Sermon By Rev. Dennis Lippart

Old preachers are like old baseball players and old gamblers.

They want to make one more bet or be in one more game. Old horse racers want to race one more time. We want to do one more sermon.

So, we agonize over what it is that we want to say to folks. Do we find the sermon that they need to hear and preach that sermon? Or do we find the sermon we’ve always wanted to preach and preach that sermon, or do we preach the one about the house of religions?

Like golf, you play it with other people, who keep their own score and nobody knows if you cheat or not, except you and God.

Then it occurred to me that I needed to take a chapter from my own book.

We are now all in English 101 at Mon University, and I had a group of students, not unlike all of you, that I started one of my classes by telling them that they were all poets. They’re all thinking, no, we’re not poets. We don’t like poetry. We don’t do poetry. And I said, yes, you are poets, and I can prove that you are all poets because I’m going to give you a poem and you’re gonna respond with the next line.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star…

“Up above the world so high,”

We are hardwired to see the world in patterns. Poetry is a pattern. You are all hardwired to be poets. Now, people have told you that you can’t do poetry. People have told you poems have to be a certain way. People have bored you to death with poetry. Teachers have made you memorize poems that you didn’t like. You’ve come to believe that you’re not poets, but you are.

There’s a huge amount of poetry in the Bible that we ignore because we’re not poets, so we don’t read the Psalms very often. We stay away from the books of wisdom. We don’t like to be inspired that way because it’s not who we are, but that is who we are. We are all hardwired as poets. Some people see their poetry in rhythm and sound, but we are all poets.

I am going to give you another line to complete, ready for it? “For God so loved the world…That he gave his only Son”

You are hardwired to love. You are hardwired to be the lovers of the world.

It goes back to Genesis when God creates men and women in his image. We have creation stories in the book of Proverbs, we have all kinds of language in the Bible about how God calls us to something. Jesus himself said, “Truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

Most of the people that Jesus talked to towards the end of his ministry, when he talked about whether there’s going to be a judgment or not, were people who didn’t even know they were doing it.

You are hardwired to be the lovers of the world, and people have told you your entire life that you can’t do that. You’re not young enough, you’re not wealthy enough, you’re not strong enough, you’re not intelligent enough, you’re not old enough. Sometimes you’re too young. People have given us reasons why we are not to consider ourselves to be created to be the lovers of the world.

I’m here to tell you that all of that’s untrue. Just like you are all poets and don’t know it. You are all lovers, and you haven’t found your way to love the world yet, but that’s what you’re made for. That’s what God has asked you to do.

One of the problems that preachers have is how deeply we wanna become scholars.

There was once upon a time when the only scholars in the community were preachers. Harvard University was founded because preachers were the most learned people in the community, and they wanted to get smarter.

I’ll tell you a conversation I had with one of the little old ladies in the church that I was telling them about something I’d found in the library, in the Pastor’s study. She said “Our pastors don’t read books.” And I thought, “I’m not gonna tell her that I write books.” If you don’t like pastors who read books, you’re certainly not gonna like pastors who write books.

There was something about being a scholar that became bad news at some point. We have to walk a fine line between how deeply we dive into the text. Because people don’t want to hear from scholars that they don’t know what’s going on in the Bible. Most people understand the Bible because they’ve been told their whole lives what it means. So they don’t pay any attention to what it says, which is the best reason for reading it as to find out what it actually says to us.

God created you to be lovers in the world. He did not create us to be in torment.

Sometimes the biggest tormentors in the world are simply other folks. Other folks who can’t be accepting, other folks who don’t understand, other folks who refuse to be loved or to love the world the way it’s supposed to be loved. God did not create us to be tormentors, and he did not create us to be in torment.

One of the gifts of the self-help programs is that in the first step of the program, you must come to believe that a power greater than yourself could restore you.

In our text today, we have a man who is insane. People don’t like others being insane, so he’s living out in the cemetery somewhere and a power greater than himself restored him to sanity. We don’t like to think that we’re insane, but the program makes us have two confessions. One is that there is a power greater than ourselves, and second, that we are not sane in the moment. We are not the lovers we are intended to be. We are not the people we are created to be. We’re not as whole as we want to be, and we need to be restored to who we are meant to be. But first we have to admit that we are broken, we are not whole, and we’re flawed. Once we make that admission, then healing is possible.

I wanted to point out that when I saw the title for today, and I never title anything, by the way. My editor titled all my books for me. When I saw the title for the sermon, I thought I could have written that book, but I didn’t. It’s not my title, it’s Rev. Kathryn’s title, but it speaks to the fact that we live in a world where we have somehow accepted being tormented as a normal state of affairs. And it’s not normal to be tormented or to be the tormentors.

