Morning Worship for the First Sunday of Lent
March 13, 2011
“Just How Hungry Are We?”
Lectionary for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12:1-4a;
Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Gathering
Announcements
Organ Prelude
Greeting by Pastor
Invocation (in unison):
Great and holy God, awe and reverence, fear and trembling do not come easily to us, but we come before you this morning, the first Sunday in Lent, knowing that your eyes are upon us and that your love surrounds us. It is you, Lord, who teach us and guide us. Help us to hunger after you. Help us to want what we need. Help us to rejoice in the gift of your unfailing love. Amen.
The Entrance
*Introit #269 “Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days” (vs. 1 & 2)
*Call to Worship: Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)
Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people’s plight.
Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.
Help me to take responsibility for my own life;
So that I can be free at last.
Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world. Amen.
*Opening Hymn #402 “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian”
*Greeting One Another with the Peace of Christ
Anthem by Our Choir
A Time for Children of All Ages
(Children 3 and older may proceed to Children’s Church.)
Proclamation of the Word
Old Testament Lesson: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 (New Living Translation)
Musical Interlude
New Testament Lesson: Romans 5:12-19 (The Message)
Musical Interlude
The Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11 (The Message)
Sermon: “Just How Hungry Are We?” Pastor Dora J. Odarenko
Response to the Word
*Sermon Hymn #397 “I Need Thee Every Hour”
Prayer of Confession (in unison):
Dearest Lord, we are afraid to face the reality of our mortality and of our sins. Turning to you seems like too great a burden or we are ashamed to begin to admit our misdeeds. Instead we busy our minds with all manner of self-important distractions and worries. Forgive us for hiding from you or simply thinking we can turn our backs. Forgive us for tiptoeing into your presence with little expectation. Forgive us for finding it so hard to turn fully to you. In your steadfast love, cleanse us. In your Holy Spirit, restore us. In the name of our Savior, we pray. Amen.
(A period of silence for reflection and prayer will follow.)
Words of Assurance and Hope
Sharing of Joys and Concerns
Silent Prayer followed by Pastoral Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer
The Offering of Our Gifts
*Doxology
*Prayer of Thanksgiving
Sending Forth
*Sending Hymn #398 “Jesus Calls Us” (vs. 1, 3-5)
*Dismissal with Blessing
Organ Postlude
Sermon for 3.13.11, first Sunday in Lent
Genesis 2:15-17, 3.1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From today’s Gospel: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”
I have to start this morning with my goats. In this season of self-examination and repentance, it’s not bad to see ourselves through an outrageous comparison. Goats are so determined: determined to find a way to push down the fence, to get into the garden, to whip around me and get into the grain bin. It’s not only about eating. It’s about independence and being what they please, over and over again. It’s about their understanding of freedom, which they love.
Our love of these same traits may help us look at our first story from Scripture: Adam and Eve in the Garden. We’ve heard it described so often as a tale about sin and sex. We all know the terrible rap that Eve and women have had to take because of this way of reading it. But the words “sin” and “punishment” do not appear. Maybe we should think about this account as a way to talk about God’s purposes for us.
Into this garden of original blessings, God placed the first humans, giving them clear instructions. The Hebrew tells us they were “to serve and to preserve or protect” this garden, not simply till and keep it. God is giving the man and the woman a vocation.1 This vocation is not to lord it over the garden or see what they can get out of it. It is to be responsible for what had been placed in it, and watch over it. In other early creation stories, the gods often created people as a by-product or a mistake. It was the most earnest belief of these first writers of Scripture that our God created us for a holy purpose, to care for what God had made and loved.
In doing so, God gave us a great deal of freedom, but the freedom was not total. God asked for trust and intimacy. And so this vocation and its freedom had limits, constraints considered appropriate by God, and consequences if these constraints were ignored. These limits are made real for us by that famous tree with its apple.
When the serpent asks the woman whether God really gave them such a command, he’s trying to redirect the way Eve thinks of her vocation. He also wants to erode her trust in God. “Think about what you can gain for yourself. You’ll have a whole new kind of seeing,” he argues, “You’ll know so much more.” Trying out his suggestion, Eve looks at the tree again: it certainly seems to have good fruit; it’s beautiful—and therefore can’t be all that bad for her; and she will have a whole new and broad range of experiences. So she decides to go her own way and eat.
The result of her hunger and that of her husband is to estrange them from God and, as we hear them quarreling, from one another. God didn’t simply want them to behave,2 to fall into line. God wanted fullness of life for them in that fertile garden, through a balanced relationship with God and all that God had placed there with them. But their desire to put their own personal knowledge ahead of God’s guidance means that they tried to become like God. They were no longer simply and wonderfully in God; they acted against God.3 Actions against God’s creation must follow.
Such willful breaking of their relationship with God is what we must call sin. It is a pattern for a whole list of sins—many of them horrible. Cain’s murder of Abel will follow. But we may take more from this story if we think about how subtlely the problem starts and repeats itself: with lack of trust in God, lack of relationship with God, with turning away from what God is calling us to do, with forgetting God’s gracious limits on our own self-centeredness. This is the human condition without grace.
God wants so much more for us and with us than that. And so we are given a second story from Scripture this morning, the story of Jesus in the wilderness. Just as we know that Eve will say yes, we know that Jesus will say no. But Matthew wanted us to hear Jesus say no, wanted us to hear the way he refused to act against God. Matthew also wanted us to realize that even for the beloved son there was testing. Just as the serpent wanted Eve to question God’s loving instructions, so that voice in Jesus’ ear wanted to mislead Jesus about sonship with God.
Each of the temptations is a variation on the desire for power or control. Each would separate Jesus from God and lead to self-destruction. These temptations continue to haunt us. Can stones become bread? Should we demand miracles? Should the laws of nature be pushed aside? As we increasingly learn to do so, should we abandon or mistreat the natural world that we have been given? What about spectacle, outward show, and risk taking? Should we long for such abilities in our leaders, our entertainers, and in our culture? How high have we turned the volume of our own lives? Who and what suffers because of such priorities? What about the sheer drive for power, political or otherwise? What models shape our decision-making, our conversations and our meetings: in our churches, school boards, and assemblies? How hungry are we for authority and esteem? How far do we allow jealousy and the desire for privilege to drive us? Who and what do we overlook and abandon?
As Jesus rejects each temptation, he prepares himself for the cross. He prepares us, as we begin this season of Lent, to understand the cost of the cross that we are approaching with him. Jesus last temptation will come as he hangs “despised and rejected” and is mocked by those who pass by, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40).
But Jesus is not yet there. In the wilderness, he drives Satan away with his final great assertion: “Serve the Lord your God with absolute single-heartedness.” Then angels come and bring him the food and drink his body must have longed for. I love the tenderness of the older translations here: “Angels came and waited on him,” angels “ministered unto him.”
