Mark 1.9-15 
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC 
Fort Collins, Colorado 

I apologize to those of you who were expecting a different sermon this morning and for all of the notes at the bottom of your bulletin about Greek, Latin, and English word origins. Yesterday, in light of the school shooting in Florida, decided that I needed to use our time together to talk about that in light of our faith.  

How long will Christians stand by — seemingly without power and influence — while kids are being slaughtered and while others go to school in fear to try and learn? How long, O Lord, how long? 

Nineteen years ago, I was finishing up divinity school in Denver and I was back in Hartford, Connecticut, interviewing for a job as Associate Conference minister, and I remember sitting down to breakfast in the hotel, opening the newspaper and being shocked as I read about the shooting of twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School. It was a pivotal moment in our nation, a moment when mass shootings became “normal.” How long, O Lord, how long? 
​
And when I was serving in Hartford, I penned an Op-Ed piece for the Hartford Courant, entitled “Charlton Heston Is Not Moses,” (and for those who aren’t old enough to remember Charleton Heston, he was a movie star in the 1950s and 60s who played Moses in the Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster, The Ten Commandments and later president of the NRA).

As I read with sadness the story of yet another high school shooting, I was left thinking about the way many of us misperceive the Constitution as a sacred text that is both God-given and unchanging. The Constitution is not the Bible, and Charlton Heston is not Moses.  

The men who drafted the Constitution were clear about the imperfection of their effort. Amendments address the document's imperfection. That mutability is part of the genius of the Constitution and explains why it has endured for more than 200 years.  

We no longer count African Americans as three-fifths of a human being; we no longer deny the franchise to women and we no longer have a poll tax…. 

So, why do we lack the courage to change the Constitution, as gun violence claims the lives of young people in our city and in suburban high schools? [Hal Chorpenning, March 18, 2001, “Charlton Heston Isn’t Moses,” in the Hartford Courant. ]

I wrote those words seventeen years ago, and nothing significant has changed. How Long, O Lord, how long? 

Back in December 2012, a deranged young man with a cache of semiautomatic weapons shot and killed 28 people, many of them elementary school students and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut. We were outraged. President Obama went to Newtown and spoke passionately. Do you remember the faces of those twenty little children and their teachers? Even in the wake of their deaths, nothing happened to prevent further slaughter…no legislation to limit the kinds of firearms that are available…waiting periods, background checks, mental illness screening. Nothing has happened, and I think you and I both know why. How many more school kids have to die at the hands of gunmen before we do something? How long, O Lord, How long? 

Why is killing innocent people seen in our country as morally acceptable? Why aren’t all people of faith out on the streets demanding change. Our nation has become inured to this type of terrorism, and that must end. 

+ + +

In today’s text, Jesus gives two commands at the very end of that compact reading. The two commands are repent and believe. I want to talk about the verb, “to repent,” because it’s frankly a less-useful English translation than it should be of the New Testament’s Greek word, metanoia, which literally means a shift in thinking. A more authentic and metaphoric translation may be a change of heart. And that is the first thing Jesus does in his public ministry: call for a change of heart in support of the kingdom of God, which stands over and against the empires of this world. He calls on us today to have a change of heart, to shift our thinking, to reassess our positions, to bring ourselves into alignment with God’s liberating reign. 
​
If we want to be part of the kingdom movement that Jesus calls us to, we need to do some serious, root-level self-examination about what causes us -– especially men -– to be violent, tightly wound, and desperate. (When was the last time you heard about a woman involved in a mass shooting?) Why do some American men who feel so hopeless, so aggrieved, so aggressive that we take weapons into hand and kill scores of people? We need to work on that, and in the meantime, how about if we start actively reducing the number of assault rifles, high-capacity-magazine pistols, and other semiautomatic weapons that are available to just about anyone?
  
The second command Jesus gives is to believe. Again, the 21st century meaning of the English word, believe, has precious little to do with what Jesus was talking about. He isn’t saying that you need to grant intellectual assent to a proposition (like “Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour?”) nor a laundry list of seemingly impossible things that most of us take as metaphor. The verb in New Testament Greek is pisteuo, which is the verbal form of the noun pisits, which means faith. Faith is more demanding; it’s about trust and relationship, not about the kind of belief that means you think something is possible. The older sense of believe necessitates relationship, as when I look into your eyes and say, “I believe in you.” And since we don’t have an English word, “faithing,” New Testament translators still fall back on the verb “believe.” But that word for us is just not active enough or relational enough. 

Friends, we need to have faith and trust in the way of Jesus, which is the way of nonviolence. We need to keep working to embrace the way of Jesus and kingdom of God he proclaimed. We need to trust God and not the power brokers in the gun lobby or those politicians who feed at their trough.  

