What Will You Be When Grown Up? December 28, 2008

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3
Luke 2:22-40

What will you be when you grow up?
It is a question we ask children the moment they begin school, and one we never fully answer. Visiting with a couple who had been married the better part of 55 years, she reported , and I am not done with him yet! It is a burden so severe, that a fifteen year old was heard tearfully explaining, but I don't know what I want to be, so how will I know what College to apply to.

To ease that burden, I would affirm that there are many days when I am not certain what I want to be when ever I finally grow up. The concept behind New Year's Resolutions, is that a whole new year is about to begin, rather than continuing bad habits, continuing for another year as we have been, consciously choose to start life differently. The point is not that New Year's Resolutions are easily broken, even if you fail ten times the first day; the point is that you have a fresh outlook a new goal and hope.

The great tragedy of Christmas, is how quickly we move back to our routine unchanged. As soon as the children came downstairs, we began taking down stockings, as gifts were unwrapped we gathered up the paper, and before kick-off the tree was undecorated, stripped bare and lying beside the road as rubbish. For over four weeks, in the longest darkest nights of the year, we waited and hoped for God to enter in, for Salvation, for God to change the world. And the miracle of Christmas is that God did! Almighty God, who taught spiders to crochet webs, planted the Red Woods, and furrowed the Grand Canyon, whose Finger prints upon Creation are known to us by the lakes right outside our door, and in the beauty of a newborn, God chose to be one with us, to live this life, vulnerable and humble, taking all of life in.

On Christmas Eve, we read the ancient story and imagined how the shepherds felt, having witnessed the Heavenly Host, an entire choir of Angels sharing good news, who then went to Bethlehem and saw what was described as the greatest miracle ever given, in a babe wrapped in swaddling rags, lying in a humble feed trough. ALL of which God did, the question of faith is what do you imagine was the response of people in the days that followed, what did they grow up to be? As shepherds who had seen this awesome wonderful sight, the gift of the Savior, the coming of the Messiah, would you go back to life unchanged? The Christmas story waiting to be told, is not how the Animals at the manger began to talk; not what rhythm and tune the Drummer boy would play for him; not even whether Joseph and the Shepherds built a snowman; or Santa and his reindeer visited the Christ-child; but rather what happened to those Shepherds, and to the Wise-men, after witnessing the birth of the Savior, what did they grow up to be?

From that day forward, all the most common of things, would not seem common to them. If a baby born in a stable of dung, and laid in the trough of cows and donkeys, could be the Anointed Messiah of God, then a Thunder storm and rain would be both God's washing the earth clean of soot and debry as well as planting the Creation with water. Winds that blow throughout the night, would be the Holy Spirit of God brooding over us, deciding how next to motivate and challenge and inspire. The death of loved ones would be seen as something natural and holy, helping us to realize how much we loved them, took them for granted, the true gifts they gave us in inspiration and kindness never boxed.
According to Luke, Mary and Joseph took the Baby to the Temple at Jerusalem that he might be circumcised. Luke serves a wonderful record that otherwise we might have lost, for no other evangelist names what took place. Ironically, parts of the Church, overtime, particularly in the last three decades has been identified with politics and moral conservative-ism; yet what the community rarely addresses are harder topics to discuss of sexual taboos and intimacy, of money and death. This brief section of Luke names all three, though we might easily have missed it. My mother describes that things are far more blatant today; in years gone by, Paul Henried lit two cigarettes and gave one to Betty Davis, and you knew what had taken place. Heathcliff came into the Bridal Chamber, the curtains blew apart with a storm and below the waves crashed upon the rocks, and your mind filled in the rest.

According to the Covenant of Abraham and the Law of Moses, as a male 8 days old, Jesus would be circumcised, to be set apart. And the parents were to offer two sacrifices. First, the sacrifice of a turtle dove, a love bird, for Mary's virginity, that no longer was she a child, having given birth regardless of her age, she was a woman. What a powerful teaching moment. Christmas is far more than a holiday for very little children. Christmas is a time for all of us as families, to talk about life's changes and our family's customs. To talk with Adolescents, as well as Aging Parents, and to mark the changes in this family relationship with a Sacrifice, as something holy. I am not talking about sacrificing Parakeets on the second of the 12 days of Christmas! But giving a gift to Vera House for protection against Domestic Violence. Making a commitment to serve as an adult advisor on Youth Mission Trips, or the Collective's Open Mic Nights, or visiting at the VA Hospital or Van Duyn.

