Sunday, December 26, 2010

No Rest for the Weary? - A Snowy Sunday Sermon

(Scriptures: Isaiah 63:7-9, Hebrews 2:10-18 Matthew 2:1-23)

Note: Due to the forecasted snow, Emanuel has cancelled services for Dec 26. Here is the sermon planned for this morning

I’d like to begin by thanking everyone once again for all that everyone did to make our Christmas Eve service a night of beauty and wonder. From the beautiful decorations to the Scripture readings which everyone did so well, to Ralph’s beautiful organ music, to preparations for Holy Communion, I thought this year’s Christmas Eve service was especially meaningful.

And here we are again, not even two full days later, in worship to God. The presents have been opened, the turkey mostly eaten – or not – and we may feel like we need a vacation to recover from our Christmas holiday. We’re grateful for the privilege of making our annual pilgrimage to the manger, to pay tribute to the Christ child, but the time we spend there goes by all too quickly. We hope today will be a day of blessed rest, but tomorrow, we’ll be going “once more into the breach,” once more back to our daily lives. We may feel that while the lights and carols are beautiful, there’s no rest for the weary.

All this may give us at least a small taste of Mary and Joseph’s experience in today’s Scripture reading. This week’s and next week’s readings are out of sequence: next Sunday is Epiphany, when we read of the visit of the Wise Men. Today’s reading tells what happens in the aftermath of their visit, when Herod tries to have Jesus killed. Both readings tell of events approximately two years after the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are no longer in the manger – we’re told that the wise men found the child, not in the manger, but in a house.

But we’ll hear from about the wise men next week. This week we’re stuck with brutal, paranoid Herod. Herod kept order and control over his subjects, but it could hardly be called peace – it was more like a reign of terror. We may remember news accounts in recent decades over the brutality of present and past rulers in the Middle East, who out of their paranoia arranged assassination attempts on members of their own family and their advisors. Herod would fit right in….in some ways, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Does anyone here today like to watch old westerns, maybe on Turner Classics? One familiar plotline is a new sheriff or US marshal riding in to clean up the town. At some point, the sheriff and the bad guy will run foul of each other, and the bad guy will tell the sheriff: “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us and I’m giving you 24 hours to clear out.” Of course, we know that the sheriff will chase out the bad guys, win the girl, and ride off into the sunset, and that’ll be the end of the story.

While the scenery is much different, today’s Gospel follows a similar plotline. The wise men had traipsed into Herod’s court and asked, “where is the king......., for we have seen his star?” Of course, as far as Herod was concerned, he was the king in them thar’ parts. Herod consulted his scribes and was told that a new king would be born in Bethlehem of Judea. And while Herod forced a smile when he talked to the wise men – “when you find him, let me know where he is; I’d like to come and…uh….worship as well. Yeah….worship…that’s the ticket” – our Gospel makes it very clear that, for Herod, his province wasn’t big enough for the both of them, Herod and the baby who is to become king; that Herod had, not worship, but murder on his mind.

For Mary and Joseph, who had endured one exhausting trip to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus, there was no rest for the weary. But God does not leave the babe defenseless. Like the Joseph of whom we read in Genesis, whose dreams warned Egypt of impending famine and enabled Joseph, with Pharoah’s support, to store up grain against the upcoming years of hunger, the dreams of Mary’s husband Joseph warn of Herod’s murderous plans. Warned in a dream, Mary and Joseph and the babe become political refugees, fleeing to safety in Egypt until Herod’s deathMatthew is very explicit in drawing parallels between Joseph in Genesis and the Joseph who would become Jesus’ earthly father. In the same way, Matthew draws explicit parallels between Jesus and the Moses of the Exodus: Jesus for a time lives in exile in Egypt, until he, like Moses before him, can emerge to return to Galilee, to bide his time with his family until, as an adult, Jesus emerges to lead all humanity to salvation. Herod reacts in character to God’s intervention – unaware that Mary and Joseph and the babe had evaded his grasp, Herod has all the babies in and around Bethlehem 2 years and younger killed. And again, there are parallels to Exodus: here Herod is re-enacting the role of Pharoah, who instructed his midwives to have all the male Hebrew babies killed. For Matthew’s community of Jewish converts to the way of Jesus, these parallels between the Genesis and Exodus accounts and the birth narrative of Jesus would have been rich with meaning.

As extreme, as literally crazed as Herod’s reaction is, at one level it’s an entirely rational response. You see, Judea really wasn’t big enough for both Herod and Jesus. In fact, the whole world isn’t big enough for the ways of Herod and the way of Jesus. The ways of the world, the ways of Herod and the way of Jesus are incompatible. As believers, we can’t treat the way of Herod and Jesus as items on a buffet table, where we can take a little of one and a little of the other. The ways of the world, the ways of Herod, are ways of death, whereas the way of Jesus is the way of life, abundant life in this world and eternal life in the world to come.

In Jesus, God’s reign was breaking into our world in a new way, to break the grip of the powers of sin and death. As Ralph (in one of his moments away from the organ) read from John’s Gospel with such passion and eloquence at Christmas Eve, the Word, the creative power of God through whom all the universe was brought into being, became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. All who receive Jesus, who believe in Jesus’ name, are given power to become children of God. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known to us.

But, as Ralph also read, while the world came into being through the Word, the world did not know him. Jesus came into the world to save, and in response the world, through Herod, sought to destroy. Mary and Joseph were entrusted with the care of Jesus, the Word made flesh, and while their lives were eventful – the stories they could tell! - they could hardly have been called easy.

And so it often is with us. When we become disciples of Jesus, we turn away the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the world, the flesh, and the devil will push back. We may find our lives becoming, not easier, but more complicated, just as Mary and Joseph’s faith led them into life as political refugees. There are costs to being a disciple of Jesus. We find ourselves, not in a sheltered retreat, but on a battlefield, in the thick of the action. And we can’t even pick up Herod’s weapons and use them against Herod. The ways of Herod only lead to death. We can only combat Herod with the weapons of the spirit, following in the way of Jesus. God does not promise us an easy life, but God does promise his presence in the struggle, his presence on our journey of life.

Jesus said, “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” It’s a strange kind of rest, not a rest of idle inactivity, but a rest that comes with knowing that, while the battle may be fierce, the outcome is assured, and we will welcome it. Perhaps it could be compared to the calm at the center of a hurricane; while life swirls around us, we can find a calm center within ourselves that comes with faith in God. And while our lives may not be easy, we are promised that we will have the peace of Christ, that peace that passes all understanding, that peace that the world can neither give nor take away. May that peace be with us now, and go with us always. Amen.

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Please start off 2011 right, by joining us next Sunday at 10 am (Epiphany or "Three Kings" Sunday) at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson).

