There once was a man who was very devout in his faith.
He read the scriptures and studied the laws, so he knew them by heart. He practiced his faith in his personal and social life. He defended God to all he met, and he challenged anyone who opposed his understanding of God and how God works in the world. Until one day, when he lost his sight. This is the beginning of a character development and every good story – like life – has a problem or challenge with which to deal.
Whether you recognized it or not, I was thinking about Saul, who became Paul, after his eyes were literally opened by God. Because it is in the challenges and struggles of our lives that we receive an invitation to a deeper, more genuine faith. It is also true that every life encounters some challenges or problems through which we must find our way – whether we do it well or not, whether we learn that we need others or not, whether we take the help offered along the way or not.
Our scriptures for today were written by Paul in an effort to unite the Jewish and Greek Christian communities.
Do you know what unites a community? A common goal or a common enemy. Paul actually begins his argument in the verses right before today’s scripture.
“I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvationto all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith,as it is written, the righteous person will live by faith.” – Romans 1:16-17
This is the heart of Paul’s letter to the Romans. God’s salvation is a common goal the people seek. And is given because of God’s righteousness. Our failure to be God’s people as fully as God hopes is our common problem, and this is outlined in our scripture.
Paul reminds us that although we could learn about God through creation, God is God and creation is not God. Creation is a “mirror dimly,” to borrow from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, through which we can learn about who God is.
“Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature,invisible though they are, have been seen and understoodthrough the things God has made.” – Romans 1:20
But we tend to worship creation rather than the creator. We tell lies and say they are truth. We commit injustices and say they are God’s will. This is where change has to happen!
This was true of the Jews and the Greeks! This is where we, too, have to change!
But the Good News is that in Christ there is a new creation emerging.
Romans 8 is a scripture of hope in the face of all that is wrong with the world. Paul was VERY aware that he was writing to people who were expected to name Caesar as Lord and the grantor of salvation. Paul was preaching that role belonged to Jesus Christ, Son of the only true God. To Paul the hope he offered was that Jesus Christ was the beginning of the new creation and therefore, God’s redemption of the world.
In this passage those who follow the Spirit, are the children of God – adopted by God – and as such we are to inherit eternal life through Christ.
For context, it is important to understand that adoption in the Roman world was done by fathers who adopted sons to have an heir for their inheritance. Remember, women could not do anything with an inheritance without a male legal guardian.
Although the adoption of God’s children has a divine reward, like the life of Christ, there will be hardship and suffering in the process, too. And so we live with faith and hope. We make mistakes, and we learn from them so we can do better. We live and love one another with all our faults and foibles.
And we give thanks for Jesus Christ for God’s grace and the inheritance of eternal life.
As I was sitting down to think about this sermon, the words that came to me were,
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epic of belief. It was the epic of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair.” Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens opening line to the tale of two cities. There’s a truth that is in that that, for most of us, we can find ourselves somewhere in there. When I read the whole piece, it reminded me of the words of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there is a time for every season under heaven.
I invite you today To think about where you are, what kind of season are you in? Are you in a season of hope? The spring of hope? Are you in the winter of despair? Are you in the best of times? Are you in the worst of times? How is it with your soul?
We just sang “It is well with my soul”, but how is it with your soul? Where are you right now?
As I was was thinking about this scripture and just reflecting on my life, I had a realization this past week that I am my own worst enemy. I am so good at looking at a situation, thinking about how something was going to go and figuring out how it can go wrong in all so many ways and how I’m going to either disappoint myself or someone else.
My brain is so good at creating all of those stories for me that I sometimes fail to act. But what I have found recently is if I can take those stories and set them to the side and choose to move forward anyway. What happened was beyond what I ever imagined. It was better than any of the best scenarios I could have considered because it probably wasn’t my idea to begin with. It was probably that little nudging from the spirit in my brain saying this is what you need to do. But I’m good at figuring out reasons I shouldn’t.
I share that with you because in our gospel reading for today, I think the disciples should be our heroes.
That’s not usually the way we depict the disciples. But the disciples in all of the gospel writings showed us our true humanity and all of the ways we can muck things up.
They did it in the presence of Jesus. So, if they were forgiven, surely we are forgiven. That’s my logic for it. So let’s look at this scene that I just read about from the gospel of Mark.
This is the fourth chapter in Mark, just to set the scene. Remember, mark does not have a birth narrative. Mark’s gospel doesn’t start until Jesus is baptized. It starts with the baptism and goes right into Mark’s ministry. It’s the baptism, it’s the time in the wilderness, he calls his disciples and he gets moving. That’s the thing about Mark’s gospel, Jesus is on the move.
One could even say that he knew he had a short amount of time to get his work done and he was going to be about it. His job was to reach as many people as possible who had been turned away from the faith, who had a different experience, had a different understanding, or let’s be honest, were outright told by the religious people, that they were not welcome within the community of believers.
After that, Jesus was out teaching and healing. In fact, the rest of chapter four is all parables.
Until we hit Mark 4:35-41 and I even sat with it, is this a parable? Is there a parable within this story too? And I think there is.
So I’m going to let you sit with that till I get there. See if you can figure out the parable in this story. Or what I think might be a parable.
But during the night, and that’s a clue. That’s like saying if you were reading a novel that the hero or the main character was going into the deep woods at night. What do you think is going to happen? Something bad. Because that’s what happens in dark places. It gets scary in the middle of the night. When you go out on the water in the middle of the night and it’s dark, you can expect that something is going to happen.
So they go out, but Jesus is like, no, we have to get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. So, they go and they meet this storm, not unexpected. But in the middle of this storm that comes up, Jesus is asleep.
Here’s where I even thought this morning, even the way I perceived this, when I read this and whether it was just my own reading or whether I was taught to read it this way by anybody else, the disciples sound like they’re helpless when they wake Jesus up. to me. My first reading was, well, the disciples are being helpless and asking, don’t you care? You’ve got to help us.
Well, maybe they weren’t completely helpless because they were fishermen. They’ve been on boats before. They have handled rough seas before. They know how to maneuver a boat in the middle of the storm. When the waves get big. Right? There’s a way to do that. They would have known how to do that.
So maybe they’re not being really helpless and asking what do we do? But more of a, Hey, you know, wake up. We’ve been bailing here for an hour and you’re sitting there sleeping. Come on, we need help here. We can’t tell which version may be closer to what Mark intended.
Let’s also remember that this story is in all three of the synoptic Gospels. So we read them all. So they kind of become one story, even though they’re not. But anyway, they wake Jesus up. They want his help. And he does it, he stops the storm. But that must not have been what they expected him to do because they are frightened.
