This past week I was introduced to a book called My Grandmother’s Hands, which talks about the trauma that we hold in our bodies.

Not necessarily talking just of the trauma that we have experienced in our lifetimes, but that our ancestral lineage has experienced. Talking specifically about the trauma in African American bodies, but also the trauma in white American bodies. The traumas that we’ve experienced throughout history and how our bodies seem to hold that in a certain way, and it affects us unconsciously.

The author makes this statement, which is a pretty bold statement, that if we are to survive as a country, it is inside our bodies where this conflict will need to be resolved. I don’t completely agree with that, but I think it’s a place that we haven’t looked before. We tend to look at all the external places and we forget that we have to be right within ourselves before we can be right with others. That’s what it reminds me of.

Rev. Adrian Thorn gave a lecture this week on embodied worship and preaching.

She was saying that to get more out of worship, we need to embody it. We need to feel it. We need to move. Thus, your hand gestures for “Shine, Jesus, Shine.” During this sermon, I’m going to ask you twice to place your hand on your heart and feel what’s going on in your body.

This may feel very uncomfortable to some of you because you are used to sermons being up in our heads. We’re very good at that. That’s our tradition. We appreciate educated clergy and we appreciate learning something in a sermon, but I also want you to feel it in your body.

With that in mind, let’s go to the Revelation scripture.

There’s a lot that could be said about the Book of Revelation, and I don’t wanna try unpacking that. That’s a whole series, and you can’t do that justice in one day. But I want to say that this is the last chapter of the Bible, and here we get the good news.

In the end, whenever the end comes, like Julian of Norwich used to say, “All will be well, and all matters of things will be well.” We will come back. It invites us back and almost describes the garden again. We started in the garden where everything was right, and then we broke that relationship with God. In the end, we’ll be reconciled with God, and the beloved community of Christ will be one again. It’s this beautiful reminder that in the end, all will work out.

With that in mind, I want you to put your hands on your heart, and I’m going to read you some other verses from the 21st chapter.

“and God himself will be with them and be their God; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” – Revelations 21:3-4

Notice how that feels. Take in the healing knowing that you are loved, forgiven, and free. There’s not a lot of places in our world that tell you that anymore, and I think that’s part of why we are here together. That’s part of why we come back to remember the stories, but we also come back to experience the healing.

Our second scripture is with the man at the gate.

There’s a bit of a problematic piece to this in that a lot of us approach the scripture, and we hear that Jesus is going to heal you. I’m gonna pray for you, and Jesus is going to heal you. You’re not going to need that wheelchair anymore, or you’re gonna be able to see again.

I think we set up God in a way that if that doesn’t happen, which it can, prayer is an amazing thing, but it may not happen in that moment. Healing may not come like that, then it looks like God’s not there or God’s not listening.

Maybe the problem is that we are not seeing the person as a whole, as they are. I read a story about a man in a wheelchair who someone came up to him and said, “I’m gonna pray for you so that you can walk again.” And he said, “I don’t need your prayer, for I am whole.”

Maybe it’s our perceptions that need to change, where we think that it’s only the very able-bodied person who is whole. Whereas, as the commercials tell us, disability is not a bad word. Many of us live with disabilities. It’s just some of us can hide ours better than others.

The whole story is that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and then we have this whole issue with the Pharisees because he healed on the Sabbath, and is that allowed or not? Then, we can ignore the healing issue and just argue about whether or not he was right to do it on the Sabbath. But I don’t wanna talk about Sabbath.

I want to keep us in this healing space because I think that we have the power, the ability, to do some internal or spiritual healing that we don’t pay enough attention to. I’m specifically focused on that piece because I want us to hear that incredibly powerful question of Jesus, “Do you want to be made well?” – John 5:6

That’s the question I want us to sit with. It’s the question I’m challenging myself with. Do I want to be made well? Do I want to be whole? What do I need? What do we need to feel whole?

The man does wanna be healed. He wants to be healed, and he reaches out and says, “Yes, I want healing.” He’s following the rules. He’s been told that the healing only happens when the pool is stirred. Think of God’s gonna trouble the waters and you have to be the first person in the pool.

Only the first person in the pool gets healed, and somebody always steps in front of him. He’s following all the rules, and yet it doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere, and he’s stuck. Until Jesus says, you don’t have to worry about those rules. It’s not about getting in the pool. Do you wanna be made? Well pick up your mat and go home.

We can change our perspective, and it may open us to healing. Maybe even healing we didn’t even know we needed.

So what does he do? I stopped reading the scripture where he walks away. But what he does is he walks away, and he starts telling people he didn’t even know who Jesus was. He told people that he met a man and he told me to walk and I can. Then finally he meets Jesus and he knows that it was Jesus who healed him, and he tells everybody that he meets that Jesus healed him.

How often do we do that? How often do we tell everybody that we meet the healing that we found? Through our faith, through what Jesus has done in our lives.

You may not have a specific event like this man did that was so transformative. I think the transformative ones are the easiest ones to talk about. If you’ve ever seen someone who wasn’t raised in church suddenly encounter Christ. They wanna tell everybody about it.

What’s coming to mind is Tom Rex’s story, for those of you who’ve been here a long time, Christ encountered him on his deathbed and gave him new life, and he wanted to tell everybody about that new life.

In my own life, I don’t think that I’ve had that kind of a healing moment, but when I look at the trajectory of my life, I can see where God intervened. Maybe God turned me around because I was wandering off, and God said, “Let’s go this way instead. Have you tried this yet?” And He put people in my life who asked me questions.

I didn’t want to go to seminary. I had the person who was in charge of admissions at the time come up to me, and instead of asking me about when I wanted to come, she said, “You have a date with the admissions department on this day and time. Please show up.” I guess God’s got a plan that I don’t have.

There are those moments in our lives. Christ is here and Christ is offering you the healing that you need, whether you know that you need it or not. That might be something that you need to search for within yourself, but Christ is here. And will you accept that?

I’m going to ask you to put your hand on your heart again, and here you are, loved, you are forgiven, and you are free. All will be well and all manner of things will be well, and may you rest.

When we look at a scripture, I try to think about where we are in the scripture, and today I’m placing us in the position of the man at the pool, the one who wanted healing.

Maybe you walked in here thinking you didn’t need healing. But think about it. Seriously, spiritual healing within yourself. Placing you at that pool and allowing yourself to have the transformation.

I think we are also the ones called to go out and tell people, tell people we encounter about Christ. Not, asking, do you know Christ? But saying, I found this great peace within me, through my relationship with Christ. You have to find that within yourself first, and then tell other people about it.

I think that we are wounded healers. But the wounded healer is a very powerful person because we know how bad it hurts in the wounding, but we know that you can survive. Someone said to me, I have survived 100% of the hard things that I have had to do in my life, and so have you.

You have survived 100% of the hard things you’ve had to do in life.

I would say that was because of Christ. God is within you, giving you that strength, helping you to move on.

I invite you to look for that strength within yourself and to share the love, the faith, and the healing that you have found with at least one other person. Just one.

Or pray about who it’s to be. Maybe all your friends go to church, but it doesn’t mean that they have found that healing. Pray about who that should be and watch who God puts in your life. There are a lot of people in our world who are hurting, and they don’t know what to do with their hurt.

We can remind them that the answer to their hurt is in Christ.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Sermon Given by UCC Conference Minister, Rev. William P. Worley

Brothers and sisters in Christ from the 150 congregations that make up the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ, where I have been the conference minister for the last 10 years.

What I have learned in the anniversary Sundays and sermons I have preached around those 150 congregations is that nobody really knows what a conference minister is or does. The easiest way I have found to describe that is to say that a conference minister is like the superintendent of a school district that has 150 schools filled with students who have one very simple lesson.

