The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Luke 9:57-62
Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Would you join me in prayer? O God who walks with us on the many paths of life, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts may be good and pleasing in your sight. Amen.
 
One of the greatest gifts of ministry with Plymouth over the past years has been the participatory planning of the All-Church Retreat. While many of our ministry teams require only distant supervision or occasional guidance (usually only in the event of a crisis), it has been part of the full-time associate minister role for me to walk through the joyful creation of this annual event as a member of the planning team.
 
One of the saddest parts of leaving Plymouth before September, when the All-Church Retreat will take place this year, is not having the chance to attend this event. I always name it as my very favorite moment of ministry here every year. And this year, friends, let me just say that the team is planning the coolest, most intergenerational, artist-filled weekend of going deeper in faith and Spirit together down at La Foret. We even have an internationally known rock balancing artist contacted to come for our program!
 
What is it, though, about the All-Church Retreat that has made it, repeatedly, the highlight of my year of ministry, year after year? What makes it special and even restorative for our work together as church? Why would anyone choose to spend a year planning an event for church to gather in old cabins, to worship in the outdoors, to be dirty, to not get much sleep, and to be homesick? We have a perfectly good church building. We have perfectly good beds here at home. We have perfectly great hiking in Lory State Park. Why would one do that on purpose—especially as it requires driving South on I-25 during a Friday rush hour?
 
Here is why: for me, the All-Church Retreat (like the All-Church Picnic) is a Sacrament of the Plymouth Church Year. It is a Sacrament that disrupts the systems and the “normal” of our lives together. The manners in which we do community and worship and fellowship is challenged and set (for me) on a new pathway every year from the retreat onward. The All-Church Retreat is where I have my ministry New Year Eve. It reminds that the church isn’t contained by walls or magic words… but by people, their stories shared around a campfire, and the attentive listening to the Spirit. On the hikes and the pathways of the retreat, norms are challenged and new ways of being in community emerge.
 
Like the All-Church Retreat, leaving our comfort zones and upsetting norms is also the subject of our Scripture passage this morning from the Gospel According to Luke. It is a passage that on the surface appears to be Jesus in a really foul mood. On the surface it is a text that makes us cringe at times of change and transition, but under that surface is a call to go deeper into Christian love together especially at times of new pathways and journey.
 
In today’s passage, Jesus encounters some “wanna be” disciples. While our reading today is often thought of as one conversation, if we break it apart, there are actually three distinct and potentially very different people auditioning to be disciples before Jesus. Since there is no time marker between them, each could have been a very distinct conversation and context. This is like an American Idol for auditioning Disciples, except Jesus is a tougher audience and judge than even Simon Cowell.
 
Within the context of the Gospel of Luke, at this point in the story, Jesus is transitioning from B-List (regional) Prophet (sort of the type who might play Las Vegas) to an A-List Celerity. Jesus is becoming the Jesus Christ Superstar we imagine in theater and movies. We catch-up with Jesus today right in the moment when he is really building up his ministry, and people are paying attention. Joiners are circling. Do you know what the word “joiner” means? Joiners are the opposite of covenant-makers. These are the folks who attach themselves to the next best celebrity and then leave just as easily for the next best thing. Jesus is auditioning disciples not joiners for the difficult work of walking together in the woodland and forests of Spiritual Community.
 
Let us hear the text again listening for all three audition tapes in this episode of Disciples Idol: 
 
57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 But Jesus[a] said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
 
Here are three people all presenting themselves to Jesus to be followers, and now the story never tells us is they actually decided to continue following Jesus or not, but it does show us three of the reasons Jesus warns them about the realities becoming part of Christian Community. Jesus offers three reasons that covenant is a difficult pathway—and note it is different for each one of them. There is no blanket response. It is individualized for each person.
 
To the first, Jesus tells him that one of the risks of following is discomfort and housing insecurity. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” There is likely to be times of severe discomfort on the Jesus Journey. There is the risk of restless and even sleepless nights and solidarity with those on the margins. The first trail warning is that this isn’t a comfortable walk or life. Discomfort is part of the Jesus Journey.
 
The second, once he receives the direct invitation to follow Jesus, suddenly pivots and comes up with the excuse of needing to go home for a previously (conveniently) unscheduled funeral. Biblical Scholars agree that this second one is the example of the false excuse for real commitment. There isn’t really a funeral to plan or attend or he wouldn’t have been there listening to Jesus in the first place. Funerals happen that quickly in the ancient world, and still today in Jewish tradition. Have any of you ever worked in the HR field? This is the, “I need to go to my grandmother’s funeral,” excused absence claim.
 
