Matthew 2.1-12
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

What did you expect to find the first day you walked into Plymouth? (I know that a few of you were carried into the church in your parent’s arms, but for the vast majority of adults, we made a decision to come here.) Were you expecting to find a church just like the one you grew up in? Or maybe you weren’t raised in any particular religious tradition and thought it might be like a church service you’d seen televised. Perhaps you were expecting a praise band and projected PowerPoint during the sermon. What did you expect to find?

What were you seeking when you came? Sometimes people come to church in the midst of a personal crisis, after a divorce or as part of their sobriety or as a response to illness. Maybe for you, it was an effort not to be alone, to find community, to find a way to educate your children about spirituality in a progressive context. Maybe you had a not-so-positive experience in another church and were giving Christianity one last try.

For me finding a church was something of a pilgrimage. I remember when I was in my 20s and living in Santa Barbara, I felt the need to find a harbor where I could safely ask the questions that still floated around like flotsam from my childhood faith. I needed a more adult faith. A college friend and I did the rounds of churches together: we went to All Saints Episcopal, which has now grown into a wonderful congregation, but was then pretty staid. I then tried First Congregational UCC, and I was far and away the youngest person in the church. (I had just returned from graduate school in London, and the elderly man sitting next to me chatted about the last time he was in London…after the war…in 1918.) And finally at the invitation of one of my colleagues at the university, we found our way to the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, which looked like a Spanish mission church, had a great pipe organ, a choir that robed and processed, and a minister who had been a United Methodist clergyman. And they welcomed my spiritual quest.

That was what I was seeking in my 20s, having rejected the Protestantism of my youth and the Buddhism I tried to practice in college. (I was what one Buddhist abbot calls a “Barnes and Noble Buddhist:” one who reads books and practices without the benefit of a sangha or community.) And the Unitarians were a great home for me for a while. I loved the liberality of their approach…but for me there was always something missing. (And I don’t mean this as a slam against our Unitarian cousins in any way.) I wasn’t able to identify the absence at that point. It was as if, just at the time I had arrived in a crowded room, someone else had just walked out …and somehow the dynamic changed…the person who was the life of the party wasn’t there.

A few years later when we moved to Boulder, my former wife and I didn’t find a good fit with the Unitarians, and so I convinced her to try First Congregational UCC. Here is what I expected: plenty of men dressed in suits and women in dresses, an order of worship unchanged from my New England Congregational roots, and a sense of propriety and decorum. And their building – a big turn of the century stone edifice – contributed to that sense that this would be a church of the establishment, not the movement. What I found instead was a vital, engaged, non-artificial Christian community that really celebrated the sacraments, and I discovered that one of the missing elements for me had been communion: sharing the living presence of Christ through the elements that represent his body and lifeblood. And in the midst of the freshness of their approach, the church maintained enough tradition in the service to keep us connected with our roots.

Things are not always what they seem. And our expectations are not always so closely in line with what we hoped or feared. So, I invite you to take a moment and consider what you were seeking when you first came to Plymouth and what you expected to find. … Were there pleasant surprises? disappointments? differences? What are the elements you found here that keep you here? Are there friends you couldn’t bear to leave? Is there a point of access to the sacred, to God, in your experience here at Plymouth? Is there a sense that this is a place where people are still trying doggedly, faithfully to help change the world and bring in the kingdom of God here and now and still unfolding?

Our souls yearn for something…what does yours cry out for?

These miraculous, trouble-filled, joyous, frustrating, fascinating, struggling journeys that we call our lives are best when we listen deeply — beyond the blare of the television or the constant diversion of our cell phones. If we don’t take time to look at the wonders of light within our lives and the light that shines from the lives of others, we will miss it…miss the meaning and the depth of life, in all the pain and the joy of it.

We will miss the light of the Spirit.

Do you imagine that there was some hunger, some deep driving force that led three ancient astrologers across the desert sands and into a foreign country? Was their pilgrimage meant to satisfy their intellectual curiosity? What political reality did they hope to uncover? After all, they came to pay homage to a new king. What passion drove them into the court of Rome’s puppet king, Herod, and then to the manger in the animal stalls where an unwed mother laid her baby?

One of the things that motivated the magi is probably something that drew you to this place. No, you didn’t have to cross a desert to get here and your trip to church was not likely as arduous…but yours in a pilgrimage nonetheless.

Perhaps these journeyers, these unlikely heroes, these gift-bearing foreigners are a model for stepping out of our comfort zones in our pursuit of finding “the more,” “the holy,” “the divine,” God, in our midst.

Their expectations may have been to find the establishment, but instead, they helped to found the movement. It is ironic that the church over the millennia has often struggled to become bedfellows with the political and temporal power of government; when all the time, those who follow Christ are doing something very countercultural. Even these astrologers from the East knew divinity when they saw it…not in Herod, not in Caesar, but a helpless peasant, an infant in a coarse bed of straw.

What were the hallmarks of their pilgrimage? To seek new light? To find a different way of seeing the divine in our midst? To share the gifts not just of their wealth but of their very presence?

The magi undertake a classic mythic journey of being called, setting out on a quest, encounter, and return. That is a cycle that we see in our own pilgrimages: we yearn for something more than our affluent culture has to offer; we have an encounter with the sacred and engage a process of transformation; and we go out beyond as changed people who have something to share with others.
We know that they magi “left for their own country by another road.” But we never get to learn what became of them, how their lives might have been transformed once they had gotten home or ways the lives of these pilgrims touched others. One tradition allows that one of the magi started the Coptic church in Egypt, but we really don’t know for certain. What we do know is that their pilgrimage has inspired our creative thinking for 2,000 years and continues to do that today.

In a sense we embody much of this cycle in our mission statement: inviting (being drawn into the quest), transforming (being changed by an encounter with the sacred), and sending (going beyond and sharing).

Sometimes, we start off on a journey of faith not knowing what it is we are seeking…perhaps we just know that something is missing. And then we begin to change…our priorities, our ethics, our concerns shift. And then we are called to risk and to go out beyond ourselves.

As we walk into this new year together, may it be a time of transformation for you, a time of finding deeper wells of faith from which you draw the waters of wisdom, presence, and grace. And may it be a year of transformation for our congregation, as together we follow Christ and seek the realm he proclaimed.

