The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado Mark 1:29-39 Fifth Sunday After Epiphany Will you pray with me this morning, Plymouth? May the words of my mouth (as fully inadequate as they will be) and the meditations and prayers of all of our hearts (as speechless as we are) be good in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there prayed.” Mark Chapter 1, Verse 35 is a moment of absolute stillness, silence, and deep loneliness in the middle of a chapter (a passage of Scripture) filled to the brim with over-activity: healings, expelling of demons, travel, and crowds of endless pressing need. This morning, friends, we are really living in a still very dark morning at the deserted place—and it is exactly where we need to be. It is okay. Today was scheduled to be Jane Anne’s monthly Sunday to preach. I know that, like myself, Jane Anne treasures the opportunities she has to come before you in this pulpit and share a Word of Gospel and grace. All of the words this week of common prayer: The Call to Worship, our hymn selections, the Unison Prayers, and even the sermon title, “Ripples of Healing,” come from my colleague, The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson. She finalized this worship bulletin only hours before indescribable tragedy would touch the Ferguson-Chorpenning household. The loss of a child at any age and for any reason is a source of grief and pain that stays with a parent in some form or another for a lifetime—with a brother, with a stepfather, with stepbrothers. Our work, brothers and sisters/ siblings in Christ, here in this congregation in the days, weeks, years to come is to allow the work of the Holy Spirit through grief and bereavement to flow through us—to be ripples rather than waves of healing. Ripples rather than waves because it requires patience, boundaries, awareness, and finesse. Jane Anne’s original sermon title, which I retained, could not be a more accurate depiction of the way grief and loss process works. I know this from my time as both a hospice and hospital chaplain. Starting from a sudden and unexpected impact on the surface of the waters of life, the process of recovering equilibrium does not come in waves but rather ripples of healing. Continuing with the image of the ripple, we should also remember that ripples continue to exist in the system of the water well after they are no longer visible to the human eye. This will be a long process for both Jane Anne and Hal—one that they will both define in their own way. We will need to wait for them to define their needs. So far, as a congregation, I want to commend you all for understanding the boundaries of space needed. You all have responded with so much love and care, and I know that they feel the ripples of healing your prayers are sending. Likewise, I want to thank the Leadership Council for providing meals for the family. We will let the congregation know if more are needed. I also understand and need to name that for many of you, some have spoken with me and some haven’t and maybe won’t, the ripples of your own healing processes intersect and overlap (magnified) with the ripples of this event. Hal shared with us by email, vulnerably and authentically, that Colin probably took his own life. While brave and hard to say, it helps remove stigma and bring this conversation to the light. I know that for many of you, this has brought up your own grief, fears, loss, guilt, and feelings of helplessness even decades old. The ripples of this event in our church family system have brought up a lot of things for many of you from your own families and histories. I want you to know that even as busy as I will be perceived to be “holding down the fort” in the coming weeks, your pastoral care, the conversations you need to have, the questions this might raise about God always come first for me, for Mark, for Mandy, and our team of pastorally-trained lay people. I want to be as explicit as I possible can be (no vagaries today): do not hesitate to reach out if you need to talk, or process, or grieve. This is true even if the triggering event is 50 or 75 years ago or even happened in your family system a 100 years or more ago. The ripples of healing are a promise from God, we see God’s great power of healing in this passage, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do it alone or that it is easy. This brings me back to our Scripture (good news) even this dark morning: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” The word translated from Greek here in our translation as “a deserted place” is hotly contested in different Christian translations. Other words frequently used in lieu of deserted include: secluded place, solitary place, desolate place, uninhabited, or most interestingly it can be translated as a vulnerable place… a place that is deprived of the protection of others—the rawness, realness, and pain of the human experience. In the early hours of a new day, when it was still very dark and dangerous, Jesus got up and went out alone to a place of vulnerability and there he prayed.” One of my favorite theology books is called Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. In this book, the author and father of son living with disability, Dr. Thomas Reynolds, argues that good theology starts with looking for the places in the Bible and in Systematic Theologies where strength comes from brokenness, wholeness comes from authenticity, where community/ church/ all of this Christianity business really is rooted in one word: Vulnerability. This is entirely counter-cultural and is essential for understanding what a grief process, ripples of healing, means for us now. Christianity is not a normal religion or normal way of living where safety and comfort are the arguable norms. Normal life is life where we suppress pain. In normal life we ignore healing. In normal life we rush bereavement. In normal life, strength is the ultimate virtue, right? In fact, in this book, and I love this and reference it frequently because it is at the core of my belief in Christ, is that normal is a cult. The Cult of Normalcy dictates that we always need to be strong, always need to be progressing, always need to have it all figured out, always need to “get over it fast,” always look happy, healthy, and wise. This normal business isn’t Christian…heck it isn’t even possible. It is a false idol. The Cult of Normalcy. Vulnerability, deserted places, lonely and hard are the source of our faith in a God who accompanied and accompanies all of humanity in the hard parts of life and death. God and Jesus Christ don’t end when things get hard, when we need to be vulnerable with each other, when healing doesn’t even seem remotely possible, but that is where faith starts. In the early hours of a new day, when it was still very dark and dangerous, Jesus got up and went out alone to a place of vulnerability and there prayed.” A couple of closing remarks: I want us to look to the last three words of this fascinating verse: “And There Prayed.” What Hal and Jane Anne shared in vulnerability with you by email, what many of you have since shared with me, what we do by worshiping God (mystery, universe, creator) together, sharing in admitting our own brokenness, admitting that none of us looks anything like normal (AMEN!) is dangerous, risky, and vulnerable. It is, yes, all of these things, but it is never hopeless. In denying the power of normal and embracing the rawness and realness of vulnerability and finally turning to the source of life in prayer (even in the midst of the darkest morning in the scariest places of our souls)—we find hope eternal in a God who will not let us go, a God who accompanied humanity even unto worst. This is the importance of the cross even for progressive churches to understand. God accompanies humanity in even the worst circumstances. While vulnerable in a deserted and lonely place, Jesus was far from alone. And there he prayed. Sometimes, like now, that is all we can do. Grounded in a calling to vulnerable places and spaces of life and death, we together come before God in prayer. There is no normal way to grieve a loss like the loss of a child, but we can come alongside in prayer, in knowing our own vulnerability is a gift that starts the ripples of healing from a core of hope. Deserted (vulnerable) places have no map, no normal, no yelp, no timeline, no Google to tell you how to find them or exactly how long you will need to be there. They just are and need to be. Amen AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
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AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
A reader's theater presentation of the entire Book of Jonah, followed by reflections by Hal.
AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. On this Sunday of Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, it is important for us to take time to reflect on the life and impact of a great leader and visionary. Of course, we remember that MLK was a community organizing, a grassroots coordinator, and a national hero. What we often overlook, however, is that he was The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The Bible and its stories, especially the Old Testament in his tradition, would have been the inspiration for his life and work. Today, we have a story that I am sure MLK knew and lived. The story of Samuel is one of miracles and God in unexpected places and direct communication. Before he was conceived, Samuel’s mother Hannah was found by Eli (the older priest in this story) crying on the steps of the temple begging God for a son. Eli, I am now convinced, must have failed Pastoral Care 101 in seminary because he assumes that Hannah is drunk and tried to send her away rather than help her. Hannah then proves to Eli that she isn’t drunk, and so Eli promises her that she will have a son… so Hannah dedicates her son to God’s service. Soon she gives birth to Samuel, and the minute he is weaned she brings him to the temple and gives him to Eli and the priests to take care of and bring-up. It is paradoxical because she prayed for a son then when she is given a son she gives him away. Let this be a lesson for us that nothing in the Bible is exactly as it seems. This is a reminder that the story we are dealing with today is not from our context or culture or our time. Now, we catch up with Samuel when he is a young boy serving and living in the temple (he only sees his parents when they come for high holidays), and he receives a very usual alarm wake-up call! Some of us have odd alarm clock sounds (mine sounds like a cricket—I am now terrified of the sound of crickets), but this is especially weird. How many of you are woken up at night by God calling your name? Not many of us, right? This is not normal for us, but it is a common theme in Biblical call story narratives of the Old Testament. Our passage today falls into a whole subgenre of Biblical literature called the “Call Story.” This is a genre of Biblical stories that is important to look at when we are talking about how God communicates or doesn’t communicate. While call stories in the Bible often have themes in common, no two are the same. This shows us, even today that each and every individual hears from God differently. Last week, I was in Arizona at an educational intensive for the Next Generation Leadership Initiative (NGLI) of the UCC for “promising young clergy” (don’t ask me why I was invited…I have no idea). The focus for my class this year was on family systems theory, so there was a lot of sharing. All of us had some great stories to tell, and you know what? None of the 16 in my class and 64 total young ministers there had the same story or the same way God communicates with us. Likewise, none of the Biblical call stories is like any other. So today, our job is to see what is unique about Samuel’s story, and then I want us to think about how it applies to our world today. Okay, are you ready? Ready to put our Sherlock Holmes hats on and start the investigation? Because there are three big things about Samuel that we need to pay attention to that are unique to this story and offer us clues to our own lives with the Divine. 1. Notice that God demands a dialogue. The first two times God calls his name, Samuel doesn’t respond to God, and Samuel rather runs to Eli. We can imagine Eli is getting tired of being woken up. Finally, Eli is probably so tired of being woken-up by Samuel that he says, “Go lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.” This is fascinating. God won’t do all of the work when you are called to something. God may still be speaking, as we say in the UCC, but our God does not monologue. God is looking for a conversation, a response, and an action on Samuel’s part. So long as Samuel doesn’t tell God that he is listening, God won’t continue the conversation. God needs dialogue. Question 1: What is God calling you to in your life right now? What is your response to God in your life? Is something keeping you up at night that you are too scared or don’t know how to reply to? What is holding you back? Remember, God is not a God of monologue. You need to say yes or no and engage with these questions rather than sleep through the alarm of God’s voice. 2. Alright, so this brings me to the second thing about Samuel’s call story that is particular to this account. Samuel needs help from an elder and a mentor. Unfortunately for Eli, if you keep reading the account later on, what Samuel has to say once he has listened to God has to do with Eli’s family’s sins. Sometimes the mentor is the one who has something to learn from the student, but I digress. The main point is that Samuel has to have help discerning how to respond to God’s call on his life. Samuel has no shame in waking Eli up not once, not twice, but many times. “Here I am, for you have called me.” The Bible doesn’t say, but maybe this is something Samuel does often! Unlike other call stories in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, Samuel goes to a mentor and an elder for assistance. This is something NGLI clergy are likewise encourages to do: develop mentoring relationships outside of our home church or home conferences to retain perspective. Question #2: Who are some mentors or people outside of your own internal knowledge system, household, or person who you can ask for guidance in the calls or decision making processes ahead? Here is a hint: sometimes mentors are not older than you. In a multigenerational church, advice flows both ways. The second thing we learn from Samuel’s call story is that sometimes we need to ask others for advice, guidance, or insights to learn how to answer God’s call on our hearts that is keeping you up at night? Who do you need to ask for advice from? On the flip side, pay attention to when in life you are called to be Eli—do not be annoyed by the questions, by being woken up at night by the discernment of a friend of mentee. In life in community, we are both Samuel and Eli. 3. Okay now for