“Genuine Love”
Romans 9.12-21
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
10 September 2023
 
A few weeks ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a week at Ring Lake Ranch, an amazing ecumenical study center in Dubois, Wyoming. In a casual discussion with a Presbyterian colleague, she expressed her dismay with David Brooks, who writes for the New York Times and The Atlantic and does commentary on PBS Newshour. Brooks is the nominally conservative voice in those typically liberal settings. I always try to read commentary by David Brooks, because even when I don’t agree with him, he often has something important to say. The article that upset my friend was in this month’s Atlantic, called “How America Got Mean,” and the subtitle is “In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.”

Part of my friend’s objection was that the church has often played the finger-wagging role of the “moralizer” in American society, and we have seen that play out in ways that you and I probably find repugnant, especially around issues of sexual orientation, social justice, and women’s rights. Brooks writes, “we would never want to go back to the training methods that prevailed for so long, rooted in so many thou shall nots and so much shaming, and riddled with so much racism and sexism. Yet a wise accounting should acknowledge that emphasizing moral formation meant focusing on an important question — WHAT IS LIFE FOR? — and teaching people how to bear up under inevitable difficulties. A culture invested in shaping character helped make people resilient by giving them ideals to cling to when times got hard.”[1] And don’t we all need resilience?

Brooks’ article made me wonder how we in the United Church of Christ and particularly here at Plymouth have done in terms of moral formation not just of our young people, but of us grown-ups as well. The second step in our mission statement’s threefold challenge is where moral formation lives: inviting, transforming, and sending. Every one of us is ripe for spiritual and moral growth, whether we’re six or ninety-six.

I think that we in the progressive church DO have something important to say about moral life, and we are at a critical moment in our nation’s history, as meanness, isolation, self-centeredness, unfettered dog-eat-dog capitalism, and a patent disregard for our fellow humans and the precious planet God has entrusted to us have become culturally normative. What WE have to say might sound vastly different than other Christians.

The church as a whole and Plymouth in particular are in a unique position to help engage a journey of countercultural transformation that moves in the opposite direction of those unwelcome cultural norms. Our mission includes a strong commitment to social justice, but it’s more than that. Our mission includes spiritual connection to God, but it’s more than that. Our faith has a lot to say about the biggest questions we ask about what gives life meaning, how to find joy rather than simple self-satisfied happiness, how we are meant to relate with one another and be responsible stewards of God’s world and the wealth God has entrusted to us.

If the voices of progressive churches like ours don’t fill the vacuum in moral formation, it will be filled by other voices: the siren song of advertising lures us toward the rocks of capitalistic ruin; the cry of “I, me, mine” will drown out “we, us, ours”; the out-of-balance individualism that takes no account of the other will win out over the value of real community.

Here is what is filling the vacuum. David Brooks points out that “74 million people saw [the former president’s] morality and saw presidential timber.” That is a strong barometric reading of the moral outlook of a lot of Americans, and I find that even more telling than the individual character of the former president.

So, my friends, as progressive Christians, where do we turn for a moral compass? What are the values you hope to inculcate in our youth and in the overall culture of our congregation? For me, the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes in the sixth chapter of Luke and the fifth chapter of Matthew are absolutely central. And I think the apostle Paul has some wisdom for us in this morning’s reading.

Hear what he has to say: “Let love be genuine,” or as another translation puts it, “Love should be shown without pretending.” This is self-giving love (agape), not sentimental or romantic love. Genuine love is costly love; that means sometimes you put another person’s needs ahead of your own. Genuine love means being willing to sacrifice something for the good of the other.

“Hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good.” I think we can get caught up in trying to define and identify evil, so you might want to focus on giving energy to what is good and encourage growth in people, communities, and creation.
“Love each other with mutual affection,” is one translation, and Paul uses the Greek word philadelphia, fraternal love, so I think a good English parallel would be loving one another like family. I see that happening at Plymouth all the time, and not just for members of this congregation, but for those experiencing homelessness, refugees and immigrants, and CSU students.

“Do not lag is zeal, be ardent in spirit, and serve the Lord.” In other words put your faith into practice…don’t just say one thing and do something else. We have an involvement fair today that invites you to become active in something that moves your faith forward.

Paul knows that part of the human condition is suffering, but he isn’t satisfied to leave it at that. Rather, he encourages us to have hope, to be patient, and to keep on praying. He doesn’t say whether prayer changes God or changes us…but my experience is that it helps in either case.

Extending hospitality to strangers is a foreign concept for many Americans, but it was a key value for life in the ancient Near East. When someone shows up at your door, you welcome them, feed them, and offer a place to rest. Part of what we strive to do at Plymouth is to offer an extravagant welcome to our guests on Sundays and also to provide a warm, homelike welcome to our Faith Family Hospitality guests experiencing homelessness.

Paul encourages us to support one another financially. Generosity is a critically important value that doesn’t get much play in today’s American culture where we tend to focus not so much on what we can give as what we can get. And I see something deeply countercultural happening in this congregation as we are exceptionally generous in supporting Plymouth’s ministry and mission and even through our Share the Plate offering.

Let’s boil all of that down. Paul is talking about loving one another. It’s about love…costly love. We all say that we want community, but it doesn’t form without genuine, costly love. Here is an important caveat, whether you are looking at Paul’s list or Jesus’ Beatitudes: Nobody does any of this stuff perfectly. Each one of us is a work in progress, so maybe we should focus on practice, not perfection.

Yesterday, I saw something I’d never seen in person: along with forty-some pistols and rifles, two assault weapons came into our gun buy-back. I looked at them after they had been sawed into pieces and disassembled. I thought about Columbine and the theater in Aurora and the King Soopers in Boulder. It heart-rending to see these weapons and to think that they were designed for one purpose: killing human beings created in the image of God…in the image of love.
The work RawTools does is a shining example of the kind of moral education and engagement that Brooks is talking about.

It actually does take a village to raise a child. It takes a village to stand up and try to end gun violence. It takes a village to create systemic change. It takes a village to embody a community whose hallmarks are faith, love, justice, peace, generosity, and welcome.

David Brooks concludes, “healthy moral ecologies don’t just happen. They have to be seeded and tended by people who think and talk in moral terms, who try to model and inculcate moral behavior, who understand that we have to build moral communities because on our own, we are all selfish and flawed. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected.”

Welcome to our village!

Amen.

© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

Psalm 24
7th Sunday in Pentecost
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
If you noticed that the hymn we just sang is one we sing in Advent you are very perceptive! And have a great memory! It is also an adaptation of our scripture for today, Psalm 24. Listen now to the psalm from the Common English translation of the Bible. I have made a few tweaks for inclusive language.
 
Psalm 24
The earth is the LORD's and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants too.
2 Because God is the one who established it on the seas; God set it firmly on the waters.
3 Who can ascend the [Holy One's] mountain? Who can stand in [God’s] holy sanctuary?
4 Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart;
the one who hasn't made false promises, the one who hasn't sworn dishonestly.
5 That kind of person receives blessings from the [Holy One] and righteousness from the God who saves.
6 And that's how things are with the generation that seeks the [Holy One] --
that seeks the face of Jacob's God.
7 Mighty gates: lift up your heads! Ancient doors: rise up high!
So the glorious [ruler] can enter!
8 Who is this glorious [ruler]? The LORD--strong and powerful!
The LORD--powerful in battle!
9 Mighty gates: lift up your heads! Ancient doors: rise up high!
So the glorious [ruler] can enter!
10 Who is this glorious [ruler]?
The [Holy One] of heavenly forces—this One is the glorious ruler! [Forever!] (Selah)
- Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 20131-20139).
 
