Luke 19:28-40
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war-horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zech. 9.9-10)

Those words come from the prophet Zechariah, written roughly 20 years after the Judean exiles started returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, which had been destroyed by the Babylonian army. It is from this prophecy that the author of Luke’s gospel tells us about Jesus and his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. The vision you heard in the prophecy — a king, humble and riding on a donkey, breaking the tools of war (chariots, war horses, bows), commanding peace to the nations, and with a reign of peace that extends to the end of the earth — this is an important reference to how the early Christian community thought of Jesus. This nonviolent, peaceful realm is an important vision of who Jesus was and what he came to do. It is entirely congruent with his proclamation of a new liberating reign. It just didn’t happen the way most people in Judea thought it was going to happen.
​
We know the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem before Passover and being welcomed with cloaks thrown down on his way and with palm fronds waving (at least according to Mark and Matthew). Basically, Jesus is getting a royal welcome, but mounted on a donkey and not on a war horse, like those ridden by Roman troops streaming into Jerusalem to quell any potential unrest during the Passover pilgrimage into the city at the same time.

Do you see and hear the irony of it all? This is meant to be a king, but he isn’t clothed in royal regalia. He isn’t powerful in the sense that Caesar, Pilate, and Herod are powerful. He is propertyless. He is a pacifist. He upsets the conventions of the religious authorities of his day. And he certainly isn’t what the people of Judea expected from a messiah. They wanted a military leader who would come in and kick Rome back to Italy and out of the Judean homeland. And instead, they got a prophet who healed people, lived in poverty, and talked about God’s reign of shalom, rather than a workaday Mediterranean empire bent on taking other peoples’ land.

We have the advantage of knowing how the story unfolds. We Christians have been telling this story for nearly 2,000 years. But the people in occupied Jerusalem and the first followers of this Mediterranean peasant, Jesus, had no idea how things were going to work out or what lay in store in the next week. We know that Jesus would be welcomed like a king on Palm Sunday, overturn the tables in the Temple, eat a Passover meal with his disciples, experience betrayal, arrest, a sham trial, flogging, and meet the ignominious end of torture on the cross. 

This is an insane week that rolls from triumph to tragedy and then back to the triumph of Easter. It’s not just a roller coaster, it’s an out-of-control ride on the Crazy Train. (In 25 years of preaching that is my first reference to an Ozzy Osbourne song…and it’s probably my last reference as well.)

Personally, I don’t really like being in the midst of emotional drama. Both of my sons were in theater growing up, and I told them to keep the drama on the stage and not at home. But this last week of Jesus’ life is insanely dramatic. And if you just come to church on Palm Sunday and Easter you only get to experience the high points, and it must seem as if everything is rosy for Jesus. We skip right from the triumphal entry to the empty tomb…it’s all the good news with none of the shadow of death and desertion. It’s what happens between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday that makes is all real, but none of us likes to face tragedy, do we? Perhaps we’d rather not have to deal with the messy feelings of Judas’s kiss or Jesus being relentlessly beaten or nailed us in the most humiliating public torture Rome could invent. 

What is lurking in the shadows of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday? Is it our own fear of death? Is it feeling the depths of despair for Jesus, whom we love and follow?

All of us know the story, we know what happens. But what if we choose to avert our eyes and look the other way? What if we just can’t take the tragedy this year, after two of the most bizarre and draining years in our lives? It’s understandable.

​One of the ways we learn how to deal with tragedy in our own lives is by experiencing it partially during Holy Week. Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. At some point, people may have thought we were wonderful and then turned their backs on us when the going gets tough. We may have had the experience of sitting around a dinner table with dear friends and family and then later having one of them betray us. We may have had to make choices that involve self-sacrifice, when we willingly put the good of others before our own self-interest. And we, all of us, are going to reach the end of our lives. As one of our members said to me, years ago, “None of us makes it out alive.” Death is a reality that all of us will experience. This is all very tough stuff to deal with, isn’t it?

Because of his own experiences of tragedy, Jesus shares some incredible lessons us during Holy Week for how we live our own lives. But you don’t get the lessons if you gloss over the shadows of Holy Week, skipping from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Having gone through it completely, Jesus provides the model for how we deal with the great disappointments and tragedies of our lives.

Mother Theresa had a poem pasted on the wall of her orphanage in Calcutta, and I wonder how Jesus would have heard it after Palm Sunday and how we might hear it today: “People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” 

You and I are living through difficult times. Pandemic, economic uncertainty, war in Ukraine, systemic racism, dismantling white privilege, the prospect of climate-change devastation. It can be too much to take in, especially if we have the TV news on in the background all the time. (I can’t even listen to NPR in the background anymore.) There are some things we can do beyond quieting the 24-hour news cycle. We can do even more unplugging. Read the news on your own time at your own pace, so that if it gets too overwhelming you can slow down or come back to it later. We have choices about how much TV and online time we spend. We can limit OUR screen time as well as our children’s!

The other thing we can do is to rest in the knowledge that God isn’t going to let us fall into oblivion. Yes, there is tragedy in this world. Yes, there is war, devastation, hatred, and injustice. God is in the thick of it with us. Yes, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are real. And God stands with us on the side of compassion. God will be with us even as we die and even in life beyond death, whatever that looks like.

Nobody said life was going to be easy. It’s not. But God does promise to be there with us every step of the way. Under the palm branches and even up to the cross. 

Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
​
Amen.

© 2022 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

1 Corinthians 8:1b-3
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

Today our scripture text is quite short. It comes from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. He is responding some tangible issues in the young church that is made up of Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor. It seems there is a debate over whether it spiritually harmful to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols when you visit someone’s house. Paul speaks specifically to the wealthier Gentile Corinthians who feel they have enough excellent spiritual knowledge be able to eat this meat when hosted by pagan friends and not fall back into pagan practices. He bypasses the whole tussle saying, “Your knowledge that this meat won’t hurt you because the idols are false gods that do not exist and you know the One God revealed in Jesus the Christ, is correct and not the point. The point is, will your practices influence those who have been Christ followers a shorter time than you and lead them back into pagan practices? How will your “superior” knowledge affect and shape the community?” Paul says to them that the beloved community, its unity and spiritual nourishment is more important that any special spiritual knowledge that any of us might have. We are all called to love the One God, the real God revealed in the love of Jesus the Christ. Hear this brief text with me. 

1 Corinthians 8:1b-3:
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God. [1]

And again:
We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.

For the Word of God in scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us …. Thanks Be To God!
 
Do you love God? What does it mean to love God? Do you believe/understand you are known by God? I wrestle with these questions. I share some of my wrestling with you today.

The piece of Gareth Higgin’s book, How Not To Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, that stunned me, took my breath away, comes from the chapter in the book titled, “The Fear Of Being Alone.” After telling a childhood story of being lost on a bike ride with his father, not knowing which turn to make to find his dad and feeling quite alone, Gareth writes, “ … true knowing is a two-way street between us and the divine (or higher power, or universe, or God, or whatever may be the best synonym for Love.) The way to overcome the fear of being alone is to find friendship with God and with yourself. Knowing isn’t as valuable or life-giving as being known. Being known is not something to be achieved but experienced.” [2]

Is Gareth echoing Paul here, knowingly or unknowingly? Paul wrote, “If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.” Knowing is something we seek to achieve. And well we should in many circumstances. Being known, however, … Loving … that is to be experienced, isn’t it?
 
I like to know things! I even strive to know things. I have strived to be well-educated, to know stuff! I strive to create the best sermons and programming possible to help individuals and church communities on their journeys to being God’s kin-dom on earth, strived to know God so I can share God! However, I had to ask myself as I read Gareth’s words, have I ever known that I am “known,” particularly “known” by God. 
Are some of you – out there in the pews, watching at home– “strivers”? Do you strive to know things in life, to know God? Perhaps, you are better than I am at being with God, accepting that God knows and love you? Accepting that you love God? 

There is a something about these questions that I am grasping to understand. Like I want to understand/experience Gareth’s words about being known is an experience far greater than knowing, I want to understand/experience Paul’s word’s “if someone loves God, then they are known by God.” These words speak to me in such deep place in me that I can barely articulate what I sense or feel. I thought I desired to know God. It seems I desire to be known by God. 

This desire brings me to the question, which may seem odd given the fact I have been in the Christian church all my life, baptized at 10, working in full-time ministry for over 20 years, if I desire to be known by God, then how do I love God? I love my family, I love my friends, I love my husband, I love my dog, I love my church. I know the choices I make because of all this loving. I can feel these loves tangibly inside of me. I love these things without a lot of striving because they are tangible in my life and because they love me back. But how do I love the Mystery that is God? How do I know that I am loving God? How do I do it right so God can know me? 

And see - I am back to the striving, striving for knowledge, for achievement, for excellence. I can think and ponder my way into and around this desire to be known by God, to dwell in God’s love, until I have worn myself out. And worn you out as well. What else did Paul say? “If anyone thinks they know something, they don't yet know as much as they should know. [That’s me.] But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.”  

Being known by God is about loving, Being in the loves of this world that are real and tangible. Being in the Love that is God that may not be as tangible at first. Paul knew that the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures commanded us to love God, neighbor and self. And I include creation, all its animate and inanimate beings, as well as humanity, as our neighbors. God, neighbors, self – these three things are the very substance of life and when we intentionally dwell in loving with them we dwell in Love, in the Divine, the Holy, and  are somehow, beyond our knowing, we are known. 

