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Part One of series on Sabbath, related to Genesis 2:1-3
 
CENTRAL FOCUS:
Sabbath practice is a core practice of the soul; rest, quiet, slowing, appreciating, blessing, enjoying, celebrating, intentional remembering and focusing, valuing, re-creating
 
Genesis 2: 1 – 3
 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done.
So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.
For the Word in Scripture,
For the Word among us,
For the Word within us,
Thanks be to God.
******
Breathe. That’s all.
Let’s all take a breath together: inhale…….exhale.
Two more:  inhale………exhale……… inhale……… exhale.
It’s a cycle, isn’t it?
Both parts are important.
 
On the seventh day, God rested, says the first Creation story.  We just heard that in our morning’s Scripture reading. What you didn’t hear was that the Hebrew word for refreshed “vaiynafesh” literally means exhaled.  The Hebrew text is saying that on the seventh day God exhaled.  Our culture is more inclined to inhaling, to taking in; do more, want more, gain more, be more, take in more information, more data.  Being busy can even be seen as a sign of importance. 
 
But are our lives busy or full? Did you know that the Chinese pictograph for ‘busy’ combines heart and killing. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton actually went so far as to equate activism and overwork with violence.
Are our lives structured not just to inhale, but to exhale?
Do we know how to exhale and rest in the arms of God, in the cradle of Creation?
 
A big part of the first Creation story in Genesis is the teaching of the importance of Sabbath to the Jewish community.  It was a characteristic practice to stop all work on Friday at sundown when the traditional Jewish day ends and to enter into Sabbath time until the next sundown.  There is a story told of Jesus walking with his disciples on the Sabbath.  They plucked some heads of grain to eat.  The Pharisees, who tried to protect the people’s piety and to respect Torah law through lots of rules, accused them of sinfully breaking the Sabbath.  Jesus’ wise response was that the Sabbath was made for the people, not the people for the Sabbath.
 
So how can Sabbath as an exhale be for us? 
How might we learn from and be served by this teaching?
In the Lenten journey at this church, we have been invited to seek being Full to the Brim.  I suggested at our Ash Wednesday service that, like our cycle of breath, we cannot be vital and ‘Filled to the Brim’ without the whole cycle. Likewise, we cannot be whole and vital without rest. And our first sacred story of rest is the Seventh Day story of the first Sabbath, the first great exhale.
 
I’m not talking about a return to dour restrictive rules of Sabbath that drain life; no dancing or card playing or visiting with people or frolicking and such. I’m talking about the wisdom and the necessity of exhaling in the service of the cycle of life.  Go ahead, inhale fully again and then feel a long exhale again. Let it bring you to rest and ever closer to stillness.
Exhale, that’s Sabbath.
It completes the energy cycle of life, re-balances it.
 
In that first Creation story, we are given an image of the earth as without form and void.  It is a kind of chaos that seems empty.  Creation happens out of a kind of emptiness.  We have to exhale in order to make room for the inhale.  The womb has first to be an emptiness in order to be filled with the growing creation of a new life.  This emptiness is not so much a denial of life as it is a letting go and a letting be. It is a kind of re-balancing.  In our human body, it is a chance to blow off CO2 as a part of our life-giving cycle of respiration, in preparation for bringing in more O2. The first Creation story begins in emptiness and ends in a kind of emptying, a resting, a stillness, an exhale, a Sabbath.
 
Like a hibernating animal, like a planted bulb or seed in winter, there is an appropriate and necessary time to rest, to lie fallow, to not do.
I was trained as an exercise physiologist after college. It is a basic principle of exercise training that the process of becoming more fit and healthy requires rest after we challenge and exercise the body.  It is in the rest time that the rebuilding to a better state happens.
 
How many of us trust that cycle?
How many of us here are practicing Sabbath rest?
I’m not talking about just laying down on the couch, although that could help. I’m not talking about kicking back and watching TV, although some quality viewing occasionally is renewing.  We are invited into a Sabbath space and time that has a sacred intention, a certain quality of delightful exhale that puts us back in touch with the blessedness of Creation, the part of the first Creation story when God says, “It is very good”.  
 
Pastor Jane Anne, before her recent sabbatical suggested that all church committees take time in our Lent season meetings for forms of Sabbath, not doing tangible committee work, but sharing in Bible study, prayer, and connection. She was inspired by the book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, in which Wayne Muller suggests we embrace “Sabbath as a way of being in time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the gifts of spirit and eternity.”
 
Our worship celebration here could be a Sabbath practice if it helps us remember who we truly are…
as images of God made of the dust of the stars,
as humble mortal beings of made of mud,
as a people called to Grace and to justice,
as part of a wondrous Creation with other wondrous Creatures and features.
Our worship celebration or any practice that we have can be a Sabbath practice if it slows us down enough, focuses us enough toward Spirit that we remember and feel again in our bodies and souls the Grace of God and the gift of life. Any practice could be a Sabbath practice if it truly re-creates in us a sense of rest, renewal, gratitude and connection to the GodMystery.  It doesn’t have to be Saturday or Sunday, or a particular ritual or prayer, though those things might help.
 