I made a futile search in our basement yesterday for some of the many medals and certificates I earned from the National Rifle Association when I was a boy. I loved riflery, and I have owned guns, though I don’t currently. Way back in the 60s and 70s, the National Rifle Association’s mission concerned with hunter safety and marksmanship. The mission and activity of the NRA changed dramatically back in the late 1970s [See Ron Elving, National Public Radio, Oct. 10, 2017, “The NRA wasn’t always against gun restrictions.”] when a group within the organization wrested control and realigned their mission toward opposing any type of gun restrictions. I have no problem if someone wants to have an elk rifle or a shotgun at home, and though I’m not crazy about it, I’m okay if you want to have a pistol that you keep in a safe at home for self-defense. But nobody needs a AR-15 to shoot a deer. But hunter safety and marksmanship are not what the National Rifle Association is about anymore. 

According to Fortune magazine, the top five U.S. senators receiving contributions from the NRA include our own Cory Gardner, who has received $3.88 million from the NRA. And in the House of Representative, Congressman Ken Buck, whose district includes some of you in Windsor, comes in number two among 435 members of Congress with $800,544 in the most recent election. But it’s not just the legislative branch. The NRA spent $11.4 million to support President Trump and $19.7 to oppose Hilary Clinton in the most recent presidential election. That’s over $31 million.  

We have a significant moral problem, my friends. Our words and our outrage are no longer enough. It is time for action. I’ve actually thought of an act of civil disobedience, like a line of clergy handcuffing ourselves to lampposts on either side of College Avenue and blocking traffic as a human chain. So, that probably won’t happen, but if it does, I hope you’ll help with bail. One thing that is happening and that was launched this week by the Women’s March organization is a National School Walk-out by teachers and students on Wednesday, March 14. Of course, this falls during spring break for PSD and CSU. 

So, if we want to do something, instead of just feeling outraged or aggrieved or traumatized, how about if we at Plymouth create a community-wide teach-in, maybe on March 14 since they won’t be in school, and invite PSD, Front Range and CSU teachers, students, and other congregations and community members to come here are learn about reducing gun violence? What if we invited both of our U.S. Senators, our congressional and state representatives. Are you with me? 

We know how to create programs at Plymouth…how about if we created one to affect big social change right in our community? I’m looking for people to help organize and lead, this, so if you are interested, put a note in the offering tray or on the red Friendship Pad and let me know! 

Repent and believe…Change your heart and trust in Christ. Work for the kingdom, God’s liberating reign, for it is the hope of the world. I leave you this morning with a poem by William Stafford, called “The Way It Is,” which is very similar to the children’s book, The Invisible String. And as you hear this short poem, think about the thread as what weaves you and God and this community of faith to each other in relationship. 

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.
[Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by William Stafford, ed. Kim Stafford.
​(Minneapolis: Lone Wolf Press, 2014).]

Amen.

© 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. 

Hal reflects on labyrinths and Lent. 

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, CO
Little Boxes: Transfiguration According to Mark, Chapter 9,
February 11, 2018
 
Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
 
Have you ever been driving down the road when something you see sparks your imagination? I mean something that does more than catch your attention in passing, but it opens-up entire insights into how you see the world. I would call it a mini or micro “transfiguration.” It is a moment of transformation (which is another and more relatable way to translate the Greek word used for transfiguration), and I am all for the church using more understandable language like lobby instead of narthex, but I digress. I recently read a story about someone for whom this happened: A sudden moment of vision or inspiration, a clear view on the reality of things, changed her life and has inspired others to see clearly as well.
 
Her daughter tells the story from 1962 of driving with her parents from San Francisco through Daly City in the Bay Area on their way to a political organizing gathering organized by local Quakers. Her mother suddenly, upon looking at the hillside where development was happening, threw the steering wheel to her husband who had been in the passenger seat. “Take the wheel honey, I have a song to write,” we can imagine her saying.
 
There and then somewhere in the suburbs, south of San Francisco maybe using the dashboard as a desk, a song was written. An activist, one of the founders of the Women’s Institute for the Freedom of the Press, musician, dedicated Unitarian, Malvina Reynolds, wrote a song that has come to epitomize the rebellion against conformity and being boxed-in.1 Her song was later made famous by singer Pete Seeger:

“Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.
 
And the people in the houses All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers, And [ministers]2 and executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all [think] just the same…”3

And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry.
And they all have pretty children And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes And they come out all the same. 
And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same,

There's a pink one and a green one And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.” - Malvina Reynolds

1 https://web.archive.org/web/20071222231203/http://music.homegrownseries.com/?p=5 
​2 Wording changes made in brackets for context and effect.
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM

Protest song perhaps, anthem of nonconformity, yes… but this is also my favorite (and this might surprise you) Transfiguration Sunday hymn. Every year on this Sunday in the lectionary, every single time I read Mark, Chapter 9, I always find myself humming [hum the song] this great song. "Why?" you might ask.
 
