“Now Is the Time!”
Mark 1.9-15
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
18 February 2024
 
You’ve probably noticed that we have made a shift in worship, having Brooklyn introduce and read the scripture so that it is a bit more accessible to our younger worshipers… and some of our older worshipers as well! I really appreciate how she does this and how engaging she is. More often than not we have used the New Revised Standard Version for scripture readings, but Brooklyn has been using a newer translation, The Common English Bible, which is a bit more understandable for all ages, and was edited by our own David Petersen, a renowned Old Testament scholar.

I really appreciate some of the ways the Common English Bible translates the New Testament Greek, and in today’s reading, “metanoeo” is translated not as “repent,” but “change your hearts and lives.” That’s exactly what I was getting at in last Sunday’s sermon on transformation. It also translates the verb “pisteuo” not as believe, but as “trust in.” Here is what it sounds like in the NRSV: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” You hear two loaded words: repent and believe. And here is the CEB translation of the same verse: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” Do you hear the difference?

So often clergy have asked us to believe – to give intellectual assent – to “six impossible things before breakfast” just like the Queen of Hearts speaking to Alice in Wonderland. But “pisteuo” in Greek has a stronger sense of “putting one’s trust in” rather than simply believing.

I think anything that can crack open scripture and help us internalize – like a new translation – is wonderful. Are you willing to open your heart and mind and put your trust in the good news of God’s realm? Please remember that question in the context of your Lenten journey.

If you’re reading Mark’s gospel along with us during Lent, one of the things you’ve probably noticed is that the author is succinct, VERY succinct. The way Mark describes Jesus’ 40-day trek in the wilderness takes exactly two sentences: “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Short and to the point. No extraneous details.

Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts are more extensive and include the dialogue with the tempter, Satan, who offers Jesus bodily sustenance, all the kingdoms of this world, and putting God to the test as part of the 40-day quest that is preparing Jesus for something. Mark doesn’t even allow Jesus to say, “One does not live by bread alone!”

Lent is a contemporary reflection of that story of Jesus undergoing a time of preparation. His time in the wilderness was an example of the mythic hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell described: departure, encounter and testing, and return. I wonder if it was something akin to an initiation ritual or vision quest for Jesus, because immediately thereafter he begins his public ministry.

What is Lent really about for us? Is it a time of fasting and penitence in the forty days that precede Easter? Or is it more of a re-enactment of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness? The answer will depend upon the person responding. There is no evidence that the apostles observed Lent, and the church didn’t do so for at least its first four centuries. The origins of Lent are sketchy at best. It certainly was not something Jesus or the disciples observed, unless you go for the “vision quest” explanation.

My own tendency is to see the story of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness as the paradigm for our Lenten journey. For Jesus, this was a time of spiritual awakening. And for us, it can be a time of blossoming spiritual awareness.

We don’t get a very clear picture of Jesus’ forty days from the gospels. It isn’t as though we have six weeks of closed-circuit video to go through, examining his every movement and thought.

But imagine yourself for a moment on a vision quest. The Spirit leads you out into the wilderness: a place where there are no distractions: no internet, no email, no cell phone reception, no streaming, and no social media. Just you and the Holy Spirit…and temptation.

I wonder if we encounter a lot more temptation than most of us are willing to admit. (I’m not talking about chocolate or sex.) More often than not, our temptations involve making something that isn’t God the object of our worship, whether that is economic security or power and influence.

It may not be that we set up an altar to economic security, and it may not be that we build a golden calf to serve as an emblem of power and influence. We are not quite that obvious, and temptation is more subtle than that. One way to think about it is what you over-give influence and attention to. Do you allow fear to predominate your thinking? There is plenty of news to draw your attention in and cause you to be upset; does that dominate your thinking? I can tell you that it sometimes consumes more of my attention and emotional bandwidth than I’d like.

If we allow God to lead us, and if we put our trust in God, then the other stuff can take a back seat. Sounds simple enough. But, if it took Jesus forty days of internal struggle to work through the temptations of having bread (what we might call fear about our economic security) and authority (the things we refer to as power and influence, often in our careers), how long will it take you and me to work through these issues? A lifetime? Fortunately, God has given us more than forty days. But these forty days can be a good place to start.

Even though few of us are preparing ourselves for a ministry like Jesus’, Lent affords us the occasion and opportunity to do some spiritual deepening. Our Plymouth Reads Bible study and our Matisse-based devotional and Christian formation classes are mean to provide an opening for you to take a step further on your journey, to see what else might open up for you spiritually.

I grew up primarily in a Congregational church that didn’t observe Lent or Ash Wednesday…I think they considered it “too Catholic,” which meant that some of the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. For me, Lent is a season of invitation to explore “changing my heart and my life” and putting more trust in the good news of God’s realm, here and now and still unfolding. It’s a time when we all are invited to go a bit deeper through a spiritual exercise here at Plymouth. Part of the idea for me is doing something that helps us feel more connected to the Spirit. There are no guarantees that any of it will work, but we’re purposefully aligning ourselves more deeply with God., and that’s enough! Other people like to give something up for Lent, seeing what it’s like to strip away some of the baggage. I applaud that, too, if it enhances your awareness of the holy.

The other phrase that struck me in the Common English Bible translation is rather than Jesus saying, “The time is fulfilled,” he says, “NOW IS THE TIME!” If you have been waiting for an invitation to go deeper in your spiritual quest, consider it done! Pick up a copy of the Lenten devotional booklet or a Plymouth Reads bookmark at the back of the sanctuary and dig in. You are invited on our Lenten journey, and now is the time!