In our Gospel stories, we often have Jesus going not toward the people and crowds, but, after his healing work, away from them to solitude and prayer. One way to translate what is translated as prayer is “to come to rest.” Jesus had the practice. He went to rest and renew.  (And the disciples came after him, “hunted” him some translations say.)
 
It’s not that Sabbath time is superior to work time.
It’s that our work time is served by the wisdom and energy of balance and wholeness, Sabbath rest and its intention to be in a different way of being serve balance and wholeness. The spiritual paradox of this Sabbath rest and not doing is that it does create in its own way.  The Rabbinic tradition says that on the seventh day God created menuha; tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose. The Jewish tradition also says that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul, Neshemah Yeterah, a Sabbath soul which more fully appreciates the blessings of life and the fruits of our labor.
How are we nurturing our Sabbath soul?
I watched my Dad for years come home from work, empty his pockets and often change his clothes. It was a simple ritual of shifting from work to home.  Now, I love the moment I get home and empty my pockets of keys, cell phone, and all the things I use in the outside world of work and marketplace. I empty my pockets and exhale. This can be a Sabbath moment on any day if I use it to really slow down, breathe, and pause to appreciate the gift of the day, of life, of the whole Mystery.
 
And even if you are not working outside the home, or are not ‘doing’ as much as you once did, you are not exempt from the call to Sabbath, for it is possible to fill all our not doing time with things that don’t help us exhale, rest, and renew in the whole-making Spirit of the Divine.
 
That’s because Sabbath is not just a time or even space that we reserve. It is also a quality of presence or consciousness.  It is effortless, nourishing rest.  It is stillness that can produce a unique kind of renewal and insight.  It is an awareness, a return to perspective, a sacred perspective that is about depth and delight, about re-balancing and re-creating, about remembering and feeling that we belong to God, to the Mystery, and that we are to love ourselves, each other, and all Creation.
 
There is a poem by Jane Kenyon that may help us feel into Sabbath time and space.  The poem is related to the traditional Jewish day beginning in the darkness right after sundown.
 
Let Evening Come
 
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
 
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
 
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
 
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
 
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
 
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
 
As we continue in a Lenten journey of becoming Full to the Brim, I invite to us to remember that there are rhythms and cycles that make for life, ultimately, that make possible our coming back to acting for compassion and justice, to acting in service and offering a helping hand.  No matter our age or stage, in our lives and in our culture, we can distort those rhythms and cycles and then distort and compromise the life force that sustains us and Creation, not allowing ourselves or the Earth to exhale, to rest, to renew.
 
God exhaled on the seventh day, resting and savoring the blessing that is Life. Today, the sacred invitation is simple. Remember the Seventh Day and exhale.  AMEN
 

Genesis 9.8-17
First Sunday in Lent
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Intro to Scripture:
The story of Noah and the ark is, perhaps, one of the best-known stories in Hebrew scripture. Adopted by widely in popular culture because of the beauty of rainbows and little animals prancing two by two out of the ark into a new world. And echoed in many creation stories from ancient and indigenous people around the world. But it is also a harrowing story of loss and destruction brought on in the version in Genesis by God’s grief and anger at the rebellious ways of humanity. God sets out to wipe the slate of creation clean with a flood covering all the earth. Plunging creation back into the primordial chaos from which it came. Saving only a remnant. Much to God’s surprise, retributive justice does not work well. The remnant of humanity saved has not been greatly changed by 40 days and nights at sea in a boat with several hundred squawking animal friends needing to be fed. Humanity is still contentious and prone to sin. God changes God’s mind about how to deal with human being. And that is where our text for today beings.
 
Genesis 9:8-17
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." 12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17 God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

Sermon
Grace and peace to you as we stand together at the beginning edge of our 2021 Lenten journey. As one often does at the beginning of a journey, we stand looking at where we have come from and towards where we are going. Today we can look behind us at a year that was like a plunge into the primordial destructive flood waters of our scripture story. We are attempting to look forward surveying, like Noah and his family from deck of the ark, a wilderness land still devastatingly deconstructed by the chaos that we hope is now subsiding. Over this threshold moment we see a bow in the clouds, a rainbow.

And we hear God’s ancient covenant with Noah. “Never again will I plunge the world into the chaotic waters of destruction. My bow in the clouds will be a sign that I will always remember my love for humanity and all creation. I will remember, even when I am grieved, that retribution will not resolve the issue of humanity’s hard-heartedness. Punishment will not coerce humankind into changing its rebellious ways. I make a covenant to always be present with my beloved creation, with humankind made in my image, to protect, not destroy.”

As God says, the sign of this extraordinary covenant is the unstrung warrior’s bow in the clouds. The bow was the war weapon of choice at the time that this story was written down in post-exilic Israel, a time when the people were coming out of the extreme chaos and confusion of exile. A bow strung and ready for war is a different shape. It is longer, thinner, taut. But this bow in the clouds is unstrung and its warrior edge from where the arrows are launched is pointed away from the earth. The disarmed bow, the rainbow, may be beautiful and inspiring to us, but it is a personal reminder to God. In its multi-colored light God is reminded to be “One Who Remembers,” even in the midst of chaos and rebellion of creation, “One Who Repents.”

