Psalm 24
7th Sunday in Pentecost Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson If you noticed that the hymn we just sang is one we sing in Advent you are very perceptive! And have a great memory! It is also an adaptation of our scripture for today, Psalm 24. Listen now to the psalm from the Common English translation of the Bible. I have made a few tweaks for inclusive language. Psalm 24 The earth is the LORD's and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants too. 2 Because God is the one who established it on the seas; God set it firmly on the waters. 3 Who can ascend the [Holy One's] mountain? Who can stand in [God’s] holy sanctuary? 4 Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart; the one who hasn't made false promises, the one who hasn't sworn dishonestly. 5 That kind of person receives blessings from the [Holy One] and righteousness from the God who saves. 6 And that's how things are with the generation that seeks the [Holy One] -- that seeks the face of Jacob's God. 7 Mighty gates: lift up your heads! Ancient doors: rise up high! So the glorious [ruler] can enter! 8 Who is this glorious [ruler]? The LORD--strong and powerful! The LORD--powerful in battle! 9 Mighty gates: lift up your heads! Ancient doors: rise up high! So the glorious [ruler] can enter! 10 Who is this glorious [ruler]? The [Holy One] of heavenly forces—this One is the glorious ruler! [Forever!] (Selah) - Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 20131-20139). The earth belongs to the God the Creator! The triumphant beginning of this ancient song was most likely sung antiphonally in festival worship. You can hear all the call and response lines…..Who can ascend the Holy One’s sacred mountain?....The one with clean hands and a pure heart….Lift up your heads, mighty gates! ….Ancient doors, rise up! Who is the king/ruler of glory? …. It is God, strong and mighty! This was – is – a majestic hymn parts of which were handed down from pre-exilic days in Israel when there was a temple with mighty gates to approach. And parts of which came from post-exilic days when the people had heard so much from the prophets about how clean and humble hearts, integrity in action following God’s ways of justice, were much more important than burnt offerings in a temple that has been destroyed by conquerors. The psalm also reminds me of the story in 2 Samuel of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem from Judah after he and the forces of Israel soundly defeated the Philistines through the power and instruction of God. If you remember the Ark was the portable residence of God which also held the Torah given to Moses. It traveled with the people of Israel wherever they went. The story goes that the Ark was put with great ceremony and care in an ox cart and taken from town to town before it was given permanent residence in Jerusalem, the City of David the King. Along the way, David led the procession, literally dancing in great abandon, before the Ark of the Covenant, accompanied by a great crowd of musicians on zithers and harps and tambourines and cymbals. Not a stately, kingly thing to do, perhaps. But a joyous, devoted, “wear your heart on your sleeve” celebration of your faith kind of thing to do. A celebration of the God who has appointed you the ruler and brought you victoriously through great battles kind of thing. When the procession reaches Jerusalem, it seems that David’s wife, Saul’s daughter, Michal, looks out the palace window and sees her husband dancing with abandon before the ark and she is scandalized! Not the way a king should behave! One translation says, “she lost all respect for him.” Another say, “she despised him in her heart.” Too much, too showy! Too religious? Have you ever felt like Michal? Something was too showy or too “religious” for you? Kind of embarrassing? Or perhaps, you find yourself not quite owning up to being a Christian as the source of your social justice passion when you are with other progressives because Christianity has such a bad reputation from extreme far right Christians. Perhaps you are afraid someone will say, “You’re not a Christian, are you?” Or perhaps you confess, “yes, I am, but not THAT kind of Christian.” “Well, what kind? And why?” Then you feel tongue-tied. You are not alone….Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, Connie Schultz, who writes for USA TODAY, is married to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and is part of our UCC family, wrote in a recent column, “My faith continues to be a source of challenge and comfort, but I find myself defending it more these days when in the company of fellow progressives. This is an understandable development in our country, perhaps, but sometimes it puts me in a mood.”[i] I have experienced this mood. Have you? Part anger, part embarrassment, frustration! My faith is a comfort and a challenge. I want to wear it on my sleeve and experience its deepest mysteries, its high and lows, and be ready to speak about it in any situation, to even express my joy and relief in its comfort to the point of dancing if the situation calls for it. Bodily expression of faith such as King David expressed was never really part of the faith tradition I was grew up in, though we were constantly challenged to verbally share our faith, “to witness.” This always felt a bit awkward because I thought it was about sharing something intellectually doctrinal that I didn’t think I could articulate. I usually just chose to be nice to my friends and invite them to church if it seemed right. But inviting someone to church in the 60’s and early 70’s in the Bible belt was not particularly scandalous. Now we are being called, as Schultz comments, to speak our faith in interfaith settings, in our families that hold views of Christianity across the spectrum from left to right and to use our bodies and our words to demonstrate for justice. If you are ever uncomfortable, you are in good company. When I read Psalm 24 over and over again this week, I was struck by the psalmist’s pure bodily joy in the goodness of God and creation, by the deep bodily longing to get right with God in heart and action in order to stand in ultimate trust before the Divine, by the giant, humongous amount of joy in welcoming God, the glorious ruler and maker of all the earth and the cosmos into the presence of the people in worship. And I longed to have my faith renewed to experience these things. It is easy to be beaten down by life to the point that worship is lackluster and just kind of washes over us as we go through the motions. Or to feel constrained in sharing our faith because of the ways Christianity has been falsely used to oppress others. Thank goodness that in times like these, when we do not have the energy to muster up a dance, even in our hearts, when we feel our silenced by our fears of being misunderstood, God receives us with open arms, anyway! Thank goodness…because it is only though continuing to intentionally show up time and again in God’s presence in good seasons and tough seasons, that we have the opportunity to be surprised once again by faith that encompasses our whole beings, body, mind, heart and soul. This is the invitation of Psalm 24. To show up with our whole being, not just our heads, but our hearts, our arms, our legs, our voices, our eyes and ears, our gut instincts in the presence of the Holy. We show up for the sheer joy of being alive, of just being. Of “oneing” with God as the 13th century mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote. Julian was a prophet before her time testifying to “a true oneing between the divine and the human. She writes that when human nature was created, it was “rightfully one-ed with the creator, who is Essential Nature …that is, God. This is why there is absolutely nothing separating the Divine soul from the Human soul…in endless love we are held and made whole. In endless love we are led and protected and will never be lost.”[ii] Julian’s entire life from childhood until her death was encompassed by the Black Death pandemic of the Middle Ages. She lost her family to the plague. She knew suffering and “saw a great oneing between Christ and us” because of he knew pain as we do.[iii] We are one-ed with God in joy and in suffering, held in love. I agree with her. And her insights illuminate the invitation of Psalm 24 to invite God so deeply into our beings that we are transformed, made clean, forgiven and can dance - in body or soul or both – for joy. Psalm 24 invites us to show up again and again to wear our faith scandalously on our sleeves for the world to see just as King David before us, just as our contemporary UCC sister, Connie Schultz. I want to end with another hearing the psalm again from the book, Psalms for Praying, by Nan Merrill, whose interpretation of the psalms helps us to hear beyond the ancient language of kings and winning battles to how the Spirit works in our interior lives. Psalm 24 The earth is yours, O Giver of Life, in all its fulness and glory, the world and all those who dwell therein; For You have founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers. Who shall ascend your hill, O Gracious One? and who shall stand in your holy place? All who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, nor make vows deceitfully. All those will be blessed by the Heart of Love, and renewed through forgiveness. Such is the promise to those who seek Love’s face. Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the Compassionate One may come in. Who is the Compassionate One? The Beloved, strong and steadfast, the Beloved, firm and sure! Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the Compassionate One may come in! Who is this compassionate One? The Beloved Heart of your heart, Life of your life, this is the Compassionate One.[iv] Truly, it is God’s intention that we are “one-ed” in Love. That we share the joy and justice of this “one-ing” with all whom we encounter, from those most intimate with us to those we may only brush by in acquaintance. Are you ready to share your faith, even in the tough situations? Are you ready to sing it? Are you ready to dance for joy? Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. [i] Tweet from @Connie Schultz; her full article can be found at usatoday.com. [ii] Julian of Norwich, Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic and Beyond, Matthew Fox, (iUniverse: Bloomington, IN, 2020, 62). [iii] Ibid. [iv] “Psalm 24,” Psalms for Praying; An Invitation to Wholeness, Nan Merrill, (Continuum: NY, NY, 1998, 41-42). AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
0 Comments
Mark 4: 25-41
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Fort Collins, CO The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson 35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" NRSV 35Later that day, when evening came, Jesus said to them, "Let's cross over to the other side of the lake."36They left the crowd and took him in the boat just as he was. Other boats followed along. 37Gale-force winds arose, and waves crashed against the boat so that the boat was swamped. 38But Jesus was in the rear of the boat, sleeping on a pillow. They woke him up and said, "Teacher, don't you care that we're drowning?" 