Acts 16: 9-15
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
“One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility [in the household of God], we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them [and us] find self-confidence and inner healing.” 
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
 
Today, friends, I want to speak with you about sharing in one household in mutuality and the Christian life together. Come and stay! Share in the love of the household of God.
 
Would 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 family and the one whom always welcomes us and all people home throughout all time and across the vast distances of heaven and earth. Amen.
 
“During the night Paul had a vision.” That is how our Scripture auspiciously starts this morning in Acts—the Lukan narrative of the Adventures of the Apostles. And you all thought that Game of Thrones was Epic! In the early dawn hours, we imagine Paul waking everyone up and rushing them to the seaside. The first condition of traveling with Paul, apparently, is being a morning person. “Get up! I’ve had another vision!” Early in the morning, Paul and his companions enter a new region for the first time and go looking for the people in prayer. They don’t even know who they are called to meet, but they know that they are sent. In response to a vision, Paul goes looking for a Community in Prayer in unfamiliar territory without a known destination. The second apparent condition of working with Paul is being comfortable working without a set itinerary or plan.
 
Paul intuitively goes down to the river where a group of women, including Lydia, worship and pray. Then in a reversal, often missed by traditional scholars, Paul and his band are saved by Lydia. She was a powerful women and merchant of the rare item of purple cloth.
 
She “prevailed” upon them means that she welcomed them to her home and fed and provided for them. She demands that Paul receive (reciprocal) her hospitality as a sign of gratitude and community. Blessing is not a one-way street. The Apostles are brought into her household, into her home, and they find welcome and radical hospitality in a new land.
 
In this passage we find a deep sense of mutuality and reciprocity that makes us ask some question: Who is really being saved here? For whom is this story more of a blessing? Do Lydia and her household save Paul and his friends, or does Paul save Lydia? I would argue that they save each other in Christian mutuality and the radical welcome of God. Importantly from a narrative/structural analysis perspective, after Lydia’s story in Acts, there is a long list of near-death and very demanding experiences throughout the Greek territory through the rest of Chapter 16 and 17. Would Paul and his apostles have been able to survive it without the service and sabbath of Lydia? The text does not say how long they stayed and recuperated at Lydia’s house. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that this salvific, restorative moment is exactly half way through The Book of Acts. Does this time of rest at Lydia’s home save the whole Christian story? Read in context, I think that is a true interpretation. Lydia, perhaps, saves Christianity.
 
Unlike many imbalanced passages in the Bible around money, spirit, power, and gender discrimination, this short passage in Acts, Chapter 16 is a glimpse of Sacred Community called into being be a vision grounded in mutuality (the need for all people and their gifts), gentleness, and hospitality.
 
Lydia demanded that they accept her care just as she had received a gift of the Gospel from Paul. Mutuality. Lydia demonstrates equality with Paul here that is significant in a Feminist and Progressive Hermeneutic or reading of the New Testament. This is the leaders of two spiritual communities meeting. Moreover, the text implies that they needed each other. Paul was called over the waters to Lydia to bring her good news, but he also finds renewal and blessing from her household. Unlike the imbalanced passages in Scripture and most of Christian Tradition, here we find a moment of balance and mutual need and acceptance.
 
How is your giving of time and love to Church Community also a gift to you? Where do you find mutuality in your Christian walk with others? How do you need community to show-up for you today? Come and stay, friends, here in the household of God. Sustainable service requires a sense of mutuality.
 
With the end of Game of Thrones (a show I have never watched by the way because of the violence), there is a lot of talk about something called a Spoiler Alert.  Have any of your heard of this idea? Since I have no plans to ever watch Game of Thrones, I ignore such warnings. A Spoiler Alert is an alert that the premise of a show or book will be shortly given away in the form of an overly-simplistic summary. So, *spoiler alert*—friends, here is the summary of the next 8 minutes of this sermon: Christianity is about being called to share and to receive. Christianity is about receiving hospitality from unexpected sources with grace. In offering hospitality, in sharing Gospel hope, in living in community with those whom many have rejected, we are not only giving home and household of God, but it is how we truly become Christians living in mutual need of one another. Spoiler Alert: This is so basic, but we need each other and those in need as much or more than they ever need us.
 