The earth belongs to the God the Creator! The triumphant beginning of this ancient song was most likely sung antiphonally in festival worship. You can hear all the call and response lines…..Who can ascend the Holy One’s sacred mountain?....The one with clean hands and a pure heart….Lift up your heads, mighty gates! ….Ancient doors, rise up! Who is the king/ruler of glory? …. It is God, strong and mighty! This was – is ­– a majestic hymn parts of which were handed down from pre-exilic days in Israel when there was a temple with mighty gates to approach. And parts of which came from post-exilic days when the people had heard so much from the prophets about how clean and humble hearts, integrity in action following God’s ways of justice, were much more important than burnt offerings in a temple that has been destroyed by conquerors.

The psalm also reminds me of the story in 2 Samuel of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem from Judah after he and the forces of Israel soundly defeated the Philistines through the power and instruction of God. If you remember the Ark was the portable residence of God which also held the Torah given to Moses. It traveled with the people of Israel wherever they went. The story goes that the Ark was put with great ceremony and care in an ox cart and taken from town to town before it was given permanent residence in Jerusalem, the City of David the King.  Along the way, David led the procession, literally dancing in great abandon, before the Ark of the Covenant, accompanied by a great crowd of musicians on zithers and harps and tambourines and cymbals. Not a stately, kingly thing to do, perhaps. But a joyous, devoted, “wear your heart on your sleeve” celebration of your faith kind of thing to do. A celebration of the God who has appointed you the ruler and brought you victoriously through great battles kind of thing. When the procession reaches Jerusalem, it seems that David’s wife, Saul’s daughter, Michal, looks out the palace window and sees her husband dancing with abandon before the ark and she is scandalized! Not the way a king should behave! One translation says, “she lost all respect for him.” Another say, “she despised him in her heart.” Too much, too showy! Too religious?

Have you ever felt like Michal? Something was too showy or too “religious” for you? Kind of embarrassing? Or perhaps, you find yourself not quite owning up to being a Christian as the source of your social justice passion when you are with other progressives because Christianity has such a bad reputation from extreme far right Christians. Perhaps you are afraid someone will say, “You’re not a Christian, are you?” Or perhaps you confess, “yes, I am, but not THAT kind of Christian.” “Well, what kind? And why?” Then you feel tongue-tied. You are not alone….Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Connie Schultz, who writes for USA TODAY, is married to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and is part of our UCC family, wrote in a recent column, “My faith continues to be a source of challenge and comfort, but I find myself defending it more these days when in the company of fellow progressives. This is an understandable development in our country, perhaps, but sometimes it puts me in a mood.”[i]

I have experienced this mood. Have you? Part anger, part embarrassment, frustration! My faith is a comfort and a challenge. I want to wear it on my sleeve and experience its deepest mysteries, its high and lows, and be ready to speak about it in any situation, to even express my joy and relief in its comfort to the point of dancing if the situation calls for it. Bodily expression of faith such as King David expressed was never really part of the faith tradition I was grew up in, though we were constantly challenged to verbally share our faith, “to witness.” This always felt a bit awkward because I thought it was about sharing something intellectually doctrinal that I didn’t think I could articulate. I usually just chose to be nice to my friends and invite them to church if it seemed right. But inviting someone to church in the 60’s and early 70’s in the Bible belt was not particularly scandalous. Now we are being called, as Schultz comments, to speak our faith in interfaith settings, in our families that hold views of Christianity across the spectrum from left to right and to use our bodies and our words to demonstrate for justice. If you are ever uncomfortable, you are in good company.

When I read Psalm 24 over and over again this week, I was struck by the psalmist’s pure bodily joy in the goodness of God and creation, by the deep bodily longing to get right with God in heart and action in order to stand in ultimate trust before the Divine, by the giant, humongous amount of joy in welcoming God, the glorious ruler and maker of all the earth and the cosmos into the presence of the people in worship. And I longed to have my faith renewed to experience these things. It is easy to be beaten down by life to the point that worship is lackluster and just kind of washes over us as we go through the motions. Or to feel constrained in sharing our faith because of the ways Christianity has been falsely used to oppress others. Thank goodness that in times like these, when we do not have the energy to muster up a dance, even in our hearts, when we feel our silenced by our fears of being misunderstood, God receives us with open arms, anyway! Thank goodness…because it is only though continuing to intentionally show up time and again in God’s presence in good seasons and tough seasons, that we have the opportunity to be surprised once again by faith that encompasses our whole beings, body, mind, heart and soul.

This is the invitation of Psalm 24. To show up with our whole being, not just our heads, but our hearts, our arms, our legs, our voices, our eyes and ears, our gut instincts in the presence of the Holy. We show up for the sheer joy of being alive, of just being. Of “oneing” with God as the 13th century mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote. Julian was a prophet before her time testifying to “a true oneing between the divine and the human. She writes that when human nature was created, it was “rightfully one-ed with the creator, who is Essential Nature …that is, God. This is why there is absolutely nothing separating the Divine soul from the Human soul…in endless love we are held and made whole. In endless love we are led and protected and will never be lost.”[ii]

Julian’s entire life from childhood until her death was encompassed by the Black Death pandemic of the Middle Ages. She lost her family to the plague. She knew suffering and “saw a great oneing between Christ and us” because of he knew pain as we do.[iii] We are one-ed with God in joy and in suffering, held in love. I agree with her. And her insights illuminate the invitation of Psalm 24 to invite God so deeply into our beings that we are transformed, made clean, forgiven and can dance -  in body or soul or both – for joy. Psalm 24 invites us to show up again and again to wear our faith scandalously on our sleeves for the world to see just as King David before us, just as our contemporary UCC sister, Connie Schultz.

I want to end with another hearing the psalm again from the book, Psalms for Praying, by Nan Merrill, whose interpretation of the psalms helps us to hear beyond the ancient language of kings and winning battles to how the Spirit works in our interior lives.

Psalm 24
The earth is yours, O Giver of Life,
            in all its fulness and glory,
            the world and all those who
                        dwell therein;
For You have founded it upon
                        the seas,
            and established it upon the rivers.
 
Who shall ascend your hill,
                        O Gracious One?
            and who shall stand in your
                        holy place?
All who have clean hands and
                        pure hearts,
            who do not lift up their souls
                        to what is false,
            nor make vows deceitfully.
All those will be blessed by the
                        Heart of Love,
            and renewed through forgiveness.
Such is the promise to those
            who seek Love’s face.
 