To be known by God, is a mystery, is a given, is not something we can strive to achieve. It is a relationship experience. It is dwelling in Love. Gareth reminds us that being known by God is not knowledge, but experience. He writes, “And it can be experienced right now through a practice that is often called prayer but is accessible to everyone, no matter your tradition or belief. … Any practice that unfolds love to you can be considered prayer.” He continues, “Prayer is not a chore. Prayer is one way to community. Prayer literally remembers us into the experience of not being alone.” [3] If we are known by God, we are not alone. 

I recently was given a poem by a friend in a contemplative writing group that I am in by a contemporary poet that I did not know, Alfred K. Lamotte. Like Paul’s words, like Gareth’s words, this poet’s words struck me to the core. “Fred”, as his publisher referred to him when I wrote for permission to share this poem, titled his poem, “Gospel.”  Remember that “gospel” literally means in New Testament Greek, “good news.” In the poem, which I will conclude with today, I think the poet offers an experience of prayer and of being known. There is one line that gave me pause, “There is no bad news.” How can he write this? I have definitely received news that seemed bad, very bad, at times. I know you have as well. Keep listening, though, to the end of the poem. The next few lines will juxtapose that line with meaning in the surrender of prayer and being known by God. I invite us all into this place of surrender in relationship and being known, even if just for a moment, this day.  

"Gospel" by Alfred K. Lamotte 
Nothing is wrong.
You have never not been free. 
This is the good news. 
Every photon of your flesh 
Is the boundless sky. 
This is the good news. 
You lost yourself
In the shadow of beauty 
So that beauty might 
Find you again
There is no bad news. 
Healing comes
From a heartbroken place 
Where you’ve breathed out 
Everything you carried. 
Stay there.
The next breath
Is God’s love. [4]

So it is. Amen.

©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May only be reprinted with permission.

1. Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 44157-44159). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.

2. Gareth Higgins, How Not To Be Afraid, Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, (Broadleaf Books, Minneapolis, MN: 2021, 88-89.)

3. Ibid, 89.
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4. Alfred K. Lamotte, “Gospel,” Savor Eternity One Moment at a Time,(Saint Julian’s Press, Houston, TX: 2016, 13.)

1 Kings 19. 1-13
9th Sunday after Pentecost
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

1Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, how he had killed all Baal's prophets with the sword. 2Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah with this message: "May the gods do whatever they want to me if by this time tomorrow I haven't made your life like the life of one of them." 

3Elijah was terrified. He got up and ran for his life. He arrived at Beer-sheba in Judah and left his assistant there. 4He himself went farther on into the desert a day's journey. He finally sat down under a solitary broom bush. He longed for his own death: "It's more than enough, LORD! Take my life because I'm no better than my ancestors."5He lay down and slept under the solitary broom bush. Then suddenly a messenger/some say an angel tapped him and said to him, "Get up! Eat something!"6Elijah opened his eyes and saw flatbread baked on glowing coals and a jar of water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep. 7The Holy One's messenger returned a second time and tapped him. "Get up!" the messenger said. "Eat something, because you have a difficult road ahead of you."8Elijah got up, ate and drank, and went refreshed by that food for forty days and nights until he arrived at Horeb, God's mountain. 

9There he went into a cave and spent the night. The Holy One's word came to him and said, "Why are you here, Elijah?" 10Elijah replied, "I've been very passionate for the Yahweh, the God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I'm the only one left, and now they want to take my life too!" 11The the Spirit of the Holy One said, "Go out and stand at the mountain before the Yahweh. The Holy One is passing by." A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Holy One. But the Holy One wasn't in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Holy One wasn't in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Holy One wasn't in the fire. After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat. He went out and stood at the cave's entrance. A voice came to him and said, "Why are you here, Elijah?"

Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 12824-12828). 

Why are you here? Today. Right now. Why are you here in this church? In worship? Why are you here?  (Pause) Any Ideas? Thoughts? Feelings? Hold all that question….We’ll come back to it. A bit about this story…..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You may remember that in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” that Glinda the Good Witch asks the little girl, Dorothy Gale, just after she has miraculously arrived in Oz in a whirlwind from Kansas, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” And this question begins Dorothy’s adventures in Oz. It becomes a test of who Dorothy can trust as she journeys through this strange new land, test of leadership. Midway through the required yearlong study of the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament at Yale Divinity School, my fellow study group friends and I developed a similar question, “Was he a good king or a bad king?” You see, it was important to know this about the ancient kings of Israel that came after Saul and David and Solomon. It was not just a history questions but also a theological question. Yahweh originally did not want to the people to have a king like their neighboring tribes had because ultimately the leadership of the Hebrew people came from Yahweh. Finally, Yahweh grudgingly allows the prophet Samuel to appoint a king because the people are threatening revolt with the caveat that the test of a “good king” was whether that king took his cues from Yahweh and followed in the ways of the Holy One. So to remember the ups and downs, the adventures of the ancient kings in leading Israel and following Yahweh you had to ask, “Were they good or bad? Following in God’s ways or not? Where were they faithful or where did they do astray?” 

Ahab was not a good king. Why? Because he let himself be led astray from following the One God, Yahweh, by his wife, Jezebel, who worshiped the fertility god, Baal. .Jezebel tried to turn all of Israel away from Yahweh to Baal. So the Yahweh called the prophet, Elijah, to prophesy to the king and his wife and all the Israelites. We meet Elijah in our text today at a point when Yahweh has vindicated Elijah in his fight against the prophets of Baal. In fact all the Baal’s prophets have been killed.  Jezebel is so angry that she threatens Elijah’s life. So, he runs for it, runs for his life! Straight into the presence of Yahweh on the mountain. Even as he longs to die because his exhaustion after fighting the good fight, God won’t let him give up. He is sustained with food in the wilderness brought by God’s messenger. And this food gives him the strength to continue and to ultimately face meet the Holy One face to face at Horeb, the mountain of God where God met Moses in the burning bush. 

God asks, Elijah, on the mountain in that cave. “Why are you here, Elijah?” Can you hear the frustration, the anger, in the prophet’s answer? “You know “darn” well why I am here! I’ve been doing your “darn” work, following you and now that crazy queen is trying to kill me! What do you mean, “Why am I here? I’m here because people aren’t listening. They want to take the easy way out and follow the flashy gods of false culture. I keep preaching. I keep showing up. And it's literally killing me. That’s why I’m here!” 

What does our enigmatic God say to this rant? Nada. Nothing. God simply shows up….to be present to Elijah….but not in the drama of earthquake, wind or fire. In silence. In simple presence. In quiet. With a whisper. And then God says again, “Why are you here?” 

I ask you, us, God’s question, ”Why are you here? Why are we here?” Here in a church, in this church, in this worship service. It can still be iffy to meet in crowds because of the pandemic. And church is not a flashy, cool place to be, not always a credible place to be in our culture. Why are we here? Why are you here? 

And I’m sorry …. “Because my friends are here, because I have always gone to church, because I want my kids to learn moral and values” (as some parents said to me in Sunday School volunteer training years ago) are not fully sufficient answers. You can meet friends in many meaningful organizations and groups. If you aren’t teaching your children morals and values 24/7 then an hour or two at church even every week won’t likely do as much as you might think. Just because you’ve always come to church is nice, but it doesn’t really get to the point, does it?  Why, really, why are you here? 

(Pause)

Why are you here?  Hearing any whispers?

This past week, Hal sent an article to Plymouth staff, and our board and committee leaders from the Faith-Lead group at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. It was titled, “Focus on Why.” It’s essentially about how to invite people into the life and ministry of our churches. In bulletin inserts and weekly emails, we tend to only give the “what” that we do assuming that people will intuit the “why.” But if we only say, we need more volunteers for this food pantry service project, or to staff the youth pancake supper, or to teach Sunday school, or even more people to come to worship, we really don’t reach the core of people’s busy lives. “Why” should they come to these events, volunteer for these ministries, join us in worship? The article’s author writes, “I want people to hear that the ministry we do is critical. I want them to hear that God is incredibly active in what we do. I don’t actually care about pancakes or giving up time on a Saturday morning. What I do care about is why people give up their Saturday morning to help at the pantry. I care about why kids need to experience a national youth gathering to grow in their faith which will be funded by a pancake supper. I care about why people need to take time in their life to worship to live a fuller life with God. How will we notice God at work through activities if we don’t even know why we are doing them?” 

My friends, we cannot answer the “why” of all our events and ministries in order to invite more folks to join us, if we do not know “why” we ourselves are here to worship, to participate in learning, to work for social justice, to nurture our children and youth. 

Why are you here?

Elijah was so caught up in the drama and exhaustion and risk of his work – and all of which was very real – that he could not hear the voice of God, feel the presence of the One who sustained him and be grateful for that sustenance until he was stopped still in his tracks. His first answer is full of drama. And fear. Then, after the earthquake, wind and fire, God asks him again, “Elijah, why are you here?” The question echoes through the silence of that cave. “Why are you here?” As the story continues from the endpoint of our text today, Elijah actually gives God the very same answer he gave the first time. Yet I hear it with a very different emotional tone. 