Even so, Jesus says that sometimes the dead will need to bury the dead. There are many valid interpretations of this, but one interpretation is that a risk of following Christ is that some things, even important things (like funerals) will never be completed. The bereavement process is a journey and not a destination. The second trail warning is that Christian life on the path less traveled doesn’t always have a sense of completion or perfect closure. Nothing final will ever feel complete, and we have to find acceptance with that.
 
The third trail warning is a hard one today. The person simply asks to say goodbye to friends and family before leaving. This one I feel deeply right now, and Jesus’ response pains me. Facing leaving home and not feeling like there is enough time to say goodbye to every one of you individually, Jesus’ reply seems strange or hurtful. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
 
This is when we realize what Jesus is doing… everyone is welcome to be a follower, but the challenge is different for each. Jesus is working in the genre of the impossible. In the ancient world, a plow wasn’t like today’s modern GPS operated tractors made by John Deer and International Harvester. They were messy and propelled by donkeys. No matter how good of a farmer you were (even an Iowan) would have to look back and check their rows. It was part of the process.
 
Everyone looks back. Jesus has set-up an impossible paradigm. The third warning has the implication that none is able to do this perfectly without Grace. Jesus is using hyperbole to welcome an imperfect world and people to a new way. The third trail warning is that nobody will live up to this work. No human is fully able to let go of the past. Nobody is perfect, and none can do this Jesus Journey alone…at least not in perfection.
 
To each joiner, to each auditioner Jesus faces them with their own fear. It is like, for those of you who are Harry Potter fans, like a Boggart. To some that is imperfection, to others it is discomfort, and to yet others it is the incomplete.
 
“I will follow you wherever you go,” they say. Jesus replies, “Yes, yes, but you need to know that this whole Christianity thing is hard (hard for different people in different ways)—it means admitting to our imperfections and lack of straight lines, it means knowing that some things will be left undone and even incomplete, and that it can be uncomfortable and even sleepless at times… even away from La Foret.
 
[Pause 4 seconds]
 
This time of saying goodbye and moving feels kind of like this story rolled all into one process—incomplete, imperfect, and uncomfortable. It is all part of the larger vision of following Jesus on the road.
 
Let me close by adding one more observation about this passage. Verse 57 starts with this phase: “As they were going along the road…” What do you notice that is strange about this. The journey is already in motion. All three are already his followers—they never needed to audition to be followers in the first place, so Jesus challenges them with their own sense of what following means.
 
These and others are already in journey with Jesus. The choice is made, but the challenges remain. The word translated in our NRSV translation as “the road” comes from the Greek word Hodos. It can mean a physical way or road, but almost as often it means a course of conduct, or a way or manner of thinking (entrenched systems). As they were going along the way, as they were settling into a manner of thinking, as the systems solidified into a course of conduct… Jesus changes the direction. The hodos or the norms and familiar faces shift and the hodos ways of their lives change. Jesus offers a hodos challenging statement to each person who presents her or himself for discipleship. Going deeper in faith means understanding ourselves and accepting new pathways when presented with them for the sake of going deeper together and becoming better individuals.
 
I leave you now with a poem that inspired my sermon “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. I come from a literary analysis background, so when I am in times of change and stress I lean deeper not into history and facts but words and meaning.
 
Those who study this poem indicate that while it has a melancholy overtone, in the end there is a joy that there is no wrong way or path…all lead to a Providential Hope in God’s Realm and the interconnectedness of all Creation.
 
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh [deep breath and pause]
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Psalms 42 & 43
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Blaise Pascal in the 17th c. wrote, “There was once in [us] a true happiness of which there now remains…only the mark and empty trace, which [we] in vain [try] to fill from all [our] surroundings…but these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself" [Pascal, Pensees, VII, 425, in The Great Books, vol. 33, p. 244].

How often have we, each of us, gone through a period in life feeling that something essential is missing and that there has to be something more to life. How often have we searched for that something more, only to try and fill up that God-shaped hole with something that is inadequate and not life-giving? The Psalmist was able to see what was really at stake here, saying that our hearts yearn for relationship with God in the same way that a thirsty deer longs for the cool, clear water of a rushing stream.

In one of his most recent books, UCC minister and biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann describes the countercultural nature of the Psalms. In fact, he goes beyond culture to describe what he calls the “Counter-World of the Psalms.” Brueggemann writes, “The psalms voice and mediate to us a counter-world that is at least in tension with our other, closely held world and in fact is often at direct odds with that closely held world. As a result, we yearn for a counter-world that is characterized by trust and assurance, because we know very often that our closely held world is not the best of all possible worlds. We are eager for a new, improved world that is occupied by the Good Shepherd, that yields help from the hills, and that attests a reliable refuge and strength. That is why we continually line out these particular cadences again and again. That is why we want to hear them at the hospital and at the graveside and in the many venues where our closely held world is known to be thin and inadequate. We want something more and something other than our closely held world can possibly yield" [Walter Brueggemann, From Whom No Secrets Are Hid, (Louisville: WJK, 2014) p. 9].

