Connected 1 John 3:16-24

 1 John 3:16-24 CEB 16 This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 But if a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him? 18 Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. 19 This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence.20 Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.21 Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence in relationship to God.22 We receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love each other as he commanded us. 24 The person who keeps his commandments remains in God and God remains in him; and this is how we know that he remains in us, because of the Spirit that he has given to us. 

 Today is Earth Stewardship Sunday. The other day someone asked me, “What’s the difference between Earth Day and Earth Stewardship Sunday?” Frankly, I don’t know. All I know for sure is that on my official Disciples worship planning calendar last Sunday was called Earth Day and this Sunday is called Earth Stewardship Sunday. Perhaps it’s that Earth Day is always April 22 so the fourth Sunday of April was simply chosen as the day we officially celebrate it in our worship services and this year Earth Day just happened to fall on a Sunday. Or perhaps it’s this way so preachers get to talk about the glories of God’s creation two weeks in a row. Either way, as Guillermo said in an email this week, “YAY! Green again!!”

 I’m always happy when I have to chance to bring out the Tree of Life wall hanging. I especially love the Celtic style tree of life, drawn with one unbroken line, a line with no beginning and no end through which everything connected to everything else. It is so perfectly representative of the way the world truly is. It’s perfectly representative of the way God is - God has always existed and will always exist, with no beginning and no end, and is the thing by which every thing and every creature in the universe is connected to each other. In the book of Job God reminds Job just exactly where all the good stuff Job had accumulated in his life came from, saying “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In [God's] hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” (Job 12:7-10)

 That unbroken line connecting everything to everything is also perfectly representative of the way the love of God is supposed to work. God loves us, we love God, and because we love God and God loves us we love all of God’s creatures in the same way as we love God and ourselves. Everyone loving and being loved. Everyone caring for and about each other. All problems solved, all injustice cured, all oppression ended, endangered animals saved from extinction, rain forests returned to their intended glory. No more hunger, no more dying, no more fighting, no more crying. Kum ba yah.

 That’s the way the love of God is supposed to work. That’s what the kingdom looks like. We all know that just isn’t the way it is.

 John reminds us here that loving means more than just expressing a feeling. “Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth.  This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence.”

 Jesus laid his life down for us, we lay ours down for our brothers and sisters. God provided great bounty for us, we share that great bounty with our brothers and sisters. We all know just how fruitful the earth is. If you don’t know, just plant some zucchini seeds. Before long you will have enough zucchini to feed the neighborhood. For some reason zucchini seem to be especially prolific and there’s really only so much you can do with squash. You will want to share this bounty with everyone you know. So, before long you’ll be bringing bags full of zucchini to church on Sunday mornings hoping people will want to take them home. You’ll be begging all your friends and neighbors to take some. People will start hiding when they see you carrying a bag. Seriously.

 Unfortunately, not every place overproduces the way our backyards do. We know that parts of the world over-produce while other regions produce very little because of drought or war or some kind of plague affecting food crops. Even here in this country we know that many people, many children, go to bed hungry every night while others throw away enough leftover food to feed a family. Grocery stores toss out produce that’s just a bit past the “best by” date. During the depression, citrus farmers piled up their produce and burned all that fruit because they couldn’t sell it. Today farmers are paid not to grow certain crops. And yet, food banks around the country have closed because they simply can’t get the donations they need to continue feeding the hungry. This is not good stewardship of the earth. This is not the way God’s love is supposed to work.

 It’s hard to reconcile over production and under nourishment going on in the same country at the same time, especially in a country that so many claim is a Christian country. If we were a Christian country in truth, a country governed by the rule of God’s love we wouldn’t have so many of our own citizens suffering from hunger and homelessness. “17 ... if a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him?” It’s equally hard for me to understand how some of our leaders think it’s a good idea to cut medical benefits, food stamps and educational assistance for the poor while untaxed corporations are making truly obscene profits and the extremely wealthy pay income tax at a lower percentage rate than the people who work for them. I don’t object to profit. I applaud anyone who manages through hard work and dedication to improve their way of living. I just think it is more loving, more just to tax a corporation or a billionaire than to let children go hungry or die for lack of medical care.

 When it comes to care of the earth, we humans have created a lot of environmental problems. Deserts are growing, water supplies are dwindling, crazy weather is everywhere. Much of this has to do with climate change, which is surely not entirely attributable to human action, but we do have to claim a part in it. Many of those same leaders are opposed to regulations that help stop air and water pollution, or protect endangered ecosystems and endangered animals, or keep our food supply safe, or really any kind of restrictive environmental laws, because those restrictions cut into profit. These leaders claim to believe that we can continue to abuse the earth as we will, and that the earth will heal itself. To them I would speak these words Ezekiel spoke to the leaders of Israel, 18 Is feeding in good pasture or drinking clear water such a trivial thing that you should trample and muddy what is left with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:18) These laws, these regulations protecting and cleaning up our environment, are part of good stewardship of the earth.

 This week one of those leaders was taken to task by the Roman Catholic Church, who said that the policies he promoted were not in keeping with his faith or with the teachings of the Church. He replied that he believed in God’s preferential option for the poor. He just didn’t believe it had anything to do with the way government works. This is one of the people who claims we live in a Christian country. He seems to believe that good stewardship means caring about money and people with money more than caring about the least of our brothers and sisters or the earth we live upon.

 Caring for the earth and all its creatures.

 Loving our brothers and sisters. 


These are the same thing.

 We cannot separate one from the other.

 These are part of the tree of life and the single unbroken line that connects them all is God, creator and sustainer of life. We cannot separate any part from any other part, because God cares about them all. Make no mistake, everything that exists belongs to God, not to us. Remember that bit from Job?

 If we are to love God as God loves us, each of us will find a way to use our gifts and talents to care for God’s earth and God’s people. First, we will pray for guidance to see how we can best serve. And then we may find our place in actively working to clean up an empty lot, signing petitions, donating money to causes, campaigning for or against particular laws, letting our political representatives know how we feel. At the very least we should spend time researching the positions of politicians before elections, to make sure that each of us votes for the persons who best represent our positions and our beliefs. Those positions and beliefs will be different for each of us, but we have to keep in mind that, if we understand all of life as interconnected through God, then we will also understand that we cannot separate our religious beliefs and our political action.

 Our God is an awesome God. The same God who separated the earth from the water, hung the lights in the sky, created all the creatures and breathed life into A’dam, that same God gave the earth and everything in it into the care of humanity. That same God spoke to us through Jesus Christ and continues to speak to us today in so many ways. If you would hear God, then go look at what God has done. Go outside and look north at the mountains. Look at the flowers right outside the door. Look at the child sitting near you. If you would hear God, feel the warmth of the sun flowing over you. Taste the cool of the water. God’s voice can be heard in everything that has been created - every creature, every star, every planet, every speck of dust, every breath of wind. God speaks to us through each of these, when we open our hearts to hear.

 Let us go out from this place to love the world, in word and action and prayer. Let us go out giving thanks and praise to our Creator, the God of the fertile fields.

What's Behind Door Number 3?

This message is a lead-in to the congregational retreat and pot luck lunch we're having right after the Lord's Supper today.

John 12:12-16 Common English Bible (CEB)
 12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him. They shouted,
   “Hosanna! 
Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 
   Blessings on the king of Israel!”
 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,
 15 Don’t be afraid, Daughter Zion. 
      Look! Your king is coming, 
         sitting on a donkey’s colt.
 16 His disciples didn’t understand these things at first. After he was glorified, they remembered that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.


Contestants on Let’s Make a Deal get to make choices - to gamble if you will. They have to decide which of two choices is better and they have NO CLUE what one of those choices is. They know what they have in their hand right that minute, maybe a computer or a beautiful necklace. Do they want to trade it for some unknown item behind one of the three doors on the stage? They might win a fabulous vacation or a New Car! or they might get a bucket of smelly dead fish. There’s no way to be sure. The contestant is dancing from one foot to the other. The audience is yelling out advice. The host is asking for a decision right now. Taking a deep breath, the contestant shouts out her choice. The host says, “Let’s see what’s behind Door Number Three!” and the door slowly opens on the prize. The contestant stands there, hands clasped, eyes wide, heart beating like a wild thing . . .

