​The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational Church UCC of Fort Collins, CO
Psalm 100
Noise, Gladness, Singing OR EveryDay Miracles (EDM)
 
Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock, sometimes our rock band soundtrack, and our redeemer. Amen.
 
One of my favorite parts of attending a Methodist divinity program was the weekly chapel service: the noise, the singing, and the gladness of it all! Now, I was lucky because when I was at Emory it was a high point for that seminary as a place of music and noise. At that time, one of the heads of liturgy and music was Professor Don Saliers. Some of you may know of his daughter Emily, principle member of the Indigo Girls, who would sometimes appear in chapel as a surprise soloist! What made Emory’s chapel services great wasn’t only Rev. Dr. Saliers, Emily Saliers, or even the fact that every other seminarian (except for me) actually could sing really well, but that everyone sang with reckless abandon, conviction, and NOISE! This might have had more to do with Emory being a southern seminary more than a UMC seminary.
 
It was at my first chapel service that I discovered perhaps some of the theological rationale for this robust singing when I opened to the first pages of the red UMC hymnal and discovered John Wesley’s “Directions for Singing,” (which would be my reading during many a sermon for the next three years), and I have never been quite the same again. How many of you know what I am talking about? There are seven rules in total, and they vary from rules about singing in tune to keeping time and rhythm (basically… pay attention) to others about not turning yourself into a soloist in the midst of a congregational song, but by far my favorite two rules are numbers 3 and 4, which are as follows:
 
3. Sing All – see that you join the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing.

4. Sing Lustily – and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half-dead or half-asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sang the songs of Satan.[1]

Setting aside that last part about the songs of Satan, John Wesley has a point! What are we so scared of? Is it the judgment of the person next to us? Is it the judgment of the music director? I promise Mark is nice guy. Is it the judgment of the choir? No, it is usually a lack of confidence in ourselves. Sing with good courage, Plymouth! What I love about what the Methodists have in the front of every hymnal is the reminder of what worship is all about. It is about not being dead (amen/praise God)! It is about being fully alive, embodied, and awake to what God is doing moving in our midst.
 
As Hal said last week in his sermon, quoting Irenaeus, “The glory of God is in a human being fully alive,” or as Wesley would say… please don’t sing as if you were half dead! Live life abundantly in each moment, especially when we are gathered in worship to praise God. Today’s Psalm is a classic and archetypical “Psalm of Praise!” This is the type of song, I see through reading the national news, that is most difficult for the UCC these days, and it is why we need to talk about it. We cannot because the denomination that only knows lament. Nobody want to join into that.
 
That is exactly what is happening today with Psalm 100, friends. This is a Psalm, a hymn, and a concert of praise at its very best: noise, gladness, and singing.
 
Scholars often describe the Psalms as ancient “hymns.” This gives us the unfortunate and false parallel to conveniently and comfortably think that the Psalms were used in a context that looked much like Plymouth. When we quietly sing Psalms or hymns, we feel like we are engaging the ancient. For my generation, and I bemoan this fact because I love hymns, the word hymn is often associated instinctively with something quiet, mumbled, spoken at memorial services and staid and quiet and sad. [Sing slowly while stomping foot in slow rhythm in the pulpit] “I went to the garden alone… while the dew was still on the roses”, and by the time the dew is on the roses you are asleep.
 
There is no passion, no noise, certainly no praise… and no heart in the word hymn anymore. Now before you jump to conclusions or stop listening, this doesn’t mean we should stop singing hymns (I love them), but we need to reclaim the passion of the Psalmist and bring back the fractured parts of our lives. The Sacred (on Sunday) and the Embodied (the rest of the week) should not be mutually exclusive.
 
100:1 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.

100:2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing.

100:3 Know that the LORD is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.

100:5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. [even the millennial]
 
Do we believe this radical statement about the universe and its meaning, church? Or is it just something we say at funerals and in bereavement seminars, church?
 