As we envision this counter-world, we hear the echoes of one who knew the psalms well, and we hear of his proclamation of a new realm, a new way of being, a new paradigm for how human life is organized and lived. We hear the strains of Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God, which is what the world would be like if we lived in accordance with God’s intention. 

Brueggemann sets up seven characteristics of “Our Closely Held World,” and I would ask you to remember that it is our closely held world. And I would ask you to consider these seven characteristics when you recall the political rhetoric you read in the news every day:

1) Anxiety rooted in scarcity: “We worry that if the goodies and power are shared more widely, there will not be as much for us" [Brueggemann, p. 10]. Anxiety leads people to want to build walls instead of bridges.

2) Greed: which “requires fatiguing overwork, endless 24/7 connection, and insatiable multitasking, all in an effort to get ahead or in an effort to stay even and not to fall hopelessly behind" [Brueggemann, p. 11].

3) Self-sufficiency: When Ezekiel quotes Pharaoh’s claim that “My Nile is my own: I made it for myself,” (Ezek. 29.3) or when we describe ourselves as “self-made men and women” we engage in the hubris of self-sufficiency.

4) Denial: We believe the promises of Madison Avenue, even though “our closely held world cannot keep its promises of safety, prosperity, and happiness" [Brueggemann, p. 12]. We are willing to say that the emperor has wonderful new clothes, even though we know better.

5) Despair: “Because we cannot fully master and sustain such denial and from time to time gasp before the truth that our world is not working, we end in despair.” Have you given in to despair in recent years?

6) Amnesia: We think, “It is all too much. And so, as a result, we are all too happy to press the delete button labeled amnesia” [Brueggemann, p. 13]. Whether we need to forget the images of Auschwitz or Hiroshima or Columbine or children in detention centers on our border…we hit the delete key.

7) A Normless World: “The outcome of our narcissistic amnesia is a normless world, because without God and without tradition and without common good, everything is possible” [Brueggemann, p. 14]. The dystopian world projected in George Orwell’s 1984 and in so many recent films is possible.

I know that Brueggemann paints a horrific picture: Our “closely held world” is a frightening reality that we see on the news every day. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. A world beyond the death-dealing dystopian future is possible, and it is echoed by the psalmist. We long for a different realm, one that affirms the goodness of life and of God’s creation. We long for the promised kingdom of God, what Brueggemann calls the Counter World of the Psalms:

1) Instead of anxiety, we can rely on God’s Trustful Fidelity: The psalmist cries out: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” God’s fidelity, God’s covenant faithfulness, can “grant us courage for the facing of this hour.”

2) Instead of a greed, the psalmist proclaims a World of Abundance. “The ground for such an abundance that refuses greed is the glad doxological affirmation that God is the creator who has blessed and funded the earth so that it is a gift that keeps on giving. The doxological assumption is that when God’s creatures practice justice, God’s earth responds with new gifts" [Brueggemann, p. 17].

3) Instead of the delusion of being self-sufficient, we can acknowledge our Ultimate Dependence on God. We can see the miraculous nature of creation and life and know that we did nothing to create it, but that we are stewards responsible for preserving it.

4) Instead of denial, the psalmist embraces Abrasive Truth Telling. Whether “speaking the truth in love” or announcing an inconvenient truth, the psalmist calls out injustice and falsehood. “The entire genre of lament, complaint, and protest constitutes a refusal of denial” [Brueggemann, p. 20]. And truth-telling requires courage.

5) Despair – the hallmark of our times – can be overcome by A World of Hope. This is the world the poet portrays by repeating this refrain in Psalm 42 and Psalm 43: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” (42.11 and 43.5) “Hope in God! Hope in God! Which is to say: ‘Do not hope in self. Do not hope in progress Do not hope for luck.’” [Brueggemann, p. 23]. Hope is the great refusal to accept the shadowy culture of despair.

6) Lively Remembering sets aside cultural amnesia about the goodness and presence of God. The refrain of Psalm 136 echoes back the history of all that God has done: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” If we don’t take time for awe, that is to reflect and remember what God has done in the glory of creation, we lapse into amnesia.

