Did You Have Other Plans? ~ Sermon (Advent 3)

Oh, Joseph.  You did have plans, didn’t you?

And weren’t they wonderful plans?  You had a trade – you were a carpenter, which in your day, meant that you were a master builder: a stone worker, a woodworker, a mason.  In your small town in the world at that time, no one had the luxury of specializing in one form of construction alone – but your knowledge and skill meant that you were much in demand.  You built houses out of all sorts of materials – and you also made shelving, and furniture, and maybe even some items simply for the beauty of them.  You had a trade that all but guaranteed you the ability to support yourself and a family.

And you had a fiancee’ – that family you hoped for appeared to be more than a mere possibility, but a soon-to-be reality.  Your marriage to Mary was arranged and, as we know, such a betrothal was a serious business.  There had not yet been a wedding ceremony, and you had not yet begin to live together, but for most intents and purposes, the two of you were married. Your families had reached an agreement, some property may have changed hands, and you two were set – as good as married.

Yes, you did have plans, didn’t you?

And then – and then –

Somehow -- and the Bible doesn’t tell us how, or from whom – but somehow word got to you: Mary was pregnant.  Pregnant with a child she claimed had come from the Holy Spirit.  Pregnant in an era in which women did not have babies unless and until they were securely married, to the man of their father’s choosing.  Pregnant despite the fact that she was carefully supervised and sheltered by her parents.  Pregnant with a story as well as a baby – a story that made no sense at all.

And your plans, Joseph?  Shattered. Shattered along with your heart.  How betrayed you must have felt!  How disappointed!  How angry!   

You would have been well within your rights to act upon that anger and disappointment.  Mary’s story?  Highly unlikely.  The law?  Women found guilty of adultery – and what better proof than a pregnancy?  – women found guilty of adultery were subject to the punishment of death by stoning.  No one would have criticized you, had you walked into the center of town and asked that such a sentence be visited upon Mary.

But – you didn’t.  You decided instead to  “dismiss” her – to break the marriage contract, and to do so quietly, so that she would not be humiliated.  Why was that, we wonder?  Had you already developed some affection for Mary?  Did someone else suggest that option to you?  Or did you yourself find the law overbearing and oppressive, a worse injustice than the act of which Mary was apparently guilty?

We don’t know your reasoning. All we know is: no sooner had you made up your mind, than you had a dream.  And what a dream that was!

An angel.  An explanation.  And very clear instructions:

[D]o not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

This news did not fit with your plans, did it, Joseph? Plans for work and marriage and children.  Plans to live as an ordinary member of your community.  Your plans did NOT include angels - and mysterious conceptions - and entanglement with God - and a son born to save the world.  You had other plans entirely.

Now, we all know something about that saying, “Life is what happens when you’re making plans,” don’t we?  And sometimes the most amazing things happen!  Things in which we do indeed rejoice and give thanks!

I’ve told you that my niece and her husband adopted a baby a few weeks ago.  Now, they did have it in mind to adopt a baby.  They’d been working on that project for quite awhile.  But they didn’t have a definitive plan, and they certainly weren’t ready – not in the way that you get ready when you have nine months of pregnancy during which to plan and prepare.

Nope – they got a call on a week-end that there would be a baby the next week-end.  And so they started to get organized, and my niece, who’s a teacher, told her principal that she’d be starting maternity in a week.  And they started making lists and planning – planning – to buy paint and baby furniture and baby clothes and baby supplies.  They had a week to get it all finished.

And then they got a call on Monday – the baby will be delivered to you tomorrow!  Tomorrow!

They had other plans. 

A week earlier, they had been planning to host their first ever Thanksgiving dinner in their home.  A day earlier, they’d been plan to furnish a nursery.  And then, suddenly – a baby!  Right then and there, in their arms!

Now, that’s a really good sort of change of plans.  A really wonderful interruption. Craig Barnes, who’s now the President of Princeton Seminary, which is one of our Presbyterian seminaries, but a few years ago was one of my professors at Pittsburgh Seminary – Craig Barnes is fond of talking about when God interrupts our lives.[1]  When God expects changes from us.  And there are, indeed, lots of interruptions and changes, like the arrival of a new baby, even with only a few hours’ notice, that we welcome with great joy, and for which we are willing to change everything.