"I've been very passionate for Yahweh, the God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I'm the only one left, and now they want to take my life too." [Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 12841-12843).]

Did you hear the difference as Elijah speaks into the silence. “I was following you, God. I was scared, God. I am tired and angry, God. I don’t know where else to be, God. I don’t have anyone, anything, else to count on. I want to be with you, God.”  Could any of those be the reasons we are here this day in this church, in worship?

After Elijah answers this second time, God, gives the prophet specific instructions of who to go to for help with his mission. Go to the leader of this tribe and that one, make this person your successor prophet. And I have preserved this many people in Israel who are faithful to me and will work with you in opposition to Jezebel and her prophets of Baal. However, before these instructions, Elijah, has to stop and really listen to the question of the Holy One….”Why are you here?” 

As we prepare for re-opening our church programming in more ways – we hope – in the fall, as we follow the guidance and vision of our very prayerfully and intentionally developed strategic plan, as we welcome and get to know new staff who will minister with and among us, let us keep God’s question before us, “Why are you here?” Like the ancient kings of Israel and their prophets, will we be “good” leaders in the kingdom, the realm of God… following in and listening to God’s ways no matter how risky or counter-cultural? Or will we be “not so good”, “bad” even, going with the flow of culture, doing things like we’ve always done before, afraid to risk, not questioning if we are straying from the presence and the sustenance of God? Like Elijah, each of us must answer the question, “Why are you here?” Why do you keep coming back to God’s community? Why do you keep seeking the company of the Holy One? Why are you here? Amen.  

©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. 

Acts 17.16-32
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

I want to share some background with you about our story for today from the Book of Acts, chapter 17. The Acts of the Apostles tells of the movement and expansion of the good news of Jesus the Christ as well as the actions of the earliest followers of Jesus and their gatherings or churches after they receive the great anointing of the Holy Spirit during Jewish festival of Pentecost. Acts tells the story of the preaching and evangelism of the apostle, Peter, who knew Jesus so well and of the apostle, Paul, who never knew the man, Jesus. Paul received God’s good news of Jesus in a miraculous vision of the risen Christ as he was literally pursuing the persecution of Jesus’ Jewish followers after Pentecost. 

Our story today centers on Paul. Paul was born in Tarsus, now in modern day Turkey. He was a Jew from his mother’s heritage and a Roman citizen from his father’s. As such he was educated not only in the Torah but also in Greek/Roman rhetoric. All of these elements go into the complex character of Paul whom we can learn so much from in theological dialogue, sometimes in theological conflict, as we read his letters to the earliest churches. In Acts the stories of Paul are told through the lens of the gospel writer of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles and was very likely writing some 20 or more years after the death of Paul.  Not necessarily concerned with writing fact-checked details of Paul’s life, this writer wants to picture Paul’s audacity and passion in sharing his new faith in the revelation of God in the risen Christ. 

At the beginning of chapter 17 in Acts, we find Paul traveling throughout Asia Minor from city to city with his companions, the older, Silas and the younger man, Timothy. They are fervently spreading the redeeming and powerful news of Jesus to Jews and any Gentiles who might listen as well throughout the region.  We have to admire their tenacity as time and again they are thrown out of the synagogues by fellow Jews offended by their claims of Jesus as the Messiah. Their lives are threatened. They are beaten and jailed by the Romans for being subversive in preaching that the God of Jesus the Risen Christ is Lord rather than Caesar. Having been thrown out of the town of Thessalonica by the Jews, they are followed to the town of Beroea by these same irate men who are want to expel them from the whole region. Believers in Beroea find and shelter the three. They hide Silas and Timothy and secretly escort Paul to Athens in order to save their lives. 

Our story begins in the middle of chapter 17. Paul is waiting for his missionary companions to join him in Athens. It ends with his sermon to the intellectual elite of Athens at a place of council and debate known as the Aereopagus or “Ares’ Hill” for the Greek god of war. During the Roman Empire it became known as Mars Hill for the Roman god.  This was a hill outside the city center with a stone amphitheater. For centuries, even before the democracy of Greece was formed, the educated went to this hill to debate philosophy and make legal decisions. These men were often advisors of the king. Though Athens was part of the Roman empire in Paul’s time, Mars Hill and its council still functioned as a seat of authority in the city.

You will hear that Paul’s intent as he preaches to the intellectual elites is to open their minds to a new image of God, the ONE God revealed in Jesus the Christ. The information in his sermon may seem quite familiar to you. It is the salvation story of the Bible. To challenge what may be our overly familiar images of God, I have changed some of the pronouns that Paul uses for God from “he” to “she”.  Hearing an unfamiliar pronoun takes our images out of their familiar God boxes that are culturally constructed to even speak of the God mystery. Now we know that the Holy cannot be contained in an intellectual box so perhaps, hearing new pronouns, the ears of our minds and hearts will open to bring us a new encounter with the Holy ONE. Perhaps we will hear the words of Paul with some shock and awe as the Athenians did so long ago and begin to seek God anew. Acts 17. 16-32

16While Paul waited for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to find that the city was flooded with idols. 17He began to interact with the Jews and Gentile God-worshippers in the synagogue. He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. 18Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion too. Some said, "What an amateur! What's he trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods." (They said this because he was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19They took him into custody and brought him to the council on Mars Hill [The intellectuals on Mars Hill said to Paul,] "What is this new teaching? Can we learn what you are talking about? 20You've told us some strange things and we want to know what they mean." (21They said this because all Athenians as well as the foreigners who live in Athens used to spend their time doing nothing but talking about or listening to the newest thing.) 

22Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, "People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. 23As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'To an unknown God.' What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. 24God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn't live in temples made with human hands. 25Nor is God served by human hands, as though [She] needed something, since [She] is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. 26From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. 27God made the nations so they would seek [God], perhaps perhaps even reach out to [God/Him] and find [God/Her.] In fact, God isn't far away from any of us. 28In God we live, move, and exist, [have our being.] As some of your own poets said, 'We are [God’s] offspring.' 29"Therefore, as God's offspring, we have no need to imagine that the divine being is like a gold, silver, or stone image made by human skill and thought. 30God overlooks ignorance of these things in times past, but now directs everyone everywhere to change their hearts and lives. 31This is because God has set a day when [God/She] intends to judge the world justly by a man [God/He] has appointed. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising [this man] from the dead." 

32When they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to ridicule Paul. However, others said, "We'll hear from you about this again."33At that, Paul left the council. 34Some people joined him and came to believe, including Dionysius, a member of the council on Mars Hill, a woman named Damaris, and several others. [Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Location 42947). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.] For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, for the word of God within us…. Thanks be to God.

“An unknown god”…. Mirabai Starr, world religions scholar, author, and translator of St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul and Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, writes of “an unknown god” in a 2014 Huffington Post Article:
“I have always been drawn to a God who eluded me. A God who transcends gender — transcends everything, actually. A God who rebels against all forms, annihilates conceptual constructs, blows my mind. In other words, a God I can’t believe in. Because beliefs are dangerous — dangerous to God, anyway. The minute we define Ultimate Reality we destroy it. God chokes and dies inside the boxes we make.” 

Starr goes on in this article to write of the God she seeks to be in relationship with rather than intellectually construct. I think this was Paul’s intent as he introduces the unknown god to the Athenians as the God he knew as creator and redeemer of the world, the very Ground of Being. In Paul’s Jewish heritage, the God who names God’s self as “I AM” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” Paul begins with images of God from natural theology, as creator the cosmos and all of its beauty, then moves to an ever-present, seemingly beneficent God who is the parent of humankind. These would have been familiar images to the Athenians as he indicates. Finally, he brings in the shock and awe, announcing the God who has the unbelievable power to conquer death, to resurrect a man from the dead. No wonder some to the Athenians laughed at, ridiculed Paul, in one translation called him “babbler.” And yet others said, “We want to hear about this again!” And some believed and followed this God of Jesus the Christ on the way of faith. 

This God that Paul preached to the Athenians rebuking their notions that God can be kept and worshiped in human-made idols – who is this God for us today? Is this a God that will turn us from the idols of our times? What are the idols that flood the cities of our lives? They are probably as numerous as the idols of the Athenians, though we may not make them out of gold or silver or stone. We may make them out of achievement in work, or in wealth, or in athletic endeavor, or in intellectual pursuits, or in following the best health practices. We can even make an idol of following religious practices in order to earn God’s notice. Are our works of social justice ever in danger of becoming idols? Our political views and actions? Our need to be right? Whatever we set before seeking, reaching out to God can become an idol. Trying not to have idols could become an idol. 

Do you catch my drift here? God is the undefinable container in which all of the universe, all that we know, has its being. Each of us lives and moves and has our being in God, whether we acknowledge this or not. “Bidden or unbidden God is present with us.” This wisdom saying is usually attributed to Carl Jung, yet he found it in the ancient Latin writings of a Desiderius Erasmus who attributed it to an even older Spartan (Greek) proverb.  Paul proclaims this unknown, yet ever-present God as not just a beneficent creator, but a fierce lover of humankind, so fierce that God defeated death itself in the risen Christ. Paul proclaims that this God, “I AM,” who raised the man, Jesus, from the dead, was Lord of all, not Caesar or the empire. This unknown God is not an inanimate idol made by human hands or human will, but a living presence.  

