The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, Colorado
Mark 12:28-34
 
Mr. Rodgers once said, “Love is at the root of everything. Love and the lack of it.” He also once said to a friend of his, Fort Collins’ very own Rev. Rich Thompson, “If you cannot be near the ones your love, then love the ones you are near.”
 
Today, I am preaching my final sermon as a minister of this church, and so the advice of Mr. Rodgers is resonating especially strongly with me in this time of goodbyes. You have shared with me a love that will never let me go. I will no longer be near, but our ministry together will continue throughout my callings and ministries to come—however many God allows me.
 
For those of you who do not know, I wandered into this church as a recently-out gay evangelical high school student. I now leave you as clergy and member some sixteen years later, as a seasoned young minister: ordained, married, trained, and hopeful for the Church and the future. I will no longer be near this church that I have loved, but I promise to share the love I have learned here, as Mr. Rodgers suggests, with those whom I will be near in my ministries to come.
 
As we explore our Scripture, let us start with prayer. O God, grant us wisdom and understanding of this text, and may the words of my mouth and our collective meditations be good in your sight. Amen.
 
J’étais très jeune quand j’avais mon premier coup de coeur. I was very young when I first fell
in love. It is a love that has never since let me go. It is a love that has taught me everything I know. It is a love that will keep all of you and my Plymouth years with me always.
 
As early as I can remember, I have been in love with and infatuated by words and their power. It was this love of words that sustained me through the tortured years of mastering French verbs and syntaxes. It was that love that threw me into theological studies and seminary. It is with words, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—One God and Mother of us all,” that we are Baptized into Christian Faith. It is with the words, “eat this bread and take this cup,” that we are sustained in our faith. It is words that have truly Ordained me to this work of walking with and being with you, called by the words of pastor, minister, and reverend. I love and fear words!
 
But it isn’t just the words in and of themselves for their own sake that I love. It is what we do with them. Words communicate, can build up, move, and shape history on their own, but they only truly find their power when words join their forces together in story. If words are the rivers (the sources/ springs) of meaning, then stories are the churning oceans of the Spiritual, Ritual, and purpose our lives.
 
Today, I want to share a Word with you as I leave you—a final benediction formed at the spring testimony.
 
As I have often preached about, I attended seminary in the Deep South in the woodlands of North Georgia. It is land where there are even more storytellers than there are pine trees. Even more than out here in the West where we have the history of campfire storytelling, story is what holds Southern Christianity and identity together. Story and testimony are at the core of community more than history (New England Christianity) or common love of the landscape (Colorado Christianity). In Southern Christianity, where I was shaped into a minister (might I add with some significant kicking and screaming from yours truly), personal stories are also how you show your love and express your faith. Story is what makes us human. All creates communicate in some form, but only we tell stories.
 
In that context, where story is the heart of being Christian, there is a different way to talk about what we might call a “sermon” or “homily.” Instead of calling it a sermon, they call it a Word or a Good Word. Preach us a Good Word today, Pastor! So today, on my last Sunday in this pulpit, I don’t want to preach at you, to meditate you to sleep, or offer some highfalutin homily, but I want to share a simple Good Word with you about the power you have had bringing this Scripture to life in my ministry and life.
 
Turning now… The Word Jesus shares with us this morning in Mark 12: 28-34 is Love.
 
He is asked, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; 33 and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself'—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
 
This is my favorite passage in all of Scripture. I value it for its simplicity, its necessity, and relevance for today. I don’t care what religion you are. I don’t care if you don’t have a religion at all. No matter who you are or what you call yourself, the idea that we are called to love our neighbors reigns supreme today and always in every culture and every corner of this world. The difference in how we treat each other and, in our politics can all be cured by the power of the Word…love. It is such a simple message, yet it is forever aspirational in nature. It forever requires our daily repeating. Our word of the day every day is love.
 
Today in the Gospel of Mark we have Jesus’ benediction. This is the end of his teachings as he turns towards the cross. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been saying this all along—through different stories and metaphors he has tried to communicate his purpose. Finally, right as he is about to face the proceedings that will lead to his end (he is already in Jerusalem when our story today takes place), as he finishes his ministry here in Chapter 12 of Mark, he says it plainly for once. There is no commandment greater than these—nor patriotism, nor purity, nor progressive politics, nor recognitions, nor fame, nor the amount of your pledge… no… your story is love of neighbor and of God. Period.
 
You all have shared so much love with me in my time at Plymouth. From being a 15-year-old lost high schooler wondering around these pews through college, seminary, ordination, and ministry—you have been love. 
 
As a person of words and language, the way I have most received your love is in your sharing of stories. I spoke about this at the start of my sermon, and I want to come back to it now. I love words for their meaning, but it is in your stories that I have found your love for me as your pastor. It is love manifested as trust.
 
You have shared stories about your deepest fears, secrets, hopes, dreams, lost dreams, dead relatives long ago and yesterday, new born babies, hospitalizations, insecurities, theological question, justice innovations, funny times, etc. We have laughed, cried, and sat in silence.
 
[Silent]
 
There is a story told in speechlessness as well, isn’t there?
 
I have come to realize, as a young minister, that this is how you all have shown me love. This is how you have lived into The First Commandment message of Jesus from our Scripture today. I will be leaving Plymouth as your minister and fellow member this week, but the love you have shown me through trusting me with your stories will last a lifetime. The Word you have shared with me is love, and that love in our pastoral relationship has manifested in the stories you have shared with me. Your stories, not church politics, have ordained me to ministry and send me now to Second Call in Connecticut. The robes, stoles, and titles have never interested me in this work. You could take them all away, and I would be more than good with that. What has ordained me to this work is your stories. I promise now as I leave you to keep them safe in my heart and forever in my prayers as I ponder your Gospel.
 
In January I preached a sermon about clergy being like curators of art galleries or museums, and while that is still true, a new metaphor has taken hold of my imagination this week. I have started to think of the role of a minister as being a lot like being a safe container. Sure, I have to be open and receptive to the different ways you all communicate, but the most important part of my job (more than party planning or preaching or emailing)… the most sacred thing about being a minister is receiving your words… your stories and remembering them and holding them safe. My job is to let you know that you are not alone in the echo chamber of your own storybook. You have shown your love for me as your pastor by sharing those intimate and precious stories with me, and I show that love back by remembering them and holding onto them forever in my heart.
 
My Metaphor today is that of the Minister as a Treasure Chest. In the tales and stories about pirates and buried treasure, the box itself is never of much value save for the fact that it is filled with riches. Likewise, what good is a minister without stories? What value is a pastor who hasn’t learned to cherish and keep safe the Words of her or his parish? The Word we share, the Love we manifest as congregation and clergy has been to be in dialogue. It is a conversation that never ends even though I won’t be here any more as I ponder your stories.
 
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I shall love your stories as my own and protect them and take them with me always. As a treasure chest is made whole and real by the value of its contents, so I have been made a real minister by my time with you.
 
In closing, as a lover of words, I thought a bit about what words for goodbye mean in French and English. In French, the quotidian way to say goodbye is with “au revoir” meaning till we see each other again. But when you say a long-term goodbye without a known conclusion in this lifetime—you mark it by saying Adieu. Adieu means "to God I give you, to God I leave you, and with God’s love I enfold you." Adieu.
 
In English, we say goodbye. Anyone know where this comes from? Goodbye comes from an old English contraction for “God be with ye.” Moreover, students of language say that goodbye is the response line of the one being sent away. The who sends or isn’t leaving would say “farewell,” and the one leaving would reply with “goodbye.”
 
“Farewell,” one would offer—have a good journey ahead.
“Goodbye,” would be the reply—God be with you.
 
This time of saying goodbye is a dialogue. As the history of the phrase “goodbye” shows, it is two sided, and we need each other to truly say farewell/goodbye well.  
 
Today I wanted to share a simple Word with you. That word is love. Some of you I may never see again but know that I will never forget you. Your stories will always be in my heart.
 
So, as Mr. Rodgers said, at the end of his final episode, and I paraphrase, “I like you just the way you are, and I am so grateful to you for bringing healing to so many different neighborhoods… it is such a good feeling to know we are friends. Goodbye for now.”
 
Adieu, Plymouth. Farewell, and May God be with you. Amen.
 
Pastoral Prayer:
God of the ages, God of many names,
God found both in the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the depths of Long Island Sound…
God, I call upon you to be with this congregation of your people.
Bring them comfort in their times of wariness—for their strength is needed.
Bring them leaders of wisdom and confidence—for this church is a beacon in this community.
Bring them courage in times of pain—for you are in all things.
O God, I give you thanks for their radical hospitality
that not only helped me find a home in Christianity
but has allowed me to share that story with others.
I give you thanks for their generosity that is manifested today
in their ministry with Habitat for Humanity, FFH, and other endeavors.
I give you thanks for their patience,
especially with their clergy as we don’t always get everything right the first time.
For their immigrant welcoming work—help them to continue to accompany.
For their Open and Affirming work for the LGBTQ community—help them to continue to learn.
For their Peace with Justice stance—help them to stay in solidarity
especially with Israel and Palestinian issues.
We, O God, give you thanks for each other and each person’s stories.
May this church always be a safe container for this sharing, listening, and caring.
 
We now listen to all of our voices as we together tell the story of hope
through the ancient words of the Lord’s Prayer beginning with, “Our Father…”

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Luke 9:57-62
Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Would you join me in prayer? O God who walks with us on the many paths of life, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts may be good and pleasing in your sight. Amen.
 
One of the greatest gifts of ministry with Plymouth over the past years has been the participatory planning of the All-Church Retreat. While many of our ministry teams require only distant supervision or occasional guidance (usually only in the event of a crisis), it has been part of the full-time associate minister role for me to walk through the joyful creation of this annual event as a member of the planning team.
 
One of the saddest parts of leaving Plymouth before September, when the All-Church Retreat will take place this year, is not having the chance to attend this event. I always name it as my very favorite moment of ministry here every year. And this year, friends, let me just say that the team is planning the coolest, most intergenerational, artist-filled weekend of going deeper in faith and Spirit together down at La Foret. We even have an internationally known rock balancing artist contacted to come for our program!
 
What is it, though, about the All-Church Retreat that has made it, repeatedly, the highlight of my year of ministry, year after year? What makes it special and even restorative for our work together as church? Why would anyone choose to spend a year planning an event for church to gather in old cabins, to worship in the outdoors, to be dirty, to not get much sleep, and to be homesick? We have a perfectly good church building. We have perfectly good beds here at home. We have perfectly great hiking in Lory State Park. Why would one do that on purpose—especially as it requires driving South on I-25 during a Friday rush hour?
 
Here is why: for me, the All-Church Retreat (like the All-Church Picnic) is a Sacrament of the Plymouth Church Year. It is a Sacrament that disrupts the systems and the “normal” of our lives together. The manners in which we do community and worship and fellowship is challenged and set (for me) on a new pathway every year from the retreat onward. The All-Church Retreat is where I have my ministry New Year Eve. It reminds that the church isn’t contained by walls or magic words… but by people, their stories shared around a campfire, and the attentive listening to the Spirit. On the hikes and the pathways of the retreat, norms are challenged and new ways of being in community emerge.
 
Like the All-Church Retreat, leaving our comfort zones and upsetting norms is also the subject of our Scripture passage this morning from the Gospel According to Luke. It is a passage that on the surface appears to be Jesus in a really foul mood. On the surface it is a text that makes us cringe at times of change and transition, but under that surface is a call to go deeper into Christian love together especially at times of new pathways and journey.
 
In today’s passage, Jesus encounters some “wanna be” disciples. While our reading today is often thought of as one conversation, if we break it apart, there are actually three distinct and potentially very different people auditioning to be disciples before Jesus. Since there is no time marker between them, each could have been a very distinct conversation and context. This is like an American Idol for auditioning Disciples, except Jesus is a tougher audience and judge than even Simon Cowell.
 