In his systematic rebuke of Satan, Jesus shows, despite fatigue and hunger, that we do have incredible freedom, the freedom to be obedient and to trust the relationship and the vocation for which God created us. This is the freedom to which Lent invites us. This is the hunger that Lent helps us discover and promises to fill. Most of us are recovering sinners,4 needing over and over again to speak our misdeeds to God. But God’s grace and God’s vocation call us by name. Every day and every Lent.
Let us pray: Dearest Lord, Give us the grace to trust you even when it is hard for us to believe that you are near enough to help. Even when it is hard for us to realize how deeply you love us. In this time of Lent, help us to turn our sins over to you. Help us to stop thinking so much about ourselves and to come closer to you and the creation in which you have placed us. Through our care of what you have given us and through mindfulness of your Word, let us return your love. We pray in your dear name. Amen.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday, 9 March 2011, 7:30 pm
Joint service for Town of Esopus UMC and the Reformed Church of Port Ewen
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From tonight’s Gospel: “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret….”
This is an evening to pray about our own mortality and to pray for greater love, and so I’d like to start with a story about three of my young nephews.
These boys had shared their home for most of their lives with Grandma Rose. After she was widowed, she really had no place to go. No one wanted to see her in a home, and so in love and compassion, the boys’ mother, my niece Li, invited her to live with them, even though it complicated an already exhausting life of motherhood, running a growing accounting firm, and serious involvement in church. But Li also wanted her boys to see such love and compassion in action, in the daily life of the household.
When you take an older person with some frailties into your home, there can be a risk. And so on Valentine’s Day, Grandma Rose was not in the kitchen when the family got home after school. When they went upstairs, they found she had died—apparently very quickly—of a massive stroke. You can imagine the shock, distress, and grief.
But there was something else they understood and that will continue to strengthen them despite and through their sorrow. Grandma Rose died at home, in her own pretty room, with all her familiar memories and expectations around her. The ones who found her and made the first decisions about her were not strangers, but those she deeply loved. In this, she was blessed. Her family too was blessed in its faithfulness and will continue to be blessed by their experience of love.
When I visited this past weekend, the boys were showing me samples of their dad’s cabinet work, but when we entered Rose’s room, the youngest went right to a dish of candy and brought it over to me. “Would you like some?” he asked. “Grandma always had it for us.” Just so, there could be sweetness in Rose’s passing because it was so tied to the sweetness that had been offered and shared.
And so I hope it may be with us. Who knows really why we come to an Ash Wednesday service. We know we are supposed to. We are present on this night because our faithfulness has led us here. Somewhere in our hearts, we may be telling God that we’re already as faithful as we know how to be. Are we really being asked to do even more? But once we are here, the ashes remind us of what we really know, but often try to forget: that our mortal lives—good, bad, mixed—will not last forever. The ashes will remind us that whatever our excuses or reasons, there are moments in our lives—perhaps more than moments—that might have been lived in a far better way. Because our misdeeds surely involve our relationship with others, we are also here to pray for those whom we have slighted or treated ill in all those ways spelled out in the opening prayer, given us by Isaiah.
There is another reason. We are here because this night is the beginning of a time given to us by Our Lord to be with him, to watch with him, as he begins his last walk to Jerusalem, and then beyond Jerusalem to Golgotha and the cross. Lent is an invitation to cease to know ourselves, for a little while, and to know Christ, to keep our eyes on him alone, to allow nothing to come between Christ and ourselves, if only in a few deeply prayerful minutes each day.
Surely this is one way to understand Jesus’ instruction to go into our most private room, our inner sanctum, and lock the door before we pray. We must enter deeply into the innermost layers of our being and invite Christ to be there with us, to guide us—no one else, nothing else. I literally have to set a timer during my serious prayer time so that I have no excuse to glance at my watch. It’s hard to put Christ first and make Christ all-important. Yet only in this way, can God begin making us part of the heavenly Kingdom for which we pray.
And so maybe most of all, in the middle of lives that are busy and often stressed, we are making time to be here because we love Our Lord, we love Jesus. But here’s the catch: we’re not only being invited to “do Lent.” It’s not a quick fix that will be over before we know it. We’re being asked to live Lent, to use Lent to shape a new life. This time set aside begins to get us into shape for Christ. The discipline of Lent can push other hungers to the side so that we hunger for Christ alone: His name, His Kingdom, His will.
Not long ago, I heard a wonderful organ piece that was inspired by Bach’s chorale prelude “Dearest Jesus, we are here.” This is how it begins: “Blessed Jesus, at thy word/ We are gathered all to hear thee./ Let our hearts and souls be stirred/ now to seek and fear and love thee.” Before we go home tonight, we will share together, and with Our Lord, a meal of sacrifice and praise and thanksgiving. We will hear the words that he spoke to his first disciples and to us. Communion is a meal that Christ gives us in an immense act of love. Gathering to receive it in this way, our hearts and souls can be stirred not only to seek and fear Christ, but to offer that love back to Christ, and to one another, and even to ourselves.
“Blessed Jesus, we are here:” The words are wonderfully direct, and so I had another more immediate thought as I heard this piece for the first time. “We are here:” I realized that this statement is an answer to the hymn we all know and sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” On this night, we are all there—and here—together: Now is the acceptable time! We are here to admit our own mortality and the vulnerability that Christ is willing to share with us. We are here in sorrow. We are here in repentance for all we have done to waste God’s gifts and all we have done to cause Christ pain. And we are here in ever deepening love.
Let us pray: Dearest God, may we keep a holy Lent. Give us grace to treasure this time with you and prepare for our Lord’s passion and resurrection by self-examination and repentance and renewed faith. Grant us humility to understand that our chief end is to know and be known by you. Let us discover, more fully than ever before, how much we hunger and thirst for you. May our hearts be sustained by love of you alone. Amen.
Joint service for Town of Esopus UMC and the Reformed Church of Port Ewen
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From tonight’s Gospel: “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret….”
This is an evening to pray about our own mortality and to pray for greater love, and so I’d like to start with a story about three of my young nephews.
These boys had shared their home for most of their lives with Grandma Rose. After she was widowed, she really had no place to go. No one wanted to see her in a home, and so in love and compassion, the boys’ mother, my niece Li, invited her to live with them, even though it complicated an already exhausting life of motherhood, running a growing accounting firm, and serious involvement in church. But Li also wanted her boys to see such love and compassion in action, in the daily life of the household.
When you take an older person with some frailties into your home, there can be a risk. And so on Valentine’s Day, Grandma Rose was not in the kitchen when the family got home after school. When they went upstairs, they found she had died—apparently very quickly—of a massive stroke. You can imagine the shock, distress, and grief.