Progressive Christians like to see ourselves as the heroes, but we need the gifts of those whom we serve as much as they need us.
 
This reminds me of a great theologian, activist, and spiritual visionary who died a couple of weeks ago named Jean Vanier—the founder of the International L’Arche Communities. These are houses set aside like group homes for those living with developmental and mental disability, but the care providers and staff live in the houses as well and share in life and community. Unlike group homes where the service and the giving are unidirectional, this is life in community embodied. Jean Vanier believed that this was mutuality and mutual blessing. Jean Vanier was a young man studying to become a priest when a visit to an institution for mentally disabled men would change him and the world forever. 
 
The New York Times remembered this moment in Jean Vanier’s recent obituary in the following terms: “Jean Vanier, who dedicated his life to improving conditions for people on the margins and founded two worldwide organizations for those with developmental disabilities, died on Tuesday in Paris….The turning point in his life came in 1963, with his first visit [as a theology student] to an institution for people with intellectual [and developmental] disabilities. He was so moved by their pleas for help that he bought a house and invited [prevailed upon them] two male residents to live with him. It was the beginning of L’Arche…Today L’Arche…has 154 communities in 38 countries…[in which] people with [core members] and without intellectual disabilities live together in a community where they can feel they belong….Mr. Vanier studied how people with mental disabilities were being treated throughout the world and resolved to create a community where they could live with one another in dignity… By living with them, Mr. Vanier said he truly began to understand what it meant to be human. ‘Before meeting them, my life had been governed largely from my head and my sense of duty. When those ingrained in a culture of winning and individual success really meet them and enter into friendship with them, something amazing and wonderful happens. They are changed at a very deep level. They are transformed and become more fundamentally human.’”[1]
 
That article was poorly, terrible, unthoughtfully entitled, “Jean Vanier: Savior of People on the Margins.” It was poorly entitled because Jean Vanier and the L’Arche model of Christianity would fundamentally understand it in the inverse. Jean Vanier wasn’t the savior of those at the margins at all, but he was the one who was saved. He was saved from a false sense of self and an artificial reality by those at the margins. That is how he would have understood it and how all those who live in and support L’Arche Communities (including the newest one in the world emerging now in Fort Collins) understand church.

Lydia and the women of Macedonia worshiped on their own by the river because they were on the margins operating outside of the official and formal circles of power, and it is to them and their community that Paul goes to be welcomed home into the household of Lydia and God. Amen?
 
The late theologian and Biblical Scholar, Gail O’Day wrote of this passage that, “This Sabbath gathering suggests that as early as the first century, women believers sought their own voices and stories in worship freed from the dictates of the male-dominated church.”[2]
 
Spoiler Alert Again: It is in mutuality with those at the margins that the Church has always found its real meaning and is saved time and time again. The church is saved and renewed by the margins.
 
Vanier once wrote: “One of the risks that God will always ask of a community is that it welcomes visitors, especially the poorest people, the ones who disturb us. Very often God brings a particular message to the community through an unexpected guest, letter or phone call. The day the community starts to turn away visitors and the unexpected…is the day it is in danger of shutting itself off from the action of God…We are too quick to want to defend our past traditions, and so to shut ourselves off from the new evolution God wants of us. We want human society, not dependence on God…We are all in danger of living superficially, on the periphery of ourselves…Community life demands that we constantly go beyond our own resources. If we do not have the spiritual resources we need, we will close in on ourselves and in our own comfort and security or throw ourselves into work as an escape. We will throw-up walls around our sensitivity; we will perhaps be polite and obedient, but we will not live in love. And when you do not love, there is no hope and no joy. To live with “gratuity” we have to be constantly nourished. It is terrible to see people who are living in so-called community that has become a boarding house for bachelors! It is terrible to see elders in a community who have closed up their hearts, lost their initial enthusiasm, and have become critical and cynical. If we are to remain faithful to the daily round, we need daily manna…It is the manna of meetings, of friendship, of looks and smiles that say, ‘I love you’ and warm the heart.”[3]
 
The household of God is rooted in mutuality of shared and unexpected blessing.
 