39He got up and gave orders to the wind, and he said to the lake, "Silence! Be still!" The wind settled down and there was a great calm. 40Jesus asked them, "Why are you frightened? Don't you have faith yet?" 41Overcome with awe, they said to each other, "Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!" Bible, Common English with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39334-39340). Kindle Edition. I knew when I read this story again that I had preached on it before. So I looked back at my sermons. Yep! Twice before in the six and a half years I have been at Plymouth. Most likely before that at one or two of the other churches I have served. And I distinctly remember an intergenerational Biblical storytelling event I led many years ago when a wonderfully, feisty and well-spoken, tiny and very blonde four year old – Helena – played Jesus in the storm-tossed boat. She stilled the waves with no fear and no uncertain command! In 2015, this was my text here at Plymouth just days after the shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC where nine African-American members were shot by a young white man interrupting a Bible study. In June 2018 when we read and considered this text together, there was a volcano in Hawaii erupting and destroying homes, huge floods in Vietnam killing people, a large, fatal mining accident in China, a terrorist bomb in Ethiopia that killed over 150, conflict in Syria and at the border of Gaza, the worst e coli outbreak in many years in the US and political turmoil due to our government’s administration. Now today, we hear the story of Jesus stilling the storm again as we prepare to re-open our church building for worship after a pandemic shut-down we could not have even imagined 3-6 years ago. Not to mention the political and societal events of the last 16 months. So many “storms.” It seems, there are always “storms” in to ride out in life. No wonder this story shows up not only in 3 out of four canonical gospels. The older I get the more I realize that there is not as much smooth sailing in life as I imagined there would be when I was younger. It seems that more often than not, we are all just holding on for the ride! Like the disciples in that storm-tossed boat on that large, large lake called the Sea of Galilee. Do you think they argued about waking up Jesus? “Let him sleep! He’s been teaching and preaching all day standing in this rocking boat! So many crowds. Everyone wanting healing! He is so tired. We can handle this storm!” “I don’t know, its getting really bad … we are starting to take on water – fast! I think we need help!” “Nah, we just have to steer carefully….besides what can he do? He’s not a fisherman.” “He can help bail!” The tension grows and the storm worsens until even the most seasoned of the fishermen are afraid and they all cry out, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are drowning?” And Jesus is suddenly awake. I think we tell this story time and again because time and again we need to hear Jesus words. We need to hear him shout out to the storm, “Silence! Be still!” or more literally from the Greek, “Be Silent! Be Muzzled!” “Hush!” And the story tells us there was a great calm, a dead calm. Whew…..let’s just take a deep breath….then let it all out….Can we stay here for a moment in the calm? Personally, I would like to stay for much more than a moment….how about staying in this calm, breathing deeply, out of danger, protected in the presence of Jesus’ powerful stilling of the storm for a really long time? I need to catch my breath big time! How about you? That is the beauty of story and why stories like this one bear repeating time after time. We can always come back to this healing moment. We can read or tell ourselves this story every day and come back to this moment of Jesus’ stilling, calming presence in the storms of our lives and catch our breath. We live in the middle of many exterior storms in life, the storms of politics and pandemics, the storms of racism and poverty and gun violence, the storms of conflict in our families and in our workplaces, on the playground, in school. However, I will venture to say that the storms we carry around inside our minds and hearts are even more frightening and exhausting – the storms of fear and anxiety, of worry, of being overly competitive, of greed, of insecurity, of seeking to control things that we really have no control over. The inside storms interact with the exterior storms and cause us even more pain and suffering. How often do you feel that you are living in a whirlwind? So come back to this moment when Jesus says, “Silence! Be Still! Enough already!” Breathe deep and let your hands unclench from the sides of the boat or the oar you are holding to help row the boat or the rudder to steer the direction or the rope for the sail that guides the power momentum of the wind. You don’t have to let go of those things completely, just relax the white-knuckled grip…for just a moment and catch your breath in the calm of Jesus’ powerful presence. And listen. To the quiet. To the gentle lapping of water against the boat. To the breathing of those around you, you are not alone. To your own beating heart. Just listen and breathe for a time. We have been through such tumultuous times together in this little boat we call the church. We have weathered extreme changes, tacking right and left abruptly, to stay on course. Bailing water so as not to sink. Adapting to all the changes and confronting the conflicts of the last 16 months. We have done well…. And let’s not forget why…Jesus, God- With-Us, is in our boat. At times like these it is tempting to push ahead with the adrenaline panic of the storm we have just come through. But we do not need to do that! Because God-With-Us is present and brings us calm. We are still in the boat together out in the middle of the lake. We still have to reach the other side safely. This is true. There is so much planning to do as we re-open our building, as we learn to be church in person again, as we incorporate all we have learned by being forced to do church, to be church in new ways. So much planning as we hire and call new staff, prepare for them to come. Planning as we incorporate online worship with live worship, welcoming new friends who have joined us through the internet. Planning to do as we implement the goals and tasks of our new strategic plan that calls us to outreach and mission on unknown shores. I am tempted to be completely overwhelmed. But Jesus is in the boat! Calming the waves and the wind. And in the quiet I hear him say to me, to us, “Why are you frightened? Don't you have faith yet? You have come through the storms and I was with you the whole time. Can you rest in, take heart in, trust in God’s presence?” This is an image I will literally take with me into my work as we move ahead as church. I need this image to calm the interior storms in my heart and mind and soul knowing I have little to no control over the exterior storms of life. We are headed to new shores of mission as a faith community just as the disciples in the boat were headed with Jesus to the country of the Gentiles where he would proclaim God’s good news of love and forgiveness and demonstrate God’s healing power. God has work for us to do, but we cannot do it all on our own power. We need God’s powerful calming presence to help us steer the boat, to remind us to breath and not to bicker with one another, to have each other’s backs as we engage the work of God in new ways. We need to hear the message, “Do not be afraid. Have faith. Trust in my presence.” There is a beautifully, poetic song titled, “The Wood Song” written by Emily Saliers, one of the Indie rock duo, “The Indigo Girls.” I think it is a song about faith communities and I know that Emily was steeped in such communities growing up as the daughter of two faithful people who I had the privilege to know when I lived in Atlanta, GA. One was a librarian who led wonderful reading hours for children and one a seminary professor who taught worship and liturgy. The imagery in “The Wood Song” is about being in a boat together during stormy times and the refrain goes like this: “But the wood is tired and the wood is old And we'll make it fine if the weather holds But if the weather holds we'll have missed the point That's where I need to go.”[i] “That where I need to go” to that place of faith and trust where I can hear the voice of Jesus, God-With-Us, say “Silence! Peace! Be Still. Have faith.” I think you and I know that the weather will not hold – at least for long. Yet there is calm in the midst of the storm and we will make it to the other side, just holding on the ride, since we have God-With-Us in the boat. Are you with me? Amen. ©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. [i] https://genius.com/Indigo-girls-the-wood-song-lyrics AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here. Psalm 138 2nd Sunday of Pentecost Outdoor Worship in the Park Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson Psalm 138 I give thanks to you with all my heart, [Holy One]. I sing your praise before all other gods. I bow toward your holy temple and thank your name for your loyal love and faithfulness because you have made your name and word greater than everything else. On the day I cried out, you answered me. You encouraged me with inner strength. Let all the earth's rulers give thanks to you, [O God,] when they hear what you say. Let them sing about [Your] ways because the [Your] glory and [goodness] is so great! Even though the [Holy One] is high, she can still see the lowly, but God keeps his distance from the arrogant. Whenever I am in deep trouble, you make me live again; you send your power against my enemies' wrath; you save me with your strong hand. [God] will do all this for my sake. Your faithful love lasts forever, [Holy One]! Don't let go of what your hands have made. Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 23853-23867). C --------------------------- Look around you! Take a good, long look! Look at all your friends and Plymouth family. Here we are together again – finally! Thanks be to God! The ancient Israelite poet who wrote Psalm 138 in thanksgiving for the Israelites being delivered from exile and their return home to Jerusalem and their beloved temple. We, too, have been a people in exile and isolation from our beloved community. Jerusalem did not look the same. It had to be rebuilt, literally. And community had to be rebuilt with those who had been left in the ruins of Jerusalem to survive and those taken away to Babylon into exile. Like the ancients we, too, stand on the brink of rebuilding. We come back together after living through so much unexpected trauma and grief. Some of us have been touched personally by Covid 19. Some of us have not. Yet we all hold the collective sadness and fear from this frightening time. Some of us experienced job insecurity, perhaps a lay-off or loss of a job. We have just experienced the fear in the pit of our stomachs of “what if” that were me and the sorrow for those who have been out of work. We all lived through the polarity and division of the election season. We all lived through the gut-punch of seeing George Floyd’s death and the ensuing reality of the devastation brought on by ignoring white privilege, white body supremacy and what it has done and continues to do to the soul of our nation. We all lived through season of the ash falling on our heads from the largest wildfire in Colorado history that was just over those hills. It has been a hot mess, people!! As joyous as our reunion is today, these months of exiles have taken their toll on us as individuals and as community. We may be tempted to rush back to what we thought was normal as a way of dealing with our grief and anxiety. And then be disappointed that it is not the same and can’t ever be just like before the pandemic. We may be feeling exhausted and anxious, unwilling to jump back into what we think used to be normal. The time of isolation and slower activity has taught us that we may not want to be as crazily over-committed as perhaps we once were. I have heard friends and family members say that they are wandering who their community is after the isolation. Is it the same as it was before? Will they take up all the same friendships as before? What are the thoughts or feelings wondering around in your minds and hearts this morning along with the joy and gratitude of being back together? Though our psalm is written in first person “I” statements, the poet is speaking for the community. I think the psalmist’s words hold so much wisdom for us right now as we begin gathering after these long 15 months of exile from being in person. Instead of just telling you what they mean to me I am going to invite us all the spend some time with the psalmist’s words individually as we sit here together in community. I will read the psalm three times and invite us to sit in moments of silence after each time to let the words and images work on our souls. This is an ancient spiritual practice called Lectio Divina or contemplative reading. We will sit for just one minute of silence after each reading – for some that will be enough, for those used to this practice it will seem short. In the silence, let the outside sounds flow over you like the breeze…let your distracting thoughts flow up into the sky and your breath return you to the psalm. I give thanks to you with all my heart, [Holy One]. I sing your praise before all other gods, [things that distract me from following you.] I bow toward you, [here in the holy temple of your creation] and thank your name for your loyal love and faithfulness because you have made your name and word greater than everything else. On the day I cried out, you answered me. You encouraged me with inner strength. Let all the earth's rulers give thanks to you, [O God,] when they hear what you say. Let them sing about [Your] ways because the [Your] glory and [goodness] is so great! Even though the [Holy One] is high, she can still see the lowly, but the arrogant distance themselves from God’s presence. Whenever I am in deep trouble, you make me live again; you send your power against my enemies' wrath; [against the fears that assail me;] you save me with your strong hand. [God]will do all this for my sake. Your faithful love lasts forever, [Holy One]! Don't let go of what your hands have made. Questions for contemplation in silence after each reading.