Verse 1: The word in Hebrew translated as, “Make a joyful noise,” is used 42 times in the Hebrew Bible. It is translated often as “shout, cry, scream, vocalize, raise a sound, give a blast…have a blast!” We are talking about embodied experience of being Christian not just acting like it on Sunday… and praising a God, a creator, beloved, giver, lover, essence, breath, sustainer, redeemer, healer.
 
It is completely in line with our Mission Statement here at Plymouth: “It is our mission to worship God [praise God] and help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people, individually and collectively, especially as it is set forth in the life, teachings, death, and living presence of Jesus Christ.”
 
The Psalms, in their ancient context, would have been used in the cultic, ritual, communal ceremonies and parties of the time that looked very little like our Sunday morning worship. In fact, they would have felt more like Red Rocks Concerts complete with the smoke effects coming from the offerings. Unlike today where we have created an artificial boundary between “high, church, sacred culture” on one hand and “low/ popular/ worldly culture” (a 19th Century Victorian distinction and construct we are still enduring today)—our lives lived on Sunday mornings on one hand and our lives lived singing at the top of our lungs in our cars on the highway on the other hand is false. It makes praise from the gut difficult or awkward. It is this artificial line and compartmentalization (in French Cartesian) that is killing the mainline churches. The worship settings where the Psalms were used were the concerts, the center, the pilgrimage, and the collective hope and aspiration settings—not ethical historical lectures.
 
Not only do we keep our church to ourselves proudly as Fort Collins’ “best kept secret,” but we also sometimes keep our passion for life and living and thereby our overwhelming praise for a God who makes all things possible a secret from ourselves…on Sundays.
 
This being the Sunday when Thanksgiving is now past, I want to ask a question. How many of you married, partnered, or have dated people whose families have different Thanksgiving traditions from your own? A ham instead of a turkey or perhaps lasagna? Vegetarian? Pickled watermelon? Stuffing vs. dressing in or outside of the turkey? Should Thanksgiving “dinner” be at lunchtime, midafternoon, or during the normal supper hour at night? Compromise and learning is a big part of being married. Amen? Aside from thanksgiving, this can also happen with music taste. While I am sort of a bluegrass guy, my husband is very much a fan of something called Electronic Dance Music or EDM. This is not a kind of music I have ever had a lot of tolerance for, but it matters a lot to him, so he will come with me to bluegrass concerts and folk music events… and I will go with him to his concerts. I do have a secret weapon though—these are earplugs [show congregation bag of earplugs used for concerts], because I need to hear you for my profession…even if I don’t always want to.
 
Aside from learning to appreciate a genre outside of my comfort zone, I have also learned something else. My generation has a lot of heart but not a lot of patience for BS! We are good, naturally connected to one another in some obstinate quiet hope. I have witnessed at Red Rocks 1000’s of young adults my age, many your doctors and lawyers and ministers (or soon will be), singing together. The lyrics are often about life, love, meaning, and even heaven. “Don’t forget about a thing called love.” “In your love I’ve built a home.” “We are all we need.” "On my way to heaven.”[2] Like a spy in enemy territory who learns to love, I have witnessed that we in the church are trying to ignore what has happened for too long—cultural surgery of heart and soul, soul and mind, body and essence. We have forgotten, especially in the UCC, the language of praise in the midst of our lament for a world and a realm that we can’t control with even the best intellect. There is so much need for crying out together in joy and passion in this universe.
 
Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Daft Punk, The Colorado Symphony Orchestra, The Grateful Dead, John Denver, U2, Metallica, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Above and Beyond, Pretty Lights, Brandi Carlile, X Ambassadors can be messengers of good and have all played Red Rocks over the years. I think that Red Rocks might be the cultic center of Colorado that Psalm 100 refers to—it binds this place together in ways the churches haven’t managed to do yet.
 
But there is hope for the church yet to reclaim praise. I see evidence of it still:
 
When you are at Presbyterian gathering (General Assembly, etc.) and someone comes marching in with bagpipes—the frozen chosen… melt… and are suddenly transformed into embodied praises of God’s goodness over the hills and valleys of Scottish embodied, collective memory.
 
When you are at Plymouth on Easter morning and we get to the Halleluiah Chorus, we are all moved in the same way, choked-up, spirit-overcome that George the II of England was during its first performance when he was called to stand!
 
