Stories from the Steeple

“Finding God’s Story in Your Story” (Genesis 29:15-30)

July 27, 2008

Rev. Carol McVetty, English Language Pastor

In a well-remembered bit of narration from the movie “Forrest Gump”, the hero says: “My mother always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. Because you never know what you’re gonna get.’” Forrest goes on to stumble through a life of seemingly random encounters with many of the chaotic world events of the late 20^th Century. There is no purposefulness to his life, no growth, no character development. He just wanders along through history a sort of present day court jester, an innocent fool.

In the book we have been studying together on Wednesday nights this summer, Scott Bader-Saye’s “Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear”, Bader-Saye suggests that one of our deepest fears is that life is like a box of chocolates, but for a different reason. “…because a box of chocolates is consumed, piece by random piece, in no particular order.”

Are our lives a series of random events, our days simply consumed until nothing remains? Or is there a story to our lives; a beginning, a middle, an end? Do our days move in a coherent direction that makes sense? Or do we stumble along like Forrest Gump from one event to another, searching in vain for the connecting thread? These are haunting questions for many.

In our scripture lesson today we met Jacob. Now Jacob in not nearly as appealing a character as Forrest Gump. In fact at times he is downright despicable. Nonetheless, for the next several weeks, we will follow the exploits of Jacob and his son Joseph in our scripture lessons and sermons. (I encourage you to read the whole story on your own. Move back a few chapters, perhaps to chapter 25, and read on through the end of Genesis to get the entire cycle of stories in context.)

Jacob was born hanging onto his twin brother’s heel. He spent much of his youth rebelling against “the system”, which in his day dictated that the first born of a family inherited all of the father’s wealth. You haven’t seen sibling rivalry until you have seen Jacob manipulate his older twin, Esau, into giving up his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup. You know nothing about dysfunctional families until you read how the parents in this one choose up sides: father Isaac backing Esau, and Rebekah, the mom, favoring Jacob. Rebekah even helps Jacob trick his dying dad into giving him the blessing which is due the elder son.

Having stooped so low and connived so skillfully to get the family farm, Jacob then had to run for his life because his brother was out to kill him. Surely on the long, dusty trip to Haran Jacob wondered “How is this going to turn out? Where is my life headed?” Today’s episode opens as Jacob has arrived in Haran on the doorstep of an uncle he had never met. He is a refugee, a fugitive, with only the clothes on his back and a price on his head.

Now Jacob has met his match! His uncle, Laban, is surely the Wiley-Coyote of the Old Testament. “You love my daughter Rachel? She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Sure, seven years labor sounds like a good bride-price.” So they shook hands on the deal. But seven long years of sheep-tending later Jacob had to remind his uncle of the deal. So a wedding banquet was thrown. What happened next is one of the most eye-popping tales in the Hebrew Scriptures. It actually believable if you factor in 1) all the women being veiled, 2) that it is really, really dark inside a Bedoin tent, and 3) a huge lots of wine having flowed throughout the wedding festivities. It wasn’t until the morning after, in the sober light of dawn (or noon perhaps), that Jacob realized he’d been had! He had married Leah, the older, not Rachel, the beautiful, whom he loved. And Uncle Laban, confronted with his treachery shows no shame. “Oops, not to worry. I had this older daughter I had to get off my hands. But you can have Rachel, too. That’ll be seven more years labor, thank you very much!”

What are we to make of this wild and crazy story? I have searched it, and as it stands on its own, I can’t find any moral. I have no uplifting lesson you can carry home with you today from this particular story. Reading today’s text is like pulling over to the side of the road to stare at a train wreck. We are left with Jacob—exiled from home, still no property or security, having invested seven years, seven hard years, for the love of his life, only to shafted and manipulated into working another seven years for no pay. This is the point where I imagine he went out and plastered the bumper sticker on the back of his donkey cart, the one that says “Sh-t happens.”

And we see Leah and Rachel—two women, two sisters, voiceless and unheard. Their hopes or desires were never consulted. Their lives had been arranged for them. Now they had been setup for a life-long, bitter competition for the attention of one man.

Then there is Laban—who comes off like a character in a Dilbert cartoon, gleeful, almost sadistic in his scheming, leaving chaos in his wake.

What are we to make of this messy, ambiguous story? What are we to make of our own messy, ambiguous lives….when our best efforts still leave us empty-handed…when our future is manipulated by others…when we tumble from one mess to another, or wander through our days, not knowing where they are headed? Is life just one darn thing after another? Is it really like a box of chocolates after all, consumed piece by piece, randomly, till it’s all gone?

Some years ago I heard a woman, a totally secular, non-church-going mom, explain why she brought her children to Vacation Bible School. She said “On the way home in the car, my kids sing the songs they’ve learned. They repeat the stories that have been told. This is the only place they’ve heard a story like this. You are the only ones who really have a story.” Sisters and brothers, that is the good news. The Gospel says that God has given the world a story, and it’s a story of redeeming love. The Good News of the Bible is that God has given the world a story, and has called each of us to participate in it, to play our part.

The book “Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear” has introduced us to a way of understanding that story that helps us see ourselves as part of it. God’s story is a drama in five acts. Act 1 is God’s creation of the world. Act 2 is God’s calling of Israel. Act 3 is God’s incarnation in Christ. Act 4 is the calling and sending of the Church, and Act 5 is the culmination of the story in God’s reign of Shalom. We live in Act 4. We are the ones called and sent by God to live out his love in the world. Jacob lived in Act 2, God’s calling of a particular people, Israel. In fact, it is just this big picture that the narrator had in mind when recording Jacob’s story.