That lesson is how to follow Jesus Christ. I am joined this morning by my conference minister colleague, the Rev. Dr. Carrie Call, who’s not only a conference minister for the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, but one of the finest conference ministers in the United Church of Christ. That, of course, is my objective opinion. Carrie and I are working with other colleagues in ministry, David Ackerman, who is in Penn West and Bonnie Bates in Penn Northeast to bring together the four Pennsylvania conferences to make one large keystone conference of 530 congregations in the state of Pennsylvania, from which we will take over the entire United Church of Christ.

If you quote me as having said that, I will call you a boldfaced liar. Even though it is now apparently recorded for posterity.

I grew up here. It’s hard to stand in this spot and not hear the whispers of saints in my ear.

Including Rev. Nevin Shellenberger, who bent over this pulpit many times with a bony finger pointed in what I thought was my direction, because clearly I was asleep. Saying something that I didn’t always quite understand, but I knew that Nevin believed it. And because he did, I could.

I think about that baptism window where I have a picture of my now 32-year-old son being held a loft on the day he was baptized. Who is at this moment with his wife, I believe, having some early contractions before giving birth to what is going to be our second grandchild. So, if you see his mother jump up in sudden anxiety, heading for the door. It is to go get our two and a half year old granddaughter.

There are other whispers from the past, but there’s a message from God for the future and we need to get to that. So I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer.

Holy God. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable unto you, oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Well, friends, 50 years, that’s half a century of hymns sung, casseroles served, council and board meetings, budgets, quandaries, coffee hours, fellowship meals, and moments that could only be called holy.

You don’t last 50 years in church without getting some bumps and some blisters, and you don’t last 50 years in church without having some love that gets you past the bumps and the blisters. Love for this place. Love for the people in these pews. Hopefully, love for their church.

People are notorious for being challenged to like each other, let alone love each other, and love for God. What God has done through Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ is doing through you. Because that’s what today’s about. Not just the memory of what was, but the love that is and the love that will create a future for this place and all people who call on the name of Jesus, the one who gives us a commandment.

Commandments don’t sit well in the church. That is sometimes referred to as the church of you can’t tell me what to do.

Some hear the word commandment and old echoes of obligation, duty, and guilt arise, and it feels heavy, like something I should be doing. But when Jesus speaks this commandment, it doesn’t sound like a threat. It sounds like a gift, maybe even a map. Maybe a GPS that gives you good directions to get where you’re going. He gives this commandment when one of the 12 disciples is about to get very lost. Judas has just stepped out of the room. The bread that Jesus offered, the bread that Judas took to identify himself as the betrayer, has barely passed his lips, and he has gone out into the night to forge the legacy that will linger. And everyone left at the table is looking at the door and wondering. Did that just happen?

This is when Jesus starts talking about glory, not on the man of transfiguration, not walking across water, not changing water into wine. Not only Easter Sunday, but also in a moment of betrayal, when it looks like things are falling apart. Jesus looks at the people who haven’t walked out the door with Judas and says to them, Now, the son of man has been glorified.

Judas, our treasurer, just walked off with all of our money, and now the son of man is gonna be glorified. Imagine your treasurer walked off with all the funds of this church. Would you believe that God was gonna be glorified in this place? Probably not.

$30 billion are embezzled from churches in the United States every year. It doesn’t feel to those congregations like God is gonna be glorified, and yet this is when Jesus says, I give you a new commandment to love each other. Not just love when it’s easy, not just love the people who agree with you. Not even love the world though. That’s coming too. No, he says, as I have loved you, so you should love each other.

And just so there’s no doubt about what he means by loving each other, he has just shown them. It looks like washing feet that have trudged through dirt and manure. It looks like feeding someone who will sell you out. It looks like kneeling low when you could have just as easily run towards safety.

In other words, love isn’t about feelings. This love that Jesus is speaking of is about freedom. Freedom to love, even when you don’t want to. Freedom to love when it’s risky. Freedom to love when it’s gonna cost you everything.

Church anniversaries are not just memories and celebrations. They are a celebration of what people have done with their freedom.

This place was built on how people used the freedom of their time, their treasure, and their talent to build something magnificent. One of my very first experiences of freedom was in this room. Some of you remember that when this sanctuary was in construction, the congregation was worshiping down the hall in Fellowship Hall.

Just before the carpet was laid over the concrete floor that holds this space up, someone, I don’t remember who it was, invited the children to pick up chalk and draw on the floor. Now for an 11-year-old who had been told time and time again, do not write on the walls of the house, especially someone else’s house, and do not write on the floor unless you are outside on the driveway or the sidewalk.

To be invited into this empty space and told, Go for it, was huge. You all are sitting on a whole bunch of young doodles, blessings, and words of hope. They’re still here.

There were other freedoms. Lou, last night, mentioned liturgical dancers, which I had forgotten. I don’t know why I did. My mother was a liturgical dancer in this space at that time. That was a little risque in a church where people get excited when they do this.

I saw some of your heads bobbing this morning to the music. Some of the people in the congregation at that time didn’t like that freedom. That freedom looked uncontrollable, unrestrained, dare I even say, in those outfits, sexy, holy cow.

And yet in that movement, there was inspiration. There was freedom. There was permission to worship in ways that neither St. Paul’s or St. John’s did. There was freedom in that.

There was freedom for Nora Smith to become a woman in ministry in the United Church of Christ in the day when women were not ordained to minister.

That was a huge freedom. The freedom to practice ministry in this place created opportunities for all of the women that followed. I don’t know if you noticed, but I am the only male clergy person up here this morning, which is in keeping with the fact that there are now more women in ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ than men. That freedom. Began in part here in this space.

Then there was the freedom to make mistakes. I was the treasurer for the youth group when someone came to me with bank statements that showed that the youth checking account was overdrawn. She was a little panicked and came to me to ask what was going on. We figured out that I didn’t know the difference between a checking deposit slip and a savings deposit slip, and that you had to put money into the checking account to write checks. Who knew?

She didn’t freak out. We figured it out. I wasn’t fired, though I could have been. What she gave me is what I believe many of our churches don’t have, and that’s the freedom to fail.

Underneath it all is the stubborn belief that something sacred happens when people get together in the bumbling, stumbling ways that humans do. Something miraculous happens when you set people free to love, free from shame, from fear, from walls that keep people out, free to say, come in, there’s room for you.

Freedom to say you are loved no matter what. The kind of love and freedom that doesn’t always look impressive.

It looks like a casserole in choir practice, it looks like protest signs, and prayer cards. It looks like showing up when the world is burning down to sing the doxology.

Jesus knew that when he was commanding the disciples to love, the cross was not that far off. Betrayal was already in motion, and still he gave this commandment, not a creed, not an obligation, not a duty, not a pledge card. He gave them this commandment to love each other. It’s that simple. And it’s that hard.

So Church of the Apostles, what do we celebrate? 50 years of a not a flawless history. Say amen if you know the place that is, the Church of the Apostles is not flawless. Amen.

God’s got nothing to do here if you all were perfect. We celebrate freedom, the kind that Jesus gave his disciples that night at the table, and the kind that lets you build something beautiful together.

Church was never meant to be a museum. Someone once said, it’s a garden, a workshop, a kitchen table, a harbor. I love that. So here’s your word, church of 50 years for your golden anniversary. Don’t stop loving. Don’t stop breaking bread. Don’t stop showing up at hospital beds. Don’t stop praying for each other.

Spontaneously grabbing someone’s hand when they have just told you that they’ve been diagnosed with cancer and saying with them a very simple prayer that Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, come with your healing spirit and help this friend of mine. It’s that simple. Say it. Don’t be afraid of it.

Don’t stop telling stories, the story of God who loved the world into being and this place into existence. In the end, maybe the greatest glory is not in the miracles that we are going to expect, but the love that we are gonna be able to share with each other.

