archive 10

I stumbled across a small segment on the TV guide channel recently that talked about the long running Soap Opera “Days of our Lives”. The gist of it seemed to be that this soap opera has dealt with just about every conceivable story line in the course of its history. When I read Matthew’s gospel, I see a potential “Days of our Lives” drama. An event on “Days of our Lives” takes a very long time to unfold. There used to be a joke about two women talking about that show or another soap opera. One of them had not seen the show in about a year and recounted to the other where it had left off and wanted to know what had transpired in the past year. The faithful watcher of the show said, “Oh, well it’s later that afternoon and …. “

Matthew doesn’t even begin to approach that kind of detail. In fact, we might well complain that Matthew quickly passes over things we’d like to know a lot more about. In today’s reading, we have Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” In the next sentence we hear, “ When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Then Matthew moves immediately on to talk about Joseph. Luke, at least, gives us an angel visiting Mary to tell her, but not Matthew.

The “Days of our Lives” writers would never do that to us. They would have spent the next year showing us how Mary felt when she discovered she was pregnant. What kind of anguish did she go through? How did she get the courage to tell Joseph, or in a patriarchal society, did that task perhaps fall to her father who would have gone with his head down at the shame this brought to his family. How did Joseph feel? This short section in Matthew’s gospel is one of the very few places where we ever see Joseph. Can’t you see his jaw drop when he hears the news? Did he feel compassion for his teary-eyed young wife to be? He doesn’t know that this child is from the Holy Spirit – not yet anyway. He just knows that he is not the father. Can you imagine the feeling of betrayal? The “Days of our Lives” writers could have gotten a lot of material out of that.

Joseph had some options available to him including even charging her as an adulteress and having her stoned. But Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace. He decided that he would quietly dismiss her.

We can applaud Joseph for not wanting to punish Mary or hold her guilt over her as a weapon or a power play. Joseph was a good man and “is like the wise husband or understanding wife who doesn’t bring up stuff from years ago in the middle of an argument. He is like the compassionate parent who allows a child to grow out form under past mistakes. Wise parents avoid labeling a child based on a few early goof-ups.”[ii] Joseph decided not to humiliate her or punish her but to quietly divorce her. No one needed to know about this shame.

Someone has said that if you want to make God laugh, just share your plans. God had other plans for Joseph, for Mary, and for the child who was to be born. We’ve probably all heard the good advice when faced with a major problem or decision, to sleep on it. Joseph did that. He had essentially decided what to do, but before he acted upon it, he slept and in his dream an angel of the Lord appeared to him. I suspect that one of the reasons that sleeping on something is good advice is that in some cases it may be the only time we slow down enough to be still and allow God to speak to us.

No matter how much a soap opera writer could have gotten out of this story, or how much more we might want to know, Matthew doesn’t tell us anymore. For Matthew, all of this is only background material. Matthew’s real focus is on what God is doing. God is the one taking the initiative in this story. God is working through the love of this couple and through the pregnancy and birth. This baby – in ways that we could debate and discuss forever – is God in human form.

Matthew tell us that all of this is to fulfill the scripture. Here, he’s speaking about Isaiah, where a virgin, or a young woman, will conceive and bear a child and this child will be named Emmanuel which means “God is with us”. Now at first glance it may seem that this doesn’t really seem to apply to Jesus. After all Joseph named him Jesus, not Emmanuel. In Matthew’s gospel the angel who appeared to Joseph told him to name the child Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. Matthew’s comment about the fulfillment of prophecy is his way of helping us to see who Jesus is. This affirmation is central to our faith. Jesus is God with us and for us.

The angel tells Joseph to name the baby Jesus which is the Greek form of Joshua which in Hebrew means, “Yahweh saves.” That again is the proclamation of Christmas – that God acts in Jesus to save us from our sins. “God saves us from the effects of our sins. Those effects include the hurts other people have caused us. For all the ways we have been neglected, for all the times someone took their problems out on us, for all the ways people have held us back, God saves us. God soothes our hurts and gives us the strength to move on. God saves us from the things we’ve done that we can’t undo. For the regrets that seem to hold us hostage, God offers us release. God saves us from the big sins for which we all chip in our two cents’ worth. For pollution, and racism, for poverty, and the ways we just let things keep going, God saves us. God doesn’t want us just to keep letting these things be, but God saves us. God saves us from the guilt of our sins.”[iii]

“We always need to hear that God took the first step to save us. Especially at this time of year, though, we need to hear that God acted to save us in the midst of what looks to us like a better soap opera than we could ever see on a weekday afternoon. If our lives are messy, full of tough decisions and awkward moments, we take heart knowing that God has been there before.”

Many of us spend a lot of time dealing with the loose ends of life – and here Matthew’s gospel is full of loose ends. But the word is that God is in the midst of the loose ends – working, being present, saving. The Christmas story isn’t about a sweet family living in a nice little home on the edge of serenity. It is about a time of conflict and confusion; the same kind of conflict and confusion that marks so much of our lives. Holidays and Christmas especially often seem to bring out the tensions that are lying just below the surface. At Christmas we need to hear that God is working in the midst of those tensions – we are not alone.

Charles Aaron, Jr. wrote a wonderful sermon for today – and some of his ideas have infiltrated my words today. Let me close with his words:

“Look at how this gospel starts and how it ends. Joseph was going to dismiss Mary quietly, in secret. No one would have known. Mary would have saved face, but it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone. Look, though at how Matthew’s gospel ends! Jesus commissions the disciples to go make disciples of all nations. What almost was snuffed out in secret ends up changing the whole world, all the nations. However things look to us now, God is working. God is healing. God is saving. When God takes initiative, we never know how it will turn out.

“What do we think is important in these last few days before Christmas? Are we scurrying around, enslaved to our to-do list? Are our travel plans finished? Can we make the end-of-year deadlines on all things personal and professional? We may have no choice in the flurry of the season. In all of those details let us not forget that they are really behind the scenes stuff. What we think really matters might rate only half a line from Matthew. Matthew wants us to see what God is doing in the craziness of Christmas. Let us see how God is acting, even in situations that seem to us to be pure pain. Let us see how, no matter how lost and broken we may feel, God is saving us. Let us see that, no matter how divided up we are, or how hostile our world seems, God is with us. Amen.[iv]

I was talking with a friend of mine the other night. She was exhausted because the retail store that she works for has been running long hours of special shopping events. She has worked far more hours than she is accustomed to and they have not been easy hours. In the course of the conversation though, she said that one of the things that bothered her was that she’s not allowed to say “Merry Christmas” to her customers. Somewhere around the time I was in junior high or high school I started to hear the lament that people were trying to take Christ out of Christmas. Now it seems we are even trying to take Christmas out of Christmas. I am a great respecter of diversity and honoring the traditions that are different than mine, so I started really paying attention to the sales ads etc. I found only one that mentioned Christmas. I did find one that told me that there were “12 shopping days to go” – the implication being “until Christmas” but it didn’t say that.

“Bruce Forbes, in his new book, Christmas: a Candid History, University of California Press, reminds us that much of what we love about Christmas predates Christianity. The Roman midwinter festival Saturnalia closely resembled the modern holiday, with weeks of eating and drinking, gift giving, wreaths of evergreens, and concern for the less fortunate.

He writes, “From the beginning, the Church's hold over Christmas was (and remains still) rather tenuous. There were always people for whom Christmas was a time of pious devotion rather than carnival, but such people were always in the minority. It may not be gong too far to say that Christmas has always been an extremely difficult holiday to Christianize.

“He then concludes, "One idea I do not recommend is a campaign to turn Christmas into the purely spiritual holiday it never was. My understanding is that the Christmas message is 'incarnation,' that God entered fully into the world. So combining Jesus' birthday party with at least some worldly celebration seems appropriate."[i]

It used to be not uncommon to find people taking offence at people who have taken Christ out of Christmas by shortening the reference to Xmas. X in Greek was the first letter for Christ. That symbol was well known in early Christianity and functioned somewhat like the fish that people would draw in the sand with their foot as a secret way to identify another as a Christian. However, a letter in a newspaper from a scientist made an interesting point. “He wrote that in his world the X was always the unknown factor in an equation. He went on to say that for him Christ was always the "unknown factor" in the equation of life. He had learned to trust Christ but never presume to understand that he fully understood Christ. At the same time, he understood that it was Christ who completed the equation.”[ii]

Before we spend a lot of time and energy on lamenting the commercialization of Christmas, or the neutralizing of Christmas, or the exclusion of Christ from all too many Christmas celebrations, maybe we need to stop and ask ourselves some serious questions. Are we merely passing the buck, expecting others to keep Christmas the way we want it? What do we expect or want Christmas to be? What expectations do we need to give up?

Today is a good day to ask some of those questions. Today is a day of questions. Today we hear John the Baptist asking whether Jesus is the Messiah, the one they have awaited, or if they need to keep waiting. Now, one would think, that John of all people would know who Jesus was. While he was still in his mother’s womb, the Gospel of Luke tells us that he leapt when Mary came near. When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John was reluctant to do so, insisting that he should instead be baptized by Jesus. Then Matthew’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus was baptized by John, the heaven was opened and the spirit of God was seen descending like a dove and lighting upon Jesus. A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17)

With a profound and powerful experience like that, one might think that John would have no question at all who Jesus was. But today we find John in prison and he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” How could John ask such a question?

Remember that when John spoke about Jesus’ coming, he talked about judgment. Jesus is gaining a reputation, but it seems to be for the wrong things. “Instead of gathering an army together, he is gathering the tax collectors and sinners into his family. Instead of being a mighty warrior, Jesus is going around and telling stories. Instead of plotting a revolution, Jesus is giving sermons about turning the other cheek, and going the extra mile. So, since his expectations have been dashed, John sends word to Jesus, `What’s going on? I thought you were the one. What’s happened to you, cuz?’ And Jesus’ reply is one that must have startled John. `Yes,’ says Jesus, `I am the one who was to come. It’s just that the job description has been rewritten since you last looked at it.’ The blind are being given sight, the lame dance through the streets, new life is being given to those the world thought were gone, and mercy comes before judgment.”[iii]

It seems that Jesus must have been listening to the prophet Isaiah, the prophet of judgment and exile, the prophet of restoration. Jesus uses words that are almost directly from today’s Old Testament lesson. These words speak of a time when all creation is made whole. They are a vision of “One who comes to radically transform nature and history, a vision of a time when Death Valley becomes Napa Valley.”[iv]

The desert that Isaiah knew was a climactic desert. That is, it is a desert because there is so little rain. However, in the time of the year when it does rain in that area, the fertile soil produces flowers almost within hours of the rain coming. It was amazing to me when I was there to see a bridge that had been washed out. A bridge in the middle of the desert, washed out by a torrent of water coming down from the hills above during the rainy season. In our Advent devotional booklet, the reading for this coming Tuesday is today’s Isaiah reading. Rev. Garland who wrote that meditation, called the land a “parable of hope.” The desert can become a place of blossoms. Our lives even when they seem parched and dry can become places of rejoicing and singing. Our lives when touched by God can be filled with hope and promise.

“If Jesus has truly come, not to be the one we expected, but to be the One we need, if Jesus has come to put into reality that radical vision God gave to Isaiah, and if Jesus has come to transform our barren lives into gardens of grace and generosity, then we better start paying attention, and we had better start telling people what we have seen and heard.”[v]

It is not up to the store keepers to keep Christmas. It is not up to the towns or schools to keep Christ in Christmas. It is up to us. Maybe it is time for us to start telling the story and living the story in new ways. Christmas pageants are wonderful and they help children learn the story. Sending cards is nice and helps us stay in touch with friends and relatives. Caroling can bring a bright spot to those who are homebound. But maybe we need to start glimpsing the vision of Isaiah and do things in a new way.

The Cub Scouts who were here Friday night for their Christmas party were going to write letters to our young men and women in the service. Like the Holy Family, our young men and women in Iraq and in other places know what it is to be lonely and afraid at this time of year. Maybe we should go find the person we’ve been mad at for the past year and tell them that we have heard Jesus’ words of forgiveness in our hearts and we would like them to forgive us for any hurt we have caused.

Perhaps instead of giving presents to people who already have everything they need or want, we could buy nets to keep children in Africa from being bitten by mosquitoes while they sleep and getting malaria, a leading cause of death among children in Africa. There are many worthwhile and urgent needs that would benefit from the money we spend on Christmas presents.

We might think about the person down the street who has lost their job, or the woman whose husband died in September, or the young person who is so desperate for someone to tell them that they are loved – and invite them to the Blue Christmas Service. There are so many ways and they start with the way we live our lives daily.

“If we want to put Christ into Christmas, we need to remember Jesus' advice that "by their fruits we shall know them." There is an old joke that illustrates this very well.

“A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

“The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup.

“As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

“He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' License plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper Sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally... I assumed you had stolen the car."[vi]

Are we putting and keeping Christ in Christmas by the way we live our lives or are we just passing the buck and complaining because the vendors and media are not doing it the way we think they should? Are our lives witnesses to the transforming power of Christ in our lives and in the world? How do our lives answer the question, “Are you the One who is to come, or should we wait for another?”

At our Church/Charge Conference last Sunday we enacted various items of business. One of those was the report of the Lay Leadership or Nominating Committee which presents persons for election to positions of servant leadership for the next year. There are many roles within the church which are not listed in that report - and one of them is particularly appropriate for this Advent season. It’s an important one and it involves each and every one of us. All of us - young and old, male and female, rich and poor have been elected to the position of “carrier of the vision.” You were elected to that position when you were baptized.

Any person seeking to know Christ, any person looking for the God of hope and peace is a “carrier of the vision.” We are in good company when we carry this vision. We join with prophets like Isaiah, Psalm writers like David, early preachers and letter writers like Paul, and with those who heralded the coming of the Messiah, like John the Baptizer.

Each week as we worship we hear and proclaim part of this vision, but today, the Second Sunday of Advent we hear it in vivid terms. We hear from the prophet Isaiah that there is One coming in whom will dwell the Spirit of God, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and awe. We hear that there is a time coming when there will be a kind of peace which we cannot even imagine. Isaiah describes this in language that is surprising and exciting. He talks about wolves living with lambs, calves and lions together in peace, and a child leading all of this. What a surprise this would be - and yet - do we not worship a God of surprises?

This child will come in a surprising way like a shoot or a branch from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David - a young boy chosen by God to become the second King of Israel. David tried to follow the ways of God and even though he made some really big mistakes and some really bad decisions, for the most part he did what God wanted him to do. To David’s credit, when the things he did wrong were pointed out to him, he was sorry. He repented, and he turned away from them, trying again to be faithful to God.

By the time Isaiah wrote, however, David’s kingdom had been split into two. The northern kingdom, Israel, had been destroyed and the southern kingdom, Judah, was in great danger. There would come a time when there would be no more king in David’s line. But still, out of what appeared dead, nothing more than a stump, would come a shoot, a new growth, a new branch - One in whom would dwell the spirit of God.

In the Christian church we have understood this passage in Messianic terms. We have understood it to be telling about the coming of Jesus. We have understood that he brought a new day to the earth, a new kind of life. We proclaim that he brought a new kingdom, a new form of government, a new way of being and living together. A way that will fulfill the vision that Isaiah proclaimed, where those who once were greatest enemies will live in perfect harmony and peace with each other. This is part of the vision which we are privileged and challenged to carry.

John the Baptizer proclaimed this vision in a different way than Isaiah. Living in a time when most Jews were oppressed by the Roman government he proclaimed that the Messiah was coming and they should get ready. He was a wild looking character out there in the wilderness proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The Message, a modern retelling of the Gospel story, puts it this way, “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.”

John wasn’t a particularly popular carrier of the vision. He spoke the truth as he understood it and it got him in trouble. Some of the temple authorities came to him and, again in the words of The Message, John proclaimed, “What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire. I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next: The main character in this drama - compared to him I’m a mere stagehand - will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house - make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”

What is this new life? What is this vision which Isaiah proclaimed in glowing exciting terms and which John warned people to prepare for? Again we hear part of it in the Psalm for today. We might update the language a little to fit our current times and hear, “Please help our President and Congress to be honest and fair just like you, our God. Let them be honest and fair with all your people, especially the poor. Let peace and justice rule every mountain and hill. Let the President and Congress defend the poor, rescue the homeless, and crush everyone who hurts them..... Let the President be fair with everyone, and let there be peace until the moon falls from the sky. “(Psalm 72:1-4, 7 CEV revised) The Psalm concludes recognizing that these things will not happen by themselves, “Lord God of Israel, we praise you. Only you can work miracles. We will always praise your glorious name. Let your glory be seen everywhere on earth. Amen and amen.” (18-19 CEV)

It is a vision that we are called to carry - a vision which we are to proclaim, and a vision which we are to share with others and work to help make a reality.

When we carry something normally we are taking it from one place to another or from one person to another. Carrying the vision means taking it from our place of worship into our homes, into our schools or places of employment, into our communities. Being carriers of the vision means we take the vision to others who may not share the vision, who may not have heard it - who don’t know about this surprising and radical way to live.

During Advent we remember and celebrate the surprising way that God chose to reveal God-self to us, as an infant, the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem. During Advent we wait for the time when the vision will be fulfilled in its entirety - when Christ shall come again. During Advent we carry and proclaim the vision as we look to the ways that God enters into our lives everyday.

With the prophet Isaiah, we are called to proclaim the vision. With John the Baptizer, we are called to confront the ways that we and others are not preparing the way of the Lord, but are instead being obstacles to the vision becoming reality.

We are challenged to carry a vision and a prayer, as the Psalmist did, that we would be honest and fair with all God’s people, especially the poor.

We often fail to realize that we are always carrying a vision. The question is, “What vision are we carrying?” Is it a vision of the poor being treated with respect and care or is it one where everyone looks out for their own needs and doesn’t care about others. Who is at the center of our vision - is it God or is it us? If we look at the way we spend our paychecks - it’ll tell us a lot about the vision we carry. Check out your calendar - how we spend our time speaks volumes about what is important to us.

What is the vision we are carrying to our children, grandchildren, the children in this church, or in our neighborhood? The way we treat children, the elderly, or disabled speaks volumes about whether or not we really believe that all people are God’s children. Notice the way you talk to you family, friends, co-workers. Do your conversations show respect and promote a vision of peace and harmony?

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. Hear the way The Message shares what he had to say in the 15^th chapter. “Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, `How can I help?’

“That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. `I took on the troubles of the troubled,’ is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. May our dependable steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir - not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to God. and Father of our Master Jesus! “So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it!” (Romans 15:1-7)

At all times - and especially during Advent - we are given both the privilege and the challenge of being carriers of the vision, those who seek to live out the vision found in Isaiah, in the Psalms, in John the Baptizer’s words, in the exhortation and encouragement of the Apostle Paul, and in the life of Jesus the Christ. We are to be those who reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory.

Can you identify with our readers? Do things already seem out of control? Many of us may be facing the coming days leading up to Christmas with the same perspective as our readers. We start out hopeful, but soon lose our focus, or we go into the Advent season already frustrated, expecting little other than the same old hassles and problems; hoping for nothing more than perhaps a moment of relief from the stress of the Advent season.

Yes, today is the first Sunday of Advent. So for those of you who are hoping to plan the “perfect” Christmas program, “perfect” family celebration, decorate the “perfect” tree and buy the “perfect” presents, you have only four weeks left. Our lives at this time of year seem cluttered and crowded by traffic jams around the malls and calendars that look positively frightening with all the things listed on them. We have learned that expecting perfection usually results in feelings of failure and frustration.

Is it time yet? Is it time to break this cycle of wishing and wanting perfection?[i]

Today’s Scripture readings can be helpful for us in breaking that cycle. The words from the prophet Isaiah come from a time of high anxiety, great stress, impatience, and discouragement. They come from a time when the nation of Assyria was gobbling up smaller countries and Israel looked like it would be next. There was political and moral corruption all around them and many people and religious leaders were rejecting the teachings of God. It doesn’t sound very different from today, does it?

The people of Israel were asking, “Is it time for a word of hope from the Lord? Is it time for a word of encouragement from the Lord?” The answer – the Advent answer – is a resounding “YES!”

All of the readings for the first Sunday of Advent focus on time in one manner or another. Isaiah talks about “in the days to come”. The epistle reading from Romans tells us that “it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” The gospel which we did not read this morning focuses on the second coming of Christ and says that “about that day and hour no one knows”. It admonishes us to be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Now, I realize that these are not exactly the scriptures that we long to hear in December. Many of us would prefer to think instead about Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and other Christmas figures. Like we heard in the skit, we often yearn for the sentimentality and warmth of Baby Jesus.

The Advent readings remind us that Christmas is about serious business. Christmas is about a God who aches over the sins of the world. Christmas is about a God who cares when people are hurt. Christmas is about a God who loved us so much that God became human and lived among us. Christmas is about a God who has been trying to get our attention for a very long time – and who doesn’t give up on us when we look the other way.

Yes, we like the idea of a baby at Christmas, but the reality is that we need more than a baby Jesus. We are the church, and it is up to us to show and to teach the world what it means that this particular baby was born.

In these passages we hear about something new and with the prophet Isaiah, we are the keepers of a vision. We heard about the word that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw – not just the word that he heard. God gave Isaiah a vision, an opportunity to see what was not yet real. “In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, God’s word is not simply a collection of letters. God’s word is a thing, a force, a power that can be seen and experienced.

“And this Word is a sure and certain Advent promise from God, not just to Israel, not just to you and me, but to all God’s people.”

It is a promise of peace among nations. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Throughout history there have almost always been wars. There have almost always been people on the brink of annihilation. And yet, in spite of that, God’s Advent promise is being fulfilled in our midst.

In the version of the Christmas stories and Advent readings that we like, God’s Word becomes flesh and dwells among us – Jesus is born. But there is more to it than that. That Word, God’s flesh, lived and dwelled among us, and then gave his life for us on a cross in Jerusalem, the land to whom the prophet Isaiah spoke. Then God’s Word rose from the dead in Jerusalem.

Jesus promised his followers that the Holy Spirit would come among them and would empower them. Through the Holy Spirit, God’s Word travels throughout all the earth. Tony Everett, in a sermon for this Sunday, says that this is what perfection is all about. Perfection, which includes completeness, is about God’s plan to reach all people. Perfection is not about the perfect tree, the perfect gifts, the perfect family gathering, or the perfect Christmas worship.

We proclaim this every time we celebrate communion together. We proclaim, “Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ will come again.” And then we pray, “Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine.” We pray for the Holy Spirit that empowers us. We pray, “that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.” We pray that this Holy Spirit will “make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” And we pray that this will continue, until the time comes when Christ will come in final victory and we will all sit at his heavenly banquet.

We don’t often focus on that part of the communion liturgy. We tend to think more about what happened on that last night when Jesus had dinner with his disciples. Although part of the communion liturgy is about remembering what happened – it is more than that. Although part of the Advent and Christmas preparation is about remembering what happened, it is much more than that. They are both about the living Christ, the living Word of God, real in our lives today and in our world today. They are both about the word of hope and promise that we need all year long, but which we seem to long for especially during times of great stress.

Preparation for the season means more than making sure that the presents are wrapped. We are called to discipleship and witness. We are called to obedience. We are called to resist the world’s evil. We are called to pay attention to the grown up Jesus, the crucified and resurrected Jesus, the Jesus who will come again. We are called to show and to teach the world what it means that a baby was born on that first Christmas.

Advent is a time of remembering what has happened, but it is also a time of waiting and preparation for the “days to come”: the celebration of Christ’s birth and the promise that Christ will come again. Isaiah invites the people of God to “come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” That invitation is given to us today.

“Advent is a time to remember how God has been present and active in our experience; times when we were certain of Christ’s presence and guidance.”[ii]

Is it time yet? The stores and commercials and calendars remind us hourly of what still needs to be “done” for the holidays. I can assure you right now that there is not enough time to do all of those things to the standards that are held before us. So, instead, stop. Take a deep breath! Remember what it is really all about.

“It is time …God’s time … and the time is here. The Word can be seen on the cross, in the waters of baptism, and in the bread and cup of holy communion.” God has given us loving arms to lean upon and a companion for the days ahead. God has a perfect plan, and we are privileged to have a part in that plan. It is time to celebrate!

Sometimes we have many of the feelings expressed by our four readers. We are sometimes very proud and arrogant, thinking that we know what is best, never wanting to rely on anyone but ourselves. But at other times we cringe in fear. We doubt our gifts and our abilities to use them. Our faith is tested and we wonder if we are equal to the test. Through all of this, the Lord of Life, beckons to us to place our trust in God’s loving mercy. May the love of Christ reign in your heart now and always. Amen.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Does it seem strange to be hearing those words today? Do you wonder if I gave the liturgist the wrong gospel reading for today? This is a scripture we expect to hear during Lent. That’s when we talk about the cross, not now. Not Thanksgiving Week. Not when we’ve eaten more than we should have this week, and when the Christmas shopping is really gearing up and we are looking ahead to all the festivities involved in the Christmas season. Why, today, would we focus on this scene at the cross?

The simple, but confusing answer is that today is Christ the King Sunday. But what does that have to do with the king, and besides we independent Americans don’t talk about kings anyway.

But listen to the thief hanging on the cross to Jesus’ right. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” One might have expected those words on Palm Sunday with the ticker-tape parade into Jerusalem. Or maybe you might expect to hear those words on the top of the Mountain of Transfiguration when Jesus’ very face and body glowed with the light of God and Moses and Elijah stood talking with him. Maybe we could imagine those words following the booming voice from heaven declaring Jesus as God’s beloved son when he was baptized. Or perhaps they would be the grateful words of Lazarus who was raised from the dead or one of the many people who were healed by Jesus during his ministry. But no, that’s not when those words are spoken.

Rather these are the words of a dying man gasping out a request to another dying man.[i] In that setting, these words represent a most improbable faith. Here in this moment of apparent defeat, who would have believed that Jesus would have a kingdom?

David Kalas writing about his passage pointed out that “everyone else in this passage got it wrong. The Jewish leaders scoffed, “If he is the Messiah, let him save himself.” The soldiers challenge, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself”. Even the other criminal had the same idea, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself.” Kalas points out that this is the human presumption about power, authority and status. If Jesus really were the Messiah, the King, then surely he would exercise his power to save himself. But they had completely misunderstood. They were looking for a display of power that would have been self-serving. What they missed was that the proof of who Jesus was and is, is found in the display of love that was self-sacrificing.

Above his head hung a sign that read, “This is the King of the Jews.” It was a sign put there not as an honor; not as an acknowledgment of who he was, but rather as a cruel joke, as a taunt, as a way to shame and humiliate.

“Somehow that one remarkable criminal perceived the truth. Though all reasonable signs seemed to point in the other direction, he recognized that a king hung on the cross next to him. And not a king whose reign was past and ending. Rather, amazingly, he perceived that Jesus' kingdom was still ahead. On this Christ the King Sunday, we affirm the faith of that anonymous, paradise-bound criminal. And we celebrate the king, whom we recognize even on a cross.”[ii]

Throughout the Christian year, we have listened to the prophets proclaim that Christ was coming. We heard and celebrated the Christmas story. We followed Jesus through his ministry; watched him heal those who were sick, feed those who were hungry, and teach the crowds. We saw crowds follow him and we saw people fall away when his teaching became too hard or uncomfortable for them to hear. We walked through Holy Week, confronted the cross, and rejoiced in the resurrection. Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year. Next week is the first Sunday of Advent and for us, in the church, that is New Year’s Day. So at the end of the church year, it is time once again, to focus on what is central to our faith. Jesus is more than just a good teacher. He is more than just a miracle worker. Jesus is more than a charismatic leader.

Today we hear the Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers, two groups who were usually at odds with each other, united in their mockery and scorning of Jesus. Luke tells us that “the people stood by.” I had never really noticed that phrase before. “The people stood by.” It’s not clear why they were standing by. Were they afraid to challenge the Roman soldiers or their leaders? Were they confused?