Jesus takes his closest friends to hike up a hillside with him, and when they reach the summit the disciples, as the story goes, witness a glimpse of reality: love embodied. They see Jesus, for the first time in the Gospels, reveal himself to be a sign and symbol of God’s wildly untamed love. This is a glimpse, not a whole picture, but it is a glimpse into the power, freedom, and the burning love beyond appearances. God’s voice echoes from the clouds: “This is my son, the Beloved, the One Whom I love—in whom love is invested! Listen to him.” Not only is Jesus there, but the representatives of tradition Elijah and Moses also appear for a glimpse of a different dimension. And we thought Colorado was the only place with people having special visions!
 
Our Christian tradition is filled with rich and far out stories, but there is none as strange and fabulous as this one.
 
In response to seeing something new, seeing the Transfiguration of Christ, the disciples don’t celebrate something new happening, but they revert to something old. They attempt to put Jesus in a box. There in the glowing radiant white, their shocked instinct is to take him and say, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and for Elijah…” There is a pink one and a green one and a blue one…
 
The dwelling places or booths or boxes (also translations) the disciples want to build for Jesus and his companions are highly symbolic here. They symbolize a tradition found in Ancient Near Eastern religions of that time that gods and demigods (Greek, Eastern, and others) would have portable tent-like alters and shrines (literally little boxes) built so that the people, a specific tribe, could own and claim and keep that god with them. And by doing this the people, especially nomadic people, believed they would have favor with that god and control its love in a way. Another symbolic part of this story is the mountaintop. Jesus appearing on the mountaintop in his true form is another way that the author of Mark borrows from Greek literature of the “coming out” of new gods to their human followers borrow a trope. With this the author is putting Jesus in the company of familiar stories, but then Mark inverts it entirely. The disciples’ response, however, is deeply rooted in the Ancient Near Eastern tradition in which they are embedded.

The disciples’ first instinct here, upon learning that their mountain climbing buddy, Jesus, is actually a manifestation of the Divine is to do what? When we read this passage, we often laugh (Ha Ha Ha) and think the disciples are dumb, while in fact they are just ancient opportunists. [See, see that is what happens when you read the Bible literally instead of narratively as it was intended… you miss really cool stuff.] What the disciples are suggesting they want to build in this dwelling is really a god-trap! They want to build a trap, a box, and capture this new god in it before he can get away! Not so stupid after all in context…
 
What they don’t know though is that the religion they are unconsciously part of founding, this Christianity business, is something new…or should be something new when not confined inappropriately and incorrectly by boxes of dogma and doctrine and pews and other traps like that!
 
Jesus rejects the disciples’ offer of building a box for him. We in the United Church of Christ as in other progressive Christian traditions understand Jesus as the bearer of something new—liberation for the oppressed, the opening-up of boxes, and the embodiment of a Love that cannot be held by anyone’s box or church or dogma or confine or definition.
 
Instead of accepting the traditional god-in-a-box role, in this story God is doing something different for the first time. This story is supposed to signal to both the Greek and the Jewish communities that this new tradition is something new, weird, far out, and different—Jesus refuses the traditional boxes. “This is my son, the Beloved, the One Whom I love! Listen to him.” Rather, this whole Jesus business is supposed to be about a LOVE that is free and out there in the world. It is radical, it is wild, it is new, and it won’t get in a box.
 
Our faith tradition, at its best, is one that was intended to breakout of the little boxes on a hillside, no two loves are the same, and to set God and people free. So, what happened to Christianity? What went wrong?
 
By 1962, when Malvina Reynolds wrote Little Boxes, this religion that was supposed to be all about getting out of the boxes was the one that had become more about little boxes than any other. We became the box factory. It is the subtext of her songs. We have denominational boxes. We have belief boxes. We have good and bad check boxes. Many in our religion have boxes for love they will accept and love like mine that they will not accept. We have boxes for the saints and boxes for the sinners. We have boxes for the high pledgers and boxes for those who don’t pledge. We have endless boxes—believe me—I just helped design our new database. We have so many boxes now in Christianity that even UPS is jealous! FedEx called and they want their boxes back, friends. We are called, by a loving God in this passage, to be those who reject boxes and traditional boundaries like Christ does. What reason does God give for us to listen to Jesus in Mark Chapter 9? We are only told that that he is the one whom God’s LOVE is channeled through. “Hey, I love this guy, listen up.” That is our job now in 2018 as the Body of Christ in the world—a channel of love and liberation.
 
Valentine’s Day is this week when we get a very normative view of what love looks like, and I have to say that it looks awfully straight to me from my vantage point. We all know that love is hard work, we know that it comes in many forms, we know that for some it includes having kids, and for others of us having children isn’t in the picture, for some it means being single and for others married, for some local and others have to be long distance for a time, for some in an RV and others in a house, for some communications comes easily and for others quiet is key, for some dogs for other couples cats (don’t ask me why). Valentine’s Day would tell us that everyone’s love and relationship should fit in an identical red, heart-shaped box made by Russell Stover.

