The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
July 16, 2017 Plymouth Congregational Church UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Will you pray with me? God, great gardener of our lives and of this planet, I pray that my words this morning may be nourishment for your soil, for this plot, for this congregation, of your embodied, earthen, earthy people. Amen. I have been told that the raising of the rafters of this Sanctuary was very much (or pretty much exactly) like a good old-fashioned barn raising also known as a “raising bee.” Ethnically German farmers who emigrated from the Volga region of Russia founded Plymouth. One of our senior members here at Plymouth whose parents helped found the church, Ray Becker, often likes to tell me about the tractors, the excitement, the rooting and planting of community on that day. It was a day when the culturally German farmer immigrants from Russian and their families gathered in a field (then far away from CSU) down the road from the renowned pig farms (yes, the NW corner of Shields and Prospect was a pig farm) for the raising, the cultivating of a new fellowship barn… our church. This place was built to gather the harvest of the beloved community, just like the barns they were building for each other on the edges of Fort Collins. The rugged and community-minded (not wealthy) Russian-German immigrants saved every penny they had to build it, leveraged noodle making dinners for fundraising, used their own tractors and hands to make this Sanctuary for us to sit, sing in, preach from, and worship God safely within today. Our recent consultant, John Wimberley, was fixated and fascinated by this fact that we built our own church. This is our barn of blessings. This is our storehouse of love. Can you still hear the loud hum of the 1950’s John Deer 94 horsepower tractors and the thick accents, many still speaking German, murmuring, blessing us through the walls? [PAUSE] I can. I do every day as one of your ministers. Learning the agrarian roots of our congregation and digging in that dirt (getting my hands dirty in that history) has helped me to better understand the deep rootedness of our Scripture passage today and what it can mean for us as we move forward as a congregation in this barn that love built. So taking these agricultural roots seriously, how can we best understand this Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23 passage on July 16, 2017? When I first read the Scripture for today, I started out thinking about the soil as different kinds of churches in the metaphor. Meaning that I started thinking about this as if you fall into (join/ attend) a rocky church, a thorny church, a “good soil” church, or a hard path church your outcome for faith formation and life will be different. Initially, that seemed to make some sense. The sort of church community we encounter to help nurture us as we journey together forms the soils of our hearts and our openness to the Divine. I have since decided that this interpretation in 2017 gives all of way too much credit to the power of the institution of the Church, for, as you all know with your busy and full lives, the church is not and cannot be the only soil you encounter. In Jesus’ day and even maybe 60 plus years ago when this building was built, you could self-isolate in that way (existing within the culture of a church institution)—BUT that is not how we live in 2017, is it? Our lives are constant transplanting, blending, fertilizing, realigning, crop rotation soils (plural). We no longer live in a world where the church is our soil identity or sole identity. We all now have many soils that compose our hearts and our identities. We are rooted in many communities. Now for a fancy seminary word I have been saving for two and a half years: What is the Ecclesiological theology of this passage? Meaning, this makes me ask, if the church isn’t the soil itself anymore, what is the role of the church in this parable for today? The answer is in the sacred, Sanctuary barn-like structure we sit within. The church is where we gather to raise each other-up and store our harvest of love for the days when the soil is hard out there is thorny out there, is good out there, or is rocky out there. Church is where we store our tractors, our spades, our weed whackers, trimmers, seeds, hay, combines, international harvesters, our fertilizers (organic and sustainable only of course)… this is Plymouth after all, and our supplies to return to the world for the work of justice, of peace, of growing a more just and perfect world. This is our barn where we learn the way to make growth in all of the complex soils we live within. Amen? Make no mistake, fellow gardeners in Christ, there is a drought raging, prairie fires burning, insects eating, there is a flood pouring, pesticides of hate proliferating, corporate farming faking out the masses, there is a lot of adverse factors (more than just thorns and hard paths these days) trying their damnedest to harm our fields of love and grace and peace we have been growing and nurturing these many seasons. This barn is where we come to get our supplies to keep the love, keep the faith, and keep the social justice growing from the grassroots of our souls!! This is our supply house in a season of drought or flood or fire. It is a safe place to store all of those seeds and tools, supplies, nutrients to go out and dig in the soils of life with God. Today, we will not exclusively be or encounter, as Jesus implies, only a hard path soil, a rocky ground soil, a thorny soil, or good soil. As if we had a choice anyway. Even in the course of a single day, we all often find ourselves operating in all of these soils of our lives as Gardeners with God. Let me quickly examine the four categories of spiritual soil Jesus presents and see what they might mean today: The Hard Path (superficiality): The hard path soils we encounter today are the many times of inauthenticity or just staying on the surface, skimming, losing the meaning of deeper living. Maybe at work or in family life if in the endless small talk that is now required of us, we encounter soils, and places, and people who are the hard path to our spiritual beings—Superficial, surface level, never going deeper. This is just skimming the surface of life consumed by Social Media or work. Surviving for survival sake. How many of us encounter people or places that are to us superficial or inauthentic? When we meet a hard path, we can come to this barn to pick-up a spiritual sprinkler of patience, vulnerability, and authenticity that can turn the hard path and hard people to soft, fertile mud. We must water/ DRENTCH the hard paths with brutal, loving honesty. The Rocky Ground (anger and fear): The Rocky Ground is where Jesus says there is not much soil. This is a place of anger and fear. It is a place where we are on edge trying to grow and root as fast as we can because we fear even a slight wind might blow us away. When we garden in places that are rocky ground we root in anger and fear. These are the places and spaces we operate in that come from politics, bad policy, or family systems and conflict that have never been resolved. How many of us know what it feels like to try and farm rocky ground? When we meet a rocky ground, we can run to the barn of Plymouth and pick us a study spade of compassion, truth, and love. We must dig in the rocks, FRIENDS, face the hard stuff, and find the soft soils of love underneath, but first we must face the rocks. The Thorny Soil (pain and loss): Thorns grow-up a choke out the solid, joyful plants. When we go forth from this place, many of us encounter thistles, weeds, and thorny soil. I know because I am still trying to get a thorn out of my thumb from gardening yesterday. More importantly, this symbolizes pain and loss. This is the soils that we thought was fertile and growing and healthy… until a weed (cancer, divorce, a break-up, a job loss) surprises us and takes away a loved one, we lose a job, and we uncover pain and loss deep within. This is unexpectedly bad soil, but it is soil that this barn called Plymouth is well equipped to help with. When we encounter the thorny soils of life, which are inevitable, we run to the barn of Plymouth and grab our gardening gloves of grace. We all still need to work through our weeds, but at least with the gloves of community support, protection, and gloves of grace and care, we can work towards a whole garden once again. Amen? We must always remember that the gloves of community and grace are here to accompany us even through the thickest thorns and thistle. The Good Soil (love and joy): And yes, oh yes, the barn of Plymouth is also here for the good soils of weddings and baptisms, communion, and fellowship, learning, pilgrimage, births, birthdays, anniversaries, proposals, job offers, promotions, pay raises, new homes, new leases on life, reunions, celebrations. We run to the barn (this church barn) to support us and celebrate the love and joy of life in the good soils too! This is the seed and the hay, and the tractors we keep in this barn with hope for the next season. We must always return to the barn in celebration. So, regardless of which soils you find yourself in today or tomorrow, know always that the farm’s storehouse of hope, this barn of love, honesty, authenticity, dirty/gritty realness, and welcome of formation and forgiveness of Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Collins is always here to outfit, refuel, store, and raise you up. This is your barn, our barn, and your resource space to assess and prepare for the soils I know you face out there. The Open and Affirming process for Plymouth to become an LGBTQ inclusive church was deeply hard even hurtful for the German-Russian farmers and their families who felt like the UCC left them, and in many ways it did. Many left us because of out gay ministers like me, but I still feel connected with them and the need to reconcile and grow through (NOT DESPITE) but through the nutrients their legacy. Naming this is important as part of the rocky soil, the thorny soil, the good soil that we have to live in. So, today, I want to honor their barn raising, the hum of the tractors, the voices that built a barn of love, of community, of hope that we have today as a shelter, a storehouse, a resource in the complex soils we all garden within every day of our lives. Here we are always assured that we are gardening with God, with the divine energy that lives within each seed and within our core, and that we have a safe barn to call our spiritual home as we discern what that means in the weeds, the rocks, the hardness, and the rich, deep, thick, messy, earthy goodness of life. Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
