"In the beginning..." (Pastor Dave's newsletter message, June, 2017)

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day…..

…….Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

So God created humankind in his image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” (Genesis 1:1-5, 26-31; 2:1-4)

Where did we come from?  In what kind of world do we live? Why are we here?  Where are we going?  From earliest times, these questions have haunted humankind.  Beyond the day-to-day requirements of survival – gathering food, creating shelter, parenting children – our ancestors in the faith asked themselves – and asked God – big questions about the purpose and direction of their lives and communities.  Their questions are answered in the opening chapters of Genesis, which is one of our readings for Trinity Sunday, June 11.

Other cultures and communities asked the same questions.   Many ancient cultures had creation stories.  Within these stories were embedded that culture’s assumptions about why they were there and the way the world worked.   The Babylonians, who would eventually conquer Jerusalem and drive the Jewish people into exile, had their own creation story, called the Enuma Elish, which was recited annually in April of each year.  While both the Genesis account and the Babylonian creation story begin with the universe as a formless void, they go from there in very different directions.  The Enuma Elish begins with a male god, Apsu, and a female god, Tiamat, who give birth to numerous younger gods.   The younger gods play too loudly and keep Apsu from sleeping.  Apsu decides to destroy these noisy children so he can once again have some peace and quiet, but as a good mother, Tiamat protects the children.  One of the Tiamat’s children, Ea, kills Apsu, his father.  Ea later marries another god and gives birth to Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians.  The widowed Tiamat remarries, taking Kingu as her consort.  Marduk eventually kills Tiamat (his grandmother) and from her body creates the heavens and the earth.  Later Marduk kills Tiamat’s second husband, Kingu, and from his corpse create humankind.  (For those who may be curious, more details are at this link:  http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Enuma_Elish.html)

Consider the differences between the Babylonian creation story and our own.  From their creation story, the Babylonians were told that competition and violent conflict and bloodshed were a natural part of life, baked into creation from the very beginning - and they lived accordingly.  By contrast, Genesis describes creation as ordered, peaceful, with blessings at every step (“And God saw that it was good”) and humankind created in God’s likeness, with a mandate to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”  And after all of God’s labors, God rested on the seventh day – so life has a daily rhythm of evening and morning and a seven-day rhythm of work and rest baked in from the beginning as well.  By contrast with the Babylonian account, Genesis tells us that peace, order, blessing and rest are baked into creation from the very beginning.  Genesis also tells us that, as humans are created in God’s image and likeness, we are of infinite worth, precious to God.

Over the past century or two, with the increase of scientific knowledge, there have been controversies over how the earth and humankind came into being.  I believe the account in Genesis is intended to answer the different and more useful question of why the earth and humankind came into being.  The question of “how” is about the past, while the question of “why” gives us guidance for the present and the future. 

The creation accounts in Genesis (remember, there’s a second account in Genesis 2) still shape our outlook on life.  In the Genesis 1 creation account, humankind is mandated to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” – and humankind has certainly accomplished that mandate with a vengeance.  By contrast, in Genesis 2:15, the man is put into the Garden of Eden with a much more modest mandate simply “to till and tend” the garden.  In our day of climate change and environmental damage, in which wealthy nations overconsume and waste while poor nations go hungry, where some areas experience contaminated water and shortages of water while islands and low-lying coastal communities face eventual submersion, perhaps humans should do less filling and subduing, and more tilling and tending – that is to say, to live in ways that are more harmonious with the plants and animals with which we share the planet,  and to be careful stewards of the creation which God declared good from the beginning.

Witnesses

Scriptures:     Acts 1:1-14                             Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

I Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11          John 17:1-11, 20-26

Any Law and Order fans in the house?  You know the setup – a crime happens, usually discovered by people who have nothing to do with the rest of the story, who we’ll never see again.  Two detectives are sent out – Briscoe and Curtis, Benson and Stabler – who interview various suspects and witnesses.  And then there’s a trial, and the outcome hinges on which witnesses are credible, and which are not.

