Call and Response (Pastor's Message, November 2015 newsletter)

Dear Emanuel Members and Friends –

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.  "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.  Revelation 1:4b-8

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."  Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."  John 18:36-37

The verses above come from our Scripture readings on November 22, the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar, which is called Reign of Christ Sunday or Christ the King Sunday.  On Reign of Christ Sunday, the church lifts up the reality that the Risen Christ reigns over all things, a cosmic reality that is hidden by the brokenness of daily life and the rebellion of those who claim to be in charge without acknowledging that ultimately God rules, and that any authority given to earthly rulers is authority only to serve and not to dominate.

On this Sunday, the reading from John’s gospel shows Christ as a king who doesn’t look much like a king.  Jesus has been arrested and brought before Pilate.  Formally, on paper, Pilate is in charge of the proceedings.  But in reality, even in chains, Jesus is fully in control of all that happens, while Pilate and others merely perform the roles that have been assigned to them, like actors in a high school play.

“Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.  He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision.”  (Psalm 2:1-4)

We live in truly alarming times, with environmental devastation and military conflict on an apocalyptic scale – devastation and conflict in which our corporate leaders and political leaders have played a significant and detrimental role.  In their pursuit of profits from fossil fuels, the loud voices of a few, amplified in the media by their billions of dollars,  call for further environmental destruction, while the voices opposing them, including American Indian and other indigenous peoples along with millions of people of faith from Christian and other traditions, seemingly cannot get a hearing.  Similarly, those who profit from the “permanent war economy” envisioned in 1944 by former General Electric president Charles E. Wilson continue to lobby our coin-operated political leaders of both major parties to continue and enlarge conflicts around the globe.  We see the four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelations 6 - conquest, war, famine, and pestilence - unleashed in our midst.

To some, these are signs of the end-times.  In fact, the E-Bible Fellowship, a Delaware County-based remnant of the followers of the late Harold Camping’s Family Radio program, had forecast that the world would end on October 7, 2015 – and that date has come and gone with little notice, as have Camping’s predicted “end of days” dates of May 21 and October 21 2011, and so many, many dates from other “prophets” before that.  So many groups – followers of Hal Lindsay, of Tim LaHaye and John Hagee and others, believe they have the “secret sauce” that, if sprinkled on selected (and out of context) Scripture verses, will enable them to pinpoint the time of the Lord’s return, ignoring the fact that Jesus himself said that he did not know the day or the hour (Mark 13:32) and ignoring the fact that Jesus’ very last words before his ascension were “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8)

So how are we to respond?   Remember Jesus’ words in Acts, “You will receive power….and you will be my witnesses.”  Far from retreating into end-times fantasies, we must allow ourselves to be empowered by the Spirit to redouble our efforts in the public square to proclaim the countercultural message of the Gospel.  When our corporate leaders say that their bankrolled millions entitle them to seize and despoil ever more land, even public land, we must proclaim that “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”  (Psalm 24:1)   When our political leaders, aided and abetted by the media, seek to spread fear in order to mobilize support for military adventurism abroad, we must proclaim that, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses” (and some in fighter jets and some in drones) “but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” (Psalm 20:7)  When we are told that we do not have resources to care for the poor, the ill, and the aged, we must recommit ourselves to Jesus’ mission statement as stated in Luke 4:18-19:  “To bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  When we feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of our personal struggles, and of the large-scale problems of our world, we must follow Paul’s exhortation not to “be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14), but rather to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.  For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness”. (Ephesians 6:10-12) As I John 4:4 states, “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for greater is the One that is in you than the one who is in the world.”

To quote an old hymn (Once to Every Man and Nation, #399 E&R))

“Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet ‘tis truth alone is strong.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scafford sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own.”

May we be among those “faithful and wise servants, whom the master has put in charge of his household…Blessed is that slave whom his master shall find at work when he arrives.” (Matthew 24:45-46)  May we be like those addressed in God’s message to the church at Smyrna (Revelation 2:10), “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life.” 