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The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC June 25, 2017 Genesis 21:8-21 Will you join me in prayer? Great and good God who loves us, makes us, and journeys with us, I pray that today I might speak a word of inclusion, peace, and love that is good, pleasing, and right with you—our rainbow, our rock, and our grace-filled Redeemer. Amen. Gerhard and I have discovered the perfect antidote to stress, the cure (yes, the cure, I say) to taking oneself too seriously, the solution to pretension, and a self-care mechanism that I believe could revolutionize ministry and work related stress. At least for me, since I am married to a Venezuelan and trying to learn Spanish, this amazing new thing in my life is the Latin American soap opera genre known, as “telenovelas.” These short, compact, human emotion-filled Spanish-language sitcoms with complicated scenarios and drrrramatic acting remind me that the Sacred can be found in even the most unlikely situational comedy, plot twist, or family drama. These short but powerful shows all are replete with intense close-up shots, catchy theme music, ridiculous over-the-top comedy, intense loss, marriage, death, betrayal, love, hate, also something that appears to be both love and hated at the same, often there is magic or curses, cautionary tales, morals of the story, and hope lots of hope! Additionally, I have noted that almost all of the Telenovelas have a loving and wise (and VERY religious) grandmother character that is actually, at the conclusion, the behind the scenes mastermind of everything! This is proof that God is actually a Venezuelan grandmother! More pointedly and seriously, these short televised stories are shorthand for the wholeness and complexity of the human experience. Now, aside from being a nice way to distress in the evening from the very real stresses and scenarios of ministry and public advocacy in 2017, I have learned a little something about Biblical Studied from watching these shows: The book of Genesis in particular and most of the Bible is best understood when we pretend (while we are reading) that we are acting out a Telenovela Spanish Soap Opera! Yes, when I thought of this comparison, I too thought it was sort of a funny joke to tell to start the sermon and help us relate to this complicated ancient text, but then I remembered that these stories started out as oral tales and community entertainment many thousands of years ago. A quote from Amherst College professor of Religion and scholar of Genesis, Dr. Susan Niditch, from The Women’s Bible Commentary, helps get at this Spanish Soap opera nature of Genesis. She writes, “The group of narrative and genealogical traditions called the book of Genesis describes the origin of the cosmos and its first inhabitants and unfolds the life stories of the earliest ancestors of ancient Israel. To read Genesis is to immerse oneself in the worldview and values of a distant and foreign culture, of a people who believed in a deity, Yahweh God, imagined as parent, river, spirit, traveling man, and warrior, communicating with ancestors through dream visions and waking revelations. To read Genesis is to encounter a people…Theirs is a different world and a different way of imagining and ordering reality from our own; yet they too love spouses and children, resent siblings, mourn the loss of kin, fear and face deprivation in the form of famine and infertility, attempt to take stock of the comprehensible and make sense of the incomprehensible features of their existence.”1 Telenovela! The story of Genesis is a script, the story, the drama, the intrigue, the popular culture account, the soap opera (la telenovela) for ancient people that helps them make sense life. These stories, all of which would have started as oral accounts were part of what gave people context for survival. So… Today, we pick-up the story midway through these very dramatic, scandalous, and strange set of events. We turn on the Biblical TV in the middle of an episode. So let me recap: back in Chapters 15 and 16, Sarah was upset that she couldn’t have children, so she recruited Hagar to be a surrogate. Sarah’s plan worked and Ishmael was born. Problem solved; but then God gets in the way. Then, as Hal preached on last Sunday, we have the story of the strange men showing-up, receiving hospitality, and then suddenly it turns out that the strange men are actually God and God is planning to have Sarah have a baby of her own, although Sarah is very old. Everyone laughs—that is the comic relief of this telenovela of Genesis. Sarah had her own baby named Isaac, and now in today’s episode of this very intense family epoch, Sarah (who was sympathetic in the last episode) now (turns into the villain) as gets rid her family of the former liaison, Hagar, and her offspring Ishmael. She does this by sending them OUT into the loneliness, the isolation, and the dryness of the desert of Beer-sheba to die. See, I told you that the book of Genesis is a soap opera. One minute you are rooting for or crying with a character, and the next second you have to reassess everything! Genesis isn’t the white washed, easy, clear, linear, Creation account that the Conservative Christians want it to be. It is messy, dangerous, hard to understand, entirely entertaining, and not at all ethical Telenovela from many thousands of years ago. June is Pride month for the LGBTQ community. Today’s episode is the Pride Month episode in this Telenovela, because it is a story of God taking the side, as God often does in surprising ways, of the oppressed, the outcast, the one who is not to be heard from or seen again—the character at the margin. According, again to Sharon Niditch, “the God of Genesis, with whom the important value judgment2 lies is partial to marginalized people…” Verses 15-20: 15 When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. 17 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” 19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. 20 God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.” The boy’s name was Ishmael, and his name in Hebrew reflects the miracle of God’s presence, because, “Ishmael” or “Yishma e’‘l” in Hebrew means literally means, “God has heard” or “God listens.” In our soap opera today from a far off time, in a far off land, in a forgotten language, we can still find something Sacred that speaks to us in deeply important ways. Today, what speaks to me in this time of our world where everyone tries to put words in God’s mouth, tries to say “God says” or “The Bible says” or “God never changes” or “God doesn’t like” or “God condemns” or “God hates…” God hates…(It would seem God’s main business these days is hating). In this world where so many claim to speak for a God who hates, today’s episode from Genesis still communicates one simple idea… A God who listens in the midst of the chaos, the family drama, and the political intrigue! Ishmael! Our God is a God who hears rather than condemning or ignoring to death in the desert… or a spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, deeply profound death in closets of falseness and thirst for authentic contact. Ishmael. God hears, God listens… Friends, here at Plymouth this past week I heard the Open and Affirming movement referred to in the past tense… “The Open and Affirming thing was great… but now its time for something new and more exciting.” I have heard this before. How many of you, and please don’t raise your hands, think our work of being an Open and Affirming church or denomination is done now that you have hired two out gay associate ministers in a row and that marriage equality is achieved? From my network, I can tell you that the fear, the anger, the backlash is coming strong… and it is scary. We (we, the LGBTQ community) need you to be diligent, to pay attention, and to continue to learn the complexity of gender and sexual orientations. It isn’t easy and it can be exhausting, and yes the vocabulary is always changing, but this soap opera of a political season we live in isn’t safe for Gerhard, and me for anyone with an L, a G, a B, a T, or a Q in their identity. The church listened, we have moved, but we must keep-up and not give-up. Ishmael… God has heard! Not only has God heard, but the text says that God heard Ishmael where he was… rather than where he was not. God meets us where we are, sisters, brothers, siblings in Christ! God has heard us where we are when we find ourselves in times of discernment for our identities and our relationships. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are gay or lesbian. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are bisexual. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are queer or transgender. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are liberal or conservative. Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are lonely, overwhelmed, hurting, calm, and anxious… Ishmael! God has heard us where we are if we are young or if we are old. We are heard, met, saved, loved, beloved. God hears us and comes to us with solutions, with life, with promise of good things to come no matter who we are or where we are in this Telenoleva we all call life! Here is what to take away from today’s scripture… the Bible is basically a long and complicated Spanish language soap opera—or really it is better and more correctly understood if we think of it that way rather than as a solemn tome from a God who doesn’t give a crap. Additionally, our very Telenovela-like episode today from Genesis is fundamentally about how God meets us in all of our diversity. God is not static, hatred filled, old man in the sky. She is a Venezuelan grandmother! As the ancients attest to, God manifests in many forms, change is part of the nature of God, and so God doesn’t yell at us… rather we have a God who still listens, still accompanies, and celebrates the diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities present at Plymouth and our world. For nobody who wrote Genesis, Leviticus, or any other ancient text would ever claim that God was done hearing us out and negotiating with us for good, for wholeness, and for the arc of the universe that bends towards justice. That wasn’t what God was like in ancient times; we see that clearly in the text. God has always been and will always be unchanging in only God’s unpredictability, free-agent nature, and willingness to listen deeply to us in our lives. Amen.
AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page. Luke 24: 44-53 May 28, 2017 The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph Plymouth Cong. UCC of Fort Collins, CO Will you pray with me? God as we, your people and your witnesses, struggle in these days and these VERY scary times to remember with joy and to look forward with hope, I pray that my sermon today will be good and pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our redeemer. Saints and how we remember them in our UCC tradition are not as formalized as in some other Christian traditions, but there are some who have left a lasting imprint on our lives whom we might describe as saints of the progressive church. On this Eve of Memorial Day, I would like to begin this morning by memorializing someone you might not of heard of before—at least not by name. Let me tell the story, oft forgotten from the pages of history books, about one very brave woman. Born to a family of austere Calvinists, converted to our cousins in the Unitarian Church, she lived her 19th Century life in New England surrounded by the most progressive, creative, and foreword thinking people (Congregationalists and Unitarians) of the 19th Century. The person I would like to memorialize today was a prolific Unitarian preacher, a champion of social justice and civil rights, the leader of the first convention of Unitarian Clergywomen in history starting in 1875, the president, and one of the founders of the Massachusetts Women’s Suffrage Organization. She was the first woman to become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, one of the founds of Mothers’ Day as an anti-war struggle1, the longtime editor of the national Women’s Journal, a devout abolitionist who saw slavery as a corporate national sin, believer in the potential of humanity to do better, a hero of the suffrage movement for women, an anti-war champion, and a global pacifist who defined (in all ways) being progressive for her time. She sounds like someone we would all want to know and emulate at Plymouth doesn’t she? Her name was Julia Ward Howe2, and today we know her mostly for a modest poem she wrote by candlelight in the middle of a dreary night during the saddest time in our national memory. You see…Julia had spent a day walking through the mud of the camps of Union Soldiers on the banks of the Potomac River. She was witnessing the wretched conditions, witnessing, bearing witness to the stories and the conversations of hope for a freer more ethical country. She saw the countless fires burning at twilight, and she heard a song about John Brown the Union soldiers sang to keep their hopes up and to remember the cause of freedom and union for which they risked it all. From her pen that night, after her tour, she took the tune the soldiers has created as a marching anthem and put new words to it… “My eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord…who is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, and has loosed the fateful lighting of a terrible swift sword, God’s truth is marching on…. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in whose bosom that transfigures you and me; as Christ died to make us holy, let us die to make all free… while God is marching on…Glory Glory Hallelujah. Glory Glory Hallelujah. Glory Glory Hallelujah. God’s Truth is marching on.”3 And we thought all this time that the Battle Hymn of the Republic was a hymn written for and by conservatives meant to convey some dreaded manifest destiny or sense of domineering military might! This is the meaning that we have been told to take from this hymn. When I told my friend and colleague, The Rev. Dr. Mark Lee that I would be preaching a Memorial Day sermon using this hymn, he said, “Yeah, I always remember this hymn as sung by Anita Bryant [at anti-LGBT rallies in Florida] and at Republican National Conventions. It always makes me uncomfortable…” While this is how we feel about this hymn today, in fact, it was written by a radical abolitionist, suffragette, the pacifist founder of Mother’s Day as a song of hope for what she believed the cause and point of our national identity could be: freedom, liberation, equality, and progress for all people. She bore witness to that vision with her own life story. That is why Julia cries out with the voice of the soldiers, and the suffragettes, and the abolitionists, and the witnesses for a better tomorrow where all are free: Glory, Glory Hallelujah! Amen! Hymns often have a life of their own, like any text in a religious context, but the historians are united in their view that this hymn is an anthem of liberation that claims God’s realm and purpose is for justice and freedom. The funny thing is that while, the religious left (us) misunderstand this anthem because we associate it with the military or with oppression, the religious right has started to uncover its true meaning and Unitarian/ Progressive New England origin! Oh my! One particularly ambitious Evangelical blogger has made it his mission to rid every “true Bible Believing” household and church of this supposedly “godless” hymn. He writes in his blog, “The Truth About the Battle Hymn of the Republic,” that, “The hundred circling camps were the Union Army camps that Mrs. Howe toured at President Lincoln's invitation. She actually imagined the watch-fires of the camps to be altars built to God! ‘By the dim and flaring lamps’ in the camps, she was able to read God's ‘righteous sentence’ on the South…. What a travesty that the words of this woman have found such loving acceptance in Bible-believing churches! What a travesty that they stir emotions of patriotic fervor to unparalleled heights of ecstasy in the congregations that sing this ‘hymn’! It should never be sung by any Christian in any church anywhere, North or South.”4 Oh, the irony! So, UCC friends, if the religious right has decided they are done with this hymn, and it SURE sounds like they are, maybe it is time for us to reclaim it again as the anthem for social justice and freedom it was intended to be. In a time when vision is lost and we seem to have lost a sense of what it means to be Progressively Patriotic rather than just pessimistically progressive (complaining and talking about how much better everything was in 1968), maybe the idea of hope and vision for liberation that Ward Howe expresses can inspire something in us again? I guess this I am asking: “What do we see of Christ working in and through our world that makes us want to…no… need to shout GLORY, GLORY, HALLELUJAH!? If Julia could find the words to proclaim that hope in the middle of the carnage of the civil war, a far darker and scarier time than today, then certainly we can find a way to proclaim hope in 2017? Progressives are supposed to be the ones with a vision and a hope a PURPOSE for now so that a future can be imagined—one in which God’s truth of freedom and peace is marching onward. That is our role. Where did those cool progressive people go? Have you seen them? We need to find them. Julia Ward Howe was a prophetic witness for her time seeing the truth underling the rhetoric and confusion of war. She cries out to us through the years…. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the realm of God! It isn’t about country—it is about greater meaning and purpose. Glory Glory Hallelujah! In today’s scripture lesson, The Ascension According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ last words to his disciples aren’t “The Great Commission” as in Matthew or the Disciples running away in fear as in Mark (multiple endings), but Luke has a much simpler and more joyful departure for Jesus. As he leaves earth, according to the story, Luke doesn’t have Jesus give a long speech, offer profound instructions or another parable, no. Jesus simply says, “You are my witnesses…And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” You are my witnesses. He doesn’t say, “You are my Christians,” or, “You are my namesake.” We are witnesses to grace and Gospel. We are the witnesses to suburb, obstinate, determined hope that the arc of the universe bends towards justice and freedom. The eyes of our hearts have seen this Glory! We are called to be the visionaries for Christ. That is the title Jesus gives us: The United Church of Witness. It is our eyes that HAVE already seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord when on July 4, 1776 a group of eclectic delegates signed a simple document of independence with the idea that all people should be free to self-government, human rights, and democracy. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! [Congregation prompted by preacher to reply with Glory, Glory, Halleluiah!] Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord when on January 1, 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery and setting us on a long road towards justice and freedom that we are still traveling today. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord when on August 18, 1920, fewer than 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment was ratified and women gained universal suffrage and the right to vote! Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord when on October 24, 1945 when the United Nations was founded under Eleanor Roosevelt’s leadership and the world began to nobly attempt resolving conflicts and humanitarian issues without constant wars. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory with the 1954 Brown Vs. Board of Education decision that ended school segregation. Glory, Glory Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965! Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory with the fall of the Berlin wall. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory with the 1996 Good Friday Peace Accords in Northern Ireland; ending generations of conflict on the streets on Belfast. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord when in January of 2017 the Women’s March took place (the largest civil rights march in history to date). Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! Our eyes saw the glory of the coming of the Lord with the outcome of the court’s decision in 2013 with United States vs. Windsor when marriage was expanded to allow people like me to be married with recognition and respect so people like ME could get married. Glory, Glory, Halleluiah! With all of the above mentioned movements for freedom and equality and justice, guess which denomination and tradition was integrally connected and witness and present and progressive and there? Guess who was there for all of these? The United Church of Witness. We remained optimistic, through the many setbacks equal or more in number than the progress weighed heavily on our faith and our strength, Christians who remained progressively patriotic and progressively witnesses for the hope they knew was there, and they endured. Today, we reclaim the progressive meaning and legacy of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” for we too have a vision for “glory, glory, and halleluiah” in our time: Hope… growth… justice… and equality that our land, our home, our country as American Christians is yet capable of achieving. This is the best way to honor our ancestors we remember tomorrow who sacrificed in wars with a sense of purpose. We will not give-up our legacy to the pessimistic progressivism that pervades and temps us away from that hope. We cannot allow one person, one corrupt Cesar, to change our mission of hope and to take away our national pride or identity. May we find a way to reclaim not only this song, for it is simply an example (a trope or totem) of the many ways we have lost hope or had something potentially strengthening taken away, but also a sense of progressive patriotism rather than surrendering our national identity to those who would carry us away from God’s Realm of justice and inclusion. May we indeed live-up to our pledge and truly learn to be a place with liberty and justice for all—and that, my friends, takes witnesses like you, like us, and like those we will form to take our place in this great caravan of history. Glory, Glory, Halleluijah! Years later, at Julia Ward Howe’s funeral in Cambridge, Massachusetts, over 4,000 of the country’s most progressive, visionary, and hopeful people gathered together—and with determination and trembling voices, tears running down their stern New England faces, they sang in unison the words they knew so well—Glory, Glory, Halleluiah, Glory, Glory, Halleluiah… Glory, Glory, Halleluiah… God’s Truth is marching on. Amen. 1 http://www.uuworld.org/articles/mothers-day-peace-as-julia-ward-howe-intended 2 http://uudb.org/articles/juliawardhowe.html 3 This version comes from the UCC’s New Century Hymnal, which has made some inclusive adjustments. 4 http://rediscoveringthebible.com/BattleHymn.html AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
April 30, 2017 Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, CO Psalm 116: 1-4 and 12-19 Won’t you join with me in prayer? God of all of the movement in our lives, I pray that the words I speak and the meditations we share will all be good in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Many scholars identify Psalm 116 as something they call a “Psalm of Reversal.” One such scholar writes in the Women’s Bible Commentary, “The mood of the book of Psalms moves back and forth from assurance to doubt, from contentment to pain, from joy to despair and back again. But those who speak from peaceful secure, and prosperous settings in life often have different things to say to God and different ways to say them than do those who are in the midst of crisis, trouble, pain, or struggle. A significant portion of the book of Psalms consists of songs of reversal…sung by survivors who attribute their present wellbeing to God’s intervention in their lives…acknowledging that their survival is a gift of Grace from the hand of God.”1 In my preparation for this sermon these past weeks, what stuck with me from my research is this idea that many of the Psalms, like#116, are Psalms of Reversal sung by survivors. The grain of blessing in this is the idea that God’s blessings are not linear or unidirectional. Rather, like life itself, God moves with us both when we feel like we are going forward and when we are stuck in reverse. Have you ever taught someone how to parallel park? On one of my first dates with my now husband, I taught Gerhard how to parallel park back in Georgia. I knew that we were on the right track after even that task went well! In parallel parking, we are only successful when we are as grateful for the reversals as we are for the forward movements. We cannot only go in one successful direction without also accepting that reversals and changes of direction are also forms of success and surviving. Only when we learn to go in reverse with determination, with precision, and with God’s help can we find our comfortable and well-spaced parking space in life. Today’s Psalm is a Psalm of celebration for God’s help in that successful parallel parking exercise of life. Today’s Psalm is a Psalm of a reversal -- a situation turned around in healing and hope. Psalms are by definition communal, liturgical, ritual, songs and poems that came from worship settings used by the ancients of our faith and their ancestors to say to us: “No matter who you are or where you are in life’s journey of GREAT Reversals, there is a Psalm/ a Song and a way to speak to God for you. REMEMBER, “…those who speak from peaceful secure, and prosperous settings in life often have different things to say to God and different ways to say them than do those who are in the midst of crisis, trouble, pain, or struggle.” Unlike Parallel Parking, there is no wrong way—the Psalms are our assurance of this. The Psalms and their diversity of moods and tones remind us: You are a survivor; I am a survivor, we are survivors by the grace of God. If the world “Psalms” were a verb (to Psalm), it would mean, “to express oneself in fullness and authenticity before God and with the support of your community.” Our goal then as church is to Psalm effectively and regularly. How are you Psalming today? The core message of our Psalm 116 is one of survival and reversal. “You have loosened my bonds. I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.” These words have the same fundamental feeling and purpose as the famous anthem and declaration by Dianna Ross and others who popularly sing, “I will survive… as long as I know how to love… I know I’ll stay alive…I’ve got all my life to live and I’ve got all my love to give. I’ll survive. I will survive.” As long as I live by God’s grace, I will be a survivor in all things. Is this your Psalm today? How are you surviving by love in this life of reversals? Anxiety and hate don’t work for successful survival—regardless of how we are tempted by culture and our friends to rely on them. Only love and grace can bring true survival. “Those who speak to God from a place of assurance and hope have different things to say and a different structural way to say them than those who are in pain, crisis, loss, tragedy, confusion, denial, or graduation and retirement.” We are entering tomorrow, May Day, into the great month of reversals and changes. The month of May is the month when the world and community turn upside down in Fort Collins and towns like it every year. [Remember the feeling of being a student and what May meant.] The assurance that comes to us first is that while we may have different Psalms to sing and different ways to say a prayer to God at different points in our lives of reversals and changing directions, whether in crisis, love, pain, or pleasure… there is no wrong or inferior Psalm. All Psalms like all prayers and different needs for God at different times of life are created equal. Our Psalm today is a Psalm of a survivor. “What shall I return to God for all of his bounty to me?” It is a song of gratitude and grace and hope to God from someone who made it, someone who lives, someone who is a survivor. Think of this as the Biblical version of Destiny Child and Beyoncé’s “I’m a survivor. I’m not going to give-up! I’m gunna make it. I will survive. I won’t give up.” Psalm 116 is Beyoncé’s Psalm—as a survivor who has embraced God’s great reversal in her life. Psalm 116 is the Psalm of the Survivor. I love this part of the Bible for exactly this reason: There is a Psalm for every season. God is a non-linear God who is with us in the times when we cannot even seem to find God in our lives, when we are celebrating, when we are surviving, and when we have survived—survived an unfulfilling or political job, survived a divorce, survived an illness, survived the death of a child, survived depression, survived whatever it is we are faced with by God’s presence and grace. God is a God of Great Reversals—life is not linear leading to Stepford Perfection! The same scholar I quoted earlier also writes in the Women’s Bible Commentary, “[The Psalms] represent the full range of human emotions in conversations with God. In all but a few cases, these deeply human (DEEPLY HUMAN) utterances are addressed directly to God.”2 Many of us who grew-up in the church were led to believe that the Bible was monochromatic. We have all seen or heard of churches and times in history where and when, in the name of Christ, the Sacred