Our reading from Acts gives us a snapshot of Jesus’ final moments with his disciples.  Remember that the book of Acts is more or less the sequel to Luke’s gospel – the same author wrote both works.  We’re told that for a 40 day period after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples.  Finally, the disciples gathered with Jesus.  And, as often happened, the disciples were not on the same page with Jesus.  “Lord, will you restore the kingdom to Israel now?”  After all that had happened, they were still looking to Jesus to lead Israel to independence from Rome.  They still saw Jesus as a politician.  It’s entirely possible that Jesus did a face-palm at that moment.  “Will these disciples of mine never stop missing the point?” Jesus might have thought to himself.  But, to his disciples, Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”  Put another way, Jesus told them:  “Mind your own business” or as is sometimes said today, “Stay in your own lane.” 

But Jesus didn’t stop there.  He went on to say, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  And then, we’re told, Jesus was lifted up into heaven.  The end.  If this were a Warner Brothers cartoon, we’d be hearing the words, “That’s all, folks!”  After the Gospels and this opening chapter of Acts, we hear nothing more directly from Jesus, except for Paul’s brief vision of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus – which set a course for the rest of his life, changing him from an enemy of the early church to perhaps its greatest missionary - and John’s vision on the island of Patmos, about which we read in the book of Revelation.  With these exceptions, after the Gospels, the focus of the rest of the New Testaments shifts to the disciples and to the communities they gathered around them, which we call the early church.

“You will be my witnesses.”  What does it mean to be a witness?  In order to be a witness, we have to have seen something or heard something or otherwise experienced something.  If we witness a car accident, it means we heard the squeal of brakes and the crunch of metal on metal, and see two cars make impact.  Or, if we don’t actually see the accident, perhaps we come upon the accident scene shortly afterward.  But there needs to be some kind of first-hand experience; we don’t get to be witnesses by reading about the accident in the paper the next day.  Similarly, for us to be witnesses to a crime – a theft, a drug sale, a shooting – we actually have to have seen the crime take place, or at the very least to see the crime scene afterward.  We don’t get to be witnesses to a crime by listening to what somebody else said about it.  And, beyond having seen or heard or otherwise experienced something, the other part of being a witness is being willing to tell others what we’ve experienced.  And this is the part that can be scary – if we’ve witnessed something that others want to keep hidden, such as a crime, and if make it known that we’re willing to tell others what we’ve seen, those who are trying to hide their acts may threaten us.  Or at the very least, they may try to discredit us. Indeed, the word martyr, which we associate with being killed for the sake of a belief or cause, comes from a Greek word meaning “witness”.  Being a witness can be risky, and costly.

As it happens, the disciples were witnesses, not to a car crash or a crime, but to a miracle.  Actually, to numerous miracles – the miracle of the resurrection, but also the miracles of healing and feeding that Jesus performed – and beyond that, the entire miracle of Jesus’ life and ministry, in which Jesus served others and, in serving them, transformed their lives, and inspired at least some of them to do the same for others.   And, just before Jesus left them, he told his disciples: “Go! Tell! Tell others about me.  Tell others what you’ve seen and heard and experienced.  Tell others, so that all that we’ve shared together will live on, even after you’ve passed on.  Tell others so that all we’ve experienced together will not be forgotten.”  And it is because these disciples did as Jesus said, that we’re gathered here together today. 

We know that sometime this morning, or maybe early afternoon if they’re running late, the folks from the veterans posts will be coming to hold their service of remembrance at our cemetery.  This is their way of witnessing to the sacrifices of those who died in the service of their country, of saying, “Their lives mattered, and their deaths in the service of their country mattered.  Do not let them be forgotten.”    And Jesus’ instruction to his disciples was similar, to an extent:  “Do not let me be forgotten.”