Jesus’ disciples didn’t know what lay ahead. Jesus had told them, but they really didn’t understand. They were expecting a glorious victory of the kind King David used to deliver! Rome cowed and defeated. Oppressors brought low. Liberation from the oppressors. They saw all the palm branches and they just knew that this is what it’s going to be like from now on. Their rabbi is being lauded as the Messiah! To be completely fair, Jesus had told them about things to come that were so far outside of their realm of understanding that it would have been a huge surprise if they did get it. The Son of Man would leave them for a time, but would return. A new kingdom would be established. The temple would be destroyed and restored in three days. Temple worship would be purified and returned to the way it used to be. They heard these things but they heard them according to the way the world was at that time, the way the world had always been. They had no idea that Jesus was talking about something completely new and different than the way they had always experienced the world. They saw the miracles he performed - driving out evil spirits, restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, health to the leper, providing food for multitudes - and they thought that these God-given powers would be used to transform the social political structure of the land.

Today they celebrate the triumphal entry into Jerusalem that the prophets wrote about. They are planning a meal, a passover meal to celebrate the liberation of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, expecting that this meal will also be a celebration of the very bright future they believe is ahead. But we know that in the next seven days their world will be turned upside down. They will find themselves lost and alone and frightened, hanging on to each other for dear life, not quite sure what just happened, asking each other, “How did we get to this place? Everything was going so well . . . .”

We are also looking ahead, with equal parts fear and hope. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but sometimes I look around and I only see who’s missing. I miss the saints and pillars of our congregation who have passed on. And while I know that this is a good thing for them, I’m not so sure about what it means for us. There are these things that we always used to do and now . . . who’s going to do them? Or are we even going to continue doing those things? On those days I wonder, “How did we get to this place? Everything was going so well . . .” Then I look around again and I see new faces, young faces, hope-filled faces, the faces of leaders, the faces of the future. I hear children laughing and crying and running around the sanctuary, and I take delight in all those sounds.

Today we will share a meal and engage in conversation about our dreams and making those dreams become reality. In this week that began with celebration, moved to deep despair and fear and ended with the resurrection, we look toward the future, poised to make choices that will determine who we are going forward, just as the disciples did. It feels almost as if we are standing on that stage, dancing from foot to foot, heart beating like a wild thing, wondering to ourselves, “What’s behind door number three?,” with the audience shouting out suggestions and Wayne Brady asking us to make a decision. Soon we will choose one of those doors, we will determine how we will serve God, how we will employ our tongues and talents going forward into the future. For now, let us sing.

Forgiveness is the Main Event

Common English Bible (CEB)
 31 The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the LORD. I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the LORD!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.

Jeremiah spoke these words to the people as together they struggled with the consequences of Israel’s disobedience to the law of God. The consequence was this - the overthrow and loss of their nation, the destruction of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant and all the other sacred objects carried off to Babylon, along with the priests, the nobles and all the other leaders - anyone who those who were left behind might rally behind. The situation was not good. All they could see was a future in exile. All they could see was what they had lost. Jeremiah didn’t make it easy for them. He didn’t let them off the hook. He laid the blame for all of these things right at their feet for their disobedience. Then, he brought them the words of hope God had given him. He told them about the new covenant God would make with the people of Israel in time to come.

I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the LORD!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord;
If only. If only that was truly the case. If only we all acted as if God’s instructions were engraved on every heart from birth onwards. If only we all knew God in that way, and lived as if we knew that each and every other person also had God in their hearts. If only there was no need to teach our children to know God because they would see only loving obedience in all the people around them.

If you follow political news at all you are probably aware of the battles raging right now over women’s health, care for the poor, who gets the right to vote and other critically important issues. I find it especially disturbing that Christianity is being used as a reason for divesting women and minorities of their hard won rights. If you follow the national news right now you will probably have seen stories on the young man in Florida who was executed on a residential Florida street for the crime of walking while being black. The outrage over his killing, however, isn’t just because the shooting appears to have been racially motivated, although that is certainly reason for outrage. The outcry is because the admitted shooter, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, was not arrested or even taken in for questioning, and he was allowed to keep his gun. The admitted shooter told 911 that he thought the young man walking home from the mini-mart with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea looked threatening because he was black and wearing a hoodie. He then told them he was following the young man and was told by the 911 operator not to do that. A few minutes later, Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old honor student visiting his father for the weekend, lay dead. George Zimmerman claimed self defense.
TV personality Geraldo said that parents of young men of color should tell their sons not to ever wear a hoodie - that wearing a hoodie is what got Trayvon shot. Really? That’s right up there with claiming that short skirts and tight blue jeans cause rape. Today to protest that mind set, preachers all over the country are wearing hoodies. At the Ecumenical Advocacy event in DC a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea were placed on the communion table, and that too is happening in congregations across our land. Meanwhile, Black preachers are speaking out from their own life experience.
Dr. Preston T. Adams, III, Pastor of Amazing Grace CC (DOC)) in Indianapolis said: “As we ponder and respond to the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I'd also like us to consider the following: In my hometown of Chicago, 60 people were shot over the past weekend. Many of them were kids and several died including a child under age 8. Where is the national outrage for this? In the city I call home now (Indianapolis), a 16 year old allegedly shot 5 other teens in a gang related incident downtown using a .40 caliber weapon. Where is the outrage over this? I agree that we should be outraged over the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, but it can't stop there”.

Dr. Jack Sullivan, Regional Minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Pennsylvania said: “Twice in my adult life, while out engaging in ministry and service, and breaking no laws, I was stopped and questioned by law enforcement officers for no reason other than the color of my skin. One wonders where I would be today had I made a movement considered by those officers as suspicious. While the vast majority of officers and guards are fair and practice restraint, clearly many are misguided by racist stereotypes. Racial profiling is a clear and present societal danger that must be stopped.”

Racism, racial profiling, the hatred of the other caused by fear are all part of this tragedy. But I think that we need to consider that this is much more than a racial issue. It’s a human issue, a societal issue. The idea that any person can be killed by any other person because that other thinks they look threatening - the fact that there are laws supporting that - is just wrong. It frightens me that an independent group has offered a $10,000 reward for information on whereabouts of the shooter, whose family says is in hiding for fear of retribution. Because the law in Florida covering what constitutes self defense is so loose, I can easily imagine someone finding and shooting George Zimmerman in retribution, then claiming he looked threatening.
I am reminded of the shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Do you remember that one? On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County. Charles Roberts took hostages and shot ten girls aged 6–13, killing five of them, before committing turning the gun on himself in the schoolhouse. It was a horrific, brutal, terrifying event.

And yet - On the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, "We must not think evil of this man." Another Amish father noted, "He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he's standing before a just God." A member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts."

An Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Amish community members visited and comforted Roberts' widow, parents, and parents-in-law. One Amish man held Roberts' sobbing father in his arms, reportedly for as long as an hour, to comfort him. The Amish also set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter. About 30 members of the Amish community attended Roberts' funeral, and Marie Roberts, the widow of the killer, was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of one of the victims.

It would be wrong to think that the Amish parents weren’t angry about what happened. I’m sure they were. It’s just that forgiveness and reconciliation are important parts of their faith. They did what they believe Jesus would want them to do: to forgive those who injured them and to offer comfort to others who were also hurt by the events of the day. It seems to me that the families of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania acted as if they do have God’s law written on their hearts.

And if Charles Roberts had lived to go to trial, I expect that the parents of the murdered girls would have done the same thing that Erricka Bridgeford did just a few days ago. She argued against the death penalty for her brother’s slayer, saying that justice for the 2007 murder of her brother won’t come by lethal injection. “It’s not justice to me to have another dead body in place of my brother’s dead body,” she said.

Some outside the Amish community were critical of this quick forgiveness, arguing that forgiveness is inappropriate when no remorse has been expressed, and that such an attitude runs the risk of denying the existence of evil. Really? I can’t find the place where it is written that there must be remorse before forgiveness can happen. Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven times, but doesn’t say anything about first find making sure the other is properly repentant before forgiving him. Forgiveness doesn’t really have anything to do with the person who sinned, rather, it is all about the person who is sinned against. Reconciliation is not about forgetting the past, rather it is about choosing to walk into the future together regardless of what has happened in the past.

Jeremiah gave the people comfort and hope when he told them that God was going to start over again with Israel, forming a new covenant to replace the one they had broken so many times in their history. They will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.

For God, forgiveness is the main event. God’s greatest desire and delight is to see us all reconcile ourselves with God. It is in this reconciliation that the world becomes new. That is what Easter is about. With the death of Jesus, sin is buried. With his resurrection, we are reborn, we are made new, we are changed, we have the law written on our hearts in the new covenant. This is what we celebrate every Sunday at the Lord’s Table; reconciliation between all of humanity and God.
We come together at the Table in remembrance of the life and death and resurrection of the Christ. We come together at the Table to share the love of God. We come together at the Table to offer ourselves to God’s service. We come to share the Lord.