Amen.

© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Matthew 6.25-33
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
​Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
I open today with the words of Diana Butler Bass, from her book, Gratitude:

“About two hours outside of Lexington, Kentucky, on a narrow country road sits a small Baptist church. It embodies the spirit of rural America as much as a church can — a white clapboard building surrounded by fields and woods, with mountains in the hazy distance. A cemetery sits on the property, too, holding saints in the peaceful earth as they away resurrection.

“I have been to all fifty states in America, including Kentucky, but I have never been to this particular church. I have seen it online, but I do not ever want to visit in person. Somewhere in that graveyard, resting among the Baptist faithful, lay the remains of the uncle who abused me when I was fourteen years old. When my mother sent me an email in January 2007 telling me he was dead, I replied, ‘Thank God.’ It was the first time that any mention of my uncle and any word of gratitude were ever combined in a sentence. Once in a while, I look at the graveyard from the safe distance of the Google cam — wanting, I think, to reassure myself that he remains in the dirt.”[1]

In these days when violence against women and girls is in the forefront of our minds, these words resonate with women and men who have endured abuse, and it is important to note that nobody is telling you to be grateful for your abuse or abuser. “Gratitude may work miracles,” Bass writes, “but sometimes the miracle comes from just being able to feel anything but pain.”[2] “Gratitude is no panacea against violence and injustice. Yet my soul suspected there might be a path beyond rage — a way for gratitude to enfold the pain in a greater good.”[3]

I can only imagine that those who have survived abuse wonder where to find that path. I imagine there are times when they wish they could feel anything but pain.

Often, I experience gratitude for something good (like a new church sign) or a happy event (like a trip or a birthday). My gratitude in those cases is part of a transaction: I receive x, so I am grateful for it. But there is another type of gratitude, a more basic, elemental type of gratitude that moves beyond the transactional “if-then” sense of the experience.

Hanging onto transactional gratitude makes it difficult to be grateful when things are not going your way. Are you experiencing gratitude for the way our national political life has deteriorated into fear-mongering, partisan vitriol, and winner-take-all politics? I’m certainly not. In fact, I find it appalling. The politics of avarice and power reflect a very deep-seated sense of fear…the fear of not having enough money, enough power, enough influence. In spite of all the crap I read in the news, I am still trying to live with gratitude for the big stuff: life, faith, love.
And if we all were better at being grateful, at being thankful, at letting go of our fear of not having enough, we’d have a very different kind of political environment.

One of the refrains in the section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that you heard this morning is a steady drumbeat to stop worrying…stop sweating the small stuff…let go of your fear…release your attachments to material objects and material wealth.

“Do not worry about … what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” It’s one thing to say to us, “Don’t worry about having Louis Vuitton bags or Patagonia jackets.” But if the only clothing you have is what’s on your back, it’s hard not to worry about what happens when your sweatshirt gets soaked in a rainstorm and it’s 35° outside. It’s one thing to say to us “Don’t worry about whether you’re drinking a Keystone Light or the latest seasonal microbrew from Odell’s.” Or “Don’t worry about whether you’re eating a hamburger at Good Times or a pan-seared halibut at the Kitchen in Old Town,” but it’s another thing to say that to someone who is just hoping to make it to the Mission for a hot meal. And I think what Jesus is saying is “Don’t freak out over having what you want, because through Creation and God’s people, you will get what you need.” And the way that works is through the everyday miracle of people like us sharing what we have and working for the kingdom of God here and now.

But Jesus goes even further than telling us to chill out. “Look at the birds of the air; they don’t work at all, and yet God feeds them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? And can you add a single hour to your lifespan by working harder? And stop worrying if you look good in your new clothes. Think about the lilies of the field and the miracle of the way they grow. They don’t work at all, and even so, King Solomon clothed in all his regalia couldn’t hold a candle to the beauty of these flowers.”

I think what Jesus is talking about is toning down our striving and even our reliance the stuff we can buy, and instead turning the tables to look and really appreciate what God has done and is doing for us. I think Jesus is asking us to become aware of God’s grace: what God gives to us unconditionally as a gift. We did nothing to earn or deserve life itself. We did nothing to earn or deserve the beauty of lilies growing in a field. We did nothing to earn or deserve the taste of apple pie or the delight of a lover’s kiss or seeing a yellow aspen stand on a Colorado mountainside. But we can observe and be grateful for them.

Last week, Jake and I had the gift of leading Geri Stutheit’s memorial service, and one of the things Geri said was that “life isn’t about how much we have…it’s about how much we give.” I think that is how we emulate God…in the giving.

I said earlier that there was a more basic, elemental type of gratitude that goes beyond transactional gratitude (which is simply being thankful that we have stuff that we’ve accumulated or even the good things that happen to us). I think that deep gratitude happens when we slow down, pause, and start to notice that everything around us as a gift.

When I’m at my best, I can capture a sense of wonder and awe when I look out of our kitchen window as the sun rises over the meadow along the Spring Creek Bike Trail. I am grateful when I look up at the stars when I go to the pool at 6:00 a.m. I am grateful when I think about my sons. I am grateful when I think about how we have grown together as this local church over the years, and grateful for all those who came before us to pave the way. These are not experiences of transactional gratitude…I think they comprise a sense of spiritual awareness that beckons me to respond, whether in feeling or action. That is deep gratitude.

David Steindl-Rast, a wise Benedictine monk, writes that “Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.” Sometimes I’m pretty good at that kind of authentic, existential, deep gratitude.

But at other times, I’m not great at seeing things as a gift, and I’m not good at being grateful for some of life’s rougher experiences. I’m not grateful for having had cancer…I’m just grateful that it’s gone! I know that we are all supposed to learn from the unearned suffering in our lives, but I’m still trying to find the big silver lining of that one.

I am deeply grateful to be alive, to have great healthcare, to experience the support and prayers of our congregation, and to be more empathic with others who have cancer…but I’m not grateful for having had cancer or for its after-effects. Like all of us, I still have some growing to do…maybe as I mature I’ll understand it differently and become grateful.