Because everyone who walks in the door of this place for the very first time has gotten over their fear about what might be inside. Maybe just maybe, the people in there have a place for me.

Love that does the dishes, and I hate doing dishes. Love that forgives. I’ve got a long list of people I’m still working on, and I know that I’m on the list of others. Love makes room and stays at the table even when there’s somebody at the table who’s ready to take your life.

50 years of that kind of love, that’s a miracle and that’s where celebrating. May you keep loving.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

 This Easter, we are talking about freedom, which is a very important value to us as Christians and as Americans.

The First Amendment of our Constitution protects free speech, including freedom of expression. It includes freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, peaceful protest, and freedom of the press. There have been actions this year that have challenged those freedoms. This picture is from the Mayday protest this past week downtown, which was Mayday as in urgent help needed, that was supporting immigrant workers who appear to be under attack.

There is also a desire among an influential group to make our nation a white patriarchal Christian nation, and that is not what the Constitution says. Our faith also has freedom. The Roman gods became very jealous and required their subjects to give to them and to listen to them. Our God has never required that. Our God has always invited it. Now, there are consequences when you choose not to, and those consequences still exist.

But in our scriptures for today, we hear two very clear examples of people who were going in a way that was against God. Yet they are invited back to come and be God’s people once again.

There is a Saul in the Hebrew Testament who becomes king. That is not this Saul. In the scripture, Acts 9:1-6, this Saul is a Pharisee who has gone after people within the Jewish community, who are following Jesus, who believe that Jesus was the one who is more than a prophet, but the Son of God.

Saul’s story starts actually in Chapter Seven, where he is present at the stoning of Stephen. So he endorsed that, even encouraged it. And in Chapter Eight of Acts, we hear this about Saul. He was ravaging the church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and women, and committing them to prison. That’s what Saul was doing to the people who followed Jesus. Saul saw his work as eliminating those who followed Jesus, and he did so with violence and cruelty. It seems that he felt entitled to continue this violence until he had this moment, which I call his come-to-Jesus moment, where Jesus shows up and says, why are you persecuting me?

I think this scripture is meant to send us back to Matthew 25, where Jesus says, “When you do it to the least of these, you do it to me.” So Saul went after the followers of Jesus. Jesus felt that he was being persecuted. When we go after the people who are the poor, the orphan, the widow, those are the ones that we are supposed to care for, and yet those are the ones that Saul was attacking.

While we’re on Matthew 25 and we’re remembering that story, I think we need to be reminded that at the end of that, it tells us that at the end of time or in our death, we get to stand for how we lived our lives. The sheep and the goats are separated. Have we used our lives to make a difference in this world? Have we used our lives to care for others or not? There are consequences for our behavior, even though I still believe in forgiveness and grace.

Our gospel reading is another come-to-Jesus moment for Peter, and I really do mean another one for Peter.

I think throughout the gospels, Peter has had more than one. If you think about all the times Peter gets called out by Jesus, Jesus kept trying to turn him around. I often say that Peter is our best reason for why you can believe because Peter appeared to have done everything wrong, including denying Jesus in his hour of need, and yet we bring them back.

When I think about this moment, this is a piece by Raphael. A little bit more traditional than some of the ones I show, but in this moment, Jesus is calling Peter to say, What are you gonna be about in your life? And if you love me, then you’re going to feed my lambs and tend my sheep and feed my sheep?

Because the Easter story is that love transforms. It forgives and it sets us up and sends us out to serve others. That is who we are to be. What does that entail? Well, I think it’s about loving our neighbor. It’s about recognizing the stranger in our midst and offering hospitality. That’s how Christians were known in the beginning.

They were known because they welcomed people. They invited people in. As Pope Francis reminded us in his living, it’s not our place to judge. We want to judge. The church has been doing that for a long time, and it worked for quite a while, so we tried to make people feel guilty and come to church because they feel guilty.

That’s not working anymore. I don’t think it was ever a good strategy. I think this strategy is to remind people of the love, the grace, the forgiveness, and the accountability that we have to face, that we are called to be our best selves, and how are we living into that?

So where does that leave us?

Well, today is May the 4th Be With You. The empire uses fear to control. The resistance acts freely to protect and defend all beings. Our God is not one of vengeance and fear, but a God of love and forgiveness and justice for all.

So on this May the fourth, I wanna leave you with the wisdom of Yoda. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.”

It almost sounds like it should have been written in the Bible, but what was written in the Bible in the first letter of John is that there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear, so the darkness is all around us, but the force of light is also present. We also have that piece that I read from the beginning of John’s gospel, that the light was in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. The choice is yours.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Since we are talking about the Freedom to Sing, I had heard some of Dot Lippart’s story, and she is here to today to share a little bit about a story from her life.

Pastor Kathryn had asked me to share a bit about my story, these memories came back to me as I was attending a Flute Day at Millersville University with 70 other flute players. One young man, who graduated from there, was working on a piece called Poem by Griffey’s. That brought back memories of my 9-year-old self.

My mother, who was an amazing musician, was always been my main mentor in my life. She was a church organist and a marvelous pianist, and I heard music all the time. I started taking piano lessons when I was probably seven, and I always enjoyed hearing music.

But when I was 9, she took me to a concert. It was a community concert on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and this man played the flute. He stood up, and I had no idea who he was, and he said he had one of three platinum flutes in the world. He said he was going to play Poem by Griffey’s, and he started playing that piece. Then, my 9-year-old self said, “That’s what I want to do. I want to play the flute.” I knew that from that moment. It was a spark that this gentleman had no idea that he had set off.

Here I am, many years later, still playing the flute. I’ve taught music and shared music. I’ve moved a lot in my life, but everywhere I have gone, I have made friends in the musical world. Music has been a joy in my life. Sometimes it takes work and is difficult, but I have always loved playing the flute.

 When I heard that story, I thought that moment, that concert, gave Dot the Freedom to Sing.

She happens to sing for a flute. But we all have that within us. We all have different ways in which God has gifted us, and maybe it is the challenge of our lives to figure out how we are to sing in this life.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the choir, but we can sing in so many different ways within our lives. So, I want you to think about how do you bring more beauty and love into this world?

Playing the Flute is how Dot does it. That is how she is more herself, the one God intended her to be through her music, through her flute.

Our tradition is to always read the gospel last, but today I think I should have flipped them because they’re out of chronological order.

The gospel story, John 20:19-31, would’ve taken place first, and then the story from Acts 5:27-32.

After the crucifixion and death, the disciples are scared, right? They don’t know what to do. This story begins on that first Easter day. It is now evening, and the disciples are locked in a room, and they are afraid of the authorities, and Jesus comes to them. But, he doesn’t come to shame them because they deserted him. He comes and offers them peace. He says, peace be with you. And he breathes on them. That is meant to remind us of the Genesis story where God breathed life into humanity. Jesus breathed on the disciples to bring them back to life. To say, don’t keep yourselves locked up in this room, afraid. You are here to live, to enjoy this life, to love, and to share that with everyone. That is such a gift. He was inviting them back into life.

I don’t usually read the part about Thomas, but I read it today because I think that the church has done Thomas a disservice. It says Thomas is also known as the twin. We don’t remember that. He was the twin. We remember that he is doubting Thomas. That’s what we’ve named him. We have renamed him, Doubting Thomas. And don’t be a doubting Thomas. We weaponized it and, we put shame if you doubt. But the reality is that doubt is part of faith. If it were complete certainty, it wouldn’t be faith, it would be what we know.

One of the most freeing sermons I ever heard was that faith is 51% certainty and 49% doubt. You’ve just tipped it towards, I’m more certain today, and that needle moves depending on the day and depending on the moment, right? Depending on what’s going on in life, whether we think God’s listening to us or we feel like our prayers fall on deaf ears, that needle moves, and we can just be honest about that.