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

God With Us

(Scriptures: Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)

Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.

What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.

Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..

…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.

Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.

God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.

We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”

Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.

We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.

For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.

One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.

Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”

And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
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At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Are You The One?

In last week’s Gospel reading, we met for the first time John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness, that voice, crying in the wilderness, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” In a few weeks, we’ll read of what happens when Jesus as an adult responds to John’s voice, and comes to be baptized. John is so overawed by meeting Jesus that he says that instead of John baptizing Jesus, Jesus should instead be baptizing him.

In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.

While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.

Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.

Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.

After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.

While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?

In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.

A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.

In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.

“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
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O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org

Sunday, December 5, 2010

A Voice In The Wilderness

(Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12)

We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.

Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.

And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.

It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.

Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.

Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”

John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.

John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.

In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.

John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”

John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.

Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”

The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.

The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.

God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.

During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org

Monday, November 29, 2010

Anticipation!

(Scriptures: Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44)

Some of us may remember the Carly Simon song “Anticipation”….”anticipation, anticipation is making me waiting, is keeping me way-ay-ay-ay-ayting….” My memories of that song are associated with…..the old Heinz ketchup commercial, which used the song to dramatize how thick Heinz ketchup purported to be, and therefore how long it took to come out of the bottle. The message was that Heinz ketchup was so thick and rich with flavor that it was worth the wait.

This Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent, the start of a new church year. As I’d noted last week, this is a season in which the church calendar and the secular calendar are out of sync: on one hand, we’re celebrating a new church year while the secular calendar will not do so for a bit more than a month, while at the same time, the wider culture is already deep into the mall-version of a Christmas celebration, while we in the church are waiting, still anticipating the coming of the Christ child. Anticipation is keeping us waiting….

As the lectionary often does for the first Sunday of Advent, our Gospel reading discusses, not Christ’s coming as a baby, but the second coming. The point is to give us, who know the Christmas story so well, a sense of the uncertainty and confusion experienced by those who surrounded Jesus when Jesus was born. For just as many look to Christ’s second coming as described in our Gospel, so there were those in Jesus’ day who looked to the coming of the Messiah, who likewise lived in anticipation – but for what? For whom did they seek? How would they recognize the Messiah? And as we know, the sought-for Messiah came – but many who sought for a Messiah didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah when Jesus was right in front of them. They were looking for a political Messiah who would march into Jerusalem and break the stranglehold of the hated Romans and restore Judah’s as a sovereign nation, under the leadership of a king from the line of David, as per God’s promise to David that there would never fail that a descendent of David would lead the chosen people. They weren’t looking for a baby of uncertain parentage born in out of the way Bethlehem.

Our reading from the 24th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is Matthew’s version of the Luke account we read two weeks ago. You remember the setup: Jesus and his disciples have entered Jerusalem. The disciples, having traveled with Jesus from the Galilean countryside to the big city, were in awe of the size and beauty of the Temple complex. Jesus brings them up short by saying that the time would come when not one stone would be left upon another, all would be thrown down. Now that Jesus has their attention, the disciples later come to him privately, while Jesus is on the Mount of Olives, saying, “tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age.” Today’s Gospel reading is part of Jesus’ lengthy response, which comprises the 24th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus words include graphic imagery: kingdom rising against kingdom, the rise of false prophets, persecution of the disciples of Christ, a man of lawlessness offering desolating sacrifices in the Temple, the sun and moon being darkened and the stars falling from the sky, and the powers of heaven being shaken. Jesus leads into today’s Gospel with the words, “From the fig tree learn its lesson; when the branches become tender and put forth leaves, you know summer is near. So when you see these things, you will know he is near, at the very gate. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And then he, having created a “standing on tiptoes” anticipation among the disciples, he changes course and tamps down their excitement by saying, “But about that day and hour, no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, not the Son, but only the Father.” He says that on that day, people will be going about their normal business, eating, drinking, marrying, as the people of Noah’s time did just before the flood. There’s language about two men together in a field, two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and one left. He compares the second coming to the coming of a thief in the night.

What are we to make of this? We know from Paul’s writings, such as our Epistle reading from Romans, and even from sayings of Jesus, such as “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” that the believers who were alive in Jesus day and during the spread of the early church expected the second coming of Jesus at any time. As the apostles were executed and the first generation of Christians died, the faith of many was shaken. But Jesus said, about the day and hour no one knows…for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

How does Jesus say we are to respond to his words? He does not tell his disciples to work out elaborate timelines to anticipate his coming, but rather to be faithful every day. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, who his master has put in charge of his household….Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. But if the wicked slave says, “My master is delayed” and begins to abuse his fellow servants and carouse with drunkards, he will be caught unprepared, and will be put with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Jesus goes into the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids – remember, the wise bridesmaids had enough oil in their lamps to go the distances – and the parable of the talents – where the wise servants used their talents, while the foolish servant buried his. Again, Jesus does not tell his disciples to indulge in guessing games and calendar calculations about his second coming, but tells them to be faithful every day.

We live in a day when many proclaim that the second coming of Jesus is imminent. Our friend brother Camping says it’ll be May 21 of next year. Hal Lindsay, writer of the Late Great Planet Earth and subsequent books, is more circumspect – he writes more carefully to leave himself loopholes for the passage of time, but clearly, since his writing of Late Great in the 1970’s, he has expected the second coming to come very soon. There’s a website called “Rapture Ready” which has a daily index that purports on a daily basis to predict the likelihood of Jesus’ second coming on that day. You can go home from this sermon and check out today’s Rapture Index online, if you like. Timothy LaHaye and his followers have created books, movies, even video games – violent video games – depicting the timeline of the last days. But the time of Jesus had its share of Brother Campings and Hal Lindsays and Tim LaHayes, those who expected the Messiah to come at any time. There were many apocalyptic writings, many teachers speculating about the coming of the one who would liberate Jerusalem and God’s chosen from Roman rule. And for all their expectations, they missed the salvation right in front of them. They had constructed timelines and scenarios in their heads, with as much Roman blood running in the streets as anything Tim LaHaye and company can conjure up – which accomplished exactly nothing. Their writings are unknown today except to scholars of obscure ancient manuscripts – they’re not in our Bible. And there are excellent reasons for that. And – I’m going a bit further out on a limb than I normally do – but I’m confident that the speculations of Brother Camping and Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye and all such will be every bit as unhelpful in preparing for the second coming, as the apocalyptic speculation of Jesus’ day was in preparing for the coming of the Christ child. Those in New Testament times who thought they had God’s plans all figured out in advance, were blindsided by the birth of Jesus the Messiah. Those of our day who think they have God’s plans all figured out, will be caught equally flatfooted, misled by the imaginings of their own minds.

