I'm writing to pass along information regarding our sister congregation, Hope Outreach Mission UCC, located at C & Indiana in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood. From a friend of the congregation:
"I'm writing as a follow-up to the meeting at Hope Outreach this afternoon, to support the church in its ongoing men's ministry, which is under fire from Licenses and Inspections. During the meeting, the Phila L&I inspector showed up again and informed Pastor Deborah Savage that he would return with a "cease and desist" letter on Monday, after which there would be one week's grace till he returned the following Monday (Aug. 9) with police to remove all the men from the building.
Plans were put into motion in several directions, including working on a request for a zoning change (from the present "assembly" zoning to "multiuse," which could include permission to allow the men to remain in the building overnight); contacting various city officials (from the local Councilperson to the Mayor); making contingency plans for housing the men if, in fact, they are barred from the church; and setting up a fund within the Association to provide the money to continue this fight.
As background, Hope has had this men's ministry in place for nearly a year, taking homeless men off the street, getting them off substance addictions, helping them turn their lives around through recovery programs, and gving them a hand up to self-sufficiency. In the course of this year, some 200 men's lives have been touched. (We saw many of them at the Spring Association Meeting at Chestnut Hill.) Currently, nineteen men are staying at Hope overnight. They receive breakfast and dinner and a place to clean up and sleep safely. These men have done the community a wonderful service in cleaning up the park across Indiana Ave. from the church, which was a drug park previously. The surrounding community supports Hope in this ministry.
The plan for now is that Hope will have an all-night prayer vigil every night during August. They are asking pastors and parishioners in the Association (and elsewhere) to commit to helping with these vigils. We are also asking that individuals and churches consider contributing to what we will call the Hope Outreach Support Fund. Checks should be made payable to the Philadelphia Association, UCC, and write "Hope Support" on the memo line. Mail to Philadelphia Association, c/o N. Krody, PO Box 24005, Philadelphia, PA 19139-0005.
A local chapter of "Mrs. E.J." is being established. Nationally in the U.C.C., Ministers for Racial, Social, and Economic Justice (MRSEJ) has existed for many years. Locally, the Revs. Dwayne Royster and Linda Noonan have agreed to provide leadership. Clergy (including licensed ministers, and other lay leaders) in the Association are invited to join them at another meeting next Tuesday, Aug. 2, at 1 p.m., at Hope (C & Indiana, in Kensington) for a follow-up meeting.
Most of all, please share this with your congregations and keep Hope Outreach Ministries in your personal and public prayers in coming weeks."
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Rich With God
(Scriptures: Hosea 11:1-11, Psalm 107,
Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21)
In our increasingly fast-paced world, demands on our time and money never seem to end. We may find ourselves feeling like we’re being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. Our family needs our time, our employer may want us to work late – especially if the company has downsized, and as one of the survivors you’re picking up half of what had been somebody else’s job, friends may remind us that it’s been just ages since you and your friends have had a guys’ night out or girls’ night out. Political or charitable organizations may want us to show up at fundraisers or charity events. Amid all of this, we all need a little “me” time now and then. We may feel like we’re just flailing at things, just slapping bandaids on a whole lot of festering situations because we don’t have time to deal with any of them in depth. How do you sort all this out? Steven Covey, author of books such as “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” has a saying to help people who feel overwhelmed by demands on their time or money – “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
In our Gospel reading today, we learn that, not unnaturally, people made unreasonable demands on Jesus’ time. And, though we rarely see Jesus refuse a request for assistance, in today’s reading we see him gently setting some boundaries on his time and energy. Asked by a man in the crowd to help him and his brother sort out the family inheritance, Jesus responds, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Since when did Jesus hang out a shingle as an estate attorney. Hey, dude in the crowd, not my job! But then, as is often the case with Jesus, he doesn’t give the man what he asks for, but rather what the man needs. Jesus gets to the root of the reason for the man’s request, telling the whole crowd “Take care, be on guard against all kinds of greed, for life does not consist of an abundance of possessions.” He then tells the parable of a man whose land produced so abundantly he had nowhere to put everything. After puzzling for a moment what to do, the man decided to tear down his barn and build bigger ones that could hold all the surplus crops – I suppose today he’d rent a storage bin - and then take an early retirement, living off the proceeds. Sounds like a great plan, until God rains on his parade, telling him basically, “Today you die – and all that stuff you’ve stored up so carefully in your shiny new barn, whose will it be?” As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. In conclusion, Jesus says, “So it will be for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
We may think that Jesus is being a little hard on the man in his parable. After all, Jesus gives no indication that the guy was evil or dishonest. He’d worked perfectly hard to see that his fields produced, and was it his fault if he wound up with a bumper crop? What was he supposed to do with his surplus? Well, maybe giving some of it away wouldn’t have been such a bad thing – he had more than he knew what to do with, after all, and undoubtedly people around him were hungry. Jesus’ point, I believe, was that the man had no thought of expressing gratitude to God for his blessings, had no thought of sharing them with his less fortunate neighbors. The man’s main priority was his own security, his own comfort, his own enjoyment. And for Jesus, those things, while they are good things, are not the main thing.
It’s a timely parable in our society today. We live in a society where the gulf between rich and poor, between have and have-not, are as great as they were in the late 1800’s. This was the time which we now call the “gilded age”, the days of the great industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J P Morgan, Andrew Mellon – called “robber barons” by some because their immense wealth, which they flaunted at every opportunity, came at great cost to their workers. These were the days before labor unions, when if a worker didn’t like his job because 12 hour days were too long or working conditions were too dangerous or the pay was too low – hey, tough situation, there were 10 guys lined up who’d be perfectly happy to take your job. And the more things change, the more they stay the same – with union membership down, companies downsizing, and regulatory agencies looking the other way – all too often we’re back to 12 hour days, increasingly dangerous working conditions, and a shrinking paycheck. If you don’t like it, there are 10 people lined up who’d be perfectly happy to take your job. At least back in the days of the robber barons, the industrialists actually made things – today we have investment bankers and CEO’s who are just as wealthy, who treat their workers – often overseas workers – just as badly as the robber barons did, and they don’t even manufacture things – all many of them do is move money around. But for those unfortunate among us who didn’t get an $80 million dollar bonus last year, hey, at least we can watch them on TV. 20 years ago, you could watch “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”; today, if your cable package includes it, you can watch Wealth TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Where is the church in all this? I’ll be a little impolite this morning: all too often, many churches, many denominations, are just plain out to lunch. It is striking that while Jesus didn’t say all that much about sex, he was an absolute pain in the neck on the topic of money and possessions – meanwhile many churches, many denominations, go on and on and on about sex, but are strangely silent on the topic of money and possessions. And of the churches that do preach about money, many of them are of the prosperity gospel variety that tell their members that “God wants them rich.” Or, like some TV evangelists, they talk their elderly viewers into sending their last dollar to TV preachers who already have more dollars than they know what to do with. I will mention that the United Church of Christ, along with some of the other mainline Protestant Churches and the Roman Catholic church, has traditionally stood with labor, traditionally advocated for the rights of workers to organize, traditionally spoken against unfair labor practices and dangerous working conditions.
Remember early on, I spoke about “keeping the main thing the main thing.” The point is not that Jesus was a killjoy or that he wanted his followers to dress in rags or eat cat food or scrounge in dumpsters for their meals – but that all too often, money and possessions can be a form of idolatry. In our reading from Hosea, God speaks of the people of Israel as an exasperated parent would speak of a wayward but still beloved child. The more God called Israel, the more Israel sacrificed to idols such as the Baals – sort of like a child who asks for assistance from mom and dad, and then spends it on booze or drugs. God is ready to leave them to their fate, to let Assyria and Egypt have their way with Israel – sort of like letting an addict hit bottom. And yet, like a father or mother who detests a child’s addiction or self-destructive behavior, but cannot turn their back on their child, God cannot totally give up on God’s people – “how can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?” While those in Hosea’s time sacrificed burnt offerings to idols made of wood or stone, all too often our society asks us to sacrifice time, effort, peace of mind, our relationships with family and friends, in an obsessive pursuit of wealth, power, prestige, status, security – either way, it’s a form of idolatry. It’s not that any of these things – wealth, power, prestige, status, security – are necessarily bad things. In fact, in and of themselves, they’re good things, gifts from God. They’re just not the main thing. To the extent that we express gratitude to God and use these good things to help others, our efforts are to God’s glory. To the extent that these things turn our attention away from God, they become idols.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians puts this into even stronger language: he speaks of our new life as believers as being raised in Christ. And like Christ, while he has been raised, and we with him, Christ’s glory is hidden, not fully evident, as it will be when Christ comes in glory. In the same way, our new life in Christ is hidden – the full working of Christ in our lives will not be seen until Christ comes in glory. That is to say, we live in an in-between time – while Jesus’ death and resurrection has created a new age of salvation and transformed lives through the work of the spirit – Christ’s kingdom or reign has not yet come in its full glory. So, in this in-between time, Paul calls on us to seek those things that are above – the things of the spirit. As regards the things of this earth, Paul says that we have died – those things are dead to us, and we to them – like childhood toys that once meant the world to us, but that as adults we’ve now long since discarded and forgotten. And Paul specifies those things that are earthly – and among them Paul lists greed, which he explicitly says is idolatry. Christ speaks of our new selves, which are being renewed in such a way that our labels – Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, barbarian, Scythian – no longer divide us, because Christ is all and in all.
Christ is all and in all. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. When we’re feeling overwhelmed with demands on our time or effort or money, we need to focus on those things which are above, need to focus on Christ. To say “yes” to Jesus we may need to say “no” to competing priorities. There’s an item in the bulletin about a new section on the main United Church of Christ website – it’s called “Feed Your Spirit”, and if you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I’d encourage you to check it out.
“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” As we gather in a few minutes for communion, and as we depart this sanctuary to serve God in our daily lives, may we seek those things that are above. In our lives, and in this congregation, Emanuel United Church of Christ, may we keep the main thing the main thing. Amen.
*************
At Emanuel United Church of Christ, love of God and neighbor is the main thing. Join us on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21)
In our increasingly fast-paced world, demands on our time and money never seem to end. We may find ourselves feeling like we’re being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. Our family needs our time, our employer may want us to work late – especially if the company has downsized, and as one of the survivors you’re picking up half of what had been somebody else’s job, friends may remind us that it’s been just ages since you and your friends have had a guys’ night out or girls’ night out. Political or charitable organizations may want us to show up at fundraisers or charity events. Amid all of this, we all need a little “me” time now and then. We may feel like we’re just flailing at things, just slapping bandaids on a whole lot of festering situations because we don’t have time to deal with any of them in depth. How do you sort all this out? Steven Covey, author of books such as “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” has a saying to help people who feel overwhelmed by demands on their time or money – “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
In our Gospel reading today, we learn that, not unnaturally, people made unreasonable demands on Jesus’ time. And, though we rarely see Jesus refuse a request for assistance, in today’s reading we see him gently setting some boundaries on his time and energy. Asked by a man in the crowd to help him and his brother sort out the family inheritance, Jesus responds, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Since when did Jesus hang out a shingle as an estate attorney. Hey, dude in the crowd, not my job! But then, as is often the case with Jesus, he doesn’t give the man what he asks for, but rather what the man needs. Jesus gets to the root of the reason for the man’s request, telling the whole crowd “Take care, be on guard against all kinds of greed, for life does not consist of an abundance of possessions.” He then tells the parable of a man whose land produced so abundantly he had nowhere to put everything. After puzzling for a moment what to do, the man decided to tear down his barn and build bigger ones that could hold all the surplus crops – I suppose today he’d rent a storage bin - and then take an early retirement, living off the proceeds. Sounds like a great plan, until God rains on his parade, telling him basically, “Today you die – and all that stuff you’ve stored up so carefully in your shiny new barn, whose will it be?” As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. In conclusion, Jesus says, “So it will be for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
We may think that Jesus is being a little hard on the man in his parable. After all, Jesus gives no indication that the guy was evil or dishonest. He’d worked perfectly hard to see that his fields produced, and was it his fault if he wound up with a bumper crop? What was he supposed to do with his surplus? Well, maybe giving some of it away wouldn’t have been such a bad thing – he had more than he knew what to do with, after all, and undoubtedly people around him were hungry. Jesus’ point, I believe, was that the man had no thought of expressing gratitude to God for his blessings, had no thought of sharing them with his less fortunate neighbors. The man’s main priority was his own security, his own comfort, his own enjoyment. And for Jesus, those things, while they are good things, are not the main thing.