But we all know that there are other sorts of interruption as well. Other ways in which our plans are altered.  Interruptions which cause us to wonder aloud at this idea that we should rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances.  Changes which make the holiday season the most difficult time of the year.

There’s the meeting with the doctor, and the diagnosis that will change your life.  You’ll be spending the next month undergoing chemotherapy instead of taking that long-awaited vacation in California.

There’s the unexpected phone call, and the news that someone you love has died.  Your plans change, abruptly and completely, and you pack up the car and go.

The doorbell rings in the middle of the night, and the police are there, your son or daughter in tow, and your plans change to accommodate a court date and increased supervision of a child who seemed to have been doing well.  

All you have to do is open your newspaper or computer, or turn on the television or radio news, to be reminded that there are countless ways in which plans are demolished every day.

The question is not whether your plans will be upended.  They will be.

The question is: Will you see God at work in the interruptions in your life?

And then the next question is: How will you respond?  

Will you say yes?  Will you remain faithful to God?  Will you make room for the surprising grace of God in your life?

Craig Barnes tells us that “it is always at the turn in the road that God is most visible to us.”[2]

I would add: If we are paying attention.  If we are alert.  And isn’t that what Advent is about? Paying attention?  Being alert?  Keeping awake?

Now, what about Joseph?  Do you think that when his own great plans were interrupted, he felt more like my niece and her husband, overjoyed at the prospect before him?  Or did he feel a good deal less enthusiastic?  Worried? Afraid?  Confused?  What about those other words we’ve used – Betrayed? Angry? 

I  would guess that at the outset he felt a lot of the latter.  Isn’t that a natural set of human reactions?  Think of changes in plan which have been proposed to you lately – in your family, in your church, in the world at large.  Have you felt worried and afraid?  Betrayed and angry?  Pretty normal, yes?

But something happened to Joseph.  Whatever his initial feelings, the feelings that caused him at first to plan to put his relationship with Mary aside, those feelings were dramatically changed by his encounter with the angel Gabriel.

New Testament Professor James Boyce tells us that Joseph is

"a person of strength and purpose. He is committed and faithful to his religious tradition and ready to act on that commitment.  . . .  When the call comes, Joseph speaks not one word either of question or objection. He simply acts directly and immediately in obedient response to the  call.  . . .  . Joseph becomes visibly and audibly an example of the power of God's call to              transform our decisions and our lives."[3]

As you know, we are sharing the Bible study Taste and See[4] with folks from B. Church this week, and I’m preaching on this passage today as a way of elaborating a bit on the Bible study.  And it’s this matter of transformation which the Taste and See study emphasizes.  Joseph’s presumed fear and anger, the natural reactions any of us might experience in a situation as bewildering as the one in which he finds himself, those feelings are transformed by the grace of God.  Transformed by grace into the grace of acceptance and love.  Into the grace of determination and commitment.

Have you ever thought of Joseph as a role model for your own life? Maybe it’s time to do that. 

We don’t really give that much thought to Joseph, do we? Let’s face it: he barely makes it into our consciousness, and only during Advent and Christmas at best. But maybe we need to pay a lot more attention to this man, especially when we have plans which are interrupted.  Maybe when someone suggests that we do something differently, that we follow an unexpected course of action, that we accept a new role in a new set of circumstances – maybe then we need to ask:  Is God the one interrupting my expectations?   Maybe when life falls apart, when what we had hoped for and longed for is disrupted by disaster (and I don’t mean to suggest that God causes disaster – but I do mean to point out that God is present and at work no matter the circumstances) – maybe we need to ask: Is God calling me to change direction?  To rejoice regardless?  To give thanks anyway?

Yes, Joseph, you had other plans, didn’t you? Plans for an ordinary life in Nazareth. 

And yes, you might have hesitated when that angel showed up.  You might have protested.  You might have said, “No way! I have other plans!”  We would have understood, because we usually have other plans, too.

But you – you opened yourself to God’s transformative power, to the movement -- of possibility, of hope, of love – in the universe – and you found grace.  You became the earthly father of the Savior of the World!