Lift up your heads, O gates!
            and be lifted up,
                        O ancient doors!
that the Compassionate One
                        may come in.
Who is the Compassionate One?
            The Beloved, strong and steadfast,
            the Beloved, firm and sure!
Lift up your heads, O gates!
            and be lifted up,
                        O ancient doors!
            that the Compassionate One
                        may come in!
Who is this compassionate One?
            The Beloved Heart of your heart,
                        Life of your life,
            this is the Compassionate One.[iv]

Truly, it is God’s intention that we are “one-ed” in Love. That we share the joy and justice of this “one-ing” with all whom we encounter, from those most intimate with us to those we may only brush by in acquaintance.  Are you ready to share your faith, even in the tough situations? Are you ready to sing it? Are you ready to dance for joy? Amen.

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

[i] Tweet from @Connie Schultz; her full article can be found at usatoday.com.
[ii] Julian of Norwich, Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic and Beyond, Matthew Fox, (iUniverse:  Bloomington, IN, 2020, 62).
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] “Psalm 24,” Psalms for Praying; An Invitation to Wholeness, Nan Merrill, (Continuum:  NY, NY, 1998, 41-42).

John 15:9-17
Plymouth Congregational, UCC
Fort Collins
Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Our scripture today comes from the Gospel of John…it is part of Jesus’ long conversation and prayer with his disciples at the Last Supper. words of instruction and love which foreshadow his death. We hear the historical Jesus speaking to his disciples amid the impending crisis of his arrest. We hear Jesus speaking through the gospel writer of John to a late first century Jewish Christian community that was besieged with persecution from other Jews as well as the Roman empire.  And we hear the Spirit of God speaking through Jesus, through the gospel writer, to us on this May morning, to our 21st century Body of Christ, Plymouth UCC. Let us listen through the filter of our strengths and struggles, our gifts and challenges, our fears, our hopes and dreams for the opportunities of God’s work through us.

As God, our loving Father and Mother, has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept God’s commandments and abide in God’s love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from God. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that God will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
 
For the Word of God in scripture; for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us …. Thanks be to God.
 
 ----------

Do you feel chosen by Jesus to be God’s friend? To abide in God’s love and joy in such complete fullness that it bears the fruit of transformation in your life and in the lives of those around you? This is not a life just for saints and holy hermits. This is the life that God has for all of us to if we keep commandments of Jesus to love one another. Jesus tells us in our scripture, when we love one another, heeding all Jesus taught us about love, we are his friends and thus, friends of God. This love is reflexive, reciprocal, regenerative. As friends of the loving God, we are empowered to follow Jesus’ commands to choose love.

After the death of my mom in 2014, I was visiting my dad and had time to talk with him about death and life after death and heaven. Many of you know he was an ordained pastor and preacher, a theology professor. As we sat in the local coffee shop in his little town in Missouri, he confessed to me, “I do not know about heaven. But what I hope is that after death I will learn to love as God loves.” Perhaps this is the aspiration that Jesus has for us, as he did for his first century disciples and friends. To love as God loves. What might that look like? I think that is the invitation here.

It begins with knowing we are “chosen.” I struggle with that. I’m just an ordinary person, one among SO many, why would God notice me? Yet Jesus tells us we are each chosen to be friends. The idea is bigger than my brain can conceive. I can only tell you that I had an experience this week taught me about “being chosen.” I sat down to practice, emphasis on that word for I am a true beginner, to practice centering prayer. I got settled and centered. Then our dog, Bridey, stuck her nose in my lap, right in my open hands. I tried to gently push her away and stay centered. She did it again with her big purple toy bone. Again I tried to disengage… she persisted and finally draped herself across my lap putting her face in mine with “kisses.” I think God is like this… choosing us time and again… in our face at unexpected times with love…that we might first see as distraction. It might even be in the middle of some spiritual practice that you think you should “do” to get close to God. God is always with us, sometimes distracting and disrupting like a loving, playful dog – or cat ­­­– calling you to love.
Jesus says that we become friends by keeping the commands to love. In the midst of this we know we are chosen. It’s a bit circuitous. Looking concretely to examples of friendship in my life…the most life-giving friends, those relatively few people that are my closest, most tried and true friends, the one who have been with me through the nitty gritty of life and have loved me through it all … I have found in true friendship I seek to take on the best characteristics of my friends. If we take on the best characteristics of our true friends in this life, then as friends of God through Jesus, might we take on the characteristics of the loving God who has chosen us? My dad longed to love as God loves, which is a huge mystery that we will never finish exploring in this life or the next. I wonder if after 80+ years of practicing friendship with God through following Jesus he was closer than he thought.
I am reminded of another surprising experience of being chosen to love as God loves. In the spring of 2009 I was chosen by the pastor emeritus of the church I served in Denver to be part of the Rocky Mountain Conference Global Missions Team mission trip to Venezuela.  Very early on a frosty Sunday morning in April, I met the other nine members mission trip team at DIA to set off for Miracaibo, VZ to partner in mission with our Venezuelan denominational partners, the United Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Venezeula or in the Spanish acronym, the UEPV. After being prayed over and anointed with oil by this same elder stateman pastor right at the United ticket counter, we took off. During our layover in Miami we walked from our gate to the International Concourse through a large airport art display. In huge glass cases there were six-to-seven-foot-high letters made of brilliantly colored flowers, like something off a New Year’s Day Rose Bowl parade float. They spelled out, “All You Need is Love”… Prophetic words.

Late that night we were met at the Maracaibo airport by our Venezuelan partners, included their bishop Gamaliel Lugos. It was a swarm of joy as people rushed to carry our bags and help us into cars. Over the course of the next ten days people of the UEPV, never failed to amaze me with their deep and enthusiastic engagement with life lived in and through the love of God. They lived large in a country riddled with poverty and injustice. Their love of Christ was inseparable from their political commitment to building a new world of justice in their country. They lived out Jesus’ preferential option for the poor and they were raising up women as leaders, working for women’s rights. They seemed to abide in God’s love to such an extent that joy was their MO, their modus operandi, each moment of their lives. As friends of God, they literally lived by the motto, “we will struggle, but we will not die.”

The bulk of our time was spent in the small town of Ospino in the foothills of the Andes. We stayed in a guest house, but our real home was a few blocks away in the small house of Gladys and Omar Gonzales, who hosted each of our meals. They gathered teams of people to prepare meals for our group of 10 or so as well as 6-8 Venezuelans who came from several areas in VZ to help with the week’s designated work project and to worship with us in the evening. They fed us using fresh fruit and vegetables from the Gonzales’ open air market next door, grilling arrepahas on their George Foreman grill, roasting meat in their backyard. Omar and Gladys became for us un familia, family. They laid down their lives for us. You do not have to die for to lay down your life for a friend. You do have to open your heart so wide that life might not always be convenient for you as you offer hospitality and love to others, but it will be joyful!

Two things I experienced in VZ through the ministry of the UEPV opened my eyes and heart to an expanded vision of being chosen as a friend by God’s love. The first was the circumstances of our work project on the finca, the farm owned by the denomination in Ospina. It was not a working farm but more of a community center for ministry. It had two or three buildings surrounded by a large amount of land…that was growing increasingly smaller because of squatters, people so poor that they grabbed any small piece of land they could to build shacks and grow a few vegetables. The shacks would literally spring up overnight. The UEPV could have legally prosecuted these people who stole the land from the finca. But they decided it was part of their ministry of Christ’s love to let the squatters have the land, to engage them as neighbors and invite them into their God’s community. A sacrificial decision, laying down their lives for friends. Ironically, our work project was to help build a wall around the remaining land so that the UEPV could continue their work of community ministry. That was the stated project and progress was made, however, the real work was made manifest in the smiles, laughter, …the halting sentences of banter and praise for a new post hole just dug made across the language barriers. Often there were songs echoing across the field strewn with mangoes falling off the trees and the sound children playing an impromptu baseball game with the mangoes too green to eat.

