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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s be the light.

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

Jeremiah 31.7-14
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Did this text have to end with that sentence: “I will give the priests their fill of fatness?” Having just come through the Christmas season and nine months of pandemic, I can tell you that this pastor has had his “fill of fatness” in the form of shortbread, spritz cookies, bourbon balls, and cinnamon bread. The pandemic has not been kind to me or my bathroom scale. But this text isn’t about any weight loss resolutions you or I may have made in this new year. It’s about something else: abundance, joy, peace, prosperity…in short, it is about physical and societal salvation.

It’s important to know that the prophet Jeremiah is writing in the context of the Babylonian Exile from 597-538 BC, when the Babylonian Empire extended itself to include Judah, destroying the First Temple, and killing or carting off some of Jerusalem’s best and brightest and keeping them in captivity for a generation. You probably know the lament from Psalm 137 that describe the exile: “By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.” Jeremiah, though, initially stayed in Jerusalem, though he was later exiled in Egypt.

I would imagine that you and I both have a better feeling for what exile is like than we did last year at this time. For almost 10 months, we’ve been in a form of physical exile from one another as a worshiping community, albeit with small excursions of outdoor vespers, the sleepout vigil, and three or four drive-thru experiences in our parking lot. Thank God we are able to livestream! I don’t know about you, but I long for the day when we will be back in this sanctuary together, singing, praying, greeting, and sharing communion. My heart aches every time I think of you all coming forward to receive elements.

So, imagine yourself as one of those who have been taken away from security and home and loved ones and your place of worship…but 2,500 years ago, not in 2020. Take a moment and picture that in your mind’s eye. [pause] And now imagine that another ruler has defeated the Babylonians and that you get to return home. Not everyone survived the years of exile. Things will surely have changed, and there is much to rebuild. Think of the liberation after years of captivity! Imagine what that feels like.

“See, I am going to bring them back…a great throng will return here. With tears of joy, they will come; while they pray, I will bring them back. I will lead hem by quiet streams and on smooth paths so they don’t stumble…They will come shouting for joy on the hills of Zion, jubilant over the Lord’s gifts: grain, wine, oil, flocks, and herds. Their lives will be like a lush garden; they will grieve no more. Then the young women will dance for joy; the young and old men will join in. I will turn their mourning into laughter and their sadness into joy.”

I don’t know how it is for you, but I am more than ready to receive such good news. The other day, the first time I wrote “2021” I got a bit of a thrill. We will get to return from exile. When I saw the first Facebook photo of a friend, a chaplain in NYC, getting vaccinated, it gave me chills. And then when I saw pictures of Anne and Bill Thompson from Plymouth being inoculated, it became even more real: we aren’t going to be in exile forever!

In another sense, some of us have felt as though we have been in exile for four years. Have you had the experience of turning on the news or opening the paper or your iPad and steeling yourself, preparing for the outrage or big lie of the day? It has been an especially tough four years for the most vulnerable in our nation. Real wages for most workers have hardly budged since the 1960s.[1] Unemployment has been brutal during the pandemic. And those who thought that America was approaching a “post-racial” future have been shocked by a further spate of police killings of Black men and women. Before the pandemic, 2.3 millions lost their health insurance, and since Covid arrived on the scene a further15 million Americans have lost health insurance coverage.[2] In the U.S., 350,000 people have died as a result of the virus this year, and 20 million Americans have been infected.

As a nation, we need salvation…physical rescue and recovery…to return from exile. We need deliverance from the forces of ignorance, avarice, bigotry, self-centeredness, and lies. We need to be saved from a virus that has done the unthinkable to God’s world.

Here’s the good news: it’s within our ability as people, as a nation, as a world to make it happen. We need a change in political culture that moves from cronyism, corruption, and deceit toward character, honesty, and servant leadership. We need to revisit our assumptions about what constitutes basic American morals and values. We need to re-examine the “givens” in American society: institutional racism, a tax system built for the rich, corporate taxation that lets industry giants like Amazon pay no tax at all, health insurance that is based on where you work rather than the fact that you are a human with basic physical needs, that human-caused climate change is someone else’s problem. Morality has far less to do with what happens in the bedroom and more to do with what occurs in the boardroom and in the halls of government.