The National Pension Boards of the denomination asked me this past week to respond to a questionnaire about “the future of the church.” They asked us young clergy NGLI participants to answer the question: What does the future of the church look like? I have put some thought into this.
 
What does the future church look like? It looks like every local church taking the call to be a living and real household of God. It means the local congregation’s living into the freedom of dynamic mutual community like that of Paul and Lydia. The future of the Church looks a lot like L’Arche. It looks like communities living into the wholeness and the giftedness of each person in mutuality of blessing.
 
Perhaps this Scripture story isn’t really the “Conversion of Lydia” at all, as it is traditionally called, but it is the true and real conversion of Paul into accepting mutuality and the strengths of others. Perhaps we miss in this story a transformation that happens in Paul more than in Lydia. Maybe the one being saved here isn’t Lydia and her household, but it is Paul and the Apostles who need the saving from their busyness. There is Scriptural evidence to this effect. That is how I choose to read this story and understand Christianity. Come and stay, friends, in a truly mutual Realm and household of God.
 
She prevailed upon them and they were brought into her household where the one who in busyness and in power thought he was saving others… is in turn saved. Would they have made it through the remaining half of the Epic Adventure of the Acts of the Apostles without the mutuality of Lydia, I think maybe not.
 
Like Jean Vanier, we choose to believe that we all may and must be transformed in authentic mutuality by the gentleness of love.[4]

Jake

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/obituaries/jean-vanier-dead.html
[2] Gail O’Day, “The Book of Acts,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, edits. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 397.
[3] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 161-169.
[4] “Jean Vanier and the Gift of L’Arche,” The Christian Century, June 5, 2019.

by Anne Thommpson

Share community,
down at the river to pray.
Then come to my home.

Who is being saved?
How do we save each other?
Sacred together,

Mutuality,
Equality and balance.
What needs do we bring?

What are the needs met?
We need gifts of those we serve
for humanity.

It is more bless-ed
That we both give and receive --
full humanity.

Look to the margins,
to your own periphery,
societal edge.

Giftedness of each
can save even powerful
from their narrowness.

Stronger together
Community of needs and gifts
Blessed and being blessed

​Acts 11.1-18
Easter 5, Year C
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
​Fort Collins, CO

1 Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3 saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" 4 Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, 5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. 6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' 8 But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' 9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' 10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 12 The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. 13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" 18 When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." 

Hal and I jokingly call this story “The Great Apostolic BBQ.” God uses Peter’s image of all those squirming animals in that sheet to make a revelatory declaration, “Everyone is invited! Ya’ll All Come! No one and nothing is unclean and excluded!” This is a pivotal story in the narrative of the book of the Acts. So pivotal it is actually told twice in the Acts of the Apostles. We have just heard the second telling from Acts, chapter 11, that occurs as Peter gives account of his experiences in Joppa and Caesarea to the burgeoning community of the Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem. You can  read the whole story happening in “real” narrative time in Acts, chapter 10.  It's not too long, and worth the read, because this story is a game changer for our earliest Christian ancestors.

In Peter’s holy vision he is invited to eat things he has never imagined eating. And he is justifiably horrified as a good Jew who works hard to keep the dietary laws of his time in as a sign of his faithfulness to God. Despite his shock and horror at being invited by God to completely reverse his dietary thinking, Peter pays attention. Something is up. As we heard, he is soon led to understand that his vision is really not about the menu of his next backyard BBQ. It is about God’s inclusive Spirit. God is inviting and commanding the followers of the Way, those faithful Jews following Jesus, to reach out farther than their Jewish community to include all of humanity as God’s people. God is inviting this new community to share the good news of God revealed in Jesus the Christ with everyone. 

