“Embracing Abundance”
Matthew 20.1-16
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
24 September 2023
 
 Did you hear that? The day-laborers who were standing around looking at the tops of their feet all day were paid the same wage as the workers who had been slogging away all day in the vineyard! I ask you: is that fair?

But this isn’t the first time you’ve heard about something so unfair, is it?

Remember the one about the father who welcomed his spendthrift son – the one who had been living among swine, the one who spent all of his inheritance? And what does the father do for the responsible, hard-working son? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Parables are a distinctive form of story intended to grab you, the hearer, and pull you in and make you wonder, ask yourself what is going on, and what “other thing” is that we’re meant to grapple with. Parables contain the aspect of riddles in the same sense that a Zen koan is meant to provoke deeper contemplation in order to help the hearer derive alternative wisdom that goes beyond a purely logical way of thinking.

The Greeks roots of the word parable are “para” and “ballein” — to throw alongside. So, there is one story being presented, but there is something thrown alongside the main narrative: a provocation to consider our assumptions differently. Dom Crossan claims that parables like this one are “challenges [that] attempt to raise the consciousness of listeners by luring and leading them into thinking for themselves.”

So, what do YOU think is going on here? What is Jesus provoking YOU to consider?

Perhaps those first listeners were in the same landless peasant class as the parable’s day laborers, and they focused on what happened at the end of the day: the landowner give a small coin to each person who ultimately worked in the vineyard, whether they worked for ten hours or only one hour. To that audience, perhaps, it seemed unfair or maybe envious of those who worked a short day.
But this is a parable of the kingdom, the reign of God that we pray for each Sunday! Does that mean that the realm of God is inherently unfair? (Maybe in our eyes.) Here are two important hints in interpreting this parable: it opens with “The kingdom of heaven is like…” (Matthew’s way of saying “the kingdom of God is like”), so right away we see Jesus saying that this is an alternative ethos creating an unconventional vision that stands in opposition to Rome’s imperial vision, and a subversive twist on the rabbinic tradition of his day. And he brackets the end of the parable by saying, “the last will be first and the first will be last,” which implies radical reversal. Who is the first in this parable? Who is the last?

That’s important for us to consider as well, because most of us come to this reading with deep American cultural expectations and assumptions from English Common Law around the rights of property and compensation. Using that lens, of course this parable seems unfair. But it’s a parable that begins with “the kingdom is like…” and ends with the last being first and vice versa. It sets OUR assumptions on their head.

Historically, this parable has been explained in different ways. Luther and Calvin saw this as a way of proclaiming that God’s grace (extended to the late-in-the-day laborers) is far more important than the good works of the early morning workers. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” asks the landowner/God, “Or are you envious because I am generous?” So, do YOU think this parable is about salvation?

Another way to look at the parable is through the lens of Matthew’s audience, which was both Jewish and gentile. Perhaps the laborers who arrived in the vineyard to work all day represented observant Jews, who had achieved salvation through centuries of following the Torah. And the latecomers to the party are the gentile followers of Jesus, who are admitted even though they show up late. In this interpretation, we are still seeing the landowner as God, spreading grace (unearned gifts) to anyone she wishes.

I was talking about this parable last week with Diana Butler Bass, who will be in the pulpit next Sunday, and her take was that it calls forth a new socioeconomic norm. What Diana said is similar to Dorothy Day (co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement), who wrote that Jesus “spoke of a living wage, not equal pay for equal work, in the parable of those who came at the first and the eleventh hour.” So, perhaps the parable envisions an alternative socioeconomic order.
I wonder if we all have an assumption that there isn’t really enough to go around and so the landowner’s actions are unfair. But what if there is actually plenty instead of scarcity? What if there IS enough?

Many years ago, I was in Senegal on a pilgrimage to explore the roots of Americans whose ancestors had been stolen from that land. It was eye-opening for me is myriad ways, but one of the lessons that struck me most was seeing what little kids did with some candy bars that I gave them. We’re talking about a few fun-size snickers bars. If we were in a group of American kids, I imagine that the children who got the candy bar would eat it themselves or squirrel it away to eat later. But that isn’t what happened in this Senegalese village. No, what I saw amazed me. The kids who received the candy bars carefully divided them so that each person would get some. There was no consideration that there was not enough to go around, rather these young Africans taught me a profound lesson that there is always enough…so long as we are willing to share. Even though they had little, they knew how to take what they had and instead of seeing it from the perspective of scarcity, they saw abundance.

Do you ever have a sense of scarcity — like there isn’t quite enough? Enough money, enough security, enough time, enough health, enough love? Sometimes I do, and I have to catch myself and try to steer a different course.

I think our culture breeds that fear-filled scarcity mindset, and advertising doesn’t help at all. We Americans are driven to earn more, spend more, consume more, want more. And I think the root of that is the fear that there isn’t enough for us. If you look back at our Unison Prayer and Sung Response, that’s why I had us sing, “Dayenu!” God has provided enough, but we have to be spiritually mature enough to recognize that there is enough and to share it.

As a congregation, we have plenty to go around. I say that not just because we have people among us who have considerable professional accomplishments or because the average household income in Fort Collins is $96,300. We may not have extravagant excess, but as a congregation we have enough.

A pastor at another church said of his parishioners, “As they earned more, there seemed to be more scarcity in their life. There was never enough time or money.” And as he began to talk about re-examining the way they perceived scarcity and abundance, and the purpose behind giving, the church had a real turnaround. They began to think about what they COULD do and what tools they needed to make that happen. They began to think in terms of abundance and what God had made available to the members of the congregation.

Still, I sometimes hear a lot more in our church about scarcity than I do about abundance. I’m not talking about extravagance, but rather simple things in our mission and ministry that are reasonable to do. What I sometimes experience is an attitude of “We can’t do that because it would cost too much” or “We can’t waste money on THAT” (even though THAT might be just the thing gives other members of the community a sense of life and spiritual connection). Having an overdeveloped sense of scarcity is hamstringing this congregation in achieving all we are called to be. It isn’t faithful, and we need some course correction.
What do you think of our Share the Plate program that gives half of what we receive as undesignated offering to a community partner? Do you think that is foolishly extravagant or do you think that is our congregation expressing our faith in God’s abundance?