But God wants us, and Jesus wants us to build this beloved community that he started to build.

But the writer of this gospel, whether it was John or someone else, put in this verse, too. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe” – John 20:29, and I think that verse was there because John’s gospel was written so much later than everything else. He was already writing for people who had not seen Jesus, they could only believe through the stories of others.

It was meant to be an encouragement, but the church has weaponized that, too. If you don’t believe, then obviously we are going to shame you. That’s not the idea. That doesn’t help anyone live more fully into their faith and who God intends for them to be.

I know guilt is powerful, but we need to teach people to love and to be joyful, compassionate, and empathetic. Because the more I question and the more of my doubts there are, the more it helps me and leads me to more belief.

So we went to Acts 5:27-32. This is a story from the very beginning.

I thought I’d lay out Acts for us so we understand where we are. We had the sightings of the resurrected Jesus in Chapter One. The Book of Acts is meant to be a continuation of Luke’s gospel. It was written by the same person, and so it begins with the ascension of Jesus. They watch Jesus Ascend.

Chapter Two is Pentecost. That’s coming up on June 8th. We’ll celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit. By Chapter Three, Peter starts his ministry in the community, and he begins by healing. That’s what’s getting people’s attention because he can bring healing to people, and by Chapter Four, the religious authorities are onto them again, and they arrest Peter and John. They question them, but they release them. They don’t have anything that they can charge them with.

Chapter Five begins with a story of Ananias and Sapphira, where they try to withhold some things. The community’s been kept holding everything in common living communally, and Ananias and Sapphira decide not to, and it doesn’t work out well for them. Then the apostles start healing again. So the religious leaders get jealous again, and they jail Peter and John a second time. This time, while they’re in jail, an angel comes and releases them.

That’s when Peter had this scripture that we read today. It’s their testament to the other people. When I look at this and I think about what the disciples and those now called apostles. What the apostles lived through, how they continued, they had reasons to be afraid, but they were so strong in their belief that they continued to preach Christ.

They continued to learn and trust in God. And now God empowered them with gifts that no one else had, especially this ability to heal people. They healed a crippled man, and that was one of the things that got Peter and John in trouble at first. But even in this text, Peter answers, we must obey God rather than any human authority.

I lift that because I’m concerned about that verse right now. I’m concerned because there are people who are saying that we need to just follow God’s authority.

It seems like something that we would say absolutely, God is the ultimate authority, except that they want to go back to following all the Levitical laws. Except I don’t think they really mean all Levitical laws. They want to choose which laws we follow.

They wanna say these are important and these are not, because the laws about whether you mix cotton and synthetic. Well, does anybody care if you wear a cotton top in synthetic pants? Or whether you have macaroni and cheese with meat? You can’t put milk and meat together. Those are not the laws they wanted, and they don’t want to lift the laws about leaving the edge of your field unharvested, so those who are poor and the stranger or the alien among you can eat and survive. Those aren’t the verses they wanna lift up.

They have a very definite agenda that I think we need to be paying attention to right now, but later after Acts 5:27-32, there are two more verses that I think are critical. They’re verses 38 and 39. It says “A Pharisee in the council named Galil said to the other leaders, ‘so in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. Because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them – in that case you may even be found fighting against God.” – Acts 5:38-39.

That’s what we need to be watching. We need to pay attention. What is God behind, and which of the different voices is God really behind?

The Easter season is about freedom. On Easter, we celebrate that Jesus was free of the tomb, and that we are free from the shame of our faults and our failings.

We are forgiven, loved, and free. Jesus wants us to feel loved and forgiven in our deepest being. That is where our strength will come from. And because hurt people, hurt others. Jesus doesn’t want us to be the hurt people. He wants us to be the loving, empathetic people who look out for the wellbeing of others.

And when we see the well-being of others being hurt, ignored, or blatantly dismissed, then we use our voices. We lift our voices in protest.

Last Saturday, the day before Easter, LIFT UCC and First Reformed UCC downtown held this pop-up choir in Bins Park to sing for justice and declared that immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community are welcome in our midst. I took this picture as I parked at the parking garage.

At that event, there was a Middle Eastern woman who was standing beside me and the whole time we were there, she had tears streaming down her face. They frequently told us to look, turn to your neighbor, and say, “You are loved and you belong here.” We even did a whole chant with “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

That’s the message that we are to share. This is Jesus’ love in action during these challenging times.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

In the last months, but particularly the last several weeks, I’ve heard a real sense of overwhelming.

Things are changing and we don’t like change to begin with. It is an inevitable, change. The one constant of life. But they’re changing at a pace that just feels exhausting right now. I want to name that because that ties into our story. I think that helps us relate to Peter in this story.

I also want to say that I think that things are happening to us that are meant to confuse us and overwhelm us so that we will submit and go along with what’s happening. That’s a tactic that has been used in the past and will probably be used more in the future. I ran across this excerpt from a fictional novel, “Autumn” by author Ali Smith, that I almost felt was meant for us.

“All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really lost. All across the country, people felt they’d really won. All across the country, people felt they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland. All across the country, people looked up Google: Irish Passport Applications.”

Autumn was published four weeks after the Brexit vote. Brits are still thinking, was that a good idea? Change. We don’t like it, but it is.

I’m going to change the way Luke 5:1-11 is preached. Yes, one more change for you.

But I’m doing this because I think It opens possibilities. Normally this scripture is preached by saying, look how persuasive Jesus was in getting Peter, James, and John to leave everything they knew. Their family, their vocation, their livelihood, all of their security and follow him to the unknown. And I’ve preached that. How powerful would his message have had to be for you to give up everything you know and follow him?

But instead of that, as I was reading and researching for this sermon. I found out a lot about first-century fishing and that’s what I want to talk to you about because I think it changes the story. Remember, context matters. What I found out is that first-century fishing was really hard.

First of all, if you go to the shore, you might see the boats with the drag nets. I lived in South Carolina, shrimp boats do that, but we catch all kinds of other things that way too. Then, you press a button and it reels it in, well they didn’t have any of that. Those big nets were thrown by people and pulled in by people. They didn’t have that kind of mechanics. Fishermen didn’t work for corporations with guaranteed income, benefits, or retirement. Benefits and retirement were not a first-century thing. We need those wake-up calls sometimes. We need to remind ourselves of what life was like.

If the Roman Empire had not been involved, fishing was probably a half-decent way to make a living. You had a way to provide food for your family and had a commodity that you could trade for what you didn’t have. But the empire was involved, and that made all the difference. You see, the Roman Empire imposed what it called licenses or leases. I think, for us, license might be a better word. In order to fish, you had to pay for a license. Then, when you caught, they taxed you on every fish you caught. They taxed you on transporting the fish, they taxed you on whatever byproducts could come from the fish, think fish sauce or fish oil, and once all of that was taken, you got what was left. It’s not nearly as exciting.

Jesus met Peter, James, and John after they had been out all night fishing and caught nothing.

Overwhelmed, frustrated, exhausted. Those are the men that Jesus met. To them he says, “but just go out again.” You can imagine Peter thinking, Is this guy nuts or what? Does he not see that we are tired? We just want to go home to see if we can find something to eat. Maybe get warm.

But, they’re willing and Jesus says go out in the deeper water and pull a catch. They pull in this great catch. It’s Peter’s dream catch. More fish than he can handle in his boat. They’ve got to bring all the boats to get all the fish back to shore.

Then, Jesus says, “Leave the fish and follow me.” At that moment, I think Jesus offered them a different possibility to see the abundance that exists, but for all of those fish they’re not going to pay tax on them. They’re going to leave them right there at the edge. They’re going to walk away. Let Rome figure out how they’re going to make money on those fish. Let Rome figure out how they’re going to move those fish. I think this was an act of liberation. It was saying, you don’t have to work in this way, what Jesus says is, “I will help you fish for people.”