texts were complicit with the ways and methods of the political Church, the Bible stories became silent bystanders to abuse, and Scripture became a bland affirmation of what we already new and experience as life without responding for our need for God’s assurance of survival. Today, we reclaim the text as our survival guide. In fact, the Bible screams out with you in pain, jumps with you in joy, questions with you in times of discernment, asks the universe for salvation with you when you feel like all is lost, and lifts up to God Psalms of Reversal and gratitude when the world turns and God shifts in new and totally radically wildly unexpected ways! Expect the unexpected, Christians. God is a non-linear God of Easter. What sort of great reversals are happening in your life right now? Moreover, how have you prayed, sung, or otherwise engaged God in those reversals. By reversals, again, I mean those big shifts both good and bad in life—or sometimes both—the full range of human emotions. Retirement, graduation, promotions are all reversals (shifts) that require prayerful joy and careful discernment. I would offer that the Psalms might act as a resource and a guide in all of that. I would even say that it is the reason for religion, for church—to be together in vulnerability, authenticity and to reclaim the stories of survivors of the past for our needs here and now. In this Eastertide, this season after the story of the resurrection and before the ascension, we celebrate, in many ways what I think of as the Season of Survival—survival even past the point of death and at the doorstep of the unknown sky of possibility. That is why the creators of the lectionary have given us this particular Psalm for today. One of my greatest mentors, teachers, and my and your last associate minister, The wonderful and compassionate Rev. Sharon Benton, was published in 2013 in a book of liturgy called, From the Psalms to the Clouds: Connecting to the Digital Age. This was a publication of the Pilgrim Press of the UCC of some of the best and most creative liturgy writers from across our denomination. The book is billed as a retelling of the Psalms and worship resources for our time. Sharon is one of the major contributors to that book like how was a major contributor to many of our lives, and it was this book that she chose to leave on her desk when she left her office for me to move into as her mentee and successor. In that book, she wrote a Psalm of her own for Eastertide that I believe responds to Psalm 116 with words of our time and meaning for today as we all discern, celebrate, and wonder how to be survivors in God’s world of reversals and all forms of human emotion. From Rev. Benton: From deep within our tombs we hear you call, O God: Rise up! Rise up from death into new life. We have found new life in this spring season, In children joyfully squirming among us, In each deep breath we breathe. We have found new life in people’s struggle for Just government throughout the world, And in nations’ continued support Following natural disasters. From deep within our tombs we hear you call, O God: Rise up! Rise up from death into new life. We follow your voice in our hope to overcome Illness, grief, addiction, fear. We follow your voice in our hope to heal your creation, Make whole our connection to all that is. From deep within our tombs we hear you call, O God: Rise up! Rise up from death into new life. Resurrecting God, you call us to follow Christ, To rise up from our tombs that hold us in death— But you do not expect us to do so alone. It is you who fills us with life beyond all our daily deaths. It is you who strengthens us to bring life to others. It is you, Holy One, who we hear call within our tombs: rise up! And so we do. We have. We are here. Amen. -The Rev. Sharon Benton Pastoral Prayer: God of Great Changes, Reversals, and Survival, Like our Psalmist says this morning, we will praise you before your people this day for all of the ways that you are with us in our lives of survival. Help us today to bring you gratitude for grace, thanksgiving for healing, and hope for surviving even the most dire and scary times of life. Bless, O God, today the hearts and souls of those for whom we pray with the same rooted hope, the same determined and ageless sense of your workings in and through our lives… bring them courage, give us strength, we pray God. Non-linear God of Reversals bring your strength to…these your beloved who are looking for survival of different circumstances: [Names of those for whom we pray] Non-Linear God of Peace… we offer likewise gratitude for the survival shown by saying the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: Lord’s Prayer 1 Kathleen A. Farmer, “Psalms,” Women’s Bible Commentary, Carol Newsom and Sharon H. Ringle, edit. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 147. 2 Ibid, 145. AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
April 2, 2017 The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph Plymouth UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado Will you pray with me? Lord God, rattle our bones and bring us to life. Shake our understanding and our hopelessness from slumber and transform it into your wondrous love. May this sermon and our togetherness today bring us new hope and love, Oh God who is our rock, our life-maker, life-restorer, and our life-keeper through love. Amen. Today, God brings Ezekiel to the Valley of Bones (a place full of dead and decomposed bodies) where they are then reanimated into living people again. I always thought that today’s lectionary passage should fall at the same time as Halloween—it has a Zombie movie sort of a tone to it, don’t you think? At the beginning of the story, before we get to the bones walking around again, God brings the prophet to this valley of death, right? And then God asks a weird rhetorical question… or is it a trick question? April Fools? It is hard to tell. “Mortal, can these bones live?” I [Ezekiel] answered, “O Lord God, you know.” You know IMMEDIATELY that something wild, weird, and possibly dangerous is about to happen whenever God addresses you by the ONE title that all humans throughout all of history and time share in common, “Mortal.” This title and address means, “a being that will die and cease to exist, or one with a finite lifespan.” We know that God is up to something big when we are addressed by the fact that we are temporary— “O Mortal, can these bones live?” This is the question God asks Ezekiel. Even stranger perhaps is Ezekiel’s headstrong, somewhat flippant, and almost exasperated response: “O Lord God, you know.” I picture him saying this with a valley accent. Why are you making me look at the reality of the situation for the house of Israel, God? Why have you brought me all the way to face this place of tragedy and loss only to ask me about the impossible and the hopelessness found here, God? We both already know the answer to this silly question- “O Lord God, you know!” Ezekiel doesn’t need a reminder that things are tough for his people and his calling as a priest. So who was this prophet Ezekiel with such a direct and confrontational form of communication with the Divine? One of my favorite scholars, Michael Coogan seems to be a big fan of Ezekiel and this passage in particular. According to this scholar, Ezekiel is a special prophet for a couple of important reasons. The first is that he was the first prophet in the Bible to be called to the work of being a prophet outside of the Holy Land. He is a prophet in exile who started his ministry while far away from home. He only received his call once already far away from Jerusalem in an unfamiliar context. While his contemporary, Jeremiah, saw the destruction of the temple in person before being exiled to Babylon, Ezekiel was taken to Babylonia in 597 and only learned of the destruction of the temple secondhand, through what others told him while already in exile as a priest far from his sacred spaces to which he was called as a priest. So Ezekiel has to rely on imagination and stories to survive in ministry. Secondly, Ezekiel speaks in the first person and offers one of the most orderly and linear accounts of any prophet in the Bible. This makes Ezekiel the favorite prophet of all of us who came out of the Presbyterian tradition- all in good order indeed. This is important because the story we are hearing, near the end of the Ezekiel narrative is the culmination of a life of prophecy—and it ends, linearly and purposefully, in hope rather than despair. Nothing is accidental or chaotic with Ezekiel—our Presbyterian-like prophet. Lastly, Ezekiel is a prophet who has nothing left to lose. He has lost his home, his calling as a temple priest, and never even got to say goodbye. Coogan says something that sheds light on this prophet’s text and Valley of Dry Bones when he writes that, “[This] passage is symbolic and does not mean actual resurrection of the dead, a concept that will not develop for several centuries.”1 So when conservative Christians misread this text as having something to do with Jesus and resurrection, it is a blatant misreading of the story. Ezekiel is a surrealist operating from a place of profound metaphor for a renewal of hope in a time of exile from power and complete and total despair. This vision is a symbol of hope for Israel in a time when all seems lost and despair prevails. Verse 11 and following: “Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.” We are living in a time where the bodies are piling up in the valley. The body of our work in environmental stewardship and climate change awareness for God’s environmental justice is before us today in the Valley of Bones. We feel the pain of the decay and what feels like death as progress is reversed and the planet and leadership itself seems to be running now boldly towards peril and ecological and climate collapse. The body of environmental stewardship is at our feet. The body of our work in socially sustainable and just communities, affordable housing, homelessness advocacy, and fair housing policy is piling up body upon body upon body upon body upon body with every new news cycle in the valley of bones. The body of healthcare for all, equality and access in medicine, HIV/AIDS research funding, access to insurance, falls slowly at our feet in the valley of bones. 