God repents. Isn’t that a stunning statement? God makes a covenant to repent, to turn from vindication to forgiveness, patience, and steadfast love despite knowing that the human heart may never completely change. The creatures made in God’s image may always resist God. Yet God lays down God’s weapons and makes a covenant that is unilateral…it limits God’s power while setting no conditions on humankind.  God does not demand that we change. God changes because God remembers to be lover, as well as judge, to be protector, as well as creator. God repents, turns from the path of destruction and anger, to the path of compassion and peace.

So, it seems to me that our story today implicitly asks us, what is our response to God’s repentance? Since God repents, can we? Can we repent? Can we unstring the bow of falsehoods that we cling to making us feel important? Can we unstring the bow of grudges that we hold, of anger that makes us feel entitled? Can those us born with the privilege of being white in this nation, unstring the, often unconscious, bow of prejudice? Can we unstring the bow of needing to “be right,” so we can see new ways to peace? Unstringing the bows of self-righteous defensiveness, laying down the weapons that defend our hearts, is the way of repentance.

From the time it was conceived as a season of the liturgical year preparing Christians for Holy Week, the Lenten journey has been about repentance. Repentance is not a very popular word in progressive Christianity. Forgetting that the prophets first cry is “Repent,” we like the revolutionary cry of the prophets., Justice!” Perhaps the word, repentance, speaks to you of over-emotional wallowing in unproductive guilt. But the repentance that Jesus spoke of meant literally “to turn around.” One must have keen sight to make a proper turn. I imagine repentance as standing at a threshold and taking a good hard, unsentimental look at where I am going. Do I want to stay on the same path I am going down on this journey in life? Or risk a new path?

Humanity is wont to continually choose the path to division and destruction. I believe it is time to risk a new path, as God did in the covenant with Noah, a path that leads to understanding and reconstruction. I believe that we can best cry “Justice!” speaking truth to the powers of the world, when we have the courage to first say honestly to our own hearts, “Repent.” Rainbows are reminders of God’s holy repentance and our invitation to turn toward God to participate in holy repentance.
Let me share a story with you – a true story and a story that actually happened to a friend of mine. One day a young mother was taking a walk with her small son and they saw a rainbow. The four-year-old boy looked up in wonder and said, “Mommy, can we take that home and put it in our house?” His awestruck question prompted the mother to write a poem she titled “A Rainbow in My House.”  She took her son’s question literally, imagining what it would be like to have a rainbow in their house, on their walls, emanating from the windows and doors, coming out the chimney. The house was transformed, and it could not contain the glory of the rainbow and its colors.

“….When the door opens
Bursts of blues, greens and yellows
Pour out and float up towards heaven.
 
Inside I breathe in warm reds
And sleep on soft pinks….
 
Sometimes I pull back my curtain
To let the passersby
Take a peak.
 
They stare amazed…at the rainbow in my house.”[i]
 
I heard my friend tell this story and share her poem at a justice event for homelessness prevention many years ago. Our sons who are about the same age are now both grown men. In revisiting her beautiful imagery, I am prompted to imagine what my “house,” my inner soul/heart house, might look like with God’s rainbow covenant of repentance inside? What about yours?

And what about other houses we inhabit? God’s rainbow bending over Noah’s ark with its doors wide open and spilling out pairs of animals into a new world is an image painted or hung on the walls of many a church nursery. We love to tell this story of God’s love and hope to our children, starting at the earliest ages. We want them to know that, even in the midst of the worst times, God is with them and never forgets them. But why relegate this message to the church nursery? Why not let the rainbow colors emanate down the hall from the nursery into worship and committee meetings, into youth group, adult education and mission projects, into choir rehearsal and church potlucks? What might the entire body of Christ look like in the light of God’s rainbow? What might our world look like?
God’s rainbow covenant of repentance does not guarantee a utopia. Instead, it invites communities of all shapes and sizes to be places where people are willing to let their hearts be remade in the image of God’s repentant heart. Led by humanity’s siblings of color and our LGBTQ+ siblings, our communities can stand under rainbow flags of justice and inclusion where literally “all the colors of the rainbow” are welcome and equal in God’s sight. We can be communities asking the question, with the wonder of the child, “Can we take that rainbow home and put it in our house?”

My friends, today we stand together, in God’s grace, at the beginning edge of Lent, looking back and looking forward. How will we journey with Jesus this Lenten season in the light of God’s rainbow? May we allow it healing colors of repentance  to penetrate our hearts, our homes, our life together in this community and beyond. May it be so. Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. Reprint with permission only.


[i] Personal story and excerpt from unpublished poem by Michelle Sisk, 2008.

Carla preaches on Genesis 22:1-14.

