Monday, November 30, 2015

Advent - Week one - Candle of Hope

“Season of Hope”


            Today we light the first candle of Advent, the candle of Hope.  As we begin this journey to Christmas, we go back in our faith story, back to the day and age of the prophets.  Take yourself back to the year 720 B.C. plus or minus a few years.  In this time period you would have seen how over the generations, God had fulfilled God’s promises.  The descendants of Abraham have become numerous and have been given the Promised Land.  God has built up for them a mighty nation and has equipped them with kings to rule over them.  The day and age of King David has come and gone, the day and age of the mighty Kingdom has come and gone.  Now, now they are living on the other side of God’s promise, it has come and gone and their mighty kingdom has split into two.  There is the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. 
            You know that Bruce Springsteen Song:  Glory days?  It’s kind of like that.  Life moves on and when you look back the past looks so good.  Nothing like talking about those glory days – but as Springsteen declares:  Glory days well they'll pass you by - Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye.  But those glory days have come and gone and now there is deep concern of losing it all, of being conquered by the neighboring nation of Assyria.  One cannot live in the past, one cannot live focused on the Glory days, the people of God need to move forward and they need a new vision, a new message, a new promise to live into.    The people are going to face a national crisis, which will also bring about a spiritual crisis, and in order to remain faithful, they need hope. 
            And so, out of this message of despair, Isaiah brings forth a message that, yes, the Assyrians will come in and destroy us, but God is not done with us.  God will continue with a covenant, God will continue with a promise, God will continue to use the Israelites as a holy people.  Even though what seems to be a complete loss of all they had God will bring forth a new creation.  And so, out of the stump of Jesse, out of what was once a beautiful Nation, but will become nothing more than a stump, a new shoot will spring, a branch will grow out of its roots.  With God, there is always new life, there is always a new vision, there is always a new promise for those that are willing to be present to God’s messengers.  Isaiah provides them hope in the midst of destruction. 
            God will rebuild the people and he will bring forth a leader that has God’s spirit upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  Sounds like a description of a good candidate.  Isaiah offers a rather descriptive image of this leader that will come forth from the lineage of King David and then there is this transition in verse 6.  It moves from a description of the gifts this king will have to an illustration of a completely transformed world.  It is one thing to have a gifted, talented, and God centered ruler, it is quite another thing for all of creation to change.   Suddenly, there is a description of animals of prey living alongside their next meal.  And a little child shall lead them.  It is a description of a better world and is often called the Peaceable Kingdom. 
            What a vision, what a promise, what a hope to live into.  Artists, writers, philosophers, theologians, ponder and wonder, what would a better world look like? Louis Armstrong has the song:  wonderful World - I see trees of green, red roses, too,
I see them bloom, for me and you  And I think to myself  What a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue, and clouds of white,  The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself   What a wonderful world.
What does a wonderful world look like to you?  Wars ended?  All of creation fed?  Diseases healed? 
            This past year, a movie came out called:  The Giver.  The book is required reading in many middle schools in our area.  It is about creating the perfect society and how, in order to do so, everything has to be made normal.  As the book unfolds, you learn that in a perfect world, there is no color, there are no choices, there are no memories of the past, there is no pain, and only the healthy are able to live.  But in order to remember why this is a perfect world, one person must remember, this person holds onto all of history, all of pain, all of the things society wanted to get rid of in order to be content.  But as this person, the Receiver, learns of color and other beautiful things about life, he cannot keep it a secret.  He wants everyone to enjoy these things even if it brings with it the cost of remembering painful events of history.   In a sense, they created the peaceable kingdom, but the message of the book is, there are so many blessings in life as it currently is -
            What does a Godly world look like to you?  And do we continue to hold onto hope as we journey forward to a day and age when we finally arrive to the holy mountain when all the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord?  Hope, hope begins the season of Advent, hope of our past, hope of our present, and hope of our future.  Are we willing to give into cynicism or fear?  Are we focused on the Glory Days, or are we moving into God’s new creation?  I find that we have so much in common with the people in the day and age of Isaiah.  We have lived into God’s promises and have professed that in Jesus Christ God brought forth the shoot out of the stump of Jesse.  We live on the other side of the coming of the Messiah and yet.  And yet we have not reached a sense of completion.  Just like the people on the other side of being a great nation, God was not done with them yet. 
            Throughout our Gospels, there is proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is Emmanuel, God with us.  That he is God’s promise of rebuilding God’s kingdom.  Matthew begins his Gospel with a genealogy because Jesus needs to be of the lineage of King David.  He is the shoot, he is the new branch, he is the one that the spirit of the Lord rests upon.    And we sing:  My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.  Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness, and yet.  And yet, we live in a day and age when we need to remember the hope.  Perhaps we need an Isaiah for our day and age, a messenger of God letting us know that even when the world around us seems dark, there is always hope.  God is not done with us and we still have a purpose for God’s kingdom here in this world.  Advent is not just an age old tradition of the church.  It is still relevant to us today, we live on the other side of a fulfilled promise, and yet.  And yet we know that there is still such need for healing, reconciliation, and hope for this world.  Let us live into God’s hope as we continue this advent journey.  Amen.    