As I said, the good news is that we can help change happen. We can continue to make our voices heard, not simply as good Democrats, Republicans, or independents, but as people of faith. Our faith tradition has a lot to say about the way we treat the widow, the orphan, the alien, the indebted living among us. It says nothing positive about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Part of our challenge in this new year is to come to grips with the places we can be most effective agents of change. When we act on God’s behalf, salvation can happen, not simply on an individual level, but on a societal level. When you read Jeremiah, you understand what that kind of salvation means, and it’s the kind of salvation this nation needs.

Today, we are seeing glimmers of hope. We have an incoming government that is more interested in building international bridges than constructing physical walls…with a cabinet that looks more like America and less like me…with a commitment to work on climate change…to accelerate the delivery and distribution of Covid vaccines. And it isn’t just the members of one party who give me hope…it is people who stand on character and integrity on both sides of the aisle.

I think most Americans want what you and I want. Not all of us agree on how to get there. We must relearn to have civil discourse not from a rigid, doctrinaire stance that considers compromise a betrayal, but from a place of character and integrity and the common good. We must stop thinking so much about “me” and start to concentrate on “we.” (Have you ever noticed that the Lord’s Prayer is offered in the first-person plural, not singular?)

It is time to come in from the cold. It is time to return from exile and captivity. It is time to work for and to embrace abundance, joy, peace, prosperity…in short, it is about physical and societal salvation.
One day this year, I will see you return from exile and walk through the doors at the back of this sanctuary, and I will dance with joy. I will offer you the bread and the cup and look into your eyes when I do. Our “mourning will turn into laughter and our sadness into joy.”

Stay hopeful and keep the faith, dear friends. This will be a decisive year, and we all have a part to play in rebuilding.

Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nearly-15-million-americans-lost-employer-based-health-insurance-heres-how-to-get-health-coverage-again-11604407656

Luke 1.46-55
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado

In last Thursday’s Washington Post, there was a smallish article in the national news section. It was not considered front-page news and didn’t even make it into the New York Times. Yet, I found the headline is shocking: “Nearly 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since the summer” and the subhead reads, “Nation’s poverty rate has risen at the fastest pace ever this year after aid for the unemployed declined.” Now, I may be alone in finding this unacceptable…clearly Congress has not yet extended unemployment benefits set to expire after Christmas or sent stimulus checks to people who really need them. In the spirit of Dickens’s “Christmas Carol,” I hope that on this day they are visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Accepting a rapidly growing poverty rate is fundamentally a moral issue.

Something closer to home happened last week. I got an email from a clergy colleague here in Fort Collins, letting me know that the city and county were finally opening an isolation shelter for people experiencing homelessness and who have tested positive for Covid. There had been an outbreak at the temporary shelter on Blue Spruce Drive with 53 homeless folks and 8 staff members testing positive, so getting the isolation shelter in place was critical. Larimer County and the city, however, aren’t covering the cost of food for these people who are living in isolation. Instead, they are counting on a local nonprofit, Homeward Alliance, to raise between $30,000 and $60,000 to cover food costs. I’ve written to every member of city council, as well as to the county board of supervisors. While council members were concerned, the city manager’s office confirmed that Homeward Alliance will cover the food costs. I hope they are visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Our congregation, led by our teens, raised about $20,000 this month for homelessness prevention. We are doing our part, but we cannot do it alone.

If I was a bit jaded, I might be led to believe that many people in our country, especially political types, don’t care that much about the poor. Would I be wrong in that assumption? And yet, we certainly hear some politicians crow loudly about America being a Christian nation and the perceived threat to the free practice of Christian religion in this nation. 

But shouldn’t Christians care about what Jesus said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled"? [Luke 6.20-21] Personally, I don’t consider it very faithful to ignore the poor and the hungry and the conditions that allow poverty to flourish.