It’s a timely parable in our society today. We live in a society where the gulf between rich and poor, between have and have-not, are as great as they were in the late 1800’s. This was the time which we now call the “gilded age”, the days of the great industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J P Morgan, Andrew Mellon – called “robber barons” by some because their immense wealth, which they flaunted at every opportunity, came at great cost to their workers. These were the days before labor unions, when if a worker didn’t like his job because 12 hour days were too long or working conditions were too dangerous or the pay was too low – hey, tough situation, there were 10 guys lined up who’d be perfectly happy to take your job. And the more things change, the more they stay the same – with union membership down, companies downsizing, and regulatory agencies looking the other way – all too often we’re back to 12 hour days, increasingly dangerous working conditions, and a shrinking paycheck. If you don’t like it, there are 10 people lined up who’d be perfectly happy to take your job. At least back in the days of the robber barons, the industrialists actually made things – today we have investment bankers and CEO’s who are just as wealthy, who treat their workers – often overseas workers – just as badly as the robber barons did, and they don’t even manufacture things – all many of them do is move money around. But for those unfortunate among us who didn’t get an $80 million dollar bonus last year, hey, at least we can watch them on TV. 20 years ago, you could watch “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”; today, if your cable package includes it, you can watch Wealth TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Where is the church in all this? I’ll be a little impolite this morning: all too often, many churches, many denominations, are just plain out to lunch. It is striking that while Jesus didn’t say all that much about sex, he was an absolute pain in the neck on the topic of money and possessions – meanwhile many churches, many denominations, go on and on and on about sex, but are strangely silent on the topic of money and possessions. And of the churches that do preach about money, many of them are of the prosperity gospel variety that tell their members that “God wants them rich.” Or, like some TV evangelists, they talk their elderly viewers into sending their last dollar to TV preachers who already have more dollars than they know what to do with. I will mention that the United Church of Christ, along with some of the other mainline Protestant Churches and the Roman Catholic church, has traditionally stood with labor, traditionally advocated for the rights of workers to organize, traditionally spoken against unfair labor practices and dangerous working conditions.
Remember early on, I spoke about “keeping the main thing the main thing.” The point is not that Jesus was a killjoy or that he wanted his followers to dress in rags or eat cat food or scrounge in dumpsters for their meals – but that all too often, money and possessions can be a form of idolatry. In our reading from Hosea, God speaks of the people of Israel as an exasperated parent would speak of a wayward but still beloved child. The more God called Israel, the more Israel sacrificed to idols such as the Baals – sort of like a child who asks for assistance from mom and dad, and then spends it on booze or drugs. God is ready to leave them to their fate, to let Assyria and Egypt have their way with Israel – sort of like letting an addict hit bottom. And yet, like a father or mother who detests a child’s addiction or self-destructive behavior, but cannot turn their back on their child, God cannot totally give up on God’s people – “how can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?” While those in Hosea’s time sacrificed burnt offerings to idols made of wood or stone, all too often our society asks us to sacrifice time, effort, peace of mind, our relationships with family and friends, in an obsessive pursuit of wealth, power, prestige, status, security – either way, it’s a form of idolatry. It’s not that any of these things – wealth, power, prestige, status, security – are necessarily bad things. In fact, in and of themselves, they’re good things, gifts from God. They’re just not the main thing. To the extent that we express gratitude to God and use these good things to help others, our efforts are to God’s glory. To the extent that these things turn our attention away from God, they become idols.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians puts this into even stronger language: he speaks of our new life as believers as being raised in Christ. And like Christ, while he has been raised, and we with him, Christ’s glory is hidden, not fully evident, as it will be when Christ comes in glory. In the same way, our new life in Christ is hidden – the full working of Christ in our lives will not be seen until Christ comes in glory. That is to say, we live in an in-between time – while Jesus’ death and resurrection has created a new age of salvation and transformed lives through the work of the spirit – Christ’s kingdom or reign has not yet come in its full glory. So, in this in-between time, Paul calls on us to seek those things that are above – the things of the spirit. As regards the things of this earth, Paul says that we have died – those things are dead to us, and we to them – like childhood toys that once meant the world to us, but that as adults we’ve now long since discarded and forgotten. And Paul specifies those things that are earthly – and among them Paul lists greed, which he explicitly says is idolatry. Christ speaks of our new selves, which are being renewed in such a way that our labels – Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, barbarian, Scythian – no longer divide us, because Christ is all and in all.
Christ is all and in all. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. When we’re feeling overwhelmed with demands on our time or effort or money, we need to focus on those things which are above, need to focus on Christ. To say “yes” to Jesus we may need to say “no” to competing priorities. There’s an item in the bulletin about a new section on the main United Church of Christ website – it’s called “Feed Your Spirit”, and if you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I’d encourage you to check it out.
“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” As we gather in a few minutes for communion, and as we depart this sanctuary to serve God in our daily lives, may we seek those things that are above. In our lives, and in this congregation, Emanuel United Church of Christ, may we keep the main thing the main thing. Amen.
*************
At Emanuel United Church of Christ, love of God and neighbor is the main thing. Join us on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Ask, Seek, Knock
(Scriptures: Hosea 1:2-10, Psalm 85,
Colossians 2:6-19, Luke 11:1-13)
Our reading from Luke’s Gospel is a continuation of the sequence of readings from the past two Sundays. Remember two weeks ago, we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, and learned the importance of being very inclusive in our definition of “who is our neighbor.” Last week we learned the importance of maintaining a balance between prayer and work, that before we can love our neighbor, we need to take time to wait on the Lord, that our strength may be renewed and that we may be receptive of God’s guidance.
Today’s reading continues on the theme of prayer. The disciples, having just watched Jesus in prayer, asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Jesus’ response is what we know as the Lord’s prayer, though the version we will pray in a few minutes is taken from Matthew’s version from the sermon on the mount, which we find in the 6th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. This is essentially Jesus’ model prayer for his disciples. We can learn so much from it, so I’d like to take a few minutes to consider it – and I’ll use the more familiar language from Matthew.
First of all, it’s very short, and the words are very simple. Jesus’ said elsewhere that we don’t have to try to impress God with our eloquence, our lofty words, our long series of petitions – for God knows what we truly need before we ask. The first two words – “Our Father” – set the tone for the rest of the prayer. Note – “Our” – not “My”. Following Jesus is not just about “Jesus and me” or “My” needs or “My Father, but not your Father” – we are a community of believers. When we pray, we need to remember others. So we use the word “Our”. And “Father.” The tradition of the day was that God was so holy, so unapproachable, that the divine name could not even be pronounced by ordinary people. And while I don’t want us to lose sight of the reality that God is indeed holy, and wholly different from us, wholly “other” - yet God graciously allows us to call on God as “Father”. As “Our Father” – “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed by thy name – holy is your name. Your kingdom come – Luke stops here, but Matthew tells us explicitly what “your kingdom come” means – your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, may you reign on earth as completely as you do in heaven, with no thought of rebellion against your will. Give us this day our daily bread. Again, not “give me my bread” but “give us our bread”. And that word “daily” – trusting that each day God will provide for our needs, so that we don’t need to hoard – as God provided daily manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, so God will provide for us each day. “Forgive us our sins” – recognition that we have sinned and need forgiveness, but that is linked inseparably to the words “as we forgive those who sin against us.” To be forgiven, we must be forgiving. And “Lead us not into temptation” – for God knows how powerless we are to resist – “and deliver us from evil.” Luke stops here, but Matthew goes on with words of praise to God “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, now and forever.” And the word “Amen” meaning “may it be so.”
Then Jesus went on to tell them the parable of the friend at midnight – if you went to your friend’s house at midnight and asked him for bread, he may refuse at first. But if you’re persistent and keep knocking, you’ll get the bread you ask for, even though your friend may not be very gracious in giving it to you. Jesus tells them that they should, in the same way, persist in their prayers.
“Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” It sounds easy – so easy. And yet we all know prayers that have seemingly gone unanswered – people suffering grave illness, people out of work for long periods – especially in this economy, people suffering family turmoil, whose situations, despite being lifted up repeatedly in prayer, did not improve.
When our prayers seemingly aren’t answered, it probably appropriate to do some discernment about our request. We may pray for something obviously unworthy – for example, we may pray for God to send a lightning bolt to strike an enemy or rival. Or, like the late Janis Joplin, we pray, “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…..” After some discernment we may discover things to pray for that are more in tune with God’s will. Prayer and magical thinking aren’t the same thing. As the saying goes, be careful what you ask for, you may get it. Sometimes the greatest gifts God gives us is the things we asked for, that we didn’t receive.
But the prayer requests I mentioned earlier – prayers for healing, for gainful employment, for family harmony – are all worthwhile prayer requests. In these cases, like the friend at midnight, Jesus asks us to persist, to be a nudge, to keep on praying. From James chapter 5: The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. Or, in another example from church history, we’re told that in early years, Augustine lived a dissolute life - the proverbial life of wine, women and song. Augustine’s mother, Monica, prayed for Augustine’s conversion for years on end before he was finally converted – and he went on to become a great saint of the church. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
We may need to keep our eyes open to see the answers to prayer God may be sending. If we have very specific ideas about what an answer to prayer may look like, we may miss the very real answer to prayer that God sends. There’s the old joke about the drowning man who prayed for God to rescue him. A boat came by, but the man waved the boat off, saying he had prayed to God, and was waiting for God to rescue him. Another boat came by – same response, the man waved the boat off, saying that he had prayed to God, and was waiting for God to rescue him. A helicopter came by, and the man gave the same response – thanks for the offer, but I prayed to God, and I’m waiting for God to save me. Eventually the man drowned. At the pearly gates he asked God why God didn’t answer his prayer and rescue him. God replied, “I did answer your prayer. I sent two boats and a helicopter to rescue you…what else did you want from me?” In the same way, God’s answer to prayer may not look like what we expect. In fact, God’s answer to prayer may not be what we had in mind. Or, on the other hand, God’s answer may be for us to make use what we already have available. For example, we pray often for this church to grow. It’s possible, but not likely, that God will lead 50 families from the Pittsburgh area, with children of all ages, to move across the state, buy homes in Bridesburg, and start clamoring for a UCC church to join within walking distance of their new homes. It could happen – but I’m not holding my breath. What’s far more likely is that God will answer our prayers for this church to grow, by giving us courage to invite our friends and neighbors. We may find that we had what we needed all along, but we needed God to open our eyes to the resources we already had available.
It has also been said that while God answers prayer, God does not always say yes. Sometimes God says “Wait” – your request is right on target, but the timing isn’t yet right. Sometimes, if God knows what we ask for will ultimately harm us or others, God will say no. And sometimes God will say, “no, but here’s something better.”
Remember how our reading from Luke’s gospel ends – Jesus tells his listeners, “If you, as bad as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to all who ask. As St Paul says in Romans 8: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” God’s Holy Spirit, God within us, will guide us so that, as we are conformed more and more into Christ’s image, that our prayers will not be so much about trying to badger God into doing our will, but rather to pray that our will will line up more closely with God’s will. Or as the Lord’s Prayer goes, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.”