This week I found myself needing to make a decision about something. As of the writing of this sermon, I was in the “stand by” mode. I had analyzed it more than I probably should have. I had lost some sleep over the decision. I couldn’t decide whether to say “yes” to option A or B, or say “no” to both of them. At one point I wanted the need to make a decision to just “go away”.

Many people do that with Jesus. Like the crowd, they stand by. Maybe they don’t want to make a decision. Maybe they think if they wait long enough, they won’t have to make a decision. But this is one case where a decision is required. To be blasé about him is to be uninformed or intellectually dishonest. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[iii]

“That all sorts of different people come together to follow and worship him testifies to who he is. And likewise, the fact that all sorts of different people come together to oppose him also bears inadvertent witness to who he is.”[iv]

When we are look around us and feel blessed by God, who do we say that Jesus is? When we are feeling confident of our own abilities and talents, who do we say that Jesus is? When we are feeling self-sufficient and think we don’t need anyone else, who do we say that Jesus is? When we are feeling frightened or confused, who do we say that Jesus is? When we are afraid that we will fail and let God down, or let someone else down, who do we say that Jesus is?

“The old question remains our question for today. Is Jesus really King or is he not? If we need to dispense with the archaic language of monarchy, then our question becomes: is Jesus the controlling image of our lives with God and with other people or do other images govern our lives?”[v]

George MacDonald, a Scottish author, poet and Christian minister, gave a clear way for us to answer the question, or at least to begin to answer it. He wrote, “Get up, and do something the Master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his.

“But you can begin at once to be a disciple of the Living One – by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. We must learn to obey him in everything, and so must begin somewhere. Let it be at once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of our conscience!”[vi]

Whether or not you have a soft spot for kings in your philosophy of life, Jesus as Lord and King has a soft spot for you. The church calls it grace. In all of our life, in the confusion, the joy, the sorrow, the times of assurance, the confidence, the bumbling, successes and failures; when we pray, “Lord, remember me”, we can be sure that Christ does indeed remember us.

“On this sacred Sabbath day, O God, of grace and glory, we celebrate that Christ is indeed King. Jesus as our Christ has opened the door of salvation and offered us the rewards of a life lived in faith. Help us to recognize the precious gift that Christ offers us through his life, death, and resurrection. Let us take hold of the mercy offered in Jesus’ cross and embrace the life he makes possible for us today. Help us become more hospitable to the guests among us and treat these persons of sacred worth with the compassion Christ first offered us. Bind us together as a congregation that calls itself the “body of Christ.” In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

You have undoubtedly noticed that the order of worship today is different than on most Sundays. If you are particularly astute at these things you will have noticed that today is Consecration Sunday – the day when we dedicate our pledges of support for the coming year. You might have picked up on the fact that the offering is coming after the sermon and that the scripture we just heard was about “the collection”. So you may well be expecting me to preach in a way that is designed to encourage you to give more than you had planned.

Benjamin Franklin had an experience like that, in which he knew that his friend George Whitefield would be preaching and specifically trying to raise money for an orphanage in Georgia. Franklin was not opposed to the idea of the orphanage but rather to its location and refused to contribute to this project. He wrote in his autobiography that, “I happened, soon after, to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistols in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”[i]

I’ve never been compared to George Whitefield as a preacher, and it is not my intention to twist anyone’s arm or attempt to make anyone feel guilty because they cannot give more. If, perchance, one or two people should feel guilty that they are not giving back to God what they can and should, then that is between them and God. My real point today is to invite us into a time of thanksgiving for what God has entrusted to us, a chance to reflect a little on the Biblical understanding of stewardship and our faith filled response to God’s commission to care for all of creation and to make disciples.

Whether we like it to admit it or not; whether we like to discuss it or not, money is one of the topics that Jesus talks about a lot – more than almost any other topic. This morning we heard his response to someone who was concerned that his brother should share the family inheritance with him. Jesus responded by telling a story of a rich man. Now Jesus didn’t describe him as a sinner, or a tyrant. There is absolutely no indication that the man did anything illegal or immoral to gain his money- in fact, his wealth came from producing a great crop. His problem was that he had so much, he didn’t have enough space to store all his crops.

He lived a life carefully constructed of boundaries that begin with the word “me” and end with the word “mine.” The sadness of this man’s situation is that he is living only for himself. He is living a life of isolation that really has no future. After telling this story, Jesus then goes on to name the secret worry that can isolate all of us – worry about security, about having enough. It is a very real concern and for many who live on the edge not having enough for what they truly need is a very real possibility. But for this rich man, and for all too many of us there is the danger of getting caught in a vicious cycle. This worry about having enough creates anxiety which feeds isolation and the isolation then nurtures more anxiety.[ii]

But the Biblical message is different. We heard in the reading from Deuteronomy that when a farmer was harvesting his fields, he was to leave some of the crop behind for the foreigners, orphans and widows. He wasn’t supposed to go back and make sure he had every grape, olive, or whatever the crop was. Certainly if he harvested every piece that he could, he would have more for himself and have more security. However, he would also be isolated from the need of others. The expectation and the obligation were to use the yield from the crop to help those who were most in need.

Jesus said that he came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. In the Bible an abundant life is one in which the boundaries between me and mine begin to lessen and the distinction between my abundance and yours begins to blur. It is a life in which we know that we are valued by God. This value that God has placed on our lives is meant to be invested in others and ultimately to yield a harvest that we can only begin to imagine. This is a life that has a future; the future is yours and mine; the future is God’s.

Brian Wren had a wonderful way of describing that in the opening hymn we sang this morning, “Live tomorrow’s life today.” George Chorba in a sermon on today’s gospel cites Brian Wren’s song and says, “That’s our business as a church. Helping others live God’s future today.” He tells about the coffee hour in a church where someone asked a young boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The boy’s answer was “An adult!”. Chorba says, “Well, you can’t define the future – or the future of the church, any better than that. We’re in the business of growing adults, people whose lives have a future.”[iii]

In the church, we are in the business of investing in the future that God has already prepared for us. Jesus talked a lot about money – and generally it was also connected to the Kingdom of God – a kingdom where God provides what we need, and our job is to invest our abundance in people whose lives have a future. We are part of that every time we come here.

Jesus told us to go into the world and make disciples of all nations. Jesus told us to go into the world and preach, teach, and heal. Years ago, I had friends who after hearing a missionary speak one Sunday morning went home each believing that they had been called into the mission field. Each of them was afraid to say anything to the other, sure that this was so crazy that it would create major problems. Finally, independently they decided that they had to speak up and they met in the hallway where they both began to speak at the same time. They were amazed to discover that both of them had experienced the same call. It was not long before they were in the jungle of a place they never expected to be. John was busy helping to build a school, and Donna was busy teaching children.

Now most of us never experience that kind of dramatic call. Yet, we are still called to go into the world to preach, teach, and heal. The apostle Paul explained how that could be done. He told the Christians in Corinth, that every week on the day of worship, each one of them should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income and saving that up until Paul came. The churches in Galatia and Macedonia were doing the same thing. The money was going to Jerusalem where the believers were in great need. There had been a famine as well as persecution directed at Jerusalem Christians. The needs were great and it was the expectation that those who had enough would help those who were in need. In one of Paul’s other letters he explains that he is not trying to put them in need, but that while they are able to help someone else they should, and at another time if they were in need, they would also be helped.

It is this concept that the man in Jesus’ story seems not to have understood. This is the model for the collection or offering that we receive every Sunday. Each week when we bring our tithes and offerings to the altar we are participating in a miracle. Each Sunday when you place your envelopes or your checks or cash into the offering plate you are going into the world to preach, teach and heal.

The majority of the money that comes in stays in this congregation where it is used to educate our children, provide this space where so much ministry and mission takes place, pay the salaries of those of us who are employed in the ministry and mission of this congregation, and empower us to be in mission and ministry in many ways. If you have not done so, I would encourage you to take a good look at the model of the church in the narthex. If you don’t already know, you’ll discover that this building is very busy – there are many programs and many ways that people are being reached with God’s love. The North Kingstown Food Pantry has been an integral part of this church for many years. This year and every year, many hungry people in our town will receive food for Thanksgiving, and over $3500 of shopping cards to grocery stores will be distributed. As you know it’s not just at Thanksgiving that this happens, but rather all year long people in this town help to feed others who need food.

Some of the money that comes in here goes toward our mission shares. This is the United Methodist way of bringing together the resources of many different churches so that together we are able to do what none of us could do alone. Within New England we train lay speakers, subsidize seminary education, work in youth ministry, provide pension and health benefits for clergy and families, help start new churches, develop curriculum for Sunday School, and maintain three cams and a conference center.

Some of our money goes to under gird UMCOR – the United Methodist Committee on Relief – that is always ready to come in with assistance following a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, fire or other disaster that destroys life and resources. Together we send out 1,812 missionaries around the world, support Urban Ministries in Boston, Worcester, Providence and other cities. We support rural ministries throughout New England and help send volunteers in mission throughout the United States and abroad. We support covenants with the West Angola Conference and la Iglesia de Cristo en Nicaragua. We support Aftica University and Black colleges. We advocate for a living wage, help women experiencing crises, work to eradicate racism, feed hungry children and their families, support economic ministries in Western Maine, support ministries to college students, advocate for our environment, provide scholarships for students around the world, help fund 225 retirement homes, 70 hospitals, 8 two-year colleges, 82 four-year colleges, and 13 seminaries and much more more!

Together we are part of a miracle every time we come together. Together we follow John Wesley’s teaching to “do all the good you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can.” Look at the envelope you put in the offering plate – that’s what it says and that’s what we do together.

Those are just some of the things we do with our regular offerings. At other times we are also involved in direct assistance through our giving tree where we provide Christmas presents for children in Providence and in North Kingstown, and gifts of hope to women and children who are victims of domestic violence. We provide some support for the NarSarah clinic in Sierra Leone; through the offerings to the Pastor’s Discretionary Fund we help people with utility bills, prescription assistance, gasoline, or rental assistance to keep people from becoming homeless.

It is a kind of quiet miracle that this stewardship of our abundance creates, with gifts that continue to grow through the years. We are so blessed. We really are. Because this is a place where every one of us can live tomorrow’s life today – and so it is with a real sense of honor that I invite you to be part of that commitment and miracle this week, and this coming year.

I recently read about a fascinating practice of the Evangelical Church of India. When they baptize a new believer, the new member of Christ’s church is given the gift of a coconut palm tree. If the believer takes it home, plants it and takes good care of it, within four years the tree starts to bear fruit. A young tree will produce about fifty dollars worth of coconuts a year; when it matures it will produce about a hundred dollars of income a year.

The church gives new believers coconut palm trees for two reasons. The first is that nearly everyone in India is needy and one hundred dollars of income a year is a substantial amount even for the middle class. Giving the tree helps to provide for a families needs. The second reason is that giving the tree teaches a lesson in Christian stewardship. The church tells the new believer that it expects them to give 10% of whatever income they get from the coconut palm tree.

Think about it. The new believer did not buy the tree. It was given as a gift. The tithe, the 10%, is money they get free. The family is able to enjoy the fruits of a gift given freely to them, and also to have the joy of freely giving something away themselves.

It is important to remember that these new Christians play a crucial role in all of this because they have a choice. They can take the tree home, throw it in a corner and let it die. They can choose to plant the tree in a good spot and take good care of it, watch over it and harvest the coconuts. Everything depends upon their decision making. No one forces them to tithe and no one comes around to check on them to make sure that they are giving 10% of the coconut income to the Lord’s work. People are free to choose to give or not. [i]

Now when I heard that story, I couldn’t imagine why people wouldn’t give 10% of the coconuts to the work of the Lord. At one point they didn’t have the coconut tree at all but after the gift they have a coconut tree producing an income for the family. Certainly, I think that anyone would be happy with the money from 90% of the coconuts. But then when I stop to think about it a little more it takes on a different perspective. If it takes about four years for the coconut tree to start producing coconuts then that means that the person has spent four years paying attention to the tree, nurturing it, caring for it, putting a lot of work into it. Then it takes more years for the tree to become mature enough to produce $100 worth of coconuts. During that time, it’s easy to start thinking about the tree as belonging to you. It’s easy to start thinking that the tree is doing so well because of your hard work. It’s easy to forget that the tree itself was a gift.

The Bible tells us that this is a real danger. When the Hebrew people had been set free from slavery, when they had been led by God out of Egypt, they wandered in the desert for forty years. During all that time God had daily provided them with food and with everything else that they needed. Now as they were about to enter the Promised Land, there is a word of warning to them. Hear the words again from Eugene Peterson’s The Message, “Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up – make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God, the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery; .... the God who gave you water gushing form hard rock; the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, … If you start saying to yourselves, `I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!’ – well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors – as it is today.”

It is a basic tenet of Scripture that human possessions are really gifts; that everything really comes from God and belongs to God. We hear that in this morning’s Psalm, “The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Everything and everybody belongs to God.”

The length of time it takes for a coconut tree to produce fruit is long enough for someone to forget where it came from. The length of time we work for and gather possessions in our lives is long enough for us to think that they really belong to us. However, the number of years that we live is only a spec in the grand continuum of time; even a lifespan of a hundred years, is only a few fleeting seconds in the history of the earth. For a few fleeting moments, we have possession of a few things, but they belonged to someone else before us and they will belong to someone else after us.

“The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wonders of life itself, the planet we live on, the universe – we brought none of these things into being. They are gifts we enjoy out of the overflow of God’s love. The love of God, the gift of Jesus Christ, forgiveness of our sins, the call into Christian community, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, eternal life – none came from us, each is a gift to us from God.

To remember that God owns everything prompts a remarkable shift in our view of stewardship. Usually when we think of stewardship we think of giving to charitable causes. We talk about it as taking what we have and giving some of it to God, the church, or other worthwhile cause. But in the Bible, stewardship is just the reverse. It is our freely using, enjoying, and giving what already belongs to God.”[ii]

Looking at the world in this way takes some doing, some significant change in the way we think about possessions, in how we use money, and in our behavior.

Some years back a New York City law firm was engaged to clear the title to some property in New Orleans. They, in turn, engaged a New Orleans firm to do the local work. The New Orleans lawyer traced it back as far as 1803, but the New York firm responded that he had not gone back far enough. Soon they received a letter that read:

Please be advised that in the year 1803 the United States of America acquired the territory of Louisiana from the Republic of France by purchase … The Republic of France in turn acquired title from the Spanish Crown by conquest … The Spanish Crown obtained it by virtue of the discoveries of one Christopher Columbus – a sailor who had been authorized to embark by Isabella, Queen of Spain, who obtained sanction from the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, who is the son and heir of Almighty God, who made Louisiana.[iii]

This is just another reminder of the truth of the Psalmist: “The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” The Bible makes it clear that everything belongs to God; we are managers, stewards, trustees in the administration of creation.

The implication is that we humans are not only permitted, but encouraged, to manage this vast estate as inventively and creatively as modern science and technology enable us to do so, provided that we never forget that we are only the managers, that God is the owner and director. We must never forget that it is God’s desire that all of this incredible estate is to be administered for the public good and not for private gain. That’s the catch. “Since we have been given the God-like power to domesticate and cultivate and, in a sense, to reshape and re-create God’s creation, we easily slip over into the absurd and blasphemous notion that we have literally made what we have only remade, that we have earned possession of the earth by our labors when, in reality, it is only a trust fund to be administered for others.”[iv]

It is all ours for the enjoying and ours for the caring and nurture. It is ours to watch over and enjoy and tend so that the coconut trees continue to grow coconuts. Like the new believers in India, we are also called to give a portion of our coconuts back to God as a way of saying Thank You for all the things that belong to God, but which we are able to enjoy.

I would like to start today’s message with a brief lesson on the significance of this week. As many of you know, or are at least aware, the Church year is divided into many seasons and times. The Church year actually begins with the first Sunday of Advent, which begins in a mere four weeks, so we are nearly at the end of this liturgical year. This week in the Church year is identified as the 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost, in what is called Ordinary Time.

As we have now entered the Fall season, many people tend to measure the year by how many weeks until Christmas, which is quickly approaching. In fact, it won’t be too long before stores will be reminding us of just how many shopping days there are until Christmas. But I, and many of you, have marked the calendar as Week 1 in the reign of the World Champion Boston Red Sox! I know that any of you that know me would understand that I couldn’t let this pass without some mention of this accomplishment.

In fact, I was one of the estimated million or so people in Boston on Tuesday for the Red Sox “Rolling Rally”. The crowds were several deep lining the streets for a chance to see the Red Sox players, coaches, the owners, the training staff, front office personnel, and anyone who had anything to do with the team that had just won the World Series. Even two hours before the Duck boats carrying the team were due to arrive, it was difficult to find a place to stand to be assured of at least a glimpse of the team, never mind a full and complete view. Every once in a while a shout would go up from the crowd, and looking up, a fan could be seen climbing a tree or a light pole for an unobstructed view. Some of them made it to some kind of perch where they could sit and wait for the team to arrive – they were cheered. Others attempts were not as successful, and after several tries, some fell to the ground or unto others, injuring themselves, and sometimes others – they were ridiculed.

What made so many people miss work, school and other matters, risk injury and humiliation? Perhaps even they could not say. Almost everyone there had someplace else they would have been and probably should have been. Yet they understood that this was something special. There is something in us that makes us want to see things for ourselves, believing that being there in person makes it more real, more memorable and even more special.

Even as I was waiting for the rally to arrive, I thought of how it reminded me of today’s Gospel reading about Zacchaeus climbing the tree in order to see Jesus. We heard how many people had crowded the streets of Jericho, making it difficult for the short Zacchaeus to see over the heads of the people in front of him. But he had heard enough about Jesus that he just had to see him.

Zacchaeus knew this was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience something wonderful and special. It was so important to him, that he risked making a fool of himself or injuring himself in order to just catch a glimpse of Jesus.

This is a bible story that I remember well from my Sunday School days, even though it is just 10 verses long and only appears in Luke’s gospel. I don’t know why I have always remembered it. Maybe because it created such a vivid comic image, of a man struggling to climb up a tree in order to see. Or perhaps it was easily remembered because of what happened when Jesus encountered Zacchaeus. Jesus called out to him and told Zacchaeus that he was going to have lunch with him. While others began to mock both Zacchaeus and Jesus, Zacchaeus responded by declaring that he was going to give half of everything he owned to the poor, and he would pay back 4 times the amount to those he had cheated. Wow!

This was certainly an unexpected response. In other places in the Bible, we read about Jesus asking sinners to “go and sin no more” or to worship God in a pleasing manner. In Zacchaeus’ case, Jesus doesn’t tell him to do this. Rather it is Zacchaeus who willingly and joyfully has responded in the way that he believes God would have him. And it truly is without remorse or regret that he gives up the treasures that were so important to him just a few minutes earlier. In an instant, Zacchaeus’ world had been turned upside down, but in a good way. Suddenly, for him, all his Jewish training and upbringing had been made clear. He would no longer cheat and steal. For him, his life would never be the same.

In our responsive reading this morning, the Psalmist reaffirms that God’s righteousness is eternal and true. But he also recognizes that we still manage to find ourselves in troubled times. We know that God has given us his laws, not just as a way of measuring whether what we are doing is right or wrong, but as a means of showing that we trust Him and love Him, through our obedience and our responses to his call.

Our hymnal uses the New Revised Standard Version of the book of Psalms. Although this often has clear and sometimes more poetic wording, in this case, I find the Good News translation a little more understandable. In verse 138, instead of, “You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness.” The Good News says, “The rules that you have given are completely fair and right.” Fair, because they apply to everyone; Right, because they can be depended on in all situations. “Completely fair and right” refers to them being worthy of following- always.

In verse 143, Good News states, “I am filled with trouble and anxiety, but your commandments bring me joy.” We often are troubled and anxious, but it is in God’s laws that we find many answers and in following them we find peace, hope and joy. They not only indicate to us how we should behave or act in certain situations, but also lead us to peace when we act in a way that pleases God.

Finally, in verse 144, it says, “Your instructions are always just; give me understanding, and I shall live.” This is the roadmap many of us are looking for. If we follow God’s instructions- that is, His laws- then we shall find understanding and shall live. Now, it doesn’t say if living refers to this life or the next, but I think it is true for both. If we believe in God’s laws and strive to follow them, much of our confusion and uncertainty will be answered, allowing us to live joyfully and lovingly and will lead eventually to our place in His Kingdom.

I think this is what Zacchaeus found in meeting Jesus. He realized that he had been accumulating merely tangible treasures and they weren’t making him happy. In Jesus, he found the fulfillment of his Jewish roots and training. He was filled with joy at finding the Truth (as Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”) He had discovered exactly what Jesus meant when, in John 8:32, he said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Knowing that the money he had stolen and cheated for was ill-gotten gains, he believed that to give it away was what God would have him do. To keep it would have been a burden and a sad reminder of his past. Giving it up would free him to enjoy life’s emotional and spirituals treasures. This was his way of following God’s laws.

So, just what are God’s laws that we are supposed to follow? Although in the Bible, God gives many laws through His leaders and prophets, we tend to think mostly in terms of the Ten Commandments- and this is a good place to start. The High School Sunday School class and the Monday night Bible study are currently reading and discussing Anne Robertson’s book, God’s Top Ten- Blowing the Lid Off the Commandments. And I believe another Bible class recently completed it. Although the discussion points stir up a lot of debate, the idea is to try to come to a better understanding of God’s will, both individually and collectively. If anyone is interested in a copy, I’m sure there are some available or could be ordered through the office.

When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, he replied that “to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” and to “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” These contain all the truths for salvation.

But what about Zacchaeus pledging to give most of his money away? Have we ever seen such a thing? In the gospels, there are many examples of those who were faced with monetary decisions. There is the story of the rich ruler to whom Jesus tells to sell everything he had and to give it to the poor. Even though Jesus promised him treasures in heaven, the man could not do it. He worshiped money and possessions more than God. There is also the story of the “widow’s mite”.

This is about the time when many rich people were putting there gifts, probably consisting of silver and gold, into the offering and a poor widow put in just two small copper coins. This was all she had and she gave it freely. There are other examples, but these make the point.

What about more recently? When Eve and I took a tour of Marble House in Newport earlier this year, I was surprised to learn that one of the Vanderbilt heirs gave half of his considerable yearly income to charities. And just last year, Warren Buffett pledged to give about $40 billion worth of his Berkshire-Hathaway stock to a charity with the stipulation that it all be spent reducing poverty and improving health and access to education. Mr. Buffett, in announcing his gift, declared, “ I am not an enthusiast of dynastic wealth, particularly when the alternative is six billion people having that much poorer hands in life than we have, having a chance to benefit from the money."

So just how much does God want us to give of our financial resources? Well, that is for each of us to decide. For me to even speak about money or someone else’s donation or pledge is something I have always been extremely uncomfortable with. It is a decision that is personal and private and I would never presume to even suggest an amount, knowing that everyone’s situation is different.

I know that I don’t recall any times when this has been directly spoken about from the pulpit, probably because it is such a sensitive subject. But I do know that in Leviticus 27 and Deuteronomy 26, God declares that a tithe, or one tenth, of everything belongs to the Lord. I understand that 1/10 of anyone’s income is a lot to that person, regardless of the total amount. I don’t know many who could easily give that up without it greatly affecting their lifestyle, and that of their family.

But I can talk about me. For me, my time of understanding and appreciation of this came at a time when my financial means was at its lowest. Just a few years ago, I found myself out of a job for the second time in three years. First, after leaving a job I had worked at for 20 years, I was laid off from my new job after just four months. After being out of work for six months, I was hired at a new job the very week my unemployment was running out. I felt very fortunate to have had enough savings to get my family through that time and to get another job just as our funds were running out. After working for two years at this new job, I was laid off again. The unemployment checks ended after six months, with no job in sight. I tried starting my own business, but that required more investment than return and things were not looking very promising. Then, after 11 months, I received a job offer from an unexpected source- how fortunate- again. It was then I took stock of my life and my situation.

I realized that I had not been fortunate – I had been blessed. There was no way we had saved enough money, since my last time out of work, to keep up with our bills for 11 months, yet I knew it was by God’s grace that we had made it through.

Life insurance proceeds, Christmas gifts, State and Federal tax refunds all arrived at just the right time to keep us going. But the blessings were not just about the money. I thanked God that there was so much support and prayer from our family and friends, and from this church.

About that time, I was lead to the book of the prophet Malachi. This is the very last book of the Old Testament and a very short one, only four chapters long. In the 3^rd chapter, Malachi is warning the Jewish community about how they have been cheating God. Not only were they not tithing, they were providing polluted food for the altar and sickly animals for sacrifice rather than offering the first and the best to God. Malachi delivers the message that God says they are, in fact, stealing from God that which is rightfully His. He implores them to stop going through the motions of ritual and to return to sincere worship with earnest hearts- anything less dishonors God. And, in verse 10, God’s challenges them. He says, “Put me to the test and you will see that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out on you in abundance all kinds of good things.” I was taken aback by that verse. God is telling them to put him to the test. I had never heard of that before. In fact, quite the opposite, I thought God didn’t want us to test his word or his promises. But this was very clear. If the Jews would give their tithes from their hearts, God would bless them accordingly.

The key is that it must be from the heart. Remember that God was not pleased with Cain’s offering, because he was not sincere, bur was pleased that Abel had sacrificed his best lamb for God. And Jesus was not impressed with the offerings of the wealthy, but lifted up the poor widow who gave her all, little though it might be.

Unless it is given with thanks and gratitude, it not only displeases God, but it dishonors Him.

I knew what I had to do. Even though I was making less money than I had before, I knew I had to tithe to the Lord. I was thankful for my new job and joyful in the knowledge that the Lord had always, and would continue to bless my family and me. Ten percent seemed more than reasonable, after all, that still left us with 90%. In fact, since I consider my life to be a partnership with God, I would have a tough time saying no if He wanted a partner’s share of my earnings. Since I had been down to nothing, it was actually easier for me now to give out of my new earnings, than it was before. After all, it really is His to begin with, and by his grace I have received abundant blessings.

Zacchaeus had his response to God’s call. I am living out my response, which includes delivering this message today, despite my personal feelings of inadequacies and unworthiness. Everyone has his or her own decisions to make. Do we trust enough in God’s promises? How do we obey his commandments? Do we hear His call? What will our response be?

Let’s hear again the reading from 2 Thessalonians. “That is why we always pray for you. We ask God to make you worthy of the life he has called you to live. May he fulfill by his power all your desire for goodness and complete your work of faith.” If it truly is our desire to live a life worthy of God’s call, then we need to trust in his promises and obey his commandments as he calls us to.

As our closing hymn will remind us, we are to, “trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Sometimes – especially in October, I think that the apostle Paul must have been a Red Sox fan. I know the Red Sox didn’t exist back in his time, but Paul was a man ahead of his time. He would have made a great Red Sox fan. He kept the faith even when things looked bleak. The 2004 series is one that was monumental and dear to the hearts of Red Sox fans everywhere. They had been hot; they swept Anaheim in the Division Series 3 games to none. Then they did what die hard Red Sox fans know that they can do at a moments notice. They entered into the American League Championship Series and immediately lost the first three games to the Yankees. From that point on every game was do or die. No major league team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven game series. There was a lot of talk about the “Curse of the Bambino”. The Red Sox had traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. After that the Yankees won twice as many World Series as any other team and the Red Sox last win was in 1918.

Being a Red Sox fan is not for the faint of heart. I know I watched my mother suffer year after year but never give up faith in her Red Sox. In 2004, my mother was 86. She was six months old when they won their last World Series. Red Sox or not, I believed that my mother deserved to see the Red Sox win a world series once in her lifetime. With bleeding hearts and a faith that wouldn’t give up, the Red Sox incredibly took the next four games against the Yankees and became the Division Champions.