Who is the God that we proclaim? Who is the ONE that we seek before any of the idols in our lives? Is it the God of relationship, ever-present, fiercely loving, and always seeking us, revealed in Jesus the Christ? Our biblical and theological heritage speaks of this God as “he”. Yet we know that God is neither male nor female, God is ALL, God is ONE. God answers to Father, to Mother, to Beloved, to Holy Mystery, to Gracious Bearer of Light, to Challenger of Our Lives, to Comforter of Our Souls’. 
During our time, as we live and move and have our being in this God in the midst of pandemic, in the midst of intense political strife, in the midst of extreme economic uncertainty and divisive polarized rhetoric of our day, may we put aside the idols that tempt us when we are fearful, that distract us in our grief. May we turn our hearts, our ears, our minds, our full attention to the ONE who is ever-present, who grieves with us, who rejoices in our presence and in our joys. The ONE who has conquered the power of death and brings us gifts of grace, mercy, hope and forgiveness as we seek to be in relationship with one another and with God. May we take the time during these tumultuous times to still ourselves that we may know again and again the “unknown” living God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2020 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. 

Psalms 42 & 43
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

Blaise Pascal in the 17th c. wrote, “There was once in [us] a true happiness of which there now remains…only the mark and empty trace, which [we] in vain [try] to fill from all [our] surroundings…but these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself" [Pascal, Pensees, VII, 425, in The Great Books, vol. 33, p. 244].

How often have we, each of us, gone through a period in life feeling that something essential is missing and that there has to be something more to life. How often have we searched for that something more, only to try and fill up that God-shaped hole with something that is inadequate and not life-giving? The Psalmist was able to see what was really at stake here, saying that our hearts yearn for relationship with God in the same way that a thirsty deer longs for the cool, clear water of a rushing stream.

In one of his most recent books, UCC minister and biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann describes the countercultural nature of the Psalms. In fact, he goes beyond culture to describe what he calls the “Counter-World of the Psalms.” Brueggemann writes, “The psalms voice and mediate to us a counter-world that is at least in tension with our other, closely held world and in fact is often at direct odds with that closely held world. As a result, we yearn for a counter-world that is characterized by trust and assurance, because we know very often that our closely held world is not the best of all possible worlds. We are eager for a new, improved world that is occupied by the Good Shepherd, that yields help from the hills, and that attests a reliable refuge and strength. That is why we continually line out these particular cadences again and again. That is why we want to hear them at the hospital and at the graveside and in the many venues where our closely held world is known to be thin and inadequate. We want something more and something other than our closely held world can possibly yield" [Walter Brueggemann, From Whom No Secrets Are Hid, (Louisville: WJK, 2014) p. 9].

As we envision this counter-world, we hear the echoes of one who knew the psalms well, and we hear of his proclamation of a new realm, a new way of being, a new paradigm for how human life is organized and lived. We hear the strains of Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God, which is what the world would be like if we lived in accordance with God’s intention. 

Brueggemann sets up seven characteristics of “Our Closely Held World,” and I would ask you to remember that it is our closely held world. And I would ask you to consider these seven characteristics when you recall the political rhetoric you read in the news every day:

1) Anxiety rooted in scarcity: “We worry that if the goodies and power are shared more widely, there will not be as much for us" [Brueggemann, p. 10]. Anxiety leads people to want to build walls instead of bridges.

2) Greed: which “requires fatiguing overwork, endless 24/7 connection, and insatiable multitasking, all in an effort to get ahead or in an effort to stay even and not to fall hopelessly behind" [Brueggemann, p. 11].

3) Self-sufficiency: When Ezekiel quotes Pharaoh’s claim that “My Nile is my own: I made it for myself,” (Ezek. 29.3) or when we describe ourselves as “self-made men and women” we engage in the hubris of self-sufficiency.

4) Denial: We believe the promises of Madison Avenue, even though “our closely held world cannot keep its promises of safety, prosperity, and happiness" [Brueggemann, p. 12]. We are willing to say that the emperor has wonderful new clothes, even though we know better.

5) Despair: “Because we cannot fully master and sustain such denial and from time to time gasp before the truth that our world is not working, we end in despair.” Have you given in to despair in recent years?

6) Amnesia: We think, “It is all too much. And so, as a result, we are all too happy to press the delete button labeled amnesia” [Brueggemann, p. 13]. Whether we need to forget the images of Auschwitz or Hiroshima or Columbine or children in detention centers on our border…we hit the delete key.

7) A Normless World: “The outcome of our narcissistic amnesia is a normless world, because without God and without tradition and without common good, everything is possible” [Brueggemann, p. 14]. The dystopian world projected in George Orwell’s 1984 and in so many recent films is possible.

I know that Brueggemann paints a horrific picture: Our “closely held world” is a frightening reality that we see on the news every day. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. A world beyond the death-dealing dystopian future is possible, and it is echoed by the psalmist. We long for a different realm, one that affirms the goodness of life and of God’s creation. We long for the promised kingdom of God, what Brueggemann calls the Counter World of the Psalms:

1) Instead of anxiety, we can rely on God’s Trustful Fidelity: The psalmist cries out: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” God’s fidelity, God’s covenant faithfulness, can “grant us courage for the facing of this hour.”

2) Instead of a greed, the psalmist proclaims a World of Abundance. “The ground for such an abundance that refuses greed is the glad doxological affirmation that God is the creator who has blessed and funded the earth so that it is a gift that keeps on giving. The doxological assumption is that when God’s creatures practice justice, God’s earth responds with new gifts" [Brueggemann, p. 17].

3) Instead of the delusion of being self-sufficient, we can acknowledge our Ultimate Dependence on God. We can see the miraculous nature of creation and life and know that we did nothing to create it, but that we are stewards responsible for preserving it.

4) Instead of denial, the psalmist embraces Abrasive Truth Telling. Whether “speaking the truth in love” or announcing an inconvenient truth, the psalmist calls out injustice and falsehood. “The entire genre of lament, complaint, and protest constitutes a refusal of denial” [Brueggemann, p. 20]. And truth-telling requires courage.

5) Despair – the hallmark of our times – can be overcome by A World of Hope. This is the world the poet portrays by repeating this refrain in Psalm 42 and Psalm 43: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” (42.11 and 43.5) “Hope in God! Hope in God! Which is to say: ‘Do not hope in self. Do not hope in progress Do not hope for luck.’” [Brueggemann, p. 23]. Hope is the great refusal to accept the shadowy culture of despair.

6) Lively Remembering sets aside cultural amnesia about the goodness and presence of God. The refrain of Psalm 136 echoes back the history of all that God has done: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” If we don’t take time for awe, that is to reflect and remember what God has done in the glory of creation, we lapse into amnesia.

7) The psalmist’s antidote to a Normless World is Normed Fidelity – our faithfulness to God through Torah, not meaning simply “the Law,” but as Brueggemann claims, the entire legacy of norming that is elastic, dynamic, fluid, and summoning….It is the Torah that yields identity and perfect freedom. It is indeed a gift to come down where we ought to be" [Brueggemann, p. 25-26].

Some would have us feel as though we are powerless to change the world, to change the course of our nation’s history, and to change ourselves. This is not so. We don’t have to slip into war with Iran, to launch global trade wars, to round up productive members of society as if they were animals, to accept gun violence as normative. And it isn’t because we are brighter or wealthier or have more followers on Facebook. We aren’t that self-sufficient! 

Another world is possible. The Counter-World of the Psalmist, the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus, the world of hope. Remember the words of Paul, dear friends of God, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” We can learn to fill the God-shaped hole not just in ourselves, but in the culture and fabric of this nation. Amen.

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

Romans 5:1-5
Trinity Sunday
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Romans 5:1-5
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers and father figures, both male and female here today! I am remembering my dad who as many of you know was a storytelling preacher, a professor of Philosophy or religion and a seminary president. He often preached on Romans and memorized many passages from it for his preaching. This passage brings me memories of him. I can hear Dad reading it in my mind. I can hear the rhythm of the cadence and inflection of his voice. And I remember him reading it with such passion. Not being a tall man he would rise up on his toes in excitement as he preached or read scripture, as if he was going to make a basketball goal just as he did in high school when he was captain of the team and they won state. Holding his soft-covered, leather pulpit Bible up in his left hand, he might paraphrase a bit to reiterate his points saying...”Because we are justified by our faith, set right with God, through Jesus and so have access to God’s peace and grace...” As the meaning of the text became more intense he rose higher on his toes reaching the highest point at “and hope does not disappoint us!” Then he would come down and lean in with the punch line,  “because God's love has been poured [big pouring motion with his right hand] into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This text was not about false, feel good sentiment for Dad. It was not a happy-clappy message. God will make everything fine for us if we just believe in the right way. For Dad, Paul’s message was life-changing news in the midst of the very real lives of the people he was addressing, in the midst of their sorrows and tragedies along with their joys. This message brought ultimate meaning and purpose to his life so he was passionate to share it. I do not remember all of his exegesis. The legacy he left is the memory that my Dad was/is a friend of God. He once told me, shortly after my mom’s death, and after at least 60 years of preaching God’s good news, that when he died his hope was that he would learn to love as God loves.

