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 hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses

Luke 19.1-10
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
It’s interesting that today’s story from Luke’s gospel involves Zacchaeus climbing up a tree. (When exactly was the last time you saw a grownup climb high up a tree? That may be the first sign that there is something extraordinary going on here!)

Part of the reason I find this interesting is that this year at Plymouth, we’ve invited you not to go higher…but rather to Go Deeper. We don’t ask you to perch yourself at the top of a tree or even at the top of the cross in our chancel…instead, one of our members created roots that visually symbolize going DEEPER, not higher. And the Stewardship Board invited you to Go Deeper and give thanks for the gifts of Faith, Hope, Community, Life, Treasure, Love, and for Plymouth. You’ve been invited by our preachers this month – Charles Buck, Sue Artt, and me – to be part of a minor miracle in the making, to imagine God’s heavenly economy, rather than the dismal science of human economy, to imagine what it would be like if we spent our money on things that changed the lives of our fellow humans, instead of buying a new couch. And how mission changes lives. Holy Cow, we even had a surprise visit from Jesus during the sermon three weeks ago!

Luke tells us that Zacchaeus is a tax collector. Now, I don’t want you to think of him as a respectable IRS employee, because that isn’t what the role entailed in ancient Judea. Instead, think of someone collaborating with the occupying Roman army and extorting money from the subject people in order to line his own pockets. (Even if you consider your taxes to be extortionate, this is a totally different situation!) So, what we witness as Zacchaeus brings Jesus into his home is a radical personal epiphany and a counter-cultural transformation away from human economy into heavenly economy. Zacchaeus says I will give half my possessions to the poor, and I will pay back four times as much to anyone I’ve defrauded.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus doesn’t even ask Zacchaeus to do this? It isn’t like the story of the Rich Young Ruler, as Jesus responds to the man’s question about what he must do to inherit eternal life – give away all your possessions. (And you remember how it ends…the Rich Young Ruler ends up going away grieving.)

What is the one thing Jesus asks of Zacchaeus? There is only one sentence in this text that encapsulates what Jesus demands: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down!” Because of his stature, Zacchaeus was just trying to see Jesus from afar, but Jesus notices him and says, “Come down.”
You all know that beautiful Shaker hymn that Aaron Copeland used in “Appalachian Spring,” “’Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ’tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, ’twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

I wonder if that is what Jesus has been calling us at Plymouth to do this year… “Plymouth, come down! Come down from that treetop and Go Deeper. Dig into your faith. Remember that you are rooted in God’s love and in the faith of this community. Understand what holds you in place. Go Deeper!”

I don’t know whether you read about this or not, but the UCC together with several local churches in Chicago last week invested $38,000 to buy $5.3 million in destructive medical debt for over 5,000 anonymous residents of Cook County, Illinois – and then they forgave all of the debt. That is God’s heavenly economy at work. Whether it is immigration justice or ending gun violence or educating our children or ending loneliness for seniors or deepening the faith of the person next to you, or giving you a song to sing, you are changing lives through Plymouth.

We come today to celebrate and give thanks for the bounty God has entrusted to us, to stand in the light of God’s heavenly economy. We are here to celebrate a community that not only provides a shelter from the storm of our rancorous politics, but gives us a way to make a difference as an outpost of God’s realm. We are here to consecrate and ask for God’s blessing on our commitments for 2020. We are here to keep on Going Deeper and reach the wellsprings of our faith that nurture not only own lives, but all the lives this congregation touches.

May our journey continue.

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

Luke 12. 13-21
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Part of the time I was growing up, my dad worked in Manhattan, where he worked with the pharmaceutical division of Revlon, and they made everything from Tums to all kinds of prescription medications. And my dad recalled a meeting with Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, who had a needlework pillow on the couch in his office that said, “You can never be too thin or too rich.” Yeah, it’s kind of funny…but we all know that people who suffer from eating disorders don’t think it’s funny, and people who have any kind of a moral compass don’t think so.

And it got me thinking…sometimes, is it possible to have too much of a good thing?

One of the lessons I learned from my dad is that money is a tool to be used for good in the world, and that it is not an end in itself. Money is not essentially good or evil…it’s a tool that can be used toward positive or negative purposes. And I thought everyone believed that. But many of us have a conflicted past with money. Some of us grew up without much, and maybe that leads us to feel insecure about having enough…yet others who were raised in similar circumstances don’t have the same conflicted relationship with money. Some folks grew up in families with plenty of money, and perhaps that has led us to think we are entitled to the same or more wealth…yet others raised in well-to-do families approach money with equanimity. I wonder whether most of us have a relationship with money that is complicated. And perhaps that is what makes us so uncomfortable when we talk about it. And Jesus talked about money… a lot.