 May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2024 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

“What Kind of Authority?”
Mark 1.21–28
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning
Plymouth Cong’l UCC, Fort Collins
28 January 2024
 
People my age and younger – and some of you older Baby Boomers, too – have a knee-jerk reaction to the word “authority” …and with good reason. Part of that is a result of the liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s: women’s liberation, gay liberation, black power, and the anti-war movement. It was the era of flower children and the counter-culture. And though there are certainly enduring legacies of that era, the people who populated those movements tended to become yuppies who cared more for their brokerage accounts than for free love, preserving the planet, and working for peace. (And please remember that there is still a lot of work to do in a nation where women still earn 82 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts in the same jobs.) Some things have changed, to be sure, but we are being forced by the political realities in which we live, to look at what ultimately matters most.

Having been sexually harassed by a female superior – in a position of authority – when I worked at Stanford University in my 20s, I can in some ways – though not all – understand what abuse of power and authority looks like. But what about legitimate authority used responsibly? Jesus didn’t have huge rabbinic authority when he went into the synagogue to preach and heal. His sense of authority was not “power to enforce obedience or compliance,” but rather power to influence the beliefs, actions, and lives of people. His hearers afforded him authority because of his abilities, healing, and wisdom.

Even though you may think that one of the hallmarks of the Feminist movement is opposing authority in all its forms, some feminist philosophers are beginning to shift that idea. Rebecca Hanrahan and Louise Antony write, “Feminism is an antiauthoritarian movement that has sought to unmask many traditional ‘authorities’ as ungrounded. Given this, it might seem as if feminists are required to abandon the concept of authority altogether. But…the exercise of authority enables us to coordinate our efforts to achieve larger social goods and, hence, should be preserved. Instead, what is needed and what we provide for here is a way to distinguish legitimate authority from objectionable authoritarianism.”[1] And God knows we are hearing a lot of objectionable authoritarianism — if not downright fascism — from certain corners of the American political arena, fueled in part by Christian Nationalism.

And still, there needs to be a dialogue between freedom and authority. We need to examine to whom or to what in our own lives we give authority to, what we pledge our allegiance to, and whether that is legitimate or not. And if we find that our prior assumptions about the sources of authority miss the mark, we need to make adjustments. We all afford or give over some of our authority to people or forces in this world, and it is time for some deep re-appraisal.

***

Let me pose an ethical question for you to consider: What is the dominant influence in your decision-making? Is it your political persuasion? Your socio-economic class? Your race? Your gender? Your nationality? Your relative affluence? Your sexual orientation? Your economic self-interest? Your role as a parent or child? Your sense of pleasure? … Or is it your faith?

Let me come at this from a slightly different angle: In whom do you put your ultimate trust? When push comes to shove, where do you assign your trust…if you can trust anyone? Is it to your doctor? Your stockbroker? Your therapist? Your personal trainer? Your spouse or partner? Your employer? Your president? Your minister? When you are on your deathbed, who do you want to be there with you…God or Jerome Powell?

Let me ask the question yet a third way: Whom do you serve? Is it your CitiCard balance? Your kids’ activities and chauffeuring them around town? Your student loan debt? Your employer? Your spouse or partner? Your family? Yourself? Your God?

All of these questions point toward the A-word…authority. Who or what is authoritative in your life? And I know a lot of us could quip, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But there is nothing in this or any economy that is going to help you lead a truly good life and keep you from death and lead you into life beyond death.
If we don’t give authority to God, then we give it to the range of petty deities of our culture. The anti-institutional thrust of the 1960s and 70s taught us to trust no one, especially if they were “over 30” or in a position of authority, and so we find our nation in a state of radical individualism, caring little for the common good or the larger consequences, but I think that’s beginning to change. The pendulum, at least for some of us, has begun to swing in the direction of collective responsibility.

 “What is this? A new teaching – with authority!”
You and I have a lot of advantages in considering the questions I’ve posed. We are part of a 400-year-old religious tradition that has diminished the human authority of bishops and popes and kings and put the authority back where it belongs: with God. It isn’t that Marta and I don’t have pastoral authority, we do, and you’ve entrusted that authority to us, never to be abused. But we firmly believe that we are not gatekeepers that come between you and God. (We can, however, coach you from the sidelines.) You have direct access to the source of ultimate authority.

One of the great Christian ethicists of the 20th century, H. Richard Niebuhr, who wrote, “To make our decisions in faith … is to make them in view of the fact that the world of culture – human achievement – exists within the world of grace – God’s kingdom.”[2] That bears repeating: “To make our decisions in faith … is to make them in view of the fact that the world of culture – human achievement – exists within the world of grace – God’s kingdom.”

So, if Niebuhr is correct, everything we do, think, say, act, feel, own, profess, is done within the context of God’s reign. And God’s kingdom is an anti-imperial reign in which the first shall be last and the last shall be first, where faith the size of a mustard seed will grow to an enormous size, where the rich “shall be sent empty away” because they have had their consolation.

***

Now, this may scare a few people away from a new members class, but our membership covenant contains these words: “I give myself unreservedly to God’s service.” How many of you have entered that covenant as members? So, when each of us who are members of this particular congregation entered the covenant, we made a solemn vow to place ourselves under the authority of God – with nothing held back. So, how are you doing with that commitment? None of us does it perfectly!

God is ultimately in charge, whether we acknowledge it or not. And when we covenant to give ourselves unreserved to God’s service, we are saying explicitly whose authority we are under.

We find ourselves at the beginning of an election year, as well as in a time of national political crisis, exacerbated by the “gift” of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. And it is precisely at such a time as this, that it is good to have a sense of clarity that we are God’s people, and nothing can separate us from the love of God.

