sermon - Lent (community)

Mark 2

“Being Community”

            As we continue our journey through Lent, we have explored a handful of spiritual practices.  On Ash Wednesday, I shared that the word Lent has roots in the word of lengthening.  The days are lengthening as we move towards Spring.  In our reformed tradition, we can view Lent as a Spiritual Spring, a time of preparation as we move towards Easter, towards the Resurrection, a time for us to till the soil of our souls and water the seeds of faith as we seek to bare fruit for our loving God.  Today’s spiritual practice, in honor of the sacrament of Baptism is:  Being Community. 

            For so many of you, being community here in this place is second nature.  Many of you have grown up in the church or even grown up in this particular church.  Eleanor Rose is a fourth generation present here within this place.  Not only is she a part of this community, she is very literally a part of this community’s family.  Many churches describe themselves as family.  That is how I have always described the church from my own experience in my childhood.  My family moved a lot when I was growing up and one of the first things we always did was find a new church family as soon as we were settled.  Our own extended family was far away, but we were able to create relationships within our church family for support, nurture, and growth. 

            Being Community, being a family of faith, something that might seem as natural as breathing, is a spiritual practice because we need to be aware of it.  For those of us that are comfortable within our community, we need to be aware of each other.  Not everyone has grown up in this church and even more so, many people are not growing up in the church at all.  So, what does that mean for us?  It means we need to be open and receptive to visitors, to new members, and to ourselves. 

            God created us people to be in community.  Whether it is community with our families, community within our children’s schools or sports, community with our hobbies and activities, whatever it is that we do, people tend to gravitate to each other and form community.  Once it was our neighborhoods, I still remember a new family moving to town back when I was in high school.  We met the new kid at a school activity and the next day, my best friend and I decided to bake brownies and take them over to his house and welcome him to town.  When we arrived at the house, the mom woke her son up, not the brother we had met the night before.  We were so confused.  It turns out they had two sons, the football player, popular son and the quiet brother.  The mom just assumed we were there to flirt with her son the football player.  Now, so many of us don’t even know our neighbors, let alone welcome to town with a cake, brownies, cookies, or homemade bread.   

            The Spiritual practice of being community.  I could have gone with the scripture passage:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  And then the whole conversation of who is my neighbor?   Instead, I chose the passage of the four friends that go to the extreme to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus.  We are told that the crowds are so large that these friends cannot get close enough to Jesus.  Their mission, their desire, their purpose is to bring their friend to Jesus so he can be healed.  This passage shows extreme love, commitment to the other, and self-sacrifice in order to bring wholeness to someone other than one’s self.  In our world today, we spend a lot of time focused on ourselves, we are living in a very independent, individualistic society.  Some of my own biggest struggles are because I was taught to be a self sustaining, strong, independent person.  Which is good, but sometimes it is my own worst enemy.  We have to be self aware enough of knowing when being independent is good and when being a part of community and engaging the needs of the whole is appropriate. 

            We can look at this passage in several different ways.  Place yourself into the story – are you one of the four friends?  If so, who are you concerned about?  Who are or what are you carrying?  And who is working with you?  Are you trying to carry something alone or are you working in community to bear the burden, to share in the process, and to be community as you seek to encounter God in your life?  Or are you the one that is paralyzed?  Are you the one on the mat, needing the support of the community to carry you for awhile.  And what are those things that paralyze us?  There can be many things in our life that hold us back: guilt, fear, anxiety, stress, the unknown.  And so often, we hold it inside, trying to be strong, instead of being present to our community that is called to carry us through these times.  And again, that is why it is a spiritual practice, because there may be times that we, as the community have no idea how to be present, how to carry the other.  And sometimes, all we can do is just be present.  We cannot always be the ones to fix it.  These friends could not fix their friend, they could not heal him, they could not make him whole.  And so, together, they bring him through the roof into Jesus’ presence.    This is a community of extreme measures. 

            Barbara Brown Taylor says this in her book: an Alter in the World – sometimes “the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self-to encounter another human being not as someone you can us, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.” 

            Where ever we are in the story, if you are able to find yourself within it, together we are called to encounter God.  Each person in that scripture is hungry for something, whether it is curiosity, the desire to be healed, a spiritual hunger, or being present for a friend.  They all have the potential of being in God’s presence and to be community for each other.  Jesus does not send any of them away, and as chaotic as the scenario seems to be, imagine someone being lowered through the roof, he engages the moment, brings healing and wholeness to paralyzed friend, and whether those four friends were looking for a spiritual moment in their own lives, I am sure just being present to this divine encounter, changed and altered their own lives as well.  The spiritual practice of community, of giving of one’s self for another, can bring us closer to God. 