Title of this message taken from a sermon by Gage Church, pastor of Congregational UCC in Ogden, UT

Choose Joy! 3rd Sunday of Advent

Scripture Reading
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 NRSV
1 The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

8 For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. 10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

As I read this passage I tried to imagine what it might feel like to be a person in exile, still grieving the loss of my home and everything dear to me, knowing that my ancestors were among the leaders, the wealthiest, the 1% if you will and that therefore their actions or lack thereof were at least partly responsible for Israel ending up in this situation. I am convinced that if I had the chance they had I surely wouldn’t make the same mistakes. I feel forsaken by my God. Is God not paying attention to our pain, our suffering, our fears? Then I imagine that I have heard Isaiah, who was truly the voice crying out in the wilderness of exile and pain, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s Favor. I heard him calling upon me to be joyous, to exult in my God, for I am of Israel. I am of a people whom the Lord has blessed.

Frankly, if I am one of the exiles in Babylon, I don’t feel all that blessed. Mostly I feel tired of waiting for God to swoop in and rescue us. I mean, can’t he hear our cries? Can’t he see the suffering of his people? Always before God has sent someone to lead Israel out of whatever mess she’d gotten herself into, but it’s been a long long time in exile. There’s no indication of a leader rising from among the people. Yet here is the prophet saying “Rejoice! You are going to bring healing to your land and your people. God has promised this and it is going to happen – soon!” I want to believe him. I surely hope he’s right. It’s just that it has been a long time so I’m really not sure what there is to rejoice about.

And yet, it happened just as Isaiah said it would. Cyrus the Great defeated Babylon, sent the exiles home and even helped rebuild the cities and the temple. From that time forward Cyrus was celebrated by Israel as a messiah, anointed of the Lord.

Six hundred or so years later the heavy foot of Rome is upon the land and has been for quite some time. Jesus has come and gone. He preached and died and was resurrected and arose into heaven, promising to return to us. The apostles told everyone that he was coming back, that he was coming into his kingdom, and that it would happen soon! Within the lifetimes of those who knew him. In the city of Thessalonica the people aren’t feeling very joyful. They’re tired of waiting. It’s been 20 years, half a lifetime since he ascended into heaven and he isn’t back yet. I imagine what it must have been like to be in that congregation, to be in the early church anywhere, wondering when Jesus will come, when the old ways will disappear and God’s kingdom will be established upon the earth.

Oh right. I really don’t have to imagine what that feels like, do I? Nearly 2,000 years have passed now. And still we wait. Each year we celebrate Advent – we wait. We tell ourselves he is coming! Emmanuel will come. The Messiah will come. It has been promised to us and we believe it is true. And yet we wonder, as did the church in Thessalonica, when is he coming? Can’t he hear the suffering? Can’t he see the pain of his people? When is he going to swoop in and save all of us?

Paul knew what the people were feeling. He felt it himself! He’d been so sure – they were all so sure that they would see Jesus return, coming down from the sky the very same way he left. But it’s been way longer than they expected. Paul starts to wonder if maybe they were mistaken in the way they interpreted Jesus’ words. Nevertheless, he knows his savior lives. He is confident that the kingdom of God will become a reality on the earth.

And so he tells the people, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, “5:16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise the words of prophets, 21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil. 23May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”

Rejoice always! Not the easiest thing to do when life is not going well. The words of Psalm 137 keep coming back to me. How do we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land? How do we rejoice when we can see so much pain and suffering in the world; in Kenya and California, in Darfur and Detroit, in Bosnia and Boston.

Give thanks in all circumstances! Really, Paul? I mean, I can see giving thanks for the things I have that are good. I have a job. I can pay my bills. I have a home to live in. There is food on my table. I’m pretty healthy right now and I have health insurance. I have a loving husband. I have friends I care about and who care about me. I am part of a caring, giving, doing community here at Delhaven Christian Church. I can give thanks for these and many other blessings. But giving thanks in all circumstances? How would that work, exactly?

Let’s see. I had that inflamed joint and it hurt a lot! But it forced me to allow others to help me. OK, I can give thanks for the injury. Our church secretary bought a home in Santa Cruz and is moving there next weekend. This is wonderful and I am really happy for her, but it leaves the church without a secretary and we lack the funds to hire another. Looking for something to be thankful for . . . ah yes, at least one person has volunteered to spend time in the church office every week so there will be someone here to give food to the hungry. Volunteering gives people an opportunity to serve the way Jesus directed us to serve, so I am thankful for that. Clearly, in many cases there is something for which I can be thankful.

Sometimes, however, there are circumstances that don’t seem to have a positive side. I thought of so many examples of terrible things that exist in our world, but I don’t have to list them for you. You know what the world is like today. The exiles in Babylon asked Isaiah and the Christians in Thessalonica asked Paul and we also ask: How do we rejoice in suffering? How do we give thanks in the face of tragedy? In light of all the terrible things that are going on in our lives and in our world how do we continue to wait for the coming of the Lord?

and both of them answered saying, Rejoice! Give thanks! For the Lord is faithful.

That’s it. It’s not things for which we are to be thankful. We aren’t being asked to rejoice over the bad things in our lives or even in spite of them. We are being reminded to rejoice in the Lord! We are being directed to give thanks to God for the love, compassion and forgiveness he showers upon us even, especially when we have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. We are being told, again, that our focus is always to be on God first and foremost, before any other consideration.

Paul said to rejoice always, give thanks for everything, pray unceasingly for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you... . hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

It is not that we are to rejoice and be thankful about the circumstances we find ourselves in, but that we are to rejoice and be thankful for God in us. In every circumstance, in every event of our lives, no matter where we find ourselves or how we feel about what’s happening in our lives and in our world, rejoice in the Lord! Every moment of every day, remember that we serve a living savior who is with us every moment of every day, who we can rely on to help us hold on when we feel ourselves slipping, and be thankful.

I got to this point in my writing and all I could think of were the words to hymns.
Joyful, joyful we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of Love.
Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her king!

Paul said, do not quench the Spirit.
Do not allow the world to drag your heart down into despair and sin. Rejoice!
Rejoice, for ours is the God of love and light.
Rejoice, for God in Christ is always with us.
Rejoice, for God’s kingdom is coming.
We don’t know when.
We don’t know how.
But we do know that we can loudly proclaim,
Christians All Your Lord is Coming

Is this the way it's supposed to be?

PEACE SUNDAY

Isaiah 40:1-11 NRSV
1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." 6 A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" 10 See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.


In Bible Study this week we read chapters 22-24 in Exodus. Among many other things God told the people of Israel these things, which are re-stated over and over again throughout the Old Testament: 21Don't mistreat or oppress an immigrant, because you were once immigrants in the land of Egypt. 22Don't treat any widow orphan badly. 23If you do treat them badly and they cry out to me, you can be sure that I'll hear their cry. 24I'll be furious, and I'll kill you with the sword. Then your wives will be widows, and your children will be orphans.
25If you lend money to my people who are poor among you, don't be a creditor and charge them interest. 26If you take a piece of clothing from someone as a security deposit, you should return it before the sun goes down. 27His clothing may well be his only blanket to cover himself. What else will that person have to sleep in? And if he cries out to me, I'll listen, because I'm compassionate.

In those same passages it becomes clear that individuals can only prosper as long as the community is stable and working in balance. The laws allow for restitution, not retribution. There was no such thing as a giant lawsuit – the value of any item, injury or damage was known in advance.

In Exodus 22, in the middle of this list of laws and punishments God promises the people of Israel what sounds like the ultimate peace of heart. “25If you worship the LORD your God, the LORD will bless your bread and your water. I'll take sickness away from you, 26and no woman will miscarry or be infertile in your land. I'll let you live a full, long life.“ If you worship me, if you obey me, this is the peace of heart that will come again upon the people of Israel. Long healthy lives. Healthy babies and many of them. No enemies to worry about.

But . . .the leaders of Israel ignored those laws and because they did, because greed and the lust for power replaced the kind of balanced community the laws provided for, the entire nation was lost. They didn’t simply suffer military defeat as they had every other time they’d “done what was evil in the sight of God.” This time their temple was destroyed, the crops were burned in the fields, all the wealth of the nation was taken away and the leadership – the nobles and priests – were taken away into captivity. Their children are taken away and raised as Babylonians. Those who were left behind had to scratch out a living as best they could, for the bulk of their wealth – their crops, their herds, the very fish from the waters of Israel – went to support their overlords. All went to Babylon.

