Reformation Sunday
October 29, 2017
Rev. Dr. Ron Patterson
Matthew 22:34-46
 
Let me begin with a true story. Several years ago I arrived late to the annual Christmas Bazaar at my church in Naples, Florida. Most years, as the Senior Minister, I was there at the opening of the Bazaar and would spend the entire day wandering the various rooms welcoming our guests and encouraging our volunteers. In that congregation the Christmas Bazaar was a big deal because the proceeds benefited the homeless and the hungry and our neighbors. Their goal was to raise over $30,000 and with creative crafts, baked goods, art, food and a lot more, they usually managed that much or more.
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Well that year, I arrived about an hour before closing time because of an out of town meeting.     I managed to greet and thank most of the volunteers before ending up in the hall where a few of the men in the congregation set up their Trash and Treasure booth. When I walked in, the men who had spent the day on their feet were sitting in the corner of a room with mostly empty tables of the picked over remnants of mainly trash with few noticeable treasures on offer, but I browsed anyway. On one table I noticed a few pair of old binoculars, one clearly broken and another in a worn leather case. I opened the case and took out a small but surprisingly heavy pair of binoculars. I looked at the label and noted that they were Leitz binoculars made in Germany. I called back to the men and wondered if they minded if I took the binoculars outside for a look. They didn’t care so I did, and as I focused them on a palm tree across the parking lot, I squealed with delight. I took them back inside and asked how much they were. Without leaving his seat, the man in charge said: “Five bucks,” and went back to his conversation.

I took my new birding glasses home that night and discovered that the same binoculars list on EBay for over a thousand dollars and are described as ‘probably the finest small binoculars ever made.” I treasure them and use them all the time. These are my $5 miracle binoculars. (Hold them up)

Now, I tell that story today, because I think it’s a parable about my personal faith and our faith tradition. Today we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of one part of the Protestant Reformation. We remember that in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, an obscure monk nailed 95 debating points to a church door. It was an invitation to a theological conversation from the learned to the learned. It was written in Latin. Most of the 95 thesis would mystify and confuse us today because they mainly concern who forgives whom for what, when, and how. But Luther opened a door and surprised himself by starting a revolution. When translated and multiplied by the new at the time printing press, his ideas mushroomed and upset the careful religious consensus that had dominated Western Europe for 500 years. His words helped people see a new relationship with God.

Like my wonderful German binoculars discovered in the trash, binoculars that help me see the wonder around, Luther found treasure in what was old and tired in the medieval world view and began a Reformation of faith and practice that has defined and shaped everything that has happened to Christianity in the last five hundred years. Within his lifetime, other Reformers like Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin and dozens more, redefined the Christian faith in ways that still touch our lives today. Let me add a footnote here: The United Church of Christ is I believe, the single Protestant denomination that carries in its DNA all of the major strands of the Protestant Reformation, we are a bit Lutheran, we are a bit Calvinist, we are a little Zwinglian as well. We carry a strain of the English Reformation in our history and we are also a little bit Anabaptist in our Christian Church heritage. I tell you that as an invitation to learn more of this interesting history in your own reading, but this is a sermon and not a lecture, so I have some other ideas to share.

Back to the binoculars! They are old, they were rescued from the trash, but they are only worth what they permit me to see and understand about my world and my life journey now and in the future. So here goes.

One of the ideas born in the Protestant reformation, an idea that our UCC tradition holds close and cherishes, is the idea that part of being a reformed Christian is to be continually reforming. That’s where all that UCC talk about “God is still speaking” and “there is yet more light and truth to break forth from God’s holy word’ comes from. (Pilgrim Pastor, John Robinson) We cherish the Bible and lots of traditional ideas, but for us, the Bible is a guide and not a dictator and tradition is a touch point, not a tether.

A few years ago, a writer named Phyllis Tickle suggested the notion that every five hundred years or so, Christians need to hold a great garage sale and dump their worn out theological trash and embrace new ways of thinking about the treasure God gives in an attempt to see and experience what new things the Holy Spirit is doing in the world.

And I love that idea because I know that God is a moving target calling us into the future. And while some people questioned Tickle’s theory of how history operates, I want to take her basic idea and offer a few suggestions for you to consider.

What should we keep and what should we dump? What religious ideas should we cherish and what should we abandon? Luther and the other reformers, especially Calvin talked about the sovereignty of God. I think that’s a keeper because it prevents the rest of us from confusing our thoughts and our opinions and time bound cultural notions that often appear as racism, sexism, classism, and a dozen other isms with God and the image of God we bear.

When a church tells people who to love or limits love with a litmus test that separates me from the rest of humanity by dogma or doctrine that mimics the prejudices of a particular leader; that’s surrendering the sovereignty of God to some inferior reality: preacher, priest or the bigot down the street.   That is thinking that belongs on history’s trash heap!