Second in this story from Luke, is recalling the sacrifice of Isaac, as well as the sacrifice of Moses for all the firstborn of Egypt, there was to be lamb, yet if the mother were poor a second turtle dove could be offered. According to Jerome in the Early Church, it was a powerful symbol to the world, that the Mother of Jesus, who was to be called The Lamb of God, was as poor as any common person, and as she offered the offering of the poor for the firstborn so could everyone. When a child is born in our families, life changes, and we need to begin even as young as 8 days old with College Savings Plans, and reading to our children, and changing our schedules/our very lives for their needs.

Third, that we would listen to the voices of our elders. Simeon and Anna each offer wisdom, of what they have been waiting for in life, what the birth of a child, this child means, not only to Simeon and Anna, but to the whole human race and especially to the child's parents. Recently, my father phoned, which inspired what I think is one of our finest Christmas presents. He said, “You know, I have been thinking, and the thing I hope I am remembered for, more than anything else, is having read to your children when they were very small.” At one time, 20 years ago, he had read into a tape recorder Kipling's “The Just So Stories” and Dr. Suess's “Bartholomew and the Ooblick”, which they treasured because different from Mom and Dad, tis was their grandfather reading to them. So we sent him a new Tape recorder and several blank tapes, asking that as he had learned as a child to memorize poems of Browning, Dickinson, Cummings and Longfellow, that he might recite these anew for us.
Salvation comes in many ways, perhaps different for us as children imagining being all grown up, than for adults imagining what may yet be. But the vital element of faith, is not only knowing God and what God might do in our lives, but imagining what we might become because we have seen and believed.

Dec 21, 2008 Not What the Country Can Do, But What Can Make of You

This week waiting outside the Montessori Nursery School an older brother was heard complaining to his mother, “But why should we go to the Mall to see a Store Santa, when we could go upstairs to the Church and tell God what we want, and God could tell the Real Santa for us?” Our traditions and customs fulfill what we want to do, and occasionally point up what God might being doing with and trough us.

Forty-eight years ago, in January 1961 a young President-elect was sworn into office promising the end of one era and the beginning of a new, pledging renewal and change. He ended that Inaugural Address, with the immortal charge “Think Not what the country can do for you, but what you can do.” Rereading these words, half a century later, we cannot ignore the planting of seeds of the Cold-War, and those of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Hopes for a United Nations and for the end of All war. In so many ways, that time resonates with our own, as well as with the time centuries before, when David sat on the throne of Israel, an era at the end of many bloody wars and terrorist acts, when the nation had known affluence and dared dream of something more. Different in the time of King David and Mary and JFK from our own, there once was a parity, an intrinsic bond between the individual and Nation, the individual and all humanity. As Mary receives the gift and responsibility of being the Mother to God, she does not dwell on what she will accomplish, how she will be immortalized, but on what God is using her to do for all humanity.

Recorded in 2nd Samuel is a Bold statement of Covenant Commitment.
To Abraham and Sarah, God had pledged that IF they were faithful, God would provide them a land, a name and future generations. To Moses, God had committed that IF the people would keep God's Commandments, God would continue to save and to protect. Consistently, there was this IF/THEN clause; and God's covenant had been to each as individuals. Suddenly with David there is a change, a commitment still awaited to this day, that NEVERTHELESS God would be faithful, humanity would sin and God would rebuke but the IF/THEN is changed to a never-ending statement that God would be present. The first word to Mary from the Angel is FEAR NOT GOD IS WITH YOU.

Faith is not the guarantee of a life without pain and suffering. Faith is not permission that you will always be forgiven, as if sin and harm we do did not matter. Faith is the covenant that NO MATTER what we do, no matter where we go, we are never alone, God is with us. We cannot pray that Grandma's hip will miraculously heal, that would be magic or at least wish fulfillment. Too often people have heaped guilt on themselves and one another, that if only they had believed more or better, or been part of the right church, they could change the outcome. We cannot pray that our Mother will never die. But we can believe that even when hips are broken, when strokes occur, our loved ones, are not alone, and neither are those who sit in the hospital and wait.

There are times when our celebrations and traditions are misappropriated. This weekend, we celebrated two weddings. In the one a teen-aged granddaughter left the reception and came into the Sanctuary quietly crying. She described that she felt more comfortable dressed as a man, acting like a man, than as a woman. Yet hearing these vows of marriage, in her grandmother's second marriage, she wondered if she would ever find anyone, if she were to be all alone. Why had God made her like this?