This version said fear. Some versions say awe, and they think it’s more, “Oh my gosh”, because then they say, Who is this?
Now, they’ve watched this man heal all kinds of people, and he has even given them the power to cast out demons. But, now they’re surprised because he can still the storm.
It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on in all of them. But what caught me when I put Job 38:1-11 as our reading, was that he was faithful to God and he lost everything. He loses his family, his business, his reputation. He becomes an outcast. Nobody wants to be near Job. I think he even ends up with skin conditions. Job’s got everything going wrong. And most of Job’s is his friends telling him it’s his fault. He’s done something wrong to make God mad, and him saying, but I didn’t.
Finally, Job goes to God and essentially says the question that is always on our lips when life goes wrong. He says, why me, God?
I hear that so often when, when life comes at us hard and fast, we too say, but why me? What we heard today was God’s response. Where were you when I laid the cornerstone? Where were you when I founded the earth?
What struck me in both of these situations was we have humans asking the divine a question, sort of like, you know, where are you God? Are you going to wake up and help us? Are you going to allow us to perish? Or why is this happening to me, God?
In both cases, the divine answers with a question, not an answer. I mean, you could say the stilling of the storms was an answer, but they come back with a question. Jesus says, are you still afraid? Do you still not trust? Do you not have enough faith? The actual words were, why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? According to this version.
Because at the end of the day,this all boils down to how much do we trust God? How much do we trust the mystery that is the three in one Father, Son and Holy Spirit? How much do we trust them to be there? And this is big, Right? This is really big. But I wonder if it is that we don’t trust that they are there because they all ask questions.
But we don’t want them to just be there, we want them to fix it and we want them to fix it the way we want it to be fixed. That’s where the rub comes because we don’t get what we want. There’s some of you in here that are going to know this line because you don’t always get what you want, but you always get what you need. God will be there. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. That’s where I think the story from the gospel is a parable. Because the storms of life do come at us and we may feel like we are drowning. But God is with us. We will not perish, or maybe we will physically perish. But if we physically perish, we will be united with our God.
All will be well.
I want to leave you with the words of Julian of Norwich. Her wisdom says this.
“God did not say you will not be assailed. You will not be belabored. You will not be disquieted. But he said, you will not be overcome.” – Julian of Norwich
There’s a little bit more to this quote. God wants us to pay attention to God’s words. Always to be strong in our certainty in well being. For God loves us and delights in us. God wishes that we would love God and delight in God and trust greatly in God and all will be well.
All matter of things will be well. Thanks be to God. Amen.
When I approach scripture, I usually look for what is it that catches my eye, or what draws my attention.
That phrase, catching people, was the phrase that stood out for me. I want you to think about, if I ask you to catch a person, think about what your body would do.
Would you be like the rugby player on the left, where you come in like this and take them down? Or are you going to catch them with open arms like the right? Because to me, that is drastically different.
This is my struggle with evangelism because when we talk about evangelism, when I think about evangelism, my experience of evangelicals is it’s the rugby takedown. They’re coming for me and they’re going to grab me and take me down. They remind me that I need to say that prayer or I’m not.
There was a trust exercise that I learned many years ago, I have no idea how many, so we won’t count. But where you stood in front someone with your arms crossed and you were to fall into their arms. It was with open arms that you were caught, not taken down. Can you feel the difference?
This is the grace of love, right?
To me it is. I think that is who we are called to be. We’re called to be people who catch people with open arms. We catch people who are falling, who are struggling, who need a soft lane. We can come in and help them, help them to find, not even just a lane, we can find life, new life, the life giving water that is available through Jesus Christ.
This story is actually the calling of the disciples, even though it comes out of the fifth chapter of Luke.
You think, wow, by this time we ought to be somewhere further along in the story. But, you have got to remember that Luke is the one that gives us the large birth narrative. So the first two chapters are all about his birth. Then the third chapter is getting started in the baptism and the wilderness. The fourth chapter, he starts his ministry.
Luke is different in that respect. In Luke, he is already teaching and healing people before he calls the disciples. So he’s already active in the community. In fact, he’s already been to Simon’s house. He goes to Simon’s house because Simon’s mother-in-law is ill. You might remember that story because it’s also in Mark. But here, he doesn’t know Simon. He goes because the mother-in-law is ill and he heals her. And I guess he gets to know Simon a little bit.
Then he meets him again at the lakeshore. where Simon’s coming in. This Simon is Simon Peter, or who we know better as just Peter. This is the good news for us. We should love Peter because Peter makes all of the mistakes that we would make. He does it for us. And Jesus never once shames him or blames him. He accepts Peter for who Peter is and loves him just the same. Continues to have him right by his side, teaching him.
So here in this moment, they go out deep. Jesus does this wonderful teaching. Out in the boat, Jesus looks at Peter and says, go out into the deep water and put down your nets. This is where, if this was contemporary, at least in my head, I heard Peter saying, they’ve done that, don’t need to do it again. Right now I’m headed in for a good meal, a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow will be good. Tomorrow we’ll catch. Are you kidding me? But that’s not it for Jesus. Yes, that’s not actually written in the book. The author is quite kinder to Peter. I hear more of Peter’s staff than the writer did, but they go out again. Peter says, all right, if you say so, but they go to deep water. That means they go to someplace they haven’t gone before. They go and try fishing in a different spot, not their local hole, favorite fishing hole, which brought them nothing. They’re going to go to deeper water. They’re going to go where Jesus wants them to go rather than where they’re comfortable going.
This is a metaphor, people. I want you to be thinking about the fact that that means that we will be called to go where we may not be comfortable.
Instead of going to all the comfortable places, the places that we like to go, because that’s where the fish, the people are. That’s why I chose this picture, that you got to be fishing somewhere deep to find a fish that big. Right? Look how he’s holding the fish.
Yes, I think about all these things when I take pictures, right? He’s holding it with open arms. He’s not just holding it up. That fish has some weight to it, right? Like this will be a strong man pose, but he’s not trying. He’s not even trying a strong man pose. He’s supporting that fish. I don’t know if that fish is gonna become dinner or not. I don’t know what kind of fish it is. That’s my ignorance. Maybe it’s a fish that you would rather put back into the water. But it’s that support.
That’s where I think Paul’s message (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) comes in too. That it’s not about being perfect. In fact, Paul’s story is that he was the worst. Paul is clear, “I was the worst sinner.” Paul specifically attacked the people who believed in Jesus. He was a Pharisee who went after the people who believed in Jesus and harassed them. Even almost to the point of death. He was a horrible person to the Christians, and Christ came even to him and invited him in to know the love and grace, the forgiveness that was available to even him.