“Don’t let go, Holy One, of what your hands have made.” This was the phrase that jumped out at me the first time I read the psalm. In a different translation it reads, “Finish in us the good work that you started.” My friends, as we face the dangers of history – and we have faced them this year and they will continue to confront us – may we hold fast to all the good works that God has started and will start in us. We are what God’s hands have made. We are all made in God’s image…the whole of creation is made by God and holds God’s divine image in every blade of grass, every leaf, every bird, squirrel, bug, and garter snake. God will not let go of us. Let us not let go of God and of one another as we rebuild our community in these new times. Amen. ©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted only with permission. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
John 15:9-17
Plymouth Congregational, UCC Fort Collins Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson Our scripture today comes from the Gospel of John…it is part of Jesus’ long conversation and prayer with his disciples at the Last Supper. words of instruction and love which foreshadow his death. We hear the historical Jesus speaking to his disciples amid the impending crisis of his arrest. We hear Jesus speaking through the gospel writer of John to a late first century Jewish Christian community that was besieged with persecution from other Jews as well as the Roman empire. And we hear the Spirit of God speaking through Jesus, through the gospel writer, to us on this May morning, to our 21st century Body of Christ, Plymouth UCC. Let us listen through the filter of our strengths and struggles, our gifts and challenges, our fears, our hopes and dreams for the opportunities of God’s work through us. As God, our loving Father and Mother, has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept God’s commandments and abide in God’s love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from God. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that God will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. For the Word of God in scripture; for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us …. Thanks be to God. ---------- Do you feel chosen by Jesus to be God’s friend? To abide in God’s love and joy in such complete fullness that it bears the fruit of transformation in your life and in the lives of those around you? This is not a life just for saints and holy hermits. This is the life that God has for all of us to if we keep commandments of Jesus to love one another. Jesus tells us in our scripture, when we love one another, heeding all Jesus taught us about love, we are his friends and thus, friends of God. This love is reflexive, reciprocal, regenerative. As friends of the loving God, we are empowered to follow Jesus’ commands to choose love. After the death of my mom in 2014, I was visiting my dad and had time to talk with him about death and life after death and heaven. Many of you know he was an ordained pastor and preacher, a theology professor. As we sat in the local coffee shop in his little town in Missouri, he confessed to me, “I do not know about heaven. But what I hope is that after death I will learn to love as God loves.” Perhaps this is the aspiration that Jesus has for us, as he did for his first century disciples and friends. To love as God loves. What might that look like? I think that is the invitation here. It begins with knowing we are “chosen.” I struggle with that. I’m just an ordinary person, one among SO many, why would God notice me? Yet Jesus tells us we are each chosen to be friends. The idea is bigger than my brain can conceive. I can only tell you that I had an experience this week taught me about “being chosen.” I sat down to practice, emphasis on that word for I am a true beginner, to practice centering prayer. I got settled and centered. Then our dog, Bridey, stuck her nose in my lap, right in my open hands. I tried to gently push her away and stay centered. She did it again with her big purple toy bone. Again I tried to disengage… she persisted and finally draped herself across my lap putting her face in mine with “kisses.” I think God is like this… choosing us time and again… in our face at unexpected times with love…that we might first see as distraction. It might even be in the middle of some spiritual practice that you think you should “do” to get close to God. God is always with us, sometimes distracting and disrupting like a loving, playful dog – or cat – calling you to love. Jesus says that we become friends by keeping the commands to love. In the midst of this we know we are chosen. It’s a bit circuitous. Looking concretely to examples of friendship in my life…the most life-giving friends, those relatively few people that are my closest, most tried and true friends, the one who have been with me through the nitty gritty of life and have loved me through it all … I have found in true friendship I seek to take on the best characteristics of my friends. If we take on the best characteristics of our true friends in this life, then as friends of God through Jesus, might we take on the characteristics of the loving God who has chosen us? My dad longed to love as God loves, which is a huge mystery that we will never finish exploring in this life or the next. I wonder if after 80+ years of practicing friendship with God through following Jesus he was closer than he thought. I am reminded of another surprising experience of being chosen to love as God loves. In the spring of 2009 I was chosen by the pastor emeritus of the church I served in Denver to be part of the Rocky Mountain Conference Global Missions Team mission trip to Venezuela. Very early on a frosty Sunday morning in April, I met the other nine members mission trip team at DIA to set off for Miracaibo, VZ to partner in mission with our Venezuelan denominational partners, the United Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Venezeula or in the Spanish acronym, the UEPV. After being prayed over and anointed with oil by this same elder stateman pastor right at the United ticket counter, we took off. During our layover in Miami we walked from our gate to the International Concourse through a large airport art display. In huge glass cases there were six-to-seven-foot-high letters made of brilliantly colored flowers, like something off a New Year’s Day Rose Bowl parade float. They spelled out, “All You Need is Love”… Prophetic words. Late that night we were met at the Maracaibo airport by our Venezuelan partners, included their bishop Gamaliel Lugos. It was a swarm of joy as people rushed to carry our bags and help us into cars. Over the course of the next ten days people of the UEPV, never failed to amaze me with their deep and enthusiastic engagement with life lived in and through the love of God. They lived large in a country riddled with poverty and injustice. Their love of Christ was inseparable from their political commitment to building a new world of justice in their country. They lived out Jesus’ preferential option for the poor and they were raising up women as leaders, working for women’s rights. They seemed to abide in God’s love to such an extent that joy was their MO, their modus operandi, each moment of their lives. As friends of God, they literally lived by the motto, “we will struggle, but we will not die.” The bulk of our time was spent in the small town of Ospino in the foothills of the Andes. We stayed in a guest house, but our real home was a few blocks away in the small house of Gladys and Omar Gonzales, who hosted each of our meals. They gathered teams of people to prepare meals for our group of 10 or so as well as 6-8 Venezuelans who came from several areas in VZ to help with the week’s designated work project and to worship with us in the evening. They fed us using fresh fruit and vegetables from the Gonzales’ open air market next door, grilling arrepahas on their George Foreman grill, roasting meat in their backyard. Omar and Gladys became for us un familia, family. They laid down their lives for us. You do not have to die for to lay down your life for a friend. You do have to open your heart so wide that life might not always be convenient for you as you offer hospitality and love to others, but it will be joyful! Two things I experienced in VZ through the ministry of the UEPV opened my eyes and heart to an expanded vision of being chosen as a friend by God’s love. The first was the circumstances of our work project on the finca, the farm owned by the denomination in Ospina. It was not a working farm but more of a community center for ministry. It had two or three buildings surrounded by a large amount of land…that was growing increasingly smaller because of squatters, people so poor that they grabbed any small piece of land they could to build shacks and grow a few vegetables. The shacks would literally spring up overnight. The UEPV could have legally prosecuted these people who stole the land from the finca. But they decided it was part of their ministry of Christ’s love to let the squatters have the land, to engage them as neighbors and invite them into their God’s community. A sacrificial decision, laying down their lives for friends. Ironically, our work project was to help build a wall around the remaining land so that the UEPV could continue their work of community ministry. That was the stated project and progress was made, however, the real work was made manifest in the smiles, laughter, …the halting sentences of banter and praise for a new post hole just dug made across the language barriers. Often there were songs echoing across the field strewn with mangoes falling off the trees and the sound children playing an impromptu baseball game with the mangoes too green to eat. The second experience was the nightly worship at Iglesia Pentecostal de Los Olivos, the local UEPV church. This church had been taken out of the denomination by a fundamentalist pastor. He was now gone and the church, much to the relief of most of its members, was returning to the denomination. Our presence was the catalyst to invite UEPV folks from around VZ to join in the celebration of reunion and to commission new pastors for the church. Pastors brought their people from little churches in surrounding towns to welcome Los Olivos back to the UEPV vision of working for the poor and women’s rights, for working ecumenically with other denominations, and for creating indigenous Venezuelan worship using their songs and liturgies. The love in the very lively worship was palpable and we were embraced by it. On the last night they actually commissioned our beloved hosts, Gladys and Omar as the new lay pastors. Each night Bishop Lugos spoke, reminding us that God is not only with us, God is in us, abiding in us, just as we abide in God. At the end of the service he would ask us to pass the peace, saying, ”I Love YOU.” It was intimidating at first. I didn’t really know these people or even know all the people on the mission team well. I didn’t speak Spanish. Yet I had to plunge in saying in English, I love you, I love you, … in Spanish, te quiero, te quiero. And it wasn’t fake or mushy or overly sentimental or even awkward. I had for a brief time been in the nitty gritty of life, with these folks, meals shared, walls built, prayers prayed, abiding in love across the barriers of language and culture in God’s love. It was true and real. If we were all together in our Plymouth sanctuary I would invite us break out of our white, Protestant, intellectual selves and try this practice. I think you would find God’s love in your face as viscerally as the dog kisses that interrupted my prayer time. My friends, I tell you this longish story today to invite you to take the risk of knowing you, too, are chosen by God. Reach out. Accept the invitation. It will take you to some strange and wonderful and hard places. And it will be worth it. What is calling to you through the ministries of Plymouth that will empower and nurture your friendship with God? Jesus says to us, “I have chosen you in God’s love to be friends of God. Keep my commands to love and you will discover, even in this life, in your heart of hearts what it can means to love as God loves.” Amen. ©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
4th Sunday of Easter; John 10.11-15