But there was something else they understood and that will continue to strengthen them despite and through their sorrow. Grandma Rose died at home, in her own pretty room, with all her familiar memories and expectations around her. The ones who found her and made the first decisions about her were not strangers, but those she deeply loved. In this, she was blessed. Her family too was blessed in its faithfulness and will continue to be blessed by their experience of love.
When I visited this past weekend, the boys were showing me samples of their dad’s cabinet work, but when we entered Rose’s room, the youngest went right to a dish of candy and brought it over to me. “Would you like some?” he asked. “Grandma always had it for us.” Just so, there could be sweetness in Rose’s passing because it was so tied to the sweetness that had been offered and shared.
And so I hope it may be with us. Who knows really why we come to an Ash Wednesday service. We know we are supposed to. We are present on this night because our faithfulness has led us here. Somewhere in our hearts, we may be telling God that we’re already as faithful as we know how to be. Are we really being asked to do even more? But once we are here, the ashes remind us of what we really know, but often try to forget: that our mortal lives—good, bad, mixed—will not last forever. The ashes will remind us that whatever our excuses or reasons, there are moments in our lives—perhaps more than moments—that might have been lived in a far better way. Because our misdeeds surely involve our relationship with others, we are also here to pray for those whom we have slighted or treated ill in all those ways spelled out in the opening prayer, given us by Isaiah.
There is another reason. We are here because this night is the beginning of a time given to us by Our Lord to be with him, to watch with him, as he begins his last walk to Jerusalem, and then beyond Jerusalem to Golgotha and the cross. Lent is an invitation to cease to know ourselves, for a little while, and to know Christ, to keep our eyes on him alone, to allow nothing to come between Christ and ourselves, if only in a few deeply prayerful minutes each day.
Surely this is one way to understand Jesus’ instruction to go into our most private room, our inner sanctum, and lock the door before we pray. We must enter deeply into the innermost layers of our being and invite Christ to be there with us, to guide us—no one else, nothing else. I literally have to set a timer during my serious prayer time so that I have no excuse to glance at my watch. It’s hard to put Christ first and make Christ all-important. Yet only in this way, can God begin making us part of the heavenly Kingdom for which we pray.
And so maybe most of all, in the middle of lives that are busy and often stressed, we are making time to be here because we love Our Lord, we love Jesus. But here’s the catch: we’re not only being invited to “do Lent.” It’s not a quick fix that will be over before we know it. We’re being asked to live Lent, to use Lent to shape a new life. This time set aside begins to get us into shape for Christ. The discipline of Lent can push other hungers to the side so that we hunger for Christ alone: His name, His Kingdom, His will.
Not long ago, I heard a wonderful organ piece that was inspired by Bach’s chorale prelude “Dearest Jesus, we are here.” This is how it begins: “Blessed Jesus, at thy word/ We are gathered all to hear thee./ Let our hearts and souls be stirred/ now to seek and fear and love thee.” Before we go home tonight, we will share together, and with Our Lord, a meal of sacrifice and praise and thanksgiving. We will hear the words that he spoke to his first disciples and to us. Communion is a meal that Christ gives us in an immense act of love. Gathering to receive it in this way, our hearts and souls can be stirred not only to seek and fear Christ, but to offer that love back to Christ, and to one another, and even to ourselves.
“Blessed Jesus, we are here:” The words are wonderfully direct, and so I had another more immediate thought as I heard this piece for the first time. “We are here:” I realized that this statement is an answer to the hymn we all know and sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” On this night, we are all there—and here—together: Now is the acceptable time! We are here to admit our own mortality and the vulnerability that Christ is willing to share with us. We are here in sorrow. We are here in repentance for all we have done to waste God’s gifts and all we have done to cause Christ pain. And we are here in ever deepening love.
Let us pray: Dearest God, may we keep a holy Lent. Give us grace to treasure this time with you and prepare for our Lord’s passion and resurrection by self-examination and repentance and renewed faith. Grant us humility to understand that our chief end is to know and be known by you. Let us discover, more fully than ever before, how much we hunger and thirst for you. May our hearts be sustained by love of you alone. Amen.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Seek We First
Sermon for 2.27.11
Psalm 131; Isaiah 49:8-16a; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34
Please pray with me: May my words and the responses of each of our hearts bring us closer to You, our God, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
From this morning's Epistle: “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries.”
We are a consumer society, no doubt about it. Enough plastic water bottles last year, in the US alone, to go around the earth 190 times. To say nothing of all our discarded microwaves and refrigerators. We're running out of land fills. And then there are people who try very hard not to contribute to this. Take me. I always wanted a nice big house that would have room for anything I need to save: nice old hand knit sweaters that no longer fit, extra supplies for school and camp projects, pretty saucers that have lost their matching cups! An attic stuffed with things I'll probably just have to add to that landfill some day.
And then along comes Matthew's lesson for this morning. Last week we were being told to love our enemies. Not necessarily live with them, but forgive them. But this week we're being told to trust God. Full-time. Of course we love God and God loves us. Isaiah and Psalm 131promise that God loves us intimately, even more faithfully than a mother loves her newborn. But then—why do we worry so much? Why are we so anxious and why are we constantly making projections, financial and otherwise?
We may be a consumer society because we are an anxious society. I squirrel away all that stuff in part because I want to be sure it's there should I need it. It's my form of security. It's also my attempt at control. Control over any future emergency that might leave me in want. In bigger ways too, we feel that what we own—or are in the process of paying for or paying insurance or taxes for—provides security and freedom from anxiety. “I'll always have my house. I'll always have my land.” And yet these very things can be the source of anxiety, of the burden we carry. Hoping to use them as bulwarks against tomorrow, we try “to drive out care with care.”1 Keeping up with the standards of our community is even more burdensome.
Jesus is so smart. He understood our need—certainly mine—for comfort and pride and knowing what's ahead. He realized our need to believe in our own achievements. He also knew that so much of what we think we're building is a mirage. A mirage that looks like the real thing until we get closer—and then it shimmers into nothing. Jesus remembered that the manna found by the children of Israel spoiled if they tried to save it for the next day. And he understood that any number of things can turn our lives upside down.
And so he tells us in this passage not to idolize the rewards of this life, not to fuss “about what's on the table” or whether our clothes are the latest fashion. “There is far more to your life,” he says, “than the food you put into your stomach, more to your outer appearance then the clothes you hang on your body.... Don't worry about missing out” (The Message). More profoundly, Jesus tells us not to worry if we face real lack. Our heavenly father knows our needs and is far more powerful than we are. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now,” Jesus says. “God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (The Message).