I think that we are called to be those who are out catching people, catching people in that supported way.
But I’m afraid that we get caught up thinking about ourselves and what do we need? What’s wrong with our lives when there are others who are struggling? And need us to turn our attention out to them and maybe to look in places we haven’t looked before. Because friends, there are those among us in our community who are unsure of their housing, who are unsure of where their next meal is going to come from, who are unsure if they’re going to pay the rent or the doctor.
Those people need our support. They need the hope that we have based on our faith. They need to know that someone actually cares about them.
There’s also those with the hidden issues that we don’t see. Maybe their sitting down like this person, we might have a clue that there’s issues. They may have experienced a great loss. They may be struggling with how to move forward in life. They may feel like life is just crumbling around them. They don’t have that support system, and that is who I think we are called to be as we catch people and help them have a safe landing.
So I want you this week to pray about this. I want you to pray about who it is that God wants you to help.
Because when we call on God, when we put ourselves out there for Christ, the spirit will show up and you may be surprised by who it is that needs help. Maybe they won’t be in that deep of a water or that far out of their comfort zone because you may find out that someone’s hiding issues because we’re very good at that.
All of our German ancestry helps us to say, that’s my dirty laundry and I’ll keep it to myself. We come in here strong and proud, and sometimes the world’s falling apart. We need somebody to help us, to hear us, to affirm us. To encourage us to remind us that God still loves us.
I was in a hospital room this week and I said, remember, God is here with you. The person shook their head and said, “I don’t know.” I said, well, I’m here to tell you that I think God is here. Maybe you don’t feel that right now, and maybe this illness is in the way, but God still loves you. It doesn’t mean, poof, you’re cured. Doesn’t work that way. It means you will not be alone through whatever you are going through. You will not be alone.
We are called to come together, to be building the community of Christ, to be helping others know that they are not alone because right now life is hard.
I was in a conversation this morning where thinking about the pressures of the world and how they try to run our lives and we have to stand up for ourselves and determine what’s the priority.
Those are the decisions that we make each day, and God wants to be one of those priorities. Right up there with family.
We come together to remind ourselves of that. So that we can go out into the world and invite others to know that love and support that we have found here because Christ comes to bring new life to all by catching all those fish. They brought new life to the fishermen, to the community. It meant People were going to eat. Bills were going to be paid.
We trust and rely on each other. That is how we live. Sometimes our world and our country has us thinking about other priorities, but the reality is we will live and thrive when we are community and we help others in our community.
We need to think about what is the impact that we’re going to make. May it be so.
In the past two weeks we have had the opportunity to see some of the strongest, fastest and athletes who are at their best as we watch the Olympics. As the culture of our world is sort of on edge. I mean, it’s the culture of the U. S. But I think it’s all over the world. Everyone is anxious. There were some disagreements. There were some heated moments and some judging calls that they didn’t like. But overall, the Olympics reminded us of how community can work, where people who are from different countries can encourage each other, congratulate each other, work together for a common good, for the best in their sport.
There was kindness, there was civility, there was even honor. For me, one of the best moments was when the Brazilian won gold in the gymnastics. Simone Biles and Jordan Childs bowed to her because she fought hard and they fought hard to beat her in the other competitions. But in floor exercise, she won gold. They acknowledged her greatness.
That’s who we’re to be. We’re to be people who see the gifts in others.
Yes, we do our best, but we also want to lift up others because it is together that we rise. Not when we’re separated.
Today, we have this story from Joshua. My guess is that you probably don’t know a lot about Joshua.
We don’t talk about Joshua very often. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, he’s a major prophet. This whole book of Joshua is part of the larger history of how Israel came to be. It was not written as it was happening, it was written centuries or maybe even thousands of years later as the story of the people. It’s a reminder, just like the Exodus story, about how God continues to be present with people. How God keeps promises to God’s people.
So in this one, we have Joshua taking over for Moses. Moses did all of those wonderful things, but Moses doesn’t get to take the people to the promised land. That’s Joshua’s role. So, Joshua comes along, and the first thing Joshua gets to do is here in chapter three, they’re going to cross the River Jordan without getting their feet wet, just like they crossed the Red Sea.
I talked about that last week, that probably when I talk about the Exodus story of Moses you see Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments with the water going up and him standing there with his arms raised and the people crossing the river. Well, it sort of happens again. We don’t talk about the fact that it happens again when they enter the promised land. It’s not the sea. The water’s probably not as big, but they still send the Ark of the Covenant with the priests into the water. The water recedes, and the people walk across, safely, into the promised land.
That’s a great story. Then it gets messy. Because in the scripture that I read, it said, Joshua tells the people, God will drive out.
There are people that are in this promised land. They’ve been in this promised land. They’re living there. The promised land is Palestine, and we can’t ignore that today. So, what God had said was that God is going to move the people, and the first place that they go is Jericho, and you might know the story of Jericho, or maybe you know the song Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. That might ring a bell.
In that story, they’re able to overwhelm Jericho without any violence. All they do is walk around the castle, the fort. But then, I’m going to say, the human side takes over. The rest of the book is quite a bloody mess. Literally, it is about how they killed the people and burned them out, burned out the villages. All for the sake of the Israelites having the promised land.
It leaves us to struggle. Is this the God that we believe in? Do we believe in a God who would kill a group of people so that his people could have the land?
I don’t think that’s who God is. That doesn’t align with the rest of what I know about God in the Bible. What I see in God is one who is present with us. Who encourages us to work out our differences and to build the beloved community.
That’s what I see. That’s what I hear God doing. That’s what I see in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus doesn’t come in and he doesn’t kill the Pharisees. He doesn’t attack Rome. He builds community. He heals differences. And even the epistles. Paul doesn’t attack anyone. He tries to build groups of people who can work together and live together. Work through their differences. There’s several epistles written on that.
How do we work through the differences we have? Because we will have differences. But differences don’t need to end in violence.
What God said at the end of Joshua 1:1-9, I think is the heart to me of who God is. God says to us, “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” – Joshua 1:9.
But as humans, we get scared. When we’re scared we tend to operate under our wisdom, rather than God’s wisdom.
When I think of the people that Joshua would have been leading, they were people who were probably born in the wilderness, raised in the wilderness, with stories of what Egypt was like, and Egypt was a place of cruelty and violence. You either did what the taskmaster said, or you were beaten, maybe even killed.