The second experience was the nightly worship at Iglesia Pentecostal de Los Olivos, the local UEPV church. This church had been taken out of the denomination by a fundamentalist pastor. He was now gone and the church, much to the relief of most of its members, was returning to the denomination. Our presence was the catalyst to invite UEPV folks from around VZ to join in the celebration of reunion and to commission new pastors for the church. Pastors brought their people from little churches in surrounding towns to welcome Los Olivos back to the UEPV vision of working for the poor and women’s rights, for working ecumenically with other denominations, and for creating indigenous Venezuelan worship using their songs and liturgies. The love in the very lively worship was palpable and we were embraced by it. On the last night they actually commissioned our beloved hosts, Gladys and Omar as the new lay pastors.

Each night Bishop Lugos spoke, reminding us that God is not only with us, God is in us, abiding in us, just as we abide in God. At the end of the service he would ask us to pass the peace, saying, ”I Love YOU.” It was intimidating at first. I didn’t really know these people or even know all the people on the mission team well. I didn’t speak Spanish. Yet I had to plunge in saying in English, I love you, I love you, … in Spanish, te quiero, te quiero. And it wasn’t fake or mushy or overly sentimental or even awkward. I had for a brief time been in the nitty gritty of life, with these folks, meals shared, walls built, prayers prayed, abiding in love across the barriers of language and culture in God’s love. It was true and real. If we were all together in our Plymouth sanctuary I would invite us break out of our white, Protestant, intellectual selves and try this practice. I think you would find God’s love in your face as viscerally as the dog kisses that interrupted my prayer time.

My friends, I tell you this longish story today to invite you to take the risk of knowing you, too, are chosen by God. Reach out. Accept the invitation. It will take you to some strange and wonderful and hard places. And it will be worth it. What is calling to you through the ministries of Plymouth that will empower and nurture your friendship with God? Jesus says to us, “I have chosen you in God’s love to be friends of God. Keep my commands to love and you will discover, even in this life, in your heart of hearts what it can means to love as God loves.” Amen.

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

Psalm 38
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
This is an auspicious date for our congregation…not because St. Patrick’s Day is this week (hence the great Celtic music)…not because we should “beware the Ides of March” tomorrow…but because we have been worshiping remotely for a full year.

And even as some of us are getting vaccinated, before we rush to celebrate the light at the end of a very long tunnel, we need to take stock of what we’ve been through together as families, as a congregation, a community, a nation, and a species. For some of us, the pandemic brought us in sight of possible death for the first time. “What if I get it…will I survive?” For others among us who are dealing with serious illnesses already, you may have wondered if it was safe to get ongoing treatments at the Cancer Center or the hospital. And some of us are dealing with a double grief of the death of a loved one in the midst of so much death, which is compounded by not begin able to mourn in the company of family and friends in a typical memorial service.

You may or may not know someone who has died as a result of the novel coronavirus, but the figures are staggering. Estimates are that 1 in 3 Americans know someone who has died of Covid. More Americans have died of Covid in one year than died in the Second World War, which for us lasted four years. Novel coronavirus deaths in America have exceeded 9/11 deaths by 127 times. About 1 in 624 Americans has died as a result of the virus, and we know that people of color have died in even greater numbers. 225 people have died of Covid in Larimer County…to put that in perspective if they were sitting here today, they would be overflowing from our sanctuary here at Plymouth. The global numbers are very hard to imagine…2.6 million people have died. I don’t even know how to put that in perspective.

All of us grieve in different ways. Culture and nationality have something to do with it, and the current administration has actually tried to put grieving into the national spotlight on February 22 with lighted candles outside the White House to remember those we’ve lost. I think that we, as a society, will need to come to grips with the collective trauma we’ve experienced.

I don’t know if you’ve heard the verb, “to keen,” but keening is a wailing lament for the dead. It comes from the Irish Gaelic…and from a culture that knows how to weep and mourn more expressively and openly than most Anglo-Saxon cultures do. When was the last time you heard of a ripping great wake for a white Congregationalist or Episcopalian? Doesn’t happen.

At my father’s memorial service in 1986, my younger brother, who had been unable to shed a tear at the time of my dad’s death, wept with abandon. It was deep, true, and healing. And my mother told him to pull himself together. I’ve learned a thing or two about grief since then, and I often tell families coming to a memorial service that this is a place that welcomes your tears. And so, I say to you: this is a place that welcomes your tears.

One of the things the church does right is to acknowledge and provide a setting, a container, for grief and mourning. We have ritual moments for saying a final goodbye and sending off our loved ones. We have prayers committing their souls to God’s care. This is critically important spiritually and emotionally. If we don’t acknowledge our grief and work through it, it will fester…the wound will become deeper and not lessen.

The Psalms provide so many examples of lament for us with the broadest sweep of emotion, from anger to dejection to bitterness to sorrow to regret. Have you been through the loss of a loved one? Most of us have. See if this sounds like something you experienced at some point in the process of grief:

“But I am like the deaf, who do not hear;
like the mute, who cannot speak.
Truly, I am like one who does not hear,
and in whose mouth is no retort.” (Ps. 38.13-14)

The numbness of grief is a very common experience, when your emotions are so raw and in overdrive that you just can’t take another thing in. We are overwhelmed and silenced by our grief. I know that feeling, and perhaps you do, too.

But silence is far from the only way we experience grief. The Psalmist demonstrates to us that we can shout out to God for help.
“Do not forsake me, O Lord;
O my God, do not be far from me;
make hast to help me,
O Lord, my salvation.” (Ps. 38.21-22)

You’ve undoubtedly seen those British World War II posters that say “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as well as all of the take-offs. One of my favorites is on the back of a sugar packet I picked up in a café in Italy, which says, “Keep Calm and prendi un caffe!” (That is a good example of the ways in which Anglo-Saxon and Italian cultures are very different!) But maybe we don’t have to keep it together with God…maybe God is ready for us to weep and stamp our feet and cry out loud. Many of us are really good at keeping a stiff upper lip, but there is a time and a place for lament…acknowledging that this is all a bit too much to handle on our own (whatever this happens to be). Lament can involve wailing, weeping, groaning, crying over a grief, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, dealing with a serious illness, isolation during a lockdown, not seeing grandkids or parents for a year, losing a job, missing the normality of life…any situation that causes you grief. In a few weeks, you will hear Jesus quote Psalm 22 from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If Jesus can lament using the Psalms, it’s okay for us to do that, too.