I think many of us lose sight of how deeply and how passionately we are loved by God. Again, remember, it is Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who calls us to address God as “Our Father”. These days, even that image may be problematic – depending on our family situation, the word “father” may conjure up visions of an absentee father whom we rarely saw, or an abusive father whom we dreaded seeing. But God is not that kind of father. For some of us, God may be the loving father we never had in our earthly families. In fact, as in our Old Testament reading from Hosea today, God is always ready to claim people as God’s own, who thought of themselves as “Not God’s people,” to meet people who think of themselves as “Not God’s children” and call them “Children of the Living God.”
“Children of the Living God” – that’s what God calls us. Beloved children, not stepchildren – beloved children, not orphans. May we at Emanuel Church always be willing to bring our prayers to the Living God, to pray, to persist – and to experience God’s blessings, today and every day. Amen.
**************
You're welcome to knock on the door of Emanuel United Church of Christ and seek God's presence. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson) and we worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Colossians 2:6-19, Luke 11:1-13)
Our reading from Luke’s Gospel is a continuation of the sequence of readings from the past two Sundays. Remember two weeks ago, we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, and learned the importance of being very inclusive in our definition of “who is our neighbor.” Last week we learned the importance of maintaining a balance between prayer and work, that before we can love our neighbor, we need to take time to wait on the Lord, that our strength may be renewed and that we may be receptive of God’s guidance.
Today’s reading continues on the theme of prayer. The disciples, having just watched Jesus in prayer, asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Jesus’ response is what we know as the Lord’s prayer, though the version we will pray in a few minutes is taken from Matthew’s version from the sermon on the mount, which we find in the 6th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. This is essentially Jesus’ model prayer for his disciples. We can learn so much from it, so I’d like to take a few minutes to consider it – and I’ll use the more familiar language from Matthew.
First of all, it’s very short, and the words are very simple. Jesus’ said elsewhere that we don’t have to try to impress God with our eloquence, our lofty words, our long series of petitions – for God knows what we truly need before we ask. The first two words – “Our Father” – set the tone for the rest of the prayer. Note – “Our” – not “My”. Following Jesus is not just about “Jesus and me” or “My” needs or “My Father, but not your Father” – we are a community of believers. When we pray, we need to remember others. So we use the word “Our”. And “Father.” The tradition of the day was that God was so holy, so unapproachable, that the divine name could not even be pronounced by ordinary people. And while I don’t want us to lose sight of the reality that God is indeed holy, and wholly different from us, wholly “other” - yet God graciously allows us to call on God as “Father”. As “Our Father” – “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed by thy name – holy is your name. Your kingdom come – Luke stops here, but Matthew tells us explicitly what “your kingdom come” means – your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, may you reign on earth as completely as you do in heaven, with no thought of rebellion against your will. Give us this day our daily bread. Again, not “give me my bread” but “give us our bread”. And that word “daily” – trusting that each day God will provide for our needs, so that we don’t need to hoard – as God provided daily manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, so God will provide for us each day. “Forgive us our sins” – recognition that we have sinned and need forgiveness, but that is linked inseparably to the words “as we forgive those who sin against us.” To be forgiven, we must be forgiving. And “Lead us not into temptation” – for God knows how powerless we are to resist – “and deliver us from evil.” Luke stops here, but Matthew goes on with words of praise to God “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, now and forever.” And the word “Amen” meaning “may it be so.”
Then Jesus went on to tell them the parable of the friend at midnight – if you went to your friend’s house at midnight and asked him for bread, he may refuse at first. But if you’re persistent and keep knocking, you’ll get the bread you ask for, even though your friend may not be very gracious in giving it to you. Jesus tells them that they should, in the same way, persist in their prayers.
“Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” It sounds easy – so easy. And yet we all know prayers that have seemingly gone unanswered – people suffering grave illness, people out of work for long periods – especially in this economy, people suffering family turmoil, whose situations, despite being lifted up repeatedly in prayer, did not improve.
When our prayers seemingly aren’t answered, it probably appropriate to do some discernment about our request. We may pray for something obviously unworthy – for example, we may pray for God to send a lightning bolt to strike an enemy or rival. Or, like the late Janis Joplin, we pray, “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…..” After some discernment we may discover things to pray for that are more in tune with God’s will. Prayer and magical thinking aren’t the same thing. As the saying goes, be careful what you ask for, you may get it. Sometimes the greatest gifts God gives us is the things we asked for, that we didn’t receive.
But the prayer requests I mentioned earlier – prayers for healing, for gainful employment, for family harmony – are all worthwhile prayer requests. In these cases, like the friend at midnight, Jesus asks us to persist, to be a nudge, to keep on praying. From James chapter 5: The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. Or, in another example from church history, we’re told that in early years, Augustine lived a dissolute life - the proverbial life of wine, women and song. Augustine’s mother, Monica, prayed for Augustine’s conversion for years on end before he was finally converted – and he went on to become a great saint of the church. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
We may need to keep our eyes open to see the answers to prayer God may be sending. If we have very specific ideas about what an answer to prayer may look like, we may miss the very real answer to prayer that God sends. There’s the old joke about the drowning man who prayed for God to rescue him. A boat came by, but the man waved the boat off, saying he had prayed to God, and was waiting for God to rescue him. Another boat came by – same response, the man waved the boat off, saying that he had prayed to God, and was waiting for God to rescue him. A helicopter came by, and the man gave the same response – thanks for the offer, but I prayed to God, and I’m waiting for God to save me. Eventually the man drowned. At the pearly gates he asked God why God didn’t answer his prayer and rescue him. God replied, “I did answer your prayer. I sent two boats and a helicopter to rescue you…what else did you want from me?” In the same way, God’s answer to prayer may not look like what we expect. In fact, God’s answer to prayer may not be what we had in mind. Or, on the other hand, God’s answer may be for us to make use what we already have available. For example, we pray often for this church to grow. It’s possible, but not likely, that God will lead 50 families from the Pittsburgh area, with children of all ages, to move across the state, buy homes in Bridesburg, and start clamoring for a UCC church to join within walking distance of their new homes. It could happen – but I’m not holding my breath. What’s far more likely is that God will answer our prayers for this church to grow, by giving us courage to invite our friends and neighbors. We may find that we had what we needed all along, but we needed God to open our eyes to the resources we already had available.
It has also been said that while God answers prayer, God does not always say yes. Sometimes God says “Wait” – your request is right on target, but the timing isn’t yet right. Sometimes, if God knows what we ask for will ultimately harm us or others, God will say no. And sometimes God will say, “no, but here’s something better.”
Remember how our reading from Luke’s gospel ends – Jesus tells his listeners, “If you, as bad as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to all who ask. As St Paul says in Romans 8: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” God’s Holy Spirit, God within us, will guide us so that, as we are conformed more and more into Christ’s image, that our prayers will not be so much about trying to badger God into doing our will, but rather to pray that our will will line up more closely with God’s will. Or as the Lord’s Prayer goes, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.”
I think many of us lose sight of how deeply and how passionately we are loved by God. Again, remember, it is Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who calls us to address God as “Our Father”. These days, even that image may be problematic – depending on our family situation, the word “father” may conjure up visions of an absentee father whom we rarely saw, or an abusive father whom we dreaded seeing. But God is not that kind of father. For some of us, God may be the loving father we never had in our earthly families. In fact, as in our Old Testament reading from Hosea today, God is always ready to claim people as God’s own, who thought of themselves as “Not God’s people,” to meet people who think of themselves as “Not God’s children” and call them “Children of the Living God.”
“Children of the Living God” – that’s what God calls us. Beloved children, not stepchildren – beloved children, not orphans. May we at Emanuel Church always be willing to bring our prayers to the Living God, to pray, to persist – and to experience God’s blessings, today and every day. Amen.
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You're welcome to knock on the door of Emanuel United Church of Christ and seek God's presence. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson) and we worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Better Part
(Scriptures: Amos 8:1-12, Psalm 15,
Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10:38-42)
St Benedict founded his first community of Benedictine monks around the year 529 AD. As with most monastic communities, the Benedictines live under the rule of St Benedict. While this guideline for monastic living goes into great detail, it can be summarized in phrases: the word “pax”, or peace, and the phrase “ora et labora” – pray and work. I mention this because these concepts – that of peace, and that of a balance between prayer and work – are lenses through which we can view both last week’s and this week’s readings from Luke’s Gospel.
Remember that last week, we had the parable of the Good Samaritan. Asked by a lawyer what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus referred him to the Scriptural injunctions to love God and neighbor. Asked by the lawyer, “and who is my neighbor?”, Jesus unfolded the parable of the man - the Jewish man - who fell among robbers, the Jewish religious authorities who passed him by without helping him, and the despised Samaritan foreigner who took compassion on the man. Clearly, Jesus’ concept of “who is our neighbor” transcends all the political, religious, socioeconomic, and other markers we use to distinguish and create divisions among ourselves. And welcoming all as neighbors is work – hard work.
This week we see the “prayer” side of Benedict’s “pray and work” rule of life. After Jesus’ day of teaching, he went to the home of Martha, who welcomed him to dinner. Jesus began to teach, and Mary sat at his feet, listening with rapt attention to Jesus’ words. Martha was trying to pull together dinner and asked Jesus to encourage Mary to pitch in. Jesus said that Martha was distracted over many things, but only one thing was needed, which Mary chose.
If this brief texts has you scratching your head in puzzlement, don’t feel bad, because I have a similar reaction. After Jesus had just gotten done teaching his followers to practice hospitality to neighbors, he turns around and chides Martha for seemingly following Jesus’ instructions. So do you want us to be hospitable or not, Jesus – which is it? We may wish Jesus would make up His mind!
Bible scholars speculate that perhaps Luke’s inclusion of this passage, which is unique to Luke’s gospel, was, in part, his way of responding to questions about the proper role of women in the church. What ministries were women permitted to carry out? In the passage, Jesus is breaking a number of Jewish cultural taboos – for a man to go to the house of an unrelated (and especially unmarried) woman would have raised eyebrows at the very least; Martha, a woman, served him; and Mary, a woman, is taught by him – and traditionally women would have done neither. The Greek word used by Luke to describe “serving”, diakonein , refers to Christian service; it’s the word from which we get our English word deacon. And there were both male and female deacons in the early church – Romans 16:1 refers to a deacon named Phoebe. And yet, at least in Luke’s telling, the better part was, not to scurry around setting out dishes, but rather to sit at Jesus feet and listen to him.
As I said, this seemingly short passage has layers of meaning and layers of complexity, and I don’t want to understate the ambiguity of the message. And yet, I think we’ve all had situations where we’ve been with someone, but he or she was so busy that it seemed like our presence was a distraction at best. Maybe we went out to dinner with a friend, and they were so busy on their blackberry or cell phone texting or taking calls from work that feel like we may as well have stayed home. And sometimes our prayer life with God is like that. Perhaps we’re just sending up a quick prayer to God now and then. And that’s certainly better than nothing. But even if we set time aside for prayer, it can be hard to focus – the day’s distractions have a way of crowding in. And my prayer life is no different – I try to focus on my prayers, and soon I’m thinking of ideas for next Sundays’ sermon and remember a parishioner I need to call, and a paper that’s due for a class, and grimace thinking about some upcoming boring meeting at my day job, and on and on. But like a spouse or partner or a good friend, God wants our undivided attention at least some of the time. It’s not too much for God to ask.