For Jesus commanded his disciples, not to tinker with timelines and speculate about scenarios – but rather, to be live every day as faithful disciples. The Bible is a collection of many books, and contains many different types or genres of literature – national history, poetry, proverbs, parables, prophetic discourse. We believe all the books of the Bible are divinely inspired, all inspired by God, but the various genres are divinely inspired in a variety of contexts, written under divine inspiration to accomplish a variety of purposes – though the ultimate goal is the salvation of humankind. We know from our own experience that in our day, writing for one purpose is very different from writing for another – for example, a love letter will look very different from a piece of business correspondence. If you don’t believe me, try drawing hearts and flowers and “xoxo” hugs and kisses around the margins of your next letter to the IRS, start it out with the words, “My dearest huggiebear,” and see what response you get. Or try sending a Valentine's Day Card to a spouse or loved one that begins with these words, “Dear Sir or Madam: I have received no response to my letter of November 15. Unless your reply is received by November 29, I will have no choice but to allow our marriage/relationship to go into receivership.” Different types of writing sound….different.

The name of one of the genres of writing in the Bible, the type in our Gospel today, is called apocalyptic writing. The word “apocalypse” means “unveiling of something that is hidden.” The purpose of apocalyptic discourse is to sustain believers in hard times, by saying that, while our daily lives, the reality right in front of us is difficult, God is working behind the scenes – working behind the veil, in a hidden way - to bring about our salvation. Apocalyptic discourse gives the readers inside information on what God is doing so we don’t give up on our faith when God’s salvation is so near. And so we read of wars and rumors of wars, spectacular events in the heavens, persecution and betrayal of believers – but apocalyptic discourse leads its readers to interpret these horrors, not as a sign that they are abandoned by God, but rather as a sign that God’s rescue of the faithful – God’s salvation - is very near, on the way. The message is something like what we see in Western movies: don’t give up the fort, the cavalry is about to come riding over the hill to rescue us. In the Bible, other major examples of apocalyptic discourse are the book of Daniel – written during the exile in Babylon - and, of course, the book of Revelation, which was written during the horrors of Roman persecution of Christians. And there are passages of apocalyptic writing in the Gospels, such as today’s reading, and in some of Paul’s letters. They often contain graphic, direly threatening imagery, but they are written with the intent to produce, not horror, but, as odd as it seems to us..…..hope. Because God’s salvation is on its way. Don’t give up the fort; the cavalry is on the way, just over the hill. Don’t be caught sleeping; look up; for your salvation draws nigh.

The Talmud tells its readers that one is to repent one day before you die. The point of that saying is, we don’t know in advance on what day we will die – and so we are to repent each day, to live each day as if tomorrow were our last day, with joy and excitement, making every moment count, or, as Paul says in Ephesians 5, “making the most of the time, for the days are evil”. And writings such as today’s Gospel reading and today’s reading from Romans come from a slightly different direction to make the same point – we don’t know the day or the hour, the Messiah could come at any time – could come tomorrow or next week, for all we know – so the disciples and the early church are to live each day as if tomorrow were their last day, to make the most of every moment, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and working for the good of their neighbors. Because no matter how difficult or depressing our daily lives may be, God is busily working behind the scenes – and sometimes in right in front of us - for our salvation.

Indeed, all the speculation and guesswork about the day and hour on which Jesus will come again, misses the point that Jesus is right here, right now, in our midst. It’s like people standing around looking up at the sky awaiting a sign, while Jesus is right in front of them shouting and waving – hello! - and trying to get their attention. For one example, we remember that Jesus said that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he’ll be in their midst – words that keep me going on some of our low-attendance Sundays here at Emanuel. In the context of today’s reading, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse is followed, not by a Rapture Index website address or an advertisement for a Left Behind video game, but by parables about wise and foolish bridesmaids, about faithful and wicked servants. And these parables, in turn, are followed by Jesus’ words that, when he comes in his glory and all the angels with him, all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, with the sheep on his right hand and the goats at his left. You know the parable: Jesus will tell those at his right hand, come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger, and you welcomed me, naked, and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me….for just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” So, if you’d like to meet Jesus, hang out some Tuesday at the food cupboard. After all, in Matthew 25 he said he’d be there. Just saying….

The point of the “anticipation” in that long-ago Heinz ketchup commercial was that because Heinz ketchup was so thick and rich with flavor, it was worth the wait, worth waiting for with anticipation. In the same way, we are to live in daily anticipation of Christ’s return, to live each day as if Jesus will return tomorrow. The reward will be worth the long wait. That’s God’s promise. Amen.
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Please join us on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Held Together

(Scriptures: Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20 Luke 23:33-43)

Today, liturgical churches such as our own celebrate Christ the King Sunday, or in inclusive language, Reign of Christ Sunday. This designation is made for the final Sunday of the church year. As often happens, the church calendar and the secular calendar are out of sync: while the rest of the world celebrates a long Thanksgiving weekend, the church begins a new liturgical year. At the same time, while the rest of the world will already start celebrating Christmas on black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving which is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, we will be celebrating four Sundays of Advent, four Sundays of waiting and preparation. For myself, I find the disconnects between the church calendar and the secular calendar a small, but helpful reminder that we, as church, are not called to just go along with whatever the world is doing. Rather we are called to give voice to a different way of living, to model an alternative way of being in the world. And this includes a different way of experiencing time.

On this Christ the King Sunday, we are given several different ways to look at Christ’s reign. Our reading from Jeremiah contrasts the unfaithful religious leaders of the time, whom Jeremiah compares to bad shepherds who neglect their sheep and leave them to their own devices, with the one whom Jeremiah says is coming, the righteous Branch whom God will raise up from David’s line, who will be king and govern faithfully, and gather together the sheep who have been scattered.

In the letter to the Colossians, Paul gives us a cosmic view of Christ: the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for whom and through whom all things in heaven and on earth, all things visible and invisible have been created, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. Paul tells us that Christ is the one who holds all of creation together, as well as the one through whom we are reconciled to God.

And then we have our Gospel reading. Could two pictures of Jesus look more different, be at more of a contrast? In Colossians, Paul tells us that Christ holds everything in heaven and earth together. In our Gospel reading, we’re at the mountain of crucifixion, and seemingly everything is falling apart, coming undone. Jesus, this one whom Paul calls the firstborn of creation, is nailed to a cross, seemingly unable to rescue himself, let alone anyone else. Of course, we read the account from the vantage point of our faith, but consider how it would look if we were there as onlookers. Who’s running this show?- Seemingly anyone but Jesus The religious leaders mock Jesus – he saved others – or so he represented – why will he not save himself, if he’s able? The Roman soldiers offer sour wine and, taking their cue from the inscription over Jesus’ head, mock him – “If you’re king of the Jews, save yourself!” And the people stand by powerless and silent. The religious establishment had its agenda, and Rome had its agenda – and maintenance of the status quo was the goal of both agendas. Jesus seemed to threaten the status quo, and so he had to be gotten out of the way.