His startling and disturbing vision gives him an inkling of meaning when the men, most likely Gentiles, maybe soldiers, from the man, Cornelius, show up inviting Peter to the home of this Roman centurion. He and his companions are essentially invited into the camp of the “enemy. ” Though Cornelius is known as a God-fearer, a Gentile seeking the God of the Jews, he is still a Gentile who does not keep the purity laws. He is not a circumcised Jew. He is not one of them. He is also employed by the oppressor of the Jewish people, the Roman empire. Peter and his companions must have thought, “What in God’s Name.....literally....is going on?” Yet they trust Peter’s vision given by the Sprit and they go to Cornelius’ house where the inclusive work of the Spirit is confirmed when Peter hears the story of Cornelius’s vision of the angel. Confirmation really sets in when all the household receives the Holy Spirit just as Peter and the other disciples had on the day of Pentecost. Gentiles are receiving the Holy Spirit of the Almighty, the God of the Jews! God is truly making a new thing! A miraculous thing! A thing of compassion and expansion and love! Peter and his friends understand and rejoices! 

After this miraculous experience, when Peter and company return home to Jerusalem they find a not so welcoming community of believers. Their companions following Jesus on the Way do not immediately recognize this new thing God is doing. There’s no “Atta boy” or Good Job” for sharing God’s good news, for helping an entire household into the family of the Risen Christ.....just horror that Peter broke all the laws of purity by dining in a Gentile household. “How could you eat with those uncircumcised people?” From our point of view this may seem so narrow-minded! But we are not part of an oppressed people who has fought form generations, through slavery and exile time and again, to retain faithfulness to God and to one another in order to preserve our way of life and our religion and our very lives. Even though they have received the good news of God through Jesus, old ways die hard. Its that whole domino effect. One broken link in the tradition and belief chain can bring the whole structure tumbling down. And now they are not only under the Romans thumb but are also seen as suspect by the Jewish authorities for following this renegade rabbi, Jesus. No wonder they react first with fear. 

If I were Peter, I know I would be really angry and hurt by their question. I might lose my cool and started arguing, quoting scripture to prove my point as I pointed out their complete narrow-minded pin-headedness. And the impulsive, brash fisherman, Peter that we know from the gospels may have been tempted to do that. But Peter seems to have learned through listening to his life – to his fear-based betrayal of Jesus after Jesus’ arrest, to the tragedy of crucifixion and then the inexplicable joy of the empty tomb, to his personal experience of the Risen One. His faith has been transformed. He has learned that “stories, not arguments change lives.”  

Step by step he leads his community through the story of this amazing transformation God is offering, implying with each turn in the story, “This is God’s doing. Not mine. It could have happened to any of you. You could be the messenger as well as me.” He says to them, In the midst of it all “I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'  If then God gave [these folks] the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" And in the silence that follows his story, The hearts of the believers in Jerusalem are transformed. Their minds are changed.. Their faith and its practice is altered from then on throughout the book of Acts. Gentiles are included. 

This is a timely message for us, is it not? As we seek to bridge divides in order to bring about God’s realm in our world. As we seek to invite all people, and particularly, those often uninvited in our wider community, into fellowship and service with us and with God. This is a story about the  leadership, power and ultimately grace of God found in talking across divides, breaking down barriers that separate us as God’s people! This story is foundational for the ministry we do together as part of the Plymouth family of God because of its message of inclusion and because it teaches us to share our stories of faith. 