Our Scripture today from Mark 9, however, says otherwise. Transfiguration or Transformation Sunday says otherwise. It is the time when we see a colorful world, where God rejects traditional boxes for deities, and when we are invited by God’s love to find new ways to define our belief, our relationships, and our own identities before a God who calls us, calls you beloved.
 
Malvina Reynolds saw something that day on the hills outside of San Francisco. She saw a physical manifestation of the attempts of society to cubical our lives, our loves, and even God. That moment of clarity, her own Transfiguration vision, led to the creation of a simple song, one that many of us know, that stands as a prophesy of counter-culture to anyone who might want to box God, you, or me in.
 
“Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
​Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.”
 
Little Boxes is a song about the uniformity, the compartmentalizing, the cubicalization of our lives and our society, but it can also be about what has happened to the church, to religion, and what we still today, just like Peter, James, and John, attempt to do to God. We try to put God into a box—a box that only serves only our tribe, our viewpoint, our people, our style of love, those like us already. Today’s story from Mark deconstructs that box.
 
May none of you ever find yourselves boxed in, and know that Jesus…that guy we talk about once a month at Plymouth… ya… he refused “the box” in the name of love on Transfiguration Sunday so many years ago… and so can you! Amen.

Transfiguration Sunday
Rev. Dr. Mark Lee        
For Plymouth UCC, Fort Collins, CO
Mark 9.2-9

I watched the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics the other night. It was a wonderful mix -- of tradition and technology, of cultures, and even political intrigue. They pulled out all the stops with the light show and fireworks. What struck me was how, during the parade of nations, so many of the athletes were filming -– taking selfies, running video as they walked in, trying to catch a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Someday, when they are showing the pictures to their grandchildren, loading those ancient jpeg pictures on a screen will seem as exotic as the carousel projector slides our grandparents show us now. But the stories they’ll tell!
 
I bet that Peter, James and John wish they’d had a nifty iPhone when they went that day up Mt Tabor with Jesus. Mountains are one of those places through the Bible and through history that stokes our spiritual imagination, that are the sites of significant spiritual events. As Coloradoans we totally get that. Though I am told on good authority that the deserts, the oceans, ice-fields, and prairie badlands all are prime sites as well.   
 
So when Jesus asks them to go up the mountain with him, they are tapping into deep traditions: Abraham almost sacrificing his son on Mt Moriah, Moses receiving the law at Mt Sinai, him later seeing the Promised Land from Mt Nebo. Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel. Later Jesus prayed on the Mt of Olives, and ascended to heaven from an unnamed mountain in Galilee. To go up a mountain is to intentionally set out, looking in some way for the ultimate, for God.
 
Any mountain climb takes preparation. The text tells us that this happened “six days later,” after the events of the prior chapter. It is hard to know exactly what is being referenced, but most likely it is the story of Peter’s confession. You remember how that goes: Jesus asks the disciples “Who do people say that I am?” And they say, Elijah, or John the Baptizer or one of the other prophets. “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus presses. “You are the Messiah, the son of God” Peter says. Jesus commends him, “Flesh and blood didn’t reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven showed you this!” Of course, Peter doesn’t really understand that that means. So when Jesus then starts telling them that he will be betrayed to the rulers, suffer and die, and then rise on the third day, Peter says “No! That’s not the right story! You’re going to be the King, drive out the Romans, and we’ll be the world superpower!” Jesus has heard this siren song before, from the tempter in his own wilderness, so rebukes Peter: “Go away, Satan! You’re thinking in human terms, not God’s.”
 
I wonder what Peter and the other disciples thought about this over the following week. How might it have set them up to really see what happened on the mountain top?
 
Oh, the mountain top! Even an ordinary mountain top is exhilarating. You trudge through the forest, and often can’t see your goal. That’s how it would have been for Jesus and his friends, Mt Tabor is cloaked in thick oak chaparral. On other mountains, maybe you come out above the timberline, and the way is rocky and loose. There may be dangers from cliffs and exposure. And when, huffing and panting, you climb the last boulder -- Wow! I did it! And look! You can see the whole world! And indeed, from the top of Tabor, you can see the from the Sea of Galilee to the north, east to the Jordan River and the mountains beyond, west to Mt Carmel, and spreading out at your feet are the rich agricultural fields of the Jezreel plain. What a view!
 
And then came the sound and light show. Better than lasers, fireworks and virtual reality, suddenly reality looked completely different. Jesus was transfigured –- his everyday look faded to the background, and suddenly the brilliant light of God shone though him. It was like looking at the sun at the moment the eclipse ended, the light that was always there suddenly sparking through. And then appeared Elijah and Moses, two of the towering figures from Israel’s story, representing the Prophets and the Law. Now, how the disciples knew who each of them was, I’m not sure – but in these kind of non-rational spiritual experiences, sometimes you just know things to the core of your being.
 