But Luke’s Gospel gives us subtle reminders of who’s really in charge. Jesus asked for God’s forgiveness of those who had just crucified him – “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus offered forgiveness to the penitent thief – “today you will be with me in Paradise.” Even on the cross, Jesus is reaching out to offer salvation to those around him. Even on the cross, Jesus is acting as the good shepherd, gathering together and holding together anyone who will listen – even if it’s only the criminal on the cross next to him.

Appearances can be deceiving. In a moment when it appears Jesus is a helpless victim of others’ agendas, we find that He is very much in control. What appears to be the unraveling of Jesus’ hopes in reality becomes Jesus’ greatest triumph. And as I consider the chaos in my own life and how so much in our society appears to be unraveling, as I consider the challenges faced by our neighborhood and the struggles of our congregation, I take immense comfort in knowing that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Jesus is in control.

Remember that, as I began this sermon, I contrasted the world’s calendar with the church’s calendar, saying that the world and the church experience time differently. The same can be said of the way the world exercises power, and how God exercises power; how the world tries to bring about peace, and how God brings about peace. When the world wants to impose power, it gives orders, sets up people to enforce those orders and establishes punishments when those orders are disobeyed. But the power of God is made perfect in human weakness – rather than coming down from above like a hammer, it springs up from below, like wheat growing from seed. When the world wants to bring about peace, it sends an army. When God wants to bring about peace, God sends a baby.
The world worships power that acts quickly through force. But God offers power that works slowly, through love.

You don’t need me to tell you that we live in difficult days. We live amid global political and economic uncertainty, amid division about the future direction of our own country, amid widespread unemployment and poverty. Along with these “big” global and national issues, we struggle with the more ordinary challenges and tragedies that life offers – the illness or death of a loved one, loss of a job, the breakup of a family or relationship. It’s only human to wonder where God is in all of this, to wonder if anyone is in charge. But our Gospel reading reminds us that we serve a King who has experienced the worst that human life has to offer, and came out on the other side triumphant. Where is God in our suffering? – standing right beside us.

From Paul’s letter to the Colossians:
11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. May we at Emanuel Church be strong to endure whatever lies ahead. Amen.
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Please join us on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org

Give Thanks

(Scriptures: Isaiah 65:17-25, 2 Corinthians 9:6-12
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:1-19)

This morning I’m doing something I think I only did once before at Emanuel, two years ago or so around this time of the year – to lift up the Biblical concept of stewardship. Generally when pastors mention stewardship, the folks in the pews roll their eyes and sigh and mutter to themselves, “it’s the money sermon.” In fact, I’d invite you to look at the Calendar of Prayer from the national UCC – there’s a quiz on stewardship that’s actually pretty funny. But this morning, I invite us to look at the Biblical concept of stewardship in a broader sense, in terms of being thankful for all that God has given us, and considering how we make use of what God has given us.

Our hymns this morning link the themes of harvest and thanksgiving. It may seem a tad bit early to think of Thanksgiving Day, but it’ll be here before we know it. Next Sunday we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in the church year. And the Sunday after that – the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend – is also the first Sunday in Advent. So as we consider one church year ending and another beginning, Christ as King and Christ coming in the form of a little babe, it seems appropriate to pause for a moment to give thanks for God’s blessings over the past year. I don’t know whether Emanuel Church once had a tradition of celebrating Harvest Home, but years ago it was a widespread tradition in the country church where I grew up, and in many of the surrounding churches. The altar guild would arrange at the front of the church a cornucopia of pumpkins and gourds and potatoes and yams and corn and wheat and all manner of other fruits and vegetables and grain representing the harvest from the surrounding farms. And we’d sing the hymn we sang this morning – “Come, ye thankful people come, raise the song of harvest home.” I remember how the sopranos used to wail away on the descant on the last verse, nearly drowning out the rest of the congregation. Whether it had been a good harvest or a poor one, we were grateful to God for giving us food to get through the coming harsh winter months. And there was also a theme of – at least symbolically, through the display of the altar guild – bringing a portion of the harvest into church and dedicating it to God.

Here in Bridesburg we’re far removed from the rural surroundings of my childhood – the closest I come these days is the occasional roadside stand or farmer’s market – but I think we can all point to ways in which God has blessed us. In today’s economy, if we have a job, even one we may not always be in love with, we can give thanks for the opportunity to earn a living. Our members have a variety of family configurations, but whatever our families look like, or whether we count our circle of friends as a “family of choice” to compensate for estrangement from family of origin, we can give thanks to God for putting people in our lives who care for us and love us. And if nothing else, each one of us is given the same 24 hours each day – 24 hours over which we are stewards each and every day of our lives. We can spend those 24 hours working, or worshipping, or loving, or hating, or helping or abusing those around us, or sitting on the sofa and eating chocolate-covered cherries, or sleeping, or any combination of the above. And for the gift of time, for the gift of another day of life, we can all give thanks.

In the time of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness and the entry into the promised land, God commanded that a tithe – one tenth – of everything be given to the Lord. For example, Leviticus 27:32 “all tithes of herd and flock, every tenth one that passes under the shepherd’s staff, shall be holy to the Lord.” Of course, then as now, while it’s more blessed to give, it’s a whole lot easier to keep, and so prophets through the ages lifted up the importance of giving to the work of God. Haggai, from whose writings we read last week, chastised those who returned from exile in Babylon for being eager to rebuild their own homes, while the site of the Temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins. He told them that the drought and poor harvests they experienced were God’s response to their neglect of the Lord’s house, and that prosperity would return when the people made rebuilding the Temple their top priority. The prophet Malachi sounds a similar note of warning: “Will a man rob God?” Malachi writes. He goes on: “But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me—the whole nation of you! Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.” Earlier in his writings, Malachi reproached the people for bringing lame or maimed animals to sacrifice, even animals that had died – road kill, we’d say – rather than the best of their flocks. (Many TV preachers have enriched themselves by twisting and misusing Haggai’s and Malachi’s words, but that doesn’t make their words any less true.)