The reformers stressed the importance of faith over works. Luther’s life was transformed by the idea that you could not work your way into heaven, but that the promise of abundant life was a free gift of God’s love in Jesus Christ. That’s an idea worth living for because there is plenty of conditional love on offer in the religious world and when somebody talks about love with strings attached, that’s not love and that’s not what Jesus had to say. Unless grace is amazing, it’s not grace.

Look at what Jesus said and look at how he lived and get rid of the barnacles the church has encrusted itself with over the last twenty centuries to protect its authority, often male authority. Live like Jesus, love like Jesus and jettison the rest. Distill the essence of tradition into the essential oil of a lived faith. That essence is covered quite beautifully in our scripture lesson for today—love God, love your neighbor and respect yourself enough to keep learning and growing. Don’t trust me, trust a community praying and talking and caring for one another. Luther called it the ‘priesthood of all believers’ and that’s an idea worth living.

Five hundred years ago Protestants and Roman Catholics forced uniformity and conformity of thought in the territories they controlled. And in the process fought long wars and caused amazing suffering. Freedom of conscience was stifled by the fear of change. Fling out the fear and bring on the freedom.

I don’t think it matters how you worship or what type of music that you happen to like.    I’m a fan of simple but there’s nothing wrong with worship that isn’t simple, if it renews and nurtures our lives toward engagement on behalf of Jesus in a world that is hurting. Style is time bound, substance is timeless. Cherish the substance that empowers active love.

In my mind there is no such thing as an individual Christian. People who talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ are too often the same people who look the other way when it comes to loving others without condition. The whole notion of getting saved as some sort of test of Christian credibility is an American invention. Being born again may be a way to get elected in this country, but being born again daily with a humility that trusts God in all things and struggles to be a bit more loving day by day is an idea worth keeping.

About a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury, an Italian monk who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury put forth the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. This doctrine says in essence, that you and I crucified Christ by our willful sinfulness and that to satisfy an angry God for our sins, an innocent Jesus had to die as a substitute for the punishment we deserved.

And on that one doctrine, I think, rests all the gloom and doom and guilt that have enveloped most of the western Christian tradition for the past 1,000 years. It is this doctrine, sometimes wrapped in contemporary music or marketed in prosperity gospel pulpits, that lurks just below the surface in conservative churches all over.

You can hide it with seeker friendly music or upbeat preaching but it is still about guilt and shame and getting right with Jesus or God will get you! Now, you can force this idea out of the New Testament if you fish for it and many of us, first found one form of Jesus through guilt based preaching that scared us into a conversion experience—that happened to me, but I have changed my mind.

I have come to believe that fear killed Jesus, that hate killed Jesus, that small- mindedness and greed and political power trying to hold on to privilege, killed Jesus. An empire killed Jesus and empires of political and religious power when they work together still try to kill Jesus today.       Look at some of the so-called religious arguments that are made against health care or freedom of choice or human rights and look at how people of color and the poor and the oppressed are victimized.

But Jesus will not stay dead despite the effort of lots of Christians attempt to keep him dead and safe in the past like grandma’s old Bible sitting unread on the coffee table. Jesus is alive and there is this universal life force called love, as in “God is love”, that was in Jesus and is in you and me and in the essence of the universe beyond all that we can understand and know, that moves through us to bring change and hope and the promise of abundant life.
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And when we sort that out and get thoughts like that going in our minds and souls, seeking in this faith family the presence of the God who’s still speaking, we will discover that like it or not, we become part of what the Holy Spirit is up to for the next 500 years.
Happy 500th Reformed and Reforming Anniversary! Amen.

The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
Consecration Sunday
October 22, 2017 
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC 
2 Corinthians 9:6-15 

2 Corinthians 9:6-15
6 The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 
 
9 As it is written, "God scatters abroad, God gives to the poor; God’s righteousness endures forever."  
 
10 God who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12 for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through the  testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for God’s indescribable gift!  
 
My dad once walked into my kitchen and said “This is just like your grandmother’s!” What he meant was the number of plants and bits of plants I have in my kitchen window. And its true. We have a greenhouse window above the kitchen sink and it is full. Of pots of herbs. A few flowers I nurture through the winter. The last of the tomatoes ripening. And yes at least a couple of odd-shaped bottles of plants sprouting roots in water. It is reminiscent of Grandmother Ferguson’s kitchen window sills in the old farmhouse in Oklahoma. 

I loved Grandma Ferguson’s house. Not fancy at all, comfortable, old pictures on the walls, the smell of the earth and the smell of iron from the well water. Her Oklahoma red dirt garden out back was complete with terrapins, as she called them, box turtles. We would paint their shells with finger nail polish to identify them the next time we came. There were chickens, goats, cows, sometimes puppies... 