Then it was on to the World Series. Could they hold on, or would they do it again; would they lose steam and games and the pennant? It was the miracle year and they took the Series four names to zip! There was great rejoicing among Red Sox fans – and even among fans from other teams who thought the Red Sox deserved to finally win the pennant. This year they have been doing their usual thing. Playing hot and cold; testing the heart and the faith of the Red Sox Nation.

Now, of course, I know that Paul was not a Red Sox fan – but he uses the image of a sporting competition, when he proclaims, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” The faith that he proclaims, of course, has nothing to do with a sporting event. The faith he proclaims is all about his commitment to living the way that God wanted him to live – and more recently in his life, it is about his faith in Jesus the Christ. Paul really had fought the good fight. He had been whipped, imprisoned for long periods of time, and endured great hardship in his life – all because of his commitment to Jesus. As he wrote this letter to Timothy, he knew that it would not be long before he would be beheaded for his faith. Yet, he stayed fast. He did not waver, he did not walk away or deny his faith.

Most of us will not face that kind of faith trial in our lives. However, it is also fair to say that most of us will not have simple uncomplicated or easy lives. We face the death of people we love and sometimes wonder how we can go on. For about 1 in 4 women, at some point in their lives their homes are not safe places for them to be. After years of loyalty to the same company, too many people discover that their company does not have that same loyalty and they find themselves looking for employment. Citizens who love their country discover one day that the leaders who they have trusted have been lying to them. A friendship that has been important suddenly takes a nasty turn and you feel abandoned or betrayed. There are many situations that occur in life that may cause us to question our faith, or cause us to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

“One of the most amazing stories to come out of World War II is told by a chaplain with the US Air Force. A bombing mission in the South Pacific turned into a grueling night of terror for one flight crew. The fuel tanks began leaking when hit by enemy fire, and the plane barely managed an emergency landing on the beach of a small island. In the darkness their location was hidden from the Japanese soldiers who held the island, but dawn would make them prisoners of war.

"`Chaplain,’ said the flight leader, `you've been telling us for months about the power of prayer. We're out of fuel! We're surrounded by the enemy! If you've ever prayed, pray now!’

“While the rest of the crew patched the fuel tanks, the chaplain knelt in the sands to pray. Even when the others knocked off for a couple hours' rest, the chaplain kept to his post. About 2 a.m., a sentry heard something scrape against the sand at the water's edge. A cautious investigation revealed a large metal floating object -- a barge -- piled high with barrels. Each one contained gasoline -- high-octane gasoline -- airplane fuel. In a matter of minutes, the crew was roused, the tanks filled, and they were in the air again, bound for home!

“But where had the fuel come from? Later investigations told the story. A supply ship captain, surrounded by enemy submarines 600 miles and several weeks away, had set his cargo of aircraft fuel afloat in hopes of saving lives. It landed fifty feet away from the bomber crew exactly when they needed it. What an answer to prayer!”[i]

This kind of dramatic answer to prayer is life changing and it can cause someone to become a strong believer. However, it also creates the opposite situation. It raises the question of why that kind of dramatic answer to prayer does not happen at other times. Many of us have had the experience of praying fervently for something to happen and having it not happen.

In our reading today, Paul says, "The Lord stood at my side and gave me strength." But what does that mean? Is it a good luck charm? Will it get you out of any scrape, even those of your own foolish doing? Hardly. We know of too many tragedies and cruelties and unrequited injustices even in the Christian community to believe that.

Paul’s faith cannot be interpreted as mere fatalism. The message of the Bible is not compatible with the idea that God inflicts evil upon people. Rather, Paul’s testimony is more of a confession or profession of faith. He is saying, “I believe that God has been by my side every time I have been called upon to defend my actions. I believe that God has given me the strength and the courage to do the things that I have done. I believe that when they finally come to take me away and kill me, I will still not be alone. I am confident that God has a direction, a purpose for this world, and I want to be a part of that leading. Even when things go "wrong" (from my own point of view) -- even when tragedy strikes -- even when no miracles happen -- "The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom." That's the confession of faith! That's the confidence of trust!

So, what does this mean for us, in our Christian lives? On one level, it means we ought not to be surprised by experiences of suffering or difficulty when they come. “The "prosperity gospel" preachers have it all wrong, as they whisper sweet nothings into their eager followers' ears about God blessing believers with health, wealth, and all good things of life. Such was not the experience of any of the apostles: Why should it be true for us?”[ii]

When Paul says that he has “fought the good fight, … finished the race, … kept the faith” he is also saying something about being prepared. Twice this summer I attempted to climb a mountain. Both times I had to stop very early on. On each occasion I had a wonderful experience of sitting in the woods, having some close time with God, and I’m grateful for those occasions. However, I did not climb the mountain. After the first time, I was much more intentional about trying to exercise and get in better shape, but it still wasn’t enough. If we want to “fight the good fight in life, finish the race, and keep the faith” we would do well to get ourselves into training during the good times of our lives. Our faith offers us a rich array of time-honored spiritual disciplines, by which we can strengthen our spiritual muscles and improve our endurance.

One of the obvious spiritual disciplines is what we are doing right now – coming together in worship. When we worship together we find food for the week ahead, guidance for our daily lives and strength for the difficult. We learn that we are not alone, and that we are held in prayer by a community of believers.

Prayer is another obvious spiritual discipline and Jesus speaks about prayer frequently. In today’s gospel he reminds us that our prayer life and our worship life are not to be a source of pride that allow us to think more highly of ourselves. They are not an activity that puts us above others, but rather our worship and our prayer remind us that we are all in need of God’s grace, mercy, and strength.

The reality is that most of us have tasted something of life’s struggle and many of us have learned that the best way through the struggle is to be prepared. It is to know from experience that we are not alone. It is to know from experience that God has been with us in the past and will be with us during the current difficulty. Paying attention to the spiritual disciplines in our lives helps us to be prepared – to be able to identify God’s presence with us through family or friends, through notes and prayers, through the strength that allows us to keep going when we think we can’t go one step further, through the courage that helps us to do what we are afraid to do, through the awareness that with Christ we are able to do what we cannot do alone. The good news is that at the end of the struggle there is awaiting us not only the prize of eternal life, but the reward of knowing it was all worth it.

It’s too early to know how this year’s World Series will end. The winning team will end up with many rewards and they will believe that whatever it took to get them there was worth it. Our lives are a different kind of World Series – it’s not a matter of beating others so that we win and someone else loses. It is a matter of holding firmly to our faith, facing whatever happens in life knowing that we face it with God and keeping on until we have finished the race. As we cross that finish line we will be greeted by Christ who has been running the race with us, steadying us when we were wobbly, carrying us when we couldn’t keep running, and cheering us on with the nutrients we have needed throughout our life.

We have been watching today’s gospel being lived out around us and among us in a dramatic way during the last couple of years. Today we celebrate a long awaited answer to persistent prayer and action. It all started a couple of years ago when Daniel and Dorcas came back from their annual trip to Sierra Leone. They were there to check on and work in the Nar Sarah clinic that they established. Some of us knew a little about the clinic but it was kind of a far off place that didn’t mean too much to most of us. They returned with the story of an eleven year old girl who needed heart surgery in order to live. Between services they told me that they were determined that somehow they would find a way for her to have this surgery.

Why? It was the right thing to do. They knew that God had planted this commitment in their hearts and that somehow God would work this miracle. That Sunday at the close of the ten o’clock service I mentioned this child as part of the benediction – the possibility or vision of a miracle that would transcend religious and cultural lines as we lived out our discipleship to Jesus Christ. I confess, that at that point, I didn’t have anywhere near the same kind of commitment – but the Holy Spirit said the story needed to be told.

That afternoon I received a phone call from Sammy Dallas who wanted the phone number for the family who told me about this child. By the next day Lisa had been on the phone with multiple people trying to locate the right path to provide surgery and life for a child who was still unknown to us. As I recall, Sammy’s comment was “It’s not fair. If she lived here, she would have already had the surgery and would be out playing with her friends.” That, my friends, is a statement of justice. It was not fair and something needed to be done.

Who taught Sammy that? Who convinced Lisa to take on this mountain? With such great medical need in Sierra Leone, who convinced Daniel and Dorcas that their energy needed to be focused on this particular child? Clearly, we believe that it was God who did all that. How did this move from being the project of a couple of people to becoming something that united a congregation and reached the hearts of people well beyond our church? God was busy working and faithful disciples were busy listening.

The obstacles at times were overwhelming, but like the woman in today’s gospel reading, the many people involved never gave up. They were persistent in exploring any possibility that came to them. They were persistent in knocking on the doors of people and systems that somehow held one of the keys to making this happen. In the 25^th chapter of the gospel of Matthew we remember a vivid description of the final judgment. In that vision, people discover that when they did something that helped any one of God’s children it was the same thing as doing it for Jesus. Saffiatu became far more than one child halfway around the world; she became an embodiment of faithful discipleship, of doing something life changing and life giving for Christ.

After the surgery became an accomplished event, the focus started to shift to the larger justice issues involved. Saffiatu became the face for a greater need. Medical supplies were collected and plans were born to keep an ongoing connection with the clinic and the crucial work being done there. The challenges in getting a large container shipped to Sierra Leone and then insuring that it arrived at the clinic were great, but once again the persistent knocking at the doors was successful.

Meanwhile, another mountain was discovered and God again wrote on the hearts of faithful disciples and an adoption began to be explored. It was necessary to bring Saffiatu here so that she could continue to have the medical care that she needed. God continued to work through the persistent efforts of faithful disciples and on Friday night Saffiatu arrived here in Rhode Island. On Friday night when I mentioned that the plane carrying Jeff and Saffiatu should be arriving in Boston in a couple of hours, the face of a child who heard me lit up. She was so excited and thrilled that Saffiatu would soon be here. When Lisa called to say that they were in their van headed home, I knew that an email had to go out to many many people. There was celebration and praise to God taking place on Friday night.

Now, believe it or not, this is not really a sermon about Daniel and Dorcas, or about the Dallas Family, or even about Saffiatu. They are all a wonderful illustration of the message of our scripture – they are a living out of the word – and they are one terrific illustration, but still only one of many ways that faithful disciples are responding to God’s call on our lives.

From the prophet Jeremiah, we hear words that were as hopeful and exciting as everything we have been through. After many years in exile in Babylon the word of the Lord came to the people through the prophet Jeremiah. They had been forced to leave their homes and move to a foreign land. They had been uprooted, enslaved, degraded, dehumanized, and no doubt they felt that they had been abandoned by God. Furthermore, many of them had been in exile for seventy years. It couldn’t get much worse than this. Then the word came through Jeremiah. The word that there would soon be new life in Israel and Judah; that they would once again live in their homes and plant their crops and raise their children in the place they loved. As wonderful and as amazing as this could be, there was another word. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. … I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, `Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.”

Friends, that new covenant is being written through Jesus Christ. It is through that covenant that we have come to know in our hearts what is right and what needs to be done. It is through that covenant that an eleven year old can know that it is not fair for a child halfway around the world not to be able to get the medical treatment she needs in order to live. It is through that covenant that the widow in today’s gospel knew that justice was something that she deserved and was persistent enough to keep at it until justice was received. It is through that covenant that the apostle Paul could urge the young preacher Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

The covenant has not been fully realized yet – we sill need to teach others. We still need to teach our children – or really what we need is to name that which is written on their hearts and help them come to know and understand better what God has given to them. The story is told of a little girl who went to the doctors for her checkup. The kindly doctor was listening to her heart and asked, “Will I find Barney in your heart?” Without missing a beat, she said, “Barney is on my underpants. Jesus is in my heart.”

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another … for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.”

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane into the world of fantasy. Do you remember a character who was given the position of “official conscience”? Many of you will remember Jiminy Cricket. He was appointed by the Blue Fairy to be the “official” conscience for Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who was trying to become a boy. Jiminy Cricket’s official title was “Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, counselor in Moments of Temptation, and Guide along the Straight and Narrow Path.” He blissfully and humbly accepted the position and only later discovered just how hard it really would be.

Today’s scriptures brought him to my mind. One of the things about Jiminy Cricket was that he was certainly persistent. When Pinocchio was lured into danger by listening to the wrong voices, Jiminy Cricket didn’t give up. It was an incredibly difficult job but persistence and love paid off, and Pinocchio finally learned that lying was wrong, greed was wrong, and you can find yourself in dangerous places when you try to fulfill the wrong needs. Like the woman in today’s Gospel reading seeking justice, Jiminy Cricket didn’t give up. No matter how dismal things looked, he persisted because he knew that what he was doing was both right and necessary.

It was necessary because Pinocchio didn’t know right from wrong. He didn’t have a heart. Pinocchio was a wooden puppet, but in answer to a wish by Geppetto he was granted the gift of life. The Blue Fairy promised him that if he proved brave, truthful, and unselfish, he might one day indeed become a real boy. Jiminy Cricket worked hard to teach Pinocchio right from wrong. Eventually a crisis arose and Pinocchio knew by himself the absolute right thing to do. He exhibited behavior that was both brave and unselfish. The persistent work of Jiminy Cricket had paid off and now deep within Pinocchio was the message of love that turned him into a real boy.

“I will write it on their hearts … they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

I have a friend who frequently asks, “What are you reading?” The real answer to that question needs to be “I am reading what God has written on my heart.” I am paying attention to the messages that God has placed at the very center of my being – the place of passion, of thought, of desire, and of energy.

At the close of today’s Gospel, Jesus asks “when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” What are the passions that God has placed in your heart? What are the injustices that will inspire you to be persistent in knocking on the doors of the people and systems that hold the keys to righting the injustice? What are the things you have been taught in your life to which you hold firmly for the sake of Jesus Christ? What are the seeds planted in your heart by God that need to be watered and to grow to produce beautiful fruit for the sake of the children of God? Take time to read what is written on your heart by the God who loves you more than you can even imagine and go forth to act on it so that Christ will indeed find faith on earth.

What do you do about those lepers? The Biblical picture is pretty clear about the details. Today it’s called Hansen’s disease, but in Biblical times leprosy included many different skin diseases. The book of Leviticus gives detailed instructions about how a priest was to make a diagnosis and what was to happen after that. Isolation was the only known way of prevention; so once diagnosed, a Leper had to move out of his or her home. Lepers were unable to work and survived by begging. They lived outside of the city walls and were required to call out “unclean, unclean” when anyone approached.

What do you do about those lepers? If leprosy hasn’t touched your family or a close friend, then maybe you just ignore them. You think that maybe they did something wrong and so God is punishing them. Or maybe you know that they really didn’t do anything wrong and so you are afraid – could this happen to you or someone in your family. Ignore it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. The lepers become the invisible beggars along the street. In Boston or other large cities when you have to stop at a traffic light, you roll up your car window so they know not to approach you; you stare straight ahead or fiddle with the radio dial, or put your cell phone up to your ear – even if you aren’t talking to anyone. Who knows what their story is – but it’s better if you don’t know. You don’t want your life to be interrupted by someone who has probably spent all their money on booze or drugs.

What do you do about those lepers? If the leper is your husband or wife or parent or best friend, your heart breaks every time you walk down the road and see him or her off in the distance. You know that he or she did nothing to deserve this disease – and you miss the easy conversation, the smiling face at the dinner table, the hug that comforted when you were feeling down and the gentle touch that said, “I’m here, every thing will be okay.” Perhaps you take a walk down that road everyday at the same time, wave to your loved one from a distance and leave a loaf of freshly baked bread or a piece of meat. You comfort yourself by knowing that at least he or she is still alive and you are doing something to help. Or maybe you look eagerly each day hoping and praying for a glimpse but the pain and embarrassment are just too great and your loved one never shows.

The leper becomes your sister whose husband is abusive and she’s not allowed to meet your for lunch anymore. He’s always with her when she goes out so that she can’t talk to anyone with freedom. She has only enough time to rush through the grocery store and get back home because he knows how long it will take and if she takes too long she’ll be in trouble. Even on a hot day she’s wearing those long sleeves so that you won’t see the bruises on her arms or legs. Your heart breaks and you keep asking yourself why she doesn’t leave. You don’t know that the most dangerous time in a violent relationship is when she tries to leave.

What do you do about those lepers? Maybe you were one of the fortunate ones – the skin disease that had been diagnosed as leprosy wasn’t the real thing. Eventually it cleared up and you were able to return home to your job, your family and your life. When you see those lepers out on the road you might be filled with compassion for them. You know how hard it is to be separated from your family and loved ones. You know how demeaning it is to have to beg for food. You know that you were lucky; you have gotten your life back and now maybe you can do something to help them. You lobby for legislation to protect women and children from violence. You write to your legislators about the need for affordable housing or job training programs. You contribute regularly to the food pantry knowing that sometimes some extra help is needed and you are so grateful that it was there when you needed it.

Maybe you credit yourself with getting well. You got better and so could they if they would only do something to help themselves. That special mud down by the stream really does have healing properties and if they would only apply that to their skin they could get better too. If they just washed themselves and put on some decent clothes they could find a job; then they wouldn’t need the food pantry. If she would just leave him, like I did, then she wouldn’t have to put up with his insults and putdowns.

What do you do about those lepers? If you are Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, you are taking the route between Samaria and Galilee. It’s not the most direct route, but it means that you don’t have to go through Samaria, and that’s important because good Jews don’t associate with Samaritans. It makes the journey longer but you take the better route. As you approach one of the villages perhaps you are thinking about what will happen when you get to Jerusalem. It’s going to be a tough time. You know that you are facing great opposition. You know that this trip to Jerusalem will be your last because you will face death in Jerusalem. There’s so much to teach your disciples. There’s so much more that you could do. There are so many thoughts and feelings going through your head. As you approach a village a group of ten lepers standing off to the side at the required distance call out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

If you were most people, they might have been no more than background noise, but with Jesus it is different. Luke says, “When he saw them”. Of course, he saw them; it’s hard not to see ten people calling out your name. But I think Luke has included that phrase for a reason. Luke is referring to more than just physically seeing them. I think Luke is telling us that Jesus stopped and really looked at them. He saw them as individuals. He saw the pain and anguish of their lives. He saw the broken dreams, the loneliness, and the pain of wondering “why me”. Jesus saw them and told them to go show themselves to the priests. It was only the priests who could declare them clean and restore them to society.

The lepers left. They went on their way, presumably heading toward Jerusalem to the priests in the temple. I wonder what their conversation was like. Did they go with excitement believing that Jesus had, indeed, had mercy on them and that they would be well? Were one of two of them disappointed that Jesus hadn’t waved his hand toward them and cured them? We don’t know how far they traveled. It could have been a few minutes, or a few hours.

Suddenly the event takes a twist. The one who returned was a Samaritan. Why did he come back? Luke tells us that he came back to praise God. He came and fell on the ground at Jesus’ feet thanking him. Most sermons focus on this one point in the story. One – and only one – came back to give thanks. We wonder what about the other nine. I wonder if the others thought he was foolish to return – that perhaps he risked losing his healing by not following Jesus’ instructions to go to the priest.

What about the nine who didn’t return? Maybe one of them was afraid of Jesus’ power, another thought that Jesus didn’t really have anything to do with the healing, a third thought he deserved the healing, he had suffered long enough. Perhaps one of them was a mother who was so anxious to get home to her children that she figured that some day when things settled down she’d find Jesus and thank him properly. There are many possible reasons – and perhaps we should be the ones answering that question. Why do we fail to give thanks to God for the many wonderful things that happen in our lives?

We might add that the Samaritan, the one who returned, couldn’t have gone to the priest in Jerusalem anyway, he wouldn’t have been permitted inside the temple. While he and the others had leprosy they were thrown together by their common misfortune and the normal barriers of daily life disintegrated. But with their healing, there would no longer be any community among them and the Samaritan would no longer be welcome as part of their group.

When the Samaritan returned to Jesus, Jesus said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” The Greek translates “Your faith has saved you.” All of the ten were cleansed of their leprosy, but the Samaritan who returned was also healed in a more complete way. He recognized that his life had been changed, that it had been transformed, and that he would be embarking on a new life. He returned, giving thanks to God for this realization.

All of us in one way or another had been in need of the healing that only God can give. For some it has been physical. For others it has been healing following the death of someone we love. For some it has been healing from abuse. For others it has been healing from some terrible situation in life. For some it has been addiction or something else. Perhaps you have needed healing in more than one way.

One of the things I like about this story is that Jesus didn’t simply wave his hand over them and cleanse them from their leprosy. For most of us, healing doesn’t take place in that way. I like that Jesus sent them to go and show themselves to the priest. They had to start walking – they had to take the first step, and perhaps many more, before they realized that they had been healed. Perhaps their sores started slowly to fade, their energy slowly began to return, and gradually they realized that healing had taken place. That’s the way it is with most of the healing that takes place in our lives isn’t it? Perhaps that’s one reason why it is so easy to forget to thank God for the healing; it happens gradually and we aren’t always aware that it is taking place.

Years ago when I was teaching nursery school, part of our program included time in the swimming pool. One of my four year olds was terrified of the water. It took many times of holding her in my arms in the water to start to take away the fear. Eventually she allowed herself to lie in my arms and as I slowly bent my knees she gradually began to understand that the water would support her. For all the folklore that says you can teach children by the "sink or swim" method - by tossing them into the water and waiting for them to get it - it almost never happens that way.

“So, too, with any journey of healing or recovery: as trite as it may sound to say it, the only way to get anywhere is one step at a time. The most important step of all is the first. That's the risk, the challenge - the leap - of faith. Jesus says to us - as he says to those lepers, who had not yet received any proof of their healing - "Go." He doesn't tell us what the journey will look like: what awaits us around the next turn. He just says, ‘It's time to get started.’"[i]

“One day the great Michelangelo attracted a crowd of spectators as he worked. One child in particular was fascinated by the sight of chips flying and the sound of mallet on chisel. The master was shaping a large block of white marble. Unable to contain her curiosity, the little girl inquired, "What are you making?" He replied, `There is an angel in there and I must set it free.’”

“Every Christian at their confirmation or conversion is handed a large cold white marble block called religion. We must then take the mallet in hand and set to work. Religion is not our goal but we must first start there. Now there are many names for religion. At times we do call it religion but we often use other words and images to describe it. Sometimes we call it our faith. Jesus spoke in terms of the Kingdom of God. We say we are the Church, Christians, or Disciples. There are many names with varying nuances of meaning but in the end they all describe the same thing. We are a people of Faith, faith in Christ to be sure, but faith nonetheless.”[i]

Faith is a frequent subject in the Bible and especially so in today’s readings. The Gospel begins with the disciples asking Jesus to give them more faith. I wonder how many of you have struggled with this passage. I know that I have. When we read that if we had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, we would be able to tell a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey us. In Matthew’s gospel, a similar illustration talks about moving a mountain. Now, I don’t know about any of you, but I have never moved a mountain, or even a tree by just telling it to move. It does not follow that this means I have no faith.

First, it is important to realize that Jesus is not chastising the disciples for lack of faith. There are two ways of saying “if you have something” in the Greek. One way is referring to something that is not true. “If I could hit a three run homer to win a baseball game I could make millions of dollars” but the reality is I can’t. The other refers to something that is true. “If I had a car I could drive to the grocery store.” I do have a car and so I can drive to the grocery store or someplace else. Jesus is saying to the disciples, “If you have faith – and you do – then you could say to this mulberry tree, `be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

The disciples do have faith – and we have faith – and its time to stop trying to measure what happens by the quantity of faith we think we have. I imagine we’ve all run into the situation where something thinks that they didn’t get well or their loved one didn’t get well because they didn’t have enough faith, or didn’t pray enough. It just doesn’t work that way. People of great faith still have to face difficult circumstances in life, terrible diseases, and we all die eventually – that is not a function of how much faith we have.

So what about the mulberry tree? Many of us don’t realize that the “custom in this part of the world was to use language in the most vivid way. This saying means that even that which looks completely impossible becomes possible, if it is approached with faith.” Suppose this passage had said instead, “if you have faith, you can take a heart out of one person and put it into another person”. There was a time when we would have thought that to be impossible, but today it is an accepted surgical operation. We can think of many other examples of surgical operations, feats of endurance, inventions and other things that we take for granted today that would have been considered as impossible as telling a tree to move. If we approach something saying, “it can’t be done” then it will not. If we approach something saying, “it must be done,” the chances are that it will. Now that’s a little bit of an oversimplification, but the truth is that no matter what the task or situation, we do not approach it alone. God is always there with us.

As Madeleine L’Engle has said, “Slowly I have realized that I do not have to be qualified to do what I am asked to do. That I just have to go ahead and do it, even though I can't do it as well as I think it ought to be done. This is one of the most liberating lessons of my life.” For those of us who think we need to increase our faith, the best way is to practice our faith, to go ahead and do whatever it is that we believe God is calling us to do.

That was the message being given to Timothy in Paul’s letter to him. Timothy was a young preacher and teacher. He had started to question his faith and certainly the living out of it. He was running into opposition and criticism in his work and the temptation was to try to water down what he was preaching and teaching so that he didn’t offend anyone. Paul, his close friend and mentor, wrote to him, in today’s epistle reading, and encouraged him to stand firm in his faith. He reminded him of the work that he was supposed to be doing and urged him to keep doing it. He reminded Timothy that both his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois were women of great faith, so Timothy was not alone in his belief. Paul exhorted him to hold firm to the standard of sound teaching that he had received and to continue to do his work faithfully.

This is also the message that Jesus gave his disciples in the gospel reading. After talking about faith, he talks about servants and the work that they do. Once again, this is a passage that doesn’t sit well with 21^st century Americans, but perhaps that is because the language and images don’t really fit well with what we know. Let’s look at it in a different way.

If you are a parent, you will probably remember those times when a child was sick and you were up at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning. You were exhausted but usually eager to try to do anything to comfort your child and help him or her feel better. You weren’t looking for your infant or toddler to say thank you – and you didn’t expect anyone else to thank you either. It was what needed to be done and you did it gladly out of love.

Ask anyone who has been in love and they’ll tell you that they were willing and eager to do things for the person they loved. Even when money was tight, a small gift for a birthday was important and given gladly and lovingly, even if it meant skipping lunch for a few days. We do many things out of love and we don’t expect to receive a medal for it.

Think about the times a friend has been in need and you’ve changed your schedule or your plans because you were the person who could respond to your friend. You were the one who could listen, or provide transportation, or prepare a meal, or just be there. You didn’t record your actions in a ledger and figure that now your friend owed you something. Relationships are that way.

That’s more of what Jesus is talking about. For although Jesus may have been cracking a small joke when he portrayed how ludicrous it could have been if the master served the slave, yet that ridiculous reversal of roles is just what took place in the Upper Room when the Master served the disciples, washing their feet. It was symbolic of his entire ministry, including the cross.

“The world's most famous evangelist D.L. Moody was hosting a Bible Conference in Massachusetts in the late 1800s. Many of the participants came from Europe. Following the European custom of the time, they left their shoes outside their room to be cleaned by the hall servants overnight. They did not know that there were no hall servants in America. Walking down the dormitory halls that night, Moody noticed the shoes and determined not to embarrass his guests. He gathered up the shoes, went to his room and began to clean and polish the shoes. Only the unexpected arrival of a friend in the midst of the work revealed the secret. The following morning the foreign visitors opened their doors and found their shoes shined. They did not know by whom. Moody told no one, but his friend told a few people, and during the rest of the conference, a different person volunteered to shine the shoes in secret each night. This story is a good example of what we are asked to do in today's gospel: "So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty'" (Luke 17:10).”[ii]

It happens all the time in our lives and in our church. There are many people who are quietly doing what they are able to do and not expecting anyone to notice them, or honor them. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t show appreciation to someone for what they have done, or that we shouldn’t say thank you to people. What I am saying is that the kind of service or response that Jesus is talking about is not motivated by expecting people to thank us, or honor us. It is motivated by love. It is motivated by our love of God which is a response to God’s great love for us.