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Genesis 18.1-15 & 21.1-7
Pentecost Season, Proper 6
Plymouth UCC, Fort Collins
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

The stories of Genesis are rich and mythic. Ancient when they were first committed to writing around the 6th century BCE during the crisis of the Hebrew people’s exile to Babylon. How do you keep your sacred traditions when you are separated from your homeland? You begin to write them down. Your three pastors are embarking on a preaching series of the stories of Genesis for the next three to 4 weeks. Today we jump right into the midst of the oldest patriarch and matriarch stories, those of Abraham and Sarah. Years before our story, in chapter 12 of Genesis, Abram is called by the One God “to go to a land that I will show you. And there I will bless you and make of your descendants a great nation. We will be in covenant.” The couple has been journeying with this God leading them for many years with this promise of abundant fertility hanging over their heads. Yet the first thing we learn about Sarah in this long story is that she is barren. Just before our story, in chapter 17 of Genesis, God has given the promise again along with new names, Abraham and Sarah. They are really old now and when God reiterates that Sarah will have a son, and soon, Abraham literally falls on his face laughing. He has a son by a second wife, Hagar. Why, asks Abraham, won’t God consider this son, Ishmael? God says that son will be blessed, but the divine covenant will be with the son of Sarah. And with that final word from God, Abraham goes to complete his part of the covenant that God is requiring, the ritual of circumcising all the men and boys of his household. Then our story begins.

Genesis 18.1-15 1
The Holy ONE appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on — since you have come to your servant." So they said, "Do as you have said." 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes." 7 Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. 8 Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

9 They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent." 10 Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" 13 The Holy ONE said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' 14 Is anything too wonderful for the GOD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." 15 But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. God said, "Oh yes, you did laugh."

Genesis 21.1-7 1
The Holy ONE dealt with Sarah as was said, and the Holy ONE did for Sarah as was promised. 2 Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me." 7 And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."

Years ago I gave a friend a card to cheer him up; if truth be told, to give him a bit of a kick in the pants. He was one of those folks who approach life with a furrowed brow and a bit of melancholy. Intense, deep feeling. The card said, “Life’s too mysterious. Don’t take it serious!” I don’t remember the picture on the card but with it I gave him one of those toys that is a figure put together on a string with moving limbs. You hold the string coming out of the top of the head and pull the string that is comes down between the legs and then the figure’s arms and legs move up and down as if its dancing. This figure was a vegetable man….he was completely clothed in all kinds of vegetables. Not a serious figure! A laughing one! I wanted my friend to laugh…to know that the deep seriousness of the world was such a deep mystery that in always pondering it with the deep intention of figuring it all out, we sometimes missed the deep joy that was also present in the mystery.

Life’s too mysterious! Don’t take it serious! Can we take this advice in considering the mysterious story we just heard from the book of Genesis, the Book of Beginnings? The mysteries of our own lives, of the world we live in now?

The three visitors in our story are, at first, a mystery. Appearing out of the shimmering desert heat to bring a mysterious message. They remind us of the invocation of the author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Was the writer of Hebrews invoking this story from Genesis? Perhaps. The ancient tradition of Middle Eastern culture is to always show extravagant hospitality in the desert. There it can be a matter of life and death. Does Abraham know upon first glance that these visitors are messengers from the Almighty? That they are actually the Almighty?

We soon learn that their visit is really for the woman behind the tent flap, the wife, Sarah. Whom we never see. We only hear her laugh and her voice. This is Sarah’s first personal encounter with the God her husband has been following all these years. Sarah has been the wife along for the ride. In earlier stories, she is portrayed not only as barren, but also as beautiful. We discover she is very canny. More than once she gets her husband out of a jam, including the times she is willing to be a sexual pawn with a more powerful tribal leader to protect her husband and her family.

The beautiful, but barren, Sarah also takes action after years of God’s promise to make of Abraham’s heirs a great nation. She gives Abraham her maid, Hagar, as a second-tier wife, in keeping with the cultural custom of the time. Hagar gives him a son and heir. Ishmael is born. But you heard how God dealt with that. Ishmael is not the son of promise.

Now God is dealing directly with Sarah. After all these many, many years of infertility she laughs in the face of seemingly miraculous news! If she has always lived under the stigma of being barren, why isn’t she laughing for Joy! Miraculous news! But is it wanted news? I don’t hear joy – yet – in Sarah’s laughter. I hear scoffing – “ A son? Yeah right!” I hear an incredulous laugh – “Oh, now you’re coming through with the promised son after I have suffered all these years!” I hear a laugh that hides rage and tears – “I have come to terms with my barren state! I put that grief behind me. I provided Abraham a son with the Hagar. Do I get any respect here? I should risk having a child in my advanced years….I should risk my life and the child’s? I should risk disappointment again if the pregnancy fails? Do I have a say in anything? Am I just a pawn in this relationship of my husband to his god? A tool used when convenient?” “This really is preposterous!” Sarah laughs and I imagine tears of anger and frustration and grief come down her face.