1 The bones and vestiges of the body of civil discourse and the marketplace of ideas, and democracy itself seems to teeter on the edge of a cliff overlooking this valley of bones. Are they too about to be pickings for vultures of commerce and greed. We see the bones of our work to end racism and to start sacred conversations on race… bones of education as school funding is stripped and curricula are replaced with convenient alternative facts… bones, bones, bones, bones,…bones of LGBTQ and especially Transgender equality and access to safe spaces and restrooms that match gender identity… bones of elder services… bones of Christian love… bones of mental healthcare…. “The Lord set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said, “Mortal, can these bones live? I answered… Lord God, you know” the answer to that question. Why this torment? This is a passage, a symbolic, surrealist image (sort of a Salvador Dali painting), that draws every lost generation and people and place and time back in because… while called the Valley of Bones… really it is better understood as the Valley of Hope, the Valley of Renewal, the Valley of God’s power to change hearts and minds… the Valley of Empowerment… and especially the Valley of Love. I had my own vision of sorts based out of this Scripture passage. The past two summers I have driven down to a place for continuing education which has a name that sounds about as comforting and hopeful as “Valley of Bones”—a sacred, thin place called Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico in the land of the Shining Stone Land Grant between Chama and Santa Fe. This is the land that captured the heart and person of Georgia O’Keiffe, a place that has seen legends of evil, a dark history of fratricide, crime, and murder… but that place of legends and ghosts has been transformed by the Presbyterians who inherited it in the 1950’s into a desert place of renewal, hope, learning, and peace. One dry clear morning, this past summer 2016, I sat alone on a mesa called The Kitchen overlooking desert openness, colors, and the mountains that Georgia O’Keiffe loved. I was reflecting on the pain and deserted place in the world, the fear of the ongoing election cycle, and also the beauty of this planet and hope for renewal I found in Christ and Christian fellowship. I remembered that even in the when things are bleakest; rays of sun and experiences of deep hope and love can change everything! I remembered, as I do now, that what makes Christian faith unique is our stubborn attachment to hope… stubborn, indignant, unyielding, unrelenting, irrevocable hope that love conquers hatred, ignorance, and oppression. Suddenly I burst into a song I didn’t even know I knew (have you ever started humming something without knowing what it is?) It came from somewhere in my soul, overlooking that desert of Ghost Ranch… the Valley of Bones… I heard myself utter the first couple of words… [SING CAUTIOUSLY] “What wondrous love is this, O my soul! O my soul! What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the heavy cross for my soul… for my soul… to bear the heavy cross for my soul!” I feel the same way looking out at you this morning… what wondrous love! That hymn has been my anthem in these dark times when our beloved projects, departments, and beliefs seem to be stripped down to their bones- and I think connects us to that vision of dry bones some 2,600 years ago in the deserts of Ezekiel’s Babylonia. What wondrous love is this that caused a community to rally and be present and show-up to support our neighbors at the Islamic Center in a matter of hours after a violent gesture threatened their community—over a 1,000 of us showed-up in love and care and pure humanity. Dry Bones were covered again with flesh. What wondrous love is this that will be present this afternoon as many from around the community gather to the ordination of my colleague Sean at the Unitarian Church to ministry. Dry Bones are covered again with flesh. What wondrous love is this that shows-up when Fort Collins strategizes together from ALL traditions and background to build 48 new Habitat for Humanity homes in the next couple of years at Harmony and Taft? Dry Bones are covered again with flesh. What wondrous love is this in the morning when we look-up and see that God has given us a new day and we see the light of the sun reflecting back… winking at us from the rock faces of Horsetooth and Long’s Peak! Dry Bones are covered again with flesh. What wondrous love is this when Plymouth hosts a civil, polite, and constructive conversation with council and mayoral candidates in our local election as part of our Forums? Dry Bones are covered again with flesh. What wondrous love is this as our denomination partners with the Disciples of Christ to bring relief efforts to those around the world in need of help and support. Dry Bones are covered with flesh. What wondrous love is this… oh my soul… oh my soul… Can these bones live, asks God? YES! Yes, God they can and they will and they must—our faith and our love—and our hope demands it. We see the beginnings of the bone rattling and waking again! So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude… They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord. Amen. AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, CO Matthew 4:1-11 March 5, 2017 Will you pray with me: God, be with us as we journey into the woods. I pray that this morning the meditations of our hearts and the words I dare speak from this pulpit will be true, honest, and good to your hearing, our God, who leads us through the woods and wilderness of our hearts. Amen. “Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there lay a small village at the edge of the woods… Into the woods, Without delay, But careful not To lose the way. Into the woods, Who knows what may Be lurking on the journey? Into the woods To get the thing That makes it worth The journeying. into the woods.”i These poetic words come to us from the prologue of the play, Into the Woods, which is a musical that combined many of the historic Brothers Grim, Disney, and other Fairy Tales into one epic story with an equally and epically complicated plot. In the end, this story of fairy tales inverts the traditional understanding of black and white good and bad. It shows how that reading of these classic stories is too easy. There are no easy categories of people anymore in a globalized world. Even our Fairy Tales have to change and make new meaning. It isn’t just the Bible with this issue. Into the Woods demonstrates that temptation, passion, wishing for something, death, and the idea of “happily ever after,” is all much more complicated than they initially appear or that we would like to think. The mores, ethics lessons, and morals of the story are really, in the end of this story of going “Into the Woods,” reveled to be as clear as… mud. Today, likewise, we begin our own journey with Jesus into the woods of the wilderness of Lent. Into the woods without delay… be careful not to lose the way. Like the play, Into the Woods, we will see that the idea of Lent and the lessons we are to learn are more complicated that the tales of old and the norms we have accepted and have been led to believe. Lent is about more than giving stuff up (chocolate, candy, cursing) and proving our worthiness for Easter to God, for it is about journeying into the deepest, thickest, most complicated Fairy Tale Land of all… our own hearts, our own real and true selves, and our own needs. Progressive Churches love to talk in platitudes about finding our “authentic selves,” but we forget to mention that is a very risky business. There are more villains and heroes within each of us than in all of the fairy tales ever written down. Lent is about confessing a deeper truth not to each other or even necessarily to God. It is, in my view after studying today’s Scripture, about being honest with ourselves about our own inner woods, needs, and growing edges for the year to come. What is the emotional thicket or briar patch or castle tower (Rapunzel) that you need to let go of or face with truth and honesty this year? Is there someone in your life keeping you captive through manipulation or emotional abuse in a tower who you need to let go of or escape from? Let us venture now, into the woods of our hearts. This is a harrowing journey, brothers and sisters, but together with strength and community we can emerge with new insight and truth on the other side of Lent. Remember that Hansel and Gretel never turned on each other even as they were lost and hopeless. This is no small miracle for siblings. Who knows what may be lurking on the journey of self-discovery? There is another way to interpret Matthew Chapter 4, verse 1; “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” If we look at the actual original Greek of the Gospel of Matthew, the same verse can be interpreted as reading, “Then Jesus was sent forth by the Holy Spirit of God into the woods, into the wilderness, into the