The parable we hear in Luke’s gospel today sets before us a “rich fool,” who definitely has a conflicted relationship with money. It’s as if he has a pretty secure retirement plan, with enough in his Bank of Judea 401(k) to last, but he is under the impression that he needs to shelter the excess wealth with which he has been blessed, so he decided to craft a new retirement plan to maximize his assets.

To many North Americans that doesn’t sound wrong or unjust…maybe the rich fool is just being prudent and saving for a rainy day. So, does the parable of Jesus strike us as odd? You and I may think of the wealthiest one percent of our populace and assume they are not bearing their fair share of the tax burden. But what about us? What about folks at Plymouth? Are we as individuals building bigger barns? Is that investment property we own helping us to be rich toward God? Is that investment we made in our retirement plan going to be used to build up the realm of God, or is it going to make us just a bit more comfortable in retirement? Do we, some of us, have too much of a good thing?

We all know that there are other good things in life that we should enjoy in moderation…food, drink, sunshine. We are probably aware of the pitfalls of excess in eating, drinking, and being out in the sun. But how do we tell when enough is enough, and not too much?

Some situations are measurable. When you go for your annual physical and your doctor advises you to lose 25 pounds, you have quantitative evidence that things are out of balance. When you get pulled over after a few drinks and just miss getting a DUI, you have quantitative evidence that you’ve exceeded moderation. When you have skin cancer lesions removed after spending too much time in the sun, you have quantitative evidence that you’ve gone overboard.

But what about when things are not so easily measured? And what about some things where you and I might be tempted to say there is not such thing as “enough?” What is “enough” houses? What is “enough” retirement funds? What is “enough” cars? What is “enough” health?

I was thinking about that last week while waiting for my radiation treatment down at the UCHealth Cancer Center. Usually, I’m one of the younger patients in the waiting room, but when I went in there were two kids, I’d guess about 4 and 6 years old, working on a big coloring page on the waiting room wall. And I assumed that they were waiting for a grandparent undergoing treatment. And when their 30-something-year-old mom walked out, it struck me. Wow…I’m dealing with cancer in my 50s, and she is about 25 years younger than I am and has little kids. That make me sit up and take notice, and it put things in perspective for me. I’m planning to be around for a while longer, but I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I’ve had a longer and a fuller life than that mom in her 30s, let alone kids dealing with pediatric cancers. Is there enough health? … a long-enough life?

I told someone recently that four years ago, I had an internist. And now I also have a urologist, a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, a cardiologist, and a pulmonologist. I have more than enough doctors! But thank God they are there. And when I’m feeling as though I don’t have good enough health, I try to go into an attitude of gratefulness for what I have: health insurance, the ability to make the copays, top-flight caregivers, and a cancer center that is only 15 minutes away. And the people who work at that place are an absolute blessing…there are a lot of angels wearing scrubs down on Harmony Road.

I want to teach you a very short Hebrew folk song that is sung around some Seder tables on Passover, as the people celebrate God’s abundance and deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Part of the Haggadah, the litany of Passover, includes the sentiment that “It would have been enough for us! If God had brought us out of Egypt but had not executed judgments against the Egyptians, it would have been enough for us! If God had given us their wealth, but had not split the sea for us, it would have been enough for us! So, the form is “It would have been enough” … “but God went beyond that and did this!” And the Hebrew word “Dayenu” means enough. Here is how the song goes: Day- Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Dayenu! Day-e-nu!

You know the refrain now, so let’s give it a try as a response to some of the things in our own lives that would have been enough. I’ll start with a couple, and then I’ll ask you for other ways God has blessed you with enough.

It would have been enough if God had given us the breath of life, but she sustains us even unto this very hour!
Day- Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Dayenu! Day-e-nu!

It would have been enough if God had given us a nice church to worship in, but he filled it with an amazing transformative tradition and the magnificent people who form Plymouth!
Day- Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Day-Day-enu! Dayenu! Day-e-nu!

What do you say would have been enough…but then God went above and beyond?
[move to Communion Table]

Singing Dayenu brings us into the realization that God’s abundance is present and tangible. It leads us into a non-quantifiable understanding that what God provides is more than enough. What if the rich fool had been sitting around a Passover table, or the table where we remember Jesus’ last supper at Passover, and he sang “Dayenu?”

What might the rich fool had done differently with the overabundance he planned to store in new, bigger barns? Even if he were still to die that night, might he have died as a joyful man instead of a foolish man? And what of us? What might we do differently as those who hear this parable of Jesus? How might we change if we remember to sing “Dayenu” and to be thankful for the abundant blessings of God?

May it be so. Amen.

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