Israel has been punished for their pride and their disobedience. They have lost far more than just their wealth and power, status and prestige. They have lost their homeland and their children. They fear the loss of their language, their culture, their very identity as a people. They had lost hope. Psalm 137 makes their feelings very clear,

“By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked us for mirth,
saying “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

There was no peace in their hearts.

And now God says to Isaiah, “Comfort my people. Tell them the time of their imprisonment is over. Tell them to have peace in their hearts. Tell them they need have no more worries or concerns.” They will be returned to their home. They will liberated, even as they were liberated from slavery in Egypt. They will be returned to the land promised to their ancestors.

In a recent Christian Century magazine, Bill Goettler, assistant dean of ministerial studies at Yale Divinity School and co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New Haven told a story about a homeless man he has known for a couple of years. Danny slept in the doorway of a local business, careful to leave before anyone arrived for work in the morning so he didn’t frighten them. He could be seen around town selling newspapers, washing windows and collecting things to recycle. He worked hard to get the few dollars he needed for food. Sometimes he’d come around to the church asking for a bus pass or a few dollars or some food. And whenever he saw Goettler, he’d say “Reverend, Is this the way it’s supposed to be?”

The short answer is NO! It’s not supposed to be this way. It’s only this way when the leaders forget in whose name they are leading, who put them in positions of power and trust. It’s only this way when society becomes unbalanced. When it becomes clear to everyone that “winning” is more important than fairness or compassion or mercy or what’s good for the community. When a candidate for president claims that people who are poor and jobless have only themselves to blame. When the most popular TV shows feature groups of people placed in a difficult environment and, rather than being told to create the best community they can, are encouraged to manipulate each other, to lie, cheat and steal in order to win a large sum of money.

There is no peace when people have no place to sleep, no job or hope of one, no way to support themselves or their families. There is no peace when the wealthy have the power of life and death over the poor.

When Israel behaved this way God paid attention. God promised Israel more than just peace of heart if they worshipped their Lord. God promised destruction if they oppressed the powerless among them. “23If you do treat them badly and they cry out to me, you can be sure that I'll hear their cry. 24I'll be furious, and I'll kill you with the sword. Then your wives will be widows, and your children will be orphans.”

I think God means it. And I think God’s promise to bring destruction upon those who oppress the powerless is beginning to come true here. Maybe destruction won’t come at the point of a sword but when I look at the news I am beginning to see an upswelling of rebellion against that lack of compassion and mercy that is a plague upon our nation. There’s the non-violent Occupy movement, of course, but there are other examples of civil disobedience that are as wonderful as they are unexpected.

In Atlanta this week, Chase Bank foreclosed upon a home and deputies were sent with a moving van and a writ of eviction. This is never an easy job for the police When they arrived and saw the homeowners they called their supervisor and said, “We’re not going to do this.” They could not in good conscience remove 103 year old Vida Lee Hall and her 83 year old daughter from the house they had called home for over 50 years. Their call was passed all the way up the chain of command to Sheriff Jackson, who backed them up in their refusal to obey the writ of eviction and called them back to their station. I first saw this story Wednesday on MSNBC, where Laurence O’Donnell said “Laws alone cannot make a Just society Laws must be tempered with mercy. We have a more just society because Sheriff Jackson of Atlanta followed his conscience instead of the law.” I think it is only right that Sheriff Jackson and his deputies chose to protect the powerless instead of serving the wealthy. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that those deputies went home that night with peace in their hearts.

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Scott Olson, a veteran of two tours in Iraq, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on Thursday. You may know that he is the man who suffered a serious head injury at Occupy Oakland when the police were trying to move the protestors from their location. His story became the motivating force that reinvigorated the movement around the country and inspired even more people to actively participate. During that interview he said, “I want more than anything to see more people get involved. You can't effect change sitting at home. The occupy movement is about coming together and learning each others stories and creating community.”

And did you know that the Occupy movement is changing focus? As more cities are moving the Occupiers out of parks and other pubic spaces, people are now occupying properties where, for example, a single mother and her children are about to be evicted because, as in so many other cases, the bank wouldn’t negotiate her mortgage payments. Instead of occupying public property for all the 99%, they are occupying private property to help individual members of the community. This isn’t new. Communities did the same thing during the Great Depression, standing with their neighbors against the bankers.

When the people of Israel behaved as community, when they obeyed the laws that were intended to keep their society in balance, when they cared for the powerless among them with mercy and compassion, they had peace. Not just political and military peace, but peace that comes from within. When the people of Israel had this peace of heart, the kind of peace that is one of the blessings showered upon them by God, then they were free.

A friend of mine recently shared this quote from the Dalai Lama: “The basic foundation of humanity is compassion and love. This is why, if even a few individuals simply try to create mental peace and happiness within themselves and act responsibly and kind-heartedly towards others, they will have a positive influence in their community.”

Author and Holocaust Survivor Eli Wiesel said, “Peace is our gift to each other.”

The deputies in Georgia gave peace when they chose compassion over blind obedience to the law. The Occupiers seek peace by bringing international attention to the plight of the powerless, calling for the kind of economic justice that is rooted in compassion and mercy. As Christians we are required to love our neighbor, to bring that peace that surpasses all understanding into the lives we touch as we go about our daily business. This love, this peace-giving, is the form of worship that the prophet Micah declared God most desires of us, more than thousands of rams or rivers of oil or clouds of incense, but rather to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Blessed be the God of Israel!

Gratitude Month

It's November. In November people's thoughts tend to turn toward gratitude. We are, after all, about to indulge in America's annual Thanksgiving feast. This year I think I will do something really different. I will try to just enjoy the holiday instead of feeling compelled to explain about the genocidal nature of the first such officially declared thanksgiving feast and all the other Grinch-ish info that people don't really want to hear. I suspect that my friends and parishioners will be grateful. They probably feel they have heard it enough over the 20+ years of my marriage to a Navajo. :-)

One of my Facebook friends is asking all her friends to post something on her page that they are grateful for every single day. That's pretty cool. Many 12 Step meetings this month will focus on gratitude as the discussion topic.

I'm going to use Thanksgiving Sunday as opportunity to prepare a stewardship sermon while everyone's focus is on gratitude. I know. Pastors generally hate to preach on stewardship. Since I am not a volunteer pastor, it feels a bit self-serving to ask people for generous contributions to my salary. I know there's all that other stuff, the stuff that makes it possible for our church to serve the community. But still, it always does feel just a bit selfish, but ...

The thing is, I learned a long time ago that Gratitude is a verb - an action word. If I am grateful for the blessings in my life then I need to say Thank You in a concrete manner. Simply saying, "I'm thankful for rainbows" is not a true expression of gratitude. Showing my gratitude by sharing the beauty of a rainbow with someone else, on the other hand, shows my gratitude because that action brings joy into their day. It's not enough to say "I'm grateful we live in a beautiful world." A true act of gratitude for the beauty of the earth could take the form of recycling or saving water or planting a tree or whatever your choice might be.

Therefore, if I am grateful for the blessings I have received because of the things I have learned as a Christian then it is incumbent upon me to return those blessings in a tangible manner. If the church gave me safe shelter from a harsh world, even in the mere fact of welcoming me into the arms of the congregation on Sunday morning then I am going to want to express my gratitude by making sure the church is there to help someone else.

Likewise, if the lessons I have taken from the readings and messages and hymns have had a positive influence on my life; if I have learned how to be a better person by trying to live according to the example set for me by Jesus and all the saints of the church who have come before, then it is important that I share that Good News so that others can enjoy the same kind of blessings that I have received.

So this Sunday I will expand on Paul's expression of thanks to the church in Ephesus by preaching on faithful stewardship and generous giving as an inevitable expression of true gratitude for the blessings we daily receive. And my post today on my friend's Facebook page will be, "I am grateful that it is my job to teach others how to live in active gratitude for all the blessings we receive."

A Communication Epiphany

On this day after all hype over changes to Facebook I just want to share a recent insight, even an Aha Moment, about the way we communicate. First, a bit of background.

My congregation has produced a newsletter for the last 29 years or so. Every month upcoming events, prayer requests, church board minutes and a column written by the pastor would be carefully compiled, formatted, printed and mailed by the church secretary. During a secretary-free period a couple of years ago I took on the task and even after we found a new secretary I kept on gathering and formatting all the information for both the mail version and the newly developed website version. It was one of those "it's just easier to do it myself" situations.