One of the ways that we can be lovers in the world is to speak out when we see torment happening, either the people who are doing the tormenting or the people who are being tormented, and simply say, it’s not the way it’s meant to be. It’s not right. It’s not the blessed community. It’s not who we are as a people, because we are the people that God created us to be. And God so loved the world that He gave it you. There are days I like to think it’s working, and days I believe it’s not.

But God gave us each other. He gave us a blessed community where we could be more together than we are by ourselves.

May it be so. Amen.

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 I’m very fond of historical period pieces, such as movies and TV series.

I love Downton Abbey, and I kept hearing about this series on HBO called The Gilded Age. So, I started watching it to see what I thought. Then, when I read Luke 7:44-50, I thought these two go together. Because the thing about The Gilded Age is, a lot of the period pieces that I watch are about England, but this is set in America.

This is set in New York City in the late 1800s, and it is about old money versus new money. The families who started in New York City, old money. Then, the people who were making money, and a lot of it in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and moving into the city, such as the Rockefellers. That’s a name they drop a lot during the movie. I don’t think that any of the characters are based on real people. I think that it is all fictional. But they certainly talk about the Rockefellers.

But what I noticed in this is how the old money generation uses their privilege to be arrogant and judgmental of others. The old money people are always peeking out their windows and peeking around corners. I think that there’s a bit of that at play in our scripture today.

On Friday, when I was at home, my neighbor next door got a new shed, and it came as the heavens opened, and it just started pouring. I realized I was the neighbor peeking around the corner saying that they better not drive that through my yard. I don’t know how they’re gonna get that in his backyard, but it better not go in mine, because that’s gonna make some ruts. I’m no better.

We need those realizations that we can be just as petty as the rich people.

There’s a moment where the one woman doesn’t want to have anything to do with her new money neighbor across the street, but she finds out that her lead servant had asked for time off, and is serving at the house across the street. She barges in there with gusto until she realizes she’s just walked into a dinner party, and she has to save face because she just broke her own rules.

The old money people created rules that the new funny people don’t even know about. They only find out about them when they bump into them.

I hope that helps you to see where this ties in into the scripture because it’s about figuring out how we can be together.

I think that there’s a bigger societal lesson in this, too, where those of us who want to make the rules need to realize that not everyone has the same life experiences that we’ve had.

So, how do we open ourselves to hear the stories of others with compassion? How much room do we make for those who think differently from us? I think that’s big for us right now. Do we put ourselves in places to hear stories of different people?

So, as we look at the scripture, Luke 7:36-50, I want you to think about where you would be in the scene. Who do you most identify with? Do you identify with the woman at Jesus’ Feet? Crying and washing his feet with her hair. Are you the Pharisee saying these are the rules? Or are you just one of the disciples or a bystander watching the scene unfold? I want you to think about that as we look at this.

This scripture was very important to the early church, and I say that because it’s in all four gospels, and that does not happen often, so that means it’s something to pay attention to. Now, each one is a little bit different. In Luke’s version, the woman is unnamed. She is unnamed, and she has no voice. That’s important. In other versions, she’s called Mary Magdalene or a prostitute, but here she’s just a woman of sin. It doesn’t tell us what kind of sin. We put all kinds of labels on her. We want to name her sin, but here’s the thing: that’s not for us to do.

That’s not our place. This scene makes us uncomfortable because there is a lavishness to this. She is so grateful that she is weeping at his feet and bathing them with her hair. That is very sensuous, even a little on the erotic side. And that makes us uncomfortable.

It makes sense that we go there because when Ruth was trying to get with Boaz, she walked into his tent and uncovered his feet. So, there is something about all of this that has a sexual overtone to it that makes us uncomfortable. But Jesus recognizes what she needs. Jesus sees her need for healing and immediately forgives her and blesses her by saying, “Go in Peace.”

In contrast, I did choose this particular artist rendering of this scene. I hope you can see that there’s a golden halo. This is a classic icon that artists put a golden halo around people whom they want you to perceive as divine or having some holiness about them. The artist gave one to the woman, gave one to Jesus, and gave one to the two other people sitting across the table. Which makes me think that maybe they’re disciples of Jesus, but the Pharisee does not get a golden halo. He is all dressed up in his finery, which is where my brain was going with the connection to the Gilded Age. It’s like those from the upper class who think that because they are upper class, because they are the 1%, they get to write all the rules for everyone else.