That’s an aspiration, isn’t it? To learn to love as God loves. I know Dad had glimpsed that in many ways while he was here with us in this life. I trust he is learning it more fully now. And I have to ask myself, do I have this aspiration? What about us here in this faith community? Do we want to learn to love as God loves here in the midst of our lives? Do we want to at least catch glimpses of this selfless loving? And in doing so be friends of God?

In this passage from the letter to the Romans, Paul acknowledges that he and the early Christians lived in very trying times. At times he wrote his letters from prison. They knew the danger of persecution. Yet Paul’s conviction is that God is utterly faithful just as God was to his ancestor, Abraham, and in God’s action in the world through Jesus, as well as the sending of the Holy Spirit. To be justified, to be set right with God through our trust in God, is to know God as Friend.

Paul tells us that even in the midst of suffering we stand in God’s grace and share in God’s peace because God is our faithful friend. Take a moment and ponder this. In the midst of your personal lives, here at Plymouth in our communal life we stand in God’s grace and peace. Because we have been justified, set right with God through our trust. We can rejoice with Paul trusting that God befriends us before we even befriend or trust God back.

We can rejoice with Paul because like him we know the heritage of the Hebrew Scriptures tells of God the Creator and God the Spirit moving across the waters of creation. Because, like Paul, we experience the faithfulness of God in Jesus, the one who lived among us, who was crucified by the sin of the world and yet through whom God conquered death in the resurrection.

The articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity came generations after Paul’s writing. Yet implicit in his testimony here in Romans is the Holy One-in-Three, the Holy Three-in-One, the mystery we name the Trinity. One unified God who has three faces or three windows of revelation into the hugeness, the unfathomable nature of the Divine. Knowing that God is faithful friend simplifies this mysterious and often confusing human-made doctrine of Trinity for me. I think of one of my closest earthly friends and the many different roles she plays in my life, comforter, challenger, care-giver, confronter and I understand the different faces of God as friend.

Paul tells us that to be justified by faith is to be friends with the flow of Love that we know as God, that we envision as the community of the Holy ONE – Earth-maker, the Source and Creator of All, Jesus, the Pain-bearer, who came to share our common lot, who bears with us the weight of this world, and Spirit, who continues the Life-giving movement of hope and deepest joy even in the midst of suffering. In deep friendship with the Holy One-in-Three, we can say confidently and without shallow sentiment that our sufferings can produce endurance and endurance character and character hope, no matter what situations life brings. Then we know in the midst of sorrow or joy the glory of God and we can in the best sense of the word boast of, share joyfully, without arrogance, but with the strength of humility,  God’s peace and grace because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

Sometimes mysteries are best understood through looking at them through the corner of our eyes in story.

On the very real mountain and peninsula named Mt. Athos in northeastern Greece, a place of 20 monastic communities comprising one large Easter Orthodox monastery, there is one monastery that was the smallest of all, the Lesser Monastery of the Holy Trinity. It holds only three monks and one lay porter. It is difficult to get to being high up on a cliff. The path to its door is steep and winding and windy. The small door to the monastery is always open and leads you into a sunny courtyard with plants blooming throughout the year. When a pilgrim enters, the person finds a small bench to sit on. Old Gregorio, the porter, lets the pilgrim sit in silence for a time as he peers through a small window to get a sense of the person. Eventually he emerges to sweep the courtyard and shyly ask the pilgrim questions such as “Where are you from?” Or “How was your journey?” Then he silently slips away and returns with one of the monks.

If he returns with Father Demetrios, the eldest monk, an old man with a long white beard, the monk sits right next to the pilgrim and begins to talk immediately. His voice is rich and deep. His words flow like honey from a comb, words of welcome and wisdom. He always seems to know just how long to talk for when he stops the pilgrim will spill forth their own words of confession, contemplation, of doubt and faith, words coming from the heart and sometimes with tears.

If Old Gregorio brings back Father Iohannes the interaction is very different. Father Iohannes is a rather round middle-aged monk with curling brown hair and warm eyes. He sits on a chair in the sun, just across from the pilgrim on the bench and looks deep into their eyes before closing his own eyes to sit in the sun in silence. From time to time he might look at them again. The silence is companionable, but it can last all morning...even into the afternoon. The pilgrim is always the one to break it, finally pouring forth their story. In the end Father Iohannes who has listened intently, gazes at the pilgrim with the deep, silent love of a brother and then simply gives a blessing.

When Old Gregorio bring forth the third monk, the pilgrim encounters a beardless, young man, Father Alexis. He looks lovingly into the face of the pilgrim with the clear, guileless eyes. His own face becomes a mirror for what he sees in the pilgrim’s face – sorrow and grief, frustration or anger, confusion, the joy of learning and asking questions. When he speaks, it is from the deepest yearnings of the pilgrim’s own soul and holds the wisdom of God that is within.

Most pilgrims stay the night and when they leave in the morning they pass by the Icon of the Trinity that is the little monastery’s greatest treasure. In it sit three figures in a loving circle, breaking bread with one another – a white headed, white bearded old man, a curly, brown-haired, smiling man of middle age and a young man with a clear face who seemed to gaze beyond his companions and into the eyes of the beholder. This is the same icon that Old Gregorio says his prayers in front of early each morning, crossing himself three times, praying for the wisdom to direct each pilgrim who might visit that day to the monk the pilgrim’s soul most needs.  

For those who seek this smallest of monasteries on Mt. Athos, they would do well to remember it is more a place of heart than of the map. And that the monks and old porter are waiting patiently within a space of prayer and image. And that the Lesser Monastery of the Trinity could just as easily hold an elderly, but energetic housekeeper named Georgiana, an abbess named Mother Demeter who writes beautiful poetry and songs, an earthy, ginger-haired middle aged woman, a healer, named Joanna and a young, lithe woman with blond hair and keen green eyes, a weaver of tapestries who is named Alexis, meaning helper, like her make counterpart.

God comes to us as friend, creating us anew, bearing our pain with us, empowering and emboldening us to act on our deepest loves. This is the mystery of the Trinity. And this is the message of the apostle Paul who believed he was set right by God’s friendship, given God’s peace and grace and love poured into his heart. This is the friendship that empowers all we do in acts of social justice, acts of caring for one another, acts of welcoming the stranger, of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, acts of worship and fellowship and study and prayer. This friendship empowers ALL we do. Do you accept it? The friendship of this larger than life, abundantly overflowing Holy One-in-Three, Three-in-One God?  It is freely given.

Amen and Amen.

Isaiah 6.1-13
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

The vision of the heavenly throne room

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."

4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

9 And he said, "Go and say to this people:
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.'

10 Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed."

11 Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said:
"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,
and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate;
12 until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. 13 Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled."
 The holy seed is its stump.

There’s never a convenient time to be called to the ministry of being a  prophet. In fact, prophets are usually called at inconvenient, turbulent times. Because that’s when we need to be surprised again with God’s messages of wholeness and love.

For the 8th century BCE Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, the call came the year that King Uzziah of Judah died. It was time of political and cultural instability. King Uzziah had been a very good king for most of his 52 year reign until his pride got the better of him. Legendary history has it that he usurped the role and power of the priests in the temple by trying to light the incense there. Simultaneously there was an earthquake breaking open the roof of the temple and the sun shining on the errant king’s face caused him to have leprosy. And soon after, he died. It is not a good sign when a Hebrew king tries to defy the ways of God. It always spells trouble!

During the immediate years after Isaiah’s call, the reign of Uzziah was followed by an ineffective couple of kings, Jotham and Ahaz. During Ahaz’s time Judah is threatened by war from the countries of Syria and Ephraim. Ahaz is listening to advice from unreliable military sources. Rather than listening to God’s appointed prophet, Isaiah, who is trying to give him God’s messages and save him and the people a heck of a lot of trouble!

Why all this history background? To help us understand what God was calling Isaiah into through this very surprising vision of God that we just heard! Not into an easy job.... Hebrew scripture prophets are always called when the people and their leaders are in the biggest mess, especially when they are unaware of their mess and need the help of God’s ways of justice and love.

Scholars think Isaiah was a mid-level bureaucrat in the court of the kings of Judah during times of war and exile. In my imagination he was a good worker who just kept his head down and got the job done. No particular heroics, no stellar performances that single him out. Just a regular guy trying to make a living and be good person by going to temple, performing the required sacrifices, saying the required prayers.

And suddenly prophecy is thrust upon him in this mysterious vision – the robes of the Holy One filling the temple, smoke and incense, angelic beings, called seraphs with six wings, flying about....and direct conversation with the Divine. That is the most mysterious and scariest part of all. Here is an ordinary, temple-going guy who is called suddenly by God, a government worker just trying to provide for his family and be a good person, not a priest or preacher! Not a religious professional! And God calls him to be the prophet for the people in a very dangerous time. Watch out, lay people! In the midst of his ordinary life he receives this mysterious vision!

Somehow, Isaiah was obviously open to it, perhaps because he was a regular temple-goer following the religious traditions of his people. But he was not specially trained. His first response to the presence of the Divine was ....”whoa, I am not worthy to be here....I am a person of unclean lips and live with others of unclean lips.” In other words...I’m not who you think I am....I’m not perfect or wise about this religious stuff...I observe of the rules but I don’t think I’m good enough for this faith in action stuff. I’m a government middle manager. I’ve might have made some iffy ethical choices in my time. I’m not so sure about this mystery thing and definitely don’t feel worthy of it, perfect and holy enough to be here face to face with you, God.