Every one of us has encountered something that is too heavy to bear on our own. The good news is that you don’t have to carry it alone! (And that doesn’t mean taking it out on your family or colleagues or kicking the dog!) The genius of a lament in our setting is that it opens dialogue between you and God. Crying out to God in distress is a great way to begin! Psalms of lament are the largest category within this collection, and with good reason: being human is difficult…it’s hard…it is riddled with losses and griefs…not just for a few of us, but for all of us. The Psalmist usually circles back in a psalm of lament to include confidence in the ability of God to be present and to turn things around with us. The most succinct form I know is from Psalm 30:
“Weeping may linger in the night,
but joy comes with the morning.” (Ps. 30.5)

Last week I was in Santa Fe with two of my UCC CREDO colleagues, and we talked at length about the experience all of us have been through with this pandemic. One commented that for us who live though the pandemic, it will be like our parents or grandparents’ experience of living through the Great Depression. All of us were concerned about the collective trauma we’ve experienced. What is it like for you to internalize the catastrophic number of Covid deaths? Every one of us has felt the impact of the pandemic, personally and by extension. And I don’t think we should discount our own experiences during this time, even if at first glance you think of them as trivial.

As we take baby steps at coming back together, and as we live into the next year, we’ll continue to talk about where you are, how relying on God can help, and ways we can learn from our pandemic experiences to shape the future.

This has been a very long year. I thank you for your patience with the changes in our worship and in the life of our congregation, a life which continues to expand in new ways and in new directions.
Will you be with me in prayer? How long, O Lord, how long? We are so weary of confronting things in new ways, that your constancy is welcome and make us feel at home in you. Help us to sense your presence in palpable ways…help bear our burdens…bind up our wounds…give us hope for a new day.
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.
 

1 Samuel 3.1-20
2nd Sunday in Epiphany
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5 and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. 6 The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." 11 Then the LORD said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12 On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13 For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever." 15 Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son." He said, "Here I am." 17 Eli said, "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you." 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him."
19 As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
 
Traditionally, we speak of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter…. but I often find the Spirit as more of a Challenger. And Spirit comforts and challenges through the most mundane ways. This past Thursday morning as I sat drinking my coffee, waking up, checking the news and preparing to write my sermon, two news articles challenged me as I was thinking about our connection to the story of the boy, Samuel, called to be a prophet in ancient Israel. All week I had been considering the call of God to be a prophet as I chose hymns and wrote our meditative call to worship to evoke the theme of prophetic living.

The article that first gave me pause was from the Washington Post. It was titled  “For some Christians the Capital riot doesn’t change the prophecies: Trump will be president.”[i]  I knew we were deeply divided in Christianity, but I had not fully realized that there are Christians prophesying Donald Trump’s presidency, a presidency I have experienced as diametrically opposed to everything I hold dear as a Christian and an American. Religious scholar sources for this article say the people interviewed are practicing a neo-charismatic version of Christian faith that is even farther right in thinking and practice than the evangelical right wing. A Christian nationalism is conflating Christianity with patriotism. And their numbers are growing. The people interviewed were part of the crowd at the Capital on January 6th and their expressed intention in coming to the Capital was to pray that Donald Trump remain president, to show up for the prophecy they had received. Their prophets tell them that Trump is the Chosen One who will shut down an American elite class that is persecuting Christians and crushing what they believe to be Christian values. They are as passionate for their vision of justice as we are for our vision of justice. We have competing prophetic paths. It definitely feels as if the “true” word of the Lord is rare in our land, doesn’t it?

I wanted to write off these people as “kooks!” I wanted to say to myself, “They are delusional and uneducated. They have been duped by conspiracy theories. I know better, don’t I? I have a degree from Yale Divinity School. I can do proper exegesis of the scripture. I understand the ins and outs of biblical prophecy and it does not lead us to support someone proclaiming lies and misuse of power. I am ordained in the UCC! I know about true justice!” However, the Spirit challenged me with humility.  I was challenged to try and see these Christians as people, not as evil others, even as I abhorred the violent actions of the crowd these folks were with.  I was challenged to reach beneath their words to seek understanding of the true concerns of their hearts, to understand how they are my brothers and sisters in Christ, as foreign as they seem to me.

I pondered this moment, wondering, Have I just heard a word from the Lord? And I will tell you why: the word was humbling and challenging, ear-tingling if you will, and revealed to me something new and much needed that God was doing, at least within my heart. I also knew I could only participate in this change with God’s help, not on my power alone. I did not feel comfortable or triumphant. I felt fearful and confused in this revelation of my own prejudice and pride. Spirit challenged me: how would I take humble, peace-making action on this realization? My first action is to share the experience with you.

I find echoes of my experience in the story we heard just minutes ago about the boy Samuel and his first experience with hearing the word of the God. It seems the call to prophetic living is humbling and challenging and it cannot be silenced. It must be shared with others. Remember how the narrator begins our story saying that as Samuel was growing up, “The word of the Lord was rare.” “Vision was not widespread.” At this time there was no king or president in Israel. The priest, as prophetic presence, helped govern and lead the people because professionally, and one would hope personally, he was a channel between the human world and the Holy One. However, in the time of Samuel, Israel was being divided by greedy and power-mongering leadership. Sound familiar?

So, when Samuel humbly accepts the call to hear God’s word, he gets an ear-tingling, earful! The Lord gives him a prophecy condemning Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, younger priests who have been abusing their priestly power. These two are exploiting and seducing women who come to the temple to pray. They are confiscating the best cuts of sacrificial meat before the sacrifices are complete, thus, robbing the people of the expensive cuts of meat they have purchased to complete obligatory religious rituals. They are ignoring the warnings of their old father, Eli, who is trying to correct their immoral behavior.  Thus, Samuel is given his first prophetic word from God, both painful and important. He knows it could get him into trouble. He only fearfully delivers it to his mentor and teacher, Eli, after much cajoling. “Your priestly house is ending,” says Samuel, “God is doing a new thing!”

What are new, ear-tingling thing is God doing that we are we called to hear as this committed community of faith? God is calling! And like Samuel discovered, the call will not necessarily be comfortable. It will be humbling. It will be a bit scary, maybe more than a bit, and outside our comfort zone. It may get us into trouble, good trouble in the words of the late senator from Georgia, John Lewis. UCC pastor, Donna Schaper, comments in an exegetical essay, on the story’s revelation that what God is going to do will make “both ears tingle.” She writes, “Since I hate sermons that make us have to be more heroic than we really are, I say…. Let one ear tingle with fear…Fear is spiritually legitimate….But listen now with the other ear…. Let it tingle too.”[ii]

Spirit’s ear-tingling challenge to me asked me to admit that it is harder for me to love these white Christians who are so very different from me than it is to love people of other faiths. There is my prophetic living challenge…how far can I live into God’s love….not condoning acts of injustice or violence…but extending my compassion, opening my heart to what I preach….that God’s love extends over all of us. And what actions will I take to extend God’s love to those so very different from me? I am asking for the courage to live into those answers as they come.

Now you may be saying to yourself…that is all very well for Samuel he was after all serving in the temple. Like you ministerial types, didn’t he sign up to hear God’s word and act on it? I’m just a regular person, not a prophet in training. And I say back to you…are you committed to the love and justice that was modeled by Jesus in his life, death and resurrection? Are you committed to – or at least concerned about - feeding the hungry, helping the homeless find a home, welcoming the immigrant, praying for peace, caring for the sick in body, mind or soul, nurturing the children and youth, being a voice for the voiceless, loving those cast out and cast down by our culture, saving our world from environmental disaster and global warming? Any of the above? If so, then I believe you are called to be a prophetic presence for God’s justice and love in our times. And I believe you are called to listen as attentively, as carefully as you can! What is making at least one ear tingle with fear? And the other with a new possibility?