            Taylor shares:  “If you have ever spent a Saturday volunteering at the Special Olympics, taking Meals on Wheels to the elderly, or picking up trash with the Riverkeepers, then you know that you can arrive back home dirty and tired but also oddly refreshed, with more lift in your heart than you could have gotten from a day at the beach.”  I think this is what happened to those four friends, they perhaps had just as much a healing moment as their dear friend.  The spiritual practice of community can bring new life, new life to all who are engaged as a family, as a community, as people who love their neighbor as themselves.  Isn’t that the calling of baptism?  Celebrating the new life we are given in Jesus Christ as we are nurtured in the faith and come together to live out that faith together in God’s holy community.  Amen.  

sermon - Lent

Jeremiah 31:31

John 12

“Incarnation – Being in the Body”

           

I can still remember, sitting in the field house back in High School, getting ready for track practice when one of my friends said to me:  Carie, you do know that Jesus was a real person, don’t you?  Hmmm, well, no – I guess I didn’t.  I heard the Bible as stories, just like many other stories I read.  I didn’t read or hear it as a history book.  It was a story about God, a story for us to live by, but a story.   My friend then said:  Jesus lived, just like other people in history.  These stories are about a real person.  Her statements to me caused an awakening in my faith journey.  What did it mean to me to know that Jesus truly walked this earth, that he was in a body just like mine, that he had real parents and real friends?

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book:  An Alter in the World calls this:  The Practice of Wearing Skin.  She reminds her readers that our bodies are the address for where our soul lives.  As we walk around this earth in which we live, we are very connected to our bodies, but our souls are present with us as well.  As we build community, we should be building community not as bodies, not as people who look the same, or dress the same, or enjoy the same activities, but as souls.  As people that acknowledge the sacred in each other.  Jesus crosses all boundaries, Jew, Samaritan, Greek, Gentile, male, female, young and old.  He does not cringe away from those with leprosy or other diseases.  He sees the soul as he heals the body.

Incarnational ministry is understanding our faith that as something we just read about, but about real life connections.  About knowing God desires a direct connection to us as God’s people.  That God knows us so well, our fears, our pains, our joys and celebrations.  God gets it, God gets us.  And just as God was present directly with God’s people, we too are called to be in sacred and holy relationships with each other.   Not just friends, but holy and sacred relationships with each other. 

            As we journey further into the season of Lent, we draw closer to Holy Week, to the time of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.  Today’s reading, is a simple way in which Jesus teaches his followers about what is to happen.  Jesus walks the earth in a day and age where people are interconnected to the earth.   They are farmers, they are herders, they are fishermen, they know about times of scarcity and times of abundance.  And so he uses very simple language and a metaphor that the people around him would have no problem understanding. 

            In order to grow the next crop of wheat, seeds must be kept aside to plant.  For those of us that have oak trees in our yards, we know that one oak tree yields thousands of acorns.  Although the squirrels in our neighborhood do a good job gathering them up, each year we have dozens of little seedlings that begin to sprout in the yard around the trees. 

            One seed can give yield to an abundant crop, if it does what it was created to do, fall into the ground and be transformed into something completely new and different from itself.  This is usually a basic science lesson in elementary school.  Kids are given a seed, usually a bean, and place it in a zip lock bag with a wet paper towel.  Over the week they watch the seed change, sprouting roots, then a stem and leaves, bursting what once was a bean into a new plant.  I love doing this with the acorns in my yard too, pulling them up and showing the children how this seed is changing and somehow within itself knows how to create roots, a stem and leaves.  I find it yet another expression of God’s creative powers in this world.  Something as small as an acorn becoming a mighty oak tree.  Something as small as a grain of wheat becoming a stalk yielding an abundance in the stalk that it grows. 

            The obvious lesson in this is that Jesus is sharing that he is the grain of wheat.  In order for his work, here on earth to be fruitful, to lead to abundance, he must first give of himself completely and die.  He is sharing that death does not have the last word, but in death new life is born.  Life that is greater than the seed, more abundant then the small part that is lost. 

            For those of us here on the other side of the story, we can see the abundance.  We can see how in the death of Jesus, in his letting go of his life, he was reborn into a movement of people living God’s teachings in a meaningful and transformational way.  People embraced each other, shared their property, took care of those that could not care for themselves.  They honored people in a sacred and holy way and more and more people became a part of this faith movement that eventually became Christianity.  We see the abundance in churches scattered all around our towns and throughout the world.  We see the abundance in various ministries that have formed throughout the world brining fresh drinking water, education, medical care, to those that live without. 

            Every once in awhile, I play this mental game with myself and I ask: what would this neighborhood, or this town, or this state look like if the church did not exist?  Would there be soup kitchens?  Would there be Habitat for Humanity?  Would there be homeless shelters?  In the life of one person, new life has continued to be born for hundreds of generations. 

The spiritual practice of being in the body, the Incarnation involves transformation.  It involves letting go of one’s self in order for a future of abundance.  This does not mean neglect of self, but letting go of our selfishness.  It might mean asking the question:  There is abundance within each and everyone of us.  There is abundance within this congregation.  What do we have to die of in order for new life to be born?  Questions that you all already asked through New Beginnings:  Who is God calling us to?  What is God’s purpose for us here in this place?  How do we get from here to there?  We embrace the spiritual practice of the Incarnation, of being in the body and we practice authentic community. 