How do scarcity and abundance play out in your own life, whether you are a teenager with an allowance, a young adult working for minimum wage, a retiree living on a small, fixed income, or a physician, a lawyer, an engineer, a professor, or a clergy person? Do you fundamentally think you have access to “enough” and give thanks to God for that, or do you think more in terms of not having enough? Where do those attitudes come from?

When I speak of abundance, I’m not talking about the New Age idea of “manifesting” wealth because you have dreamt that into being. I’m talking about seeing our lives in global perspective… that we have been given plenty.

God has provided for the world abundantly. God has provided for US abundantly. It’s a matter of those who have more being willing to see what they have abundance to share. Not just as what they “deserved” or “earned,” like a daylong laborer. And once we have a mindset of abundance and possibility rather than scarcity and fear, we need to act in a way that reflects God’s attitude of grace and abundance.

The wonder of parables is that there are many ways to interpret them. I hope that you have been provoked to wonder, to think, and to dream by Jesus through this parable. The kingdom of heaven on earth is like a group of people, young, old, and in-between; queer, straight, trans or cisgender, Black, Asian-American, Latina, white; rich, poor, and everywhere in between. It is seeing them following Jesus, employing what has been entrusted to them, working for justice, welcoming the stranger and the outcast, enjoying the fruits of their labor, finding meaning in the Spirit, and working to ensure that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 

“Abundance Enough”
Matthew 14.13-21
by Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC, 6 August 2023
 
The miraculous story from Matthew’s gospel is one of the best-known in the New Testament, in fact Mark, Luke, and John repeat their own versions of the story. Fishes and loaves. What an image: being able to take a small quantity of very simple food and to nourish 10,000 people. (This story is usually called “Feeding the 5,000,” but they forget to count the women and children, so I’m rounding up.)

Over the years, this story has yielded many different interpretations. One way to look at it is that it happened exactly the way the gospel writer recorded it: that Jesus took two fish and five loaves and magically multiplied them sufficiently so that every one of the people present had enough to eat their fill.

Another way to interpret it is less physical and more spiritual: that what nourished the 10,000 was not having a full belly, but rather having a spirit that was topped off by a meal with Jesus. It wasn’t so much that Jesus increased the volume of food there. Rather, he qualitatively increased the food, enabling it to meet the spiritual needs of the people.

A third interpretation has to do with the sacramental value of the meal. You probably know that in the Protestant tradition, we celebrate two sacraments: communion and baptism. But I would argue that this story of fishes and loaves provides scriptural rationale for opening the door for the third Protestant sacrament: the potluck supper. (I’m only half kidding; I really think that we can come to know each other and God through a common meal shared with those we journey with.) Do you remember what it was like to eat together at church after Covid began to decline? It was joyous! And we’ll do that next Sunday following our outdoor worship.

The fourth way of interpreting this wonderful story is that it shows that God is active here on earth sharing abundance. Just as God provided manna to the Hebrew people wandering in the desert, God also provides sustenance through the ministry of Jesus. Unlike the second interpretation – the spiritual nurture – this fourth way of looking at the miracle is about God helping to meet our most basic needs as animals: we have got to eat. It’s no accident that the two recognized sacraments both involve basic hygiene and nutrition functions: bathing and eating. It’s just a part of who we are as embodied beings. And it can be a wonderful part of who we are and who God created us to be.

The Psalmist writes, that “the Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”[1] And an integral part of God’s compassion is providing enough food to go around. It is we who are responsible for distribution of what God has entrusted to us.

It’s interesting to try and imagine Jesus’ thinking in this story. What is it that is driving Jesus? Is it pity? hospitality? simple generosity? The dominant motive of Jesus is a force that emanates deep in the gut: compassion. The Latin roots of the word mean “to suffer with:” cum + patior. But the Greek word is splagchnizomai (splag-knidz-o-my) which is a feeling so deep it grows out of your belly. It’s the same compassion that God shows to all people.

God – and Jesus – didn’t just provide enough: they provided abundantly. That is the reason there 12 baskets of leftovers after feeding all those hungry people. And God continues to provide for humanity abundantly.

What kind of miracle would it be if we could use God’s abundant gifts to eradicate world hunger? That might sound even more miraculous than feeding the 10,000 with two fish and five loaves.

• One billion people exists on less than one dollar a day. 2
• In developing countries, 6 million children die each year, mostly from hunger-related causes.
• More than 800 million people in the world are malnourished – 777 million of them are from the developing world.
• 10.2 percent of households in this country are food insecure.
• 38 million people in our nation live in poverty.
• Child poverty rates tell an interesting story: in 2020, the child poverty rate was 9.7 percent. But by 2021, it had declined to 5.2 percent, a 46 percent improvement. What worked? Child tax credits, expanded Medicaid, and other programs related to Covid-19 antipoverty measures.
• What kind of miracle would it be if we could use God’s abundant gifts to eradicate hunger not just in our nation but around the world?
• According to Oxfam, it would take $37 billion each year through 2030 to end hunger on our planet. Just to put it in perspective, that’s less than we Americans spend on pet food each year.

Peter Singer is a highly controversial ethicist, originally from Australia, who now teaches at Princeton. He really takes our government to task for its low percentage of overseas aid. The U.S. gives just 0.18 percent of our GDP for international relief – we would have to increase our national giving by 5.4 times to reach the target set by the U.N. It isn’t that we Americans are not generous folk – we are! It is that we are unwilling to look all the rest of our sisters and brother with whom we are sharing God’s world.

As Christians, in a very tangible sense, we acknowledge that whatever we have is not even ours to begin with: it’s God’s. All we have is given to us as a gift, entrusted to us as stewards. Whatever wealth we have on hand now is only ours in the short term. Do you remember that old song, “We give you but your own, whate’r the gift may be, all that we have is yours alone, we give it gratefully?” That’s not idle chatter; it’s real. What kind of miracle would it be if we could use God’s abundant gifts to eradicate world hunger?

Peter Singer writes, “In the world as it is now, I can see no escape from the conclusion that each one of us with wealth surplus to his or her essential needs should be giving most of it to help people suffering from poverty so dire as to be life-threatening. That’s right: I’m saying that you shouldn’t buy that new car, take that cruise, redecorate the house or get that pricey new suit. After all, a $1,000 suit could save five children’s lives. ... Again, the formula is simple: whatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away.”[2]

Okay, that’s a pretty radical suggestion. But I have a concern with this, and it’s a problem of enormous proportion in every church I know: we want to do charity, not justice.