I’m guessing I first heard the old hymn that gives us the sermon title this morning sitting in with her in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Harrah, OK. I even remember the old sanctuary where my dad and all his siblings grew up wiggling in the pews beside her. “Bringing in the Sheaves” was written in 1874 by Knowles Shaw, who was inspired by Psalm 126:6,

"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness, Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve; Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping, We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. Refrain: Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves, Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
 
What have you harvested recently in your life? Let’s think literally first. Vegetables, flowers from a raised bed or container garden? How many have actually harvested wheat or hay or soybeans or corn or some other large crop?

Now let’s think figuratively... in metaphor. What have you harvested in your life? What are some seeds you have planted in relationships, family, school, career, a hobby, sport, a craft that have resulted in a satisfying, abundant harvest?.....for instance just over 25 years ago I decided to study storytelling, to start learning and telling stories...I took classes and went to workshops and spent hours   in the library looking up old books of tales (this was before the internet made it easier to find all kinds of stories from different cultures and traditions)....I spent hours crafting a story, writing it down at the beginning,.... making storyboards of the scenes....rehearsing and rehearsing....I would get very nervous before telling. The harvest of all those hours of study and research is abundance. More than I ever imagined. I still work at my storytelling , I still tend it like we have to tend a garden day by day, week by week, year by year, .....but now I learn stories with an ease that surprises me. I have a style of telling that has developed over the years that   surprises me. And telling stories is second nature to me. I feel fully who I am and a closeness to God I never imagined when I tell stories...that’s not why I set out to tell stories...its the harvest of all the years of tending the practice of storytelling. What about you?

What have you harvested in your life with the perseverance and love and the help of God that surprised you? The beauty of life is that we never have to stop planting seeds of change and growth and harvesting their results.

Growing a church can be like growing a garden, well maybe more like tending an entire farm! Each church is started in its earliest years with a handful of folks, the first seeds....and they begin to grow community and ministry as they worship together, study together, care for one another, laugh and cry together. They sow seeds of God’s love and justice, reaping the harvest through times of joy and sorrow.

The apostle Paul was tending the garden of the church in Corinth when he gave them the words of encouragement that you just heard our liturgist read. To paraphrase Paul, “You reap as you sow, abundantly or sparingly, God supplies the abundance that empowers your generosity and sharing...Out of God’s abundance of blessing our ministries, our community, in the name of Christ grows....Thanks be to God for God’s indescribable gift....of love in Christ Jesus and so much abundance that we must share!”

So what about the harvest of our lives together here at Plymouth? The harvest of our pledges, our tithes and offerings, that make up our yearly operating budget? The harvest of our work together to make God’s realm of justice and love visible?We give faithfully year after year and there are many things we see grow, but we may miss the abundant and amazing scope of the harvest. We have a harvest of ministries that is so abundant that people can glean from our fields. In Hebrew scriptures we hear of God’s mandate about gleaning to God’s people. They are to always leave enough in their fields at harvest time so that the poor, the widows and the orphans, those on the margins of society could come and glean from the fields.

They could harvest from the fields they had could not plant or tend because of their particular vulnerability, to feed for their themselves and their families.

People glean from the fields of Plymouth through our generous giving of financial resources. Our pledges support a growing operating budget. We give above and beyond that to disaster relief, to Neighbors in Need for UCC ministries around our country, to the Christmas Fund to enhance support for retired UCC ministers.

We have a beautiful building to share with the Fort Collins community. We have active vital staff that not only tend Plymouth’s garden but reach out to connect us with the wider church and to be leaders in social change. Our youth are involved each summer and throughout the school year in mission and service trips....this summer our abundance spilled over into the Red Bud Reservation of South Dakota....and there are several Front Range Youth Events planned so they can continue service closer to home. The Immigration Team is very visible right now and growing in its ministry. Think of our giving to Bennett School, through the Alternative Giving Fair, the Giving Tree at Christmas, Faith Family Hospitality.....these just name a few ways in which people glean from our generous and abundant field.

And they glean from our spiritual engagement in this community. We come to worship, we meet for study and spiritual growth, for fellowship and to care for one another, to volunteer, in very tangible ways. This spiritual and physical energy spills out into the wider community of Fort Collins and northern CO. as we take the spirit of God that we encounter together in worship to our places of work, our schools , our neighbors. The abundance of Plymouth’s fields of ministry overflow.

In the midst of abundance we know that ministries, like plants, need constant tending , watering, feeding, warmth and light to grow. They may be new growth or they may be in the midst of change. There are times when ministries need tending with extra care. Like the Japanese eggplant I still have growing on our patio. I bought it on sale late in the season. It’s almost dried out with too little water, its almost drowned with the rains we had. In fact I had to repot it once because the soil was too wet. I bring it in when it threatens to freeze outside...and after losing blossoms, almost dying...it now has blossoms and four little eggplants growing. There are times when ministries need pruning in order to grow -– like my bougainvillea vine... When it looks like its at death’s door, I trim it back and give it a little plan food and it grows more leaves....it blooms pink at Christmas and magenta all summer. Then drops its leaves and we start again. Ministries in churches are like that.