Our reading from Amos speaks of the much grimmer situation that can take place when we’re not even trying to maintain any kind of prayer or worship life. We met Amos last week, when he was prophesying against the social injustices of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the court prophet told Amos to put a cork in it, to shut up and prophesy elsewhere. Today we hear God’s response as prophesied by Amos. Amos recognizes that while his society goes through the motions of religious observance, their minds are focused on getting back to their work. “When will the new moon be over, so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may sell wheat?” Or in today’s terms, “boy, I hope pastor keeps the sermon and the prayers short today, so I can get out early….I have a million things to do at work this afternoon.” But then Amos’ description of this “work” turns downright sinister: “We’ll make the ephah small and the shekel great” – we’ll charge top dollar – “and practice deceit with false balances” – butchers put their thumbs on the scale back then too – “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” And, in our day in which we read stories of toothpaste adulterated with chemicals found in antifreeze, and periodic recalls of meat and vegetables laced with salmonella and other dangerous contaminants due to sloppy quality control and lack of regulation, and other abuses of industrialized food production, we can reflect that some things never change: “we’ll sell the sweepings of the wheat!” - hey, we’ll scrape up the husks of the wheat off the floor – along with whatever crud gets mixed in - and we’ll sell that! Ka-ching!
Remember that in last week’s reading from Luke, we were reminded that the two great commandments were to love God and love neighbor. These two commandments are inseparable. If our relationship with God suffers, our relationship with neighbor will suffer as well. Conversely, if we neglect or exploit our neighbor – generically, if we treat the people around us like dirt – it’s not unlikely that our relationship with God is out of kilter, that we’re treating God like dirt as well.
So God’s response to Israel’s neglect of God and exploitation of neighbor sounds a lot like the motto for Burger King – “Have it your way”. “The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.” Praying is too much trouble for you? Spending time in worship too much of a burden? Treating your neighbors like human beings too much to ask? Alrighty then – have it your way. I won’t take up any more of your time. “They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it.” God loves us, infinitely, eternally, but God will not force Godself on anyone unwillingly. Or, as you’re driving, you may now and then pass a church sign bearing the message, “If you feel like God is far away, guess who moved.” A word for the wise.
The United Church of Christ places a high value on radical inclusion of all sorts and conditions of people in congregational life, and on social justice as a way of showing love of neighbor to those who are too distant for us to know personally. We’re known as a social activist denomination. But this radical inclusion and social activism – this hands-on style of love of neighbor – must be firmly rooted and grounded in a prayer, in worship, in the development of a spiritual life. Our love of neighbor must be firmly, deeply rooted in love of God. "Ora" must come before "labora"; prayer before work. Otherwise we’re little more than a political action committee with organ music – which is exactly how our denomination’s critics see us. Let’s prove our critics wrong.
But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." May we here at Emanuel Church likewise choose the better part, as our congregational life is rooted and grounded in love for Emanuel – God with us. Amen.
**************
Come spend some quality time with God on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street, off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10:38-42)
St Benedict founded his first community of Benedictine monks around the year 529 AD. As with most monastic communities, the Benedictines live under the rule of St Benedict. While this guideline for monastic living goes into great detail, it can be summarized in phrases: the word “pax”, or peace, and the phrase “ora et labora” – pray and work. I mention this because these concepts – that of peace, and that of a balance between prayer and work – are lenses through which we can view both last week’s and this week’s readings from Luke’s Gospel.
Remember that last week, we had the parable of the Good Samaritan. Asked by a lawyer what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus referred him to the Scriptural injunctions to love God and neighbor. Asked by the lawyer, “and who is my neighbor?”, Jesus unfolded the parable of the man - the Jewish man - who fell among robbers, the Jewish religious authorities who passed him by without helping him, and the despised Samaritan foreigner who took compassion on the man. Clearly, Jesus’ concept of “who is our neighbor” transcends all the political, religious, socioeconomic, and other markers we use to distinguish and create divisions among ourselves. And welcoming all as neighbors is work – hard work.
This week we see the “prayer” side of Benedict’s “pray and work” rule of life. After Jesus’ day of teaching, he went to the home of Martha, who welcomed him to dinner. Jesus began to teach, and Mary sat at his feet, listening with rapt attention to Jesus’ words. Martha was trying to pull together dinner and asked Jesus to encourage Mary to pitch in. Jesus said that Martha was distracted over many things, but only one thing was needed, which Mary chose.
If this brief texts has you scratching your head in puzzlement, don’t feel bad, because I have a similar reaction. After Jesus had just gotten done teaching his followers to practice hospitality to neighbors, he turns around and chides Martha for seemingly following Jesus’ instructions. So do you want us to be hospitable or not, Jesus – which is it? We may wish Jesus would make up His mind!
Bible scholars speculate that perhaps Luke’s inclusion of this passage, which is unique to Luke’s gospel, was, in part, his way of responding to questions about the proper role of women in the church. What ministries were women permitted to carry out? In the passage, Jesus is breaking a number of Jewish cultural taboos – for a man to go to the house of an unrelated (and especially unmarried) woman would have raised eyebrows at the very least; Martha, a woman, served him; and Mary, a woman, is taught by him – and traditionally women would have done neither. The Greek word used by Luke to describe “serving”, diakonein , refers to Christian service; it’s the word from which we get our English word deacon. And there were both male and female deacons in the early church – Romans 16:1 refers to a deacon named Phoebe. And yet, at least in Luke’s telling, the better part was, not to scurry around setting out dishes, but rather to sit at Jesus feet and listen to him.
As I said, this seemingly short passage has layers of meaning and layers of complexity, and I don’t want to understate the ambiguity of the message. And yet, I think we’ve all had situations where we’ve been with someone, but he or she was so busy that it seemed like our presence was a distraction at best. Maybe we went out to dinner with a friend, and they were so busy on their blackberry or cell phone texting or taking calls from work that feel like we may as well have stayed home. And sometimes our prayer life with God is like that. Perhaps we’re just sending up a quick prayer to God now and then. And that’s certainly better than nothing. But even if we set time aside for prayer, it can be hard to focus – the day’s distractions have a way of crowding in. And my prayer life is no different – I try to focus on my prayers, and soon I’m thinking of ideas for next Sundays’ sermon and remember a parishioner I need to call, and a paper that’s due for a class, and grimace thinking about some upcoming boring meeting at my day job, and on and on. But like a spouse or partner or a good friend, God wants our undivided attention at least some of the time. It’s not too much for God to ask.
Our reading from Amos speaks of the much grimmer situation that can take place when we’re not even trying to maintain any kind of prayer or worship life. We met Amos last week, when he was prophesying against the social injustices of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the court prophet told Amos to put a cork in it, to shut up and prophesy elsewhere. Today we hear God’s response as prophesied by Amos. Amos recognizes that while his society goes through the motions of religious observance, their minds are focused on getting back to their work. “When will the new moon be over, so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may sell wheat?” Or in today’s terms, “boy, I hope pastor keeps the sermon and the prayers short today, so I can get out early….I have a million things to do at work this afternoon.” But then Amos’ description of this “work” turns downright sinister: “We’ll make the ephah small and the shekel great” – we’ll charge top dollar – “and practice deceit with false balances” – butchers put their thumbs on the scale back then too – “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” And, in our day in which we read stories of toothpaste adulterated with chemicals found in antifreeze, and periodic recalls of meat and vegetables laced with salmonella and other dangerous contaminants due to sloppy quality control and lack of regulation, and other abuses of industrialized food production, we can reflect that some things never change: “we’ll sell the sweepings of the wheat!” - hey, we’ll scrape up the husks of the wheat off the floor – along with whatever crud gets mixed in - and we’ll sell that! Ka-ching!
Remember that in last week’s reading from Luke, we were reminded that the two great commandments were to love God and love neighbor. These two commandments are inseparable. If our relationship with God suffers, our relationship with neighbor will suffer as well. Conversely, if we neglect or exploit our neighbor – generically, if we treat the people around us like dirt – it’s not unlikely that our relationship with God is out of kilter, that we’re treating God like dirt as well.
So God’s response to Israel’s neglect of God and exploitation of neighbor sounds a lot like the motto for Burger King – “Have it your way”. “The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.” Praying is too much trouble for you? Spending time in worship too much of a burden? Treating your neighbors like human beings too much to ask? Alrighty then – have it your way. I won’t take up any more of your time. “They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it.” God loves us, infinitely, eternally, but God will not force Godself on anyone unwillingly. Or, as you’re driving, you may now and then pass a church sign bearing the message, “If you feel like God is far away, guess who moved.” A word for the wise.
The United Church of Christ places a high value on radical inclusion of all sorts and conditions of people in congregational life, and on social justice as a way of showing love of neighbor to those who are too distant for us to know personally. We’re known as a social activist denomination. But this radical inclusion and social activism – this hands-on style of love of neighbor – must be firmly rooted and grounded in a prayer, in worship, in the development of a spiritual life. Our love of neighbor must be firmly, deeply rooted in love of God. "Ora" must come before "labora"; prayer before work. Otherwise we’re little more than a political action committee with organ music – which is exactly how our denomination’s critics see us. Let’s prove our critics wrong.
But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." May we here at Emanuel Church likewise choose the better part, as our congregational life is rooted and grounded in love for Emanuel – God with us. Amen.
**************
Come spend some quality time with God on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street, off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
(Scriptures: Amos 7:7-17, Psalm 30,
Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37)
Some of you may remember or may have been told about the news accounts of the March 14, 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City. At 3:20 a.m., as Kitty Genovese was walking from the Kew Gardens train station to her apartment, a man attacked Kitty with a knife. Kitty started screaming. Lights came on in the surrounding apartments, and a voice came from an upper apartment – “leave that girl alone.” The man with the knife scurried away – but then the lights went out, everyone in the surrounding apartments went back to sleep, and the man returned and attacked Kitty again. Again, lights went up in the apartments, and the man with the knife was startled and actually drove off. But again, the lights went out, everyone went back to sleep and the man returned to Kitty’s apartment building, where he found her slumped in the hallway, and stabbed her to death. At 3:50 a.m., someone finally called the police. For half an hour, 38 of Kitty Genovese’ neighbors heard Kitty Genovese being repeatedly attacked and ultimately stabbed to death – and did virtually nothing. Police later interviewed the neighbors to ask why nobody called the police, and over and over again the police heard the words, “I didn’t want to get involved.”
Today’s Gospel reading includes one of the most familiar parables of Jesus – the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable has become so much a part of our secular culture that there are laws, called Good Samaritan laws, to protect would-be rescuers from being held liable if their attempts to help inadvertently cause injury. As a side note, I’ll mention that in Minnesota and Vermont, the Good Samaritan laws actually require a person at the scene of an emergency to at least call 911. In any case, given that this is one of those parables that seemingly everyone has heard a million times, it’s a challenge to find anything fresh to say about it. And yet, the lawyer’s question, “And who is my neighbor?” is one with which both the church and the wider society have struggled since the beginning of time.
Today’s reading is situated in Luke’s Gospel directly after last week’s reading about Jesus’ sending the 70 out on their mission of healing and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Jesus has just gotten done telling the 70 to rejoice, not because they were able to cast out demons, but because their names were written in heaven. These words are barely out of Jesus’ mouth, Luke tells us, when this lawyer pops up out of nowhere – where’d he come from? - and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. “Hey Jesus, how can I get my name written in heaven?” We should understand that, in Luke’s context, this “lawyer” is not an attorney – this isn’t one of the ambulance chasers whose ads you’ll see on late night TV – but one trained to interpret Torah, the law of Moses, and the oral tradition of law that had sprung up to relate the written law to current circumstances. But, like present day lawyers, these experts in the religious law were accustomed to creating ever-finer distinctions to set boundaries between what was permitted and what was prohibited. For example, to clarify the commandment to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”, rabbinic tradition lists 39 activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath, on the grounds that they constitute “work.” And these distinctions and interpretations came about in a process of dialogue, a process of conversational give and take between rabbi and student, or between rabbis holding differing interpretations of the law.