It all makes me wonder whether our nominally Christian politicians have ever heard Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which is today’s text. Any Episcopalians among them hear it as part of Evensong, but sometimes its radical message gets disguised by beautiful choral settings. Listening to some of these ethereal canticles, you would never know that Mary’s words are an anti-imperial manifesto. 

Her words are powerful and raw: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” This is a subversive song of the kingdom of God that Mary sings and that her son proclaims. This is about socioeconomic jujitsu, throwing the norms of the world on their head. This is anything but the so-called prosperity gospel…it’s not the rich and the well-fed who are blessed, it’s the poor and hungry. 
I wonder how many Christians this year will hear the nativity stories and wonder why God sent Jesus not to a palace in Rome, but to a Judean peasant household…not to well-educated, well-off parents, but to an unmarried young woman. And if they do wonder about such things, do they go one step further and ponder what it means for them as people of faith? What does it mean for you? What does it mean for us at Plymouth?

We can look at Mary’s song and say, “Yeah…Caesar and Herod were really awful people and oppressed the poor.” And we can do that without ever wondering who the Caesars and Herods are in today’s setting. Imperialism has not died off over the last 2,000 years. If anything, it has flourished, especially among the nominally Christian nations of Europe and the supposedly Christian United States.
This is not a very cheery conversation to have on the final Sunday of Advent, but it is an important part of the Christmas message that we hear Mary’s words of justice and that we don’t domesticate Jesus into baby who is perpetually “meek and mild.” 

We are given a choice about the path we will follow. We can follow the mainstream American path that invites us into a dog-eat-dog world of competition and survival of the fittest, where people are allowed to fall into poverty by the millions, where humans who are ill with Covid are sheltered but not fed by our government. They have made room at the inn…they just haven’t fed the hungry.
You and I are invited down a different path. It is the way of Jesus, the way of Mary, the way of God’s realm, where the poor are blessed and the hungry are fed. As Christians we are called not just to acknowledge such parts of our faith, but to put them into practice and to encourage others to do the same. So, if you are looking for something to do this afternoon, call Senators Bennet and Gardner and Congressman Neguse or Ken Buck, if you’re in his district, and encourage them to restore unemployment benefits set to expire after Christmas and to get an economic relief act passed now. Consider taking action not only as a Christmas gift to people who really need it, but as an act of faith.
Part of what Mary calls us to join her in doing is to magnify the Lord. The Greek word literally means to enlarge or amplify, so what might it mean for you as an ordinary everyday follower of Jesus to amplify his message? How might you turn up the volume a bit this week and act from a sense of costly love? 

I wonder whether any of us sometimes get caught up in a current or in an eddy tainted with the bitterness of Ebenezer Scrooge and if we need a brief visit from a spirit who shows us what the world would be like if we learned to open our hearts to one another and truly act from love and abundance. Maybe that spirit isn’t a ghost imagined by Charles Dickens. Perhaps it is the spirit of Mary, calling to us across the millennia to amplify God’s liberating realm and to rejoice in God’s presence.

It has been a difficult year with the pandemic, the fires in our foothills, and political discord. And for some of us, it’s been even harder as we struggle to make ends meet and keep a roof over our heads or to find someplace warm and safe to sleep at night. And in the years ahead, this congregation will have a role to play in influencing the moral issues that we as a wider community face. 

Our celebration of Christmas will be different in this pandemic year. We may not be surrounded by extended family. We won’t be gathering in this sanctuary together. But we can still unite our hearts and hands and voices and sing Mary’s radical refrain. We can still worship together remotely and safely. We can look forward with hope at getting the pandemic under control. We can know that even if we are in solitude, that we are never alone. Christmas will be different, but my hope for you is that you find new meanings in God’s unique entry onto the scene of human history and that you will become part of the story.

I leave you with the word of a great 20th century theologian, Karl Rahner: “Christmas tells you in your solitude: Trust your surroundings, they are not emptiness; Let go and you will find; Renounce and you will be rich.

May it be so. Amen.

© 2020 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.