The New Testament isn’t as specific, but it still underscores the need for giving. Our reading from 2 Corinthians 9 was Paul’s writings, in the context of taking up a collection from the Gentile churches to help the struggling Christian church in Jerusalem. He frames it in terms of sowing and reaping – those who sow sparingly will reap sparingly; those who sow bountifully will reap bountifully. He’s very careful not to try to guilt trip the believers into giving, but rather to encourage them to give in joy. Which again leads back to why churches use the word “stewardship” – it’s a recognition that we are not owners, but rather stewards or managers, of what we have – that our time, talent, and treasure - are not our own, but rather gifts on loan to us from a gracious God – gifts that we are to manage wisely, to use wisely to help others, not to hoard all to ourselves or squander recklessly. Our giving is to be part of the fabric of our whole lives, lives of love for God and neighbor – and Jesus famously chastised those who were careful to tithe one tenth of every little vegetable in their garden on the Sabbath, while oppressing and bullying everyone around them the other six days of the week. And, of course, in our Gospel reading for this morning we have Jesus’ words about the poor widow who gave more than everyone else, for everyone else gave out of their abundance – gave God what was left over – while the widow gave all she had. She knew that all she had, little as it was, was a gift from God, and she trusted God enough to be willing to return that gift to God to help others.

Our reading from 2 Thessalonians and latter part of our reading from Luke’s gospel point to something that may affect our giving, for good or for ill. Both have to do with anticipation of the final coming of the Reign of God. In 2 Thessalonians, some of the believers mistakenly believe that God’s reign had already come, that they were already in Paradise – and in Paradise, there’s no need to work. They could just hang out and take it easy. And apparently some of them were running around in a misguided way, trying to convince others to do the same. Paul pulls them up short, telling them to get back to work, to get back to living lives that contributed to the good of those around them. Again, Paul’s words have been misused: Paul did not say, “if a man or woman cannot work, neither shall they eat” or “if a man or woman cannot find work, neither shall they eat.” He wasn’t referring to those who by reason of disability or misfortune could not work, but only to those who were perfectly able of body and mind, but would not work, who refused to work. These are the people he calls to be good stewards of the gifts God gave them, to return to working and contributing to the greater good.

Meanwhile, in Luke’s gospel, the disciples are admiring the beauty of the temple – to which the poor widow had just contributed – when Jesus pull them up short by telling them that the time would soon be coming when it would all be gone, not one stone left upon another. The disciples, understandably shaken, ask Jesus when this would be. Jesus begins his response by telling them not to be led astray by those who falsely claim to be the Messiah and falsely claim that “the end is near.” He tells them of coming wars and insurrections, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, of great earthquakes and strange things in the sky. But at the same time, he tells them, “do not be terrified.” He tells them of the cost of discipleship, the potential for betrayal by family and friends, of arrest. But at the same time, Jesus tells them to use these trials as an opportunity to witness to the faith. What others intend for evil, Jesus urges them to use for good, for the sake of the gospel. He closes by saying, “by your endurance you will gain your souls.” Again, the message from Jesus is not to panic, not to run after every religious crank and pious fraud who promises salvation and a short-cut to paradise – but rather to endure, to keep on keeping on, to keep on being faithful stewards of the time, talent, and treasure that God has given us.

Politicians during the last election cycle, as during every election cycle, told us all sorts of things about what they supposedly stand for: God, country, freedom, mother, apple pie, Chevrolet, whatever. We’ll soon find out what they really stand for after they take office and begin making decisions about how our city, our state, our national government spend our tax dollars. For example, it’s easy to for a politician to say that he or she supports the troops and cares about veterans’ issues, but if he or she is content to send underpaid soldiers into battle with shoddy, cut-rate equipment and to let VA hospitals fall into disrepair and other veterans services go begging, we may have cause to question that politician’s sincerity, no matter how many stickers and magnets saying “support our troops” are on the politician’s car. But the same holds true for us: we can tell ourselves, and those around us, all sorts of things about what matters to us. But as Jesus told his listeners: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Your household budget, and mine, tell a lot about what really matters to us. Your calendar, and my calendar, tell a lot about what really matters to us. As Christians, we say that Jesus is Lord, not just of Sunday mornings between 10 a.m. and noon, but of our lives – all of our lives, including what we do on Sunday afternoon and evening and on the other six days of the week. If Jesus gets first dibs on our paycheck and top billing on our calendar, our budgets and our calendars and our lives will reflect that. If we’re content to give Jesus table scraps – what’s left of our time and money after we’ve done everything else we wanted to do, our lives will reflect that as well.

I began this morning by referring to the holiday rapidly coming up, Thanksgiving. While our national Thanksgiving holiday comes only once a year, we can give thanks to God every day by being faithful stewards of what God has given us. To borrow the title of a sermon a few years ago from the pastor of our neighboring Bridesburg Presbyterian church, faithful stewardship is not only thanksgiving, but thanks-living – living a life of thanks to God.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. May we at Emanuel Church share in God’s abundance, and may we share that abundance with our neighbors here in Bridesburg. Amen.

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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org

All Saints

(Scriptures: Haggai 1:15b-2:9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Luke 20:27-38)

Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday, also known in historically German churches like Emanuel UCC as Tottenfest, or. In the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, there are many days set aside for specific saints – of course, we know St. Patrick’s Day as March 17. For some other examples, St John the Evangelist’s Day is December 27, and St John the Baptist’s Day is June 24. But November 1 is designated as All Saints Day or All Souls Day, when we remember all the unknown saints, all those believers who have gone before us, including departed family members and friends and church members. We give thanks for their lives, give thanks for those whose faith in Jesus Christ has shaped and strengthened our own.

It’s also a day when we ponder those most basic questions of our faith – what happens to those who die? Where do they go? Do they experience joy? Will we see them again? Will they recognize us and remember us?

It was to these questions that Jesus spoke in our Gospel lesson today. Jesus was being challenged by the Sadducees, the wealthy, aristocratic leaders who controlled the Temple priesthood with its system of sacrifices. The Sadducees could be considered the fundamentalists of their time – they considered only the written Torah, especially the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers – as authoritative. The Sadducees rejected the oral “tradition of the elders” that had built up over time to guide Jews in applying the written word to a changing society. Based on their interpretation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, they rejected the idea of an afterlife. Since they thought death was the end of human life, they concentrated their efforts on keeping the peace with Rome so that the Temple system of sacrifices could be continued undisturbed.

And so, in the typical manner of theological argumentation, they presented Jesus with a situation which they supposed made the idea of an afterlife absurd: a woman married a man, who had six brothers – so there were seven brothers in all. Her first husband died without fathering a child. Under the institution of Levirite marriage, under this circumstance, the wife was supposed to marry the late husband’s brother, assuming the brother wasn’t already married. The first child coming out of the wife’s union with the brother would be reckoned as the child of the deceased husband, thereby ensuring that his family line continued. So in the absurd example proposed by the Sadducees, the woman would up marrying all seven of the brothers without producing a child, after which she died. In the resurrection, whose wife was she. The Sadducees asked their question, not in a spirit of seeking fresh understanding, but rather they were trying to trip Jesus up, to put him into a theological box and make him look foolish.