What needs tending at Plymouth? Our Christian Formation programs need consistent tending children and youth with new volunteers, teachers bring creative and imaginative faith. Our evening service needs consistent tending so it is not a ghettoized or isolated group within Plymouth but a vital, connected part of Plymouth’s wide abundant fields. Our Calling and Caring program of lay visitation needs care as it expands to serve a larger church. Our outreach to college students in our community, starting with our immediate neighbors at CSU and reaching out in time across town to Front Range needs a great deal of tending as a new ministry of our community. Developing lay leadership skills and volunteer recruitment and management needs very consistent tending. development and involvement from a wider segment of our members. Progressive evangelism....making ourselves visible for the sake of expanding and making visible the realm of God in northern Colorado needs meticulous care. Understanding what it means to offer extravagant welcome must be tended each time we open our doors....we will never finish tending our welcome. We will never finish tending our vital faith for God keeps giving abundantly so that we can share abundantly.

The old song continues.... Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows, Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze; By and by the harvest, and the labor ended, We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

We know the labor never really ends....it just changes with the seasons, with new growth, with the extravagant giving of God. Thanks be to God for God’s indescribable gifts to us as today we bring in the sheaves of God’s abundance and grace. Amen!

© The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2017. May be reprinted with permission only.

October 15, 2017
Rev. Ron Patterson
Philippians 4:1-9
 
This morning I think most of you know that I am supposed to talk about money. I think most of you know that we have this wonderful Board of Stewardship that does a great deal of planning and thinking and then sends out a letter and makes some phone calls and then asks the preacher on this Sunday to talk about money. And if you are a visitor this morning, you have wandered in here on the very day when this annual ritual of talking about money is supposed to happen. And I would be tempted to apologize to you visitors because I am tempted to believe that my talking about money might make you uncomfortable, but I know that you know that this beautiful building and this wonderful congregation and these preachers and this music program and what you may have heard about the mission of this congregation did not just happen here on Prospect Avenue by accident--that we were not just hatched from some cosmic egg or that somehow we all fell from the sky fully formed, we are here because for the last 100 years or so, someone talked about money and a lot of great people listened and God blessed and multiplied.

For many years in other congregations, despite being asked to talk about money I have often made a game of explaining that I really don’t like to talk about money because I grew up in a family that even used a different tone of voice when they referred to money—they whispered the word in a rather shameful raspy voice. We had an aunt who had “money” and neighbors who had “money” and there were people in our church who had “money,” but we never talked about it unless the word “money” was mentioned in that tone of voice. A few years ago, I decided that I have this congenital disease known as “financiaphobia”—the fear that since “money” is supposed to be the root of all evil, if I talk about “money,” you will not like me because I might make you uncomfortable while I am making myself uncomfortable talking about “money.”

And of course that is silly. And of course you already know that the church needs money and that the only way for that to happen is for all of us to do our part, by making an annual pledge and then doing as well in our giving as we are able. It’s called proportional giving—giving that reflects our blessings—some give lots and some give less, but all give proportionally.

Many of us have discovered the miracle of tithing. Some of us set aside five or ten percent of our incomes each year to give to others through the church or through hundreds of other caring institutions. Some of us have figured out that the more we are able to give of ourselves, the more we have—not only in dollars, but in joy, because there is a real happiness to be had when we give our time and our dollars. A few of us even believe that the many good things happening around this place have something to do with the blessings our dollars and our volunteer efforts are having in places like Angola or with the dreamers. A lot of us have the idea that our family is a whole lot bigger than the faces on our refrigerators and that God wants us to see the whole world as family. But I think you know most of that.

You know also that there are real expenses and real challenges. You know that there are mission partners locally and around the world who count on our caring as a congregation. You know that there is insurance and lighting and salaries and maintenance. You know that there is a carefully managed budget and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer hours that multiply our giving and touch this community in beautiful ways.

You know all of that because you give with a beautiful generosity that has overflowed the budget the last several years in a row and you care and you are here and the last time I checked, you did not fall off a turnip truck or belong to that very tiny group of people who someone once described as “the takers”—you are the givers and the sharers and the thinkers and the carers and the ones who know that when good things happen it is because good people get together to make them happen and that you know; you already know.

And you also know, or I believe that you know, that God gives first and God gives strength and God gives wisdom and when we give we are giving back and giving forward and investing a part of what we have been given because God first loved us. And so, while I may make a joke about not wanting to talk about money, or asking you to fill out your pledge card and turn it in today or next Sunday, the best thing is that I really don’t need to, because you already know.

And so let me say something else that underlies the money talk that’s really faith talk and provides the foundation for what I believe we do in this place and in our lives. It might even be the foundation of civilization, because wherever people are not being civil to one another—wherever there is injustice or hate or bigotry or even war, this quality seems to be in short supply.