solitude, into the loneliness (sent out into the uninhabited/ desolate/ forlorn places of his own soul) to prove himself to himself, to be examined, to be tested by the adversary alone." Now here is the interesting thing. In the same way that we assume that Cinderella lives happily ever after once she meets her prince or that Jack is the good and wholesome character in “Jack and the Beanstalk” (while the giants have done nothing wrong…), we also assume from having heard the story too many times (every year in Lent) that Jesus knows who the adversary is throughout this entire time in the woods. We assume that the adversary is a physically embodied devil standing there with Jesus and bringing him to these different tests. We envision the adversary here a little bit like a host on a game show (something like Survivor)… creating an ethical obstacle course. If we assume that is the case, then it raises two important questions: First, why, if this is an encounter with the adversary… the Devil, is it the Spirit of God/ The Holy Spirit who leads Jesus into the woods in the first place? This runs counter to the popular prosperity Gospel and sometimes even the progressive Christian Gospel that God doesn’t want us to be challenged or to dig too deep! God just wants easy and fun in life. The idea that God wants Jesus to go spend time in the woods of his soul problematizes our normal fairy tale reading of this story of Jesus going into the woods. We assume, for some reason, that Jesus doesn’t want to be there, but the Bible says that the Holy Spirit led him to the woods rather than it forcing or compelling him against his will. This is a self-willed process. So Lent, Plymouth, is a choice we make to follow the Holy Spirit into something difficult. If this is not a year when you are ready to really do the work of lent, then maybe don’t do lent at all. Lent is an intentional space in our year for proving something new to us and it is lonely. First, God takes us to the woods to learn something, to go deeper, to face our fears and inner selves. It is in the woods where we begin to grow in faith, in healing, and in recovery. The woods are where denial ends. Now for the second problem of our easy reading: Why does it take 9 verses and around a month a half of being tempted and wondering in the wilderness before we reach verses 10 and 11 when, “Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” It takes 9 verses and well over a month for Jesus to name the adversary and to send these thoughts and tests away. Why? Who likes being tested? Why would it take Jesus so long to send the adversary (Satin) away? The answer to this can only be found in the woods of our own hearts. The adversary is safe and easy (as popularly depicted with horns and a cape). That which must be overcome is easy to send away, banish, or ignore when we think it is something external, but more often than not… the temptation to give-up on our dreams, to be selfish, to seek power and glory over truth and wholeness, to hoard, to postpone becoming authentically who we are called to be, to give in and to give up to the powers of loneliness of inner woods and forests, to quit, to stop hoping [LONG PAUSE]… those temptations don’t (unfortunately) come from a devil in a red cape. That is simply a fairy tale told to keep our egos safe. Second, the temptation is from within most often, and it is only by journeying and facing the true part of ourselves that we emerge in confidence. It takes time for Jesus to face the inner tempter. We are often our own devils. We are most often our own adversaries. We are the internalized tempters who draw our potential for wholeness away from our authentic, whole selves. This is why it took Jesus so long to send the adversary away, for he was hidden in the shadow of the woods. Isn’t the Bible so much for interesting when we take it seriously? This what lent is all about! Lent is about following the Holy Spirit intentionally into the hard conversations with the latent, unpleasant, and complicated parts of our own hearts. This might not be the year when you are ready for real into the woods work, but when you are Plymouth is here to support you no matter who you are or where you are on your woodland journey. Hey, Pastor Jake, jeeeeez… I don’t attend a UCC church to think about my own loneliness and inner work and spiritual/ emotional self! I leave that touchy feely stuff to the Evangelicals. I am here because I want social justice marching orders with a Divine Imperative that help me feel good about myself without facing the parts of myself that are lost in the woods of despair, hidden depression, deep and very very old childhood shame, lost causes, inauthenticity, and abandoned dreams and hopes. I don’t want to follow Jesus into the woods of Lent. Sister and Brothers, life is not a fairy tale—even in Fort Collins. We willingly go into the woods of Lent with Jesus not to see things as we always see them (easy, black and white, as presented… good/ bad), but we go to the woods to be challenged with hard truths about ourselves and to work for healing, authenticity, and renewal. With Jesus by our side, we have nothing to fear from this process. Hopefully, with this intentional work of Lent woodland journeying, we will emerge in the meadows of Springtime Easter Morning with a new clarity for the work ahead, the purpose and ethics we are called to and honest work for the year ahead. This is the real work of Church. “Into the woods To get the thing That makes it worth The journeying… The way is clear, The light is good, I have no fear, Nor no one should. The woods are just trees, The trees are just wood. No need to be afraid there…”ii Into the Woods we go now with Christ. Amen.
AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
The Rev. Jake Miles Joseph
Plymouth Congregational UCC of Fort Collins, Colorado February 5, 2017 Matthew 5:13- 20 * I love teaching the new members’ classes with Hal and Jane Anne because they always help remind me what this work is all about and how special our approach to ministry is at Plymouth. I was reminded this week about what covenant and church means here in the UCC. In the UCC, we covenant to journey together, but do not promise to always agree. Today, I am preaching a sermon that came to me from my discernment with the Holy Spirit. You do not have to agree with me, but I pray that you will listen and find what rings true for your heart. Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the prophesies, visions, awakening of our hearts be good, complete, and new in your sight, O God, our rock and our alarm clock. Amen. The time for complacency is past. The days of blissful ignorance are long gone. The Church’s long and comfortable slumber in the satin sheets and down, feather-filled bedspreads are coming to the dawn of a new day. The comfort found with the mattresses of padded endowments, pillows of unquestioned cultural dominance, and blind sleepwalking through superficial, easy acts of charity are finished. The harsh sound of the alarm clock of God’s call for ethical speech, awakening to a need for virtuous leadership, and prophecy has now rung for the Church. Can you hear it? God’s alarm clock rings loud clear in all of our hearts this morning. Don’t you hear God’s call for action sounding in your soul? It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We might well believe this is the first time God has sounded this great awakening alarm. As Congregationalists, however, this is our legacy and our heritage. Awakenings are our business in the UCC. While we no longer espouse the retrograde theology of the time, we in the United Church of Christ are the direct inheritors of the First Great Awakening that began in Northampton, Massachusetts in the church led by Jonathan Edwards. He was the author of the famous, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” How many of you remember reading this gem in school? The UCC has come a long way since that sermon title, hasn’t it? While today the words of Jonathan Edwards strike us as conservative and awkward, we must recognize that it was revolutionary and even progressive in 1741 when it was written! Edwards was the leader of the Congregationalist “New Lights” or reformers who sought to revive a faith in God’s grace and in active belief. The “Old Lights,” on the other hand, were the Congregationalists who had become more of a complacent political institution running the affairs of small towns in New England than a church of faith and action. They wanted nothing to do with passionate belief. The Old Lights despised Edwards and his First Great Awakening followers’ passion, penchant for grace, outspoken nature, and they preferred that the church go back to sleep as a pacified and placated institution of polished pews and polite picnics. Now, Edwards was very concerned with what he called the “wrath” of God. There is an ugly English word: Wrath. It isn’t even fun to say. This makes me wonder, as progressive Christians today, being woken from our sleep, can we handle our claim on the wrath of God? There is no doubt that God’s anger is Biblical. Even Jesus demonstrates wrath in the temple at those abusing the system by turning over tables in a rage. This is a word that, for many of us including me, brings up what I call Evangelical Church-PTSD from our youths in more conservative and less loving places than Plymouth. The wrath of God is tough to embrace. So how can we re-appropriate and reclaim God’s anger as a righteous and holy wrath? Can we reclaim the legacy of our direct ancestors Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening for a new time and a new need? Why is God waking us up now and calling