To what, my friends, are we called? To what grace-filled transformation does this Advent season invite us?  How is God inviting us into the work of God?

Do you have other plans?  Do you want to cling to the past, to the old expectations and the old ways of doing things? 

Or are you willing to welcome God’s movement in your life?  Are you willing to let fear and anxiety be transformed by the grace of God?  Are you willing to let God change your lives and lead you to possibilities you’ve never imagined?

There is no doubt about it: You are called –like our model Joseph -- to participate in the life of Jesus Christ.  You are called – like Joseph – to exchange your plans for God’s.  You are called – like Joseph – to embrace a new life. 

Rejoice, and be glad!

Amen.

---

[1] Craig Barnes, “When God Interrupts.” Shadyside Presbyterian Church Sermon.  (9/4/2011).

[2] Ibid.

[3] James Boyce. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=15 (2007).

[4] Jan Johnson, Taste and See.

Here I Am - A Sermon for Advent 2

An intriguing cast of characters populates our Advent panorama.  Last week, we encountered Elizabeth and Zechariah, the aging couple about to become the parents of John the Baptist, the man who would one day herald the arrival of Jesus. This morning, we hear from John himself, grown to adulthood to cry out the words of the prophet Isaiah -- "Prepare the way of The Lord! Make his paths straight!" -- and we meet the young Mary, stunned by the appearance of the angel Gabriel in her life, and yet quickly responsive to the call from God he shares with her.

This past week, two groups met for our new Bible study and had an opportunity to consider together this event in Mary’s life.  An angel appears to this seemingly ordinary young woman, this young unmarried woman, living in a small town of no particular significance, and tells her that she is to bear God’s son into the world. We imagined the possibilities:

·         Was she inside or outside? What were her surroundings like?

·         How, in the small and crowded world in which she lived, did she happen to be alone?

·         What did it mean for a young, unmarried woman of her time, a person whose status was entirely dependent upon husband and children, to be confronted with a surprising pregnancy before her marriage?

·         What did her face look like when she heard this news?  What would yours look like if you received news like that?

·         How did she feel?  How would you feel?  “Perplexed” is the word our text gives us.  What about – also – surprise?  Fear?  Shock?
 

And we marveled at how quickly she moved from her astonishment at Gabriel’s announcement to acceptance of the honor bestowed upon her.  “Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord.  “Let it be with me according to your word.”

Now that’s not how we would be likely to react, is it?  Imagine yourself having just received surprising news – shocking news, even – that is about to transform your entire life.  News that will cause everyone you to know be skeptical of your story.  News that will alter all of your relationships.  News that sets you on an entirely new and completely unexpected path.  How likely are you to say, “I will live in accord with your will, God?” As Pastor Dave pointed out in one of our classes this week, aren’t we more likely to say, “What about MY will? What about MY plans?”

But Mary says, “Let it be with me according to your word.  Here am I.”  Or, in words with which I’ve taken a bit of liberty, “Here I am.” 

“Here am I.  Here I am” – as we’re going to sing those words at the end of our service this morning.  These are the words of prophets.

Isaiah speaks them; the song we’re going to sing in based upon the words of the prophet in Isaiah 6:8, as he responds to God’s call: “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”

Listen again to Mary: “Here am I.”

They are the words of Samuel, last of the judges and first of the prophets of Israel, when as a young boy he hears the voice of God calling in the night and, thinking that it is the elderly Eli calling for him in the dark, responds, “Here I am!”  And then, do you recall, that after Eli understands that God is calling, he instructs the young Samuel in how to respond, and Samuel does so, saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (I Samuel 3:1-20)

Listen again to Mary: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

The words of a prophet.  The words of someone responding to God’s call to speak and to show God’s people how God is moving among them and how they are themselves called to respond.

And make no mistake about it: Mary is a prophet.   

In her words, and in her very body, Mary is engaged in the prophetic task: faithfully trusting in and responding to the call of God, showing what God is doing in the world, and modeling for us the way in which we, too, are called to answer God’s movement in our own lives.

Not sure?  Yes, she responds as Samuel did, and as Isaiah did: “Here I am.  I am your servant, Lord.” Yes, she carries the Son of God into the world.  But there is more, in words we did not read earlier but will hear now, in the words she speaks to her cousin Elizabeth.