So this teacher of the law asks Jesus a question, and Jesus answers his question with a question – what does the law say? The lawyer responded with what we have come to know as the two great commandments – You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength – taken from the Shema in Deuteronomy, which functioned almost as a creed or statement of faith for the Jews – and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, “yep, right answer, do this and you shall live.”
But as I mentioned earlier, the interpreters of the law were not satisfied with a broad, blanket response. So the lawyer tries to make distinctions – “and who is my neighbor?” Perhaps, as in my earlier example about the 39 activities prohibited on the Sabbath, the lawyer expected Jesus to list out various classes of people who were or who were not to be considered neighbors, maybe based on distance, or ethnicity, or economic status, or other factors. And, of course, the reason for the question is not to include more people as potential neighbors, but fewer. He wasn’t looking for more people to love as himself, but fewer. The lawyer’s question was not coming from a mindset of “How can I do more?” but rather “What’s the least I can get away with?”
But Jesus tells a parable, moving the conversation in a different direction. A man was returning from Jerusalem to Jericho, on a road notorious for robbers – today we would say that the man was walking through a dangerous neighborhood. Presumably he’s Jewish; likely he was returning from worship. The man gets beaten up and robbed and left for dead. In succession a priest and a levite – characters who would have had much in common with the lawyer who asked the question – see the man and pass by on the other side. Perhaps they were concerned about becoming ritually contaminated by getting too close to the beaten man – they may have stayed far enough away that they couldn’t tell whether the man was Jew or Gentile, friend or stranger. At any event, as in the Kitty Genovese murder, they didn’t want to get involved.
And here’s where Jesus throws a curveball: To our ears, Jesus’ story starts out a lot like one of our modern day jokes – “a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Jew go into a bar…” His listeners probably expected to hear a story along the lines of “the man got robbed, the priest and the levite walked by, but an ordinary everyday Israelite came along and saved the day. Hooray for the ordinary everyday Israelite. He wins! He gets eternal life. But instead, Jesus throws a curveball – “then a Samaritan came along….”
A Samaritan! – yuck! Jews and Samaritans weren’t on speaking terms in those days. We’re not exactly clear on why they were at odds – the Samaritans were descendents of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who had intermarried with their Assyrian conquerors, and were considered not fully Jewish. They also disagreed on where to worship – Jews of course worshiped in Jerusalem, while Samaritans considered Mt Gerazim to be their holy of holies. In any case, the lawyer questioning Jesus would almost certainly have put the Samaritan into a box called “not my neighbor.” But instead, the Samaritan went above and beyond in caring for the man who had fallen among robbers – the Jewish man, who initially probably feared even more harm to come from the Samaritan he saw approaching. And then Jesus concludes the parable by asking his questioner – which of the three, do you think, was neighbor to the man who had fallen among thieves. The man made the obvious response – “the one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
“And who is my neighbor?” Interesting question. Especially here in Bridesburg, with our banners on every lightpole proclaiming us “a family-first community” – which would seem to imply that we take care of our own first - so we're good neighbors to each other - and for anyone else, the line forms to the right. Bridesburg is a neighborhood which traditionally has had very clear ideas about who was – or more importantly, who wasn’t – a neighbor.
“And who is our neighbor?” The hostilities between Jew and Samaritan have faded into history. How might Jesus have told this story in more modern times? How would Jesus tell this parable in Bridesburg? Perhaps Jesus would have said that someone who lived in Bridesburg and worked for SEPTA, took a short cut through Kensington on the way home, and got mugged. As the man was lying on the sidewalk, bleeding out on the pavement, pastors from two of our local congregations happened to drive by, but they didn’t stop. But then along came - an undocumented immigrant with only a few words of broken English – or someone returning from services at the local mosque, still dressed in robe and head covering – and stopped, and helped the person, driving him to the ER and calling the police so they could take a report.
To cite Irish statesman Edmund Burke’s words from 1795 – “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men – or women – to do nothing.” If Jesus had told this parable in Nazi Germany – perhaps it would have been a German assaulted on the road, and a Jew on his way home from synagogue who would have helped him. It may be simplistic to say, but many of the genocides of the past century – Hitler’s murder of millions of Jews in Germany, for example – were able to happen, at least in part, because ordinary citizens did not want to get involved, because ordinary citizens answered the question “who is my neighbor” by saying, “Not Jews” Or on a much smaller scale, almost certainly Kitty Genovese’ life could have been spared on that March evening 46 years ago, had only one or two people been willing to claim Kitty Genovese as a neighbor.
Our readings from Psalm 30 and from Amos tie into this theme of caring for neighbor. Psalm 30 speaks of giving justice to the weak and the orphan, to maintain the right of the lowly and destitute. Although it isn’t as obvious in this week’s reading, much of Amos’ prophetic work consisted of speaking against the social and economic injustices of his day. We’ll hear more about this in coming weeks. Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, is often criticized for the emphasis we put on social justice – but working for justice is how we live out the parable of the Good Samaritan, how we act as neighbors to those who are far away. It’s not an extra, not optional, but basic to the Gospel message. It’s not possible to know every person on the planet by name – only God can do that, and I can barely keep track of the names of the people I’ve met in Bridesburg – but by advocating for social justice we show love to our neighbors who are far away, who we don’t and can’t know individually, but who are nonetheless precious in God’s sight. We may not individually be able to camp out on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem and rescue individual travelers, but, metaphorically, we can advocate for improved safety on the road, so that the robbers aren’t allowed to prey on travelers. Or to elaborate on what we already do in Bridesburg, we have a food cupboard to help the needy. That’s charity, and that’s an incredibly important way to be a neighbor. Justice – creating a society where nobody goes hungry – is another way to be a neighbor. Or to use a well-worn metaphor, charity is pulling drowning people out of the river; justice is trying to stop people from falling in to begin with. It’s not a choice of “either-or” - both are needed.
You may remember the children’s TV show “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” His jingle “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” ended with the words “won’t you be my neighbor.” When the words are coming from a nice middle-aged man in a sweater and sneakers – a man who happened to be a Presbyterian minister, as it happens Fred Rogers was – it’s easy to say ‘yes’. But what if the request “won’t you be my neighbor” are coming from – say, somebody like a Kitty Genovese being attacked just a few doors away from where you live? Or an undocumented immigrant who speaks only a few words of broken English? Or someone of a different faith, or race? Or the gay couple living at the end of the block? Or someone with a physical or mental handicap or who suffers from mental illness? The words of Scripture quoted by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus did not say, “Like your neighbor,” but rather “Love your neighbor.” “Love your neighbor” – even when your neighbor makes you uncomfortable; even when your neighbor is hard to like.
I’m not making an argument for an attitude of “anything goes.” I want to be very clear: from where I stand, all people are welcome here at Emanuel. All behavior is not. Exactly for the purpose of creating a sanctuary - safe space - for our neighbors who may be different, if someone behaves in this house of worship in a manner that is verbally or physically abusive or disrespectful of others, that person will rapidly be shown the door. For abusive people, while we are still called to be neighbors, our neighborliness may have to come from a distance, in the form of praying for a change of heart. But beyond those extremes, my prayer is that we at Emanuel can live out Jesus’ words by listening for the call, “won’t you be my neighbor?” – in whatever form it comes – and when we hear, to respond in love, as God has first loved us. Amen.
**********
At Emanuel United Church of Christ, we love when our neighbors visit. Please join us at 10 a.m. for worship. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37)
Some of you may remember or may have been told about the news accounts of the March 14, 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City. At 3:20 a.m., as Kitty Genovese was walking from the Kew Gardens train station to her apartment, a man attacked Kitty with a knife. Kitty started screaming. Lights came on in the surrounding apartments, and a voice came from an upper apartment – “leave that girl alone.” The man with the knife scurried away – but then the lights went out, everyone in the surrounding apartments went back to sleep, and the man returned and attacked Kitty again. Again, lights went up in the apartments, and the man with the knife was startled and actually drove off. But again, the lights went out, everyone went back to sleep and the man returned to Kitty’s apartment building, where he found her slumped in the hallway, and stabbed her to death. At 3:50 a.m., someone finally called the police. For half an hour, 38 of Kitty Genovese’ neighbors heard Kitty Genovese being repeatedly attacked and ultimately stabbed to death – and did virtually nothing. Police later interviewed the neighbors to ask why nobody called the police, and over and over again the police heard the words, “I didn’t want to get involved.”
Today’s Gospel reading includes one of the most familiar parables of Jesus – the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable has become so much a part of our secular culture that there are laws, called Good Samaritan laws, to protect would-be rescuers from being held liable if their attempts to help inadvertently cause injury. As a side note, I’ll mention that in Minnesota and Vermont, the Good Samaritan laws actually require a person at the scene of an emergency to at least call 911. In any case, given that this is one of those parables that seemingly everyone has heard a million times, it’s a challenge to find anything fresh to say about it. And yet, the lawyer’s question, “And who is my neighbor?” is one with which both the church and the wider society have struggled since the beginning of time.
Today’s reading is situated in Luke’s Gospel directly after last week’s reading about Jesus’ sending the 70 out on their mission of healing and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Jesus has just gotten done telling the 70 to rejoice, not because they were able to cast out demons, but because their names were written in heaven. These words are barely out of Jesus’ mouth, Luke tells us, when this lawyer pops up out of nowhere – where’d he come from? - and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. “Hey Jesus, how can I get my name written in heaven?” We should understand that, in Luke’s context, this “lawyer” is not an attorney – this isn’t one of the ambulance chasers whose ads you’ll see on late night TV – but one trained to interpret Torah, the law of Moses, and the oral tradition of law that had sprung up to relate the written law to current circumstances. But, like present day lawyers, these experts in the religious law were accustomed to creating ever-finer distinctions to set boundaries between what was permitted and what was prohibited. For example, to clarify the commandment to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”, rabbinic tradition lists 39 activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath, on the grounds that they constitute “work.” And these distinctions and interpretations came about in a process of dialogue, a process of conversational give and take between rabbi and student, or between rabbis holding differing interpretations of the law.
So this teacher of the law asks Jesus a question, and Jesus answers his question with a question – what does the law say? The lawyer responded with what we have come to know as the two great commandments – You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength – taken from the Shema in Deuteronomy, which functioned almost as a creed or statement of faith for the Jews – and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, “yep, right answer, do this and you shall live.”
But as I mentioned earlier, the interpreters of the law were not satisfied with a broad, blanket response. So the lawyer tries to make distinctions – “and who is my neighbor?” Perhaps, as in my earlier example about the 39 activities prohibited on the Sabbath, the lawyer expected Jesus to list out various classes of people who were or who were not to be considered neighbors, maybe based on distance, or ethnicity, or economic status, or other factors. And, of course, the reason for the question is not to include more people as potential neighbors, but fewer. He wasn’t looking for more people to love as himself, but fewer. The lawyer’s question was not coming from a mindset of “How can I do more?” but rather “What’s the least I can get away with?”
But Jesus tells a parable, moving the conversation in a different direction. A man was returning from Jerusalem to Jericho, on a road notorious for robbers – today we would say that the man was walking through a dangerous neighborhood. Presumably he’s Jewish; likely he was returning from worship. The man gets beaten up and robbed and left for dead. In succession a priest and a levite – characters who would have had much in common with the lawyer who asked the question – see the man and pass by on the other side. Perhaps they were concerned about becoming ritually contaminated by getting too close to the beaten man – they may have stayed far enough away that they couldn’t tell whether the man was Jew or Gentile, friend or stranger. At any event, as in the Kitty Genovese murder, they didn’t want to get involved.