The Hebrew people told these earthy, colorful, clearly entertaining stories about their ancestor Jacob for generations around the campfire. The stories may have seemed to them as random and ambiguous as they are to us. But the narrator who put this series of stories in writing was able to read these events in light of God’s story. He could detect the thread of purpose that runs through them all. Our faithful narrator arranged the stories to show us the point. The whole Jacob cycle is arranged as a series of frames, or matching bookends to surround and draw attention to the central point. In the series of stories, the first is conflict with Esau, matched with reconciliation with Esau at the end. Next, is an encounter with God at Bethel, matched with an encounter with God at Peniel. Inside of those two frames is the conflict with Laban, balanced by a truce with Laban. Right in the middle of all these stories is the birth of Jacob’s children. That is the key, the central point of the whole Jacob saga. While in Haran, he had eleven sons, and one daughter. On his return to Canaan he had one more son. Those twelve sons became the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The narrator looked at Jacob’s messy, chaotic life full of conflict and trouble, deception and lies. He looked at all that and still could see God’s story being played out. He saw that ancient promise to Abraham, of more descendants than there are stars in the sky, coming to fruition in Jacob. That is not to say that God caused each event. To say that we would have to conclude that God is as mean and manipulative as Laban, that God is a trickster like Jacob. God’s way in the world is much more mysterious than cause and effect. Somehow God is at work. In ways beyond our understanding, God weaves even the darkest turns in life towards God’s good ends. We set aside explanation to tell a story of God’s purpose having it’s way, even in the midst of our messes and screw ups.

As Christians, our job is to learn to do what the Genesis narrator did. Our task is to read the jumbled, random events of our lives in light of God’s story. You can learn to recognize your bit part is God’s vast drama and thus pick up the thread of meaning and purpose running through your days.

Through my high school and college education I invested eight years in studying science…eight years dedicated to the dream of becoming a doctor. Near the end of college that all fell apart, and I went home not knowing what I was going to do. What if I had been able to see that time experience in the light of the story of the fishermen who left their nets and their whole lives behind and walked away to follow Jesus with no idea of what came next? If I could have seen my story in the light of that part of God’s story, then perhaps I would have been spared some of the sense of failure and shame that I felt at the time.

I have heard Karen folks in the refugee camps in Thailand, having fled the horror that is Burma, say: “We are like the Hebrew children wandering in the wilderness. We have no country, no home, but God is providing us with daily manna. And I know many of those who have resettled in our midst see the US as their Promised Land.

When Judge Lefkow’s husband and mother were brutally murdered just down the street, the first thing their pastor did was to tell the family the story of Job. She told them how his life was trashed, and yet he clung to God; and how Job eventually discovered that God was hanging on to him.

To learn to see our story in the light of the Great Gospel story of God’s redeeming love…

That is our task. For life is, after all, not like a box chocolates. Life is not a random series of events that lead nowhere. Our lives are lived out within the great drama of God’s loving purpose….

And within that story, your story moves toward a good end.

Amen.

“Blow the Trumpet” (Joel 1:8-10, 17-20)

July 20, 2008 - Creation Sunday

Justin Thornburgh, NSBC church member

Prayer: May it be, oh Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you and useful to your purposes of Grace. – Rev. Joanna Adams

So, this passage is probably not one you were expecting to hear on a Sunday labeled as Celebrating God’s Creation. I don’t blame you. When I first came across it as I was looking for something to preach on, I quickly turned to the next passage and hoped this one would stop speaking to me. Well, I have been meditating and praying and stewing over this passage for the last month, so obviously it did not stop speaking.

The resource I used to find creation centered Bible passages is a website called Season of Creation. They have a 3-year cycle of readings – each of which lasts about 6 weeks culminating on St. Francis of Assisi Sunday. These cycles focus on different aspects of creation.

One of the Sundays in the series is called Wilderness Sunday and that is where I found today’s passage.

I think part of the reason this passage would not leave me alone is because when I initially read it it was during the first round of wildfires in California – followed a week later by the horrid flooding in the Midwest. News about the world wide food shortages were making above the fold headlines.

These past few weekends Mae and I have done a lot of traveling through Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. While we were not near the worst of the damage we did see an empty Lake Delton. We did see farms with massive barren patches where standing water destroyed the crops. We did see several farms totally annihilated. The most powerful thing I saw was a farm that was half submerged by a river that moved well beyond the flood plain, and the other half of the farm, that was once submerged, now dry and cracking…looking like pictures I have seen of Oklahoma during the dust bowl. This field that was damaged so much by the unyielding rains was now dying because of lack of those life giving rains.

I heard the ground mourn. I could see the animals crying. I saw fire devouring the pastures of the wilderness.

***

Joel is living in or near Jerusalem at the time which this reading takes place. The land was destroyed by a plague of locust. The people of Judah and Jerusalem had turned away from God. They had let material pleasures steal their focus. Joel in Chapter 2 exhorts:

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near.

He tells the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah that it is because of their sin that this plague is upon them. He calls for the elders to:

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
16 gather the people.

The blowing of the trumpet is a warning call. Sounding the alarm from God’s holy mountain is intended to be a wake up call for those who are slumbering.

Today’s passage stuck with me because I see parallels between us and the people of Jerusalem in Joel’s time.

We have become a society run by greed. A society run by gluttony. A society nearing the edge of a catastrophic moment. A society not inclined to listen to the blowing of the trumpet.

The earth is speaking to us. Calling us to listen to the trumpet.

I believe that God is present in every microbe of this world.

Whether one believes that the world was created in 6 days or over millions of years, we, I think, can all agree that we began as nothing, and through a divine spark we were created. Genesis 2 says how were created from the dust…the dirt. And then God placed man in the garden to till it and keep it. We are created form the dirt and told to keep it. And we can not forget that God saw all of it and said it was good.

To take this one step farther, not only was human kind created in God’s image, but we can not forget that the Word became flesh. The God of creation inhabited this world and became part of this world. The God of creation became flesh…came from the same dirt as Adam.

Our sins against the land are sins directly against the incarnation of God. The ground mourns.

Our sins of greed and gluttony are part of the reason the flooding was so bad in the river valleys.

Because of our greed we have turned our farms into factories that produce crops that are not sustainable. We have forced farmland to move into floodplains. The monocultures – which is the same crop grown in the same spot year after year – currently used, and mandated by many of the major agra companies if you are to get any help from them or discounts on seed, do not lead to good stewardship of the earth. These monocultures do not allow for deep root growth because they need to be planted annually. These monocultures deplete the land of necessary nutrients and lead to the use of artificial, man-made, fertilizers. These monocultures become susceptible to disease and infestation and lead to the use of more artificial herbicides and pesticides. These monocultures lead to the weakening of the nutritional value of the crops. That is why the United States is one of the fattest yet undernourished countries in the industrialized world. These monocultures lead to the weakening of biodiversity in crops leading to the use of genetically modified seed…all profiting people.