Remember, the aging Elizabeth, is herself, also surprisingly, pregnant, awaiting the birth of the baby who will become John the Baptist.  Mary, quite naturally, upon learning that she, too, is most surprisingly pregnant, rushes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is delighted to receive her. And Mary says to Elizabeth – and I want you to listen carefully here -- Mary says:

[God’s] mercy is for those who fear God

   from generation to generation.

 God has shown strength with God’s arm;

   God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty.

God  has helped God’s servant Israel,

   in remembrance of God’s mercy,

according to the promise God made to our ancestors,

   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’ (Luke 1:50-55)

Are these not also the words of a prophet?

There is a long prophetic tradition in the Old Testament, a tradition in which those called by God are called, not to predict to the future, as we today so often think of prophecy, but called to assure those in need, those who are poor and hungry and sick and disenfranchised, that God is laboring for them. And called to warn those who are powerful and wealthy and in political control that their ways are not God’s ways, and that their power will be toppled and their wealth destroyed -- in favor of God’s new creation in which all people are called into a kingdom of peace and love.

And is this not exactly what Mary says?  And does? 

Mary is not a simple peasant girl waylaid by an angel.  Mary is not a meek and mild young woman called to quiet submission to things as they are.  Mary is a woman of prophecy, a woman who proclaims through both her very being and through her words, that in her son,

·         God scatters the proud

·         God brings down the powerful

·         God lifts up the lowly

·         God fills the hungry

·         God sends the rich away empty

·         God fulfills God’s promises.
 

Friends, the world is in need of prophets today.

·         The world is in need of people who insist that the hungry be fed.

·         The world is in need of those who insist that the sick be made well and the injured be healed.

·         The world is in need of those who stand in the streets to cry out against injustice.

·         The world is in need of those who work tirelessly to reform our criminal justice system.

·         The world is in need of those who persist for peace, for an end to war, for an end to all forms of violence.

·         The world is in need of those who say. “Here I am, Lord.  Here I am, your servant. Let it be with me according to your will.”

This world is in need of prophets who say, with Mary:

·         Here: In this time and this place.

·         I: This person, me, this person you, my God, created with these gifts for this time and place.

·         Am: Right now, present tense, responding with what I have to give, to your call in this time and place.
 

“Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

So says Mary. 

So, God asks, say we all.

Amen

Learning to Walk in the Dark ~ Book Review

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my all-time favorite preachers and writers.  "Introduced" to her via mail as a Chautauqua Institution summer preacher by my stepsister, whose church in Clarkesville, Georgia she served as priest, I became a dedicated follower, often scheduling family vacations at Chautauqua for the weeks in which she was preaching, and inhaling her books during the rest of the year.  I had ordered Learning to Walk in the Dark before it came out, and it landed on my porch a day or two before the official sales date.

 

I didn't crack the cover for about six months, not until day before yesterday. Much as I admire BBT, and love to listen to her for the spectacular turn of phrase or for an idea I've never considered, I did not, it turned out, want to hear what she had to say about walking in the dark.  Walking in the dark is my main activity and area of expertise.  What could even BBT have to say to me about an enterprise I know so well?

 

Plenty, as it turns out.  I finally read the book on a day off designed entirely for reading and walking.  It's marvelous.

 

I am particularly taken with her idea of endarkenment  ~ a counter-concept to the familiar idea of enlightenment.  As you might have guessed if you haven't read it already, in Learning to Walk in the Dark BBT seeks to strip from darkness its usual associations with malevolence, sorrow, and bleakness, and to invite us to walk into the dark in anticipation of new possibilities, new wonders, and a sort of healing not available in the bright light toward which we all scurry.

 

The book contains a couple of intriguing chapters on her efforts to become better acquainted with darkness, one of them deep inside a cave, and another, falling asleep in a cabin as the natural light recedes for the night.  She also explores ~ just a bit ~ some of the great Biblical passages having to do with night and with darkness.  If I am at all disappointed with the book, it's due to the brevity of those reflections.  The Bible is, after all and as she notes, a great herald of light, but it is also filled with stories of the night.  I don't think that Nicodemus~ a seeker of endarkenment if ever there was one ~ even rates a mention.