Charity is giving something you have to someone who needs it. Charity makes me feel good, and it might meet the other’s need in the short term. But, ultimately, the answer is not about me and my feelings. It’s about God’s world and God’s children.

What happens when compassion – not pity – comes into the equation? When that gut-wrenching, suffering-with, feeling grows inside us? When we respond not as somebody who is one step above another, but shoulder to shoulder with those who are suffering? We’re more apt to respond with justice, rather than with charity.

We’ve moved beyond the need for band-aids: we need major surgery: systemic solutions to answer world hunger. And we have the ability and the resources to do it.

I would like every person here to write down this web address: bread.org That’s the website for Bread for the World, which is a Christian-based citizen’s group lobbying Congress to help make systemic changes to end world hunger. It’s also a great resource for information on hunger here in the U.S. and around the world.

So, what can we do? How can we be good stewards of all we’ve been given?

We can start with prayer. Not just prayer for more food for those who need it, but by confessing our own overconsumption. We can pray to help discern our true needs from our wants. The next time you say the Lord’s Prayer, take the “give us this day our daily bread” part seriously.

We can share what we have through the UCC’s One Great Hour of Sharing offering, which comes around every spring.

We can put pressure on our elected representatives not only to do our fair share, but to help put into place sustainable structures and systems that provide food for all.

As we come to the communion table together, let each of us, as we taste the bread, think of those who don’t have that privilege today. And let us rededicate ourselves, as stewards of God’s world, to help create a miracle in our midst.
What kind of miracle would it be if we could use God’s abundant gifts to eradicate world hunger?

Amen.
 
[1] Psalm 145.9
[2] NYT, 5 September 1999.

“Overwhelming Abundance”
Psalm 23
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
9 July 2023
 
How many of you learned this psalm by heart when you were in Sunday school? It’s probably the best-known psalm and by many the most beloved. One of my favorite sung versions is by Bobby McFerrin, and we used part of his paraphrase as our Call to Worship. It is one that we sometimes hear during a memorial service as a comfort, knowing that the Lord is our shepherd, our guide, our protector. In fact, on those occasions, I will sometimes use the King James or Revised Standard Version, since it is what many folks grew up hearing and that familiarity can bring comfort.
 
The opening verse talks about having everything we need. Hear these different translations: “I shall not want,” “I have all I need,” “I lack nothing.” How does that sit with you? Does it ring true? Do you have everything you need? Maybe if you are just starting out or things are really tight financially, it could be that you don’t have all you need…or at least all the things you want.
 
As the prophet Mick Jagger once sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” The rub is distinguishing the one from the other.
 
So, what do we really need? Food, shelter, medical care, education, spiritual connection. We also have a whole host of wants. If we didn’t, it would decimate the advertising industry, which wants us the leap into Prime Days on Amazon, buy a new car with have a four-figure monthly auto loan payment, and to ask our doctor if Lunextra[1] is right for you.
 
Nothing keeps the wheels of advertising spinning like fear of inadequacy. “Never let them see you sweat.” “Be all that you can be.” “The best a man can get.” “Maybe she’s born with it…maybe it’s Maybelline.”  And the other thing advertisers like to do is to weave a web of scarcity that ensnares unsuspecting viewers. I literally read this on a blog this week: “Scarcity isn’t just another marketing hack—it’s a psychological phenomenon you can use to make more revenue.”
 
Americans are bombarded by advertising, and much of it is designed to make us want things we don’t really need or didn’t even know we wanted. Imagine the climate impact of doing away with all the things we buy as a result of advertising and how much simpler we could live. Most of us would agree that the best things in life…aren’t things.
In The Covenanted Self, biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “The reality of drought or low production or famine…produces a sense of scarcity, a deep, fearful, anxious conviction that there is not enough to go around, and that no more will be given. The proper response, given that anxiety, is to keep everything you have…. The myth of scarcity that can drive the economy is not based on economic analysis, but on anxiety.”

Anxiety is rooted in fear, and yet at our core, we know that “even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no danger because you are with us.” How many times in the biblical narratives do we hear the command, “Fear not!”? And yet, too often we do give into fear and allow it to drive our decision-making. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it requires intention and attention to see the world differently: as a world provided with plenty rather than scarcity.
 
God has provided abundantly, but it is how we respond and share God’s abundance that makes the difference in peoples’ lives. Brueggeman writes, “I propose that the lyric of abundance that is evoked by the generosity of the Creator, sits deeply against the myth of scarcity. The lyric of abundance asserts that because the world is held in the hand of the generative, generous God, scarcity is not true. I mean this not as a pious, religious sentiment, but as a claim about the economy.”
 
How do you sense that in your own life? Is your cup overflowing with God’s abundance? I have a hunch that many of us don’t slow down enough to consider that question deeply. Where is your cup so full that it spills over?
 
When we were visiting my son, Cameron, in Japan before the pandemic, I was surprised at the method of pouring sake for a guest. As a deep gesture of hospitality, someone else always pours the sake into your glass for you. And while there are all kinds of sake cups, the one I saw most frequently in Japan was a set that contained a glass and a small wooden box, called a masu.
 
Now, you may wonder what this has to do with the 23rd Psalm and abundance. When a host is pouring sake into your glass, she or he pours it to overflowing, so that it exceeds the capacity of the glass and spills into the masu. This is a gesture of abundance, and the first time I saw it, I couldn’t help but say, “My cup overflows!” Literally!
 
Abundance in God’s world is never a question of there being enough, but rather a question of distribution, so that all have the basic needs met. Some of us have too much and others have too little. How we balance that out is a question of good stewardship: how we live with and share God’s abundance.
 
Even within the life of our congregation, we work this way. Rather than charging a membership fee or dues, we ask one another to do our best to live and give faithfully in response to God’s gift of abundance. If we did have dues at Plymouth, they would be about $4,100 a year per family. That may surprise you, but it takes a lot to do mission, keep the lights and air conditioning on, plan and gather for worship, provide pastoral care, build community, be a voice in public square, and educate our children and teens and adults. Because not all of us can afford that amount, those among us who can give more must do so to support the community.
 