There is nothing wrong with making money, but when a major agra company sues an independent farmer because some of their “brand name” seed – that was probably carried by a bird or blown by the wind – sprouts in his field then our greed has gotten out of control.

Our gluttony feeds our greed.

Because of our need for cheap food, particularly items full of high-fructose corn syrup and dollar hamburgers, we have created a market demanding that we put undo stress upon the land. As His Holiness Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch (the leader of 300 million of the world’s orthodox Christians) , says, “Human economy wastes and discards, while natural economy is cyclical and replenishes, and God’s economy is compassionate and nurturing.”

Our sin against the land is sin against the incarnation. The trumpet is blowing.

We, like the people of Judah, need to repent. Repentance is not only seeking forgiveness but then changing our ways.

We can start by reading about where our food comes from. Ask our butcher where our meat comes from. We can join Consumer Supported Agriculture co-ops. Mae and I belong to one and get a half-bushel of organic, sustainably grown produce a week. We are part of another co-op that provides us with meat raised in humane and sustainable ways. You may not be able to do that, but you should be able to look into where your food is coming from or at least how it was raised. This is only one small step.

This, though is not only a personal repentance, we as a community of faith must repent.

There are many things we can do as signs of our repentance. Simple things like making our recycling boxes more visible. Small things like using our wonderful china instead of paper plates; signing up to receive Steeple Stories via e-mail instead of a paper copy. How about we look into creating a green roof top above the gym? What if we could install solar panels to create our own energy … we have this wonderful south facing peak. Action has begun. A green task force has already been blessed by the church council, and we will begin to dream…and ACT.

We can Blow the Trumpet.

We can sound the alarm.

We can learn more about living life more carefully.

We can teach.

We can lead our neighborhood by being an example.

We can celebrate creation.

And you know what. God promises redemption. Through proper care of creation things will happen. I recently saw the movie WAL-E. If you have not seen it, go see it. It takes place in on planet earth after years of not listening to the warning from the mountain. But it is a movie where we can see what happens when we begin to care – if we, as community, heed the trumpet blast and turn from our current ways. If we ACT.

Through Joel, God promises the people of Judah “grain, wine and oil and you will be satisfied.”

Do not fear, O soil;
be glad and rejoice,
for the Lord has done great things!
22Do not fear, you animals of the field,
for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit,
the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

23O children of Zion, be glad
and rejoice in the Lord your God;
for he has given the early rain* for your vindication,
he has poured down for you abundant rain,
the early and the later rain, as before.
The threshing-floors shall be full of grain,
the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.

These things are ours, but we must act. We can no longer afford to be complacent. We must repent…change our ways.

We must Blow the Trumpet. - Amen.

“Are You A Gentile” (Matthew 6:24-34)

May 25, 2008 - Memorial Day Weekend

Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield, Executive Minister ABC/MC

Are you a Gentile?

That was not the question I was asked.

I assume that because my last name is Greenfield that there wasn’t any need to ask. It was simply assumed that we Greenfields were Jews.

That was almost forty years ago. My wife Barbara and I, and pre-school daughter Sarah, had only recently moved into our first home. That was in South Shore, a neighborhood that had once been pretty thoroughly Jewish but had, over the past few decades, become increasingly African American in composition. So when someone at the local synagogue noticed we were new arrivals, they were quick to call and tell us about their Hebrew Day School.

The woman on the phone described the philosophy of the school and the curriculum, and made special note of the fact that the enrolled children received instruction in elementary Hebrew.

“Would you be interested in enrolling Sarah in the school?” she asked.

I replied that we would be very interested, and in no small part because of the instruction in Hebrew. The caller was delighted to hear my enthusiastic response and proceeded to tell me about steps that would need to be followed so that Sarah could be enrolled as soon as possible.

At the end of the telephone conversation, I told the caller that I needed to disclose one thing, which I hoped would not disqualify Sarah from enrollment.

“What’s that?” she asked.

I said that she needed to know that I was a Baptist minister.

There was a very long pause at the other end of the line, but finally she said: “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and hung up.

I’ve often wondered whether she was “so sorry” for having put me through this ordeal – as if to offer an apology to me. Or was she so sorry that I had the bad fortune of being a Gentile.

If it was the latter and not the former – that is, if she was lamenting my condition as a Gentile – then she was in good company. Because Jesus, too, had sorrow – really, almost a kind of deep sadness – for those who were and lived as Gentiles.

Well, that’s not exactly true. What has for centuries been translated at “Gentiles” in the English Bible, doesn’t have any textual or linguistic basis in either Hebrew or Greek. “Gentile” has its origin in Latin, not Hebrew or Greek. “Gentile” was the mistranslation of the scriptural concept of “non-Jewish” or, more clumsily, the “unchosen.” A more accurate translation of this concept in the biblical Hebrew and Greek would be “the nations” or “the other nations,” or “the people of the other nations” over against the “chosen nation” or the “elect people.”

But for this morning, let’s still use the mistranslation as it appears in our Gospel lesson from Matthew – the story of Jesus lecturing on the mountainside – but still keep in mind when we use the word “Gentile” what it really means.

Now obviously Jesus himself was using the concept of “Gentile” or “the nations” or “the people of the nations” in a different way than most of his fellow Jews. For them – that is, his fellow Jews – this concept would mean either that the “Gentile” didn’t have the correct bloodline (we might put it today, the distinctive DNA) to be a Jew or that the “Gentile” didn’t follow the beliefs and behaviors that came from the Jewish religious traditions – didn’t, for example, follow the Laws of Moses, or the Jewish dietary or liturgical codes.

But Jesus, in our passage from Matthew this morning, is clearly not concerned about bloodlines or DNA, is clearly not concerned about following a set of laws and codes. In our Gospel text for the morning he clearly has something entirely different in mind when he wants to distinguish himself and his followers from the “Gentiles” or “the nations.”