At Worship 3.0 [Sunday evenings] at Plymouth when we sing with passion the songs of Iona or Taizé, releasing our worry and looking up to heaven and singing the Celtic and ancient repetitions.
 
On this Christmas Eve, when we will sing in darkness… “Silent Night…[PAUSE]  Holy Night [PAUSE]”—you know the feeling, right?
 
We don’t need to imitate the Evangelicals (some of the best and most embodied worship praise I have ever experienced have been Episcopal services) and change anything about our worship service to get there—we just need to remember our mission statement and the intent of the hymns and the Psalms and the call to sing as if we are indeed alive. We should bring our car singing, poetry reading, improve workshop, beer garden, rock concerts, conversations selves… whole selves to worship.
 
[Minister leaves pulpit and goes to the middle of the congregation asking everyone to please rise, as they are able and willing. Everyone stand looking to the middle, close eyes, singing together at full voice Amazing Grace verses 1, 2, and 3.]
 
Now, that was Thanksgiving! Amen!

[1] https://exploringchurchhistory.com/john-wesley-hymns-directions-singing/

[2] All of these are part of the Above and Beyond (http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/about) label. Above and Beyond is a radio show and a collection of DJ’s in the EDM genre. All of this is new to me, and it is like learning a whole different language. 

On Thanksgiving Day, Jake preaches on John 6:25-35. ​ 

Matthew 25.14–30
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado
19 November 2017
 
A man goes on a long journey, leaving behind him a cadre of folks he hoped would invest his assets wisely. Do you know what it’s like to come home from a three-month sabbatical and find this text waiting for you?!

Actually, it’s perfect! In their wisdom, the folks who created the lectionary plop this text into the season of harvest here in the northern hemisphere, which in many congregations coincides happily with stewardship season. And so when you hear someone pick this text apart, you can usually be fairly certain that they are going to “go financial on you”… that somehow the return on investment from these silver talents will be reflected in the church budget. Well, I’m not going there today. (That said, if you pledge for 2018 isn’t in yet, I know that you can lower the blood pressure of fellow members on the Budget & Finance Committee by pledging today!)

You know, I don’t think that Jesus’ hearers would typically be the kind of folk who would be in the position of financial managers who are entrusted by a master to expand his wealth. So, if it isn’t about money and a solid return on investment, what it is about? I wonder if it is something far more valuable, far more elemental than silver. I am going to hazard a guess that this parable of Jesus is about us.

I know you’ve heard a few parables this fall, and it is important to remember the function of a parable, which is to make us stop and think differently about a situation, to puzzle with it, to wrestle with it, to go deeper.

What if the wealth that is invested with us is not our money, but ourselves…our deepest selves…the very life that has been given and entrusted to us by God? Stop for just a minute and think about that: each one of us, the old and young, the foolish and wise, the rich and poor…all of us have been given one life to live out fully. As Jesus says, “I came that you may have life, and have it in abundance.”[John 10:10] That’s the greatest gift for each of us: abundant living. Whether our lives are long or short they can be lived in abundance in each moment.

So if you use that framework, think for a moment about the master going on a long journey and entrusting you with your life. Our cultural framework is based on radical individualism and the notion that “it’s my life to live however I want.” And I might quibble with the theology behind that. What if we saw our lives as a gift from God entrusted to us, not simply for our own satisfaction and enjoyment, but also an investment in God’s kingdom? We only get one life, so we need to make it count.

Each of us has gifts within us; some of them are obvious and some of them are quite well hidden. And sometimes we aren’t even aware of them, because we have quashed our talents and not given ourselves permission to live our lives in full abundance.