            I was at an installation service this past Sunday, and the elder giving the sermon shared this:  God’s story has been shared generation after generation and it is now in our hands.  It is our turn to share the story to pass it along to the next generation.  What does this mean for us? 

            Lent is the perfect time to ask ourselves about the Spiritual Practice of being in the body.  We name Jesus as the incarnation of God, that is: God being in our human body, God in the flesh, Emmanuel – God with us.  Jesus was in the body. 

            In closing: Taylor shares this:  “The daily practice of incarnation – of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh – is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels.  Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash fee and share supper?  With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he did not give them something to think about together when he was gone.  Instead, he gave them concrete things to do – specific ways of being together in their bodies – that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself.  We are now God’s flesh on this earth.  

Sermon: Gathered to be Sent

Isaiah 40

Mark 1

“Gathered to be Sent”

            Our lives are filled with various rhythms.  The sun rises and sets and the majority of us follow the rhythm with being awake and going to sleep.  Depending on where we are in our lives, we have the rhythm of school or work and hopefully days of rest within our weeks.  We have the rhythm of the seasons, knowing that spring does follow winter gives a lot of us hope that this cold days will, hopefully, soon be over.  Our rhythm of life is enhanced by various holidays that are scattered throughout the year. 

As a people of faith, we also have rhythms that guide us through our weeks and years.  We gather on Sundays to center ourselves in God’s presence, for some it is a time of recharging our batteries in order to move through the week ahead.  For some it is a time of prayer, sharing of concerns and joys, and sacred rest.  Together, it is a part of our rhythm, our time to gather and worship.  We also have the seasons of the church year that break us out of the ordinary, such as Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent, and Christmas. 

Today’s Gospel reading is one of rhythms.  Jesus and the disciples have gathered in the Synagogue for a time of worship, teaching, and learning.  As the time of worship concludes, Jesus is called to come immediately to the home of Peter’s mother-in-law.  As Jesus enters the home, he finds that she is ill with a fever and immediately, heals her.  As the day progresses, we are told at night, people come from the entire city to be healed.  One commentator shared that the reason it is at dark is that this is when the Sabbath has ended.  Once people are released from the Sabbath regulations they are able to come and be healed.  Jesus sets the course for one set of life pattern while the majority of the city still follows the rhythms of their tradition.  Sometimes, the patterns of our lives are so ingrained within us, we don’t even realize that they may be keeping us from wholeness.   

As the scripture continues, we learn that early in the morning, Jesus separates himself from everyone else, he goes alone to a deserted place to pray.  As his disciples realize he is missing, they set off to look for him and once he is found, they want him to come back and heal more people, but Jesus responds that it is time to move on to the next town.  It is time to share God’s presence with others, to move on to a new place.  This pattern of faith living is a little more challenging for us.  For many, we set aside time on Sunday to gather as a faith community to worship, but that day has ended and Jesus still sets aside time in his life for prayer, for entering into God’s sacred presence.  Finding that time in our busy lives is so challenging.  In order to make this time part of our daily rhythm, people use various devotions books or in today’s world of technology, you can even have a daily prayer, or Bible verse, or devotion emailed to you.  Over the next few weeks, I would like to see if there is enough interest to start a weekly Bible Study or monthly study group.  Beginning practices of gathering throughout the week then moves us into the next pattern of being sent to serve God. 

In just my two weeks with you all, I have already heard some really “God Moment” stories of how people have been called to serve God both within your local faith community and out in the world around us. 

            In Jesus’ daily living, he is establishing a model for how people of faith are called to live.  We gather to worship and then we go out to be present with each other.  They start with someone familiar, this is Peter’s mother-in-law, and then they are present for the community in which Peter’s wife’s family lives.  Perhaps this is also Peter’s community as well, but there is still a sense of being in a familiar community.  Then Jesus spends time alone with God in prayer and then pushes his disciples to move into the less familiar.  I think this is where most of us get a little uncomfortable.  When I was an interim pastor in CT, the choir once a year would go to the woman’s prison in Danbury and lead worship.  Little did I know, the pastor was also suppose to preach.  What?  Me?  You want me to go into a prison and preach?  I was shaking in my boots.  No way!  But I couldn’t tell my choir that.  I’m not sure how many times they told me that I had to have my driver’s license as a form of ID to enter the prison.  Well, that was fine, because I always had my driver’s license with me.  But when we arrived that day, I could not find my driver’s license.  Did I subconsciously remove it?  However my license disappeared, they still let me in.  We had done a security screening ahead of time, and I think that must have been when I did not put my license back in my wallet. 

            Long story short:  I actually enjoyed being a part of the worship service at the prison.  All of this fear, all of this, not me God, turned into a really amazing experience.  In fact, we went back.  Not as a choir to lead worship, but one of my deacons put together a four week self esteem program for the women.  So, we not only were present in worship, we began the formation of relationships, of hearing their stories, of being present with them in their pain, loss, failures, and hopes for a fresh start once they were released.  God calls us to the familiar but we are also called out of our comfort zones to enter into communities that might make us extremely uncomfortable. 