So, that was the the framework that they had to work from. Going into this promised land, they weren’t people who had been trained to farm the land. or to raise cattle or sheep or goats. They didn’t have that kind of mentality anymore. Because when they were in the wilderness, they were constantly moving.
All they knew is that is the man from heaven, which ends up stopping once during the promised land. Then they have to figure it out.
They could have worked with the people who were there.
Just as Israel could have chosen to look at the Palestinians when the State of Israel was formed and said, “How can we work with these people?” Rather than the choices they made. Even with the West Bank, when the lines were drawn, the West Bank was formed for the Palestinians. Instead of saying, “that’s theirs”, the Israeli government said, “but it’s supposed to be ours.” I haven’t heard that in the news, but they have the ability to say, and this story says, “this is ours. This land belongs to us. Despite what deeds you may have, despite how long your family may have lived there, thousands of years ago, God gave us this earth, this land.”
Instead of trying to work out a compromise, Israel came in with the bulldozers, eliminated the houses. The people had to flea with nothing and we wonder why there’s tension. We wouldn’t be where we are now if other decisions had been made, if other choices had been made, but they weren’t. So here we are.
How do we move forward being strong and creative? Not being frightened or dismayed.
The thing about fear is that when we’re in fear mode, all of the other possibilities go away. We go back to what we knew worked at some point along the way. The psychologist would say, go back to your reptilian brain. You’re not using your higher functions. You’re not using your best thinking. You go back and you become instinctual and it’s about surviving. It’s not about building the beloved community anymore. So how can we stop ourselves from going back in that fear?
The point is we have to trust God. We have to trust that God is in the midst of this, that God is in the midst of the Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, Hamas, Hezbollah situation.
I don’t know about you, but it’s not happening in my country. And I want to cry out to God about that. Let’s go, God. Enough people have died. Enough people have suffered. Make this right. But it’s not my call. It’s God’s. And I have to trust God enough to let go of what I want.
I struggled with this sermon, probably because it was something I didn’t want to hear.
That’s an interesting piece about it. Sermons. The ones you struggle with are the ones that you need the most. And when I think about what I experienced in the last couple days, over and over, the message was, let go and trust.
Whether it was Elsa, trying to control everything in Frozen with my grandson or Dr. Strange trying to come under a circle. You have to let go and trust that God is there. That God will bring us through this. That a way will become known. Even if we don’t know what it is now. We move forward and we work towards whatever builds community.
Because that’s where the love and the peace and the joy of God are. It’s not in the fear. It’s not in the violence, the cruelty, the hate. It’s in the love. We have to lead from our hearts. Because that’s where the love is. May it be so. Amen.
This is probably one of those stories that almost everyone, whether they’re in church or not, has heard of.
A lot of you may even have that image of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments movie. Or you may have seen Sight and Sound’s version of it with the walls of water. Quite something to experience.
This story is meant to help us understand something about God, about who God is. God is one who hears the cries of God’s people. God liberated the Israelites because he heard them cry out in their slavery. God is one who is present with us. In our hard times and throughout our lives, and God is one who sends us freedom, who wants freedom from slavery for us.
I think we have taken this story and we have turned it into a hero story because we like hero stories.
God as a hero, that’s a good thing in and of itself, except when we think that God has to do all the work. God will be with us and God will help us. But when we think that we can’t do anything until God does it all, and I think we’ve missed the point.
That’s where I think God sent Jesus to help us understand that God wasn’t just going to come back and vanquish the Roman Empire. God wasn’t going to take them out of their own type of slavery with Jesus. But again, God intervened. Not in this way that was vanquishing armies, but in this quiet way that was calling us to be about new life, to be about freedom, to let go of the things that have enslaved us.
I’m going to try and make a turn here with you. I want you to think of this as a metaphor. I want you to think of this story metaphorically, and I want us to think about what are the things that enslave us now.
The Exodus story is about liberation, is about freedom. God wants us to be free. God wants us to be able to enjoy this wonderful life that God gave us.
But we are tied to sin and to greed, to power, and to control.
What are the things that are enslaving you?
That’s what I want you to think about. then I want you to think about what it is about the water. The water is significant in this. Yes, the Israelites walked on dry land. The water was moved out of their way. They had to go through the water. Even when they come back from the wilderness, 40 years later, they have to cross the Jordan. You have to go through the water to experience the freedom.
So what does the water of baptism mean to you? These are big things, heavy things. important things. But for me, the water of baptism is the gift of life. It is the gift of forgiveness. The drops of mercy raining down on us.
I don’t think I have ever been as happy to see rain as I was on Friday. I enjoyed it yesterday too. But Friday, I just stopped and went out and sat on the porch and watched it rain. Because we were parched. If you weren’t parched, our earth was parched.
My garden is parched. The corn, the leaves are folded and growing up almost like it’s a yucca plant. They’re pointed instead of being open. Because it’s starved for nourishment, for a drink. Just like we need a drink. We need the water. This is the water of life, water of salvation.
It’s not a surprise that we talk about baptism as a death and then a resurrection. What do you need to be resurrected from?
Or what chains do you need to break? What baggage do you need to let go of?
Our defenses are like the armor and the chariots of the Egyptians. They weigh us down and they get us caught in the mud. Those defenses that have may have worked really well for us at times in our lives, getting in the way of us experiencing true freedom.
Each of us is different. Only you know your path and only you know your burdens. I’ve said it many times that we come to church to lay our roots at the cross. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. And we tend to do that during worship. Then when we worship, we say, “It’s okay, God, I’m all right. I’ll just take it with me,” because we want to trust our own power.
But today we also have the beauty of communion where we are offered the bread of life. We don’t have to go into the water, but we can come to the table and we can remember that this simple loaf becomes more than a simple loaf. This becomes the way forward into real life. It can break the bonds of our slavery.
It can take away all that has us stuck, but we have to let our defenses down when we come to the table.
So the question is yours. What will you do? What are you willing to let go of? What baggage are you willing to leave here? What bonds do you want to break that are no longer healthy for you?
Thank you, gracious God, for all the ways that you come to us to bring a new life, to bring nourishment, to bring encouragement, to bring freedom and justice. May it be so.
Last fall, we affirmed our vision and mission, and one of the pieces of that is environmental advocacy.
We have taken this summer season to focus on some environmental issues, and we have aligned ourselves with the children’s faith formation class that’s meeting in Rader Park. We’re using the scriptures from their curriculum as our guide for this.
Interestingly, that makes July a lot about famine.