As we enter this stewardship season, I would encourage you to do a little writing…just a few notes if you wish. If you want to take out a pencil, here are some questions for you to consider in your prayers during the coming week:

• What are the things that evoke in you a deep sense of gratitude? Make a list of what you’re grateful for.
• Are you mostly grateful for things, or people or events or just being?
• Notice times when you are grateful: is it possible for you to be dominated by fear, anxiety, anger and gratitude at the same time?

 
As we move into this season of thanks, of gratitude, of generosity, may you be blessed, and may you be aware of all that God has done and is doing for you and with you and through you. And may we — all of us — strive first for the Kingdom of God.
Amen.
 
© 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] Diana Butler Bass, Gratitude. (SF: HarperOne, 2018), pp. 25-26.
[2] Ibid., p. 38
[3] Ibid., p. 39

Hal reflects on labyrinths and Lent. 

The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
Matthew 2:1-12
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
 
1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:  
 
6 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'"  
 
7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.  
             
One of my favorite authors and spiritual mentors is the late Madeleine L’Engle. You may know her for her fiction, A Wrinkle in Time, being her best known work. She also wrote poetry, personal memoir, books of spiritual and theological reflections on art, scripture and seasons of the church year. I turn to her writing when I need hope. In her book of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany writings, Madeleine shares a very early childhood memory. Her family was visiting her grandmother’s house on an almost uninhabited beach in North Florida. Born in 1918 this night time experience took place well before the days of light pollution. She writes:
 
“It  must have been an unusually clear and beautiful night for someone  to have said, ‘Let’s wake the baby and show her the stars.’ The night sky, the constant rolling  of breakers against  the shore , the stupendous light of the stars -– all made an indelible impression on me. I was intuitively aware not only of a beauty I had never seen before but also that the world was far greater than the protected limits of the  small  child’s world which was all that I had known thus far. I had a total, if not very conscious, moment of revelation; I saw creation bursting the bounds of daily restriction and stretching out from dimension to dimension,  beyond any human comprehension. This early experience was freeing, rather than daunting, and since it was the first, it has been the  foundation for all other such glimpses of glory.”i

I wonder if the magi who followed the star to Bethlehem experienced a night like this night in Madeleine’s life. The brilliance of the stars overhead, the radiance of the new star they followed out shining all the others, the sound of breakers on a beach, or perhaps, wind whistling across desert sands and rattling the dry leaves of palm trees. Surely they did, even though I also imagine their journey was long and tedious at times, even dangerous.

Matthew writes that the revelation of this new star in the east, a first glimpse of glory, set them on their pilgrimage. What other revelations might they have had along the way? Small glimpses of glory in their daily travel experiences? What bits of heart light and intellectual insight did they gather as they traveled that illuminated their journey? I imagine that they each had a fine collection, bits and bobs of glory glimpses, when they finally they reached the place where the star stopped over the house that held the One they sought, the new king, the Light of the world.
The season of Epiphany which we entered yesterday on the twelfth day of Christmas is a season of light, a season of the revelation of God’s glory, particularly in Jesus the Christ. One of its primary images is the shining star that led the magi. The scriptures we will encounter as we journey through this time of year leading us to Lent will all hold images of brightness, of stars, of new days dawning, of miracles, of the deep mystery of God with us in human form. Epiphany is a time of gathering light and glimpses of God’s glory even in the darkest hours.

I know that we preachers talk a lot about light in the darkness. About trusting in God to guide, about the need to keep on keeping on. Maybe to the point of our listeners’ exhaustion. And ours. We talk about such things to keep our hope alive along with yours.

We live in exhausting times. We long to figure out solutions to the problems of the world. To make ways for peace and justice. To be the change we long to see. Epiphany is a time to gather light for our journeys of justice, to gather hope in the stories of mystery and miracle that will sustain our ministries here at Plymouth and our personal pilgrimage through the year. It is a time to tend the stars that guide us like the star cleaners, to listen to their music, to receive their tears of joy. And all so that we can hold them in our hearts.

In a poem titled, “Into the darkest hour,” Madeleine L’Engle wrote:

It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hunger yawned the abyss – and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.
 
It was a time like this
of fear & lust for power, license & greed and blight --
and yet the [One] of bliss came into the darkest  hour in quiet & silent light.
 
And in a time like this how celebrate his birth when all things fall apart?
Ah! wonderful it is
with no room on the earth the stable is our heart.ii
 
When we open our hearts like the stable doors and once again they are filled with the light of Christ .... what then? I think you know. It is our privilege and responsibility to show up in the dark places of the world and let the stars of God’s love shine.

We let God’s love shine in the dark places of our own hearts and souls and minds. This is important and sometimes hard work. It takes prayer, study, a community of faith for support....sometimes even therapy or counseling. Its all worth it because we cannot share what we do not have. Its all worth it because each of us deserves to know in our heart of hearts that we are beloved beings made in the image of the Holy One.

We let God’s love shine in the dark places of our communities, family, work, school, through the outreach, calling and caring, Christian formation ministries of Plymouth. We show up here to care for one another and to let that care spill over into the world, through working for justice for the homeless, for the immigrant and refugee. We show up here for the sustenance of study and prayer and fellowship with one another. So that we may more effectively work for the sustenance of Plymouth, this beloved community, and its ministries, to work for peace in the world.

We let God’s love shine in the dark places when we gather to worship God each week. To give ourselves up wholeheartedly to God’s presence in community as we sing and pray and listen to God’s word in scripture and sermon. Our mission here at Plymouth is first and foremost to worship God SO THAT we may shine like the stars with the light of Christ. SO THAT we may experience glimpses of God’s glory in one another and wherever we else we may be.

On his much beloved 1980’s science show, “Cosmos,” the late astrophysicist and cosmologist, Carl Sagan made famous the notion that we human beings, as well as most of the matter on Earth, are literally made of the stuff of stars, of star dust. Sagan said, "We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff.”iii Sagan’s statement sums up the fact that the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our bodies, as well as atoms of all other heavy elements, were created in previous generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago. Scientifically, we are made of star stuff.

And in the mystery of theological and spiritual metaphor/truth, we are made of star stuff....made of the light of God. We hold that light within our hearts, hold the One born in the light of the stable within our very being, the One born to be God with us. How can we not share the glimpses of glory, the light we gather along the way?