            We gather in worship to be sent into the world.  We gather to be sent to the familiar as well as the unfamiliar, but we gather to be sent.  This is something that I know you all have been discerning over the past few years.  Where is God calling you to serve?  Are there rhythms of life holding you back?  Are there patterns of tradition that might be holding you back such as the people that came to be healed only after the Sabbath ended? 

            I wanted to spend a little more time with Peter’s mother-in-law, but sometimes sermon writing takes you in a completely different direction than planned.  As Jesus enters the house of this woman, she is healed, and immediately she serves them.  For some, this can be a challenging text as women struggle with traditional and untraditional roles.  But, we have to put ourselves back two thousand years and understand that Jesus healed a woman.  Jesus knew she had value and worth and is ever bit a child of God as his male disciples. 

            As she is healed, she serves.  We don’t know how any of the other people that are healed later that night respond.  But we know she serves.  She encounters the sacred in her life and she is restored to her fullness, she is restored to use her God given gifts, her purpose in life, she responds not by taking the rest of the day off, but by serving.  As we seek to find wholeness in our lives, as we encounter God moments and the sacred presence, we too may find ourselves in those moments where we know we are called to serve.  Not out of obligation, not because no one else will do it, but because we are restored to a fullness that calls us into serving. 

            As a congregation seeking to be present with God here within this place and out in the world around us, let us find the rhythms of our faith living that energize us, that heal us, that give us meaning and purpose, that open our souls to our God given gifts and then, let us serve.  Amen.      

Junk Food - Sacred Food

Deuteronomy

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

“Junk Food – Sacred Food”

            As we enter in this sacred journey together, I am glad that on this first Sunday, we have a mission component to our worship service.  I personally think that the Souper Bowl of Caring is genius and completely God inspired.  To think, this started as a small movement, a youth pastor in a church looking at culture, looking at the world all around us, and asking the question, how can we be a faithful people of God in and amongst this world in which we live?  Before becoming overwhelmed with all the issues of the world, God whispered and directed, Pastor Brad Smith, specifically towards Superbowl Sunday. 

As a child, I loved watching football with my dad, but over the years, I have drifted away and really only focus any attention to the game on Superbowl Sunday.    I have many fond memories of Superbowls past from those days watching the big game with my dad, to youth group gatherings where we would play games as we watched the game together, or as an adult, gathering with friends.  Over the years, things changed, and more and more attention was moved away from the game to the commercials.  And then, one year, I remember on the news that a 30 second commercial was running for a million dollars.

 I think at that point in my life it all clicked and connected and the inner faithful part of me questioned this use of money.  What!  That’s a lot of money to run a commercial for Doritos, M&Ms, and Coke.  I might have thought about how this just did not make sense, but I did not know how to respond.  I have absolutely no control over how businesses operate and they have every right to spend their money how they want to. 

            And perhaps that’s why I think the Souper Bowl of Caring is so God inspired.  For this one youth pastor, he sought a way, not to stop the commercials, but to respond to this inner calling that so many of us feel.  That’s a lot of money to spend on commercials that are selling food that – well, is junk.  Yes, very tasty, but junk.  And so, instead of condemning the culture, he found a way to walk along side and helped people connect a day of football which incorporates lots and lots of food, to the reality that a lot of people right here in our own communities are going hungry.  Would people prayerfully consider bringing in a can of soup for the local soup kitchen, or contribute a dollar towards the local feeding programs.  He invited people to faithfully think about the way in which we celebrate this day, with parties, and food, and junk food, and commercials that cost way too much money.  This year they are 4.5 million.  He asked us to prayerfully consider taking a step away from our own celebrations and make a contribution towards feeding others. 

            What started twenty-five years ago as a local movement is now a national day of giving raising over 8.5 million dollars last year.  Their vision statement is the following:  To transform the time around the Super Bowl into the nation's largest celebration of giving and serving.  One person’s spiritual creativity has been a gift to so many people over the past twenty-five years. 

            Food, we Presbyterians love to eat.  And we are also very good at feeding others.  But can you imagine, if in our faith, we were restricted as to what we could or could not eat?  Various faith practices have food restrictions, whether it is pork, beef, alcohol, or caffeine and that is just to name a few.  Our first reading today from Deuteronomy is an example of food restrictions.  At one point in time, people of God were not to eat any of these unclean foods.  In my own life, I’ve always just eaten the foods that I like.  I’ve never really examined food in my life to what God would or would not like me to eat.  My church, my faith tradition, has not given me restrictions on what I can and cannot eat.  My mom, at least, did her best to teach me to eat healthy, and to not have my dessert before dinner.  But that’s about the extent of it.  

So, can we even relate to this issue that Paul is addressing?  We purchase or food at the grocery store and I, for one, have never worried about it being dedicated to an idol.  We could look at it from the angel of how sports have become our modern day idols and all the junk food we eat while watching these games is part of the sacrificial worship we do while watching our games.  But, I’m not going to go there.