 

Nevertheless, I am much taken with the book.  Last night, the burglar alarm went off at church, and consequently I spent the hour between 12:30 and 1:30 a.m. en route to a rendezvous with the police and then home again.  The moon, just-past-half full, hung low and huge and orange in the sky. As I passed through the empty streets, and the five minutes down a long hill through a metropark into which a parishioner has told me she would never consider driving at night,  I watched for the moon and hoped for an owl.  And I considered endarkenment ~ a benefit of being roused from bed way too early, and perhaps of the opaque places in life as well.

Gratitude for Bones

A friend of mine is looking at knee replacement surgery sometime in the next year. She is predictably wary and anxious, but she wrote a FB post about all the things that her knees have done for her.  I've decided to take a page from her book, as I finally reach the point of more-or-less full recovery from my broken ankle, and say "Pffft!" to the toe I broke 10 days ago.

 

Some of what my ankle and feet bones have done for me:

 

Carried me and my backpack into the wilds of Glacier National Park and Algonquin Provincial Park, throughout Isle Royale National Park, and along the trails of western Pennsylvania.

 

Taken me on beach walks and long hikes from Prince Edward Island to Key West and from British Columbia to the Virginia Shore.

 

Helped me wander Iona and the Cinque Terre, Paris and Rome, Boston and Chicago and Washington, D.C. and Vancouver and Portland, Chautauqua and St. Augustine.

 

Pedaled bikes and hung onto horses and skied through the snow and danced through numerous dubious concert venues.

 

Walked babies at 3:00 a.m. and accompanied clients to court and ran after troubled students and paced through sermons and retreats.

 

And for years and years, excluding most of this one, taken me on the long walks so essential to my physical and mental and spiritual health, around the Shaker Lakes in Cleveland and to the Highland Park Reservoir in Pittsburgh and alongside the fields at the Wernersville Retreat Center.

 

It turns that that that break on January 2 was a really bad one.  But you can see why I have been so determined to make my plate and screws work like real bones.  I can't run yet ~ I've tried and it's as if I have a stack of bricks in my ankle ~ but I am really grateful for bones and spare parts that walk.

Memorial Homily

Last night our church hosted a memorial service for the daughter of the former pastor, who died of suicide two months ago.  Her service was eight hours away, where she lived, and we wanted to do something for  former parishoners and colleagues here.

It turned out to be a beautiful and powerful service, a  perfect blend of pastoral leadership (including the mom and her husband as well as four others of us) in music, word, and ritual.  So many gifted people in ministry!  My contribution was to host and to preach a short homily.  Here it is:

 

 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God’s very self will be with them;  God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’

~ Revelation 21:1-4

*****

 

 Many, many years ago, I heard the late Unitarian Universalist pastor Forest Church preach at Chautauqua.  “Why do we have religion?” he asked.  The answer? “Because we live and we die.”

We live and we die, and we have to make sense of those twin realities.

 

For those of us whose lives have been marked by the suicides of people we cherish, the entanglement of life and death becomes the question that relentlessly stalks our days and claims our nights.

“Choose life!” the Bible tells us.  And most of us do.  All of us here have seen how joyously people choose life when they are married, when a child is born, when labor work is satisfying and fruitful.  And all of us have seen how tenaciously people cling to life even as they gasp their final breaths, how they long for one more day, or even one more minute.

But the choice for life is not always as easy, or natural, or hope-filled, as it might seem.  For some, illness makes of death a release from pain and trauma.  And those of us left behind are called to delve into that dark place in which we can understand, a bit, where our loved ones found themselves, marooned on islands of despair and longing, no longer able to see even a sliver of light at the end of tunnels that curve and swell and twist and turn and finally narrow.

And then – what becomes of those of us who would have done anything, anything at all, to preserve the lives of those precious to us?