But Jesus does not allow himself to be boxed in by their ridiculous example. The Sadducees proposed their question, assuming that Jesus’ conception of the resurrection was a continuation of life in its present form. But Jesus rejects that assumption. Jesus responds that, while life continues beyond death, our human institutions do not – the people of this age marry and are given in marriage, but it is not so in the resurrection.” But then Jesus goes on to turn the Sadducees’ trick question into a teaching moment: he affirms that since God out of the burning bush told Moses that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that since God is the God of the living, therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to God are….alive – for to God, all are alive. As are our departed family members, friends, church members – our saints.

God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. A dangerous text to preach in a church that’s surrounded on two sides by a cemetery, the maintenance of which has been a primary mission of our congregation in recent years. But nonetheless, the text stands – God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. The memorials of our loved ones are in the cemetery outside our window. But to God our loved ones are not headstones and memorial markers, but are alive, beloved of God, enjoying God’s presence. They are the cloud of witnesses spoken of in the book of Hebrews: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” The language of the text puts me in mind of a racetrack, on which we are all running a race, which represents our earthly life. Up in the stands, cheering us on, are all our departed loved ones who died in the faith – mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, all those who have gone on before us, cheering us on in our life’s journey. We feebly struggle; they in glory shine.

God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. So our church is not called to be a funeral parlor, a place weighed down by death. Rather we are called to be a place bursting with life – the new life of the Spirit, abundant life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come. In this world we suffer all the infirmities of the flesh – illness, weakness, temptation, exhaustion. But in the world to come, we will have glorious, resurrection bodies, as different from our own as an oak tree is from an acorn – in the words of our hymn, “unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” In this world we miscommunicate; we keep secrets and hold grudges; as a result we suffer loneliness, alienation. But in the world to come we will all be in God’s presence, surrounded and embraced and enfolded in God’s love and the love of those who have gone before us, and God will wipe away every tear. In this world we see through a glass, dimly; in the world to come we will see everything in full, even as we ourselves will be fully known.

So our saints shine in glory…but we still feebly struggle. We still run our race, still pursue our journey through life, keeping our eyes on Jesus. May we draw encouragement from these words of the Apostle Paul, written to the church at Thessalonica: But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”

May it be so with us. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org

Monday, November 1, 2010

Newsletter Article: Saints and Stewardship

Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Luke 20:27-38

We will celebrate All Saints Day on November 7, the first Sunday in November. It is a day when we remember our saints – departed family members and friends, departed members of Emanuel Church, all those whose lives have helped to shape our lives, those who have departed from this life to be with God as members of the Church Triumphant.

In many churches, November is also a month in which “stewardship” - returning to
God a portion of our time, talent, and treasure – is remembered. It’s a recognition that all we have and all we are is a gift from God. It is a privilege to offer a portion of our time, talent, and treasure to God through the church – not in the spirit of paying yet another bill or fulfilling yet another duty or responding to yet another guilt trip, but instead, with joy, as an expression of our love for God and neighbor flowing from glad and generous hearts. It’s a form of “thanksgiving” we can practice all year ‘round. The Bible prescribes proportionate giving: as we have been blessed, so we can be a blessing to others. The Biblical standard is a tithe – 10% of income is to be given to the church. In a difficult economy, tithing is likely a stretch for most of us, perhaps for all of us, but we can all commit to giving some proportion of our income to support Emanuel Church. This giving is also a way to honor and continue the ministries that our departed members, our Emanuel saints, carried out. As they supported the church in their time, so it is our privilege to support the church in ours.

And finally, November marks the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of another. November 21 is the final Sunday of our church year, and is called “Reign of Christ” or “Christ the King” Sunday in recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord. And November 28 begins a new church year. November 28 is the First Sunday of Advent, that season of preparation for the coming of the Christ Child. In the words of the carol, “Let every heart prepare Him room.”
See you in church!
Pastor Dave

Reformed and Always Reforming

(Scriptures: Isaiah 1:10-18, Psalm 32
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10)

Maybe you remember the song your Sunday School teacher may have taught you when you were little:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man
A wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see
And as the Saviour passed that way
He looked up in the tree.
And He said, Zacchaeus, you come down.
For I’m going to your house today.
For I’m going to your house today.

Those who knew Zacchaeus – whose name ironically means “clean” or “innocent” - likely wouldn’t have felt any great desire to sing a song about him. He was a tax collector, and not just a tax collector, but the chief tax collector. We remember, of course, that he would have been a Jew who had thrown in with the Romans for the privilege of collecting taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of Rome – with, of course, the opportunity to collect a little extra – or maybe more than a little extra - for himself. And since Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, he may well have had others under him, who were likewise giving him a cut of their overcollections. What a nice guy! Far from being clean or innocent, the guy was a crook! Zacchaeus would not have won a lot of popularity contests. He’d heard that Jesus was in the neighborhood, and wanted to see Jesus – but he was short, and couldn’t see past the crowds. So he climbed a tree – maybe as much to keep distance from the hostile crowds, as to see Jesus. Jesus saw him and called him to come down out of the tree, for Jesus wanted to stay at his house. Not just wanted; the Greek says “it is necessary that I stay at your house.” So Jesus invited himself to dinner at Zaccheus’ home. The crowd grumbled, but Jesus told the crowd that salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house – because despite all his cozying up to Rome, he was still a son of Abraham. And Jesus’ visit to Zacchaeus changed his life. His was not a “pray a little prayer and go on with my life as I ever have” kind of conversion; but one that turned his life upside down, leading him to give up greed in favor of generosity, to give instead of taking, to repay four times as much as he had gained through his dishonesty. The good news of the Gospel had the power to break through even Zacchaeus’ hardened heart, bringing about his reformation.

Today is Reformation Sunday, when Protestant churches lift up a turbulent era of our church’s history. Earlier in the service, we sang hymns written by two prominent reformers, John Calvin, whose theology informs the teaching and practice of the Presbyterian church, and Martin Luther, whose theology lives on in the Lutheran Church. We may remember other names from our Reformed tradition: Ulrich Zwingli, Heidelberg Catechism creators Zacharius Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, and others.

These theologians were active at a time when there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church. The sale of indulgences – basically “fast track tickets out of purgatory” that the church sold in order to raise funds – was an abuse in its own right, but in a larger sense was just one symptom of a bigger problem - that of a church hierarchy that, many felt, grew rich by promoting and exploiting the spiritual insecurities of its members, was too quick to throw around its economic and political weight, that in its eagerness to become a political power had seemingly lost its connection with much of its own membership, and had grown distant even from God.