Instead, I think the real issue in this text is that food is not just food but can be a symbolic representation of our spiritual selves.  We are what we eat,  I learned that when I was rather young.  But does food impact our soul as well?  Paul is saying here that it can, depending on how strong our faith is.  In the case of food being sacrificed to idols, the food is then eaten, either in the temple or sold in the markets.  The food is just food but it carries with it a symbolic meaning of is intended purpose. 

I have various friends that are very specific about what they will and will not eat.  For them, food is not just food, food is a part of their life practice, part of their philosophy, part of their faith practice.  More and more people are buying organic fruits and vegetables or free range meets.  I attended a Vegan wedding a few years ago, several of my friends are becoming vegetarians and more and more people are on gluten free diets.  Various movements are being practiced by people, such as buying only local food, which means not purchasing food that has to travel more than 100 miles to get to your store.  Farmers Markets are a huge draw in the summer months as people seek to purchase the freshest produce. 

What does food mean to us?  Throughout the Biblical story, food has often had greater meaning then just what we need to eat.  Jesus gathered with people over a meal.  Food represents hospitality.  Food is essential to our celebrations: Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christmas and Easter.  What symbolic meaning does food have for us as spiritual people?  I know for myself, I have been living on a processed food diet for most of my life.  I am seeking to grow in my own spiritual practice of sacred eating.  Of being more intentional about what I eat and how I feed not just my body but my soul. 

            It is no accident that God uses food to meet us in this sacrament that we call Communion.  God told the people when they fled from Egypt to remember the Passover and to celebrate and to remember once they were not a people and now they are a people, once they were slaves in Egypt and now they are free.  As a spiritual people, God continues to use food not just as food but as a symbol of who we are.  We can argue whether this bread and this cup are just bread and cup or the real presence or symbolic presence of Jesus.  But more than that, we come to this table to remember that we do not journey in this world like locusts tearing through a cornfield, but that we are created to be a community, a community that has a God given purpose to be set apart for sacred living.  Sacred living where we walk alongside our culture and listen to those places where our souls sit uneasy.  Are there places, such as the high cost of commercials for food, that make your soul uneasy?  Take, eat, and remember, that God is calling us to listen and respond. 

            Ann Weems writes this:  Ordinary bread made by ordinary people is holy when we take and eat and remember.  Ordinary grapes taken by ordinary people made into ordinary wine is holy when we hold it to our lips and rink and remember.  This bread…remember his body was given for us.  This wine…remember his blood was poured out for us.  Bread and wine, from ordinary to holy, Remember. 

            Food is just food, but as spiritual people, our creating God recreates food as we gather in this sacred time and are blessed by this covenant of Grace, Forgiveness, Renewal, and Love.  Amen. 

Sermon - In the Spotlight

Epiphany

Jeremiah 31:7-14

John 1

 

 

“To be in the Spotlight”

 

 

            I was first introduced to the magic of Broadway as a child when my family moved up to CT from TX.  I am pretty sure my first show was Annie, and I feel like I have been hooked ever since.  The costumes, the sets, the music, the dancing, the lights, it is all so captivating, so enchanting, so, did I already say, so magical?.  Although I have not yet taken my own children to a Broadway show, I am introducing them to the theater through the children’s shows in Morristown.  As it is time for the show to begin, the lights dim, the room silences, the curtains draw, and a spotlight will often pinpoint one particular character as the show begins. 

            The spotlight is a powerful thing.  It shines itself upon the center of the show, highlighting what is essential, the significant character, the one that your attention is supposed to be drawn towards.  Have you ever been driving at night and suddenly noticed a spotlight shining up in the sky?  Businesses will use this tactic for a grand opening or some sort of big event.  For miles around, the light can be seen shining up into the sky, making people wonder, what am I missing?  What is happening?  What event is this?  And perhaps a very curious few will make it their mission to go on an adventure to find out where the light is shining.   

            To be in the spotlight means the attention is upon you.  During my studies, this is one of the key things I have remembered about the Gospel of John: read the Gospel of John as if it is a theatrical show.  Pay attention to where the light is shining.  The Gospel writer uses light as if it were a spotlight, placing the key character in its embrace.  Just as a show begins, the lights dim and it is dark and then, the spotlight breaks through the darkness, capturing the main character of the show, bringing the entire audiences eyes to one place and one person.  Darkness and Light.  Anytime you read a passage from the Gospel of John, pay attention to these two things, darkness and light. 

            In these opening verses of John, the writer proclaims:  the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.  Words of hope, right from the start.  And yet, the Gospel writer holds off on revealing this main character’s name.  A second person, John the Baptist, is named first.  We get hints, we get clues, we get this rich creation story of God bringing forth life through the Word.    The Gospel writer is playful, he is drawing the reader in, he is creating tension because the world has such a hard time seeing, even when the light is shining directly on the key player of the story.  And yet, the world did not know him. 