These kind of experiences don’t happen to most people very often, maybe only once in a life. But when they do happen, the thing to do is just go with it. Surf the wave, keep listening to the song, bask in the light. There will be time for analysis and pondering and meaning-making later. Give free rein to ….. to whatever. When I was on pilgrimage in Israel last summer, when I was at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I went into the small shrine built around the slap where Jesus was laid after his death. The monks only let you have maybe 2 minutes there before they moved you out, because there’s only room for 3 people, that’s how small it is. So I looked around inside the shrine, read the placard, “He is not here, he is risen!” and quickly kissed the slab. And started to cry. I stepped out of the shrine, tears running down my cheeks, and knew that God was doing something with me. As I cried harder, I went around behind a pillar in a corner – and cried and cried and cried. For 20 minutes. Yeah, I was the weird guy crying his eyes out. And I still can’t tell you why or wherefore. That I was sad, or joyful, or what. Or even that I felt better when I was done. All I could figure afterwards was that something cracked loose, broke free, came undammed, deep in my soul.
 
When something like that happens, you can’t catch and bottle it. Unlike the athletes taking pictures as they entered the stadium, it would have been absurd to try to take a selfie then, to capture it for later. But that’s pretty much what Peter suggests, though the narrator notes that “He didn’t know what he was talking about.” “Look, Lord, it’s good that John, James and I are here, because we can build some quick shelters, for you, Elijah and Moses, where we can just stay.” I mean, this is amazing, don’t let it stop!
 
Then it got more intense: a cloud covered the mountaintop, echoing the cloud on Sinai, the dazzling darkness where God is, and a voice: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” And then, the vision ended. Silence.
 
You can imagine the quiet disciples as they climbed back down the mountain. Jesus tells them not to tell anyone, “Until after the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” They are totally confused --- confused by Jesus predicting a death they cannot accept and a resurrection they cannot understand. Was this vision something like what Jesus means about his resurrection?
 
We always have to go back down the mountain. The vision ends. The retreat is over, it’s time to go home. It is getting late, a thunderstorm is coming up, better get off the mountain! That happened to me once, when I’d climbed a 14er, Conundrum Peak. I had started up late, and kept going even as the weather moved in. I got to the summit, quickly took a picture and started down. I was barely 100’ from the top when the rain and hail opened up, and the lightening started. I sat down on my butt and slid down a rock scree chute, because I didn’t want to be higher than anything around me! Descending can be as challenging as climbing. I got drenched, and wasn’t dressed for a storm. By the time I got back to Conundrum Hot Springs and camp, I was so hypothermic I could hardly get out of my clothes to get into the hot spring. Used up a couple of my 9 lives that day! But nobody at the camp seemed interested in my adventure.
 
So I wonder about the other 8 disciples, who hadn’t gone along that day, who didn’t have the amazing experience. Instead, they had the frustrating experience of trying to heal someone but not being able to! And while Jesus had told the 3 not to say anything, I bet they spilled the beans somewhere along the lines. When you hear God speak, it’s tough to stay quiet! So what did the others feel about it? Were they jealous? Did they not believe the story? Did they need to minimize it, that it was no big deal?
 
One of the great challenges of the Christian life is finding ways to talk about what God has done for us in ways that don’t put others off. It is so easy to have a blessed experience, and in our enthusiasm imply, “Because God did this for me, God should do this for you!” Or worse, to get proud and imply, “See how spiritual I am!” Sometimes it is perfectly well meaning, we want others to experience God too, and forget that people’s psychology of religion is different.

Centering prayer is a rich well of devotion for one person, and a frustrating bore to another. A Bach requiem lifts one person to the gates of heaven, while another is thrilled at Hillsong Worship or Casting Crowns. I remember feeling so insufficient at times in my life because I didn’t speak in tongues -– forgetting all the other beautiful gifts that God had given me.
 
We do well to train our eyes to see God in the everyday wonders we encounter --- I’m reminded of the story of the monk Brother Lawrence who was the monastery cook, who in his little book The Practice of the Presence of God wrote, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”
 
But even seeing God in every flower, meeting Christ in every homeless person, learning to hear God in the sound of sheer silence isn’t the final test. As wonderful as spiritual experiences are, as rare as they are, as unique to each person they are, they are not the bottom line of our Christian walk. But:

Fifth Sunday of Epiphany
​Rev. Dr. Mark Lee,
Plymouth UCC, 3.0 Worship                                                                                                          
February 4, 2018
 
One of the most interesting characters in JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” fantasy novels is Gollum. You remember Gollum –- a former Hobbit named Sméagol who had killed his brother to get ahold of the awe-full Ring of Power, and then hid out deep in mountain caves with his “precious.” There, he degenerated into a shell of his former self, using the invisibility power of the ring to stalk unsuspecting goblins and fish as prey, which he’d gulp down raw. But after he loses the ring, first to Bilbo Baggins, and then to Frodo Baggins, his obsession brings him out of the caves in pursuit. We don’t know everything that happened to him once he emerged, but do know that he was tortured in the dungeons of Mordor to give up to the Evil One whatever he knew of the Ring’s whereabouts.
 