I was reading a book last week by Elizabeth Gilbert, about unleashing creativity, called The Big Magic, and it had all kinds of resonances with this parable: “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” she asks. “Look, I don’t know what’s hidden within you. I have no way of knowing such a thing. You yourself may barely know, although I suspect you’ve caught glimpses. I don’t know your capacities, your aspirations, your longings, your secret talents. But surely something wonderful is sheltered inside you. I say this with all confidence, because I happen to believe we are all walking repositories of buried treasure. I believe this is one of the oldest and most generous tricks the universe [aka God] plays on us human beings, both for its own amusement and for ours; The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”1

I’m going to invite you to pull out your bulletin or a piece of paper and jot down some of your own thoughts about your deepest longings and your gifts. What are some of those jewels that are still buried deep within you? What are some of the yet-unlived dreams, the yet-undeveloped talents, the yet-unwritten stories that are waiting within you to be mined? Make a note or two for yourself. Bring that into your prayers this week and see how you might go on a treasure hunt that will yield jewels not just for you, but for God and God’s realm.

Irenaeus of Lyon, a second-century bishop wrote that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Have you experienced being with someone who is fully alive? Who has grasped living life with abundance? Who is uncovering and mining the jewels, the gifts, within themselves and sharing that giftedness with the world? We talk about people as being charismatic, and that literally means those who possess a gift. But it’s more than having a nice smile and an engaging personality: it’s being authentically who God created us to be and using our God-given talents.

So, if we all have gifts, why aren’t we using them? What are the obstacles that are getting in the way of us becoming “human beings fully alive?”

Let’s go back to the parable for a moment. Two of the three slaves understand that their master wanted them to unpack their gifts and increase what he had entrusted two them. They don’t spend any time making excuses…they just report how they doubled what had been entrusted to them. The third slave, who buried his treasure and kept it hidden, said, “Master, I knew you were a harsh man” as he tries to explain why he had not increased what he had been given. What kept the last slave from expanding what was entrusted to him was fear.

How many lives could be infinitely more rich if we could help one another move beyond our fear? I’m not talking about sensible fear of things like rattlesnakes and bungie jumping. I’m talking about the chorus of little negative voices within us that beat the constant refrain: “You’re not good enough.” “You’re not old enough.” “You’re not young enough.” “You’re not smart enough.” “You’re not faithful enough.” “You’re not beautiful enough.” “You don’t have time.”

All of us have at times sense those negative voices and the kind of fear that paralyzes us from becoming fully alive and uncovering the talents that lay buried deep within us. And it’s time to acknowledge that we have those fears and say “enough” and put them on the sidelines.

What we need to overcome those fear-laden voices is courage. You may never have thought about yourself as courageous or brave…because you experience fear. But without fear, there is no opportunity to live into courage. Courage is all about doing something scary, stepping out into the risk-zone.

I know that churches in general hate taking risks. But if you look at what we have done at Plymouth, you’ll see the high points of our history all involve risk-taking: starting an immigrant church, moving from Old Town to Prospect Road, calling LGBT clergy in the 1990s, voting to become Open and Affirming, expanding and improving our building, standing up for undocumented immigrants.

Courage is about acknowledging the fear and then moving forward with faith. Sometimes we forget that we are not doing this alone and that God has our back.

I also want to challenge you all to look within yourselves and see if some of your giftedness is in helping this particular outpost of the kingdom of God reach its mission by saying yes to serving as a lay leader, as a member of one of our boards or the leadership council. It takes courage to lead, and we want to help develop new leaders within this congregation, so if you have an inkling and want to talk more, I’m available!

When I was in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in September, I stayed in an AirBnb with four young guys, and they invited me to have dinner with their friends, and they asked what our congregation was like, and when I told them about being ONA, doing work around immigration reform, and homelessness prevention, they said, “Oh, our government does all that for us.” Well, our government isn’t doing that, so we need to step up with courage.

Incredibly gifted people comprise Plymouth…together, we have the capacity to expand the talents that have been entrusted to us. We need each one of our members to look within themselves prayerfully and ask what talents they have to contribute to God’s realm. We need to step up with courage, with conviction, and with faith to do become the fully-alive congregation that God intends us to be.

I close today with the words of Marianne Williamson, which you may have heard Nelson Mandela offer at his inauguration:
​
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”2

May it be so. Amen.

1 Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. (NY: Riverhead, 2016), p. 8.
2 Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love. (SF: HarperOne, 1996).
 
© 2017 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.