I said, “similar to an extent”.  We are inspired by the service of those who have fallen, and by those who remember them.  But as Christians, we believe that as others hear of Jesus, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection, they will be, not only inspired, but transformed, transformed at the deepest level.  We believe that as others hear of Jesus, the focus of their lives will change from being self-centered to being God-centered, from serving themselves to serving God and neighbor.  Remember that I said that in order to be a witness, we had to experience something.  The Gospels were written so that those who read them would meet and experience Jesus in the pages of the Gospels just as the first disciples met Jesus in the flesh, so that the lives of those who read them would be transformed in the same way that the lives of Jesus’ first disciples were transformed.  John’s Gospel is very direct about its intention, as John wrote:  “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31)

Jesus told his disciples that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  To us, these are names for faraway places most of us will never visit, but for those who followed Jesus, these places held emotional associations.  Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship, and was also the place where the disciples had been instructed to stay.  It was the area immediately around them.  Judea was the area surrounding Jerusalem, and most of the residents were also of the Jewish faith.  Samaria was further north.  While the residents of Samaria held some basic beliefs in common with Jews, they rejected most of the Jewish scriptures except for the first five books of the Old Testament, and they worshipped on a mountain in their area, Mt. Gerezim, instead of Jerusalem.  These differences were enough so that Jews looked down on Samaritans, and Samaritans in return were hostile to Jews.  And yet Jesus also wanted his disciples to tell the Samaritans about Jesus.   And then, of course, Jesus said his disciples would go even further, to tell people about him to the ends of the earth.  Our United Church of Christ logo, which is printed in the bulletin, comes from this passage – the crown and the cross and the globe – representing the Lordship of Christ over the whole world – and the globe is divided into three parts, representing Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth.  It’s a reminder that Jesus’ instructions to his disciples are his instructions to us as well, that we too are to tell others about Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth – to our neighbors, our friends, our enemies, and to everyone.

If a witness in a trial says something that’s obviously false, that testimony will be discounted. For a witness to be heard, he or she must be credible.   Jesus knew that in order for people to believe his disciples words about how Jesus transformed their lives, their lives had to look transformed. Indeed, one of the failings of the church – and I’m talking about the church as a whole -  is that, as much as we talk about Jesus changing our lives for the better, too often those outside the church look at our lives, and see no change at all – that is to say, preach as we will about the love of Jesus, the lives of many inside the church are just as unloving and self-centered as those outside the church. For our witness to be believable, we need to walk the way we talk, and when we don’t, our words will come to nothing.  In our Gospel reading, Jesus was praying for his disciples at the Last Supper….a final prayer for them before his arrest.  Jesus could have prayed any number of things on their behalf – “let them be persistent, let them be powerful, let them be successful” -  but instead, he prayed that they would be one – and not only them, but anyone who would come to believe in Jesus because of their words, that they would all be one.  And he linked this to the credibility of their testimony about Jesus, praying “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  Jesus felt that unity among his followers would make the witness of his followers believable.  For Jesus, unity brought credibility.

Well.  We may question whether God granted this prayer of Jesus, for his disciples to be completely one.  Over the first thousand years of the history of the church, the small congregations planted by the disciples of Jesus gave birth to other congregations, and over time bishops were elected to oversee these congregations, and after Christianity was embraced by Emperor Constantine, eventually the bishop of Rome, otherwise known as the Pope, came to be seen as the most powerful of the bishops – and with power came power struggles and corruption.  In the year 1054, there was a great split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.  In the 1500’s and 1600’s, numerous Protestant communities split off from the Roman Catholic Church, including the German Reformed Church from which our congregation traces its heritage.  Today there are said to be close to 40,000 Christian denominations.  Some are large, such as the Southern Baptist Church, United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, and so forth.  Others are very small, such as the Schwenkfelder Church, a denomination consisting of five historically German churches in Southeastern Pennsylvania, with combined membership of a couple thousand. These denominations differ on all sorts of issues, sometimes about matters of governance – should the church be governed by a pope or by bishops or by other sorts of denominational governing bodies – or should each church be on its own, charting its own course.  Church splits have happened over race, as the African Methodist Episcopal Church formed from persons who were not welcomed in white Methodist Churches – in fact, the AME church started right here in Philadelphia, when African-American worshippers at St. George’s Methodist near 4^th & Race Streets were disrespected during worship, and walked out of the service to form their own congregation at 6^th & Lombard Street, called Mother Bethel - and the National Baptist Convention was formed by African-Americans who felt unwelcome in white Baptist churches. Churches split over social issues, as the split between the American Baptist and Southern Baptist churches came over the issue of slavery, and more recent church splits have come over the authorization of female clergy and gay clergy, among other issues.  Some split over matters of worship and doctrine, such as whether people should be baptized as infants or as adults, or whether communion should happen weekly or monthly. 