I think that there’s something there for us about how do we go to that deeper water?

For us to go to the deeper water, we need to know our stories, so that we can tell our stories. That’s how we fish for people, by telling our stories. In a few minutes, you’re going to hear the story about our Saturday Morning Breakfast Ministry and how that feeds people, probably in more ways than just their stomachs.

But we need to think about the abundance that we have together. We need to look into our hearts. I think that’s where our deep water is. Think about the abundance that we have, no matter what. This morning, the kids showed us about an abundance of love. There’s no tax on that. There’s no tax on care. Nobody else can affect our level of compassion and empathy.

I do think that we need to work on how we are a community together, how we support one another, and the difference we can make together. That’s our challenge. Each one of us has the ability to make a difference.

How will we be light to the world by using our voices?

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

I would like us to think about what God’s love looks like.

How does that feel if you had to describe God’s love? What would you say about it? I’m going to invite you into a little bit of theology with me because I think you know more than you realize.

Think of a Bible story that you know. Whatever comes to mind. How was love present in that story? Now, I need the extroverts to talk.

The way the widow gave all that she had, she did not hold back. So that’s what love looks like. Love looks like giving what you have and being generous with what you have. That’s God’s love.

The good Samaritan. I love the fact that we have this whole window on the good Samaritan. If you didn’t recognize that before, that is the good Samaritan window where the person helps. God’s love is reaching out to those who are in need and helping. Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” – Luke 10:37

Matthew 25:40, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” It’s about reaching out and doing something. It’s not just this ethereal peace.

When is God showing us a love that calls us to be more than what we are or who we are at this moment? I think there’s this balance between the God who loves us and says that we are loved and worthy just as we are in this moment and the God who wants us to know that we have the potential to be more than that, to be better than what we are, to be more loving.

It is in the scripture from 1 John 4:8, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

What do we do with that? What does that look like? What is striking to me is that this scripture is meant to be an encouragement, but it’s also meant to tell us that everyone who loves then knows God, whether they put it in that kind of language or not.

It’s a very inclusive love. It’s not God loves these people because those are the people we love. And these people over here they’re not that loving so God must not love them either. What I hear in the scripture is God loves period and we’re the ones who want God to hate our enemies. But I don’t think that’s what this says.

This says God loves. God is love.

We’re the ones who play these childish games and want people to be out of God’s love. This is hard. It’s simple and hard. It’s simplistic, we are to love everyone. Some people are not very lovable and that’s hard work, but that is God’s expectation on us.

I mentioned in the Come Sunday that I’ve been sitting with who we are to become with our new vision and mission.

We’ve been living into that now for a year. So what are we becoming? Well, I think we’re becoming the beloved community. We’re to be about building a beloved community. So, that means we need to be love. Does that make sense? In order to be beloved, we need to be love. So how do we be love? How do we love others?

Well, one of the things that came to me as I sat with that was to show up and listen. That’s how you love. You love by showing up and listening rather than telling others what they need to do. But if we listen to them, if we help them, if we ask them questions, they probably know what they need.

It’s about listening, really listening. I think there are so many people in this world who are hurting because they feel like no one’s listening. I mean, they’re saying the pandemic of this year is loneliness. We can be all together and yet we’re lonely because we don’t let anybody else know those dark things that circle in our brains, those places that we don’t like to share.

Last week, Craig Gross was here with you. I know Craig well and Craig calls it his drawer. He said he has this drawer of dark things that he only opens so much. Then he closes it again because nobody else needs to see the dark things that are in the drawer.

Here in Lancaster County, we like to put a lot under the rug and we hide things there. We were taught to hide things. You don’t talk about your dirty laundry. You keep things private. You put on this stiff upper lip, right? Hold your chin high. Even if your world’s falling apart, unless we find a safe space to let ourselves fall apart, we’re all just a hot mess and we have to be able to create that safe space, which is part of our vision, creating a safe space for those who are vulnerable or afraid.

The reality is we’re already sitting here. Some people aren’t here who need a safe space now more than ever. So we need to be clear about who we are.

When we get to the annual meeting today, I put together an overview of what has happened over the past year and where we’re going.

As I was doing that, I was struck by the fact that my brain wanted to say the outreach commission did this and the property commission did that and the education commission did this and the parish life commission did that.

I stopped myself and I realized that’s the way we have defined it a lot of the time. Instead of saying, we did this and we did that. Do you hear the difference? I heard the difference. I felt the difference when we go from this group and that group to being one group. What have we done and what will we do next?

That’s what this morning is about. It’s about going out and being love.

But I’ll tell you, as I said before, this is hard work. There are two things that you need to do to do this. You need to love. To go places that feed you or do things that feed you and that fill your cup. Go places that inspire you and bring out life in you where you feel invigorated rather than drained wherever that is.

Last Sunday I went to Longwood Garden. It’s gorgeous. The new conservatory is beautiful. Take time, put yourself in places where you see beautiful things, wherever that is.

We all have different things that do that for us. So think about what it is for you and make sure you’re including that in your life and remind yourself that to be love involves our faith and faith is risky. It’s scary sometimes. Faith is about believing in something that we can’t prove. Hope. We have to hold hope. Hope is about thinking something is going to happen that hasn’t happened yet. And love is about holding people in our hearts, even the people that are hard to hold.

This is from Facebook. It was posted by a book company, which turns out was Celtic Spirituality Book Company. I felt very good sharing it.

May it be so. Amen.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Sermon by Rev. Craig Ross

This is a time of the year when we often think a lot about the word freedom, right?

Elections are a corporate event that virtually demands a pause in life. We can reflect on the blessings and privileges of freedom and what it offers to us in our country and how we might best embrace this blessing through our choice of leaders.

Change of seasons we experienced in these later months of the year also leads some to migrate to different parts of this magnificent globe because we have the freedom to travel, to embrace the rich diversity that our nation offers us. From sea to shining sea and beyond. Increasingly, individuals have the freedom to live their lives in ways that reflect the identity that they believe God has sewn into the very fabric of their lives and souls.

Freedom is one of the themes of today’s lesson from the gospel.

As Christians, we’re pretty comfortable defining the gospel of Jesus in a variety of ways, right? We all have our sort of mini gospels that we carry with us. We use words like salvation, maybe grace, maybe forgiveness, maybe life. If we took a bit of time this morning, we could add additional words that would describe this gospel as we experience it in our uniqueness, in our communal ways, and everywhere in between.

In our lesson today, we’re called to embrace one word. One word that might not always be on the tip of our tongues when we think about the gospel, and that’s this word, freedom. Today, Jesus adds freedom as another way to describe the gospel.

Think about it. The images we use to describe salvation typically assume some need that we have. One has to value salvation because one knows one needs saving. One to whom grace is important and is aware of the need for grace. Forgiveness implies sin, so you get the picture.

No wonder those who engage Jesus in our lesson today are offended. Because Jesus says to persons who already believe in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” – John 8:31-32. The promise of freedom, awesome! Except it’s not. At least not to those whom Jesus makes this promise. They’re pretty much the opposite of excited or grateful for Jesus’ words as they offer their answer. “We are descendants of Abraham and we have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying you will be made free? – John 8:33.

No thank you, Jesus. No praise God, and definitely no awesome. Instead, those that Jesus addresses are offended. “What do you mean” is all they can offer in response to this teaching and this assurance. The modern way of saying that might be, who do you think you are anyway, Jesus, to talk like that?

Now we have the luxury of a couple of thousand years of reflection on this scripture. So to me it makes sense.