“Born in Yugoslavia, she responded to God's call on her life while still a teenager. A missionary's strong challenge to give her life to teaching in India resulted in her appointment to the city of Calcutta. Some months later she saw a sight which completely revolutionized her life, and would ultimately bring her world wide fame as Good Housekeeping magazine's `Most-Admired-Woman’ selection. What was the sight? A homeless, dying woman lying in the gutter, being eaten by rats. Compassion compelled her to beg an abandoned Hindu temple from the government, and convert it into a crude make-shift hospital for the dying. A comment of hers became her life's thrust: `If there is a God in heaven, and a Christ we love, nobody should die alone.’ This woman who established colonies for over 10,000 lepers in 28 cities was interviewed by Malcolm Muggeridge from the BBC News. `Mother Teresa, the thing I noticed about you and the hundreds of sisters who now form your team is that you all look so happy, is that a put-on?’ She replied, `Oh no, not at all. Nothing makes you happier than when you really reach out in mercy to someone who is badly hurt.’ Service is its own reward. True mercy begets genuine joy.” [iii]

Our faith and love of God is what allows us to be in service without looking for glory or a reward. It is what enables us to respond to others in love. Our faith is what gives us the courage and ability to face the mountains or mulberry trees with the assurance that we are not alone. Our faith and God’s presence with us give us the ability to move the mulberry trees that are in our lives, to face the obstacles with confidence and with courage.

That man dressed fine as Sunday every day
of the week. Owned Imperial Food Products
poultry processors. Had a plant right here
in town. Every morning, early, the workers
would line up at the front gates—mostly women,
mostly black folk, some with joints froze up from
working those machines, some with emphysema
from working the pantyhose factory
down the road, but all wanting their babies
to eat half as good as what sat on that
rich man's table every evening 'round supper time.
Well, he got to worrying that some folks
might start stealing his chicken parts,
so he took to locking up the factory
doors once the morning shift was in place. The
time came when a hydraulic line blew on
one of the deep-fat fryers and black smoke
filled up the room, followed by grease fire. None of
the state-of-the-art, automatic, carbon
dioxide sprinklers ever came on. Most
folks died at the south end of the building
near the walk-in freezer. They had headed
for the exit, but it was locked. Then they
were drawn on by the gulps of cool air. Some
died down at the loading dock. Piled up on
each other trying to get through the small
hole between the wall and the truck blocking
the platform. There was Mary Alice Whit.
She was dead. There was Peggy Fairley. She
was dead. There was Lillian Mary Wall,
who'd only worked chicken a few months. She
was dead. And Margaret Banks. When
they brought her out, you could already
tell she was dead. All in all, there were 25
who died that day. The Hamlet police lieutenant
said you couldn't tell whether the bodies
were white or black on account of the smoke; but the
angels, who pay no mind to color, came
and carried every single one of them
up into the arms of Abraham.
Now, all of this happened the day after
Labor Day. And even though Imperial
didn't allow no organizing in its
plants, the North Carolina Textile Workers
Union still sent dresses (and suits for the
men) to use as burying clothes. At the
First Baptist Church the mourners cried out "Lord,
Lord," maybe because in the confusion
they had missed the angels. They cried out "Slavery
time's been over! How much longer is it
going on?" To which there was just no good
answer. What all happened to the rich man
was never much covered in the newspapers,
but the actual truth is his story's been told before.[i]

That poem was written by Rose Marie Berger. Six months after the September 1991 fire in the Imperial Good Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, the owner, operations manager and plant manager were all indicted on 25 counts of involuntary manslaughter. It wasn’t the legal outcome with which Ms. Berger was concerned. She entitled her poem, “Lazarus and the Rich Man” and it is to that gospel story that she refers when she says, “the actual truth is his story’s been told before.”

The reality is that this story had been told before and has been told too many times since. The details change but it is a story about the great gulf that too often divides the rich and the poor – a gulf that on earth can and should be bridged. It is a gulf that almost all of us have the opportunity to bridge while we live. It’s a gap that is highlighted in our epistle reading as well. It may be that one of the most misquoted passages of scripture is found right here. We have probably all heard the saying that “money is the root of all evil.” Paul’s letter to Timothy, doesn’t say that “money is the root of all evil” but rather that it is the “love of money” which is a root of all kinds of evil. With that many of us breathe a sigh of relief because we aren’t likely to admit that we love our money; it is merely a tool that gets us the things we need in life, we say – or if we are really honest, the things we want, not just the things we need.

The story that Jesus told describes the man in two quick strokes. He was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen (think Armani) and who feasted sumptuously every day. There’s nothing wrong with a feast. They are fun, but they are meant to be shared and Lazarus outside his door never received even the crumbs from the feast. Even in death, the rich man thinks he is entitled to privilege. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to take care of him. Then he wants Lazarus to be his errand boy and go to warn his brothers.

Paul’s words speak well as a warning to this man and to us. Eugene Peterson in The Message, puts it this way, “Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage – to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.”

John Wesley, the man who is considered the founder of Methodism, had a way of explaining all of this. His counsel was to “gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.” Both Jesus and Wesley seemed to be afraid of money because it tends to do something destructive to the human soul. Yet if we view money from the perspective of scripture, it can be a means of fulfilling God’s purpose.

Most of us have no trouble with Wesley’s first rule about money, “Gain all you can.” However, let me be clear that Wesley isn’t advocating greed or gain for the sake of gain. He is talking about earning all that one can but only within the guidelines and restraints of an ethic based on love of God and compassion for others. He could never properly be accused of being a cheerleader for reckless profit-seeking or acquisition. In fact, he focuses more on the restrictions that we should follow in the pursuit of wealth. He was insistent that we should not be seeking profit at the expense of health, integrity, honesty or the well-being of others.

Even if we are careful about this in our own lives, we need to realize that as Americans we profit from the exploitation of poor nations of the world. Our comfortable life style is gained at the expense of much of the world’s poverty.

“Forrest Carter wrote a wonderful book, The Education of Little Tree, in which he tells the following story. It is the story of a young Native American boy named Little Tree. When Little Tree is left an orphan, he is sent to live with his Cherokee grandparents in the Smoky Mountains. Soon the grandfather begins to teach Little Tree about the way of his people.

“One day grandfather and grandson went hunting. The old man dug a hole in the ground and made a turkey trap. When they returned hours later, six turkeys were gobbling in the trap.

“All six turkeys were removed from the trap and their legs securely bound. As they lay squawking and flapping on the ground, the grandfather told Little Tree that they only needed three turkeys. Then he went on to explain that they should choose the three smallest and least likely to survive and set the others free to reproduce and provide food for someone else. In this graphic way Little Tree learned that the way of his people is to be as concerned with giving to life as much as taking from life. It is a lesson we would do well to learn today.”[ii]

The second principle that Wesley expounded was “Save all you can.” “Having gained all you can, by honest wisdom and unwearied diligence …. Save all you can.”[iii] Oh boy! Bring on those Certificates of Deposit, stocks and bonds and other means of investment! But wait, that’s not what Wesley is saying at all. “Save all you can” is Wesley’s call to a simplified life style. We all know that “things have a way of increasing in importance. They get into our souls and become a part of our identities. We become dependent upon what we own.”[iv]

Environmentalists tell us that it is crucial that we become aware of our carbon footprint and take steps to reduce it or off-set it. If I want my new grandchild to grow up in a world where she doesn’t have to worry about the air she breathes then I’d better take those steps now before it’s too late. A contemporary proverb echoes Wesley’s challenge to save all you can: live simply so that others may simply live.

This is a challenge for us as Americans. “When more money is spent on entertainment than on education, on diet products than on food for the hungry, on cosmetics that on dental care for the poor, and on luxury automobiles than on housing for the homeless, a potentially fatal crack has appeared in our ethical and religious foundations. We would do well to heed Wesley’s charge to save all we can”[v] and to heed Jesus’ warning that we must give an account for our lives and how we have used our resources.

These first two, “gain all you can” and “save all you can” are explained in the final rule, “give all you can”. Lest you think that Wesley was just a preacher trying to raise the church budget or raise the hackles of those listening to him, let me assure you that Wesley practiced what he preached. When he was a student, he earned thirty pounds. He lived on twenty-eight and gave away two. Now, I will admit that he was not tithing at that point, otherwise he would have been giving away three pounds. However, as his earnings increased, so did what he gave away. He continued to live on twenty-eight pounds and gave away everything else. When he earned 120 pounds, he gave away 92. At one point he wrote to his sister, “Money never stays with me. It would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible, lest it should find its way into my heart.” He told people that if at his death he had more than ten pounds in his possession, they could call him a robber.[vi]

This urging to “give all you can” is routed in an understanding of God’s generosity, and a plea for compassion for the poor and needy. St. Jerome, in a letter written in the year 400 A.D. referred to a woman who “preferred to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than to hide it in a purse.”[vii] That is a wonderful image of saving all you can in the best way – by providing for those who are truly in need.

We are getting close to the time of year when we hear advertisements for Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”. You may remember that in that story and the play that has been made from it, Ebenezer Scrooge has a dream – or rather a nightmare – of what his future will be if he doesn’t change. The story of the Rich man and Lazarus is similar and calls us to self-examination and change.

This is an invitation to each of us to realize that whether we know it or not we are wealthy in many ways. It is an invitation to see Lazarus sitting by our doorstep and to use the resources available to us for the good of all, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share. It is an invitation to build a good foundation for the future and to take hold of the life that really is life. Most of us are ordinary people and it can be a temptation to think that we don’t have much to give, much to offer, but we do. It can be a temptation for us to think we are doing the best we can – and that may be true – but maybe there is another step that we can take. Maybe there is one place in our lives where God wants us to look a little closer and use the gifts God has given us in a way that is different than what we have been doing. Let us remember that feasts are meant to be shared.

I’ve begun to realize how out of touch I am about some of the things that go on in the world. Recently, I was part of a conversation about someone having met someone to whom he was attracted. The question was something like, “Did he get digits?” I wonder how many of you know what that means. I thought it sounded like some horrible disease or something, but I learned that it meant “Did he get her phone number?” It seems every time I turn around there are new words and technologies I don’t know about. Last week I read an article about “Ministry via New Technology”[i] In there I discovered a new term for me, “vlogging”. It must be relatively recent because the article explained it to me as “video journaling”.

I thought about all this as I started working on today’s sermon and studying the Gospel reading. Ched Myers with whom I studied during my renewal leave describes the steward in this parable as being caught between “two economies.” He talks about the economy of business by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer verses the economy of the household where people depend upon each other, where each has what they need to live without exploiting another. He explained that when the manager is asking himself what he will do when he loses his job, he is literally asking, “What will I do when I am kicked out of the economy?”

He decides that the only way he will be able to live is to get in on the other economy – the household economy where someone will make sure that he doesn’t starve. He is making a shift from the economy of exploitation to the economy of relationships. Now I could go into greater detail in trying to explain the attitude toward money in first century Palestine, or the land system and the steward, and the strange dilemma the steward creates for his master. Some of you might find that interesting and others of you might go to sleep. So instead let me read this last section to you from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

“Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way – but for what is right – using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.” (Luke 16:8-9)

“I want you to be smart in the same way – but for what is right. Another writer put it this way: Look at the shrewdness, the enthusiasm with which the sleazy shysters and charlatans of this world acquire riches for themselves. If you, the children of light, could marshal just a fraction of that cleverness for God’s work, for serving others, what good could be accomplished?[ii]

Many of Jesus’ parables were told to crowds, but this one was told to his disciples and a strange group they were. There was Matthew the tax collector, and Peter the fisherman. Quite likely there were some of the women there as well. They were all people who knew how to use their instincts, their skills and perseverance in order to live in an extremely difficult and fickle economy under the control of the Roman government. To Matthew the tax collector, a man who understood money, this story seems to be saying, use that gift for the sake of the kingdom. Take what you know about money and apply it for good. To Peter and the other fishermen who had to barter with others in order to make a living, he seems to be saying, use that experience for the sake of the kingdom. To the women who knew how to stretch a coin in the market, how to feed a family on next to nothing, how to use every part of everything they had without wasting anything, and managed to get all of this done in an organized way, he seems to be saying, take all of those skills and use them for the sake of the kingdom. To us who know how life works whether it is advertisement or finance, teaching or wheeling and dealing in the boardroom, Jesus says, use that for the sake of the kingdom.

You see things haven’t really changed much since Jesus’ telling of the story. The world we live in today is different in details but similar in many ways. The unjust manager’s descendents are all around us. The New England Patriots just received a half a million dollar fine and the loss of a draft pick because they were caught using video technology to decipher the on field signals of opposing teams. We read stories about the integrity of some of the donations made to political campaigns. Through Plunder Dome Rhode Islanders know well that bribery is still alive and well in some areas of government and is an accepted practice in some places. How often have we lamented about how much good could be done if that same kind of energy and knowledge could be used for good!

If you look at the church from a marketing standpoint, we have the best product around but we are not always very good about letting people know about it. We live in a world where there is much trouble, where people look desperately for something to give meaning to their life, where isolation and loneliness are rampant. We live in a world where the dishonest mangers descendents are alive and well.

We know the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We know because God is a God of liberation and life, of freedom and power that we are free to not need any other gods, we are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols. We are free from killing, stealing, and covetousness as ways to live in the world.

We know that when we are in trouble we are not alone because God enters into that trouble with us. We know that when we are in pain, God enters into the depths of our pain with us and brings healing. We even know that God expects us to do the same with each other – to enter into other’s pain, to bear other’s burdens and those of the world around us.

We know the power of God within us. We know that this life and this world are not all that there is. We know that because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection the powers of this world and the death of our earthly bodies is not the last word.

We have the word of hope, the promise of peace, the courage to face the future and we have a world that is literally dying to know what we already know. The problem in all too many cases is that churches and believers tend to keep this a secret. We tend to take all of this wonderful news and keep it for ourselves without sharing it with the world. We may have learned the lesson of trusting God, but we have not been as good at learning that we are to use the wisdom and the knowledge and the power and the skills that we have acquired in our secular lives in ways that invite others to know and be part of what we have found. We have not always moved beyond worship, and peace, and comfort into discipleship, evangelism, and mission which is the true worship of God.

Discipleship, evangelism, and mission are church words that simply mean living our lives as if what we believe is really true in every part of our lives, sharing it with others and doing the work that God wants us to do everywhere. The image that comes to me is from the movie “Sister Act”. The huge church is mostly empty during worship except for a faithful few. When Whoopi Goldberg finds herself in a convent hiding from the mobsters who want to kill her, she ends up leading the choir of nuns. The music that she introduces is a variation on the music she has been singing in her days as a Vegas showgirl. When the choir starts to sing songs that are familiar to the people on the streets they tentatively start to poke their heads in the doors of the church. They start to hear a message that connects with where they are in their lives. They start to hear a message of hope; a word that they are not alone.

Soon the church is full of people who are starting to find something important in the place they least expected to find it. The sisters then begin to go out into the streets and meet people. Goldberg’s character takes the street smarts that have helped her survive and like the manager in today’s parable uses them to build relationships, to reach out to a different world. In the process she is also transformed.

What would happen if we used all of our collective worldly wisdom for the sake of the kingdom of God? Well let’s see. We might be able to make a difference for a Muslim child halfway around the world. We might come to understand that there are people in the world who don’t have access to medical care and we might do something about that. Perhaps we would provide rental or utility assistance to people in our town who desperately need some hope. We might provide food for people who are hungry and school supplies for children in Providence. We might follow safe sanctuary policies and require background checks for adults working with children in this place. We might have a ministry of hospitality to our community. Oh, wait a minute; we’re already doing those things.

Yet, even with all of this, I suspect that we are using only a small portion of the collective wisdom and energy that is available in this place and among us as a people. There are so many places where we are not reaching. When was the last time most of us were on Navy Drive? Do our worship and music connect with people who are part of a visual culture and a technological mindset? Do those who are not safe in their own homes know that we are a people who will not tolerate violence and abuse? Are we listening to God and thinking outside of the box in finding ways to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a hurting world? Do we see ourselves as having a mission to reach out to and welcome the people God wants to bring into God’s house?

“Just when the disciples think they understand the kingdom of God, Jesus throws them with a new idea. "Keep on your toes, keep engaging with the World." “We are not free from engaging with the world and its structures.”[iii]

Christ calls us to take the skills we have learned in the world and use them compassionately, wisely, and energetically in the work of God’s kingdom. When we do this our faith becomes more meaningful and more real not only to us but to the world to which God calls us.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

September 16, 2007

Text: Epistle: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Gospel: Luke 15:1-10

Title: God’s Lost and Found Department

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

All of us have lost something at some time or another. We can identify with the frantic feeling of not being able to find something important to us. When I read the second part of today’s gospel about the woman sweeping carefully and searching until she finds a lost coin, I remember the time I lost my pocketbook on the boardwalks at Myrtle Beach. I frantically ran back to where I last knew I had it, then ran around looking for the security center where I hoped it might be. I was frantic, all of my money, credit cards, license everything was in there. I was alone hundreds of miles from home.

The incredible relief and joy that I experienced when the person at the security center handed it to me was amazing. That joy was multiplied when I discovered that all of my money and everything else was still there. I was so excited I had to tell someone, so I rushed back to the information center where I had stopped earlier and held up the pocketbook as I approached. The three women behind the counter all started clapping and someone promptly produced a bottle of cold water and told me to sit down and relax and catch my breath.

My pocketbook didn’t get excited about being found – it was really all about my excitement. That’s really a key in today’s gospel reading. I don’t know whether or not the lost sheep would realize it was lost, but I’m fairly certain the coin would not. So the conclusion of the parable, “Just so I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” may be more about the joy than about the repentance.

There is good news here for those who have been lost but now are found. There is good news for those who have repented and changed their lives and come back to the kind of life that Jesus wants us to live. There is good news because those who are lost are welcomed and their returning is a cause of rejoicing.

These parables are not so much about repenting as they are about rejoicing. They are not about changing our ways – although we often need to do that – but they are more about seeking, sweeping, finding, and rejoicing. Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that “the invitation is not about being rescued by Jesus over and over again, but about joining him in rounding up God’s herd and recovering God’s treasure. It is about questioning the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out. It is about trading in our high standards on a strong flashlight and swapping our `good examples’ for a good broom. It is about discovering the joy of finding.”[i]

Part of the reason for this understanding of the stories is found in the context of these parables. Tax collectors and sinners were coming to listen to Jesus. He had something to say that encouraged these people who were normally the outcasts of society to come closer, to listen, and to hang around with Jesus. To make matters worse, Jesus not only welcomed them, but he ate with them. Think about the people with whom you normally share a meal. Except in restaurants or cafeterias, these are usually our family or friends. Think of those with whom you do not want to sit down for a meal and you have a vision of who Jesus was socializing with on a regular basis.

So Jesus told two parables about something being lost. My first impulse when I hear the story of the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to go looking for the lost one is that he’s not very smart. I wonder who is taking care of the 99 sheep that have not wandered off. I wonder whether a wolf or lion will come and attack them while he is gone. Many commentators have suggested that flocks belonged to a village and there would have been several shepherds there so the other sheep would not be left alone. Others suggest that the sheep were in a sheepfold or pen so it was safe to leave them. It became a common theme to illustrate God’s love by showing that God is like a good shepherd who would risk his life and go after a lost sheep.

Richard Swanson, a religion professor, suggests another way of looking at this. He writes, “When Jesus first set this story problem in front of people (people who knew a lot about sheep), everyone in the crowd knew how to answer his question, `Which one of you would leave ninety-nine sheep alone in the wilderness to go on a fool’s errand searching for single stray?’ The crowd answers, with one voice, `No one in his right mind would leave ninety-nine perfectly good sheep just to hunt for one stray who apparently lacks the genetically determined instinct to bunch up and form a herd.’ Everyone in the crowd would have known that.”[ii]

He goes on to argue that the story of the woman searching for her lost coin is similar. He says, “If you know anything about the schedule of women’s work in traditional societies (before washing machines, dishwashers, and gas ovens) you know that this woman has just thrown an entire week off, and maybe left her family without an evening meal. Even if she is searching for something precious, she has disrupted an entire world in her searching. Which one of you women would stay home from work during the busiest week of the year (maybe the auditors are coming?) because she had misplaced her wedding photos? `No one in her right mind’ is the answer you were looking for.”[iii]

Swanson’s thoughts take the idea of a loving God who searches diligently for the one who is lost further than our more traditional interpretations. “If they are to be taken as stories about how God refuses to surrender any part of creation, no matter what the cost, then they are both comforting and disturbing at the same time. They are comforting if we happen to be the part of creation that God insists on honoring and protecting. They are disturbing if God has decided to honor and protect people we know are not worth the effort. When the newspaper runs a story detailing the cost of the war (no matter what war you are talking about), the list of casualties will always include the names of our soldiers who have died. The list will never include the names (a much longer list, at least in recent wars) of the civilians who have died as a result of a nighttime bombardment. `You can’t avoid collateral damage,’ we tell ourselves. And we are right. But if Jesus’ story problems present a picture of a God who is excessively concerned about every part of creation, these stories will be troublesome.”[iv]

We get a small glimpse of that in our reading from 1 Timothy as we hear the words of one who was lost – but didn’t know it – and who now rejoices in being found. “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of violence.” Hardly the kind of person you would want to have as part of the family of faith. And yet, the author of those words was in his earlier life a zealous Jew concerned about protecting the integrity of the faith that was so important to him. He became equally zealous about spreading the news about Jesus. These words were written by the apostle Paul who became the greatest missionary of the early Christian church and perhaps of all time. There were those who were justifiably suspicious of his sudden inclusion among those who followed Christ, but the God who refuses to give up on any part of God’s creation had greater wisdom than those who had only human wisdom and knowledge.

The question for each of us is where are we in these stories? Are we the sheep or the coin that are lost? Is God searching for us, diligently sweeping away the dirt that covers us and carefully looking for us, refusing to give up? If so, feel God gently reaching out and picking you up, pulling you out of the place where you have been lost and hear the angels rejoicing that you have been found.

Are we the Pharisees and scribes who are watching those who are found by Jesus? Are we grumbling because the people who are being found might not dress the way we do, or may not know the proper etiquette for worship, or may not support the ministry of the church financially the way we do? Are we complaining about those who are being found and in our complaining closing doors? If so, we might be surprised to discover that we are the ones who are lost, that we have missed the point and that we too need to be found again so that we can join the party and rejoice.

If these stories are about a God who searches then pay attention to the images that Jesus used for God – a shepherd and a woman. In first century society, shepherds were outcasts. They were scorned because they smelled like sheep. Often they were viewed as being rootless and untrustworthy and were not allowed to testify in court cases, or vouch for anyone’s good character. A woman was also very low in the social hierarchy, and likewise could not testify in court cases. Yet, throughout the Bible there are many many times when the image of a shepherd or a woman is used to describe the actions of God.

Are we the shepherd who risks all to find the lost sheep or the woman who lights a lamp and sweeps diligently until the lost are found? Are we the ones who are rejoicing and holding a party when someone who has gotten lost has been found?

I was talking with another pastor this week and she told me a wonderful story of something that she discovered in the church she just started to pastor. She had been out with another woman in the church visiting a couple of people. As they walked down the street they came to a housing unit with a bench outside. Seated on the bench was the oldest member of the church, a woman in her nineties. This woman did not live in this housing development; she lived down the street a little bit and had walked to the bench. As they watched, the woman sitting on the bench invited everyone who walked by to stop and chat. When they did she showed them a copy of the Sunday morning worship bulletin and a pamphlet describing the church. She told them what the pastor had preached about on Sunday and told them about the activities of the church and she ended by inviting them to come to worship at her church. Her approach was low key. There was no pressure. She was just a woman who was excited about what was happening in her church and wanted others to know. She was simply being friendly to those who came by and engaging them in conversation to the extent that they were willing to stop and talk with her.

We might ask ourselves, “When was the last time I invited someone to come and worship with me? When was the last time I told someone about our Sunday School, youth fellowship, or adult studies? When was the last time I really wanted to share my faith with someone else and how did I do it?

Where are you in these stories? Where do you want to be? More importantly, where does Christ want you to be? The door is open; come in and join the party. Go out and invite someone else to come to the party with you. Rejoice and have fun in the celebration of God’s great love pouring over you and spreading beyond you to all those you meet. Let us pray.

[i] Brown Taylor, Barbara, The Preaching Life Cowley Publications, Boston, MA 1993, p.151

[ii] Swanson, Richard W. Provoking the Gospel of Luke, Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, 2006, p.196

[iii] Swanson, p.196-7

[iv] Swanson, p.197

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No sermon text available for September 9, 2007

Sermon preached by The Rev. Gary Shaw, Superintendent RISEM

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September 2, 2007

God’s Guiding Words

by Elaine Marcia Roffo

North Kingstown United Methodist Church

Through it all

I’ve learned to trust in Jesus

I’ve learned to trust in God

Through it all

I learned to depend upon God’s word

“Through it all” Methodist Hymnal

Have you ever had a terrible day? A day when nothing seems to go right. A day where you feel out of sorts and just don’t want to do anything.

In Psalm 81 10-16 God was having one of those days. His people were not heeding his voice.[1] They didn’t want anything to do with him. [2]. God was ready to give them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels[3].

God could not understand why his people wouldn’t listen to him.[4] If only they would, he would subdue their enemies[5] God wanted to be there to take care of their problems and show them

Just like God, when we are having a terrible day, we feel like we are all alone. That no one else cares for us or what is happening to us. But maybe having a terrible day is a message from God to slow down. To consider why we think the day is terrible.

Maybe you need to sit down and consider why you think the day is terrible. Take some time to ponder what is bothering you. Are you afraid? Are you worried? God is always there to listen to what is troubling you. Remember what was said in Hebrew 13 “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?[6]

My favorite hymn is “This is the day”. It reminds us that every day is a day made by God. No matter how terrible we feel at the time we must rejoice and be glad that the next day has come.

What we should try to do, is not let all our days be terrible days. We need to find a way to turn the bad thoughts into good thoughts. To change spending our time worrying about ourselves to helping others who have problems much greater than ours.

Sometimes in trying to help others we can solve our own troubles.

We all have gifts that we can share. What is your gift? Here are some gifts that don’t cost a cent.[7]

The Gift of Listening – But you must really listen. No interrupting, no daydreaming. No planning your response. Just listening. Jesus was a great listener.
The Gift of Affection- Be generous with appropriate hugs, kisses, pats on the backs and handholds. Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for family and friends.
The Gift of Laughter – Clip cartoons. Share articles and funny stories. Your gift will say “I love to laugh with you”
The Gift of a written note – It can be a simple “Thanks for the help” note or a comforting bible verse. A brief handwritten note may be remembered for a lifetime and may even change a life
The Gift of a Compliment – A simple and sincere “You look great in Red,” You did a super job.” Or “That was a wonderful day” can make someone’s day.
The Gift of a Favor – Every day go out of you way to do something kind
The Gift of Solitude – There are times when we want nothing better than being alone. Be sensitive to those times and give the gift of solitude to others.
The Gift of a Cheerful Disposition – The easiest way to feel good is extend a kind word to someone, really it is not hard to say, “Hello” or “Thank You”

Remember that Jesus is always with you. Hebrew 13:8 reminds us that “He is the same yesterday, today and forever” [8]

But as you go about sharing you “gifts”, do it in a humble way. Follow the teaching of Jesus found in the Luke passage that was read today.[9] Share your gifts with the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.

Try not to be the “authority” on the subject. Spread your “gift” in such a way that the people receiving the help will not know where it came from. For Jesus said in Luke 14:11, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.[10]

Remember that God will be with you, to guide you, in all you try to do.

Let us pray,

Lord of all hopefulness; be with us from our waking to our sleeping, guiding us to be your disciples in all that we strive to accomplish in our daily lives.