This is a pretty tall order for faith. For our basic well-being, do we trust what our Bibles call Mammon or the wealth of the world for which we labor, or do we trust God? This brings me back to our bottles encircling the globe, even if they can be reused and even though water is very good for us. Are we running our lives by what everyone else does, even if this endangers the planet? Or are we striving to live more simply so that others—including creatures unlike us and plants—can simply live? Are we trying not to turn wants into needs? I remember the reaction of a young teen, returning to her parents' home after a mission trip to a small village in Honduras. At 4 am, she was walking around the house saying, “Too much stuff. Too much stuff.”
The faith-based trust that is being called upon in Matthew is not irresponsible. Jesus is not preaching an easy prosperity gospel: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything will fall into your lap now. Nor is Jesus suggesting that if we can work, we should neglect it. We have a bounden duty to care for ourselves and our loved ones to the best of our abilities. But we need to remember that these are distinct and subordinate concerns to our real work.2 “Before we start taking thought for our life, our food and clothing, our work and families, we must seek the righteousness of Christ.” 3
Making a commitment, even to a job, is tricky. That job, together with its rewards and anxieties about doing even better, can become a trap for our hearts or our lives. It can also drive us into the Little Red Hen Syndrome: “Well,” said the little Red Hen, “I'll do it myself.” And she did.
But in truth, we are not in charge, and to think this way is to dethrone God. That is why service to God and service to the world are incompatible. Upstanding, reasonable, church-going people that we are, we would so like to honor both: the God whom we love and the good things of this life. We'd like to think that we are building the kingdom when we are working for our families and our bread and our houses. And those are important things. But as sources of real security, they can compete with God. Unless we know who the real big boss is; unless we are first focused on our Creator above all else; unless we are first seeking our Redeemer's and our Sustainer's righteousness with a single and focused vision, there's going to be a tug of war. That will raise a barrier between us and God.
The call “not to be anxious for tomorrow” is not just an upbeat saying decorated with bluebirds and blossoms. Nor is Jesus giving us directions that we cannot follow. He is not mocking those who literally are in danger of starving. He is reminding us that desire, even need, for food and clothing is not the same as desire, even need, for the Kingdom of God. He is asking us to consider seriously what the joys of a kingdom of peace and justice might be. And to consider how we might bring that kingdom closer. Jesus is telling us of God's hopes for God's people: “Desire first and foremost God's kingdom and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Common English Bible translation).
Jesus is urging us towards such desire with our hearts and minds and deeds. This is what we must seek first. First thing in the morning. A cup of coffee or tea is allowed, but then a real time of prayer before the news or the weather or our emails. Before we are much distracted by many things. Before what we consider our “real” day starts. And this isn't an excuse to put off work. This is spiritual discipline and it is our real work: seeking first!
There is something more wonderful for us than anxiety about the world and its pulls. Paul tells the Corinthians to think of themselves as “stewards of God's mysteries.” Stewards are managers who watch over and have access to the wealth and resources of a community. They are subordinates who must be trustworthy and who will be judged if they are not.
As good stewards, we can together rejoice in the shared life of the body of Christ, shaped by our obedience to his gospel and to God. The hidden wisdom of God—God's mysteries—will not always be discernible and will not always be delivered quickly or on demand. But God's wisdom will guide our lives and our community as we understand ourselves, each one of us, as God's special creations, and as we place ourselves fully under God's cherishing care.
Let us pray: Dear Lord of our hearts, may you be the one with whom we start each day. May you be the one in whom we rest no matter what our other tasks. With the bread that we need for today, feed us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. Give us the grace to find You at the very center of our lives. Amen.
I would like to express gratitude for continuing conversations with Brother James Michael Dowd of Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY.
Psalm 131; Isaiah 49:8-16a; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34
Please pray with me: May my words and the responses of each of our hearts bring us closer to You, our God, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
From this morning's Epistle: “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries.”
We are a consumer society, no doubt about it. Enough plastic water bottles last year, in the US alone, to go around the earth 190 times. To say nothing of all our discarded microwaves and refrigerators. We're running out of land fills. And then there are people who try very hard not to contribute to this. Take me. I always wanted a nice big house that would have room for anything I need to save: nice old hand knit sweaters that no longer fit, extra supplies for school and camp projects, pretty saucers that have lost their matching cups! An attic stuffed with things I'll probably just have to add to that landfill some day.
And then along comes Matthew's lesson for this morning. Last week we were being told to love our enemies. Not necessarily live with them, but forgive them. But this week we're being told to trust God. Full-time. Of course we love God and God loves us. Isaiah and Psalm 131promise that God loves us intimately, even more faithfully than a mother loves her newborn. But then—why do we worry so much? Why are we so anxious and why are we constantly making projections, financial and otherwise?
We may be a consumer society because we are an anxious society. I squirrel away all that stuff in part because I want to be sure it's there should I need it. It's my form of security. It's also my attempt at control. Control over any future emergency that might leave me in want. In bigger ways too, we feel that what we own—or are in the process of paying for or paying insurance or taxes for—provides security and freedom from anxiety. “I'll always have my house. I'll always have my land.” And yet these very things can be the source of anxiety, of the burden we carry. Hoping to use them as bulwarks against tomorrow, we try “to drive out care with care.”1 Keeping up with the standards of our community is even more burdensome.
Jesus is so smart. He understood our need—certainly mine—for comfort and pride and knowing what's ahead. He realized our need to believe in our own achievements. He also knew that so much of what we think we're building is a mirage. A mirage that looks like the real thing until we get closer—and then it shimmers into nothing. Jesus remembered that the manna found by the children of Israel spoiled if they tried to save it for the next day. And he understood that any number of things can turn our lives upside down.
And so he tells us in this passage not to idolize the rewards of this life, not to fuss “about what's on the table” or whether our clothes are the latest fashion. “There is far more to your life,” he says, “than the food you put into your stomach, more to your outer appearance then the clothes you hang on your body.... Don't worry about missing out” (The Message). More profoundly, Jesus tells us not to worry if we face real lack. Our heavenly father knows our needs and is far more powerful than we are. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now,” Jesus says. “God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (The Message).
This is a pretty tall order for faith. For our basic well-being, do we trust what our Bibles call Mammon or the wealth of the world for which we labor, or do we trust God? This brings me back to our bottles encircling the globe, even if they can be reused and even though water is very good for us. Are we running our lives by what everyone else does, even if this endangers the planet? Or are we striving to live more simply so that others—including creatures unlike us and plants—can simply live? Are we trying not to turn wants into needs? I remember the reaction of a young teen, returning to her parents' home after a mission trip to a small village in Honduras. At 4 am, she was walking around the house saying, “Too much stuff. Too much stuff.”