            I can just visualize the opening of this Broadway show.  Complete darkness, and then, a piercing light, shining, but shining upon nothing.  And then another light softly exposing John the Baptist, over on stage left who is pointing to the light.  Pointing to the light, and perhaps shadows of other people, such as Moses, flicker through the spotlight, and then, then, with our modern technology, words splash around the darkness such as: love, joy, peace, grace, and merge together in the spotlight reveling the manger scene, as the Word becomes flesh.  Eighteen verses later, the light that has been shining can now reveal the Son of God born into this world as Jesus Christ.  But even through the entire Gospel story, with all the emphasis on Jesus by placing him in the spotlight, there will still be those who do not know him.  There will still be those that choose the darkness instead of the light.  There will still be those that cannot embrace the love, joy, peace, and grace of God. 

And so we continue to tell the story.  And God continues to shine the spotlight through the darkness because the darkness cannot overcome it.  We have just journeyed through the Advent and Christmas Season where we have symbolically remembered the light as the four Advent candles were lit representing more and more light shining into God’s world.  And life outside of the church walls glisten as people adorn their homes with light after light after light.  Today is what we call Epiphany Sunday, and is often connected to the Three Kings that followed the light of the new star in the sky.  Epiphany: when God’s love extends out into the greater world and strangers, foreigners, Gentiles, and outsiders are invited in and join the story.  Epiphany: taking the joy of the Christmas season and extending it into our daily living, focusing the spotlight of our beings to shine God’s love and goodness into this world in which we live.  Epiphany: when the light bulb comes on and we say to ourselves – I get it. 

            God’s spotlight is a powerful thing.  It draws foreign Magi to search for this new born king.  It causes King Herod to tremble in fear.  It stops shepherds in their tracks.  It calls people to foreign lands to use their resources and skills to open schools and medical facilities, to teach and heal the sick.  God’s spotlight calls people in Morris County to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and share the Christmas Spirit through the giving of gifts to children that are living on the fringes.  God’s spotlight calls us to pray for each other, to cry together, to laugh together,  to gather together as faith communities, to be a people of God that embraces God’s love through Jesus Christ and shares that love with the greater world. 

 

Where do you see God’s spotlight in your life?  What is God calling you to?  Just as the Magi saw this star in the sky, and they embarked on a journey to find the new born king, we too are on a journey.  As a congregation, you have discerned that you are ready to engage where God is calling you in the greater community, whether it be through Habitat for Humanity or Succa Sunny days or other town events.  Some of you may have amazing stories of where your journey has taken you and how the source of God’s light has given your life deep meaning and purpose.  Some of you may just be embarking on this journey.  But together, we are here in this place, to learn from each other, to grow together, to share, and to embrace the love, joy, peace, and grace that God has granted us through the Christmas Story of the birth of Christ.   

God’s spotlight is always there, always pointing on Emmanuel, the Messiah, God with us, whether we can see it or not.  Whether we just see the words bouncing around the stage, or John the Baptist on stage left proclaiming the good news, or whether we are catching the shadows of others that are called into God’s service or if we can clearly see Jesus Christ at center stage.  In and through each and everyone of us, God’s light grows stronger and stronger and fills the stage of life, pushing the darkness further and further away. 

            Epiphany:  the church of God gathering together, inviting all to be a part of the journey, and then going out into the world, shining God’s light, even in the darkest of places.  Amen. 

1 Peter chapter 2 - sermon series

1 Peter 2

“Building a Spiritual House”

            Last week, we entered into the first letter of Peter.  He is writing to people that have found themselves living in exile.  A people that desire a different way of life for themselves, a people longing to return to Israel.  Instead of raising their hopes that they will have a future promise of returning home, the writer of this letter instead encourages them to embrace their current reality.  Embrace living where they are, embrace the purpose God has for their present, instead of a focus on what God might be doing for their future.  Last week the focus was on how to be a Holy people, even in exile. 

            Today, the writer of this letter continues to help guide this group of people into defining what it means for them to be community with each other.  This part of the letter calls this gathering of people to think about their behavior, to think about their actions, to think about how they are treating each other.  They are told to rid themselves of:  all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.  Before they can move forward as God’s people, before they can move forward to living out the purpose God is calling them into, they need to create peace within themselves.  They cannot just be a group of people gathering together, they must be a group of people gathering together for a Holy purpose. 

            This whole first section of 1 Peter, is directly connected to the Hebrew scriptures.  The writer is reaching back into their faith story and drawing on the scriptures as they are creating a new community in their present situation.  Taste that the Lord is good, is from the Psalms. 

            They are to prayerfully examine what in their lives connects them to God.  How do they taste God?  Is it through study?  Is it through prayer?  Is it through the kindness of another?  Something has impacted their life in such a way that they are being drawn to this new fledgling faith community.  Somehow they have been introduced to God’s work through Jesus, and they believe that in and through his life and teachings that he is indeed the Messiah.  In their current setting, this was not an easy decision to come to.  They are breaking from the cultural setting they are living within, they may even be breaking from their family heritage, alienating themselves from the family community with which they live. 

            And this is partly why, 1 Peter is guiding them on how to be community.  For some, the faith community might be the only community they now have.  Embracing the faith of the early Christian church was not the standard way of life.  The writer emphasizes this within the letter, “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight…”  We usually understand this Hebrew scripture of the corner stone being rejected as a direct reference to Jesus being rejected by the religious authorities of his time.  But here, it is being used for all those that are a part of this community of faith.  Just as Jesus is the living stone, rejected by mortals, so are they.  They are living stones, yes, rejected, but living stones in God’s sight to be used by God for God’s holy purpose. 