[1] Psalm 81:10

[2] Psalm 81:11

[3] Psalm 81:12

[4] Psalm 81:13

[5] Psalm 81:14

[6] Hebrew 13:6

[7] Paraphrase “Eight gifts that don’t cost a cent!” – Author unknown

[8] Hebrews 13:8

[9] Luke 14:1, 7-14

[10] Luke 14:11

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

August 26, 2007

Text: Luke 13:10-17

Jeremiah 1:3-10

Title: Not one more day

There are some images that become indelibly etched in your mind. Such is the one that leaps to remembrance whenever I encounter the gospel reading for today. It is a scene from Pastor’s Assembly, a continuing education event I attend every year. It was a hot summer day and there was a woman sitting on a stool at the front of the chapel where we held our sessions. I don’t remember the exact words that were spoken but it was something like this. The leader of our session, Marie Fortune, said, “They told you that good girls always do what they are told.” Someone stepped forward and placed a blanket over the woman. She continued, “They told you that wives are supposed to be submissive to their husbands.” Another blanket was placed over the woman. “They told you that Jesus forbids divorce.” Another blanket. “He said it was your fault. If you had kept the children quiet he wouldn’t have gotten so mad and hit you.” Another blanket. “He said he was under stress at work and you made it worse when you burned the supper.” Another blanket. And on it went until the woman who had been sitting upright on the stool seemed to become only a squashed down mound of blankets.

Then the words started to change. “A friend told you that burning dinner didn’t give him the right to hit you.” A blanket was removed. “Your sister reminded you that children make noise and that’s not a reason to hurt you.” Another blanket was removed. “Your pastor said that the one who inflicts violence and abuse is the one who breaks the marriage vows, not the one who leaves in order to be safe.” Another blanket was removed. “Jesus loves you and wants you and your children to be safe.” Another blanket was removed.

And so it went. The woman who had been under the blankets described the blankets becoming heavier and heavier until it became impossible to continue to sit tall on the stool. She slumped over and eventually even had trouble sitting at all. She felt like she was suffocating under the blankets. She wondered why someone didn’t help. As they were gradually removed she found it easier to breath, easier to sit and eventually was able to straighten her body again.

That is one of the images I see every time I hear the story of the bent over woman in the synagogue. It’s a story that describes the incredibly feeling of being overwhelmed, pushed down, feeling alone and unable to do anything to help yourself. It’s a story that with different words describes many different human conditions in which people find themselves.

Then Jesus comes and sees the woman and pronounces her freedom and healing, touches her and she stands straight. It reminds me of the song “He touched me.” “Shackled by a heavy burden, neath a load of guilt and shame, then the hand of Jesus touched me, and now I am no longer the same. He touched me; O he touched me, and O the joy that floods my soul! Something happened, and now I know, he touched me and made me whole.”[i]

It’s a wonderful story of healing, but immediately the focus shifts and the woman almost gets lost in the controversy that ensues. The problem quite simply is that Jesus, in healing this woman, has broken one of the Sabbath laws. He has healed and that is considered work. The leader of the synagogue insists that there are six days to work, so the woman could have come and been healed on another day. If Jesus had only waited one day, the story would be so very different. If Jesus had only waited one day, this would have been a story of excitement and wonder and celebration. Instead it is a story of conflict and debate about authority.

Jesus seems to be arguing, not against the rule that work should not be done on the Sabbath, but rather that the rule be understood. The rule about work on the Sabbath was meant to give people an opportunity to slow down, to let their soul catch up to their body, to be intentional about worshipping and adoring God. I believe that Jesus’ argument comes down to understanding what the rule is about, and then recognizing that the giving of life, the restoring of wholeness is an appropriate and important act in the worship of God. His point however, is that this woman has suffered for eighteen years. She has been in bondage to whatever it is that has been controlling her, and true worship of God, true adoration of God, compels that she should not suffer needlessly for even one more day. In healing the woman, the true spirit of the Sabbath is honored.

It’s a debate that continues today. I understand that there are reasons for most of the rules we have in society and in our communities, churches, and homes, but sometimes we have to do what Jesus did and look at the reasons. Sometimes the rules become one more blanket thrown on someone who is already buried under a heavy load. We have to be careful that the people involved do not get lost in the administration or enforcement of the rules.

Let me take the illustration at the beginning and go a little further with it. In the process of having the blankets removed and the healing beginning, there are other blankets and roadblocks that get put in the way. Rhode Island has a wonderful program called “Rite Care” that helps provide medical coverage to families or lower income people who need coverage. Food stamps are life savers for many people. For women with children part of these programs involve trying to get the father of the children to provide support to offset some of the cost. That makes a lot of sense. Unless you are fleeing a dangerous situation and it isn’t safe for you or your children if the father finds out where you are. There is a provision for not pursuing the father but the criteria are such that they don’t apply unless the child or mother have been very seriously injured. Consequently there are a lot of women out there who are trying to put their lives back together, trying to provide for their children, living well below the poverty level and unable to access the safety nets that we think we have in place.

Immigration has become a real hot-button topic in our country and most of us would agree that major overhaul is needed in the laws and regulations. When laws are applied without looking at the people involved we are adding blankets to their burdens. Joe arrived in this country when he was 2 years old. “He only speaks English. He did well in high school, and now, at 22 works at a restaurant where he was recently promoted to assistant manager. He coaches Little League and is a faithful member of his church. Since he was 16 he has worked under a false Social Security number, which means that he has faithfully paid taxes into a Social Security account that he can never use for his retirement. Last year he married his childhood sweetheart, who is a U.S. citizen. After she became pregnant with their first child, she petitioned to legalize Joe’s status.

“They ran into the `bar.’ Since 1996, if anyone has been in the country illegally more than a year, they are barred from (becoming a legal immigrant) until they first return to their home country for 10 years. Joe now faces the prospect of being forced to leave his pregnant wife to live for 10 years in a country foreign to him.”[ii] No matter what you think of the current Immigration debate, remember that Joe was brought to this country when he was 2 years old. He never made the decision to be here illegally. To his way of thinking and living he is an American, actively contributing to his community but the rules say differently.

Jesus responded to his critics, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” Luke tells us that when he said this, his opponents were put to shame; they were able to see the absurdity in their complaint. The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

There are many other illustrations I could use to describe some of the places where we have allowed the rules and regulations to get in the way of the healing and life giving that our faith raises as being one of our primary duties. You can think of many yourselves.

In the reading from Jeremiah this morning we heard about God’s call to Jeremiah – a call that says that God has known him before he was shaped in the womb and that God had plans for him before he even saw the light of day. This is the same call that God issues to each of us. Jeremiah’s argument that he is only a boy and doesn’t know what to say or do is dismissed because God is the one who will do the leading and guiding. That is the response we also receive when we argue that we don’t know what to do or how to do it, or that there are too many needs and we don’t know where to begin. Jeremiah is called not only to challenge the status quo and the powers but also to build and to plant, to help recreate in the way that God wants things to be.

”The burden of the prophet is "to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow" (Jeremiah 1:10). Jesus takes on that role as he chastises the religious leaders for their petty legalisms and destructive obsession with regulations. The ultimate prophetic purpose, however, is "to build and to plant," to act with true compassion and mercy. Jesus came not to throw out tradition, but to show us that it can never replace—and should never be allowed to hinder—the expression of genuine love for one another.”[iii]

Some of us may be feeling like the bent over woman – life seems too difficult, we are no longer able to look up and enjoy life, figuratively or literally to see the face of those who care and to rejoice in life. If that is your case then please accept the assurance that Jesus does see our pain and cares. We are not left alone to deal with the heavy blankets that have been thrown over us – there is one who will carefully and lovingly remove the blankets so that we may see the future with hope.

Many of us are able to see ahead and see around us. We are able to see the needs of those who are covered with and weighed down by the blankets of concern. We are then called to hear the word to Jeremiah. We are reminded that we are also called to help remove the blankets, to step forward with boldness and confidence, trusting that God will overcome whatever inadequacies we feel; knowing that the truth of the Gospel and the empowerment of our Lord is far greater than our weaknesses and doubt. We join a long line of people of faith. And they are waiting for us to build a new world with them. We are called to hold God’s people in our hearts and to respond “Here I am, Lord.”

[i] Gaither, William J. “He Touched Me” United Methodist Hymnal, #367

[ii] Salvatierra, Alexia “Sacred Refuge” Sojourners Magazine Sept.- Oct 2007, p.20

[iii] Rice, Jim “Lord of the Sabbath” SoJo.com Preaching the Word, Aug. 26, 2007

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August 19, 2007

THE GOD WHO HEALS AND RESTORES

By The Rev. F. Richard Garland

Psalm 80

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

The Hymn "Amazing Grace" is one of the most beloved of all our hymns. The words are over 200 years old and the tune has been around for more than a century, perhaps two. People are at home with it in church and in prison, on a glittering stage or at a simple camp meeting. The story of its writing is a triumph of justice over wealth, of repentance over pride, of hope over despair, of life over death. It is timeless in the many truths it tells while being so timely that it connects to the human condition at so many levels across so many generations. From the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy this hymn unites people in the common bond of faith and human experience.

Each of us has a favorite phrase or verse from the hymn. In fact we could probably meditate on this hymn for a very long time and only begin to plumb the depth of its wisdom. Today I would like to focus on one verse of the hymn that connects beautifully to Psalm 80, one of the Lectionary readings for this Sunday. "The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures; he will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures." Psalm 80 is a Psalm to the God who restores - the God who is the source of all hope - the God who gives life as a gift.

When we speak of the restoration of life, we are acknowledging that life also has times of brokenness, anguish, bewilderment, sorrow and grief -- times when there seems to be a mighty contradiction between the promises God makes in creation and the way we experience life. It was for these times that the Psalmist wrote. "Restore us, O God of hosts; let thy face shine, that we may be saved."

As a Pastor I have moved a fair amount. Every transition is something of an adventure, with mingled excitement and apprehension. On a couple of occasions I began a new ministry in a new place battered and bruised by situations I was leaving. Sometimes, but not always, it was through no fault but my own. Every pastor processes this stuff differently, but for me, in an odd sort of way, one of my anchor points through all the moves were the plants that I carry with me from place to place - coleus I’ve had for 35 years, dahlias I’ve had for thirty, plus daisies and hollyhocks. Each time they got established in my new place, I felt like I’d put down roots.

In Psalm 80 the Psalmist likens the people of faith to that of a precious vine, lovingly carried to a promised land, planted and nurtured, taking root, and blessing the land. Then, recounting the troubles that the people have experienced in those times when they forget the source of their blessings, the Psalmist prays to God for a restoration of the people so that they may be saved. The Psalmist even engages in a kind of bargaining, by promising faithfulness and praise from the people if they are granted life. The Psalm acknowledges that it is God alone who make life and the restoration of life possible, and pleads with hope that God will not abandon what has been begun.

This is a Psalm for those times when we come up against the reality that life does not always go the way we would like it to go. Often we long for simpler, less complicated days in which, as a people of faith, we can find the presence of God fresh in our common experiences. We long for moral values, full churches, and just governments. We seek people who care about each other, who work for decent communities, who don't abuse their powers or privileges. Whether these things really existed in the past doesn't matter. We know we need to believe that such things are possible if we are to continue, and the things we value are to endure. Deep down we know we need a vision of restoration if we are to survive spiritually.

No matter what you have experienced or are now dealing with in life, be assured that the Master is nearby, ready with the gift of love and grace. God knows that there is planted in each one of us a sacred value which is a great treasure. We may miss the real worth of a person by focusing only on outward appearances or giving in to long held prejudices. Lost in the crowded ways of life or burdened by sorrows or grief, sometimes we even forget our own value. It is then that God, with amazing grace, answers our prayers with salvation, not because we deserve it, but because God is Love - a God who heals and restores. As the beloved hymn reminds us: "The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures; he will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures." Therefore, in the difficult times of life, let us pray as did the Psalmist long ago: "Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let thy face shine, that we may be saved." Then we shall be healed and restored to our sacred worth by the touch of the Master's hand.

I’ve got a quiz for the adults. What’s the significance of the #613? Does that number sound familiar? 613. That’s the number of commandments, rules and laws in the Old Testament. Jews were and still are expected to follow all of them every single day. Most of these rules are found in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

These laws governed all aspects of the Israelite life. There were rules regarding what type of food you could and could not eat and how to cook the food. Does any in here like bacon or scrimp or pork chops or lobster? Against the Rules!

There were rules on clothing too, such as you could not wear clothes made of two types of material, such as polyester and cotton, and men and women cannot wear each other’s clothing. In addition, there were rules on finances, farming, morality and proper behavior.

Lastly, there were the punishments for breaking one of the laws. For the most part a sacrifice would be offered to the Lord to atone for the sin. Again there were rules dictating what type of animal was to be sacrificed and how it was supposed to be prepared and killed. The Israelites also offered sacrifices for unintentional sins. The catch is that all of these sacrifices were to be offered in humility and in the spirit of repentance.

These rules were not meaningless. They were designed to create a harmonious and just society. A second but equally important, if not more important purpose was that the Israelites would be physically, mentally and spiritually pure before God. The Laws were supposed to be a means to glorifying God, but instead the Isrealites took the Laws and deified them. The Laws became the goal instead of the means.

By Isaiah’s time, the people were just going through the motions. They had stopped as a society truly worshiping God. They were following the letter of the Law but the intended spirit of Law. They were singing hymns and offering sacrifices but their heart was not in. They were obeying the Law, but not to glorify God.

In today’s Psalm, we hear the Lord tell the Israelites that He has no need of sacrificial bulls. He tells them that they offer him these sacrifices as if they as doing Him a favor; as if they are feeding him. He rebukes them telling them that He created the world and all its creatures already belong to Him. God tells the Israelites to instead offer sacrifices of praise and that He will reward them for doing so.

Let’s fast forward about twenty-seven hundred years to today. There are still people who merely go through the motions. We pray to the Lord to forgive our sins but we don’t really mean it. And we don’t always forgive those who have wronged us. Some people even question how can God forgive someone who has repeatedly committed crimes but has asked for forgiveness after each crime?

My response to them is God forgives everyone who repents. And to truly repent one must turn away from evil actions and instead do good deeds.

In addition, there are what are commonly known as Christmas/ Easter Christians. These are the people who only come to church on those two holidays. I’m not saying the only way to serve and glorify God is by attending church every single Sunday. It’s not. There are plenty of ways to serve.

Even members who attend every Sunday may just be going through the motions. They may come in at 9:45, sit down, hear what is being said and then leave promptly at 11:15. They are doing what the Israelites did in Isaiah’s time – just going through the motions. The only difference is now they are not offering bloody sacrifices.

And this brings up a good question, what sacrifices have we offered to our Heavenly Father? We are reminded in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews of Abraham’s sacrifice. He left his home to follow God’s dream for him. He left the comforts and security of home to show his faith in God. How often do we challenge or question God’s dream for us? We sometimes think we know what’s best for us and disregard God’s plan for us. But God can see what we can not. When was the last time we said, “Ok God I’m gonna listen to what you’re telling me to do and I’m doing this for you?”

See God calls on each one of us to be proactive in our relationship with Him. He tells us explicitly what he wants us to do: “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

We are not being asked to be a Superman or Superwoman but rather to do our part in shepherding God’s flock. Sometimes that means taking a stand and other times it means praying for someone, or simply sharing a kind word with someone.

Back when I was in college, professors handed out syllabuses detailing what we as students could expect in the class. It would explain what the focus of the learning would be, what the grading method would be, and any quirks that the professor might have. Most of us however looked for one thing: if there was to be a term paper and when it was due, 90% of the time- near the end of the semester.

And like the good student I was, I’d start on it immediately. I would pick out a topic, take out research on the subject and begin to formulate my thesis. And then college life would take over. There would be work, sports, student organizations (for me College Republicans) and other activities to divert my attention from the paper. I’d say “I’ve got three or so months to write this paper, why do it now, when I could be doing something so much more fun?”

Then near the end of the semester, I’d have an epiphany something along the lines of “uh-oh, I need to write 4 term papers in about two weeks.” I’d then spend every available moment writing papers. I’d get them done by the skin of my teeth and usually with a decent grade. I do not recommend this method for any students in the room.

The problem with my system is that on random occasions professors would ask to see our works in process. There was no mention on the syllabi of handing in work in part way. Never failing, I’d have nothing to show except that brief start I’d made on it in the first week or so. If I had known about these spot checks on the papers, I would have done them, but the fact is I didn’t know and therefore I had to pay the piper, which usually meant marks off my final grade. I think there is a lot to learn from my college blunders.

Jesus told his disciples in Luke to be ready for the Second Coming. He likened it to slaves keeping the house ready for they knew not when their master would be returning. Jesus also said “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but only the Father.” This is like being assigned a paper but not even being told when it’s due. It could be due at any moment. We need to be ready for the random spot checks in our lives from God.

I believe many live our lives as if we have time in the future to atone for our sins and change our ways to make our lives more in tune with God’s will. It’s not just the Second Coming we should be ready for. We never know when our lives will end either naturally or otherwise. We should act as if today we get to meet our Lord face to face because it may happen even before I finish my sermon this morning. I’m not saying don’t plan for the future but act so that you wont be ashamed or scared to stand before God at any moment.

A manager of mine told me live now because life is long. It took me a while to realize what he was saying. He wasn’t advocating postponing or procrastinating doing the important things in life; but rather a prioritizing of what’s important. Many of us act as if life is short. Meaning we feel as if we have to rush around to accomplish all of our daily tasks and errands. And in that running around we lose sight of God. If we act as if life is long, we realize it’s ok if we don’t get to do all the little errands and distractions that arise in our lives today there will be another time for them. And if not so be it.

We have the time and we should make time to take a moment or two and thank God for everything He has given to us. I’m reminded of the hymn “Come Away with Me.”

Come away with me to a quiet place, apart from the world with its frantic pace, to pray, reflect, and seek God’s Grace.

Come today with thoughts of the countless ways that God’s steadfast love blesses all our days and join with me in silent praise.

Come away with me.

I’ve recently started taking moments to be with God. These moments with God are extremely relaxing. They allow me to let go of the stress of the world and to focus on God’s will. These times with God are my personal reguvinators.

My favorite Bible passage is from the book of Micah, sixth chapter eighth verse: “And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

That simple verse sums up what God requires of us. It teaches us how to ready for the spot checks in our lives. Those three phrases are the sacrifices that God wants us to make. Not elaborate ceremonies and bloody sacrifices but to do what is right and just, to love one other with kindness and to walk humbly with our God every day. Amen.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church - August 5, 2007

Text: Hosea 11:1-11

Luke 12:13-21

Title: The Family Inheritance

“Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” It is a sad reality that the division of the possessions following the death of a parent or other family member can be a cause – or symptom – of disagreement, anger, jealousy, and separation among the surviving family members.

Let me suggest to you another way. What if our attitude was to multiply the family inheritance and to share it with others in ways that it continues to multiply. Our worship can be a good model as a place to begin to think about how to do that.

When we gather for worship, we generally pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We ask only what we need – enough for today. The rest is for God’s use to support those who do not have enough for today. The Jesus who comes to us at this table is the same Jesus who teaches and empowers us in today’s Gospel to be on guard against every form of greed. It is the same Jesus who frees us to be rich toward God – as God has been rich toward us in offering us Christ.

When we receive and accept the inheritance that God offers it must be shared with others and in doing so it is not diminished, it is multiplied. The inheritance includes God’s incredible love that is described so beautifully in the prophet Hosea. “When Israel was a child, I loved him. … it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms, … I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.”

What an incredible image of God’s love cradling, nurturing, feeding us, and teaching us to walk. We can then either walk closer to God, or walk away. And yet, God does not walk away from us. God keeps calling to us.

Think about when you have held an infant. Have you been content to look at the infant from arms length, or have you drawn that infant closer to you, bringing the infant up close to you and bringing your cheek down to feel the smoothness of a baby’s skin, to be able to smell the wonderful smell of a baby. That’s the kind of close relationship described in Hosea, the kind of love God shows to us.

How is God bending down to us and feeding us at the Lord’s Table? Are you truly receiving what God offers you there? Or are you turning away, worshiping other gods, allowing or endorsing violence, hoarding all that you can for yourself, ignoring the needs of others, treating others with contempt and impatience and then still coming back expecting to be fed so that you can continue on a path of destruction?

Christ invites to his Table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sins and who seek to be at peace with their neighbors. It doesn’t mean that we’ve always gotten it right. Rather it means that we haven’t and that we need God’s forgiveness. It means that we seek God’s power to turn perhaps for the first time, or turn once again and return more deeply to God’s ways.

When we think about human wealth, human inheritance, human possessions, we are reminded that all that we have and all that we are is really part of our inheritance from God. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. It is on loan to us and we are to be faithful stewards caring for it and for all those who live on it. If you have any doubt of that, let me ask you have you heard of "the cookie tree"?[i] In tropical areas of both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres there is a fast growing tree whose leaves per 100 grams contain: Over twice as much potassium as bananas,

Over twice as much protein as cow's milk,

Over 3 times as much vitamin A as carrots,

Over 3 times as much calcium as cow's milk and

Over 7 times as much vitamin C as oranges.

It's the moringa tree, whose leaves are harvested, dried in the shade to preserve their vitamin A, and put through a sieve to make a powder. A few tablespoons of this moringa powder added to cookie dough -- or cereal or other foods -- each day can bring a severely malnourished child back to health in a few weeks and keep them healthy. Relief agencies are discovering that this ancient tree can provide help for today's enormous problem of trying to feed multitudes of hungry people of all ages around the world.

God really does provide for the needs of God’s children, but so much of this provision depends upon how we who have received the family inheritance are sharing it with others and multiplying the benefits of it. Let me share with you portions of a message that came from Dorcas this week, describing in detail one of the ways that our Family inheritance is being multiplied. Her entire message will soon be posted on our website and it will be in the next newsletter.

“Greetings from Freetown , Sierra Leone . I returned from Kabala yesterday. Today the Lord has blessed me with access to a computer and an internet. Thank God for this.

“It had been my intention to keep you informed of our work here at least every week. As you know electricity and a computer is a problem. In addition to this, I have found several people hungry and access to food even for me has not been that easy. This all goes to show the need for the work we are doing here. I thank God and all of you who are supporting our work. I wish you were all here with me to see the joys, smiles, ‘tenkey’ (Thank You) from the people we are working with and serving. People like the war wounded, amputees, old and young women and men, children of all ages, the sick, pregnant women, etc, etc, all full of hope and joy when they come to us. With your help we are touching lives. Thanks to each of you for your prayers and financial support to make our work possible. The rest of this email will focus on main areas we are working in and what we have done since my arrival on July 2, 2007

“NarSarah Clinic: The clinic staff attends to about 40 to 50 patients a day. NarSarah clinic reputation has gone far. During one of the Sunday morning services the preacher said in church, the good work of the clinic and its staff is talked about by all the villages they have visited. Just yesterday, the director of Christian Children’s Fund asked if NarSarah Clinic could take over the health care of all their 800 children registered in their program. In addition to this some of the government officials also get their health care from this clinic. People walk 4 to 5 days to come to this clinic. All amputees and war wounded in Koinadugu District get health care from this clinic. Without this clinic most lives will be lost. Child birth also takes place here. In a week we delivered four babies. We lost the life of a 14 months old child through high fever and dehydration. I believe this child died of malaria and malnutrition. Most of our mortality rate is due to malnutrition, malaria, childhood diseases, and worm infestation, cholera, typhoid and diarrhea. All are preventable. Polio is on the rise in all of Sierra Leone especially in Kabala. I have seen two cases already, We will start immunization soon.

“We have completed roofing the new clinic building. We are now doing the plumbing for water supply and the wiring for electricity. We had bought a generator that is currently providing light for patient care. This generator is also used to provide electricity for the working of the television that is used in health education. The generator we bought can only run certain equipments. We will be looking to buy a 100 KV generator to run the entire clinic operations. For now this generator can run the television, and a few of the medical equipments and light for the clinic. Television is used for the education in HIV/AIDS prevention. The actors in the video are Sierra Leoneans. This has helped us teach the people that they too can get the disease. Most of them did not believe they can get HIV/AIDS. Using this television has helped greatly says the clinic staff. They also told me that our HIV/AIDS patients die due to malaria, malnutrition and lack of medication. We currently have 16 HIV positive young girls, and 3 have developed AIDS. I have meet all of them. Three of these ladies are part of the “Women Against Poverty” group. We know they are dying and it is sad. Our HIV/AIDS rate is on the rise.”

Dorcas continues with information about an Amputee and War wounded Camp then moves on to Bendugu Village.

“Bendugu Village : The children, women and men came out in full force to welcome us in their village. The thought of their children having a school in their village brought them all out. They came with their musical instruments played for us and we all danced and laughed. They want a Christian school and also did ask for a church to be built. We have promised the school and said we will talk with the United Methodist Church Mission to have a church in their village. We hope we can raise enough funds to complete the school and also build a church. We have planted 200 palm crenel seedlings on 3 acres of land. We still have 97 acres more to plant. These plants will yield palm oil in the future to generate funds that will help support the clinic and the village.”

Next she shares about Safiatu and the hopes of her adoption here by the Dallas family.

“40 feet Container: North Kingstown United Methodist Church men and women worked hard to load a 40 feet container full of medical supply for NarSarah Clinic back in June 2007. That container was to have arrived in Freetown on the 29^th. It has not. We were told it had arrived and all we had to do was to pay for the clearing of it from the port. In my excitement, I had sent information that the container had arrived. The clearing officer that gave me the information apologized for giving me wrong information. I am sorry if I mislead any of you. . We continue to work on the individual government’s documents and transportation to Kabala. So far it is going to need strong people to off load it once it arrives. With Gods help we will do it. I am still been told that it will cost more than our anticipated $2000.00 for clearing and transportation. Please keep us in your prayers.

“You are helping us touch and change lives. We are bringing hope and light in the lives of those who had given up. I wish you are here to see the tears and joy on the faces of these people. I am looking forward to the arrival of the container in Kabala. Thank you all for bringing hope to the hopeless, the poor, the sick and the hungry. May you all be blessed. Please continue to pray for our work and our health.

“I will keep you informed as I get access to internet.

“May you all be blessed.

Dorcas”

May we continue to multiply the family inheritance through compassionate justice so that God’s love may fill the earth.

[i] www.sermonsuite.com “The Immediate Word” August 5, 2007

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

July 29, 2007

Text: Luke 11:1-13

Title: “Lord, Teach Us To Pray”

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

“Lord, Teach me to pray.” Have you ever wanted to say that to Jesus? I have. Lord, teach me how to pray. Show me how to keep my mind from wandering in different directions. Help me to understand why some of my prayers don’t get answered – of if you are answering them, the answer is “no”. And why are those the prayers that mean so much to me? Heal the one I love. Stop the killing. Make our world leaders really sit down and talk to each other. Help us understand each other. Why does it so often seem as if you silent or far away?

Have you asked these questions? Probably most, if not all of us, have asked them at one time or another. Sadly, many have given up on prayer because they didn’t seem to get an answer or received the answer they didn’t want. These questions are nothing new – they’ve been around forever – and probably always will be. So, we hear the plea from Jesus’ disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Jesus response gave a prayer – or a model of a prayer – that we have adopted and that we tend to pray in a memorized rote way. We even teach it to our children that way. There have been many examples of the ways that children have misunderstood some of the words and have put in the words that make sense or that they think they are hearing. Some of you may have heard some of those before. “Our Father, witches are in heaven, Harold is your name, … deliver us some email, …” and other innocent childlike attempts to make sense of some strange words. I absolutely believe that there is an importance and a power in memorizing a prayer like this and having it become so much a part of our lives that it can rise to our lips even when we cannot put other words together. However, there is more to prayer and praying than just repeating the words of a prayer – especially, if we haven’t taken the time to really listen to them in the first place.