Thanksgiving sermon

Thanksgiving for the Sense of Taste and Smell


            I am the mother of two young children, so my life is saturated with Disney movies and children’s story books.  My girls have one particular Winnie the Pooh book about the senses that we read quite often.  It starts off with Rabbit needing help harvesting all of the apples in his orchard.  The whole crew pitches in and helps pick apples.  Once they are finished, they marvel at the different colors: there are red, and yellow, and green.  They then decide that they need to have a party to celebrate this great harvest, so Rabbit gives them permission to take whatever they need from his garden and off they go to make various items for their harvest celebration. 
            Eeyore takes his apples and makes apple cider.  Pooh bear takes his apples and dips them in honey.  Kanga takes her apples and makes pie.  Owl takes his apples and makes candles.  And Rabbit takes his and makes jam.  But poor Tigger, he has no idea what to make.  He is all confused and feeling rather inadequate.  As he visits each of his friends, learning about what they are making, he finally has an idea.  He will turn all of their creations into a game of the senses.  Some of the items smell good, others are sticky and gooey to the touch, others can be sampled and identified through taste.  And even little Roo  made maracas to join in the fun, so his creation connected to the sense of sound.  
            The Winnie the Pooh characters all participated in bringing in the harvest and they all contributed to the harvest festival.  Together, they took the same items, and yet they each contributed something unique and different.  No one item was better than another, and each character, whether young or old, skilled or not, had a way to share of themselves as they celebrated together.  Apple Cider, apple pie, apple candles, honey covered apples, apple jam, so many ways to take one fruit, one item of the harvest and enjoy its tastes, and smells. 
            This is just a children’s book, but it makes my mouth water.  I would really like to taste one of Pooh’s honey covered apples.  And apples, fresh off the tree are just so much better than buying them in the store.  Reading the book, conjures up memories of apple picking, fresh apple cider, and I can almost feel the juice running down my cheek. 
Our senses are powerful things.  They stir up our brain, they trigger emotions, they can even evoke memories.  Have you ever smelled something and suddenly you almost feel transported back in time to a specific place and time?  Our senses can trigger memories of things we haven’t thought of in forever, such as a meal at grandma’s house when you were a young child.   
            As we prepare for our upcoming Thanksgiving meal, are there any special dishes that you plan on having?  For so many, the foods have become a part of our heritage, a part of our psyche, a part of our memory engrained within us because of our senses. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they had stuffing or marshmellows on their sweet potatoes on that first Thanksgiving, but I can’t imagine a Thanksgiving without it.  Over time, meal after meal, we remember but we also add on, alter, change, and re-create.   As we prepare our meals, are there dishes at the table that are there because they have an ingrained memory within us, connecting us to our past, to our own heritage of a grandparent or great grandparent?  That when we eat it, we can’t help but think of Thanksgivings of our past, and how through food, we are able to bring our past into our present and on into our future? 