Within the context of the Gospel of Luke, at this point in the story, Jesus is transitioning from B-List (regional) Prophet (sort of the type who might play Las Vegas) to an A-List Celerity. Jesus is becoming the Jesus Christ Superstar we imagine in theater and movies. We catch-up with Jesus today right in the moment when he is really building up his ministry, and people are paying attention. Joiners are circling. Do you know what the word “joiner” means? Joiners are the opposite of covenant-makers. These are the folks who attach themselves to the next best celebrity and then leave just as easily for the next best thing. Jesus is auditioning disciples not joiners for the difficult work of walking together in the woodland and forests of Spiritual Community.
 
Let us hear the text again listening for all three audition tapes in this episode of Disciples Idol: 
 
57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 But Jesus[a] said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
 
Here are three people all presenting themselves to Jesus to be followers, and now the story never tells us is they actually decided to continue following Jesus or not, but it does show us three of the reasons Jesus warns them about the realities becoming part of Christian Community. Jesus offers three reasons that covenant is a difficult pathway—and note it is different for each one of them. There is no blanket response. It is individualized for each person.
 
To the first, Jesus tells him that one of the risks of following is discomfort and housing insecurity. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” There is likely to be times of severe discomfort on the Jesus Journey. There is the risk of restless and even sleepless nights and solidarity with those on the margins. The first trail warning is that this isn’t a comfortable walk or life. Discomfort is part of the Jesus Journey.
 
The second, once he receives the direct invitation to follow Jesus, suddenly pivots and comes up with the excuse of needing to go home for a previously (conveniently) unscheduled funeral. Biblical Scholars agree that this second one is the example of the false excuse for real commitment. There isn’t really a funeral to plan or attend or he wouldn’t have been there listening to Jesus in the first place. Funerals happen that quickly in the ancient world, and still today in Jewish tradition. Have any of you ever worked in the HR field? This is the, “I need to go to my grandmother’s funeral,” excused absence claim.
 
Even so, Jesus says that sometimes the dead will need to bury the dead. There are many valid interpretations of this, but one interpretation is that a risk of following Christ is that some things, even important things (like funerals) will never be completed. The bereavement process is a journey and not a destination. The second trail warning is that Christian life on the path less traveled doesn’t always have a sense of completion or perfect closure. Nothing final will ever feel complete, and we have to find acceptance with that.
 
The third trail warning is a hard one today. The person simply asks to say goodbye to friends and family before leaving. This one I feel deeply right now, and Jesus’ response pains me. Facing leaving home and not feeling like there is enough time to say goodbye to every one of you individually, Jesus’ reply seems strange or hurtful. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
 
This is when we realize what Jesus is doing… everyone is welcome to be a follower, but the challenge is different for each. Jesus is working in the genre of the impossible. In the ancient world, a plow wasn’t like today’s modern GPS operated tractors made by John Deer and International Harvester. They were messy and propelled by donkeys. No matter how good of a farmer you were (even an Iowan) would have to look back and check their rows. It was part of the process.
 
Everyone looks back. Jesus has set-up an impossible paradigm. The third warning has the implication that none is able to do this perfectly without Grace. Jesus is using hyperbole to welcome an imperfect world and people to a new way. The third trail warning is that nobody will live up to this work. No human is fully able to let go of the past. Nobody is perfect, and none can do this Jesus Journey alone…at least not in perfection.
 
To each joiner, to each auditioner Jesus faces them with their own fear. It is like, for those of you who are Harry Potter fans, like a Boggart. To some that is imperfection, to others it is discomfort, and to yet others it is the incomplete.
 
“I will follow you wherever you go,” they say. Jesus replies, “Yes, yes, but you need to know that this whole Christianity thing is hard (hard for different people in different ways)—it means admitting to our imperfections and lack of straight lines, it means knowing that some things will be left undone and even incomplete, and that it can be uncomfortable and even sleepless at times… even away from La Foret.
 
[Pause 4 seconds]
 
This time of saying goodbye and moving feels kind of like this story rolled all into one process—incomplete, imperfect, and uncomfortable. It is all part of the larger vision of following Jesus on the road.
 
Let me close by adding one more observation about this passage. Verse 57 starts with this phase: “As they were going along the road…” What do you notice that is strange about this. The journey is already in motion. All three are already his followers—they never needed to audition to be followers in the first place, so Jesus challenges them with their own sense of what following means.
 
These and others are already in journey with Jesus. The choice is made, but the challenges remain. The word translated in our NRSV translation as “the road” comes from the Greek word Hodos. It can mean a physical way or road, but almost as often it means a course of conduct, or a way or manner of thinking (entrenched systems). As they were going along the way, as they were settling into a manner of thinking, as the systems solidified into a course of conduct… Jesus changes the direction. The hodos or the norms and familiar faces shift and the hodos ways of their lives change. Jesus offers a hodos challenging statement to each person who presents her or himself for discipleship. Going deeper in faith means understanding ourselves and accepting new pathways when presented with them for the sake of going deeper together and becoming better individuals.
 
I leave you now with a poem that inspired my sermon “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. I come from a literary analysis background, so when I am in times of change and stress I lean deeper not into history and facts but words and meaning.
 
Those who study this poem indicate that while it has a melancholy overtone, in the end there is a joy that there is no wrong way or path…all lead to a Providential Hope in God’s Realm and the interconnectedness of all Creation.
 
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh [deep breath and pause]
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Acts 16: 9-15
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
“One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility [in the household of God], we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them [and us] find self-confidence and inner healing.” 
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
 
Today, friends, I want to speak with you about sharing in one household in mutuality and the Christian life together. Come and stay! Share in the love of the household of God.
 
Would you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our family and the one whom always welcomes us and all people home throughout all time and across the vast distances of heaven and earth. Amen.
 
“During the night Paul had a vision.” That is how our Scripture auspiciously starts this morning in Acts—the Lukan narrative of the Adventures of the Apostles. And you all thought that Game of Thrones was Epic! In the early dawn hours, we imagine Paul waking everyone up and rushing them to the seaside. The first condition of traveling with Paul, apparently, is being a morning person. “Get up! I’ve had another vision!” Early in the morning, Paul and his companions enter a new region for the first time and go looking for the people in prayer. They don’t even know who they are called to meet, but they know that they are sent. In response to a vision, Paul goes looking for a Community in Prayer in unfamiliar territory without a known destination. The second apparent condition of working with Paul is being comfortable working without a set itinerary or plan.
 
Paul intuitively goes down to the river where a group of women, including Lydia, worship and pray. Then in a reversal, often missed by traditional scholars, Paul and his band are saved by Lydia. She was a powerful women and merchant of the rare item of purple cloth.
 
She “prevailed” upon them means that she welcomed them to her home and fed and provided for them. She demands that Paul receive (reciprocal) her hospitality as a sign of gratitude and community. Blessing is not a one-way street. The Apostles are brought into her household, into her home, and they find welcome and radical hospitality in a new land.
 
In this passage we find a deep sense of mutuality and reciprocity that makes us ask some question: Who is really being saved here? For whom is this story more of a blessing? Do Lydia and her household save Paul and his friends, or does Paul save Lydia? I would argue that they save each other in Christian mutuality and the radical welcome of God. Importantly from a narrative/structural analysis perspective, after Lydia’s story in Acts, there is a long list of near-death and very demanding experiences throughout the Greek territory through the rest of Chapter 16 and 17. Would Paul and his apostles have been able to survive it without the service and sabbath of Lydia? The text does not say how long they stayed and recuperated at Lydia’s house. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that this salvific, restorative moment is exactly half way through The Book of Acts. Does this time of rest at Lydia’s home save the whole Christian story? Read in context, I think that is a true interpretation. Lydia, perhaps, saves Christianity.
 
Unlike many imbalanced passages in the Bible around money, spirit, power, and gender discrimination, this short passage in Acts, Chapter 16 is a glimpse of Sacred Community called into being be a vision grounded in mutuality (the need for all people and their gifts), gentleness, and hospitality.
 
Lydia demanded that they accept her care just as she had received a gift of the Gospel from Paul. Mutuality. Lydia demonstrates equality with Paul here that is significant in a Feminist and Progressive Hermeneutic or reading of the New Testament. This is the leaders of two spiritual communities meeting. Moreover, the text implies that they needed each other. Paul was called over the waters to Lydia to bring her good news, but he also finds renewal and blessing from her household. Unlike the imbalanced passages in Scripture and most of Christian Tradition, here we find a moment of balance and mutual need and acceptance.
 
How is your giving of time and love to Church Community also a gift to you? Where do you find mutuality in your Christian walk with others? How do you need community to show-up for you today? Come and stay, friends, here in the household of God. Sustainable service requires a sense of mutuality.
 
With the end of Game of Thrones (a show I have never watched by the way because of the violence), there is a lot of talk about something called a Spoiler Alert.  Have any of your heard of this idea? Since I have no plans to ever watch Game of Thrones, I ignore such warnings. A Spoiler Alert is an alert that the premise of a show or book will be shortly given away in the form of an overly-simplistic summary. So, *spoiler alert*—friends, here is the summary of the next 8 minutes of this sermon: Christianity is about being called to share and to receive. Christianity is about receiving hospitality from unexpected sources with grace. In offering hospitality, in sharing Gospel hope, in living in community with those whom many have rejected, we are not only giving home and household of God, but it is how we truly become Christians living in mutual need of one another. Spoiler Alert: This is so basic, but we need each other and those in need as much or more than they ever need us.
 
Progressive Christians like to see ourselves as the heroes, but we need the gifts of those whom we serve as much as they need us.
 
This reminds me of a great theologian, activist, and spiritual visionary who died a couple of weeks ago named Jean Vanier—the founder of the International L’Arche Communities. These are houses set aside like group homes for those living with developmental and mental disability, but the care providers and staff live in the houses as well and share in life and community. Unlike group homes where the service and the giving are unidirectional, this is life in community embodied. Jean Vanier believed that this was mutuality and mutual blessing. Jean Vanier was a young man studying to become a priest when a visit to an institution for mentally disabled men would change him and the world forever. 
 
The New York Times remembered this moment in Jean Vanier’s recent obituary in the following terms: “Jean Vanier, who dedicated his life to improving conditions for people on the margins and founded two worldwide organizations for those with developmental disabilities, died on Tuesday in Paris….The turning point in his life came in 1963, with his first visit [as a theology student] to an institution for people with intellectual [and developmental] disabilities. He was so moved by their pleas for help that he bought a house and invited [prevailed upon them] two male residents to live with him. It was the beginning of L’Arche…Today L’Arche…has 154 communities in 38 countries…[in which] people with [core members] and without intellectual disabilities live together in a community where they can feel they belong….Mr. Vanier studied how people with mental disabilities were being treated throughout the world and resolved to create a community where they could live with one another in dignity… By living with them, Mr. Vanier said he truly began to understand what it meant to be human. ‘Before meeting them, my life had been governed largely from my head and my sense of duty. When those ingrained in a culture of winning and individual success really meet them and enter into friendship with them, something amazing and wonderful happens. They are changed at a very deep level. They are transformed and become more fundamentally human.’”[1]
 
That article was poorly, terrible, unthoughtfully entitled, “Jean Vanier: Savior of People on the Margins.” It was poorly entitled because Jean Vanier and the L’Arche model of Christianity would fundamentally understand it in the inverse. Jean Vanier wasn’t the savior of those at the margins at all, but he was the one who was saved. He was saved from a false sense of self and an artificial reality by those at the margins. That is how he would have understood it and how all those who live in and support L’Arche Communities (including the newest one in the world emerging now in Fort Collins) understand church.

Lydia and the women of Macedonia worshiped on their own by the river because they were on the margins operating outside of the official and formal circles of power, and it is to them and their community that Paul goes to be welcomed home into the household of Lydia and God. Amen?
 