7) The psalmist’s antidote to a Normless World is Normed Fidelity – our faithfulness to God through Torah, not meaning simply “the Law,” but as Brueggemann claims, the entire legacy of norming that is elastic, dynamic, fluid, and summoning….It is the Torah that yields identity and perfect freedom. It is indeed a gift to come down where we ought to be" [Brueggemann, p. 25-26].

Some would have us feel as though we are powerless to change the world, to change the course of our nation’s history, and to change ourselves. This is not so. We don’t have to slip into war with Iran, to launch global trade wars, to round up productive members of society as if they were animals, to accept gun violence as normative. And it isn’t because we are brighter or wealthier or have more followers on Facebook. We aren’t that self-sufficient! 

Another world is possible. The Counter-World of the Psalmist, the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus, the world of hope. Remember the words of Paul, dear friends of God, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” We can learn to fill the God-shaped hole not just in ourselves, but in the culture and fabric of this nation. 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.

Romans 5:1-5
Trinity Sunday
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Romans 5:1-5
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and father figures, both male and female here today! I am remembering my dad who as many of you know was a storytelling preacher, a professor of Philosophy or religion and a seminary president. He often preached on Romans and memorized many passages from it for his preaching. This passage brings me memories of him. I can hear Dad reading it in my mind. I can hear the rhythm of the cadence and inflection of his voice. And I remember him reading it with such passion. Not being a tall man he would rise up on his toes in excitement as he preached or read scripture, as if he was going to make a basketball goal just as he did in high school when he was captain of the team and they won state. Holding his soft-covered, leather pulpit Bible up in his left hand, he might paraphrase a bit to reiterate his points saying...”Because we are justified by our faith, set right with God, through Jesus and so have access to God’s peace and grace...” As the meaning of the text became more intense he rose higher on his toes reaching the highest point at “and hope does not disappoint us!” Then he would come down and lean in with the punch line,  “because God's love has been poured [big pouring motion with his right hand] into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This text was not about false, feel good sentiment for Dad. It was not a happy-clappy message. God will make everything fine for us if we just believe in the right way. For Dad, Paul’s message was life-changing news in the midst of the very real lives of the people he was addressing, in the midst of their sorrows and tragedies along with their joys. This message brought ultimate meaning and purpose to his life so he was passionate to share it. I do not remember all of his exegesis. The legacy he left is the memory that my Dad was/is a friend of God. He once told me, shortly after my mom’s death, and after at least 60 years of preaching God’s good news, that when he died his hope was that he would learn to love as God loves.

That’s an aspiration, isn’t it? To learn to love as God loves. I know Dad had glimpsed that in many ways while he was here with us in this life. I trust he is learning it more fully now. And I have to ask myself, do I have this aspiration? What about us here in this faith community? Do we want to learn to love as God loves here in the midst of our lives? Do we want to at least catch glimpses of this selfless loving? And in doing so be friends of God?

In this passage from the letter to the Romans, Paul acknowledges that he and the early Christians lived in very trying times. At times he wrote his letters from prison. They knew the danger of persecution. Yet Paul’s conviction is that God is utterly faithful just as God was to his ancestor, Abraham, and in God’s action in the world through Jesus, as well as the sending of the Holy Spirit. To be justified, to be set right with God through our trust in God, is to know God as Friend.

Paul tells us that even in the midst of suffering we stand in God’s grace and share in God’s peace because God is our faithful friend. Take a moment and ponder this. In the midst of your personal lives, here at Plymouth in our communal life we stand in God’s grace and peace. Because we have been justified, set right with God through our trust. We can rejoice with Paul trusting that God befriends us before we even befriend or trust God back.

We can rejoice with Paul because like him we know the heritage of the Hebrew Scriptures tells of God the Creator and God the Spirit moving across the waters of creation. Because, like Paul, we experience the faithfulness of God in Jesus, the one who lived among us, who was crucified by the sin of the world and yet through whom God conquered death in the resurrection.

The articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity came generations after Paul’s writing. Yet implicit in his testimony here in Romans is the Holy One-in-Three, the Holy Three-in-One, the mystery we name the Trinity. One unified God who has three faces or three windows of revelation into the hugeness, the unfathomable nature of the Divine. Knowing that God is faithful friend simplifies this mysterious and often confusing human-made doctrine of Trinity for me. I think of one of my closest earthly friends and the many different roles she plays in my life, comforter, challenger, care-giver, confronter and I understand the different faces of God as friend.