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Fort Collins The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. -NRSV The Good Shepherd is a familiar and comforting image for God and for Jesus. Oddly so, because how many of us have contact with sheep and shepherds on a regular basis? When I looked up sheep farming in America, I found a website, sheep101.info, with this information: According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, there are 101,387 sheep farms in the United States. Large sheep operations, which own 80 percent of the sheep, are located primarily in the Western United States. Texas, California, and Colorado have the most sheep.[i] Little did I know…I am too much of a city dweller. Perhaps, some of you come from sheep farming families here in this state and you are more familiar with real sheep and real shepherds. I had never been up close and personal with them until I traveled to Ireland and Scotland in 2009. I found sheep everywhere as I traveled the country roads or hiked the moors and hills. The image of God as shepherd is ancient in our Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Psalm 23, possibly composed around 1000 BCE, is so familiar with that many of us can recite it from memory. The prophet, Ezekiel, was prophesying in the late 6th century BCE. In Ezekiel, chapter 34, the prophet speaks for God, shaming and condemning the false/bad shepherds who have led the people astray. Then God says: As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. … I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, …[ii] You can hear the echoes with the psalm and with John’s passage. (Back to Me)The Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, Moses and David, the young king, were all shepherds. It is in this tradition that Jesus says in the gospel of John, “I am the good shepherd.” New Testament scholars tell us that the Greek word “good,” kalos, actually has a larger connotation that just “good” as in “does a good job.” It means “model.” “I am the “model shepherd.” As God is shepherd, so is Jesus who models the very essence of being caretaker of the people. As caretaker, as shepherd, Jesus is gathering God’s people together under the overflowing love and protection of God. Jesus, as shepherd, is willing to lay down his life for God’s people. Since our text is from chapter 10 of the gospel, you can hear the writer’s foreshadowing of Jesus death which comes in chapter 19. The literary and theological metaphor of God and Jesus in God’s image as shepherd, of God’s people as sheep, of the threats and dangers to God’s people, can be spun out in many ways. A pastor could preach a series of sermons on this metaphor. The very word, “pastor,” comes from a 14th century French word meaning shepherd and is related to the word pasture, where the sheep are fed. So what do we make of God as the heavenly shepherd and Jesus, God’s word made flesh, the shepherd who laid down his life for the God’s people? Who are the flock, the sheep? All people? The church? If a pastor is the shepherd, are the parishioners the sheep? Some folks would object to being called sheep because sheep have a reputation for being not so smart! I read in one commentary that this reputation comes from cattle ranchers. Cattle are herded by being prodded literally and vocally from behind. If you stand behind a sheep and yell, it will simply go around and get behind you. Sheep want to be led from in front. They want to follow the voice of the shepherd they know and trust or the shepherd’s whistle to the sheep dogs. It is only when they are ill that they follow a stranger’s voice. Or refuse to follow and wander off into ravines or fall from a height. I happen to know as a pastor that some people like to be led with encouragement from in front, and some people from encouragement behind, and some from alongside. So, the sheep metaphor is definitely not literal when it comes to people! Here is what I’d like us to consider today …. if the Lord is our shepherd…if as Jesus says in John, he is the model shepherd who will willingly and with no coercion lay down his life for the flock…if we as the church are God’s flock – and I mean “we”, pastors included and not set aside in an elevated position – then, are we listening to the shepherd’s call? And if so, how? Because the shepherd’s call leads us home, even thru dark valleys to a place of care and rest, flowing streams of love and green pastures of food for our souls. It leads us away from dangerous pitfalls and into the safety of transparent and loving community. In these tense and fractious times, we need to listen carefully to God’ call to community as we worship, as we meet on Zoom, as we pray for one another, as we listen to the guidance of our strategic planning team. We need to do our individual work of listening so that God can be gathering and leading us all in community. We need to be assuming the best of one another in this exhausting time of pandemic when we all have frayed nerves and are glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel but can’t quite reach it yet. Otherwise, we will be like scattered sheep, wandering off on our own. God, the protector and gatherer of God’s people is calling us together through the voice of Jesus and through God’s Holy Spirit to new and renewed community as we begin to come out of isolation into safe gatherings and as we continue to grow our work together building God’s realm here and now in northern Colorado. When I was in Scotland in 2009, I stayed for almost three weeks on a tidal island, the Isle of Erraid, in the Inner Hebrides with a spiritual community connected to the Findhorn community of northern Scotland. This community lived in stone lighthouse keeper houses, working and praying together and offering hospitality to people coming from the mainland for retreat. It was early October. And while I was there the time came for the annual sheep round up. As I hiked the island, I had seen many, many sheep. In my inexperience, I didn’t realize or take note that they were all part of the same flock. They belonged to a shepherd named John who lived nearby on the Isle of Mull. It was time to gather the sheep for yearly inoculations and for the lambs to be sold at market. The people of the Erraid community gathered one morning to help the shepherd round up the sheep by walking the 462 acres of the island, hills and bog land and beaches, in groups that herded any stray sheep to the center valley where the sheep dogs and the shepherd could gather them safely into the flock. Before we left, we held what they called an “attunement.” For me, it was prayer. We stood in silence in the lovely chill of the morning air with the sun just beginning to warm things a bit. Gradually people began to offer up affirmations, “prayers”. “May we all go in safety. May the sheep be safely gathered in. May the mothers be comforted as they are separated from their lambs for the first time.” I was in awe…a little stunned that we were praying for sheep and then ashamed that I was stunned. Why wouldn’t we pray for sheep as creatures of God and the source of the shepherd’s livelihood? Then off we went. I ended up with a group on a high bluff where I could see and hear the shepherd signaling the sheep dogs. It was amazing the way the dogs worked at his whistling commands, amazing how hard they worked to gather the sheep into a safe group. Suddenly all the biblical shepherd imagery I had ever heard became clear. At that moment I saw the shepherd as the Lord of Psalm 23… I first thought of the sheep dogs as the pastors trying to gather the flocks. On further reflection, I think the sheep dogs are more likely the Holy Spirit trying to gather us all into God’s fold. Suddenly there was a huge gasp from the group I was with. An older ram, had gotten itself out on the ledge of a bluff across the way from us. The dogs were working frantically to help the sheep turn around and go back the safety. A couple of people were on the ground below waving their arms at the sheep to get its attention. One was trying to find a way to safely climb down to the ram. But even with all this effort of care, the ram backed itself into a corner and then fell to its death. And there was an even bigger gasp as we watched it fall. And tears in the eyes of the community. Eventually we gathered in all the sheep and walked them home by a path to the barns where the inoculations began and the sorting of the lambs from the mothers. The mood was joyous that the sheep were all home. And it was tinged with sorrow for the old ram that was lost despite all the care and the work of the shepherd and his dogs and the people of the community. It was a living metaphor for me of the real-life workings of God and God’s people in community. My friends, I challenge you today: take another look at the Lord as our shepherd, at Jesus as the model shepherd giving all he has to gather the flock, at the Holy Spirit eager to round us all up. Our nerves are frayed from a year of pandemic and the turmoil of politics and racism. We are feeling our frustrations keenly. Yet we are being called home to our souls, called to rest in prayer after a long time of struggle and loss, called by God’s love to gather in love with one another. I invite you this week to re-read Psalm 23, perhaps daily. Read it slowly, resting in each image. Read John 10.11-15 slowly, prayerfully, letting the image of the Jesus, the model shepherd, willing to call you back home by laying down his life for you in the dark valleys, sink deep within your heart. Remember that the Holy Spirit is animatedly gathering us together as God’s people even as we are still socially distanced. (Back to Me) Remember, pray, allow yourselves to be led home in peace! Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only [i] http://sheep101.info/farm.html [ii] Ezekiel 34. 12,15-16a AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
Luke 24.36–49
2nd Sunday of Easter Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC Fort Collins While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" They were terrified and afraid. They thought they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you [surprised and frightened]? Why are doubts arising in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. It's really me! Touch me and see, for a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones like you see I have." As he said this, he showed them his hands and feet. [While in their joy, they were still wondering and disbelieving,] he said to them, "Do you have anything to eat?" They gave him a piece of baked fish. Taking it, he ate it in front of them. Jesus said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you--that everything written about me in the Law from Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. He said to them, "This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, [and that repentance,] a change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached, [be proclaimed,] in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Look, I'm sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power, [power from on high.]" (A compilation of the text from the New Revised Standard Version and the Common English Version.) Several years ago, a friend loaned me a short novel titled, Dinner With a Perfect Stranger; An Invitation Worth Considering by David Gregory. I don’t remember if I agreed with it all theologically, but the concept intrigued me! You can see where this is going, can’t you? The book is about a businessman in his late thirties named Nick Cominsky. Nick, an overworked strategic planner for an environmental testing firm, receives a mysterious invitation among the rest of his business mail. “You are invited to a dinner with Jesus of Nazareth. Milano’s Restaurant. Tuesday, March 24. Eight o’clock.” The opening paragraph of the book reads: “I should have known better than to respond. My personal planner was full enough without accepting anonymous invitations to dine with religious leaders. Especially dead ones.”