In the other wedding, a Bridesmaid sought me out afterward to confess that while only married three years, she and her husband were in the midst of divorce, and hearing the vows was painful.

More even than a statement of commitment, the passages we read this morning are sacred vows, that God will USE us for God's purposes. What a different orientation that would be for us.
As described in the Call to Prayer, instead of Reacting: It is time for this, do it. Instead of following directions and being assured of the outcome.
Instead of searching for what we want, or what will please others.
If we prayed for an absence of distraction, not needing to please authorities or our own desires. Rather than questioning what do you want for Christmas, what would make you happy, how much will it cost, even the noble prayer that what we want for Christmas is Peace on Earth, what if God were to re-orient our lives to What are we doing to bring peace on earth? the question How is God using you? How can we work to fulfill God's design? What are you being transformed to be?

What if, instead of questioning What we wanted the Government to do for us, what we wanted bailed out, or what we wanted to do; if we questioned, how is God using us?

There is a beautiful symmetry to the Annunciation of Mary and her singing the Magnificat, to all that has gone before in Scripture. Elizabeth and Mary are unlikely mothers, one beyond the age, and one far too young. Pregnant at the same time, the infants within them are like twins, reminiscent of an earlier set of twins in the Old Testament. But instead of wrestling in the womb for dominance, this elder one leaps for joy at the coming of the younger.

Different from philosophies or theories of the reason for our existence, Christianity is historically bound in the life and death and resurrection of a very real family. This is not a set of laws to follow, or beliefs to memorize, even to understand. This is an historic reality. That God demonstrated for us a Complete Revelation, throughout one human life, of what it is to live as we believe, to live our commitments, to struggle to follow the covenant.

Comforting the Challenged and Challenging our Comfort

Isaiah 40: 1-11
Mark 1:1-11
This morning, we focus on Advent in a different way, a new beginning, a new center.

A Century and a half ago, America went through radical change. There was a rapid increase in the number of new settlers, there had been famine, draught, economic collapse across the developed world and the Midwestern Frontier was opened for expansion. Settlers raced across the face of the countryside, as if devouring the unspoiled wilderness, they had never seen such natural resources. They fished indiscriminately, they chopped down trees for being the closest rather than being deadwood. They killed what they did not know. They shot buffalo for sport. They herded the indigenous people, as if animals, to be bought and sold, abused. A Great Cheyenne Chief was asked by his Tribe “Why are they doing this?” He is recorded as saying, “This is a people who have lost their way, lost Center, they no longer know what provides balance, meaning, what is needed or what is evil. They kill and hurt and destroy, because they are off-center.”

Advent is a time of “Preparing the Way of the Lord”. Different from the Season of LENT which is 40 Days of Fasting and Prayer and Reflection; Advent is the wisdom of knowing God is sending “Innocence into the world”, God is offering Grace. Lent is sacrificial because we know we crucified him, humanity made the Son of God suffer and die. Humanity was wrong, in Lent we pray for forgiveness. But Christmas, Christmas is God's choice to enter in, not based on anything we have done, or have avoided doing, but simply because God loves us. Advent then, is our attempt to re-Center, to confess brokenness and hope to begin afresh. We prepare so we do not miss Christ's coming.

Friday evening at the Community-wide blessing of the Creche, we described that each of the Four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John begin differently, telling a different story. John begins at Creation itself, poetically, symbolically reading back into the Creation. Matthew begins at the Genealogy fulfilling each of the Covenants of Abraham, David, the return from Exile in the reality of Jesus. Matthew and Luke both begin with the Birth, the infancy of this most human child. Mark begins differently.

Friday night we had a Biblical Storyteller, who recited The Gospel of Mark. This is NOT a history of Jesus, or the meaning of that history, or the meaning of all history, this is, this is the Beginning of the Gospel, the Salvation of the world, not as an abstract theoretical event to be taught and learned. His presentation was avant-gar-de, this ordained minister was stepping over the pews, getting in our face, allowing us to hear the Gospel not as a 2000 year old text, but as real words of real people encountering Christ in their lives.

Salvation is experienced, lived and felt as something far more than going through the motions of life. As the Poet Laureate Billy Collins described in this morning's Call to Worship, Salvation is more than SEEING where a fictional character tells you to LOOK, Salvation is pointed to in the Word: BEHOLD! So often we see and respond, we recognize and react. Life has become a Race, where the quickest to the answer regardless of the MEANS, wins; and everything seems to be about winning, having the most, the fastest, the biggest and flatest, the most miniaturized.