What do these splits say about Christian unity, about Jesus’ prayer that we may all be one?   Surely our divisions over the centuries have grieved the heart of God, and it’s tempting for us to throw up our hands in despair.  Certainly, throughout history, Protestants and Catholics, and different brands of Protestants, have excommunicated one another and even killed one another in the name of Christ – which made a mockery of the intended message of Christ’s love.   Today, however, churches are learning to work together across denominational lines.  Some of this is a matter of practicality – with shrinking numbers, in order to have any impact at all, we’ve had to learn to work together.  We are learning that even if we don’t have uniformity, we can still have a measure of unity, particularly in helping the poor and marginalized in our communities.  Our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, is the result of the merger of four previous denominations – German Reformed, German Evangelical, Congregational, Christian.  The United Church of Christ has agreements recognizing the sacraments of several other denominations – Presbyterian Church USA, Reformed Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Disciples of Christ -  and belong to bodies such the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches, which include most major Protestant denominations.   Though ours is a small denomination, the United Church of Christ has worked tirelessly for unity in the church.  We see ourselves as a united and uniting church.  And of course, here in Bridesburg, we are a contributing member of the Bridesburg Council of Churches, working with our Presbyterian and Methodist sisters and brothers to share Christ’s love and to serve our neighbors here in the ‘Burg. Indeed, back in the 1950’s, one of our former pastors, the Rev. Ronald Keller, had a key role in the formation of the council.  As small as the Bridesburg Council of Churches is, it’s a witness of unity, a small answer to Jesus’ prayer for unity, and as such deserves our support.

Jesus wanted his disciples to go out into all the world to be witnesses, and he wanted them to walk together in unity.  May we do our part, not only talking about God’s love but living out God’s love in ways that build others up instead of tearing them down.  Truly, may they know we are Christians by our love.  Amen.

"....and to the ends of the earth" - A Personal Reflection About This Blog

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."  Acts 1:8

This blog was started way back in 2008, when I was just starting my pastorate at Emanuel Church.  It was intended as an outreach tool for a church with very low attendance (10 or so on average at the time) and, at the time, virtually no visitors.

While things have improved at the church - our attendance is closer to 20 on average, with much higher attendance for holidays and special services, and we routinely see visitors in worship - the blog never really took off.   This is likely because, aside from a link from our (seldom-visited) website and occasional mentions in our newsletter and on Facebook, I've done next to nothing to promote the blog.  I wouldn't know how to begin to do so.  Most of my posts receive between 12 and 15 visits, with some of the older ones getting 20 or more visits.  Most of these, I'm sure, are from automated webcrawlers and bots from various search engines.  The blog has exactly one follower:  Ralph, our former organist.

In recent weeks, though, I've noticed a bit more activity.  A couple sermons from February received over 150 visits, and two May sermons received closer to 40 visits.  What's going on?  Blogger (the platform on which this blog is hosted, now part of  Google) has a link to a statistics page.  I looked at the geographical spread of the blog's visits over the month of May, and here's what I learned:

	Pageviews

Russia	337
France	172
United States	79
Germany	7
Portugal	4
Canada	2
Romania	2
Bermuda	1
Switzerland	1
Spain	1

It goes without saying that the blog's international audience is quite a surprise.  Readers from Russia?  From France? (Mon Dieu!)

I would love to learn more about what this means.   I'm sure that much of my readership consists of automated bots and webcrawlers.  Even so.....it means something that a low-visibility sermon blog from a tiny church can reach such a distance.  We never know who is watching or listening, and what impact our softly-spoken words and small actions can have on those around us....and even those really far away from us.