Still, there’s nothing to suggest – or even hint – that Jesus is trying to set himself and his followers over against the faith and tradition of his parents or over against the laws of Moses or even the codes of behavior. There’s nothing here that reveals that he is prepared to stop being a Jew, or is asking others to give up their Jewish faith.

In a strong sense, it’s just the opposite: what Jesus is pleading for in this part of his lecture on the mountainside is that his fellow Jews recapture and re-embrace what is essential, what is at the core, what is absolutely fundamental to their Jewishness, their chosenness, their election as the nation and as the people of God. Furthermore, on precisely those terms, those terms that are essential, core, and fundamental (and here Jesus is really pushing the envelope) people with other kinds of DNA and other bloodlines, people who follow the core commandments and the core codes of other religious and cultural traditions, they too can be members of the chosen nation, can also be a member of the elect people, can become – listen to this – a non-Gentile!

Now that is radical. It’s radical if you are a Jew listening to Jesus on the mountainside, and it’s radical if you are a Gentile listening to Jesus on the mountainside. He’s saying to his fellow Jews that you can’t be Jewish if you place your bloodline and your DNA ahead of something that is even more essential for your Jewishness, if you place your following the Jewish laws and codes ahead of that which is even more fundamental to your Jewishness. And he is saying to the Gentiles, you are not excluded from being the chosen nation and being an elect person because of who your parents are or what religion or culture you’ve been a part of. It’s radical because he’s saying: we’ve all got it wrong in this business of who’s in and who’s out, who’s included and who’s excluded, who’s blessed and who’s condemned.

So what is it, according to Jesus on the mountainside, that makes it right for all of us: Jews and Gentiles alike?

Well, it turns out that it’s all fairly simple, pretty basic.

First of all, it is to recognize that neither Jews nor Gentiles can serve two masters. As much as we want to make it otherwise – as much as we want to believe that somehow we can pull off serving two or three or four masters, can somehow manage to pull off living that way – it just isn’t going to work. In the end, one of those masters is going to win out and make all the rest subservient to that one.

Jesus here lays it on the line about these many masters. In the end, the Jew and the Gentile are going to have to choose between the God who created and sustains the whole universe and some other god. And Jesus chooses the most likely candidate as the alternate god vying for loyalty and devotion for Jews and Gentiles over against the sovereign God of the whole universe: the most powerful god competing with the God is the one who entices our loyalty and devotion to wealth, our loyalty and devotion to money and to things, our loyalty and devotion to the accumulation and hoarding of money and things for oneself.

That’s a genuinely tempting god. It’s a god who is so tempting because it appeals to the weakest point of our human nature: our insecurity about ourselves and our insecurity about others—that we won’t have enough to satisfy what we think we need AND that someone else will have more than us, and therefore make us feel smaller and weaker and less important. And it is made all the more tempting if we live in a country that says we are only successful if we’re making money, and buying lots of things, and accumulating more and more, that says we’ve got to spend more on these things in order for the country as a whole to be well off, that says, in other words, that we as Americans can only prove that we’re the chosen nation and the chosen people if we serve the god of wealth, of money, of possessions.

But Jesus on the mountainside says, “No.” You can’t make wealth, and money, and possessions your god and delude yourself into thinking that you can also serve the sovereign God of the whole universe. That somehow you can fit the sovereign God of the universe into some subordinate place within a system in which wealth and money and possessions are in first place. It just won’t work, Jesus teaches. You can’t be a chosen nation and an elect people if you choose that god.

Jesus on the mountainside puts it in the starkest terms: if you are enslaved – and there he got it exactly right, because that’s what making wealth and money and possessions your god will do, it will enslave you – then you will end up despising (that’s the word, “despising”) the sovereign God of the universe – hating, scorning, resenting, dismissing with contempt that sovereign God. You may not say it out loud, but that’s what you will feel.

If you chose that god of wealth and money and possessions then you are a Gentile and a non-Jew, then you are a part of “the nations” and the “people of the nations,” and you exclude yourself from being a part of God’s chosen nation and God’s elect people.

But you’ve got to choose. You can’t, Jesus teaches, serve two masters; you can’t serve two gods.

Let’s be clear what Jesus is NOT saying here: he isn’t teaching that we ought to stop earning enough money to meet our legitimate needs, that we ought to stop having savings to meet expected or unexpected circumstances in the future, that we ought to stop securing the possessions that are required for our lives. All of that, according to Jesus, is legitimate. In fact, he teaches that the sovereign God of the universe helps and motivates us do exactly that. But we cross that line out of God’s domain and into Gentile territory when wealth and money and possessions become our god.

So how do we know when we’re coming close or if we’ve crossed over that line from God’s chosen people into Gentile territory?

If I’m hearing Jesus in his lecture on the mountainside right, I think he gives us three warning, three alerts, three markers for our becoming Gentiles.

The first alert is when we find ourselves worrying about our own lives in an excessive, even compulsive way: worrying, as Jesus says, about “what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, and what you will wear.” When these become preoccupations – and just think for a moment about how we are instilled as Americans today to think constantly about these very things: eating too much, or too little, or eating the wrong things, or drinking special water, or water in certain kinds of plastic bottles, or the shape of our bodies (too thin or two fat, or too many lumps here and not enough curves there), or what styles of clothing we ought to keep up with – when those issues become the things we worry about, then we know, according to Jesus, that we’re coming close or that we’ve crossed over the line from the God’s domain into Gentile land.

The second warning is when we sense we are lessening our trust in the sovereign God of the universe – when we wean ourselves away from the God who created and who continues to create us, when we separate ourselves from the God who lovingly sustains us and graciously forgives us and caringly sets us back on the path of righteousness, when we distance ourselves from the God who calls us to do the sacred work of God’s will for the world. It’s when we start trusting only in ourselves, or trusting only on what some Gentile-inspired device or strategy will do for us that we come near or cross over that line that distinguishes God’s domain from the land of the Gentiles.