We have routinely confused Theology with Politics, pushing one agenda, liberal or conservative to declare our intent as God's Will. The Gospel is different because this is not about Theology, but about Christology, recognizing and seeing more than the Created Order, Choosing to enter in, because of Justice responding to Evil; or Love for the Lost. Christology is The Centering of humanity, more than a reactionary response of Fight of Flight, to stand with those who are impoverished, alone, victimized, because Communion with one another is Righteous. To Love and act with Compassion for those who are lost.

Years ago, there was a woman who came as a visitor and sat among us. By the second week we had learned her name. By the third we were inviting her to consider claiming this church as her own. She declined but continued to participate, to be part of the communion, to listen, to pray, and to sing. One morning she looked horrible, and she named she had had a recurrence of Cancer. We would go and sit together while she had her treatments, driving slowly on the way home, so we could pull off when she needed to. Then one day she decided she did not want the treatments anymore. She continued to worship, then because of her body's schedule she shifted from Sunday morning to taking a Bulletin and sitting in the Sanctuary whenever she was able. We tried to call, but she did not answer. After a few months, someone called the Church one afternoon. They identified themselves as her sister. She had had a falling out with the family several years before, and they had lost all contact. Then, a call her sister had died. She was cleaning the apartment, and found a whole stack of Church Bulletins, worn from being held tightly, read over several times, tied with a ribbon to a Bible. The sister was in shock, saying “I didn't think my sister believed in God, and here after she is dead and buried, I learn she has been part of a church?” We shared what we knew, and her sister said “Thank you. Thank you for being there when/and/as my sister needed. You helped her find peace, when we were at war with each other. You helped her find God.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in Mark, begins with this private conversation between God and Christ: BEHOLD! See, I am sending my messenger before your face, to prepare a way for you. Like John the Baptist, our role at Advent is to Prepare The Way for Christ in the World by Challenging our Comforts and Comforting those who are Challenged.

These words from the Prophet often called II Isaiah, are strange to us. Seeming to have come from a different time and place. “Comfort, O Comfort my People says your God” is dissonant with a people who have so much. In 2005, when I went to South Sudan for the first time, Isaiah 40 is the passage we read in worship on Sunday morning. The 25 year long civil war had just barely ended. As people gathered at the church, from out of mud huts and steel box cars, they lay their rifles near but outside the place of worship. And we named that universally, they described themselves as the Suffering People of God, yet for their sons and daughters who were refugees in America, this place infested with flies and mosquitos, malaria heat of 120 degrees and rain for nine months was Home, with all that Home means. But whether to that people or our own, the centering-gospel comes through: All Flesh is grass, the grass withers the flower fades, but the Love of God endures for ever.

Ripping Heaven November 30, 2008

Isaiah 64
Mark 13:24-37
At Advent we gather to be FAITHFUL, to WATCH, to Prepare for the Coming of Christ.
What sound do you imagine to see and hear for: “Heaven Ripping” as Christ enters in?
Would God entering our reality come in Silence, or Earthquakes,Thunder and Lightning, the Rush of a Mighty Wind, would the opening of the Firmament in the Heavens that separates Waters from waters be like Breaking Glass, or as Isaiah and Mark each elude to ripping would God Ripping Heaven to Come Down be like Paper being torn open?

This morning, just before dawn, I heard it. There was this sound of wind and rhythmic beating, then getting louder as it came closer the tumult of honking. I thought at first it was the sound of the returning Truckers Convoy with air breaks and horns, but then realized the sound was from the south and we all know there are no longer trucks on 41 and 41A. No, this was the sound of the Geese after resting for the night on their migration from Canada to points South. A sound like Heaven Ripping, that reminds us we are part of a larger Created Order, God does not come just for the faithful few but for all Creation.

A week ago as we read the Parable of the Last Judgment, Jesus is recorded as having separated sheep from goats, not Catholics from Protestants, not Christians from Muslims, not Church members from Those who only come on Christmas Eve, not even those who believe from those who do not. While the separation is between those who have acted with mercy and kindness, from those who have not, Christ enters in for all.

This week, we went to sit at table with family, to take a few days of vacation and rest, and there to realize just how blessed we are. Advent begins in that spirit of THANKSGIVING, not for what we have, or what we accomplished, but for what God has shown us. Thankful to God for all those who are part of our lives, who in their need have challenged us to step forward to act in faith, to pray for one another, who have blessed us by helping us serve and witness life differently.