How has God filled your cup to overflowing? Stop for a moment and think about how God has shown up abundantly in your life and in the life of our congregation. Most of us have enough to eat, a place to sleep, available healthcare, a career or retirement. Most of us have enough and then some. [pause] And now I invite you to silently offer thanks to God for whatever abundance has been made available to you.

And in the spirit of continuing your meditation, I’d like to share a short film with you from Brother David Steindl-Rast, an elderly Austrian Trappist monk who has a profound relationship with gratitude. https://vimeo.com/223300973
 
May you continue to see your cup neither as half-full or half-empty, but as overflowing with God’s abundance. And as Brother David says, “May your gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.” Amen.
 
© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Not a real drug name

“Not to a Congregation of the Sinless”
Matthew 9.9-13
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
June 11, 2023
 
 Who does Jesus eat with, and why? An observant first-century Jew should be eating only at a kosher table with people who are socially acceptable and who are not ritually impure. And yet we know who Jesus hung out with. It wasn’t the well-to-do or the religious establishment, and it certainly wasn’t the Roman imperial occupiers of the Jewish homeland.

The gospel writer tells us that Jesus is under fire for sharing the table with sinners and tax collectors. It’s important to know that tax collectors were not simply IRS agents who were doing the work of the federal government in getting everyone to pay their fair share of the tax burden. Instead, tax collectors in this case were Jews who made their money by collaborating with the Roman occupiers. That isn’t a good start, but it gets better: they essentially extorted money from people on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder, handing over a portion of the money they collected and keeping some of it for themselves. They were despised by most of those under Roman occupation.

The other category is “sinners.” Temple Judaism in the first century was centered around purity codes that had paths of practice to cleanse one of sin and become ritually clean, and you can read about them in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

But don’t all of us commit sin? Don’t we miss the mark as we try to live good and worthy lives? Things that push our relationship with God out of kilter? Of course we do! In our membership covenant response we say, “We warmly welcome you not to a congregation of the sinless, but to a living community of faith that seeks together to find new ways of being in relationship with God and enacting God’s intention for the wholeness of humankind.”

When was the last time you sat down and really considered how you yourself and we together as a church were finding “new ways of being in relationship with God and enacting God’s intention for the wholeness of humankind?” Later in this sermon, I’m going to pose three questions about that, along with an invitation to do some wrestling.

I have a hunch that many of us think that we are pretty set with the second phase of our mission statement that calls us to inviting, transforming, and sending. Do you think you are done with your own transformation as a follower of Jesus? Have any of us attained full enlightenment?

We don’t talk very much about our own spiritual transformation at Plymouth, and I think perhaps we need to work a bit more on our growth and (to use a very old-fashioned word) discipleship. A disciple is nothing more than a student following a master, and we follow Jesus. If we don’t work together on our spiritual lives, where else is that going to happen?

St. John Chrysostom, a bishop of the fourth century said, “The church is a hospital, not a courtroom, for souls. She does not condemn on behalf of sins, but grants remission of sins.” Think about that hospital metaphor in light of what Jesus said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” I’m going to make a bold assumption in saying that there is no one here who is entirely well or whole. We all need healing and growth. We all need a teacher and a physician. And we need a community to help us along the way.

As I was writing this week, I became curious about what other Christians might see as marks of discipleship or learning. If you want to see a diversity of opinion, try googling “key marks of discipleship” and see what it yields. It wasn’t terribly useful for our purposes, since they all came from organizations whose theology we would be unlikely to support.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t have ideas about ways that we can grow in our relationship with God. And as those who try to follow Christ, the best source seems to be Jesus himself. In the text this morning, Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea, instructing his disciples to “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire compassion, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” The great Jesus scholar Marcus Borg, Plymouth’s first Visiting Scholar, said that Jesus deliberately replaced the centrality of purity as a key aspect of religious practice with compassion, and I think this is a clear example of that. God doesn’t need burnt offerings of doves or sheep; God’s deepest desire for us is to act compassionately toward one another.

Living with compassion is harder than it sounds. It implies that we need to get out of our individualistic and even familial mindset and be open to share the suffering of others. Compassion is costly…it isn’t free, and it isn’t easy. We have to be willing to sacrifice some part of our well-being in order to help others. And that is countercultural in our society.

Many of Jesus’ clearest (and hardest) teachings are enumerated in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, so isn’t that a logical place to look for clues about what we need to learn as disciples?

The Beatitudes hold up as blessed those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for justice, who show compassion, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of justice, and those who are rejected on account of following Jesus.

As disciples, some of us here today fall into one or more of those categories. I know some of you who are mourning, others who are meek, and some who hunger for justice. So, what about the rest of us? If a particular beatitude doesn’t apply to us, perhaps we are meant to be a support and a blessing to those Jesus lists. We can support the peacemakers, lift up the poor in spirit, and show compassion.

When the crowd asks Jesus how they should pray, he tells them not to wail aloud like the hypocrites who pray to be seen by others, instead he offers them the prayer we offer each Sunday, the Lord’s Prayer. Have you even noticed that in the Lord’s Prayer we pray twice for the inbreaking of the realm of God? And that it speaks about God’s abundance and debt forgiveness?

Perhaps the first question we should ask ourselves as disciples, learners is Who am I in relation to God?

Jesus keeps on going in his sermon, encouraging his followers (us) to be even more concerned for justice and righteousness than others, to let go of anger, to avoid retaliation by turning the other cheek, to go the second mile, and to give to anyone who begs from you. He tells us not just to love the folks who already love you, but to love even our enemies.

A second question for us as learners seems to emerge: Who am I in relation to others? Think not just about your own family, but about your church, community, nation, and world. Our society is amazingly self-absorbed, which is fueled by consumer advertising. Consider the neighbors that surround you, near and far, and whether those relationships are expanding or contracting.

You may not realize it, but Jesus has a lot to say to us about abundance and wealth and how we use what is entrusted to us. He encourages us to be generous in our giving, but not to be showy about it. He tells us not to worry so much about our possessions or what we will eat or drink or wear. God provides in abundance and Jesus says, “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Jesus is clear that people like us cannot serve two masters: God and wealth. And he shares some uncommon wisdom with us, telling us not to store up treasures on earth. He tells us that where our treasure is, it is there that our hearts will be.