Luke’s version is a little different in that he gives us Simon’s thoughts. We get to know that Simon thinks this is not a good thing. He says, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” His thinking is not wanting to have anything to do with her. She would be at the of the servant class, but without noting what Simon’s thinking, Jesus tells that little parable about people who had borrowed money, and their debt was forgiven.

He has this classic line, which to me is the heart of it, “But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.” (7:47) I think we have to sit with that. Jesus is letting Simon know he knows what he’s thinking. While Simon’s trying to discern who Jesus is. Jesus’ answer proves that he is much more than he appears, as he knows the character of both the woman and of Simon.

So who do you think you most connect with?

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of us that want to be the Pharisee, even though, like I was telling you in my story about the neighbor’s shed, I think far too often we are the Pharisee judging other people. Judging other things as being less than or how we might be taken advantage of.

Do you feel like the woman who’s broken and in need of healing? Because if so, I hope that you find it today. I hope that you connect with someone here and they are able to hear you, be a listening ear, and a comfort to you.

If you’re like the Pharisee and you wanna remind us all about the rules, maybe we need to look in the mirror more closely and recognize our own failings because none of us in here are without sin. The image of the church as a hospital where sinners can come for healing is certainly more attractive to me than a place where only saints hang out.

If you’re a disciple, then I think that our job as disciples is to come alongside people, knowing that we’re not here to fix it. We’re here to listen, to comfort, and to say that we’re going to walk with you. I think that we are here to create a spiritual home where grief can be tended and rage can be organized, and hope can be reimagined because hopelessness is the worst. We don’t wanna reach that point, but together we can remind each other to see the things that help draw us along.

May it be so. Amen.

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 As we look at these scriptures, Luke 7:11-18 & John 11:17-27, I’m focusing on those whom Jesus helped and the situations because I believe that we have an epidemic of brokenness.

We are doing our very best to ignore it, and I don’t mean we as in just the people gathered in this room. I mean a big we. In fact, it may be the whole world.

But I want to specifically talk today about the young men and boys in our culture who are feeling lost, confused, and are facing social isolation, economic anxiety, and societal expectations. Research shows that young men spend more time alone. They are isolating, and that is linked to depression and anxiety. Right now, the suicide rate for men is higher than women, and the economic change over the last couple of decades has not helped. Companies have defunded benefits and reduced workforces for a better profit on their stock, which has left the traditional idea of the company man to no longer exist.

You don’t go and work for a company and expect to retire from them. That doesn’t happen because the allegiance to the workforce isn’t there. The allegiance to the company isn’t there either. That’s leaving them feeling very unsure of who they are to be. We have also done a good job of lifting our girls and young women, which needed to be done, but we can’t do that at the expense of our boys and young men. We need to empower every person.

We’ve talked a lot in the last years about toxic masculinity, but I don’t think that we have defined what healthy masculinity looks like. And we need to. I think that’s where our scriptures help us.

That is where I’m heading and what can be gleaned out of these scriptures, because we need to help our young men and boys find their purpose, because the internet and social media are not anybody’s friend.

Their exposure to negativity, violence, and unrealistic masculine expectations is setting the stage for the violence we’ve been experiencing. I think we’re headed for, if we’re honest, a culture where brokenness is a sign of weakness, even being overwhelmed is a sign of weakness. We try to hide it or we try to fix it with a quick fix. But there are no quick fixes, because we don’t want to feel vulnerable. We don’t like that. That’s uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable with my vulnerability, too, and there has to be some place where we can show it.

I think this is what the church can be. It can be a place where we’re honest about our brokenness, about being overwhelmed by the world and what’s going on in it. But, too often, the church has been the least safe space because we are so good at judging each other. So good at pointing to another person’s faults so we don’t have to look at our own, but that’s something that we can change.

We say God’s vision for us, God’s mission for us, is to create a safe space, and we can do that. In the scripture today, both times Jesus goes and meets a grieving female.

In Lazarus’s story, I only talked about Martha, but Mary’s there too. We’ve got Jesus going and meeting three females, and I want to lift up how Jesus models for us this healthy masculinity.

He does tell the widow of Nain not to cry. I wish he wouldn’t have. I’d like to say, Luke put that in. I don’t know if Jesus said that or not, because in the story of Lazarus, if you keep reading, Jesus cries. Crying is not the end of the world, and we all need to get better at that.

But what Jesus shows us is that Jesus was not afraid of their pain or their anguish. Jesus walked toward it, not away from it. He walked toward them with empathy and compassion to meet them.