The faith-based trust that is being called upon in Matthew is not irresponsible. Jesus is not preaching an easy prosperity gospel: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything will fall into your lap now. Nor is Jesus suggesting that if we can work, we should neglect it. We have a bounden duty to care for ourselves and our loved ones to the best of our abilities. But we need to remember that these are distinct and subordinate concerns to our real work.2 “Before we start taking thought for our life, our food and clothing, our work and families, we must seek the righteousness of Christ.” 3
Making a commitment, even to a job, is tricky. That job, together with its rewards and anxieties about doing even better, can become a trap for our hearts or our lives. It can also drive us into the Little Red Hen Syndrome: “Well,” said the little Red Hen, “I'll do it myself.” And she did.
But in truth, we are not in charge, and to think this way is to dethrone God. That is why service to God and service to the world are incompatible. Upstanding, reasonable, church-going people that we are, we would so like to honor both: the God whom we love and the good things of this life. We'd like to think that we are building the kingdom when we are working for our families and our bread and our houses. And those are important things. But as sources of real security, they can compete with God. Unless we know who the real big boss is; unless we are first focused on our Creator above all else; unless we are first seeking our Redeemer's and our Sustainer's righteousness with a single and focused vision, there's going to be a tug of war. That will raise a barrier between us and God.
The call “not to be anxious for tomorrow” is not just an upbeat saying decorated with bluebirds and blossoms. Nor is Jesus giving us directions that we cannot follow. He is not mocking those who literally are in danger of starving. He is reminding us that desire, even need, for food and clothing is not the same as desire, even need, for the Kingdom of God. He is asking us to consider seriously what the joys of a kingdom of peace and justice might be. And to consider how we might bring that kingdom closer. Jesus is telling us of God's hopes for God's people: “Desire first and foremost God's kingdom and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Common English Bible translation).
Jesus is urging us towards such desire with our hearts and minds and deeds. This is what we must seek first. First thing in the morning. A cup of coffee or tea is allowed, but then a real time of prayer before the news or the weather or our emails. Before we are much distracted by many things. Before what we consider our “real” day starts. And this isn't an excuse to put off work. This is spiritual discipline and it is our real work: seeking first!
There is something more wonderful for us than anxiety about the world and its pulls. Paul tells the Corinthians to think of themselves as “stewards of God's mysteries.” Stewards are managers who watch over and have access to the wealth and resources of a community. They are subordinates who must be trustworthy and who will be judged if they are not.
As good stewards, we can together rejoice in the shared life of the body of Christ, shaped by our obedience to his gospel and to God. The hidden wisdom of God—God's mysteries—will not always be discernible and will not always be delivered quickly or on demand. But God's wisdom will guide our lives and our community as we understand ourselves, each one of us, as God's special creations, and as we place ourselves fully under God's cherishing care.
Let us pray: Dear Lord of our hearts, may you be the one with whom we start each day. May you be the one in whom we rest no matter what our other tasks. With the bread that we need for today, feed us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. Give us the grace to find You at the very center of our lives. Amen.
I would like to express gratitude for continuing conversations with Brother James Michael Dowd of Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Homily for Robinson/Duffy Wedding
A Celebration of Christian Marriage for
Katelyn Elizabeth Robinson & Christopher Ryan Duffy
5:00 P.M. on 15 Oct 10
Town of Esopus United Methodist Church
Port Ewen, NY
Scriptural text is from John 2:1-11.
Katelyn Elizabeth Robinson & Christopher Ryan Duffy
5:00 P.M. on 15 Oct 10
Town of Esopus United Methodist Church
Port Ewen, NY
Scriptural text is from John 2:1-11.
The Wedding in Cana is a perfect Scriptural reading for the wedding of Katelyn and Christopher. This is the only time that we actually see Jesus at a wedding, and the story appears only in the Gospel of John. I love to wonder about those who repeated the story so many more would know about it: the disciples were there and it increased their belief. But the servants who drew the water must have known and then the steward, who probably sampled both batches of wine. How else would he have known that the second batch was better?
Now look at the similarities to us here: We too are celebrating a wedding in a small village, like Cana. We too are a gathering of family and friends—and there are mothers present! These families also want everything to be just as it should be to honor this decisive moment in the lives of their children, to honor the new extended family that is being formed, and to honor all of us, their guests. Finally, our story today contains a miracle, one that I hope will be remembered by us who are here and told by those who are blessed by the married life of Katelyn and Christopher in the years to come.
We are not turning water into wine. And our feasting this evening is not a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice for us. But in a cynical time of quick decisions and casual arrangements, we are celebrating true love in the sight of God and the Church. Katelyn and Christopher have worked together. They have been friends and have taken the time to know and understand one another. I can’t forget what the couple said during our first conversations: Katelyn spoke of Christopher’s work ethic and of how much she could depend on him in every way. And Christopher said that he loves Katelyn’s “joy for life.” It was clear that they wanted their love blessed in the presence of God and of God’s people.
Our miracle starts, therefore, with the recognition of love that goes beyond self and self-interest. The vow that Katelyn and Christopher will shortly make is to give all that they are and all that they have. The poem we heard and Scripture readings speak of this amazing power of love. Marriage is a commitment to cherish so fully that two people are willing to trust their inner selves and hopes—and their daily lives—to one other. They must not only be willing to comfort; they must allow themselves to be comforted. I’m sure Katelyn and Christopher already know what it means to be pushed a little beyond their comfort zones.
And so there are risks in a commitment to marriage as well. The party in Cana ran out of wine; there was the danger that the rejoicing might end early. As the reading from Proverbs reminds us, in every marriage, there is the need to search—to stretch—for insight and understanding, knowing they are more precious than silver or a hefty bank account. Only with insight and understanding—and forgiveness—can a relationship survive. And when insight and understanding are not enough, Katelyn and Christopher will find themselves turning to God’s grace for comfort and help. The miracle of this evening is that Katelyn and Christopher are starting on a journey that will bring them even closer together and that will transform them and those who know them.
Katelyn and Christopher, with the commitment that you are pledging to one another this evening, the common everyday stuff of life—the water, if you like—can be turned, over and over again, into the wine of rejoicing. Remember this holy evening. May it bless your days together and may your happiness increase.
Let us pray:
Eternal God, creator and preserver of all life,
author of salvation, giver of all grace:
Bless and sanctify with your Holy Spirit
Katelyn and Christopher, who come now to join in marriage.
Grant that they may give their vows to each other
in the strength of your steadfast love.