A woman asked a pastor to teach her how to pray, and the response was, “Pray the Lord’s Prayer, but take an hour to do it.” Have you ever tried that? Have you tried stopping to think about what we are really praying when we say those words?

Have you noticed that this prayer uses only plural pronouns? You won’t find the words, “Me, my, mine, or I” in this prayer at all. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray it was a communal prayer, full of “our and us”. “Our Father, … Give us…. Forgive us…. Lead us…. Deliver us…”

Someone has said, “Prayer is the oxygen of our spiritual lungs.” I want to invite you now to take out the insert in your bulletin and let us fill our lungs with spiritual oxygen as we pray this meditation of the Lord’s prayer, reflecting and being open to the meaning of the words we pray so easily and so quickly.

Responsive Pastoral Prayer
Leader: Our Father who art in heaven:
People: remind us this day that you are not only creation's Architect, but you are the Babe who cried for food, the teenager who knew loneliness, the adult who felt the rejection of loved one.

Leader: Hallowed be Thy name:
People: yours is the name spun by the stars; yours is the name whispered by the dying; yours is the name written on our hearts.

Leader: Thy Kingdom come:
People: may it be a kingdom of peace, not prejudice; may it be a kingdom of sharing, not grasping; may it be a kingdom of hope, not hurting.

Leader: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
People: may your Word be more than print on a page; may your justice be more than a wish in our hearts; may your will become our deepest desire.

Leader: Give us this day our daily bread:
People: let us taste it in the kisses of loved ones; let it fill us in the empty moments of our lives; let it slip out of our hands to mend the brokenness of our world.

Leader: And forgive us our sins as we forgive others:
People: may those who have hurt us find a welcome in our hearts,
even as we have found our home in yours.

Leader: And lead us not into temptation:
People: turn our hearts from the seductions of our world, and the simple pleasures that turn us from you. Keep us from thinking we are so important that we ignore those around us. Help us to always bring others to you in prayer, before we bring ourselves.

Leader: But deliver us from evil:
People: not just great evils of war and hunger, but from ingratitude, self-love, pride, all those little evils that do such great harm.

Leader: For thine is the kingdom:
People: our heart's true longing;

Leader: and the power:
People: which you set aside to serve us in weakness;

Leader: and the glory:
People: which we would mirror in our lives, our bodies, our minds, our souls, this day and every day;

Leader: forever and ever.
People: Amen.[i]

Lord, teach us to pray. Prayer is as vital to our spiritual lives as oxygen is to our lungs. Prayer is not making speeches to God. We don’t need fancy words to talk to God. God knows what is on our hearts and minds long before we come in prayer – and yet, that is not an excuse for us not to prayer. Prayer is about a relationship with God, and it’s pretty hard to have a relationship if you aren’t communicating with the other party in the relationship. In fact, after Jesus taught his disciples this prayer, he went on to try to explain a little bit more to them about what all of this meant.

Unfortunately, much of this explanation of Jesus’ has been interpreted in ways that have created more problems, rather than less, for people trying to understand prayer. Jesus told about going to a friend looking for help during the night. The friend finally helps, but not because of their friendship, but rather because the man is so persistent.

Then there is a section about asking, searching, and knocking and the door will be open. This is followed by the statement, “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” I actually had a friend who quoted this to me as the explanation for why they were having a child. They had prayed and claimed this promise. Since at the time, I was also praying for a child and not getting the same response, I was told to be persistent, to have more faith, and to claim the promise in this verse and my prayer would be answered. I rejoice with those who believe that their prayers have been answered in this way, but all of us know too many situations that have not been answered in the way we wanted them to – and, friends, I don’t believe it had anything to do with whether or not we believed enough or claimed the promises of this verse. God is not a giant vending machine in which we place a certain number of prayers and a given quantity of faith and out comes the answer we want.

I think that when we start believing that way, or acting that way, we are missing the point of what Luke is saying here. Luke is not saying, knock until your knuckles are bloody, keep asking until you wear God down with your persistence. We should be persistent in prayer – not to wear God down, but to keep prayer a high priority in our lives, to be persistent in keeping ourselves open to God. Persistence in prayer keeps us nourished and passionate to live and share the good news. We ought to be persistent in prayer precisely because God is listening to us, not because we think God is ignoring us.

Remember that this is all in the context of Jesus teaching his disciples to pray. That prayer focuses on praising God, praying for God’s kingdom and our faithful living into that kingdom. It focuses on acknowledging and honoring our daily dependence upon God and seeking to live as God’s children and disciples. It affirms that we are thankful for God’s forgiveness and reminds us to be forgiving toward others. It seeks God’s help so that we may be girded to struggle with the evils and problems around us.

Luke is using a rabbinic mode of argument that moves from the lesser to the greater. If a tired householder will get up in the middle of the night to provide hospitality, how much more can the community count on God, who is loving and just, to help them live faithfully into the kingdom. We can knock in confidence that God, like good human parents who give good things to their children, will give us what we truly need – and, in this case, that is the Holy Spirit.

The reality is that God knows our needs better than we do, but God has also given us the gift of free will. God will not make us or someone else do something we refuse to do. God gives us the Holy Spirit that teaches us, reminds us, and guides us better than any gift that we could ask for. It is the Holy Spirit that helps us live as followers of our God.

Prayer is a risky activity. When we truly prayer, seeking to be open to God’s leading, we may find ourselves going down some risky and unfamiliar paths. We will find ourselves responding to circumstances in a way that is different than what our immediate instinct might be, or the way that others around us would handle something. Prayer is risky because we are actively saying yes to the relationship that God delights in offering us. As in any good relationship, some of our time will be spent in talking, and much of it should be spent in listening.

The reality is that none of us can really teach another person to pray. There are lots and lots of books written that try to do that, that try to help us deepen our prayer life. Like anything we really want to know how to do, we need to practice. We learn by doing. We learn by watching others – by remembering that Jesus frequently went off by himself to pray. If Jesus did that, then we can be sure that it’s important for us to do so too. But, what works really well for one person may not be the best way for another to pray. Some people find that sitting very still and being quiet is calming and helps them become open to God. Others find that walking by the water or walking a labyrinth helps them feel closer to God. Some people find that listening to music is a prayerful experience, others find that they need the words of the music in order for the music to speak to them. Some people find that painting or drawing, or working with clay opens them more to the creative power of God speaking to them. Some people find that writing in a journal is helpful.

What we can be sure of is that God is listening and that God is eager for an ongoing relationship with us as we seek to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. I’m going to invite us into another way of praying the Lord’s Prayer – this time through music. Kathy will lead us, all we have to do is repeat what she has sung. At the end of the prayer, we will take some time to be in silence, listening to God.

[i] The Immediate Word, July 29, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

July 22, 2007

Text: Colossians 1:15-28

*Luke 10:38-52

Title: Never Too Busy

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

When I was four years old, he was in the Army, far away in Germany. By the time I was 12 or 13, he was married, had graduated from college and had two children. During my teenage years he was busy raising his family and teaching in a college out of state. It was that way throughout our lives. We were always busy with other things. We didn’t seem to have much in common. Occasionally a family crisis would bring us in touch with each other. I was always the one to be making the phone calls to everyone to keep people up to date. It was during those times that my brother and I discovered that we had more to say to each other. It was during those times that we began to think that perhaps we could like each other, if we got to know each other. We’d always promise to stay in touch and not to get so busy again. But the crisis would end and we would go back to our own busy lives.

Then the cancer struck. Yes, another family crisis – again I was busy with the telephones, but this time the crisis was his. This time we made time. As the illness progressed and he was unable to work, I would visit. Thursday afternoon was tea time. The two of us sitting and talking; reminiscing, debating, wondering. The topics ranged all over the place and we finally really did get to know each other. At first he would make the tea and I would sit on the couch. Later, as he became weaker, I would make the tea and he would stay in his chair. There was no agenda for those two hours or so except to sit and talk; to be together. In my heart, and often out loud, I lamented that my brother was dying just as I was finally getting to know him.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation – maybe like that, or maybe not – but where you discover that you have to say goodbye, before you have really ever gone beyond hello? I’m afraid that in our busy society it happens all too frequently.

At work we are always so busy. We run from one meeting to another, or we are busy waiting on customers or moving items or doing whatever it is that we do for so many hours. Our co-workers and those with whom we interact are acquaintances and nothing more. We don’t know if their home life is happy or a nightmare. We don’t know if someone they love is dying or if someone is being born. We don’t know if they lean upon God for help or think they have to do everything on their own. We are often so busy with what we think we need to do that we miss the lives that are happening around us.

What started as young passionate love gets quickly usurped by the pressure of daily life. There are careers, food to be prepared, bills to be paid and laundry to be washed. Then there are children to be fed and cared for and transported from one activity to another. It’s easy to fall into the trap of leading parallel lives – lives that seem to intersect, lives that look like they are interacting all the time, but one day you discover that you really don’t know what thrills your child or the fears that come to haunt their dreams. You find yourself alone with your partner and realize that you don’t know how to talk about anything other than who will transport which child where. We are often so busy doing all the things that we think we have to do that there is a subtle danger that we will not really know those whom we claim to love the most.

I think it was like that for Martha. I’m learning about the silences between the words – the places where the Bible doesn’t tell us all the details. These are wonderful places where our imagination can roam and our pictures of the people we meet in the Bible can become more complete. The Iona community is wonderful at doing some of that. Let me share with you a meditation that might be more of Martha’s story.

“I have always known my place. I was the oldest in the family. I didn’t have my brother’s brains or my sister’s good looks. But in any case, they were young when my mother died and I had to take her place.

“I did all the cooking and baking and laundry the way my mother had done and I kept the books, because my father was useless with money.

“And people admired me. They’d say, `Your father doesn’t know how lucky he is to have a girl like you in the house.’ Or they’d say, `You’ll make a great wife for some lucky man, Martha.’

“But there was no lucky man, and when my father died, I just kept house for the other two. I had no money of my own, only what the other two gave me; and my friends were mostly of the older generation.

“But I knew my place … I knew it from the day my mother died and I took over in the kitchen, and I welcomed everyone at the door and brought them in and made them comfortable and started baking and ….”[i]

We know what happened next. On this particular occasion, Martha was feeling particularly frazzled and as often happens when we let ourselves get rushed and feeling pressured, everything seemed wrong. Mary wasn’t helping and that was just too much for Martha to handle right then. She knew Jesus well enough that she let what she thought was righteous anger come through. Somehow she knew that her anger was safe with Jesus. She gave him her anger and he gave her his love.

I think we ought not to hear Jesus’ words to Martha as an angry response, but as a gentle calling her to a greater priority. In her rushing around, she was not able to spend time with Jesus. She was not able to really get to know him. Now, I know that in their culture it was not normal for women to be sitting with men and listening to teachers, but in the community of people who followed Jesus, who traveled with him, who listened to him there were women present.

Yes, there was need to feed Jesus and those who had arrived with him, and Martha was probably one of the best hostesses around. She took hospitality seriously, but in this case took it so seriously, that she had overlooked the reality that hospitality is about more than an abundance of food and a clean house. Hospitality is about a warm and gracious environment, a welcoming atmosphere, and her flustered and frustrated rushing about was creating an environment of a different sort. Soup and sandwiches would have been better than a five course meal. Jesus was more interested in food for the soul than in food for the body. Martha’s presence was more important than a flawlessly prepared and served meal.

It wasn’t a matter of right and wrong, but rather a matter of balance. Last week we heard the story of the Good Samaritan and the lawyer being told to “go and do likewise.” He was being told to get his head out of the books, get up and act on your faith. Martha was certainly doing, but now it was time to slow down, to sit and to be – to be in the presence of the one she loved, to cherish the time she could have with him, to learn about what thrilled him and what worried him.

This wonderful story provides an important lesson for us in our human relationships. It is an important reminder that true relationships require the time to sit and to be, to spend quiet time with each other, rather than just running frantically from place to place. But the lesson doesn’t stop there, because this wasn’t just an old friend who had come to visit. The visitor this day was Jesus.

So, the question becomes, when Jesus comes to visit, what do we do? When I was growing up, my parents had a 45 record with a wonderful song/poem on it called “If Jesus Came to Your House”. Some of you might remember it.

IF JESUS CAME TO YOUR HOUSE

If Jesus came to your house to spend a day or two, if He came unexpectedly, I wonder what you'd do? Oh, I know you'd give your nicest room to such an honored guest, and all the food you'd serve to Him would be the very best.

And you would keep assuring Him you're glad to have him there, That serving Him in your home is joy beyond compare. But when you saw Him coming, would you meet Him at the door, with arms outstretched to welcome in your heavenly visitor?

Or would you have to change your clothes before you let Him in, or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they'd been? Would you turn off the radio and hope He hadn't heard, and wished you hadn't uttered that last loud nasty word.

Would you hide your worldly music and put some hymn books out? Could you let Jesus come right in, or would you rush about? Oh, I wonder if the Savior came to spend a day with you, would you just go on doing all the things you always do?

Would you go right on saying the things you always say? Would life for you continue as it does now day to day? Would your family conversation keep up it's usual pace, or would you find it hard each meal to say a table grace?

Would you sing the songs you always sing and read the books you read, and let Him know on which the things your mind and spirit feeds? Would you take Jesus with you everywhere you planned to go, or would you maybe change your plans, for just a day or so?

Would you be glad to have Him meet with all your closest friends, or would you hope they'd stay away until His visit ends? Would you be glad to have Him stay forever on and on, or would you sigh with great relief when He at last was gone?

It might be interesting to know the things that you would do, if Jesus came in person to spend the day with you!

~ Song written by Lois Blanchard Eades, sung by Red Sovine ~

If Jesus came to our church, I wonder what we’d do. Would we be glad to have him attend our Trustees, Finance, SPRC, and Administrative Council meetings? Would we have to watch what we say, and would he be pleased with what he heard and the subjects we were discussing? Would he need to remind us that we are too focused on ourselves or would he be glad with the missional work that we were doing?

Would we be glad to have him attend our Bible Studies, and Sunday School classes? Would we sit at his feet eager to hear what he had to say or would we be trying to tell him what we believe the Bible says? Would we be glad to have him go to the rehearsals of the choir, hand bells, and hand chimes? Would he find the rehearsals to be times of worship or would he wonder if he’d wandered into some place he wasn’t welcomed?

Would we be glad to have him come to worship? Would he recognize who we are worshiping? Would he be welcomed or ignored?

It might be good to ask ourselves as we go about our daily lives both inside and outside the church, “If Jesus were with me would it change my behavior? Would it change what I’m doing and saying and the places where I’m going? It would be good to ask ourselves those questions, because the reality is that we proclaim a risen Christ and a Holy Spirit who is with us each and every day, who hears all that we say and do, who is the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation.

If we really start to ask those questions and really live with them, we will discover that Christ is no longer the unseen guest at every meal because we will see Christ in all with whom we eat, in those with whom we meet, in those whom we pass by. We will start to hear Christ as an active part of every conversation, guiding us, giving us the words we need when our words fail and touching our lips to silence us when we should be listening to someone else. We will also discover that unlike Martha, unlike my brother and I, unlike the way many of us live our lives, Christ is never too busy for us: never too busy to listen to us, to know us, to love us.

[i] Iona Community, The Wild Goose Resource Group, Present on Earth, Chicago, GIA Publications, 2002, pp. 183-4.

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Rev. Beverly E Stenmark

North Kingstown United Methodist Church

July 15, 2007

Text: Luke 10:25-37

Colossians 1:1-14

Title: “Who is My Neighbor?”

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

Today’s gospel reading is a story that has won a place in American culture – we call it the parable of the Good Samaritan and its title has lent its name to hospitals, churches, acts of mercy, and even a set of laws designed to protect someone who attempts to provide assistance to another. One wonders whether many of those who use the term “Good Samaritan” in a cultural way have any idea that this is a story from the Bible. In most cases the story, or the understanding of it, has been boiled down into a very simple thought – help those who are in need.

While that is an important and commendable idea, I think it robs the story that Jesus told of some of its richness – and it makes it easier and more palatable for us to handle. The story needs to be seen in its greater context. “A lawyer stood up to test Jesus.” Depending upon the commentators I read, this is either a hostile confrontation trying to trap Jesus in a mistake or it is an energetic debate among two intelligent minds. The debate takes a sudden twist however, when the question is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” At this point Jesus leaves the debate and moves into teaching mode and tells a story.

We’ve tended to be hard on the Priest and the Levite who passed by the hurt man lying in the road. There are any number of reasons why they did not stop. They might have been concerned about becoming ritually unclean and being unable to perform their religious duties. They might have been afraid that it was a trap and that the robbers were hiding nearby waiting to attack them if they came nearer. They might have been doing the everyday triage of thinking that whatever they were heading to was of greater importance. We don’t know why they didn’t stop. In the typical story telling fashion of the time, Jesus’ listeners would not have expected them to stop anyway.

The third person to come by would be the hero of the story. That person should have been a Jewish layperson. That would have shown true neighborliness –and all of our ideas of being a Good Samaritan would have made sense because the story would be about helping someone in need. The story would have been neat and complete, and Jesus’ question at the end, “Which of these three, do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” would have been a simple question to answer. The lawyer and Jesus’ listeners could then have gone on their way feeling good about the many times they stopped to help someone who needed them.

Jesus doesn’t tell stories that are neat and clean. He doesn’t tell stories where those listening can predict the end. Jesus’ stories always have a zinger in them, something to catch your attention and cause you to sit up and listen – and this one is no exception. The hero in this story – the third person to come along – is a Samaritan. Samaritans were hated by Jews. Yet it is the Samaritan who risks his own life, who stops to help the man in need, and goes the second and third mile by not only providing first aid, but then taking him to an inn and providing the resources for his continued treatment. In addition, he promises to stop by again and pay whatever else might have been spent on his care.

What happens here is that the Samaritan sees the man lying in the ditch for what he truly is – a man lying in a ditch – a man who is injured and needs help. He sees beyond any other question or issue. He sees beyond the fact that the man lying in the ditch is a Jew and would probably not have stopped to help him. He sees a human – a man in need. There is a danger in most of our interactions to make judgments based upon the external signals that we receive when we look at a person. We see the color of their skin, their gender, age, style of their clothing, any other visual clues that lead us to jump to conclusions that affect the way we respond. We all do it, some of us more of less than others, but it’s really hard to get past the myopia of external visuals.

I had a conversation with someone recently in which we talked about how getting to know someone from a different group than ours can change our perceptions. Specifically we were discussing it as it related to her change in perspective regarding homosexuality. But what we were discussing applies to any group of whom we might be afraid or whom we might not understand.

A couple of questions this week and some research and meditation, led me to see a similar pattern for some of Jesus’ disciples when it came to Samaritans. A sermon preached in 2004 by Lanny Peters, the pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur Georgia was helpful in showing me some of this pattern.[i] Two weeks ago, in Luke 9 we heard the story of Jesus sending his disciples out and their being rejected by a village of Samaritans. James and John wanted to command fire to come down from heaven and destroy them. Jesus would not allow them to do such a thing. Now, not much later, Jesus is telling a story in which the hero is a Samaritan.

When asked which of the three acted as a neighbor, the lawyer did not respond, “The Samaritan did.” Rather he responded, “The one who showed him mercy”. It might be that he couldn’t bring himself to attribute that quality directly to the Samaritan, but it is also likely that he is answering out of the depths of the Jewish faith. He is responding with the understanding that it is one’s actions that show what one believes not merely the words that come out of the mouth. He is acknowledging that “Torah observance, faithfulness to God, true integrity: all these show up in actual action, not in talk.”[ii] The implications of his answer – the implications of Jesus’ story are astounding. This challenges everything the disciples have known and believed. How could a Samaritan be the one who showed mercy? How could a Samaritan have done the actions of human kindness and the actions of faith when the Priest and Levite had failed to do so?

We could change the characters here and come up with similar stories that would provoke discussion. The man in the ditch could be an Israeli citizen and the Samaritan would be a Palestinian. The man in the ditch could be an American soldier; the ones passing by might be President Bush and a Four Star General; while the Samaritan would be Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. How shocked we would be to hear that story. That’s how radical this story would have been to those who heard it. The Lawyer must have walked away shaking his head, thinking, “How can I make sense of this?” Jesus’ disciples must have wondered anew at the radical ideas that their teacher expressed.

It wouldn’t be their last encounter with a Samaritan however. In John’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman by the well drawing water. She and Jesus have one of those marvelous probing debates that results in her going to get people from her village to come out and hear what Jesus had to say. I’m grateful to Lanny Peters for pointing out what I have overlooked in that story. Jesus and the disciples then went into the village and stayed there for two days. That means that they stayed in the homes of the Samaritans. They ate their food. They talked with them, they came to know them, and John tells us that many more of the Samaritans became believers. The people, on whom they had previously wanted to rain down fire, were now the people with whom they were talking and laughing and learning about each other. Their former enemies became, if not their friends, then at least acquaintances whom they could begin to understand.

I’m coming to think that this is what the story of the Good Samaritan is really about. I think it’s about coming to know those whom we do not know, those whom we have considered unclean or strange, those with whom we have not wanted to associate. I think it’s about learning that those whom we consider our enemies are also people whom God created, people who have the same hopes and fears that we have; people who love and laugh, people who are sad and cry; people who want the same stability for their children that we want; people who suffer the same diseases and have the same heart that is within us.

In a world or culture where people are increasingly becoming afraid of those who look differently than we do, who profess a faith different from ours, it is a challenge to hear Jesus’ story in a new way. From time to time I have received unsolicited books in the mail. Usually they come from some religious group promoting their own agenda of fear and suspicion. Within the last couple of years, one group spent a lot of money to send out millions of copies of a book that claims to tell us the truth about Islam. It is a twisted hate filled book that can only be used to lead people to believe that all Muslims are hate filled people trying to destroy Christians. It seems obvious to me that the agenda of the group that sent out these books is to promote their own idea of Christianity as those who will save the world from those dangerous Muslims. This is not only bad theology, it is dangerous theology.

I believe the parable of the Good Samaritan tells us to get to know our neighbor, to put the compassion and mercy of Jesus into action. Jesus healed people who were not Jewish. He interacted with those whom others considered not acceptable. His last words to his disciples were to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth, and that he would be with them.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a book called, Strength to Love. In that book is an essay called, “On Being a Good Neighbor”. It is his interpretation of the story of the Good Samaritan. In it he says, “the ultimate measure of a man (we might add woman) is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.”[iii]

The close of his essay says what I want to say better than I can, so hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “More than every before, my friends, men of all races and nations are today challenged to be neighborly. The call for a worldwide good-neighbor policy is … a call to a way of life which will transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment. No longer can we afford the luxury of passing by on the other side. Such folly was once called moral failure; today it will lead to universal suicide. We cannot long survive spiritually separated in a world that is geographically together. In the final analysis, I must not ignore the wounded man on life’s Jericho Road, because he is a part of me and I am a part of him. His agony diminishes me, and his salvation enlarges me.”[iv]

Those words from more than 40 years ago are, if possible, even more true today than they were then. Who is my neighbor? It might be better to ask, “Who is not my neighbor?” and to realize that in Christ’s eyes there are none excluded.

[i] www.oakhurstbaptist.org Sermon “The Good Enemy: The Good Samaritan Story Revisited” 7-24-04

[ii] Swanson, Richard W. Provoking the Gospel of Luke, Cleveland, OH, Pilgrim Press, 2006, p.165

[iii] King, Jr, Martin Luther Strength to Love Philadelphia, PA, Fortress Press, 1981 edition, p.35

[iv] King, p.38

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

July 8, 2007

Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Galatians 1:1-10

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Title: Career opportunity: Workers Needed for God!

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

She was a young girl content with her life, probably looking forward to the day when she would marry a handsome young man and have children of her own. All that changed when the soldiers came. They invaded her country and took her as a captive, just as they might have taken jewelry or other valuable possessions. Now she lived in a foreign country and was compelled to work as a servant for the wife of the man who had led the invasion.

She could have been bitter, hateful, and resentful. When she discovered that her master had leprosy she could have rejoiced. But she didn't. In her compassion, she took the risk of witnessing to her mistress, of suggesting to her that a prophet in Samaria could cure Naaman. That simple act, a word spoken at the right time, started the ball rolling leading to Naaman's cure.

Wisdom in this story comes from the little people, people normally overlooked, people who were not even worth mentioning by name. First a slave girl from Israel, then Naaman's wife who conveyed the message, and later a couple of servants who were willing to risk Naaman's wrath by suggesting that he follow the instructions from the prophet and wash in the muddy Jordan River.

The Bible is full of stories of how God uses little people - peasants, women, children, and foreigners - to bring healing and salvation. In this particular case, not only was Naaman healed of his leprosy, but even more importantly he recognized and proclaimed, "Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel." A brave and profound proclamation of faith. All this because a young girl, who had the right to be angry and bitter, acted instead with compassion.

In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he admonishes us, "Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up." The young slave girl did not grow weary of doing what was right. In Luke’s Gospel, we hear Jesus proclaiming that it is time for the harvest. However, although the harvest is plentiful, alas, the workers are few. When you consider that in the Jewish nation religious concerns and practices colored the fabric of everyday life you might expect that there would be no shortage of workers available for God's work. Perhaps we need to realize that religious activity merely directed toward God rather than directed by God may be useless. Prayers and rituals directed toward God are one thing, but allowing our actions to be directed by God is something else altogether.

There were many people ready to hear the message of salvation - and many many more who needed to hear but were not yet receptive. So Jesus sent 70 or 72 of his followers out in teams of two. They were to go to the places that Jesus would visit later and proclaim the message that the Kingdom of God had come near. Before they left and while on their journey, they were to pray that God would send more workers to help in this very important work.

Imagine being sent to a strange city, to people you don't know. Imagine having no suitcase, no money, and no credit cards. You walk up to a strange house and ring the bell and tell the person, "I bring you peace." Imagine expecting that stranger to welcome you, feed and clothe you, and listen to your views on religion.^{^[i]}

Fortunately for most of us, Jesus doesn't send us out that way. Yet, we are still often like lambs among the wolves - to use Jesus' phrase. Our families may think that going to church and believing in God is a waste of a good Sunday morning. Our friends may think that the "live for today" and "the one with the most toys wins" philosophy is a great approach to life. Our bosses and co-workers may believe that what we do on Sunday is our own business as long as we don't start trying to apply Christian principles to a business world where anything goes. When we walk out of the sanctuary doors, we may well feel like lambs going into the wolves den.

Jesus warned his disciples that it wouldn't be easy out there. He told them that sometimes they would be received warmly and other times they would be rejected. Either way, their message was to be the same - The Kingdom of God has come near.

That's still the message we proclaim today, but we seldom use those terms exactly and even active "church people" may be confused by what it means. The Kingdom of God is a new way of living that is different than the ways of the world. It is a way of living that people may accept or reject. We don't have to wait until some future time - a time that some look forward to like the rapture when they expect to see Jesus appearing in the clouds and coming to establish God's Kingdom on earth.

That Kingdom has already come near - Jesus established it with his presence - and although many still don't see it, don't acknowledge it, God's kingdom has been part of our world - or rather we have been part of God's Kingdom for a long time. To some the Kingdom of God is good news. The pronouncement "The Kingdom of God has come near to you" has the sound of a blessing. It brings the word of God's presence during joy and sorrow. It beings the word of comfort during turmoil and strength during weakness. It brings a word of hope during times of despair and strength in the middle of indecision.

God’s kingdom brings a word of challenge to those of us who seek the kingdom. It challenges us to work for the day when “justice shall roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

But to those who reject it, the message is a word of judgment. Some do not want to hear that there is any power in the universe greater than themselves. They do not want to hear that their actions should be guided by anything other than their own desires. To them, the Kingdom of God is not a blessing, but rather a threat. It is bad news - not good news.