In Luke, he touched that coffin. He all but touched the dead body, which you may or may not think anything of, but back then, that was a big no-no. You didn’t wanna touch a dead body that made you unclean. He was going to have to go through ritual purification. Again, that was women’s work because we went through that every month anyway.

But Jesus wasn’t afraid of it. He was willing to allow himself to be vulnerable with the widow. The griever’s there with Martha. He takes Martha’s harsh criticism. I think Martha wanted to tell him off.

That also tells us something about what God can handle from us, that we can say our harsh words to God, and God can handle them. God wants the relationship. God’s not gonna get mad at us because we said something that could offend God, at least the God that I know. Because the God that I know, which I think is the one and only God, loves us and walks with us, comes to us in our brokenness to bring us healing if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

If we shut down and don’t allow God in, that’s on us. That’s the choice that God still lets us make, God won’t force God’s self on us, but God will come to us in our darkest nights, maybe not in ways that we expect. But, God will be there.

Jesus wasn’t afraid of death, not even of his own, but this is also not the “Jesus wasn’t afraid of death, so we don’t have to be either” sermon.

I’ve heard those sermons. Jesus knows that we’re human and that we do break. These women, if you put them in their culture, you need to know that they were about to be destitute. They could not inherit any of the wealth or property of the son or the brother. They were going to be homeless and on the streets begging. Jesus understands that, too, and does what he can to change that.

The ones who are without resources, the ones living on the streets, the ones who are lonely and broken, those are the ones we are to care about too.

So, what is our role based on this? Well, we’re not going to produce miracles. We’re not gonna raise anybody from the dead, but we can walk with those who are struggling. We can comfort and listen.

That is why we have a Compassion Team. Our Compassion Team will listen to us, and they will hold your confidences. You could be that person among us who just needs somebody to care about their pain, confusion, or anger.

If we look at our collective lives. We have learned a lot. For those who’ve been with this congregation for a long time. We know how to survive conflict. It is our humanity that unites us. According to the research, our DNA is 99.9% identical. It’s only that 0.1% that makes each one of us unique. That is not a big difference. Even though it’s a difference we tend to focus on.

We can choose differently.

We can choose to walk with each other, to comfort one another, to come and be reminded that our God is here for us. Life is hard, and we are all going to suffer in some way. That is a reality.

Sorry if this is a downer, but I hope that you also hear that we are surrounded by the love and grace of God. That is beyond our imagination, and I hope that you feel that today.

If you need that in a physical way, reach out to the Compassion Team, and let one of them walk with you.

May it be so. Amen.

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 Today is the beginning of a new season. We are now in what is called ordinary time or the season after Pentecost.

This is the longest season of the year. Today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity is when we celebrate God, the traditional language is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit. We also say Creator, Redeemer, & Sustainer to identify their roles.

I change things a little bit every season. Like the call, the prayer of confession is now silent, and we added the prayer of illumination. That’s not a piece we usually do. I gave that to the reader, which is different. We also have this table, because we’re going to talk about who Christ welcomes to the table.

Specifically, at this point, we’re talking about the people who would have been considered by everyone else to be outsiders, like a Roman centurion.

The Roman centurion in our scripture for today was the enemy.

He represented the empire that was taking the people’s money, taxing them to the point of poverty, and was a huge military presence that intimidated the people to make sure that they didn’t rise against the empire. All of that, and yet Jesus welcomes and heals him. I want to try to unpack all of that.

I was also at Penn Central Conferences’ annual meeting on Friday and Saturday.

It was an emotional time because we believed this was the last annual conference meeting of the Penn Central Conference. We believe that and hope that at the General Senate in July, they will agree to let us become one Keystone Conference.

So, the four conferences in Pennsylvania will become one conference, and then the State of Pennsylvania will be divided into three regions. We will be in region one, going towards Philadelphia. Berks County is with us, Lebanon County is coming with us, and York County is coming with us. We’re joining essentially the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference. It will not be called that. We’re all gonna be the Keystone conference.

There were a lot of mixed emotions in that. The keynote speaker was Rev. Dr. Courtney Stange-Tregear from the Cornerstone Fund, which is the investment and loan branch of the United Church of Christ. Telling you that, you might be surprised to know that her specialty is in storytelling. She tells the stories of the loans that they have made and the work that has been done for Christ, and she reminded all of us of the importance of storytelling.

I’m still figuring out how we’re gonna do more storytelling together. But I will tell you as an exercise, she had us at our tables tell a true, personal story.

I think this story fits all of her criteria.