God simply reaches out in grace to the humiliated and hesitant Isaiah....no shaming, no rhetoric, no dogma....just “Here we can make you clean with just a touch....accept my grace and love....and let’s get down to business....I need a prophet.”

“Oh! Oh, my!” responds Isaiah and after the touch of holy fire, “Okay....I’ll go! Send me!”

Isn’t it interesting, according to this prophetic story, that once we really accept the grace of God, the steadfast love of God, the forgiveness and wholeness offered by God we are freed to say, “Oh, ok! I’ll go!” And we haven’t even heard the assignment yet. (There are other prophets in the Hebrew scripture tradition who do put up a bit more resistance ..... “no, really, I’m just a boy”.... or “I can’t speak well enough. I stutter!”....God just keeps offering grace until they accept it and accept the job.) 

All this is good news for us, isn’t it? God comes to ordinary people in the midst of our lives offering grace and love and purpose and meaning and wholeness! We just have to show up! Maybe that’s the tricky part? Showing up....because here is the rest of the story that we were not asked to read...the next five verses of Isaiah chapter 6. This is what the Holy One asks the new prophet to show up to...

"Go and say to this people: (my people of unclean lips....those people just like you),
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.
Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed.’ "

What?  Make them unrepentant? What is up with God? I thought God was supposed to help us and be faithful in offering grace to us! How can you hear God’s message with out your ears? Or see God’s revelations without your eyes? Or understand God’s meaning without your mind? Scholars have poured out much ink over what this directive from God means. Do we as a people have to experience a “no” before we can experience a “yes”? From God? Hear some judgment, some tough news, before we can hear and really receive the good news? That was Isaiah’s visceral experience in the temple. “I am unclean, not whole, not as good as I thought I was” Then its God’s power heals. Could this be a poetic, prophetic and parabolic way of God saying....listen with your hearts, I put my laws and love within you, you are created in my image.  Just listening with your more rational senses, trying to figure it all out by yourself will not get you where you need to be to really experience the grace of God. Don’t get stuck in all your see and hear and do not understand. Listen with your hearts. 

With such a very tough assignment, Isaiah understandably says, "How long, O Lord?" How long do I have to deliver this unbelievably hard news? 

"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,
 and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate;
until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled," 
God says.

In other words...for as long as it takes for the people to realize they rely on me and not the human wisdom of an unfaithful king. In Isaiah’s historical context this means even into exile and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. For us  could it mean until all we think we have built up with your own power and might no longer distracts us from listening to God.

Why is it so hard for us to accept God’s grace? Why do we hide from it? The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, addressed the mystery of God, “you drifting mist that brought forth the morning” saying:
Once again from the old paintboxes
we take the same gold for scepter and crown
that has disguised you through the ages.
Piously we produce our images of you
till they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
Our fervent hands hide you.[i]

Franciscan father, Richard Rohr, writes, “The key to entering into the Divine Exchange is never our worthiness but always God’s graciousness. ... To switch to an economy of grace is very hard for humans because we base everything in human culture on achievement, performance, accomplishment, payment, exchange value or worthiness of some sort.”[ii] We work on a merit badge system.

The tough news message here is the message of surrender, folks. And by that word, the S word, surrender, I do not mean becoming a worthless, ragged doormat for God. That is not what God requires! Remember Isaiah’s vision. God does not think we are worthless...God always offers us grace!  And along with grace offers challenge, purpose, meaning! We surrender in order to get out of our own way so we can listen and follow.  We do love to stand in our own way when it comes to listening to God because listening to God is risky business.

Yet God calls us again and again, through prophets, through the visions of our hearts, to be attentive to God’s ways....to live counter-culturally to the ways of the world....God calls us to put down our soul roots into the heart of God, to trust, to discover purpose and meaning in relationship with the mystery of the Holy One who is ultimately the Divine Energy of the cosmos....all that is and has been and will be, the unity and love of God. Then as we go about our “normal” everyday lives as Isaiah did....God will break through with epiphany and revelation....even if it seems we are living in the midst of destruction.

God says to Isaiah, “Even if a tenth part remains like the stump of a tree that is felled and then burnt to the ground.....God will break through when we can finally pay attention with our hearts.  Isaiah says “The holy seed is its stump.” God does not desert us to live in a burned out life, but even in the devastation there are seeds of God’s grace that can grow into faith.

May we open our hearts to the holy seed and answer God’s prophetic call in each of our lives as well as in our life together as God’s people here at Plymouth!

Amen. 

[i] Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still; Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 2014, 42). Ibid

[ii] Ibid, 42-43.

Mark 4:35-41
June 24, 2018
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them,
"Let us go across to the other side."
36 And leaving the crowd behind,
​they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.
Other boats were with him.
37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat,
so that the boat was already being swamped.
38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion;
and they woke him up and said to him,
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!"
Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"
41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another,
"Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

It is the end of the work day for Jesus. He is most likely exhausted. He has been teaching all day. The crowds were so great at the seashore that he sat or stood in a boat moored just at the edge of the beach in order to teach. Imagine balancing your weight in a boat to teach. Speaking above the lapping of the waves. Telling stories to help the people understand the ways and realm of God. Watching their puzzled faces. Patiently explaining over and over what you thought you were making clear the first time.  No wonder Jesus is tired! No wonder he falls asleep on the journey across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes....distant Gentile neighbors of the Jews. 

             Yet tired as he may be it is Jesus’ idea to make the crossing of the sea by night. To go to a foreign country with no particular preparation, a country where they may or may not be welcomed. He is not saying....”Hey, guys! Let’s get in the boat and go home! Won’t it be great to sleep in our own beds?” No, he is saying,” Hey guys! Let’s get in the boat and set off on another journey into unknown territory after a long, exhausting day of teaching, preaching....being with the crowds.”  And they all go with him....they had to have been tired as well. They take him “just as he was” the text says. No preparation. Just as he was....remember that phrase, we’ll get back to it.

They, too, leave just as they were.  And not just one boat but an entire flotilla of boats go with Jesus. Other boats, most likely fishing boats...perhaps the livelihood of an entire village, maybe more. They all set off together. They all encounter the storm together. They are all in peril. This is bigger than the fate of one small boat with Jesus and the disciples, as momentous as that might be. If any of them go down it will impact more than one family. If more than one perishes, God forbid all of them, the livelihood of several villages is wiped out.

The very image of setting off into the dark is bit scary for you and me. Remember there are not lights on this boat....not one has a cell phone flashlight or flashlight of any kind. Perhaps some of them were skeptical about setting out at night...knowing what might be when storms come up, knowing the storms on the Sea of Galilee.

When the storm comes up the disciples are truly scared. There are no life preservers.  No rubber raft life boats. The waves are beating into the boat....the rain must be coming in sideways...so any lit lantern would be doused. Steering is getting more impossible. What if the boats are dashed against one another by the storm? This is a serious! “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” What do they hear? Snore.

No wonder they are upset! Frantic. Panicked. They are bailing water and steering and calling out locations...trying to row for shore....yet they cannot save themselves. They realize they are in the boat with this one who has shown them amazing healing miracles through the power of God, who preaches good news with stunning truth. A teacher sent from God. But he is not paying attention just when they need him most! He is asleep in the back of a boat....head even on a cushion! For God’s sake!  “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

In the dark days of WWII a sailing boat was adopted by World Council of Churches as the symbol of the church universal. Depicted on storm tossed seas it had a cross for a mast. We are in the 21st century church boat in the stormy seas of our times....sailing it seems at times with no particular preparation....no extra provisions...no life preservers....here we are just as we are .... and there are a flotilla of competing boats with us, boats of politics, culture, other faiths, other kinds of Christians. What can we do? Will we be effective in riding out the storm? Can we steer the boat? Or in the midst of all the other boats will we crash into one another causing more disaster in our efforts to save ourselves and help our neighbors?

In “The Wood Song”, Indigo Girl, Emily Saliers sings,
the thin horizon of a plan is almost clear
my friends and i have had a tough time
bruising our brains hard up against change
all the old dogs and the magician
now i see we're in the boat in two by twos
only the heart that we have for a tool we could use
and the very close quarters are hard to get used to
love weighs the hull down with its weight[1]

Her words are an apt description of our life and times. Though we might think she is a bit optimistic in thinking it is love that weighs the hull down with its weight.  Our boats seem weighted with greed and competition rather than love and compassion. Yet perhaps she see the bigger picture from our text today and is remembering Jesus in the boat. God’s love with us in human form, in the boat. 

“God, do you not care that we are perishing?”

I amazes me how Jesus wakes up and immediately he is in the moment. No grogginess. No yawning. . Jesus, so attuned to the power of God that he wakes from deep sleep into complete chaos and knows immediately what to do. Remember that phrase from the beginning of the story. They took him “just as he was.” Jesus wakes up and just as he is....he rebukes the wind and says to the sea....”Peace! Be Still!”

In the Greek, he literally says “Be Silent! Be Muzzled!” And the wind and the sea obey. There is a dead calm  And Jesus says to the disciples, to us.... “Why are you still afraid? Have you still no faith, no trust?”

Oh, that I could handle crisis in this way.....but I am not Jesus...none of us are. We are the ones in the boat with Jesus. And our job in the midst of chaos is to remember that we are not alone. To remind one another, we are not alone.