And then the third marker is very much related to the first and second: we’re in danger of becoming Gentiles when we are more concerned about ourselves and less concerned about others – especially those who need us. It’s when we are so worried about our own life that we are blind and insensitive to what others need – and what some others need desperately – for them to have life at all. It’s when we so trust human devices that will serve us and overlook the possibility that by trusting in the sovereign God of the universe we can serve the needs of all those others who God loves so deeply.If those are the three warning signs, the three alerts, the three markers of danger, what then, according to Jesus lecturing on the mountainside, helps us stay in God’s domain, what helps us be a chosen nation and an elect people, what helps us avoid becoming Gentiles?

This is what he said then, and what he says now. Listen, these are the words of Jesus:

Therefore, do not worry, saying “What will we eat?” or “What will be drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things. But you should, you must, strive first for the dominion of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

What is that “dominion of God?” What is “God’s righteousness?”

It is, according to Jesus, that chosen nation and those elect people who choose to do what God does.

God takes care of the birds of the air, God feeds them and gives them shelter. God cares for the lilies of the field, God clothes them and adorns them. God loves and cares for all that God has made – not the least, God loves and cares for the human beings who God has created and entrusted with the love and care of the earth that God loves.

So if you want to be a part of God’s domain, God’s kingdom, God’s community, give of the life that God has given you so that you can love and care for the whole world that God loves the whole world.

Surely love and care for those who are in need – those today who are suffering from natural disasters and human-made disasters, those who today are suffering from deprivation and despair, those who today are suffering from injustice and from war, those today who are suffering from illness and ignorance, all those who desperately need our help.

But love and care also for the Gentiles, those who, even in their abundance and wealth, worry and are anxious about their life, what they will eat, and what they will drink, and what they look like, and what they will wear, and what people will think of them, and whether they are important enough, and if someone is better than them. Lead them, my sisters and brothers, to the mountainside and let them learn of Jesus, lead them to the mountainside and let them hear his lecture, lead them to the mountainside so that they can stop worrying, and stop being anxious, and stop being preoccupied with themselves, lead them to the mountainside so that they can learn to trust the loving and forgiving and gracious sovereign God of the universe, lead them, my sisters and brothers, to the mountainside so that when they are asked “Are you a Gentile?” they will be able to say, “No, I’m a child of God and I’m a part of a people of God called to do God’s work in the world that God loves so fervently.”

* * * * *

This Memorial Day weekend we pay our respect, in gratitude, to those who have given their lives for this nation, who have paid an ultimate price of self-giving on behalf of our nation’s ideals of equality and freedom and mutual service to each other. God bless every one of them.

It can also be a weekend in which we, as followers of Jesus, recommit ourselves to a still greater cause, a still greater chosen nation, a still greater elected people. The question for us, then, is whether we, in our commitment to God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, will be willing to make sacrifices, even an ultimate sacrifice, for God’s cause of loving and caring for the world.

Will it be said of us after our passing from this earthly life, that we chose not to be Gentiles, but in the living of our lives chose to listen to and follow Jesus.

If that is your choice, you are invited to declare it publicly this morning by coming forward during the singing of the last hymn, to join not just this congregation of Jesus’ disciples but also whole community of Christ, the community who gives itself for the renewed life of God’s world.

Amen.

“Garland for Ashes” (Isaiah 61:1-4)

May 11, 2008 - Mother’s Day/Easter 7

Jocelyn Wilson, Student Intern

In the gospel of Luke chapter four Jesus is in Nazareth at synagogue where he is presented with a scroll to read aloud. Christ stood up and read the words we just heard from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he as anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21).

This is the Good News.

Last Sunday I looked up at the baptismal and the portrayal of Christ and I interpreted this image within the context of Christ’s proclamation in Luke 4. Christ, arms open and outstretched, is surrounded by the suffering – the oppressed, the spiritually blind, the captives – he had come to bring them good news. I looked at this image and saw that the people are suffering so much that they do not even have the strength to stand. They are gripping and they are clinging to Christ as he stands strong in their midst.

What the Good News gives to them is hope for a new day. They are gripping and they are clinging to hope.

Hope. It seems so simple but in a world in which we will inevitably suffer, hope is powerful. The gospel kind of hope let’s us know that God is with us when we suffer, God is on our side when we are oppressed, and God seeks to give us sight when we are the oppressor. Now it can make us feel uncomfortable to say that God takes sides but God most assuredly is not neutral. Christ did not come to make the powerful more powerful or the rich richer. Christ while forgiving, receiving, and reconciling himself to all wants to be black-and-white about what he stands for. So as he proclaims in Luke 4 and as we see here in this image, Christ takes a stand in the midst of the suffering who grip and cling to him. This is not to say that the powerful and the rich and the oppressors do not suffer or that Christ is not with them also, but only that when they receive the Good News which fills them with hope they have to be willing to stand with the poor and the oppressed as Christ did.

James Cone, a theologian whose offerings to the Christian faith often get overlooked because of the controversy of his popular character, has said “no one can be liberated until all are liberated.” We cannot escape God’s grace but lack of liberation effects how we interact as participants in community locally, globally and everywhere in between. When we unite as a liberated people who speak out against any powers that attempt to oppress in any form then we are able to come together in reconciliation, in love, and in peace. But when we attempt to unite as a powerful people together with an oppressed people we are unable to have genuine reconciliation with one another. Ultimate power possessed by any one person, or one group, or one country, always, always, always means that someone else is getting oppressed. The only way ultimate power can be ascertained is by stealing it and maintaining the system that enables it to be stolen and hoarded. This is oppression.

Right now in Burma a cyclone has devastated an already devastated region and people. A U.S. diplomat has recently estimated that the death toll could reach as high as 100,000; 100,000 human beings. The response of the military junta in power has been slow and lacking. Lack of clean water, the risk of epidemic disease, and food shortages aggrievated after the cyclone destroyed crops has only piled suffering on top of suffering for the people in Burma. In the meantime, the military junta is attempting to move forward with a constitutional referendum which would make permanent the military government which has oppressed the people of Burma for many generations.