Paul tells us that to be justified by faith is to be friends with the flow of Love that we know as God, that we envision as the community of the Holy ONE – Earth-maker, the Source and Creator of All, Jesus, the Pain-bearer, who came to share our common lot, who bears with us the weight of this world, and Spirit, who continues the Life-giving movement of hope and deepest joy even in the midst of suffering. In deep friendship with the Holy One-in-Three, we can say confidently and without shallow sentiment that our sufferings can produce endurance and endurance character and character hope, no matter what situations life brings. Then we know in the midst of sorrow or joy the glory of God and we can in the best sense of the word boast of, share joyfully, without arrogance, but with the strength of humility,  God’s peace and grace because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

Sometimes mysteries are best understood through looking at them through the corner of our eyes in story.

On the very real mountain and peninsula named Mt. Athos in northeastern Greece, a place of 20 monastic communities comprising one large Easter Orthodox monastery, there is one monastery that was the smallest of all, the Lesser Monastery of the Holy Trinity. It holds only three monks and one lay porter. It is difficult to get to being high up on a cliff. The path to its door is steep and winding and windy. The small door to the monastery is always open and leads you into a sunny courtyard with plants blooming throughout the year. When a pilgrim enters, the person finds a small bench to sit on. Old Gregorio, the porter, lets the pilgrim sit in silence for a time as he peers through a small window to get a sense of the person. Eventually he emerges to sweep the courtyard and shyly ask the pilgrim questions such as “Where are you from?” Or “How was your journey?” Then he silently slips away and returns with one of the monks.

If he returns with Father Demetrios, the eldest monk, an old man with a long white beard, the monk sits right next to the pilgrim and begins to talk immediately. His voice is rich and deep. His words flow like honey from a comb, words of welcome and wisdom. He always seems to know just how long to talk for when he stops the pilgrim will spill forth their own words of confession, contemplation, of doubt and faith, words coming from the heart and sometimes with tears.

If Old Gregorio brings back Father Iohannes the interaction is very different. Father Iohannes is a rather round middle-aged monk with curling brown hair and warm eyes. He sits on a chair in the sun, just across from the pilgrim on the bench and looks deep into their eyes before closing his own eyes to sit in the sun in silence. From time to time he might look at them again. The silence is companionable, but it can last all morning...even into the afternoon. The pilgrim is always the one to break it, finally pouring forth their story. In the end Father Iohannes who has listened intently, gazes at the pilgrim with the deep, silent love of a brother and then simply gives a blessing.

When Old Gregorio bring forth the third monk, the pilgrim encounters a beardless, young man, Father Alexis. He looks lovingly into the face of the pilgrim with the clear, guileless eyes. His own face becomes a mirror for what he sees in the pilgrim’s face – sorrow and grief, frustration or anger, confusion, the joy of learning and asking questions. When he speaks, it is from the deepest yearnings of the pilgrim’s own soul and holds the wisdom of God that is within.

Most pilgrims stay the night and when they leave in the morning they pass by the Icon of the Trinity that is the little monastery’s greatest treasure. In it sit three figures in a loving circle, breaking bread with one another – a white headed, white bearded old man, a curly, brown-haired, smiling man of middle age and a young man with a clear face who seemed to gaze beyond his companions and into the eyes of the beholder. This is the same icon that Old Gregorio says his prayers in front of early each morning, crossing himself three times, praying for the wisdom to direct each pilgrim who might visit that day to the monk the pilgrim’s soul most needs.  

For those who seek this smallest of monasteries on Mt. Athos, they would do well to remember it is more a place of heart than of the map. And that the monks and old porter are waiting patiently within a space of prayer and image. And that the Lesser Monastery of the Trinity could just as easily hold an elderly, but energetic housekeeper named Georgiana, an abbess named Mother Demeter who writes beautiful poetry and songs, an earthy, ginger-haired middle aged woman, a healer, named Joanna and a young, lithe woman with blond hair and keen green eyes, a weaver of tapestries who is named Alexis, meaning helper, like her make counterpart.

God comes to us as friend, creating us anew, bearing our pain with us, empowering and emboldening us to act on our deepest loves. This is the mystery of the Trinity. And this is the message of the apostle Paul who believed he was set right by God’s friendship, given God’s peace and grace and love poured into his heart. This is the friendship that empowers all we do in acts of social justice, acts of caring for one another, acts of welcoming the stranger, of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, acts of worship and fellowship and study and prayer. This friendship empowers ALL we do. Do you accept it? The friendship of this larger than life, abundantly overflowing Holy One-in-Three, Three-in-One God?  It is freely given.

Amen and Amen.

by Robert Calhoun

This past month, during the first week of May, I was sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop beside the Big Thompson River as it coursed its way through Estes Park… a cool day, the water level on the rise with spring rains and early snow melt. Sipping coffee with a book, notepad, and pen in hand.  People passing by.