We row and steer and bail out the water AND pray! We protest and pray. We write letters and make calls and pray. We build housing and feed people in our church and pray. We volunteer and send aid, love even our unpleasant neighbors....AND WE PRAY!  And God shows up!  Just when we are think that this  old boat of a church might be so tired that its breaking apart ....God shows up! For us just as we are. And God is always enough...there is always a love that passes all our understanding watching closely over the journey.[2]

In the final verse of her song, Emily sings,
sometimes i ask to sneak a closer look
skip to the final chapter of the book
and then maybe steer us clear from some of the pain it took
to get us where we are this far yeah
but the question drowns in its futility
and even i have got to laugh at me
no one gets to miss the storm of what will be
just holding on for the ride[3]

My friends, we may feel beaten and battered, old and tired as individuals and as the church, but Jesus meets us just as we are....just where we are...with the power and authority of God. And it is enough for any stormy journey. Remember, the task ahead of us is never greater than the power behind us. We know we will make it fine if the weather holds....but the weather never holds....there is always change in the midst of life....and the point is we can always go to the place of faith. Jesus is there waiting for us. Just as we are. Waiting to still the storms and heal the brokenness. That’s where we need to go. And together with the disciples of old we can say with awe and wonder, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" Thanks be to God!

Amen.
​
©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson ,2018 and beyond. May be reprinted for publication with permission only.

[1] http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-wood-song-lyrics-indigo-girls.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.

Revelation 7:9-17
All Saints Sunday
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, CO
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
 
Will you pray with me? O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations, the artwork, the expressionism of all of our hearts in response to your Word, this Totenfest morning, be good and pleasing to you and healing for your people. Amen.
 
Last Sunday was Reformation Sunday when we celebrated the 500 years of the Reformation in the Church, so today it is proper and right for me to begin my sermon by quoting Martin Luther from his preface to a 1522 translation of the New Testament. In it he says of the Book of Revelation, “My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it.”1 Martin Luther’s reaction to Revelation was not unique. Zwingli, another parent of the Reformation, also sternly rejected The Book of Revelation, although neither succeeded in removing it from the cannon. There is a reason for that.
 
This is one of those complex texts, not a comforting or easy narrative, not a story or a letter, but a volatile and even dangerous one when misunderstood or misused, which it often is in our time. This is because it emerged from the School or Community of John, but many years after the death of the Apostles and Gospel writers. Rather, it is attributed to a later John—John the Divine. Isn’t that an awesome name! We can surmise from the context, language, and historical references that in response to persecution, death, and even hunger. It is, by every definition, an apocalypse. As such, it bears the weight, the burden, the pain, the anguish, and the torture in the face of oppression, fear, and loss. It was written as a tableau of grief in search of hope for a community and a people in pain. An apocalypse in Biblical literature is always a response to a Totenfest of sorts.
 
Rather than reading the Revelation literally, for that is always a grave mistake with Biblical apocalyptic literature, we must hold it up to the light of paradigm, metaphor, and human experience… painted in words and story fragments. The Book of Revelation is the raw, pure, and complex experience of being human and facing death transformed into a non-linear story. Again, this book is a painting of grief and loss.
 
Speaking of paintings, how many of you have ever been to a modern art museum? If you haven’t, Denver has one of the best with the Clyfford Still Museum—which I recommend. Still was an abstract expressionist artist rooted in philosophy that kept most of his work as one ensemble and offered it in its entirety to any city, upon his death, willing to build him an art museum. Guess what? Denver did it. This museum inspired my sermon.
 
Today, in Biblical terms we are journeying into Scripture’s Museum of Modern Art. We are entering together into the literary space shared by John the Divine (author of The Book of Revelation) and the Bauhaus movement, abstract expressionism, modernism, surrealism, pointillism, and post-modern artwork. Saint John the Divine was the original abstract expressionist. When we encounter modern art, like encountering the apocalyptic literature, we must assume a couple of things:
1. Feelings and our responses matter
2. Pay attention to the metaphors, the colors, and the big picture rather than getting lost in the details—it is the composition that counts
3. It is in response to a world that is no longer explainable, relatable, and understandable with simple story.
Abstract Expressionism emerged in the speechlessness and horror of a post World War II world, much like the communities who wrote Biblical apocalypse. Pictures of flowers and stories will no longer do. We again live in such a world where words and images have reached their limit of rational expression.
 
I love this—I feel like I am teaching an art history class.
 
Put simply in artistic terms: When encountering The Book of Revelation, think Jackson Pollock rather than Rembrandt. While the Gospels and the letters of Paul are images we easily can relate to with story and personalities we understand (love 'em or hate 'em), learning to love the Book of Revelation is much like learning to understand modern or abstract expressionist artwork. It is not to be taken literally but symbolically and artistically. Again, think of Jackson Pollock rather than Rembrandt. Think of Salvador Dali rather than Monet. Think of Clyfford Still or Mondrian rather than Michael Angelo.
 
One of my professors, Dr. Carl Holladay, writes, “Counterbalancing [the] negative reactions [to it] is Revelation’s influence on the church through music and art. Some of the most memorable choruses from Handel’s Messiah are drawn from Revelation, even as it has inspired some of the most memorable works of visual art through the centuries…Its ‘Splendiferous [a great word… splendiferous] imagery’ captured the imagination of poets, artists, writers in every age and from every quarter. Any assessment of Revelation must account for this aesthetic dimension of the work and its lasting legacy.”2 When we read Revelation, we are called to respond with the creative side of our souls, which I know can push our limits as Congregationalists. When we read Revelation, we are allowed [given permission] to be artists dealing in the delicate space of grief, bereavement, loss, death, and finally the light of hope.
 
So I am going to read the passage for today again [while emphasizing the colors and imagery that emerge for me in my reading], and I want you to pay attention to color, to metaphor, and to what makes your heart jump: words, colors, phrases, etc. I also invite you to close your eyes and visualize the painting of emotions that John the Divine is painting with words. Let us be artists:
 
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation [rainbow], from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches [green] in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels stood around the throne [gold] and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
 
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood [red] of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne [gold] of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun [yellow] will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water [clear blue] of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
 
What do you see? How do you feel? We have had the beauty of The Book of Revelation, its powerful imagery, and ability to bring peace taken away from us by those in the Christian faith who want to interpret it as a literal apocalypse of the future and use it to draw fear into their followers. Rather, I believe for today’s reader it is painting an abstract picture of what it means to face loss and death for each of us in our lives. It is a picture of all our daily deaths and mini apocalypses.
 
Since there isn’t enough time to dig into all of the images, although I will point out the use of color in this passage for today, I want to draw you attention to just one image, one that I will point out is unique to the Book of Revelation, which might surprise us. So many of us, like Luther, say we dislike this book, but in it are some of the images we hold most dear in our faith and in healing ministry. This is an image that we know and see in popular Christianity, we have heard, but maybe we have not thought much about or located before in Scripture.
 
Verse 17: “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of the water of life and God will wipe away every tear from their eye.” And God will wipe away every tear from their eye.
 
This imagery is unique to Revelation, and it is so important that it is repeated again in Revelation 21: 4, “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
 
The word in Greek translated as “wipe away” is moreover only used to mean specifically “wipe away” in this way only two times in the whole Bible, and they are these two instances in Revelation. The Book of Revelation is unique in this motif and the intimate, kind, and lovingly familiar image of God here.

This is gut-wrenchingly intimate. Have you ever wiped away someone’s tears while he or she is crying, weeping, or morning? [Gesture to face to imitate the wiping of tears.] I mean have you ever reached over with a tissue and actually wiped away a tear? Or have you ever had someone else wiping away a tear for you? This is something that maybe some of us have never experienced. This is God at God’s most intimate, familiar, gentle in a time of great mourning. Here, at the conclusion of the Bible, we have journeyed from the Book of Genesis with a God or collection of gods (depending on how you read Genesis) who punish and don’t want names known or said, to here… here… a God who wipes away tears from a multitude too large to count. What a journey it has been. Here at the conclusion of the cannon, while often misinterpreted as a book of violence and misread by Evangelicals as an instruction manual for the end of the world, really it is an abstraction on the theme of loss and hope: contrasts and colors.
 
A God who wipes away tears is a God who is familiar with us. A God who reaches out with the comfort of touch is a God who knows and feels our pain. The tableau presented here in this abstract expressionist apocalypse is a complex image of life, death, pain and yes a glimmer of hope.
 
We find ourselves on this Totenfest or Death Sunday at the end of the Biblical cannon, in the midst of a confusing and complex artistic interpretation of the pain and the fear of an ancient people in a time that could not be explained with a story or a narrative or a letter or a poem. Only one genre will do: abstract apocalypse. We are offered something unfamiliar: colors, imagery—raw emotions of a community in free-fall. Yet, despite all of that, God comes through the dizzying array of colors, themes, metaphors and similes… and smiles, reaches out for our faces and again wipes away our tears.
 
I revel in being able to say this: Martin Luther was wrong, at least in this case. Today, only a week after Reformation Sunday, Martin Luther misses the point and the mark entirely. Revelation doesn’t point necessarily directly to Christ, but rather it paints pictures of the deepest struggles, fears, isolation, loss, mini apocalypses, and ongoing deaths and struggles we all face. Revelation paints a picture of grace and hope with color, with art, and with God’s hand reaching through the storms of the centuries past and yet to come to wipe a tear from the faces of God’s beloved one: you.
 