And here’s where Jesus throws a curveball: To our ears, Jesus’ story starts out a lot like one of our modern day jokes – “a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Jew go into a bar…” His listeners probably expected to hear a story along the lines of “the man got robbed, the priest and the levite walked by, but an ordinary everyday Israelite came along and saved the day. Hooray for the ordinary everyday Israelite. He wins! He gets eternal life. But instead, Jesus throws a curveball – “then a Samaritan came along….”
A Samaritan! – yuck! Jews and Samaritans weren’t on speaking terms in those days. We’re not exactly clear on why they were at odds – the Samaritans were descendents of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who had intermarried with their Assyrian conquerors, and were considered not fully Jewish. They also disagreed on where to worship – Jews of course worshiped in Jerusalem, while Samaritans considered Mt Gerazim to be their holy of holies. In any case, the lawyer questioning Jesus would almost certainly have put the Samaritan into a box called “not my neighbor.” But instead, the Samaritan went above and beyond in caring for the man who had fallen among robbers – the Jewish man, who initially probably feared even more harm to come from the Samaritan he saw approaching. And then Jesus concludes the parable by asking his questioner – which of the three, do you think, was neighbor to the man who had fallen among thieves. The man made the obvious response – “the one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
“And who is my neighbor?” Interesting question. Especially here in Bridesburg, with our banners on every lightpole proclaiming us “a family-first community” – which would seem to imply that we take care of our own first - so we're good neighbors to each other - and for anyone else, the line forms to the right. Bridesburg is a neighborhood which traditionally has had very clear ideas about who was – or more importantly, who wasn’t – a neighbor.
“And who is our neighbor?” The hostilities between Jew and Samaritan have faded into history. How might Jesus have told this story in more modern times? How would Jesus tell this parable in Bridesburg? Perhaps Jesus would have said that someone who lived in Bridesburg and worked for SEPTA, took a short cut through Kensington on the way home, and got mugged. As the man was lying on the sidewalk, bleeding out on the pavement, pastors from two of our local congregations happened to drive by, but they didn’t stop. But then along came - an undocumented immigrant with only a few words of broken English – or someone returning from services at the local mosque, still dressed in robe and head covering – and stopped, and helped the person, driving him to the ER and calling the police so they could take a report.
To cite Irish statesman Edmund Burke’s words from 1795 – “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men – or women – to do nothing.” If Jesus had told this parable in Nazi Germany – perhaps it would have been a German assaulted on the road, and a Jew on his way home from synagogue who would have helped him. It may be simplistic to say, but many of the genocides of the past century – Hitler’s murder of millions of Jews in Germany, for example – were able to happen, at least in part, because ordinary citizens did not want to get involved, because ordinary citizens answered the question “who is my neighbor” by saying, “Not Jews” Or on a much smaller scale, almost certainly Kitty Genovese’ life could have been spared on that March evening 46 years ago, had only one or two people been willing to claim Kitty Genovese as a neighbor.
Our readings from Psalm 30 and from Amos tie into this theme of caring for neighbor. Psalm 30 speaks of giving justice to the weak and the orphan, to maintain the right of the lowly and destitute. Although it isn’t as obvious in this week’s reading, much of Amos’ prophetic work consisted of speaking against the social and economic injustices of his day. We’ll hear more about this in coming weeks. Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, is often criticized for the emphasis we put on social justice – but working for justice is how we live out the parable of the Good Samaritan, how we act as neighbors to those who are far away. It’s not an extra, not optional, but basic to the Gospel message. It’s not possible to know every person on the planet by name – only God can do that, and I can barely keep track of the names of the people I’ve met in Bridesburg – but by advocating for social justice we show love to our neighbors who are far away, who we don’t and can’t know individually, but who are nonetheless precious in God’s sight. We may not individually be able to camp out on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem and rescue individual travelers, but, metaphorically, we can advocate for improved safety on the road, so that the robbers aren’t allowed to prey on travelers. Or to elaborate on what we already do in Bridesburg, we have a food cupboard to help the needy. That’s charity, and that’s an incredibly important way to be a neighbor. Justice – creating a society where nobody goes hungry – is another way to be a neighbor. Or to use a well-worn metaphor, charity is pulling drowning people out of the river; justice is trying to stop people from falling in to begin with. It’s not a choice of “either-or” - both are needed.
You may remember the children’s TV show “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” His jingle “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” ended with the words “won’t you be my neighbor.” When the words are coming from a nice middle-aged man in a sweater and sneakers – a man who happened to be a Presbyterian minister, as it happens Fred Rogers was – it’s easy to say ‘yes’. But what if the request “won’t you be my neighbor” are coming from – say, somebody like a Kitty Genovese being attacked just a few doors away from where you live? Or an undocumented immigrant who speaks only a few words of broken English? Or someone of a different faith, or race? Or the gay couple living at the end of the block? Or someone with a physical or mental handicap or who suffers from mental illness? The words of Scripture quoted by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus did not say, “Like your neighbor,” but rather “Love your neighbor.” “Love your neighbor” – even when your neighbor makes you uncomfortable; even when your neighbor is hard to like.
I’m not making an argument for an attitude of “anything goes.” I want to be very clear: from where I stand, all people are welcome here at Emanuel. All behavior is not. Exactly for the purpose of creating a sanctuary - safe space - for our neighbors who may be different, if someone behaves in this house of worship in a manner that is verbally or physically abusive or disrespectful of others, that person will rapidly be shown the door. For abusive people, while we are still called to be neighbors, our neighborliness may have to come from a distance, in the form of praying for a change of heart. But beyond those extremes, my prayer is that we at Emanuel can live out Jesus’ words by listening for the call, “won’t you be my neighbor?” – in whatever form it comes – and when we hear, to respond in love, as God has first loved us. Amen.
**********
At Emanuel United Church of Christ, we love when our neighbors visit. Please join us at 10 a.m. for worship. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Friday, July 9, 2010
Go Jump In A River
(Scriptures: 2 Kings 5:1-14 Galatians 6:1-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)
Today we celebrate July 4, Independence Day, the day on which we declared independence from England. The colonists came to America for a variety of reasons – religious liberty, economics, freedom of expression. Of course, there are people who came to America from Africa against their will, and people who were already here who were forced to move elsewhere.
We’ve come a long way in 234 years. We’re no longer a recently-liberated colony of England, with folks like Washington and Jefferson and Ben Franklin walking the streets of Philadelphia in colonial garb – though you can find their stand-ins walking around Independence Mall, posing for the tourists. We’ve come up in the world over the past couple centuries. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we’re now the world’s remaining superpower, and our involvement is expected in any act of international diplomacy or the creation of any sort of international consensus – we see ourselves as the indispensable nation. In many ways, we’re not entirely unlike the Roman empire at the time of Christ – while we don’t actually name many places as colonies, by virtue of economic and political power we can exert strong pressure on nominally independent allies to do our bidding. We take national pride in throwing our weight around. All of this comes under the title of privilege, of feeling entitled to a certain amount of respect because of our position. But while privilege has its advantages, it also comes with occupational hazards. One of these occupational hazards is a sort of acquired deafness, when we can feel too important – too entitled - to take other peoples’ views into account.
We encounter this kind of acquired deafness, this unwillingness to listen to others, in our Old Testament reading today. Naaman was a commander of the Aramean king. While very powerful, he struggled with a great hardship – he had leprosy, which distanced him from others who did not want to expose themselves to contact. A young Israelite girl, captured in one of Naaman’s raids, served Naaman’s wife. The girl told her mistress that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure Naaman’s leprosy. The wife told Naaman, and Naaman told the Aramean king – who sent a letter to the king of Israel, accompanied by many gifts, informing him that he was sending his commander, Naaman, so that the Israelite king could cure him of his leprosy. He didn’t want to be bothered dealing directly with the prophet….he figured he’d send a diplomatic message to the Israelite king and let the Israelite king work out the details. Of course, the king of Israel was completely blindsided by the message from the Aramean king – “let’s get this straight…first the Aramean king sends Naaman to fight against me, and now I’m supposed to cure Naaman’s leprosy? Hello?” Elisha gets word of the Israelite king’s predicament and rescues the situation, giving word that Naaman should visit him. So Naaman comes to Elisha’s house – “with his horses and chariots”, we’re told, no doubt decked out in all his official glory. But Elisha can’t even be bothered to leave the house – in fairness, it’s possible Elisha himself wanted to avoid contact with Naaman’s leprosy - but instead sends a messenger to Naaman, saying, “Go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored, and you will be made clean.”
But here’s where Naaman’s privilege, as a result of his status, rendered him deaf to Elisha’s instructions. It wasn’t good enough that Elisha leave instructions for his cure – no, Naaman had very specific ideas about what the cure should look like – Elisha should wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord for Naaman’s healing. Or if that’s too much, would it have killed Elisha to at least come out and meet Naaman? And so Naaman felt snubbed, and stomped off in a huff. Fortunately for Naaman, his servants were able to calm him down and talk some sense into him. They were able to tell Naaman to get past his hurt feelings, to get over himself. Naaman did as Elisha instructed, and was cured.
Get over yourself, Naaman! Get over yourself! They can be hard words to hear – but sometimes words we need to hear, in order for our ears to be open to God’s call and for our spirits to be open to the healing God offers! After all, to ask for God’s healing is to admit that we are sick, physically, mentally, spiritually; to ask for God’s strength is to admit the limits of our own, to admit our weakness. To ask for God’s guidance is to admit that we’ve lost our way. And so it takes humility to call on God – and maybe our brothers and sisters in Christ - for help. We cannot call for help from God or neighbor until we get over ourselves.
Get over yourself! On this Independence Day, when we remember the time of our founding and consider who we were, and who we are, and who we aspire to be, perhaps as a nation we may sometimes need to heed this message. We think that with our military might, with our technological know-how, with our wealth, there is no end to what we can accomplish, no end to what we can control. There are voices from the sidelines, telling us otherwise, telling us that we need to change – that we cannot drill and bomb and spend and pollute in the future as we have in the past, that the damage done to the environment is as widespread as Naaman’s leprosy – and every bit as ugly, as pictures from the oil leak in the gulf remind us - that we need to use our vaunted Yankee ingenuity to learn new ways to do things, to be faithful stewards of the planet God has given us. Many of these voices from the sidelines are voices of faith. The United Church of Christ and other mainline churches have been proclaiming such things for a long time, as has the Roman Catholic church, but more recently even in conservative evangelical circles, there is an increasing consensus that God calls us to take loving care of nature instead of fouling our own nest, that having dominion over the earth doesn’t mean trashing it beyond recognition. But in our national pride, these voices get blocked out, and our national leaders stomp off in a huff. We are America, one country, indivisible – but we are not masters of the universe. Almighty God already has that position filled. Even as we celebrate the 234 years since we declared political independence from England, we need to remember our interdependence with all of humanity and with creation, and especially our utter dependence on God.
We can do this as individuals as well. In a few moments we will be celebrating Holy Communion, eating and drinking in remembrance of Christ, who died that we may live. We will come to the altar rail, together, as Christ’s body gathered here at Emanuel Church. In preparation for breaking bread and drinking wine together in remembrance of Christ, we will join in the prayer of confession. I would invite us, as we join in prayer, to look at our lives over the past day, over the past week, over the past month, to consider those moments when real or perceived snubs to our injured pride have caused us to hold a grudge, or lash out in anger at a neighbor – and to allow the cleansing waters of God’s love to wash this bitterness away, to let go of all that separates us from God and neighbor, and let God restore our spirits. As we hear the assurance of pardon for our own sins, may we likewise pardon those who have sinned against us; as God forgives our debts, may we forgive our debtors.
The old Shaker hymn proclaims:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
On this day in which our nation celebrates its freedom, may we celebrate a very different freedom – the simple gift of the freedom of the Spirit that Christ offers. Amen.