So, here is where the profound dialogue between authority and liberation meet: When we give ourselves fully to God (and only a small handful of human beings I know of have ever done that completely) we free ourselves from every other master: powers and princes and presidents, success, wealth, fame, longevity…and even student loan debt. Aren’t you ready for that kind of liberation?

When we share in Holy Communion, we feast at God’s table. And in a very tangible way, we acknowledge that we are utterly dependent upon God for everything that keeps us alive – body and soul. So, every time we celebrate communion…every time you come forward and receive the elements of bread and wine, I invite you to think carefully about whom you serve, and what ultimate authority you recognize in your life.

May we be grounded in grace and in God’s service.
Amen.
 
© 2024 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] Rebecca Hanrahan, Louise Antony, “Because I Said So: Toward a Feminist Theory of Authority” in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2005 20:4, 59-79
[2] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, p. 256.

“Midwinter Metanoia”
Mark 1.1-8
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
10 December 2023
 
 Every year on the second Sunday of Advent, we get a special guest appearance in the Lectionary from John the Baptizer, he who survived by eating locusts and wild honey and wore rough clothing made of camel hair. We tend to think of John as an offbeat character, and that’s probably about right. One of the things I noticed in studying images of John is that he seems so much more human than most of the other subjects. He has the look of world-weariness about him. Perhaps that happens when you find yourself in the wilderness shouting, “Repent! For the Kingdom of God has come near.” In the Gospel According to Matthew, and he adds insult to injury, calling the Sadducees and Pharisees a “brood of vipers,” a nest of poisonous reptilian offspring. Not generally a good way to win friends and influence people.

Most of us probably don’t think of Advent as a penitential season, when we stop and enumerate our sins and make a plan to change course. But on this second Sunday of Advent, that is what John the Baptizer calls us to do. However, that language takes some serious unpacking, because for many of us the language of sin and repentance sounds more televangelist than we’re used to. And what’s more, it has caused injury to people who are not able to believe that God’s goodness lies within them.

Still, it is important for 21st century liberal Christians not to dismiss traditional language out of hand; if we do that, we lose some of the richness and depth of our faith tradition and the wisdom it holds. Instead, we need to re-examine and redefine some of the language.

Let’s start with sin. You may think of sin as wrongdoing, and sometimes it is. For the great 20th century theologian, Paul Tillich, sin is more about estrangement and separation. Adam and Eve become estranged from God, living east of Eden. We are living as exiles, cut off from our true home. And our true home is God.
Marcus Borg writes, “Our estrangement can become hardened by how we live; we indulge our self-centeredness…. Estrangement, the birth of the separated self, is the natural result of growing up; it cannot be avoided. For the same reason, we develop closed hearts, a shell around the self. There is a sense in which we are blinded by the imprinting of culture on our psyches and perception.”[1] It happens to all of us.

Let’s look at an Advent example of someone who has been “hardened by how he lives” and who “indulges in self-centeredness,” but who has a profound change of heart.

[“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” clip.]

Maybe you never thought about John the Baptizer when you watched “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but it is as if there, on the crest of Mount Crumpet, the Grinch sees his estrangement from the Whos down in Whoville, and his hardened heart breaks open and grow three times its size.

You never heard the word “repent” in the clip, but what you saw was a beautiful example of what repentance really means. “The biblical meaning of ‘repent’ is not primarily contrition, but resolve. In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means primarily to return to God. Its metaphorical home is the exile. To repent means to return from exile, to reconnect with God, to walk the way in the wilderness that leads from Babylon to God.”[2] As the Grinch returns to find community and love and meaning with the Whos down in Whoville, it is a homecoming that I’d imagine makes God smile.

Repent is a scary word, especially because we usually think of it coming from the mouth of a fiery evangelist like Elmer Gantry, and it sure seems holier-than-thou in our context. But in biblical Greek, it’s actually a lovely, beautiful word that has a surplus of meaning. The word metanoia has two roots that connote going beyond the mind you currently have. And I would add that for me it means going beyond the mind and the HEART you currently have. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been shaped by self-interest. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been molded by American consumerism and greed. Go beyond and embrace the heart and mind of Jesus’ compassion and subversive wisdom.
When John the Baptizer offers a “baptism of metanoia,” he is inviting people into the embodied process of transformed lives, going beyond the things that keep them in exile or in bondage. You know what that looks like…it isn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t for Ebenezer Scrooge!

[Clip from “A Christmas Carol.”]

I didn’t show you the visitations of the three spirits, because metanoia can be scary if you really embrace it. But you can use your memory to imagine the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. What would those spirits show you from your past, present, and future? Charles Dickens described Scrooge as a “miserable old sinner,” and that isn’t what you saw in Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of the miser after his moment of metanoia.

Scrooge has been separated not just from his family and the Cratchits, he has cut himself off from the whole human family and from God. But it isn’t too late for him, is it? Metanoia is a real possibility for each of us in our alienation and exile.
Perhaps Advent is more preparing the way and tending to the rebirth of the spirit of Christ within each of us and in our church, rather than waiting for the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, or for the second coming. Who knows what new life may spring up afresh within any of us? And maybe the people sitting around you will be the midwives who encourage and help you in that rebirth.
Where in your life are you feeling perhaps a bit estranged, cut off, or bound up? Simply acknowledging those pieces of your current mindset is the first step in rebirth or finding your way back home from exile. God is waiting for each of us to accept the invitation to renewal, rebirth, transformation, and wholeness. In our full humanity and our imperfection, God bids us come toward the light of the world and to midwinter metanoia.