See you in church –

Pastor Dave     

Remember Who You Are (A Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday)

Scriptures:     Daniel 7:7-14    Psalm 93

Revelation 1:1-8        John 18:33-38

How many of us have read the Diary of Anne Frank?  Written by the teenage girl Anne Frank while in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, and later in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, the diary not only chronicles her experiences, but also her relentless search for joy and hope in the midst of an increasingly grim and hopeless situation.   Perhaps the most famous and heart-wrenching quote from her diary, written while she was experiencing the worst misery that human hatred could devise, is, “Despite everything, I still believe people are good at heart.”

Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, otherwise known as Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in the liturgical year when we proclaim the rule, the reign, of the Risen Christ not only over our individual lives, but over all things, over the universe, a cosmic reality that is hidden by our own brokenness and by the rebellion of those who claim authority without submitting to Christ who is the only true authority.  In our three-year cycle of readings, the Gospel reading for Reign of Christ Sunday portrays Jesus, basically, as a king who doesn’t look at all like our idea of a king.  Today’s Gospel reading is from the account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate in John’s Gospel.  Next year we’ll be reading Luke’s account of the crucified Jesus’ telling the crucified but penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  And two years from now, we’ll be reading from Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus describes himself, in essence, as a king who goes around in the disguise of the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, so that whatsoever is done to the least in our society is done to the king.  Three accounts of a king who doesn’t look like a king, reminding us that God’s ways of exercising power in the world are very different from ours – that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways not our ways.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus stands before Pilate, on trial for his life.  It would appear that since Pilate has the power to free Jesus or imprison Jesus or condemn Jesus to death, that it would therefore follow that it is Pilate who has the power in this story.  Nonetheless, both the portion of the story in our reading and the portions that follow before and after reveal that, indeed, it is Jesus who is in charge all the time.  The religious authorities arrest Jesus, but later admit that they have no power to put him to death.  Peter tries with his sword to rescue Jesus, but Jesus rebukes Peter, and affirms that he must drink the cup that the Father has given him.  It becomes evident that Pilate would like to release Jesus – and he certainly has the legal authority to do so – but triangulated as he is between the religious authorities who intimidate him and Jesus who doesn’t seem especially frantic about being released, Pilate eventually caves in to the religious authorities and gives them what they want.   Ultimately it comes down to the words of Jesus that I referenced earlier:  “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

As I was reading this passage, it struck me that Jesus steadfastly refused to allow Pilate to define Jesus on Pilate’s terms.  Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”.  Clearly this is a setup for Jesus to declare himself as some sort of usurper or rebel leader – a political rebel seeking power.  Politics was Pilate’s world, and an admission on Jesus’ part of political rebellion would have given Pilate an easy excuse to have Jesus executed.  But Jesus isn’t going to allow Pilate to define Jesus on Pilate’s terms….Jesus asks, ”Where’s all this coming from?  Did you come up with this on your own, or are you listening to other peoples’ gossip?”  And Pilate says “Am I a Jew?  Your own priests and people brought you here.  What have you done?”  And Jesus responds, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If I had a worldly kingdom, my followers would be fighting tooth and nail to save me.  But I have no worldly kingdom.”  Pilate keeps wanting to draw Jesus back onto his turf, and asks, “So you’re a king?”  And Jesus insists on defining himself on his own terms:  "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."  And Pilate pretty much gives away his political game by saying, “What is truth?”  Whatever truth is, at that moment, for Pilate, truth wasn’t a priority.

Despite Pilate’s repeated attempts to draw Jesus into Pilate’s frame of reference, Jesus resolutely insisted on defining  himself on his own terms, and more importantly, insisted on remembering why he had been sent, remembering that he had to drink the cup of suffering his father had given him.   In these chaotic days, I believe Jesus’ actions in our gospel reading are an important reminder to us, as Christians, to remember who we are, to remember whose we are, and to remember who we are to love and serve.