            There is such a sacredness in doing this.  Many of our faith traditions use food as a way to continue a story.  There are both the Passover and the Lord’s Supper, that for time longer than any of us can really fathom, have been passed along from generation to generation reminding us to remember, remember what God has done.  I love how the Psalmist uses the sense of taste to symbolically call us to connect to God:  O taste, and know that the Lord is good.  This is not a literal taste, taste the pumpkin pie and know God is good, but spiritually taste God.  Taste your faith, engage in it, engage in the scriptures of your faith, engage in how our senses speak to our memories and the moments of life where we remember what God has done for us.  Our senses are more than just a part of the physical design of our bodies.  They are more than just our nerve endings telling our brain how to react.  They are a part of our spiritual design.  It is through food and our sense of taste, our sense of smell, and our sense of sight that creates the whole moment, that creates one whole memory.  Our senses connect us to every day living, but they also connect us to the sacred, when we pay attention, when we listen to those memories stirred up within us, when we remember that the pumpkin pie is not just grandma’s recipe, but we remember how grandma sought to live her life as faithfully as she could. 
            Our senses, our memories, our sacred stories and meals in our lives, are very Biblical.  In the passage read today from Deuteronomy, the people have been living in the wilderness for forty years.  Although God has provided for them, they have had a rather limited diet.  As they prepare to enter the Promised Land, they are given this command.  They are to take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket.  Can you image?  Take the first fruits of the ground and dedicate them to God.  I’m sorry, but I am I would be like the little child that takes a nibble before the food is served.  Did any of you ever get shooed out of the kitchen, I remember those hand smacks and the scolding, get your fingers off of that and wait until dinner is served.  But it smells so good, it looks amazing, can’t I just have a taste? 
            That would be me, once I arrived in the Promised Land, I would need to have a nibble, I am sure my mouth would be watering as these new foods connected with my senses and I would want to devour them.  But God asks first for the food to be dedicated before the priests.  No matter how strong our senses are, to touch, smell, and taste these foods, first we must remember. 
            The people are to remember, once they are in the Promised Land that life was not always so blessed.  They are to remember being a people in Egypt and they are to remember that God liberated them from their affliction.  They are to remember that God brought them into this land and they are to dedicate the first fruits before they celebrate the harvest. 
            Many years ago, my family started remembering.  We did not remember all the way back to our Biblical history, but we started remembering that the pilgrims did not always have an abundant harvest.  We began to remember that there was a time when there just was not enough.  We began to remember that Thanksgiving was not just about grandma’s apple pie, and turkey and stuffing.  But it was about a courageous people that came to a new land to live in a new way and that many of them did not survive.  We began to remember the importance of the friendship between the pilgrims and the Native Americans and we starting to give thanks in a new way.  Five kernels of corn were placed by each persons plate reminding us of hard times, of times when there is just not enough and we prayed for those in the world today that still do not have enough: for the homeless, for refugees, for the underemployed and unemployed, for those whose medical bills have drained them dry.  We remember not just the past but we remember the present and we give thanks for our abundance.  This Thanksgiving, spend time allowing your senses to invoke memories among you.  As you smell taste your food, celebrate those that have come before and give thanks for the ways in which God’s sacred story continues to live out in our lives, in new and creative ways.  O Taste and know the Lord is good.  Amen. 

             

Stewardship Sermon

1 Kings 17
Acts 4:32

            After Sunday worship, a young boy walked up to the pastor and handed him a dollar.  The pastor asked, what is this for?  I thought you might need it.  And the pastor responded, why is that son?  And the boy responded, every Sunday when we get home from church, my dad always says what a poor preacher you are. 