Let me talk about giving as gratitude. There are lots of beautiful emotions. There are many positive attitudes of heart and mind that can build up a life and build a community and make our lives more meaningful and touch the world in positive ways, but I can think of none more powerful or more life changing or world impacting than simple gratitude. The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said once that if the only prayer you ever said in an entire lifetime was the single word “thank you” that would be enough. (Quoted in Spiritual Literacy by Brussat)

Let me attempt a tongue twister: Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of happiness. Do you remember when Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—those words simply translated could be: “How happy we are when we know that we can’t make it on our own and that we don’t have to.” I have noticed that happy people are grateful people. I have noticed that successful people are grateful people. I have noticed that people who spend their time rocking the boat are not grateful people. I have noticed that the ones who row the boat on any project or who get behind good ideas to make them happen are grateful people. I have noticed that if you look closely at anything that is growing, at its very center you will find gratitude. Gratitude is like sunshine and fertilizer in the garden. Gratitude is what makes the flowers grow and when that attitude is missing, nothing good grows.

I once had a friend who said to me that if worrying was an Olympic event she would be a medal contender. Did you ever notice that worry is not a team sport? Jesus talked about his eternal presence wherever two or three of us were gathered together. Maybe another understanding of his words about the “poor in spirit” would be that true happiness is to know that no matter what, we’re in this thing called life together and that’s all about gratitude. Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of happiness.

Let me try another tongue twister: Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of healthy relationship. Or as Jesus said it: love your neighbor, love your enemy, and love yourself. Some years ago a major study was undertaken to figure out if there was a way to predict whether a relationship would be successful or not; whether a marriage or a committed relationship would be long term. And they filmed and studied couples interacting with one another and they recorded what they said to one another early in their relationship and they followed them for years and years and years. And the strangest thing emerged. Maybe you read this report. The researchers discovered that the single biggest negative predictor was whether they rolled their eyes in one another’s presence.

You know: (demonstrate an eye roll). Rolling the eyes was a sign that deep down, one or the other of them disrespected the other—was not grateful to the other, was not truly thankful for the person they were with---did not see the other as bearing the image of the Holy—that the other was not really worthy and the relationships failed on that basis. It was simply a failure of gratitude.

And does that say anything to us about the family of nations on this good earth? Does that say anything about why it is so easy to trash-talk people who follow different religions or people who look different or think differently or are stuck in a political rut different than the one we’re stuck in? If I am grateful to God for you, if we are truly grateful for one another and for this amazing human family, then so much that leads to strife and disharmony and even war is placed in the light of God’s love. One of you said it so well: we can never make our own candle any brighter by attempting to blow out the candle of another. Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of healthy relationship.

Here’s another tongue twister: Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of healing. Now I know that all of you have read about the correlation between stress and illness. People under stress get sicker quicker and stay sicker longer or so I have heard.

Now I have to be very careful here. I am not a scientist and I am not that kind of doctor, but I do know that lots of illnesses are organic or just happen because these wonderful bodies of ours wear out or have genetic imperfections. Little bugs doing wicked things cause lots of illness, but a failure of gratitude is like offering those little critters a red carpet and an engraved invitation to take up residence; failing to be grateful feeds whatever ails us with its favorite food.

Jesus was a healer because Jesus sought to put harmony in our hearts and peace in our minds. Stress causes distress and distress takes away our ease and when the ease is gone, the dis-ease takes its place.

Gratitude, being thankful, thankful for others, for care givers and friends, for life and for this world is a way of throwing the entire power of the creator God into the battle with whatever it is that robs us of our ease.
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Gratitude as a life attitude is the foundation of healing.

One last thing: Gratitude as a life attitude is the best hope we have for the future. I don’t have a crystal ball and I was absent the day they talked about prognostication in the seminary I attended so I missed out on that too. Please, I beg you, don’t ask me what the stock market is about to do or what tweet or trick might appear in the night, but I do know that if you and I understand our life journey as a pilgrimage of gratitude from God to God, hand in hand with God-giving as God gives, the future is taken care of. In the future that we might doubt or worry about, nothing that can hurt us or surprise us or offend us or confuse us, because we belong and are safe and loved and accepted, by the one who will never let us go. Gratitude as a life attitude is the best hope we have for the future.

Now, this was supposed to be a sermon asking you for money, but it has degenerated into a discussion of gratitude. May I be so bold as to suggest, my beloved friends, that if you and I get the attitude of gratitude, the money around this place will take care of itself?      

Thank you, thank you all and thank God! Amen.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
October 8, 2017 at
Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ
Fort Collins, CO.
 
 Good morning Plymouth! Thank you this morning to our many volunteers who make worship possible: Sound, Deacons, Choir/Music, and our wonderful liturgists. While the minister preaches, these volunteers have the job of invoking the Holy Spirit through their work.
 
