As the Advent season approaches, there's a debate going on in my congregation about what the appropriate hymns to sing are during these four weeks leading up to Christmas. Really, this is not a new debate: my congregation has had some of it before, and many congregations face a similar dilemma.
The struggle, as it were, is basically this: the pastors (myself and my senior pastor colleague), the music staff, and a portion of the congregation want Advent to be Advent, holding off on Christmas carols/hymns until the Christmas Eve services and for the Sunday(s) following that are the actual Christmas season. Another section of the congregation, though, doesn't seem to have much connection with the Advent season or its hymnody, and feels that we should be singing the Christmas carols in those Sundays leading up to Christmas. And, of course, there's probably the silent 'broad middle' of the congregation that doesn't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other on the matter.
In the debate going on in my congregation, I think there are actually a number of realities and issues playing into the dynamics of the debate--issues not directly connected to the debate at hand--and so I'm not sure it's helpful or appropriate to go into great detail about the specifics of how this debate is playing out in this place.
What I want to do instead, though, is give some of the reasons why I feel Advent is important, why I feel we need to let Advent be Advent.
1. -- There's a fairly basic issue about the integrity, harmony, and wholeness of the liturgy itself. Our congregation uses the lectionary to determine the scripture readings for each Sunday. As a preacher and worship planner, I find that worship services are much more powerful and meaningful when all of the elements fit with one another. Specifically, I try very hard whenever I am planning worship to see that the hymns and other music we sing fits well with the scripture readings, the sermon, and any other themes for that day (special celebrations, liturgical season, etc.). Sometimes this "fit" is more direct (a hymn whose text quotes or tells the story of one or more of the readings, for instance) and sometimes this "fit" is more of a 'coordinated' or 'complementary' relationship (a hymn that expresses the same or similar themes, for instance). During the 'festival seasons' (that is, the part of the church year that is not simply Ordinary Time), often choosing most of the hymns out of the repertoire for that season is a sufficient level of 'fit' to bring the sort of harmony I look for. The hymn that follows the sermon, though, (the "Hymn of the Day" as it is referred to in the Lutheran tradition) definitely needs to 'fit' the readings and sermon, for me--little is more jarring than a post-sermon hymn that deflates, contradicts, or is simply unrelated to the sermon and scripture that precedes it (unless for some well-thought out reason a contradictory message is planned intentionally).
So, during the season of Advent, it makes little sense to me to completely ignore the whole nature of what the scripture readings are during this season. For instance, the Gospel reading for the 1st Sunday of Advent this coming year is from an apocalyptic discourse of Jesus, Matthew 24:36-44: "Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." For that kind of text, something like the well-known "Sleepers Wake! A Voice Astound Us" (a.k.a. "Wake, awake, for night is flying") to the also-well-known tune WACHET AUF is something that fits well. Or, while not being quite so direct a fit, Marty Haugen's "Awake! Awake, and greet the new morn" would fit in a complementary way. Or even "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" complements this text--Jesus is saying "you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" and in response the church prays for him to come. Flipping through one of the hymnals I have at home right now, though, I cannot find a Christmas carol that fits at all with this kind of text.
The situation is the same with many of the Sundays of Advent in all three years of the lectionary cycle. We hear beautiful and powerful prophetic visions from Isaiah about the wolf lying down with the lamb and God saying 'peace' to those under oppression. We hear Jesus speaking of his second coming, not his first. We hear John the Baptist crying out to prepare and repent. How many Christmas carols speak of repentance?
2. -- The church does not need to play into and support the over-commercialization of Christmas and our society's addiction to immediate gratification. As this debate plays out in many churches, there are always folk who say "well, they're playing Christmas carols everywhere else, why can't we sing them in church?" Well, part of the vocation of Christianity and the church is to invite people into "the way", a different way of seeing themselves and the world and a different set of practices. Recently there has been a lot written about the recovery of "Christian practices" in mainline Protestant churches. The way we mark time, as Christians, is part of the different sort of practices we engage in as the church. We set aside one day each week for 'sabbath': worship, rest, and service to others. And we observe a liturgical cycle that deeply connects us with the life of Jesus: his coming, his birth, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, his presence by the Holy Spirit, and his coming again. It is not that we don't celebrate Christmas or sing Christmas carols, but we do so in their own time and place. Advent gives us the opportunity to be immersed in Jesus' "coming"s: his first coming and his coming again.
The demand that we sing Christmas carols during Advent stems from at least two phenomena in American society and American Christianity. One of these I have already named: the combination of commercialization with our American addiction to instant gratification. Why should I have to wait when I can have it now? A second piece, though, has to do with the phenomenon of the American civic religion and the loss of Christian distinctiveness in America. Many in our congregations do not connect with Advent, or with much of the liturgical/lectionary year, because in the so-called glory days of American Protestantism, most Protestants had little to do with such things. Observance of the church year and use of the lectionary is something that most mainline Protestants (the Episcopalians and some Lutherans excepted) only began reclaiming in the late 1960s. It was probably not until the 1980s that you could say it had caught on to a large degree in a majority of the churches. (And, I will add, my particular congregation was especially late in this, as regular use of the lectionary didn't start until around the year 2000.) The idea that the distinctive, historic practices of the larger Christian tradition could have important formational function went largely unrecognized, or thought unimportant, by mid-20th century civic faith Protestantism. It was simply assumed that everyone was Christian and that everyone knew what it meant to be Christian. The idea that Christianity was about inviting people into an alternative way of life, faith, and practice would have been thought odd at best (and perhaps 'ludicrous').
Well, folks, this isn't the 1950s any more. Most mainline Protestants have been engaged in the liturgical renewal movement for at least 30 years. Marking the liturgical seasons, using the lectionary, reclaiming the sacraments, all this is not new. Secondly, we do need to be formed in the faith, to be drink deeply at the well that is the life-death-and-resurrection of Jesus, to be invited into a distinctive community called the church.
3. -- This final piece is connected to the second one, but from a different angle. I'll say it this way: We need Advent. I think the root feeling/theme at the heart of Advent is longing. Simply as humans, we have longing. We long for comfort, for peace, for an end to warfare and hunger, for love. The haunting melody of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" is a wonderful musical embodiment of that longing. As Christians, though, we are especially a people of longing. We are the ones who "proclaim the Lord's death until he comes"--the focus of which should be at least as much on the "until he comes" part as on the "Lord's death" part. Our basic faith affirmations include "Christ will come again" and "I believe in ... the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Our basic prayer is "Our Father in heaven ... your kingdom come." Quite frankly, if we are not a people of longing, then we have definitely lost our way as Christians. If we are not a people of longing, then we have lost sight of all those in this world who are hungry, dispossessed, and enslaved. If we are not a people of longing, then the gospel itself is nothing to us, for we apparently have all we need and all we hope for within our reach. (This is part of the connection to the commercialization of American society theme, because in America we do have everything within our reach, or at least so it seems.) If we are not a people of longing, then we have no use for God at all. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O God," saith Augustine.
We need Advent. We need it in order to reconnect with the longing that haunts inside us, to give voice to our hope for ourselves and the world, to empower us to authentically cry out "Come, Lord Jesus!"
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2007
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.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Annual Report 2007
I don't really think too many people will want to read this, but I'm rather pleased with what I wrote for my annual report to the congregation for their annual program meeting this coming Sunday. So, here it is:
ANNUAL REPORT TO THE CONGREGATION
The Rev. Matthew Emery, Associate Pastor
April 29, 2007
Grace and peace be with you all!