May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity. (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), p. 168.
[2] Ibid., p. 180.

Mark 4: 25-41
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
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?" NRSV

35Later that day, when evening came, Jesus said to them, "Let's cross over to the other side of the lake."36They left the crowd and took him in the boat just as he was. Other boats followed along. 37Gale-force winds arose, and waves crashed against the boat so that the boat was swamped. 38But Jesus was in the rear of the boat, sleeping on a pillow. They woke him up and said, "Teacher, don't you care that we're drowning?" 39He got up and gave orders to the wind, and he said to the lake, "Silence! Be still!" The wind settled down and there was a great calm. 40Jesus asked them, "Why are you frightened? Don't you have faith yet?" 41Overcome with awe, they said to each other, "Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!" Bible, Common English with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39334-39340). Kindle Edition.
                 
I knew when I read this story again that I had preached on it before. So I looked back at my sermons. Yep! Twice before in the six and a half years I have been at Plymouth. Most likely before that at one or two of the other churches I have served. And I distinctly remember an intergenerational Biblical storytelling event I led many years ago when a wonderfully, feisty and well-spoken, tiny and very blonde four year old – Helena – played Jesus in the storm-tossed boat. She stilled the waves with no fear and no uncertain command!

In 2015, this was my text here at Plymouth just days after the shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC where nine African-American members were shot by a young white man interrupting a Bible study. In June 2018 when we read and considered this text together, there was a volcano in Hawaii erupting and destroying homes, huge floods in Vietnam killing people, a large, fatal mining accident in China, a terrorist bomb in Ethiopia that killed over 150, conflict in Syria and at the border of Gaza, the worst e coli outbreak in many years in the US and political turmoil due to our government’s administration. Now today, we hear the story of Jesus stilling the storm again as we prepare to re-open our church building for worship after a pandemic shut-down we could not have even imagined 3-6 years ago. Not to mention the political and societal events of the last 16 months.
So many “storms.”  It seems, there are always “storms” in to ride out in life.  No wonder this story shows up not only in 3 out of four canonical gospels. The older I get the more I realize that there is not as much smooth sailing in life as I imagined there would be when I was younger. It seems that more often than not, we are all just holding on for the ride! Like the disciples in that storm-tossed boat on that large, large lake called the Sea of Galilee.

Do you think they argued about waking up Jesus? “Let him sleep! He’s been teaching and preaching all day standing in this rocking boat! So many crowds. Everyone wanting healing! He is so tired. We can handle this storm!” “I don’t know, its getting really bad … we are starting to take on water – fast! I think we need help!” “Nah, we just have to steer carefully….besides what can he do? He’s not a fisherman.” “He can help bail!” The tension grows and the storm worsens until even the most seasoned of the fishermen are afraid and they all cry out, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are drowning?” And Jesus is suddenly awake.

I think we tell this story time and again because time and again we need to hear Jesus words. We need to hear him shout out to the storm, “Silence! Be still!” or more literally from the Greek, “Be Silent! Be Muzzled!” “Hush!” And the story tells us there was a great calm, a dead calm. Whew…..let’s just take a deep breath….then let it all out….Can we stay here for a moment in the calm?
Personally, I would like to stay for much more than a moment….how about staying in this calm, breathing deeply, out of danger, protected in the presence of Jesus’ powerful stilling of the storm for a really long time? I need to catch my breath big time! How about you?

That is the beauty of story and why stories like this one bear repeating time after time. We can always come back to this healing moment. We can read or tell ourselves this story every day and come back to this moment of Jesus’ stilling, calming presence in the storms of our lives and catch our breath. We live in the middle of many exterior storms in life, the storms of politics and pandemics, the storms of racism and poverty and gun violence, the storms of conflict in our families and in our workplaces, on the playground, in school. However, I will venture to say that the storms we carry around inside our minds and hearts are even more frightening and exhausting – the storms of fear and anxiety, of worry, of being overly competitive, of greed, of insecurity, of seeking to control things that we really have no control over. The inside storms interact with the exterior storms and cause us even more pain and suffering. How often do you feel that you are living in a whirlwind?

So come back to this moment when Jesus says, “Silence! Be Still! Enough already!” Breathe deep and let your hands unclench from the sides of the boat or the oar you are holding to help row the boat or the rudder to steer the direction or the rope for the sail that guides the power momentum of the wind. You don’t have to let go of those things completely, just relax the white-knuckled grip…for just a moment and catch your breath in the calm of Jesus’ powerful presence. And listen. To the quiet. To the gentle lapping of water against the boat. To the breathing of those around you, you are not alone. To your own beating heart. Just listen and breathe for a time.

We have been through such tumultuous times together in this little boat we call the church. We have weathered extreme changes, tacking right and left abruptly, to stay on course. Bailing water so as not to sink. Adapting to all the changes and confronting the conflicts of the last 16 months. We have done well…. And let’s not forget why…Jesus, God- With-Us, is in our boat. At times like these it is tempting to push ahead with the adrenaline panic of the storm we have just come through. But we do not need to do that! Because God-With-Us is present and brings us calm. We are still in the boat together out in the middle of the lake. We still have to reach the other side safely. This is true. There is so much planning to do as we re-open our building, as we learn to be church in person again, as we incorporate all we have learned by being forced to do church, to be church in new ways. So much planning as we hire and call new staff, prepare for them to come. Planning as we incorporate online worship with live worship, welcoming new friends who have joined us through the internet. Planning to do as we implement the goals and tasks of our new strategic plan that calls us to outreach and mission on unknown shores. I am tempted to be completely overwhelmed.