I leave you an invitation to this season of gathering light through the power of Madeleine L’Engle’s poem, “Epiphany”:
“Unclench your fists Hold out your hands. Take mine.
Let us hold each other.
Thus is God's Glory Manifest.”iv Amen.
​
©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2018. May be reprinted with permission only.
 


i “The Light of the Stars,” Miracle on 10th Street and other Christmas Writings, Madeleine L’Engle, (Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, IL: 1998, 39-40).
ii Ibid,47.
iii https://www.livescience.com/32828-humans-really-made-stars.html
iv L’Engle, 49.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, CO
Matthew 4:1-11
March 5, 2017
​
Will you pray with me: God, be with us as we journey into the woods. I pray that this morning the meditations of our hearts and the words I dare speak from this pulpit will be true, honest, and good to your hearing, our God, who leads us through the woods and wilderness of our hearts. Amen.
 
“Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there lay a small village at the edge of the woods…
Into the woods, Without delay, But careful not To lose the way. Into the woods,
Who knows what may
Be lurking on the journey? Into the woods
To get the thing That makes it worth The journeying. into the woods.”i
 
These poetic words come to us from the prologue of the play, Into the Woods, which is a musical that combined many of the historic Brothers Grim, Disney, and other Fairy Tales into one epic story with an equally and epically complicated plot. In the end, this story of fairy tales inverts the traditional understanding of black and white good and bad. It shows how that reading of these classic stories is too easy. There are no easy categories of people anymore in a globalized world. Even our Fairy Tales have to change and make new meaning. It isn’t just the Bible with this issue. Into the Woods demonstrates that temptation, passion, wishing for something, death, and the idea of “happily ever after,” is all much more complicated than they initially appear or that we would like to think. The mores, ethics lessons, and morals of the story are really, in the end of this story of going “Into the Woods,” reveled to be as clear as… mud.
 
Today, likewise, we begin our own journey with Jesus into the woods of the wilderness of Lent. Into the woods without delay… be careful not to lose the way. Like the play, Into the Woods, we will see that the idea of Lent and the lessons we are to learn are more complicated that the tales of old and the norms we have accepted and have been led to believe. Lent is about more than giving stuff up (chocolate, candy, cursing) and proving our worthiness for Easter to God, for it is about journeying into the deepest, thickest, most complicated Fairy Tale Land of all… our own hearts, our own real and true selves, and our own needs. Progressive Churches love to talk in platitudes about finding our “authentic selves,” but we forget to mention that is a very risky business. There are more villains and heroes within each of us than in all of the fairy tales ever written down. Lent is about confessing a deeper truth not to each other or even necessarily to God. It is, in my view after studying today’s Scripture, about being honest with ourselves about our own inner woods, needs, and growing edges for the year to come.
 
What is the emotional thicket or briar patch or castle tower (Rapunzel) that you need to let go of or face with truth and honesty this year? Is there someone in your life keeping you captive through manipulation or emotional abuse in a tower who you need to let go of or escape from? Let us venture now, into the woods of our hearts. This is a harrowing journey, brothers and sisters, but together with strength and community we can emerge with new insight and truth on the other side of Lent. Remember that Hansel and Gretel never turned on each other even as they were lost and hopeless. This is no small miracle for siblings. Who knows what may be lurking on the journey of self-discovery?
 
There is another way to interpret Matthew Chapter 4, verse 1; “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” If we look at the actual original Greek of the Gospel of Matthew, the same verse can be interpreted as reading, “Then Jesus was sent forth by the Holy Spirit of God into the woods, into the wilderness, into the solitude, into the loneliness (sent out into the uninhabited/ desolate/ forlorn places of his own soul) to prove himself to himself, to be examined, to be tested by the adversary alone."
 
Now here is the interesting thing. In the same way that we assume that Cinderella lives happily ever after once she meets her prince or that Jack is the good and wholesome character in “Jack and the Beanstalk” (while the giants have done nothing wrong…), we also assume from having heard the story too many times (every year in Lent) that Jesus knows who the adversary is throughout this entire time in the woods. We assume that the adversary is a physically embodied devil standing there with Jesus and bringing him to these different tests.
 
We envision the adversary here a little bit like a host on a game show (something like Survivor)… creating an ethical obstacle course. If we assume that is the case, then it raises two important questions:
 
First, why, if this is an encounter with the adversary… the Devil, is it the Spirit of God/ The Holy Spirit who leads Jesus into the woods in the first place? This runs counter to the popular prosperity Gospel and sometimes even the progressive Christian Gospel that God doesn’t want us to be challenged or to dig too deep! God just wants easy and fun in life.
 
The idea that God wants Jesus to go spend time in the woods of his soul problematizes our normal fairy tale reading of this story of Jesus going into the woods. We assume, for some reason, that Jesus doesn’t want to be there, but the Bible says that the Holy Spirit led him to the woods rather than it forcing or compelling him against his will. This is a self-willed process. So Lent, Plymouth, is a choice we make to follow the Holy Spirit into something difficult. If this is not a year when you are ready to really do the work of lent, then maybe don’t do lent at all. Lent is an intentional space in our year for proving something new to us and it is lonely. First, God takes us to the woods to learn something, to go deeper, to face our fears and inner selves. It is in the woods where we begin to grow in faith, in healing, and in recovery. The woods are where denial ends.
 
Now for the second problem of our easy reading: Why does it take 9 verses and around a month a half of being tempted and wondering in the wilderness before we reach verses 10 and 11 when, “Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” It takes 9 verses and well over a month for Jesus to name the adversary and to send these thoughts and tests away.
 
Why? Who likes being tested? Why would it take Jesus so long to send the adversary (Satin) away? The answer to this can only be found in the woods of our own hearts. The adversary is safe and easy (as popularly depicted with horns and a cape). That which must be overcome is easy to send away, banish, or ignore when we think it is something external, but more often than not… the temptation to give-up on our dreams, to be selfish, to seek power and glory over truth and wholeness, to hoard, to postpone becoming authentically who we are called to be, to give in and to give up to the powers of loneliness of inner woods and forests, to quit, to stop hoping [LONG PAUSE]… those temptations don’t (unfortunately) come from a devil in a red cape. That is simply a fairy tale told to keep our egos safe.
 