The late theologian and Biblical Scholar, Gail O’Day wrote of this passage that, “This Sabbath gathering suggests that as early as the first century, women believers sought their own voices and stories in worship freed from the dictates of the male-dominated church.”[2]
 
Spoiler Alert Again: It is in mutuality with those at the margins that the Church has always found its real meaning and is saved time and time again. The church is saved and renewed by the margins.
 
Vanier once wrote: “One of the risks that God will always ask of a community is that it welcomes visitors, especially the poorest people, the ones who disturb us. Very often God brings a particular message to the community through an unexpected guest, letter or phone call. The day the community starts to turn away visitors and the unexpected…is the day it is in danger of shutting itself off from the action of God…We are too quick to want to defend our past traditions, and so to shut ourselves off from the new evolution God wants of us. We want human society, not dependence on God…We are all in danger of living superficially, on the periphery of ourselves…Community life demands that we constantly go beyond our own resources. If we do not have the spiritual resources we need, we will close in on ourselves and in our own comfort and security or throw ourselves into work as an escape. We will throw-up walls around our sensitivity; we will perhaps be polite and obedient, but we will not live in love. And when you do not love, there is no hope and no joy. To live with “gratuity” we have to be constantly nourished. It is terrible to see people who are living in so-called community that has become a boarding house for bachelors! It is terrible to see elders in a community who have closed up their hearts, lost their initial enthusiasm, and have become critical and cynical. If we are to remain faithful to the daily round, we need daily manna…It is the manna of meetings, of friendship, of looks and smiles that say, ‘I love you’ and warm the heart.”[3]
 
The household of God is rooted in mutuality of shared and unexpected blessing.
 
The National Pension Boards of the denomination asked me this past week to respond to a questionnaire about “the future of the church.” They asked us young clergy NGLI participants to answer the question: What does the future of the church look like? I have put some thought into this.
 
What does the future church look like? It looks like every local church taking the call to be a living and real household of God. It means the local congregation’s living into the freedom of dynamic mutual community like that of Paul and Lydia. The future of the Church looks a lot like L’Arche. It looks like communities living into the wholeness and the giftedness of each person in mutuality of blessing.
 
Perhaps this Scripture story isn’t really the “Conversion of Lydia” at all, as it is traditionally called, but it is the true and real conversion of Paul into accepting mutuality and the strengths of others. Perhaps we miss in this story a transformation that happens in Paul more than in Lydia. Maybe the one being saved here isn’t Lydia and her household, but it is Paul and the Apostles who need the saving from their busyness. There is Scriptural evidence to this effect. That is how I choose to read this story and understand Christianity. Come and stay, friends, in a truly mutual Realm and household of God.
 
She prevailed upon them and they were brought into her household where the one who in busyness and in power thought he was saving others… is in turn saved. Would they have made it through the remaining half of the Epic Adventure of the Acts of the Apostles without the mutuality of Lydia, I think maybe not.
 
Like Jean Vanier, we choose to believe that we all may and must be transformed in authentic mutuality by the gentleness of love.[4]

Jake

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/obituaries/jean-vanier-dead.html
[2] Gail O’Day, “The Book of Acts,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, edits. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 397.
[3] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 161-169.
[4] “Jean Vanier and the Gift of L’Arche,” The Christian Century, June 5, 2019.

by Anne Thommpson

Share community,
down at the river to pray.
Then come to my home.

Who is being saved?
How do we save each other?
Sacred together,

Mutuality,
Equality and balance.
What needs do we bring?

What are the needs met?
We need gifts of those we serve
for humanity.

It is more bless-ed
That we both give and receive --
full humanity.

Look to the margins,
to your own periphery,
societal edge.

Giftedness of each
can save even powerful
from their narrowness.

Stronger together
Community of needs and gifts
Blessed and being blessed

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Will you pray with me? O God, today, as you call us on a new processional journey, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts will be good, pleasing, and humble in your sight. Amen.
 
Thinking back on my childhood, growing-up at an evangelical church across town, I don’t remember a distinction between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. If anything, perhaps if I think hard enough, Palm Sunday was when the adults filled the Easter Eggs, and it was Easter when we got to eat all the candy!
 
In any event, Palm Sunday was a lead-into Easter. It was a joyous parade, a jubilant celebration that all has already been accomplished for us in Christ. Palm Sunday always reminded me of the Greeley Stampede or the CSU Homecoming Parade. The idea was this: “There is no more work for us to do theologically but to welcome the victor, the hero, the triumphant one into our hearts.” Then we can sit back, enjoy life, get rich, and sing songs of praise for the rest of our days. Sound familiar?
 
Our Scripture passage today is known by many names and is observed by many customs—most of which reinforce this parade-like feeling. It isn’t just the Evangelical Church, but also many in the Mainline Church (and culture itself) that reinforce this notion that Christianity is a fait accompli—a done deal. This is especially true with how we experience Palm Sunday. Lament, ongoing journey, and care for the other… not really included.
 
The most well-known of these traditions is the joyous waving of palm fronds in churches around the world and the most common Biblical title for this passage, assigned to it by more recent editors is, “Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.” Triumphal means an event carried out to celebrate a great victory or achievement. Typically, triumph means a parade.
 
The neoclassical L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris is the center of L’Axe historique is at the center Paris and of French national pride. It is a triumphant gate, replicated and re-imagined by many states around the world, including Mexico and North Korea, as a symbol of war victory and military pride. It represents a colonial urge to control and conquer. In France, of course, it is also a symbol of pride in the national soccer team, “Les Bleus,” but that is another sermon! “Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem” typically is interpreted as a victory parade, an eternal win, and achievement. Fait accompli.
 
Now, understanding this Psalm Sunday story as a victory parade isn’t at all outside of a superficial reading of the passage. In fact, the authorship of the Gospel of Luke wants a triumphal parade to be your first impression. One scholar writes, “[Luke 19] incorporates phrases from Palm 118, [‘Blessed is the king, who comes in the name of the Lord,’] This scene depicts a royal entry, naming Jesus as king, a title that will be used in the charges against Jesus before Pilate in Luke 23:2.”[1]
 
On the surface, we have a great royal victory parade, the deed is done, all is accomplished, and it’s time to break out the Easter Ham (with or without pineapple), but we know there is more to the story. The Gospel of Luke is showing us that Jesus, even as he walks literally/ knowingly towards his death, is inverting the norm of the king, of what is royal, or what victory means. Luke is arguably the most literarily sophisticated of the Gospels and is also the one most rooted in Social Justice and community need.
 
Here are three important ways that this is not a normal triumphant parade (like what we imagine with Charles de Gaulle after WWII):

1. Jesus isn’t greeted with the garbs of royalty but with the cloaks, a very precious belonging in the ancient world, of the poor who line his path. The powers of this world, on the inside of the gates, are not present to welcome Jesus. Notice, importantly, that this celebration happens not under the arcs of triumph inside the city walls but still on the outside with the other on the road! Location matters in Biblical story telling. This story happens on the outside of the walls of authority.
   
   
2. Jesus doesn’t ride on a great horse of a Roman military victor, but he rides on a farmer’s colt or baby donkey. The scene, to the ears and eyes of the people of the time, would have been farcical or comical! What a scene of the absurd—a king riding on peasants’ cloaks and a young colt? A colt or donkey is also a working animal of peace used to till fields in peacetime rather than an animal of war. This is an ironic scene, to the ancient world intended to make us question everything we think we know about power and who wields it. Only in modern, perhaps numbed (we have heard it too many times), readings is it a celebratory parade.
   
   
3. Finally, we know that this isn’t the end of the story. This parade is the vehicle by which the crucifixion and the death happen. The language of king, borrowed from Psalm 118, spoken by this crowd is what is used to later secure a conviction of death. This victory seals his fate in a way. It is, in many ways, the opposite (au contraire) of a victory parade. It is a funeral processional march, but not one done in sadness or in vain.

 
The Gospel writers are intentionally offering a paradox. We act like this is the final scene in a fairy tale where Jesus enters the gates of the city and then lives happily ever after. In reality, it is anything but a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty story once inside the gates. Especially with how we handle Palm Sunday, we absolve ourselves from further work. We have symbolically arrived at the gates. We abruptly stop the story at the gates of the city and declare: Happily, Ever After! How we handle Palm Sunday dictates how we handle and perceive our whole Christian lives. By saying that this is the victory parade, we miss that it isn’t a parade to be watched but a procession which we are called to join.  
 
This isn’t a parade at all, as it turns out, but it is a procession of life and transformation.
 
Tom Long was a professor at Emory when I was a student, and he wrote an amazing book on the Christian Funeral called, Accompany Them with Singing. In it he writes, “The key marks of a Christian funeral: simplicity, majesty, and the gathering of people…For Christians, Jesus is not the founder of some new religion or separate sect, but rather a revelation of what it means to live a fully human life, a life that truly embodies the image of God. To follow Jesus, then, is to walk the royal road intended for all humanity…One of the earliest descriptions of the Christian movement was ‘people of the way.’ For Christians, baptism is the starting point of this Way, a journey along a road Jesus himself traveled. Christians travel this road in faith, not knowing where it will lead and sometimes seeing only one step ahead. But they keep putting one foot in front of the other, traveling in faith to the end…”[2]
 
Friends, the word parade, as we often imagine the triumph of Palm Sunday, comes from an etymology meaning “a showing” or a “spectacle.” It means something to be observed and witnessed from the outside. It is neutral, it is passive, and it doesn’t call us to real lives of grace for each other.
 
On the other hand, what this story is really about is the word procession. A procession means “a moving forward” always and forever. We are called to be people of the way, walking with Christ into, not cheap grace, but deeply lived lives of Christian experience and hope for each other. Christianity is a processional moving forward—one foot in front of the other.
 
Christianity isn’t meant to be a triumphant spectacle, but it is meant to be lived in motion… a moving forward together.
 
We are lulled into thinking that we have an easy theological and ethical “out” here. We imagine that Jesus has done all the work already. Isn’t it time to open the Easter Eggs and eat all the peeps yet? All we need to do is accept the victor of war over evil into our lives and all is accomplished, right? Consciously or unconsciously, Evangelical or Mainline Progressive, that is what happens when we think of Palm Sunday as a victory parade. We miss that it is only the start of the journey and we are all called to the donkey, to the road, to the way.  
 
This isn’t a parade at all, as it turns out, but it is a procession of life.
 
“For Christians, baptism is the starting point of this Way, a journey along a road Jesus himself traveled. Christians travel this road in faith, not knowing where it will lead and sometimes seeing only one step ahead. But they keep putting one foot in front of the other, traveling in faith to the end…”[3]
 
I took last Sunday through Tuesday as vacation days to go on what I consider an annual Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to meet with Congress about housing affordability funding and policy. I always start by taking a moment to sit and pray on my own somewhere on the National Mall. This year, with the Cherry Blossoms and bright blue skies, I found myself inspired by democracy and what is possible in our country if we work together. In our National Mall, even today, the feeling isn’t of triumph over others, but it is a feeling of what is possible if we walk together. As a country, despite current rhetoric inside the buildings in D.C., the symbols we have chosen for our National Mall and capitol aren’t symbols and arcs of triumph over others, even our WWII memorial, but signs of togetherness and hope. We are not about triumph over but democracy with others.

I went into the meetings with a sense of confidence in my place in the Christian procession of justice, of diversity, of equity, and inclusion that Jesus starts with this procession story today. This isn’t easy, solo, selfish grace, but it is a grace to be shared through living lived on the path and way of transformation.

We are called to put the one step in front of the other way of Christ, to the path of hope, to the procession of transformation.
 