Actor Andy Serkis who played Gollum in the movie, framed his characterization around the idea of an addict going through withdrawals. His pain is physical as much a mental, the way he hops and jumps along, somewhere between a four-legged animal and a two-legged person. His face is contorted, he is but skin and bones. But he has also lost his own psychological center, and is split between the broken evil persona of Gollum, and the potentially good and stable person he once was, Sméagol. He never talks to anyone, only talks at himself, an ultimate narcissist.
 
Martin Luther famously described sin as “being curved in upon oneself.” Humans tend towards narcissism run amok, from the first sin in the Garden of Eden, when Adam wanted to become like God. When we lose track of who is God, and crown ourselves the Deity, we paradoxically lose our own selves, our own center. On one hand, we are all that matter; on the other, we never matter enough to be satisfied. And so it was with Gollum, turned in on himself, addicted to his Precious, he doesn’t even remember who he really is.
 
A sly cunning creature, he eventually ends up traveling with Frodo and Sam, guiding them on their way to Mordor where Frodo intends to destroy the Ring, and the power of the Dark Lord who forged it. Gollum doesn’t share that goal, but needs to be near the ring, and has dreams -– or nightmares -- of reclaiming it. By cunning or violence, he will get back his Precious.
 
Now Gollum is a pretty extreme character. Beyond his addiction to the Ring, he’s utterly narcissistic. He’s paranoid, certain that the world hates him. He’s if not schizophrenic, at least schizoid, torn between the Sméagol he once was and the Gollum he’s degenerated into. But he captures our imagination, our pity, even our love –- for we know Gollum in real life.
 
Most of us have known people who have descended into that sort of personal hell. Some people we love have succumbed to addiction, not to the Ring of Power, but maybe to a drug or a drink that gave them the illusion of power. Some people we love have suffered abuse, not in Sauron’s dungeons but in homes or schools or churches that should have been safe for children to play, young people to grow, and adults to flourish… and then they struggle to cope with their scarred psyches. Some people we love hear voices in their heads, stray neurons firing in their brains that reorganize into frightening words and images. Some people we love are so depressed that it seems the sun never shines and the flowers never bloom. Yes, we all know people who live with mental illnesses --- sometimes it is even us.
 
Our culture has not been kind to people suffering mental illnesses. For a long time, it was considered a moral failing, a lack of character or willpower, a yielding to crazy temptations. Insurances have often paid less for mental healthcare than other health care. “It’s all in your head” is used as a casual dismissal, that a person’s suffering isn’t real or serious.
 
But consider: nobody thinks catching the flu, or falling down the stairs, or having a stray cosmic ray mess up some cell’s DNA that sprouts into cancer, are moral or character faults. And modern brain science increasingly shows how mental illness is rooted not in sin or in soul- sickness, but in errant electrical and chemical activity (or sometimes inactivity) in the brain. So we now know that the voices of schizophrenia are not some demon whispering in a person’s ear, but are more like electrical interference overloading the circuits in a computer chip. Net result: programs crash.
 
Even addictions, a set of diseases once heavily morally judged, we now understand as illnesses. We’re going to have a Forum on March 4 in which Dr. Ross Lane, an addiction specialist, will talk about the opioid epidemic.
 
Which leads me into the scripture text that Anne read earlier. This healing is the very first miracle in the Gospel of Mark, and starts to create Jesus’ reputation as a powerful teacher and healer. He healed minds as well as bodies.
 
Now, ancient people did not understand brain chemistry any more than they knew about bacteria and viruses. And just as they ascribed health, strength and fertility to good spirits, they ascribed disease to bad spirits -– spirits being a cipher for forces they neither understood nor controlled. So mental illness was seen as demon possession, that a person’s real self had been taken over by some evil spirit. And just as people even today quickly walk past the shouting street person, they counted such people as unclean, antisocial, outcast.
 
The gospel told us earlier what Jesus was teaching in the synagogue that day: "Listen up! This is the time! Change your hearts and lives, for God’s realm is coming soon!” He’s not talking about some end-of-the-world thing, still less about the afterlife, but about God’s realm were the poor, meek, merciful and peacemakers are blessed, where people love even their enemies, where captives are freed, Prodigals are welcomed, and all get what they need.
 
So this guy stands up in the synagogue and starts yelling back. Lacking the social filters most people have, he starts in on Jesus. “You’re the Son of God!” Well, everyone around knows
that’s just crazy talk. Or even if they suspect Jesus is quite unique, they certainly don’t say it
out loud!