Last summer I went on sabbatical. The board moderator took over my admin duties, one of which was producing the newsletter. Well, that just didn't happen. For three months no newsletter was printed or put on the website. When I returned it really surprised me to realize that no one seemed to miss it at all! We decided to just let it go.

For the past year we've been letting people know what's going on through announcements at the end of worship, email blasts, notices on the website, Facebook and even text messages. Phone calls were added to the mix when the news was really time sensitive.

At some point I began to notice that I missed seeing some folks at events that they had always attended in the past. I couldn't imagine what would keep them away. I began to realize that the missing folks were people who don't use the internet. I realized that not everyone is on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter. And just to be really clear, most of these folks are NOT elderly retired people who just never learned to use the internet, although there are a few of those. Some are people who have made a choice not to spend any portion of their home life attached to the machine. Some only use the internet for work. Some just simply cannot afford it.

That's when the epiphany came. I realized that just because it is new and up to date and the best/most efficient method of doing whatever doesn't mean it's the only way we should do that thing. There is/should be a place in between not changing because "That's the way we've always done it" and throwing out "the way we've always done it" just because it IS the old way. I had to realize that new isn't necessarily better and doesn't have to completely replace the old.

Certainly I'm not the first person to realize this. When the conversion of Gentiles began and circumcision was no longer required for baptism and membership in this new cult of Christianity Paul continued to remind the members of the new churches that the foundation of our faith is firmly rooted in the Abrahamic tradition. Just because the dietary restrictions weren't required of the new folks didn't mean that people who were accustomed to keeping the Law needed to give it up. He mentioned repeatedly that the old ways could and should exist alongside the new and directed both Jewish Christians and Greek Christians to accept the ways of the other even if they didn't follow those ways themselves. Christians today acknowledge that the Greek Testament builds upon the Hebrew and is equally important to informing our knowledge of God.

Our first newsletter in over a year will be going out this week. We'll keep doing all the very coolest and most up to date electronic and digital communication but we'll also make paper copies available to the folks who live alongside those of us obsessed with all things digital.

Back to School Sunday

Wisdom 6:12 – 19 (Common English Bible)
Wisdom is bright and unfading. She readily appears to those who love her. She’s found by those who keep seeking after her. She makes herself known even in advance to those who desire her with all their hearts. Someone who wakens before dawn to look for her will find her already sitting at the door. Taking wisdom to heart is the way to bring your thinking to maturity. The one who can’t sleep at night because he’s consumed with thinking about her will soon be free from worry.

She herself goes about looking for those who are worthy of her. She graciously makes herself known to them as they travel. She comes to them in each of the ideas that they think. The real beginning of wisdom is to desire instruction with all your heart. Love for instruction expresses itself in careful reflection. If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.



The reading I used today comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, which is not found in many of the bibles we have at home. It is one of those books only found in study bibles (and Catholic and Orthodox bibles) in that section between the Old and New Testaments known as the apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. The bishops who decided which books should go into the Bible decided that these should available to students of the Bible because we can learn from them but that we shouldn’t consider them to be authoritative.

The Wisdom of Solomon is sort of a continuation of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. A large part of it is narrated by a person known as Wisdom and contains sayings about how to live with joy and obedience to God. We first meet Wisdom in Proverbs where she describe herself in this way:

The LORD created me at the beginning of his way, before his deeds long in the past.
I was formed in ancient times, at the beginning, before the earth was.
When there were no watery depths, I was brought forth,
when there were no springs with water.
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth;
before God made the earth and the fields or the first of the dry land.
I was there when he established the heavens,
when he marked out the horizon on the deep sea,
when he thickened the clouds above,
when he secured the fountains of the deep,
when he set a limit for the sea, so the water couldn't go beyond his command,
when he marked out the earth's foundations.
Common English Bible (2011-06-15). CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha (Kindle Locations 28122-28143).

Just FYI, Wisdom is always referred to as a woman because the word meaning wisdom is feminine in Hebrew and Greek. English words, of course, don’t have gender.


This concludes the educational portion of the message.


I say that sort of tongue in cheek because as we all know education and wisdom are not the same thing. Today we celebrate the beginning of the school year, the beginning of a new season of education. The children will learn a lot this year. They’ll learn new things about words and numbers and science and maybe history and languages . . . and I don’t know what all. Their teachers will do their very best to teach them the things they need to know, the things the government and the school system say the children need to learn in order to pass the required tests.

I know that most teachers would much rather teach them how to think, how to reason their way through situations, how to think critically about problems and issues. Most teachers are be thrilled if in addition to teaching their students how to pass tests they also manage teach them to be moral and ethical and wise.

The real beginning of wisdom is to desire instruction with all your heart. Love for instruction expresses itself in careful reflection. . If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.

If you love wisdom you will keep her laws, you will live forever, you will be near to God. This sounds familiar. This is kingdom of heaven language. The one who loves Wisdom loves God, because Wisdom is of God. The one who loves Wisdom and therefore God, will do justice and love kindness, will show mercy and compassion, will care for the widow and orphan and everyone who has no one to protect them from the oppressor.

I know, I say these things all the time yet I don’t always say what loving the widow and the orphan and all the other powerless people really entails.

For the last two years we have been offering a program called the Treasure Box. A Treasure Box contains about 25 pounds of good quality frozen food at a very reasonable cost. It is supposed to feed a family of 4 for one week and an elderly person for an entire month. Unfortunately, Treasure Box has been losing so much money that they can’t continue to offer this service. The very last Treasure Boxes will be distributed in September. Most of our people were very upset to hear this – they simply don’t know what they’re going to do. Some have been sent to us by social workers or the school system. Many are retired or on disability. One has 6 foster kids and 3 of his own to feed. We feel terrible and we feel responsible to find a way to help these people. We’re going to see if we can get involved with a similar program between now and October so we can keep serving our neighbors.

One of the people who gets a Treasure Box every month is Garth, a very nice elderly man who has the kind of physical difficulties that make me think maybe he’s had a stroke. He was relieved to hear that we’re going to try to continue helping him. He’s terrified that the government is going to take away his Social Security and Medicare. He’s angry that the government doesn’t seem to care about people like him.

The Hebrew prophets told the government of their own times that if they didn’t care for the poor and powerless they would fall – and they did. Dr. Jeremiah Wright said the same thing to the U.S. government in his infamous “God damns America” sermon. He wasn’t alone in this kind of thinking. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to preach a sermon titled “Why America May Go to Hell” the Sunday after his assassination. According to Dr. Cornel West of Princeton University in a recent NY Times article titled “Dr King Weeps From His Grave,” Dr. King said that his “dream of a more democratic America had become “a nightmare” owing to the persistence of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism.” Dr. King called America a “sick society.”’

Forty plus years later America is still sick and suffering from the causes of Dr. King’s nightmares.
Racism: It isn’t dead, it’s just changed the way it works. Schools are more segregated today than they were in 1970. Racially based hate crimes are on the increase. The prison population is disproportionately comprised of young men of color.
Poverty: The gap between the rich and poor is greater than it has ever been. Thanks to the greed of banks and multinational corporations more families – 2 parents plus children – are homeless now than at any time since the Great Depression and it doesn’t look like those numbers are going to decrease any time soon.
Militarism: We are engaged in two wars, and have been at war for nearly ten years. You have all seen the news stories about the dire straits way too many military families are in while the military industrial complex reports record profit.
Materialism: Corporations are people now – at least they are according to the Supreme Court and some candidates for the presidency. We are a nation living on plastic, bombarded with the temptation to buy online, on TV, on the phone and on impulse. A frighteningly large percentage of us are one pink slip or bad diagnosis away from financial disaster. I won’t even mention that lately some Americans have losing rights at a scary pace – union members and poor women and –

Do I need to point out that the people who suffer most as a result of racism and materialism and militarism and poverty are the widows and the orphans and the otherwise powerless?
The very same people who have been denied justice from forever –
the same ones that God specifically and repeatedly told the leaders to treat with justice and mercy and compassion or bad things would happen.

Yesterday Garth said he is afraid that if the government keeps taking away from the poor that people will take up arms, that there will be a violent uprising, a revolution. I believe a revolution is exactly what we need. According to Cornel West we need to make “a revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.”