When first sitting down, I noticed a large fluffy gray jay…gripping tightly to a lone boulder in the middle of the stream. A mature bird, feathers periodically ruffled by the breeze…he appeared comfortable…I imagined him to be contemplating what he saw both near and far…as he held this space on the boulder in midstream.  My eyes often returning to my winged friend, wondering what he saw, what he knew.  He was there for what seemed a very long time, while pages turned in my book.

And then, at one moment looking up from my reading…. I saw the boulder was bare. I had not seen him fly away.  Now just a bare boulder, a space that earlier was filled with my feathered friend.  

I was surprised how the image of that empty rock grabbed… held my attention. This empty, vacated, space without the gray jay had my full attention now.

Empty spaces. What to do with empty spaces?…….spaces where what was is no longer; or spaces where something has always been missing, spaces yet to be filled……spaces that appear suddenly or spaces that capture our attention slowly over time? Empty spaces due to the natural changes of life…..spaces ripped open by the unexpected. How do we experience, how do we respond to, those spaces before us and within us?
 
Empty spaces call up many feelings and reactions…curiosity, compassion, excitement for a new start, hopefulness ….or confusion, heartache, doubt, fear, hopelessness…… it is not unusual for us to fill empty spaces with distractions, even false gods, so as not to even notice what is missing.

What do we do, how do we wait… for what or for whom do we listen? 

My thoughts went to Good Friday at noon-time in our Plymouth sanctuary where I and one other…were in that quiet space for almost an hour, a space which spoke of emptiness, waiting.  What or who if anyone holds that space with us?

Perhaps Jesus wondered, as he waited….in the wilderness....or in the garden.

Or Mary outside the tomb.

Or twelve apostles “all together in one place,” and Mary, the mother of Jesus, as they gathered in a house on Pentecost, along with the many others who gathered as was the Jewish custom at the end of the grain harvest…..The twelve apostles aware of an empty space, remembering, wondering what to expect, waiting for what may be next if anything….

I have read about Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, theologian and mystic… at the corner of Fourth and Walnut Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky in the 1950’s… watching, waiting, not yet imagining what was about to come….

You have had your times….I have……moments when what has your full attention is the "bare boulder," the empty space that cannot be ignored….times when the messenger has disappeared, belief seems hollow…when what you thought you believed no longer makes sense, even belief in yourself….times when nothing seems to be holding the space in front of you…when what was reassuring…is gone and its absence is what fills you.

Life………waiting for the phone call that does not come…… receiving the phone call you do not want to receive….starting out in life without a clue where to go…..a sudden lack of purpose….the end of a relationship…

…standing at the grave of your parent, child… partner…….or times when the thoughts of past traumas take over your mind…. perhaps the "empty-nest" time, or the aging process and the awareness of approaching death…… 

… spaces that speak of emptiness….These days, the nightly news often speaks of empty spaces: uncertainty, lack of civility… divisiveness…one more shooting…. excluded from entrance for simply being who you are….us against them.

The twelve apostles gathered “all together in one place,” in a house, and the many others gathered as was the custom at Pentecost. 

Perhaps that is the meaning of faith…to gather together, to still gather even when the space before us is empty…still gather when the road ahead is unclear. 

Perhaps that is faith… for us to keep gathering as a Plymouth community, week after week, even in times when the "boulder" is empty, when something is missing, the promise seems distant…..still gather when our efforts to be welcoming seem futile…. to gather together, share bread together… where we hold the empty spaces for each other…and together see what is, what is not, and what has always been.  To still gather, remember, wait……wait for the signs of reassurance, wait for our eyes and hearts to open to the loving presence that holds the space with us, shines light into dark places……

…reminding us of our birthright, that we are not alone, as love unfolds before us and among us and we move out into the world with boldness and compassion knowing that "God is still speaking."

These things I pondered sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop on a spring morning alongside the Big Thompson River.  And then, as if unaware until that very moment, I felt the rush of the wind upon my face, the branches waving, and heard the loud, mighty, sounds of the rushing water as if many voices were speaking all at once….and now all of that energy had my full attention and I left that bench and began walking on the crowded sidewalk, enlivened by something familiar but for which I could not name, with the sense we were not separate, not alone, but were all walking together with the One who breathes with us.

Sasha Steensen
Pentecost Sunday
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, CO

I am, by trade, a poet and a professor. In order to write poetry, I have to give myself over to the mysterious work of language, and in order to teach, I have to be comfortable speaking to groups of students about abstract concepts. Despite this training, I was, at first, incredibly intimidated by idea of speaking on the subject of the Holy Spirit. I asked myself, how does one begin to talk about something so experiential, something that cannot, by its very nature, be fully articulated? As I considered these questions, though, I realized that talking about poetry might have equipped me, in some small way, to talk about the Holy Spirit.   
 