The call comes at mundane moments. When we are just lying in our bed before sleep, musing over the day. Or drinking our first cup of morning coffee. We have an unexpected thought. A preposterous idea. Are you listening?

The second news article that challenged me on Thursday morning came from NPR. It seems that there is a restaurant in California run by an award-winning chef,[iii] of Top Chef TV fame. Though it is well-known, it is still struggling in the midst of pandemic as they downsize their business into predominantly take-out orders. One day not long ago they received an online breakfast order, paid for, with a message saying, “This order will not be picked up by the person ordering it. Please make sure that it goes to someone who needs a meal.” The chef who owns the restaurant was so moved that she posted the order message on Facebook. Within a few minutes, another order came into the restaurant, paid for, and with the same message. And another. And another. By now the restaurant has received almost 250 orders for food that is paid for by someone who will not pick it up and who wants the meal given to someone in need. This influx of orders is helping the chef pay her employees and helping others in her community not even connected to her business. Who started this? A teacher in Texas. Not a hugely rich, powerful person, but an “ordinary” teacher. And the love has come back around because someone, after discovering this teacher’s gift to the restaurant, went onto Amazon and saw her wish list of supplies for her classroom. That someone paid for all those supplies helping children they had never met.

A word from the Lord! A delightful new way of working together for the good of people! What if we as a country took this system of paying it forward and helping others as our primary way of working instead of being crippled by greed, selfishness and the lust for power over other people? Would we be as divided as we are now? Would we be better able to see and love and relate to those who now seem “other” as brothers and sisters?

Listen! The word of the Lord is always present! Our ears can always be tingling with the God’s word of justice and love! Listen! Follow. Act in Love. Amen


[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/01/14/prophets-apostles-christian-prophesy-trump-won-biden-capitol/
[ii] Donna Schaper, “Pastoral Essay”, 1 Samuel 3.1-20, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Feasting on the Word” Year B, Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 2008, 246
[iii] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956705067/texas-customers-call-in-order-helps-la-restaurant-pay-it-forward

Plymouth Congregational UCC
Advent 4:  Luke and Matthew. 
Mary and Joseph’s story

Today’s Christmas story is a LOVE STORY. The Gospel of Luke tells the Christmas story and the birth of Jesus from Mary’s perspective. The Gospel of Matthew tells the Christmas story tells it from Joseph’s perspective. We are going to approach both today.

These stories are so familiar to us.

Mary was a young woman who in 1st century had no power. Not just because she is young, 12-14, not just because she is pregnant and without a husband, she didn’t have voice or consent over her body during these ancient times – others made those decisions for them.

But this story, gives a young woman choice VOICE to her situation.

We see evidence of this in our scripture today. The Angel of Gabriel tells Mary she will bear a son.  Mary says how can this be? I am a virgin. Gabriel reassures her that this is from the Holy Spirit and Mary moves from being powerless to powerful by saying: verse 38 – “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary accepted the love of God at that moment.
Joseph’s version of the birth story is covered in Matthew and it goes like this.

Mary and Joseph were engaged to be married. Joseph’s plan, when he found out Mary was with child, was to quietly divorce her because he was a righteous or just man. Joseph was also heard the voice of an angel who said:  ‘take Mary as your wife, what is conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.”

As a just man he learned to follow the LAW in the Torah but he is torn by the message from the angel. Joseph’s quandary or his choice is this – follow the Torah (the Law) or follow God. 

HE was definitely in a much better situation than Mary – simply because of his gender and his family genealogy. But he still had to make a choice because his status was a stake. 

Joseph accepted the Love of God – accepted God’s message.

So….Don’t you want to know more? Don’t you want to know more about Mary and who she was and what her relationship with Joseph was like – where did they meet, were they junior high sweethearts or was it an arranged marriage? Don’t you want to reach out and have a conversation with her and find out how she survived these ancient times?

The hopeless romantic in me wanted this sermon to be a love story about Mary and Joseph – and their relationship and their unborn SON. 

A romantic tale at Christmas time.

The reality is that this likely would have been scandalous situation! Yet, it is a love story. A love story with God and about God.  Mary and Joseph each had their quandary. But as they journeyed to the first Christmas they walked into the unknown – relying on their own love story with God.

The good news is that it’s not just a story of 1st century it’s a story relevant to today. It’s our story. 

The birth story or as Luke calls it “Mary’s story” empowers a nation to be pregnant with possibility. To birth hope, peace, joy, and love.  It has the power to inspire us to rise above and be our best selves. This story affirms that God is born, conceived, birthed in all kinds of families, all kinds of situations.  We don’t have to have status or power or money – we can live in the suburbs, cities, rural towns, single, married, divorced, young, old, doubtful, faithful, questioning, gay, lesbian, bi, trans – hurt, sad, - God meets you where you are.

This story affirms that God comes to all of us. All of us are created by God. To say that this child is from the Holy Spirit is to say that this is a radically new beginning and that it’s God’s doing. This is a love story.

This story says that God favors Mary. A poor, young Jewish girl – this was not typical in a world when this situation could have been very dehumanizing in a time when the rich and powerful were thought to be favored – and most always men. 

In this story, Mary was chosen instead of stoned to death and told to not be afraid. And Mary says; let it be with me according to your word. She had a SAY. It favors the unfavored.

It encourages us not to be afraid in the face of a violent and frightening world because God lives in all of us. Not just in Jesus but also the likes of Mary and Joseph. She carried God within her. She birthed God. This is a radical love story. This story disrupts our thinking and asks us to open our hearts to difference, to different people and different situations.

Because God is love and this is a love story. Mary was chosen because she was different. There is no one standard of people or situation that God favors. God favors ALL of us. 

We are invited to learn from this story. To invite the love of God into our lives – no matter whom we are or what we experience – whether we feel isolated or broken, joyous or exuberant. 

We learn to accept those who might be shamed or ostracized. Those who may be facing a quandary – Law or God.  God wants to birth something new in us – hope, peace, joy, and love – in you and me. No matter whom we are! All of us.

How will we respond to this story? How will we respond to the Holy Spirit who dwells not just in Mary and Joseph but in us within us? How will we deal with the impossible? When society says one thing and God says another? Let us look around our world. Where is the possibility? 

This story says that nothing is impossible. How will we rewrite our story based on the greatest story ever? If we embody the messages of hope, peace, joy and love – will we accept the challenge of the Holy Spirit? 

Will we see the impossible in Mary and Joseph’s situation and make it our story?

Will we extend the meaning of this LOVE STORY in our lives?

I hope so!

Praise be to God!  Amen.

​I Corinthians 13.1–13
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC 
Fort Collins, Colorado

If you don’t know anything else that Paul of Tarsus wrote, you likely know this passage from First Corinthians, probably because you’ve heard it at a wedding. And it is a good starting place to understand Paul, who often gets a bum rap in progressive churches. And this passage is also a great way to understand love. 

Even though Valentine’s Day is less than two weeks away, I am not going to talk about eros and erotic love this morning…I’m going to talk about agape or self-giving love, which is the variety of love that Paul writes about in this letter.