While I thought I would have been glad to have been out of town, to miss the goings on this week, truly I am sorry to have missed THE PARABLE that what was reported took place, for it seems to have been HEAVEN RIPPING as Christ entered in.
Those who live and work on the main streets of our community have been fearful of the hundreds of trucks that drive through every night and day. The smell of garbage, the waste, the noise, the rattling and weight of these big rigs coming through intersections which led to the Governor banning all non-essential trucking to the Expressways. Caught up in this were farmers and local haulers, who also use the roads, and seemingly were being denied access. It was prophesied to be a day of irreconcilable confrontation and conflict, when in the midst of economic hardship, on Black Friday when stores try to turn things around from a balance sheet in the Red to Black, at the start of Holiday shopping, as tourists come to town for the Dickens Characters, the truckers would convoy all the way from the City of Auburn to where the road divides for Marcellus, Syracuse and Cortland. There were the sounds of traffic on the road. There were the honking of horns like geese, but rather than scaring people away, hundreds more came to witness, to show support of both sides, and to act with tolerance, seeking another way through our conflict. Not fighting, not harsh words, not anger, not rioting in the streets as happens after a basketball game or pennant series, but tolerance and support and great numbers turning out to try to find another way through conflict, that is the sound of Heaven Ripping open.

It is at a time like this that the Prophet Priest Isaiah called the people to CONFESSION. Different people have had differing emphases in worship, some emphasize RECEIVING, others OFFERING, others LISTENING to the Word, still others INTERPRETTING the Word, and others still SPEAKING in Tongues. But our origin as PRESBYTERIANS is as a people in CONFESSION. Our culture does not appear to value Confession. We learn to take responsibility, and to blame. Part of the Broken nature of our time is that our culture, our values, our principles are all based on Our WORD being our bond, our word being sacred to us. We have witnessed one person after another, swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, while being caught up in lies, half-truths and innuendo. Confession is not going into a closet, penitently whispering “Forgive Me Father For I have Sinned”, as Presbyterians we try to be more open and transparent, we can have one on one counseling, but we also emphasize our shared responsibility as part of one another's lives. Confession is a verb of naming what we represent to one another, who we are in relation to one another, in relationship to God, what we are thankful for, what we repent of and what we most need. Isaiah's confession is that throughout history there has been no other God! That we are a people who have sinned and suffered for it. And Isaiah asks the question of ADVENT: “O LORD, HOW LONG WILL YOU KEEP SILENT, WHILE WE SUFFER?”

The Evangelist of Mark records this differently. According to the Evangelist, Jesus Never named himself as God, or as the Son of God. In fact in the whole of Mark, the only time Jesus is ever referred to as the Son of God is at the CRUCIFIXION, because for the evangelist everything needs to be understood through Jesus Suffering For Us and remaining true to the Covenant with God. The name Jesus uses instead of Son of God, is to identify himself as THE SON OF MAN. An Apocalyptic Title which names that one could suffer for the sake of all, that just as the President could represent the Nation, as a King could be one with their nation, so also the Son of Man could be one who suffers for all, the Savior of the Nations.

The question we must ask ourselves is who we believe we are?
Do we imagine ourselves to be God in our own universe? Are we Protestors roaring through the lives of others? Are we Citizens who want everyone to go away and allow us to live without others? Do we want to be Christians?
Recognize that Christ identified himself as one who suffers for others, who did whatever was necessary to bring dissonant voices together in harmony. We do not need to be Messiahs, God already sent one of those for us all, for all the world. BUT according to the Gospel of John, Jesus final command was to Peter (that is to the Church) to Feed and Care for Christ's lambs. According to Matthew and Luke, the Great Commission, to Go into all the world spreading the Good News. According to Mark, the Commission Jesus left, his final words before he was Anointed and Betrayed and Tried and Killed for the world, was WATCH! For you do not know when the Master of this house will come, in the evening, in the morning, or when, lest God come and find you asleep in faith. WATCH!

When Did We Se You, November 23, 2008

Ezekiel 34:11-31
Matthew 25: 31-46
The sermon that I had written for this morning, we will use at another time, for yesterday events transpired that cause us to hear this word with burning ears and eyes that see differently, as if cross-eyed.