So, a third question arises for us as we move toward transforming our lives: Who am I in relation to abundance and wealth? Jesus says more about money than he does about love. Money is an important tool entrusted to us to help extend the realm or kingdom of God. How much time do you spend serving wealth?

So, those three questions are:
• Who am I in relation to God?
• Who am I in relation to others?
• Who am I in relation to abundance and wealth?

I think each one of us has a lot to learn on this lifelong journey of transformation. Part of what the church offers that no other institution can is that we get to wrestle with the tough stuff together. We are on the journey together. None of us gets it all right, but I think God appreciates our wrestling. May the path of discipleship be a blessing for you!

Amen.
 
© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

The Land of And…
A sermon related to Matthew 14:13-23
 
CENTRAL FOCUS:
The inward contemplative life must be integrated with the outer life of expression and service (and vice versa).
 
When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. 14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. 15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
 
16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”
 
18 He said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. 21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.
 
22 Right then, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead to the other side of the lake while he dismissed the crowds. 23 When he sent them away, he went up onto a mountain by himself to pray. Evening came and he was alone.
 
For the Word of God in Scripture
For the Word of God among us
For the Word of God within us
Thanks be to God
 
Some of you know the elder Roman Catholic Priest Father Richard Rohr who was the founder and driving force in establishing the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He once offered this illustration……
When people ask me which is the more important, action or contemplation, I know it is an impossible question to answer because they are eternally united in one embrace, two sides of one coin. So I say that action is not the important word, nor is contemplation; and is the important word!
 
I’ve read Father Richard Rohr’s books in past years and he is an increasingly important teacher for me, particularly as an articulate voice and presence for evolving Christianity, for the kind of Christianity that takes the best from our tradition and moves it forward with articulation and depth that is accessible.  Like Father Rohr, I don’t find the essence of Christianity problematic, I find that too often our way of understanding it over the centuries has been problematic and immature.  Our faith has too often been captured by the Empire and used for its purposes.  Conveniently for the Empire, this capture psycho-spiritually involves the ego and its fondness for splitting things into two and confirming its bias.  The ego thrives on either/or; my way or the highway, I’m in and you are out, heaven or hell.  Taken as a whole, and in its highest and deepest teaching, the Gospel and our spiritual lives are meant for more.  The Realm of God, of which Jesus spoke so often, is a big enough circle, a wide enough vision to include all, even paradox.  In short, the Realm of God could also be called the Land of And.
 
Father Rohr quotes Charles Péguy (1873–1914), French poet and essayist, who wrote with great insight that “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”  And Rohr says that everything new and creative in this world puts together things that don’t look like they go together at all, but always have been connected at a deeper level. Spirituality’s goal is to get people to that deeper level where the Divine can hold contradictions and paradox. (Some call this place the unified field or nondual reality or wisdom.)
 
This creative work of living in the Land of And is the creative work of a lifetime and a sign of maturing faith and psychology.  (It’s harder when we are younger.)
 
We could spend a long time exploring all those seemingly opposing poles of life in which we move, like continuity and change, structure and flow, accountability and mercy, planned and emergent, and countless others. Today, I invite us to travel in ‘the Land of And’ by focusing on the two important poles initially mentioned: action and contemplation.
 
Did you notice the integration of these two in our Scripture story today?
 
Just below the plot, just below the surface, Jesus is in the dance of action and contemplation.  He seeks solitude and prayer both before and after his communal feeding of the 5000.  Just before our story, Jesus hears of John the Baptist’s cruel execution at the hand of Herod, and he seeks solitude. And after his action with the crowds, showing them compassion and healing, offering them food, he seeks solitude and prayer time once more. This is a deep pattern, contemplation and action and then contemplation again and so on, each feeding and informing the other.
 
You might say that Moses was in this cycle on Mount Sinai, first having a mystical experience of the burning bush and having that lead to his actions for liberation of the people. It’s as if the bush burned before him, then in him, and then through him in action in the world.
 
You might come to the Land of And from either side of this or any polarity. You might be a person of action like Simone Weil, an activist who fought against totalitarianism and worked for the French Resistance based in England during World War II.  What you might not know is that in the 1930’s as a young activist, her atheist, communist sympathies soured and it was no longer religion that she considered the opiate of the people, but revolution. A mystical experience in the Church while on a visit to Assisi changed her life and the framework and fuel of her activism. She realized that activism without a spiritual framework, a framework capable of getting beyond the ego, was deeply limited and even dangerous. Said Weil, “God is not present, even if we invoke God, where the afflicted are merely regarded as an occasion for doing good.” Weil began in action and found her way to the inclusion and integration of contemplation, of inward spiritual practice, which in turn altered and inspired her continued activism. She found her way to the Land of And where action and contemplation were one dance, indispensable and interdependent elements.   
 
Others have journeyed the other direction from contemplation to action. Saint Oscar Romero might be one example of this. The quiet studious priest earned his doctorate after ordination and then eventually served in parishes and as a church official in various capacities including running a conservative Catholic publication. He certainly got things done in his early ministry, yet was considered a conventional and conservative choice years later when he was selected as Archbishop of San Salvador, selected as someone to preserve the status quo.  It was Saint Oscar’s contemplation of the assassinated body of his activist friend and fellow priest, Rutilio Grande, that transformed Romero, transformed him into a prophet of action who led actions of liberation for the people, actions borne of compassion that came out of his wrestling in prayer, his inner spiritual contemplation.
 
The invitation to the Land of And begins when we draw the circle wide, including both energies. As simple as the inbreath and the outbreath, we come back to the necessity of each and their interdependence. Any energy pole can polarize, distorting the other side and suffering the consequences of focusing too much on one side. In most congregations like this one, to oversimplify, there will be fans of action and of contemplation, people who lean one way or the other.  
 
Let’s do a quick polarity map of those.