“It is hard to argue or split theological hairs with a compelling story”   Yet as progressive Christians we often shy away from telling our own stories of God’s work in us partly because we know the power of story. We know that story can be used for transformation or to manipulate and twist the facts if used in the wrong ways. We know its power to heal or to distort. And we want to get it right!
We may not tell our personal faith stories of transformation because we do not want to appear manipulative or better-than-thou or self-righteous. Because we cannot find just the right words to speak of the holy, numinous moments that have changed us. Because we don’t think we have all the theological answers that we should have.  

 I am telling you this morning/evening, my friends, .... you ALL have at least one, and probably many, stories of being transformed by the loving power of God to share. God’s world needs your stories. Our faith community needs your stories, your children and grandchildren need your stories, the children and youth in our Christian Formation programs need your stories. The people in your neighborhood, in your office, at your school need your stories of being transformed in faith. The people who enter our doors through the Homelessness Prevention Initiative/Neighbor to Neighbor program and through Faith Family Hospitality need your stories. Those of you  who work in our wider community through our immigration advocacy ministry teams, or Habitat for Humanity, and in our newly forming Stopping Gun Violence ministry team need your stories. We need your stories of stunning insight or quiet revelation, your stories of transformation where, like Peter, mistakes were made before new life was revealed. 

For example, I can tell you a brief story of mistakes before revelation....I was 19 and had just finished my freshman year in college. A church youth group friend came to me saying, “I’m thinking of being gay. What do you think?” “Being gay” was hardly on my radar screen at this point in the mid 70’s. I knew that as Christians we loved everyone. I didn’t know the ethics or theological specifics about “being gay.” I didn’t even know that there were scripture passages that could be considered prohibitive. All I knew to say was, “What ever you decide, I will always love you. I think as a Christian you should investigate what God says about it.” Not bad advice on the surface. Unfortunately, being the mid-70’s in Missouri there was not too many places he could go for investigation.  He took my my advice literally and that led him into a very conservative Christian group that tried to “cure” him. By the time I found out about this, I had a very different perspective on “being gay.” I had close, close friends who were like brothers, struggling with being Christian and being who they were made to be in the image of God as gay men. I know that I am not God and not responsible for my high school friends faith journey. But like Peter after his betrayal of Christ this memory of my youthful naiveté stings. What pain did my advice lead him into? For a long time now I have understood that all of us are made in God’s image, gay or straight or bi or transgendered or non-binary gender, I have been an open proponent for God’s message of love for all. We are all in the sheet from Peter’s vision together. Now if I were asked in a similar situation, “What do you think?” I would say, I love you just as you are. And I think you should know that God loves you just as you are and made you just as you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

How have you experienced the transforming love of God for you and for all humanity and creation? God’s transformation does not have to come in big dramatic visions and prayers, or dramatic events and moments. It also comes in conversations, reading, day dreaming, serving, parenting, teaching. It is as likely to come in the midst of a work day as in the wonder of the wilderness. Moments so real....then fleeting. Did that just happen? Yes, it did. God is speaking to each of you. Listen and remember. How have you been transformed by faith? What comes to mind? Pay attention to what first comes to you. Then go deep. Make some notes on your bulletin. Think about this for just a moment – 30 seconds to be exact. (Pause) 

Now you know there is at least a germ of a story of God’s work made manifest in you. As Peter did, go and tell and rejoice in God’s good news! Who are we to hinder God? Amen. 

1) Stephen D. Jones, “Homiletical Perspective on Act 11.1-18”, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, (Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 2009, 453.)
2) Ibid., 455.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2019 and beyond. All rights reserved. 

Psalm 23 and Psalm 13
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Last Tuesday evening, I went to my 18-year-old son Chris’s last high school orchestra concert. Next weekend, we will attend his last performance with Debut Theatre at the Lincoln Center. And at the end of the month, we will celebrate his graduation from Rocky Mountain High School. These are the typical celebratory events for seniors in high school, and of course, they are tinged with both pride and melancholy as we see him grow up. That is as it should be. (And on this Mother’s Day, Chris will hopefully remember to buy a card for his mom.…Yes, I reminded him.)