The harvest is still plentiful. There are still many who want to hear something, anything, that will give meaning to their lives. In some ways it is even harder to proclaim this message today. There was a time when we thought of our country as being a Christian nation - that, I think, is no longer the case. In many ways our society has become hostile to Christianity, blaming it for many of the ills of our world, and faulting it for not providing the solutions. Some have proclaimed Christianity in a way that causes people to believe that the only things Christians are concerned about are homosexuality, abortion and the end times. Those of us who believe that Christianity is concerned with justice, caring for the vulnerable, taking care of our earth, following the Prince of Peace, and growing as disciples need to speak up, speak out and act in that way.

You may have heard the story of a young college student who went into the chapel on his college campus. "God," he said, "can't you see all the terrible things happening around us. Don't you see the hungry children, and the violence in homes, and the unemployment and the homelessness. Why even I could have made a better world than this." He heard a voice, "That's what you are supposed to do." Although Jesus established the Kingdom of God here, it has not yet been realized in its fullness. There are still too many evils around us. There is too much suffering that does not have to be. There is still far too much for us to do as workers in the harvest.

"A woman dreamed she walked into a brand-new shop in the marketplace, and to her surprise, found God behind the counter. `What do you sell here?' she asked. `Everything your heart desires,' said God. Hardly daring to believe what she was hearing, the woman decided to ask for the best things a human being could wish for. `I want peace of mind and love and happiness and wisdom and freedom from fear,' she said. Then as an afterthought, she added, `Not just for me. For everyone on earth.' God smiled, `I think you've got me wrong. We don't sell fruits here. Only seeds.'" ^{^[ii]}

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." We are still being sent out to plant the seeds of love, of compassion, of freedom. We are still being sent out to proclaim the Kingdom of God to those who have not heard and to remind those who have heard and may have forgotten, or need to be reassured.

The seventy came back to Jesus excited and rejoicing about all the wonderful things that happened when they went into the villages. Jesus reminded them of something they also needed to hear and remember. It was wonderful that the results had been so fruitful, but they needed to remember that they were the workers, not the power behind the results. They had brought the word, but it was God who had provided the power.

Certainly they could rejoice in what had happened because of their work - and we, too, can celebrate the results that we see from our work. Our rejoicing, however, should be because of what the changes mean for another, not because of our pride at what we have done. It is truly a wonderful feeling to know that God has worked through you to bring someone closer to God. But many of us will never see the results. We may never know the lives that have been touched or changed because of the words we said, or the actions we did out of love. Others of us, may spend our time among people who are not receptive, who are not yet ready to hear and we may despair and think of ourselves as failures. It is at those times especially when we need to remember that God didn't call us to be successful. God called us to be faithful.

Jesus reminded his disciples that they should rejoice not because of the results of their work but because their names were written in heaven. That's the bottom line. That's the very message they went out to proclaim to others. "The Kingdom of God has come near to you."

Our joy as disciples of Christ is not found in rejoicing about the gifts that we have received to help us in ministry, or patting ourselves on the back for the results. Our joy is rather in remembering that it is God who gives the talents and skills with which we have been blessed. We may plant the seeds, or nurture the young believer, but it is God who gives the growth. Each of us has a ministry to which we have been called and sent. Sometimes we tend to forget that. We may think of those who are more visible as being ministers. But all of us have been called to ministry and all of us have gifts that we are to use as God would have us use them in the places we find ourselves.

Those who seem to have greater authority in the church or whose gifts and ministries appear more obvious have to be especially clear and constant about being aware that the truly important thing is that our names are written in heaven, that we belong to Christ. Only in this way can we be saved from an intolerable pride and selfishness. For each of us, "what good we are able to do must be seen to be - as it really is - not what we are able to do at all, but what God is able to do in us and through us." ^{^[iii]}

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." More workers are needed. There should be zero unemployment when it comes to doing God's work, because there is work for every one of us, from the youngest to the oldest, from the most physically able to the least, from the most outgoing to the shyest, from the one with the most confidence to the one with the least confidence. The harvest is plentiful and there is more than enough work for all of us. Let us go forth, as God has sent us, to work for the harvest, and remembering always, that the most important thing is that our names are written in heaven.

^{^[i]} Upper Room Disciplines '95, p. 201

^{^[ii]} deMello, Taking Flight, p.103

^{^[iii]} Interpreter's Bible

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

July 1, 2007

Text: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Luke 9:51-62

Title: Picking up the Mantle

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

I don’t think that I have ever preached a sermon that could really be called a Patriotic or a Fourth of July sermon. For me there’s a basic reason for that. I love this country. I am glad that I was born here and that I live here. I value the freedom that I have and I honor those who have worked so hard and in many cases given their lives to maintain and protect that freedom. That said, my first loyalty is not to my country. My first loyalty is to God and when I come to worship, I come to worship God not my country. However, I do believe that my faith in God, my commitment to following Christ, has a major impact on how I view the policies and actions of the country I love. I pray that this is true for each one of you. Our faith is meaningless unless it impacts every other area of our lives.

The scriptures for today seem to focus on the idea of passing on the mantle of leadership, responsibility, understanding, and action. The 2^nd Kings reading is a dramatic story of the prophet Elijah passing the mantle of prophetic words and actions to his successor Elisha.

There’s one section of the story that I heard in a new way as I studied it. It has to do with the section where Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. Back in the story of Moses, there came a time when Moses complained to God that he alone was carrying the burden of all the people. God’s response is to have Moses bring 70 elders and some of the spirit that God had given to Moses would be also transferred to others so that they “will help you carry the burden of the people.” Now, I don’t understand this to mean that Moses then had less of God’s spirit, but rather that God’s spirit like the light of a candle could be shared and spread among others so that there would be more people to share the load.

This is an important concept, I think, for us as Christians. In today’s gospel we read, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Luke’s gospel has this occurring in the 9^th chapter. It’s not until the 19^th chapter that Jesus finally enters Jerusalem. In the intervening chapters, Luke has put all of the preparation work, all the things Jesus taught his disciples so that they would understand what it meant to follow him both now and after his death. In this passage we have three people looking to follow Jesus and although Jesus’ response to them sounds harsh, he is telling them to count the cost, know what you are getting into.

Sometimes in the church we have watered down what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We have too often swung away from the part of the Gospel message that reminds us that while following Jesus is an exciting and wonderful thing, it also calls us to a different standard than many in the world.

Following Jesus is not something to be taken lightly. Sometimes it involves walking in the places that we would rather avoid. Sometimes it involves taking a stand that is unpopular with our families or friends or even our country. Sometimes it involves standing up to power and wealth and reminding them that God expects us to take care of those who are most vulnerable.

I think our forefathers counted the cost when they signed the Declaration of Independence. They knew the risks they were taking and they were willing to take those risks. Barbara Kingsolver in a wonderful essay written after 9-11 called, “And Our Flag Was Still There”[i] writes, “The authors of our Constitution knew, from experience with King George and company, that governments don’t remain benevolent to the interests of all, including their less powerful members, without constant vigilance and reasoned criticism. And so the founding fathers guaranteed the right of reasoned criticism in our citizenship contract – for always.”[ii]

At a time when they were risking their very lives and the lives of all the people of the soon to be new country, they didn’t say, “We know what’s best. We will make all the decisions. Just trust us.” Instead they provided for and protected the right of citizens to give thoughtful consideration to other viewpoints and to express reasoned criticism. Each of us who is female, or nonwhite, or without land ownership should be very grateful for that provision because in 1776 we were guaranteed the same voting rights as a horse. In other words: none. However, the guarantee of the right and protection of reasoned criticism has obviously led to many important changes.

Kingsolver writes, “The rights and liberties described in our Constitution are guaranteed not just to those citizens who have the most money or power, but also to those who have the least, and yet it has taken hard struggle through every year of our history to hold our nation to that promise.”[iii] Our forefathers knew the struggle would not be easy. They guaranteed the freedom so that especially at those times when national choices are difficult and carry serious consequences, our leaders would even then need to hear the moderating voice of disagreement. That is the basis of democracy.

It is one of the important bases of Christianity that we should know where our first loyalty lies - to Christ – not to our employer, our country, and not even to our family but to Christ. It is through that first priority that all of these other good things are viewed and valued. It is through that first priority that all of our decisions should be made. It is through that first priority that we are sometimes called to make tough decisions and speak the prophetic word. It is through that first priority that we are called to responsibility for those who are most vulnerable. The freedom that our forefathers fought so hard to win is not freedom to do whatever we want, especially when what we want is gained by oppressing others.

This is a really tough time of year for those who struggle the most to make ends meet. School is out so breakfasts and lunches that might have been provided to children have stopped. The moratorium on utility shutoffs has been lifted and some of those who couldn’t keep up with the rising costs of oil, gas and electricity during the winter are finding themselves without any now.

Let me share with you two images, two stories, both true. This week I had a call from a man in town who needed help with his electric bill. $128 would keep his electricity from being shut off and allow him to set up a payment plan for the balance he owes. I knew from experience that this wasn’t the only bill he had that was behind. Sure enough, his gas will be shut off by Tuesday of this week unless he comes up with $384 to then allow him to set up a payment plan. Now mind you, these are the figures that are needed in order to set up a payment plan. They are not the balances due on the accounts. He has worked at a local store for the last six years. Being employed is no guarantee of making a livable wage. He and his wife are raising their two grandchildren, one of whom has some health issues. He made the excruciating decision that if he couldn’t keep both his electricity and gas, the electricity was more important because of his grandchild’s health issues and because their stove and refrigerator run on electricity. The gas heat was not crucial and they would heat water on the stove. The nagging question is how he will come up with the money he needs so that he will have gas again by the time he needs heat.

I wish I could tell you that his story is unique. If it were, I could easily come up with the $384 needed to keep the gas turned on as well as the electricity. He is not unique. His story is multiplied over and over again and all I can do is offer a band aid to a bleeding wound.

The other story is also multiplied over and over again. It was on the front page of Saturday’s Providence Journal. “Undeterred by a $600 price tag, customers queue up at Providence Place for hours to buy the compact telecommunications wonder.” This is the “got to have” “iPhone”. A man in New York City emerged from a Fifth Avenue Store with two iPhones – the maximum allowed per person. That would be $1200. His comment, “I don’t have to sleep outside anymore.” Now, you all know he was not referring to being homeless and not having a place to sleep. He was referring to the increasingly common practice of spending a night sleeping outside of a store to hold your place in line to buy the most recent “got to have” gadget. It seems to me that there is something wrong with these stories.

The gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting bigger and God keeps asking me what I’m doing about it. God keeps asking me if I really care that more than 1.3 billion people in this world live on less than $1 per day and that almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation. God keeps asking what I’m going to do about it and I would ask all of us the same question.

This year as we celebrate Independence Day, I think I’m going to make a new commitment to express my reasoned criticism when I think that my country is not doing what we can to help save the lives of children around the world. Today as I come to the communion table I’m going to remember that when we receive the bread and the cup, when we take into our bodies the elements that represent the body and blood of Jesus, we are taking up the mantle of doing the work to which God calls us, the work of reaching beyond our doors to a world of people who are crying. With Paul’s words to the Galatians ringing in my ears, I’m going to ask God to help increase the fruits of the spirit in my life as I seek to be faithful to the tap on my shoulder. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit and produce the fruits of the work of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

[i] Kingsolver, Barbara, Small Wonders, Harper Collins Publishers, NY, 2002, pp.235-245

[ii] Kingsolver, p.243

[iii] Kingsolver, p.241

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

June 24, 2007

Text: 1 Kings 19:1-15a

Title: Running through foot-deep molasses

At the end of December, just before I started my renewal/study leave, I read a book describing how one pastor felt before embarking on a time of leave. She said that she was experiencing a “lack of creativity” and that she felt like she was going through the motions of the day to day work. There was a wonderful sentence that made me sit up and take notice. She wrote, ”The goal is visible, but I have to run through foot-deep molasses to reach it.”[i] At first I thought she was inside my head, but then I realized that she was describing a common human experience. Have you ever felt like you are running through “foot-deep molasses” just to keep up, just to do what needs to be done, just to get through the day?

In today’s Scripture readings we find someone who was feeling exactly that way. The prophet Elijah was suffering from what today we call “burnout”. He had it bad! Along with his burnout there was depression, self-pity, disillusionment, and confused thinking. In the words of Jill Briscoe, a Christian author, Elijah was “running on empty.”[ii] Whether it feels like running through molasses, or running on empty, this is a condition that affects all too many of us, all too often.

To understand Elijah let me give you just a little history. Elijah was a prophet of God during the reign of King Ahab in Israel from about 874 to 853 B.C. According to the book of I Kings in the Bible, “Ahab did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him.” Ahab and his Canaanite wife, Queen Jezebel, became legendary for breaking God’s laws and worshipping the Canaanite god Baal. Elijah was a real thorn in their side. Even his name proclaimed who he was and who he served: El, meaning “Creator, the omnipotent God,” and jah, meaning “coming from Jehovah”, the Lord’s personal name.[iii]

Three years before, at the urging of the Lord, Elijah had announced a drought as punishment on the nation of Israel for its idolatry and worship of the Baals. A contest was arranged on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Baal to determine once and for all just who the real God of Israel was. Each would build an altar for their god and then a sacrifice would be made. The god who answered by fire consuming the sacrifice would be the winner. All day long the prophets of Baal danced and prayed, sang and prayed, whined and prayed, all without result. Finally, at the end of the day, Elijah prayed his relatively short prayer and God answered by fire! BIG time! Yahweh wins! Eli jah wins! Yes![iv]

The rains had come, Elijah should have been feeling elated and on top of

the world – but no, he was in a blue funk. Queen Jezebel had threatened to kill him and that seemed like the last straw for Elijah. We find him in the desert under a broom tree bemoaning his fate and pleading with God to kill him.

Now this is where I think we have a lot to learn from what happened to Elijah. Elijah was suffering from four symptoms which when combined can be spiritually, emotionally, and physically deadly. Elijah was hungry, alone, lonely and tired – four words, warning signs, if you will, whose first letters spell HALT, reminding us to stop and pay attention to the signals from our body. Sometimes when we are feeling deep in the depths of despair, when we are feeling separated from God, we may pray, or look to the Bible for a word to help fill us and soothe us. That can be most helpful if our problem is only spiritual but sometimes there is more to it. If we are physically or emotionally exhausted, as Elijah was after everything that had happened, we may not be able to see, hear, or respond to God’s word until our exhaustion is alleviated. Elijah slept. I believe that was God’s first response to Elijah’s prayer – providing physical rest.

Then an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” Elijah looked around and found a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. Angel food: God’s second response to Elijah’s prayer. Think of the times when you have been the recipient of angel food in one form or another. Elijah had gone off by himself; he had left behind his companion and had gone into the desert alone. Sometimes we just don’t want to be with other people, do we? And yet, often that is the time when we most need to have someone around to help us. If we could only learn not to isolate ourselves during times of deep trouble, we would receive ministry to our wounded spirits that would not only bless us, but also bless the person who ministers to us. Sadly, many of us are so much better at giving than at receiving. Elijah had gone off by himself, so an angel came to minister to him. Elijah ate and lay down again.

A second time the angel came and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” Elijah is being fed again, but this time, he is also to understand that he is not going to spend the rest of his time lying under the broom tree feeling sorry for himself. He must get up and resume his life, resume his work.

I think that God must have been disappointed at Elijah’s response following the great experience on Mount Carmel. Through Elijah, God had shown who was in charge and the people might have been ready to turn back to God. Even King Ahab might have been influenced. But Elijah didn’t stay around long enough to find out, he ran. I imagine that God must have been greatly disappointed, just as God may be disappointed when we fail to follow through on the work God has given us to do. Yet, God did not abandon Elijah. In the desert, waiting for Elijah was a broom tree and an angel ready to take care of him.

It shouldn’t be any surprise to us that proper nutrition and rest are critical to a decent mental attitude. Our bodies and mind are an integrated whole. When one part is out of balance, the rest quickly follows. Renewed by sleep and food, Elijah was once again physically able to carry on, but his spirit was still not any better. Another step was necessary.

Elijah went to Mount Horeb. Now in this case, this is not running away but rather returning to his spiritual roots. Mount Horeb was the place where Moses first met God in the burning bush. It was also known as Sinai, the place where God gave the Law. For Elijah, a trip to that holy mountain was a pilgrimage to his spiritual roots, a place to rekindle memories, to recall all God had done throughout history. The mountain was a setting that would force Elijah to think about something other than himself.[v]

How very important it is to return to the place of our spiritual roots. That may not always be possible physically, but it is possible and essential to return to the place that proclaims those roots and helps us be in community with others.

“There’s a great story about Stuart Henry, Professor Emeritus at Duke University. He taught American Christianity there for many years. Dr. Henry was walking across the Duke campus one Sunday morning, and the bells in the chapel tower were ringing loudly up ahead. He was dressed up in his Sunday best, and he was walking briskly…. A student saw him and said `Hi, there, Dr. Henry. Did you decide that you would go to church this morning?’ Stuart Henry kept walking and said, `No, I didn’t decide to do that this morning.’ The student looked puzzled, `Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. `I could have sworn you were going to chapel.’ `I am,’ Dr. Henry said, `but I didn’t decide to go this morning.’

“The student, somewhat baffled, said, `Oh, I don’t guess I understand,’ And Dr. Henry said in reply, `Look, son, I didn’t make the decision to go to church this morning. I made that decision more than fifty years ago when I first became a Christian. So, it is never a decision whether I’ll go to church, but only a decision where I’ll go to church,’”[vi]

Faithful participation in the corporate worship of a church body is an integral component of a life style that helps to prevent or treat spiritual burnout. There is a great difference, however, between coming to church and coming to worship. Coming to church may be a physical action, it can be a going through the motions. We can come as consumers or an audience expecting to be entertained, to have someone say or do something that will make a difference. Coming to worship is different, it means coming to be a participant, to enter into prayers and songs and even entering into the sermon through mental and emotional engagement rather than passive listening.

For Elijah that took place on the mountain. Remember that Elijah still wasn’t in a good place spiritually. He went into a cave and spent the night. But now it was time for God to initiate the conversation. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah was ready with his litany of woe. “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

Our litany may sound a little different but it usually has some of the same components. How tempting to think that we are the ones who have been wronged. How we lick our wounds by ignoring our own actions and focusing only on someone else’s. How soothing to our ego to think we are the only one who has been faithful, who has done all the work – everyone else has shirked responsibility except us. We are all alone.

Like Elijah, it is easy to ignore the facts. Elijah knew that he was not the only one left. He knew that Obadiah, another faithful follower, had hidden 100 prophets in two caves (50 in each) and had been faithfully bringing food to them while the king’s soldiers hunted them down to try and kill them. We, too, can be assured, that even if we don’t know who they are, there are many others who are faithfully obeying God and fulfilling their duties.

In the book of Exodus we hear Moses asking to see God’s presence, but here God tells Elijah to go and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. There is a powerful wind, strong enough to shatter rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. Then there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, came a fire, but the Lord who had sent fire on Mount Carmel was not in the fire. Although in the past, God had been known in wind, earthquake and fire, this time that was not how God would be revealed to Elijah. I love the way the New Revised Standard Version translates this next phrase. “after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”

Have you ever been still enough to hear the sound of sheer silence? I heard it or something close to it this week. I had occasion to be sitting on a rock by a trail in the woods for about half an hour. Occasionally people came by. I could always tell when they were coming, sometimes there was a soft footfall, other times I almost thought a herd of elephants was approaching. It would usually be one person using heavy steps that almost seemed to shake the ground in their interruption of the silence. At other times it was so quiet that I could hear a leaf move or a chipmunk scurry across the ground. In that silence, I knew that God was present in a way that I sometimes miss in the noise of telephone conversations, meetings, traffic, and this weekend the sounds of the air show. Let me suggest finding a rock in the woods and listening to the sheer sound of silence.

When Elijah heard the silence he recognized the presence of God and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. When we look for God only in something big we may miss God’s presence in the gentle whispers of creation or a humble heart.

Once again, Elijah is asked, “What are you doing here?” God knew the answer, but God asks the questions because they require an answer from us – and answers require reasons for our actions or lack thereof. Elijah had a bee in his bonnet and he couldn’t get rid of it, so even after the earthquake, wind, fire, and silence, he gave God the same answer again, insisting that he was the only one left and that God had essentially abandoned him.

Now that Elijah was no longer hungry or tired, now that he recognized God’s presence and knew he was no longer alone, God could confront him in love with the errors of his thinking. In the verses that follow today’s reading, God reminds him that there are 7,000 Israelites just like him, people who have not bowed down to Baal. Then God made it clear to Elijah that it was not time for Elijah to hide away in a holy hill of retirement! There was still work to be done that only Elijah could do. How important it is for us to remember that there is always work to be done; work that will never get done if we retreat and lick our real or imaginary wounds.

God didn’t ask Elijah what the others were doing. God asked Elijah what he was doing. That is the question God asks us. God doesn’t ask us about what Mary or Joe or Susan or David are doing. God doesn’t ask us if George or Tom or Alice or Lisa are being faithful. God asks only if we are being faithful. The message is to focus on our own calling from God and leave God to judge our brothers and sisters.

Now Elijah is ready for his marching orders. “Go back the way you came.” And Elijah went. By the way, Elijah had more encounters with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel to come. If you were at the 8:00 service last week you heard about one of them involving some pretty nasty abuse of power. That sermon is on the church website if you are interested.

God calls us to come – to come to God. If we are feeling troubled or tired or weary, God calls us to “Come.” If we are feeling lonely, burdened or rejected, God says, “Come to me, all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Be careful of those four dangerous symptoms: being hungry, alone, lonely, and tired. When you combine those with absence from worship, a closed dusty Bible, and a neglected prayer life the results are dangerous all around. God calls us to wait. Sometimes God speaks through the dramatic, but more often God speaks through the silence or the still small voice. Wait and pray. Wait and watch. Wait. In worship, God hugs us to life. Jesus told his disciples, “Wait, wait here and worship, and you will clothed with power from on high.” God tells us to come, to wait for instructions, to be fed spiritually and then to go out to serve. When any one of those pieces are missing, we become more susceptible to spiritual burnout, “running on empty” or “running through foot deep molasses”.

[i] Bone Sevier, Melissa Journeying toward Renewal, Alban Press, p.4

[ii] Briscoe, Jill. Running on Empty, Refilling Your Spirit at the Low Points of Life, Word Publishing, Dallas, 1988.

[iii] Briscoe, p.16

[iv] The Immediate Word, June 20, 2004

[v] The Immediate Word

[vi] From a sermon by Norman Neaves, “Settle It Once and for All” October 30, 1994.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

June 17, 2007 3^rd Sunday after Pentecost 8:00

Text: Old Testament: 1 Kings 21:1-21a

Gospel: Luke 7:36-8:3

Title: Whose Side are you On?

There are several things about attending Annual Conference that I really enjoy – and, as you might imagine, there are things that I do not enjoy. One of the highlights though is hearing about so many different ways that we as United Methodists are together in mission through our connectional system. Along with that comes a heightened sense of global awareness and justice issues. It is coming from that most recent experience that I approached this week’s scripture lessons.

The story of Naboth and his vineyard has always cried out for more of my attention. Today I invite you to give it some of yours. It’s not just a story from long ago – it’s a story about yesterday and today – and even tomorrow. In this story we find three different approaches to life, three different sets of values and perspectives. First we have King Ahab. He sees a piece of land he likes and wants to have for a garden. King Ahab assumes that everything has a price and so he can have anything he wants by meeting the price. This is capitalism pure and simple. In a sense of fairness he approaches Naboth, the owner of the land and offers him a fair price for the land. When Naboth refuses, King Ahab doesn’t know what to do, his basic orientation has been challenged. He should be able to get whatever he wants simply by offering a high enough price.

Naboth operates under a different perspective. For Naboth the land is a gift from God – not a gift in the sense that ownership is transferred to him and he can do whatever he wants with it, but rather in the sense that the land is entrusted to him and to his family. The land belonged to God, but Naboth was entrusted with the use of the land – never forgetting who the true owner was, or what his responsibilities were. For Naboth even an offer to buy the land might be seen as an insult especially coming from the king who should understand the Hebrew way. For him to sell the land for money would be to break trust with God and to violate his responsibility to future members of his family. This was the ancestral land. His father had lived there, and his father before him. Naboth would live there and his son and his grandson after him. At least that was the plan. Selling the land was unthinkable.

Queen Jezebel, being of foreign background, had no such respect for the laws of Yahweh, for the laws of the Hebrew God. She believed that her husband as king had the right and the power to have anything he wanted. She taunts Ahab with the question, “Aren’t you the king? Don’t you now govern Israel?” In her opinion the king is above the laws which regulate the lives of ordinary individuals. He should have what he wants – and if that requires the death of someone who gets in his way, so be it. Now while Jezebel didn’t respect the laws of Yahweh, she knew what they were and she used the letter of the law to accomplish an end that was contrary to its spirit and intent. For her the law is simply an instrument of manipulation.

She hatches a plan – and I’m convinced that she did this with the complicity of the king even if it was not with his direct knowledge. In times of struggle or stress within a city or district, it was a common practice to call a fast as part of an assembly. During this time the focus would be on confessing guilt and trying to get God to relieve what was perceived as punishment from God for some perhaps unknown sin. Jezebel organizes such a fast and assembly. She arranges for two false witnesses to accuse Naboth of cursing God and the King. Since the people would be looking to discover what sin had brought on God’s punishment, they would be quick to seize upon the accusation of Naboth. He is quickly convicted and following the law, he is stoned to death. Since the property of treasonous individuals reverted to the crown, Ahab was then free to take possession of the vineyard.[i] She took laws and customs that were designed to bring people closer to God and used them instead to accomplish the goal of getting what the government – the king – wanted.

The really disturbing thing about this story is that it is not an isolated incident. If we were to retell the story substituting Native Americans for Naboth, and white settlers for King Ahab and Queen Jezebel we would have a painfully accurate scenario. Native Americans held an understanding of the land that was similar to that of Naboth’s. The land was a sacred trust, not something that they could treat simply as a commodity. When purchasing the land didn’t work for our countries settlers and early government, possession was simply taken and Native Americans were driven away to other places.

Unfortunately, even this is not an isolated piece of history. Today we still have our Jezebels in the form of huge mining, lumber, oil, and pipeline companies. I read recently about farm or ranch land in the Midwest in which the owners, own only the surface rights and the government owns below the surface and can lease the rights to companies to come in and harvest the gas and other natural resources at great cost to the environment. Perhaps we consumers are the Jezebels with our insatiable demands for more energy and cheap goods without concern for the long term effects.

In the New Testament, Jesus was concerned with the intent of God’s law. The laws around land remind us that land and resources are a gift of God intended for equal use by all. The possession of land brings with it a mission and obligation to make of it what God intends. In too many parts of the world corporations are using land in a way that contaminates the water that villagers need so that there are too many people in the world who do not have access to safe drinking water.

The various perspectives I’ve described from this story relate to more than land use and ownership. They relate to the basic way we treat other people and how we view others. If we operate out of Ahab’s viewpoint, then everything has a price and we can have whatever we want simply by making someone an offer they can’t refuse. When you are trying to feed yourself or a child, the high price that will be paid for being a stripper or a prostitute can look attractive. To kids in an urban setting, the money they can make selling drugs looks like a much better deal than working a minimum wage job in a small store. Adults trying to provide for their families find that the salaries being offered become what may seem a necessary tradeoff for long hours or days away from their families or a reason to cooperate with less than honest business practices.

If we operate out of Jezebel’s viewpoint then power is most important. This gets played out in the areas of domestic violence where one person believes that what he or she wants is all that matters and power over someone is the way to get it. In child abuse it shows up when adults exercise power over children in such a way that steals their very soul and denies them the worth and value that go with being a child of God. It occurs when governments think that they have the right to do whatever they want because they have the power – because they can do something. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is the right thing to do.