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In the opening chapters of the book of Acts in the New Testament, we read about those very first moments in the life of the Christian church—-that period when the earliest Christians had to figure out exactly who they were and what their mission was as followers of the risen Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit. As the very first converts joined the community of the disciples, the author of Acts shares this description of just what the church was: a gathering of people whose identity consisted of their devotion to “the apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
I believe that we, this gathering of people known as Second Congregational United Church of Christ, are ourselves on a journey of re-discovering our true identity as an authentic Christian community of disciples and on a mission of renewing our commitment to live into such an identity. As this journey and mission goes forward, I think we will find that this identity and life together looks an awful lot like that earliest description in the second chapter of Acts. In other words, we are finding ourselves called once again by God to be a community “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
Our work of re-devoting ourselves to this identity takes many forms. One of these is through our worship life: our reading of “the apostles’ teaching” in scripture, the preaching in our midst of the still-speaking Word of God, our prayers for the world and all in need, and our gathering around the table of grace for the “breaking of bread”. I am thankful for the numerous opportunities I have already had to preach among you, and hope that the ministry Pastor Mike and I both carry out in this area continues to faithfully call all of us deeper into the Word that God speaks to us today and the life demanded of that Word. I am also very thankful for the ministry of Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, and all of our church’s musicians in supporting our worship together, and particularly for their commitment to connecting the music with the scriptures of the day and with the overall ‘work’ of the whole congregation in worshipping God. A number of members of our community have offered their gifts and time to visually enhance our worship space for each season of the church year. This church has together explored a few new and renewed ways of enriching our liturgy (the pattern of the worship service); I offered much input, planning time, and logistical execution in the renewal of some of the ‘special’ services on the church calendar: Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, Palm/Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Easter Sunday. Our continued work to live more fully into the rich practices of Christian worship helps us journey toward the identity to which God is calling us.
Of course, the “apostles’ teaching” and the “breaking of bread” around which we gather in worship also calls us from inside the church walls to live out that teaching and that gracious meal in the world. Many ministries of mission, justice-seeking, and community outreach continued here at Second Congregational United Church of Christ. I believe our partnership with the Boys and Girls Club has and will continue to transform lives, both among the Boys and Girls Club youth and among the people of our own congregation. Even though mission and outreach is not part of her official job description, I continue to be amazed at the behind-the-scenes “social work” our own Becky Erbe does when a crisis arises, for both church and Boys and Girls Club families. Our very capable Board of Missions has taken the lead on many other areas of our mission ministries. One area of this work in which I have been more directly involved, though, is the process of re-visioning the purpose and work of the cooperative downtown ministry currently known as ‘Neighborhood Ministries’. As of this annual report, it remains to be seen what new form this ministry might take. As concerns all of our mission, justice, and outreach work, though, I am thankful for the growing awareness among us that the mission of the church out in the world is essential to the vitality and life of the church within the church walls.
Our devotion to “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship” also shows itself in our ministries of Christian education and formation. It has been good to see a growing interest in education/formation opportunities for adults as we began including adults in our Wednesday night programming thanks to the work of Fred Krauss. I am sure you will read much about this and other Christian education/formation ministries in the reports from Becky Erbe and the Board of C.E. As for myself, though, I have been directly involved with these ministries by leading our high school youth ministries and by assisting with the confirmation program. Our high school youth ministries have been in a sort of ‘re-building’ phase for this year, as the recent years’ turnover in associate pastors has taken its toll on both the program and on the youth themselves. I am encouraged by the relationships I have been able to build with our current 9th-graders, as well as with this year’s 8th-graders in our confirmation class—these two classes together will form our core group of high school youth for the next few years. Our annual junior-senior high Snow Camp was again a huge success. This year also saw the beginnings of a semi-regular newsletter to all of the youth connected with our church, a newsletter currently written by myself but which I hope will begin to include contributions from the youth themselves in the future. As we face the changing landscape of our society and our youth, we will need to continue to expand our vision of youth ministry beyond the confines of simply youth group. For example, some of our older high school youth have been active this year in other ministries within our congregation, including worship, music ensembles (Sanctuary Choir and Martin Ringers), and fellowship and athletic activities. In the coming years, we will need to challenge ourselves into a more comprehensive vision of the ministry possibilities with and among the youth of our congregation and our neighborhood.
Our increasing efforts to welcome new members into our church community forms part of our sharing in “the apostles’ ... fellowship” and our sharing of “the apostles’ teaching” with them. Our own morale and sense of positive excitement as a congregation-—the evidence of vitality within—-serves as a key component in our efforts to welcome newcomers. It has been wonderful to hear from many about the sense of new energy and positive mood shift within our congregation in the last year or so. No doubt that as we live into our true vocation as a Christian community, this will continue. Newcomers and guests among us will see and sense that there is some good thing here that they want to be part of. In fact, this is already happening. Since our last annual meeting, we have welcomed 21 new members into our congregation, and we have seen a higher percentage of them remaining ‘active’ since their joining than in some recent years. It was a joy for me to teach our January-February inquirers classes, and I look forward to another series in June for which we already have 8 to 12 potential participants. We will also welcome up to 10 new members on May 6th as our current confirmands affirm their baptismal vows and join our fellowship. Other efforts within my work around ‘new member welcome and evangelism’ have included active participation with our Board of Membership and Church Growth and Vitality Task Force, work on our forthcoming church website reconstruction, the creation of the guest stations and guest information packets located in our two narthexes, and participating in our March evangelism event with David Schoen. As always, though, all of these efforts are only secondary; our primary task as a congregation is to continue to live into our true identity as that community dedicated to those teachings, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers that mark us as a community of the Gospel. Only when others can experience the substance, gift, and good news of this kind of life together will they find themselves seeking to join us.
Finally, my work since coming here in September has included much in the way of ‘fellowship’ and ‘the prayers’ as I have accompanied you all in various fellowship activities and attempted to connect with those in need in pastoral care situations. Pastor Mike and I have begun using a more structured schedule for our own visitation of shut-ins, and we look forward to seeing some renewed effort in ‘lay visitation’ in the coming year. As always, the cycle of life on earth comes full circle for some people each year; since coming here in September, I have conducted four funerals myself and co-officiated four others with Pastor Mike.
I want to express some special thanks to some of the folks with whom I have worked most directly over the past year: Pastor Mike, Becky Erbe, Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, church secretary Mary Jensen, bookkeeper Nancy Yoeckel, Deacons chair Linda Tolodxi, Membership chair Dick Nielsen, Moderator Karen Olson, all the adults who helped with Snow Camp, and so many others. And most of all, thanks to the wonderful search committee that brought me here to be among you all—-were it not for their efforts, I would not have the gift of working and living among the wonderful people and staff of Second Congregational United Church of Christ.
Looking Forward
In addition to the continuing of the ministries I’ve discussed already, I am very excited about some of the things we are looking forward to for the coming year.
As I mentioned above, I am encouraged about the possibilities for greater vitality in our youth ministries this coming year, with the rather cohesive group of youth that are currently 8th- and 9th-graders forming the core body of the youth group and other ministries with and among the youth. I hope that our mission trip this summer to Washington, D.C., will provide a formative experience for the participants that will be a springboard into the fall. Also, on the date this annual report is being presented, I will be doing some continuing education time at the Princeton Forums on Youth Ministry, and I hope that this experience will also impact our program.
In addition to continuing with our high school youth ministries, I will be taking the lead in our 8th-grade confirmation program beginning in the fall. Mike, Becky, and I have selected a new curriculum for this program that I hope will greatly enrich the confirmands’ experience. Also, with me taking the lead for confirmation, Pastor Mike will be more available to teach as part of an upcoming expansion of the adult education/formation opportunities offered during our Wednesday night programming.