Today will be a different kind of Mother’s Day for Maria Castillo, whose son, Kendrick, died in a school shooting on Tuesday in Highlands Ranch. I cannot imagine the pain his mom is feeling today, and that she will feel every Mother’s Day for the rest of her life. The day my son Chris was playing French horn, Kendrick Castillo, also an 18-year-old senior, threw himself into the line of fire as bullets flew in his high school. Chris will get to finish out his senior year and graduate, but there will be at least one absence in the graduation at STEM Charter School in Highlands Ranch. 

One day last month, every school in Poudre School District was closed because of what the FBI called a “credible threat” of a school shooting. Those of us with kids or grandkids in school, those who are or love teachers and kids, how long will we let this go on? 

How long, O Lord, how long? How long will we be part of a society that is rooted in the myth of redemptive violence? How long will people who call themselves Christians tolerate violence as a means to settle disputes? How long will we tolerate politicians who are addicted to the cash provided by the gun lobby? How long will we live in a nation that cannot acknowledge that we have an enormous mental health crisis? 

It’s not just about gun control legislation…but that’s a place to start. It’s not just about teaching conflict-resolution skills to kids …but that’s a place to start. It’s not enough for us to say “No more school shootings!” and to get out on the streets…but that’s a place to start. It’s not enough to try and remove the stigma from people who have mental health challenges…but it’s a place to start. 
How long will we as Christians tolerate the status quo? School shootings have become so common that this week’s tragedy wasn’t even the lead story on NPR or in the Washington Post or the New York Times. 
What is the first thing that comes into your mind when I say, “Columbine?” We live in a place that helped equate the name of our state flower with school shootings. We live in a state where the shootings at New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007 failed to put all Christians on notice that we need to address the prevalence of guns in our society and their use in violent crime. We live in a state where a movie theater shooting in 2012 left 12 people dead. And here we are again with another tragic shooting in a Colorado school. Fortune magazine identified the top ten Congressmen who have benefited most from NRA funding; among those ten are one of our two senators and the representative who serves Windsor and Greeley. 

Yes, I do want to cry out to God and say “How long, O Lord?! How long?!” And because I know that God acts through us, I want to say to myself and to each of you, “How long, God’s people?! How long?!” How long are we going to tolerate politicians who bury their heads in the ground when there is a shooting? How long are we going to tolerate the gun lobby calling the shots in Washington, DC? How long are we going to perpetuate an ingrained system of hyper-competitiveness and hyper-busyness for our kids? How long are we going to avoid talking about mental health and refuse to remove the shroud of shame from those who suffer from mental illness. 

Kendrick Castillo and his family are in my thoughts and prayers. But ours is an engaged faith; a faith in which prayer leads to commitment and commitment leads to action. So, by all means, pray for the Castillo family and the students and families of STEM Charter School…and pray for the families of the two young people who did the shooting. And don’t forget to take the next step and engage your faith in action. 

We are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, my friends. It is a valley where the stench of death should affect us on a visceral level. The stench is in the offices of lawmakers who refuse to open their eyes to what is happening, because they are being paid to look the other way. The stench is in an industry that wants to make more handguns and semiautomatic weapons available because they see that the fear of Americans can help them make a profit. The stench hangs on us who can use our influence to affect a change in our culture and in our politics, but we don’t because we are too busy earning a living, or we’re complacent, or we’ve given up hope. 

If Christian and Jews, who claim to believe in the message of the Psalms, are convinced that we have no reason to fear the shadow of death, because God and God’s rod and staff are with us, then why are we afraid to do something dramatic? Isn’t it incumbent upon us as people of faith, especially Christians in the majority faith, to do something to remedy the situation that confronts us? 

After the shooting in Parkland High School in 2018, we organized a Ministry Team and many of you went to a march in Old Town Square. And that was a great show of support, but it wasn’t sustainable, and here we find ourselves again. 