But it is a challenging encounter that Jesus offers us today because by offering them freedom, Jesus does imply that they are not free. And as is the case with most of us, we get backed up into a corner, we pull out our tried and our true responses that are usually pretty defensive responses. These Jews here do the same. We are descendants of Abraham. We have never been slaves to anyone, they say.

We’ll time out here for a moment. Admittedly, none of us here are Old Testament Bible scholars, including me. But we know the problem in this response, right? This problem is embedded in what the Jews say. Did the Jews somehow forget their slavery in Egypt? Or the Assyrian captivity? Or the Persians? Or any of those who have taken over Jewish life and enslaved them for periods in history. What about the Romans? They’re not exactly your friends here in first-century Judaism.

As the old saying goes, denial is not just a river in Egypt. But before we judge our first-century brothers and sisters in faith, shouldn’t we ask the question, aren’t we at some times just the same?

How good are we at naming and admitting our own needs, our own hurts, our own brokenness?

How comfortable are we in naming those things that enslave us as individuals, as families, and sometimes as churches? This enslaves us in the sense of honesty admitting that we’re not perfect, we have problems, and that we are enslaved by things. It’s hard to do, but Jesus’ presence and Jesus challenging us throughout his various teachings and stories and all those with whom he engages reminds us that through admitting our lives being imperfect, we have a little bit of breathing room, not just for growth improvement, but also for help.

Maybe big words like repentance and forgiveness. It’s not easy to do. It’s sort of my business and I’m not good at it all the time. I’m good at talking about it, really good at that, and advising other people about it. But, you know, in my friendship circles, in my family, in close connections I have with folks, I’m not too easy to own my bondedness to things that I don’t want to let go of.

Today, it seems for me at least, it’s harder than it used to be because there’s so much cultural pressure to act as if we have everything together.

Great life, great job, great relationships, great future, great Facebook and Instagram pages, great everything, right? There’s such pressure. Our lives to the point where they shine. And as we buy into that illusion, we contribute to our own bondage.

For a while social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (Now X) have proven a great way to keep in touch with people we love and cherish, no question about that. But they also have proven to be vehicles that demand greater attention and effort and ultimately pretense as we try to convince the world that we’re living our ideal lives.

Maybe I should be a little better than they are. I can make that happen on social media. That pretense takes a toll, of course. We know that. We’re honest with ourselves. We don’t claim descendants from Abraham but by our acts and our loyalty to God. We might not claim descendants from Washington or Luther either. We might admire Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, or Beyonce. One way or another, we name them as our apostles. And then we cry out, or we should cry out, that we have never been slaves to anyone.

I don’t honestly know what a United Church of Christ community might do in this situation. Maybe look to James O’Kelly, Abner Jones, the former Baptist, or Barton W. Stone as the early formers and followers of the United Church of Christ movement. You might know more modern ones. Who is thinking closer to home? The Right Reverend Katherine Kuhn? We have persons we look up to, and we ask them to help guide us in deciding what makes us authentic, and what gives us a sense of purpose in our lives. But I don’t know those persons as well as many of you do.

So I’m going to go to the one that Lutherans know, Martin Luther, and his earliest seminal, and of his theology, the 95 Theses.

I can’t read much of Luther, it’s too long and gobbledygook, but I can understand the 95 Theses they’re short and they’re tight and I can remember even a few of them.

But the first of his 95 Theses is about repentance. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. In our softer and more gentle times, we’re not all that big on the word repentance. It’s pretty harsh, but I think our reticence around embracing repentance is that we might misunderstand what repentance really means. Luther says that when calling for repentance, he’s not talking about confession and penance as administered by clergy. Luther never saw repentance as an inward, cathartic, feel-good, or feel-bad kind of moment. For Luther, true repentance is a kind of truth-telling that allows you to be honest about how you are deceiving yourself or letting yourself be deceived by the world.

And that, Luther suggests, gives you an opportunity, a moment. To think, speak, and act differently. To put it another way, that gives you an opportunity to live in freedom.

Jesus’ invitation from freedom demands an act of repentance as truth-telling before it hits home and does that saving work for us.

Because it demands that we become clean about our needs, which isn’t easy for self-made women and self-made men to admit. Just as with Jesus, earlier conversation partners, the truth of which Jesus speaks is two truths. First, a truth about us, and then a truth about God’s response to us.

God’s news is that we’re always sinners, God’s fallen, and at times flailing around confusedly, always imperfect. And in the face of that fallen grace that characterizes our lives, God then chooses to love us anyway. Hope that divine love in time will change us, transform us, and redeem us.

Gloria Simon was known for repurposing an old Alcoholics Anonymous saying when she struggled in her life, she would say, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you feel miserable.”

The truth with which Jesus confronts us, that we are sinners. God’s fallen, at times flailing, regularly confused, and always imperfect children from birth to death is true. But, and here is the second, I won’t say more important, but certainly equally important truth that does sound like good news, that we are also those sinners who are simultaneously God’s beloved children.

Those sinners who God calls blessed and holy and perfect. Those sinners whose futures are not determined by our regrets and our mistakes, but by the possibilities created by resurrection every day of our lives. Those sinners who God loves above anyone else. We are not perfect. We don’t have to be in order to be loved because only God is perfect.

We are granted the privilege of hanging on to God’s coattails until that day when we die and have the chance to see what it looks like up close and personal.

In closing, I offer a final word of David Lowes, one of our bright Lutheran voices of hope.

We are sinners. Sinners that no amount of indulgences, good works, intentions, status updates, or creative social media posts can redeem. But, here is the second truth which finally sounds like good news, we are also those sinners who are simultaneously God’s beloved children.

Those sinners who God calls blessed, holy, and perfect. Those sinners for whom Christ died. Those sinners who make mistakes but by the possibility created by resurrection, those sinners whom God loves above all else. We are not perfect, and we don’t have to be in order to be loved by God.

Amen to that!

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

Whenever we hear the words from first chapter of Genesis, we think about the master plan of God’s creativity out of chaos, out of an ugly world of nothing.

God created our world. Genesis paints a marvelous picture of how God did this. In the first chapter of Genesis, we listen to the likes of, “n the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God created light and sky and water and dry ground and God filled it up by creating habitats for animals and plants.

Then, finally, God created human beings and when God was all finished, what did God say? It is good.

You’re all familiar with this story. God made humankind to be like God. Created to reflect the very nature of God. Did you ever stop and wonder why? Why did God bother? Was God bored? Was God lonely? What was God’s motive in all of this creating? Well, to find an answer to this question, we go searching the scriptures to find out a little more about God.

I read to you today from Psalm 19. Listen to what the psalmist tells us about God.

“The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge. Yet they have no speech and they have no words. No sound is heard from them yet. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world.” Psalm 19.

I believe God is revealing God’s self through the action of creation. God’s omnipresence, God’s all encompassing presence is revealed in God’s artistic act of creation. God’s spirit surrounds us in the air and the sea and the mountains, even though you hear no words.

The sounds that you do hear are the very presence of God.

Have you ever perched yourself on the edge of a cliff and the wind blew through your hair onto your face? Or have you ever sat on the sands of the beach and listened to the rhythm of the waves crashing onto the surface? Or have you ever lingered in your garden watching the movement of the bees and the butterflies and the birds? What did you feel in these moments when you were surrounded by God’s creation? Did you feel peace, tranquility, comfort?

I would like to suggest what you were feeling is love. The Bible clearly tells us God is love. We see it from the very beginning. It’s always been about love. In all of creation, God created love.

Why? Because as scripture tells us in 1 John, God is love. Love. It’s just who God is. I’m here to tell you, love is how we were created to be. We are children of God and that makes us children of love.

The scripture test for today says God created human beings. He created them to be godlike. He created them to reflect God’s image. You my friends were designed by love you were designed by love in God’s image thus you were made to be loving.