But Jesus is in the boat! Calming the waves and the wind. And in the quiet I hear him say to me, to us, “Why are you frightened? Don't you have faith yet? You have come through the storms and I was with you the whole time. Can you rest in, take heart in, trust in God’s presence?” This is an image I will literally take with me into my work as we move ahead as church. I need this image to calm the interior storms in my heart and mind and soul knowing I have little to no control over the exterior storms of life.

We are headed to new shores of mission as a faith community just as the disciples in the boat were headed with Jesus to the country of the Gentiles where he would proclaim God’s good news of love and forgiveness and demonstrate God’s healing power. God has work for us to do, but we cannot do it all on our own power. We need God’s powerful calming presence to help us steer the boat, to remind us to breath and not to bicker with one another, to have each other’s backs as we engage the work of God in new ways. We need to hear the message, “Do not be afraid. Have faith. Trust in my presence.”
There is a beautifully, poetic song titled, “The Wood Song” written by Emily Saliers, one of the Indie rock duo, “The Indigo Girls.” I think it is a song about faith communities and I know that Emily was steeped in such communities growing up as the daughter of two faithful people who I had the privilege to know when I lived in Atlanta, GA. One was a librarian who led wonderful reading hours for children and one a seminary professor who taught worship and liturgy. The imagery in “The Wood Song” is about being in a boat together during stormy times and the refrain goes like this:
“But the wood is tired and the wood is old
And we'll make it fine if the weather holds
But if the weather holds we'll have missed the point
That's where I need to go.”[i]
 
“That where I need to go” to that place of faith and trust where I can hear the voice of Jesus, God-With-Us, say “Silence! Peace! Be Still. Have faith.” I think you and I know that the weather will not hold – at least for long. Yet there is calm in the midst of the storm and we will make it to the other side, just holding on the ride, since we have God-With-Us in the boat. Are you with me?
Amen.

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

[i] https://genius.com/Indigo-girls-the-wood-song-lyrics

“Blooming”
Mark 4. 26-34
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
13 June 2021
 
 This week when I was walking our dog, Bridey, on a dirt trail near our house, I was astounded to see how high the various grasses have grown, and not just on the sides of the path, but even sprouting up in the cracked, parched soil that benefitted from a couple of wet weeks late in May. “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” Our seasonal cycle is off to a roaring start with all of the moisture we’ve had, and I know that we’ll soon see our vegetables sprouting and blooming. And they all start with seed and are nourished by healthy soil, sun, and water.

You may know the lovely poem by Wendell Berry, called “Sabbaths.” Here are a few lines of this poem that describes the intersection of human work in sowing, tilling, and harvest and the work of God: “And yet no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace. That we may reap, great work is done while we’re asleep. When we work well, a Sabbath mood rests on our day, and finds it good.”

There is so much that we humans affect in plant growth…that is the nature of agriculture, going right back to the Near East millennia ago. And yet there are things that are well beyond our control, things that we should marvel at and see as everyday miracles, like the fertility of the earth, the diversity of plant and animal life, the abundance of water, air, and land. And there are enormous implications for the ways we act as stewards of creation…and that’s a sermon for another day.

There is also a miraculous sense in which you and I are the vessels into which the kingdom of God — God’s liberating reign — is sown and nourished. If you were to think of yourself as a container of potting soil and the Spirit placing one tiny seed within you, isn’t it amazing how that seed can either flourish or become dormant or even die? What happens to seeds that don’t have adequate soil drainage? or don’t get enough water? or get too much or too little sun? or get nipped by the frost? There are all kinds of ways that the seed of the Spirit within you needs tending, some that you may not even be aware of.

Like all good gardening, nurturing the seed of the Spirit within you takes some intention. Nurture is the place where transformation and spiritual growth happen. How do you weed and water the seed of the Spirit within you? We need to love and to be loved, to serve and to be served as part of our growing. We need times of quiet contemplation and times of action to stretch us spiritually. Times of prayer and spiritual practice can help us distinguish what is important in life from that which is simply urgent. And it’s not always pleasant experiences that cause us to grow…surviving and thriving in hard times can sometimes help spiritual seeds grow stronger, too. Part of our purpose as the folks who comprise the church is to keep reorienting us so that we face toward God and grow spiritually.
Have you ever thought of yourself as a vessel that contains a germinating seed of holiness and wholeness? Paul uses a related analogy in Second Corinthians: “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”[1] Each of us is an imperfect vessel that grows and spreads God’s love for creation, including humanity.

All of this nurture wouldn’t do much of anything if there hadn’t been a seed of spirituality sown within us by God. As Wendell Berry said, “no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace.” Spiritual growth is a cooperative venture between God and us.

So, what if the seed has been planted within you is a fast-growing, take-over-the-garden kind of plant? Years ago, a neighbor gave us some mint, which we planted in a planter, and in the years since, it has jumped to a patch under some shrubs, the gaps in our patio, and turned into a minty-smelly border in our lawn. (A friend once said that it’s impossible to steal mint…you’re doing someone a favor by ripping some of theirs up and taking it home!)

That’s kind of what the mustard plant Jesus describes is like. It isn’t a nice, little domesticated plant that might be used to produce French’s, or Gulden’s, or even Grey Poupon…it’s more of a noxious weed that takes over the garden. Here is what one ancient author, Pliny the Elder, wrote in the first century: “with its pungent taste and fiery effect [it] is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand, when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”[2]  (Pliny, incidentally, took the National Geographic thing too seriously, and was killed by getting too close while investigating the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.)