Laughing into the seriousness of mystery, into the face of God, is not a lark. It is a way to deal when life deals us unexpected hands in its game. Currently the mystery of two pandemics are staring us in the face – Covid-19 and Covid 1619 as one of our African-American UCC clergy colleagues named the long pandemic of racism in America. 1619 being the year that African slaves were first brought to the Jamestown colony in what is now Virginia. We are scrambling to face the mystery of both these pandemics. Mysteries that overwhelm our hearts, our minds and our ability to know what right actions to take. And laughter is probably not the first thing that may come to us as we look their crises simultaneously in the face – unless we laugh with Sarah, in incredulous, scoffing grief and angry frustration. Like Sarah we cannot change what is happening. It feels so tragically surreal.

We do not know, understand, why we are suddenly and mysteriously facing these two crises in our world. Both are born of deep pain and the loss of sacred lives. They are serious. With a pregnancy in old age foretold by a personal announcement from this mysterious God, Sarah had much to think about. It seems she chose to listen to herself, to this God, as the new life stirred within her amidst all the fears and physical discomfort of pregnancy. Would the baby really be born alive and well? It takes faith to be pregnant.

Like Sarah we are invited to “listen” through the pregnant pain of these two pandemics: to the hurt of those who are still dying from Covid-19, the hurt of their families, for those out of work, for businesses closing. We listen to the hurt caused by the disproportionate number of our brothers and sisters of color who have died in this pandemic. We listen to the ache in our bones for the pandemic of deaths caused by racial violence also staring us in the face. This has been a much longer season of pandemic that we have tried to ignore, or smooth over, without going to the root causes of greed and abuse of power. It’s time to defeat this racial pandemic, to heal its deep wounds. And there are actions to take.

But first we listen. To the history of centuries of our brothers’ and sisters’ pain. We listen to follow their lead in the birth of a new life of racial equality and economic balance that will bring justice for all. Just as a woman listens to her pregnant body’s promptings in labor and delivery, to the promptings of the new life within her. We listen and we pray without ceasing as we listen. Every pregnant woman knows the depth of deeply longing prayer for the new life within. And we trust in faith the Holy One’s words…”Is anything too wonderful for God?” Is anything too wonderful for God?

This is the serious mystery we are invited to co-create with, to laugh into, to wrestle and rejoice with…Life is too mysterious not to take serious in its pain and its joy. Too mysterious not to listen to before we jump to fix its pain. Sarah did not laugh with great joy till she held the newborn Yitsak, Isaac, in her arms. His name means “he who laughs.” She gave thanks and rejoiced, “Who knew I would nurse a child in my old age?” Is anything too wonderful for God? May we listen in the struggle of this mysterious pandemic time, may we find the moments of joy in the pain, may we take God’s promise seriously in the mystery of faith. Amen.

©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2020 and beyond. Please do not reprint with out permission.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Genesis 32: 22-31
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado
August 6, 2017
 
Would you pray with me? Wrestling God, as we wrestle with your Word this morning, I pray that the humble words of my mouth and the inspired reflections of all of our collective hearts may be good to your sight… our Rock, our Wrestler, and our Redeemer. Amen.
 
DING DING DING And now Plymouth Congregational Church and the many communities, authors, redactors and editors of the Book of Genesis present in association with the financial sponsorship of your ongoing pledging support and sanctioned by the Society of Biblical Literature and the United Church of Christ and supervised by the night skies of ancient times and the three judges marking the scoring for today’s contest: Biblical hermeneutics, form criticism, and ancient literature, and the referee and time keeper for this event is the moon and the sun. And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the main event of this morning! Let’s get ready to rumble with God!!!
 
In the far corner, wearing the long robe and his brother Esau’s cloak of hair is the undisputed champion of crafty, sly, and creative human infighting. From the ancient land of the nomads comes this many time world sheep hearing champion. In previous fights he has come out on top through the use of manipulation and sneaky moves. Weighing 150 pounds. Ladies and Gentleman… the undisputed human champion of the world, please welcome the son of Isaac and Rebecca, grandson of Abraham himself … Jacob (Yacob)!! [Congregation cheers]
 
In the other corner and really all corners…clothed in light and mystery… nobody has ever seen the face and lived to tell about it… creator of the planets, the earth, all living beings, undefeated, eternal, and all powerful… from the land of Heaven and the stars, the undisputed immortal, invisible champion of the universe and the cosmos and the space beyond imagination…the one… the only…please welcome… Elohim (The Name) God. [Congregation cheers]
 
Now, we want a good, clean fight today… and we wish the best of luck to both contestants. Let’s get ready to rumble with God.
 
And with that, the rumble, the ambush, the wresting or the greatest boxing match of all time and history began (and I don’t mean the famous fight between Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, but the fight on a riverbank between God and Jacob from our lectionary today). This is the story of the greatest wrestling match or boxing contest of all time—one that continues within many of us to this very day. Let us hear the story of this epic fight/ wrestling match/ boxing contest again:  
 
22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children (ufdah), and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. [Whenever you see a river crossing in the Bible it is an important literary trope (big neon sign) meaning narrative change… something brand new is on the other side of the river.]
 