As your senior pastor, I’m issuing a challenge to the members of this church to do something. Yes, pray fervently! You who write letters to politicians, write! You who organize ministry teams, organize! Those of you who write checks, give! And we need to work with others in the community and nation to create a sea-change, because we cannot do it alone. Your clergy will empower you in whatever ways we can…but this has to have grass roots support within the congregation in order to be sustained. So, let’s get to work…let’s involve ourselves in ministry. If you want something concrete to do, go to a meeting of a community group, Moms Demand Action, at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church on Lemay Avenue on Monday, May 20 at 6:30 p.m. And if you all want to form a Plymouth Ministry Team to support that effort, we can help make that happen. [pass sign ups and reminder]

I gave Chris an especially big hug on Wednesday night. And it is certainly because I’ll miss having him here at home when he heads out on a gap year. But as I looked at the big six-foot-three frame I thought to myself…it could have been Chris and not Kendrick.

Let’s work to end this scourge and help to create a culture in which the stench of violence is replaced by the bright light of resurrection. 

May it be so. Amen.

© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Acts of the Apostles 9.1-20
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Today, we start a cycle of lectionary readings from a book in the New Testament that is neither a gospel nor an epistle, but something different. The “acts” genre contains a sequence of things that were done after Jesus was no longer on the scene in the same way, so they basically the adventures of the apostles, who are those people sent out to spread the word. (Sometimes people are confused about who is a disciple – a student or follower – and who is an apostle…and though people like Peter are both, but today we hear about Paul, who didn’t know the pre-Easter Jesus, so wasn’t a disciple of Jesus, but is sent out as an apostle.) Between now and Pentecost in June, you’ll hear all kinds of adventures that are described in the Acts of the Apostles. There are also books in this genre that didn’t make it into our New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which is a great read!

But back to the Acts of the Apostles and today’s famous story about a Jew born in the diaspora, in Tarsus, in what is now Turkey. And in today’s story we hear that he was called Saul (and later called Paul [Acts 13.9]), and that he was persecuting the Jews who saw Jesus as the messiah and who had introduced a provocative reform movement called “The Way” into the heart of Judaism. Saul appears to be working with the central authority of the religious establishment, the High Priest, in Jerusalem, and asks for letters authorizing him to root out followers of the Way in Damascus in Syria, about a week’s journey away from Jerusalem on foot.

And as he nears Damascus, he has what can only be described as a mystical experience…a first-hand experience of the risen Christ who appears in a blinding light and asks Saul why he is persecuting him.

Three days later, Christ appears to a disciple (not an apostle) named Ananias and instructs him to go to and find Saul and lay hands on his eyes to end Saul’s blindness. Can you imagine what Ananias is thinking? “I’m supposed to go and cure this guy who has been trying to defame our movement, arrest our people…and cure his sight? What’s the deal? He deserved to be blinded!” Ananias goes anyway.
And having experienced a sequence of miraculous transformation, Paul not only gives up persecuting The Way, he gets swept up into it and begins to proclaim that Jesus was, in fact, the messiah.

In light of centuries of antisemitism and synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and San Diego, I want to make a brief digression to talk about New Testament references to “the Jews.” When the author writes that “the Jews plotted to kill” Saul, it sounds like Saul isn’t a Jew himself. But a lot of the people in this story are Jews. Jesus was a Jew, was circumcised, and lived and died as a Jew. Paul was born a Jew, circumcised, and he becomes part of a Jewish renewal movement called The Way. John’s Gospel is perhaps the most vociferous in the New Testament about condemning “the Jews.” It is absolutely critical for modern readers to understand the context in which this was written. John and others like him were being excluded by the religious establishment, not because of their ethnicity, but because of what was perceived as their heresy. It’s not unlike the experience of being a gay kid and being thrown out your family of origin. John was a Jew…virtually all the members of his community were Jews. They happen to be part of a Jewish renewal movement that eventually morphed into a separate religion that we know as Christianity. All of which is to say that Jews are our older siblings, and it is from Judaism that every part of the Christian household descends. And if it isn’t clear: antisemitism has no place in Christianity.