We are called into the procession of Christ to find shelter for those without housing.
We are called into the procession of Christ to help create new homes for those who are priced out of the market.
We are called into the procession of Christ to support those who believe themselves to not be living lives of worth or value.
We are called into the procession of Christ to stand-up for services that enable mental healthcare.
We are called into the procession of Christ to work for compassion and safety for the refugee.
We are called into the procession not the parade of Christ to seek peace in our world.
We are called into the procession of Christ to stop conversion therapies wherever it is still taking place.
We are called into the procession of Christ to fund scientific research and cures for diseases.
We are called into the procession of Christ to build affordable housing.
We are called into the procession of Christ, not as observers, but as activists for the ways of God in this world.
 
Procession isn’t a run. It is one step in front of the other, working for change, living in hope, experiencing grace. We may never see the results of our work, but we are in a long line, and we know that Jesus leads onward. Never stop walking and trying and remembering this calling.
 
Palm Sunday isn’t a parade. It is a farcical flipping over of our universe and a reminder of our calling to again become People of the Way. Come, friends, it is time to rejoin the procession of transformation. There is no time to lose.
 
Amen.

[1] Marion Lloyd Soards, “Luke,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: NRSV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 134NT.
[2] Tomas G. Long, Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), xii-xiii.
[3] Tomas G. Long, Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), xii-xiii.

by Anne Thompson

Parade-like feeling
with palm-waving "Hosannas"
through Arc de Triomphe.

A great victory!
Cloaks of peasants on the ground
outside city walls.

A farcical scene
on a working animal --
filled with irony.

The language of "King!"
seals the fate of coming death --
A Funeral March

Join the procession!
We should not be here to watch,
People of the Way!

This is not parade,
not a spectacle to see --
but moving forward.

Called to the donkey --
not knowing where it will lead --
with hope for justice.

Working for this change,
one foot before the other
in transformation.

Procession of love
Journeys of love and justice
Transformation path

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Joshua 5: 9-12
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Will you share with me a moment of prayer? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God of the refugee, the migrant, and the immigrant. Amen.
 
The members of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Fort Collins, Colorado hear God’s Call to care for and welcome with compassion and justice the widowed, the orphaned and the alienated who are living in our community.  We follow Jesus, the Christ, who lives among the “least of these” in our communities. We affirm that each and every person is a Child of God welcome in the Realm of God’s Love. Our refugee-immigrant ancestors fled persecution; upon arriving in Colorado they established the German Evangelical Congregational Church that laid the foundation for Plymouth Congregational UCC. Therefore, Plymouth Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Fort Collins, CO declares itself an “Immigrant Welcoming Congregation” to encourage the development of policies and activities within Plymouth UCC dedicated to facilitating respectful, compassionate welcome and inclusion of immigrants in our midst. (Enacted by Unanimous Vote of the Congregation, January 2018)
 
Since 2005, long before I was a minister here, I have been a member of Plymouth. Since that time, the telling and retelling of this congregation’s storied history is to me a Poetic Epic of heroism and hope for refugees. It is a story that has become for me a “scripture” (lower case “s”) of a sort—a sacred tale that can help us remember where our values and call to assist the migrant and refugee come from in this context.
 
If you know about the history of the City of Fort Collins and immigration to our city, you know that it is a pretty sweet story! Sweet, that is, in terms of sugar beets as the “produce of the land” in this region in the early 20th century. The sugar beet industry, a common alternative for sugar cane in the wake of the Spanish-American War, came to Fort Collins at the same time as a large wave of ethnic Germans from Russia. That wave of refugees escaping persecution were resettled in Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming and Northern Colorado by the US Government and church groups like the Congregational and Lutheran Church.
 
Now, sugar beet farming and processing, which happened at the time in the Andersonville area, isn’t for the faint of heart. It is hard, unglamorous work! But the sugar beets were a source of empowerment and a status change from refugees to fabric of our community. The sugar beets were a source of hope in a new land.
 
The founders of this congregation were of a large group of poor, ethnic Germans whose ancestors had moved to the Volga River Valley region of Russia under Catherine the Great in the 18th Century. They did this with a promise that they could keep their language, culture, religion, and not be conscripted into the military. By the late 19th Century, Russia was undoing those promises and persecuting the German minority. This forced a mass refugee migration to the United States, Canada, and Argentina. Those who chose to remain behind in the Volga Region, were mostly murdered by the Russian military during World War II—accused of being German spies.
 
While this is a story that many of us know by heart, I try and repeat it in a sermon at least once a year to remind us, as a congregation, where this place, these walls, our story comes from. To me it is a great saga, a tale of courage and faith, and it bears repeating, especially today as our Scripture points us to the plight of refugees once again.
 
If you go to the website for city history at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, there is a title called, “Factory worker churches.” In this section it describes our congregation: “Earliest church services for immigrant workers were conducted in private homes in Andersonville or Buckingham. The German Evangelical Congregational Church held services in the G. A. R. hall. In 1904 there were enough German Russians to employ Montezuma Fuller in the design of the German Congregational church at the southwest corner of Whedbee and Oak. The church was designed in a Gothic style with a fifty-foot tower and pointed arch windows and was composed of a red stone foundation with Fort Collins pressed brick walls and red stone trim.” [https://history.fcgov.com/contexts/sugar] The fruit, the produce of the land was now, again, sustaining them in this new place—a third place of refuge in only a couple generations. (Trinity ELCA, Shephard of the Hills ELCA, and Immanuel Reformed are also Russian-German Congregations in Fort Collins.)
 
It wasn’t always easy here in “Fort Fun.” This church would later have to change its name to Plymouth Congregational Church during World War II. While they were Russian-Germans, the locals began attacking them again, here in their place of refuge, for being German of all things.
 
Both in our immigrant story and our adopted Pilgrim story, as a congregation and a denomination, we have a rootedness in refugee stories. By becoming members of this church—these stories of refugee past, bravery, political uncertainty, urgent changing of a name for salvation sake, and hope become our story as well. That is the magic of joining a church community—we are now part of that legacy. Likewise, the responsibility to support new refugees with the “produce of the land” and resources here in Colorado comes with assuming that membership. These walls demand justice for refugees.
 
This brings me to our Scripture today. Our reading comes to us from an early part of the Book of Joshua. Joshua is part of what many scholars call the Hebrew Bible’s Deuteronomistic History—meaning second or history or law. Moses leads the people out of Egypt, out of slavery and death, and into the desert of wandering. That is the “first history,” categorized and told through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.
 
The “first history” ends when Moses dies without reaching the promised land. When Moses dies, a new leader is appointed named Joshua. The Book of Joshua picks-up where the Moses story ends in the desert. While Moses’ story is a tale of being refugees, we can see the Joshua story (the second history) as the story of being resettled.
 
The fact that in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament it takes two leaders and two whole histories to get us from the state of refugee status to a state of finding home evidences that throughout history immemorial becoming a refugee happens quickly, instantaneously based on external factors, but the process to resettle again, to claim stability is long and hard. Resettlement can take generations, it can require changes in law (as we see in the Bible with two laws), and it requires people of faith and vision like Moses and Joshua to lead.
 
We also find ancient language for a green card, for safety, resettlement, for hope, and for fulfillment of blessing in the repeated phrase, produce or crops of the land.
 
Let us hear the Scripture again:
 
10 While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal, they kept the Passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. 11 On the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. 12 The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.

Whenever something is repeated three times, it means we should pay attention. This reference to produce of the land, tevua in Hebrew, is found 40 times in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Importantly, almost every place where this word for “produce of the land” is found (and I looked at them all) in the Bible signs of peace and a sense of hope and community exists as well.

Psalm 107 “They sowed fields, and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful produce.”
Proverbs 3:9 “Honor the Lord with your wealth with the first produce.”

Our story this morning is the story of a change in resident status in the land. This is an ancient green card story in Joshua, Chapter 5. This is the moment when they no longer have to reply on the manna—the symbol of being refugees without a home. This is the moment when the people, after a generation of living in the unknown, are able to claim a sense of hope again. The ability to grow food, we forget in our modern supermarket and click-list lives, is the difference in the ancient world between having a place to call home and hope and being afraid of starvation, consumed by despair.
 
The produce of the land is a synonym for stability, for shelter, and the moment when refugees become residents. There are other ways to read the Joshua story and what the arrival of the Israelites means, but today I think we should focus on this moment. Joshua, Chapter 5, Verse 12 is perhaps the most important verse in the whole story of the Exodus when “The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land.”
 
I was able to bear witness to a produce of the land moment myself two years ago when my husband, Gerhard, was selected to be part of the once annual naturalization citizenship ceremony to take place in Rocky Mountain National Park. There, at the foot of Long’s Peak in Moraine Park Amphitheater, the Superintendent of RMNP, a jolly man dressed like Yogi Bear in a green ranger panama hat, spoke. He told the new immigrants, many refugees, that the great mountain before us, and it was a blue bird Colorado day, now belonged to them. It was theirs to take care of and a symbol of hope. This was a generous offer of the produce of the land that will always stick with us.
 
In our church story, the same moment comes when the produce of the land, in their case sugar beets, allowed our ancestors in 1904 to finally build a new place of worship in Fort Collins and to claim their place in our city. It is also notable that they didn’t just hire any architect, but they hired the best architect in our city’s history—a sign of pride! That sugar beet foundation, the cornerstone of which we brought with us to this site, is allowing refugees the opportunity to become settled, home, and connected to community roots again.
 
I received an urgent email from the UCC and the Church World Service this week. It read like this, “We have a moral responsibility to hold the administration accountable, for slashing the refugee program by 75 percent. This is the worst refugee crisis in history. With global need at its highest, the [administration] has dismantled the refugee resettlement program and reversed our nation’s history as a world leader in refugee protection… The administration set a new record-low refugee admissions goal for fiscal year 2019 at 30,000, and what’s worse, we are only on track to resettle 21,000 refugees this year -- not even meeting this abysmally low goal.” [“Where R The Refugees Worship Toolkit”]
 
God isn’t subtle. I want you all to know that. That same day, I received the email from the Church World Service, a copy of The Seventh-Day Adventist Magazine, Liberty, arrived in my mailbox with the cover article, “A Refugee Crisis.” It reads, “The world today is in the midst of mass migrations, reminiscent of the period encompassing the run-up to World War II, the war itself, and its aftermath…Today we have the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing government action in Myanmar. In Ukraine there is again flight from the Russians…In Syria there is massive dislocation of communities…And, less in the headlines, climate change and consequent loss of crops is driving desperate people north from Africa…Aside from Germany and Scandinavian countries, developed countries have not felt the weight of the crisis. Canada is doing moderately, and the United States is doing very little. The question of just how to balance security and charity remains,” and the article ends with the question, “Just how can the lamp at the golden door be relit?” [Amdur, Reuel S. “A Refugee Crisis: A Canadian Perspective,” Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom. March-April 2019.]

Later, that same day, a Facebook friend from PCUSA posted this article from the Christian Century: “Over the past two years, the nation’s refugee resettlement system has been slowly dismantled. The process started after…the president temporarily suspended the entire refugee program in the United States and issued the first version of a ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries. That dismantling has led to layoffs and office closings for resettlement groups. The nine agencies authorized by the federal government to resettle refugees in the United States—six of which are faith-based—also saw reduced funding for fiscal year 2018. Cuts to the refugee resettlement program will have lasting consequences, said Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy for the immigration and refugee program with Church World Service. 'You’re not just changing policy for a couple of years; you’re dismantling decades of work and relationships that will be nearly impossible to rebuild.'”

Did I mention that God hasn’t been subtle this week about what needed to be preached? “The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land.” The produce of the land is a symbol throughout the Bible of what all humans hope to have and deserve to obtain by the laws of the Bible and by principles of basic Human Rights—to live without fear of starvation, to be able to grow and put down roots of community, and to connect to earth and to Creator.
 