It was a time when many agreed that the church had lost its way, but differed on how the church was to find its way back to the right path, or even where that path was or what it looked like. Luther’s theology emphasized the primacy of the God’s grace over and against what he saw as the works-righteousness promoted by the hierarchy, and the priesthood of all believers, whose right and duty it was to encounter Christ not only in the sacraments, but through individual Bible reading and prayer. Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah likely would have resonated with Luther as he considered the Roman church of his day – “trample my courts no more; I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity…your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me and I am weary of bearing them….cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean….” The religious establishment of Isaiah’s time, and that of Luther’s time, was called upon to, as we would say, clean up its act.

Luther wished to remain in the Roman Catholic church, but was excommunicated – to this day, the Lutheran order of worship bears the strong imprint of the Roman liturgy from which it emerged. Others advocated more radical measures – for example, doing away with the hierarchy in favor of congregational autonomy - and broke with the Roman church. For its part, the Roman Catholic church, while it opposed those who broke from the church, it also eventually came to realize that some of the Reformers’ ideas had merit, that maintaining the status quo was not a viable option. As I said, it was a turbulent period, and men killed and were killed for religious control of territory in Europe. The winners of these wars established their religious practice by means of state-supported churches. And some of these conflicts have dragged on and on and on even into the present day, such as what were called “the troubles” between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, who reached some degree of coexistence through the Belfast “Good Friday” agreement of 1998, only a bit over 10 years ago. Many fled to America, in hope that in a new land, religious differences could be resolved by peaceable means, or at least that those of all religious persuasions could find some space in which to practice their beliefs. Many of the colonies were predominantly of one faith – Maryland was predominantly Catholic; Virginia and the Carolinas, Anglican; New York and New Jersey, Dutch Reformed; the New England colonies, Congregationalist. Under the Quaker William Penn, our state, Pennsylvania, was chartered as a sort of “Holy Experiment” where people of many faiths could find a welcome.

What are we to say about this? For my part, I think it’s hard not to feel some degree of ambiguity. In our reading from 2 Thessalonians, Paul boasted about that church’s endurance of persecution, but I doubt he’d have find much about which to boast regarding Catholic and Protestant churches persecuting one another – though despite these mutual persecutions, the church – “big ‘C’ church”, the universal, worldwide church to which Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox alike belong - has endured, sometimes despite our best efforts to the contrary. Perhaps it is a testimony that, as one of my professors states, we live in a sinful and fallen world, that the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation came to bloodshed, that men killed each other in the name of the love of Christ, and that to this day there is suspicion and misunderstanding between Protestant and Catholic, and even between varying stripes of Protestants. On the other hand, the Good News of Christ was carried all over the world by Protestants and Catholics of all stripes, even by those whose motives can at best be charitably described as mixed. And in recent years there have been some convergences of thought and practice – Catholic and Protestant alike affirm the importance of believers’ participating in both individual Bible reading and prayer as well as worship as the gathered body of Christ; many traditionally Catholic spiritual practices such as lectio divina and the prayer of examen are being rediscovered by Protestants, and Catholic and many Protestant churches alike use the Revised Common Lectionary, reading at least some of the same Biblical texts every Sunday, so that, literally as well as figuratively, we are at least in some ways on the same page.

The Reformation was a time when the Holy Spirit broke into what many saw as a calcified tradition, bringing messiness and disorder and even chaos to be sure, but also new life. As the mothers among us know, childbirth is not a neat, tidy process. Just as Zacchaeus’s life was turned around in his encounter with Jesus, becoming a giver instead of a grabber, the life of the institutional church and of individual believers was turned around, and for many believers, what had been dutiful obedience became a love affair with Jesus.

The Reformation is not a one-time, long-ago era of history, but an ongoing process. The Reformers said that the church was semper reformanda – reformed and always reforming – as individual believers, pastors, congregations, and faith traditions encounter Christ anew in the changing circumstances of the day, and the Scriptures yield new insights, speak in new ways – for God is still speaking, and the church is still reforming.

What will the “reformed and always reforming” church of the future look like? That very question was under consideration at our recent meeting of the Philadelphia Association of the United Church of Christ. The youth of our conference were invited to submit essays about how they saw the church of the future, and I handed out three of those essays – as well as an adult submission – during worship for the congregation's consideration. Many of the essays reflect a degree of youthful exuberance and impatience that, at least for me, has been tempered with the passage of time. Some of the comments concerning technology strike me as humorous, make me want to giggle – as I read them, I get pictures in my mind of the old Jetsons cartoon I used to watch as a child. You may remember the opening credits: “Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane his wife…..” as they all climb into little pods and fly off to school or work or wherever, while Rosie the Robot Maid cleans house in their absence. Of course, I go to my day job in a pod that looks a lot like the Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad and later the SEPTA trains built in the 1960’s and 1970’s, which is also roughly when the Jetsons cartoon was created – so the Jetsons’ vision of the future, at least in the realm of transportation, didn’t quite come to pass. And the visions, dreams – or what we may see as the nightmares – of the Philadelphia Association youth may or may not come to pass. What’s important is not necessarily their answers, but the fact that they gave the question – “what will the church look like in the future” – some serious consideration. It’s a question to which we at Emanuel should give serious consideration as well.

What will the Emanuel church of the future, the United Church of Christ of the future, the Universal Church of the future look like? Or, to use H. G. Wells’ phrase, “What is the shape of things to come?” What is the shape of things to come for Emanuel Church, for the United Church of Christ, for the Church Universal? The thought may seem ominous, marked with a sense of foreboding, of approaching danger – until we remember that we follow Jesus Christ, the good shepherd who gave his life for the sheep. And so the question really becomes “Where will Jesus lead us in the future? Into whose home will Jesus invite himself for dinner. Where will the Holy Spirit give birth to something new. Where will God do a new thing?”

Really, God alone knows. But on this Reformation Sunday, I would invite us to keep our eyes open, to be alert, to watch for the leading of the Savior, to listen for his words saying “Come, follow me.” Where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.

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You are invited to follow the Spirit's leading to Emanuel United Church of Christ, Fillmore Street (off Thompson). We worship at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org

Come As You Are

(Scriptures: Joel 2:23-32, Psalm 84
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14)

Today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel continues the theme of last week’s reading about prayer. Remember last week, we had the parable of the widow seeking justice from an corrupt judge, and confronting him and pestering him and nagging him until the judge finally relented and gave her what she wanted, not out of any feeling of love or justice or compassion, but just so she’d get out of his face and go away. The lesson we’re to draw is that if even a corrupt judge can be persuaded by the persistence of a widow, among the weakest and most vulnerable members of the society of the day, how much more will a just and loving God eagerly listen and respond to our prayers, to the cries of our heart.