So, back to Saul, later Paul. He has quite an experience. It is such a major turning point in his life that we use the term “Damascus Road experience” as an archetype to describe a sudden transformation.
And lest we think that we in the Congregational strand of the UCC are not eligible for mystical experiences, conversion experiences, or sudden transformation, allow me gently to remind you that in many Congregational churches in 18th century New England, prospective members had to display a “visible sign of conversion” before they could be taken into covenanted membership. Obviously, we don’t use that as a litmus test for membership at Plymouth and never have, so don’t let that scare you off from our new members class in two weeks!

One of things we will discuss in that class is Plymouth’s own mission statement, which you all should know by heart. “Our mission is to worship God and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death, and living presence of Jesus Christ. We do this by… remember the dance?? Inviting, Transforming, and Sending.
The middle action in our mission statement is not there by accident! It is a clear recognition that every last one of us is in need of growth and movement in becoming more whole human beings. What are some of the ways you could transform and grow more Christlike? How do you need to “Go Deeper” in your faith?

A wise Jesuit writer, Anthony de Mello, wrote that “Most people would rather have a definition than an experience.” That fits most of us at pretty well. Definitions are safe. And I’m sure that Saul would rather have had a definition than an experience!

Not all of us have the Risen Christ show up, knock us to the ground and blind us to get his message across. But how many times have you said, “Show me a sign, God…and make it a big one!” This is a 2 x 4, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “God, I need a sign…make it obvious.” But, I don’t really want to have God swat me with a 2 x 4, nor do I want to be blinded. I hope that something a little more subtle would work.

When I was in my early 30s, my former wife and I were members of First Congregational UCC in Boulder, and I had Public Relations business at the time. We had received a book from our minister by John Dominic Crossan, who has spoken here at Plymouth and with whom Jane Anne and I led pilgrimage in Ireland. Dom’s book is called Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and one afternoon as I was reading it at our dining room table, I had a sense that someone had put their hand on my shoulder. It was a palpable sense of a presence, and it came with a message: “You can do this.” For me, that was a moment of transformation that led me to change careers and become a minister. And I share that with you not because I think you all should become ministers, but rather to let you know that people do have transformative, life-changing, sometimes mystical experiences…and not all of them involve lightning bolts, blinding lights, or 2 x 4s.

So, what have been pivotal life-changing moments in your experience? I have an Episcopal priest friend who uses acronym to describe those moments when we are confronted with change: AFOG. A.F.O.G., which stands for Another Fantastic Opportunity for Growth…though the F-word she used was not “fantastic.” When have you been faced with an AFOG or transformation or crisis that shifted life? For some people, getting into a 12-step program is utterly transformative and directs them toward the Spirit. For others, the process of becoming a parent changes their spiritual life and opens a new access point to the sacred.

If you are on the church mailing list, and if you’ve opened your mail, you read that during Holy Week I found out that my prostate cancer has returned, and I’ll be starting hormone and radiation therapy, and the outlook is still good. That’s an AFOG. I don’t know if there is a message I’m supposed to get from my journey with cancer, but I hope it will become clear. I do know how many of you have dealt with cancer with grace and courage and faith, and you are my examples. And I know that God is with us every step of the way. I know you’ll want to do something, so I would be really grateful if you would keep me and Jane Anne and our family in your prayers.

One of the things we all can learn from Paul’s example is that sometimes we have a transformative experience when what we’d really like is a safe definition. And we also can learn from Paul that after you’ve found yourself on the ground, you can get up, and that you will be changed, and you can go forward in new, unimagined directions. God has a lot of surprises yet in store in each of our lives, and in our common life as a congregation. So, be on the lookout for moments of transformation…and if you find yourself on the ground, know that you have a God-inspired community to lend a hand.
Amen.
 
© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.