So, the kingdom of God is like a noxious weed that is really potent and has a “fiery effect” and that will probably take over your garden if it gets too close. And if that is the seed God planted within us as Christians, we should be a force to be reckoned with!

Dom Crossan often talks about “the normalcy of civilization,” by which he means the things that humans have done ever since we started cultivating crops and raising livestock instead of hunting and gathering. He contends that one of the marks of the normalcy of civilization is empire: taking for your own group or nation what another has. It is survival of the fittest culture in a dog-eat-dog world. Certainly, one can see the Roman or Babylonian Empire as examples of one culture controlling the land and people of another and cashing in on it. You can see how the British did that in India or how the Japanese did it in the Pacific in the 1930s or how Europeans did it with North and South America. The Greek word used in the New Testament for empire is “basileia,” which is the same word we translate as “kingdom,” as in the kingdom of God. That is critically important: When the author of Mark writes, basileia, he is using the same word to describe the Roman Empire. It’s the way of rule or reign, not necessarily a geographic location. And the contrast is dramatic between the basileia tou theou, the reign of God, and the reign of Caesar.

The reign of Caesar was about dominating conquered peoples, resettling their land, creating a system of military control that allowed everything to work. It was a system that aimed at eventual peace, gained through violence, war, and oppression. The realm of God reverses that by first seeking love, compassion, abundance, connection, justice, and commonwealth as a pathway to peace or shalom. The two systems couldn’t be more different!

The writer of Luke’s gospel puts it succinctly: “The kingdom of God is within you all.”[3] Think about that for a moment…the seeds of God’s liberating reign are in all of us.

Sometimes I wonder whether we Christians actually have two seeds planted within us: the seed of the reign of God and the seed of the normalcy of civilization or empire. Do you ever wonder what is growing in you? Is it a sense of abundance or scarcity? Is it faith or fear? Is it compassion or apathy? Is it generosity or greed? Is it love or is it self-centeredness? Is it courage or is it anxious worry?

If we do all have the seeds of the realm of God and the normalcy of civilization planted within us, which seed are you nurturing? If the pandemic has led us to water the seed of fear, apathy, and anxiousness, that is the seed that will take hold and grow within us. If we water and tend the seed of the reign of God, we will see the fruits of faith, love, and courage in our lives and in the world.

That tiny mustard seed within each of us needs love and attention to flourish and grow. That’s why we are here together as church! And as it grows in you, it will reach out beyond you and have effects far and wide. Always remember: “The kingdom of God is within you.”
Amen.

© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] 2 Corinthians 4.7
[2] see John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography,(SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) p. 65.
[3] Luke 17.20

Mark 1.29-39
5th Sunday of Epiphany
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
29 As soon as Jesus and his companions left the synagogue [in Capernaum], they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon's mother-in- law was in bed with a fever, [she was very hot and sweating a lot], and they told [Jesus, “She is very sick.”] 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and [she got up from her bed] and she began to serve them. [She gave them some food to eat.]
 
32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons, [the people with bad spirits in them.] 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
 
35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." 38 He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
 
Looking at the first chapter in Mark, which we have heard most of in worship throughout January and now into February, you might think that the writer knew about modern movie trailers. The scenes move very quickly giving us the essence of what Jesus and his story is all about. He is committed to and blessed by God at his baptism….he gets his strength and power by  going into wilderness solitude for prayer…he proclaims a new message about God’s presence in the world saying, "Now is the time! Here comes God's kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!"[i] Then he begins healing folks who are outcast because of their illnesses, unclean by religious law, like the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue who Carla lifted up for us in last week’s sermon. You could say that Jesus is now really on a roll!

Everyone is bringing people to Jesus for healing and he is casting out their disease and their dis-ease, their bad spirits. First Simon’s mother-in-law and then all the sick of the city of Capernaum! Just as the disciples think, “Wow! We’ve got a good thing going here in our hometown,” Jesus tells his them that his purpose, his mission, is to proclaim God’s message and take the healing throughout all of Galilee, not just in Capernaum. They are on the move! Proclaiming the message of repentance and trust in God goes hand in hand with healing, “casting out demons.”

We love Jesus, the teacher, the storytelling rabbi, the proclaimer of wisdom, the social justice prophet who speaks truth to power about change. But what do we make of Jesus, the healer? In our time of pandemic, what do we make of Jesus as one who not only prays and proclaims, but also heals? Does the talk of spontaneous healing and being possessed by demons make us squeamish? We know and trust science. We know the advances of medicine in the last 2000 years. We are particularly grateful for the advances of medical science in this time of pandemic!  More and more of us are getting the vaccine. Much to be grateful for! Medical and mental health sciences do not have all the answers. Yet the answers they do have heal so much! Unlike Simon’s mother-in-law, when we have a fever, we can take a pill.

So what do we as 21st century people, disillusioned by radio and tele-evangelists who are shysters and money grubbers, do with Jesus, the healer?

I found help from the late scholar, Marcus Borg, who is much beloved here at Plymouth as our first Visiting Scholar and as a much-read author guiding us in faith formation through so many profound books. You may know that Marcus was part of the Jesus Seminar, a think tank of scholars and lay people, who worked in the 1980’s and 90’s on the quest to discover more about the historical Jesus. Marcus, spent much of his career asking, “What can be historically verified about Jesus? In his last posthumously published book, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century. Marcus writes that historically Jesus was a traveling rabbi and mystic healer following in the tradition of other Jewish mystic wisdom teacher and healers of his time.