We are looking forward to some greater intentionality around various forms of small groups within our congregation in the next year or two. We already have some types of small groups here, such as athletic teams, circles, the book club, fellowship groups, and so forth. As we move forward, though, we hope to both diversify the types of smaller groups available for our members to plug-in to and help make all of our small groups into supportive communities where folks can engage in conversation and exploration that can deepen their faith journey and provide support and care in times of need.
In our efforts to welcome new people in our midst, I hope that over the coming years we can begin to think about what it means not only to welcome people from other churches, but what it takes to invite people into Christian faith in the first place. A majority of people in my own age bracket have never been part of a church at any point in their life. As Christians, we believe that we have good news to share, a reason that someone would want to part of a church community (never mind whether it is our church community specifically). Much of our society, though, doesn’t know this-—and doesn’t know what it means to be Christian in the first place. If we are really going to be serious about inviting people into our congregation, we are going to need to challenge ourselves to stop providing merely education about our church and to begin providing formation into our faith. There are many possible answers of how we can begin to live into that challenge, and I hope that together we can explore some of them over these next few years.
As a congregation, we are definitely moving in the direction of that early Christian community we read about in Acts: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Our congregation’s new mission statement expresses that direction quite well:
I am excited to continue watching this congregation live into these words—-and for me to live out my calling to help enable you in that work.
Yours in the journey,
The Reverend Matthew C. Emery
Associate Pastor
ANNUAL REPORT TO THE CONGREGATION
The Rev. Matthew Emery, Associate Pastor
April 29, 2007
Grace and peace be with you all!
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In the opening chapters of the book of Acts in the New Testament, we read about those very first moments in the life of the Christian church—-that period when the earliest Christians had to figure out exactly who they were and what their mission was as followers of the risen Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit. As the very first converts joined the community of the disciples, the author of Acts shares this description of just what the church was: a gathering of people whose identity consisted of their devotion to “the apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
I believe that we, this gathering of people known as Second Congregational United Church of Christ, are ourselves on a journey of re-discovering our true identity as an authentic Christian community of disciples and on a mission of renewing our commitment to live into such an identity. As this journey and mission goes forward, I think we will find that this identity and life together looks an awful lot like that earliest description in the second chapter of Acts. In other words, we are finding ourselves called once again by God to be a community “devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
Our work of re-devoting ourselves to this identity takes many forms. One of these is through our worship life: our reading of “the apostles’ teaching” in scripture, the preaching in our midst of the still-speaking Word of God, our prayers for the world and all in need, and our gathering around the table of grace for the “breaking of bread”. I am thankful for the numerous opportunities I have already had to preach among you, and hope that the ministry Pastor Mike and I both carry out in this area continues to faithfully call all of us deeper into the Word that God speaks to us today and the life demanded of that Word. I am also very thankful for the ministry of Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, and all of our church’s musicians in supporting our worship together, and particularly for their commitment to connecting the music with the scriptures of the day and with the overall ‘work’ of the whole congregation in worshipping God. A number of members of our community have offered their gifts and time to visually enhance our worship space for each season of the church year. This church has together explored a few new and renewed ways of enriching our liturgy (the pattern of the worship service); I offered much input, planning time, and logistical execution in the renewal of some of the ‘special’ services on the church calendar: Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, Palm/Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Easter Sunday. Our continued work to live more fully into the rich practices of Christian worship helps us journey toward the identity to which God is calling us.
Of course, the “apostles’ teaching” and the “breaking of bread” around which we gather in worship also calls us from inside the church walls to live out that teaching and that gracious meal in the world. Many ministries of mission, justice-seeking, and community outreach continued here at Second Congregational United Church of Christ. I believe our partnership with the Boys and Girls Club has and will continue to transform lives, both among the Boys and Girls Club youth and among the people of our own congregation. Even though mission and outreach is not part of her official job description, I continue to be amazed at the behind-the-scenes “social work” our own Becky Erbe does when a crisis arises, for both church and Boys and Girls Club families. Our very capable Board of Missions has taken the lead on many other areas of our mission ministries. One area of this work in which I have been more directly involved, though, is the process of re-visioning the purpose and work of the cooperative downtown ministry currently known as ‘Neighborhood Ministries’. As of this annual report, it remains to be seen what new form this ministry might take. As concerns all of our mission, justice, and outreach work, though, I am thankful for the growing awareness among us that the mission of the church out in the world is essential to the vitality and life of the church within the church walls.
Our devotion to “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship” also shows itself in our ministries of Christian education and formation. It has been good to see a growing interest in education/formation opportunities for adults as we began including adults in our Wednesday night programming thanks to the work of Fred Krauss. I am sure you will read much about this and other Christian education/formation ministries in the reports from Becky Erbe and the Board of C.E. As for myself, though, I have been directly involved with these ministries by leading our high school youth ministries and by assisting with the confirmation program. Our high school youth ministries have been in a sort of ‘re-building’ phase for this year, as the recent years’ turnover in associate pastors has taken its toll on both the program and on the youth themselves. I am encouraged by the relationships I have been able to build with our current 9th-graders, as well as with this year’s 8th-graders in our confirmation class—these two classes together will form our core group of high school youth for the next few years. Our annual junior-senior high Snow Camp was again a huge success. This year also saw the beginnings of a semi-regular newsletter to all of the youth connected with our church, a newsletter currently written by myself but which I hope will begin to include contributions from the youth themselves in the future. As we face the changing landscape of our society and our youth, we will need to continue to expand our vision of youth ministry beyond the confines of simply youth group. For example, some of our older high school youth have been active this year in other ministries within our congregation, including worship, music ensembles (Sanctuary Choir and Martin Ringers), and fellowship and athletic activities. In the coming years, we will need to challenge ourselves into a more comprehensive vision of the ministry possibilities with and among the youth of our congregation and our neighborhood.
Our increasing efforts to welcome new members into our church community forms part of our sharing in “the apostles’ ... fellowship” and our sharing of “the apostles’ teaching” with them. Our own morale and sense of positive excitement as a congregation-—the evidence of vitality within—-serves as a key component in our efforts to welcome newcomers. It has been wonderful to hear from many about the sense of new energy and positive mood shift within our congregation in the last year or so. No doubt that as we live into our true vocation as a Christian community, this will continue. Newcomers and guests among us will see and sense that there is some good thing here that they want to be part of. In fact, this is already happening. Since our last annual meeting, we have welcomed 21 new members into our congregation, and we have seen a higher percentage of them remaining ‘active’ since their joining than in some recent years. It was a joy for me to teach our January-February inquirers classes, and I look forward to another series in June for which we already have 8 to 12 potential participants. We will also welcome up to 10 new members on May 6th as our current confirmands affirm their baptismal vows and join our fellowship. Other efforts within my work around ‘new member welcome and evangelism’ have included active participation with our Board of Membership and Church Growth and Vitality Task Force, work on our forthcoming church website reconstruction, the creation of the guest stations and guest information packets located in our two narthexes, and participating in our March evangelism event with David Schoen. As always, though, all of these efforts are only secondary; our primary task as a congregation is to continue to live into our true identity as that community dedicated to those teachings, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers that mark us as a community of the Gospel. Only when others can experience the substance, gift, and good news of this kind of life together will they find themselves seeking to join us.