But Jesus doesn’t push him away. He doesn’t ignore him. He doesn’t call security. He doesn’t condemn him. He meets him right where he’s at, in the midst of his illness. He takes him seriously. And loves him right into health. I suspect that the account is abbreviated –- Mark’s gospel in particular collapses longer events into a dramatic moment. Healing usually takes more time than this story has. But it is clear that grace has changed the man. No longer is he mastered by illness, but by Jesus. And no longer outcast, but now supported by the other Christ followers. That’s important: Have you ever noticed how Jesus’ healing stories always bring someone back into community?
 
What would it be if Gollum met Jesus? What would grace look like for him? Grace –- that completely undeserved love from God. Grace -- the love that just Is –- that is there for us whatever we do, whatever we don’t do, whether we like it or not. Grace -- Love that meets us in our illness, our broken places…. In the shadows where we hide our sin from even ourselves, God’s love is still there. Rather than being turned in on ourselves, we are given a new center in God.
 
I think that Gollum – or Sméagol – experienced that sort of grace in the person of Frodo. He
has taken to calling Frodo “Master” – a new focus, a new center, outside his broken self.
 
Frodo is both cautious and kind to Gollum, unlike everyone else who is repulsed by him, is scared of him and mean to him. As the movie progresses, Frodo is able to draw out more and more of Sméagol, remind him of the Hobbit he once was, and call him towards a better self. The more Sméagol trusts Frodo, the stronger Sméagol becomes. There is a pivotal scene, in which Sméagol and Gollum are arguing aloud, first whether to murder Frodo and seize the Ring, and then turning to the deeper issue of who is in charge of their life. The voice of Gollum starts:
 
Gollum: We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precioussss. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitsesss. Wicked, trickssssy, falssse!
Then Sméagol argues back:  No! Not Master.
Gollum: Yes, precious. False. They will cheat you, hurt you, lie.
Sméagol: Master’s my friend.
Gollum: (taunting) You don’t have any friends. Nobody likes YOU...
Sméagol: Not listening. Not listening.
Gollum: You're a liar and a thief.
Sméagol: (shaking his head) Nope.
Gollum: Mur...derer...!
Sméagol: (starts to cry and whimper) Go away.
Gollum: Go away! (cackles) Hahahahaha!
Sméagol: (cries, whispering) I hate you, I hate you.
Gollum: (fiercely) Where would you be without me? Gollum, Gollum. I saved us. It was me. We survived because of me!
Sméagol: (resolute) Not anymore.
Gollum: (surprised) What did you say?
Sméagol: Master looks after us now. We don’t need you.
Gollum: What?
Sméagol: Leave now and never come back.
Gollum: No!!!
Sméagol: (louder) Leave now and never come back!
Gollum:  (bares teeth, growling) Arghhhh!
Sméagol: LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK. (Sméagol pants and looks around for Gollum) We... we told him to go away! And away he goes, preciousss. (dances around, happily) Gone, gone, gone! Sméagol is free!
​

​The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado
Mark 1:29-39
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany
 
Will you pray with me this morning, Plymouth? May the words of my mouth (as fully inadequate as they will be) and the meditations and prayers of all of our hearts (as speechless as we are) be good in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
 
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there prayed.” Mark Chapter 1, Verse 35 is a moment of absolute stillness, silence, and deep loneliness in the middle of a chapter (a passage of Scripture) filled to the brim with over-activity: healings, expelling of demons, travel, and crowds of endless pressing need. This morning, friends, we are really living in a still very dark morning at the deserted place—and it is exactly where we need to be. It is okay.
 
Today was scheduled to be Jane Anne’s monthly Sunday to preach. I know that, like myself, Jane Anne treasures the opportunities she has to come before you in this pulpit and share a Word of Gospel and grace. All of the words this week of common prayer: The Call to Worship, our hymn selections, the Unison Prayers, and even the sermon title, “Ripples of Healing,” come from my colleague, The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson. She finalized this worship bulletin only hours before indescribable tragedy would touch the Ferguson-Chorpenning household.
 
The loss of a child at any age and for any reason is a source of grief and pain that stays with a parent in some form or another for a lifetime—with a brother, with a stepfather, with stepbrothers. Our work, brothers and sisters/ siblings in Christ, here in this congregation in the days, weeks, years to come is to allow the work of the Holy Spirit through grief and bereavement to flow through us—to be ripples rather than waves of healing. Ripples rather than waves because it requires patience, boundaries, awareness, and finesse.
 
Jane Anne’s original sermon title, which I retained, could not be a more accurate depiction of the way grief and loss process works. I know this from my time as both a hospice and hospital chaplain. Starting from a sudden and unexpected impact on the surface of the waters of life, the process of recovering equilibrium does not come in waves but rather ripples of healing. Continuing with the image of the ripple, we should also remember that ripples continue to exist in the system of the water well after they are no longer visible to the human eye.
 