It is the theme that runs through most of the scriptures in July. I put this picture up for you, um, to show you where within the world famine exists. The places that are colored blue is where famine exists. You can see that the continent of Africa is not in good shape.
But there are other places, one of those places is Palestine. The number one cause of the famine is conflict. I’m going to say conflict, but it’s more than conflict, right? It’s violence. It’s violence that is hurting people. The second reason is the climate crisis. The third reason for famine is the rising costs of food.
So famine is a shortage of food. Which leaves people literally hungering. That causes people to migrate and that is what plays in to our story for today.
Today, we’re gonna look at Joseph. Joseph is a major character in Genesis. In fact, to read his story starts in chapter 37. It’s chapter 37 then it goes to 39, and it’s 39 to 45. You can read all of that and I’m going to try and tell you that in two minutes. Six chapters in two minutes. How’s that? But Joseph’s story is laden with conflict.
It begins when he’s a young boy and he has this dream that he is going to be great. He is one of twelve children to Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob becomes Israel. His name becomes Israel. They are the twelve tribes of Israel, if that rings a bell with you at all. Joseph, he is also his father’s favorite son. He is the firstborn to his father’s favorite wife. Yes, he had two wives. Remember, we can get way down in the weeds, and I’m gonna try not to go in the weeds today. But he is the favored son.
You may have heard of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. That was a musical. Joseph gets an ornamental robe. In the King James version of the Bible, it was described as a coat of many colors, which is where Andrew Lloyd Webber ran with the Technicolor Dreamcoat. But his brothers, all of his brothers envy him and decide they need to get rid of him. They need to be done with this troublesome brother. So, they take him out and they end up selling him into slavery. Interestingly, if you look at the backstory, he’s sold to the Ishmaelites, and I’ll let you track that rabbit trail yourself. But he ends up in Egypt at Potiphar’s house, and that doesn’t go well either, and he ends up in prison.
In prison, God continues to be with him. This ability that God has given him to interpret dreams comes in handy. Because they tell the Pharaoh who’s been having these dreams. This is where our scripture that we read today is focused. Where I think we can get caught in the weeds and we can see something amazing about God. When you read this story, it’s especially the scripture we read you can get caught with the lean cows and the dried corn, but what’s really happening if we back out of that detail, what’s really happening there is God is talking to Pharaoh and Pharaoh is listening.
I want you to stop and think about that for a minute. Pharaoh does not worship our God, does not worship the God of Israel, does not worship Joseph’s God. He may have heard of it, but he worships the Egyptian gods. Those are the gods of his people. But suddenly, he’s getting messages from another god. What we would call the one true god, who obviously doesn’t mind, or doesn’t have an issue talking to someone who doesn’t really believe in them, or listen to them, or think about them. That’s the God that we worship. A God who constantly reaches out, even to those who would be in opposition to God’s people.
God chose to talk to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh chose to listen. Think about that. That’s God working in all of that. We haven’t gotten to the Moses story yet, but we’ll hear about how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. That’s a line from the story, from the Exodus story.
But here, God is softening Pharaoh’s heart because it will put Joseph as second in command of Egypt.
Why is that important? There’s going to be a famine in the land. What’s going to happen? Joseph’s family, the 12 tribes of Israel, are going to come to Egypt because they’re starving and they need food. Joseph is in the right place to help them. So all the conflicts of Joseph’s life, the sibling rivalry and the conflict with Potiphar’s wife that lands him in prison. All of that, God works through all of that to bring Joseph to a place where he can be reconciled, where this family can come back together and be God’s people. That’s how I want you to look at the story.
I had a very hard time finding a picture of Pharaoh. I use the Vanderbilt Christian library and they’ve got thousands of pictures, but not of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the character in the right bottom corner. This is a picture from the Tuskegee Chapel that was done by the lambs. It’s their singing window and the majority of the characters are African, and it has words of the spirituals on there.
But, I can’t emphasize enough, I want us to think about what that says about who our God is.
That Pharaoh was so moved by God and these dreams that he ignored the ethnicities. He ignored the fact that Joseph was an Israelite. He ignored the different religions, that he didn’t follow the Egyptian gods. He ignored the social classes, because Joseph was a slave. In fact, when Pharaoh chooses him, Joseph is in prison accused of rape. How many people in prison accused of rape would get exonerated and made second in command of a country? Just think about that. We’re talking about a major shift that God brought about for God’s purposes.
Joseph’s interpretation really was not really all that remarkable. In your abundant years, save it. Because there’s going to be lean years. That’s just good economic wisdom, right? Yet, it reminds the people to have a longer vision. Don’t just worry about today and what feels good for today and waste, but look at the longer vision.
Our church is going through lean years and we are trying to take that longer vision.
We’re relying on the abundance that has been part of our heritage. Literally, we say we’re standing on the shoulders of the saints who came before us and their generosity. Because we are in lean years right now. You can be part of making that sustainable through your sustaining gifts. You can be part of continuing that ministry. A ministry of reconciliation within our community, within those whose lives we touch. In ways that we support and advocate for God’s creation. In ways that we welcome all people as children of God and offer inclusive refuge.
So, I have a hard question for you to consider. When, like Pharaoh, do we let go of our need to be right? To be in charge and listen to the wisdom of the one that we perceive as less than us. Because that’s where God’s working through. God’s working through the children, through the youth, through those who have not walked through the doors yet.
I’m also wondering, what are the famines of our lives? For what are you hungry? What are you starving for? What are the situations that can lead us to listen to the wisdom of another?
When we wrote The Mission and Vision, these statements came with the core values. We believe that God’s love is stronger than fear. We value social justice and inclusion. We are called to care for our environment as God’s creation. May these be words of wisdom for us. May they encourage our faith in God who loves and works in the world in ways that we do not understand, and with people that may surprise us.
May they remind us of God’s abundance that we do not have to fear. Thanks be to God, Amen.
I first want to revisit a moment that we had last week when Jonathan was ordained. Because this is a moment that we really need to celebrate.
I want you to feel how important you were in this journey of his to this moment. It’s quite an honor when one of our own reaches that point where they are ordained. It was a great celebration for us.
I took this picture right after Lucy had put the stole on him. That is one of those once in a lifetime moments. You only get your first stole put on you once. That’s why it was so important. I coached Lucy so she knew what she was doing. She was really nervous about it, but it was so important for that to happen for them.
I want to lift up Jonathan, because Jonathan was like the farmer, who, while he was with us, was planting seeds. He planted seeds of love and joy with this entire congregation. With each person he met. As he had events that he was running, he empowered people. He planted seeds with people to take ownership of it and to grow it and to carry it out. He supported them in doing that and he lifted them up. He equipped them for the ministry. He was a seed planter among us. Even if that’s not how you saw him, I just want to name that that is what he was.