A week ago, as we sat in worship, praying and singing, lifting up the story of Jephthah from the Book of Judges (That Book, where every man did what he ever he thought without consideration for others) and Matthew's Parable of the Talents, someone snuck into the Church and began rifling through cabinets. When confronted they left. On Friday night in the dark before Saturday's dawn, someone broke in to rob the Church with a pry-bar and hammer, a thief in the night they went through every drawer of every office, the pastor's desks, the Christian Educator's, the Music Directors, the Church Office, even the Music Festival's, the Collective Youth and BOCES'. Files, computers, checks, they had no desire for, they were looking to take money from this House of God. Your offerings and donations, they broke in and stole.

How easy it would be to feel violated, to feel righteous indignation, to seek vengeance and vindication. And yet, we must consider, “How desperate must someone have been to break into a Church as a thief in the night to steal from the charitable donation of others?” A few weeks ago, the first Sunday in October, another Church in our area, had set out the bread for World Communion and when they came in of Sunday morning someone had come in and eaten every crumb. While many in that church were indignant that someone had dared consume their Sacrament, others named that the person must have been truly in need to have broken and eaten that bread.

The Village Police and County Sheriff, as well as Our staff were marvelous, coming in on a Saturday, spending countless hours, putting things back to right, filling our reports.
A frustrating compromise was that because the Church was now a Crime Scene and evidence had to be gathered, those who had come for the Fellowship of Scrap-booking, volunteers for Dickens, those coming for Yoga and meditation, all had to be sent away, rescheduled for another day, or another location. An immediate fear was that people would complain about the church turning them away, yet the most telling response was from a young woman who stared incredulous as if wounded to her heart saying “But who could do this to the Church, you are the Church whose doors are open to all, who make everything you have available for others. How could someone use a hammer and crowbar to break-in to steal from the Church?”

In the midst of all the disarray and violation, A member stopped in to express concern and to share that his father had been helping someone, when he was rushed to the hospital and was now in ICU. Another of the young couples who had been married here, emailed to say that the bride's grandfather had died. Yesterday afternoon, we had a wedding at The Lodge, and also worked to help a church find a new pastor. Our life and ministries go on, but how must it affect a person's soul to have violated a church?

Would that we could separate good and evil, right and wrong, as easy as black and white, in the parable of the Last Judgement, Jesus easily separates the sheep from the goats, not only because a shepherd can recognize their own, but literally because Syrian Goats are black and Syrian Sheep are white. According to the vision of Plato's Republic, a person's soul bears all the marks of what transpired throughout their life, scars of battles, wounds from wrongs, but while we may ignore these in ourselves, only God can see them in others.

The Post-Modern World we populate is a confluence of Modern Rationalism, knowing cause and effect, possibly knowing secrets of the world, humanity was never supposed to learn; and an Ethical Mysticism, believing there are absolutes of right and wrong, and if we could block out all the distractions we could orient ourselves to the Feng Sui of what is good; as well as a Narcissistic Psycho-social Subjectivity that makes excuses for our own life and decisions, where we know what is right and wrong but we suspend judgement because this is our child and our desires; one of the elements that it is difficult for us to have room for is an image of God as Judge, of Jesus sitting upon a throne as we kneel.

How odd that we come to faith demanding MIRACLES. We want to pray at the end of November for blue skies to appear, flowers to burst from the ground and within our next fifteen minutes for trees to come to full leaf. Yet, that will begin in about four or five months, witnessing the trees coming to bud and leafing over fifteen days instead of fifteen minutes we become too comfortable, too familiar, we take for granted MIRACLES beside us.

We have grown comfortable, familiar with Jesus' HUMILITY, born in a stable, a world that had no room for God, for love, for compassion.
We have grown comfortable, familiar with Jesus' TEACHINGS, the Good Shepherd calling willing disciples, teaching in parable, naming the power of the Widow's mite.
We have grown comfortable, familiar with Jesus' SUFFERING on the Cross, and being uncomfortable with death we quickly jump to Easter Morning's RESURRECTION. But the historic understanding throughout ALL of Scripture is that Jesus took off the DIVINITY of being God, so as to be human for us, and after death took that Divinity up Again, so that the very one who lay in the manger, who healed the lame and the blind and had compassion for the poor, is the one who sits in judgment.

The amazing odd nature of Jesus' own description of the Last Judgment is that no where does he suggest that ALL THOSE WHO HAVE CONFESSED the NAME OF JESUS, or ALL THOSE BAPTIZED, not A MATTER OF COLOR, or RACE or CREED, not even of RELIGION, not of AFFLUENCE or POVERTY or SEXUALITY, not even of ever having SINNED, But only whether we have done kindness acted with mercy to another.