Naboth’s viewpoint would be that each person is a child of God and valued by God. It is then incumbent upon us to treat others in that way. Our children are a sacred trust and we have a responsibility to take care of them, protect them, and raise them in the love of God. Our spouses, partners, friends, colleagues are people of worth who have a right to be honored and treated with respect – to be treated the way we would like to be treated. It is a responsibility to make sure that all of God’s children have the necessities of life – food, water, a place to live, an opportunity to support themselves and to live in dignity.

This week I read about farm workers in Florida who pick tomatoes for a major fast food chain. They earn 40 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. This rate has not risen significantly in nearly 30 years. Workers who toil from dawn to dusk must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50 in one day. Modern day slavery has reemerged in Florida’s fields. Since 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice has prosecuted five slavery rings, freeing more than 1,000 workers. This is Ahab and Jezebel in spades; putting downward pressure on farm worker wages and putting corporate profits before human dignity.

Jezebel may have been the one who concocted the plan to get Naboth’s vineyard from him, but I’m sure that Ahab was complicit in the carrying out of the plot and he was very definitely the one who benefited from her actions. Ahab is the one who, after all, ended up with the plot of land he wanted. We may not be the corporate owners who are exploiting farm workers or allowing slavery rings to gain a new foothold, but in some ways aren’t we complicit in this when we eat at these restaurants or are the purchasers of goods produced on the backs of farm workers or sweat laborers. We may not be the persons abusing another, but when we turn our heads and pretend we don’t see what is going on, we become complicit.

The story doesn’t end with Ahab taking possession of Naboth’s vineyard. The Word of God came to Elijah the prophet who was sent to King Ahab with the word of judgment. Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah had a history with each other. This was not the first time that Elijah confronted Ahab about his misdeeds. When Ahab saw Elijah, he says, “Have you found me, O my enemy.” Listen well to Elijah’s response, “I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you.”

Notice that phrase, “Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil.” Ahab who thought that everything had a price, discovered that indeed there was a price, even for him. He had accepted the price and sold himself by stealing the land that belonged to Naboth through God. He sold himself in order to get what he wanted. I will spare you the rest of the story, but let me just say it isn’t very pretty. Jezebel who thought that the law didn’t apply to her and her husband discovered that there was a higher law that did in fact apply and violating the law of God would cost her dearly.

There is good news. In our gospel we heard the story of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet while the Pharisee, in whose house Jesus was a guest, looked on and looked down on the woman as a sinner. Jesus tells a wonderful story about two people being forgiven – one being forgiven a great debt and one a smaller debt and asks which one will show greater love for the master who forgave. The Pharisee gives the obvious answer that the one who was forgiven much will show the greater love. The implication here is that the woman has been forgiven many things while the Pharisee, being a nice respectable religious man, has little to be forgiven.

When I read this story in conjunction with the story from 1 Kings, I wondr if we aren’t missing something. I think that Jesus is also trying to tell the Pharisee that he has much that needs to be forgiven but does not yet recognize or acknowledge it. Joyce Hollyday writing for Sojourners magazine observed that “Perhaps the real surprise of the story is not that Jesus received the blessing of a `sinful’ woman – but that he ate at the table of a Pharisee. He listened and taught and took the man seriously.”[ii]

She suggests that we often find it easier to minister to people in trouble or in need than to listen to those with a different viewpoint. Our unwillingness to engage or listen leads to brokenness for all of us. Jesus would have sat down at the table with Ahab and Jezebel as well as with Naboth. Jesus would have sat down at the table with the victims of domestic violence or the children who are abused as well as with the perpetrators of these crimes. Jesus would have sat down at the table with the farm workers as well as with the corporate executives and the leaders of the slave markets.

Jesus would sit down with each one of us and invite us to an honest examination of our lives, to see where we have sinned and where we are forgiven when we repent of those sins. He would invite us to learn more about the places where we are complicit in sins against others by the way we abuse our use of resources to the detriment of our brothers and sisters in the world. He would and does invite us to learn about how we can live as part of a sustainable earth. He calls us to be an active part of a world of justice where each person, each animal, every part of the world is seen as part of God’s creation to be honored, and valued as part of God’s great gift of love and trust to a world that is much bigger than we can imagine, and also much smaller and more connected than most of us realize.

God calls each of us to respond to living our lives in accordance with God’s will and God’s plan. Our responsibility is to do all we can to love our neighbor and to work for justice. We would do well to ask with President Abraham Lincoln, not “Is God on our side?” but rather, “Are we on God’s side?” We have a responsibility as we live our lives on this planet to ask how our choices play out for the marginalized in the world, for the most vulnerable. The most basic question is “Do we see ourselves as answerable to God?” The answer to that question when taken seriously will affect everything else that we say and do.

[i] Much of the explanation of these three viewpoints and Jezebel’s use of the law comes from Daniel Tiessen’s article “Land as a Gift from God” found on the Sojourners preaching resources website.

[ii] Hollyday, Joyce. “In Need of Grace” www.sojo.net Preaching resources.

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10 June 2007 – “Cosmic Compassion”

by Lay Speaker Jay Hickey

Good Morning! As the youth reminded us two weeks ago on Pentecost Sunday, God calls each of us to serve according to the talents that He has given us. For some, that calling is clear and unambiguous, like a clap of thunder on a stormy night -- hard to be denied. You get a sense from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and from comments he makes elsewhere, that it must have been like that for him, struck blind on the road to Damascus. That is also how it was for the Reverend Jack DeJarnette, our pastor in the late-1980s in Pensacola, FL. An established, very well-off medical professional living near Atlanta, GA, his call to the ministry came at the end of a long period of deep, anguished soul-searching – his life was seriously off the tracks. I will, however, leave out the awkward details. He is, after all, still a serving minister! One day, rising from his knees after a time of quiet contemplation, he turned to leave a chapel, stared up at a beautiful painting of Jesus at the back of the sanctuary…and the painting moved!! As Jack tells it, Jesus reached out his hand and beckoned to him. Jack’s experience still moves me as much today as it did in 1986 when he first described it to me. Now imagine the impact if something similar happened to you, if Jesus moved out of the clouds of the beautiful mural that Cibby painted for us. How would you respond? For Jack, the proverbial die was cast. Their home and most of their possessions were soon sold, and Jack, Beverly, and their two children headed off to start their new life – the life of a circuit preacher and his family in a very poor part of the Deep South. They were, quite literally, paid in produce, and the floor in the kitchen of their first parsonage collapsed under the weight of the dinner table one evening. There is a reason I introduced you to Pastor Jack, and I’ll return to him later.

For others, perhaps most of us here, the calling is more of a whisper, like the soft rain that sometimes comes right before dawn. Just as it is easy to roll over to grab a few more minutes of sleep, so too is it easy to ignore that gentle call to action. For me, the call to Lay Speaking followed this latter path. I had often sensed there was more I should be doing, that there was more that I was being called to, but I just kept hitting that snooze alarm. Then I got knocked out of bed. It’s really kind of hard to ignore those “innocent” requests from Pastor Beverly isn’t it?! Many of you know the ones I am referring too. “Would you like to teach Sunday school?”, “Would you like to serve on the SPRC?” … “So, would you like to take the Basic Lay Speaker’s Course?” What could I possible say? So here I stand.

So, why this extended lead-in you might ask? Lay Speakers, I’ve been told, normally have one or two killer sermons bottled up inside, waiting to be shared with an eager and attentive congregation. These sermons often center on a particular issue close to our hearts, or on our personal conversion experience. But this is not my first sermon…that was two years ago this very Sunday, although I still would like that eager and attentive congregation! Once the initial creative well is tapped dry, what’s a Lay Speaker to do? Well, the first step is to turn to the Revised Common Lectionary…a three-year plan for services which I’m sure you’ve heard referred to before. This is exactly what I did. Once I knew the week I was scheduled to fill in for Pastor Bev, I opened the lectionary … and was handed a gift. A gift that I’d been given before, as I’m certain many of you have too, but one that I, in all honesty, probably laid aside in my hectic life. I want to reintroduce and share this gift with you this morning … the message of compassion.

The Oxford English Dictionary provides us two definitions for the word “compassion.” The first talks of “suffering together with another … fellow-feeling … sympathy.” In this sense of the word it is clear that the sufferers are equals, both are experiencing the same pain or distress. One recent example might be those affected by the deadly tornadoes in Kansas. We saw on the evening news stories of local people seeking each other out for comfort, trying to reach a shared understanding of an event which, in all likelihood, can never really be understood…but only endured. There is much to be admired about this type of compassion, and I don’t mean to marginalize it in any way…in fact, it’s worthy of a sermon of its own. But for today I’d like to focus on the second definition, which speaks of a “feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it.” Here we see an entirely different dynamic at play. And I think for Christians, this nuance makes all the difference in the world. For rather than it being the case where two or more people have been thrown together in suffering, pain, or distress, in this latter scenario one of the parties is unaffected…is free from whatever trauma has occurred…is able to turn and walk away if he or she so chooses. But doesn’t. This intentional, deliberate choice to help those in need forms the very bedrock of Christian love. This compassion is born not out of a sense of obligation, not out of a need of being seen to be doing the “right thing,” but out of a sense of compassionate love. What the author Jim Rice calls Christ’s “cosmic compassion.”

The bible, Old Testament and New, is full of examples of this cosmic compassion evidenced by the acts of Jesus and others. And boy do they lead by example! Almost every week we hear read from the scriptures stories of the hungry being feed, the afflicted being healed, and, in some cases, the dead being returned to life. So it was with this week’s passages. In the Old Testament reading we heard of Elijah’s trip to Zarephath, and of his filling the widow’s pantry. Later, when her son takes ill and dies, Elijah brings him back to life. Elsewhere in Second Kings, although not part of today’s scripture, Elijah’s protégé Elisha also raises a boy from the dead.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus, having recently healed the centurion’s servant, enters the town of Nain. Seeing a funeral procession and a grieving mother, again a widow, he takes pity upon her and raises her son from the dead. This has long been seen as an important passage in the Gospel. In fact, while I was preparing for this sermon, I discovered that St Augustine of Hippo, an early Christian theologian – who had also lead quite a wild life before fully committing to God – preached on this very passage in his Sermon 98 – some 1,600 years ago. Now initially I thought it would be useful to share some of his thoughts with you, but I have only been able to find the sermon in Latin…I’ll spare you that pain today.

Suffice it to say, there is much at play here, and on many different levels. Learned scholars could probably write books on various aspects of the message here, but I’ll only touch on a couple. At this time in history, a time before social welfare programs, the death of a widow’s only son would, in all likelihood, signal the loss of her only means of economic support. Without any income, the woman would become a virtual outcast in society. Viewed as an unproductive member of the village, she would become solely reliant on the charity of others. Jesus’ ministry continually sought to break down the boundaries between people of different social, cultural, and economic classes. We see this in action here… for by returning her son to her, He eliminates the impeding crisis. We also see this in his work with lepers, sinners, and outsiders.

The raising of the widow’s son in Nain also resonated with the people of the time for another reason. Well versed in the teachings of the Old Testament, they knew the stories of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. When they witnessed a similar act before them, they recognized that God has sent them another great prophet in the person of Jesus. But there are also some subtle differences worth noting. First, the two examples from this week’s readings are not true resurrections. The widows’ sons are merely restored, however miraculously we view the event, to the same life they had before. While such an event may hint towards the promise of resurrection, we need to remember that the promise to Christ’s followers is a rebirth into an entirely new kind of life. A second, but critical, difference is that in the former cases, the mothers appealed to Elijah and Elisha…in the latter, Jesus’ cosmic compassion is unbidden. He did it because He wanted to, He felt pity for the widow, and acted to ease her pain. This is an important lesson for us…it reminds us that our compassionate actions should come first from our sense of Christian love, not because we’re asked or wish to be seen as “doing good.”

So, what about the world around us today? What we hear in the press doesn’t seem to match the biblical examples from long ago…have we, as a society, lost our sense of “cosmic compassion?” I actually think the answer to that question is mixed, and perhaps not quite as negative as we might first guess…although there is clearly much room for improvement. Just as we are told that the compassionate acts of Jesus recorded in the bible are not the totality of His good works, I think we often don’t get a true sense of compassion at work in our world today. It has been said, somewhat cynically perhaps, that good news just doesn’t sell. The papers and broadcast media seem filled with things that have gone wrong, and of human suffering. Of course we do get the feel good human interest story now and then. There were a number of stories recently on a businessman, sadly now passed away, who gave away much of his fortune by walking the community, seeking out those in need, then personally and anonymously giving them the resources needed to help ease their plight – that certainly sounds like “cosmic compassion.” Similarly, many people in our community and beyond, including members of this congregation, work ceaselessly, and often thanklessly, to help those less fortunate. There are volunteers working with shut-ins and with the elderly. There are those working in the medical profession. Teachers helping our children and young adults…offering more than just book learning. This congregation also regularly responds generously in times of need.

But unfortunately I also think it is clear that the same barriers of division -- social, cultural, and economic -- that Jesus worked so hard to overcome, are with us today. I also sense a belief in some that those in need must have done something wrong…that their plight is their own fault. Now, I am not implying that actions don’t have consequences and I agree that personal choices can result in individuals finding themselves in difficult, even dangerous, situations. But Jesus got past the “blame game” to help the less fortunate – I think we need to as well

I recently saw some of these dynamics at play in the Stop and Shop at the north end of town. This event really made me stop and think. Rae and I were in line on a busy Saturday afternoon, waiting to check out. Two women at the front of the line were struggling to pay their bill. By dress and overall appearance it seemed readily apparent that they were “down on their luck.” After working their way through gift cards, cash, and coupons, there was a modest balance still due. Edging their way towards “frantic,” and more than a bit embarrassed, they discussed which items needed to be taken off the order. From where Rae and I were standing, you could see there really were no “extras.” One of them suddenly remembered she had a little money in a bank account…she had her ATM card, but couldn’t remember her PIN. Thinking that it was written down in their car they ran to find it. Now, imagine this scene. The line is getting longer, the checkout clerk is getting quite frustrated because “this has happened before,” and nothing can be resolved until the women return.

A hand reaches forward, swipes an ATM card, types in a PIN, and clears the bill. The line goes silent. The groceries are placed in the basket and it is moved off to the side. In a few minutes, when the women return, they are told the bill has been taken care of…although confused, they are very thankful and quickly leave. Isn’t this “cosmic compassion” at work?

Now, this really did happen, this is not one of those wonderful illustrative tales. Worded differently, you can almost hear Jesus telling it as a parable. But then He might ask the hard question. Which person are you in this story? Silently think of what your answer might be. Have you ever been in the position of the two women? Are you the frustrated clerk blaming them for causing the delay? Are you the second store employee who eventually got involved, telling the two women that “you need to pay them back?” Or…are you “the anonymous hand?”

Earlier I introduced you to Pastor Jack…and here’s why. Like Paul, like St Augustine, and like countless others, he moved beyond his secular, “get as much as I can” existence, and embraced Christ’s “cosmic compassion.” Quietly, and without pretense, he has served the Lord. He was for me back then, and for many others over the years, a selfless, living example of what we should strive to be as Christians. And there are so many more examples around us right here. Just look at what was accomplished for a small, sick, Muslim girl in Africa. Sure, Saffiatu’s life was saved by the concerted efforts of many, from both within this congregation, and the wider world community. But all of that started with a single act of “cosmic compassion,” the simple realization by a youngster, of all people, that “This isn’t fair!” That is one big example. There are many, many other examples both big and small. The larger question is whether…in our daily lives, as seen by those around us, are we good examples of the faith we profess? Do we practice “cosmic compassion?"

In our secular world, bumper stickers tell us to “Practice Random Acts of Kindness,” while popular movies tell us to “Pay It Forward.” But such sentiments are also embedded in our Methodist tradition. This Church is a community of those who are being saved by grace through faith in Christ, living under God’s rule, and sent out as instruments of God's eternal purpose.

Simply put, we are saved by grace through faith alone; we cannot earn our way to our eternal reward. But we are also taught in the Wesleyan tradition that this faith is evidenced by our good works. This is the active portion of our lives as Christians – a chance to get back to Christ’s example…of dusty sandals, and lives transformed.

As we leave here today, exiting our comfortable house of worship, let us constantly remind ourselves of our mandate as Christians, of our need to follow Christ’s example – to practice “cosmic compassion.” Let us pray.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

June 3, 2007

Trinity Sunday

Title: Community as Home

By The Rev. Beverly Stenmark

Text: Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

There are many things that I do not understand. I don’t understand how the Internet works. I don’t understand why some people get sick and others don’t. I don’t understand why most of us live in great prosperity while so many in the world don’t even have clean drinking water. This Sunday within the church is Trinity Sunday and that’s something else I don’t understand. I am becoming more willing to live with the mystery of some unanswerable questions. I am comforted by the fact that minds much greater than mine have tried to figure this out and have not been able to.

One of the great theologians and fathers of the church, Augustine was puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity. While walking along the beach one day, he observed a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth to pour water into a little hole. Augustine asked, “What are you doing?” The boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole. “ Then Augustine realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind.[i]

If we look at today’s Gospel, we find Jesus sharing what I consider a wonderful and comforting thought. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” There are just some things that we are not able to understand right now. There are some things we are not ready or able to hear right now. That is a reality of life. God is God and we are not.

There is, however, something about the Trinity and about God’s way of relating to us that makes a lot of sense to me. A few years ago, I heard the idea of Trinity as community.

Something in that resonated with me and came back to me this week when I read, “Community is God’s strategy for reaching the world.”[ii] The author of the article, Joe Nangle, wrote, “That’s a neat way of saying that as community – rather than as individuals – we model what God has in mind for humanity. Think of what community demands of us: commitment, selflessness, concern for the common good, humility, large doses of patience, forgiveness. These are New Creation values, the ones Jesus outlined in the Sermon on the Mount as his guidelines for God’s reign among humans.” “The Trinity – the community of three within God’s being – point out to us that group relationships are at the heart of our faith.”

On Friday night I attended the calling hours for a 91 year old man who died this week. He had attended worship on Sunday morning in his church as he always does – that is one of the communities that was central to his life. At the funeral home, I saw people who were also part of his communities – some of whom I hadn’t seen in many years. But we were gathered out of commitment, concern for the family, and a desire to be community and to embody or model God’s love.”

Jesus told his disciples that after he left, the Spirit of Truth would come and continue to guide them. God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is present in each of us helping to guide us and showing us how to model God’s plan for the world. In Paul’s letter to the Romans we heard that we have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. … God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Some years ago I was serving a small church in a close knit community. One day after visiting a member of the church, I stopped by the home of another member. She was surprised to see me and told me that a third member had told her that I had already left town for the day. I laughed and thought about how for an hour no one had known where I was. Now, it’s not always a good thing when people are that aware of where you are and what you are doing, but it is an exaggerated illustration of how community sometimes works. In that community, if someone was injured, everyone seemed to know immediately. Food would show up on their doorsteps and offers of transportation or childcare would be made. People knew that they were part of a community.

When community is functioning well it can be the best vehicle for sharing God’s love with those who most need it. Communities can be fluid changing depending upon the needs and they can overlap with other communities. One really good example of community modeling God’s love is the way this congregation came together to see that a young Muslim child in Sierra Leone had life saving heart surgery. That connection brought different communities together in commitment and compassion for the good of another.

The next step in that commitment, compassion, and community is to go beyond the needs of one child and work on the needs of the many. We have raised $1600 – about half of the money needed to send a large shipping crate of medical supplies, hospital beds, and a jeep to the clinic in Sierra Leone. In faith that crate is being packed and shipped. When I think of the supplies and the need I hear Jesus saying, “whatever you do for the least of these, one of my children, you do for me.” I also hear the opposite – that when we refuse to do something for one of God’s children it is as if we are refusing to do it for Christ.

Community is the way that most of us learned about Christ in the first place – through the community of our family, our church, a friend, or some other manifestation of God’s love in community. Being part of a community also involves a responsibility to that community – a supporting of its work and a living out of its values. “Community exemplifies living "as if"—as if we are essentially relational beings; as if we can live together in peace; as if we can commit to something beyond ourselves; as if our faith journey is best done in company; as if our God is unity in Trinity, the ultimate model for all gatherings of humans.

There are many ways that we can be community together and many ways in which we can extend God’s community. We are limited only by our vision and our desire to model God’s love. I have been approached by another United Methodist Church wondering if we might be interested in working on a combined Vacation Bible School. Is God calling you to be part of that community?

In his article, Joe Nangle tells of a missionary from Africa who told him how they celebrated communion in a young Christian community there. At Communion time members of the gathering would hurry from the altar with portions of the bread so that the sick would receive it at the same time as those present at the service. There was no doubt about membership in that community. When you come to the communion table this morning – are you aware of people who are not able to be here with us? Perhaps you could be like one of those runners and take bread from our communion to them so that they may be part of this faith community in that way.

Are there people at work who are hurting? Perhaps you could invite the Holy Spirit to work through you to model God’s love through listening or through helping in an appropriate way. Do you have a particular need that might be shared by others? Are you struggling with issues around caring for aging parents either locally or at a distance? Perhaps there are others who would like to join you in a smaller community that could help each other. Have you been or are you being abused by someone who claims to love you? I have materials for a three session group for Christian women who are dealing with these issues? Would you like to form a community to help sustain each other?

Communities take many forms. God is made known to us as Father or Creator or Almighty or Majestic or many other images we use to help convey our understanding of God. God is made known to us as the one who came as a baby and embodied or incarnated all that God is and taught us in so many ways. God is made known to us in the presence of the Holy Spirit guiding us, sustaining us, leading us into truth, and prodding us to stretch and to grow. This one God has chosen to be made known to us in many ways – as community – and invites us to be community with one another.

[i]Michael Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Baker Book House, 1993, p. 389. cited in e-sermons.

[ii] Nangle, Joe, “Community As Home” found on Sojourner’s Preaching the Word website.

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North Kingstown United Methodist Church

May 20, 2007 – Ascension Sunday

Text: Acts 1:1-11

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Title: We are Witnesses

By The Rev. Beverly E. Stenmark

Robert Morgan in his book, Who’s Coming to Dinner? tells about being a guest preacher in a United Methodist Church in North Carolina. He said that when he arrived the first thing he noticed was a beautiful stained glass window over the front entrance. “The window depicted Jesus standing with his arms outstretched inviting all to come.” Later as stood inside greeting people who were leaving he discovered another feature of the window. “There was an open ceiling in the narthex and the window was visible from the inside. Now Jesus seemed to be bidding the worshiper to go. Coming in from the outside the invitation was to come, and leaving the sanctuary the command was to go.” He discovered that the people of the church aptly called the window their “come and go window.” He notes, “I was reminded that Jesus never called anyone to come to him that he did not bid them to go.”[i]

Indeed as Morgan notes, at the conclusion of all four Gospels, Jesus makes his mission known to his followers and in every case, the instruction involves a going out and telling others. In Luke’s Gospel we heard earlier, that when Jesus appeared to his disciples, alive again, he helped them to understand the scriptures that spoke about him. He explained to them that the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms all looked to him and had been fulfilled in him. He reminded them that the Scriptures said that the “Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Then he says, “You are witnesses of these things.”

Luke wrote two volumes about Jesus. The first is the Gospel that bears his name, the second is the Acts of the Apostles, that’s why it begins “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven.” Then he goes on to recount what happened once again. This time he elaborates on this and tells how Jesus told the disciples to wait until they had received power from on high and that then they would be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

It seems that Jesus is quite clear that while coming to him is important – it is only the beginning. The going is equally as important. His disciples – and that includes us – are expected to then go out and be witnesses of all that we have seen. That is the mission of the church. The Latin root for the word “mission” means “to go.”

Sometimes that part is scary. We might be willing to come. We are willing and often even eager to come and worship. We may long for the time of coming to Jesus, of being intentional about spending time focusing on Jesus. Certainly Jesus is glad to have us come and welcomes us warmly. This winter after visiting my great nephew in Vermont, a death in the family caused me to go back a week later. When I walked through the door, Cullen started jumping up and down saying, “Aunt Bev, you came back. You came back.” He had been told that I was coming that night, but his excitement at actually seeing me so soon again was a joy for me to behold. I think that there is that same joy when we come to Jesus. When we choose to spend time in prayer rather than watching a tv show, reading a novel, doing another load of laundry, or hitting the snooze button. There are many things that claim our attention, but Jesus continually calls us to come.

Today, however, the emphasis is upon what happens after we come – when we are told to go. Now the really neat thing about “going” is that it doesn’t mean that we actually are walking away from Jesus. It doesn’t mean that we are leaving God behind. It means that we are going out into the world – the place we live, rather than standing as the disciples initially were doing staring into heaven looking for Jesus to come back.

The key here, however, is that standing looking up toward heaven is good for a time, but then it’s time to do something. In the spiritual life we move back and forth between moments of inspiration and our daily routine. Both the uplifting mountaintop and the hard work of faithful living are spiritual. The key is to channel the energy from one into the other. It’s important to recognize the temptation to continue gazing heavenward when there is work to be done. It is equally as important to recognize the danger in constant work without time to gaze into heaven.

Morgan made a good but somewhat painful observation. He said, “The church needs to confess that so much of our emphasis has been on `coming’ and not enough on `going.’ As a result of this emphasis, many people believe that when they `come’ they have met all their Christian responsibilities. Unfortunately, for many, church vitality is gauged more on the way we come and not on the way we go into the world.”[ii]

As I thought about his words, I received an email from the District Office. Included in that email were some statistics comparing 2005 membership across the denomination with 2004 figures. Once again, as has become almost the norm, there was a decrease across all categories. Worship attendance is down. Membership is down. Sunday School participation is down. The number of churches is even down. All of those statistics reflect measurements related to the coming. If we could accurately measure the “going” I’m sure we’d find the same thing. In fact, I’m sure that the only way that the “coming” will ever increase is if the “going” increases even more. Coincidentally, this week I also attended a meeting with Bishop Weaver where pastors from “above average” size churches were invited to join in discussion. Are you aware that this church is among the 66 largest churches in the New England conference? Our coming is pretty good – better than most churches in this conference. But how is our going?

This is not about statistics. This is about vital faith. This is about being witnesses. The main work of Christian discipleship is about witnessing. It is not about worshipping, it is not about Bible study, it is not about financially supporting the church, it is not about singing in the choir or serving on the Trustees. While all of these are important, they are important as tools that feed and empower us for being witnesses.

Now before you think that I’m suggesting that we all go and stand out on the street corners preaching about Jesus, let’s think about how we are to witness. We are to witness to what we know and have experienced. We are to witness in the way that Jesus did. Yes, certainly Jesus preached and taught and for some of us we may be called to witness in that way, but that is only a part of witnessing. Everything in Jesus’ life pointed toward loving and caring for those who were broken, down trodden, or hurting. Even when Jesus encountered people who had done things that were wrong, there is no record of Jesus condemning them or ridiculing them, but rather his invitation was always to bring their brokenness to the table of reconciliation; his invitation was to change what needed to be changed and to move on.

There is so much brokenness in our world. Sadly, often within the church we give such mixed messages that too many people don’t see their community church as a place to go when they are facing difficulties or feeling broken. I remember one day talking with a person who had come to get food from the food pantry. She told me that she would never consider going to the church where she was a member because she didn’t want anyone there to know that she needed help. Indeed, another conversation with the pastor of that same church included an unequivocal statement that they took care of the needs of the people within their church so their people didn’t need to use the food pantry.

When I talk with women who are in abusive relationships, it is not uncommon to hear that they don’t want anyone in their church to know because they feel ashamed, that somehow they wouldn’t measure up or be good enough if anyone knew. While I pray that people in this church don’t feel that same way, I suspect that there may be people who do. A wise preacher once told me that you can be pretty sure that in almost every pew there is at least one broken heart. If your heart is not broken, you might be sitting next to someone whose heart is broken.

Jesus calls us to be witnesses to his love a