Last year, I preached on the parable of the sower, and I used this image, and Jonathan was really struck by this image.
I bring it up again, because we are transitioning to not having Jonathan around anymore. That is bittersweet. We are so happy for him and wish him the best in Connecticut. But I want to name that we also miss him.
But in this picture, the farmer is just frivolously planting seed, just throwing it out with abandonment. That’s not the way most of us who farm or raise gardens plant seed. We don’t just walk and throw seed. Because we want it to produce a crop.
This has been a very frustrating year for me as a farmer. Because we planted three rows of corn and three ears came up. In my first planting three rows, I got three stalks. So we planted again. Now, I’ve got about a row and a half.
A lot of it has to do with rain. We look for just the right soil. We get in there, and we pull all those weeds out and we churn up that soil. I admit, we have a rototiller, so before I plant, I make David go through it at least once so that that ground is really ready. We want to have that good soil.
But that’s not what God does. God just doesn’t do that. Plants everywhere. To see what happens. What I want us to talk about is, what does that tell us about who God is?
A lot of us know the Parable of the Sower. We know where it’s heading. I bet you could tell me where it’s heading. But what if we focus on what it tells us about God? Right?
The normal way to explain this, which, if you keep reading in Mark, Jesus goes on to tell us how we’re supposed to understand it. That we’re supposed to look at the different types of soil as our lives. It sort of leaves us with this, so clean up your life.
You clean up your life so that you’re ready for the seeds that God’s scattering.
If God is scattering this seed everywhere, I just want you to stop and think, does God really care that your life is already cleaned up and the perfect soil before God scatters seeds with you? When I think about that question, my answer comes down to, God accepts all the conditions of our lives.
Whether we’ve got it all together and we are the best soil waiting for God’s seeds or whether our lives are a mess. Some of us, our lives are a mess. Some days are better than others. Right? I think God accepts us and loves us and throws seed our way, whether we’re together or not.
So for those of us who’ve been felt like you were told by the church that you’ve got to get your life together so that you’re acceptable to God, I want to tell you, you’re worthy for God just as you are.
If your life is such that there are circumstances that are beyond your control, whether it has to do with health or situations that have happened that put you in a place that you wish you weren’t. God understands all of that. God loves us in whatever condition our lives are.
But if you’re doing really well, and you think that you’re running your life, well then, maybe we do need to look at our lives. Maybe we do need to look and see if we are allowing others to run our lives. To come in and choke out the good ideas and the good works and the Word of God that God is trying to plant in our lives.
Maybe we need to be more vigilant at paying attention to our lives.
Who are we listening to? Are we listening to people that are feeding us lies? That are just trying to divide us and make us angry? Or are we listening to words that move us to offer God our praise, to work towards love, hope, joy and peace?
Is there evil that is talking to us, that is trying to get our attention? If you prefer evil, evil personified then is Satan, I’m not fond of that, but is Satan trying to lure you away from God, from your relationship with Jesus?
A lot is happening right now about Christianity being conflated with our patriotism. So, I wonder if you believe that only real Americans are Christians, Do you look at the world and see the beauty of the diversities God has created? Or are you afraid that as white Americans, Christians, we’re losing something? Because they’re two very different postures.
If we’re afraid, there are people that will take advantage of the fact that we are afraid and they will make us more afraid. It’s what they will do so that they can run our lives. Or we can make sure that we are open to God’s love, joy, and peace and that we are peacekeepers. That we are the ones who are sharing love, who are helping groups come together, helping people come together.
Are we building communities, or are we dividing communities? Are we inviting people in, or are we pushing people out? Those are the things that we need to think about in our lives. Are we making our world smaller, or are we trying to expand? Because, I believe that we worship an expanding God. This God of Abundance.
This was a picture of my garden and some sweet peas that were not weeded. You know, God didn’t care that I didn’t weed that patch. Right? God would have seeded it anyway. Sometimes we’re even the seed. As I talked about Jonathan spreading seeds, sometimes, we’re the seed to take the word. Sometimes we need to be the farmer that’s sharing the word of God with others. Those that we share it with don’t have to be perfect. We can love everyone just as they are.
So the question is, what seedlings will we nurture?
Our mission and vision statement that we voted on last fall was that we believe that God is calling us to be inclusive and generous, to be a safe space for those who feel powerless and afraid. So, are we trying to nurture the little seedlings among us, those who are struggling with what to believe and how to follow Jesus? Or, are we judging people to make sure that they are the right soil? Whatever that might mean.
I think in those phrases, we are naming that we are not afraid. It’s the most repeated phrase in the Bible, do not be afraid. Our mission and vision statement implies that we are not afraid. That we want to live out our calling by God to love others. That we welcome those who are looking to learn about Jesus without requiring them to change.
Jesus reached out and invited people to know another way of living. That is what we are to do, to invite others to know the love we have found. To invite another to find the support we have found. To invite another to experience Christ’s grace and peace, and invite another to find community here.
It’s time to put our faith into action. By living in God’s abundance, rather than being trapped in a mindset of scarcity, we have many gifts to share. Let us be about it. Amen.
The scriptures for today are actually a sermon I preached last week. Maybe I’ll just use the same sermon, right? That’s what pastors usually do, right? They just regurgitate stuff but, I couldn’t do that to you all.
I did what I usually do and I woke up this morning and I said “God, what do you want to say to your people? What do these people need to hear from you on this day?” And, as I ask God to inspire me, “what are the words that your congregation needs you to hear?”
I kind of laugh because, the irony is that this scripture is on planting and seeds and I still know very little about planting and seeds.
I just kind of asked everybody, “how does stuff grow?” I asked a lot of questions about, you know, slugs, and “How do you fight slugs?” This is Lucy’s ongoing battle, but, we’ve got to the point where we realized that we were gonna be moving so we didn’t do any like upkeep on our gardening and you know what? Stuff grew.
We didn’t water, we didn’t plant, but stuff grew. Not anything good, obviously, but there’s so much stuff in there that we’re just like, well, it’s gonna be the next persons to deal with. Which can be another sermon, right? Like, if you don’t take care of your own garden, things are gonna grow. Most of the time, it’s things that you do not want. But something will grow.
Today we have these parable images.
We all know the parables, there are some more famous ones, like the prodigal son or the parable of the sower and the seeds, which is gonna be next week. I know that this summer, the theme is the environment. How do we relate as Christians? How is this important to us? Why should it be important to us? Why should we care? And does it even matter?