*********
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ (on Fillmore St, just off Thompson) on Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org )
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)
Today we celebrate July 4, Independence Day, the day on which we declared independence from England. The colonists came to America for a variety of reasons – religious liberty, economics, freedom of expression. Of course, there are people who came to America from Africa against their will, and people who were already here who were forced to move elsewhere.
We’ve come a long way in 234 years. We’re no longer a recently-liberated colony of England, with folks like Washington and Jefferson and Ben Franklin walking the streets of Philadelphia in colonial garb – though you can find their stand-ins walking around Independence Mall, posing for the tourists. We’ve come up in the world over the past couple centuries. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we’re now the world’s remaining superpower, and our involvement is expected in any act of international diplomacy or the creation of any sort of international consensus – we see ourselves as the indispensable nation. In many ways, we’re not entirely unlike the Roman empire at the time of Christ – while we don’t actually name many places as colonies, by virtue of economic and political power we can exert strong pressure on nominally independent allies to do our bidding. We take national pride in throwing our weight around. All of this comes under the title of privilege, of feeling entitled to a certain amount of respect because of our position. But while privilege has its advantages, it also comes with occupational hazards. One of these occupational hazards is a sort of acquired deafness, when we can feel too important – too entitled - to take other peoples’ views into account.
We encounter this kind of acquired deafness, this unwillingness to listen to others, in our Old Testament reading today. Naaman was a commander of the Aramean king. While very powerful, he struggled with a great hardship – he had leprosy, which distanced him from others who did not want to expose themselves to contact. A young Israelite girl, captured in one of Naaman’s raids, served Naaman’s wife. The girl told her mistress that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure Naaman’s leprosy. The wife told Naaman, and Naaman told the Aramean king – who sent a letter to the king of Israel, accompanied by many gifts, informing him that he was sending his commander, Naaman, so that the Israelite king could cure him of his leprosy. He didn’t want to be bothered dealing directly with the prophet….he figured he’d send a diplomatic message to the Israelite king and let the Israelite king work out the details. Of course, the king of Israel was completely blindsided by the message from the Aramean king – “let’s get this straight…first the Aramean king sends Naaman to fight against me, and now I’m supposed to cure Naaman’s leprosy? Hello?” Elisha gets word of the Israelite king’s predicament and rescues the situation, giving word that Naaman should visit him. So Naaman comes to Elisha’s house – “with his horses and chariots”, we’re told, no doubt decked out in all his official glory. But Elisha can’t even be bothered to leave the house – in fairness, it’s possible Elisha himself wanted to avoid contact with Naaman’s leprosy - but instead sends a messenger to Naaman, saying, “Go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored, and you will be made clean.”
But here’s where Naaman’s privilege, as a result of his status, rendered him deaf to Elisha’s instructions. It wasn’t good enough that Elisha leave instructions for his cure – no, Naaman had very specific ideas about what the cure should look like – Elisha should wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord for Naaman’s healing. Or if that’s too much, would it have killed Elisha to at least come out and meet Naaman? And so Naaman felt snubbed, and stomped off in a huff. Fortunately for Naaman, his servants were able to calm him down and talk some sense into him. They were able to tell Naaman to get past his hurt feelings, to get over himself. Naaman did as Elisha instructed, and was cured.
Get over yourself, Naaman! Get over yourself! They can be hard words to hear – but sometimes words we need to hear, in order for our ears to be open to God’s call and for our spirits to be open to the healing God offers! After all, to ask for God’s healing is to admit that we are sick, physically, mentally, spiritually; to ask for God’s strength is to admit the limits of our own, to admit our weakness. To ask for God’s guidance is to admit that we’ve lost our way. And so it takes humility to call on God – and maybe our brothers and sisters in Christ - for help. We cannot call for help from God or neighbor until we get over ourselves.
Get over yourself! On this Independence Day, when we remember the time of our founding and consider who we were, and who we are, and who we aspire to be, perhaps as a nation we may sometimes need to heed this message. We think that with our military might, with our technological know-how, with our wealth, there is no end to what we can accomplish, no end to what we can control. There are voices from the sidelines, telling us otherwise, telling us that we need to change – that we cannot drill and bomb and spend and pollute in the future as we have in the past, that the damage done to the environment is as widespread as Naaman’s leprosy – and every bit as ugly, as pictures from the oil leak in the gulf remind us - that we need to use our vaunted Yankee ingenuity to learn new ways to do things, to be faithful stewards of the planet God has given us. Many of these voices from the sidelines are voices of faith. The United Church of Christ and other mainline churches have been proclaiming such things for a long time, as has the Roman Catholic church, but more recently even in conservative evangelical circles, there is an increasing consensus that God calls us to take loving care of nature instead of fouling our own nest, that having dominion over the earth doesn’t mean trashing it beyond recognition. But in our national pride, these voices get blocked out, and our national leaders stomp off in a huff. We are America, one country, indivisible – but we are not masters of the universe. Almighty God already has that position filled. Even as we celebrate the 234 years since we declared political independence from England, we need to remember our interdependence with all of humanity and with creation, and especially our utter dependence on God.
We can do this as individuals as well. In a few moments we will be celebrating Holy Communion, eating and drinking in remembrance of Christ, who died that we may live. We will come to the altar rail, together, as Christ’s body gathered here at Emanuel Church. In preparation for breaking bread and drinking wine together in remembrance of Christ, we will join in the prayer of confession. I would invite us, as we join in prayer, to look at our lives over the past day, over the past week, over the past month, to consider those moments when real or perceived snubs to our injured pride have caused us to hold a grudge, or lash out in anger at a neighbor – and to allow the cleansing waters of God’s love to wash this bitterness away, to let go of all that separates us from God and neighbor, and let God restore our spirits. As we hear the assurance of pardon for our own sins, may we likewise pardon those who have sinned against us; as God forgives our debts, may we forgive our debtors.
The old Shaker hymn proclaims:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
On this day in which our nation celebrates its freedom, may we celebrate a very different freedom – the simple gift of the freedom of the Spirit that Christ offers. Amen.
*********
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ (on Fillmore St, just off Thompson) on Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org )
Healing Hope
(Scriptures: I Kings 19:1-18
Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39)
The advent of communication technologies such as text messaging and twitter has created a sort of parallel language of abbreviations, in order to communicate with fewer keystrokes. For example, LOL means laughing out loud, ROFL means roll on floor laughing. Not all such abbreviations are about happy moods. A Facebook posting by some distant acquaintance went on and on and on about the bad day the person was having, and then at the end of the complaint came the initials: FML. Being a little naïve, at first I could make no sense of the letters. “FML? Feed my llama? Four more lemons? Huh?” But I later discovered that the latter two initials, ML, stand for “my life,” and the F is best left unelaborated. Apparently the initials are an expression used in texting and twittering, when a temporary setback may seem like the end of the world and the sender is totally frustrated and fed up with his or her life, when a person just wants to roll their eyes heavenward and say, “shoot me now” – I’ve had enough.
While the language in our Old Testament reading is a bit different, Elijah could relate to the sentiment. Today’s OT reading is a continuation of Elijah’s confrontation with Israel’s king Ahab and Ahab’s queen, the Baal-worshiping Jezebel. Elijah had just come off a moment of great triumph. After more than 3 years of drought, there was a contest between 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, respectively a male and female pagan fertility god, and Elijah. The pagan prophets offered a bull and shouted to their gods and danced and raved and even cut themselves so that they bled, but nothing happened. Elijah offered a bull and soaked it with water, and prayed to the Lord, and fire came down and consumed the waterlogged bull. And Elijah had the false prophets put to the sword. And the rain came, and the drought ended.
But as sometimes happens, Elijah’s good deed did not go unpunished. Jezebel was furious at this public embarrassment to her god, not to mention the execution of all those false prophets, and sent a message that she had put a death sentence on the head of Elijah. So Elijah fled south, to Beer-Sheba in Judah, and then a day’s journey into the wilderness. And he rolled his eyes heavenward and asked God to kill him. “I’ve had enough. The people are in rebellion, and they don’t listen to me any more than they listened to Moses or Joshua or Samuel or anyone else who came before me. I give up. I quit.” He fell asleep, but an angel came and brought him food and water. He ate and drank, and slept again. Awoken once again by the angel, he ate and drank again, and then traveled for 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God – this is the same mountain on which the Lord appeared to Moses out of the burning bush, as described in Exodus chapter 3. He went inside a cave to rest. The Lord came and said, “what are you doing here, Elijah?” As in, why aren’t you in Israel doing the prophetic work to which I called you? Elijah’s response – or rather complaint – comes in three parts: “I’ve been so faithful and the people haven’t been; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” Elijah had lost all hope, and was ready to walk away from his prophetic calling and, indeed, from life itself.
Elijah is told to go out on the mountain and stand before the Lord, for the Lord would be passing by. Initially Elijah doesn’t respond; he’s too lost in his own self-pity to be bothered. Then there are spectacular signs – a wind strong enough to split rocks, an earthquake, and a fire – but we’re told that the Lord was in none of these. Scholars debate the correct translation of what came next - “a still small voice” is the most familiar translation, but other translations read “the sound of silence, crushed” or “the sound of sheer silence”. It was this incredible silence and stillness that got Elijah’s attention. He wasn’t yet ready to venture outside, but he at least ventured to the mouth of the cave – where God again asked, what are you doing here, Elijah? But after all that had just happened, despite God’s appearing to Elijah in a way that only Moses had ever experienced, Elijah was still too wrapped up in his own self-pity to care. He repeats his earlier complaint nearly word for word: “I’ve been so, so faithful (never mind that at this moment Elijah was only partially following God’s instructions) and the people have been anything but; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” This time God responds in a way that – as God often does – both helps and humbles Elijah: He tells Elijah to return home, and on the way he’ll be anointing both new leadership for Israel, in the form of Jehu, and a successor for himself, Elisha by name. And then God gives Elijah a broader perspective on his situation, gently telling Elijah – “And, oh, by the way, there are 7,000 others who have not bowed down to Baal, 7000 others who are still faithful. You’re not the last faithful man standing. You’re not alone. You never were.” For Elijah, from a situation of no hope, God brought hope, pointed out a way forward where Elijah saw no way.
I think we’ve all been where Elijah was. We’ve tried so hard to do the right thing, to be faithful to God, to our family, at our job, to our friends, here at church. We work our hearts out. Despite our best efforts, we’re at best only partly successful. Or maybe it seems we’re spinning our wheels, accomplishing nothing. And we get tired. And we feel like God has forgotten about us. “What’s the use? Why bother? Everyone around me just does whatever they please, and they’re doing just fine. Why am I making myself miserable.” We feel tempted to walk away, or maybe run screaming – from faith, from family, from friends, from life.
Despite the strangeness of some of the details of our reading – wind, earthquake, fire, and God himself putting in a personal appearance – the passage offers some down to earth advice. When Elijah was in the wilderness, wanting to die, the angel of the Lord came and – brought food and water. We’re human beings, with physical requirements for food and water and rest. Twelve-step programs caution those in recovery to be careful about allowing themselves to become hungry, angry, lonely, or tired – because at those points, recovering alcoholics and addicts are vulnerable to relapsing, to picking up a drink or a drug. And, whether recovering from addiction or not, when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired, we’re apt to snap at people or flip out in public, to go into road rage, to put ourselves and others at risk. In our reading today, Elijah was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired – all of the above. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, sometimes getting back on our feet involves things as simple as eating something healthy, taking a nap, calling a friend and talking things out so we can get some perspective on the situation.
And, if we’re overworked, overscheduled, going in 10 directions at once, it may be that we need to make some space in our lives for silence, to give God a chance to get a word in edgewise amid the clamor in our minds. Like Elijah, we may find that God’s presence is not to be experienced in spectacular ways, but in moments of silence, when we are quiet enough to hear God’s still, small voice of love.