Our passage from Joshua reminds us of our own refugee, not just immigrant, saga as a congregation. Guided by our story and by the call of the Holy Bible, we must hear the signs of God calling us to work harder for advocacy, pay attention to funding bills in FY2020 that cut the produce of the land even greater and the possibility of safety and welcome. The moment when the refugees go from eating manna to eating from the land is the moment when they have a change in residency status and are offered new hope in a new home. It isn’t fast, it isn’t easy (as the next chapters in Joshua would reveal), and the politics aren’t always clear… but it is right.
 
Let us work harder to live into our call claimed and affirmed in 2018 to be an immigrant and refugee welcoming congregation and to help plant the seeds of the produce of the land for those most in need. Amen.

​Anne Thompson writes a weekly poem based on her hearing of the sermon. Here is her poem this week in response to Jake's "Produce of the Land" Sermon. 3/31/19

Produce of the land
can become a source of hope
to those who migrate.
 
There is a story
of immigrants in these walls -
tales of sugar beets.
 
This is our story.
We assume the legacy
of those refugees.
 
Refugee status
can happen very quickly
and can be painful –
 
leaving behind home,
family and heritage,
risking death and worse.
 
But resettlement
and status of belonging
can take a long time.
 
“Produce of the land”
is a symbol for safety
from hunger and fear.
 
Refugee crises -
our responsibility?
Where is charity?
 
How can the lamplight
be relit, and the closed door
be open again?
 
For those who made it
over seas and over walls,
the manna will cease.
 
It is up to us
to offer food and shelter
with our open hands.
 
Those of us who now
are nourished by fertile land –
how to be worthy?
 
We can help plant seeds,                      
connect Earth with Creator,
open minds and doors.
 
Plant the seeds of hope,
for the produce of the land –
our future and theirs.
 
A wilderness cry –
tired, feeble voices as one –
“Will you let me in?”

​
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph 
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
​Fort Collins, Colorado

​A couple of days ago, a new friend told me why she loves Lent, and it was her insight which inspired the sermon I’m about to preach. “I love the Season of Lent,” she said, “because it is the time of the year when I reset, and I learn to pay attention again.” Lent is the Art of Paying Attention. Lent is reclaiming the power of the detail. Today, I would like to share a word on reclaiming Poetry in our busy modern lives as a way (one way) to, again, learn to pay attention to meaning, to detail, to ourselves, to others, and to God. It is time for us to reclaim poetry as Christians both for ourselves and for our world which is desperate for new language and new vocabularies for love. 

Let us pray together. May the words of my mouth, O God of All Creation, and the intimate thoughts of our hearts, help us to renew our ability to truly pay attention to our world. You are our reminder of the details we treasure—our rock and our redeemer. Amen. 

“O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” The Psalms have a way of speaking to us in ways that no other Scripture can. This is because, unlike the narrative or legalistic parts of the Bible, the Psalms have a way of being chameleons, changing color, metamorphosing, and somehow meeting us wherever we are in life. As we grow older, I’ve noticed now at 30, the Psalms grow with us, new details emerge, new hearing develops. 

“So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.” Can you imagine how beautiful this poem is in the original Hebrew where it actually retains the stanzas and repetitions of the original poetry? Last week, Hal also preached on a Psalm, and he encouraged us to go deeper with them to pray the Psalms for lent. I love that! For that reason, I have chosen to also preach on a Psalm this week to help us with that going deeper together. I, like Hal, believe that the Psalms become part of us—they are able to become our own prayers in unexpected ways. When we don’t know how to pray or don’t know how to go deeper, a Psalm is usually in order. 

“My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” 

​Two pictures of the mad-libs “Time with Children”
​and the Psalms they helped us write in worship at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. 

Today, I want to go deeper with a focus on the poetry of the Psalms and how they can help us rediscover the need for details in our lives. The Psalms reawaken in us an attention to detail. To claim the Psalms as our own is to reclaim the power of language from the powers now choosing to wield words as weapons. We shall not accept this abuse of the power of language. By looking for poetry in the Psalms and in our world, we may reclaim poetry and the power of words for good in our lives and culture. If ever there were a time for poetry, it is now. 

Friends, a world that doesn’t appreciate poetry is a world at risk of losing its very sense of the meaning of existence. A world without the Poets and the Psalmists is a world without love, or dreams, or visions, or hope. Humans need poetry as the food for our souls. Extending this metaphor, I would say the Psalms are like a tapas bar with something for everyone and every time. 

Academics tell us that, “Psalms or The Psalter, as it is often called, is a collection of prayers and songs composed throughout Israel’s history. Its title, Psalms, is derived from a Greek term meaning ‘song.’ The Hebrew title of the book, Tehillim, means more specifically ‘hymns’ or ‘songs of praise.’ The poetic character of the Psalms is manifest in the balance or symmetry of each line.” [Patrick D. Miller, “Psalms,” The Harper Collins Study Bible (San Francisco, CA: Harper One, 1989), 732.] The Psalms are the part of the Bible where the details, and how they make us see our own existence, matters most of all. 

In Seminary, I was your classic fish out of water. I came right from an undergraduate degree in French Literature analyzing Rimbaud and Baudelaire into Divinity School where I found myself surrounded by Religious Studies majors…analyzing Paul. They knew all the facts, could recite the books of the Bible backwards and forwards without error. They enjoyed, as a leisure sport, reciting quotes from long dead theologians with funny names to one another.  

It was when I discovered the Psalms that I found my place in Seminary and subsequently in ministry. Here is a part of the Bible where literary analysis, poetry, a love for language and words matters as much or more than facts about dead theologians and historic hypothesis theories. A “Psalmist Christian,” as I identify, is a Christian who is most interested in the details of how religion makes us feel connected with God and community. It isn’t about the facts of faith, but Psalms are about the feeling and connections of faith. With the Psalms, we are free to dream, wonder, and feel—even as Mainline Protestants. The Psalms help us to pay attention to the Spirit at work and at play. 

It is time to be Psalmist Christians…poets all. 

Friends, we are drowning in facts—both accurate and deceptive. We are floundering in a sea of useless language. Wikipedia, news alerts on our smartphones, press secretary pronouncements, publicity, advertisements, from dawn to dusk drunk on factoids. The over-abundance of trivia has made finding meaningful words difficult. It has made the Lenten art of really paying attention to detail all but impossible. There are more words in our lives than ever, yet there is less and less meaning that gets in here to our hearts! 

“O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water, [meaning, purpose, substance].” Like our Psalmist today, we are all thirsty for meaning beyond what we can memorize or google search. We are thirsty for lives grounded in meaning and purpose. Our purpose as humans must be greater than that of the news we aggregate or the revenue we generate. That is what the Psalms offer us for such a time as this. The Psalms offer us poetry and a chance to reclaim purpose and to see the beauty in the small details of life. 

Rose Marie Berger is a poet, a writer and staffer for Sojourners Magazine and a Christian who writes in what she calls “holy poetry.” She was recently asked in an interview, “As a Catholic, do you see poetry as a spiritual practice?” 

She replied by saying, “Because of my Catholic-ness, I see the world liturgically and sacramentally. The world is a holy place. Time moves in liturgical seasons. Poetry is an ancient form of speech for speaking about God and beauty, for witnessing and praising, for calling to account, for reanimating mystery. So yes, while not all poets write from a spiritual lens and not all poetry, even my own, needs to reflect spirituality, I do see poetry as part of my spiritual practice… Prose writing can convey lots of things–emotions, information, historical continuity. It can prompt intellectual insights and shifts. But long before prose was invented, birds sang poetry to small human communities and those communities learned to sing it back [Palms]. Poetry is what makes us human animals in the creation. It’s the language God uses to speak worlds into existence — and out of existence. Poetry is elemental, like earth, fire, water, and air.” ["Bending the Arch"]

“I love Lent,” she said, “because it is the time every year when I learn to pay attention again.” Poetry and the Psalms, then, are essential to Lent—they help us reclaim the mystery and the detail of the basic elements of life: earth, fire, water, and air…poetry.

Which Psalms or Poetry are speaking to you this season? I would invite you to pick a favorite poem (secular or Sacred), read it daily through the rest of this season and see how it reawakens deep meaning of language beyond the artificial divide between fact or fiction. What new details emerge and make meaning every day? 

This Lent, I invite you to pay attention with me again to the words and their meaning as a method to saving our souls from the cold and unforgiving facts of life we are dying to every day. Only Poetry can save us now. We need the Psalms in Christianity in 2019 (and certainly in 2020 with the certain vitriol of an election year coming) more than we need any other part of the Bible. We need to get back to the basics of reanimating mystery and discovering purpose in the details. 

Words matter and have power to destroy or heal. Tweets are not William Carlos Williams poems any more than every speech made from a little wooden box three feet in the air is a sermon. Poetry like preaching requires sacred intention. 

Those of you who have been at Plymouth for at least four and a half years had the joy of hearing my predecessor preach. The Rev. Sharon Benton, if you ever looked at her sermons, didn’t write sermons as speeches. No, she wrote them in the form of poems. Every single one of Sharon’s sermons over her ten years at Plymouth was a poem written for you in love and care. While some of my colleagues find it odd that I am serving my home church, I find a great beauty in the fact that I too was ministered to and formed by the one who held my job before me. Many days, I too really miss Sharon, her poetry, and her poetic attention to detail. 

This Lent, the poem I am reading every day is one of Sharon’s published Psalms. I am going to close by reading that poem, and I hope that in Lent and in the seasons beyond Lent, we all may rediscover the details in our lives—especially our great meaning and purpose that comes through Poetry. 

Thanksgiving by The Rev. Sharon Benton

Some gratitude comes hard, O Spirit: 
hard as a brick thrown through a strained-glass Jesus feeding his flock;
hard as teeth grinding their own enamel night after anxious night;
hard as fighting through Black Friday shopping crowds.
Sometimes gratitude comes hard, O Spirit:
when there is loss of relationship,
loss of abilities, 
loss of life, 
loss of hope. 

But when a wet nose nuzzles us awake in the morning,
or a stranger captures our wind-stolen scarf, 
or a single star stretched out in so much space reminds us--
we are not alone in this life:
we are one with each creature,
and with each other,
and with each part of your creation.

Spirit, our individual griefs are not small, 
nor are the world’s pains.
But grant us gratitude amidst them
so we may also overcome
addiction, depression, disease, or accident;
poverty and war and all that depletes life rather than sustains it. 

Even when gratitude is hard, O Spirit, 
soften us to see your love poured out upon all the universe, 
and help us give thanks. 

Amen. 

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph 
Luke 6:27-38
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado

Will you join with me in prayer? May the words of my mouth and the meditations and transformations of each of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our peacemaker and creator. Amen. 

Today is the Academy Awards, or the “Oscars” as we also know them. Gerhard, my husband, and I love the Academy Awards! We love watching the interviews on the red carpet, the live music, sometimes the jokes (that varies a lot depending on the host), and we love rooting for our favorite films. As a minister, though, it makes me reflect deeply on the power these movies and particular genres of film have over us and our ethics and national values. 

Movies can be a force for good and social change, but often over time, through repetition of themes and motifs, they have formed some of our worst collective ways of dealing with love, with conflict, and how to “deal with” and “take care of” a perceived enemy. Thanks to Westerns, in particular, our collective American Conflict Resolution looks more like the John Wayne film True Grit than it does the ways of Jesus. True Grit and the ways of US Marshall Rooster Cogburn hold more weight than the ways of Jesus of Nazareth in our culture. Movies and television often drive values or ethics more than meditation, places of worship, friendships, or Spiritual teachings like today’s absolutely fabulous Scripture from the Gospel of Luke. 

When we think about what forms our idea of an enemy, we think of the movies and classic American Westerns above all where there are clear lines between the good and the bad. These formulaic, overly simplistic films that Hollywood is still producing have generated a popular way of thinking about enemies and how to deal with them. Violence and division seem to be the resolution in most cases. Regardless of if you have ever even watched a Western, they are enculturated into our mores and values.  