You can be like me and take an attitude that I’m not going to be around, so that’s going to be somebody else’s problem in a couple months when everything’s just exploding in the garden. But don’t tell Lucy, I do not care for gardening. When we moved in, Lucy had an interest in gardening, and we talked about it, and I said I’m not into it, and of course, we ended up gardening. We’ve had a garden, and it’s produced some pretty cool stuff, but not this year, thankfully.
I’m sure there’s the same people here today who are very passionate about the environment, and what happens to this world, and what’s going to continue to happen. I know there’s people like me that could care less about my garden and rather just have grass. It’s easier to care for. Mow it once every couple weeks. That’s who I want to talk to today.
There’s no reason to preach to the people who understand the environment and care about the environment and realize why it’s important. They’ve had the foresight. They understand why it’s important to act now.
Then on the other side, it’s people who could care less and expect this proverbial, someone, will take care of it. There is no someone. You are it. You have to do it.
That’s who I want to focus the reading on today. That’s who I think these parables are speaking to. I think, out of habit, I just assumed that this was one of those, let your faith be like a seed where you kind of just plant it and take care of it and somehow it grows. But the closer I read these parables, I realized that it’s not talking about our faith being like seeds.
I want to read these parables and these scriptures in a way that’s more inciting, especially to the people that are hands off environmentalists. What if these parables were about money? More specifically, your money. Like, I was able to reach over and grab your wallet and your bank account and talk about it. What if I could just pull up your statement and show everybody what you’ve been spending? Show everybody what you’ve been saving for? Show everybody your retirement funds? What if I could pull out your checkbook and read out your balance sheet? For everybody to hear. Alright, now it’s a little bit more serious.
Some people perked up. Oh, I don’t know about that. It makes me uncomfortable. But this is something that matters to you, right? Let’s reread the parables. With the thought that your bank account really does tell you what’s important in your life.
The paraphrase reading for today is, this community that gathers on Sunday morning, as if someone were to take their own money and invest it wisely. And after a long time, because that’s how safe investing works, and the money would have actually accrued a profitable interest, and no one knows how. Some of you actually do know how. The stock market works and interest works and for the rest of us it’s just magic. But the second reading would follow.
When you first start working in life, your bank account is terrible. After some time of savings, it starts to look strong, the stocks begin to grow, and with a retirement plan finally comes to bear fruit and returns with substance. That’s when it’s time to retire. And that’s when the Grim Reaper comes and gets you, right? And it’s all over. No, actually. No, no, no. That’s the time when you retire and you can enjoy the fruit of your labor. You can enjoy the investment that you’ve worked so hard for. With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?
No one here will disagree with my interpretation. Is it accurate? Is it theological? Who knows, but I know what I said is true. That’s how we all feel about money. That’s how we all view money, that we can’t just, you know, throw money around and live like it doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna pull me aside later and tell me, oh, that was bad theology or bad life advice. Because we believe in our finances, it adds up. We do numbers and things have to equal at the end and we believe in being responsible for our finances, Right?
This is where I get you to fall into my trap. It’s easy to focus on our future for our own comfort internally. But we also took the same attitude that we already have about our finances and looked outwardly.
You planting a tree today, you’ll never sit under the shade or enjoy its fruit. But who will? Who will enjoy this tree? Maybe you’re children, but most of them are kind of grown up. Maybe you’re like my parents, but the most important person in their life is their grandchildren and their children. That’s who’s going to be able to reap the reward from this tree. As the saying goes, the best tree is the one that was planted 50 years ago. Because it’s not just about trees.
There’s so many other things around the world that are causing way more damage than you, whether or not you plant one tree. I don’t see any of you jumping on your private jet and flying to Europe to get cheesecake from a specific hotel. That’s not who we are. So why should the environment matter? After all, you’re just one person. What does it matter? Why should the environment matter? Because this is what you’re leaving to your grandchildren.
I close with this. The mustard seed, I’ve been told it’s very small. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in my life, but that’s what the Bible says, so I guess it has to be true.
But, it grows into a large shrub. A shrub, not a tree. I mean, I’m imagining a shrub’s not that big, but I guess this grows into a large shrub. It doesn’t say that it covers the whole earth with its shade. It doesn’t even provide food for the entire world. It doesn’t fix all of humanity’s problem.
But it does give a place to rest, for some. It does alleviate the harshness of life, for a few. And in the grand scheme of life and eternity, your small and insignificant act today, it won’t do anything. Whether or not you recycle today, it doesn’t matter. Whether or not you are active in the way you look at the environment, it doesn’t matter. But there will be one individual that that will affect.
One individual that may be able to find shade under that tree and appreciate that. This enormous tree that you’ve invested in. You’ve changed their world. You’ve changed their eternity. You changed their family’s future. Being green isn’t about you today. It Isn’t about you being conscious of the environment today.
Being green is you thinking about eternity. This world in eternity and what that would look like.
Those who follow you can’t do anything for themselves until a later time. So it’s up to you to be responsible for them today. May it be so.
This summer season, we are focused on the environment. This is a part of our mission and vision to be advocates for the environment.
So we are looking at the scriptures with that lens. That is what, for me, keeps the scriptures alive, it’s all about which lens do you look at it through. So looking at this through the environmental lens this season.
I bring you to think about our world environmentally. Naturally. There are a lot of challenges in front of us.
We know that there is pollution in the air and in the water. We may not see the pollution in Lancaster. It’s not the same as the smog of the 70s, at least not here. But, I hear all the time about the quality of our air is not good.
That’s specifically noted by people who have breathing issues. We’re in some kind of a valley, where a lot of things reside in the air. Then there’s the water. I talked two weeks ago about the pollution in the oceans, but we know that our streams are polluted.
We are part of the Interfaith Partnership for the Chesapeake because we are trying to make sure that the bay and the wildlife there survives and thrives. We don’t want it just to survive. That is a food source for us. Even our little Conestoga is on the list for Pennsylvania of streams that they are watching for the quality of the water, which means our Brubaker Run is, as it feeds into the little Conestoga.
So, it comes literally to our backyard that we need to be thinking about all of these things. The weather patterns are changing. That is going to affect our food supply, and that will create even more challenges for us.
So we hear scripture, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” – Isaiah 65:17
We hear God is creating a new earth. Thank you, Jesus, you saved us again. And we are all in. Until we realize that God’s doing that in God’s way and has maybe, I believe, listened to our prayers, taken them into consideration, but is working from God’s view, not ours. There is a very true statement that says no one likes change except the change that they want. If the change is our idea, we are all in. But if it’s someone else’s idea, well, maybe not. Not so sure. The problem is, we don’t agree on the changes.