Second, the temptation is from within most often, and it is only by journeying and facing the true part of ourselves that we emerge in confidence. It takes time for Jesus to face the inner tempter. We are often our own devils. We are most often our own adversaries. We are the internalized tempters who draw our potential for wholeness away from our authentic, whole selves. This is why it took Jesus so long to send the adversary away, for he was hidden in the shadow of the woods.
 
Isn’t the Bible so much for interesting when we take it seriously?
 
This what lent is all about! Lent is about following the Holy Spirit intentionally into the hard conversations with the latent, unpleasant, and complicated parts of our own hearts. This might not be the year when you are ready for real into the woods work, but when you are Plymouth is here to support you no matter who you are or where you are on your woodland journey.
 
Hey, Pastor Jake, jeeeeez… I don’t attend a UCC church to think about my own loneliness and inner work and spiritual/ emotional self! I leave that touchy feely stuff to the Evangelicals. I am here because I want social justice marching orders with a Divine Imperative that help me feel good about myself without facing the parts of myself that are lost in the woods of despair, hidden depression, deep and very very old childhood shame, lost causes, inauthenticity, and abandoned dreams and hopes. I don’t want to follow Jesus into the woods of Lent.
 
Sister and Brothers, life is not a fairy tale—even in Fort Collins. We willingly go into the woods of Lent with Jesus not to see things as we always see them (easy, black and white, as presented… good/ bad), but we go to the woods to be challenged with hard truths about ourselves and to work for healing, authenticity, and renewal. With Jesus by our side, we have nothing to fear from this process. Hopefully, with this intentional work of Lent woodland journeying, we will emerge in the meadows of Springtime Easter Morning with a new clarity for the work ahead, the purpose and ethics we are called to and honest work for the year ahead. This is the real work of Church.
 
“Into the woods To get the thing
That makes it worth The journeying…
The way is clear, The light is good, I have no fear,
Nor no one should.
The woods are just trees, The trees are just wood.
No need to be afraid there…”ii
 
Into the Woods we go now with Christ. Amen.

1. James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim, Act I Prologue: Into the Woods, Theater, Theatre Communications Group, Edition 1, 1993.

1. James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim, Act I Prologue: Into the Woods, Theater, Theatre Communications Group, Edition 1, 1993.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 and Matthew 5:43-48
February 19, 2017; 7th Sunday in Epiphany
Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
 
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-1819:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them:
You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
19:9 When you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap to the very edges of your field,
or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
19:10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare,
or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard;
you shall leave them for the poor and the alien:
I am the LORD your God.
19:11 You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely;
and you shall not lie to one another.
19:12 And you shall not swear falsely by my name,
profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.
19:13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal;
and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.
19:14 You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind;
you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment;
you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great:
with justice you shall judge your neighbor.
19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people,
and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin;
you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.
19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,
but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
 
Matthew 5:43-485:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
5:44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
5:45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven;
for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
5:47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,
what more are you doing than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
5:48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
 
I am reading The (Un)Common Good; How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided by Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners community in Washington DC, a Christian community dedicated to living out the gospel together in social justice. Wallis tells the story of Mary Glover. Mary was a cook in a day-care center in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC where Sojourners was located in their early days. Only twenty blocks from the White House, Columbia Heights was at that time one of the poorest and most violent areas of DC filled with people considered pejoratively by society to be the “least of these.” But we know how Jesus considered the marginalized, those who are poor, hungry, without shelter, sick, in prison. They were his beloveds and part of his family.

Mary Glover, who was poor herself, was one of the consistent volunteers in Sojourners grocery give away every Saturday morning to help poor families make it through weekend. She was the designated pray-er, because given her Pentecostal roots, she was the best pray-er in the group.
Every Saturday before Sojourners opened their doors to the 200 families that lined up at the door and around the block to receive the free groceries, Mary prayed. Wallis confesses that he got up almost every Sat just to hear Mary pray. “We would hold hands, and Mary would thank the Lord for waking us up that morning and that we were all still alive: “Thank you Lord for another day! That the walls of our rooms were not the walls of our graves! And our beds were not our coolin’ boards!” Then Mary always ended her prayer by saying, “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.”

For me Mary Glover in this story is an embodiment of the instructions we hear in our texts from Leviticus and Matthew today. Instructions to be “holy” and “perfect” as God is “holy” and “perfect":
“You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. “
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

How many of you think of yourself as holy or perfect? Go ahead, raise your hand! Yea....me too. Not many of us would say we are perfect. Though we may drive ourselves and our loved ones nuts trying to be perfect...without fault...without mistake or blemish. And that word “holy” has real difficulties for us....because we associate it with arrogance...”holier than thou.”

The Hebrew word used in Leviticus for holy, qadosh, does not primarily mean pure or sanctified. It means “set apart.” God says to the people of Israel, “You are set apart as my people for my work.” And in being set apart, God invited them, and invites us today, into a very intimate relationship of holiness. “Be holy, as I am holy.” The people of Israel knew from Genesis that they were made in God’s image. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery and oppression. They knew they were God’s people created to love the God with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. “Be holy, as I am holy.” This is a relationship of trust and accountability. As God’s people they were and we are accountable for:

• sharing the harvest of the work of our hands with the poor and the stranger,
• dealing fairly and honestly with one another, no stealing or lying,
• paying fair wages to those we employ as laborers,
• helping – not hindering- those marginalized with disabilities,
• dealing equally with all people in matters of justice; no playing favorites with rich or poor,
• being accountable for our words and actions; no slandering, no profiting from others’ oppression,
• being accountable for our emotions and our attitudes; no “hating” in our hearts or with your words

 
And if these sound a bit similar to the Ten Commandments....that is the writer of Leviticus’ intention!