Enable them to grow in love and peace
with you and with one another all their days,
that they may reach out
in concern and service to the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Intercessory Prayer from Service of Christian Marriage,
United Methodist Hymnal, p. 866)
Monday, October 11, 2010
A Spacious Place
Sermon for 10.10.10
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From today’s Psalm: “Come and see what God has done.…Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard….We went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.”
Recently, I heard a letter sent by a nurse in a mission orphanage in Africa. A young mother had given birth. Shortly after, she died, leaving her infant and a little girl. Utterly without equipment, the staff had to try to keep the newborn sufficiently warm. One of the children in the orphanage knew that Jesus could help. She prayed to Jesus to send a hot water bottle for the baby and a doll to comfort the sister. The nurse confessed a reluctance in saying “amen” to the prayer since she didn’t see how Jesus could do what the child had asked. But that very afternoon, a package arrived from her former Sunday School students in the states, mailed five months earlier. It was the first package she had received from home. In it were brightly colored T-shirts for all the children, and—needless to say—a hot water bottle and a lovely rag doll. How could God have known, five months before, that those last two items were so needed!
That letter was not only an act of praise for the Lord who hears before we call, but an act of remembrance for a mercy received and an act of profound gratitude to the Lord who knows before we ask. These are the powerful messages of our Scripture this morning. Our Call to Worship, Psalm 66, insists on God’s grace to us and urges us not only to accept grace but to accept the possibility of grace, for us, and for all the earth. We are not alone even when we in some remote settlement in Africa or wrestling with a problem on our own laptop or waiting for a specialist to read our x-rays. We are, all of us, saved from our own human misery by the ever-presence of God’s grace.
There are examples every single day. But it’s also worth remembering those times in our lives when something wonderful occurs at just the right time—improbably, impossibly: a letter, a phone call, a chance meeting, a reconciliation, an outpouring of generosity and effort in time of need. Suddenly things open up before us. We can stretch and breathe again. We tend to speak of “coincidences” and “the miracle of human kindness,” when in fact these are blessings of God’s love at work in this world through us. Who would have expected a simple Carpenter to be our Redeemer? God’s love always has the last word and God is always up to something greater than we can imagine. As the Psalm tells us, God has “brought us [and is bringing us] out to a spacious place.”
But once there, it is essential to mark that moment, to say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!” and then recount, as does Psalm 66, the delivery from Egypt, the later crossing over the Jordan River to the spacious Promised Land, and anything else for which we owe God thanks. So Timothy is told, “Remember Jesus Christ.” “Remind” people that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” Again and again, Scripture tells us to remember: There is the commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” At the Eucharist, Jesus urges us to eat and drink “in remembrance of me.” In this way, no matter what else is happening, we will become more Christ-like, workers who need not be ashamed.
Aren’t we sometimes like the nine lepers this morning, a story that only Luke remembers? They cry for healing and then go rushing off to resume normal lives. Not that anyone can blame them. It’s so tempting to put the bad memories behind us and enjoy normalcy again. These lepers were social outcasts, banished from their homes and families. They were appalling to look at and their condition was associated with sexual misconduct, like someone with syphilis or AIDS. No one would touch them and even their shadows were thought to carry infection. No wonder they want to return to human touch and society.
But one, the Samaritan, is willing to put off that precious moment of return. He seems willing to transform normalcy and keep some of the sacred within it. He turns back, praising God and thanking Jesus. He remembers to stop, to praise, and to thank. This remembering and this gratitude cause Jesus to say, “Your faith has made you whole.” It wasn’t that this particular man deserved to be healed because of an extraordinary record of faithful belief. Simply by giving thanks, he was acknowledging God and therefore living out faithfulness, putting it into practice. He stopped his own urgent business of being declared clean by the priests in order to mark his personal encounter with a saving God.
Jesus’ farewell to him, “Your faith has made you whole,” has tied some Christians up into guilty knots. They fear they have not been healed because of their own lack of belief. But what Jesus is honoring is the man’s deep gratitude. Jesus defines that as faith, for gratitude is life affirming and life giving and acknowledges the source of life. C.S. Lewis has written, “Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.”[1]
The grateful Samaritan was, in fact, a man at worship, remembering not only praise to God but thanksgiving to someone from another culture—an outsider in fact—Jesus, a Galilean. In these acts, the Samaritan was doing what Jeremiah urged the children of Israel to do in exile. In a sense, Jeremiah is telling them to shape up and accept the new conditions of their lives with good grace and as normally as possible: plant gardens, marry, have children. But he’s also telling them to pray. To pray their way through the lives they must now live, rather than pining for the good old days. He tells them to pray for the city in which they now live and in its welfare to seek their own.
Jeremiah was writing long before Jesus told us to love our enemies and to bless them that curse us. But this powerful prophet also knew that worship has the power to heal and that worship right where we are, right here, right now, opens up spacious and healing places for ourselves and, quite surprisingly, for those around us.
Our encounters with a saving God may be monumental, truly miraculous, or quite personal and seemingly modest. But acknowledging any of these encounters, remembering and treasuring them, is the faith work and the worship that God asks from us. This practice of gratitude, not only inside but outside these doors, even in the present-day Babylon that assaults us in so many ways—subtle and not—is unexpected news, but it will lead us to the “Good News,” the spacious place of the kingdom of God.
Let us pray: Dearest Lord, we are blessed to be able to praise you this morning and in this place for all that you have given and are giving, known and unknown by us. We thank you for our life and for this earth on which you have placed us. Let us not forget even your smallest mercies and, through them, help us to grow more like the one who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
[1] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: G. Bles, 1958), 78-81.
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From today’s Psalm: “Come and see what God has done.…Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard….We went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.”
Recently, I heard a letter sent by a nurse in a mission orphanage in Africa. A young mother had given birth. Shortly after, she died, leaving her infant and a little girl. Utterly without equipment, the staff had to try to keep the newborn sufficiently warm. One of the children in the orphanage knew that Jesus could help. She prayed to Jesus to send a hot water bottle for the baby and a doll to comfort the sister. The nurse confessed a reluctance in saying “amen” to the prayer since she didn’t see how Jesus could do what the child had asked. But that very afternoon, a package arrived from her former Sunday School students in the states, mailed five months earlier. It was the first package she had received from home. In it were brightly colored T-shirts for all the children, and—needless to say—a hot water bottle and a lovely rag doll. How could God have known, five months before, that those last two items were so needed!
That letter was not only an act of praise for the Lord who hears before we call, but an act of remembrance for a mercy received and an act of profound gratitude to the Lord who knows before we ask. These are the powerful messages of our Scripture this morning. Our Call to Worship, Psalm 66, insists on God’s grace to us and urges us not only to accept grace but to accept the possibility of grace, for us, and for all the earth. We are not alone even when we in some remote settlement in Africa or wrestling with a problem on our own laptop or waiting for a specialist to read our x-rays. We are, all of us, saved from our own human misery by the ever-presence of God’s grace.