We are headed into a season not only of cold and snow that has already come. We are entering into a season of holidays. We pray that this season, rather than being consumed by shopping and outdoing our mothers in baking, we could recognize those all around us. If in this week of Thanksgiving, we could take our brother aside and instead of pinching them, or putting them down, we could find a word of forgiveness of kindness. Instead of worrying about whether Grandma will take out her teeth at the Thanksgiving Table, we could in the midst of this life be thankful to be have another year with them.

Undercut by Fear November 16, 2008

Judges 11:29-40
Matthew 25: 14-30
A few years ago, a minister colleague asked me to sum up what CHRISTIAN FAITH is all about as briefly as possible, in Layman's Terms, without all the Theological Language. Would you describe faith as MORALITY? How could you describe the INCARNATION OF CREATOR as Messiah, explain GRACE, SIN, RESURRECTION, REDEMPTION, COVENANT, SACRIFICE? Instead, for me, my response is REBUILDING TRUST.

In this life, our expectations are rarely fulfilled.
Broken dreams make it hard to RISK to trust, to hope, to believe.
Despite the hype of this community, parents do not give us everything, when we desire. The job we thought we had, becomes something far different.
The President flew to an AirCraft Carrier off shore in the Middle-East and declared Victory! after 6 weeks, in a war that has gone on now for six more years.
Regardless of how attractive and virile we were when we first fell in love, in spite of all the promises, we did not shower our love with riches and praises, and make their lives a fairy-tale every single day of their lives.
God did not give us everything we imagined, there have been times we have been angry.
We have failed to live up to our own promises and dreams, to ourselves and to the world.
ACKNOWLEDGING the reality of Promises broken, of dreams unfulfilled, TRUSTing anew appears extra-ordinary. REBUILDING TRUST becomes an act of Faith.

Over the last eighty years, our trust has been shifted from beliefs, promises, affections, to what we could earn, purchase, what we could own, master and control on our terms. After repeated disappointments, we put our trust in ourselves and our abilities, building up for ourselves private worlds, measured by belongings, property, accomplishments, our money. HOWEVER, the current crises, whether named the Housing Crisis, Borrowing, Lending or Credit Crisis, are again failures of our ability to TRUST. Fear makes it seem impossible to trust the Banks, to trust the Government, to trust the Market.

Our FEARS UNDERCUT, scars and wounds make it difficult to risk and to believe.
It was to such a world as this, that Jesus gave the PARABLE of the TALENTS. Luke's Gospel tells a similar account, but the TALENTS is memorable for the Parable's extravagance, as well as the Pun, that A TALENT Refers to our ABILITIES as well as having been a unit of money.

At other times, we have described the payment of a Laborer for a full day's work was a coin called a DENARIUS, and another unit of Currency was a TALENT the equivalent of 6,000 Denarii. We often become stuck in this story, by the unfair starting point that one received 5 another 2 and the focus of the parable is the one who received only one talent. The fact of the matter is that we do not all have the same talents, or the same number of talents, some through birth, through education, by what ever means have received more than others. STILL, the parable invites us to recognize that, while we are amazed by the talents of the Stone Masons and Artisans of the great Cathedrals, the faith and culture of the Great Reformers and Great Masters, there were ditch-diggers who broke the soil and cleared the way, who laid foundations deep down beneath that no one will ever see, whose humble singular talent holds up the talents of these others.
Furthermore, at 6,000 times a day's wage, that single TALENT was trusting a slave with the equivalent of a Quarter of a Million Dollars. Yet, this one could not see the TRUST given. His life was so UNDERCUT by FEAR that he acted in fear.

With finance there have always been THREE POSSIBILITIES, you can Spend, you can Invest, or you can Save. As a people, the current generation have excelled at Spending, believing in Middle Class Affluence that we could all have the dream of fulfilling all our desires, we also Invested; what we have not done well is to SAVE and to teach saving. The Master names that Saving would have been the simplest return on an investment, the means of holding and preserving value. What the Slave was afraid of, was losing what had been trusted to him. BUT that is the point of TRUST. If we are afraid, our FEARS so undercut our abilities, we bury our trust, we bury our abilities, our Talents, and our faith is dead to us.