Paw Naw, a Karen woman who worships with us and whom has given me authority to share her story, was one of many oppressed by this military government. Poe Clee and I went to visit Paw Naw one afternoon. It was raining that day and almost immediately after I sat down Paw Naw began to share the story of the birth of her daughter:

It was raining in the refugee camp the day her daughter was born. The military government attacked their camp that day forcing the entire camp to uproot and to run. Paw Naw told me that as they ran, literally, as they ran she gave birth to her daughter. She delivered the baby herself. She said she knew what to do because she had delivered her previous children and she explained to me with the expertise of a nurse the birthing process of a child. After the baby was born, and she was born healthy, they continued to run. I asked her how long she ran. I was thinking a few days maybe but Paw Naw said that they ran not for two days but for two months. For two months Paw Naw, her newborn daughter, her other children, and the rest of the camp ran from the military government. Everytime it rains Paw Naw remembers that day.

So today I do not feel uneasy saying that God takes a stand with the oppressed. God is not the force leading the military government to oppress the people. God stood with that camp the day Paw Naw and her children ran giving them the hope to keep running for two months. I can imagine that they could barely walk from their suffering like the people in the image above the baptismal but they kept moving forward with Christ gripping and clinging to the hope they had in him; hope for a new day. Maybe they remembered his words, “The Spirit of the Lord … has sent me … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (v. 18). This is brilliant. That Christ would transcend into eternity but leave us with the irresistible presence of His Holy Spirit. This is brilliant because in our gripping and clinging to this irresistible presence when we are suffering, when it feels we can do nothing else but grip and cling to this presence, we move forward into that future into that hopeful eternity that Christ has promised to us. “Today,” Christ said, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). This is brilliant because we have to do nothing else but cling to Christ.

The Spirit of Truth likely stood with the military government those two months as well but it was likely urging them to transform and to take a stand with the oppressed. The Spirit of Truth was offering them sight. As Christ said, “I have come to give sight to the blind.”

And today – on Mother’s Day – as we honor and uplift the women in our lives, we all remember that women as a community also have been oppressed and abused in the past and we all know that women continue to be oppressed and abused today by governments and powers for sure but also, and unfortunately, by those within their own homes.

The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 61 verse three “the spirit of the Lord God has anointed me … to comfort those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes.” Today, as Eh Kalu Htoo and Ngwe Kyi sing the hymn of response, Dear Mom, I invite you to come forward and pick up your garland, your hope for a new day, and to leave your ashes here at the table. If you don’t feel you have any ashes to leave behind, then I invite you to take a stand for someone else who is suffering.

So today as we honor and edify women, and today as we remember the people in Burma, and today as we remember our own suffering and the suffering of others, we don’t suppress our suffering as the military government of Burma suppresses the suffering of the people. The military government of Burma maintains its power by denying and suppressing the suffering of the people. If we interpret that image of Christ through the eyes of the military government then we would not see a Christ standing with and in the midst of the suffering, but a Christ who blindly walks through and over the suffering to get more power. It is our joy that we know a Christ who although he is sovereign and the possessor of all genuine power gets glory through the destruction of our fetters; from our triumph, through suffering by way of hope, to a new day.

But we do not stay in the suffering either. Today we recognize that it is important to acknowledge the suffering and to take a stand with those who suffer but then, but then we celebrate.

We celebrate the Good News. We celebrate the irresistible Holy Spirit that gives us the hope we need so much right now; that Spirit of Truth that whispers to us in the midst of our suffering and in the midst of our oppression:

“Yes, you can”

“Don’t give up”

“Today is a new day”

So as we come forward to retrieve our flowers we acknowledge the suffering, we take a stand against the oppression, and we celebrate a God who would trade us garland for ashes.

So now I invite you to come forward as Eh Kalu Htoo and Ngwe Kyi sing Dear Mom , retrieve your flowers and leave behind your ashes. If you do not have any ashes to leave behind right now, I ask that you, as you are able, would stand up while others retrieve their flowers and stand with those who do suffer and who do mourn.

“Show Us the Way” (John 14:1-9)

April 20, 2008 - Fifth Sunday of Easter

Rev. Carol McVetty

On Tuesday I will participate in an interfaith dialog, a conversation among people sometimes identified as “Abraham’s Children” because Jews, Christians, and Muslims all view Abraham as their spiritual father. I hope many of you will participate as well. For me, it is a conversation not with strangers, but with friends. Jamal Hussein of the Ismaili Center, Paul Koch at Ebenezer Lutheran, Michael Zedek, the rabbi at Congregation Emanuel, and Father Dominic Grassi at St. Gertrude’s are colleagues of mine here in the Edgewater neighborhood. We sit around a table for lunch every month. Over the years I have grown to respect and trust and value them both as friends and as men of faith.

You folks may also find it to be a conversation with friends, neighbors, or acquaintances. This is a local Edgewater event. That is part of the reason we are doing this. We believe that locally, within a neighborhood, is the place these conversations must begin. It is the place they are the most fruitful.

As I began to gather my thoughts for Tuesday, I was also preparing this morning’s sermon. The Gospel text assigned for today, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, is found in the Gospel of John and includes these words: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No ones comes to the Father except through me.’” Now what do I do with that? This is a treasured text for me. It is one of my favorite parts of John’s gospel, along with the other “I am” statements: “I am the light of the world.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the vine.” “I am the way, the truth, the life….” To these words my soul clings, as to a life raft in a raging storm. But how do I carry them with me into interfaith dialogue? Must I leave them at door? Do they apply?

Years ago I was asked to pray at the annual community commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It was a big deal in our city, an inner ring suburb of Detroit. Southfield was primarily African American and Jewish. Those groups would make up the majority of those in attendance at the event. My clergy colleagues advised me to give a generic sort of interfaith prayer. They said that in those kinds of settings Jewish people feel betrayed, tricked into blasphemy even, if they are invited to pray and then the prayer concludes “in Jesus’ name”. Use images for God that all can ascribe to, that will give offense to no one, I was told. That is the only appropriate thing to do, they said, especially at a city sponsored event. But in conversation with members of my church, some African-Americans who were on the event’s planning committee, I was told, “If you do that, we will feel betrayed! Dr. King was a Christian, a Baptist even. His faith was the rich soil from which his work grew. Even at this city-wide event we must celebrate his faith or we are being dishonest about his legacy. You must pray an explicitly Christian prayer.” Who would have imagined a prayer….just a prayer….could be fraught with so much danger! It is no simple thing to engage one another across faith differences.