the strangest and coolest part of this particular story! So first, God is a God who wants or requires a yes from us—a dialogue. Then we see how in the story, the community, the mentors, the wisdom of others is essential to the discernment, and now we come to the best part that makes Samuel’s call unique and relevant for our lives. Verse 10: “Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel, Samuel!” Now the Lord came and stood there. God meets us where we are. God doesn’t give up on your purpose. You are valuable, loved, and followed by God. When Samuel doesn’t respond to simply being called, God tries a new tactic, a different approach for a different call: God comes and stands right by Samuel’s bedside and yells in his ears. “SAMUEL! Wake up!” Question #3: Do you know that God won’t give up on you? Did you know that? I know that. Additionally, each of you is being called, no matter how old or how young (Elis and Samuels alike) to new adventures with the Spirit. I know that. I feel it in my bones, friends. Let me ask it again: Do you know that God won’t give up on you? Let’s pull all of this together. On this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend when we remember one in our own time who was called to something extraordinary, we need to all think about what God is calling us to do in this world. What is our greater purpose for a time such as this? What the call story of Samuel reveals is that God is a God who is looking for a dialogue, a conversation, a two way street and requires your response. God doesn’t want to talk at you. God wants to talk with you. Secondly, mentors, community, elders, and getting advice from other people are good ways to figure out how to respond to God. Don’t be afraid to wake someone else up and alert him or her to your problem even multiple times. You are not in this, this current dilemma, and this Meshuggeneh life alone. Thirdly, and most exciting and unique to this story, know that God doesn’t give up on you and you have a purpose that God is moving through your being and your life. Are you all with me? Let me now in closing take this one step further. A common theme in my preaching is what I see as disconnect between our lives as Mainline Christians (an imagined life that looks a lot like 19th Century Victorian Vermont) and the real life we struggle through on the other hand. The disconnect I see possibly arising here is that you all, like me, might think that God is going to only speak to you when you are on a meditation retreat or sitting in silence, or staring into the actual physical face of a stranger. Here is the reality: What actually is most likely to wake you up at 2 AM? For me, it is a text message from one of you with an emergency or a call. A text from my mom… who wakes up at 5 in the morning and sends inspirational quotes to her adult children. While we like to idealize how God communicates with us, just like we idealize God as having stopped speaking a longtime ago (that would be convenient), I have to tell you that the Divine Deity is more tech savvy than your computer programming grandchildren. While the divine can and does speak to us in voice and in spirit on those yoga retreats or palates pilgrimages, we also find God sightings and marking on text messages from a friend in need, in a Facebook post from a wise friend, or in the emails from a stranger reaching out for help. Look for God in the text messages, in the emails, in the online materials. Our God sightings are no longer limited to face to face. Treat the texts and emails you write with the same care as in-person interactions, for it matters just as much now. It is a brave new world. It is a world in need of new call stories to be told, and I think I know of just the congregation to tell their stories and to bring something new to a time such as this. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, Plymouth, Plymouth! And Plymouth said, “Speak for your servants are listening, reading, following.” We are ready for what God has to say. Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 and Matthew 5:43-48
February 19, 2017; 7th Sunday in Epiphany Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-1819:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. 19:9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God. 19:11 You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 19:12 And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD. 19:13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. 19:14 You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. 19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. Matthew 5:43-485:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 5:44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 5:45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 5:47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 5:48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. I am reading The (Un)Common Good; How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided by Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners community in Washington DC, a Christian community dedicated to living out the gospel together in social justice. Wallis tells the story of Mary Glover. Mary was a cook in a day-care center in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC where Sojourners was located in their early days. Only twenty blocks from the White House, Columbia Heights was at that time one of the poorest and most violent areas of DC filled with people considered pejoratively by society to be the “least of these.” But we know how Jesus considered the marginalized, those who are poor, hungry, without shelter, sick, in prison. They were his beloveds and part of his family. Mary Glover, who was poor herself, was one of the consistent volunteers in Sojourners grocery give away every Saturday morning to help poor families make it through weekend. She was the designated pray-er, because given her Pentecostal roots, she was the best pray-er in the group. Every Saturday before Sojourners opened their doors to the 200 families that lined up at the door and around the block to receive the free groceries, Mary prayed. Wallis confesses that he got up almost every Sat just to hear Mary pray. “We would hold hands, and Mary would thank