Now, would you pray with me? O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, our guide, our teacher, and the ultimate mouse-catcher! Amen.
 
Plymouth, I have something to confess to you as my employer this morning. Since I started working for this church as one of your ministers (three years ago November 1st), I have been hearing voices. Now, I know that sounds really bad coming from your minister. So, don’t get the wrong idea. I am not hearing God (at least not audibly), angels, or ghosts—this is the month leading into Halloween so one must be very careful about invoking such things. No, no…I am hearing voices because the way the minister office area over here is insulated, and the way the hallways are shaped and surfaced. Because of the architecture of this church, I can hear voices emanating from the conference room if the door is open, as far away as the front door and even the back of the sanctuary from sitting at my desk answering emails (which as Ron and Jane Anne will tell you is a significant part of working here—you all LOVE emails). Yes, Plymouth, if you are in this building, it is likely that your ministers can and do hear you. We hear all voices emanating from the walls and corridors.
 
So I hear lots of voices from my office, and usually I politely ignore them unless addressed to me. A week ago, however, though I heard a voice down the hallway asking a rather odd question: Do you often have mice here at Plymouth? Never having seen a mouse at Plymouth, although the previous associate minister Sharon Benton did warn me about their existence, I ran out of my office to find both the mouse in question and my interim boss, The Rev. Ron Patterson, in a staring contest in a corner down the hallway. The mouse looked at Ron. Ron looked at the mouse. I looked at the mouse. Ron and the mouse looked back at me. What should we do? I have never had to catch a mouse before.
 
Now mind you, this was a very small and incredibly adorable and reasonably terrified little baby mouse. It was about the size of your thumb from its head to end of its tale. Cowering in the corner, not running fast, Ron suggested it was probably dehydrated and lost.
 
Friends, let me say the other time I have seen that look of fear and confusion on someone’s face is almost every Sunday when a new visitor arrives and doesn’t know anyone. So from now on when I do trainings about how to welcome people to church— just remember how scary a new church can be for human and mouse visitors alike.
 
By the time I had finished zoning out and turning that last metaphor about first time visitors over in my head, Ron had created an actual plan. “Get a cup and a piece of paper,” Ron said, so I went running for a small clear glass cup and a piece of sturdy paper. I also grabbed a small manila folder for me to use as a temporary wall to assist the effort from the corralling side of things.
 
Then we were off! As Barb and Daisy barricaded themselves in the front office, Ron chased the mouse with the cup as it took off down the hallway. I herded the mouse with the folder into another corner where Ron promptly dropped a glass over the mouse. [Produce an actual glass cup like the one we used and drop it down on the pulpit.] We had caught it! He then gently slid a piece of paper under the mouse to create a floor.

Voila--we now had a mouse airplane! Imagine that mouse’s surprise as Ron lifted the mouse in the cup off the ground went swiftly out the door into the rain and safely deposited it by the far fence across the parking lot. The mouse had reached freedom and a state of liberation! And that, my friends, is how you catch a real, live, church mouse with a lot of care and teamwork.

Today’s lectionary reading from Exodus, Chapter 20 is one of the passages in the Bible (and there are several) that deal with the Ten Commandments or what academics call the Decalogue. No, there isn’t a commandment telling us step-by-step how to catch a mouse (I wish there were), but often we feel like a lost mouse when we encounter these ancient texts and rules and try to navigate the complex passages of Scripture and our lives in community. The Ten Commandments are, in their basic form, the outline of community covenant that ideally would help us to navigate lives in which we often feel like lost mice. A lot of life is, after all, feeling like a lost mouse in God’s universe.
 
This part of Exodus is a very ancient part of the Hebrew Bible. It is also a complex part (the scholarship surrounding Exodus from historians and accredited Biblical scholars is often rejected by our Evangelical sisters and brothers) because at closer look we can see the complexities of the text. The story of Moses bringing them down off of the mountains is important but so is the historical-critical scholarship. In the UCC, we take both the history and the narrative seriously.
 
Exodus, and this version of the 10 Commandments in particular, incorporates and directly quotes very VERY ancient portions of a pre-Biblical fragments called the Code of Hammurapi from the Ancient Near Eastern Babylonian context that predates the rest of Exodus by several hundred to a thousand years and also a 1,000 years after the original version it incorporated later edits and revisions from the later Priestly period. The Ten Commandments, contrary to an anachronistic literal interpretation of the story, represent around 2,000 years of human history, covenant, legal code, and the necessary changes there within. [The Bible is most powerful when understood as communities wrestling with God.]

In non-academic talk, Exodus is an ancient narrative that draws upon much earlier legal codes (pre-dating the Bible) and like all relevant and good law was revised and edited much later to meet the needs of the Priestly era communities. This shows that the Ten Commandments were like all good and practical laws and good understanding of cultural covenants meant to be contextual, updated, and relevant for the society they governed.

