a bad place.  I believe that dreams are important for our emotional health and for our spiritual vitality and for our physical health as well.
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Several years ago, I began to fall asleep in meetings.  Now I know that church meetings can be sleep inducing and that there is no end to jokes about people falling asleep in church, but I was really sleepy until one afternoon I actually fell asleep at a traffic light.  I finally went to my doctor and I expected him to poke around and do some tests, and instead he asked me a simple question:  “How are you sleeping?” and when I said to him, I get eight hours of sleep every night, he asked me:  “Are you dreaming?” and it suddenly occurred to me that I had stopped dreaming, that instead of waking up and remembering for a short time sometimes complex and convoluted dreams, I hadn’t dreamt for months.  He sent me for a sleep study that revealed severe sleep apnea and when that problem was solved, the dreams came back and I recovered my energy and my vitality and the sleepy’s went away.
The Bible is full of dreams and dreamers.   The lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs are driven by dreams.   Dreams get Joseph of the coat of many colors in trouble, and dreams ultimately save him.  The Wise Ones dream sends them home from Bethlehem by another route.  Joseph the father of Jesus saves the savior by listening to his dreams.  Herod, the wicked king is a man without dreams and he dies a terrible death because power without a dream or a vision is deadly. Haven’t we learned that the hard way in this country?

Pharaoh, Job, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Jacob, and many more are warned, guided and sustained by dreams.  And then there’s those words spoken by Peter on the Day of Pentecost quoting the prophet Joel about the promise of the “kingdom” of God, about the time when justice and truth and peace will prevail on this good earth, the time when the old will dream dreams and the young ones will see visions. 

So today I want to talk about dreams and dreaming and my text is from the book of I Kings, the story of God coming to a very young King Solomon in a dream.   

Now in this this dream, God asks King Solomon what he wants.  Well, what do kings or for that matter, most politicians normally want?  They want long life or at least perpetual re-election and lots of power and lots of money.  

But this young King is not ordinary.  He doesn’t ask for wealth or power or money—he asks instead for an understanding mind, he asks instead to know the difference between right and wrong, he asks instead for the presence of God to guild him in his life.  And he gets his wish. Solomon receives from God an understanding mind.  He receives from God the knowledge of good and evil.  He receives from God a full measure of wisdom.  And as a bonus, because from God’s point of view he asked for the right things, all the rest:  long life, wealth and power were given as well.   Now this is a great story and one I hope you will remember the next time you mark a ballot or listen to the yammering of a politician or a talking head.

Now, let me talk just a bit about power of dreams.  To begin with not everyone believes that dreams have any meaning. I do. 

As I said, I’m not a psychologist and I am certainly no psychiatrist.  But those I’ve read disagree about dreams.  Some of them say dreams are important and some of them say they aren’t.  Some of them say that dreams are just random encounters with bits and fragments of the unconscious mind, totally without meaning.  Others believe that dreams are much more meaningful.  One of them, whose work I really admire has said that we do not sleep to rest, rather, we sleep to dream—that dreaming is the purpose of sleep and that emotional and spiritual health are not possible without a dream life. (C. G. Jung) 

That’s pretty close to my own belief about dreams—except that I would add one more layer to the idea that we sleep to dream.  I not only believe that we sleep to dream, but that dreams are the gift of a loving God for the purpose of healing and wholeness and wellness.  And that sometimes, in fact many times, God speaks to us in our dreams.  And that listening to our dreams is one way you and I can listen to the voice of God.   

Did you ever have a dream that repeats over and over again?  Let me tell you about a dream I have many Saturday nights.  I dream that you are all here and that I arrive late at the church building just as you are singing the first hymn, sometimes I’ve had a flat tire or sometimes I get lost but when I finally get here, the doors are locked and I go all around the building trying to find a way to get into the church.  But I can’t find the door or because you are singing, you can’t hear me knocking on the locked door once I do find it.  Or sometimes I get locked in the bathroom and can’t get out as the service starts or sometimes I dream that I get up in the pulpit only to discover that I have forgotten to bring my sermon with me and I’m suddenly standing up here with nothing to say.  I’ve even dreamed that I show up at the wrong time or in the wrong place.  Now that is a preacher’s nightmare and dreams of that type are what are referred to as classic anxiety dreams. 

Do you remember a dream like that?  Do you remember that dream from when you were in college and it was the last week in the semester and you suddenly discovered that you had forgotten to go to a particular class and that you were confronted with a final exam for which you had not prepared?  Do you recall how relieved of stress you were when you woke up and found out that it wasn’t true? Or how about a dream when you are embarrassed in public—that you arrive someplace with no clothes on or the wrong clothes?  Anxiety dreams like these are healing dreams. 
They heal us because they gather up whatever it is that worries us or troubles our hearts or makes us afraid and the dream maker—our own spirit under the inspiration of God’s love, I believe, lays out the very worst possibilities in life, reviews those possibilities, and causes us to live through them in our dreams.   And while sometimes they are full of the most graphic detail and sometimes, they are terribly painful, we wake up relieved of the burden.    

I believe that when we lay down to sleep the one who keeps your soul and mine sends us dreams to deal with those things in our lives which trouble us and worry us most.  The way I picture it, our anxiety dreams are like someone working the night shift on our behalf, first with a push broom and shovel, cleaning up the clutter of our harder days and dealing with the day’s worries, while helping us reduce our anxiety and our fears.   

And then when the mess is cleaned up that same still small voice of God the giver of dreams, can become a wise teacher and guild helping our unconscious mind to heal and to think new thoughts and consider new possibilities.  Did you ever have a dream which helped you make a decision?  Did you ever have a dream which gave you a new idea or a way forward in your life journey?  

Part of my nighttime routine is a ritual I call “giving it to God”.  When I lay down at night, I gather up my worries and the things that might be keeping me awake, or the things I am working on and all my prayer concerns and mentally put them in a little bundle and lay them up on the head board.  Then I say to God—would you work on these things tonight so I can get some rest?   And the blessing for me is that so many times, some of those concerns or some of the things I am working on get taken up in my dreams and new ideas and ways of looking at my present reality emerge.  And that is a gift from God the giver of dreams.    

Am I allowed to talk about Christmas at an outdoor service in the middle of August?  My favorite Christmas story—aside from the Christmas story with Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus is the one written by Charles Dickens.  Dreams moved the action of the first Christmas story, but do you remember the role that dreams played in the Dickens classic?  

In each of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dreams his uneasy conscience took his personal pain, his smallness of mind, his greed and his secret regret over his shriveled heart, and held those broken places up to the searching light of God’s love in ways that would have been a daytime impossibility.  Dreams converted Scrooge.  Dreams converted him from death to life, from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from misery to love.  He was saved in the night kitchen of his dreams.

Now, I’ve only touched the surface of this whole subject of dreams, but one last thing:  There is no record that Jesus ever dreamed.  The gospel writers and Paul are completely silent about his dream life.   But let me suggest that dreams heal our past and open the way to the future.  Dreams take our pain and open the path of possibility.  Dreams clean up what is old about yesterday and enable us to face tomorrow.   

That’s exactly who Jesus was.  That defines exactly what Jesus does.  He looks at this world as it is and invites you and me to embrace what might be.  He looks at hate and invites us to love.  He stares fear in the face and invites you and me to hope and confidence.  He confronts our fear of death with the power and the promise of abundant life.  He was and is quite simply a dreamer inviting all of us to embrace his dream.  

In our waking, in our dreaming, Lord may that become the truth about our lives!  Amen.