23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. [So Jacob intentionally makes himself vulnerable. As the leader of his tribe, he has many companions to protect him and belongings to defend himself with, but he purposefully enters the night alone, on the side of the river, cut off from all that is safe. Students of theology learn that good church community and relationship with God comes from places of vulnerability/ authenticity NOT safety. Author Belden Lane calls this the solace of fierce landscapes where you are on the edge and forced to wrestle with God and with yourself. Likewise, Church and community is only real and meaningful when true and full venerability are present. So… Jacob makes himself utterly vulnerable…at risk].
 
24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. [I think Genesis 32: 24 is the ultimate example of Biblical understatement. This leaves several key questions—1. Who threw the first punch? Who is the aggressor or initiator? Many scholars like to call this passage, “Ambush by God,” but I think that Jacob threw the first punch. When we fight with God, friends, sometimes it feels like God throws the first punch in the ring and other times… we pick a fight with God, don’t we?
 
25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the man[a] said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,[b] GOD FIGHTER for you have striven with God and with humans,[c] and have prevailed.”
 
29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” [The reason that Jacob wants to know the adversaries’ name is because a name was thought to provide power over the individual. Knowing a name of a God could invoke its power. Jacob, ever crafty tries to obtain the name of God.]
 
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[d] saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” [This is important because in the Ancient Near Eastern tradition of these early Hebrew texts, it was thought that you could not see the face of God and survive to tell the story.] 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
 
God wrestlings on the rivers’ edge of change never leave us unscathed. Rather, we can come away from these boxing matches with the divine quite wounded but also deepened in faith, renamed, recreated, and blessed. Religion is no easy or safe sport.
 
Now, that is what I call a boxing match of Biblical proportions—literally! Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali have nothing on God and Jacob.
 
This boxing match in our lectionary today raises no fewer than four essential theological revelations for us all to remember in our current time of many different river crossings:
 

1. Wresting with God isn’t a default mode. You can and may go through your life without choosing to wrestle. We can choose to avoid it. This is done by surrounding oneself with safe possessions and places, sticking with the pack, and crossing life’s rivers (transitions) without recognizing (naming/ claiming) them for the change-makers they are meant to be. That is the formula for a wrestle-free existence. Jacob seeks it out. Just because you are UCC doesn’t mean you have chosen to wrestle. Sorry to tell you. Being passively progressive Christian is as easy or easier than being passively Evangelical Conservative Christian. Wrestling with God means creating spaces for vulnerability and discomfort in our faith journeys. Wrestling with God is never a default mode, but it may be chosen.
2. It isn’t always God who throws the first punch. The text doesn’t tell us if God ambushed Jacob or if Jacob was hoping for a fight. Sometimes the wrestling is something we need for our faith and we seek it out. Sometimes, God ambushes us and throws our hip out of joint with a sideswipe of the universe leaving us no choice but to RUN from faith or to wrestle with faith. Jacob doesn’t run. We should always choose to wrestle rather than run.
3. There are no winners or losers. Reading our passage today, we don’t ask ourselves, “Who won the fight?” It isn’t clear. Have you ever seen a movie, I am thinking of It’s a Wonderful Life, where someone turns to God and says, okay you win. I’ve had enough? That isn’t how this is supposed to work. This isn’t Bergman’s The Seventh Seal either. We aren’t playing chess with fate trying to destroy us. For in these matches, wrestlings, we MUST remember that God is not our equal ever in any form at any time. God doesn’t want to “win” and doesn’t need to win—according to our narrative today and good theology—God wants you to ask for a blessing to come out of your wrestling. The blessing might mean a new identity, a reminder of the match, or a new attitude as Jacob manifests after this in the story. There are no winners or losers—God just wants the wrestling to bless your life as you cross the next river.

 
So… Plymouth… friends… look at God, feel God’s wrestling tension with you (this religion thing is a tactile, contact sport)! It is not meant to be passive or calm. See God’s face shining with love and desire… and say, even in the hard times, the complex times, the times when you feel ambushed by politics, by spousal conflict, by relationships at work gone wrong, when your kids aren’t doing well, when your parents are ailing or dying… grab hold of God and cry out… “What is your name? What should I call myself now? What is my name, God, now that I am no longer a teacher or a professor or a daughter or a son or whatever other title or identity is passed? Say to God, “I will not let go unless you bless me on the bank of this river I KNOW I need to cross” I will not let go unless you bless me. I will not let go. I will not let go. I will not let go…
 
This account of Jacob wresting with God on the riverbank is one of the most studied portions of the Hebrew Bible and someone with the name Jake coming from Jacob, although my legal name is really just Jake (thanks mom), this means a lot to me today on this one year anniversary of my ordination and installation as your associate minister, on my final Sunday leading worship with Jieun, as Hal leaves on Sabbatical, and as I start a new NGLI young minister program this week that will last for the next ten years.
 
I have spent the last year wrestling with God around this new name I have been given “The Reverend” (reverendus)—a title that carries with it so much responsibility to you and to history meaning “a person to be revered/ and or feared.” That idea alone is a lot to own.
 