The Ten Commandments were written based on older laws and the version we know today, scholarship shows comes from a redacted version from a later period. So what happened to this ancient understanding of law and Bible as something that needs to be reinterpreted anew in the contexts it meets? Where did that go? When did we get stuck in that mousetrap of interpretive death? When did we, as a country, then start using bad interpretation of Biblical law (seeing it as frozen in time) to interpret our Constitutional Law? Which is the cat and which is the mouse here in this interpretive choice?
 
Vs. 4, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the sea…” For the word of God in Scripture, for the word of God among us… for the word of God within us… friends… what have we done with the Ten Commandments in modern America?
 
Politicians have turned them into an impractical, meaningless idol—a totem replacement for God’s good and dynamic presence. “If only we keep the old sculpture of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms,” says many rightwing politicians, “then we will surly have favor with God.” Even better, as long as we defend stone monuments to God, we don’t have to think about love of neighbor or what the monuments actually say or funding programs that support God’s people! Ironically, this is the definition of an idol (written on the very stone monuments they are defending to avoid)… a static representation of the will of God that ignores the realities of the needs and issues of the time. It denies a living God whose presence we experience and know and replaces God with stone scriptures of laws that were always meant to be reinterpreted for every new generation since they were taken from the Babylonians for the early drafts of the Talmud and revised by the Priestly governors. As a country, we have done the same thing, applied the same flawed written in stone logic with the Second Amendment—BUT we need to understand it for a new time and new issues and new technologies that were not here at the writing. The weapons and violence we saw this week means that we need to re-understand again the meaning of both Biblical and Constitutional law.
 
This modern, anachronistic worship of the Ten Commandment—changing the commandments from living/ dynamic/ covenant relationship into a sculpture to be fought over is idolatrous. It is “Conservative” Blasphemy. Currying favor with political base, stoking hatred against minorities, ignoring starvation and housing issues, missing the point of God’s love but…BUT coming to the defense of a statue with old laws written on it instead of the defense of those in need, the poor, the abused, the LGBTQ minorities around the world, the desperate… is blasphemy and misses the point of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments were created from a process of meeting the covenant needs of the communities that wrote and reexamined them and made them a useful covenant in society.
 
I believe the mouse’s journey represents the different ways that we get stuck in our faith journeys and our relationship to church, to Scripture, and to law in general. Here are the three stages of catching a mouse as shorthand for how we move from fear and entrapment to freedom and Grace through covenants both with God and society:
 

1. First the mouse was lost, terrified, thirsty, and hiding in a corner. When we try to interpret the Ten Commandments from a place of fear and solitude we end up living in a state of fear of God and each other—a fear that compounds itself. Scripture is meant to be read in community and reinterpreted for new times as God’s Spirit moves. We need other mice! If we live in isolation from one another, we end up trapped and lost like the mouse not knowing where to go next. That social isolation is how people end up holed-up and alone in their homes trembling and collecting weapons. This is the mouse without community.

 

1. Second, the mouse was trapped under a glass cup. If we land in certain church communities or ideologies, the word of God can be used as a tool of confinement, of permanent entrapment, and a cast in stone understanding of a dynamic God. The cup might be made of glass but make no mistake, for it is confining. If we are like the mouse when it was trapped under the cup, we can see out and the wider world, but the walls of old understandings and confines keep us from growing or becoming. This happens when we take things literally without interpretation or context—we are trapped in glass houses of our making. This is the phase that turns Commandments into stone idols. Staying in the cup is safe, but it is not whole or good.

 

1. Third, the mouse was free! When we realize that law, Scripture, God, and Commandments are valuable and are best understood as process and as a journey together with the world… it is scary… we no longer have the safety of the glass church to save us and their rules… we no longer have the convenience of solitude and faith outside of community… but the payoff of a reading of the commandments and understanding covenant as something that can change is freedom. This is the mouse in covenant and freedom.

 
Fear, Entrapment, Freedom—the different ways to relate to life, community, covenant, and the difficult parts of Scripture and relationships are all choices we make as people and society. We can run away from community, we can become too comfortable in clearly defined houses and rules, or we can join the world and learn to be free. The arc of the Biblical Narrative and the Life of Christ shows the way towards liberation, but first we have to let go of stone carvings of ancient laws and learn how to love freedom once again.
 
And that, my friends, is how you catch… and release... a mouse. Amen.

October 1, 2017
Philippians 2:1-13
Rev. Ron Patterson

This morning, as you heard, we begin our annual Stewardship campaign. This is when we are asked to support our congregation with our dollars and our dedication. I hope you know that Jesus spent more time talking about money and how we use it than any other topic. I need to confess right up front that I used to begin stewardship sermons with an apology, not wanting to offend anyone by talking about money, because in my family and in my mind that was a forbidden topic, private, secret, and off limits.