Another thing to remind ourselves of is that throughout the Bible, God favors the poor. The poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. The language of the Bible is often the widow, the orphan, the one on the outside who is starving, who doesn’t have adequate shelter, clothing, food. I’m gonna go out on a limb, but I don’t think there’s anybody in this space who’s food insecure. I think we’re all gonna know where at least one of our meals is coming from today. But there are people in our world who are.
So, we have to. recognize that the changes God brings about may not necessarily benefit us. That’s something to sit with. I love this scripture because it reminds us of Isaiah 11, the peaceable kingdom scripture. In Isaiah 11, it says that the lion and the lamb will live, will lie down with each other, meaning they will live in harmony. It goes on, it’s got quite a list of all the kinds of things. It ends with that verse about the child and the hole of the asp, and you’re going, a kid and a snake, really? But it’s this idea of all of God’s creation living in harmony.
This scripture today ended with this motif also, with “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together” – Isaiah 65:25. Predator and prey no longer in that adverse relationship, but finding food together.
Actually, what I found interesting, and I’ll go back and read that to you, is that the three instances are all about what they eat. It says, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent, its food shall be dust! – Isaiah 65:25. It’s all about eating.
I’m not going to deal with the serpent and why the serpent’s going to eat dust. But you know what that other part says? It says we ought to be vegetarians. Now I’ve heard all of my life that I should eat more vegetables. Isaiah is telling us the same thing. Do you know what? If we ate more vegetables, it’s better for our planet. Because the impact on our planet of raising the meat, particularly the red meat, and I am the first one to sign up for a good burger or a good steak, please hear that. But I know that that has an adverse effect on our planet. At least the way we do our corporate growing and raising of cattle. The grass fed steers and cattle that’s a different story. That’s healthier.
But, we have to look at that. We have to think about it. If we all ate vegetables, we could grow our own food. Also helpful to the planet when we’re not trucking in stuff from all over the place. But we like to eat strawberries all year long, and they only grow for three weeks in May & June. Did you notice it was earlier this year? The strawberry festivals used to be mid to late June. Well, they’re pretty much over now. That’s that climate shifting. That’s the weather pattern shifting. That’s the temperature change. It’s going to affect our food.
I’m going to encourage you, hopefully at the end of this sermon to think about and to watch for where God is doing something different in our world.
But one of the good articles that I heard recently was Krista Tippett’s “On Being” radio show. She had two environmentalists on. They’re noticing that the environment has more elasticity and the ability to adapt than we realized. That’s good news. That’s really good news. But it also takes a long time. So that does not take us off the hook for changing how we live.
In fact, a friend of mine showed me a picture of a turtle who climbed a curb. I would not have guessed that a turtle could do that. That it walked across the road, hit a curb, and it actually could go up the curb and onto the sidewalk without ending up on its back and being stuck. It is changing, but it takes time.
Last weekend, Mark Achtermann and I were at the Penn Central Conference Annual Meeting, up at the Penn Stater.
Which was both our annual meeting and the spring meeting of the possible future Keystone Conference, which is that our four conferences are looking to go together to be one.
It was a wonderful experience. When you put 600 people together in worship, the spirit is palpable. You could feel it in the song, in the spoken word, in being together. We talked about the changes, how this change will affect us. Pennsylvania is currently divided into four sections for the United Church of Christ, and we would all become one conference for the United Church of Christ, it means change.
We talked about the joys of that and the challenges. Fortunately, we spent some time not just naming the challenges, but thinking through what we need to do to address those challenges, as opposed with just saying, “here’s the list of cons. Here’s why we shouldn’t do it.” No, if we’re going to do it, then these things also need to happen to address this.
It was powerful. It was very enlightening and uplifting. No decision was made, in case you’re wondering about that. The decision will be made on November 9th at a fall meeting. That’s when our delegates go to the meeting. I don’t know if it’s virtual or in person yet, I don’t think they decided that. But, we have time. We have time to think about it. We have time to make good choices. For more information visit www.FEMA.gov.
The thing that was really striking to me is their motto. “Together we are stronger.”
That’s where we all came down to. That together, we as the four congregate conferences becoming one conference are stronger.
This was Sunday morning worship, last Sunday, and the person preaching up on the podium was the Reverend Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, who is our General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, was there to do the sermon. It’s important for you to know what she said.
These are my short notes. She named that we are a denomination of diversities, not just a diversity. It’s not just ethnic diversity or racial diversity, but there’s a a lot of ways that we are different, including, and this might surprise you, we have 30 languages within the United Church of Christ. 30 languages. 30 languages spoken, 29 different languages written. Do you know what the one language that is spoken and not written in the United Church of Christ is? This is fun! You are there. It’s Pennsylvania Dutch. We are the one language that is spoken in our denomination but not written.
Fun fact, We are not a binary political system. We are a covenant of inclusivity and love. I think that was the most important statement she made. We are a covenant of inclusivity and love.
In the picture to the right is a cross that we made. Each person was asked to draw their hand on a piece of fabric and they covered this cross. They put a bunch of them on a wall. We actually took a hand to bring home with us and pray for that person. But it’s this idea of together we are stronger and that is true for us as a congregation also.
We are also stronger together. We are stronger together. And together, we can make a greater impact on our environment. I know that there are environmentally minded people in our congregation, people who recycle faithfully, people who may drive hybrid cars or some of you may even have electric cars to make sure that you’re being responsible in that way.
But together, we have the ability to make a statement to our community about how much the environment matters to us.
Our park does make part of that statement. But a lot of people don’t know about our park. We can be more vigilant about what we do, how we live together. That’s what I want the environmental team to be looking at. So if you signed up for that, that’s where we’re headed. We want to look at what things could we do differently here that would be more environmentally friendly or environmentally responsible.
It’s shocking to me when I see the pictures that come out of Ukraine or Gaza. When I think about environmentally friendly, caring for the environment, war is not. Right? And I was stuck on the phrase, Choose War No More. But, what that did was that led me back to Isaiah 2:11, “Beat swords into plowshares. and spears into pruning hooks.”
We need to change our mindset because wars and that type of aggression are not helping us either. We need to learn how to live together, to respect one another, to respect one another’s boundaries, that goes for both sides, Hamas and Israel.
Then we can be the people of God and create the peaceable kingdom because we are made in God’s image.May it be so, Amen.
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?