A year ago today, you changed my name from Jake to The Reverend Jake Joseph. It was a river crossing, but it is a title I struggle with because how many people with this name that I now carry abused, injured, killed, or supervised/ passively observed the destruction of my LGBTQ ancestors, of women, of minorities, throughout the past 2,000 years? How many? The answer is countless. How many people with this name injured the planet, subjugated nations, killed or are killing gay people to this day in the name of Christ? I told a close friend early after my ordination that when people called me reverend… it was like being called the crypt keeper.
 
Wrestling with God, I have found a way to claim this new name and to use the power and position it affords to flip the expectations and understanding of the meaning and the burden of “The Reverend” on its head. I have found my calling to be redefining, reclaiming, and renaming what The Reverend can mean for authenticity, vulnerability and God Wrestling. Plymouth, this reverend doesn’t have all of the answers, but I believe we are called to all wrestle with the names we are given, to not run from a fight with God, to make Christianity the contact sport with the Divine power in our lives once again… and for all of us to collectively wrestle…not run… but wrestle with Christianity in all of its messiness.
 
Yes, as we stand with a light foothold on the shore of a new river, let us open-up to vulnerability, call God to a good wrestling match, and cry out: “I will not let go unless you bless me, God.”
 
Plymouth, Fort Collins, Christians—LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!! Otherwise, why bother…
 
Amen!

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
June 25, 2017
Genesis 21:8-21
 
Will you join me in prayer? Great and good God who loves us, makes us, and journeys with us, I pray that today I might speak a word of inclusion, peace, and love that is good, pleasing, and right with you—our rainbow, our rock, and our grace-filled Redeemer. Amen.
 
Gerhard and I have discovered the perfect antidote to stress, the cure (yes, the cure, I say) to taking oneself too seriously, the solution to pretension, and a self-care mechanism that I believe could revolutionize ministry and work related stress. At least for me, since I am married to a Venezuelan and trying to learn Spanish, this amazing new thing in my life is the Latin American soap opera genre known, as “telenovelas.” These short, compact, human emotion-filled Spanish-language sitcoms with complicated scenarios and drrrramatic acting remind me that the Sacred can be found in even the most unlikely situational comedy, plot twist, or family drama.
 
These short but powerful shows all are replete with intense close-up shots, catchy theme music, ridiculous over-the-top comedy, intense loss, marriage, death, betrayal, love, hate, also something that appears to be both love and hated at the same, often there is magic or curses, cautionary tales, morals of the story, and hope lots of hope! Additionally, I have noted that almost all of the Telenovelas have a loving and wise (and VERY religious) grandmother character that is actually, at the conclusion, the behind the scenes mastermind of everything! This is proof that God is actually a Venezuelan grandmother! More pointedly and seriously, these short televised stories are shorthand for the wholeness and complexity of the human experience.
 
Now, aside from being a nice way to distress in the evening from the very real stresses and scenarios of ministry and public advocacy in 2017, I have learned a little something about Biblical Studied from watching these shows: The book of Genesis in particular and most of the Bible is best understood when we pretend (while we are reading) that we are acting out a Telenovela Spanish Soap Opera!
 
Yes, when I thought of this comparison, I too thought it was sort of a funny joke to tell to start the sermon and help us relate to this complicated ancient text, but then I remembered that these stories started out as oral tales and community entertainment many thousands of years ago. A quote from Amherst College professor of Religion and scholar of Genesis, Dr. Susan Niditch, from The Women’s Bible Commentary, helps get at this Spanish Soap opera nature of Genesis. She writes, “The group of narrative and genealogical traditions called the book of Genesis describes the origin of the cosmos and its first inhabitants and unfolds the life stories of the earliest ancestors of ancient Israel. To read Genesis is to immerse oneself in the worldview and values of a distant and foreign culture, of a people who believed in a deity, Yahweh God, imagined as parent, river, spirit, traveling man, and warrior, communicating with ancestors through dream visions and waking revelations. To read Genesis is to encounter a people…Theirs is a different world and a different way of imagining and ordering reality from our own; yet they too love spouses and children, resent siblings, mourn the loss of kin, fear and face deprivation in the form of famine and infertility, attempt to take stock of the comprehensible and make sense of the incomprehensible features of their existence.”1 Telenovela!
 
The story of Genesis is a script, the story, the drama, the intrigue, the popular culture account, the soap opera (la telenovela) for ancient people that helps them make sense life. These stories, all of which would have started as oral accounts were part of what gave people context for survival. So… Today, we pick-up the story midway through these very dramatic, scandalous, and strange set of events. We turn on the Biblical TV in the middle of an episode.
 