Revering Marcus as a scholar and knowing that he had the research to back it up, this statement about Jesus was took me by surprise! Marcus believed Jesus was a healer, who healed through the power of his relationship with God, a relationship that involved his heart as well as his head, in fact, the devotion of his entire being, body and soul, a mystical relationship, if you will. Marcus goes on to define a mystical experience as an episode that invokes “sheer wonder, radical amazement, radiant luminosity [and often] evokes the exclamation, “Oh, my God!”[ii] He claims his own conversion to mysticism even as a scholar, through these experiences that take over all your senses. Experiences of the Holy that connect one with the “more” that is God. Not with a supernatural, parentified, Santa Claus God who will give me what we want or think we want if we just pray hard enough. But with the transcendent “God who is more than the space-time universe of matter and energy” AND the immanent God who dwells within, “the presence of God everywhere.”[iii] The God in whom, as the apostle Paul said, we “live and move and have our being” (Acts17.28). 

I have had these, usually too brief, numinous moments of “knowing” God, trusting with my whole being the God who is vaster than the cosmos, yet as intimate as my breath. Have you? And they connect me to Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of history who made God manifest in the world. These moments are not sought. They come upon one, not frivolously, but unexpectedly. I have found that I have to place myself in way of such moments by simply opening to the opportunity of them through habits of paying attention to the whole of life as sacred and to listening for the Holy in prayer. Just as Jesus did.

Leaning on the scholarly and heart-felt testimony of Marcus Borg, I confess to you in simple confidence, not needing to know with my head all the scientific or theological facts, that I trust Jesus was a mystic healer in his day. He healed people of whatever ailed them – from fever to “bad spirits.” Bad spirits that might have been mental/physical illness, such as depression, bi-polar or epilepsy. But also, bad spirits that might have been being allowing anger, resentment and holding grudges to consume life, seeking relationship to power over relationship to people. Jesus healed not through his own power, but through the power of God. He sought perfect attunement to God in his whole being, in his prayer life and his religious study life, yes, but also in his relational life, his community life of love and fellowship and in his life of social action for justice. Through being in-sink with God, he healed with his presence, his touch, his love bringing people into wholeness and new life. How, exactly? I don’t know. But I believe, I trust in Jesus’ healing.  I know he still heals souls. And that healing goes hand in hand with proclaiming God is here Now and God is love.

We can participate in the liberating message and mission of the historical Jesus in our own time which we know needs so much healing.  I am not saying we are called to lay hands on people and spontaneously heal them of Covid! We are not Jesus. What I am saying is that we each have the opportunity to open our hearts to healing change and redemption through the wholeness of God’s love. And then to share that opportunity with others.

The healing process of God the historical Jesus participated with began with bringing folks in and meeting them right where they were. In whatever state they were in. Loving them with the fierce, unsentimental, unconditional love of God. Seeing them for who they were created in the image of God. Calling them into this image. And then casting out whatever was harmful, not needed, not useful, what was bad for the health of the body, mind and soul, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.

Try something with me for just a moment. Let’s put ourselves in the way of the Spirit, open our hearts and minds to the opportunity of God’s healing through Jesus. Close your eyes, if you’d like. Take a deep breath and let it our slowly. Using your prayer heart or meditation mind or simply your imagination, bring all of your Self to stand before Jesus as if you were one of those folks brought to the door of Simon’s mother-in-law’s house in Capernaum. Bring all your longings, your frustrations, your illnesses of any kind. All your angers and resentments, your failings, your successes. Bring all your relationships. All the things you love and the things you don’t love about yourself. Your self-hatreds and lack of self-forgiveness, your pain in body, mind and soul. Bring your gifts, your joys, your thanksgivings. Present yourself before the spirit of God in Jesus for healing. God in Jesus sees you just the way you are created in God’s image. (pause) Is there anything standing in your way to wholeness that needs to be cast out by God’s powerful and loving presence? Let that thing go. Perhaps, there is there a healing word or image or idea that has come to you. Nothing is insignificant. Acknowledge what you receive and bring it more deeply into your soul. Let it anchor you in God.  Is there a surprise gift that has popped up in an image and is yearning to be used for God’s good in the world? Receive it and say, “Thank you.” Take a just a few moments to be in this place of before the power of God we know in the face of Jesus.

Now I invite you to take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Open your eyes if you closed them. Wriggle your finger and toes. Come back into the physical space of your home. Standing before Jesus’ presence for healing is a place you can go again and again. Because healing is a process. And you don’t have to do it all alone – that’s why there are ministers, friends, counselors and therapists, doctors, spiritual directors, the fellowship of a faith community. Remember the people came as a crowd.

Jesus calls us to healing so that the world may be healed. Remember the woman from Children’s Time? “But this is all I know of dancing.” I invite you to know the healing power of God through Jesus so that you may dance your life with both hands flung joyously into the air! Remember Simon’s mother-in-law? Her healing prompted her to servant leadership. She got up and fed all the disciples and Jesus, the healer. She was dancing in the Spirit with both hands up! May it be so with each of us.

Amen.

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

[i] Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39204-39205). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.

[ii] Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century, (Harper One Publishers, New York, NY: 2017, 43.)

[iii] Ibid., 39.

Mark 1.14-20
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Let’s talk about…Jesus.

Now, you may say to yourself, Hal you talk about Jesus almost every Sunday, and that’s true. But how often do you talk about Jesus with your family, your kids, your friends, even with your friends here at Plymouth? I’m guessing not very often.

When I was younger, it seemed that in my church we talked about “Christ” as a more refined, less emotional kind of a figure. It’s easier to make “Christ” conform to your own norms and standards than it is when you think about “Jesus,” the Galilean peasant who preached regime change to overturn the Empire and the forces of this world in favor of the kingdom of God.