The events of the past weeks have been deeply upsetting.  Wall to wall coverage of bombings in Paris, for many of us, bring back memories of the days following 9-11 in our own country.  Similar attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, in Mali, and in Nigeria have been much less widely reported, but still give us a sense of widening chaos.  And as I wrote my sermon, Belgium was on high alert, vigilant against the possibilities of attacks there.  And there have been threats of an attack here in the US.  And at the same time all this is happening, Syrian refugees – fleeing the same kinds of attacks in their own land – are seeking asylum anywhere they can get it, including here. 

The message of the news media, of the talking head commentators, of many government officials, and of most of the candidates for president can be summarized roughly as follows:  Fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear, fear and more fear, wall to wall fear, all fear all the time, fear 24/7/365.    But the writer of John’s gospel also wrote, in a later letter to the churches, “Perfect love casts out fear.”  At a time like this, on this Reign of Christ Sunday, it is absolutely crucial to remember that, in the words of our first hymn, Jesus Shall Reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run.  It is absolutely crucial to remember that despite human hatred and fear, God is still in charge.   And it is absolutely crucial to remember who we are as baptized Christians:  children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church.  When I baptize someone, after I say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”, I anoint the candidate with oil, and these are words I pronounce:  “Receive the Holy Spirit, (candidate’s name) child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church” – and as baptized Christians, indeed, that’s who we are, our core identity, trumping all other claims of nationality or race or ethnicity, or gender or sexual orientation.  Our core identity: “child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.”

Children of God:  at the beginning of this sermon, I mentioned Anne Frank and her diary.  What is less well known is that Anne Frank’s father, was among hundreds of Jews who sought sanctuary in America.  Had refuge been granted – who knows, Anne Frank could well have lived to a ripe old age here in the United States.  But the Frank family was refused, on the basis of the same arguments being used right now against admitting Syrian refugees – that the country, having struggled through a depression for more than ten years at that point, should take care of its own citizens first, that among the refugees there might be spies for Hitler.  And so asylum was refused, and the United States sent those Jewish refugees back to Hitler, and for many of them, to their deaths – Anne Frank among them.  And indeed, many of the refugees are themselves children. …children like Rana, the four year old Palestinian girl whose education I partly sponsor and to whom our own children have sent drawings.  Are we going to let the fearmongering on TV terrorize us to the point where we’re afraid of four-year-old children?  Or afraid of children like the two or so year old Jesus whose family fled as refugees to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod?  Is that what we in the land of the free and the home of the brave have become?  Really?  As children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church, I hope we can do better.

Disciples of Christ:  As Christians, we believe we are saved by grace through faith.  That is the bedrock of our faith, the reason we’re here.  But we are not saved so that God will baptize, bless, and sanctify our fears and prejudices, but rather that through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit we may not be conformed to this world, but transformed through the renewing of our mind.  As followers of Jesus, we are called to be different from the world; in a word, we’re called to be Christlike, to be….Jesusy.  The world looks on us, to see if we will indeed follow in the way of Jesus, if we will be Jesusy.  And when they see that we are not Jesusy, they think we’re phonies, and rightly so.  The call to care for the stranger and the alien is embedded throughout Scripture, Old and New Testaments; from Leviticus 19:34:  “The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God – to the beginning of Hebrews chapter 13: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares.”  Truly being disciples of Jesus is not easy – Jesus said that the gate is narrow and the road is hard -  but it is the call we as Christians have received and committed to follow.  And again, the key is to resist the messages of fear that are out there, to heed the words that appear throughout Scripture time and again:  “Fear not.  Do not be afraid.”  Paul wrote to Timothy that “God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  Fearful people can be led around by the nose and manipulated and stampeded to their own self-destruction.  After 9-11 in this country, people were terrified,  the media and the government did all they could to perpetuate and amplify their terror – remember the terror alerts, the government telling us on one day to be afraid and the next day to be really afraid, and the day after to be not so afraid, but still afraid - and people trusted what the government and the media told them, and we were stampeded into policies that have destabilized not only Afghanistan and Iraq but more recently Lebanon and Syria as well, turning them essentially into failed states, and the resulting power vacuum, in fact, contributed to both to the refugee crisis and to the formation of ISIS….the formation of ISIS was caused, in part, by Us-es, or at least by our political leaders.  Been there, done that! We’ve seen this movie before!  There’s no need for a sequel, and as children of God, disciples of Christ, members of Christ’s church, I hope we can point to a better way forward.