So let me recap: back in Chapters 15 and 16, Sarah was upset that she couldn’t have children, so she recruited Hagar to be a surrogate. Sarah’s plan worked and Ishmael was born. Problem solved; but then God gets in the way. Then, as Hal preached on last Sunday, we have the story of the strange men showing-up, receiving hospitality, and then suddenly it turns out that the strange men are actually God and God is planning to have Sarah have a baby of her own, although Sarah is very old. Everyone laughs—that is the comic relief of this telenovela of Genesis. Sarah had her own baby named Isaac, and now in today’s episode of this very intense family epoch, Sarah (who was sympathetic in the last episode) now (turns into the villain) as gets rid her family of the former liaison, Hagar, and her offspring Ishmael. She does this by sending them OUT into the loneliness, the isolation, and the dryness of the desert of Beer-sheba to die. See, I told you that the book of Genesis is a soap opera. One minute you are rooting for or crying with a character, and the next second you have to reassess everything! Genesis isn’t the white washed, easy, clear, linear, Creation account that the Conservative Christians want it to be. It is messy, dangerous, hard to understand, entirely entertaining, and not at all ethical Telenovela from many thousands of years ago.
 
June is Pride month for the LGBTQ community. Today’s episode is the Pride Month episode in this Telenovela, because it is a story of God taking the side, as God often does in surprising ways, of the oppressed, the outcast, the one who is not to be heard from or seen again—the character at the margin. According, again to Sharon Niditch, “the God of Genesis, with whom the important value judgment2 lies is partial to marginalized people…”
 
Verses 15-20: 15 When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. 17 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.

18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” 19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
20 God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.”
 
The boy’s name was Ishmael, and his name in Hebrew reflects the miracle of God’s presence, because, “Ishmael” or “Yishma e’‘l” in Hebrew means literally means, “God has heard” or “God listens.”
 
In our soap opera today from a far off time, in a far off land, in a forgotten language, we can still find something Sacred that speaks to us in deeply important ways. Today, what speaks to me in this time of our world where everyone tries to put words in God’s mouth, tries to say “God says” or “The Bible says” or “God never changes” or “God doesn’t like” or “God condemns” or “God hates…” God hates…(It would seem God’s main business these days is hating). In this world where so many claim to speak for a God who hates, today’s episode from Genesis still communicates one simple idea… A God who listens in the midst of the chaos, the family drama, and the political intrigue! Ishmael! Our God is a God who hears rather than condemning or ignoring to death in the desert… or a spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, deeply profound death in closets of falseness and thirst for authentic contact. Ishmael. God hears, God listens…
 
Friends, here at Plymouth this past week I heard the Open and Affirming movement referred to in the past tense… “The Open and Affirming thing was great… but now its time for something new and more exciting.” I have heard this before. How many of you, and please don’t raise your hands, think our work of being an Open and Affirming church or denomination is done now that you have hired two out gay associate ministers in a row and that marriage equality is achieved? From my network, I can tell you that the fear, the anger, the backlash is coming strong… and it is scary. We (we, the LGBTQ community) need you to be diligent, to pay attention, and to continue to learn the complexity of gender and sexual orientations. It isn’t easy and it can be exhausting, and yes the vocabulary is always changing, but this soap opera of a political season we live in isn’t safe for Gerhard, and me for anyone with an L, a G, a B, a T, or a Q in their identity. The church listened, we have moved, but we must keep-up and not give-up.
 
Ishmael… God has heard! Not only has God heard, but the text says that God heard Ishmael where he was… rather than where he was not. God meets us where we are, sisters, brothers, siblings in Christ!
 
God has heard us where we are when we find ourselves in times of discernment for our identities and our relationships. Ishmael!
 
God has heard us where we are if we are gay or lesbian. Ishmael!

God has heard us where we are if we are bisexual. Ishmael!
 
God has heard us where we are if we are queer or transgender. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are liberal or conservative. Ishmael!
​
God has heard us where we are if we are lonely, overwhelmed, hurting, calm, and anxious… Ishmael!
 
God has heard us where we are if we are young or if we are old. We are heard, met, saved, loved, beloved.
 
God hears us and comes to us with solutions, with life, with promise of good things to come no matter who we are or where we are in this Telenoleva we all call life!
 
Here is what to take away from today’s scripture… the Bible is basically a long and complicated Spanish language soap opera—or really it is better and more correctly understood if we think of it that way rather than as a solemn tome from a God who doesn’t give a crap. Additionally, our very Telenovela-like episode today from Genesis is fundamentally about how God meets us in all of our diversity. God is not static, hatred filled, old man in the sky. She is a Venezuelan grandmother! As the ancients attest to, God manifests in many forms, change is part of the nature of God, and so God doesn’t yell at us… rather we have a God who still listens, still accompanies, and celebrates the diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities present at Plymouth and our world.
 
For nobody who wrote Genesis, Leviticus, or any other ancient text would ever claim that God was done hearing us out and negotiating with us for good, for wholeness, and for the arc of the universe that bends towards justice. That wasn’t what God was like in ancient times; we see that clearly in the text. God has always been and will always be unchanging in only God’s unpredictability, free-agent nature, and willingness to listen deeply to us in our lives. Amen.

1. Susan Niditch, “Genesis,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, edit. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 1998), 13.
2. Susan Niditch, “Genesis,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, edit. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 1998), 20.

Hal preaches on ​Genesis 18:1-11.