When we step into the public sphere with our faith, I see two main approaches. One is the equivalent of “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nah, nah.” It says “We’ve got the truth. Jesus is the only way.” Theologians call that triumphalism. The notion that only Christians are acceptable to God has fueled much that is good. It is the energy behind evangelism and much of our missionary enterprise. It says, “we’ve got Good News!” But we can see the disastrous results of this conviction as well; the Crusades, the Holocaust, religious conflicts down through the centuries. With horror I read this week that Rod Parsley, pastor of Ohio’s most mega megachurch, the 12,000 member World Harvest Church in Columbus, is calling for the destruction of Islam. His book “Silent No More” is selling well. He also broadcasts to huge audiences, proclaiming that America can only “fulfill its divine purpose” by seeing to it that Islam “this false religion, is destroyed.” It is not just the extremists who claim Allah wants to destroy Christian civilization that he is out to eliminate. No, even the kind, moderate Muslims down the street, “mainstream believers in America drink from the same poisoned well” and must be eliminated.

We recoil in horror from such hatred. We rightly recognize it as the opposite of the way of Jesus, utterly un-Christian. When someone like Parsley tosses out “Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, it is like a grenade and we run for cover. But the shelter we find is all too often in a non-committal stance: “Oh, there are many ways to God” …”all religious ideas are the same,” “it doesn’t matter what you believe.”

So we careen from “nyah, nyah” to a mamby-pamby, wishy-washy position that denies the core of our faith. If our only choices are triumphalism or indifference, I find myself praying “Lord Jesus, show us the way!” Because there must be another!

Look again at the story in John’s Gospel. It took place in the Upper Room on the night when Jesus was betrayed. Jesus had gathered around him his dearest friends….

the ones who had trailed after him through the countryside

the ones who had watched him heal and heard him preach

the ones with whom he had talked late into the night, praying and speaking of Holy things, of God

the ones who were there when the authorities turned from jealous to hostile….as things grew tense and dangerous.

It was this group of intimate friends to whom Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It was not to the whole world that Jesus spoke that night, but to this little band of followers.

And John wrote his gospel for a small, struggling church, in a world that was a cacophony of competing religious claims. It was a little group trying to separate itself out from the synagogue, trying to establish their identity in the midst of pagan cults. It was for this little band of early Christians that John recounted this story. The heart of John’s gospel is that Jesus is the Word become flesh. Remember how it begins? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” In Jesus, the incarnate Word, we can see and know God in a way never possible before. In the coming of Jesus the relationship between God and humanity is forever changed. That’s John’s testimony. That’s John’s message. Jesus is so intimate with God that he calls him Father. No one had done that before! When we see Jesus we see God. They are in an embrace that cannot be severed.

So when John writes the story of that last night in the Upper Room, when he recounts the words of Jesus “I am the way…” essentially it means “The way to enter this intimacy that I share with God is by drawing close to me. That’s the way to do it.” Jesus is making a defining statement for this community, for his followers. The statement does draw a boundary. But it is not a boundary around God, for God is without limit. It draws a boundary around the Christian community. It says, “this is who we are. We are the people who believe in the God who has been revealed to us decisively in Jesus. To be in the circle of Jesus’ own, you must recognize Jesus for who he is: the Way, the Truth, the Life.” To be Christian is not to say “Oh, well, believe whatever.” To be Christian is to say “I have found the Way in Jesus.” This is what it means to be Christian. This passage does not answer the question “who gets to heaven?” It answers the question “who is a Christian?….

who is part of this community?….

and how does this community find God?”

We find God through Jesus.

How, then, do I take this testimony of Scripture into interfaith dialogue? I carry it as a badge, not a club. I fully, completely and proudly own who I am….a follower of Jesus. And I meet others who come fully, completely, proudly as Jews or Muslims. We come as distinct voices in a spirit of mutual respect and care. Otherwise there is no point in coming at all.

Finally, do we dare ask the question “who gets to heaven?…Who is accepted by God?” Yes, we can ask it. But we dare not presume to answer it. I am deeply grateful that that decision is not up to me. Tony Campolo says “Yes, Jesus said ‘No one comes to the Father except through me.’ But how can we presume to know who Jesus will bring to the Father?” We cannot. Only God himself knows that.

But I do know this:

That the God I meet in Jesus is a God of unstoppable love.

That the God I meet in Jesus is a God of unending mercy.

That the God I meet in Jesus is a God of grace beyond our imagining.

That the God I meet in Jesus surely knows a way to embrace all our neighbors.

The point of our dialogue on Tuesday is most definitely not deciding who gets into heaven. The point is to build relationships of trust. We build relationships of trust so we can live together as neighbors, and stand together in the face of the crucial tests of our day. I attended a missions conference this week at Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago. One of the speakers, a Catholic theologian, recounted how, as Serbia was descending into a bloodbath, that the leaders of each religious group spoke out against the violence. The Catholic bishop spoke to the Croates, the Orthodox patriarch spoke to the Serbs, and the Muslim leaders spoke to the Bosnians. But it didn’t make enough of a difference. They slaughtered each other anyway. But now, in the aftermath of that horrendous war, those leaders meet together. They are building with each other relationships of trust so that now, when they speak for peace and understanding, they speak together, with one voice. Now they are showing their people how living as neighbors is done. And now, whenever tensions rise again, they will be heard differently.

Here in Edgewater our purpose is the same. It is to show that we can be vibrantly, passionately, faithfully Protestant or Catholic or Muslim or Jew and still trust and love each other. It is to show that we can even admire what is beautiful in the other’s faith. And it is to lay the groundwork for speaking together on the crucial challenges that face us all. Even now we are making plans for a weekend next fall of joint interfaith action through all of Edgewater to address the scourge of gun violence.

Jesus said to his disciples, his dearest friends, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you would come to the Father, it must be through me.” This message is not for others. It is for us. For we cannot come to the Father by ourselves. On our own we are hopelessly lost. We need Jesus to show us the way.

Amen.