There have been surveys lately that indicate the “religious right” believes church should have a larger role in politics. Well, I’m not part of the religious right, but I believe that too.
I believe that the Church needs to stand up for the justice that is denied the poor, the widows, the orphans, the bullied and the powerless.
I believe that we must sign petitions, march, register to vote and tell everyone around us to register to vote, write blogs and letters to the editor and letters to our elected officials.
I believe we must stand with the Hebrew prophets and with Dr. King, and tell our government to love Wisdom and to love her laws, to love justice.
I believe we need to remind them what happened to Israel and to Judah when the prophets were ignored –

and just to be clear, the prophets were not fussing over how to properly keep all the laws in Torah. They weren’t worried about written down rules and how to interpret them. They weren’t lawyers. Some of them weren’t very well educated. But they were lovers of Wisdom. They were prophets. Their job was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. They were concerned for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless. They preached that everybody, but especially the leaders of the nation, need to act with justice and mercy and compassion and love to all persons, but especially to the oppressed.


We need to do that.
We need to do that because if we do not stand with the least of our brothers and sisters, we are not Christian.
We need to do that because if we do not love even the most unlovable,
we are not Christian.
I don’t know what we would be, but we would not be Christian.
We would most certainly not be lovers of Wisdom and of her laws.

Wisdom is bright and unfading. She readily appears to those who love her. She’s found by those who keep seeking after her. . . If you love Wisdom, you will keep her laws. If you are attentive to her laws, you can be assured that you will live forever. If you live forever, you will be near to God.

Let’s live forever.
Let’s be near to God.
Let’s seek Holy Wisdom.

A Response to "Easter Shouldn't be a Big Deal"

I read a blog the other day that said we shouldn't make a big deal about Easter. When I read the first line or so I was very disturbed because if not for Easter what would be the point? We wouldn't have a resurrection to build our faith around. We would have lots of excellent teachings to live by but . . .

Then I read the rest of the blog. And I got the point. The blogger was talking about the whole visitor thing. It seems that some churches get a whole bunch of Christmas and Easter visitors.

Some of those visitors don't know what to expect in church and get lost during the program, which is apparently funny to some. It further seems that members and even (gasp) preachers at those churches can be somewhat unfriendly about the whole Christmas and Easter thing. They say things like "Nice to see you here for a change,' which is not a comment geared to bring the visitor back next Sunday or even next Easter.

In some congregations the service is totally unlike what a visitor is likely to find if they come on any other Sunday during the year. There are processions and plays and full orchestras. The folks who normally show up in jeans are in dresses and suits. The clergy are wearing their best vestments. Visitors may get lost in the shuffle or embarrassed by being made to stand up and introduce themselves.

And some congregations have LOTS of opportunities to attend services on Easter. They have a special sunrise service and their regular morning service or two and maybe a special afternoon or evening service. I know this because the religious page in our local newspaper expands from 1 page to 3!

We don't get a lot of visitors at Easter. We might have a few, but usually what we experience is that everyone who ever shows up during the year is pretty sure to show up on Easter. Some of our folks are once a month church folks and some are once every couple of months church folks. But on Easter everybody is here. We don't have any extra Easter Sunday services, just have our regular 10:30 a.m. service. Some years we have our choir concert on Palm Sunday and some years we have it on Easter. The same people who are always in the choir are in the choir. We always have an egg hunt after church and the kids find all the eggs so quickly that I have yet to watch the hunt happening.

But I have to confess that when visitors come we do make them sign our visitor book and then stand up or at least sit and wave at the congregation when they are introduced. We warn them that this is going to happen, and I always make sure to invite them publicly for our after worship fellowship time. But then, we do that every Sunday to whatever visitors show up. It's not to embarrass them, it's to make them feel welcome. It's to help the rest of the folks remember they are visitors so they can help if the new folks seem to be lost at any point during the service.

I especially love the Lord's Supper when we have visitors. Because when we have visitors I get to explain again why Disciples share this meal every Sunday and that everyone is welcome to partake. I get to give directions on how we do communion here so that no one has to feel left out.

So - is Easter a big deal at our church? Absolutely! Even though we do things pretty much the same way at Easter as every other week, there's a good theological reason for that. You see, once upon a time somebody told me that we celebrate Easter EVERY Sunday and so every Sunday is a big deal.

Happy Easter y'all.

Palms or Passion?

Matthew 21:1-11
1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, "The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately. " 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5 "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" 10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" 11 The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."


There has been a big battle among preachers this week over whether we should focus on Palm Sunday or treat this Sunday as Palm/Passion Sunday. In seminary I was taught that we really should do Palm and Passion together because many of our churches won’t have Good Friday services. And that means that for many we will go directly from Palm Sunday to Easter without ever having Jesus suffer on the cross. I was taught “Without the crucifixion there can be no resurrection.” Those were the same arguments I saw on line for doing the whole Passion today. While those in opposition spoke of rushing the season and living in the grief of Holy Saturday all this last week instead of letting the events progress as they actually did. Sort of like putting the Christmas decorations out before the kids had gotten home from Trick or Treating.

Every year since I came to Delhaven we have celebrated Palm/Passion Sunday. Some years we have had our choir concert on Palm Sunday, so the music took us through the entire week including Easter celebrations. Some years I have preached and have taken us through the entire week up to Easter, forcing us all to struggle through the week with the image of Jesus, bloodied and broken, laying on the slab of rock inside Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. One year I even did a dramatic presentation as one of the women who followed Jesus.

My decision – and I like to bring you all along with me on these theological and liturgical decisions – is to do Palm Sunday this year. We’re going to be together on Thursday evening for supper and a Maundy Thursday service that Kate will be leading. And we will be praying all day, from noon to midnight, on Good Friday. Even though we may not all be in the same room at the same time during these events, we will be observing Holy Week in our homes and hearts, in our prayers and actions. This year for Palm Sunday we will stay in the day, lauding Jesus the rabbi from Nazareth as king, the way the crowd at the gate of Jerusalem did. We will take this opportunity to sing alleluias during Lent and forget for just a brief moment all the troubles that surround us. We will look to our king and believe that everything will be great almost immediately! – just as the crowd at the gate of Jerusalem did.

Me, I LOVE palm Sunday. It’s all about hope for the future, maybe even more so than Christmas. Welcoming the king of kings into my life, my heart, my soul. Celebrating that he is entering the city. Like the crowd, having no idea what is going to come later in the week but after a lifetime of suffering and waiting – wow! Here he is! The last will be first and the humble will be made great.

I was reading Ann Lamott’s “Plan B” this week and she says she just can’t deal with Good Friday. She is a resurrection kind of person. Well, me too. I think we have enough of Good Friday and Holy Saturday in our lives. We have enough pain and crucifixion and grieving and suffering and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Palm Sunday helps us get ready for the resurrection in a way that no other celebration can do – Palm Sunday leads us in that direction, even though the crowd didn’t quite have the right idea of how Jesus was to be King.

In ancient times, the prosperity of the land was believed to be tied directly to the king. A good king, a righteous king, a king who loved his land and his people and cared first about their wellbeing, would rule a land that prospered. For example, the Pharaoh of Egypt in the days of Joseph was a good king because his people were well cared for despite the fact that there was a famine. He listened to Joseph’s interpretation of a prophetic dream. He prepared for the famine and made sure his people were fed throughout that long seven years. King Jehoaichin of Judah, on the other hand, was not a righteous king. He cared only for his own power, he disregarded the plight of the poor and ignored the prophets. The Babylonians carried him away along with the nobility and priests and all the wealth of the land. Now, we know that he wasn’t the first unrighteous king in the land. He was the last in a line of bad kings, kings who cared only for their own comfort and power, and who didn’t listen to the prophets who kept trying to bring them back to the ways of their God. In fact, from the time of Solomon onward, the Bible only tells us about one king who was righteous, who had the Temple re-dedicated, re-instituted the celebration of Passover and had the Law of Moses read aloud from the steps of the Temple. In his time things were looking up a bit. Alas, his descendents returned to the ways that displeased their God and so, eventually, they were overcome by might of Babylon. From that time until the time of Jesus there hadn’t been any really Good kings. In fact, the kings they had ruling them were mostly puppets of some empire or other. The people of the land were looking for a messiah, a king who would return them to the glory days of David and Solomon, when their nation had wealth and power and the respect of their neighbors, when all the poor and widows and orphans were cared for, when judges spoke with righteousness and didn’t always make decisions in favor of the most powerful. This is the king they welcomed into Jerusalem that day. This is the Messiah they proclaimed, laying their cloaks and palms in the street in front of him.