I remember a conversation with a Swedish friend many years ago in which he sang the praises of English. My friend Tore pointed to the huge vocabulary of our language, which is relatively larger than Swedish, thanks in large part to Celtic Britain being invaded by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Vikings, and Normans, all of whom brought new words to the language we speak today. Yet we have a pretty limited vocabulary of love, at least compared to the Greeks. Yes, we have attraction, affection, and fondness, but they all sound kind of a vague and pasty compared to the eros, philia, and agape of Greek. And for us, love also is shaded by the canopy of the Romantic era, which leaves it soft, squishy, and pale. That isn’t agape. Agape is about going deeper.

Agape is the kind of love needed if you are in Amsterdam in 1943 and you are hiding Jewish children in your attic. Agape is the kind of love needed if you are a part of Christian Peacemaker Teams, putting yourself in harm’s way in a war zone. Agape is the kind of love you need when you are called upon to risk and sacrifice something in order to stand up for your faith. Agape is self-giving love in action; it is risky, it is costly, and it is not for the faint of heart. When John’s gospel quotes Jesus as saying that “no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” [John 15.13], he’s talking about agape…costly, self-sacrificial love.

You and I are seldom called on to really step up and act from a sense of self-giving love for our faith, and we’re unlikely to be imprisoned for it…but that is still a reality for some Christians, like Pastor Jin Mingri, whose church in Beijing was bulldozed by the government, which then sent him a $179,000 demolition bill. In an interview with the Guardian, Jin said, “Of course we’re scared, we’re in China, but we have Jesus.” [The Guardian, 28 Sept. 2018, “We Were Scared, but We Have Jesus: China and its War on Christianity."

At last week’s congregational meeting, we were able to meet openly, elect a slate of folks who agreed to serve on boards and council, pass a budget, and there was no intrusion from the state. We don’t talk very much about “loving Jesus” at Plymouth; and even if we don’t use that phrase, our love of God drives us to do amazing things together, going deeper in our faith, getting out of our comfort zones, making offerings that are costly to us, and living out our faith boldly. People like Bob and Nancy Sturtevant, who established a kindergarten in Ethiopia and just returned from there last week…and you’ll see them giving their time as well as moderator, deacon, sound guy, Interfaith Council rep., and more. That’s what self-sacrificial love looks like. 

Glennon Doyle, a UCC member, whose #1 NY Times bestseller is called, Love Warrior, says this: “Life is hard because love is hard, and it’s not because you’re doing everything wrong. Often life is hardest when you are doing everything right.” [From Glennon Doyle’s talk on Work of the People.]

Earlier in First Corinthians, Paul writes, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” [I Cor. 8.1] How do you see that at work in your home or workplace or here at Plymouth? Offering our service, our time, our wealth, our compassion, ourselves to God and one another is an act of self-giving love. 

Paul writes of all kinds of wonderful spiritual gifts -– speaking in tongues, prophetic witness, knowledge, faith, hope, giving away everything. And he says that if you have those gifts and graces but you don’t have love, then you are left empty.

Agape, as Paul describes it, is not always easy to put into practice…maybe it is also a variation on what we know as “tough love,” when we have to do uncomfortable things because we see a person bent on self-destruction. Families who do interventions with a member with a substance abuse problem know what agape love looks like. Tough love doesn’t tolerate denial; it “rejoices in the truth.” Maybe agape in this sense blends love and courage.

It takes a lot of love to tell someone things they would rather not hear. My own family did that with my mom to help her acknowledge her alcoholism. It is seldom easy to “speak the truth in love” [Eph. 4] when you have something hard to say…but it can be loving.

So, here is a small dose of truth telling that I hope you will hear in the spirit of agape: I think that we as a congregation have become complacent. We’re a little bit “fat and happy,” and there is nothing recently that seems to drive a sense of urgency. When you walk into Plymouth, you see a comfortable, well-maintained building, and so perhaps you assume that “it’s all good,” that there is no financial need here…that people seem generally happy and affluent. That’s because we have some people who tithe and give sacrificially of their time and money. But this involved segment is pulling more than their weight, and it’s not sustainable. if you missed the Congregational Meeting last Sunday and didn’t read the 2019 budget or annual report…you missed the urgency. Twice last week, I told members of the congregation and staff, “Sorry, we can’t do that, because of budget cuts.”

To those of you who give generously of both your time and your money, thank you! And to those of you have time and wealth to give, please consider this an encouragement, and invitation to step up with a sense of self-giving love. 

I appreciate the congregation’s understanding that freezing spending on all mission and programming costs and not being able to fully fund cost-of-living increases for staff was not a nefarious deed on the part of the Budget & Finance Committee or the Leadership Council. All of us together are the ones who decide what Plymouth’s annual income will look like, and we decide it by what we pledge. And to all of you who are giving so generously of time, talent, and money…thank you deeply!

An even bigger issue is that we need to live our faith from a place of God’s abundance and infinite love, rather than from scarcity. Richard Rohr writes, “The flow of grace through us is largely blocked when we are living inside a worldview of scarcity, a feeling that there’s just not enough: enough of God, enough of me, enough food, enough mercy to include and forgive all faults.”

We need everyone –- yes, everyone –- at Plymouth to go deeper in their faith with a sense of agape. That might mean helping with Faith Family Hospitality, teaching Sunday school, working at the reception desk, helping at spring clean-up day, and yes, it means stretching yourself when it comes to financial giving. We also need you to follow through on the commitment you make when you join Plymouth to attend worship more frequently…and also to invite your friends who need the gift of Plymouth. 

So, why? Why do we need to kick it up a notch? Is it because we don’t want our church to stagnate? Yeah…in part. Is it because there are people out there trudging through life and not finding much meaning in an endless cycle of work and entertainment? Yeah…that’s part of it, too. Is it because somebody in this town has to stand up for LGBTQ rights and sensible gun laws and immigration reform and people who experience homelessness?  Yeah…sure. Those are all perfectly good reasons why we need to lean into our common life at Plymouth. But the dominant reason is that God calls us to live out our agape love for one another, for the world around us, and for God. 

I wonder if we sometimes forget that that’s why we are here in the first place. In Deuteronomy, the heart of Jewish faith is expressed this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all you soul, and with all your might.” Deut. 6.5] And Jesus adds another: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12.31]. That’s agape.

I hope that you hear what I am saying as an expression of my love for God, for Plymouth, and for you. I love you all far too much to remain silent. 

Love is both a noun and a verb in our language. My prayer for Plymouth this year is that we go deeper and take action to tie our faith together with a sense of God’s love for us and all those we call neighbors.

Amen.

© 2019 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
Immigrant Rights Sunday: May 6, 2018 (Lectionary)
 
 Will you pray with me? May the humble words of my mouth, the meditations of our collective hearts, and the call to justice we all feel be good and pleasing to you, O God, our freedom-maker and liberator. Amen

Before I really preach this morning on one of the most pressing, alarming, and hurtful subjects of our era, that of Immigrant Rights and Justice, I want to first reflect briefly on the delicate art of being an ally. It takes a lot of intentional work to be in solidarity with a community of the oppressed, from a position of privilege, without speaking over or for that community. The risk is to overshadow those whose voices are already marginalized.
 