We remember those we have lost (our saints) friends and beloved. We also today remember the little deaths we all face every day when we know we aren’t living the lives we thought we were promised. When work is unfulfilling or political. When a child you helped raise and love, perhaps a son or daughter, turns and says something hateful. When we face loneliness and isolation. What parts of you/ yourself are you mourning the death of? Whatever the answer to these questions, God emerges in a revelation of hope in the midst of darkness to wipe away every every every every tear.
 
This is what I see for God’s people, for you, in the abstract expressionism of our reading for today from The Book of Revelation.

1 Carl R. Holladay, A Critical Introduction to the New Testament: Interpreting the Message and Meaning
2 Carl R. Holladay, A Critical Introduction to the New Testament: Interpreting the Message and Meaning

August 20, 2017
Rev. Ron Patterson
Matthew 15:21-28
 
Many years ago there was a popular book, based on a love story that I never read, that resulted in a movie I never saw, that included a memorable sentence that caused me to wince the first time I heard it and every time I’ve thought about it since. Do you remember the sentence? Can anybody call it out?

That’s it: “loving is never having to say you’re sorry.”

Now, I confess that I probably misunderstood the intent, but Baloney, I thought the first time I heard it, Baloney! Maybe I’m odd, but my experience has been just the opposite.

Were you ever hurt by the actions or attitudes of someone you admired and held in highest esteem? Did you ever find yourself embarrassed or shocked by something someone close to your heart said or did? Have you ever noticed that the biggest problem with putting yourself or another up on a pedestal is that pedestals are precarious?

That’s a common human dilemma, I suppose. Some nights when I lay down and review the things I’ve said and done and thought about and give my day to God so I can get some sleep, I find myself full of regrets and needing to seek forgiveness. And I don’t think I’m alone in those feelings, but that’s the subject of another sermon—something about your personal foibles and mine. Something about how we need to forgive one another and ourselves for being human. Something about loving one another that leads us to greater sensitivity. Something about how that’s what Jesus wants us to do and how its the only healthy way to live and that we shrivel up and die of pettiness if we don’t manage to do it—but that’s another sermon for another day.
​
Today I have something else in mind. I want to stretch that idea of getting along with one another and with our selves past the boundary of me and mine and here and now into a bigger idea way beyond the personal.

Here’s my idea for today: if the nations and the people of this earth are ever going to get together and seriously face the problems which threaten to undo us and overwhelm everything that is good and just and beautiful in this thing we call humanity, that includes our physical environment and the intricate web of connectivity that we are part of, then people of good conscience and religious faith had better find a way to get together and discover some common ground and begin act as if the future matters.

It is enough that life on this tiny planet brings us things like tsunamis and hurricanes and plagues of locust and famines. It is enough that accidents happen and diseases attack. All of that is enough.

To say it simply, we have a sufficiency of pain and problems, but when you pile on top of those unavoidable points of pain the things we might be able to avoid, things like war, and duplicity in government, and policies that rely on fantasy and fear more than science and integrity and add in the injustices that create pollution and encourage terrorists driving cars into crowds and blowing themselves up, it is not only more than enough, it is frightening and depressing. It’s been a tough week!

And I have to tell you this sermon began as I reflected on our Gospel lesson for today and with my embarrassment about few things that Jesus had to say. I put Jesus on a mighty high pedestal and our text for today is that troubling little event of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman. Were you listening? The woman is hurting. Her daughter is suffering. She throws herself on the ground before Jesus and pleads for help.

And the one we call savior, the one in whose honor this building in built, the one in whose name we gather today, turns her away and in effect calls her a dog—a common insult in the Middle-East and in cultures around the world. He tells her that his mission in life is narrow and well defined. In effect, he tells her that he is only about the business of helping those who look like him and who happen to share the religion of his birth and his particular point of view. He appears to tell her that foreigners need not apply and needn’t bother knocking on the door of that pathetic and vengeful deity revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai for the sole benefit of the Hebrew nation.
​
And here I see in the Jesus I love, the mirror image of the nasty person people who love me have sometimes seen in me at my worst moments. And I am shocked and I am offended and I want to scream at Jesus: “Jesus, what a dumb thing to say!” You’ve got God way too small! You’re giving God a bad name and limiting your love way too much the same way I do it sometimes when my anger or my fear or my politics get in the way. Did you every catch yourself majoring in the minors when it comes to loving?
​
And then I thought about how this happens in the religious community. I thought about religious leaders from many traditions who think their way of believing makes them right and others wrong, or who figure that they understand Jesus or Mohammad or the Buddha, so fully that they can condemn others or fence the freedom of the individual conscience or who try to turn their views on human sexuality into laws which bind the rest of us to their view of reality.

I find myself wanting to get really wound up about those religious folk who want to lead us back to the dark ages on virtually every issue, masking their ignorance and fear and male control issues behind innocuous sounding slogans like intelligent design or family values, or sanctity of life; seeking to bring back the good old days of back alley abortions and transform this nation or other nations into self-righteous,

freedom-denying holy empires where they are in charge and where anyone who disagrees with them is going to hell.

Hate and intolerance is a poor platform upon which to build the future, unless the future we want is one of war and human misery.

And there it is: in this little story, Jesus calls the Canaanite woman a dog. And in this one passage, the human side of Jesus, the time-bound part of the man Jesus, the Jesus who was born in the first century, the part of Jesus who believed that the world was flat and that disease was caused by demons is revealed.

But the Canaanite woman persists, and she pleads, and she pushes and by the power of God, her daughter is healed.

And in my mind, this little healing is a sign of the in-breaking of the Holy. God in this passage is not in Jesus where you and I might expect her to be. God in this passage is the woman—the foreign woman, the other, the one who ambushes the earthly Jesus with the power of Amazing Grace. In her, I believe we catch a glimpse of the eternal Christ, the one whose love is boundless and whose grace is transformative. Here we see a tiny sign that the violence and stupidity that separates people by gender and tribe and race and class is not the final word.

Here it is revealed in a way most simple that any religion or political system that blesses violence and feeds on fear is a human creation, a human invention that will not stand up to the power of caring love wherever that love finds a home.

Like all of you I am appalled by terrorism. Like all of you, I am shocked that in the name of religion, radicals can find the courage to drive cars into people or pick up guns or blow up subway trains or burn crosses or commit hate crimes or destroy abortion clinics.

But believe me when I say it, bad religion, tying your hopes to an image of a God too small and too time bound or too based on an ancient book—whether that book is the Bible or the Quran is the foundation for much of the sorry misery that besets this world of ours. Bad theology causes bad behavior; rotten religion props up the thought world of al-Qaeda cells just as much as it does the Klan. It motivates the sort of anti-abortion fanatic who killed Dr. Edward Tiller in Wichita, Kansas a few years ago. All of them are siblings operating under the same delusional faith system—that skims the polluted surface of the same stagnate pond.

And as I see it, the way forward is a different way. Not so much in a political sense, because as far as I’m concerned, the political realities and politicians of this world will find a way to catch up with the movement of the human spirit.

I believe that each time people of good will develop new ways of looking at the world through the eyes of faith—the politicians will find a way to follow. I believe that democracy was a faith idea, a philosophy, a religious idea, a way of believing, centuries before the first free election was ever held.

What we need is a new way where the followers of Jesus and the followers of Mohammed and the followers of Moses and the followers of the great Hindu and Buddhist sages and all of the rest of those amazing points of positive energy in the history of humanity begin to discover that what all of them are saying is the common nudging of a single Divine Spirit toward a way of light and truth and hope and love and mutual respect.

Bishop John Spong, who spent time with our congregation in Florida, wrote some time ago that too many of our leaders are engaged in “an assault on both intelligence and learning. They deny global warming, they oppose stem cell research, they are closed-minded about end of life issues, they express uninformed negativity about homosexual persons and they attempt to blur the line between church and state.” (Spong, “A New Dark Age Begins”) Now, those are big words and big ideas, but let me suggest a few simple things you and I can do.

Ask yourself this question: Who, in your life, qualifies as being less than human? I hate to insult the animals we love by using the word ‘dog’, but like the Jesus who wandered this earth back in the first century, every one of us, including yours truly, is a prisoner of our own time and our own prejudices. I have my dog list and so do you and so did the earthly Jesus, but the amazing thing about Jesus was that Jesus was open to the divine.

The power of God moved through that Canaanite woman to save Jesus. She reached out to Jesus in her pain pushing him to abandon his first century Palestinian Jewish mind-set and heal her daughter from the demons who tormented her that day.

And here’s the thing: You and I carry that same spark of the divine. Like the Canaanite woman, we are the children of God’s love: fully and wonderfully created to transcend our time bound nature and reach for the stars.

Love someone, find a way to care, speak up when and where you can. Search for the deepest truth God might reveal to your heart and then live it. Find common ground with other people of good will.
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Pray for guidance. Invest in the future. Plant a tree whose shade you will not live to enjoy. Open your mind. Forgive. And above every other thing, love your neighbor and do all that it is in your power to do to expand the circle of just who you believe your neighbor to be. Amen.