A polarity map is a way of understanding where we are in relation to any given poles and how the two can be integrated.  Each pole can have an upside and a downside. When we are really preferring one pole, we tend to be suspicious of its interdependent pole, judgmental about the downside of that interdependent pole.  If you are preferring action, you might be suspicious of those who talk about prayer or meditation or mysticism. What are your concerns? (I’m one of these people. I have this voice.) Pie in the sky, all talk no action, hypocrisy, insulated, not real.  Breaking through this polarization involves trying to see the other pole’s upside and your preferred pole’s downside.  So, let’s say we guarantee that the action pole will be served, what could one gain by also serving contemplation? Energy, inspiration, insight for better actions, care for the self and inner life, integrity of spirit when engaging action, etc. 
 
Reverse it.  If you prefer the inner life, the contemplative life of Spirit, you may have been suspicious of those always in action. What are your concerns?  Burn out, reactivity, not strategic, act in inconsistent manner (ie not peaceful peace marchers), etc.  But what could be the gain in adding action to one’s contemplation?  Integrity of doing what you say you value, new learning from engagement, connection to others, grounding in the tangible world.
 
Are we, like Jesus in the story we heard this morning, involved with self-awareness, with checking our egos and supporting our souls with a regular life of connecting with Spirit through prayer and/or yoga and/or other spiritual disciplines like Lectio Divina, poetry, or journaling, or walking the labrynth, or participating in vital worship?  Are we, like Jesus, then filled with enough courage and compassion to answer the call to act, to incarnate the Spirit into acts of service and healing and justice-making, to put our bodies and checkbooks and time into faithful actions for the coming more fully of heaven to earth?
 
In a distracted world of the 24-hour news cycle, of Facebook and emails, of constant cable news crawlers and tweets, my friends we are challenged to keep in touch with God, with the deep still point of the circle.
 
And, in the midst of a world of such constant noise and so many opportunities to live only in a chosen private manufactured reality, we are challenged to connect in community, and to act in wise, effective, and meaningful ways that are grounded in the embodied reality of earth and guided by the vision of all God’s people and all Creation in a just relationship. 
 
If we are to see the possibility and then miraculously deliver such abundance satisfying the hunger of body and soul as Jesus in feeding the 5000, we will have to imitate Jesus in the cycle and the integration of action AND contemplation.
 
It’s worth remembering that both King and Gandhi considered their movements spiritual movements, fueled by prayers of song and speech. Gandhi once said, "I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one." That’s a human being living in the land of And.

Let us go and do likewise. AMEN

Luke 5.1-11
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Years ago, I preached on this text and I focused on what it would take for us to become “fishers of folk” and invite new people into our community of faith. I used the analogy of fly-fishing and using different artificial flies to catch different sorts of people…some of us will bite on a tiny gray parachute Adams and others of us will strike at a big, black woolly bugger. And I think that progressive evangelism or “inviting” aspect of the story is absolutely key, and it’s going to be part of our post-pandemic rebuilding. But I’m going to ask you to go somewhere different with me today.

Jesus goes out onto the lake with these guys who have spent their lives fishing…they are the professionals, and their father Zebedee must have taught them the trade over the course of many years. They would know where the fish tended to congregate, what time of day they were active and feeding, and how to use nets masterfully to maximize the catch. But like all fishers, they have the occasional bad day and get “skunked,” which is what happened on the day of our story. So, up comes this spiritual teacher who needs a water-borne pulpit to preach to the gathered crowd, and after the sermon, he tells the guys to row out into deeper water and cast their nets. Can’t you just imagine them folding their arms and saying, “Okay, Jesus, if that’s what you want us to do…”? I imagine that there might have been a few sniggers behind Jesus’ back as well. “Okay, carpenter-boy…let’s see you fish!” And of course, they bring in a miraculous catch. It isn’t just the normal evening’s haul, but rather such an abundance of fish that they need to get another boat to come alongside them to help bring up the nets, which were filled to bursting. Why not just a good or an adequate catch?

Now, it may be that the sons of Zebedee were absolutely gobsmacked…they couldn’t say a word because they were stunned. Or maybe they were embarrassed that the dude from Nazareth bested them in knowing how to fish. Or perhaps they couldn’t believe their eyes. But the only recorded verbal response comes from Peter, who falls down at Jesus’ feet and says, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Think about that response for a minute. Jesus provides an incredible abundance of fish for these fishermen who were eking out a living on the lake shore, and the best you can come up with is “Get outta here…I’m a sinner and not worthy!”

How many of us would respond in a similar way? Imagine yourself in Peter’s place and Jesus providing twenty amazing new clients or a classroom full of totally motivated students or fellow engineers who were always open to your brilliant ideas. Imagine! How would you respond to that unconditionally loving  and abundant gift? One response might be, “Hey, Jesus, that’s just too much…I can’t accept this.” Perhaps that is why Peter is overwhelmed. What would YOU say to Jesus?

I wonder if any of you would say something that none of the disciples did: THANKS! There seems to be a sense of amazement among the disciples and Peter can’t accept that he is deserving of such a gift. But no one in the narrative turns to Jesus and says, “Thank you, Lord. You’ve done something amazing here, and none of us could have done that on our own. We are so grateful to you for what you’ve provided!”

Are we even remotely aware of the amazing haul that God provides for each of us? The fact that we can broadcast worship? That we even have a church? That Jesus came to share the good news of the kingdom of God and it got passed along to us? That we live in an environment with incredible natural beauty? That we are able to understand one another’s speech and that we can read and that we can explore spiritual mysteries? That we are alive in this very moment? Taken as individual miracles, each of those far surpasses a boatload of fish! Do we recognize the abundance of miraculous gifts God has made possible in our lives? Each of us is the recipient of far greater gifts than fish, which are going to smell funky in a few hours anyway. Take just a moment and think of three gifts that God has given to you unconditionally. [pause]

How do we respond to God’s entrusting so much abundance to us? How do we get beyond being speechless to moving in the direction of a response of gratitude? How do we pay those gifts forward? That’s one of the things communities of faith can help with…being conscious of what has been shared with us, living in a continual sense of gratitude for God’s abundance. And that leads us to responsible stewardship of everything entrusted to us: our bodies, our souls, our families and pets, our possessions and our wealth, all of which are on loan from God. We have an ancient wisdom tradition that guides us away from the “greed is good” and “it’s all about me” mentality that our culture applauds and moves us in the direction of self-giving love.