Genesis is pretty clear That God created us for a very specific purpose, we’re to be like God. We are to be a reflection of God’s image. In other words, we are to look like God.

And how do we live up to God’s expectation of us being God’s image bearers? What does a loving God, a loving image person look like? What are we to look like?

First of all. According to Eugene Peterson, God made us to be responsible for tending God’s created world. We are to love our planet, and we do that by tending to the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. We are to be intentional in preserving life. We are to ensure all God’s critters and grasses are preserved. This is a declarative act. Call to action by God. The words we heard today say we are responsible for the planet.

Other biblical versions use harsher language that say humankind is to rule over all of creation. Some say humankind has been given dominion over the critters and the trees, but a loving interpretation, the one Peterson uses says we are to be stewards of the planet. We are to care for it.

The creation story clearly tells us that we have been given a responsibility to nurture creation.

But secondly, and in my opinion, even more importantly, the creation story tells us we are to love creation. Again, taking on an image of God means we are to be loving.

What does that look like? We know that love is a word that has multiple meanings. What images come to your mind when you hear the word love? We can love ice cream. I know I do. We love our siblings and our children. But that’s a different kind of love than what we have for our spouses.

Love is beautiful. Love it evokes the best in us and also the fiercest in us. I believe what the scripture is telling us to do is to love like God loves.

If we are to be like God than we must imitate God, but here’s the thing God doesn’t love like we love. We humans love in what is more a reactive manner. When we love, it’s because we find the object of our love pleasing to us. I love a Dairy Queen Blizzard with all its candy and ice cream blended into a tasty treat. I love them. Because they tantalize my taste buds. We humans love by our senses. When we see or smell, taste or touch something that is pleasing, we love it. You may have fell in love with your spouse because of his or her beauty, or because he or she was a good cook. This is the way humans love. Human love is reactive. We respond to our environments, but God’s love is different.

God’s love is not a reaction to the senses, rather God’s love is transformative. God’s love is creative. You see, here’s the thing about love. It’s not static. Love is an action word. God was busy during the creation week. God started off with nothing. Just chaos and God got busy creating land and sea and critters and plants. Then, the most marvelous act of his love was when God created us.

God created humankind. God was so busy that week that God got tired, didn’t he? So, what did he do? He rested. He set aside a day of all of this busy work so that we can rest, revive, refresh, and reflect. God needed a day of rest because creating is hard work.

Loving can be exhausting. You know that’s true. It’s not always easy to love. It’s especially hard to love like God loves. It’s not easy to create goodness from the ugly, but that is what God did. And that is what God commands us to do. Therefore, we are also called to do just as God loves.

God’s creation story is a call to action. We are called to transform lives.

We are not just to slumber and bask in the comfortable, peaceful, sunny meadows of life where we love to hang out watching those wildflowers sway in the breeze, birds flying in the air and the wind moving the clouds around in those remarkable shapes. We are to be busy. We are to always be on the move.

We are to be instruments for God’s creative and transforming love. See, here’s the thing, you know, God never stops creating. God created the world and God continues to create the world as an act of love. I know this and you know this because you and I can see it in the face of a newborn baby, in the blossom of a flower, in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, at the dawning of each new day, and we are offered the opportunity to be awakened and changed because God loves us.

When we invite God’s love, we too can create something lovely out of the chaos of this world, when we too become agents for change. Daily, my friends, we walk through the muck and mire of the “isms” of this world. Racism, sexism, ageism, and all forms of hate. We must be agents of change and create love.

When we tend to the social soils with loving hearts, chaos that accompanies violence, hatred, anger, while it’s transformed because love transformed. Those things are transformed to the likeness of kindness and justice and mercy. Love in action creates a world of beauty that blossoms into abundance.

Change begins with each one of us.

You may feel small and insignificant, but remember, God created you with love to be love. It’s in your DNA. Do not get comfortable. Today is the day to love God’s people and by loving, I mean nurture, inspire, revive what God has already initiated. Go forth from this world and be an agent of love and make change happen.

You can do that right where you are. Even you, my friends, can make a difference.

Now that is love is an amazing love. Amen.

This Sermon given by Rev. Katherine Seiler

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More in this Series

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

The scripture text for our contemporary words this morning is this, “That they may be one as you father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” – John 17:21

The setting for this prayer of Jesus follows the meal with his disciples. On the evening before he was arrested, it follows his washing of the disciples feet and his emphasis on the commandment to love one another. It’s part of a lengthy prayer in the gospel according to John, a prayer which Jesus offers to his Father, for his disciples, and for those who love him. Who would believe in Jesus as a result of what the disciples would do later.

You and I are included in this prayer. The Gospels mention Jesus going off by himself to pray. But except for what we call the Lord’s Prayer, and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. We don’t know much about what Jesus prayed.

Here we hear him praying for his first disciples and for us. The theme of the prayer is that all may be one, that is, united. As he and the Father are united. He prays that his disciples may be united with him and his father and with each other.

I’ve titled this sermon Untied or United. They both have the same letters, but the different arrangement of the letters leads to very different meanings.

Untied means not held together by any bond, not restrained, not joined in unity, free from outside control, as typified by such remarks as I’ll do it my way or I’m numero uno or other self centered attitudes.

On the other hand, united means made one, combined, no longer separate, acting in unison, concurring, dwelling in unity.

Notice that united does not mean total uniformity. We can have differences of opinion or personality. and still be united. Clearly, Jesus prayer is for the disciples and for us to be united rather than untied. The big question is, united for what?

Both the Old and New Testaments make very clear, that we are to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. In other words, human life is essentially about relationships, relationships with ourselves, with Jesus and God, neighbors, fellow workers, church members, the natural world, society, and our nation. We’re related to all those in some way.

To love God is not to have some fuzzy warm feeling. It’s to obey God’s commands. To love our neighbors is to seek God’s love and work for their good, Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” – John 13:34. The unity of Jesus and the father is the template for the unity of the disciples with Jesus and the father, and with Jesus and each other.

Lest, we inadvertently fall into a trap by assuming that untied is always bad and united is always good.

It’s important to acknowledge that the situation is not absolute, but very nuanced. It’s good to be untied to the attitudes and actions that are banned by the 10 Commandments. It’s good to be untied to having other gods, to making idols, to taking God’s name in vain, to steal, to commit adultery, to murder, to bear false witness, to covet. It’s good.

Likewise, It’s bad to be united with what may be good for a political party to win elections rather than what is good for our country and all our people. But most of the time it is better to be united than untied.

So where does this point us?

God loves and accepts us as we are. We do not have to meet a set of preconditions in order to be loved by God. But God does not expect or desire us to remain as we are at this point in our life. God’s plan is for us to become more like God. In other words, more holy as God is holy. We won’t fully attain that, but that is the goal.

Let’s look at two examples, one positive and one negative, that show us what becoming more holy means. In Jesus telling, a priest and a Levite came upon a man who had been injured and robbed. They both felt untied to him and passed by, leaving him lying on the road. A Samaritan also came upon him, but he felt united with him, pitied him. Dressed his wounds, took him to an inn, paid the innkeeper to take care of him, and promised to pay any additional costs for the man’s care. That Samaritan was becoming more holy, more like God.

On another occasion, Jesus told about an older brother who came in from working in the farm fields to discover music and dancing going on. He asked what was happening and learned that his younger brother, who had left home, taking his inheritance that he subsequently wasted, had returned home, and their father had joyfully welcomed him back. and ordered a festive celebration to begin. Despite entreaties from his father, the older brother refused to go in. He wouldn’t join the party referring to your son rather than my brother, thus revealing. that he was untied to his brother. He was not becoming more holy, more like God.

If our goal is to be more united with Jesus and with one another, what are we to do?