Finally, my work since coming here in September has included much in the way of ‘fellowship’ and ‘the prayers’ as I have accompanied you all in various fellowship activities and attempted to connect with those in need in pastoral care situations. Pastor Mike and I have begun using a more structured schedule for our own visitation of shut-ins, and we look forward to seeing some renewed effort in ‘lay visitation’ in the coming year. As always, the cycle of life on earth comes full circle for some people each year; since coming here in September, I have conducted four funerals myself and co-officiated four others with Pastor Mike.
I want to express some special thanks to some of the folks with whom I have worked most directly over the past year: Pastor Mike, Becky Erbe, Paul Laprade, Bob Bates, church secretary Mary Jensen, bookkeeper Nancy Yoeckel, Deacons chair Linda Tolodxi, Membership chair Dick Nielsen, Moderator Karen Olson, all the adults who helped with Snow Camp, and so many others. And most of all, thanks to the wonderful search committee that brought me here to be among you all—-were it not for their efforts, I would not have the gift of working and living among the wonderful people and staff of Second Congregational United Church of Christ.
Looking Forward
In addition to the continuing of the ministries I’ve discussed already, I am very excited about some of the things we are looking forward to for the coming year.
As I mentioned above, I am encouraged about the possibilities for greater vitality in our youth ministries this coming year, with the rather cohesive group of youth that are currently 8th- and 9th-graders forming the core body of the youth group and other ministries with and among the youth. I hope that our mission trip this summer to Washington, D.C., will provide a formative experience for the participants that will be a springboard into the fall. Also, on the date this annual report is being presented, I will be doing some continuing education time at the Princeton Forums on Youth Ministry, and I hope that this experience will also impact our program.
In addition to continuing with our high school youth ministries, I will be taking the lead in our 8th-grade confirmation program beginning in the fall. Mike, Becky, and I have selected a new curriculum for this program that I hope will greatly enrich the confirmands’ experience. Also, with me taking the lead for confirmation, Pastor Mike will be more available to teach as part of an upcoming expansion of the adult education/formation opportunities offered during our Wednesday night programming.
We are looking forward to some greater intentionality around various forms of small groups within our congregation in the next year or two. We already have some types of small groups here, such as athletic teams, circles, the book club, fellowship groups, and so forth. As we move forward, though, we hope to both diversify the types of smaller groups available for our members to plug-in to and help make all of our small groups into supportive communities where folks can engage in conversation and exploration that can deepen their faith journey and provide support and care in times of need.
In our efforts to welcome new people in our midst, I hope that over the coming years we can begin to think about what it means not only to welcome people from other churches, but what it takes to invite people into Christian faith in the first place. A majority of people in my own age bracket have never been part of a church at any point in their life. As Christians, we believe that we have good news to share, a reason that someone would want to part of a church community (never mind whether it is our church community specifically). Much of our society, though, doesn’t know this-—and doesn’t know what it means to be Christian in the first place. If we are really going to be serious about inviting people into our congregation, we are going to need to challenge ourselves to stop providing merely education about our church and to begin providing formation into our faith. There are many possible answers of how we can begin to live into that challenge, and I hope that together we can explore some of them over these next few years.
As a congregation, we are definitely moving in the direction of that early Christian community we read about in Acts: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Our congregation’s new mission statement expresses that direction quite well:
Second Congregational United Church of Christ is a welcoming, historic, and progressive Christian community in the heart of Rockford.
As a people gathered in response to God’s call, our mission is to proclaim the good news of God made known in Jesus Christ and to courageously live toward Christ’s inclusive reign of justice, mercy and peace.
In fulfillment of this mission, we covenant to…
-- join together faithfully in worship of our Triune God, through preaching, prayer, sacrament, and music;
-- grow continually in our understanding of our faith through ministries of Christian formation;
-- deepen our discipleship through service, justice-seeking, and reconciliation;
-- act as stewards of the abundant gifts we receive: physical, spiritual, financial, and relational;
-- intensify our commitment to the downtown Rockford community; and
-- celebrate and strengthen each other’s faith through friendship, compassion, and care in times of sorrow and rejoicing.
I am excited to continue watching this congregation live into these words—-and for me to live out my calling to help enable you in that work.
Yours in the journey,
The Reverend Matthew C. Emery
Associate Pastor
Sunday, January 21, 2007
“Wholly Holy People” - A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“Wholly Holy People”
A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 21, 2007
Most of you know that not too long ago I spent a year working on the pastoral staff of a UCC church right outside Washington DC. I must say that I think Washington is a great place, and I really enjoyed my time there. Some people, though, find Washington—or I should say, more specifically, the people in Washington—rather irritating. “The first thing anyone ever asks you,” they say, “is ‘what do you do?’” That is, ‘what’s your job, your position?’ In the minds of these Washington detractors, nobody seems to care about anything other than if you can get them somewhere or do something for them because of your job or position. You are what you do—your job—apparently.
Now, I’m not sure I entirely agree with this criticism—I seem to think that “what do you do” is a fairly natural social icebreaker in many situations, a typical (although by no means required) bit of polite conversation. But that is not really my point here. Rather, I wonder, ‘How do you know who you are?’ Are you your job? Are you a name on a driver’s license? Are you simply a money-spending, stuff-consuming machine, as our whole culture of advertising and shopping and, often times, throwing-away would have us believe?
Over the past few weeks, I must confess that I have found myself spending a bit of time on the internet, looking at various people’s weblogs (or ‘blogs’) and profiles on “social networking” websites like MySpace. It is interesting to me what people do on these personal webpages and profiles to create and show a sense of their own identity. It begins with their answers to the stock getting-to-know-you sort of questions: where do you live, what are your hobbies and interests, where did you go to school—that sort of thing. But then, there’s often more. People personalize their pages with music and video clips and personal journal entries. There’s the endless personal survey responses, where folks reveal everything from what they ate for breakfast to … umm … probably some things they don’t expect their mother to be reading. And then, my favorite, are the little “quiz” responses—what the results were when they took the “what ice cream flavor are you?” quiz or the “which horror movie stereotype are you?” quiz.
So, anyway, all this is to say that there’s a lot of effort that seems to go into figuring out just what sort of image one wants to portray to the next random internet user that wanders by. But I’m not sure that knowing what flavor of ice cream some random survey has determined that you are really says much about your true identity. I mean, I’m guessing that no one started weeping when they heard that one.
We, of course, know of a people who wept when they heard who they were, when they were reminded of their true identity. All the people—men and women and all who could understand—stood in the square by the Water Gate and wept when Ezra and others read and explained the law to them. Now, in this passage from Nehemiah, the writer is not talking simply about ‘the law’ like we think of a legal code, but rather about what the Jewish tradition calls ‘Torah’, the books of the law, which correspond to the first five books of our Christian bibles: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so, these people, a people that had been taken away to exile, they wept as they were reminded of the stories of who they were and where they came from: of God creating all humanity in the image of the divine; of God choosing them, the children of Abraham, as a chosen people to be a light to all the nations; of God breaking the chains of bondage and bringing them into freedom from their slavery in Egypt. And surely there was probably some legal code in there too, but a legal code that showed them a way to live as a people set apart, chosen and loved and freed by God—a legal code that called upon them to forgive debts and release captives in the jubilee year, the year of God’s favor. And the people, all the people, they wept as they remembered who the chosen people of God that they were, as they remembered the ways they had failed to live into that identity, as they saw before them the opportunity for a new start at living as the people God called them to be.
Being reminded of who we are is a powerful thing. I remember being at a large gathering of Christians in Philadelphia a little over three years ago, the second “Witness Our Welcome” conference. The first evening, our somewhat rag-tag group of people, brought together because we knew the disdain of society and the rejection of the Church, we sat in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity on the city’s famous Rittenhouse Square as another group that called themselves Christian protested our gathering, in fact our mere existence, outside the church doors. And as we gathered in that magnificent space that evening, the Book was opened, and the Word was proclaimed, this time from 1st Peter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of [God] … Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people. What more wondrous Word could be spoken to such a group? What more wondrous Word could be spoken through their own books of the law to the Israelites returning from exile? Indeed, what more wondrous Word could be spoken here, in this place, to you, to me, to us?
And perhaps as wondrous as that Word itself is how that Word is proclaimed. The Book is opened in the midst of all the people, before all the members of the body, the men and the women and all those that might understand, those more honorable and those less honorable. All the people gathered in from exile to hear again exactly who they are and whose they are—the whole people made into the holy people and the holy people becoming whole people once again.
Moreover, this is the assembly that we form here, Sunday after Sunday. We gather together, all of us, returning home from the exile that we live day-in and day-out, coming to find who we are. Sure, there may be only some 200 or so of us in this particular room, but we gather around this Word proclaimed together with Christians across the street and around the world. And like at the synagogue in Nazareth, we find Christ among us, fulfilling that Word as it is spoken and heard. And that one we find among us, anointed by the Spirit to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives sends us out to prepare ourselves as a feast to share with those who have nothing prepared.
At the Water Gate in Jerusalem, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people heard themselves and the promises of God anew. At a church in Philadelphia, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people knew themselves and the promises of God anew. In a synagogue in Nazareth, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people saw the promises of God fulfilled in their midst. So maybe, like those folk in Washington, who we are is about what we do. Or maybe something even more than that. Maybe we do what we do as a sign of the One to whom we belong, the One in whom we know ourselves to be whole people and holy people—and in doing what we do, we find that One, that solid rock upon which we are built, standing in our midst fulfilling ever again the promises of God.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD,
NOW AND FOREVER.
AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 21, 2007
Most of you know that not too long ago I spent a year working on the pastoral staff of a UCC church right outside Washington DC. I must say that I think Washington is a great place, and I really enjoyed my time there. Some people, though, find Washington—or I should say, more specifically, the people in Washington—rather irritating. “The first thing anyone ever asks you,” they say, “is ‘what do you do?’” That is, ‘what’s your job, your position?’ In the minds of these Washington detractors, nobody seems to care about anything other than if you can get them somewhere or do something for them because of your job or position. You are what you do—your job—apparently.
Now, I’m not sure I entirely agree with this criticism—I seem to think that “what do you do” is a fairly natural social icebreaker in many situations, a typical (although by no means required) bit of polite conversation. But that is not really my point here. Rather, I wonder, ‘How do you know who you are?’ Are you your job? Are you a name on a driver’s license? Are you simply a money-spending, stuff-consuming machine, as our whole culture of advertising and shopping and, often times, throwing-away would have us believe?
Over the past few weeks, I must confess that I have found myself spending a bit of time on the internet, looking at various people’s weblogs (or ‘blogs’) and profiles on “social networking” websites like MySpace. It is interesting to me what people do on these personal webpages and profiles to create and show a sense of their own identity. It begins with their answers to the stock getting-to-know-you sort of questions: where do you live, what are your hobbies and interests, where did you go to school—that sort of thing. But then, there’s often more. People personalize their pages with music and video clips and personal journal entries. There’s the endless personal survey responses, where folks reveal everything from what they ate for breakfast to … umm … probably some things they don’t expect their mother to be reading. And then, my favorite, are the little “quiz” responses—what the results were when they took the “what ice cream flavor are you?” quiz or the “which horror movie stereotype are you?” quiz.
So, anyway, all this is to say that there’s a lot of effort that seems to go into figuring out just what sort of image one wants to portray to the next random internet user that wanders by. But I’m not sure that knowing what flavor of ice cream some random survey has determined that you are really says much about your true identity. I mean, I’m guessing that no one started weeping when they heard that one.
We, of course, know of a people who wept when they heard who they were, when they were reminded of their true identity. All the people—men and women and all who could understand—stood in the square by the Water Gate and wept when Ezra and others read and explained the law to them. Now, in this passage from Nehemiah, the writer is not talking simply about ‘the law’ like we think of a legal code, but rather about what the Jewish tradition calls ‘Torah’, the books of the law, which correspond to the first five books of our Christian bibles: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so, these people, a people that had been taken away to exile, they wept as they were reminded of the stories of who they were and where they came from: of God creating all humanity in the image of the divine; of God choosing them, the children of Abraham, as a chosen people to be a light to all the nations; of God breaking the chains of bondage and bringing them into freedom from their slavery in Egypt. And surely there was probably some legal code in there too, but a legal code that showed them a way to live as a people set apart, chosen and loved and freed by God—a legal code that called upon them to forgive debts and release captives in the jubilee year, the year of God’s favor. And the people, all the people, they wept as they remembered who the chosen people of God that they were, as they remembered the ways they had failed to live into that identity, as they saw before them the opportunity for a new start at living as the people God called them to be.
Being reminded of who we are is a powerful thing. I remember being at a large gathering of Christians in Philadelphia a little over three years ago, the second “Witness Our Welcome” conference. The first evening, our somewhat rag-tag group of people, brought together because we knew the disdain of society and the rejection of the Church, we sat in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity on the city’s famous Rittenhouse Square as another group that called themselves Christian protested our gathering, in fact our mere existence, outside the church doors. And as we gathered in that magnificent space that evening, the Book was opened, and the Word was proclaimed, this time from 1st Peter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of [God] … Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people. What more wondrous Word could be spoken to such a group? What more wondrous Word could be spoken through their own books of the law to the Israelites returning from exile? Indeed, what more wondrous Word could be spoken here, in this place, to you, to me, to us?
And perhaps as wondrous as that Word itself is how that Word is proclaimed. The Book is opened in the midst of all the people, before all the members of the body, the men and the women and all those that might understand, those more honorable and those less honorable. All the people gathered in from exile to hear again exactly who they are and whose they are—the whole people made into the holy people and the holy people becoming whole people once again.
Moreover, this is the assembly that we form here, Sunday after Sunday. We gather together, all of us, returning home from the exile that we live day-in and day-out, coming to find who we are. Sure, there may be only some 200 or so of us in this particular room, but we gather around this Word proclaimed together with Christians across the street and around the world. And like at the synagogue in Nazareth, we find Christ among us, fulfilling that Word as it is spoken and heard. And that one we find among us, anointed by the Spirit to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives sends us out to prepare ourselves as a feast to share with those who have nothing prepared.
At the Water Gate in Jerusalem, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people heard themselves and the promises of God anew. At a church in Philadelphia, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people knew themselves and the promises of God anew. In a synagogue in Nazareth, a community gathered, the Book was opened, and a people saw the promises of God fulfilled in their midst. So maybe, like those folk in Washington, who we are is about what we do. Or maybe something even more than that. Maybe we do what we do as a sign of the One to whom we belong, the One in whom we know ourselves to be whole people and holy people—and in doing what we do, we find that One, that solid rock upon which we are built, standing in our midst fulfilling ever again the promises of God.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD,
NOW AND FOREVER.
AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
At least someone in the media gets it!
All I can say is, Wow, I haven't seen the secular media weigh in this well on the issue in a long, long time (if ever)!
From THE PALM BEACH POST:
Friday, January 12, 2007
The cat is out of the bag. It is about sex, after all.
The breakaway parishes in the Episcopal Church make all the right noises about their struggle for theological orthodoxy, biblical purity and traditional Anglican values. Cut through all the verbiage, and their issue is sex, specifically homosexuality in the church's leadership, with a side order of bias against women.
The clergy in Truro Church and Falls Church in northern Virginia led their flocks out of the American Episcopal Church last month. In an extraordinary expression of self-righteousness, they aligned themselves with the Anglican Church of Nigeria and created a jurisdictional nightmare. They joined a renegade mission of the Nigerian church called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America that now boasts 21 parishes, according to The New York Times.
The group is under the insensitive direction of Nigerian bishop Peter Akinola, who reads Scripture literally and claims it says what he wants it to say. He equates gay leadership in the church with "a satanic attack." Akinola supports a bill in Nigeria that would make any public expression of homosexual activity a crime punishable by five years in prison. He wants to bring his prejudices to this country. To that end, he has consecrated an American priest, MartynMinns, rector of the Truro Church, to be a bishop in the Convocation. Minns will work under the authority of his Nigerian master in the vineyard of the American Episcopal Church.
That is the height of ecclesiastical arrogance borne of mind-numbing hubris. Bishops of different jurisdictions do not muck about in another bishop's territory, but this sanctimonious crowd observes no such niceties. They alone, they claim, know the truth and read Scripture accurately.
The great danger in all this — apart from the disgraceful treatment of homosexuals — is the growing power of bigots to use the Bible to condemn those who are different. Christians have long done that against Jews, blacks and women.
They use their religion "as a fig leaf to cover their naked prejudice," said the Rev. Peter Gomes, preacher to Harvard University who is a black, Republican, Baptist, gay minister.
His simple presence would make Bishop Akinola and his American minions apoplectic. His words condemn them.
(Steve Gushee, Staff Writer)
From THE PALM BEACH POST:
Friday, January 12, 2007
The cat is out of the bag. It is about sex, after all.
The breakaway parishes in the Episcopal Church make all the right noises about their struggle for theological orthodoxy, biblical purity and traditional Anglican values. Cut through all the verbiage, and their issue is sex, specifically homosexuality in the church's leadership, with a side order of bias against women.
The clergy in Truro Church and Falls Church in northern Virginia led their flocks out of the American Episcopal Church last month. In an extraordinary expression of self-righteousness, they aligned themselves with the Anglican Church of Nigeria and created a jurisdictional nightmare. They joined a renegade mission of the Nigerian church called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America that now boasts 21 parishes, according to The New York Times.
The group is under the insensitive direction of Nigerian bishop Peter Akinola, who reads Scripture literally and claims it says what he wants it to say. He equates gay leadership in the church with "a satanic attack." Akinola supports a bill in Nigeria that would make any public expression of homosexual activity a crime punishable by five years in prison. He wants to bring his prejudices to this country. To that end, he has consecrated an American priest, MartynMinns, rector of the Truro Church, to be a bishop in the Convocation. Minns will work under the authority of his Nigerian master in the vineyard of the American Episcopal Church.
That is the height of ecclesiastical arrogance borne of mind-numbing hubris. Bishops of different jurisdictions do not muck about in another bishop's territory, but this sanctimonious crowd observes no such niceties. They alone, they claim, know the truth and read Scripture accurately.
The great danger in all this — apart from the disgraceful treatment of homosexuals — is the growing power of bigots to use the Bible to condemn those who are different. Christians have long done that against Jews, blacks and women.
They use their religion "as a fig leaf to cover their naked prejudice," said the Rev. Peter Gomes, preacher to Harvard University who is a black, Republican, Baptist, gay minister.
His simple presence would make Bishop Akinola and his American minions apoplectic. His words condemn them.
(Steve Gushee, Staff Writer)
Sunday, January 14, 2007
"What a Guest!" - A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“What a Guest!”
A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 14, 2007
Those of you who were here two Sundays ago likely remember the somewhat unusual sermon preached that day. In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard about Jesus at age 12 in the temple, sitting among the teachers listening and asking questions. And so, in some sense creating a sermon together in our midst, we did likewise, sitting among each other as teachers, listening to one another and asking questions that lay deep on our hearts. There were many good questions that we shared in that time, many of them the sort of questions for which the only answer is a lifetime of living the journey of faithful exploration, discernment, and discipleship.
Questions usually have multiple layers. For instance, when someone asks “why did God let this happen?”, there’s almost always a deeper, more critical question lurking underneath it; that is, “how can I go on now that it has?” We like to hide those more vulnerable places, too afraid to even ask about our true yearnings. Or sometimes, the questions we ask reveal the doubts and anxieties we have ourselves.
One of the questions shared two weeks ago is just such a question, I think. As I recall, it went something like “how can Christianity compete in a world with multiple major religions?” Or, bringing the scale down a little bit, many people today ask about how the mainline Protestant churches—churches like ours: a part of one of the historic denominations of this country, rooted in historic traditions and practices, and yet vitally open to differences in theology and beliefs and faith—how can mainline-liberal-progressive churches like ours survive in the midst of the so-called competition from our more charismatic conservative-evangelical counterparts? That is, how can Church Street [our congregation] compete with Colonial Village [Heartland Community Church]? Even for all the very respectable pragmatic concern behind questions like these, I’m inclined to think that they’re not the real matter on our hearts. Or at the very least, that there is something deeper behind them.
What might that be, you ask? I think rather than surviving or competing against others, we want to know that there is new life possible here. We want some sign that our faith has not been in vain, and that indeed a living, vital relationship with God can be had. We seek to see that these vessels we call church—this path of belief and practice, this community of people—that these are still good and still have purpose, and that these can still bear the presence of God to us and others. With our anxieties and doubts combined with the trappings (or sometimes the baggage) of our traditions and history, we might just be a bit like empty jars at a wedding feast.
It’s a little interesting when you look at this story from the Gospel of John to see what the author spends their time telling us about. For the first few verses, they zip right through with plot—there’s a wedding feast in the town of Cana, Jesus is there with his mother and his newly called disciples, the wine runs out, and Jesus and his mother get in a little tussle about what to do. (This latter piece will have to be for another sermon.) And then, having zipped right through all this, in the middle of the story we find the author of John spending an awfully long time telling us about … jars, of all things. How many there were (six), what they were made of (stone), how big they were (20 or 30 gallons each), and what they were for (the Jewish purification rites). In pausing here, on something seemingly insignificant, we see a little glimpse into how Jesus works. He takes something old and solid and good—remember, just last week we heard of Jesus going through a Jewish purification rite himself—these old, solid, good things he transforms into the vessel for the gift of something new and wonderful, and does so in abundance; I mean, 120 to 180 gallons of wine is a lot of wine. I must note, here that, while for us today we see wine can have a dark side that people sometimes must struggle with, the people first receiving John’s gospel drew upon many images from the Old Testament and from their culture of wine as the sign of rich, abundant new life. And so, the miracle here is not simply that water was turned into wine, but that Jesus takes old, solid, good things that stood empty and waiting and makes them into the bearers of new life, and new life in abundance. What a guest!
And so, what about us? Is there new life to be seen here in this old building, in this solid community of people, in the midst of good things created for purposes of perhaps times past? Well, is that not what we’ve already seen? Have we not seen the Spirit, the continuing presence of Christ, in the creation of our unique Congregationalist and United Church of Christ traditions out of a past that wasn’t working anymore? Do we not know of the Spirit calling out to the church to open itself to women and gay people and persons of color—and seen ourselves rise to that purpose? Have we not heard of the Spirit calling to out to a congregation to open its doors to it’s community and provide a safe place for neighborhood children to gather (that would be us, you know)? The story goes that St. Jerome, the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin, was once asked whether all of that wine got consumed at the wedding feast. His response? “We are drinking from it still.” Indeed, right here, in the story of this denomination and this congregation, the festive drink of new life has flowed abundantly.
The Spirit still calls to us today, asking this old stone jar to be re-dedicated to bear the fruits of new life. And like the apostle Paul looking upon the church in Corinth, I look out among us and see a treasury of gifts to be used in the service of this task. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesy, discernment, even miracles—these gifts are here, among you—each of us having been given something by the Spirit. In Corinth, there was an ongoing debate over which gifts were the best, and Paul wrote to tell them, ‘No, even those gifts that some of you seem to think are least important—all of them are gifts of the Spirit, and thus all of you have something to offer in the service of God.’ All of you. All of you.
Having been so abundantly gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, we cannot help but be standing ready for Christ to be the guest among us, transforming us to new purpose, calling upon us to bear new life ever again. But wait, there is something more that happened at the wedding feast that day. Remember that chief steward? What was it that he said? Oh, yeah—at this wedding, the best wine had been saved for last. What makes us think that it will not be so with the new life that we shall bear, too?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 14, 2007
Those of you who were here two Sundays ago likely remember the somewhat unusual sermon preached that day. In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard about Jesus at age 12 in the temple, sitting among the teachers listening and asking questions. And so, in some sense creating a sermon together in our midst, we did likewise, sitting among each other as teachers, listening to one another and asking questions that lay deep on our hearts. There were many good questions that we shared in that time, many of them the sort of questions for which the only answer is a lifetime of living the journey of faithful exploration, discernment, and discipleship.
Questions usually have multiple layers. For instance, when someone asks “why did God let this happen?”, there’s almost always a deeper, more critical question lurking underneath it; that is, “how can I go on now that it has?” We like to hide those more vulnerable places, too afraid to even ask about our true yearnings. Or sometimes, the questions we ask reveal the doubts and anxieties we have ourselves.
One of the questions shared two weeks ago is just such a question, I think. As I recall, it went something like “how can Christianity compete in a world with multiple major religions?” Or, bringing the scale down a little bit, many people today ask about how the mainline Protestant churches—churches like ours: a part of one of the historic denominations of this country, rooted in historic traditions and practices, and yet vitally open to differences in theology and beliefs and faith—how can mainline-liberal-progressive churches like ours survive in the midst of the so-called competition from our more charismatic conservative-evangelical counterparts? That is, how can Church Street [our congregation] compete with Colonial Village [Heartland Community Church]? Even for all the very respectable pragmatic concern behind questions like these, I’m inclined to think that they’re not the real matter on our hearts. Or at the very least, that there is something deeper behind them.
What might that be, you ask? I think rather than surviving or competing against others, we want to know that there is new life possible here. We want some sign that our faith has not been in vain, and that indeed a living, vital relationship with God can be had. We seek to see that these vessels we call church—this path of belief and practice, this community of people—that these are still good and still have purpose, and that these can still bear the presence of God to us and others. With our anxieties and doubts combined with the trappings (or sometimes the baggage) of our traditions and history, we might just be a bit like empty jars at a wedding feast.
It’s a little interesting when you look at this story from the Gospel of John to see what the author spends their time telling us about. For the first few verses, they zip right through with plot—there’s a wedding feast in the town of Cana, Jesus is there with his mother and his newly called disciples, the wine runs out, and Jesus and his mother get in a little tussle about what to do. (This latter piece will have to be for another sermon.) And then, having zipped right through all this, in the middle of the story we find the author of John spending an awfully long time telling us about … jars, of all things. How many there were (six), what they were made of (stone), how big they were (20 or 30 gallons each), and what they were for (the Jewish purification rites). In pausing here, on something seemingly insignificant, we see a little glimpse into how Jesus works. He takes something old and solid and good—remember, just last week we heard of Jesus going through a Jewish purification rite himself—these old, solid, good things he transforms into the vessel for the gift of something new and wonderful, and does so in abundance; I mean, 120 to 180 gallons of wine is a lot of wine. I must note, here that, while for us today we see wine can have a dark side that people sometimes must struggle with, the people first receiving John’s gospel drew upon many images from the Old Testament and from their culture of wine as the sign of rich, abundant new life. And so, the miracle here is not simply that water was turned into wine, but that Jesus takes old, solid, good things that stood empty and waiting and makes them into the bearers of new life, and new life in abundance. What a guest!
And so, what about us? Is there new life to be seen here in this old building, in this solid community of people, in the midst of good things created for purposes of perhaps times past? Well, is that not what we’ve already seen? Have we not seen the Spirit, the continuing presence of Christ, in the creation of our unique Congregationalist and United Church of Christ traditions out of a past that wasn’t working anymore? Do we not know of the Spirit calling out to the church to open itself to women and gay people and persons of color—and seen ourselves rise to that purpose? Have we not heard of the Spirit calling to out to a congregation to open its doors to it’s community and provide a safe place for neighborhood children to gather (that would be us, you know)? The story goes that St. Jerome, the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin, was once asked whether all of that wine got consumed at the wedding feast. His response? “We are drinking from it still.” Indeed, right here, in the story of this denomination and this congregation, the festive drink of new life has flowed abundantly.
The Spirit still calls to us today, asking this old stone jar to be re-dedicated to bear the fruits of new life. And like the apostle Paul looking upon the church in Corinth, I look out among us and see a treasury of gifts to be used in the service of this task. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesy, discernment, even miracles—these gifts are here, among you—each of us having been given something by the Spirit. In Corinth, there was an ongoing debate over which gifts were the best, and Paul wrote to tell them, ‘No, even those gifts that some of you seem to think are least important—all of them are gifts of the Spirit, and thus all of you have something to offer in the service of God.’ All of you. All of you.
Having been so abundantly gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, we cannot help but be standing ready for Christ to be the guest among us, transforming us to new purpose, calling upon us to bear new life ever again. But wait, there is something more that happened at the wedding feast that day. Remember that chief steward? What was it that he said? Oh, yeah—at this wedding, the best wine had been saved for last. What makes us think that it will not be so with the new life that we shall bear, too?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, January 12, 2007
"Through the Waters" - A Sermon for the Baptism of Christ, Year C
“Through the Waters”
A Sermon for the Baptism of Christ, RCL Year C
Isaiah 43:1-7 & Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 7, 2007
I don’t think Phil was very happy with me. When I finally happened to see him yesterday--after probably more than three weeks of no contact--he was looking a little down... Not at all perky... The zest of life zapped right out of him. No words were exchanged in our brief little encounter yesterday, but none were needed. After all, Phil’s appearance alone said it all: “look at me... when you forget to give me water for this long, what do you expect a little guy like me to do but turn all wilt-y and brown?”
Of course, “Phil” is my houseplant, a philodendron that I’ve owned for not quite two years now. And, I must confess that I am not very good about keeping him watered. Maybe it’s because he sits off in an area of my apartment that I don’t necessarily walk by every day. Maybe if I had more houseplants--something I’ve thought about, as I think they would make a nice addition to my apartment--maybe if I had more than just one, then I’d be more likely to think about it. Maybe if I kept some sort of watering can out on my kitchen counter, maybe that might remind me.
Well, anyway... Observations about my houseplant gardening skills aside, what happens when we forget about the water? Now, I think it wouldn’t be too likely for us here in this building to forget about water. I mean, in just the four-and-a-half months I have been here, we’ve had a pipe burst that flooded our dining room and a roof leak here in the sanctuary that damaged part of our pipe organ. So there’s been water to think about a plenty.
But, then again, I wouldn’t think that the Israelites would forget about the waters either--the people who God led out of Egypt and through the waters of the Red Sea, God’s chosen people whose promised land lay across the Jordan River. Surely they wouldn’t forget about their journey through the waters and covenant God made in carrying them through. But, years later, we hear The Prophet preaching to them after they had forsaken that covenant. The new life they were given as they passed through the waters now stands withered away, brown leaves on dead branches.
But The Prophet proclaims the promise, God’s vow offered anew. ‘Cross the rivers, and I will be with you. Wade through the waters again, and I will raise you up. You may not know whether they are the floods of trial and terror or the pathway to freedom, but do not fear, for I have redeemed you.’ So The Prophet reminds the Israelites in exile of the message that the waters carried all along: ‘new life’, ‘the promise of the covenant’, ‘you belong to God.’
[pause (slight)]
Even with our recent overabundance of water flowing around this building, I believe that ultimately we too need reminding of the waters. We need to taste the cool sip of a refreshing drink in the desert heat. We need to feel the strange tingle of droplets, like that fine mist on a spring morning, like that touch that the baby coo-s at when the pastor’s wet hand comes near. We need to remember how good it is to wash ourselves off, to watch the sweat and muck of our lives disappear down the drain.
We need to remember that in the end the waters don’t depend on us. The faucet will pour forth water no matter who it is turning the spigot. The rain will come no matter how dirty or clean your car is. Even the prisoner--or perhaps especially the prisoner--is given water to drink. Are you old? These waters have washed over you. Are you young? In these waters, you too have passed through the river to the promised land. Are you rich? Are you poor? Are you white? Are you black or Latino or an immigrant? Are you gay? Are you straight? Are you a pastor? Are you a lay person? Are you differently-abled? Guess what--it doesn’t matter, the promise still calls out from the waters, for you too are baptized.
But there is something more here. We remember the waters, yes. But we also remember who is in the water with us. Glistening wet, hair dripping onto the sand, we find Jesus, right along side us and all the people. We remember and tell again this story from Luke, the account of Jesus being baptized, not only because we need to remember the waters, because we want to recall the fact that we are baptized. No, rather we tell the story--this story--of the One who wades into the water with us. John the Baptist warns of one who comes with power and might, Spirit and fire, and instead we find Jesus joining the ranks of the sinners who have come in repentance. The one who is supposed to come as our judge is the one who joins with us in our journey through the Jordan.
This is the “dirty little secret” that we have to share with the world. Jesus has stood beside us and all the people. When we pass through the waters, God will be with us. The Beloved One has chosen us. All humanity belongs to God, the One who calls us by name and loves us. And over this river of living water, the voice of God’s promise still rains down from heaven.
So, I think it’s a good thing we have this ‘watering can’ right here, so we don’t forget about the water.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon Copyright © 2007, Matthew C. Emery. All rights reserved.
A Sermon for the Baptism of Christ, RCL Year C
Isaiah 43:1-7 & Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 7, 2007
I don’t think Phil was very happy with me. When I finally happened to see him yesterday--after probably more than three weeks of no contact--he was looking a little down... Not at all perky... The zest of life zapped right out of him. No words were exchanged in our brief little encounter yesterday, but none were needed. After all, Phil’s appearance alone said it all: “look at me... when you forget to give me water for this long, what do you expect a little guy like me to do but turn all wilt-y and brown?”
Of course, “Phil” is my houseplant, a philodendron that I’ve owned for not quite two years now. And, I must confess that I am not very good about keeping him watered. Maybe it’s because he sits off in an area of my apartment that I don’t necessarily walk by every day. Maybe if I had more houseplants--something I’ve thought about, as I think they would make a nice addition to my apartment--maybe if I had more than just one, then I’d be more likely to think about it. Maybe if I kept some sort of watering can out on my kitchen counter, maybe that might remind me.
Well, anyway... Observations about my houseplant gardening skills aside, what happens when we forget about the water? Now, I think it wouldn’t be too likely for us here in this building to forget about water. I mean, in just the four-and-a-half months I have been here, we’ve had a pipe burst that flooded our dining room and a roof leak here in the sanctuary that damaged part of our pipe organ. So there’s been water to think about a plenty.
But, then again, I wouldn’t think that the Israelites would forget about the waters either--the people who God led out of Egypt and through the waters of the Red Sea, God’s chosen people whose promised land lay across the Jordan River. Surely they wouldn’t forget about their journey through the waters and covenant God made in carrying them through. But, years later, we hear The Prophet preaching to them after they had forsaken that covenant. The new life they were given as they passed through the waters now stands withered away, brown leaves on dead branches.
But The Prophet proclaims the promise, God’s vow offered anew. ‘Cross the rivers, and I will be with you. Wade through the waters again, and I will raise you up. You may not know whether they are the floods of trial and terror or the pathway to freedom, but do not fear, for I have redeemed you.’ So The Prophet reminds the Israelites in exile of the message that the waters carried all along: ‘new life’, ‘the promise of the covenant’, ‘you belong to God.’
[pause (slight)]
Even with our recent overabundance of water flowing around this building, I believe that ultimately we too need reminding of the waters. We need to taste the cool sip of a refreshing drink in the desert heat. We need to feel the strange tingle of droplets, like that fine mist on a spring morning, like that touch that the baby coo-s at when the pastor’s wet hand comes near. We need to remember how good it is to wash ourselves off, to watch the sweat and muck of our lives disappear down the drain.
We need to remember that in the end the waters don’t depend on us. The faucet will pour forth water no matter who it is turning the spigot. The rain will come no matter how dirty or clean your car is. Even the prisoner--or perhaps especially the prisoner--is given water to drink. Are you old? These waters have washed over you. Are you young? In these waters, you too have passed through the river to the promised land. Are you rich? Are you poor? Are you white? Are you black or Latino or an immigrant? Are you gay? Are you straight? Are you a pastor? Are you a lay person? Are you differently-abled? Guess what--it doesn’t matter, the promise still calls out from the waters, for you too are baptized.
But there is something more here. We remember the waters, yes. But we also remember who is in the water with us. Glistening wet, hair dripping onto the sand, we find Jesus, right along side us and all the people. We remember and tell again this story from Luke, the account of Jesus being baptized, not only because we need to remember the waters, because we want to recall the fact that we are baptized. No, rather we tell the story--this story--of the One who wades into the water with us. John the Baptist warns of one who comes with power and might, Spirit and fire, and instead we find Jesus joining the ranks of the sinners who have come in repentance. The one who is supposed to come as our judge is the one who joins with us in our journey through the Jordan.
This is the “dirty little secret” that we have to share with the world. Jesus has stood beside us and all the people. When we pass through the waters, God will be with us. The Beloved One has chosen us. All humanity belongs to God, the One who calls us by name and loves us. And over this river of living water, the voice of God’s promise still rains down from heaven.
So, I think it’s a good thing we have this ‘watering can’ right here, so we don’t forget about the water.
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon Copyright © 2007, Matthew C. Emery. All rights reserved.
Quote for the Day #2
"The truth of God is not limited to any cultic speech or vocabulary (ours or theirs). It is equally at home and equally difficult everywhere. ... Speaking of the truth of God, therefore, is not somehow speaking of a special truth at applies to a special realm and that is sayable only in a special language, to be understood by those with special training, and communicated to those with a special status, for whom it promises some special future."
--W. Dow Edgerton, Speak to Me That I May Speak: A Spirituality of Preaching (Pilgrim Press, 2006), p. 100.
--W. Dow Edgerton, Speak to Me That I May Speak: A Spirituality of Preaching (Pilgrim Press, 2006), p. 100.
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