There are examples every single day. But it’s also worth remembering those times in our lives when something wonderful occurs at just the right time—improbably, impossibly: a letter, a phone call, a chance meeting, a reconciliation, an outpouring of generosity and effort in time of need. Suddenly things open up before us. We can stretch and breathe again. We tend to speak of “coincidences” and “the miracle of human kindness,” when in fact these are blessings of God’s love at work in this world through us. Who would have expected a simple Carpenter to be our Redeemer? God’s love always has the last word and God is always up to something greater than we can imagine. As the Psalm tells us, God has “brought us [and is bringing us] out to a spacious place.”
But once there, it is essential to mark that moment, to say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!” and then recount, as does Psalm 66, the delivery from Egypt, the later crossing over the Jordan River to the spacious Promised Land, and anything else for which we owe God thanks. So Timothy is told, “Remember Jesus Christ.” “Remind” people that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” Again and again, Scripture tells us to remember: There is the commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” At the Eucharist, Jesus urges us to eat and drink “in remembrance of me.” In this way, no matter what else is happening, we will become more Christ-like, workers who need not be ashamed.
Aren’t we sometimes like the nine lepers this morning, a story that only Luke remembers? They cry for healing and then go rushing off to resume normal lives. Not that anyone can blame them. It’s so tempting to put the bad memories behind us and enjoy normalcy again. These lepers were social outcasts, banished from their homes and families. They were appalling to look at and their condition was associated with sexual misconduct, like someone with syphilis or AIDS. No one would touch them and even their shadows were thought to carry infection. No wonder they want to return to human touch and society.
But one, the Samaritan, is willing to put off that precious moment of return. He seems willing to transform normalcy and keep some of the sacred within it. He turns back, praising God and thanking Jesus. He remembers to stop, to praise, and to thank. This remembering and this gratitude cause Jesus to say, “Your faith has made you whole.” It wasn’t that this particular man deserved to be healed because of an extraordinary record of faithful belief. Simply by giving thanks, he was acknowledging God and therefore living out faithfulness, putting it into practice. He stopped his own urgent business of being declared clean by the priests in order to mark his personal encounter with a saving God.
Jesus’ farewell to him, “Your faith has made you whole,” has tied some Christians up into guilty knots. They fear they have not been healed because of their own lack of belief. But what Jesus is honoring is the man’s deep gratitude. Jesus defines that as faith, for gratitude is life affirming and life giving and acknowledges the source of life. C.S. Lewis has written, “Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.”[1]
The grateful Samaritan was, in fact, a man at worship, remembering not only praise to God but thanksgiving to someone from another culture—an outsider in fact—Jesus, a Galilean. In these acts, the Samaritan was doing what Jeremiah urged the children of Israel to do in exile. In a sense, Jeremiah is telling them to shape up and accept the new conditions of their lives with good grace and as normally as possible: plant gardens, marry, have children. But he’s also telling them to pray. To pray their way through the lives they must now live, rather than pining for the good old days. He tells them to pray for the city in which they now live and in its welfare to seek their own.
Jeremiah was writing long before Jesus told us to love our enemies and to bless them that curse us. But this powerful prophet also knew that worship has the power to heal and that worship right where we are, right here, right now, opens up spacious and healing places for ourselves and, quite surprisingly, for those around us.
Our encounters with a saving God may be monumental, truly miraculous, or quite personal and seemingly modest. But acknowledging any of these encounters, remembering and treasuring them, is the faith work and the worship that God asks from us. This practice of gratitude, not only inside but outside these doors, even in the present-day Babylon that assaults us in so many ways—subtle and not—is unexpected news, but it will lead us to the “Good News,” the spacious place of the kingdom of God.
Let us pray: Dearest Lord, we are blessed to be able to praise you this morning and in this place for all that you have given and are giving, known and unknown by us. We thank you for our life and for this earth on which you have placed us. Let us not forget even your smallest mercies and, through them, help us to grow more like the one who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
[1] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: G. Bles, 1958), 78-81.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Relational Disasters
Sermon for 10.03.10
Lamentations 1.1-6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1.1-14; Luke 17.5-10
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable to you, dear Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From today’s Epistle: “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”
Years ago, when we were living close to the UN, Karl and I would often walk our dog quite late. On one bitter winter night, I noticed a nice lined glove lying on the pavement. About a block later, stretched out on a bench, we saw one of the homeless deep in sleep, covered with sacks and old clothes. My bright idea was to run back and get the glove for the woman. Then an odd thing happened. Although she was sound asleep and I had a man and a large dog with me, I was hesitant to go up to her. Possibly because her total isolation and misery made her seem so alien and that possibility frightened me. Taking Karl’s hand, I laid the glove next to her and we returned to our home, but the memory has remained.
Our Scriptural readings this morning talk about isolation and misery. Lamentations describes a people that have gone into exile, groaning, grieving, powerless. Our psalm describes people so full of despair that they’ve given up playing their musical instruments. Whenever I hear that line, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” I think of those times when I, or people I know, have felt so cut off from joy and even from God’s mercy, that it’s hard to find a hymn to sing or a prayer for comfort. We feel alien, wrapped in a cold and dangerous misery that sets us apart. Even the New Testament letter to Timothy, speaks of Timothy’s tears, the tears of a faithful Christian who has become discouraged by what is happening to his church and who seems to be having doubts about his faith.
I’m grateful for such passages because we have felt heartbreak too in this church, certainly tears and fears. These passages remind me that we are not the only ones. All through history, the faithful have had moments of isolation and despair. But Scripture gives help in tough times too. Even when our faith is being tested, it is possible to pour out our distress, to call out to God. In fact, it is essential. The psalmist realizes that at the moment of greatest fear and pain, we can and must remember blessings: “Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set [the temple of] Jerusalem above my highest joy!” And the Letter to Timothy outlines a way of living through tears: Even when there is disaster, there is still relationship.
There is relationship with God, who continues to call us into a life that is holy and blessed; who saves us, not because of our own actions—or lack of them—but because of an all-embracing love and grace; who is a continuing presence in our lives. The wonderful thing about a deepening relationship with God is that it leads to a full range of relationships with others and with all of God’s creation.
There is relationship with the faithful and not only the holy memories of Scripture. Timothy is reminded of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. They were good Jewish housewives, witnesses to faith in God’s power whom Timothy can look back to. We are witnesses, reminders to one another of the spirit of God. We can nurture ourselves and one another in goodness, in hope, and in Christian joy.