This will be a long process for both Jane Anne and Hal—one that they will both define in their own way. We will need to wait for them to define their needs. So far, as a congregation, I want to commend you all for understanding the boundaries of space needed. You all have responded with so much love and care, and I know that they feel the ripples of healing your prayers are sending. Likewise, I want to thank the Leadership Council for providing meals for the family. We will let the congregation know if more are needed.
 
I also understand and need to name that for many of you, some have spoken with me and some haven’t and maybe won’t, the ripples of your own healing processes intersect and overlap (magnified) with the ripples of this event. Hal shared with us by email, vulnerably and authentically, that Colin probably took his own life. While brave and hard to say, it helps remove stigma and bring this conversation to the light.
 
I know that for many of you, this has brought up your own grief, fears, loss, guilt, and feelings of helplessness even decades old. The ripples of this event in our church family system have brought up a lot of things for many of you from your own families and histories. I want you to know that even as busy as I will be perceived to be “holding down the fort” in the coming weeks, your pastoral care, the conversations you need to have, the questions this might raise about God always come first for me, for Mark, for Mandy, and our team of pastorally-trained lay people. I want to be as explicit as I possible can be (no vagaries today): do not hesitate to reach out if you need to talk, or process, or grieve. This is true even if the triggering event is 50 or 75 years ago or even happened in your family system a 100 years or more ago. The ripples of healing are a promise from God, we see God’s great power of healing in this passage, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do it alone or that it is easy. This brings me back to our Scripture (good news) even this dark morning:
 
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
 
The word translated from Greek here in our translation as “a deserted place” is hotly contested in different Christian translations. Other words frequently used in lieu of deserted include: secluded place, solitary place, desolate place, uninhabited, or most interestingly it can be translated as a vulnerable place… a place that is deprived of the protection of others—the rawness, realness, and pain of the human experience. In the early hours of a new day, when it was still very dark and dangerous, Jesus got up and went out alone to a place of vulnerability and there he prayed.”
 
One of my favorite theology books is called Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. In this book, the author and father of son living with disability, Dr. Thomas Reynolds, argues that good theology starts with looking for the places in the Bible and in Systematic Theologies where strength comes from brokenness, wholeness comes from authenticity, where community/ church/ all of this Christianity business really is rooted in one word: Vulnerability.
 
This is entirely counter-cultural and is essential for understanding what a grief process, ripples of healing, means for us now. Christianity is not a normal religion or normal way of living where safety and comfort are the arguable norms. Normal life is life where we suppress pain. In normal life we ignore healing. In normal life we rush bereavement. In normal life, strength is the ultimate virtue, right? In fact, in this book, and I love this and reference it frequently because it is at the core of my belief in Christ, is that normal is a cult. The Cult of Normalcy dictates that we always need to be strong, always need to be progressing, always need to have it all figured out, always need to “get over it fast,” always look happy, healthy, and wise. This normal business isn’t Christian…heck it isn’t even possible. It is a false idol. The Cult of Normalcy.
 
Vulnerability, deserted places, lonely and hard are the source of our faith in a God who accompanied and accompanies all of humanity in the hard parts of life and death. God and Jesus Christ don’t end when things get hard, when we need to be vulnerable with each other, when healing doesn’t even seem remotely possible, but that is where faith starts.
 
In the early hours of a new day, when it was still very dark and dangerous, Jesus got up and went out alone to a place of vulnerability and there prayed.”
 
A couple of closing remarks: I want us to look to the last three words of this fascinating verse: “And There Prayed.” What Hal and Jane Anne shared in vulnerability with you by email, what many of you have since shared with me, what we do by worshiping God (mystery, universe, creator) together, sharing in admitting our own brokenness, admitting that none of us looks anything like normal (AMEN!) is dangerous, risky, and vulnerable.
 
It is, yes, all of these things, but it is never hopeless. In denying the power of normal and embracing the rawness and realness of vulnerability and finally turning to the source of life in prayer (even in the midst of the darkest morning in the scariest places of our souls)—we find hope eternal in a God who will not let us go, a God who accompanied humanity even unto worst. This is the importance of the cross even for progressive churches to understand. God accompanies humanity in even the worst circumstances.
 
While vulnerable in a deserted and lonely place, Jesus was far from alone. And there he prayed. Sometimes, like now, that is all we can do. Grounded in a calling to vulnerable places and spaces of life and death, we together come before God in prayer. There is no normal way to grieve a loss like the loss of a child, but we can come alongside in prayer, in knowing our own vulnerability is a gift that starts the ripples of healing from a core of hope.
 
Deserted (vulnerable) places have no map, no normal, no yelp, no timeline, no Google to tell you how to find them or exactly how long you will need to be there. They just are and need to be. Amen