            Rejection is one of the hardest emotional stresses people wrestle with.  Most people do not desire to be rejected.  Most people want to be liked.  They want to be a part of their community.  And yet, we know, there are people we like and people we just don’t seem to connect with.  Within the faith community, there is no room for this.  God calls us together, God has given each purpose within the community a purpose.  The outside world, the cultural around the church might be full of rejection, but within the faith community, God desires acceptance.  God desires each member of the community to be a living stone, to be built up into a spiritual house for the Lord.  The writer of 1^st Peter is calling them to understand that together they serve a purpose.  And together, they are the spiritual house for God. 

            Their time period was rather different than ours.  They did not have this independent individualistic society that we have today.  Community was absolutely the core of their everyday lives.  In our world today, we value independence.  We value being able to stand on our own; to support ourselves, to not have to depend on anyone but our self.  For many, we no longer live within our family communities.  We are transient, we are able to move from place to place and more often, it is our job that dictates where we live. 

            For many of us, we do not grow up going to school with our cousins, or spending weekends with the extended family.  Rather, we recreate family, we give close friends the title of aunt and uncle and develop new networks of familial community with those that live close by.  Even in our individualist culture, we still crave, desire, gravitate towards community. 

            This is one of the critical questions the church of the 21^st century must ask of itself as it seeks to remain relevant to people in today’s world.  What kind of community are we?  How are we tasting that God is good?  How can we share that spiritual milk with others?  How are we God’s living stones being built into a spiritual house for God?  How are we facing rejection and embracing love? 

            God has not called us together as a family of faith just to recharge our own batteries.  God has not called us together as a family of faith, for our own individual needs, but God calls us together to be a community.  A community with a purpose –   But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,^[c] in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  This text is part of our baptism liturgy.  It is essential that we embrace the understanding that together, our purpose and our very being is to proclaim that we believe God’s light of love is at the core of our own lives. 

            Being God’s living stones gathered together to build a spiritual house for the Lord changes from generation to generation and looks different depending on the cultural context.  We are living in a day and age where people proclaim they are spiritual but not religious.  We are living in a day and age where people no longer desire to be a part of a faith community because they are finding community in other places.  In a very real sense, the greater church is finding itself back in the day and age of 1^st Peter, living in a world that doesn’t really value us.  But we know those small gatherings of people kept the faith and found a way to make it relevant to the world around them and the church grew.  In the ebb and flow of life, in the changes of the seasons, God will continue to work through the church and through communities of people that gather, and God’s story will continue to transform people’s lives as we taste and know that the Lord is Good.  Amen.  

sermon: The Wedding is Ready

Matthew 22

“The Wedding is Ready”

            In today’s parable, Jesus uses the imagery of a wedding banquet to illustrate what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  Throughout the scriptures, the prophets also used the imagery of marriage to speak of God and God’s people. At times, God is the groom and Israel is his wife.  At times, Israel is the groom and they have married away from God, as God calls them back from their idolatry. 

            So, as Jesus begins this parable, those that are familiar with the Hebrew scriptures are hearing an echo of their heritage.  They are hearing yet again, the voice of the prophet that asks: are you my bride?  Are you truly my people?  Except the imagery has changed, no longer is relationship that of groom and bride but now the people that Jesus speaks of are guests.  This too should catch the listeners attention.  If Jesus spoke of a parable about a wedding banquet where all was ready but the bride did not come, the Hebrew people would sit up and take notice.  They have always been the bride so who are these guests?  And why don’t they want to come to the wedding banquet?

            Most of us enjoy parties, especially weddings.  When it comes to a family member or a really good friend, to turn down a wedding invitation is usually not an option.  Seven years later, I am still disappointed that I was not able to attend a really good friend’s wedding, but I was pregnant with Andi and very sick.  I couldn’t muster up the energy to drive eight hours so I had to tell her, we just couldn’t make it.  And, for my own wedding, there were a few really good friends that could not come and I remember feeling rather disappointed that they were not able to be there.  When it comes to family and good friends, attending the wedding can be a reflection of the relationship.  Yes, you are truly a good friend, I will make sure I do everything I can to make sure I am there for you on this special day. 

            But then there are those invitations from friends, but not close friends.  And sometimes those are easier decisions to make.  Well, yes, we went to high school together but we haven’t really stayed involved for the past ten years and it is going to be expensive to get a hotel and travel expenses so I think that perhaps this is one wedding that I can easily say thank you for the invite but I am not able to attend.  And then, there is the rarer invite from someone that you are extremely surprised to get an invitation from.  Why in the world would this person invite me to their wedding?  