As a parallel to illuminate what I mean by the art of being an “ally,” let me offer an example of a time a place when privilege wasn’t checked.
 
One day back in seminary, the school I attended decided to have “dialogues” on the issue of LGBTQ rights in the church. Sounds straight forward enough on the surface, right? They brought in panelists from what they termed as “fair and balanced” on both “sides” of the “issue.” [I always love being an issue.] The person they brought in to speak on behalf of the LGBTQ community, however, wasn’t an LGBTQ community member himself, but rather a well-meaning retired United Methodist Bishop who had a strange warming of the heart after his retirement towards his disenfranchised gay church members. He spoke so beautifully from the heart (not to take that away from him) and maybe, I must admit, related better as an advocate to the mostly straight, conservative audience than one of us out people like me might have been able to do; but something did not feel right. You know that feeling that something isn’t right in your gut? It is the feeling you get when someone does not name that they are simply an ally, a co-traveler who, while speaking, doesn’t have the first-person experience of the oppressed community. I never forgot that feeling and promised myself to never do the same to others in oppressed communities. It was a hard lesson on social justice advocacy to always stop and check privilege. He forgot to check his privilege at the door.
 
So today, I want to start by checking my own privilege. While I am the son of an immigrant from Canada (certainly not a difficult story… although we struggle to find good Maple Syrup in this country), the great-grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (a distant story), and I married a beautiful man with his own harrowing immigration story to tell from Venezuela, my efforts to speak on this issue, as passionate as I am, are that of ally and solidarity force. Even Gerhard’s story isn’t mind to tell. It is his alone.
 
I know I am preaching to the choir today, so if you remember nothing else from this sermon remember to be careful as an ally not to silence or overshadow. As the church working on this issue, that is one of the most important reminders we all need as advocates. We are there to support the community, but not to take over the justice movement. The UCC is particularly guilty of this.
 
The most powerful stories don’t come from us allies (even if we are necessary for the struggle), but from those whose immigration stories are their own. It is only the immigrants themselves who can share the experience the horrors of injustice, the palpable and real impacts of racism and cultural supremacy wrapped in the light veneer of “immigration policy,” and the experiences of indignity, suspicion, fear, micro-aggressions, and overt racism that continue even after citizenship ceremonies are well in the rearview mirror.
 
Having said that, let me see if by relying on Scripture today, I might do a little more than simply preach to you as a progressive choir.
 
Anyone remember CliffsNotes? They were these little pamphlets that summarized books for those students that… well didn’t want to do all of the reading. Do CliffsNotes still exist? I remember being the student who would get so upset when others would use CliffsNotes instead of reading the whole book. I was sort of the teachers’ pet. So, given my dislike of CliffsNotes, what I am doing to say today might surprise you! Our Scripture except for today is basically Jesus’ CliffsNotes (JesusNotes) to the entire Bible and Christian faith! Yes, today, we just read a CliffsNotes summary of the point of all of this religion business! Let’s hear it again:
 
“As the Father [The Creator] has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.  I do not call you servants[a] any longer, because the servant[b] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from [the Creator]. “This is my commandment [note the singular rather than plural tense], that you love one another as I have loved you. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
 
What is the main message here if this is Jesus’ shortcut to Christian faith and living? Yes, love each other already, people, and don’t treat anyone as a servant. Amen?
 
Now, I am not the only one who has seen this Scripture and seen God’s CliffsNotes in it for the Bible. Love each other already, people, and don’t treat anyone as a servant. A whole movement of Black, LGBT/Queer, and Latinx Liberation theologians have been saying this is the point of it all for decades. The arc of the universe bends towards love, towards freedom/ liberation, and towards justice for the oppressed: the migrant, the immigrant, the poor.
 
Between all of the complexities and contradictions of the Bible (and there are countless of them), if we really look at the driving force of Scripture—it always comes back to the least of these, the forgotten, the excluded. God has a preference for the poor and the oppressed. This is an undeniable common thread through all of Scripture. Our religion is a religion of and for the oppressed, the migrant, the immigrant, the depressed, and the lonely. Our job is to align and support.
 
Last Saturday, Professor James H. Cone of Union Seminary in New York City died. He was part of this movement of liberation theologians who see religion and scripture as a vehicle primarily for an arc of liberation, hope for the oppressed, and God’s preferential treatment for the poor and those in most need of love. He was the guiling light in North America for this movement for decades. Dr. Cone will be very missed in the world of ministers and theological thinkers.
 
I want you to hear some of Cone's words on the matter today on Immigrant Justice Sunday:
 
“God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts.” 
― James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power
 
“And yet the Christian gospel is more than a transcendent reality, more than “going to heaven when I die, to shout salvation as I fly.” It is also an immanent reality—a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst, “building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side.” The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
 
“The scandal is that the gospel means liberation, that this liberation comes to the poor, and that it gives them the strength and the courage to break the conditions of servitude.” 
― James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed[1]
 
That last quote in particular should give us pause today, “The scandal is that the gospel means liberation…and it gives the poor strength to break the conditions of servitude.” I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from [the Creator].
 
We have all probably heard a lot of talk these past years about the doctrine of America First. It is a statement about our understanding of God and what God promises and to whom. “America First” is a theological/religious statement about how we understand the nature of God’s promises and ourselves. It is a false prosperity theology and a wicked and even evil doctrine of servitude. It does not see or understand the world, and our culturally, artistically, economically, linguistically, musically, and religiously beautiful neighbors/equals in Central and South America, in particular, as friends. It is not a theology of friends but one of servitude. But I have called you friends… I am giving you these commands, so you may love one another.  
 
If in our passage today, the embodiment of God, Emmanuel, God-with-Us can say that we are friends… with the creative energy that sparked existence, that the love of God is for all, that common life shared is the goal (the CliffsNotes of God), then certainly we should do the same with our policies. A public policy of friendship.
 
With all of our wealth and privilege, the question ought to be: What more can we do to support, ally with, lift-up, check our privilege, inspire, collaborate with our neighbors?
 
I married a man from Venezuela—a country I have never been to and really cannot visit with him because of the violence, food shortages, and dangers. I know the struggles his family faces there, and I know the feeling of helplessness we have to do anything about it. I also know that they are proud, brilliant, educated, beautiful people with deep faith, family roots, and yet still hope. Even if we don’t see them as friends, they still see us as their neighbor.  
 
I cannot take “America First” rhetoric seriously as a Christian.  God says that all of God’s people come first—so what are we waiting for?
 
Why is friendship so hard? Why is selfishness so easy? Why is scarcity winning over faith? Why aren’t we doing much about it?
 
We are in deep theological waters, friends. With immigration policy being used as a tool of racism. With the church, most of it in America, rolling over and playing dead, yesterday almost 60,000-90,000 hard working Hondurans and Central Americans lost their protected status for no reason, we have been playing politics with the lives of young dreamers—God has a word for us…and its harsh!
 
“The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” -James Cone
 
As those called to accompany, not to overtake, may we check our privilege as individual to see if we might reawaken a Gospel of love, of mutuality, of hope, and of selflessness in our time. What an interesting word: Selflessness. This is the only Gospel we have. We can’t choose another one, and it is time to take it (even the CliffsNotes version) seriously.
Amen

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17438.James_H_Cone