the Lord for waking us up that morning and that we were all still alive: “Thank you Lord for another day! That the walls of our rooms were not the walls of our graves! And our beds were not our coolin’ boards!” Then Mary always ended her prayer by saying, “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.” For me Mary Glover in this story is an embodiment of the instructions we hear in our texts from Leviticus and Matthew today. Instructions to be “holy” and “perfect” as God is “holy” and “perfect": “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. “ “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” How many of you think of yourself as holy or perfect? Go ahead, raise your hand! Yea....me too. Not many of us would say we are perfect. Though we may drive ourselves and our loved ones nuts trying to be perfect...without fault...without mistake or blemish. And that word “holy” has real difficulties for us....because we associate it with arrogance...”holier than thou.” The Hebrew word used in Leviticus for holy, qadosh, does not primarily mean pure or sanctified. It means “set apart.” God says to the people of Israel, “You are set apart as my people for my work.” And in being set apart, God invited them, and invites us today, into a very intimate relationship of holiness. “Be holy, as I am holy.” The people of Israel knew from Genesis that they were made in God’s image. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery and oppression. They knew they were God’s people created to love the God with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. “Be holy, as I am holy.” This is a relationship of trust and accountability. As God’s people they were and we are accountable for:
And if these sound a bit similar to the Ten Commandments....that is the writer of Leviticus’ intention! Jesus was steeped in the knowledge of the people of God that we discover in Leviticus. Remember the Torah, the prophets and the psalms were his Bible. He knows the deeper meaning of qadosh, fo being God’s holy people set apart for God’s work. Throughout collection of teaching we call the Sermon on the Mount, he tells the crowds on the mountainside that they are God’s people. They are in an intimate relationship of trust with God. This is not entirely new information to them. Yet Jesus is reinterpreting the law of the Torah in light of the times they were living in, times of oppression of the people of Israel by the Romans. He tells them as God’s people here is how you are accountable to God in this intimate relationship. “Love even your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In New Testament Greek the word translated as “perfect”, teleios, does not mean “without fault or mistakes”. It means be “healthy, whole, mature, complete.” Jesus gives his commandments to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors in the context of an intimate, growing, healthy, maturing relationship of wholeness with God. I am privileged, humbled and challenged to be serving a community such as Plymouth who already strives to be holy and perfect. We strive to take seriously our intimate relationship with God that propels us to be holy and perfect in relationship to God and to one another, and to the strangers, and the “least of these” that Jesus loves. John Wimberly, the consultant with us last week, described our congregation as one of the healthiest that he has work with as a community in relationship to one another and to God. He observed that it is in Plymouth’s DNA as a community to do hands on work for God’s kingdom. And I would add to accept the challenges of our texts today. Taking the Leviticus text and its list....Let us continue to ask ourselves how do we use only what we truly need from the work of our hands and apportion some of the harvest for those less fortunate? Can people glean in our fields? How do we deal justly with all people no matter their economic status? How do we love your neighbor as yourselves through our actions and through extravagant welcome? Let us continue to ask ourselves, where can we reach out in genuine love to our enemies?” Do we have “enemies” as individuals, as a community? Here’s the thing about enemies, we may still not like them....but we have to ask how we find a way to love them as our neighbors, as we love ourselves? What does that love look like? Respect? No slander? Honesty? Can we pray for those that we vehemently disagree with? Not that they change their minds to think like us! But pray for their highest and best as children of God. And leave them as much without judgment as we can in God’s hands for God to guide their hearts and minds. We will never to do any of this without mistakes. We will forget at times in the frustrating details and logistics of our life together and our work for God’s realm that God has calls us into intimate relationship and think we have to do everything by ourselves. But that’s the thing about God...the thing about God we know in Jesus the Christ....God keeps coming back over and over offering us God’s love and justice, mercy, grace and presence. The words of scripture today are words to live by in our troubled times. Yet they boil down to more than following a list of commandments. Being holy, set apart for God’s work, loving our neighbor as our self, and striving to be perfect, to live into wholeness and maturity because we belong to God boils down to the prayer of Mary Glover. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.” Look around you this week. Look for God’s “least of these.” Look for those who may seem to be your enemy. Look in all the lines your encounter as Mary did in free groceries line. Look for the stranger, the marginalized, the ones who seem so different from you in values and lifestyle that you think you could never be in relationship with them. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through the lines of our lives this week; keep us accountable to you in holiness and wholeness; help us to treat you well.” Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, Associate, Minister, is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. She is also the writer of sermon-stories.com, a lectionary-based story-commentary series. Learn more about Jane Ann here.
Hal preaches on Deuteronomy 30:15-20.
AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado February 5, 2017 Matthew 5:13- 20 * I love teaching the new members’ classes with Hal and Jane Anne because they always help remind me what this work is all about and how special our approach to ministry is at Plymouth. I was reminded this week about what covenant and church means here in the UCC. In the UCC, we covenant to journey together, but do not promise to always agree. Today, I am preaching a sermon that came to me from my discernment with the Holy Spirit. You do not have to agree with me, but I pray that you will listen and find what rings true for your heart. Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the prophesies, visions, awakening of our hearts be good, complete, and new in your sight, O God, our rock and our alarm clock. Amen. The time for complacency is past. The days of blissful ignorance are long gone. The Church’s long and comfortable slumber in the satin sheets and down, feather-filled bedspreads are coming to the dawn of a new day. The comfort found with the mattresses of padded endowments, pillows of unquestioned cultural dominance, and blind sleepwalking through superficial, easy acts of charity are finished. The harsh sound of the alarm clock of God’s call for ethical speech, awakening to a need for virtuous leadership, and prophecy has now rung for the Church. Can you hear it? God’s alarm clock rings loud clear in all of our hearts this morning. Don’t you hear God’s call for action sounding in your soul? It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We might well believe this is the first time God has sounded this great awakening alarm. As Congregationalists, however, this is our legacy and our heritage. Awakenings are our business in the UCC. While we no longer espouse the retrograde theology of the time, we in the United Church of Christ are the direct inheritors of the First Great Awakening that began in Northampton, Massachusetts in the church led by Jonathan Edwards. He was the author of the famous, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” How many of you remember reading this gem in school? The UCC has come a long way since that sermon title, hasn’t it? While today the words of Jonathan Edwards strike us as conservative and awkward, we must recognize that it was revolutionary and even progressive in 1741 when it was written! Edwards was the leader of the Congregationalist “New Lights” or reformers who sought to revive a faith in God’s grace and in active belief. The “Old Lights,” on the other hand, were the Congregationalists who had become more of a complacent political institution running the affairs of small towns in New England than a church of faith and action. They wanted nothing to do with passionate belief. The Old Lights despised Edwards and his First Great Awakening followers’ passion, penchant for grace, outspoken nature, and they preferred that the church go back to sleep as a pacified and placated institution of polished pews and polite picnics. Now, Edwards was very concerned with what he called the “wrath” of God. There is an ugly English word: Wrath. It isn’t even fun to say. This makes me wonder, as progressive Christians today, being woken from our sleep, can we handle our claim on the wrath of God? There is no doubt that God’s anger is Biblical. Even Jesus demonstrates wrath in the temple at those abusing the system by turning over tables in a rage. This is a word that, for many of us including me, brings up what I call Evangelical Church-PTSD from our youths in more conservative and less loving places than Plymouth. The wrath of God is tough to embrace. So how can we re-appropriate and reclaim God’s anger as a righteous and holy wrath? Can we reclaim the legacy of our direct ancestors Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening for a new time and a new need? Why is God waking us up now and calling us all back to the real work of the church? Today, as progressive Christians, we associate the word “wrath” as meaning a hateful or a conservative God, right? The word wrath actually just means “extreme anger” or “vexation.” We must, sisters and brothers, believe that God is capable of extreme anger if we also believe that God is a God of social justice and radical transformation. In the words of our ancestor of Congregationalist faith, Jonathan Edwards, “You had need to consider yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of Sleep; you cannot bear the Fierceness and Wrath of the infinite God…Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come…Let everyone fly out…”[i] Regardless of party affiliation, if we believe that lying and making up fake facts makes God angry, then we must know of God’s wrath. We must reclaim virtue and ethics. If nobody else is going to claim that lying is wrong, then it has to be us. Lying is just as wrong for progressive Christians as anyone. Deceit is no virtue, Amen? If we believe that neglecting the poor of the earth, marginalization the other, and making the poor and hopeless poorer and more hopeless for our own enrichment, wealth, power, and money makes God angry, then we know of God’s wrath. If America First means that everyone else goes last, then God has wrath in store for us. If we believe that belittling others, mocking the weak, discrediting the educated, insulting the hopeless, undermining world peace, or promoting or protecting hatred is a sin (falling short of what God hopes for us), then we must know of God’s wrath. Yes, I said sin. If we believe that discriminating against the LGBTQ community is wrong and enabling the hateful and violent, then we know of God’s wrath. If we believe from the depths of our hearts, our faith, and our theology (belief in the nature and fact of God’s very existence) that fundamentally… sexism, the objectification, abuse, unequal pay, and double standards for women is fundamentally a cultural sin, then you know in your heart what wrath means. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when your spouse, sister, or mother is passed over for a promotion. If we believe that abusive reverse mortgages, predatory scams and financial schemes, rampant elder abuse, underfunded and understaffed nursing homes for those who cannot afford private pay, and disrespect for our elders and elderly is a cultural sin, then you know the wrath of God. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when you cannot get proper care for your parent or sibling. If we believe that having ethics matters and that creating alternative ethics that makes everything okay is wrong, then you feel the core of the wrath of God. If we believe that outlawing immigrants, dehumanizing other religions, rejecting the refugee, and building walls between God’s children based on race and language is a sin, then we know the wrath of God. Maybe we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God anyway for our slumber and complacency. This is not however a time to blame, but it is a time to waken the sleeping Church. That choked up feeling, fear, anger we feel in our guts as all that is good and right and Scared in the world is put at risk is God’s alarm clock inside of us. We feel God’s wrath and it is Holy. As your minster for pastoral care and outreach and mission, these two job responsibilities often merge as these cultural sins cause our own members’ pain. As inadequate healthcare, mental health support, elder abuse, and immigration worries bring us and you to tears, my call here to care for your outreach work and your spiritual care merge. Usually I preach pastoral sermons about the love of God, the peace of God, the acceptance of God through Jesus Christ, but today (While all of that remains true… truer than ever…and my next sermon will probably be again about loving our enemies and I might could even sing again in my next sermon…), I am called by my ordination vow to help us reclaim and awaken to the wrath we know in our hearts comes from God. Wrath is, after all, extreme and Holy, DIVINE vexation, frustration, and anger. If I don’t preach this today, then I am not worthy of the title of The Reverend Jake Joseph. If I don’t speak the truth, take away this title. New Lights, Christians, Church, Friends, Leaders of the Great Awakening… of 2017, today we start here in Fort Collins, Colorado… like what was started in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1730, but this will be the First Progressive Great Awakening. “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to the father.” Salty Christians, what does that mean? Historically, in the text, it means those with a unique flavor who are effective at their mission of preserving and transforming. I especially love this passage because of what else salty means as an adjective in modern English parlance. To be salty means to be irritated and irked… vexed! This is what our scripture is calling from us today! We must harness the wrath of God for the good of the word in order to lead. Other branches of Christianity have given-up their saltiness or capitulated to power, and have therefore given-up their claim on Christ’s message and hidden their flame. Others have decided that Christianity is simply a vehicle for political oppression of the weak and powerless. We are called to be salty, flaming Christians! We must again be new lights in a world of darkness, newly awakened as others are now going or being put to sleep. Now, since we are already talking about progressive Christian wrath and cultural sin, why don’t I also say a word about what Progressive Christian temptation looks like? I mean, might as well go all in! This very likely is a once in a career type sermon. The first temptation I call, “The Snooze button.” I mean, who doesn’t like to go back to sleep? When confronted with a Great Awakening of God, who wouldn’t instinctively hit the snooze button!? I confess that I LOVE the snooze button on my phone alarm. We see this in effect in the Bible with Jonah and his reluctance as a prophet, Paul before his conversation when he was Saul, and even with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (take this cup). SNOOZE! God, can’t we just hit Snooze for another decade or millennia? Can’t we just hot the snooze for the next four years? The first instinct is to ignore the fierce urgency of now, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and LBJ called it. That is a grave temptation. The second temptation I call, “The roll over and pass the buck.” The other temptation, and I can attest to this and am also guilty of it, is when the alarm goes off, you roll over in bed and tell your spouse or partner, “hey honey [yawn] go let the dog out.” Then you pass back out. “Hey honey, go get the kids ready for school.” “Hey honey, go attend to the issue I don’t want to deal with right now,” and I am going to hit the snooze button for a while. Amen? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Does this sound like anyone’s spouse or loved one? This is the temptation, when you see an announcement about a march for social justice or have an idea for action that must be taken (when God sends you an alarm), you email Betsy or me from the Outreach and Mission Board and write with lots of exclamation marks, “Somebody should be doing something about this!!!! The church should organize this march!!! I am indignant that you are not leading this charge!” I have been getting around five ten of these emails a day from you and they all center on the phase, “someone else should, but I am too busy to take any leadership right now.” You should be doing something about this. If I turned all of my attention to organizing all of the marches for you, you would have no pastoral care or communications or sermons from me. So when the alarm goes off, don’t pass the responsibility, but take action and provide leadership. An email to the board or me is a good start, and please keep emailing us, but it is sort of the “roll over and pass the buck” and go back to sleep response to God’s wake-up call. Plymouth, we are called to be new lights once again. The alarm of grace and action that stirred so many years ago is sounding again. We are called to this time for waking-up. We are called to this time of being salty, whole and H.O.LY. irritated Christians for God. It is time for the to waken from our sleep, risk losing our endowment mattresses and our pillows of peace, and our blankets of blandness. The buck stops here. We cannot roll over and say that this morning task is someone else’s responsibility. We cannot hit the snooze button. We are the leaders we have been waiting for and that God, Jesus Christ, the universe has been looking for. It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We are the New Lights for a new time. Shine on. Amen. © 2017 Jake Joseph, all rights reserved. Please contact jake@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit use [i] Jonathan Edwards. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
Hal preaches on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-12.
AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
Matthew 4.12-22
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado January 22, 2017 There is a saying common to the mission of preachers and journalists: We are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I hope that in today’s sermon, there will be moments of comfort and moments when you will sense challenge …if not affliction. We hear about the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry today: he has already been a follower of John and been baptized by him in the Jordan; he has returned from 40 days in the wilderness being tested by the evil one, and now it is his turn to launch his own message and program. (Dare I say that it was Jesus’ inaugural agenda?) One of the first thing Jesus proclaims employs one of my least favorite words in the English translation of the Bible. It’s a word that you would likely hear on the lips of Jimmy Swaggart or other televangelists: REPENT! Now, while I have all kinds of negative associations with that English word (and perhaps some of you do, too), the word used in the Greek New Testament is one of my favorites. It is the same word translated as REPENT, but it has different connotations and shades of meaning. The Greek word is metanoia — meta (as in metamorphosis) means to change, and nous/noia has to do with your way of thinking and being (as in paranoia…well, bad example, but you get the picture). Metanoia means to bring about a radical shift – a transformation — which is absolutely central to vital, living Christianity. It’s kind of a heart-and-mind transplant, as Paul wrote, “Let the same mind (nous/noia) be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” [1 Phil. 2.5] You all remember Plymouth’s mission statement: “It is our mission to worship God and to help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people individually and collectively.” We do this by “inviting, transforming, and sending.” That second step — transforming — is what metanoia is all about. We have to be willing to shift our thinking and our way of living to transform ourselves when our faith demands it. We need to be able to part with some of our old, comfortable patterns and live into new ways of being and doing. Why? Why do we need to transform ourselves if we’re already doing pretty well and we’re at least okay, flawed people? Jesus tells us the WHY of transformation: BECAUSE God’s realm or kingdom has come near. (Jesus goes even further in Luke’s gospel, saying that the kingdom of God is not simply NEAR…it’s HERE…among us!) This kingdom is not like the empires of this world, which seek power over, domination of the many by the few, winner take all, and privilege for the elite. In the coming weeks, through his Sermon on the Mount, you will hear Jesus tell what the kingdom is all about: hungering for justice and righteousness, blessing the poor, and working to become peacemakers. Wait a minute… the poor? … working for justice? … peacemaking? That may not be the priority (or the rhetoric) of the new administration, but is it God’s priority. It isn’t about Republicans or Democrats…it’s far more basic than that. On a fundamental level, it’s not about what is advantageous to any one of us, but rather what is congruent with the teachings of Jesus…the historical Jesus….the human being who was born, grew up, taught, led, prayed, and was executed in the first century. It is a lot easier for any one of us to know what Jesus said than it is for us to DO what Jesus DID…and both are integral to the Christian journey. None of us gets it right, but what we are about in the church is to work toward that goal — to aim toward God’s realm and to be God’s co-creators of it. I have been told recently by some of our members that it feels so good to be with folks at Plymouth. And I think part of that is that we attempt to live by love for one another…we don’t always make it, but we try together. And that isn’t something you necessarily find in other organizations, whether in justice work, nonprofit work, schools, or some churches. The UCC’s tagline speaks volumes: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” Democrats and Republicans and Independents: ALL WELCOME HERE! Gay, straight, bi, lesbian, questioning…ALL WELCOME HERE! Male, female, trans…ALL WELCOME HERE! Old, young, in between…ALL WELCOME HERE! Introverted and extroverted; Republican, Democrat, and Independent; physical and cerebral; able-bodied and people with disabilities; doubters and believers; black, white and all shades in between…ALL WELCOME HERE! And the issue is that there are people in Fort Collins…right there at CSU…who have no idea that a church like Plymouth even exists. Lots of folks don’t know that a congregation that actively welcomes spiritual exploration in community can be found right here. After all, our name sounds like other churches…our building looks like other churches…how on earth can they be expected to know that we are different? progressive? welcoming? wondering? Let me show you a 90-second video released last week by the UCC… can you imagine any other denomination doing this? [VIDEO] Jesus has called YOU from your nets to become fishers of women and men — even if that seems scary to you. It’s time to shift our way of thinking and acting on this, because our community…our nation…God’s world needs to have the gift of Plymouth spread wider. So, summon up the courage to invite someone to Plymouth…it is not going to happen automatically without your participation, and “somebody else” at Plymouth is not going to do it for you. For many of us, this is the challenging part: We need to be open to transforming our hearts and minds — to be open to metanoia — if we are going to do this. We have to leave some of our reticence, our shyness, our pride at the doorstep if we want to share the gift of progressive faith at Plymouth. You clergy cannot do this alone. We have a gift to share — we are a challenging, talented, motivated group of people who want to explore their faith, and we have a God whose steadfast love for humanity is palpable. We are a congregation where you can bring your heart and your mind to church, where we work together for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation — not as an add-on program, but as an essential part of our ministry and mission. So, I challenge you, each of you, to think about the gift of Plymouth (whether its education or fellowship or worship or justice work). Think about it…maybe even be grateful for it! And then invite a friend, coworker, or neighbor who might appreciate you sharing that gift. It’s an invitation…but it could be one that makes a world of difference in someone’s life. Now, more than ever, the role of the progressive church is critical. Our witness is essential, our fellowship is sustaining, our worship challenges us and builds us up. Jesus challenges each of us to leave behind “business as usual,” whether that is fishing nets or the routine of your life today. He has called you to be fishers of women and men. Amen. © 2017 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal.