Let me offer several things for you to consider. First, We can acknowledge the truth of Jesus teaching that he is the vine and we are the branches. If we abide in him as he abides in us, we can be united. We can grow and bear fruit, becoming more like God. Because apart from him, we can do nothing. It is only as we are united in him that we grow more holy.

Also, we often hear the words, the truth will make you free. But that overlooks the first part of what Jesus said. “If you continue in my word, You are truly just my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” – John 8:31-32. It is as we are continually learning about Jesus and his teachings that we will learn the truth about God and the human life God intends for us.

To have another figure of speech that is helpful, we can think about a wheel with a hub and spokes leading out from the hub. Then we can also realize that it is only as we move toward Jesus as the hub, that we are getting closer and more united with him and with each other.

We can do more praying, especially more listening for what God is calling us to be and do. We can do more reading of the scriptures, especially the four gospels.

Getting to feel less untied and more united requires more than an attitude or a feeling, it requires action.

The epistle of James puts it quite frankly, if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says, Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill and yet does not supply their bodily needs. What is the good of that?

We can also move toward being more united by deliberately and appropriately living into our congregation’s recently adopted mission statement. We can make changes in our governance structures. We can offer our increased personal involvement and financial support. Becoming more united calls for action in how we use our financial resources.

Jesus observed some rich people putting gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins, and he remarked that she had put in more than all the rich people because they contributed out of their abundance while she, out of her poverty, had put in all she had to live for.

Becoming more united also leads us to become more and more generous by increasing the percentage of our income we give for our congregations ministries to welcome and help our neighbors. To do that necessitates giving a higher priority to our neighbors needs than to our own wants. That’s not easy. It means saying no to some of our expenditures on ourselves as we seek to be more united with Jesus, with the father, with each other, with our neighbors near and far.

The good news is that we are not expected to become united all by ourselves. We are called to be intentional and faithful about our decisions and actions, but we do not have to become united all on our own. Our Lord has promised to help us every step of the journey. He has said, “I am with you always to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20. We can encourage and help each other.

Remember also the Apostle Paul’s assurance that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So sisters and brothers in Church of the Apostles United Church of Christ, will we be untied or united?

Sermon Given by Rev. Milton Gockley

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast

If you have been in the church for a while, then you recognize that today is Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost is the 50th day following Easter. The normal Pentecost reading is one where we have all those names that nobody wants to get stuck with. All those names that nobody can pronounce and be ashamed of fumbling through them.

Then we have this experience of tongues of fire and wind. But, my sense is that most of us probably have not experienced tongues of fire and wind that way. That’s not how we’ve experienced the Holy Spirit. In talking with the Worship Commission in preparation for this Sunday, what they said to me was, “you know, it seems like the Holy Spirit is really hard to understand. We’re really not sure that we know that much about it.”

So I put this graphic here because the Holy Spirit is confusing. Just in Scripture alone, all of those things represent the Holy Spirit. It is represented in wind and in fire, but it’s also represented by the hand of Jesus, by a dove that descends, by anointing oil. Sometimes it’s a cloud, sometimes it’s a seal, sometimes it’s in water at baptism. There’s so many different images for the spirit, that the spirit is confusing.

I thought rather than sit with the Pentecost and what happened, where we give credit for the church being created, I thought it might be worthwhile to just try to unpack a little bit about the Spirit.

In these readings that we had today, John 15:26-27 & 16:4b-15, we heard some things about the Spirit. The Greek word is paraclete, which in the NRSV gets translated as advocate. But the word comforter is a lot closer to what it really means. It’s not just one who goes before you, although the Spirit does help us intercede in our prayers with God. But it also said that the Spirit comes to us in our weakness, The Spirit pleads our case, like the advocate, but the Spirit also convinces the world of its sin. And it explains or brings the availability of God’s goodness. It brings deliverance from judgment. It guides us into all truth, and it tells us about the future. The Spirit praises Christ.

All of those things are just in the scriptures that we read this morning about the Spirit. The Spirit really is like a first responder that’s coming to us, that is with us whenever we need it.

All we need to do is ask for the Spirit’s guidance, for the Spirit’s comfort and help in whatever situation we’re in.

Then, it’s up to us to listen. That’s where I think, probably more than anything, we miss out. Because, I think, the Spirit even comes to us in ways that we didn’t ask, in ways that we miss, because we’re so focused on our own agendas and what we’ve got to do. It comes in gentle ways.

So, there’s a lot of ways to experience the Spirit. But the Spirit is there to help guide us to remember that Jesus is our helper. That Jesus is there for us to help us with our sin. In fact, sin here, in this scripture that I read, means not abiding in Jesus. It’s a theological understanding of sin rather than a moral one, right?

Sin can also be the injustices that we allow within our communities, within the bigger county, state and world. When we allow people to be hurt, that is not of God. Actually, that’s the challenge with listening to the spirit is that we have to determine what is spirit and what is ego.

For me one of the big ways in which I tell the difference is that spirit will always lead us towards life, towards wholeness and peace, love and joy.

It is an expansive peace. It is not about retracting. It’s not about dividing us. The Spirit doesn’t want us, like the disciples, to be hold up in a room, shuttered from the world.

That’s why the Spirit breaks in that way comes to them and says, “it’s okay.” In that Pentecost story from Acts 2 that we didn’t read, the Spirit comes to all of these people. People that would have been from Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Jordan, and says, “you need to work together. Stop dividing. Come together.” They were able o come together and agree. That’s the beauty of the Spirit.

But when we hear things within us that encourage us towards mean spiritedness or violence, that is not of God. That is of our egos. So telling the difference is something that’s the most important thing. Because the Spirit does come in different ways. We might be like Samuel, who actually hears the voice calling him. Or it might be like Elijah, where the Spirit is not in the wind or the fire, or the Earthquake. But the, Spirit is in that still small voice within.

That’s the one that I particularly relate to because I find that the spirit more like nudges me. I’ll be walking along and all of a sudden somebody’s name will come into my mind. Like, “Yep, you haven’t talked to that person in a while.” So often when I do that and I’m thinking, I’m late, I should have called them last week. I should have gone yesterday. But, I get there and they look at me and they say, this is the perfect time for you to be here because we put all that other stuff on ourselves.

But the spirit is there, if we’re just paying attention to those little nudgings.

If you feel called to call somebody, if they’re coming to your mind, do it. Pick up the phone. Give them a call. They may need to hear from you right now. There may be something going on that you don’t know. Or maybe, you may be like Mary and actually see a vision of an angel.

There’s so many ways to experience the spirit. I heard a colleague speak this week and was talking about the spirit in a very prescribed way. I think the church has tried to control the spirit. The church has tried, just like we’ve tried to control God. Instead of thinking and remembering that we are made in the likeness of God, we try to make God in the likeness of us. We try to control what the Spirit does and we say, “this is Spirit, but this isn’t.” Maybe I’m doing that too with this mean spiritedness versus wholeness and love, but I think there are so many times we want to put a frame around what the Spirit is, who God is or who Christ is, and the answer is actually yes and much more.

Our versions of God and the Spirit and Christ are too small. We can’t comprehend all of God. We can’t comprehend all of the Spirit or even all of Christ. Jesus was our best way to know God and it gave us an understanding of who God was as one of us. But that was just a piece and there is so much more.

So I hope that you think about the Spirit and I put this picture because it’s a transformation. It’s striking because usually a caterpillar will go into a cocoon or a chrysalis in order to transform and it appears to be doing that without it. It’s going right from caterpillar to finding wings.

How might we transform if we listen to the spirit? What is the spirit calling you to be about today? If it’s calling you towards love, peace and joy, then it is the Spirit. And it is not just of you. And I hope you choose to follow. May it be so.

Like this Sermon? Click Here to View More

Prefer to Listen to this Sermon? Click Here to Listen to our Being Apostles Podcast