After Peter offers that “I’m not worthy” line, Jesus comes back to him and says those words we hear so often in the New Testament, the words I wrote about in last Tuesday’s reflection: “Don’t be afraid.” That phrase occurs five times in the Gospel of Luke alone.
None of the disciples may have been very good at articulating their gratitude to Jesus. Nobody wrote a thank-you note or even said WOW! Instead, something more important happened inside them. They saw and were amazed. And some sense of gratitude and wonder filled them so much that when Jesus said that they would be fishers of folks, “they left everything and followed him.”

It makes me wonder whether our sense of gratitude, even when it is not enunciated, could be a vehicle for transformation in our lives…that being grateful to God for the everyday miracles and abundance all around us could and should be life-changing for you and for me.

What sense of gratitude and abundance fills you? Are you aware of the source of that abundance? How can you not only SAY thank you, but how will you put your gratitude into practice, giving it legs, giving it the power to change your life and the lives of others?
Don’t be afraid. Amen.
 
© 2022 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 

II Corinthians 8.7-15
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
 Abundance has become a watchword for some new age-ish groups, who think that it has to do with “manifesting” wealth or that if you are thinking very clearly and correctly and have made financial gain your objective, it will simply happen. (Unless, of course, you live in Carbon, West Virginia, or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh or you’re a woman in Saudi Arabia or a Black farmhand in Louisiana or living on the Navajo Reservation.) That’s a misapprehension of the word abundance, and not what Paul is talking about, and it’s not what I’m going to refer to today. Abundance is about having enough, not about oversupply. And God provides abundance. It’s all a matter of whether or not we humans can learn how to share it with one another.

Much of what we perceive about God’s abundance, specifically what God has entrusted to us, comes from our family and personal history. The attitudes of our families of origin play a very large part in the way we ourselves think about money, time, and abundance.

My dad was born in 1920 and lived through the Great Depression. His father died suddenly in 1933, leaving my grandmother with six children to feed, house, and clothe. She worked for the telephone company and owned a duplex, so she had a bit of money from renting out the other half of their home, but I imagine that their financial situation after my grandfather’s death was precarious at best. My dad became a professional jazz musician and traveled with a big band in the late 30s, and when World War II was on the horizon in 1941, he enlisted and eventually became a B-17 pilot. Coming home from the war as an officer, he probably felt as though he had a bit of real money for the first time. Like many of his generation, he went to college on the GI Bill, started a career, bought a home, and raised a family. It was a world of possibility. There were financial ups and downs along the way for my parents, but one of the messages I got from my dad was that money is a tool to be used, rather than an end in itself. My parents were also very generous with the church, both with their time and with their money. As part of the Greatest Generation, he had an optimistic outlook that things were going to get better, because they always had.

In ways that I probably don’t fully understand, my father’s experience of abundance — surviving the Depression, becoming a professional musician, an officer, going to Marietta College (founded by Congregationalists, by the way), grad school at Duke, becoming a marketing executive — informs some of my attitudes about abundance. His optimism is often alive and well in me.

What about you? How did your family’s experience with poverty or wealth or having just enough telegraph its way into your life? Do you see patterns in your attitudes about abundance that are expressions of your parents’ experience?

Whether we sense that we have much or little depends largely on perspective. Some folks might feel as though they are just making it on $100,000 a year, while others can’t imagine what they’d do with all that money. It also depends on what kind of societal messages we’ve internalized.

Many of the advertisements we see are geared to make us think that we don’t just want a product, but that we need it, and sometimes that we are inadequate if we don’t have it. It’s hard to imagine the impact of advertising on our children, who start seeing ads on television and on other screens from the time they are quite young. Advertising is incredibly pervasive, and many of its messages are antithetical to the idea of God’s abundance.

Many years ago, I was traveling in West Africa, and our bus stopped outside a village in Senegal. Some of us had tiny “fun-size” candy bars, which we shared with some local kids. Most American children would likely have scrambled to take the candy and eat it, but the kids in this village gathered around while one of the children divided the tiny candy bar so that everyone could have some. That was many years ago, but it really stuck with me, because those kids who had so little also had a sense of abundance — that there was enough to share around with everyone. Their culture focused on “us” and “ours,” rather than just “me” and “mine.” They have a surprising attitude of abundance!

----------

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth in this chapter of his letter, describing for them the generosity of the churches of Macedonia, who have given generously for the support of the church in Jerusalem. And he is encouraging generosity among all of the churches for their mutual support. He opens the chapter writing “about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches in Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” Does that sentence sound a little bit off to you, linking “abundant joy” and “extreme poverty?” I think Paul is getting at what the kids in Senegal knew: that if we’re in this together, even when we are experiencing poverty, we can be joyful together. But the Macedonians apparently push one step further by experiencing a “wealth of generosity” to share with the church in Jerusalem.  Paul writes to the Corinthians that “it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need.” (You’d think Paul had never heard of laissez-faire capitalism!)

I want to let you know that this congregation is much like one of the generous churches in Macedonia; we are giving out of our abundance. Throughout the pandemic, you have continued to support not just Plymouth, but the wider church and community as well. This year in our budget, we are committing $44,000 to Our Church’s Wider Mission, the program that supports our conference, the national setting of the church, and our global mission and national justice ministries. Even though we don’t have the largest budget among the churches of the Rocky Mountain Conference, we give more than any other congregation. And I don’t say that to disparage them, but rather to thank and to encourage you. Thanks to our sense of abundance, we are in a position to be generous in supporting the other churches of the Rocky Mountain Conference, the churches of the UCC, and our global mission. Even in the midst of the pandemic shutdown, you have continued to sense of God’s abundance, rather than give way to the fear of scarcity. We even used income from our endowment to provide video-recording equipment to congregations too small to afford it otherwise. And I give thanks for your generosity.

Each morning, I sit with my prayer beads (outside when the weather is good) and offer the lines of some Celtic prayers I’ve collected and adapted, and recently I’ve done something additional. I offer the 28 lines of prayer, but then I go around the prayer beads again and give thanks to God for 28 things or places or people for whom I am grateful. It’s much like a gratitude list, but I also remember to thank God, who is the giver of it all. On Wednesday morning, I noticed the profusion of growth and color in our backyard.