Members of Christ’s Church – There is an unusual level of consensus among Christian leaders against the fearmongering and bigotry perpetuated by the media and by political hacks across the spectrum.  Of course, the mainline Protestant churches are generally strong on peace and justice issues, and United Church of Christ in particular is known as a peace and justice church, and so everyone expects the UCC to advocate for peace and justice and against fearmongering and anti-Muslim bigotry, as we eat our granola bars and hold hands and sing kumbaya, because, in the words of the Geico commercial, it’s what we do – I’m joking a bit about stereotypes of UCC folk, of course.  But so is the Roman Catholic Church, itself with a strong and proud tradition of social teaching that Pope Francis is emphasizing in ways that haven’t been heard in decades, and so is the National Association of Evangelicals, generally on the conservative end of the Christian spectrum, normally the last people you’d ever expect to climb on board the peace train.  Left, right, and center, our Christian sisters and brothers are urging us to choose love instead of fear and hospitality instead of rejection.  As children of God, disciples of Christ, and members of Christ’s church, perhaps we should listen.

It’s not easy to be a Christian in these days.  It’s not easy to stand against the tide of fearmongering and hatred and say “no”.  But just as Jesus came to testify to the truth, so must we, even when our voice shakes.  And in the worst of times, we can draw comfort from the words of the first question of the old Heidelberg Catechism that our longtime members grew up with.  The first question goes, “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?”  And while the answer is a bit lengthy, it begins with the words, “That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”   May we remember who we are and whose we are, and may this comfort carry us safely through the days ahead. Amen.

Silent Strength

Scriptures:     I Samuel 1:1-28, 2:1-10    Psalm 16

Hebrews 10:11-25     Mark 13:1-8

Last Sunday, we met women – Ruth and Naomi, and the nameless woman who  gave her last coins to the Temple – who had been down so long that it looked like up to them, who indeed from where they were situated had nowhere to go but up.  Today we meet another woman, Hannah, who outwardly appears to be in a much better position, and yet is carrying a heavy burden, by which she is, in her own words, “deeply troubled”.

Hannah is married to a man named Elkanah, and we’re given his geneology.  It’s an interesting geneology – the name of the first ancestor, Zuph, means “honeycomb”. We seem to go downhill with Zuph’s son, Tohu, whose  name means “waste” - it’s the Hebrew word used in Genesis when it says that before the earth was created everything was formless and void. But the next two generations, Elihu (He is my God) and Jehoram (God is exalted).  The name Elkanah itself means “God creates”. So Elkanah came out of a family whose beginnings were a mixed bag, but that was devout.  The name of Hannah herself means “gracious”  And then we’re told there’s a second wife, and her name is Penninah, which appears to mean “pearl or coral”.  To support two wives, we can suppose that Elkanah was at least comfortably well off.  We’re told that Hannah has no children, while Penninah had many children – the main reason Elkanah married Penninah in the first place is that Hannah hadn’t come through with any children.  And Hannah was deeply unhappy about this; in that culture, bearing children was the most important purpose for a woman, the one thing a woman could do that a man could not.  In that culture, for a woman, to be childless was to have failed at one’s purpose in life. And even though Elkanah loved Hannah, the second wife Penninah constantly picked on Hannah for having no children.

We’re told that Elkanah went up to Shiloh every year to sacrifice to the Lord – this took place long before Jerusalem was the center of worship; at that time Shiloh was the main center of worship.  On the occasion described in our reading, the family went up to Shiloh, with Penninah picking on Hannah the whole time.  Elkanah gave portions of the sacrifice to Penninah and her children, and an extra big portion to Hannah, because he loved her – but Hannah was so upset she couldn’t eat.  Elkanah tried to comfort her, with words that might make the women among us want to smack him: “Why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad?  Am I not more to you than ten sons?”  Yeah, Hannah, how can you cry when you’re lucky enough to have me!  Elkanah surely saw himself as enough of a prize that Hannah should be satisfied with him, but Hannah for some reason seems unconvinced.