We start looking.  Where are the answers?  A  and T and E, I know that over time, you will find your own ways to live with the loss of S, and your own ways to live with the paradox of the stunning beauty of her flower-filled life entertwined as it was with  the searing pain of her illness.  I myself can offer only one small Biblical interpretation which has helped me.  It comes from Mirslav Wolf’s book The End of Memory, in which he suggests that the new heaven and new earth held out as promises to us, the final fulfillment of the kingdom which has already come among us, this new reality in which every tear will be wiped away and mourning and crying and pain will be no more -- this will be a reality in which even the memory of these hard things will be no more.

It sounds shocking, at first, and kind of horrifying.  Memory no more? We all want to retain our memories, don’t we?  Our memories of all of it, the good and the bad, the joy-filled and the heart-rending -- our memories which remind us of all that has made us who we are today?  We don’t want to lose our them, not even the reminders of tears and mourning.  We cling to our memories as if they are ourselves.  Who we are.  People of compassion because we have suffered, people of determination because we see what might be,

And yet . . .  and yet . . . and yet, what if we are made for more?

What if we are not, as Wolf says, merely “the sum of our past experiences?”  What if we are called to leave our heartaches behind and to receive ourselves as the people we were originally intended to be?  People created for a garden? People created entirely for love?  To remember and to know S, gardener, animal lover, daughter and sister and friend, as most fully and joyously her beloved, precious self?

It’s hard to imagine, tonight, when the loss is so great, that compete transformation lies ahead.    That there will come a time when the heavens and the earth, even the tangible earth on which we live, will be transformed  by the love of God into a mass of extravagant color and growth, into a garden in which brokenness and death will be no more, a garden in which life will flourish without recourse to the past. 

Here, we live and we die.  Sometimes the combination seems harsh beyond comprehension.  But the promise is for life.  Even when our capacity for this existence is crushed by illness and battered by sorrow, the promise remains.  Life for S.  Life for us all.  Amen.

A Sermon for Visioning Day

GOD’S COVENANT

GOD COVENANTS WITH US TO PRESERVE AND RENEW LIFE

And God said to Noah, "Make yourself an ark.” . . . 

God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters had abated; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more. . . . Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 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. 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.’ 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: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

                                                                                                ~ Genesis 6:13a, 14a; 8:1-12, 9:8-1

Do we feel, sometimes, in the church, as if we have been hit by a deluge?  Trampled by a tumultuous storm? Submerged in the depths?

Everything has changed.

Our culture used to be a culture in which, for Christians, church was front and center. Stores closed and it seemed that everyone went to church on Sunday.

Our city used to be a booming little city in which people all had jobs during the week, whether in industry or at home, and thronged to places of worship on Sunday mornings.

Our congregation used to be a lively home for hundreds of people, where children learned about faith and adults sang in the choir and all enjoyed regular fellowship.

Our numbers used to be high: 1,000 people in worship on Sunday, two services, filled classrooms.

Our funding used to be a given. Run a stewardship campaign and the pledges poured in.   

Did we even ask questions about what and who we are as a church?  Not so much, I think.  Our successes were obvious; our future, assured.  

And then the skies darkened.  The wind blew. And the rains came pouring down. 

The culture changed.  The congregation changed and dwindled in number.  The money began to dry up. 

Does it feel as if a storm has hit?  As if we are rocking back and forth and side to side in a leaky ark?

And yet: God offers us a rainbow, a sign of promise.  God calls us out of the ark and into a new world, a world longing for God’s promises of life and love.

Conversation Question: What does God promise us when the storms come?

RESURRECTION LIFE

OUT OF DEATH COMES RESURRECTION LIFE

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

                                                                                                            ~ Luke 24:1-5

At the core of Christian faith is a great mystery: out of death comes life. After a flood, a rainbow forms in the sky. After all seems lost on a cross, light shines forth from a cave. 

We usually hear this story, about the first day of the week at early dawn, on Easter Sunday itself.  And then we kind of forget about it.  We get busy with our meetings and our meals, with our finances and our food, and we forget.

So let’s remember for a moment.  The heartbroken women at the tomb, as we are heartbroken when we ponder what seems to be the death of the church.  The women perplexed by the rolled-away stone and the vanished body, as we are often perplexed by the church: What happened?  Where did everyone go? The arrival of the unexpected: two men in dazzling clothes, who terrify the women.  How do we respond when it seems that we are confronted by the unexpected?  Are we anxious, afraid?  Terrified, even?