[i] After determining, the invitation is not another outreach effort by the church down the street and still wondering if it is a prank by two of his work colleagues, Nick’s curiosity takes over. Against his better judgment, he takes another precious evening away from his wife and new baby girl and goes to dinner. At the restaurant he meets a nice-looking, dark-haired man with unusually piercing eyes, dressed in a sharp suit, a man who looks like he just got off work at Merrill Lynch, a man who seems to know all the wait staff at the restaurant intimately. A man who comfortably discusses everything from world religions to the existence of heaven and hell and who seems to know a disturbing amount about Nick’s personal life, including the scandal that is brewing in his company. A man who introduces himself as Jesus. The evening progresses through drinks to appetizers to salad and main course to dessert and coffee to paying the bill. Jesus picks up the check. Their conversation touches on the meaning of life, God, pain, faith, doubt. By the end of the evening, Nick, like the disciples surprised in that upper room, feels a deep joy he can’t understand, can’t quite believe or trust yet. He has spent the whole dinner skeptical, cynical, wondering, angry, captivated, confused. And now this odd joy. As he says goodbye to Jesus at his car, Jesus gives him a personal message and another invitation for continued conversation. The question hanging in the air for Nick is, will this dinner change his life? And how? Imagine, being surprised with a personal dinner invitation from Jesus…would you go? What would you want to talk about? In the gospel story from Luke, the disciples gathered on that late Easter evening receive just such an impromptu surprise without the printed invitation. Suddenly Jesus is just in their midst! The very person they had come to grieve. They have gathered for a wake and the deceased walks in the door! They are surprised in their grief by joy – which is deeper and more mysterious than passing happiness. Isn’t it remarkable that when we are surprised by the mystery of joy, we can hardly trust it? We trust sadness, anger, frustration and doubt a whole lot more, than joy. The gospel writer takes pains to let us know that this is not just a warm fuzzy moment in which they feel the presence of their old buddy, Jesus, as they toast his memory. Jesus shows up saying, “See my hands! See my feet! Still aren’t sure? Then let’s eat!” And after dinner, Jesus gives the disciples an invitation. Jesus says, “Everything I spoke to you has come to pass for the Messiah has to fulfill all that has been spoken about him in the scriptures.” Now remember what the test of truth is in the first century. Does the new truth reconcile with the old truths? Does it further reveal the old truths? Jesus’ message to the disciples is that all that has happened is consistent with God’s faithfulness throughout the scriptures and in history. Then he opens their minds to understand all that was written about him so they can trust in the faithfulness of God. Here in the resurrected Jesus, the reality of Good Friday is joined to the reality of Easter. And not in a shallow, pie in the sky sort of way. This is not about correct doctrine or beyond a doubt, scientific, historical fact. It is deeper than that. This is about living into the redeeming and reconciling story of the everlasting God, made known in Jesus, a story that challenges the stories of the finite world. Scholar and minister, Barbara Essex writing in the Feasting on the Word commentary says: “In his book, Search for Common Ground, Howard Thurman reminds us that ‘the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate’ and that God is the giver of forgiveness and mercy, ever ready to offer shalom: peace, the possibility and promise that order, well-being, hope, compassion, and love might yet prevail.”[ii] The Resurrected Christ joins Good Friday to Easter Sunday, pain and suffering, all the “no’s” of this life, stand in that upper room with the joy, the ultimate “yes” and shalom, of God. There in recognizable, yet unbelievable, human form, Jesus the Christ says “Peace be with you. All that has happened is consistent with God’s faithfulness. Now go and proclaim these things to the world, starting right where you are…” Do you get a little squeamish with this proclaiming, witnessing thing? I can hear you protesting in your minds. “But isn’t proclaiming just for you preacher types? I mean, really. I don’t have any words for that sort of thing.” Do you associate witnessing and proclaiming with accosting people on street corners, handing out tracts with the four spiritual laws? Surprise! As followers of Jesus, we are all witnesses! Traditionally it is more comfortable in the UCC to put our witnessing into actions for social justice, but not have to talk about our faith, what we trust. Listen carefully. Actions for social justice are most definitely the fruit of our experience with the Risen Christ. But Jesus doesn’t say to the disciples, “Go and proclaim social action!” Jesus says, “Because the anointed One has suffered and died and risen from the dead, go and proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins.” Because of the unbelievable joy and peace you have experienced, go and proclaim repentance, metanoia, turning back to God because the ancient scriptures tell us that God longs for us even more than we long for God! As joyfully unbelievable as that may seem! Listen to and live into God’s story, not the world’s story of dog-eat-dog competition, greed and revenge, because God is about mercy and forgiveness. My friends, I believe we are made in God’s image and born into original blessing rather than into original sin. However, this human journey distracts us. We get fearful, blinded, and we turn away from God. Sin, hamartia, simply means turning away from God, turning away from living into God’s story. We do this is so many ways every day, knowingly and unknowingly. Often the church has encouraged us to make a long list of sins, the ways we turn away. But that leads to judging one another by our own personal lists rather than paying attention to turning back to God! Here is the joyful news! Our lists are unimportant. What is important is that God wants us, longs for us to turn back time and again to live in God’s story as it is fulfilled in Jesus, the Christ. And this is what we can proclaim! Like those disciples in the upper room, we have witnessed God’s mercy and forgiveness and shalom through the scriptures and through community, the church of the Risen Christ. We can claim Jesus’ promise that we will be given the “power from on high” to proclaim the joy of turning back to the God of love and forgiveness. How? Through the Holy Spirit. A little biblical shorthand: Holy Spirit = Power. Empowering power, not controlling power, power that is life-giving not life-taking, power that disturbs the corrupt systems of this world, the systems we humans put in place we when are not living into God’s story. This is the power from on high that moves the church to social actions and proclamations in risky places that are in need of God’s love and justice. If we want the power to act, we must accept the power to proclaim. They are one and the same. Act for God’s love and justice and proclaim God’s forgiveness and mercy, compassion and shalom. Living into God’s story brings the power of the Holy Spirit and brings shalom, the peace that Jesus proclaimed as he greeted the disciples in the upper room. Perhaps, God’s peace and God’s power are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps, one always comes with the other. I can trust that, disbelieving and wondering, in great joy. How about you? May the peace and joy and power of God known to us in Risen Christ be with you all. Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. [i] David Gregory, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger; An Invitation Worth Considering, (Waterbrook Press, Colorado Spring, CO, 2005, 1). [ii] Barbara J. Essex, “Homiletical Perspective, Luke 24.36b-48, Third Sunday in Easter”, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, Lent Through Eastertide, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2008, 429). AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
Mark 11.1-11; Matthew 21.1-11
Palm Sunday Plymouth Congregational, United Church of Christ The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson Mark 11.1-11 When Jesus and his followers approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives. Jesus gave two disciples a task, 2saying to them, "Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.'" 4They went and found a colt tied to a gate outside on the street, and they untied it. 5Some people standing around said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?"6They told them just what Jesus said, and they left them alone. 7They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes upon it, and he sat on it. 8Many people spread out their clothes on the road while others spread branches cut from the fields. 9Those in front of him and those following were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!"11Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. After he looked around at everything, because it was already late in the evening, he returned to Bethany with the Twelve. Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39636-39644). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition. I begin today with a story about standing in line at the grocery store, a mundane, routine, probably recent, event for all of us. But no matter how routine grocery shopping may be, it has taken on palpable and deeply poignant resonances for us in the aftermath of the King Sooper shooting in Boulder this week. When I was the interim pastor at Community UCC in Boulder in 2013-2014, I lived part of the week at a parishioner’s house nearby that King Soopers and shopped at that store. Community UCC is just up Table Mesa Road from the King Sooper’s shopping center. As I share my brief grocery store story with you today, I am sensitive to where our minds may go with just the mention of grocery stores. And as I begin this sermon, my heart is breaking and praying for the people of Boulder, particularly those in the Table Mesa and Broadway neighborhood, for Community UCC, as well as for our country which urgently needs to change the use and role of guns in social structure. Some of you may remember, as I do, the spring of 1999…all the dire predictions beginning to be made about the Millennium, what would happen on December 31 as we turned the time corner into a new century. I was still living in Connecticut that spring, anticipating the move to Colorado in July. I was a full-time Divinity school student and full-time mom. As I stood in line at the grocery store one day with a cart full of supplies for the week, a tabloid headline caught my eye. I make it a practice to avoid the tabloids, hoping in a ridiculously self-righteous way that if I don’t even acknowledge them in the grocery store line, I am contributing to the downfall and bankruptcy of the tabloid industry. You can see how well that has worked! But this one jumped out at me – “Millennium Predictions! - Jesus May Have Already Returned!” “Yeah, right,” I thought, “I wonder who he is this time? How will we recognize him? Why has he come now?” Just then it was my turn to dump my groceries on the conveyer belt and I forgot my theological musings, paid for the groceries and headed off into my day. But I think of that “prediction” each year at Palm Sunday – “Jesus May Have Already Returned!” If he has, where is he present? How will we know him? What is he up to? The Palm Sunday story tells us each year in the story of Jesus’ unusual entry into Jerusalem that he is coming! His reputation as teacher, healer, prophetic activist precedes him and as he enters the city gate riding on the colt or donkey, depending on which gospel account you are reading, he is proclaimed by his followers as prophet and king. Or perhaps, by some in the crowd, he is seen as a radical and dangerous fool. Let’s picture the scene…The city of Jerusalem is swelling with tourists and visitors coming the Passover Festival. (Remember the crush of crowds before social distancing?) They are filling the market at the gate where the road from Bethany and the Mount of Olives comes into the city. Passover begins in three days…people are shopping and preparing…picture the grocery store on the day before Thanksgiving – or just before our recent snowstorm. Suddenly down the road from Bethany marches this rag tag army of joy, a procession of people singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. It’s a joyful, non-violent protest scene! People are strewing palm branches and cloaks across the road in front of a guy riding on a colt, or a small horse, or maybe it’s a donkey – who can tell from this distance? They are shouting and singing…. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Blessings on the coming of the kingdom of our ancestor, King David! Blessings on the Son of David! Hosanna, Hosanna!” What is this all about? In Jesus’ day it was traditional for pilgrims coming to the Passover Festival in Jerusalem to greet one another with words from Psalm 118, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” But what is all the Hosanna about? And hailing this one as coming in the name of King David? That is dangerous talk…could be seen by the Romans, who are the conquering rulers of Israel and Judea, as seditious talk! Can you imagine the crowds’ whispers? “What are they saying? The coming kingdom of our ancestor David? This scruffy guy on the donkey? A Son of David? Yeah, right….” Some think he is the anointed One come to lead our people…” “Don’t let the Romans hear you say that! Who is this guy anyway?” “It’s the prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.” “Who?” “You know the prophet, the teacher, the healer, Jesus of Nazareth.” “Oh, Nazareth, right….nothing good ever came out of Nazareth!’ “But didn’t you hear? Last week in Jericho, he healed a blind man! I’ve heard he’s healed lepers and raised a man from the dead. And the stories he tells….well, you double over in laughter and then he hits you with the real punchline….about God’s love and forgiveness and inclusion of all people…women and children and blind men and cripples….I’m telling you, I think he could be the real deal!” “Oh, go on! He’s just another itinerant, radical rabbi…playing on the hopes of poor and ignorant people. You don’t really think he amounts to much do you?” “I don’t know….maybe…” That’s the scene at the city gate, in the marketplace and the streets as Jesus returns to Jerusalem for Passover. Some are hailing him as the anointed one, a king in the line of David, sent to save the people. Some as a prophet, healer, teacher, man of God. Some as fool. We don’t trust king figures hear in America. Kings are figureheads with no real power. Hopefully we have learned not to trust political figures that want to act like kings, obscuring justice in the process. And prophets? They are a bit sketchy as well, if we see them merely as fortune tellers predicting futures that are either too dire or too rosy. We have a bad habit of assassinating social justice prophets like Abe Lincoln, MLK, Jr., Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy. We may see them as wise in their moral vision, but are they foolish in their radical, risk-taking methods of proclamation? Wise fools? We won’t follow kings, we are iffy about prophets turning the tables on the status quo. We certainly don’t want to follow fools! Starting with the earliest gospel writer, Mark, Jesus is seen as prophet and king and this is at the heart of the matter in the gospels for God’s good news of liberating love. To understand Jesus as king and prophet, is to understand how him as Anointed One, the Christ. In the 21st century, we like our leaders, our saviors, new and improved with ideas and solutions never heard before. The people of the first century who first heard the stories of Jesus liked their saviors old and unchanging because that is how you could tell a true savior from a false one. A true savior fulfilled the prophecies of old. Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey because that is how the ancient kings, the ones anointed by God, like David, always rode into the Jerusalem. They came to bring God’s peace, not to bring the oppression of control and domination like the Romans who came riding on warhorses. And the crowds spread branches and cloaks because that is what you do for kings in the line of David, a king who was not raised in a palace and educated by the state…but raised instead with the poor, the regular people. Those who claim Jesus as king are tax collectors and blind beggars, lame men and cast-off women and children, lepers. He is a king and a prophet who tells stories about God’s realm being like mustard seeds and yeast. He hangs out with fishermen as some of his closest friends. When asked about his “state policy”, he say, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant…Let the children come to me, for you must become like a child to truly enter the kingdom of God…Love God with all your heart and soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is how Jesus has earned his acclamations as a king and social justice prophet. Is Jesus a fool, as well? If so, he was a fool for love who told stories and turned tables that upended the status quo so that all would receive the love and justice of God. In the events of his last week, we see him open himself so fully to the power of God’s love that he walks straight into the face of pain, humiliation and death in order that the world, that we, might know that God is with those who suffer, who are oppressed and those who are dying. In speaking of Jesus, the apostle Paul reminds us that “God’s foolishness is wiser than our wisdom and God’s weakness more powerful than our power.” So, here we stand at the beginning of a fateful week. The tumult at the city gate is growing louder and stronger, spreading through the marketplace, public places of influence and power, to the temple itself. People in high positions are asking questions. “Who is this man?” Others are shouting praise. By the end of the week the voices will swell to a conflicting crescendo. Shouts of anger will triumph over shouts of joy. Prophets are rarely welcomed in the own neighborhoods. Many will decide this is not the savior king or prophet they thought they wanted and stand staring skeptically at a mocking headline on a cross that says, “The King of the Jews.” “Some king! He’s a fool! Can’t even save himself!” “Can’t or won’t,” we might ask ourselves. Jesus returns again and again, each year in the stories Holy Week. His presence is palpable. And it is palpable in the world around us. In Asian Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter protests and vigils. At the southern border of our country where unaccompanied immigrant minors searching for new life are held in detention. In hospital rooms where people struggle to breathe, to live, and others struggle to care for them. And yes, in grocery stores and schools and movie theaters and places of everyday business where gun violence erupts and interrupts peaceful life. Wherever there is pain, suffering, oppression, death, Jesus returns to us again and again. Another question for us, “How will we receive him?” Hosanna. Blessed is the One who comes in the name of God! Amen. ©The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May be reprinted with permission only. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
Genesis 9.8-17
First Sunday in Lent Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson Intro to Scripture: The story of Noah and the ark is, perhaps, one of the best-known stories in Hebrew scripture. Adopted by widely in popular culture because of the beauty of rainbows and little animals prancing two by two out of the ark into a new world. And echoed in many creation stories from ancient and indigenous people around the world. But it is also a harrowing story of loss and destruction brought on in the version in Genesis by God’s grief and anger at the rebellious ways of humanity. God sets out to wipe the slate of creation clean with a flood covering all the earth. Plunging creation back into the primordial chaos from which it came. Saving only a remnant. Much to God’s surprise, retributive justice does not work well. The remnant of humanity saved has not been greatly changed by 40 days and nights at sea in a boat with several hundred squawking animal friends needing to be fed. Humanity is still contentious and prone to sin. God changes God’s mind about how to deal with human being. And that is where our text for today beings. Genesis 9:8-17 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." 12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17 God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." Sermon Grace and peace to you as we stand together at the beginning edge of our 2021 Lenten journey. As one often does at the beginning of a journey, we stand looking at where we have come from and towards where we are going. Today we can look behind us at a year that was like a plunge into the primordial destructive flood waters of our scripture story. We are attempting to look forward surveying, like Noah and his family from deck of the ark, a wilderness land still devastatingly deconstructed by the chaos that we hope is now subsiding. Over this threshold moment we see a bow in the clouds, a rainbow. And we hear God’s ancient covenant with Noah. “Never again will I plunge the world into the chaotic waters of destruction. My bow in the clouds will be a sign that I will always remember my love for humanity and all creation. I will remember, even when I am grieved, that retribution will not resolve the issue of humanity’s hard-heartedness. Punishment will not coerce humankind into changing its rebellious ways. I make a covenant to always be present with my beloved creation, with humankind made in my image, to protect, not destroy.” As God says, the sign of this extraordinary covenant is the unstrung warrior’s bow in the clouds. The bow was the war weapon of choice at the time that this story was written down in post-exilic Israel, a time when the people were coming out of the extreme chaos and confusion of exile. A bow strung and ready for war is a different shape. It is longer, thinner, taut. But this bow in the clouds is unstrung and its warrior edge from where the arrows are launched is pointed away from the earth. The disarmed bow, the rainbow, may be beautiful and inspiring to us, but it is a personal reminder to God. In its multi-colored light God is reminded to be “One Who Remembers,” even in the midst of chaos and rebellion of creation, “One Who Repents.” God repents. Isn’t that a stunning statement? God makes a covenant to repent, to turn from vindication to forgiveness, patience, and steadfast love despite knowing that the human heart may never completely change. The creatures made in God’s image may always resist God. Yet God lays down God’s weapons and makes a covenant that is unilateral…it limits God’s power while setting no conditions on humankind. God does not demand that we change. God changes because God remembers to be lover, as well as judge, to be protector, as well as creator. God repents, turns from the path of destruction and anger, to the path of compassion and peace. So, it seems to me that our story today implicitly asks us, what is our response to God’s repentance? Since God repents, can we? Can we repent? Can we unstring the bow of falsehoods that we cling to making us feel important? Can we unstring the bow of grudges that we hold, of anger that makes us feel entitled? Can those us born with the privilege of being white in this nation, unstring the, often unconscious, bow of prejudice? Can we unstring the bow of needing to “be right,” so we can see new ways to peace? Unstringing the bows of self-righteous defensiveness, laying down the weapons that defend our hearts, is the way of repentance. From the time it was conceived as a season of the liturgical year preparing Christians for Holy Week, the Lenten journey has been about repentance. Repentance is not a very popular word in progressive Christianity. Forgetting that the prophets first cry is “Repent,” we like the revolutionary cry of the prophets., Justice!” Perhaps the word, repentance, speaks to you of over-emotional wallowing in unproductive guilt. But the repentance that Jesus spoke of meant literally “to turn around.” One must have keen sight to make a proper turn. I imagine repentance as standing at a threshold and taking a good hard, unsentimental look at where I am going. Do I want to stay on the same path I am going down on this journey in life? Or risk a new path? Humanity is wont to continually choose the path to division and destruction. I believe it is time to risk a new path, as God did in the covenant with Noah, a path that leads to understanding and reconstruction. I believe that we can best cry “Justice!” speaking truth to the powers of the world, when we have the courage to first say honestly to our own hearts, “Repent.” Rainbows are reminders of God’s holy repentance and our invitation to turn toward God to participate in holy repentance. Let me share a story with you – a true story and a story that actually happened to a friend of mine. One day a young mother was taking a walk with her small son and they saw a rainbow. The four-year-old boy looked up in wonder and said, “Mommy, can we take that home and put it in our house?” His awestruck question prompted the mother to write a poem she titled “A Rainbow in My House.” She took her son’s question literally, imagining what it would be like to have a rainbow in their house, on their walls, emanating from the windows and doors, coming out the chimney. The house was transformed, and it could not contain the glory of the rainbow and its colors. “….When the door opens Bursts of blues, greens and yellows Pour out and float up towards heaven. Inside I breathe in warm reds And sleep on soft pinks…. Sometimes I pull back my curtain To let the passersby Take a peak. They stare amazed…at the rainbow in my house.”