While I was sitting there, I was also thinking about my sermon. I think about it all week. This sermon was called Who Is Worthy. And I realized that when I go to the conference, I want to be viewed as worthy by the rest of the conference. I want them to acknowledge and respect who I am as your pastor. There are a whole lot of other pastors. Not that I would be special, but that we would all be valued.

I have learned in my life that a way in which I feel worthy is by pleasing others, but when I please others, I don’t take care of myself, and I also end up hurting relationships. That was my takeaway from that presentation. And I think that was what I was supposed to be focusing on, because on my phone, I have a little app that sends me positive messages. When I flipped over my phone after thinking about that, my phone said this, “I love myself too much to question my worth.”

If that’s something that you needed to hear today, that you should love yourself enough that you don’t need to question your worth. I want you to take that with you.

This whole idea of worthy and of who’s worthy or who’s not, that’s what I’ve been sitting with.

I did what I call a deep dive. I went through this scripture, and it’s a Jewish leader who goes and says, the centurion is worthy. But the centurion says, “I’m not.”

I looked at how many other scriptures talk about someone being worthy, and there are 78 scriptures in the Bible talking about being worthy or not being worthy. What I noticed is that every single one of them was in the Voice of Humanity. It was a human who was saying about declaring someone’s worth or unworthiness. It was never God or Jesus. And what that tells me is that this isn’t a God issue. This is an us issue. We are the ones who are concerned about who’s worthy and who’s not. God isn’t concerned about that, and I think that’s because to God, we all have worth. After all, we are God’s children. God is that parent who loves us unconditionally. We don’t have to prove that we’re worth loving. God just loves us.

Are we really worthy?

I think we’re pretty darn self-interested. I think we worry about ourselves more than we worry about what we’re supposed to be doing for God. We listen to ourselves and our egos more than what God is calling us to do.

Rather than commenting on this scripture and rather than commenting on the centurion’s worthiness, Jesus doesn’t. He comments on the amount of faith the Centurion has because the centurion asks for healing without knowing Jesus. He’s never met Jesus. They’ve never been in the same room together.

He’s heard the stories of what Jesus has done and he believed and he trusted that Jesus could make a difference in this servant’s life.

He believed without seeing. That’s us. Jesus isn’t here with us walking, talking, and we aren’t able to see his hands, his feet, and his side, but we trust that he is who he is and that he can still help us.

But we are the ones who create this label of worthiness. We’re the ones that create lines in the sand or boundaries that say these people are in and these people are out, and these people are good and these people are bad, and these people are worthy or not worthy. The church has been doing that for a long time. What I hear in this scripture is that that’s not ours to judge. God’s the judge, not us. And it’s not even a thing that God worries about.

We need to look at who we keep outside.

Who do we prevent from coming to the table that is not ours anyway? It belongs to Jesus. We need to invite and welcome all those who feel like they are not worthy to come into this house, because there are so many people who have been told that God does not love them. We need to be a different voice that says that we think God loves you. God wants a relationship with you, and you are welcome here. We want you to come in

Just to drive that point home a little more is the Galatians 3:23-29 scripture, which declares there are no labels. We are all Children of God, there are no longer the labels of Jew, Greek, slave or free, male or female, although we still have that one. It’s not about that. It’s about the fact that we are all children of God and that we are to care about the needs and well-being of others. That’s what God told us. That’s what Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” – Mark 12:30-31. That’s who we are supposed to be.

We are to care for the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, and those who struggle every day to survive. That is why it is so hard right now, because there are people in power who are not interested in that.

They are interested in making us afraid and telling us who to blame for it. As I was thinking about that, I heard a line from my favorite movie, The American President, where he says, “That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

Let’s go and be present with people. Our God wants to be our ultimate parent, thinking of the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Today is Father’s Day. God wants to be that father figure, that one who encourages us and bodes us through the struggles, and who tells us not to give up. But we have a God who allows us to make choices. Recognizing that we will learn through our mistakes and that there will be comfort and support in our difficult times. Rev. Call said in her sermon, “God is most present in the breaking of our hearts.”

I am heartbroken by the stories that I see on the news.

I’m heartbroken for the people who are guilty until they can prove that they have documentation and that they’re a citizen or that they’re allowed to be here in America. But I’m also worried about the ICE agents and the effect this has on them.

I worry about our LGBTQ+ family and friends who are in Pride Month, the month where they celebrate that they can finally be who God created them to be. Yet, they’re not safe. They don’t feel safe. Not right now.

I grieve for Minnesota and for those senators, the families, the friends, and for the depth of anger and despair that person must have had to do that act.

We have people who are hurting, and they need to hear that God loves them. May this be the work that we do.

May it be so. Amen.

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