Moreover, Timothy is told to rekindle the gift of God. Think about rekindling a fire: You have to rearrange the little pieces of wood, add larger ones, stir around in the ashes, blow gently. Life requires similar discipline. The work of rekindling is sometimes tricky and sometimes hard. Sometimes we have to start over again. But there is that gift of God living within us, that divine spark that through God’s grace and the Holy Spirit glows and burns.
And we have the saving help of Christ. Today we will be given the great gift of that help through the sacrament of Communion, through the living presence poured out among us that “makes us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.”
These things—the good news of Christ, the mercy and peace of God, the power of the sacraments, and the faithful nurture of one another—are the treasure with which we have been entrusted, regardless of our present circumstances. I think of this treasure horizontally, stretching across the world, touching those people and places we may never know. I also think of it vertically, extending from the past into the future. We can’t know how fully it will extend in either direction. We certainly can’t yet know what it can be. But just as we know that we will not receive God’s treasure all at once, so we know that God’s power, working in us, will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. This is our certain hope and therefore our faith.
Let us pray: O Lord God, you call us, your servants, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending and through dangers unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. Amen.
Lamentations 1.1-6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1.1-14; Luke 17.5-10
Please pray with me: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable to you, dear Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
From today’s Epistle: “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”
Years ago, when we were living close to the UN, Karl and I would often walk our dog quite late. On one bitter winter night, I noticed a nice lined glove lying on the pavement. About a block later, stretched out on a bench, we saw one of the homeless deep in sleep, covered with sacks and old clothes. My bright idea was to run back and get the glove for the woman. Then an odd thing happened. Although she was sound asleep and I had a man and a large dog with me, I was hesitant to go up to her. Possibly because her total isolation and misery made her seem so alien and that possibility frightened me. Taking Karl’s hand, I laid the glove next to her and we returned to our home, but the memory has remained.
Our Scriptural readings this morning talk about isolation and misery. Lamentations describes a people that have gone into exile, groaning, grieving, powerless. Our psalm describes people so full of despair that they’ve given up playing their musical instruments. Whenever I hear that line, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” I think of those times when I, or people I know, have felt so cut off from joy and even from God’s mercy, that it’s hard to find a hymn to sing or a prayer for comfort. We feel alien, wrapped in a cold and dangerous misery that sets us apart. Even the New Testament letter to Timothy, speaks of Timothy’s tears, the tears of a faithful Christian who has become discouraged by what is happening to his church and who seems to be having doubts about his faith.
I’m grateful for such passages because we have felt heartbreak too in this church, certainly tears and fears. These passages remind me that we are not the only ones. All through history, the faithful have had moments of isolation and despair. But Scripture gives help in tough times too. Even when our faith is being tested, it is possible to pour out our distress, to call out to God. In fact, it is essential. The psalmist realizes that at the moment of greatest fear and pain, we can and must remember blessings: “Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set [the temple of] Jerusalem above my highest joy!” And the Letter to Timothy outlines a way of living through tears: Even when there is disaster, there is still relationship.
There is relationship with God, who continues to call us into a life that is holy and blessed; who saves us, not because of our own actions—or lack of them—but because of an all-embracing love and grace; who is a continuing presence in our lives. The wonderful thing about a deepening relationship with God is that it leads to a full range of relationships with others and with all of God’s creation.
There is relationship with the faithful and not only the holy memories of Scripture. Timothy is reminded of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. They were good Jewish housewives, witnesses to faith in God’s power whom Timothy can look back to. We are witnesses, reminders to one another of the spirit of God. We can nurture ourselves and one another in goodness, in hope, and in Christian joy.
Moreover, Timothy is told to rekindle the gift of God. Think about rekindling a fire: You have to rearrange the little pieces of wood, add larger ones, stir around in the ashes, blow gently. Life requires similar discipline. The work of rekindling is sometimes tricky and sometimes hard. Sometimes we have to start over again. But there is that gift of God living within us, that divine spark that through God’s grace and the Holy Spirit glows and burns.
And we have the saving help of Christ. Today we will be given the great gift of that help through the sacrament of Communion, through the living presence poured out among us that “makes us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.”
These things—the good news of Christ, the mercy and peace of God, the power of the sacraments, and the faithful nurture of one another—are the treasure with which we have been entrusted, regardless of our present circumstances. I think of this treasure horizontally, stretching across the world, touching those people and places we may never know. I also think of it vertically, extending from the past into the future. We can’t know how fully it will extend in either direction. We certainly can’t yet know what it can be. But just as we know that we will not receive God’s treasure all at once, so we know that God’s power, working in us, will do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. This is our certain hope and therefore our faith.
Let us pray: O Lord God, you call us, your servants, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending and through dangers unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. Amen.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Blessing of the Animals
Second Annual Blessing of the Animals
October 3, 2010
Pastor Dora and Fred Rhoda, guitar
Welcome by Pastor
Hymn: “The Friendly Beasts” UMH 227
Scripture:
But ask now the beasts,
and they shall teach you;
and the fowls of the air,
and they shall tell you:
Or speak to the earth,
and it shall teach you;
and the fishes of the sea
shall declare unto you. (Job 12:7-8)
Prayer (all together):
Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering, for any that are hunted or lost, or deserted or frightened or hungry, for all that must be put to death. We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful. (Albert Schweitzer)
Hymn: “God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale” UMH 122
The Blessing:
Praised be the Creator, who has given every creature its own wisdom and in whose clear eyes we can see the miracle of creation. We pray, dear God, that you will protect and bless all things that have breath, and especially these animals gathered here.
Individual Blessings as guests come forward:
Bless, O Lord, (name of pet and name of friend),
and fill our hearts with thanksgiving for their being.
Dismissal (all together):
May the Creator of us all continue to protect and sustain us, now and for ever. Amen.
October 3, 2010
Pastor Dora and Fred Rhoda, guitar
Welcome by Pastor
Hymn: “The Friendly Beasts” UMH 227
Scripture:
But ask now the beasts,
and they shall teach you;
and the fowls of the air,
and they shall tell you:
Or speak to the earth,
and it shall teach you;
and the fishes of the sea
shall declare unto you. (Job 12:7-8)
Prayer (all together):
Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering, for any that are hunted or lost, or deserted or frightened or hungry, for all that must be put to death. We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful. (Albert Schweitzer)
Hymn: “God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale” UMH 122
The Blessing:
Praised be the Creator, who has given every creature its own wisdom and in whose clear eyes we can see the miracle of creation. We pray, dear God, that you will protect and bless all things that have breath, and especially these animals gathered here.
Individual Blessings as guests come forward:
Bless, O Lord, (name of pet and name of friend),
and fill our hearts with thanksgiving for their being.
Dismissal (all together):
May the Creator of us all continue to protect and sustain us, now and for ever. Amen.
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