But Jesus rescued me with his honesty and some good congregations nurtured me with their generosity and dedication and helped me forget my fear. And while I will be speaking again on this topic in a couple of weeks with more specifics, I want to use my sermon time today to tell you a story.

My beloved always says that 'my little kid on the farm' stories are the best ones I tell, because unlike the other stories that help me make sense of life as a person of faith, the 'little kid on the farm' stories come from the time that molded how I look at the world as a child of God.       
                                                                                                            
The farm is gone, the people who touched my life then are gone, but the memories animate my day to day.

When I was seven, I was sent to my great-grandparents dairy farm in rural Ohio to stay and for the next ten years, I spent every summer and almost every school vacation on that farm working and experiencing the rhythms of nature and the life cycle of a working farm with hogs and sheep and chickens and beef cattle and a raft of dairy cows and hay and corn and wheat and oats and gardens and canning and fields and woods and springs of cool clear water and endless chores and just plain hard work. That experience, more than school or college or seminary molded that place on the inside of my heart that I would describe as my soul.

Today, I want to tell you the story of the miraculous peach tree. But to share this story, I need to give you a little farming background. When we made hay on the farm, the hay would be cut and then when it was dry, it would be raked together into windrows so that the hay bailer could pick it up and pack it into bails. This process normally took about three days and as a little kid, since I couldn't drive the tractor yet, I didn't have much to do with it, other than helping collect and stack the bails and bring them into the barn. But sometimes, just when the hay was about dry, there would come a sudden thunder storm and you just can't bail wet hay--and then would come a chore which I hated more than any other.

It involved picking up a three tine hayfork and fluffing up the windrows of hay just enough to permit the breeze to blow in under the hay to dry it so that by afternoon it could be bailed. And I hated that job, because it was hot and it was dusty and it was in the sticky humid sun of an Ohio summer. And once in a while a snake or rabbit or a mouse would be hiding under the hay and as you walked along fluffing the hay they would jump out and for a little kid that was terrifying. And the job was endless in a way that things are often endless for a child.

One summer on a miserable hot day I was alone doing this job way out around the hill from the barn, fluffing the windrow with my hayfork when I came to the end of the field. I was so hot and feeling totally sorry for myself and suddenly I looked up and there was a tiny tree growing in the fencerow that divided our farm from the neighbor’s woods. And as I looked, I noticed that something was growing on the tree.

The tree was loaded with gigantic peaches--the size of small grapefruit, and they were ripe and they were wonderful and I ate a couple and each time I finished fluffing a windrow I stopped and ate another peach and I forgot about the heat and the snakes and the sun. That little tree became my best friend that afternoon and to this day they were the best peaches I have ever tasted.

The next summer, when it came time to work that field again, I looked for that peach tree—and the first time that summer I managed to make it to the end of that field, I was cutting thistles along the edge of the field where corn was now growing. I looked and looked for the peach tree and finally found the same place and there it was—only that year, it was just a nearly dead stump of a thing—uncared for and unplanned, it had pretty much died over the winter. There were no more peaches. It was gone.

And I have thought about that peach tree many times since. Every time I've tasted a good peach and you have great peaches here in Ft. Collins, I've wondered about that peach tree. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Chances are one of my relatives—some cousin or great uncle, had passed that way eating a peach and tossed the peach pit into the fence row. Chances are, by some miracle that peach pit grew—and by another miracle, uncared for and unbidden—that little peach tree had managed to bloom and prosper for a few years, half a mile from no where in the back of the beyond.

And while those peaches were the sweetest ones in the world—something was missing--something important was missing. There was no planning and there was no ongoing care or giving to nurture that little tree and so when the harsh wind blew across those Ohio hills that next winter, the little tree stunted eventually died.

So often in the life of the churches I have known over the years, I have seen the same thing happen to great ideas and even great congregations that did not take to heart the call of Jesus to give and to care. Too often there was this assumption that someone else would do it, or that an individual’s giving did not make a difference. Growth and leaders and mission and our work in this community depend on our enthusiasm and our financial support.

And so I am a believer. I believe in planting trees I will never live to enjoy. I believe in doing what I can to make the dream others gave me come true in a future that will not include my presence. I believe in giving that supports people as they do the love of Jesus in this community and around the world. I believe in giving to maintain this building so that my grandchildren will find the same love I experienced in my home church as a child. I believe in a music and youth program that exists to proclaim God’s love with verve and excellence. I believe in giving to support the cause of peace and justice. I believe that the more we give, the deeper our experience of God’s presence will be.
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I wandered in here six weeks ago and what I discovered was a living outpost of the Jesus movement named Plymouth: people working together and loving, thinking and living, people daring and dreaming. The gifts we share and the commitment we make will strengthen this congregation and this community. The lives we live and our giving makes that possible today and for the sake of the future. I thank God for your witness and for the ministry we share. Amen.