Love him or hate him, disregarding his politics, still one of the top ten most popular movie stars of all time, according to a recent poll,  is still John Wayne and his Westerns. Huffington Post movie critic and film expert John Farr tried to get to the bottom of the question: “Why [does] John Wayne still rank among today’s most popular stars?”

Farr writes, “What accounts for this actor’s uncanny endurance? Other better actors played cowboys, like Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. Other bigger stars like Clark Gable and Gregory Peck played soldiers. But around the world, whenever John Wayne played a cowboy or a soldier, he was America. Wayne’s persona—its bigness, roughness…literally came to define our heritage. And to a surprising degree, it still does.”  This cultural identity power is still with us and our politics. We all are trying to live like John Wayne in a Western in how we respond to perceived enemies—as both progressives and conservatives. 

Think about it: How does Conflict Resolution usually work in a Western? Does it end in transformation and wisdom seeking understanding? Is the community better off or transformed because of discourse and problem-solving out there on the range? Are different sides seeking common ground or shared space? Can one town tolerate two authorities? No, none of that mushy, highfalutin European stuff! Is there resolution? Is there resolution to the dispute? Yes! Always! There is always resolution—usually with a rifle, a duel, or a high plains shootout. My thesis this morning: American Conflict Resolution is not the same as the Conflict Transformation of Jesus. 

Where does our Scripture today fit within this overwhelming cultural narrative of power to oppose enemies rather than transform community?

Today, in Luke Chapter Six, we find ourselves in the Wild West of the Ancient World, and we are on the side of the outlaw. We are with a wanted outlaw named Jesus or “Jesus the Kid” as he was probably referred to by local authorities. Chapter Six of The Gospel According to Luke is a somewhat lawless, Wild West chapter of the Bible for the Jesus of Nazareth story. In most of this chapter, the writer of Luke lets us know that Jesus and his small band of disciples were popularly viewed as the outlaws, the problem, and the enemy. Yes, what is often missed about Jesus’ discourse on “Love Your Enemies” is that it appears in the middle of a chapter where he and his band are the Wild West Outlaws. 

In the first verse of this chapter, Jesus and his disciples take some grain from a field and work it and eat it on their way. The Pharisee Sheriff stops him, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath around these parts?” Jesus replies, “The son of man is lord of the Sabbath.” There is a new sheriff in town! 

A couple of verses later, in verses 6-11, we read that Jesus got in a fight with the local authorities in another small town while healing a man’s hand on the sabbath. He says to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save a life or destroy it?” Jesus is a theological and legal outlaw on the high plains of Ancient Israel. Truly, I tell you this is Wild West sort of material, and with Jesus there is a new Sheriff in town. 

In my reading of Chapter Six, by the time we get to the Enemies Discourse from today’s lectionary, Jesus is breaking down and going on a verbal rampage. He is tired of being called an enemy everywhere he goes. I view this as a sort of exasperated Jesus who is tired of being chased down, on the run, and accused of breaking the law and being the enemy all the time. He is ready to set the record straight. 

Jesus responds to his reputation as an outlaw of the powers that be by proving it to be true. In a world or tribalism, divisions, and enemies at every turn, Jesus announces that there is a new sheriff in town with a new set of rules. Jesus posts these new rules on the swinging door of the saloon: 

“But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.[a] Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

There are at least three overlooked points about this passage that will help us better understand it and how to live under by the rules of Sheriff Jesus rather than Sheriff John Wayne. 

First, as I have already alluded to, if read correctly within the context of Luke, Chapter 6, Jesus is the one who is constantly being accused of being the enemy. They were the outlaws of the Empire, the sheriff, and the religious powers of the time. Love your enemies, friends, is about how we hope people might even treat us. It is a reversal of perspective. 

Here is the resulting, useful spiritual practice for the Progressive Church in the time of divisive politics: In moments of local, personal, or national disagreement give yourself the label of enemy. We love to be the Wild West heroes. We love the be the saviors of the town on the side of the good, but it is powerful to try to see how we are challenging for others or even threatening. 

This doesn’t mean that we as progressives give up or weaken in our resolve, especially in the face of so much injustice, but it does mean that we find the humanity, the love, the need for our enemies again. We need to disengage from the script of a Wild West Western we are all living through politically. It is an enculturated script we all follow. For every enemy you make, you make of yourself an enemy. 

This does not mean that we are wrong or let go of our work and justice advocacy, but it is a practice of self-evaluation and self-awareness that opens conversation. 

In Western movies, good guys vs. bad guys is always dualistic. We must reject these dualistic world views—even the one we so often live into by calling ourselves “Progressive Christian” rather than just “Christian.” We pick the camp of politics rather than a camp of Christ. 

The word enemy used in this passage comes from a Greek word meaning either someone who is actively hostile or passively odious. All of us are enemies of someone either actively or unconscious passively. 

An example in my work: I know that when I go into a room where I am meeting with Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians for Habitat for other reasons (there are a lot of these opportunities in affordable housing), they know that I am a gay minister. Therefore, in some way, I know that I am perceived as enemy even if we have common cause in other areas. 

The only way I am able to speak with them and show compassion is to remember how challenging I am to their world view, their systems, their entire theological framework. I own who I am in the space, and I find compassion for the anxiety or change I must represent. All of us understand what fear of change or anxiety can feel like and can find compassion for that human quality rather than the cause itself. 

If, for an instant, I look for how I might be seen as the enemy, it can change how I enter the room or engage conflict. I know that I represent pain, change, and fear of the unknown as the world and culture changes. That must be hard. While I will never agree with them or change who I am, I can find compassion for their experience. Rather than blaming them for their theology and context and cutting them off and refusing community or connection, isn’t it more powerful to come in with compassion for their fear while also owning who I am? Who knows where those relationships might lead? 

In American Conflict Resolution, we always view ourselves as the hero cowboy or cowgirl on a high horse with a penultimate right to win and to resolve that conflict once and for all for the benefit of our understanding of good. 

Where in your life do you know you are perceived as the enemy? Can you take the time to think of how you or what you represent might make that other person feel—even if you totally know that it is ridiculous or unfounded? Can you for even a second imagine their vantage point? Remembering always that Jesus was the perceived enemy rather than hero. 

Now you are doing transformative work! 

Secondly, we see Jesus in verses 32-35 making sure that the enemy is humanized. It is like a mirror. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.” Jesus is calling their and our bluff. He is really asking: Are you sure you are always the hero of this story? He points out that love for primary community and for family is a common value we all can relate to—so what makes a true hero? 

Thirdly, and I love this, notice in this passage God hath not promise a life without enemies. A world without those who disagree with us is not promised. We like to pray for peace on earth, but it would appear God does not see uniformity of perspective or a lack of enemies as the way to achieve peace. “If only everyone saw the world exactly the way we see it here at Plymouth, then the Realm of God would be realized” … is theological fallacy. In fact, it appears that God’s will might be a world where we have to find compromise—maybe that is where the Sacred is found. The Peace of Christ lies in learning somewhere in living well with difference. 

This brings me back to the problem with the True Grit and the American idea of Conflict Resolution. Resolution implies that there is one right outcome. It implies that conflict can be resolved once and for all. Resolutions result in violence, in arbitrary end, and in pain. At the end of the movie True Grit pretty much everything is resolved, but everyone except Wayne’s character and one other are pretty much dead. Is that really the model we want to follow even as progressives who are sure we are right? 

I believe what Jesus is talking today about is akin to Conflict Transformation. One scholar writes, “[Conflict transformation] is something more than conflict management or conflict resolution. The goal of conflict transformation…is not only to end or prevent something bad but also to begin something new and good. Transformation asserts the belief that conflict can be a catalyst for deep-rooted, enduring, positive change in individuals, relationships, and the structure of human community.”  

A couple of weeks ago, I received a text that I thought was a joke at first asking me to serve on Governor Polis’ Clergy Council. It is a small group of 11 interfaith clergy from across the state who meet with the governor several times a year to offer support, ideas, and perspective. I spent an hour with the governor and the group last week. During that meeting, a fellow clergyperson from Denver asked, “What can we do most to make a difference for good?” The governor thought for a minute and then asked us to do everything we can to help change this adversarial culture in our society of partisanship, artificial divisions, and the rampant creation of enemies. I agree with the new governor on this and am willing to work for a new civil discourse in our state and country. I see our Scripture today as God and Outlaw Jesus calling us to do better in trying to have compassion for and get to know our enemies in both personal and political settings. 

In Colorado, the Wild West history is at our core. This True Grit Conflict Resolution is embedded in the DNA of our state history. It is every rancher for her or himself mentality. In some ways that means we have less open conflict than other states, but we are great good at putting up emotional barriers, riding people off and riding into the sunset. “You stay on your ranch and I’ll stay on mine and we be just fine so long as we don’t speak.” 
 
In reality we need each other, we need transformation that comes from authenticity in conflict, and we need our enemies to start talking to us again more than ever. We can’t just stay on our separate Fox News or MSNBC ranches and stop engaging in real community. We can’t do that and just hope we will wake-up to a different world in the morning. 

At the end of the movie True Grit… almost everyone is dead. That is not the outcome of Christ. Conflict Transformation calls us to not resolve things with violence and reinforcing divisions but to engage, forgive, and truly love our enemies. The proliferation of enemies and the “enemyification” of society will only slow down when we are willing to see our own role in being the enemy as Outlaw Jesus is in our story today. For it is only in learning to see ourselves both as hero and outlaw that we truly can come into conversation ready to be transformed. 

Happy Trails to you—until we meet again! Amen. 

1. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-farr/why-john-wayne-still-rank_b_204965.html
2. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-farr/why-john-wayne-still-rank_b_204965.html
3. Thomas Porter, The Spirit and Art of Conflict Transformation: Creating a Culture of JustPeace (Nashville: Upper Room, 2010), 5. 

Related Original Liturgies
 
* Call to Worship                                                                                                    
Leader: But I say to you that listen, love your enemies!
People: Do good to those who hate you.
Leader: Bless those who curse you.     
People: Do to others as you would have them do unto you.                        
Leader: The word of God for the people of God is not always easy to hear. It is often against the grain of our popular culture and learned behavior.
All: May we rediscover the truly counter-cultural meaning of Christian love and learn to find goodness and God even in our worst enemies.                                      

* Unison Prayer                                                                                                           
Sometimes, God, we think we are Wild West heroes—take no prisoners, leave no question, lasso ambiguity, get things done, demonstrate true grit. Here on the Ranch of Life we confuse the values in movies for the ethics of Jesus. We know that is not your way. Today, we commit to a new way that seeks reconciliation where there is pain, self-reflection where there is pride, and an end to the building wave of enmity in our time. Amen.

* Unison Prayer of Thanksgiving and Dedication              
May this table be a corral of forgiveness, a chuckwagon feast of grace, a pasture of plenty, and a reminder of your presence in and among our lives no matter what trails we may wander or paths we may trace. Help us to give with a sense of common good and remember always that we give not for ourselves but for your realm where enmity is no longer, and where love endures forever. Amen.

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
I Corinthians 12: 12-31
Plymouth Congregational UCC,
Fort Collins, Colorado

Will you join with me in prayer? May the words of my mouth and the sparks of joy of all of our hearts be good and pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our curator. Amen. 

Happy Congregation-Reorganization Day! I think of Annual Meeting as when we decide to be congregation again. Since this is our 116th organization day for Plymouth as church, I want to borrow some best practices from a different industry to help us better understand own commitment as the Body of Christ. 

Now, I am a self-proclaimed “conference escape artist!” Do any of you know what I am talking about? Whenever I get the advance schedule for a conference I will be attending, I always look for the gaps, the unscheduled lunches, or the “optional” evening plenaries. I do this for one very specific reason—I need to find time in the schedule to visit the local art museums. Out of principle, as a matter of traveling ethics, I refuse to visit a new city and only see the inside of hotel meeting rooms. While I will always attend and be totally present for all of the meat and potatoes of the conference as the reason for being there, I make a point to find the time somewhere in the schedule that allow me to visit the most sacred space in any major city—the art collections and flagship museums. 