            As we gather on this Stewardship Sunday, we have these two passages before us.  One is of the prophet Elijah that encounters a widow that has absolutely nothing left to care for her son and herself.  The other is of a community of people that have come together to share of their resources so that there is no need among them.  One is a story of isolation, the other is a story of community.  The widow and her son are on their own.  Once their meager amount of food is gone that is it, there is nothing more and it seems there are no outside resources available to them.  No soup kitchen, no food pantry, no community of faith pooling their resources to get them through.  They are going to die. 
            In the story of community, we have generous hearts, people taking what they have, selling what they don’t need, bringing together resources to make sure the entire group is being cared for.  Barnabas had a field, and he too sold it to bring the proceeds to the community.  We then have another couple, that decide they too will sell some property, but instead of being of one heart with the greater community, they proclaim that they are giving the proceeds of the sale to the group, but they withhold a portion of the prophets for themselves.  Ananias an Sapphira – have so much, and are generous in what they give, and yet.  And yet they cannot completely surrender what they have and the outcome is rather harsh.  They drop dead. 
            We have a widow with nothing that fears she and her son will die, and somehow, by giving the last of what they have to the prophet Elijah, their food does not run out.  Ananias and Sapphira had no fear of going hungry, no concern that their life might come to an end, but they also just can’t seem to fully trust in the community to which they are a part. 
            Throughout the generations, people have tried in various places to live out this type of Christian community.  Is it truly possible to come together as a people and share all of our resources?  And over and over again, people have learned that it just does not work.  The Amish are doing their best to model coming together as a community in times of need to help each other out, but even they do not pool all of their resources together. 
            So, as we ponder Stewardship, as we ponder what it means to be community here together, we each have our own possessions, homes, and cars, but we also have a shared resource and responsibility.  This church building, this sanctuary, this organ, these windows are collectively ours.  Generations of people have contributed from their own resources to come together and share, to share in creating a sacred place where people can gather in worship, prayer, song.  Where people can gather in Sunday School and Bible Study, where people can gather in fellowship and celebration.  This is how we pool together our resources in our modern world so that all have a church home. 
            But we also know we are more than a building, we are more than this sanctuary, this organ, and these windows.  We are to be like the prophet Elijah that goes to the widow and her son, we are to go to places of isolation, places that others have forgotten or don’t care about, we are to go and bring promise, bring hope, bring God’s promise of providing even in times when there seems to be nothing left.  For a small church, we do a lot.  We just gathered at least a dozen grocery bags full of food for the Roxbury Food Pantry’s Thanksgiving basket.  And now, today, we pack items for the military through Operation Shoe Box.  Studies show, that in our current society, people want to give to a cause, they want to give to something that is concrete, something that they can see, something tangible.  People want to give to charities that connect to their own lives such as: Breast Cancer, Alztimer’s research, or diabetes. 
            When we give to God, when we give to the church, it might not seem so concrete.  The work of God in this world, what we proclaim as the Kingdom of God is not always easy to name.  But it is there.  Your stewardship to this church building has allowed a scout troop to gather in this building for years.  Year after year, young men gain skills of leadership and are given the opportunity of becoming Eagle Scouts, and those are the tangible moments of the Kingdom of God breaking into our world.  Stewardship calls us to pool our resources, not always for ourselves, but for the greater community, for the support group that meets here on Monday nights, and for the yearly blood drives.
            Here are a few ways in which people within this congregation have shared why this church, why this community is important.  We can’t put a price tag on these things, but we can proclaim them as the work of God, the inbreaking of God’s kingdom here in this place, and within our hearts, and within our lives. 

            However it is that we are able to give, we, as a community here in this place will need to find ways to gather as a community that fits within our means.  We are fortunate that we are not the widow, preparing our last meal, but we must be good stewards with what we have and with what we receive.  Let us live into the Bible characters of Elijah and Barnabas, whether we are able to take a meager handful of resources and multiply it, or give generously of what we already have, together, we are God’s people and together we are making a difference in our own spiritual journeys as well as sharing love and compassion with the world around us.  Amen.    