And so today we’re given another parable about two people who came to God in prayer, but whose prayers came from very different places, very different life experiences. It’s a parable in which Jesus’ original listeners, and we who hear the parable today, may feel discomfort with both of the main characters – not sure I’d want to invite either of these folks to dinner - but will want to identify more with one than the other. But if we take the time to let the parable sit with us, we may find that our discomfort with the characters may lead us to feel discomfort with ourselves – and ultimately that discomfort may lead us to seek God’s grace at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus’ snapshot of the Pharisee is so repulsive that it seems like a cartoon, a satirical portrait of religious self-righteousness run rampant. The original Greek is a bit ambiguous, and different English translations portray the man’s actions a bit differently. The NRSV, from which we read today, says that the man stood by himself – stood alone - and prayed – in other words, the man was physically isolated and separated from others at the temple, perhaps out of concern that he would be ritually contaminated, made ritually unclean, if the other poor slobs at the Temple that day accidentally brushed up against him. We get that sense from the words of his prayer – “God, I thank you that I am not like other people, not like thieves or extortioners – the Greek adjective means ‘one who is ravenous, vicious, destructive’ – not unjust, not an adulterer, and certainly not like that tax collector standing over there in the corner. Who let him in here anyway? He’s stinking up the place” The Pharisee felt he was better than other people, and so he would not stand near other people. Other translations say that the man stood and prayed with himself – in other words, his words were ultimately not directed to God at all, but rather the man in his self-satisfaction was in effect just making noise talking to himself, as he reminded God – as if God needed a reminder – of how zealously he had followed all the rules, doing more than required: ‘I fast twice a week, I give 10% of all my income.’ Either way, the man’s self-righteousness cut him off from God and neighbor alike.

The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable is an easy character to make fun of, but just a few words in his defence: with his society under Roman rule, with the Jewish way of life under constant threat, the Pharisee took seriously his duty not to cave in to Roman customs, but to hold fast to the way of life prescribed by the Torah – the written law – and the words of the prophets, and the oral tradition of interpretation that had evolved in order to apply the law and prophecies written centuries before to an evolving society. The Sadducees – the Temple hierarchy – largely collaborated with Rome, so that Rome would give them space to continue the rituals of the Temple. So long as they were allowed by Rome to do their thing at the Temple, the Sadducees weren’t overly concerned with what Rome did outside the Temple. Of course, after the Romans destroyed the Temple in AD70, the Sadducees had lost their place in Jewish society. And the Essenes largely kept to themselves, not interacting with the larger society, and at some point faded from history, though in recent years some of their writings have been rediscovered. It was the Pharisees who loved God so much that they wanted to stay connected to their society, not to go along with the crowd, but to bring God’s laws and commandments into their everyday lives. It was from the Pharisees that present-day rabbinic Judaism evolved. But even though the Pharisee in this parable – and I want to emphasize that he does not stand for all Pharisees or all Jews; we’re just talking about the guy in the parable – though he interacted with the larger society, his sense of self-righteousness and entitlement before God had the effect of cutting him off from neighbor, bringing his good intentions to naught.

And then Jesus introduces us to the other character, the tax collector. Just as a reminder, the tax collectors in Jesus’ day would have been Jews who had agreed to collect taxes from their fellow Jews on behalf of the hated Roman government. And under the system of the day, so long as the tax collector turned over to Rome what Rome wanted, Rome didn’t mind if the tax collector charged extra and kept it for himself. If the Pharisee went a bit too far in trying to preserve the faith of his fathers, and in the process had become a self-righteous jerk, a legend in his own mind, the tax collector had totally caved into Rome and turned his back on his fellow Jews.

And so the tax collector is also standing alone, probably out of embarrassment, to avoid being seen by his fellow citizens that he had exploited. The tax collector’s body language is telling; he wouldn’t even look up to heaven – lest God strike him with lightning, perhaps - but beat his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Again, the Greek is a little ambiguous; it can also be translated, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” The tax collector made no excuses for himself, no comparisons to others – “well, a saint I ain’t, but I’m no ax murderer either.” Just a plea for mercy, just a leap of faith into the loving arms of God.

So Jesus gives us two extreme, super-sized examples, a super-religious person and a super-sinner. And then tells us that it was the super-sinner, the one who threw himself on the mercy of the court, who was justified. The word “justified” is a relational word, meaning “brought into right relationship with God.” That right relationship with God comes, not by handing God our resume of good deeds and waiting for God’s admiration, but by coming into God’s presence, just as we are, and imploring God’s mercy….which we do every Sunday in the prayer of confession.

As I said, both of the characters in Jesus’ parable make us uncomfortable. Though we’re not crazy about either of them, we want to put ourselves in the place of the tax collector. We certainly don’t feel a lot of empathy for the Pharisee. But Jesus’ parable may lead us into an uncomfortable moment of self-recognition. Remember that the downfall of the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable was in comparing himself favorably to those around him. And so, if we’re tempted to say that we’re nothing like him, we may come to find that we’re exactly like him. It’s a temptation into which longtime church members – and pastors – can easily fall – our long years of church work may give us a sense of entitlement: “this is our church, our place of worship. We’ve earned this. We’ve worked so hard to keep things going – God knows we’ve had little enough help from anyone else - and it’s only fair for God to bless our efforts.” We may compare ourselves favorably to other groups of Christians. C. S. Lewis wrote of those whose penny’s worth of imagined humility before God bought them a dollar’s worth of contempt for their neighbors. But in the words of the old hymn, the ground is level at the foot of the cross; Christ died for us all, and we all stand in need of God’s grace. Indeed, it is only by God’s grace that any one of us have a place to stand at all.

It was the tax collector who threw himself on God’s grace who went home justified, brought into relationship with God. The tax collector had made a fresh start with God. And so it can be for us, and for our neighbors. Our Old Testament reading from Joel describes this sort of fresh start. Joel’s words come in the aftermath of a plague of locusts which have devoured all the crops. “What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust has left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.” And our lives can feel like that, like we’re lurching from one disaster to the next. If our wanderings have taken us far from God, we may feel like we’ve wasted our lives, spent our time and money on things that have only hurt us, that the days and weeks and years of our lives have been eaten up by a swarm of locusts. What have we done with our lives? Where have the years gone? What do we have to show for them? But the prophet calls on the people, “Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him.” And God promises, if we return to him, “I will repay you for the years that the locust has eaten.” Whatever lies in the past for us – no matter who we are, or where we are on our journey through life – God is gracious to welcome us home from our wanderings. We can be restored to relationship with God and neighbor, so that, at the end of our lives, we can say, with the Apostle Paul – who also knew what it was to start over and begin a new relationship with God – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” May it be so with us here at Emanuel Church. Amen.
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Whether you're a tax collector or a Pharisee, a saint, a sinner, or both, or somewhere in between, you're welcome at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). We worship at 10 am. on Sundays. www.emanuelphila.org.