But there may be times when all that isn’t enough. Even on a full stomach and 8 hours of sleep, there may be times when we feel that God has forgotten about us, that our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and landing in a heap on the floor. We may experience what St John of the Cross call the dark night of the soul, when all sense of God’s presence is hidden from us. For some mystics, these dark nights go on for years; for example, according to Mother Theresa’s letters and personal papers, she experienced this seeming withdrawal of God’s presence for most of the last 50 years of her life. And yet she persisted in her works of charity. It is during these times, should we experience them, when it is more crucial than ever to trust in God’s care, even in times of God’s apparent absence and silence. These times are not punishment from God, but rather an opportunity for our faith to grow stronger, as, even amid God’s seeming absence, we trust God enough to continue to do as God has called us to do, anyway.
For when God’s healing, restoring presence comes – and it will come, eventually – God restores our strength, not for ourselves alone, but so that we can return to the task for which God has called us. God raised up a successor for Elijah, but Elijah still had to return home and return to his prophetic ministry. In our reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus healed a man who had been possessed by demons, too many to count. We’re not told how this terrible situation had come to pass, only that the man’s behavior was beyond his own control or that of anyone else, and so he lived among the tombs, in agony. The man’s behavior is peculiar – the spirits within the man are terrified of Jesus, and yet the man comes to Jesus, perhaps from some tiny remaining spark of hope for healing. Jesus asked the man’s name, and the response was “Legion,” so fragmented was this man’s identity by the powers that possessed him. Jesus healed the man, restored him to wholeness. The man begged to stay with Jesus, but Jesus commanded – “Go home. Return to your family, to your loved ones who have missed you for so long. Return to the identity you had lost. And tell how much God has done for you.” It was in returning to his identity, to his community and former daily life that the man could best glorify God, and it was for this purpose that Jesus healed him.
It is not only individuals, but churches and entire communities that are healed by hope. Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia was written to a faith community torn apart by allegiances to false identities other than that of being a disciple of Christ. To this, Paul wrote: In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. All those other false identities that are tearing you apart mean exactly nothing. Like the man freed from many demons and restored to wholeness, Paul was trying to free the Galatian church from all that kept them fragment, calling on the church in Galatia to see themselves, not as many, but as one body in Christ. Our final hymn, "In Christ There Is No East or West", written in the early 1900’s, updates Paul’s words – In Christ there is no East or West, no north or South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. Today, in Grand Rapids, MI, we see the Reformed side of the church coming together in one great fellowship of love and service.
God’s hope is as present today as it was then. In our crazy world, Christ still offers restoration to health and sanity. In a world where different factions are at each other’s throats, Christ still calls us to be one body. When seemingly all hope has departed, as the UCC puts it, “never put a period where God has put a comma – God is still speaking – speaking words of hope, words of healing, words of love.” May Christ’s words of hope and healing and love be our words as we reach out in Christ’s name to our struggling, yet dearly beloved, neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
***
Need some hope? Need some healing? Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Fillmore St (off Thompson) at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39)
The advent of communication technologies such as text messaging and twitter has created a sort of parallel language of abbreviations, in order to communicate with fewer keystrokes. For example, LOL means laughing out loud, ROFL means roll on floor laughing. Not all such abbreviations are about happy moods. A Facebook posting by some distant acquaintance went on and on and on about the bad day the person was having, and then at the end of the complaint came the initials: FML. Being a little naïve, at first I could make no sense of the letters. “FML? Feed my llama? Four more lemons? Huh?” But I later discovered that the latter two initials, ML, stand for “my life,” and the F is best left unelaborated. Apparently the initials are an expression used in texting and twittering, when a temporary setback may seem like the end of the world and the sender is totally frustrated and fed up with his or her life, when a person just wants to roll their eyes heavenward and say, “shoot me now” – I’ve had enough.
While the language in our Old Testament reading is a bit different, Elijah could relate to the sentiment. Today’s OT reading is a continuation of Elijah’s confrontation with Israel’s king Ahab and Ahab’s queen, the Baal-worshiping Jezebel. Elijah had just come off a moment of great triumph. After more than 3 years of drought, there was a contest between 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, respectively a male and female pagan fertility god, and Elijah. The pagan prophets offered a bull and shouted to their gods and danced and raved and even cut themselves so that they bled, but nothing happened. Elijah offered a bull and soaked it with water, and prayed to the Lord, and fire came down and consumed the waterlogged bull. And Elijah had the false prophets put to the sword. And the rain came, and the drought ended.
But as sometimes happens, Elijah’s good deed did not go unpunished. Jezebel was furious at this public embarrassment to her god, not to mention the execution of all those false prophets, and sent a message that she had put a death sentence on the head of Elijah. So Elijah fled south, to Beer-Sheba in Judah, and then a day’s journey into the wilderness. And he rolled his eyes heavenward and asked God to kill him. “I’ve had enough. The people are in rebellion, and they don’t listen to me any more than they listened to Moses or Joshua or Samuel or anyone else who came before me. I give up. I quit.” He fell asleep, but an angel came and brought him food and water. He ate and drank, and slept again. Awoken once again by the angel, he ate and drank again, and then traveled for 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, the mount of God – this is the same mountain on which the Lord appeared to Moses out of the burning bush, as described in Exodus chapter 3. He went inside a cave to rest. The Lord came and said, “what are you doing here, Elijah?” As in, why aren’t you in Israel doing the prophetic work to which I called you? Elijah’s response – or rather complaint – comes in three parts: “I’ve been so faithful and the people haven’t been; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” Elijah had lost all hope, and was ready to walk away from his prophetic calling and, indeed, from life itself.
Elijah is told to go out on the mountain and stand before the Lord, for the Lord would be passing by. Initially Elijah doesn’t respond; he’s too lost in his own self-pity to be bothered. Then there are spectacular signs – a wind strong enough to split rocks, an earthquake, and a fire – but we’re told that the Lord was in none of these. Scholars debate the correct translation of what came next - “a still small voice” is the most familiar translation, but other translations read “the sound of silence, crushed” or “the sound of sheer silence”. It was this incredible silence and stillness that got Elijah’s attention. He wasn’t yet ready to venture outside, but he at least ventured to the mouth of the cave – where God again asked, what are you doing here, Elijah? But after all that had just happened, despite God’s appearing to Elijah in a way that only Moses had ever experienced, Elijah was still too wrapped up in his own self-pity to care. He repeats his earlier complaint nearly word for word: “I’ve been so, so faithful (never mind that at this moment Elijah was only partially following God’s instructions) and the people have been anything but; the people have harmed and killed your prophets. I, I alone, am the only faithful follower you’ve got, the last godly man standing, and they’re trying to kill me.” This time God responds in a way that – as God often does – both helps and humbles Elijah: He tells Elijah to return home, and on the way he’ll be anointing both new leadership for Israel, in the form of Jehu, and a successor for himself, Elisha by name. And then God gives Elijah a broader perspective on his situation, gently telling Elijah – “And, oh, by the way, there are 7,000 others who have not bowed down to Baal, 7000 others who are still faithful. You’re not the last faithful man standing. You’re not alone. You never were.” For Elijah, from a situation of no hope, God brought hope, pointed out a way forward where Elijah saw no way.
I think we’ve all been where Elijah was. We’ve tried so hard to do the right thing, to be faithful to God, to our family, at our job, to our friends, here at church. We work our hearts out. Despite our best efforts, we’re at best only partly successful. Or maybe it seems we’re spinning our wheels, accomplishing nothing. And we get tired. And we feel like God has forgotten about us. “What’s the use? Why bother? Everyone around me just does whatever they please, and they’re doing just fine. Why am I making myself miserable.” We feel tempted to walk away, or maybe run screaming – from faith, from family, from friends, from life.
Despite the strangeness of some of the details of our reading – wind, earthquake, fire, and God himself putting in a personal appearance – the passage offers some down to earth advice. When Elijah was in the wilderness, wanting to die, the angel of the Lord came and – brought food and water. We’re human beings, with physical requirements for food and water and rest. Twelve-step programs caution those in recovery to be careful about allowing themselves to become hungry, angry, lonely, or tired – because at those points, recovering alcoholics and addicts are vulnerable to relapsing, to picking up a drink or a drug. And, whether recovering from addiction or not, when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired, we’re apt to snap at people or flip out in public, to go into road rage, to put ourselves and others at risk. In our reading today, Elijah was hungry, angry, lonely, and tired – all of the above. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, sometimes getting back on our feet involves things as simple as eating something healthy, taking a nap, calling a friend and talking things out so we can get some perspective on the situation.
And, if we’re overworked, overscheduled, going in 10 directions at once, it may be that we need to make some space in our lives for silence, to give God a chance to get a word in edgewise amid the clamor in our minds. Like Elijah, we may find that God’s presence is not to be experienced in spectacular ways, but in moments of silence, when we are quiet enough to hear God’s still, small voice of love.
But there may be times when all that isn’t enough. Even on a full stomach and 8 hours of sleep, there may be times when we feel that God has forgotten about us, that our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and landing in a heap on the floor. We may experience what St John of the Cross call the dark night of the soul, when all sense of God’s presence is hidden from us. For some mystics, these dark nights go on for years; for example, according to Mother Theresa’s letters and personal papers, she experienced this seeming withdrawal of God’s presence for most of the last 50 years of her life. And yet she persisted in her works of charity. It is during these times, should we experience them, when it is more crucial than ever to trust in God’s care, even in times of God’s apparent absence and silence. These times are not punishment from God, but rather an opportunity for our faith to grow stronger, as, even amid God’s seeming absence, we trust God enough to continue to do as God has called us to do, anyway.
For when God’s healing, restoring presence comes – and it will come, eventually – God restores our strength, not for ourselves alone, but so that we can return to the task for which God has called us. God raised up a successor for Elijah, but Elijah still had to return home and return to his prophetic ministry. In our reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus healed a man who had been possessed by demons, too many to count. We’re not told how this terrible situation had come to pass, only that the man’s behavior was beyond his own control or that of anyone else, and so he lived among the tombs, in agony. The man’s behavior is peculiar – the spirits within the man are terrified of Jesus, and yet the man comes to Jesus, perhaps from some tiny remaining spark of hope for healing. Jesus asked the man’s name, and the response was “Legion,” so fragmented was this man’s identity by the powers that possessed him. Jesus healed the man, restored him to wholeness. The man begged to stay with Jesus, but Jesus commanded – “Go home. Return to your family, to your loved ones who have missed you for so long. Return to the identity you had lost. And tell how much God has done for you.” It was in returning to his identity, to his community and former daily life that the man could best glorify God, and it was for this purpose that Jesus healed him.
It is not only individuals, but churches and entire communities that are healed by hope. Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia was written to a faith community torn apart by allegiances to false identities other than that of being a disciple of Christ. To this, Paul wrote: In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. All those other false identities that are tearing you apart mean exactly nothing. Like the man freed from many demons and restored to wholeness, Paul was trying to free the Galatian church from all that kept them fragment, calling on the church in Galatia to see themselves, not as many, but as one body in Christ. Our final hymn, "In Christ There Is No East or West", written in the early 1900’s, updates Paul’s words – In Christ there is no East or West, no north or South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. Today, in Grand Rapids, MI, we see the Reformed side of the church coming together in one great fellowship of love and service.
God’s hope is as present today as it was then. In our crazy world, Christ still offers restoration to health and sanity. In a world where different factions are at each other’s throats, Christ still calls us to be one body. When seemingly all hope has departed, as the UCC puts it, “never put a period where God has put a comma – God is still speaking – speaking words of hope, words of healing, words of love.” May Christ’s words of hope and healing and love be our words as we reach out in Christ’s name to our struggling, yet dearly beloved, neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
***
Need some hope? Need some healing? Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Fillmore St (off Thompson) at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
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