Frankly, we sometimes have trouble understanding Jesus as King. Oh, we speak of him as Lord. We give him king-like titles. We sort of shake our heads at the poor, ignorant folks of his time who couldn’t understand what Jesus meant when he said his kingdom is not of this world. And we are quite sure that he is the King of Heaven. King of the Afterlife. But that’s not quite it either. He is the king who leads us into a world that is radically different from the world he, and we, inherited. He is the king who models how we, his people, are to live, just as any good king does. He is the king who could have described himself with these words from Isaiah 50:

4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.
5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
6 I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
7 The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;

What kind of king brags of having the tongue of a teacher? The kind who wants to lead his people into a new way of living. The kind who says to them, the way of the world is not the way of God. Let me show you how to live in God’s kingdom. The kind who says, it’s going to be hard, and there will be sacrifices made. But don’t worry, I’m going to show you how to live through even the worst of times. I’m going to show you how to love even the worst of people.

As I get to this point I realize how very difficult it is to celebrate Palm Sunday without the Passion. Because you see, we know what comes next. We know that the adoring crowds will melt away, that even his followers will run and hide when he is taken from their midst.

But we also know how he faced his trial. We know that when one of his followers pulled out a sword, Jesus made him put it away. We know that Jesus even healed the man he injured, a man who came to arrest him. We know that he spoke not a word in threat or anger even when he knew he was being wrongfully accused and tried in an illegal court. We know he gave his back to those who struck him and blamed no one for what he was enduring.

We know . . . he was human. Which means that anything he could do, we can do. I know that when stuff happens, when tragedy comes into our lives, when oppression is looming large and we are called upon to be like Jesus, our first reaction might be “Well, yeah. But I am not Jesus. I can’t do what he did.” And maybe that’s true. But we can model ourselves after what he did, because he is our king, now and forever. He lived to teach us how to live, he died showing us how to face even the worst oppression and adversity, standing proudly for what we believe is right. Confronting evil with good, confronting violence with peace. As with anything else worthwhile that we learn how to do, living this way takes practice and dedication. It is difficult, but it is doable.

Jesus is our king. He is not the Once and Future King. He is not a king who lived a long time ago and will come back someday to be king again. He is the King of the world. He is our king, day in and day out, in good times and evil. He is the king who came to teach us how to live in love and justice, to bring us close to God, to set us free from the tyranny of anger and oppression, to shower us with God’s grace. Let us celebrate our King, waving our palms like the crowd at the gates of Jerusalem, singing Hosanna and crying out Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the God of Israel!







Blessed Be the God of Israel 135

Seeing Clearly

Ephesians 5:8-14
8 For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; 13 but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."


By this time of year many of the folks in the northern hemisphere are feeling as if winter will never end. It’s grey and gloomy outside and it seems as if spring will never arrive. Likewise by this time in Lent when so many of us are engaged in soul searching and self examination we may be feeling a little low and wondering why Easter is taking so long to arrive. So as I pondered the various passages offered by the lectionary for this fourth Sunday in Lent I was struck by the imagery of light and dark in this passage in Ephesians. “For once you were darkness but now in the Lord you are light.”

Darkness. The Dark Side. We all know Dark is used as a metaphor for all the less desirable character traits, things like hatred, anger, greed and violence. We use it to describe fictional villains and real ones; black hatted cowboys, vampires, Darth Vader and Charles Manson. Dark is cold. It is the home of spooky shadows, mold, evil plots, secrets and conspiracies. Many children are afraid of the dark and even though we tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of, most of us are quick to turn on a light when we enter a room. We don’t like the dark very much.

And then there is Light. Light is more than simply the opposite of the Dark. Light is everything that is warm and good and pure. When light shines the dark is chased away, evil is defeated. Vampires are destroyed, lies are exposed, ugliness is seen for what it truly is, children are comforted. Light is Luke Skywalker and Saint George the Dragon Slayer and Roy Rogers and Mother Theresa. Light is truth and justice and love, all the good things, all the blessings of life. We love the light.

People who live in the light see the world differently. It’s way beyond glass half empty or half full. It’s looking for the good in situations, not the potential for trouble. It’s trusting. It’s deciding the world is a good place and behaving as if you believe that to be true. People who live in the light are willing to shine their light into the darkness, to stand up against evil and speak out for the right. People who live in the light live in God’s kingdom.

Paul say to the church in Ephesus, “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” We may not always be able to do that well, but we can usually figure out what is not pleasing to God.

You all know that I watch the news a lot. I watch for a couple of hours in the morning and then for another hour or two after dinner. When I can stay awake long enough I end the day checking out what the Comedy Channel does with whatever the rest of the media is reporting on. And yet somehow I entirely missed that Terry Jones, pastor of a small congregation in Florida, presided over a group of some 30 people who burned a copy of the Qur’an two weeks ago. You might remember that the last time Pastor Jones was in the news was just before September 11th, when he was threatening to burn a whole stack of Qur’ans. The president condemned this recent action and many Christian and interfaith groups in the US spoke out publicly against it.

I’m quite sure that treating any other person or group of people with complete disrespect and hate-filled speech is not pleasing to the Lord. Jesus said “Love your neighbor” not “mistreat your neighbor”. Even if you are sufficiently ill-informed as to believe that all of Islam is the enemy – which it isn’t - Jesus also said “love your enemy.”

I suppose I can be excused for not noticing the Qur’an burning at first. It didn’t get a lot of press in the US, what with the political budget stuff here and the earthquake and tsunami and nuclear plant problems in Japan and anti-government demonstrations in North Africa and the Middle East and a new war starting and all. We’ve had some really busy news cycles and I guess the media thought that since only 30 folks showed up and there were no demonstrators present maybe it could just sort of slide under the radar. Unfortunately, the rest of the world was paying attention. Particularly the parts of the world where they believe that America as a nation is anti-Islam. People in those parts of the world held demonstrations to let us know they were displeased. Things turned ugly in Afghanistan. Seven people were killed at a United Nations office building. According to the Associated press: several hundred demonstrators were peacefully protesting the purported [Qur’an] burning when the gathering suddenly turned violent. This violence in response to a hateful act is also not pleasing to the Lord.

I was blessed to meet Noor-Malika Chisti, a Vice President of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of World Religions and a member of the World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations at the Interfaith Peace March in Pomona last September. On Saturday Noor-Malika had this to say in response to that violence: The Prophet Mohammad, peace upon him, gave us the example of how to respond to ignorant and hateful language: show them something better. The killings of United Nations workers in Afghanistan by those who were protesting the burning of the Qur’an by Terry Jones is NOT what was modeled for us, nor taught to us in the Qur'an.

According to Dr. Margaret Aymer of Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Paul is urging the church in Ephesus “to set boundaries and ethics for life together as a community of faith, boundaries that call community members to pursue goodness, justice (or righteousness) and truth. Part of that pursuit includes not only following truth, but truth-telling: exposing that which is false or secretive to community discernment.” (Dr. Margaret Aymer Commentary on 2nd Reading, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx)

Silence in the face of evil is not pleasing to the Lord. Allowing any kind of darkness, any kind of hatred, any kind of evil to exist without speaking and acting against it is not pleasing to the Lord. In fact, when we stand silently by, when we say nothing in the face of evil, we ourselves are engaging in evil. We ourselves are living in the dark instead of living in the light. It is not enough to turn our back on the evil doer. It is necessary that we speak out against their actions. Especially when that evil doer is one of our own community – one of the body of Christ. Now we can say “Well, that guy who burned the Qur’an and that guy who shows up with his “God hates Fags” signs at military funerals, they’re not really Christian. If they were really Christian they’d act differently. They would get the whole concept of loving your neighbor.” But I say that if we simply turn our back, if we simply pretend that they are not one of us, if we don’t speak the truth in opposition to their behaviors we are allowing everyone else to believe we feel the same way they do.

However, if we are to be children of the light, the one thing we cannot do is to treat them hatefully, the way they treat others. Even the harbingers of hate must be treated with love. They are also children of God, our neighbors, whom we are commanded to love and to forgive. We can speak about how Christ calls us to act without speaking evil about others. We can pray for God to open their hearts, we can condemn their acts, but somehow we must love the persons. That would be living in the light – and that would be very hard.

Vienna Presbyterian Church in Virginia is moving from darkness to light. In 2005 their youth director was fired after being found guilty of sexually abusing a young girl in the church. Other girls came forward but the congregation didn’t want to know. They sort of blamed the victims and wanted to just let the whole thing go away quietly. So it festered quietly. In 2008 a new associate pastor was called who realized that light had to be shed on this evil in order for the church to heal. The church formed an abuse outreach ministry, the young women are receiving help and last year were finally able to tell their stories to the congregation. Last week Pastor Peter James stood before the congregation and preached the story of “the darkness that had been eating away at the church for nearly six years,” publicly apologizing to the young women sitting together in the back row of the church. Associate Pastor Jordan-Haas said “We really seek to change, institutionally and relationally, and that comes at a cost. There is still something hopeful here, and that brings me great relief. It is good when we bring darkness into the light.” (Josh White, “Vienna Presbyterian Church seeks forgiveness and redemption in wake of abuse scandal” The Washington Post April 2 )

It is good when we bring darkness into the light.