The sun peeking between the branches of an Aspen tree…bougainvillea blossoms that have become deeper red in the sun…small yellow blossoms that will turn into tomatoes that we’ll enjoy later this summer…the pink peonies that came from Jane Anne’s family home…the bushy basil destined to become pesto…the verdant mixed greens that will find their way to our dinner table…tiny green apples beginning to populate our trees…purple flowers that will turn into Japanese eggplant…and lavender that sweetens the air.

The abundance of God is everywhere, if we just take a moment to see it and experience it. It is there in new life and baptism. It is there in our return from pandemic exile. It is there in the long days of summer. My invitation to you this week is to spend a few minutes outdoors on a walk, or sitting on a park bench, or even looking out the window, and simply soak in God’s abundance and give thanks. I also invite you to make a gratitude list of the people, places, and things that God has provided in your life that give you a sense of deep joy, and to offer a prayer of thanksgiving for them.
God’s abundance is there for us to enjoy, to give thanks for, and to share. May you become ever more aware of the abundance that God has brought into your life.
Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Acts of the Apostles 2.42-47
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Here is a big question: How are human beings supposed to live together? We have been trying to figure that out since the beginning of civilization. Even in Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel gives a mythic answer to the reason we are separated by various languages. But we need to go deeper than just linguistic differences. How are we supposed to live together? That is one of the questions that this story from the Acts of the Apostles tries to answer.

On a macro level, humanity has attempted different systems and responses over the last few hundred years that we in the 21st century assume is the way it always has been. And that’s not so.

At the end of the 19th century, after evidence for biological evolution had been presented, some began to say that we live in a dog-eat-dog world where the fittest survive, that is and ought to be true for humanity as well, and it birthed SOCIAL Darwinism. The poor in industrial England, the Irish, and child laborers who worked in dangerous conditions were thought to be where they ought to be: at the bottom of the food chain. A 19th c. English clergyman, Thomas Malthus, even proposed that “excess” human beings would die off so that others could survive. And haven’t we seen a bit of that Malthusian catastrophe proposed by some political leaders (who ironically also claim to be “pro-life”) that it would be okay for some of the elderly and infirm to be taken by Covid-19 and to make a place for the fittest to survive? How do you think God sees our society?

Economics is a relatively new field, and the Scotsman Adam Smith is known as the father of economics for his seminal book, The Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. And we he developed the ideas of capitalism and self-interest, and of course they grow into unfettered capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. You and I probably take it for granted that we are “consumers.” Stop and think about that…“consumer.” It’s one role in a mechanistic equation…and isn’t life more than that? Aren’t you also a “lover” or a “teacher” or an “advocate” or a “Christian” or a “parent” or a “sibling” or a “citizen”? Let’s pause for just a moment and reconsider the initial question: How are we supposed to live together? Are we supposed to consume materials and goods? Are we just cogs in the system of interconnected wheels in a stupendously large economic machine? How do you think God sees us?

Another vision is that we are meant to live simply as “free agents,” doing whatever we like in a “do your own thing” kind of way to nurture our self-satisfaction? Are we just out for ourselves (and maybe our nuclear families on a good day), or are we really a part of something bigger?

Throughout most of human history, the nature of living together in clans, communities, tribes, and nations has been survival…enough of the basic things like food, clothing, and shelter so that we could survive. And as civilizations and nations developed, the question of how we are meant to live together dogged us every step of the way. In Genesis when Cain kills his brother Abel, God asks where Abel is, and Cain famously replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And that is the big question: to what extent are we responsible for the well-being of the people who form our social grouping: towns, states, nations, regions. I think about that picture of the earth from space taken by the Apollo astronauts from the moon, and it is abundantly clear that our fate is inextricably bound together as residents of the same “big blue marble.” How do you think God sees us?

The Acts of the Apostles gives us insight into the way the first Christians answer the question of what life together ought to look like, and it may be a fairly idealized vision. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home (in good social distance) and ate their food with glad and generous hearts (after washing their hands for a full 20 seconds), praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” This is a description of DISTRIBUTIVE justice, where people recognize that there really is enough to go around if we share what we have. It is a statement about profound abundance.

Have you ever noticed how many economic systems are based on fear and scarcity, rather than on generosity and abundance? We have so many refrains of abundance in the biblical record that we stop noticing them as such: manna from heaven, my cup overflows, the loaves and fishes…it’s all about God’s abundance.

Here is a question for you: when have you operated out of a sense of fear and scarcity, and when have you made decisions based on generosity and abundance?

The Acts of the Apostles describes a radically different vision that most of us Christians — even progressive Protestants — have of how things work today.

As the Second World War began and many German Christians accommodated, if not encouraged, the rise of the Nazi regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book called Life Together about what Christian community could and should mean. “In a Christian community,” he writes, “everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable… Every Christian community must realize not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship.”

I wonder how that plays out at Plymouth. Each of us is weak in some ways and strong in others. We are utterly reliant on God and on one another, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we will be able to live together in harmony.

What if we expanded that idea to the wider community? Six months ago, I rather doubt that some people would have counted grocery checkers and truck drivers and the UPS delivery guy as “essential workers.” And in some medical institutions, nurses are seen to exist in a stratum under physicians, but if you’ve ever been in the hospital, you know how critical they are in terms of your care, but they are unsung heroes. But then again, I haven’t seen military jets doing fly-overs to recognize hedge-fund managers and advertising executives lately.

How are human beings supposed to live together? I think we’ve been doing a pretty poor job in this country, but I have certainly seen glimmers of hope in the way neighbors support one another, younger members of Plymouth doing grocery shopping for elders, people wanting to reach out and contact other members with a call or a card or a text message. Please, let’s not let go of any of that pulling together when the pandemic is over. Let us continue to grow into what Dr. King called the Beloved Community and what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. These visions are far richer than anything Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand could have dreamed up, and they are infinitely better for the human soul.

Christian community at Plymouth is going to look different in the future  in ways that we cannot fully imagine. We are likely to continue livestream worship, even after we can worship in person. For a long while, we may need have social distance in worship, adjust the way we greet each other and celebrate communion and have coffee hour. I have no idea when that will be, but I know that our sense of connection and love for one another has not been diminished by our physical distance.

Life together at Plymouth is going to be different, in ways that none of us can yet anticipate, but I do know it’s going to be rich. I have faith in God to show us how to be community, and I have faith in you to come together in faith.

We’ll do this together. May it be so. Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses