From the Associate Pastor…
Most Sundays at the conclusion of our worship service, you will find me near the door of the sanctuary greeting people as they leave the church for the day. Often as I talk with people at that moment, I will hear comments like “good sermon” or “I really enjoyed the service today.”
Now, on one hand, it is good to receive direct feedback. Our congregation is working on overcoming a long-standing “problem” of people not directing their feedback to the people actually responsible for something, instead just talking (complaining, usually) within a circle of friends—so that maybe the feedback reaches the person responsible third- or fourth-hand, giving that person no good way of actually responding or dialoging about the issue.
On the other hand, though, as a pastor these “good sermon” or “enjoyed the service” comments sometimes make me cringe a little bit. Part of this is for some reasons of principle: as a preacher, I don’t hope for a sermon to be “good” so much as I hope that the sermon conveys God’s goodness. I don’t hope for you to “like” the sermon so much as I hope the sermon moves you to faith, or to re-affirmation of your faith, so that you are driven to respond in some way. As a worship planner and leader, I don’t care as much about whether you “enjoy” a service as I do about whether the service enabled your prayer and praise to God. Worship is not like a concert or a lecture or a sporting event that you go to watch and then decide whether it was “enjoyable”; rather, it is something you participate in, something you receive signs of God’s grace through, and something that ultimately is directed toward God, not us.
Perhaps in our tradition within Christianity we have lost the ability to think and speak about worship and preaching in this way. By the 1950s, we had reached such a great misunderstanding of our tradition that worship had become simply about “going to hear the preacher”, an understanding of worship from which we are (slowly) working ourselves away. We lost the sense that people needed to be “formed” as Christians, which is one of the things worship helps do, because society simply assumed that people already were Christians and already knew what that mean (which, it turns out, was a very misguided assumption). Or, on another thought, perhaps our worship still is not participatory enough for us to be able think about worship as the worshipper’s actions and as receiving from and giving back to God. (As a side note, though, to those of you who too readily agree with the idea that our worship is not participatory enough, it seems that as soon as we do try something in worship that involves more active participation, that is when we get accused of doing things that are “too Catholic”.) Or perhaps Mike and I need to do more to ask you about why you liked a sermon or a worship service.
But anyway, aside from these issues of principle, there is another reason I am sometimes disheartened by the “good sermon” or “enjoyed the service” comments: quite frankly, I am not the one you should be telling that to. If you think a sermon, or preaching at Second Congregational in general, is good, you need to be telling that to all the people who aren’t in worship here. If you found a worship service “enjoyable”, there is someone who wasn’t here that needs to hear that. We need to generate excitement about what goes on in worship among the 300 to 400 of our members that aren’t in worship on any given Sunday—give them the sense that they’re missing out on something. Many of these people are people you already know and talk to: tell them about the “good” sermon or how “enjoyable” the service was. And, not only do our own members need to hear this, to be reminded that they’re missing something really fabulous whenever they’re not in worship, but we need to be spreading this word to others who aren’t yet part of our church community. You think Mike or I give “good sermons”? Great, now tell that to someone you know who’s never been here to hear them. You think our worship services are “enjoyable”? Great, I’m sure one of your friends or coworkers or relatives or teammates would find them enjoyable too. Really, it’s no different than telling them how “good” the food is at your favorite restaurant or how much you “enjoyed” the concert you went to last week.
So, by all means I do not want to say that you shouldn’t give Mike and I feedback, even if it is just “good sermon” or “enjoyed the service”. But, for every time you say that to us, I challenge you to say it to at least one other person who wasn’t here to experience it.
Peace, Pastor Matt
This is an article I've written for this week's church newsletter.
Monday, September 17, 2007
"'I may be the most famous deity you don't really know.' --God" -- A Sermon for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“‘I may be the most famous deity you really don’t know’ —God”
A Sermon for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
September 16, 2007
Have you ever wondered why certain things are so popular and well-loved? Like, a particular food or soft drink. Or, maybe a certain baseball team even though they haven’t been to the World Series in 62 years (that's a reference to the Chicago Cubs). Well, this week I’ve been wondering about a hymn—yes, a hymn… don’t worry, I do have a life—namely the hymn “Amazing Grace”. “Amazing Grace” is probably the most widely-known hymn in the English-speaking world—mainline Protestants like us sing it, conservative evangelicals sing it, Roman Catholics sing it (this I know first hand, having been at a Roman Catholic mass where it was sung). Certainly even some people who are not Christians find the song compelling. But why is it that people love “Amazing Grace” so much?
Now, for me, I am someone who usually says I like a song more often because of the music than the words. There are plenty of songs on pop and rock radio stations that I like even though I never paid attention to the words. With “Amazing Grace”, though, I’m inclined to think that it’s more than just the music. I mean, the tune is lovely enough, but from a musical standpoint, it really isn’t all that interesting.
Besides that, you can take the tune and put it with any number of other lyrics, but the results just aren’t quite as compelling. For instance, you can sing our opening hymn this morning, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” to the same tune we use for “Amazing Grace”: [here I sang to demonstrate this] Now, that’s perfectly nice, but at least I don’t think it’s quite the same.
So, anyway, what that gets us around to is that there must be something about the words themselves. The message or story that the words to “Amazing Grace” convey connects with people at a very deep level. No matter what mask we try to wear or what airs we try to put on, I think most all of us have some experience feeling lost or abandoned, some ‘dangers, toils, [or] snares’ that we know or fear. When we are willing to let our guard down just a little, we see brokenness inside us or brokenness around us that we cannot help but participate in or brokenness that we have been the victim of. As much as we sometimes don’t like the word ‘sin’, and as much as we try to pretend that we aren’t guilty of sin—and even as much as we know that there are some Christians who use the language of sin to wrongly assault and victimize people—even with all that, when we are willing to look at the truth of our experience, we know what it means to be lost, to be less than what we were created to be, to be a “wretch”.
Of course, if “Amazing Grace” were all about being lost, I’m sure it wouldn’t have nearly the popularity it does. “Amazing Grace” is also the story of being found—in fact, it is first and foremost about being found. As much as I believe that most or all of us have some experience will feeling lost and broken, it is my hope that we also know what it is to be found. Somewhere along the way, we have felt a warm embrace, an set of open arms, a light amidst the shadows, a word spoken at just the right moment in our lives—the grace of God. Even for those of us who have grown up amidst caring communities and the life of the church, I suspect there has been an experience when this grace became more real, more tangible—even if it was only someone handing you a piece of bread and saying “the body of Christ, given for you.”
So, if our attachment to “Amazing Grace” is because it tells a story of being lost and being found that we know ourselves, I would think it should be easy for us to identify with the two parables Jesus tells in this reading from Luke this morning. The sheep is missing. The coin is no where to be found. And—just like how in “Amazing Grace” the words never speak of searching out God’s grace, but rather simply of being found—the sheep and the coin don’t do anything. Rather, the shepherd and the woman go looking for them. The shepherd even leaves his other sheep at risk in order to restore the lost one to the whole. And the point is fairly clear: God is that shepherd; God is that woman. God lights a lamp and searches her house to restore us into her treasury. God risks danger and offense to one part of the flock in order to find us, so that the flock may be whole again.
But, even though it would seem that we have an easy time hearing and identifying with these stories, it was not so with the Pharisees who first heard them. They didn’t want to hear about restoring the whole, bringing the outcast into the community, welcoming the sinners. It’s not that the Pharisees were evil, heartless, legalistic men, as sometimes Christians have claimed out of the evils of anti-Judaism. Rather, in the midst of the compromises that had been made under the thumb of the Roman authorities, the Pharisees needed to be clear about how the Jewish community was defined. If they let just anyone in, like Jesus was doing, it threatened the whole system that ensured some illusion of ‘security’ and that kept the Pharisees in power. And so, for the Pharisees, their religion and, as a result, their image of God was about law and purity and boundaries and respectability, at least as Luke pictures it (see note at end). The God they knew was solely interested in the righteous.
You know, though, I can’t help but thinking that we get caught there ourselves sometimes. For many decades, churches like ours all across this country got caught up in being ‘respectable’, in trying to maintain their place in American society. Even today, there are too many of us who worry about speaking up about the controversial issues of the day because someone might get offended. We can’t stand up against the evils of war, we can’t welcome into our midst the illegal immigrants or the gay people or the single mothers on welfare because what would people think of us then? For too long, the God we seemed to know was mostly concerned with making us “nice” and forming us into good citizens and giving us some pointers on how to live a good life.
But, like a certain presidential candidate complaining about her impersonal image recently, God has come to us saying something like “I may be the most famous deity you really don’t know.” If the God we think we know is about rationality and rules and respectability, then I think we don’t really know God very well after all. That’s certainly not the God we see in today’s parables from Luke. Just the images alone begin to shatter that picture: God as a shepherd in a culture that saw shepherds as poor, shifty, and unclean; God as a woman in a time when women had almost no status in society. But even more than that, we have God taking the initiative to find the lost, to restore every last part of the community to wholeness, even putting the many at risk to save the one. It’s that same irrational God that hear about in 1st Timothy, the God that would choose the foremost sinner to become the most famous apostle. It’s that same irrational God that we sing about in the words of “Amazing Grace”, a God that would save a wretch like me … and that same God that would choose ordinary things like spoken words and water and bread to be the instruments of divine power among God’s people. And of course, it’s the same God that did that most irrational and un-God-like act of all: to become human, one of us, and even to die for the life of the world.
The challenge is before us: We can get caught in that image of God to which God says “you don’t really know me”, or we can live in the knowledge of the God who seeks us out, the One who finds us even when we aren’t looking to be found. And likewise, we can grumble like the Pharisees when we see that same God seeking and finding others, even at our risk, or, remembering the joy at our own finding, we can join in the party God is throwing. And as we join the party, we can take on our calling to join with God in sheep and coin finding ourselves, that there might be even more rejoicing.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Note on my disclaimer "at least as Luke pictures it": I include the “at least as Luke pictures it” disclaimer in recognition of the fact that some scholars believe that the picture of 1st century Judaism in the New Testament is skewed to serve the interests of early Christian communities in conflict with their non-Christian Jewish contemporaries (the roots of what we know now as rabbinic Judaism). It is important to acknowledge that Luke’s picture of the Pharisees may not be accurate, and that some of the images of Judaism (or at least the Jewish leaders) given in New Testament texts like this one have contributed to centuries of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and their resulting atrocities.
A Sermon for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
September 16, 2007
Have you ever wondered why certain things are so popular and well-loved? Like, a particular food or soft drink. Or, maybe a certain baseball team even though they haven’t been to the World Series in 62 years (that's a reference to the Chicago Cubs). Well, this week I’ve been wondering about a hymn—yes, a hymn… don’t worry, I do have a life—namely the hymn “Amazing Grace”. “Amazing Grace” is probably the most widely-known hymn in the English-speaking world—mainline Protestants like us sing it, conservative evangelicals sing it, Roman Catholics sing it (this I know first hand, having been at a Roman Catholic mass where it was sung). Certainly even some people who are not Christians find the song compelling. But why is it that people love “Amazing Grace” so much?
Now, for me, I am someone who usually says I like a song more often because of the music than the words. There are plenty of songs on pop and rock radio stations that I like even though I never paid attention to the words. With “Amazing Grace”, though, I’m inclined to think that it’s more than just the music. I mean, the tune is lovely enough, but from a musical standpoint, it really isn’t all that interesting.
Besides that, you can take the tune and put it with any number of other lyrics, but the results just aren’t quite as compelling. For instance, you can sing our opening hymn this morning, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” to the same tune we use for “Amazing Grace”: [here I sang to demonstrate this] Now, that’s perfectly nice, but at least I don’t think it’s quite the same.
So, anyway, what that gets us around to is that there must be something about the words themselves. The message or story that the words to “Amazing Grace” convey connects with people at a very deep level. No matter what mask we try to wear or what airs we try to put on, I think most all of us have some experience feeling lost or abandoned, some ‘dangers, toils, [or] snares’ that we know or fear. When we are willing to let our guard down just a little, we see brokenness inside us or brokenness around us that we cannot help but participate in or brokenness that we have been the victim of. As much as we sometimes don’t like the word ‘sin’, and as much as we try to pretend that we aren’t guilty of sin—and even as much as we know that there are some Christians who use the language of sin to wrongly assault and victimize people—even with all that, when we are willing to look at the truth of our experience, we know what it means to be lost, to be less than what we were created to be, to be a “wretch”.
Of course, if “Amazing Grace” were all about being lost, I’m sure it wouldn’t have nearly the popularity it does. “Amazing Grace” is also the story of being found—in fact, it is first and foremost about being found. As much as I believe that most or all of us have some experience will feeling lost and broken, it is my hope that we also know what it is to be found. Somewhere along the way, we have felt a warm embrace, an set of open arms, a light amidst the shadows, a word spoken at just the right moment in our lives—the grace of God. Even for those of us who have grown up amidst caring communities and the life of the church, I suspect there has been an experience when this grace became more real, more tangible—even if it was only someone handing you a piece of bread and saying “the body of Christ, given for you.”
So, if our attachment to “Amazing Grace” is because it tells a story of being lost and being found that we know ourselves, I would think it should be easy for us to identify with the two parables Jesus tells in this reading from Luke this morning. The sheep is missing. The coin is no where to be found. And—just like how in “Amazing Grace” the words never speak of searching out God’s grace, but rather simply of being found—the sheep and the coin don’t do anything. Rather, the shepherd and the woman go looking for them. The shepherd even leaves his other sheep at risk in order to restore the lost one to the whole. And the point is fairly clear: God is that shepherd; God is that woman. God lights a lamp and searches her house to restore us into her treasury. God risks danger and offense to one part of the flock in order to find us, so that the flock may be whole again.
But, even though it would seem that we have an easy time hearing and identifying with these stories, it was not so with the Pharisees who first heard them. They didn’t want to hear about restoring the whole, bringing the outcast into the community, welcoming the sinners. It’s not that the Pharisees were evil, heartless, legalistic men, as sometimes Christians have claimed out of the evils of anti-Judaism. Rather, in the midst of the compromises that had been made under the thumb of the Roman authorities, the Pharisees needed to be clear about how the Jewish community was defined. If they let just anyone in, like Jesus was doing, it threatened the whole system that ensured some illusion of ‘security’ and that kept the Pharisees in power. And so, for the Pharisees, their religion and, as a result, their image of God was about law and purity and boundaries and respectability, at least as Luke pictures it (see note at end). The God they knew was solely interested in the righteous.
You know, though, I can’t help but thinking that we get caught there ourselves sometimes. For many decades, churches like ours all across this country got caught up in being ‘respectable’, in trying to maintain their place in American society. Even today, there are too many of us who worry about speaking up about the controversial issues of the day because someone might get offended. We can’t stand up against the evils of war, we can’t welcome into our midst the illegal immigrants or the gay people or the single mothers on welfare because what would people think of us then? For too long, the God we seemed to know was mostly concerned with making us “nice” and forming us into good citizens and giving us some pointers on how to live a good life.
But, like a certain presidential candidate complaining about her impersonal image recently, God has come to us saying something like “I may be the most famous deity you really don’t know.” If the God we think we know is about rationality and rules and respectability, then I think we don’t really know God very well after all. That’s certainly not the God we see in today’s parables from Luke. Just the images alone begin to shatter that picture: God as a shepherd in a culture that saw shepherds as poor, shifty, and unclean; God as a woman in a time when women had almost no status in society. But even more than that, we have God taking the initiative to find the lost, to restore every last part of the community to wholeness, even putting the many at risk to save the one. It’s that same irrational God that hear about in 1st Timothy, the God that would choose the foremost sinner to become the most famous apostle. It’s that same irrational God that we sing about in the words of “Amazing Grace”, a God that would save a wretch like me … and that same God that would choose ordinary things like spoken words and water and bread to be the instruments of divine power among God’s people. And of course, it’s the same God that did that most irrational and un-God-like act of all: to become human, one of us, and even to die for the life of the world.
The challenge is before us: We can get caught in that image of God to which God says “you don’t really know me”, or we can live in the knowledge of the God who seeks us out, the One who finds us even when we aren’t looking to be found. And likewise, we can grumble like the Pharisees when we see that same God seeking and finding others, even at our risk, or, remembering the joy at our own finding, we can join in the party God is throwing. And as we join the party, we can take on our calling to join with God in sheep and coin finding ourselves, that there might be even more rejoicing.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Note on my disclaimer "at least as Luke pictures it": I include the “at least as Luke pictures it” disclaimer in recognition of the fact that some scholars believe that the picture of 1st century Judaism in the New Testament is skewed to serve the interests of early Christian communities in conflict with their non-Christian Jewish contemporaries (the roots of what we know now as rabbinic Judaism). It is important to acknowledge that Luke’s picture of the Pharisees may not be accurate, and that some of the images of Judaism (or at least the Jewish leaders) given in New Testament texts like this one have contributed to centuries of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and their resulting atrocities.
Monday, August 27, 2007
"You Want Us to Go Where?" -- A Sermon for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“You Want Us to Go Where?”
A Sermon for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Jeremiah 1:4-10
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
August 26, 2007
I have two stories I want to tell you about today—two pictures to paint, if you will—and so I’m going to jump right in with story number 1.
This first story is the story of the calling forth of a prophet, specifically today’s story of the call of the prophet Jeremiah. We as liberal mainline Protestants aren’t always as up on our knowledge and understanding of Old Testament prophets—or really much of the Old Testament—as perhaps we should be, and so I think this story deserves a few moments for us to unpack, to explore, to delve deeply into what is going on here.
The first thing we hear in this story of the calling of a prophet is God coming to Jeremiah. “Now the word of the Lord came to me.” Jeremiah does not tell us that he went looking for God, that somehow he sought out the Lord, that in some way he started asking for God to speak to him. No, rather, quite the opposite—God sought him out. God took the initiative. God made the way. And this is certainly not the first time we find God making the first move. Perhaps you remember the “Early Word”, our children’s message, three weeks ago where Pastor Mike took on the role of Samuel, and ran over in the middle of the night to Eli the priest (aptly played by our own Ian Woody) because he, Samuel, heard the voice of God calling to him. Or maybe you recall Moses out in the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s sheep, when God called to him out of a rather flame-resistant bush. And there are others too: Abraham, Gideon, Isaiah, Ezekiel—all of them, like Moses and Samuel and, in today’s story, Jeremiah, found themselves being found by God.
Having been found by God, and now being spoken to by God, what does Jeremiah hear? Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. Wow, this is the kind of language in the Bible that can take my breath away. Imagine these words addressed to yourself, as Jeremiah would have heard them. I suppose you could be thinking, ‘well, yeah, God’s God—all powerful, all knowing, blah blah blah—of course God knew Jeremiah,’ but I think there’s something much more intimate going on here. ‘I knew you’—‘I chose you—not others, but you.’ ‘I am watching over you and caring for you.’ This intimate kind of knowing is the only kind of knowing I can imagine happening in the waters of a mother’s womb.
There is more: the word of the Lord that Jeremiah hears does not only tell him that God knows him, but that God has consecrated him. God has chosen Jeremiah. God has set him apart, dedicated for a particular mission. Scholars will point out that in the Old Testament, consecration was something usually said about priests. A priest was consecrated to be the mediator of God’s holiness in the temple or sanctuary. Here, Jeremiah is a bit different: he’s been consecrated to proclaim God’s holiness out in the world, in the streets of Jerusalem. But even with this difference, God has still set him apart; he was born with the promise of God already upon him.
Now, of course, all this—it is a lot. A big calling. A huge responsibility. And Jeremiah sees this, and so he objects, even protests or complains. Certainly not me. How could I be up to the job? Or, as Jeremiah puts it, “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ‘Aaahhh, but it’s not about you, is it?’ seems to be God’s retort. The words Jeremiah is to speak—God will give them. The opposition Jeremiah will encounter—not a problem, for God will be there too. The calling of a prophet, it would seem, not ultimately about how adequate or skilled or experienced the prophet is. The calling of a prophet is about what God intends for them.
And then, finally, as if to prove or seal all this talk—or maybe, more rightly, to enact it—God reaches down and touches Jeremiah. Through a real, visible, tangible action, God puts this call into Jeremiah. “Now, I have put my words in your mouth.” And not simply the words of the call, I think, but the words that drove Jeremiah out into the streets and the words that he proclaimed when he got there.
So, that’s the first story, the story as we have been told it of the calling of a prophet.
The second story I have come to tell today is the story of your baptism. Now, I know that, except for a handful of you, I was not there when you were baptized. In fact, while I was certainly there when I was baptized, I confess that I do not remember it, as I was only a few months old at the time. But, even with that, I think I can tell the story of your baptism, or at least a version of it.
Let’s see now… Your baptism… Well, to begin with, it started not with you. Now, for those among us who, like myself, were baptized as infants, that’s pretty easy thing to say. Our parents, or someone else significant in our lives, did what was necessary to have us baptized. For those among us who were baptized at an older age, you might protest, though, saying that you did what was necessary to be baptized. But, in either case, I still insist that the story of your baptism didn’t begin with you, and it didn’t begin with your parents, either. The story of your baptism began with God. And I don’t mean that in some sort of theological sense that God gave us the gift of the sacrament of baptism, even though that is true. Rather, I believe that for every one of us here, our baptisms began with God taking the initiative. There was something that led you to try out that church for the first time, and something that kept you coming to the point that you wanted to pass through the waters. Or there was something that got your parents into the church, or your parents’ parents, and kept them there and something that led them to have you baptized. And that something, well… as Blaise Pascal, a man better known for his contributions to math and computer science than religion, put it: “Console yourself: You would not be seeking me if you had not already found me.” To say it plainly, I’m staking the claim that that something was God—or at the very least, that God had some hand in it, even if God’s hand had to work through some strange or mysterious ways. Regardless of any of the details of how it happened, I believe that the stories of all our baptisms have God’s initiative right at the start.
The story of your baptism also includes God’s claim upon you. If you take a look at the prayers and other words said when a person is baptized, one of the things you’ll see again and again is that in baptism, we are joined to Christ. We speak of our going down into the water as dying along with Christ, and our rising from the water as our rising together with Christ. This idea of baptism as God’s claim on us gets emphasized more strongly in our particular tradition within Christianity than in probably any other. Back in the 1500s, the folk in Germany who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism, a document we recognize in the United Church of Christ as part of our historic tradition, they put right at the very beginning this question: “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” The answer? “That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” So important this is, that those writers built their whole statement of Christian faith and belief starting with that affirmation. And there is probably nothing else we do as church that more strongly states that claim upon us than baptism.
Now, something that was not part of the story of your baptism was your having to be good enough. Thankfully, ‘No Child Left Behind’ does not affect churches—we have no achievement tests for admission to baptism. You can be male or female. You can be a really devout mystic or a questioning, overly-intellectual seeker. The church has baptized black people, white people, people with autism, people who use wheelchairs, gay people, straight people, rich people, poor people, old people, young people. All in all, your baptism was as much about you as it was about God and God’s plan for you.
And, finally, I know there’s much more to the story of each of your baptisms, but one last thing I’m confident in is that there was some water involved. The priest poured water from a shell over you, or the pastor sprinkled some water on your head, or the preacher led you down by the riverside where you waded in and were dunked under. However it happened, as if to seal or prove or enact all these other things about your baptism, some real, touchable, mess-making water was used. It touched you, and then there was a community of real, touchable, messy people there to welcome you in.
So, there you have it. The two stories I want to tell this morning. The story of the calling of a prophet and the story of your baptism.
Hmmm… Come to think of it, maybe these aren’t two stories. Maybe there’s only one story here. God’s having the first intimate knowledge and taking the first initiative. Check. God’s claming and setting apart. Check. The un-importance of one’s adequacy and ability. Check. Some sign and seal of all these promises of God. Check. Indeed, it would seem that the calling of a prophet and our baptisms add up to one and the same story.
...
If you were paying attention to the reading from Jeremiah, you may have noticed that there was a piece I left out as I walked us through it. God knows and consecrates and claims Jeremiah to be “a prophet to the nations”, and the words God places in Jeremiah’s mouth are so that Jeremiah will pluck up and pull down, and for him to build up and to plant. As Jeremiah’s life goes forward, we find that Jeremiah has to go in front of his people to warn them of the errors of their ways, to call them back to the kind of community that God intends for them, and even to journey into exile and despair and yet to proclaim hope in the midst of it. It would seem that the story is not finished without the message God has given us to proclaim and the work God has set us apart to do.
A Sermon for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Jeremiah 1:4-10
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
August 26, 2007
I have two stories I want to tell you about today—two pictures to paint, if you will—and so I’m going to jump right in with story number 1.
This first story is the story of the calling forth of a prophet, specifically today’s story of the call of the prophet Jeremiah. We as liberal mainline Protestants aren’t always as up on our knowledge and understanding of Old Testament prophets—or really much of the Old Testament—as perhaps we should be, and so I think this story deserves a few moments for us to unpack, to explore, to delve deeply into what is going on here.
The first thing we hear in this story of the calling of a prophet is God coming to Jeremiah. “Now the word of the Lord came to me.” Jeremiah does not tell us that he went looking for God, that somehow he sought out the Lord, that in some way he started asking for God to speak to him. No, rather, quite the opposite—God sought him out. God took the initiative. God made the way. And this is certainly not the first time we find God making the first move. Perhaps you remember the “Early Word”, our children’s message, three weeks ago where Pastor Mike took on the role of Samuel, and ran over in the middle of the night to Eli the priest (aptly played by our own Ian Woody) because he, Samuel, heard the voice of God calling to him. Or maybe you recall Moses out in the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s sheep, when God called to him out of a rather flame-resistant bush. And there are others too: Abraham, Gideon, Isaiah, Ezekiel—all of them, like Moses and Samuel and, in today’s story, Jeremiah, found themselves being found by God.
Having been found by God, and now being spoken to by God, what does Jeremiah hear? Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. Wow, this is the kind of language in the Bible that can take my breath away. Imagine these words addressed to yourself, as Jeremiah would have heard them. I suppose you could be thinking, ‘well, yeah, God’s God—all powerful, all knowing, blah blah blah—of course God knew Jeremiah,’ but I think there’s something much more intimate going on here. ‘I knew you’—‘I chose you—not others, but you.’ ‘I am watching over you and caring for you.’ This intimate kind of knowing is the only kind of knowing I can imagine happening in the waters of a mother’s womb.
There is more: the word of the Lord that Jeremiah hears does not only tell him that God knows him, but that God has consecrated him. God has chosen Jeremiah. God has set him apart, dedicated for a particular mission. Scholars will point out that in the Old Testament, consecration was something usually said about priests. A priest was consecrated to be the mediator of God’s holiness in the temple or sanctuary. Here, Jeremiah is a bit different: he’s been consecrated to proclaim God’s holiness out in the world, in the streets of Jerusalem. But even with this difference, God has still set him apart; he was born with the promise of God already upon him.
Now, of course, all this—it is a lot. A big calling. A huge responsibility. And Jeremiah sees this, and so he objects, even protests or complains. Certainly not me. How could I be up to the job? Or, as Jeremiah puts it, “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ‘Aaahhh, but it’s not about you, is it?’ seems to be God’s retort. The words Jeremiah is to speak—God will give them. The opposition Jeremiah will encounter—not a problem, for God will be there too. The calling of a prophet, it would seem, not ultimately about how adequate or skilled or experienced the prophet is. The calling of a prophet is about what God intends for them.
And then, finally, as if to prove or seal all this talk—or maybe, more rightly, to enact it—God reaches down and touches Jeremiah. Through a real, visible, tangible action, God puts this call into Jeremiah. “Now, I have put my words in your mouth.” And not simply the words of the call, I think, but the words that drove Jeremiah out into the streets and the words that he proclaimed when he got there.
So, that’s the first story, the story as we have been told it of the calling of a prophet.
The second story I have come to tell today is the story of your baptism. Now, I know that, except for a handful of you, I was not there when you were baptized. In fact, while I was certainly there when I was baptized, I confess that I do not remember it, as I was only a few months old at the time. But, even with that, I think I can tell the story of your baptism, or at least a version of it.
Let’s see now… Your baptism… Well, to begin with, it started not with you. Now, for those among us who, like myself, were baptized as infants, that’s pretty easy thing to say. Our parents, or someone else significant in our lives, did what was necessary to have us baptized. For those among us who were baptized at an older age, you might protest, though, saying that you did what was necessary to be baptized. But, in either case, I still insist that the story of your baptism didn’t begin with you, and it didn’t begin with your parents, either. The story of your baptism began with God. And I don’t mean that in some sort of theological sense that God gave us the gift of the sacrament of baptism, even though that is true. Rather, I believe that for every one of us here, our baptisms began with God taking the initiative. There was something that led you to try out that church for the first time, and something that kept you coming to the point that you wanted to pass through the waters. Or there was something that got your parents into the church, or your parents’ parents, and kept them there and something that led them to have you baptized. And that something, well… as Blaise Pascal, a man better known for his contributions to math and computer science than religion, put it: “Console yourself: You would not be seeking me if you had not already found me.” To say it plainly, I’m staking the claim that that something was God—or at the very least, that God had some hand in it, even if God’s hand had to work through some strange or mysterious ways. Regardless of any of the details of how it happened, I believe that the stories of all our baptisms have God’s initiative right at the start.
The story of your baptism also includes God’s claim upon you. If you take a look at the prayers and other words said when a person is baptized, one of the things you’ll see again and again is that in baptism, we are joined to Christ. We speak of our going down into the water as dying along with Christ, and our rising from the water as our rising together with Christ. This idea of baptism as God’s claim on us gets emphasized more strongly in our particular tradition within Christianity than in probably any other. Back in the 1500s, the folk in Germany who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism, a document we recognize in the United Church of Christ as part of our historic tradition, they put right at the very beginning this question: “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” The answer? “That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” So important this is, that those writers built their whole statement of Christian faith and belief starting with that affirmation. And there is probably nothing else we do as church that more strongly states that claim upon us than baptism.
Now, something that was not part of the story of your baptism was your having to be good enough. Thankfully, ‘No Child Left Behind’ does not affect churches—we have no achievement tests for admission to baptism. You can be male or female. You can be a really devout mystic or a questioning, overly-intellectual seeker. The church has baptized black people, white people, people with autism, people who use wheelchairs, gay people, straight people, rich people, poor people, old people, young people. All in all, your baptism was as much about you as it was about God and God’s plan for you.
And, finally, I know there’s much more to the story of each of your baptisms, but one last thing I’m confident in is that there was some water involved. The priest poured water from a shell over you, or the pastor sprinkled some water on your head, or the preacher led you down by the riverside where you waded in and were dunked under. However it happened, as if to seal or prove or enact all these other things about your baptism, some real, touchable, mess-making water was used. It touched you, and then there was a community of real, touchable, messy people there to welcome you in.
So, there you have it. The two stories I want to tell this morning. The story of the calling of a prophet and the story of your baptism.
Hmmm… Come to think of it, maybe these aren’t two stories. Maybe there’s only one story here. God’s having the first intimate knowledge and taking the first initiative. Check. God’s claming and setting apart. Check. The un-importance of one’s adequacy and ability. Check. Some sign and seal of all these promises of God. Check. Indeed, it would seem that the calling of a prophet and our baptisms add up to one and the same story.
...
If you were paying attention to the reading from Jeremiah, you may have noticed that there was a piece I left out as I walked us through it. God knows and consecrates and claims Jeremiah to be “a prophet to the nations”, and the words God places in Jeremiah’s mouth are so that Jeremiah will pluck up and pull down, and for him to build up and to plant. As Jeremiah’s life goes forward, we find that Jeremiah has to go in front of his people to warn them of the errors of their ways, to call them back to the kind of community that God intends for them, and even to journey into exile and despair and yet to proclaim hope in the midst of it. It would seem that the story is not finished without the message God has given us to proclaim and the work God has set us apart to do.
Monday, August 20, 2007
"Your Life is Being Demanded of You" -- A Sermon for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“Your Life is Being Demanded of You”
A Sermon for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
August 5, 2007
Texts: Hosea 11:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
I have a confession to make to you this morning. I don’t know. Now, I know that many people—and especially us Protestants—come to church on Sunday to hear the preacher tell us what she or he thinks the scripture text means, or what we should believe or think or say. Not a few of us expect the pastor to have all the answers. So, that is my confession today, that I don’t entirely know. And, just as a side note, if you are someone who thinks that pastors have all the answers, I would encourage you to spend some more time around some pastors.
But, anyway… Let me start with some things I do know. We have shared two readings from the Bible today, and both of these passages are readings where God speaks. By that, I don’t mean that God speaks in that sort of philosophical way that we claim God speaks to us through any story from the Bible. Rather, in both of these readings, we actually get the active voice of God speaking—“and God said …” So, what is it that God is saying?
Well, first in Hosea we heard God thinking and talking about Israel—actually, to be more precise about the passage, we hear a mother God looking out on her gathered people as her child. She begins by testifying her love for her people: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” She is the mother who guides her child through life with kindness and bends down to feed her people. But, like many a mother, she is keenly aware of all the ways that her child has gone astray. “The more I called them, the more they went from me, they kept sacrificing to [other gods]. … The sword … devours [them] because of their schemes.” But God is a loving mother in this passage from Hosea, never willing to give up on her child no matter where they go. She may have to be a ‘tough-love’ mother at times, even roaring like a lion, but through it all, her compassion warm and tender, she asks “How can I give you up? … How can I hand you over?”
I know I am often amazed at the stories that I see and hear of someone’s faith and faithfulness despite all the odds. With our high school youth last week in Washington DC, I was able to yet again see such faithfulness. We spent the evening on Wednesday playing in the beautiful Meridian Hill Park, a park that only 5 or 6 years ago was the most dangerous and crime-ridden park in all of Washington—and now because of the faithful work of the ‘Parks & People’ group that some of our youth worked with, it’s crime rate has dropped fully 99% and it’s simply a great place to take a stroll or play frizbee with 60 of your favorite high schoolers. Or, there was Mr. James Burton on the staff at the 1,350 bed homeless shelter we worked at, a man who’s been through all the ups and downs that the shelter has seen—from lost court cases to government dignitaries who thought they were too good to eat the same food that the shelter served its residents. And yet, through all of that, Mr. Burton is still convinced that “the almighty God” was using our little group of youth from Illinois as part of the “ongoing unfolding of creation.”
And yet, the faithful conviction from which Mr. Burton spoke was simply a reflection back of the faithfulness of God that he knew, the faithfulness of a God who was—and is still—using our youth as part of the unfolding of creation, the same faithfulness that we hear this mothering God herself speaking in the pages of Hosea, the same faithfulness of the God who came to be among us as Jesus, the same faithfulness in death itself and in resurrection triumphantly that we remember and proclaim and enact as we gather around this table. So, this is one thing God is saying in the readings today, and this is one thing I know.
But, as we turn to the story from Luke, it would seem on first appearance that God is saying something rather different. In the parable, the story, that Jesus is telling, we see a rich farmer who has ended up having a really, really big harvest. So big, in fact, that his barns cannot hold all his crops. Now, having grown up in a farming community myself, I can’t say that this is the sort of problem that most modern American farmers are running into. But, given that this is his situation, this rich farmer has to figure out what he is going to do, and so he decides that he will tear down the barns and build bigger ones. And, having devised this seemingly intelligent plan, he continues on this conversation with himself, saying “Self, you have stored up all you need: relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” It’s there, at the end of this rich farmer’s conversation with himself that we hear God’s first words in the story: “You fool!”
“You fool?!?” What happened to the mother crying for her child? This may not be God coming in wrath, but it certainly doesn’t sound like Mr. Nice God. It would seem that our faithful, compassionate God has gone away, and the rich farmer’s left with an angry, or at least annoyed, God, because it’s not only “You fool!”, but God goes on to say “This very night your life is being demanded of you.” It’s easy to assume that this parable is about God demanding the rich farmer’s life. It is certainly true that much of Luke and, in fact, much of the Bible doesn’t take kindly to rich people who hoard all their money and possessions with no regard for anyone else or for God.
But I think there may be something more here. If you pay close attention to exactly what God says to the rich farmer, it isn’t God demanding the rich farmer’s life here. Many experts on this passage point out that the way the sentence reads in the original language, the thing demanding the man’s life is not God, but in fact the crops and goods that he wants to store up and eat, drink, and be merry about. I suspect many of us know how true that can be—our lives can become consumed with all the stuff we want or have, or they become overrun by the jobs we have to toil at in order to afford that stuff. Or maybe it’s something else demanding our life: an obsession or addition, a broken relationship or the quest for a relationship, even our own egos. Even as a church, we can fall into this trap—while I wouldn’t call this building merely a “barn”, how easy it is to get sidetracked from the life and ministry God is calling us to by an obsession with our building or our traditions or even our programs. Whatever it is, whether as a group or as individuals, “it” is out there and “it” is demanding our lives from us.
And so, to us as to the rich man, God comes to us like a good friend or a wiser older sibling, saying “You fool!” Or maybe “Helloooo!!!!!! Don’t you see what’s going on here? I want you to have real, true, abundant life and all this stuff is demanding it away from you.” Sometimes we need the wake up jolt. In the time of the parable, an over-abundant harvest was a sign of something bigger, a sign of God’s coming kingdom, and this rich farmer missed it. And so God comes in, saying “You fool!”, God being a friend to one who needed to hear “Wake up, dummy!” This is another thing God says in the readings today, and this is another thing I know.
So, what is it that I’m confessing to you that I don’t know? Well, in the midst of what I do know—that even through a whole laundry list of wanderings and offenses and unfaithfulness, God is faithful and that even when we get blinded to real life by misplaced priorities, God comes with a “You fool, Wake up!”—in the midst of these two gracious gifts from God of faithfulness and re-orientation, what I don’t know is how you will choose to be rich to God in return.
A Sermon for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
August 5, 2007
Texts: Hosea 11:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
I have a confession to make to you this morning.
But, anyway… Let me start with some things I do know. We have shared two readings from the Bible today, and both of these passages are readings where God speaks. By that, I don’t mean that God speaks in that sort of philosophical way that we claim God speaks to us through any story from the Bible. Rather, in both of these readings, we actually get the active voice of God speaking—“and God said …” So, what is it that God is saying?
Well, first in Hosea we heard God thinking and talking about Israel—actually, to be more precise about the passage, we hear a mother God looking out on her gathered people as her child. She begins by testifying her love for her people: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” She is the mother who guides her child through life with kindness and bends down to feed her people. But, like many a mother, she is keenly aware of all the ways that her child has gone astray. “The more I called them, the more they went from me, they kept sacrificing to [other gods]. … The sword … devours [them] because of their schemes.” But God is a loving mother in this passage from Hosea, never willing to give up on her child no matter where they go. She may have to be a ‘tough-love’ mother at times, even roaring like a lion, but through it all, her compassion warm and tender, she asks “How can I give you up? … How can I hand you over?”
I know I am often amazed at the stories that I see and hear of someone’s faith and faithfulness despite all the odds. With our high school youth last week in Washington DC, I was able to yet again see such faithfulness. We spent the evening on Wednesday playing in the beautiful Meridian Hill Park, a park that only 5 or 6 years ago was the most dangerous and crime-ridden park in all of Washington—and now because of the faithful work of the ‘Parks & People’ group that some of our youth worked with, it’s crime rate has dropped fully 99% and it’s simply a great place to take a stroll or play frizbee with 60 of your favorite high schoolers. Or, there was Mr. James Burton on the staff at the 1,350 bed homeless shelter we worked at, a man who’s been through all the ups and downs that the shelter has seen—from lost court cases to government dignitaries who thought they were too good to eat the same food that the shelter served its residents. And yet, through all of that, Mr. Burton is still convinced that “the almighty God” was using our little group of youth from Illinois as part of the “ongoing unfolding of creation.”
And yet, the faithful conviction from which Mr. Burton spoke was simply a reflection back of the faithfulness of God that he knew, the faithfulness of a God who was—and is still—using our youth as part of the unfolding of creation, the same faithfulness that we hear this mothering God herself speaking in the pages of Hosea, the same faithfulness of the God who came to be among us as Jesus, the same faithfulness in death itself and in resurrection triumphantly that we remember and proclaim and enact as we gather around this table. So, this is one thing God is saying in the readings today, and this is one thing I know.
But, as we turn to the story from Luke, it would seem on first appearance that God is saying something rather different. In the parable, the story, that Jesus is telling, we see a rich farmer who has ended up having a really, really big harvest. So big, in fact, that his barns cannot hold all his crops. Now, having grown up in a farming community myself, I can’t say that this is the sort of problem that most modern American farmers are running into. But, given that this is his situation, this rich farmer has to figure out what he is going to do, and so he decides that he will tear down the barns and build bigger ones. And, having devised this seemingly intelligent plan, he continues on this conversation with himself, saying “Self, you have stored up all you need: relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” It’s there, at the end of this rich farmer’s conversation with himself that we hear God’s first words in the story: “You fool!”
“You fool?!?” What happened to the mother crying for her child? This may not be God coming in wrath, but it certainly doesn’t sound like Mr. Nice God. It would seem that our faithful, compassionate God has gone away, and the rich farmer’s left with an angry, or at least annoyed, God, because it’s not only “You fool!”, but God goes on to say “This very night your life is being demanded of you.” It’s easy to assume that this parable is about God demanding the rich farmer’s life. It is certainly true that much of Luke and, in fact, much of the Bible doesn’t take kindly to rich people who hoard all their money and possessions with no regard for anyone else or for God.
But I think there may be something more here. If you pay close attention to exactly what God says to the rich farmer, it isn’t God demanding the rich farmer’s life here. Many experts on this passage point out that the way the sentence reads in the original language, the thing demanding the man’s life is not God, but in fact the crops and goods that he wants to store up and eat, drink, and be merry about. I suspect many of us know how true that can be—our lives can become consumed with all the stuff we want or have, or they become overrun by the jobs we have to toil at in order to afford that stuff. Or maybe it’s something else demanding our life: an obsession or addition, a broken relationship or the quest for a relationship, even our own egos. Even as a church, we can fall into this trap—while I wouldn’t call this building merely a “barn”, how easy it is to get sidetracked from the life and ministry God is calling us to by an obsession with our building or our traditions or even our programs. Whatever it is, whether as a group or as individuals, “it” is out there and “it” is demanding our lives from us.
And so, to us as to the rich man, God comes to us like a good friend or a wiser older sibling, saying “You fool!” Or maybe “Helloooo!!!!!! Don’t you see what’s going on here? I want you to have real, true, abundant life and all this stuff is demanding it away from you.” Sometimes we need the wake up jolt. In the time of the parable, an over-abundant harvest was a sign of something bigger, a sign of God’s coming kingdom, and this rich farmer missed it. And so God comes in, saying “You fool!”, God being a friend to one who needed to hear “Wake up, dummy!” This is another thing God says in the readings today, and this is another thing I know.
So, what is it that I’m confessing to you that I don’t know? Well, in the midst of what I do know—that even through a whole laundry list of wanderings and offenses and unfaithfulness, God is faithful and that even when we get blinded to real life by misplaced priorities, God comes with a “You fool, Wake up!”—in the midst of these two gracious gifts from God of faithfulness and re-orientation, what I don’t know is how you will choose to be rich to God in return.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Pictures!!!
Hey,
1. If you want to see some pictures of me during my recent trip to the National Gathering of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, as well as one from General Synod, go here. (For other pictures from National Gathering, you can go to the Coalition's website at http://www.ucccoaition.org/.)
2. If you want to see some pictures from life around Second Congregational UCC, check out this.
3. Finally, if you want to see some pictures from my Ordination and from my Installation, go here.
1. If you want to see some pictures of me during my recent trip to the National Gathering of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, as well as one from General Synod, go here. (For other pictures from National Gathering, you can go to the Coalition's website at http://www.ucccoaition.org/.)
2. If you want to see some pictures from life around Second Congregational UCC, check out this.
3. Finally, if you want to see some pictures from my Ordination and from my Installation, go here.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
More is coming...
All right, all:
So, as I was away most recently for our United Church of Christ's General Synod, I found out that there are in fact at least a few people out there who do read this blog. It was interesting having someone(s) I didn't know come up to me to say that they'd been reading my blog. Anyway, for all of you who are reading this, do know that I am planning to write more about my time away back in May (I went to the Princeton Forums on Youth Ministry and to the Festival of Homiletics) and also my most recent trip which included the National Gathering of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns and the UCC General Synod. For now, I did just post today's sermon and the wedding homily/sermon from the wedding I officiated yesterday (my first ever!).
Peace,
--Matt
So, as I was away most recently for our United Church of Christ's General Synod, I found out that there are in fact at least a few people out there who do read this blog. It was interesting having someone(s) I didn't know come up to me to say that they'd been reading my blog. Anyway, for all of you who are reading this, do know that I am planning to write more about my time away back in May (I went to the Princeton Forums on Youth Ministry and to the Festival of Homiletics) and also my most recent trip which included the National Gathering of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns and the UCC General Synod. For now, I did just post today's sermon and the wedding homily/sermon from the wedding I officiated yesterday (my first ever!).
Peace,
--Matt
A Sermon for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
A Sermon for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
2 Kings 5:1-14 (The Healing of Naaman) & Luke 10:1-11,16-20 (The Sending of the 70 Disciples)
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
July 8, 2007
But Naaman’s servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
My friend John is pretty good at catching me in some “Naaman moments”, that is, when I’m sounding an awful lot like this guy Naaman in our 2nd Kings reading, trying to make something rather simple into an excruciatingly complicated ordeal. Usually, it starts out with me talking about something I’m planning to do, and my story will involve like 46 steps, the reinvention of the wheel, and weeks of planning. And John, in a sometimes overly ‘older brother’ sort of tone, chimes in like Naaman’s servants: “but why don’t you just _____ (something amazingly simple)”. Then, of course, comes some sort of defense: “but if I just do that, then x, y, and z won’t happen.” “Yeah, and…” usually follows from John, at which point I realize that x, y, and z really aren’t that important anyway, that the job will be accomplished just as well with the simple solution, and that, indeed, the world will not come to an end.
I am willing to hazard a guess that I am not the only person here today guilty of having at least an occasional “Naaman moment.” Some household chore you’re trying to avoid, some long-standing dispute with your brother or your in-laws—really there are any number of situations that can blind us to the solution right in front of us that seems too easy to be right, to simple to be possible, too good to be true.
As Christians, and especially as American Christians of the late 20th and early 21st century, we have so often fallen into this trap. Some 80 to 90 percent of Americans say that they believe in God—probably 60 to 70 percent consider themselves at least nominally Christian—and yet the vast majority of us have completely missed the too simple to be possible, too good to be truth that is the real core of what Christianity is all about. I suspect if you took a random survey of a handful of people who consider themselves at least nominally Christian, whether they go to church regularly or not—if you asked them what it means to be Christian, they’d probably tell you it’s something about being a good person or being nice or doing what is right. And this has a dark flipside: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say that they can’t go to church because they’re not good enough—they swear too much or they’re a lesbian or they smoke and drink or they don’t pray enough or they’re a single mother, or, or, or… all because of this conception of what Christianity is all about. Even among those of us who do go to church at least occasionally, many still think that what we say and believe and do is not really too important as long as we’re generally “good people”, so to speak.
Where are Naaman’s servants among us? Who are going to be the ones to call us all back to the too gracious, too wonderful to be possible, too fantastic to be true core of our Christian faith? That core that says ‘it’s not about you or what you’ve done, it’s about God and what God has done.’ The truth that rings out “God loves you” and “Christ died for you” and “Christ was raised to new life for you and for your new life” and “Another world is possible—and not some slightly better version of this world of hatred, injustice, prejudice, and despair, but truly another world, a new world.” The light that reveals that churches are not museums of saintly do-gooders, but rather that place where one hungry, broken sinner shares bread with another hungry, broken sinner. The trumpet blast that declares “not only that there is a God, but that God actually cares…actually gives a damn…” about you and about me and about us and about our world. (Quote borrowed from a sermon by David Lose at Luther Seminary and included in the introductory volume of Luther Seminary's In the Company of Preachers audio series.)
Can it really be so simple? Can Christianity and the church really be about God’s love and God’s care and God’s healing and God’s grace? … Is this not what the whole story of the Bible is about? God who creates order and light out of chaos and shadows. God who hears the cries of God’s people and leads the slaves out of Egypt. God who sends prophets to call for justice and faithfulness when the people are entangled in idolatry and profiteering. God who comes to us to be one of us. God who goes all the way, even to death, with us. God who sends the Spirit to sustain us and apostles like Paul to remind us of God’s “grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24) God who shows us a vision of the end of all history of a new world where tears are wiped away and thousands upon thousands feast at the banquet table. Can it really be so simple? Can it really be true? Maybe, just maybe, it’s so wonderful and so fantastical that it can't not be…
The opportunity stands ever before us: “Wash and be clean”. We can take our Naaman selves and walk down to that river bank and immerse ourselves in the abundant waters of God’s grace. We can emerge out of the waters healed and renewed. But, having done so, the opportunity also stands before us for us to take on a different role in the story, for you and me and us to be more like Naaman’s servants, saying to each other and to those outside this place and to the world that it doesn’t have to be so difficult—just come and wash and be healed. Where are Naaman’s servants among us?—we are they. Or, maybe more fully than just Naaman’s servants, we are Jesus’ disciples. Sent out to all the people as in the passage from Luke this morning; sent out not with grand complicated plans and preparations—remember, it doesn’t always have to be so difficult—and sent out simply to teach and to heal and to say that the kingdom of God has come near. Reclaiming the simple yet wonderful and fantastical reality that lies at the heart of our identity, all that remains is for us to go forth in its power and to return in joy, amazed at the demons of the world that fall at our feet.
People of God, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean' … and go forth.
2 Kings 5:1-14 (The Healing of Naaman) & Luke 10:1-11,16-20 (The Sending of the 70 Disciples)
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
July 8, 2007
But Naaman’s servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
My friend John is pretty good at catching me in some “Naaman moments”, that is, when I’m sounding an awful lot like this guy Naaman in our 2nd Kings reading, trying to make something rather simple into an excruciatingly complicated ordeal. Usually, it starts out with me talking about something I’m planning to do, and my story will involve like 46 steps, the reinvention of the wheel, and weeks of planning. And John, in a sometimes overly ‘older brother’ sort of tone, chimes in like Naaman’s servants: “but why don’t you just _____ (something amazingly simple)”. Then, of course, comes some sort of defense: “but if I just do that, then x, y, and z won’t happen.” “Yeah, and…” usually follows from John, at which point I realize that x, y, and z really aren’t that important anyway, that the job will be accomplished just as well with the simple solution, and that, indeed, the world will not come to an end.
I am willing to hazard a guess that I am not the only person here today guilty of having at least an occasional “Naaman moment.” Some household chore you’re trying to avoid, some long-standing dispute with your brother or your in-laws—really there are any number of situations that can blind us to the solution right in front of us that seems too easy to be right, to simple to be possible, too good to be true.
As Christians, and especially as American Christians of the late 20th and early 21st century, we have so often fallen into this trap. Some 80 to 90 percent of Americans say that they believe in God—probably 60 to 70 percent consider themselves at least nominally Christian—and yet the vast majority of us have completely missed the too simple to be possible, too good to be truth that is the real core of what Christianity is all about. I suspect if you took a random survey of a handful of people who consider themselves at least nominally Christian, whether they go to church regularly or not—if you asked them what it means to be Christian, they’d probably tell you it’s something about being a good person or being nice or doing what is right. And this has a dark flipside: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say that they can’t go to church because they’re not good enough—they swear too much or they’re a lesbian or they smoke and drink or they don’t pray enough or they’re a single mother, or, or, or… all because of this conception of what Christianity is all about. Even among those of us who do go to church at least occasionally, many still think that what we say and believe and do is not really too important as long as we’re generally “good people”, so to speak.
Where are Naaman’s servants among us? Who are going to be the ones to call us all back to the too gracious, too wonderful to be possible, too fantastic to be true core of our Christian faith? That core that says ‘it’s not about you or what you’ve done, it’s about God and what God has done.’ The truth that rings out “God loves you” and “Christ died for you” and “Christ was raised to new life for you and for your new life” and “Another world is possible—and not some slightly better version of this world of hatred, injustice, prejudice, and despair, but truly another world, a new world.” The light that reveals that churches are not museums of saintly do-gooders, but rather that place where one hungry, broken sinner shares bread with another hungry, broken sinner. The trumpet blast that declares “not only that there is a God, but that God actually cares…actually gives a damn…” about you and about me and about us and about our world. (Quote borrowed from a sermon by David Lose at Luther Seminary and included in the introductory volume of Luther Seminary's In the Company of Preachers audio series.)
Can it really be so simple? Can Christianity and the church really be about God’s love and God’s care and God’s healing and God’s grace? … Is this not what the whole story of the Bible is about? God who creates order and light out of chaos and shadows. God who hears the cries of God’s people and leads the slaves out of Egypt. God who sends prophets to call for justice and faithfulness when the people are entangled in idolatry and profiteering. God who comes to us to be one of us. God who goes all the way, even to death, with us. God who sends the Spirit to sustain us and apostles like Paul to remind us of God’s “grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24) God who shows us a vision of the end of all history of a new world where tears are wiped away and thousands upon thousands feast at the banquet table. Can it really be so simple? Can it really be true? Maybe, just maybe, it’s so wonderful and so fantastical that it can't not be…
The opportunity stands ever before us: “Wash and be clean”. We can take our Naaman selves and walk down to that river bank and immerse ourselves in the abundant waters of God’s grace. We can emerge out of the waters healed and renewed. But, having done so, the opportunity also stands before us for us to take on a different role in the story, for you and me and us to be more like Naaman’s servants, saying to each other and to those outside this place and to the world that it doesn’t have to be so difficult—just come and wash and be healed. Where are Naaman’s servants among us?—we are they. Or, maybe more fully than just Naaman’s servants, we are Jesus’ disciples. Sent out to all the people as in the passage from Luke this morning; sent out not with grand complicated plans and preparations—remember, it doesn’t always have to be so difficult—and sent out simply to teach and to heal and to say that the kingdom of God has come near. Reclaiming the simple yet wonderful and fantastical reality that lies at the heart of our identity, all that remains is for us to go forth in its power and to return in joy, amazed at the demons of the world that fall at our feet.
People of God, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean' … and go forth.
Wedding homily/sermon for Sarah Klint & Jonathan Frankel
A Homily/Sermon for the Marriage of Sarah Klint & Jonathan Frankel
July 7, 2007 - Geneva National Golf Club, Lake Geneva, WI
John 2:1-11 -- The Wedding at Cana
Aside from any that I have been an “official” part of recently, I know that I for one have been to quite a lot of weddings in the past few months. There’s even another wedding going on as I speak at the church where I serve as pastor down in Rockford. It must be the season, as they say, for those of us in our 20s, since I know that Sarah and Jon have said that they’ve had a wedding or a bridal shower or something wedding related practically every weekend for the month or more leading up to this day.
Anyway, across all these weddings that I’ve been some part of lately, I can say that nothing quite like this story from the Gospel of John has come true—none of them have run out of wine (or beer or whatever they were serving) during the festivities. This was fortunate, I think, for the sanity of the people putting on these receptions—and perhaps also fortunate the next morning for drug stores selling Excedrin.
And yet, even though I’ve never seen a wedding that has run completely out of wine—and I’m not led to believe that it happens all that often—still this story is one that comes up in connection with weddings. Of course, that’s because the story is not really about the wine running out. I’m not sure it’s about the so-called ‘miracle’ of Jesus turning water into wine, either.
Rather, this is a story of transformation. Jesus took some old clay jars and rededicated them for a new purpose as the container for something new and wonderful. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here at this wedding feast: that these old and honored traditions of wedding celebration—the dresses, the food, the pictures, the party—that these can hold and celebrate the new marriage we witness today. But even more than that, we pray that these lives before us, Sarah and Jon, and the life they have shared together up to this point, that they can be transformed into containers for something new and wonderful by what they do today and by the power of God we invite upon them today.
This is also a story of abundance. Jesus did not simply make a glass of wine or a bottle of wine or even a jug or a keg of wine. He made somewhere upwards of 150 gallons of wine. In the time when this story was written, wine was a sign of God’s kingdom—God’s reign of abundant love, abundant justice, abundant mercy, and abundant peace. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here too. In a world filled with broken relationships, nations at war, and people hungry and oppressed, may the love we witness and celebrate, the risky commitment Sarah and Jon are about to make, and the feast we are about to share, may these things be signs and foretastes of that God’s coming kingdom. And even more, may the new stage that Sarah and Jon are entering in their relationship, may it help them partner with one another and with all of us as we work together with God in bringing about such abundant love and justice and mercy.
Finally, this story of abundance and transformation is the story of Jesus and of the God we know through him. Taking the old clay jar and making it the vessel for something new—this is a glimpse of who God is. Transforming something as ordinary as water into the abundant wine of a new life of peace, mercy, and justice—this is a glimpse of who God is. And, of course, as the story began, this all happens “on the third day”, a reference, I think, to that first Easter day when Jesus was raised after three days death—Christ’s self-giving love on the cross and powerful triumph of new life on Easter being the surest glimpse of who God is. And so, our prayer this day is for this kind of miracle to happen here too: that among all these friends and family gathered and amidst our acts of promising and praying and celebrating, that the presence of the God of new life will be known to each of us.
Sarah and Jon, I don’t hope that you run out of wine, but I do indeed hope this story comes true today. Amen.
July 7, 2007 - Geneva National Golf Club, Lake Geneva, WI
John 2:1-11 -- The Wedding at Cana
Aside from any that I have been an “official” part of recently, I know that I for one have been to quite a lot of weddings in the past few months. There’s even another wedding going on as I speak at the church where I serve as pastor down in Rockford. It must be the season, as they say, for those of us in our 20s, since I know that Sarah and Jon have said that they’ve had a wedding or a bridal shower or something wedding related practically every weekend for the month or more leading up to this day.
Anyway, across all these weddings that I’ve been some part of lately, I can say that nothing quite like this story from the Gospel of John has come true—none of them have run out of wine (or beer or whatever they were serving) during the festivities. This was fortunate, I think, for the sanity of the people putting on these receptions—and perhaps also fortunate the next morning for drug stores selling Excedrin.
And yet, even though I’ve never seen a wedding that has run completely out of wine—and I’m not led to believe that it happens all that often—still this story is one that comes up in connection with weddings. Of course, that’s because the story is not really about the wine running out. I’m not sure it’s about the so-called ‘miracle’ of Jesus turning water into wine, either.
Rather, this is a story of transformation. Jesus took some old clay jars and rededicated them for a new purpose as the container for something new and wonderful. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here at this wedding feast: that these old and honored traditions of wedding celebration—the dresses, the food, the pictures, the party—that these can hold and celebrate the new marriage we witness today. But even more than that, we pray that these lives before us, Sarah and Jon, and the life they have shared together up to this point, that they can be transformed into containers for something new and wonderful by what they do today and by the power of God we invite upon them today.
This is also a story of abundance. Jesus did not simply make a glass of wine or a bottle of wine or even a jug or a keg of wine. He made somewhere upwards of 150 gallons of wine. In the time when this story was written, wine was a sign of God’s kingdom—God’s reign of abundant love, abundant justice, abundant mercy, and abundant peace. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here too. In a world filled with broken relationships, nations at war, and people hungry and oppressed, may the love we witness and celebrate, the risky commitment Sarah and Jon are about to make, and the feast we are about to share, may these things be signs and foretastes of that God’s coming kingdom. And even more, may the new stage that Sarah and Jon are entering in their relationship, may it help them partner with one another and with all of us as we work together with God in bringing about such abundant love and justice and mercy.
Finally, this story of abundance and transformation is the story of Jesus and of the God we know through him. Taking the old clay jar and making it the vessel for something new—this is a glimpse of who God is. Transforming something as ordinary as water into the abundant wine of a new life of peace, mercy, and justice—this is a glimpse of who God is. And, of course, as the story began, this all happens “on the third day”, a reference, I think, to that first Easter day when Jesus was raised after three days death—Christ’s self-giving love on the cross and powerful triumph of new life on Easter being the surest glimpse of who God is. And so, our prayer this day is for this kind of miracle to happen here too: that among all these friends and family gathered and amidst our acts of promising and praying and celebrating, that the presence of the God of new life will be known to each of us.
Sarah and Jon, I don’t hope that you run out of wine, but I do indeed hope this story comes true today. Amen.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
"Unexpected Ministry" -- A Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter
[Sorry for the delay, this is the sermon from May 20th, the 7th Sunday of Easter (a week ago)]
“Unexpected Ministry”
A Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter, Year C
Acts 16:16-34 (with allusion to Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21)
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
May 20, 2007
We are pretty good, here in the church, at saying that God works in mysterious ways. We tell one another that the love of Christ is broader than our minds can possibly imagine. We speak of a God whose will and ways are supposedly unknowable. We claim to believe that the winds of the Holy Spirit blow when and where and how they please. And yet, when we get outside of formal confessions and away from statements of what we think we should believe, most of the time we act as though God is under our control, living inside a box to which we have the key. We live with no room for the unexpected.
During my second year of seminary in Chicago, I participated in a unique experiment my school was attempting, an experiment in bringing our academic course work into closer conversation and relevance to the real lives of congregations in diverse settings throughout Chicago. As part of this program, I myself was working and worshipping among a predominately Puerto Rican UCC congregation on Chicago’s West Side. I was expecting to be challenged by working in a congregation very different from the ones I grown up in. I was expecting to be challenged in making connections between our studies and the churches we were working in. I was expecting to grow in my sense of myself as a pastor. I was expecting to struggle a bit as I worked with some community organizations the congregation belonged to in that inner city neighborhood. Certainly, many of those things happened; many of those challenges were there to be had. All that said, though, these were not the places where the greatest transformation happened. My eyes were opened the widest by the strife I did not foresee right there inside our classroom with and among my fellow classmates.
You see, the year we spent together in this experiment was the first time most of us had been in an academic environment where white people were in the minority. Of the fifteen students in the program that year, four of us were white, one of us was an international student from the Philippines, and ten of us were African American. The unfortunate reality is that this sort of situation just doesn’t happen in almost any graduate school in this country. And the yet more unfortunate reality is that, even in this environment, white privilege and white racism still reared their ugly heads. In the opening weeks of the year, we were asked by our professors—both white—to read a seemingly well-written book on the relationship between ethics and the scriptures. That is, seemingly well-written to those of us who were white. On the day we were to discuss the reading, it took almost an hour before the first of my black classmates found enough courage to break the tension that lingered in the air, so thick you could cut it with a knife. The moment was a story of hopes dashed and the pain of old battle wounds opened yet again. You could sum up my classmates thoughts as saying, ‘For the first time, we are in a place where we as African Americans are in the majority, and yet these white professors have assigned us a book that dismisses black liberation theology as a less-interesting example and hardly worthy of discussing at length.’ Or even more succinctly, ‘Yet again we have been downgraded, dismissed, ignored, thrown to the curb. How dare you?’ Still clinging to our unrecognized privilege, those of us who were white made feeble attempts to reclaim the book. ‘Well, yes, but aside from that, though, isn’t the overall point the author is making good?’ But the point wasn’t about the book. The point was about us. Were we too blind to see the reality of this community of people, too cold to care about their lifetime of pain and rejection?
Over the course of that year, that would not be the only painful conversation among the 15 of us. Somehow, though, I believe that through that year, through those experiences, I was being ministered to. I was having my eyes opened to truths previously unseen, my heart opened to realities previously unknown. Surely, words of judgment were given, and yet some gospel of grace was there too, as my classmates had the courage to walk with us as we finally learned how to walk with them.
I’m sure the jailer who kept watch over Paul and Silas did not expect to be ministered to by his captives. This jailer had the authority of the Roman Empire behind him. Moreover, this jailer had the literal keys to their prison cell, the power over whether Paul and Silas would stand or sit or walk or eat or drink. And yet, as William Willimon puts it, “Having the key to someone else’s cell does not make you free.” (Acts, Interpretation commentary series from John Knox Press) In fact, the jailer was certainly not free, as both he and we realize that his own life was at the mercy of the empire. Furthermore, no position of power makes us immune from the power of God to work through unexpected faces.
In times past, the established church was not immune from the Spirit of God calling it to stand against slavery and segregation, and is still today learning the riches of the gifts of the African American in our midst. In this time, the established church is not immune from the Spirit of God calling us to welcome and affirm lesbian and gay persons into the life of the church. And furthermore, we have just begun to see how this calling is pushing moderate and liberal Christians to new clarity about how we understand the Bible and what we believe the mission of the church to be. New voices will always call to us—to us as individuals, to the church, to our society—from some darkened prison cell with the possibility of life. The question seems to be whether we can open ourselves to a word of grace, a word of peace, a word of challenge, a word of compassion, a word of the Lord that sounds forth from outside whatever little box in which we’re trying to hold God.
This is a high calling, an honor, a gift, to open ourselves to the unexpected ministry we can receive from the Pauls and Silases in our midst. And yet, this is not the only way this story plays. Unexpected ministry is not only a gift for us to receive. Indeed, unexpected ministry is also the calling ever placed before us, the gift for us to do and give. If we’re trying to place ourselves in this story, we are not only the jailer, but we are also Paul and Silas, on a mission with the good news of the gospel to share with folks not expecting the gift we can offer them.
Paul and Silas speak a word of freedom and new life to two different people in this story. At the beginning of the passage today, we find them being followed by ‘fortune-telling girl’. Now, our scientific modern and post-modern minds might question this whole idea of her being possessed by some spirit or daemon—we might rather think of her as unbalanced or mentally ill—but regardless of the specific details of her condition, she is being used and abused. Her masters are using the spectacle of her condition as a way to make money. In calling the daemon out of the girl, Paul sets her free from the ability to be used in this way. Now, like what happens in many of the ministries we do as individuals and as a church, we don’t actually know what happened to the girl after Paul’s action. We don’t know if she remained a slave, perhaps to be treated even worse by her masters, or if maybe, just maybe, the budding Christian community in this town took her in. Likewise, we don’t know much about what may have happened to the jailer that Paul and Silas welcomed into the community of Christ. In both cases, though, a word was spoken, though, and a new possibility opened.
We here, this gathering of people known as Second Congregational United Church of Christ, we too have taken on the calling to be as Paul and Silas on our little corner in Rockford, speaking a word by which new possibilities open. And not only have we taken on this calling, but the ministries we do here, as individuals and together as the church, have all sorts of unexpected effects. Who of us can know what affect a caring phone call or a compassionate greeting could be having? How can we know today what life we may have opened up for the children and youth we serve through the Boys & Girls Club? Or perhaps even more unexpectedly, would you have guessed that the work we are doing as a congregation on clarifying our identity and mission, and improving our hospitality and welcome, and raising the vitality and centeredness of our worship, and becoming more intentional about scripture and mission-work and forming one another in faith is doing as much to improve our church’s youth ministry as anything we do at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons up on the 4th floor? At least that’s what some of the newest and most exciting research into congregations that are doing exemplary youth ministry is telling us. (You’ll hear more about this and other things from my recent time away in the coming weeks.)
Our whole reason for being is to invite people into God’s story of new possibilities in this world, to call out ‘daemons’ that keep people in bondage, to sing and pray until that final earthquake comes that will fling wide open every door of captivity and shake loose every chain of injustice. And just what is that story of God that opens new possibilities? Where do we find our authority to cast out the daemons of the world? What is that final earthquake that we await, and where comes our strength to sing and pray until it’s coming? That story, that authority, that earthquake, that strength is none other than the Christ who claimed us, like the jailer, in the waters of baptism. None other than the Risen One in whom God embraced us all even into the pain of death. None other than the One who came not to be served but to serve, whose coming again we await with the Spirit and the bride and everyone who hears. The infant One, the 12-year-old in the temple One, the healing One, the hunger-feeding One, the living-water-at-the-well One the table-turning-over One, the bread-of-life One, the crucified One, the Risen One, the reigns-and-prays-for-us One, the coming-again One.
As the last line of that old American hymn goes, “All things are mine since I am Christ’s—how can I keep from singing?” As the people so loved by this One, the people with the gift of the story of this One to tell, the people who already “trust in the Lord Jesus”, the people with the courage to be ministered to and the strength to minister—how, like Paul and Silas, can we keep from singing?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
“Unexpected Ministry”
A Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter, Year C
Acts 16:16-34 (with allusion to Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21)
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
May 20, 2007
We are pretty good, here in the church, at saying that God works in mysterious ways. We tell one another that the love of Christ is broader than our minds can possibly imagine. We speak of a God whose will and ways are supposedly unknowable. We claim to believe that the winds of the Holy Spirit blow when and where and how they please. And yet, when we get outside of formal confessions and away from statements of what we think we should believe, most of the time we act as though God is under our control, living inside a box to which we have the key. We live with no room for the unexpected.
During my second year of seminary in Chicago, I participated in a unique experiment my school was attempting, an experiment in bringing our academic course work into closer conversation and relevance to the real lives of congregations in diverse settings throughout Chicago. As part of this program, I myself was working and worshipping among a predominately Puerto Rican UCC congregation on Chicago’s West Side. I was expecting to be challenged by working in a congregation very different from the ones I grown up in. I was expecting to be challenged in making connections between our studies and the churches we were working in. I was expecting to grow in my sense of myself as a pastor. I was expecting to struggle a bit as I worked with some community organizations the congregation belonged to in that inner city neighborhood. Certainly, many of those things happened; many of those challenges were there to be had. All that said, though, these were not the places where the greatest transformation happened. My eyes were opened the widest by the strife I did not foresee right there inside our classroom with and among my fellow classmates.
You see, the year we spent together in this experiment was the first time most of us had been in an academic environment where white people were in the minority. Of the fifteen students in the program that year, four of us were white, one of us was an international student from the Philippines, and ten of us were African American. The unfortunate reality is that this sort of situation just doesn’t happen in almost any graduate school in this country. And the yet more unfortunate reality is that, even in this environment, white privilege and white racism still reared their ugly heads. In the opening weeks of the year, we were asked by our professors—both white—to read a seemingly well-written book on the relationship between ethics and the scriptures. That is, seemingly well-written to those of us who were white. On the day we were to discuss the reading, it took almost an hour before the first of my black classmates found enough courage to break the tension that lingered in the air, so thick you could cut it with a knife. The moment was a story of hopes dashed and the pain of old battle wounds opened yet again. You could sum up my classmates thoughts as saying, ‘For the first time, we are in a place where we as African Americans are in the majority, and yet these white professors have assigned us a book that dismisses black liberation theology as a less-interesting example and hardly worthy of discussing at length.’ Or even more succinctly, ‘Yet again we have been downgraded, dismissed, ignored, thrown to the curb. How dare you?’ Still clinging to our unrecognized privilege, those of us who were white made feeble attempts to reclaim the book. ‘Well, yes, but aside from that, though, isn’t the overall point the author is making good?’ But the point wasn’t about the book. The point was about us. Were we too blind to see the reality of this community of people, too cold to care about their lifetime of pain and rejection?
Over the course of that year, that would not be the only painful conversation among the 15 of us. Somehow, though, I believe that through that year, through those experiences, I was being ministered to. I was having my eyes opened to truths previously unseen, my heart opened to realities previously unknown. Surely, words of judgment were given, and yet some gospel of grace was there too, as my classmates had the courage to walk with us as we finally learned how to walk with them.
I’m sure the jailer who kept watch over Paul and Silas did not expect to be ministered to by his captives. This jailer had the authority of the Roman Empire behind him. Moreover, this jailer had the literal keys to their prison cell, the power over whether Paul and Silas would stand or sit or walk or eat or drink. And yet, as William Willimon puts it, “Having the key to someone else’s cell does not make you free.” (Acts, Interpretation commentary series from John Knox Press) In fact, the jailer was certainly not free, as both he and we realize that his own life was at the mercy of the empire. Furthermore, no position of power makes us immune from the power of God to work through unexpected faces.
In times past, the established church was not immune from the Spirit of God calling it to stand against slavery and segregation, and is still today learning the riches of the gifts of the African American in our midst. In this time, the established church is not immune from the Spirit of God calling us to welcome and affirm lesbian and gay persons into the life of the church. And furthermore, we have just begun to see how this calling is pushing moderate and liberal Christians to new clarity about how we understand the Bible and what we believe the mission of the church to be. New voices will always call to us—to us as individuals, to the church, to our society—from some darkened prison cell with the possibility of life. The question seems to be whether we can open ourselves to a word of grace, a word of peace, a word of challenge, a word of compassion, a word of the Lord that sounds forth from outside whatever little box in which we’re trying to hold God.
This is a high calling, an honor, a gift, to open ourselves to the unexpected ministry we can receive from the Pauls and Silases in our midst. And yet, this is not the only way this story plays. Unexpected ministry is not only a gift for us to receive. Indeed, unexpected ministry is also the calling ever placed before us, the gift for us to do and give. If we’re trying to place ourselves in this story, we are not only the jailer, but we are also Paul and Silas, on a mission with the good news of the gospel to share with folks not expecting the gift we can offer them.
Paul and Silas speak a word of freedom and new life to two different people in this story. At the beginning of the passage today, we find them being followed by ‘fortune-telling girl’. Now, our scientific modern and post-modern minds might question this whole idea of her being possessed by some spirit or daemon—we might rather think of her as unbalanced or mentally ill—but regardless of the specific details of her condition, she is being used and abused. Her masters are using the spectacle of her condition as a way to make money. In calling the daemon out of the girl, Paul sets her free from the ability to be used in this way. Now, like what happens in many of the ministries we do as individuals and as a church, we don’t actually know what happened to the girl after Paul’s action. We don’t know if she remained a slave, perhaps to be treated even worse by her masters, or if maybe, just maybe, the budding Christian community in this town took her in. Likewise, we don’t know much about what may have happened to the jailer that Paul and Silas welcomed into the community of Christ. In both cases, though, a word was spoken, though, and a new possibility opened.
We here, this gathering of people known as Second Congregational United Church of Christ, we too have taken on the calling to be as Paul and Silas on our little corner in Rockford, speaking a word by which new possibilities open. And not only have we taken on this calling, but the ministries we do here, as individuals and together as the church, have all sorts of unexpected effects. Who of us can know what affect a caring phone call or a compassionate greeting could be having? How can we know today what life we may have opened up for the children and youth we serve through the Boys & Girls Club? Or perhaps even more unexpectedly, would you have guessed that the work we are doing as a congregation on clarifying our identity and mission, and improving our hospitality and welcome, and raising the vitality and centeredness of our worship, and becoming more intentional about scripture and mission-work and forming one another in faith is doing as much to improve our church’s youth ministry as anything we do at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons up on the 4th floor? At least that’s what some of the newest and most exciting research into congregations that are doing exemplary youth ministry is telling us. (You’ll hear more about this and other things from my recent time away in the coming weeks.)
Our whole reason for being is to invite people into God’s story of new possibilities in this world, to call out ‘daemons’ that keep people in bondage, to sing and pray until that final earthquake comes that will fling wide open every door of captivity and shake loose every chain of injustice. And just what is that story of God that opens new possibilities? Where do we find our authority to cast out the daemons of the world? What is that final earthquake that we await, and where comes our strength to sing and pray until it’s coming? That story, that authority, that earthquake, that strength is none other than the Christ who claimed us, like the jailer, in the waters of baptism. None other than the Risen One in whom God embraced us all even into the pain of death. None other than the One who came not to be served but to serve, whose coming again we await with the Spirit and the bride and everyone who hears. The infant One, the 12-year-old in the temple One, the healing One, the hunger-feeding One, the living-water-at-the-well One the table-turning-over One, the bread-of-life One, the crucified One, the Risen One, the reigns-and-prays-for-us One, the coming-again One.
As the last line of that old American hymn goes, “All things are mine since I am Christ’s—how can I keep from singing?” As the people so loved by this One, the people with the gift of the story of this One to tell, the people who already “trust in the Lord Jesus”, the people with the courage to be ministered to and the strength to minister—how, like Paul and Silas, can we keep from singing?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Time Away, Part 1: Cleveland
All right, it seems like I should do something bloggy (reflective, etc.) about my recent time away. So, I shall attempt to do so in a few parts.
I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 27-29, at the UCC "Church House" (our national offices) in Cleveland. I was there for a conference titled "Called Out for Good: Ministering in the United Church of Christ", which was a denomination-wide gathering of clergy (plus a couple seminarians) who are openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, same-gender-loving, queer, etc. (Random thought 1: clearly our vocabulary is quickly failing us, as seemingly we who fall in these categories keep adding more and more terms to the list, while those 'outside' the community can't even handle the acronymns GLBT or LGBT without a blank stare.)
Any gathering of people from across the denomination in the UCC is, shall we say, interesting--and predominately LGBT ones even more so. People who are clergy and others in lay leadership in this denomination bring such a diverse mix of social, theological, liturgical, etc. viewpoints, which is simultaneously a great gift and a great weakness of our church. I'm also never quite sure that such gatherings are truly "representative" of the overall character of our denomination, since these gatherings are populated by those people attracted to such gatherings. There does seem to be a growing (ever so slightly) number of us who, while remaining committed to the diversity and the issues of justice, are more 'traditional' or 'orthodox' in our liturgical and theological leanings. For instance, in a conversation about the denomination as a place where "all are welcome", I am no longer the only voice raising the questions "Well, yes, but what exactly are we welcoming them into? Simply welcoming them into a place where all are welcome? Or is there something deeper, broader, beyond that--i.e. the gospel of Jesus Christ (a gospel which is not only 'you are welcome here')?" (Thanks to my friend Greg Morisse for being the one to raise this!).
Overall it was a good gathering. I remain astounded at Phil Porter's skills in facilitating group process (Phil is the Minister of Liturgical Arts and Communications Coordinator at First Congregational Church of Berkeley). Set before him was a gathering of diverse people with no particular agenda for the time, and he was able to guide the group into focusing its time around a couple key areas of discussion and facilitate those discussions in a way that was peaceable, respectful, voice-enabling, and all-around just plain wonderful.
Two of our periods of discussion left me with some things I surely need to reflect upon. The first was a presentation of some research around churches that hire openly gay pastors, and the second was our group discussion around self-care (physical, spiritual, and relational), personal life, and integrity.
One of the areas of reflection for me coming out of both of these sessions is about 'outness'. In my life and ministry at Second Congregational, I would not say that I am "closeted", but I am also not fully "out", or at least not as 'out' as I could or probably should be. We made the decision at my hire that we would not put a "I am gay" statement in the introductory materials that went out to the congregation; part of this was a logical argument that we wouldn't put a "I am straight" statement if that were the case. Since I was not at the time in any sort of relationship (and still am not), there wasn't a particular "need", so to speak, to make this sort of broadcast announcement. However, I also sensed that there was still some worry over the tension/anxiety that arose when my openly-lesbian predecessor was called; her orientation was fully 'broadcast' so to speak at her hire, at least in part because she had a partner. This decision, though, was predicated on an understanding that I was/am not willing to be 'closeted', that if the topic arose I would be open, that if I was asked about, any respondent was to be open. Also, since I was 'out' on my profile, the search committee and the entire church council knew/knows my orientation. And, being a church with an active 'rumor mill', certainly many others know. It was also included on my biographical info, both at my hire and on new-member Sunday back in February when I officially joined the congregation, that I am a member of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns (but again, referencing my random thought above, there are a lot of people who don't know what the LGBT acronym stands for).
Now some 8 1/2 months later, I find myself growing somewhat more uncomfortable with the current state of affairs. Who knows? Who doesn't? I said that I was going to be open about myself when the topic arose, or the appropriate context presented itself, but when/what is that appropriate context? Why is it that, for the most part, I have yet to find any of those 'appropriate' contexts myself--I'm drawing a blank as I try to think of a time that I have disclosed my orientation to people within the congregation whom I didn't know already knew. My senior pastor, Mike, says that he has mentioned it on at least a couple occassions, which is perfectly fine, but that doesn't address my own disclosure. When will the time arise when I can make a passing reference in a sermon, be it to an event I was at, a relationship I had, whatever? How do we get to that time? Is it acceptable if that time never comes? (Already know the answer to that one: NO).
I am not talking about this as someone who wants to be defined by this aspect of my identity. It's not like that, once I think everyone knows, I would make some reference in every sermon or began every sentence in a group gathering with "As a gay man, I ...". On the other hand, it is the case that this part of my identity has contributed significantly to my journey as a Christian and as a pastor. I have already had to overtly 'neuter' a sermon at least once, maybe twice, in my time here.
At this point, I don't know whether the decision we made back in August was the "right" one. At one level, it quite possibly could have been 'easier' to have just taken care of this whole issue back then. On the other hand, I am usually a believer in "working the system", and maybe that's what we're effectively doing here, working through the disclosure within the positive impression and relationships I have already created with the congregation, instead of having had my orientation set up as a "hurdle" to jump on the road to those relationships. But is my own comfort, integrity, and self-care ending up as the sacraficial lamb in the process of "working with the system"? On yet another hand, will people be curious/doubtful/mistrustful/upset about the motivations for not sharing this from the beginning?
Obviously, the bed is now made as it is, and we (I and the congregation) must lay in it. But as we go forward, I still am really puzzled as to what those so-called "appropriate" moments are. In the eyes of the heterosexist world, no moment is "appropriate". In the eyes of liberation, every moment is "appropriate". In the eyes of Second Con? Who knows!?!
At heart, the crux of all of this from a theological/pastoral lens comes down to this: How can I make the claim that the Church is supposed to be a place where we can be who we truly are, when I am still have worries and anxiety about the dynamics (whatever they may be) of people finding out who I truly am?
I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 27-29, at the UCC "Church House" (our national offices) in Cleveland. I was there for a conference titled "Called Out for Good: Ministering in the United Church of Christ", which was a denomination-wide gathering of clergy (plus a couple seminarians) who are openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, same-gender-loving, queer, etc. (Random thought 1: clearly our vocabulary is quickly failing us, as seemingly we who fall in these categories keep adding more and more terms to the list, while those 'outside' the community can't even handle the acronymns GLBT or LGBT without a blank stare.)
Any gathering of people from across the denomination in the UCC is, shall we say, interesting--and predominately LGBT ones even more so. People who are clergy and others in lay leadership in this denomination bring such a diverse mix of social, theological, liturgical, etc. viewpoints, which is simultaneously a great gift and a great weakness of our church. I'm also never quite sure that such gatherings are truly "representative" of the overall character of our denomination, since these gatherings are populated by those people attracted to such gatherings. There does seem to be a growing (ever so slightly) number of us who, while remaining committed to the diversity and the issues of justice, are more 'traditional' or 'orthodox' in our liturgical and theological leanings. For instance, in a conversation about the denomination as a place where "all are welcome", I am no longer the only voice raising the questions "Well, yes, but what exactly are we welcoming them into? Simply welcoming them into a place where all are welcome? Or is there something deeper, broader, beyond that--i.e. the gospel of Jesus Christ (a gospel which is not only 'you are welcome here')?" (Thanks to my friend Greg Morisse for being the one to raise this!).
Overall it was a good gathering. I remain astounded at Phil Porter's skills in facilitating group process (Phil is the Minister of Liturgical Arts and Communications Coordinator at First Congregational Church of Berkeley). Set before him was a gathering of diverse people with no particular agenda for the time, and he was able to guide the group into focusing its time around a couple key areas of discussion and facilitate those discussions in a way that was peaceable, respectful, voice-enabling, and all-around just plain wonderful.
Two of our periods of discussion left me with some things I surely need to reflect upon. The first was a presentation of some research around churches that hire openly gay pastors, and the second was our group discussion around self-care (physical, spiritual, and relational), personal life, and integrity.
One of the areas of reflection for me coming out of both of these sessions is about 'outness'. In my life and ministry at Second Congregational, I would not say that I am "closeted", but I am also not fully "out", or at least not as 'out' as I could or probably should be. We made the decision at my hire that we would not put a "I am gay" statement in the introductory materials that went out to the congregation; part of this was a logical argument that we wouldn't put a "I am straight" statement if that were the case. Since I was not at the time in any sort of relationship (and still am not), there wasn't a particular "need", so to speak, to make this sort of broadcast announcement. However, I also sensed that there was still some worry over the tension/anxiety that arose when my openly-lesbian predecessor was called; her orientation was fully 'broadcast' so to speak at her hire, at least in part because she had a partner. This decision, though, was predicated on an understanding that I was/am not willing to be 'closeted', that if the topic arose I would be open, that if I was asked about, any respondent was to be open. Also, since I was 'out' on my profile, the search committee and the entire church council knew/knows my orientation. And, being a church with an active 'rumor mill', certainly many others know. It was also included on my biographical info, both at my hire and on new-member Sunday back in February when I officially joined the congregation, that I am a member of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns (but again, referencing my random thought above, there are a lot of people who don't know what the LGBT acronym stands for).
Now some 8 1/2 months later, I find myself growing somewhat more uncomfortable with the current state of affairs. Who knows? Who doesn't? I said that I was going to be open about myself when the topic arose, or the appropriate context presented itself, but when/what is that appropriate context? Why is it that, for the most part, I have yet to find any of those 'appropriate' contexts myself--I'm drawing a blank as I try to think of a time that I have disclosed my orientation to people within the congregation whom I didn't know already knew. My senior pastor, Mike, says that he has mentioned it on at least a couple occassions, which is perfectly fine, but that doesn't address my own disclosure. When will the time arise when I can make a passing reference in a sermon, be it to an event I was at, a relationship I had, whatever? How do we get to that time? Is it acceptable if that time never comes? (Already know the answer to that one: NO).
I am not talking about this as someone who wants to be defined by this aspect of my identity. It's not like that, once I think everyone knows, I would make some reference in every sermon or began every sentence in a group gathering with "As a gay man, I ...". On the other hand, it is the case that this part of my identity has contributed significantly to my journey as a Christian and as a pastor. I have already had to overtly 'neuter' a sermon at least once, maybe twice, in my time here.
At this point, I don't know whether the decision we made back in August was the "right" one. At one level, it quite possibly could have been 'easier' to have just taken care of this whole issue back then. On the other hand, I am usually a believer in "working the system", and maybe that's what we're effectively doing here, working through the disclosure within the positive impression and relationships I have already created with the congregation, instead of having had my orientation set up as a "hurdle" to jump on the road to those relationships. But is my own comfort, integrity, and self-care ending up as the sacraficial lamb in the process of "working with the system"? On yet another hand, will people be curious/doubtful/mistrustful/upset about the motivations for not sharing this from the beginning?
Obviously, the bed is now made as it is, and we (I and the congregation) must lay in it. But as we go forward, I still am really puzzled as to what those so-called "appropriate" moments are. In the eyes of the heterosexist world, no moment is "appropriate". In the eyes of liberation, every moment is "appropriate". In the eyes of Second Con? Who knows!?!
At heart, the crux of all of this from a theological/pastoral lens comes down to this: How can I make the claim that the Church is supposed to be a place where we can be who we truly are, when I am still have worries and anxiety about the dynamics (whatever they may be) of people finding out who I truly am?
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