Think about this with me. Even when Detroit was bankrupt a couple of years ago, the citizens of that city refused to talk about liquidation the Detroit Institute of Art. Denver is renovating its art museum as a way to communicate to the world the value it places on art. The Walker or MIA in Minneapolis, The High Museum in Atlanta, The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City (even saying its name makes me weak at the knees), LACMA or the Getty in LA, the Met in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago... are all the Sacred Spaces/Chapels in their respective communities. They represent community spirit, organization, and hope. 

I learn important lessons about God, ministry, and how to do the work of church well from art museums. Next time you visit one, see how these very old institutions are doing cool programing, changing their hours, and reinventing themselves to be relevant and attractive to everyone in ways that the Church hasn’t yet! There is no institution the Church can learn more from than the field of art museum management. 

I have already shared this analogy with the three boards I work with, but I want to share it with all of you on this our Annual Meeting Sunday. I view being a minister like being a curator of a prominent art museum (or in my case one of the assistant curators responsible for certain rotating exhibits). I understand you, the members, as the artists through whom the Holy Spirit works, expresses God’s will, and communicates the needs in and of the community here at Plymouth, in Fort Collins, and around the world. You are the Holy Spirit-artists painting and sculpting with every color and medium imaginable (social justice, worship, fellowship) to form an oeuvre or a Body of Work that we call the Body of Christ. You are the Body of Christ forming a great body of spiritual art. 

As a minister, my role is to curate. This is the act or process of organizing and looking after the art of the people. It is to organize, to promote, to systematize, to find the right lighting or the funding or the arrangement to showcase and make your Holy Spirit artwork visible, known, and possible. Yes, ministry at its best is the art of curation of community. 

Let’s start over this morning: “Hi, I’m Jake. I am one of the assistant curators here at the Plymouth Gallery of Fine Spiritual Art!”

Describing my job as spiritual curation has changed how I relate to you and your vision. The way in which you define your job for yourself, changes how you approach and execute the work, right? Being clergy in terms of curation has given my visits and escapes to art museums a new theological purpose. It begs me to ask: What are the best practices or the promising practices out there in the curation industry, in the organization world, in the tidying industry that I need to pay attention to as I care for this Body of Christ and help make it even more visible and understood in 2019? How can we as church do a better job of making the artwork of the spirit visible and known and well preserved? 

How can we better curate your incredible Spirit-Driven artwork as a congregation? 

Our Scripture today, in my opinion, is Paul’s way of telling the Christians in Corinth that all of their gifts, their different skills and styles of Spiritual Artwork are welcome, needed, and positively contribute to the masterpiece collection of Christ. A good art museum, as I have learned through my travels, is a well-diversified collection. The Christians in Corinth had been fighting about who was the greatest and who had the most important gifts for Christian ministry. Is it the Egyptology Collection, Impressionists, or the Expressionists… certainly not the Surrealists?! Friends, they were fighting over which ministry teams had first right of refusal for the Corinthian Fellowship Hall, right? Whose artwork of the spirit should be exhibited most prominently in the space provided. Paul comes back to them with this magnificent letter that has set the tone for the last 2,000 years of Christianity: All are needed and, in fact, essential. It is one body of work in Jesus Christ. Just as the body is one and has many members, so is it with the Body of Christ. The collection that is the Body of Work in Christ is as indivisible as the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection—it constitutes a Sacred Whole in diversity. 

One Scholar wrote, “The well-known analogy between the human body and the body politic illustrates his argument for the diversity of the Spirit’s manifestations for the common good…The argument opposes the ‘honor’ values of hierarchical aristocratic Greek and imperial Roman culture, in insisting on the solidarity of the interdependent and equally valued members.” 

Paul is a curator of the Spirit in a living art gallery of Christian Community! And this act of treating power, leadership, and authority of community with a sense of equality, which we continue here in the United Church of Christ, is radically countercultural. It is an act of rebellion both in Paul’s time and today. 

As your one of your ministry curators and organizers, I would like to point out that today is very special in the life of our Body of Christ. Today, we gather to decide to contribute our masterpieces to this Art Gallery of the Holy Spirit again in 2019. Today, we agree as a congregation, to do this whole thing over again for what…the 116th time? Every year on my wedding anniversary, I get down on one knee and re-propose to Gerhard. He always says, “yes,” but the point is to reaffirm the covenant. That is what we do, as community and congregation, at Annual Meeting. 

This is the Sunday when we do more than pass budgets and follow Robert’s Rules of Order (much to the joy of our former Presbyterians), but we also reaffirm our desire to be artists together, a Body of Christ, a gathering of Spirit-artists together for another year-long art show. Today, we claim the calling of Paul in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12 as our own calling to be community in diversity. Today, we say “yes” again. 

So, as we organize today, as a living art gallery of spiritual art, I would like to draw your attention to a pop-culture, worldwide phenomenon on the topic of personal curation and organization: Japanese Organizing Expert Marie Kondo. 

How many of you already know who I am talking about? 

Marie Kondo has become my favorite modern theologian in over past couple of weeks as I have read her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. First with her books and now with her Netflix Series, Marie Kondo is changing how people and communities place value on things and learn to treasure what actually matters. I believe that Paul and Jesus would approve! The KonMari Method, as she calls it, is a doctrine of rebellion against a society that tells us to hold onto everything: resentments, revenge, rage (the three R’s), stuff, junk, and belongings. We are conditioned to hoard out of fear. We fear forgetting, not having enough, or being in a state of needing something we once had and have lost or given up. In this age of selfishness and monochromatic (look-alike) printer ministries, this is a reminder to our call to let go of habits of hoarding so we may rediscover the full palette of possibility. 

Today, as we reorganize our life of church, as we prepare ourselves for a year’s worth of new artistic ministry curation and gallery openings, I would like for us to think of 2019 as the year of KonMari Christianity. 

As the Body of Christ, we owe this to ourselves as community. Here are a couple insights from Marie Kondo that are relevant to our organization day as a Body of Christ and maybe also have resonance for you in your own lives. 

1. Lesson 1: Don’t live for yesterday or fear next year! “We can only transform our lives if we sincerely want to. Small changes transform our lives. There are two reasons we can’t let go: an attachment to the past or a fear of the future.”  Friends, as we assemble as a congregation again for 2019, how do we hope to transform Plymouth, Fort Collins and the world? In your own lives, friends, what are you holding onto that is an attachment to the past but doesn’t give you life right now? “There are three approaches we can take towards our possessions: face them now, face them later, or avoid them until the day we die. The choice is ours…If we acknowledge our attachment to the past and our fears for the future by honestly looking at our possessions [or systems] we will be able to see what is really important to us…If you are going to put your house in order do it now.”  The first lesson on community curation is face stuff directly and don’t hang onto stuff or structures because of an unhealthy attachment to the past or a fear for the future. To be the best church we can in 2019, we need to live fully for ministry in this year! 

2. Lesson 2: “Cherish who you are now!” How many of us use the word cherish mostly in reference to memories, to keepsakes, or to that which we no longer think we have? Do you cherish who you are now? Do we as a congregation cherish (adore and celebrate) the amazing, generous congregation we are on this very day? As your associate curator, I cherish who you are now. Marie Kondo brings up this topic in terms of those boxes of pictures of unopened photo albums we all have at home and here in the archives. She observes that most of the joy of having pictures is mostly found in the moment of taking the picture not in the storing of the pictures. This gets at a bigger and deeper spiritual point: “Cherish the things you love. Cherish yourself: Find what you truly cherish in life. Cherish who you are and what brings you joy and fulfillment.”  As congregation, let us learn to cherish all of the Body Parts of Christ and celebrate them in the now. 

3. Lesson 3: “Spark Joy!” The idea of "spark joy" is by far the most popular and most important contribution of Marie Kondo. And it's why I think, no matter if you have Netflix or not, all of us need to become KonMari Christians. In a time of darkness and fear, Marie Kondo has brought millions of people two important theological questions. What is joy? & What does joy mean to you? She doesn’t offer a definition of joy, but she demands that we answer this question in the deepest part of our hearts. Where is your joy? She then asks, “What sparks joy in your life?” You are Holy Spirit artists, but you need more creative freedom! Marie Kondo tells us, “When you do this, you will be surprised at how clearly you can tell the difference between those that touch your heart and those that don’t. As always, only keep the ones that inspire joy!”  (Or see this New Yorker cartoon...)

As a young ministry curator in a very old and sometimes dusty art museum of ministry, the United Church of Christ, I am almost daily asked in one form or another why young people aren’t in church and to diagnose what is wrong with Church in general in 2019. That is almost fitting since the etymology of “to curate” comes from the same root as “to cure” meaning to attend and stay vigilant to those who are ill. The world eventually evolved from healthcare to vigilance in attending to art collections…and today we extend it to ministry. 

It does make me wonder how my age (30 years old) is somehow a credential to wisdom on this important topic? I have struggled to answer this question until now. The number one thing that church has forgotten, especially in the midst of our campaigns of all sorts and systemic internal anxieties is that our primary purpose is to help people learn how to find joy again! We are called to help re-spark joy in living in the midst of death, depression, loss, and fear. It is the Church’s job to always spark joy in in community in the midst of toxic politics. It is our job to spark joy and ALWAYS point to the dynamic-artistic-creative relationship with Jesus Christ and God. The Christian Church should, at its best, spark joy everywhere it is found and every time anyone encounters our touchpoints or presence. This is the primary call of Church Community: Spark Joy! 

The world, friends, needs a macro organizing expert. Our systems for categorizing, ethics for doing collective laundry, our patterns for decision making are not working. Christianity and all of the big world religions need a revamp and a KonMari Closet Emptying! Like our Sabbatical Interim Senior, The Rev. Ron Patterson, said in his sermons last year for Reformation Sunday, we need a giant garage sale as church! We need to ground ourselves again in the sparking, lit, burning joy of communities of sparking joy in a depressed world. 

In the words of Marie Kondo: “If we acknowledged our attachment to the past and to our fears for the future by honestly looking at our possessions, we will be able to see what is really important to us. This process in turn helps us identify our values and reduce doubt and confusion in making life decisions…

"If you can say without a doubt, ‘I really like this!’ no matter what anyone else says, and if you like yourself for having it, then ignore what other people think…All you need to do is get rid of anything that doesn’t touch your heart…As for you, pour your time and passion into what brings you the most joy, your mission in life.” 

It is one of the greatest honors to be an associate curator here in your Art Gallery of the Holy Spirit called Plymouth. Today, as we reorganize for yet another year, my prayer is that we truly remember our purpose to be a place that we all say, ‘I really like this’ no matter what anyone else says and to spark joy in the hearts of our members, our visitors, our community, and the world. Mostly, we Pray that, as always, we Spark Joy in the heart of God the Creator and Great Curator of life. 

Spark Joy, friends! Let’s do this 2019 thing!

Amen. 

The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
Luke 2:41-52
 
“Now every year, his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents didn’t know it.”
 
They grow-up so fast, don’t they?
 
Many of you have Christmas traditions and they are much like the tradition of Jesus family traveling in this story today. They help us mark the passing of time, they are filled with song, and they remind us how short life is and how important it is to love those around us. Christmas stands out among the holidays, for Christians and for secular celebrants alike, because its music, its colors, its symbols remind us of our loved ones, brings us back to our childhoods, and connects us with milestones in life more than any other holiday—for better and for worse.
 
Today, since we are focused on song and tradition of Christmas singing, in lieu of a long sermon, I am simply going to offer a simple reflection on this idea: There is a great importance to traditions like Christmas Carols and songs across different cultures as a way to take care of each other and to create milestones in life that remind us to slow down and to cherish our loved ones. Christmas music, like what we are singing today from around the world, is a deep connection to a sense of time and place.
 