Working with words, one soon realizes their limitations. We know the language we have created to communicate with one another, though full of beauty, is, in the end, also insufficient. The Holy Spirit touches that part of us that cannot be reached in the usual ways. Language’s failure becomes the holy spirit’s entrance point. Paul writes of this in his first letter to the Thessalonians when he says, “our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.”
 
In times of desperation or, conversely, in times of great joy, I have felt this wordless, but convicting presence. Maybe you have felt this as well. I often experience this presence as a revelation. William Paul Young wrote, “The work of the holy spirit in our lives is to reveal the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it.” The Holy Spirit, then, calls me to first see myself anew, and then to meet that self rather than to return to some false self that is concerned not with God’s will for my life but instead with the image of myself that I wish to project to others. The Holy Spirit, then, asks me to consider who God called me to be rather than who I think others might expect or want me to be.
 
Hal asked that I talk specifically about my experiences with the Holy Spirit, and I could offer several examples of the way the Holy Spirit has revealed the truth of my being and called me to meet that truth, but I will give just one example. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Up until that point, I had prided myself on being strong, both physically and emotionally. I was someone who believed I was independent, someone who had worked hard to achieve my goals as a writer and an academic all the while birthing and raising two daughters. I assumed I had everything under control, and I aimed to project that to others.
 
The revelation I faced with my diagnosis is that the strength I had prided myself on was an illusion. Cancer was not something I could fix on my own, not something I could control. I had to embrace vulnerability, live in it and exist there, which was something that was incredibly uncomfortable for me. As I underwent tests and procedures, there was no denying that in this moment I was being called to confront a truth of myself that I had long tried to ignore. 
 
On the one hand, I turned to language, as I often do, to see what words might have to offer, and I learned that I might need to reconsider the words I had previously used to describe myself to myself—words like strength and independence were replaced with words like vulnerability and connectedness. But there was also a feeling that I could not shake, a conviction, we might call it,  that these simple substitutions were an insufficient response to the Holy Spirit’s calling.   
 
It was a feeling of deep need for God’s all-encompassing presence, and that need demanded a response of some kind. To return to William Paul Young’s words, the Holy Spirit had revealed a truth of my being that now needed to be matched by the way of my being. It was at this moment that I was introduced, not coincidentally I’m sure, to the practice of Centering Prayer. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Centering Prayer requires silence and sitting; it requires the practitioner to relinquish control and to open oneself to a force which is outside of language.
 
If I had relied on words and strength to engage with the world prior to my cancer, the Holy Spirit, I believe, was going to use that experience to call me to a wordless place characterized by deep vulnerability. It is here, in this wordless, vulnerable space that I feel most bolstered by God. As I practice centering prayer, I often experience failure. I am unable to turn off the noisy mind, which is characteristic of the desire to control. While I am attempting to sit quietly so that I might be in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I find myself making lists, making plans, fretting, constructing conversations I need to have at work or with my family. And then, from time to time, I am able to quiet myself and see that what this practice is really about is to reveal to me how little control I actually have. Here in this failure to sit quietly, I am confronted with the need for God. And this neediness is, somewhat paradoxically, deeply comforting.
 
And that is, in my experience, one of the hallmarks of the Holy Spirit—paradox. I think of a story Richard Rohr tells of a man coming to him in deep despair after losing a business he had worked for decades to build, a business he had prided himself on. Without his business, and in this space of profound failure, he didn’t know who he was any more. In response to the man’s despair, Rohr said, “Hallelujah.” Rohr is celebrating the paradox of loss as gain. The man who had understood himself as a success must now understand himself as a failure and in this understanding, he has readied himself for transformation. This is the paradox Jesus tell us of in Matthew 16:25 when he says, “For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.” This isn’t something that happens once, but something we are called to do on a daily basis and in ways we cannot foresee. In my experience, when I am called into a place of contradiction, a place that is uncomfortable, unfamiliar, contrary to what I think I already know, the Holy Spirit is at work. The truth of my being is revealed so that I might, not through my own strength but through God’s, be transformed.                                