So Hannah breaks off from the group and presents herself before the Lord.  Only men would have been allowed into the worship space proper, so she would have been near the entrance of the space.  Hannah was absolutely at the end of her rope, and so Hannah poured out her heart to the Lord, begging him for a son, pleading with him for a son, promising God that if she was granted a son, she would dedicate his life to serving the Lord.

Eli, the old priest who presided there, sat at the entrance, and so saw Hannah.  He saw her lips moving but no sounds coming out – in those days, silent prayer was very unusual – and so Eli supposed she’d gotten drunk and staggered in by accident. Eli hisses at her, “How long will  you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?  Put away your wine.”  Poor Hannah….unable to bear a child, tormented by Penninah, having to deal with Elkanah’s clumsy attempts at comfort, and then, when she comes to pour her heart out before God, the priest chews her out.  But she responds, “No, sir, I’m at the end of my rope, but I’m not drunk; please don’t regard me as a worthless drunk, for I’ve been pouring my heart out to God.”  And Eli gives her a grudging blessing: “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.”  She responded to Eli, “Let your servant find favor in your sight.”  But even with Eli’s misunderstanding and interrupting her, and only grudgingly blessing her, it was enough: we’re told that “The woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her face was sad no more.”  She and her husband conceived, and in due time she gave birth to Samuel, and when he was old enough, presented him to Eli to be trained for religious service, fulfilling her vow.  And God blessed Hannah for her faithfulness: Hannah went on to give birth to three more sons, and two daughters.  But Samuel…..Samuel was more than a cute baby….he grew up to be a game changer, first supplanting Eli and his corrupt sons, and eventually himself anointing Saul, the first king of Israel, marking the end of the period of the judges – sort of the wild wild west period of Israel’s history – and the beginning of a central government for Israel.

But Hannah was not looking for any of that.  Hannah poured out her heart to the Lord, shared her cry of the heart with the Lord, and the Lord responded, spectacularly.   

What are the things that weigh you down?  What are the things that block out the light in your life, that keep you in the shadows?  What is your cry of the heart?   Today’s passage reminds that even when family opposes us, that even when those who are supposed to be on our side are insensitive to our needs, that even when the official representatives of God dismiss us as “less than”, God hears the cry of our hearts.  God hears the cry of our hearts.  And God will respond….perhaps not on our schedule, perhaps not as we expect, but God will not ignore the cry of the heart from those who love him.  So let us bring our deepest yearnings to the throne of grace.

Today, on this day, and I have to say on most days, the cry of my heart is for justice for the poor and oppressed, and for peace.  In many ways, this has been a really difficult year....from the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France in January to the church shooting in S. Carolina this summer, to the ramping up of hostilities in Palestine in recent months, to the crisis of refugees from Syria and elsewhere, to this week’s attacks, not only the attacks in Paris that we’ve heard about, but the attacks in Lebanon that happened the day before, but weren’t included in our news cycle, though other countries are well aware of them. And aside from these national stories, the shredding of the social safety net which once provided the poor with some measure of dignity, but is now leaving more and more people on the streets… As a pastor, all of this weighs heavily on me….what am I supposed to do about all this?  What even am I supposed to say about all this, to tell the congregation about this? And so my cry of the heart is justice and for peace.

And our Gospel reading tells us that the path ahead may not be peaceful.  In our gospel readings, Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem, and the disciples are admiring the scenery…”Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.”  And Jesus responds by telling them, in effect, “all of this will soon be crashing down, all of it.  Not one stone will be left on another.”  He goes on to say that there will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, and persecution.  But after likely scaring them half to death, Jesus then says, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

The one who endures to the end will be saved.  God will answer the cry of our heart.  God will not abandon us.  The one who endures to the end will be saved.  Even as the world we thought we knew seems to come apart, may we be comforted by the reality that God hears the cry of our hearts.  May we be comforted by Jesus’ promise that there is salvation to those who abide.  Amen.