And then the question: Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen.

We forget, when we are busy with our meetings and our meals and our finances and our food, that we are called to live resurrection lives.  We forget to look for the living not among the dead, but among the living.  We are so accustomed to being hobbled by loss and dismay that we forget that we have been set free by love.

If we feel discouraged and disoriented by changes in our church, then we are right at the heart of Christian transformation.  And at the heart of Christian transformation we are called to peel off the trappings of death and turn toward the light of new life. 

Conversation Question:  What would a resurrected church look like to you?

CALLED TO MISSION

IN RESURRECTION LIFE WE ARE CALLED TO CARE FOR OTHERS

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’

                                                                                                                                ~ John 21:15-18

Do you know what the word ‘mission’ means?

We tend to think of a mission as a plan, or an assignment: something we are supposed to DO. 

But the word mission comes from the Latin mittere: to send.  To be on mission is to be sent.

The Bible is one long story of mission, of sending.  God is always sending people out to serve others.  The Hebrew Bible is filled with narratives of people called and sent.  The prophets, sent to call the people back to God’s justice.  Moses, sent to lead his people to freedom.  Noah, sent to build an ark and prepare for a new world.

And then: God sends Jesus, to love God’s people and to trounce death.  And God and Jesus send their Spirit, to energize the people to proclaim the God news: The Kingdom of God has come among you!  And God keeps sending: the apostle Paul, the other disciples, other people across the centuries, and yes, even: us.

Our final passage today is about sending.  About Jesus sending, starting with Peter.  Jesus is with his disciples on the beach, in one of his many appearances to them after his resurrection. And what does he say? Feed my lambs, Jesus tells Peter.  Tend my sheep; feed my sheep.

Rainbow-covenant life and resurrection life are not only about us.  We are not called to mind only our own business, tend only our own field, mind only our own sheep.  This might mean some radical changes for us as a church.  To Noah, God did not say: Build and ark and then live there. To Peter, a fisherman, Jesus did not say: Build a new warehouse and a shop on the beach, buy a new boat and some new nets, and get back out there to do what you did before.  To us, Jesus is not saying: Save the building, buy some curriculum, and invite people to come in and do with you what you’ve always done.  Jesus says: Feed my sheep.  Get out there and look for my people – that would be all people – and care for them.  Be a people in mission!

Conversation Question: What sort of service to others excites you?

WRAP-UP

Today we are all about: a storm, an ark, a rainbow ~ a grave and a resurrection ~ and a sending forth.  As we continue with today’s gathering, think about what we have before us:

You all have animals on your table, who represent the storm, and the ark, and hope for the future.  We have a rainbow, which represents God’s promise of new life.  We have an empty cross, which represents resurrection life. And we have a question: how do we respond?   Take your animals home with you and remember to ask: How are we going to feed God’s sheep?  Amen.

The Orchardist: Book Review

A couple of nights ago my in-person book club met to discuss The Orchardist, a novel by Amanda Coplin.  Two pregnant sisters, on the run from the man who has enslaved them to prostitution, find a home and a short-lived peace with another man, whose Eden-like life brims with the fruit of his flourishing orchards.  Not everyone survives, and the first deaths occur early in the book, after which the remaining lives unfold despite the black cloud under which they begin.  It's a gorgeous, expansive, heart-rending novel.

Well, that's one viewpoint: mine.  We were quite divided.  I found it to be a narrative which immediately pulled me into the lives of its characters and the Central Washington State landscape of the turn of the last century, despite the sparse prose and even sparser conversation of the laconic folk who people the story.   Yes, there is horror and bleakness and heartbreak; it's not a jolly story.  But I saw tremendous courage and resiliency and moments of redemption in the lives of each of the characters, in even the numbed and remote Della, dealt so many devastating hands in her tormented life.

Some of our group liked the book, or at least the writing.  A few were in open revolt.  They want cheerfulness, heroism, and happy endings in their novels,  No one minds a challenge, but the end result needs to convey unambiguous triumph.  I found the characters compelling despite their refusal to be transformed into success stories.

I suppose that our various reactions are even more intriguing than the novel itself.  There's an entire story there.