Acts of the Apostles 16.16-34
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Two different stories of liberation comprise today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. One is the story of manumission: the release from demonic possession and slavery of a young woman who is being exploited by those who own her. And her freedom ironically leads to the captivity of two apostles, Paul and Silas, who are thrown into prison because they helped to free her from bondage. The second liberation comes as Paul and Silas are freed from prison as an earthquake breaks the prison cell doors and unshackles them and others. 
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It’s an odd tale…definitely one that fits the genre of an adventure story. Can you picture for yourself Paul and Silas, wounded from having been flogged, in a prison cell with their legs in stocks in the middle of the night? I imagine that it was dark and dank. We don’t know what their long-term prospects were, but after being beaten, they were probably awaiting execution…long-term incarceration wasn’t typical in the ancient world. What would you do if you were in their place? I imagine that I would pray fervently and quietly. How about you? Would you be singing? Maybe so…singing is one of the things that sometimes dispels fear. Maybe you would start quietly with the triumphant Welsh hymn and the words of that great preacher from the Riverside Church in New York: “God of grace, and God of glory, on your people pour your power crown your ancient church’s story; bring its bud to glorious flower. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour, for the facing of this hour.” Or maybe you’d sing the words of one who suffered during the Thirty Years War in the17th century: “If you but trust in God to guide you, with hopeful heart through all your ways, you will find strength with God beside you, to bear the worst of evil days.”

One of the aspects of music in worship is that it gets us out of our heads and into our hearts. Singing has an affective dimension that employs our bodies as well as our souls and minds. And that is especially important for those of us who find ourselves in the oh-so cerebral Congregational tradition of the UCC, the church that founded Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth, along with so many other American universities. 

But being thoughtful and appreciating the life of the mind is not mutually exclusive with being able to feel deeply as well. When we are in moments of crisis, it is the ability to feel our faith (and not simply analyze it) that pulls us though. That might be why those two early apostles found themselves singing hymns at midnight in a seemingly hopeless situation in a prison cell. 

When I was beginning to write this sermon, I was talking over the text with Jane Anne, and she told me that she remembered a sermon her dad had preached about this passage, and he called it “Singing Hymns at Midnight.” And so, I borrowed his sermon title, though the content is different. 

Milton and Bettie, my late in-laws, were acquainted with tragedy as their daughter, Jo Catherine, was killed in a traffic accident when she was sixteen. Milton was a seminary president and taught philosophy of religion and had a great theological mind. But he also had an incredibly big heart…not unlike Jane Anne. And in that sermon, Milton recalled how in the dark of the night, after learning of Jo Catherine’s death, he found himself reading scripture and singing hymns at midnight. That was the aspect of his faith that gave him strength and hope in the face of tragedy. It wasn’t theological analysis, which of course is important, but rather the affective dimension of his faith that Milton relied on in that dreadful hour. He later told Jane Anne, “As I looked into the abyss that night, I realized that everything I had been teaching and preaching my whole life was true…I believed it in the midst of tragedy.”

What about you? How would you lean into your faith at such a moment? At times like those, it is so helpful to have a spiritual toolkit that contains a passage of scripture, a prayer, or a hymn that you know by heart, even if it’s just one line. Your spiritual toolkit can help calm your mind and your heart.
One of the amazing figures of colonial Christianity in this country, Jonathan Edwards, served Congregational churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts before becoming president of Princeton. Edwards concluded that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” Edwards was writing in the 18th century before the advent of psychology, but he was able to identify that faith involved more than the head; it also involved the heart. “Holy affections” involve emotion, but they are more than that for Edwards. He lists love, hope, joy, and gratefulness as positive religious affections. And we can lean into those to bolster our faith. 

It was love, compassion, and concern in our story that led Paul to keep the guard from taking his own life and to tell him that by putting his trust in Jesus he would be saved. 

That word “believe” is an interesting one for many of us. For some of us believing reflects the experience of Alice in Wonderland, who said to the Queen of Hearts, “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Faith does not mean convincing yourself of six impossible things before breakfast. It means opening your heart and mind to relationship. Believing in someone is vastly different than simply judging the veracity of a statement. And it’s more than conjecture. If I say, “I believe in you” to my son, Christopher, it means that I have confidence in him. And the English verb “believe” has its roots in the Old English “belyfen,” which is also related to our verb, “belove.” To have faith in God is about relationship; it is more about the heart than it is the head.

So, when we say, “I believe in Jesus,” it is less about affirming his existence and more about saying that I trust him…I have confidence in him…I put my faith in him.

In our story, when the guard comes into relationship with Jesus, he responds faithfully through deep hospitality, taking Paul and Silas, his former prisoners, into his home, cleaning their wounds, and feeding them. That’s a theme: for the last five weeks, each story from the Acts of the Apostles has involved hospitality, when one person provides housing, food, or both. Hospitality essentially seals the relationship and underscores faith.

So, if you find yourself feeding the hungry or standing up against gun violence or extending hospitality to people, or even if you find yourself singing hymns at midnight, just go with it. It may be your relationship with God showing up in unexpected ways. Amen.
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© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.