Jesus was steeped in the knowledge of the people of God that we discover in Leviticus. Remember the Torah, the prophets and the psalms were his Bible. He knows the deeper meaning of qadosh, fo being God’s holy people set apart for God’s work. Throughout collection of teaching we call the Sermon on the Mount, he tells the crowds on the mountainside that they are God’s people. They are in an intimate relationship of trust with God. This is not entirely new information to them. Yet Jesus is reinterpreting the law of the Torah in light of the times they were living in, times of oppression of the people of Israel by the Romans. He tells them as God’s people here is how you are accountable to God in this intimate relationship. “Love even your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In New Testament Greek the word translated as “perfect”, teleios, does not mean “without fault or mistakes”. It means be “healthy, whole, mature, complete.” Jesus gives his commandments to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors in the context of an intimate, growing, healthy, maturing relationship of wholeness with God.

I am privileged, humbled and challenged to be serving a community such as Plymouth who already strives to be holy and perfect. We strive to take seriously our intimate relationship with God that propels us to be holy and perfect in relationship to God and to one another, and to the strangers, and the “least of these” that Jesus loves. John Wimberly, the consultant with us last week, described our congregation as one of the healthiest that he has work with as a community in relationship to one another and to God. He observed that it is in Plymouth’s DNA as a community to do hands on work for God’s kingdom. And I would add to accept the challenges of our texts today.

Taking the Leviticus text and its list....Let us continue to ask ourselves how do we use only what we truly need from the work of our hands and apportion some of the harvest for those less fortunate? Can people glean in our fields? How do we deal justly with all people no matter their economic status? How do we love your neighbor as yourselves through our actions and through extravagant welcome? Let us continue to ask ourselves, where can we reach out in genuine love to our enemies?” Do we have “enemies” as individuals, as a community? Here’s the thing about enemies, we may still not like them....but we have to ask how we find a way to love them as our neighbors, as we love ourselves? What does that love look like?

Respect? No slander? Honesty? Can we pray for those that we vehemently disagree with? Not that they change their minds to think like us! But pray for their highest and best as children of God. And leave them as much without judgment as we can in God’s hands for God to guide their hearts and minds.

We will never to do any of this without mistakes. We will forget at times in the frustrating details and logistics of our life together and our work for God’s realm that God has calls us into intimate relationship and think we have to do everything by ourselves. But that’s the thing about God...the thing about God we know in Jesus the Christ....God keeps coming back over and over offering us God’s love and justice, mercy, grace and presence.

The words of scripture today are words to live by in our troubled times. Yet they boil down to more than following a list of commandments. Being holy, set apart for God’s work, loving our neighbor as our self, and striving to be perfect, to live into wholeness and maturity because we belong to God boils down to the prayer of Mary Glover. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through this line today; so help us to treat you well.”
​
Look around you this week. Look for God’s “least of these.” Look for those who may seem to be your enemy. Look in all the lines your encounter as Mary did in free groceries line. Look for the stranger, the marginalized, the ones who seem so different from you in values and lifestyle that you think you could never be in relationship with them. “Lord, we know you’ll be coming through the lines of our lives this week; keep us accountable to you in holiness and wholeness; help us to treat you well.” Amen.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado
February 5, 2017
Matthew 5:13- 20
 
* I love teaching the new members’ classes with Hal and Jane Anne because they always help remind me what this work is all about and how special our approach to ministry is at Plymouth. I was reminded this week about what covenant and church means here in the UCC. In the UCC, we covenant to journey together, but do not promise to always agree. Today, I am preaching a sermon that came to me from my discernment with the Holy Spirit. You do not have to agree with me, but I pray that you will listen and find what rings true for your heart.
 
Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the prophesies, visions, awakening of our hearts be good, complete, and new in your sight, O God, our rock and our alarm clock. Amen.
 
The time for complacency is past. The days of blissful ignorance are long gone. The Church’s long and comfortable slumber in the satin sheets and down, feather-filled bedspreads are coming to the dawn of a new day. The comfort found with the mattresses of padded endowments, pillows of unquestioned cultural dominance, and blind sleepwalking through superficial, easy acts of charity are finished. The harsh sound of the alarm clock of God’s call for ethical speech, awakening to a need for virtuous leadership, and prophecy has now rung for the Church.
 
Can you hear it? God’s alarm clock rings loud clear in all of our hearts this morning. Don’t you hear God’s call for action sounding in your soul?
 
It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. 

We might well believe this is the first time God has sounded this great awakening alarm. As Congregationalists, however, this is our legacy and our heritage. Awakenings are our business in the UCC. While we no longer espouse the retrograde theology of the time, we in the United Church of Christ are the direct inheritors of the First Great Awakening that began in Northampton, Massachusetts in the church led by Jonathan Edwards. He was the author of the famous, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” How many of you remember reading  this gem in school? The UCC has come a long way since that sermon title, hasn’t it? While today the words of Jonathan Edwards strike us as conservative and awkward, we must recognize that it was revolutionary and even progressive in 1741 when it was written!
 
Edwards was the leader of the Congregationalist “New Lights” or reformers who sought to revive a faith in God’s grace and in active belief. The “Old Lights,” on the other hand, were the Congregationalists who had become more of a complacent political institution running the affairs of small towns in New England than a church of faith and action. They wanted nothing to do with passionate belief. The Old Lights despised Edwards and his First Great Awakening followers’ passion, penchant for grace, outspoken nature, and they preferred that the church go back to sleep as a pacified and placated institution of polished pews and polite picnics.
 
Now, Edwards was very concerned with what he called the “wrath” of God. There is an ugly English word: Wrath. It isn’t even fun to say. This makes me wonder, as progressive Christians today, being woken from our sleep, can we handle our claim on the wrath of God? There is no doubt that God’s anger is Biblical. Even Jesus demonstrates wrath in the temple at those abusing the system by turning over tables in a rage. This is a word that, for many of us including me, brings up what I call Evangelical Church-PTSD from our youths in more conservative and less loving places than Plymouth. The wrath of God is tough to embrace. So how can we re-appropriate and reclaim God’s anger as a righteous and holy wrath? Can we reclaim the legacy of our direct ancestors Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening for a new time and a new need? Why is God waking us up now and calling us all back to the real work of the church?
 
Today, as progressive Christians, we associate the word “wrath” as meaning a hateful or a conservative God, right? The word wrath actually just means “extreme anger” or “vexation.” We must, sisters and brothers, believe that God is capable of extreme anger if we also believe that God is a God of social justice and radical transformation.
 