“Stay With Us” (Luke 24:13-35)

April 6, 2008 - Third Sunday of Easter

Rev. Carol McVetty

“Stay with us” they said to the mysterious stranger. “Stay with us, for it is evening, the night is falling.”

Evening is the weary time, isn’t it? The day that brimmed with bright possibility as it dawned all too often ends with grouchy, head-achy, grubby reality, only made worse by a packed CTA train or traffic jam on Lakeshore Drive. It is in the evening that little things get on our nerves. What went poorly that day plays over and over in one’s mind like a bad commercial. What’s left undone nags at us. It’s in the evening that we just want to curl up and be left alone….or escape into the lights and noise that will drown out the anxieties, the loneliness, the haunting emptiness.

“Stay with us” they urged him. For it is evening, the night is falling.

For Cleopas and his companion on that first Easter, evening was not just the time of day, it was their state of mind. The story they told the stranger on the Emmaus Road was as despondent as the one UCLA and North Carolina fans are telling this morning after last night’s losses in the NCAA basketball Final Four. It was a story of failure, a story of crushing defeat. “Where have you been this weekend?” they asked stranger. “Under a rock? Jesus, our teacher, was surely a man of God. Surely he was a prophet. The things he said and did were full of power. He was the One…the One who was going to deliver Israel from the Empire. We were sure of it. But our leaders betrayed him. They had him tortured and executed. It’s been three days now. The women came this morning with a crazy tale about how his body was gone from the tomb… and a vision of angels. But the others checked it out. No one has seen him. We thought he was the One. But now it’s all over.

Then Jesus took their story, blessed it, broke it, and gave it back to them. He blessed it by retelling it in the light of the long, long story of God’s loving action in the world.

It’s a story of God’s good and holy creation…our world.

It’s a story of people created with the capacity for mighty achievement and heroic good, but also with the freedom and mysterious tendency to choose evil..ordinary garden variety evil, or unimaginably horrendous evil.

It’s a story of God’s loving relationship with a particular people, Israel

how he brought them out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and into a promised land.

It’s a story of God’s loving patience when this beloved people went astray again again: ignoring God, dazzled by wealth, cheating the poor, exploiting the stranger.

Jesus blessed their story by telling it back to them in the context of the stories of Eve and Adam, Sarah and Abraham, Moses, David, Ruth, Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Then Jesus broke their story. He broke it open, showing them how his suffering was for us. “He was wounded for our transgressions.” Jesus explained to them how God works in the world…that failure. heartbreak. dead ends, aging bodies, even graves are the place where God steps in to make a new beginning.

Finally, Jesus gave their story back to them. And their hearts burned within them. Their hearts burned because they could hardly contain a story so vast and rich and wise. And now they understood how their ordinary little lives were a part of it. They begged him: “Stay with us.”

Yesterday a number of us gathered in Howel Hall to break bread together. Well, actually, since it was a Filipino feast there was only rice and noodles, no bread. But you get the idea. We ate together and told stories. It was a “despidida”. “What’s a despidida, and what should we wear to one?” were the burning questions around here last week. We learned that a despidida is a time to say farewell, and also a wonderful party. We said goodbye to Rudy, who is returning to the Philippines for a year, and a final goodbye to his wife Loretta, who died in December. The stories that were told could have been stories of despondency…a loved one going so far away for so long. They could have been stories of despair, in that a beloved wife and mother, little Nicholas’ dear lola (grandma) has left this world for good. But Jesus stayed with us. If, when two or three are gathered together in Christ name, he is there, then by golly 60 will do just fine. Jesus stayed with us. We gathered as family and friends, but with a keen awareness that we were also sisters and brothers in Christ. In addition to blessing the food at the tables, Jesus also took this family’s experience of saying goodbye, and blessed, and broke, and gave it back to them. So the tears were not tears of despair, but of blessed memory. And the stories of the family’s heritage were treasured and lifted up. The pictures of Loretta’s life were cherished and affirmed. And there were stories that looked, not back in grief and loss, but forward to a life of promise and meaning for Rudy as he returns to the Philippines. The spirit of Jesus brought about that transformation. Jesus stayed with us. Jesus drew that families’ story into the great, vast Gospel story of God’s redeeming work in our lives.

“Stay with us” the two disciples said to the stranger. Stay with us…for it is evening, and night is falling. They welcomed him in, as a guest in their home. But suddenly Jesus became the host. His seat became the head of the table. And he took the bread and blessed it, and broke it and gave it to them. And they could finally see! Their eyes were opened…”It’s Jesus! Stay with us!” But he was gone, as ephemeral, as fleeting as any of our glimpses of the Divine.

Today we gather around this table set with the bread and the cup. We invite Jesus to be our guest, but then, again, he becomes the host. We will take and bless and break and give bread, but it is his table, his bread. We do all this in the very presence of Christ.

I urge you, during Communion this morning, to let Jesus take and bless and break and give back to you the story of your life that you have brought with you today. For our lives are not just our own little drama of happiness and heartbreak, of anger and love, of work and success and failure. Years ago in Detroit I saw an overpass that had spray painted on it: WORK EAT DIE. Well, yes, there is a kind of flat two-dimensional truth there. But it is ultimately false. Because our lives are a part of a rich, flowing story…a story that began before time with our Creator’s vast and mighty love for his creation and each precious life within it. When we ask Jesus to stay with us, and to draw that story into our hearts, then it reads us, not the other way around. The story of God’s redemption reads and transforms the story we tell about our own lives.

Despair becomes hope

possession becomes gratitude

struggle becomes challenge

boredom becomes joy

aimlessness becomes purpose.

But Jesus can only reshape our lives and show us how they are a part of God’s great story, if we learn the story…if we listen to it. That’s why we put in the bulletin each week the texts for the coming Sunday, so you can read them and listen to them throughout the week. That’s why we offer so many different Bible studies. That’s why I suggested to you this morning that you reread the Scripture for the day here in worship while it is being read in Karen, so that it can sink into your heart. Then you give Jesus the opportunity to take your life story…

to take it, bless it, break it open, and give it back to you.

It is in prayerfully opening up the Scriptures and coming to this Table that we say:

“Stay with us, Lord Jesus,

stay with us.”

Amen.