It’s also because of the rise of anti-science, anti-gay, anti-woman evangelicalism in the 20th century that led to the Religious Right. It’s because we don’t want to be associated with the televangelists who talked a lot about Je-ee-sus (with three syllables). That Jesus is perceived by some as having one purpose: to get you into Heaven by being saved through a profession of a personal relationship with him as your personal Lord and savior. That theology invites radical individualism (it’s about me and Jesus) and it is centered in the mistaken perception that Jesus’ reason for being here in the first place was to die a bloody and agonizing death on the cross so that believers receive a get-out-of-jail-free card in the hereafter. If Jesus — that Jesus — doesn’t care a fig about social justice, then it’s all about reaching the pearly gates. I imagine that is the Jesus many insurrectionists in DC were praying to on January 6. Don’t you wonder what they would do with the words of  the historical Jesus: “Blessed are you who are poor.” “The kingdom of God is among you.” “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God; it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

And sometimes we in the mainline churches talk about the Christ of faith as the “post-Easter” Jesus, the one who rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God. (That’s a metaphor, by the way.) We speak of Christ whose presence is with us today. And that’s really important…but there is more.

But I have an invitation for you. We are going to be hearing a lot from the Gospel According to Mark in the lectionary this year (with a detour into John’s Gospel during Lent), and Mark provides a punchy, no-nonsense, early account of Jesus, the historical Jesus, who lived, walked, talked, preached, healed, proclaimed, and died in the Jewish homeland. Mark gives us a sometimes raw and unvarnished vision of who the Jesus of history was.

You may ask why the historical Jesus is important. The big theological answer is the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus, but I’ll set that aside for now. Jesus set an example of what it looks like to live a life fully in congruence with what God intends for humanity. In the version of the Lord’s Prayer we often sing, John Philip Newell writes “May your longings be ours,” which is another way to say that what mattered to the historical Jesus should matter to us…because it matters to God.

The historical Jesus is not so easily bent and contorted to fit our American vision of what a messiah should be. Instead, he was a disturber of the religious and political status quo, a sage of alternative wisdom, and a healer. The Jesus of history is an antidote to Christian Nationalism that co-opts the Christ of faith by putting words in the mouth of Jesus that he never spoke. He never said a word about abortion or same-sex love. The historical Jesus is also the yardstick by which Christians can and should measure our theology, whether it is our idea that God is still speaking or whether it is someone claiming to be a prophet thinks the former president should still be in the Oval Office. If you want to measure your message from the Holy Spirit, see how it looks in comparison to the life and teachings of the historical Jesus, and if it doesn’t measure up, it’s more likely to be your superego talking than it is God.

So, here is the invitation I extend to you: I invite you — no I implore you — to start talking about Jesus. Talk about Jesus and what he said about the poor, what he did in healing people without charge, what he meant by the phrase “the kingdom of God,” what Jesus was trying to do through his ministry and his public witness. As I watched the events of inauguration day last week, it occurred that we have entered a new era for progressive Christianity with a president informed deeply by Catholic social teaching and the social gospel. And in this morning’s New York Times, there is an article, “In Biden’s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity” that quotes Dr. William Barber saying, “Birth pangs require one thing: pushing.” Are you willing to push?

Have you ever noticed that the Black church has never had a problem talking about Jesus? We have something to learn! And the Jesus they talk about is most often the Jesus who blessed the poor, healed the sick, and stood up to empire. Can you push yourself outside your comfort zone to talk about Jesus? It’s a new day, and it’s time for us to claim our faith: to show people that the stereotype of White evangelicals doesn’t describe all Christians, and it doesn’t mean our view is exclusive of other faith traditions.

At the end of last year, I received a very thoughtful email from one of our members who wrote, “’We stand on the side of love’ or ‘Come just as you are’ constitute nice sentiments, to be sure.  But how do they move us forward? Rather, perhaps we should say: ‘Come just as you are…but don’t expect to stay that way.’ Expect to be challenged and changed…and, occasionally, to be made a bit uncomfortable — that is how growth and progress occur.” YES! This is exactly the centerpiece of Plymouth’s mission statement that describes inviting, TRANSFORMING, and sending.  The word you heard in our text this morning, REPENT, in Greek is metanoia, the shift of our hearts, minds, and actions toward the things that mattered most to Jesus. And it’s hard. Transformation is hard!

You may think that it’s hard to talk about Jesus…so just try it! What have you got to lose? People probably think you’re a bit of a crackpot for belonging to this church anyway! Try it! That’s my challenge to you this week.

And if you think talking about Jesus is difficult, imagine for a moment that you met Jesus, and he said to you, “Follow me and leave your classroom or your law practice or your small business or your retirement behind. I’m going to make you do something new that involves changing peoples’ lives!” What would you be willing to leave behind? Would you abandon your career? Your assumptions? Your fear of talking about Jesus? Your wealth? Your family? Imagine him speaking one-on-one directly to you.

It takes an incredible amount of trust in Jesus to take big steps. But here is something I know about you as a congregation: you have big hearts that match your big minds. Once something grabs you, you’ll give it your all, not just for a day or a week or a month. And if we really trust Jesus, we can take big risks for the kingdom.

So, what do you think Jesus is asking you to do as a person? What do you think Jesus is asking us to do as his followers? Where do you think Jesus is calling Plymouth in this new year? As we eventually leave the pandemic behind and we can come back together, what do you think Jesus wants us to do together for God’s world?

These words of Amanda Gorman are worth repeating:
“For there is always light if we are brave enough to see it,
If only we are brave enough to be it.”

Let’s be the light.

Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.