In the words of our ancestor of Congregationalist faith, Jonathan Edwards, “You had need to consider yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of Sleep; you cannot bear the Fierceness and Wrath of the infinite God…Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come…Let everyone fly out…”[i]

Regardless of party affiliation, if we believe that lying and making up fake facts makes God angry, then we must know of God’s wrath. We must reclaim virtue and ethics. If nobody else is going to claim that lying is wrong, then it has to be us. Lying is just as wrong for progressive Christians as anyone. Deceit is no virtue, Amen?
 
If we believe that neglecting the poor of the earth, marginalization the other, and making the poor and hopeless poorer and more hopeless for our own enrichment, wealth, power, and money makes God angry, then we know of God’s wrath. If America First means that everyone else goes last, then God has wrath in store for us.
 
If we believe that belittling others, mocking the weak, discrediting the educated, insulting the hopeless, undermining world peace, or promoting or protecting hatred is a sin (falling short of what God hopes for us), then we must know of God’s wrath. Yes, I said sin.
 
If we believe that discriminating against the LGBTQ community is wrong and enabling the hateful and violent, then we know of God’s wrath.
 
If we believe from the depths of our hearts, our faith, and our theology (belief in the nature and fact of God’s very existence) that fundamentally… sexism, the objectification, abuse, unequal pay, and double standards for women is fundamentally a cultural sin, then you know in your heart what wrath means. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when your spouse, sister, or mother is passed over for a promotion.
 
If we believe that abusive reverse mortgages, predatory scams and financial schemes, rampant elder abuse, underfunded and understaffed nursing homes for those who cannot afford private pay, and disrespect for our elders and elderly is a cultural sin, then you know the wrath of God. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when you cannot get proper care for your parent or sibling.
 
If we believe that having ethics matters and that creating alternative ethics that makes everything okay is wrong, then you feel the core of the wrath of God.
 
If we believe that outlawing immigrants, dehumanizing other religions, rejecting the refugee, and building walls between God’s children based on race and language is a sin, then we know the wrath of God.
 
Maybe we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God anyway for our slumber and complacency. This is not however a time to blame, but it is a time to waken the sleeping Church. That choked up feeling, fear, anger we feel in our guts as all that is good and right and Scared in the world is put at risk is God’s alarm clock inside of us. We feel God’s wrath and it is Holy.
 
As your minster for pastoral care and outreach and mission, these two job responsibilities often merge as these cultural sins cause our own members’ pain. As inadequate healthcare, mental health support, elder abuse, and immigration worries bring us and you to tears, my call here to care for your outreach work and your spiritual care merge.
 
Usually I preach pastoral sermons about the love of God, the peace of God, the acceptance of God through Jesus Christ, but today (While all of that remains true… truer than ever…and my next sermon will probably be again about loving our enemies and I might could even sing again in my next sermon…), I am called by my ordination vow to help us reclaim and awaken to the wrath we know in our hearts comes from God. Wrath is, after all, extreme and Holy, DIVINE vexation, frustration, and anger. If I don’t preach this today, then I am not worthy of the title of The Reverend Jake Joseph. If I don’t speak the truth, take away this title.
 
New Lights, Christians, Church, Friends, Leaders of the Great Awakening… of 2017, today we start here in Fort Collins, Colorado… like what was started in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1730, but this will be the First Progressive Great Awakening. 

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer  good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to the father.”
 
Salty Christians, what does that mean? Historically, in the text, it means those with a unique flavor who are effective at their mission of preserving and transforming. I especially love this passage because of what else salty means as an adjective in modern English parlance. To be salty means to be irritated and irked… vexed!

This is what our scripture is calling from us today! We must harness the wrath of God for the good of the word in order to lead. Other branches of Christianity have given-up their saltiness or capitulated to power, and have therefore given-up their claim on Christ’s message and hidden their flame. Others have decided that Christianity is simply a vehicle for political oppression of the weak and powerless. We are called to be salty, flaming Christians! We must again be new lights in a world of darkness, newly awakened as others are now going or being put to sleep.
 
Now, since we are already talking about progressive Christian wrath and cultural sin, why don’t I also say a word about what Progressive Christian temptation looks like? I mean, might as well go all in! This very likely is a once in a career type sermon.
 
The first temptation I call, “The Snooze button.”
 
I mean, who doesn’t like to go back to sleep? When confronted with a Great Awakening of God, who wouldn’t instinctively hit the snooze button!? I confess that I LOVE the snooze button on my phone alarm. We see this in effect in the Bible with Jonah and his reluctance as a prophet, Paul before his conversation when he was Saul, and even with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (take this cup). SNOOZE! God, can’t we just hit Snooze for another decade or millennia? Can’t we just hot the snooze for the next four years? The first instinct is to ignore the fierce urgency of now, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and LBJ called it. That is a grave temptation.
 
The second temptation I call, “The roll over and pass the buck.”
 
The other temptation, and I can attest to this and am also guilty of it, is when the alarm goes off, you roll over in bed and tell your spouse or partner, “hey honey [yawn] go let the dog out.” Then you pass back out. “Hey honey, go get the kids ready for school.” “Hey honey, go attend to the issue I don’t want to deal with right now,” and I am going to hit the snooze button for a while. Amen? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Does this sound like anyone’s spouse or loved one?
 
This is the temptation, when you see an announcement about a march for social justice or have an idea for action that must be taken (when God sends you an alarm), you email Betsy or me from the Outreach and Mission Board and write with lots of exclamation marks, “Somebody should be doing something about this!!!! The church should organize this march!!! I am indignant that you are not leading this charge!” I have been getting around five ten of these emails a day from you and they all center on the phase, “someone else should, but I am too busy to take any leadership right now.” You should be doing something about this. If I turned all of my attention to organizing all of the marches for you, you would have no pastoral care or communications or sermons from me. So when the alarm goes off, don’t pass the responsibility, but take action and provide leadership. An email to the board or me is a good start, and please keep emailing us, but it is sort of the “roll over and pass the buck” and go back to sleep response to God’s wake-up call.
 
Plymouth, we are called to be new lights once again. The alarm of grace and action that stirred so many years ago is sounding again. We are called to this time for waking-up. We are called to this time of being salty, whole and H.O.LY. irritated Christians for God.
 