Sunday, November 1, 2015

All Saints Day - sermon: More than Heirlooms

Rev. 21

“More Than Heirlooms”

            This past week, I attended a pastor’s retreat at camp Johnsonburg.  The theme of the retreat was story telling.  We sat around a fire, with full length windows on either side, so the gorgeous fall foliage accented the beauty of the burning logs.  Our speaker shared his stories, each beginning with a scripture and each ending with a connection to how God is present in not just the stories of our scripture but in the story of our lives.  We were then invited to share stories of our own lives, stories from our ministry, stories of life, and stories of death. 
            He shared a story on Revelations 21 of the new heavens and the new earth.  His story was of one of the reality of the world, that sometimes really bad things do happen and how, as a people of faith, we live in this time knowing God’s promise that in the fullness of God’s time God’s love overcomes oppression, injustice, suffering, and even death.  We live in this imbetween time, this time of proclaiming God’s work in Jesus Christ, a season of resurrection, but still not the fullness of all knees bowing before God, and embracing God’s love in their lives. 
            But the thing is, we have stories, we have stories of when God’s fullness is present in our lives.  We have glimpses of God’s future glory if we open ourselves to interpreting our life stories through the lens of scripture. 
            As I began to think more deeply about my stories, and this particular day we call All Saints Day, I began to think about the people in my life that have gone before.  I remember visiting my grandmother and how she was so adamant that there be no fighting over her things after she died that she gave us all masking tape and a marker and we were suppose to go around and put our name on specific items.  Grandma wanted her stuff to be passed along.  There were some really special things that I wanted.  I was one of the last of the grandchildren not to have children, and Grandma had made all the other great grandchildren baby blankets.  Well, wouldn’t you know, she had a hope chest, and in the chest were a pile of baby blankets waiting, waiting for future babies, babies not yet born, but waiting for future possibility, future expectations, future love.  Maybe like God’s hope chest of the new heavens and the new earth, filled with God’s love for not just what has been but for what will be. 
            Sometimes, the things we receive from loved ones are family heirlooms, other times they are deep connections to our loved one’s life.  I have a few items passed along to me that have very little meaning to me. I keep them only because they belong to grandma or grandpa.  But there are other things that are more than heirlooms, they hold a reminder to stories, to memories, to moments where our lives connected and our stories intertwined.  From both of my grandmothers, I asked for one of their quilting books.  They were both avid quilters and this is an art form that I am deeply drawn to.  Although I have only done a few small quilts, I plan to embrace this art form more deeply as my girls get a little older. 
            Another item I claimed, was my grandmother’s Bible Quilt.  I only learned of this quilt on her 90th birthday when my mother and aunt put together a book for all the grandchildren.  After grandma’s death, I used the Pastor card and said, I am the only pastor in the family, I get the quilt.  This quilt is by far more than just a heirloom, just as our scriptures are by far more than just an heirloom.  It is grandma’s faith story.  She picked the fabrics, she picked the stories to remember, she retold the stories by her art, and her love for God and her love of telling God’s story is infused through this quilt.   As I think about all Saints Day, I think about all the stories of faith that were embraced by the generations before us and how people sought to tell the story, sought to share the love of God with others, with their family and with the next generation.  Our stories are more than heirlooms, our stories when told through the lens of faith, illustrate to the world our trust in God, our understanding that is at work bringing wholeness and goodness into this world. 

            Our Bible, our scripture is more than an heirloom, it is a living story.  A story of people that did their best to understand God in their lives and how they were to live as a people connected to God.  All Saints day is more than just remember our loved ones, it is a time to embrace the stories of those that formed us, fashioned us, molded us into the people we are becoming.  We are, only because of the lives before us, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It all is a part of who we are.  Communion is more than just a heirloom.  Here is a story that we tell over and over again, not just through words, but through action.  Because we believe in God’s promises, because we believe that God is at work in the world, because we believe we are called to be the yeast of God’s love that works within the dough, we break bread and share the cup living into God’s story.  We are not just retelling the story, we are not just connecting the story to a moral or ethical meaning, we are participating with in the story, we are participating within the great chain of saints, those that came before, and those that have not yet been born.  We are the now of God’s work, the now of God’s promise, the now of God’s story, and in the bread and in the cup we are united with the entire body of Christ.  This is God’s promise, this is the new heaven and the new earth, this is the time when knees will bow and people will praise God with one voice.  Embrace your story, embrace the moment, and be fed on God’s covenant of grace, reconciliation, and newness.  In Christ, we are a new creation, we are the not yet, but someday will fully be.