These songs, the hymns of Christmas, serve as important reminders about life, love, and family—because, friends, life is so short!
 
Just a couple of days ago, after all, Jesus was born in a manger in Jerusalem. Just a couple of days ago the angels sang. Just a couple of days ago the Shepherds left their sheep unattended in the fields and went to worship Jesus. Christmas… Christmas Eve, Santa, the commotion, the presents, the tree, the lights, the family visiting. It all feels like it was just yesterday, doesn’t it!?
 
Today’s Scripture passage comes only verses after the Christmas Story, and yet time has accelerated to the point where Jesus has already started to teach, he has already claimed a sense of independence escaping from his parents, and as Scripture says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” Jesus is growing-up, and we can almost feel the subtext of the anxiety, the hope, the pride, and the many mixed emotions his parents must have had. How many of you are parents and relate to this? Our passage today is, in many ways, one of the human moments in the Jesus story—it is a moment when the Baby starts to turn into the man. It is the moment when all of Mary and Joseph’s joy starts to turn into fear, alarm, and change—fear for the future.
 
The irony or foreshadowing here is that Jesus gets lost teaching in the temple as a 12-year-old in Jerusalem—the very city and place where he will eventually be put to death for doing the very same thing as an adult.
 
Parenting, in my case gay uncling, or even watching your parents get older year after year… frailer perhaps… is part of life, but it is scary. Most of all, it means that we need to hold onto the sacred moments and the milestones in life like Christmas memories.
 
Christmas is different from Halloween, Easter, 4th of July, or even birthdays because it comes so close to the new year and is highly ritualized both by society and the church. Christmas, for better or worse, is how we measure our year and our memories of our loved ones. It is also how we measure our own adulting success. Are my cookies anything like grandma’s? Is my tree as beautiful as the one I remember growing-up?  
 
Watching your kids open their Christmas presents, decorating your first tree with your spouse after getting married, baking cookies with grandma, food, song, culture, family time around the fire are all milestones to help us know the distances traveled in life.
 
There is a great scene in the classical musical Fiddler on the Roof when one of the daughters is getting married and the parents sit and sing softly to themselves a very deep song. The lyrics go like this:

Is this the little girl I carried,
Is this the little boy at play?

(Golde)
I don't remember growing older,
When did they?

(Tevye)
When did she get to be a beauty,
When did he grow to be so tall?

(Golde)
Wasn't it yesterday when they were small?

(men)
Sunrise, sunset (x2),
Swiftly flow the days.

(everyone)
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,
Blossoming even as we gaze.

(women)
Sunrise, sunset (x2),
Swiftly fly the years,
One season following another,
Laden with happiness and tears.[1]
 
Growing-up, growing old, growing wise, growing tall (in my case short), growing in faith, growing in hope, growing in love… all of the ways in which we grow can be measured from Christmas to Christmas. Whether we love this holiday or resist it, for all of us, Christmas is a time of making, maintaining, and renewing memories.
 
The hymns we sing today, some familiar to us and others new, are for different cultures and people their memory-makers and milestone reminders.
 
By singing together, like the people did at the Passover Festivals in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time from our story today, we create milestones that maintain our memories and help us to cherish our loves ones even more and even better.
 
Amen.

[1] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bjthomas/sunrisesunset.html

​The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado
Second Sunday in Advent: December 9, 2018
Luke 1: 68-7

Sometimes the best theological tools come from the most unusual of places. Not a theologian, but definitely a great singer of the 1960s, Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette (better known by her stage name, Dusty Springfield), accidentally developed a shorthand for how we should actively engage the practice of Advent Anticipation. Advent practice in a nutshell is, “Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Thinkin’ and Prayin’ and Planin’ and Dreamin’.” [1] The six forms of active anticipation that Dusty Springfield identifies in her classic song might be the most useful memory tool for Advent practice of all time. Let me tell you how, but first, I have to leave you in anticipation.
 
Would you join me in prayer? May the stirrings of our hearts, the musings of our souls, and the words of all of our lips all be harbingers and signs of peace for our world, for our families, and for ourselves. May I not fail you, God, in speaking a word of truth with your people. Amen.
 
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel!” Benedictus Dominus Deus! With these words Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, starts his great song of praise, of hope, and of peace known throughout the Church Universal and all time as the Benedictus. It is the great Invocation of all of the Gospel good news to follow. Today, our Scripture is invoking the very essence of good news for peace in our world.
 
The Benedictus is used in the Matins (morning worship) of monks and nuns, Communion Liturgies of almost every Christian tradition, and as the most ancient recorded liturgical way to begin worship services. In all, this beautiful poem exclusively found in the middle of the First Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, symbolizes the hope for peace in all of Christian traditions across difference, time, and place.
 
It communicates two things. The first half is a summary of the prophesies of the past and God’s continued presence and promise of peace from generation to generation. The first half is looking backwards in praise and accounting. Then the second half from verse 76 and following looks forward with anticipation. We hope that God will guide our feet in the way of peace forever and ever amen. It is this latter part, the hope for peace, that I think we need to focus on today. This latter point that calls for a time, soon approaching and already breaking upon us, where we are guided in the way of peace must be the topic of our thinking today. Moreover, it raises a big moral, ethical and theological question for us:
 
How can we, in a time of so much verbal, emotional, physical, psychological, technological, and even internalized violence. dare speak the word "peace"? How can such a brave word be spoken? How can we do this and not make ourselves liars or make God out to be the same? It is dangerous work—this work of speaking about peace because it produced anticipation and expectation. Disappointment and disillusionment is always sure to follow.
 
The word I would use to summarize the Benedictus, the reason that it is so effective as a call to worship, the reason it is an essential part of traditional Eucharist liturgies can all be summarized with that one word: Anticipation. Now, anticipation is a word that typically means a preconceived idea of what will be. We think of it as being a neutral state of passive hope. I anticipate that it may snow. I anticipate that I will get Christmas presents. I anticipate that we will continue to be a great church. I anticipate world peace. Our Scripture today is the very definition of anticipation. Unfortunately for us, anticipation has been incorrectly defined from an etymological perspective since the 1800’s, so what does it really mean to anticipate peace? Is it really a passive act?
 
In actual fact, the real meaning and history of the word anticipation and what it meant until the mid-1800’s was “the act of being before another in doing something.”[2] Anticipation has more to do with being avant garde than simply hopeful. Christians are called to start walking the walk and to anticipate that the world might could catch-up. This means that rather than just imaging that it may snow, that you get your snow boots out. Rather than just hoping that God will bring peace to us on Christmas, that we actually start living peace right this second. It is cliché, yes, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. Anticipation is not a passive state of hope or the art of gracefully waiting. Rather, it is the act of being before others…preparedness for what God has promised.
 
Now, a trick question. How many of you think the Benedictus in context in the Gospel of Luke is about Jesus and/or the birth of Christ? In fact, it has almost nothing to do with Jesus. It is actually a song sung by John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias, about his son who will prepare the way for peace to come.
 
John the Baptist is sort of an overlooked figure in the shadow of Jesus, but he is the "Wind Beneath [Jesus’] Wings." He anticipates the peace of Christ and, in many ways, makes it possible. In many ways, anticipation is the business of John. If Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth, then in many ways Advent is the celebration of the birth of John the Baptist. It is about the very real and intentional work of making a way for peace even when it seems impossible.
 
The Benedictus is our song—it is your song. It is the song of all of those who are called in every time and every place to make a way for the Peace of Christ in the world. It needs to be reclaimed, for perhaps more than any other character in the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany story (as fun as it is to dress up as Sheep, Three Kings, Shepherds, Mary, Joseph, and Angels) we are really meant to be John the Baptists. That is our real role in the Christmas narrative.
 
Today, we are all John the Baptists. The work of anticipation—of creating ways and practices of peace is our job in both this short season before Christmas and really every day of our lives. We are called to the work and to lives of anticipation. 
 
I am against preaching and not leaving you with some kind of a concrete spiritual practice. How are we supposed to actively anticipate the peace of Christ and help make it happen like John the Baptist did? How do we learn to sing our own Benedictus of hope for this day and age through our Advent living?
 
Remember Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette (better known by her stage name, Dusty Springfield)? She wrote what is the very best unintentional Benedictus and description of the Season of Advent ever. Better than the Church Fathers and Mothers, Dusty wrote a song that describes the meaning of active anticipation. It is really a six-point to do list for this season of the church year. It goes like this:

Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Thinkin’ and Prayin’ and Plannin’ and Dreamin’
 
We need a new Benedictus more than ever! Each of the six practices at the beginning of that great song of 1962 is a different way to participate active anticipation. Each one is its own spiritual practice. Here they are:
 
Wishin’ for peace. A wish is defined as "a desire for something thought unattainable." Sit and set your intention for peace in the world. Wishing for peace means that you align every cell in your being with what seems impossible. Remember when you were a kid and all you wanted for Christmas was a pony or a Tonka truck, or an iPhone? Remember the intensity you put into your letters to Santa or to what you would say to Santa at the department Store? I’m thinking of A Christmas Story. I want that same level of wishing and motive put into the wish for peace. I want each of you to write a letter to Santa this year as a spiritual practice and put that childlike willpower for a wish into the letter written for peace. Wishing is an act of utter rebellion against the tyranny of possible.
 
Hopin’ for peace. Hoping is a much more delicate practice than the willpower of wishing. Hope is allowing yourself to not let go of what you wished for even after the wish has failed time and time and time again. Even if it is your fifth year wishing for a pony, hope is writing that letter again. Hope is more delicate like a snowflake in the palm of your hand. It has to be observed. Don’t be careless with you hope. Name it and claim it and whisper your hope for peace in yourself and in the world. Hope is like a wish but more personal and more enduring. How can peace become your hope again? How do you protect it?
 
Thinkin’ of peace. We need to spend time thinking and brainstorming new ways to create peace in the world. We cannot give into narratives of tyranny that say that everything good has ever been thought of. We are called to spend time thinking and innovating for peace. New frameworks are always needed. What can you think of?
 
Prayin’ for peace. Thoughts and prayers have become cliché. After every mass shooting, murder, tragedy, people tweet or post that they are offering thoughts and prayers. I am convinced that nobody who publicly announces “thoughts and prayers” through Facebook or Twitter actually is praying at all. If they were, then God would have already moved their hearts to change policy. Amen? If they were, then war would be no more. Don’t just say you are going to pray, but actually pick a chair (prayer chair) in your house for prayer and spend five or fifteen minutes a day praying for peace. It is one thing to say that you think and pray—it is another to actually do it.
 
Plannin’ for peace. What happens if we actually start to plan for peace? Take a pen and paper and draw the world in a peaceful state. If you are keener on prose, wrote a short story or a poem about what the world looks like when peace has come. Learn to visualize it again. Develop a master plan for peace in your own life, in our community, and in the world. If we cannot plan for peace in a real way, how can we ever hope to move towards that vision? Plan for peace.
 
Dreamin’ of peace. This is the art of letting go. It is the art of finding a meditative practice that helps you find peace. You cannot control your dreams, but you must find a way to create a peaceful heart in your own person. Then and only then can God anticipate using you to help create peace in this world and peace on earth. If it cannot start in you and in your deepest dreams, then how do you expect to actually help create peace elsewhere?
 
We are all John the Baptists in the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany Trilogy. We are the ones called to set the stage and to wish for, hope for, think about, pray for, plan for, and dream peace into being. The Benedictus is our song. It was sung at your birth. In this season, if you don’t know what do to do or how to anticipate Christ with intention and purpose, just think of the opening line of the song:
 
Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Thinin’ and Prayin’ and Plannin’ and Dreamin’[3]
 
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel!” Benedictus Dominus Deus! To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Amen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAdTsAKvVTU
[2] https://www.etymonline.com/word/anticipation
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74BSImG4xM