us all back to the real work of the church? Today, as progressive Christians, we associate the word “wrath” as meaning a hateful or a conservative God, right? The word wrath actually just means “extreme anger” or “vexation.” We must, sisters and brothers, believe that God is capable of extreme anger if we also believe that God is a God of social justice and radical transformation. In the words of our ancestor of Congregationalist faith, Jonathan Edwards, “You had need to consider yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of Sleep; you cannot bear the Fierceness and Wrath of the infinite God…Therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the Wrath to come…Let everyone fly out…”[i] Regardless of party affiliation, if we believe that lying and making up fake facts makes God angry, then we must know of God’s wrath. We must reclaim virtue and ethics. If nobody else is going to claim that lying is wrong, then it has to be us. Lying is just as wrong for progressive Christians as anyone. Deceit is no virtue, Amen? If we believe that neglecting the poor of the earth, marginalization the other, and making the poor and hopeless poorer and more hopeless for our own enrichment, wealth, power, and money makes God angry, then we know of God’s wrath. If America First means that everyone else goes last, then God has wrath in store for us. If we believe that belittling others, mocking the weak, discrediting the educated, insulting the hopeless, undermining world peace, or promoting or protecting hatred is a sin (falling short of what God hopes for us), then we must know of God’s wrath. Yes, I said sin. If we believe that discriminating against the LGBTQ community is wrong and enabling the hateful and violent, then we know of God’s wrath. If we believe from the depths of our hearts, our faith, and our theology (belief in the nature and fact of God’s very existence) that fundamentally… sexism, the objectification, abuse, unequal pay, and double standards for women is fundamentally a cultural sin, then you know in your heart what wrath means. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when your spouse, sister, or mother is passed over for a promotion. If we believe that abusive reverse mortgages, predatory scams and financial schemes, rampant elder abuse, underfunded and understaffed nursing homes for those who cannot afford private pay, and disrespect for our elders and elderly is a cultural sin, then you know the wrath of God. The Wrath of God is the feeling you get when you cannot get proper care for your parent or sibling. If we believe that having ethics matters and that creating alternative ethics that makes everything okay is wrong, then you feel the core of the wrath of God. If we believe that outlawing immigrants, dehumanizing other religions, rejecting the refugee, and building walls between God’s children based on race and language is a sin, then we know the wrath of God. Maybe we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God anyway for our slumber and complacency. This is not however a time to blame, but it is a time to waken the sleeping Church. That choked up feeling, fear, anger we feel in our guts as all that is good and right and Scared in the world is put at risk is God’s alarm clock inside of us. We feel God’s wrath and it is Holy. As your minster for pastoral care and outreach and mission, these two job responsibilities often merge as these cultural sins cause our own members’ pain. As inadequate healthcare, mental health support, elder abuse, and immigration worries bring us and you to tears, my call here to care for your outreach work and your spiritual care merge. Usually I preach pastoral sermons about the love of God, the peace of God, the acceptance of God through Jesus Christ, but today (While all of that remains true… truer than ever…and my next sermon will probably be again about loving our enemies and I might could even sing again in my next sermon…), I am called by my ordination vow to help us reclaim and awaken to the wrath we know in our hearts comes from God. Wrath is, after all, extreme and Holy, DIVINE vexation, frustration, and anger. If I don’t preach this today, then I am not worthy of the title of The Reverend Jake Joseph. If I don’t speak the truth, take away this title. New Lights, Christians, Church, Friends, Leaders of the Great Awakening… of 2017, today we start here in Fort Collins, Colorado… like what was started in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1730, but this will be the First Progressive Great Awakening. “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to the father.” Salty Christians, what does that mean? Historically, in the text, it means those with a unique flavor who are effective at their mission of preserving and transforming. I especially love this passage because of what else salty means as an adjective in modern English parlance. To be salty means to be irritated and irked… vexed! This is what our scripture is calling from us today! We must harness the wrath of God for the good of the word in order to lead. Other branches of Christianity have given-up their saltiness or capitulated to power, and have therefore given-up their claim on Christ’s message and hidden their flame. Others have decided that Christianity is simply a vehicle for political oppression of the weak and powerless. We are called to be salty, flaming Christians! We must again be new lights in a world of darkness, newly awakened as others are now going or being put to sleep. Now, since we are already talking about progressive Christian wrath and cultural sin, why don’t I also say a word about what Progressive Christian temptation looks like? I mean, might as well go all in! This very likely is a once in a career type sermon. The first temptation I call, “The Snooze button.” I mean, who doesn’t like to go back to sleep? When confronted with a Great Awakening of God, who wouldn’t instinctively hit the snooze button!? I confess that I LOVE the snooze button on my phone alarm. We see this in effect in the Bible with Jonah and his reluctance as a prophet, Paul before his conversation when he was Saul, and even with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (take this cup). SNOOZE! God, can’t we just hit Snooze for another decade or millennia? Can’t we just hot the snooze for the next four years? The first instinct is to ignore the fierce urgency of now, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and LBJ called it. That is a grave temptation. The second temptation I call, “The roll over and pass the buck.” The other temptation, and I can attest to this and am also guilty of it, is when the alarm goes off, you roll over in bed and tell your spouse or partner, “hey honey [yawn] go let the dog out.” Then you pass back out. “Hey honey, go get the kids ready for school.” “Hey honey, go attend to the issue I don’t want to deal with right now,” and I am going to hit the snooze button for a while. Amen? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Does this sound like anyone’s spouse or loved one? This is the temptation, when you see an announcement about a march for social justice or have an idea for action that must be taken (when God sends you an alarm), you email Betsy or me from the Outreach and Mission Board and write with lots of exclamation marks, “Somebody should be doing something about this!!!! The church should organize this march!!! I am indignant that you are not leading this charge!” I have been getting around five ten of these emails a day from you and they all center on the phase, “someone else should, but I am too busy to take any leadership right now.” You should be doing something about this. If I turned all of my attention to organizing all of the marches for you, you would have no pastoral care or communications or sermons from me. So when the alarm goes off, don’t pass the responsibility, but take action and provide leadership. An email to the board or me is a good start, and please keep emailing us, but it is sort of the “roll over and pass the buck” and go back to sleep response to God’s wake-up call. Plymouth, we are called to be new lights once again. The alarm of grace and action that stirred so many years ago is sounding again. We are called to this time for waking-up. We are called to this time of being salty, whole and H.O.LY. irritated Christians for God. It is time for the to waken from our sleep, risk losing our endowment mattresses and our pillows of peace, and our blankets of blandness. The buck stops here. We cannot roll over and say that this morning task is someone else’s responsibility. We cannot hit the snooze button. We are the leaders we have been waiting for and that God, Jesus Christ, the universe has been looking for. It is morning in the church and midnight in America. Today is the first day of the Progressive Great Awakening. We are the New Lights for a new time. Shine on. Amen. © 2017 Jake Joseph, all rights reserved. Please contact jake@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit use [i] Jonathan Edwards. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page.
Jake preaches on Matthew 2:1-12 for Epiphany Sunday.
AuthorThe Rev. Jake Miles Joseph ("just Jake"), Associate Minister, came to Plymouth in 2014 having served in the national setting of the UCC on the board of Justice & Witness Ministries, the Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and the Chairperson of the Council for Youth and Young Adult Ministries (CYYAM). Jake has a passion for ecumenical work and has worked in a wide variety of churches and traditions. Read more about him on our staff page. |
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