In our prayer this morning we asked God to “Open our eyes to Christ’s living presence.”
Christ is present when members of a church choose to “act differently: to tell the truth, to push for justice, to uphold goodness regardless of the norms of the society at large.” (Dr. Margaret Aymer Commentary on 2nd Reading, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx)

Christ is present when we seek to shine the light of God into the darkness.
When Christ is present we can see clearly, we can stand and speak light into the dark.
Let us ask our Lord to open our eyes to Christ’s presence, that we may see.

How Can This Be? John 3:1-17

John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." 3 Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." 4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above.' 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." 9 Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.


This is Founders Day weekend. Friday and Saturday Chapman University hosted hundreds of Disciples and United Church of Christ folks and others who came to hear the words of Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, Disciples historian Newell Williams, the great preacher Alvin Jackson and the very popular writer of spirituality Anne Lamotte. We enjoyed so much music, from an hour long concert by the Chapman Choir to wonderful performances in worship by the a cappella group Sound Check to a solo performance on marimba by Chapman student Soyon Cheon to Paul Svenson and the PSWR Regional Celebration Band. We got to catch up with folks we don’t see very often, congratulate friends on recent accomplishments, mingle with students and faculty from our Disciples related university and meet the new Dean of the Chapel. We celebrated the fact that the United Church of Christ is now also in an official covenant relationship with Chapman. This year we celebrated the 150 year anniversary of Disciples educational heritage culminating in what we now know as Chapman University. We came together to do what Disciples do – to learn and to teach and to sing and to share the love of our Lord with one another at the Table.

I am a Disciple, a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I’m not a Disciple by virtue of having been brought up that way, like many of you, but because after having rejected church and the theology that I was taught in the church of my youth for 25 years I came to understand that I needed church. After 25 years of hating church and church people and reading the Bible in order to find ammunition to use against Christians, I discovered that I needed to become part of a community of people who believed in the god of love and compassion I had come to believe in. At the same time that I came to understand that, the pastor of a Disciples congregation came into my life. She prayed with me and comforted me and gave me assurance that I was welcome. She told me about the Disciples commitment to education, about the Disciples strong belief that each of us can and must read and study and come to understand scripture ourselves. I didn’t have to accept what the preacher said unquestioningly. I didn’t have to believe the Bible was handwritten by God. She told me that there is no creed I had to claim belief in before I could be accepted into a Disciples congregation. I didn’t have to believe exactly what everyone else here believed. She told me about Disciples congregations being congregational with no hierarchy to answer to, and weekly communion and believers baptism. She told me about the priesthood of all believers – that all Disciples are equally ministers of the Good News of Jesus Christ, that lay folks taught Bible studies and presided at the Table and took communion to shut-ins. I listened to all this and thought to myself, “Wow. Really? I can disagree with the preacher and the Bible study teacher? There’s no pope or cardinal or priest or nun to tell me what I have to think and believe? I like this place.” And so I started to show up. And the more I showed up the more I liked what I was learning. Before long I realized that God was speaking to me, that I was being called to the ministry. A year or so later I moved from South Florida to Southern California to attend Chapman University where I fell in love with learning. Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Chapman is that everything I know is subject to change. Sometimes I would hear something that flew in the face of everything I knew and believed, and I would say, “How can this be?”

That’s where Nicodemus found himself in that night. He was an educated man, a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews. He knew Torah backwards and forwards, he knew his theology, he knew the history of his people, he knew the stormy story of their relationship with God. He knew as much about how the world works as anyone could at that time. He’d been hearing what Jesus preached and it was not what he was used to. Jesus was known for preaching the opposite of what popular wisdom claimed. And yet, what he was saying sounded true. He came to Jesus for clarification. We’re told he came at night and most interpret that to mean he was trying to hide his interest. I’m not quite convinced of that. It’s possible of course. Nicodemus was a prominent leader and a respected teacher. He may not have wanted his colleagues to know he was leaning toward what this man from Galilee was preaching. He may have come at night in order to keep from being seen. But night time was also the time when the crowds were gone. Fewer people were around Jesus at that time. He might more reasonably hope to get to talk to Jesus one on one at night.

So he asked his questions. “"How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above.' 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

This is where we get the belief that only people who are baptized are going to go to heaven. “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” When we read scripture carefully, putting aside as much as possible everything we have been brought up to believe about what it says, we can come to realize, like Nicodemus did, that what Jesus is saying is not what we are used to hearing. We have to understand that our understanding of heaven is not the same thing as the kingdom of God. Throughout his ministry, Jesus was teaching about bringing God’s kingdom into existence on earth, so that the world would become a place where all persons are treated equally under the law, where folks with no one to look out for them would be cared for, where wars of conquest and oppression simply didn’t happen, where governments and the wealthy would care more about the people of the land than about their own power and comfort. It sounds like heaven, and it sounds a bit unrealistic. But it is what Jesus preached. “If you all will just do the things that God really directs you to do, if you will just love one another as much as you are loved. this is what the world will be like. If you do these things, if you follow the teachings I am giving you, you will bring about and live in the kingdom of God. But first you must repent of the way you are living, you must let the winds of change in and become a new person. In essence, you must be born again.” Baptism in Jesus’ time was not a symbol of membership in that exclusive club known as Christianity. There was no Christianity yet. Baptism was the act by which a person publicly demonstrated her willingness to give up her sins and character defects and her old way of living in order to embrace the Spirit of God and become a new person in God’s sight.

When people have come up to me, you know, those folks who show up at the front door and ask “Have you been born again?”, frankly, I’ve never quite known how to answer them. Did I suddenly one day have a conversion experience that somehow can distinguish my lifelong Christianity into a new and different life in Christ? No. Have I been re-baptized to start over again? No. I’ve been taught that isn’t necessary, that I only have to be baptized once even though that happened when I was a baby. But – am I different today in what I believe about God and Christ and Church and how to live? Yes. Radically different. It didn’t happen all at once. It is a product of being willing to hear new things I don’t like with an open mind. It is a product of continuing to read and study and talk about scripture and history and other people’s ideas about what it might mean. It comes from learning more about myself, what my strengths and weaknesses are and a willingness to make changes in myself in order to be able to help bring about that kingdom Jesus kept preaching. And to do that openly, as the penitents in Jesus’ day did when they went to the Jordan river to receive the waters of repentance. The more I study and learn, the more my faith, my understanding of God and Jesus and theology and liturgy and dogma and all those other things keeps changing. That’s the biggest reason why I can’t use the same sermons I used last time these lectionary selections came around. I might not necessarily still believe exactly the same way I did when I preached them before.

In one of his three lectures on Friday, Bishop John Shelby Spong suggested that instead of asking people to be born again that they might be as children, we should be calling them into maturity. I believe that is what we see Jesus doing here with Nicodemus. He said, “"Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.” Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, “Grow up! Move past what you think you know and learn these new things that we are teaching.” While I was a student at Chapman I took a class on the Book of Revelation. On the first day of class then Dean of the Chapel Dr. Ron Farmer told us that both Martin Luther and John Calvin had wanted to leave this book out of the newly translated Bible. He began to discuss it as metaphor rather than as literal truth and one young man became very upset. He was expecting to be in a class where he would be taught about the absolute truth and accuracy of the prophecies it contained. He didn’t want to know about the history or the culture in which it was written. He didn’t want to know about the controversies that swirled around even including it in the first place or about other apocalyptic books that were left out of the Bible. He was unwilling to hear anything other than what he already believed, so he got up and walked out and never came back. It seems to me that young man made a choice that day to remain as a child in his understanding rather than taking the daring step of learning new things that might just help him grow in his faith.


We know that Nicodemus was changed by what he heard Jesus say. He stood up at Jesus’ trial in the Sanhedrin to protest what they were doing. He helped to prepare Jesus for the tomb after his crucifixion. He heard something new, questioned it, struggled with it, and eventually embraced it. He allowed the Spirit of God to change his heart and his mind. Let us commit to doing the same, to allowing the Spirit of God lead us in new directions even as Nicodemus and all the other disciples of Christ were led to new and greater understandings of what God desires of us. Let us move deeper into maturity in our faith. Let us turn to our Lord and say, “have thine own way, Lord.”