It is time for the to waken from our sleep, risk losing our endowment mattresses and our pillows of peace, and our blankets of blandness. The buck stops here. We cannot roll over and say that this morning task is someone else’s responsibility. We cannot hit the snooze button. We are the leaders we have been waiting for and that God, Jesus Christ, the universe has been looking for. It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We are the New Lights for a new time. Shine on.
 
Amen. 

© 2017 Jake Joseph, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit use
 
[i] Jonathan Edwards. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Hal preaches on Micah 6:6-8 and Matthew 5:1-12. ​

Matthew 4.12-22
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado
January 22, 2017
 
There is a saying common to the mission of preachers and journalists: We are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I hope that in today’s sermon, there will be moments of comfort and moments when you will sense challenge …if not affliction.

We hear about the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry today: he has already been a follower of John and been baptized by him in the Jordan; he has returned from 40 days in the wilderness being tested by the evil one, and now it is his turn to launch his    own message and program. (Dare I say that it was Jesus’ inaugural agenda?)

One of the first thing Jesus proclaims employs one of my least favorite words in the English translation of the Bible. It’s a word that you would likely hear on the lips of Jimmy Swaggart or other televangelists: REPENT!

Now, while I have all kinds of negative associations with that English word (and perhaps some of you do, too), the word used in the Greek New Testament is one of my favorites. It is the same 
word translated as REPENT, but it has different connotations and shades of meaning. The Greek word is metanoia — meta (as in metamorphosis) means to change, and nous/noia has to do with  your way of thinking and being (as in paranoia…well, bad example, but you get the picture).

Metanoia means to bring about a radical shift – a transformation — which is absolutely central to vital, living Christianity. It’s kind of a heart-and-mind transplant, as Paul wrote, “Let the same mind (nous/noia) be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” [1 Phil. 2.5]

You all remember Plymouth’s mission statement: “It is our mission to worship God and to help make God’s realm visible in the lives of people individually and collectively.” We do  this  by “inviting, transforming, and sending.”

That second step — transforming — is what metanoia is all about. We have to be willing to shift our thinking and our way of living to transform ourselves when our faith demands it. We need to be able to part with some of our old, comfortable patterns and live into new ways of being and doing.

Why? Why do we need to transform ourselves if we’re already doing pretty well and  we’re at least okay, flawed  people?  Jesus tells us the WHY of transformation: BECAUSE God’s realm or kingdom has come near. (Jesus goes even further in Luke’s gospel, saying that the kingdom of God is not simply NEAR…it’s HERE…among us!)

This kingdom is not like the empires of this world, which seek power over, domination of the many by the few, winner take all,     and privilege for the elite. In the coming weeks, through his Sermon on the Mount, you will hear Jesus tell what the  kingdom  is  all about: hungering for justice and righteousness, blessing the poor, and working to become peacemakers.

Wait a minute… the poor? … working for justice? … peacemaking? That may not be the priority (or the rhetoric) of the new administration, but is it God’s priority. It isn’t about  Republicans or Democrats…it’s far more basic than that. On a fundamental level, it’s not about what is advantageous to any one   of us, but rather what is congruent with the teachings of   Jesus…the historical Jesus….the human being who was born,  grew up, taught, led, prayed, and was executed in the first century.

It is a lot easier for any one of us to know what Jesus said  than it is for us to DO what Jesus DID…and both are integral to the Christian journey. None of us gets it right, but what we are about in the church is to work toward that goal — to aim toward God’s   realm and to be God’s co-creators of it.

I have been told recently by some of our members that it feels so good to be with folks at Plymouth. And I think part of that is that we attempt to live by love for one another…we don’t always make   it, but we try together. And that  isn’t  something  you  necessarily find in other organizations, whether in justice work, nonprofit work, schools, or some churches. The UCC’s tagline speaks volumes: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”

Democrats and Republicans and Independents: ALL WELCOME HERE! Gay, straight, bi, lesbian, questioning…ALL WELCOME HERE! Male, female, trans…ALL WELCOME HERE! Old, young, in between…ALL WELCOME HERE! Introverted and extroverted; Republican, Democrat, and Independent; physical and cerebral; able-bodied and people with disabilities; doubters and believers; black, white and all shades in between…ALL WELCOME HERE!

And the issue is that there are people in Fort Collins…right there at CSU…who have no idea that a church like Plymouth even exists. Lots of folks don’t know that a congregation that actively welcomes spiritual exploration in community can be found right here. After all, our name sounds like other churches…our building looks like other churches…how on earth can they be expected to know that we are different? progressive? welcoming? wondering?

Let me show you a 90-second video released last week by the UCC… can you imagine any other denomination doing this? [VIDEO]

Jesus has called YOU from your nets to become fishers of women and men — even if that seems scary to you. It’s time to   shift our way of thinking and acting on this, because our community…our nation…God’s world needs to have the gift of Plymouth spread wider. So, summon up the courage to invite someone to Plymouth…it is not going to happen automatically without your participation, and “somebody else” at Plymouth is not going to do it for you.

For many of us, this is the challenging part: We need to be open to transforming our hearts and minds — to be open to metanoia — if we are going to do this. We have to leave some of our reticence, our shyness, our pride at the doorstep if we want to share the gift of progressive faith at Plymouth. You clergy cannot  do this alone.

We have a gift to share — we are a challenging, talented, motivated group of people who want to explore their faith, and we have a God whose steadfast love for humanity is palpable. We are a congregation where you can bring your heart and your mind to church, where we work together for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation — not as an add-on program, but as an essential part of our ministry and mission.

So, I challenge you, each of you, to think about the gift of Plymouth (whether its education or fellowship or worship or justice work). Think about it…maybe even be grateful for it! And then   invite a friend, coworker, or neighbor who might appreciate you sharing that gift. It’s an invitation…but it could be one that makes    a world of difference in someone’s life.

Now, more than ever, the role of the progressive church is critical. Our witness is essential, our fellowship is sustaining, our worship challenges us and builds us up.

Jesus challenges each of us to leave behind “business as usual,” whether that is fishing nets or the routine of your life today. He has called you to be fishers of women and men.

Amen.
 
© 2017 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Jake preaches on Matthew 2:1-12 for Epiphany Sunday. ​