[i] I heard my friend tell this story and share her poem at a justice event for homelessness prevention many years ago. Our sons who are about the same age are now both grown men. In revisiting her beautiful imagery, I am prompted to imagine what my “house,” my inner soul/heart house, might look like with God’s rainbow covenant of repentance inside? What about yours? And what about other houses we inhabit? God’s rainbow bending over Noah’s ark with its doors wide open and spilling out pairs of animals into a new world is an image painted or hung on the walls of many a church nursery. We love to tell this story of God’s love and hope to our children, starting at the earliest ages. We want them to know that, even in the midst of the worst times, God is with them and never forgets them. But why relegate this message to the church nursery? Why not let the rainbow colors emanate down the hall from the nursery into worship and committee meetings, into youth group, adult education and mission projects, into choir rehearsal and church potlucks? What might the entire body of Christ look like in the light of God’s rainbow? What might our world look like? God’s rainbow covenant of repentance does not guarantee a utopia. Instead, it invites communities of all shapes and sizes to be places where people are willing to let their hearts be remade in the image of God’s repentant heart. Led by humanity’s siblings of color and our LGBTQ+ siblings, our communities can stand under rainbow flags of justice and inclusion where literally “all the colors of the rainbow” are welcome and equal in God’s sight. We can be communities asking the question, with the wonder of the child, “Can we take that rainbow home and put it in our house?” My friends, today we stand together, in God’s grace, at the beginning edge of Lent, looking back and looking forward. How will we journey with Jesus this Lenten season in the light of God’s rainbow? May we allow it healing colors of repentance to penetrate our hearts, our homes, our life together in this community and beyond. May it be so. Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. Reprint with permission only. [i] Personal story and excerpt from unpublished poem by Michelle Sisk, 2008. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
Mark 1.29-39
5th Sunday of Epiphany Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson 29 As soon as Jesus and his companions left the synagogue [in Capernaum], they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon's mother-in- law was in bed with a fever, [she was very hot and sweating a lot], and they told [Jesus, “She is very sick.”] 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and [she got up from her bed] and she began to serve them. [She gave them some food to eat.] 32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons, [the people with bad spirits in them.] 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." 38 He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. Looking at the first chapter in Mark, which we have heard most of in worship throughout January and now into February, you might think that the writer knew about modern movie trailers. The scenes move very quickly giving us the essence of what Jesus and his story is all about. He is committed to and blessed by God at his baptism….he gets his strength and power by going into wilderness solitude for prayer…he proclaims a new message about God’s presence in the world saying, "Now is the time! Here comes God's kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!"[i] Then he begins healing folks who are outcast because of their illnesses, unclean by religious law, like the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue who Carla lifted up for us in last week’s sermon. You could say that Jesus is now really on a roll! Everyone is bringing people to Jesus for healing and he is casting out their disease and their dis-ease, their bad spirits. First Simon’s mother-in-law and then all the sick of the city of Capernaum! Just as the disciples think, “Wow! We’ve got a good thing going here in our hometown,” Jesus tells his them that his purpose, his mission, is to proclaim God’s message and take the healing throughout all of Galilee, not just in Capernaum. They are on the move! Proclaiming the message of repentance and trust in God goes hand in hand with healing, “casting out demons.” We love Jesus, the teacher, the storytelling rabbi, the proclaimer of wisdom, the social justice prophet who speaks truth to power about change. But what do we make of Jesus, the healer? In our time of pandemic, what do we make of Jesus as one who not only prays and proclaims, but also heals? Does the talk of spontaneous healing and being possessed by demons make us squeamish? We know and trust science. We know the advances of medicine in the last 2000 years. We are particularly grateful for the advances of medical science in this time of pandemic! More and more of us are getting the vaccine. Much to be grateful for! Medical and mental health sciences do not have all the answers. Yet the answers they do have heal so much! Unlike Simon’s mother-in-law, when we have a fever, we can take a pill. So what do we as 21st century people, disillusioned by radio and tele-evangelists who are shysters and money grubbers, do with Jesus, the healer? I found help from the late scholar, Marcus Borg, who is much beloved here at Plymouth as our first Visiting Scholar and as a much-read author guiding us in faith formation through so many profound books. You may know that Marcus was part of the Jesus Seminar, a think tank of scholars and lay people, who worked in the 1980’s and 90’s on the quest to discover more about the historical Jesus. Marcus, spent much of his career asking, “What can be historically verified about Jesus? In his last posthumously published book, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century. Marcus writes that historically Jesus was a traveling rabbi and mystic healer following in the tradition of other Jewish mystic wisdom teacher and healers of his time. Revering Marcus as a scholar and knowing that he had the research to back it up, this statement about Jesus was took me by surprise! Marcus believed Jesus was a healer, who healed through the power of his relationship with God, a relationship that involved his heart as well as his head, in fact, the devotion of his entire being, body and soul, a mystical relationship, if you will. Marcus goes on to define a mystical experience as an episode that invokes “sheer wonder, radical amazement, radiant luminosity [and often] evokes the exclamation, “Oh, my God!”[ii] He claims his own conversion to mysticism even as a scholar, through these experiences that take over all your senses. Experiences of the Holy that connect one with the “more” that is God. Not with a supernatural, parentified, Santa Claus God who will give me what we want or think we want if we just pray hard enough. But with the transcendent “God who is more than the space-time universe of matter and energy” AND the immanent God who dwells within, “the presence of God everywhere.”[iii] The God in whom, as the apostle Paul said, we “live and move and have our being” (Acts17.28). I have had these, usually too brief, numinous moments of “knowing” God, trusting with my whole being the God who is vaster than the cosmos, yet as intimate as my breath. Have you? And they connect me to Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of history who made God manifest in the world. These moments are not sought. They come upon one, not frivolously, but unexpectedly. I have found that I have to place myself in way of such moments by simply opening to the opportunity of them through habits of paying attention to the whole of life as sacred and to listening for the Holy in prayer. Just as Jesus did. Leaning on the scholarly and heart-felt testimony of Marcus Borg, I confess to you in simple confidence, not needing to know with my head all the scientific or theological facts, that I trust Jesus was a mystic healer in his day. He healed people of whatever ailed them – from fever to “bad spirits.” Bad spirits that might have been mental/physical illness, such as depression, bi-polar or epilepsy. But also, bad spirits that might have been being allowing anger, resentment and holding grudges to consume life, seeking relationship to power over relationship to people. Jesus healed not through his own power, but through the power of God. He sought perfect attunement to God in his whole being, in his prayer life and his religious study life, yes, but also in his relational life, his community life of love and fellowship and in his life of social action for justice. Through being in-sink with God, he healed with his presence, his touch, his love bringing people into wholeness and new life. How, exactly? I don’t know. But I believe, I trust in Jesus’ healing. I know he still heals souls. And that healing goes hand in hand with proclaiming God is here Now and God is love. We can participate in the liberating message and mission of the historical Jesus in our own time which we know needs so much healing. I am not saying we are called to lay hands on people and spontaneously heal them of Covid! We are not Jesus. What I am saying is that we each have the opportunity to open our hearts to healing change and redemption through the wholeness of God’s love. And then to share that opportunity with others. The healing process of God the historical Jesus participated with began with bringing folks in and meeting them right where they were. In whatever state they were in. Loving them with the fierce, unsentimental, unconditional love of God. Seeing them for who they were created in the image of God. Calling them into this image. And then casting out whatever was harmful, not needed, not useful, what was bad for the health of the body, mind and soul, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Try something with me for just a moment. Let’s put ourselves in the way of the Spirit, open our hearts and minds to the opportunity of God’s healing through Jesus. Close your eyes, if you’d like. Take a deep breath and let it our slowly. Using your prayer heart or meditation mind or simply your imagination, bring all of your Self to stand before Jesus as if you were one of those folks brought to the door of Simon’s mother-in-law’s house in Capernaum. Bring all your longings, your frustrations, your illnesses of any kind. All your angers and resentments, your failings, your successes. Bring all your relationships. All the things you love and the things you don’t love about yourself. Your self-hatreds and lack of self-forgiveness, your pain in body, mind and soul. Bring your gifts, your joys, your thanksgivings. Present yourself before the spirit of God in Jesus for healing. God in Jesus sees you just the way you are created in God’s image. (pause) Is there anything standing in your way to wholeness that needs to be cast out by God’s powerful and loving presence? Let that thing go. Perhaps, there is there a healing word or image or idea that has come to you. Nothing is insignificant. Acknowledge what you receive and bring it more deeply into your soul. Let it anchor you in God. Is there a surprise gift that has popped up in an image and is yearning to be used for God’s good in the world? Receive it and say, “Thank you.” Take a just a few moments to be in this place of before the power of God we know in the face of Jesus. Now I invite you to take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Open your eyes if you closed them. Wriggle your finger and toes. Come back into the physical space of your home. Standing before Jesus’ presence for healing is a place you can go again and again. Because healing is a process. And you don’t have to do it all alone – that’s why there are ministers, friends, counselors and therapists, doctors, spiritual directors, the fellowship of a faith community. Remember the people came as a crowd. Jesus calls us to healing so that the world may be healed. Remember the woman from Children’s Time? “But this is all I know of dancing.” I invite you to know the healing power of God through Jesus so that you may dance your life with both hands flung joyously into the air! Remember Simon’s mother-in-law? Her healing prompted her to servant leadership. She got up and fed all the disciples and Jesus, the healer. She was dancing in the Spirit with both hands up! May it be so with each of us. Amen. ©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May only be reprinted with permission. [i] Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39204-39205). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition. [ii] Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century, (Harper One Publishers, New York, NY: 2017, 43.) [iii] Ibid., 39. AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here.