            So, what is going on in this parable?  The King, sends out an invite to a wedding banquet and no one shows up.  This is the King, does he not have any friends?  Does his son not have any friends?  Are there no relatives that want to be a part of this celebration?  There are very few royal weddings in our world today, but when there is one, people want to be invited.  Even if they don’t know the couple, they want to be a part of this special day.  In fact, they line up along the streets to just catch a glimpse of the couple, they get themselves as close to there as possible without actually being there.  And it becomes part of their story.  They go back and tell their friends, hey, I saw the royal couple, I saw them enter the church, I saw them leave the church, I saw them in their royal carriage, the bride, she waved at me.  But none of this is happening in today’s parable. 

            Why does the king and his son have no friends?  Why does no one want to come?  So he sends out his servants to bring the people to the wedding banquet.  And, just like last week’s parable, there are not good results.  Why won’t the guests come?  What is so hard about attending a party?  Being a guest involves very little obligation, doesn’t it?  Or does it?  What would coming to the banquet obligate these people to?  In a literal sense, it would involve a loss of a day’s work, it might involve purchasing a gift, it might involve having to buy the right clothes.  In a literal sense, there might be some financial obligations that the people just cannot meet. 

            In a spiritual sense, since this is a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven, what are the obligations for the guests?  They are not being asked to be the bride, but just come and attend and be a part of the celebration.  Why won’t they come?  Perhaps because this is something new and different.   The people are comfortable in the way they are living their lives and they are not seeking anything new and different in their faith, in their understanding of God.  By coming to the wedding banquet there is a sign of respect for the family members that are getting married.  Spiritually, there must be a response of respect for God and for Jesus.  Spiritually, there has to be a connection to this king, to God, to what he is doing in the world by presenting his son to the world.  If there is no connection, there is no need to attend.  If there is no relationship building there is no reason to attend.  If there is no respect, there is no reason to attend.  So, is the Kingdom of Heaven about the king or about the guests?  Who is at fault?  If the king was connected to the people wouldn’t they have come?  Or are the people just too busy to pay attention to the king? 

            So, the parable continues.  The first round of guests don’t come, so anyone and everyone on the streets are gathered in and brought to the feast.  And they come.  The wedding is ready.  Although this parable has some really rough edges, the spiritual message behind it is that God’s grace is extended to all.  Everyone is invited to the wedding, but, just like the people on the streets, perhaps not everyone knows they are welcomed.  God does not act alone, this parable illustrates that there are servants, there are loyal people connected to the king that go out into the streets. 

            This parable is a spiritual message of both/and.  I asked earlier, who are the guests?  But I didn’t ask, who are the servants?  The wedding feast is ready.  What does that mean for us?  Who are we in the parable?  Are we the first round of guests, are we the second round of guests, or are we the servants?  If we are the second round of guests, let us come and enjoy the wedding.  Let us feast on God’s word, and God’s love, and God’s grace in our lives.  Let us celebrate that God is good, that God loves us, and God desires us to be at the wedding.  Let us build our relationship with God so that we hold God as one of those dear friends that we would drop just about anything for in order to be there for him. 

            Do often think of God being there for us, but what would it look like to think about ourselves as the guests and being there for God and for the son?  Take a minute and think about one wedding that you have attended as a guest that was extremely meaningful for you.  I just did a wedding vow renewal for a couple that have been married almost fifty years.  At that celebration people shared how they were at the wedding almost fifty years ago and what a wonderful relationship they have had with that couple over the past fifty years.  God desires that of us.  God desires us to say, I am so glad to be a part of this spiritual wedding and what a wonderful relationship we have had over these past – ten, or twenty or eighty years. 

            But let’s take a second look, what if we see ourselves as the servants.  God sends those servants out to gather others in.  Do we feel called in any way, shape or sort to go out and bring people in?  And if we do, what does that look like?  Some people have invited friends to come to church.  Some people have invited friends to come to Bible Study.  Some people have invited friends to come to the community breakfast.  Some people have invited friends to come our events such as the Tea or Strawberry Festival and this is a great start. 

            I just heard a story about a church that was having a community breakfast with the agenda of bringing in families.  But families did not come, instead those that came were homeless or on the fringe of homelessness.  The congregation was surprised and didn’t know what to do.  They wanted families with children.  As I heard this story, it just reminded me of us.  Now, the difference between this other congregation and us was this, they held the breakfast on Saturday and when they had worked through what they wanted and what God had sent them, they decided to put together a very informal worship service during the breakfast.  Now, some of you have heard me mention wanting to do this with our breakfast, but I have not figured out the logistics.  Do I do it during the breakfast maybe at 9:30?  Is there an elder or two willing to lead this service?  If I lead the service would an elder or two lead our worship service upstairs?  How can we make this work?  I was so surprised to hear this story because it showed me that another church stopped asking the logistic questions and just did it, and it worked. 

            The servants went out, they offered a breakfast, and the people came, and they fed them with food and the word of God and new life emerged.  Nothing like what the people expected, but truly the Kingdom of Heaven in their midst. 

            Come, the wedding is ready, come and build a loving relationship with God, come and feast on God’s love and mercy and grace.  Come, and then go out and bring others in.  The wedding is ready and it has been prepared for all.  Amen.