1 John 4:7-21
January 15, 2017 Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson 1 John 4: 7-21 7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that [God] loved us and sent [God’s] Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and [God’s] love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in [God] and [God] in us, because [God] has given us of [God’s] Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent [the] Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as [God] is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because [God] first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from [God] is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (NRSV) “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;” or as I learned it as a child in the King James version…perfect love casteth out all fear. I know I heard this scripture quoted in sermons while I was growing up. Never thought much about it. Until I was on to preach on this text for MLK Sunday in 2008. I had just encountered a popular cultural sentiment of the time. “Fear is the opposite of Love…not Hate, Fear is the opposite of Love.” ....And in that context I heard the words anew, “perfect love casts out all fear…” The letters of First, Second and Third John were written out of the same community of first century believers as the Gospel of John and Revelation. During the last ten to twenty years of the first century, this little community of Jewish Christians were being persecuted and oppressed by their fellow Jews. Their exuberant faith in the Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah was getting them into trouble. They were literally being thrown out of their synagogues because of their belief in God’s new revelation through Jesus. They had reason to live in fear yet they had experienced the Living God through the stories and teachings of Jesus and of his life, death and resurrection. And this set their lives on fire with God’s love even in the midst of fear, persecution and oppression. I ask myself and you today, “Have you ever been in trouble for your faith? Persecuted, oppressed, fearful because you were on fire with the love of God?” We celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this weekend. I believe today would be his actual 88th birthday. He was on fire with God’s love as he led the Civil Rights Movement in its struggle against the on-going persecution and oppression of the African American people. He kept this fire and passion going because of his own relationship with the Living God through the life and teachings and person of Jesus the Christ. The writing of the first century community of 1 John can sound a bit narrow....only one way to God through Christ...to our pluralistic, twenty-first century ears. As a scholar, King had studied comparative religions. He knew the heart of the Christian gospel and understood the heart of all the great religions of the world. And he believed deep in his heart that God’s Biggest and most transformative and political Word was Love. “God is love “said the writer of 1 John. “Love is the key to the world’s problems,” said Dr. King.i It is easy to nod our heads and smile and feel warm making these lovely statements about Love here in this warm sanctuary, with friends and family around, hopefully friendly faces if you are visiting. We all had the opportunity for breakfast this morning. Lunch is waiting at home or at the restaurant of our choice. We’ll go home, watch football, read a book, take a nap, be with our loved ones. It’s easy in this context to say “God is love” and “Love is the key to the world’s problems.” But then we throw in the part about loving our brothers and sisters…that makes things harder…because sometimes our brothers and sisters do not seem so loveable. They are different from us…in culture, values, religion, skin color, sexual orientation, political persuasion, economic status. And even in the “enlightened” 21st century we are taught to fear “different.” And what happens when the people we do love, those who are not so different from us, act unloving toward us, refuse our attempts at love? Have very different political convictions? Either way, suddenly we are afraid…we are afraid we will get hurt, physically or emotionally, … its those other people, those “ acting differently people” who are the problem! They are the real challenge to saying “God is Love” and “Love is the key to the problems of the world.” If we could just fix them…Love would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Or does the issue goes deeper… “God is love. We love because [God] first loved us,” says the writer of 1 John. Do we believe that God really loves us, really loves humankind, or that God is just has a sort of disinterested and indifferent, aloof, concern for the welfare of creation and humanity that God set in motion, some senile benevolent benefactor who drowsily hopes that all is going well for us? What if with that crusty, old Christian apologetics scholar, C.S. Lewis, we recognized and internalized that God loves us “with the consuming fire, [of] [God’s Self,] Himself and [Herself], [God is] the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’ love for [her] work, and despotic as a man’s love for his dog, provident and venerable as the father’s [or mother’s] love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between [two lovers].” ii We cannot woo God with good behavior, righteous social justice action or right answers into loving us! Because God is the wooer in this love affair called Life! God is love. We love because [God] first loved us. God’s Love is free and abundant and available before we even think to ask for it! This is the ultimate Christian message, the Big Word of God, the message in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, that we are being called to share. We are at a pivotal moment in our country. You know that and I know that. Fear is looming large in many of us. Anger is looming large in many of us. God’s Big Word of Love is once again a political word. It never ceased to be. It demanded the entire life of Jesus and of Martin Luther King, Jr. And for them even unto death. It now demands our lives, my friends. We are called to the transformative work of God’s love, to its non-violent resistance of fear and racism and bigotry and oppression. We are being called beyond ourselves to stand up and work in the name of God’s Big Word of Love for human rights in issues of healthcare for all, immigration, economic and ecological justice. And we are being called to Love, to pray for, those who seem so different from us across political lines in the midst of our work. For they, too, are God’s beloveds. “God’s perfect love casts out all fear,” says the writer of I John 4. “Love is the key to the world’s problems,” said Dr. King as he addressed a group called “Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam” in his speech, “Beyond Vietnam” in Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967. Just a year to the very day before his untimely death, on April 4, 1968. In this speech he laid out why a civil rights activist is also a peace activist. He shows how the war in Vietnam was not just a travesty in and of itself, but also a war on the 1960’s American War on Poverty. He rallied the people of this country to with a cry to revolution that is relevant for our times. “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain. ... This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all ... . When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: ‘Let us love one another; for love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that loves not does not know God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwells in us, and [God’s} love is perfected in us.’"iii God’s perfect love casts out all fear. Dr. King and the ancient community of 1 John were both consumed with the fiery passion of God’s love. Let us hope and work with them so that Love will become the order of the day in our fear-filled times. Amen. i http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html, from the speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a meeting of “Clergy and Laity Concerned” in Riverside Church, New York City, New York, April 4, 1967. ii A Year With C.S. Lewis; Daily Readings from His Classic Works, ed. Patricia S. Klein, “January 12, Amazing Love, How Can It Be?” from The Problem of Pain, p 14, New York: HarperSanFransico, c2003. iii http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html AuthorThe Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, Associate, Minister, is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. She is also the writer of sermon-stories.com, a lectionary-based story-commentary series. Learn more about Jane Ann here. |
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