1 Samuel 3.1-20
2nd Sunday in Epiphany Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson 1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5 and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. 6 The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10 Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." 11 Then the LORD said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12 On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13 For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever." 15 Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son." He said, "Here I am." 17 Eli said, "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you." 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him." 19 As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD. Traditionally, we speak of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter…. but I often find the Spirit as more of a Challenger. And Spirit comforts and challenges through the most mundane ways. This past Thursday morning as I sat drinking my coffee, waking up, checking the news and preparing to write my sermon, two news articles challenged me as I was thinking about our connection to the story of the boy, Samuel, called to be a prophet in ancient Israel. All week I had been considering the call of God to be a prophet as I chose hymns and wrote our meditative call to worship to evoke the theme of prophetic living. The article that first gave me pause was from the Washington Post. It was titled “For some Christians the Capital riot doesn’t change the prophecies: Trump will be president.”[i] I knew we were deeply divided in Christianity, but I had not fully realized that there are Christians prophesying Donald Trump’s presidency, a presidency I have experienced as diametrically opposed to everything I hold dear as a Christian and an American. Religious scholar sources for this article say the people interviewed are practicing a neo-charismatic version of Christian faith that is even farther right in thinking and practice than the evangelical right wing. A Christian nationalism is conflating Christianity with patriotism. And their numbers are growing. The people interviewed were part of the crowd at the Capital on January 6th and their expressed intention in coming to the Capital was to pray that Donald Trump remain president, to show up for the prophecy they had received. Their prophets tell them that Trump is the Chosen One who will shut down an American elite class that is persecuting Christians and crushing what they believe to be Christian values. They are as passionate for their vision of justice as we are for our vision of justice. We have competing prophetic paths. It definitely feels as if the “true” word of the Lord is rare in our land, doesn’t it? I wanted to write off these people as “kooks!” I wanted to say to myself, “They are delusional and uneducated. They have been duped by conspiracy theories. I know better, don’t I? I have a degree from Yale Divinity School. I can do proper exegesis of the scripture. I understand the ins and outs of biblical prophecy and it does not lead us to support someone proclaiming lies and misuse of power. I am ordained in the UCC! I know about true justice!” However, the Spirit challenged me with humility. I was challenged to try and see these Christians as people, not as evil others, even as I abhorred the violent actions of the crowd these folks were with. I was challenged to reach beneath their words to seek understanding of the true concerns of their hearts, to understand how they are my brothers and sisters in Christ, as foreign as they seem to me. I pondered this moment, wondering, Have I just heard a word from the Lord? And I will tell you why: the word was humbling and challenging, ear-tingling if you will, and revealed to me something new and much needed that God was doing, at least within my heart. I also knew I could only participate in this change with God’s help, not on my power alone. I did not feel comfortable or triumphant. I felt fearful and confused in this revelation of my own prejudice and pride. Spirit challenged me: how would I take humble, peace-making action on this realization? My first action is to share the experience with you. I find echoes of my experience in the story we heard just minutes ago about the boy Samuel and his first experience with hearing the word of the God. It seems the call to prophetic living is humbling and challenging and it cannot be silenced. It must be shared with others. Remember how the narrator begins our story saying that as Samuel was growing up, “The word of the Lord was rare.” “Vision was not widespread.” At this time there was no king or president in Israel. The priest, as prophetic presence, helped govern and lead the people because professionally, and one would hope personally, he was a channel between the human world and the Holy One. However, in the time of Samuel, Israel was being divided by greedy and power-mongering leadership. Sound familiar? So, when Samuel humbly accepts the call to hear God’s word, he gets an ear-tingling, earful! The Lord gives him a prophecy condemning Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, younger priests who have been abusing their priestly power. These two are exploiting and seducing women who come to the temple to pray. They are confiscating the best cuts of sacrificial meat before the sacrifices are complete, thus, robbing the people of the expensive cuts of meat they have purchased to complete obligatory religious rituals. They are ignoring the warnings of their old father, Eli, who is trying to correct their immoral behavior. Thus, Samuel is given his first prophetic word from God, both painful and important. He knows it could get him into trouble. He only fearfully delivers it to his mentor and teacher, Eli, after much cajoling. “Your priestly house is ending,” says Samuel, “God is doing a new thing!” What are new, ear-tingling thing is God doing that we are we called to hear as this committed community of faith? God is calling! And like Samuel discovered, the call will not necessarily be comfortable. It will be humbling. It will be a bit scary, maybe more than a bit, and outside our comfort zone. It may get us into trouble, good trouble in the words of the late senator from Georgia, John Lewis. UCC pastor, Donna Schaper, comments in an exegetical essay, on the story’s revelation that what God is going to do will make “both ears tingle.” She writes, “Since I hate sermons that make us have to be more heroic than we really are, I say…. Let one ear tingle with fear…Fear is spiritually legitimate….But listen now with the other ear…. Let it tingle too.”[ii] Spirit’s ear-tingling challenge to me asked me to admit that it is harder for me to love these white Christians who are so very different from me than it is to love people of other faiths. There is my prophetic living challenge…how far can I live into God’s love….not condoning acts of injustice or violence…but extending my compassion, opening my heart to what I preach….that God’s love extends over all of us. And what actions will I take to extend God’s love to those so very different from me? I am asking for the courage to live into those answers as they come. Now you may be saying to yourself…that is all very well for Samuel he was after all serving in the temple. Like you ministerial types, didn’t he sign up to hear God’s word and act on it? I’m just a regular person, not a prophet in training. And I say back to you…are you committed to the love and justice that was modeled by Jesus in his life, death and resurrection? Are you committed to – or at least concerned about - feeding the hungry, helping the homeless find a home, welcoming the immigrant, praying for peace, caring for the sick in body, mind or soul, nurturing the children and youth, being a voice for the voiceless, loving those cast out and cast down by our culture, saving our world from environmental disaster and global warming? Any of the above? If so, then I believe you are called to be a prophetic presence for God’s justice and love in our times. And I believe you are called to listen as attentively, as carefully as you can! What is making at least one ear tingle with fear? And the other with a new possibility? The call comes at mundane moments. When we are just lying in our bed before sleep, musing over the day. Or drinking our first cup of morning coffee. We have an unexpected thought. A preposterous idea. Are you listening? The second news article that challenged me on Thursday morning came from NPR. It seems that there is a restaurant in California run by an award-winning chef,[iii] of Top Chef TV fame. Though it is well-known, it is still struggling in the midst of pandemic as they downsize their business into predominantly take-out orders. One day not long ago they received an online breakfast order, paid for, with a message saying, “This order will not be picked up by the person ordering it. Please make sure that it goes to someone who needs a meal.” The chef who owns the restaurant was so moved that she posted the order message on Facebook. Within a few minutes, another order came into the restaurant, paid for, and with the same message. And another. And another. By now the restaurant has received almost 250 orders for food that is paid for by someone who will not pick it up and who wants the meal given to someone in need. This influx of orders is helping the chef pay her employees and helping others in her community not even connected to her business. Who started this? A teacher in Texas. Not a hugely rich, powerful person, but an “ordinary” teacher. And the love has come back around because someone, after discovering this teacher’s gift to the restaurant, went onto Amazon and saw her wish list of supplies for her classroom. That someone paid for all those supplies helping children they had never met. A word from the Lord! A delightful new way of working together for the good of people! What if we as a country took this system of paying it forward and helping others as our primary way of working instead of being crippled by greed, selfishness and the lust for power over other people? Would we be as divided as we are now? Would we be better able to see and love and relate to those who now seem “other” as brothers and sisters? Listen! The word of the Lord is always present! Our ears can always be tingling with the God’s word of justice and love! Listen! Follow. Act in Love. Amen [i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/01/14/prophets-apostles-christian-prophesy-trump-won-biden-capitol/ [ii] Donna Schaper, “Pastoral Essay”, 1 Samuel 3.1-20, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Feasting on the Word” Year B, Volume 1, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 2008, 246 [iii] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956705067/texas-customers-call-in-order-helps-la-restaurant-pay-it-forward AuthorAssociate Minister Jane Anne Ferguson is a writer, storyteller, and contributor to Feasting on the Word, a popular biblical commentary. Learn more about Jane Anne here. |
Details
|