If we were to have that Coin, that represented a TALENT today, we would need to inscribe upon one side ABILITY, for that is what a Talent is. And on the other-side RESPONSE, for that is what a Talent does. So that taken together as one, we would see that our abilities empower us to respond, and RESPONDING WITH our ABILITIES builds greater and greater RESPONSIBILITY. To those to whom much has been given, much will be required. Our Talents are not possessions. Our Talents cannot be returned for a refund unused. A Talent Buried by fear is not SAVED, but Lost, where all we can do is grind our teeth over opportunities lost outside the limelight, living in the shadows.

But the MIRACLE of FAITH is that even when we believe we are lost, still God Trusts us and gives us possibilities for REBUILDING TRUST.
Describing the Book of Judges to the Confirmation Class, I usually name this as the STEVEN KING Portion of the Bible. These are among the most gruesome horrific of tales ever written, of rape and assassination, of power and corruption. While gruesome and horrific, the tales in the Book of Judges are not far different from our Newspaper Headlines. Each one beginning and ending with the phrase “For every man did what he thought was right in his own heart, and when they were convinced of their sins they repented asking God's forgiveness.”

Jephthah is the story of a man who like us has a personal life and professional life, intertwined. As every name has a meaning, “Jephthah” refers to “OPENING THE MOUTH” and it is upon the words spoken, rather than the thoughts of his heart, or the actions of his life, that this story hangs. Jephthah was a throw away of society. He was an orphan, not of war or AIDS, Jephthah's mother appears to have been a prostitute, his father was unknown among all the men she had been with. After having survived to adolescence, Jephthah was rejected by everyone, and developed a talent for killing. Then came a time of war, when his TALENT was desired. The people came to him and offered whatever he desired, if Jephthah would lead the people. In one battle after another, Jephthah was the winner. But as he approaches the final battle with the Ammonites, Jephthah's faith in his own ability is undercut by fear. JEPHTHAH's VOW is not like ELIJAH's who after destroying all the priests of BAAL WORSHIP, runs to the Cave of Moses and asks God whether He, Elijah had done these things or whether God had done them through him, and God in a still small voice says “What are you doing here Elijah.” NO, Jephthah is so filled with Fear and desire to kill his enemy, Jephthah makes a foolish FAITHLESS VOW to make a sacrifice of whatever first greets him representing home. He imagines sacrificing a Pheasant, or a Lamb, even a Heifer, or a Slave. He goes into battle, and wins, without knowing that TO WIN IS TO LOSE. As he goes home, his only child, the one that represents love and home and life to him, rushes to greet him. The height of irony is that what he had been fighting, what the Ammonites represented, was a society that believed in child sacrifice, and having opened his mouth to swear he would kill something of home if he could kill this people, he was faced with his own daughter.

This is a cautionary tale of concern for those returning from war, who cannot leave the killing on the battlefield. This is a Cautionary Tale for us all, that our work, our PROFESSIONAL LIVES ooze out into our personal. But even more, this is a story of whether our faith is in God, or only in our fears.

Having placed such great TRUST in OUR INVESTMENTS, our Faith in our Money and our ability to WIN, we now live in a world very much afraid, UNDERCUT by FEAR. As much as we show up for work, and for meetings, to sing in the choir, to be part of our families, our FEARS ooze out.

Would that Jephthah had made a different vow. Would that we could stop in the midst of all our fears, the bills and news all around us, and confess “LORD, I am afraid. The world is too much with us. But you have trusted us with these abilities, trusted us with Talents, empower us to RESPOND, to use the Talents gifted us for your service.”

Because of the killing of his daughter, before she ever came of age, Jephthah is not remembered in the great lineages. Jephthah's un-named daughter, we can never forget.

Jephthah is remembered for the story that follows. Each of the Tribes of Israel were named after one of the sons of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. Among these sons of Jacob was Joseph, Governor of Egypt for the Pharaohs. When Israel left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, the descendants of Joseph were identified by the names of his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. Throughout the history of settling in the land the tribe of Ephraimites were forever in tension with the rest of the nation of Israel, sometimes allies, sometimes adversaries, dependent upon the faith and trust and leadership of the Judges. After killing his own, Jephthah wages war against the Ephraimites. The difficulty is how do you tell the difference between one people and another who both are descended from Israel? Jephthah makes up a word, a foreign word, the Ephraimites will not be able to pronounce, SHOBOLETH. When the Ephraimites attempted to pronounce SHIBBOLETH they instead lisp and opening their mouths differently pronounce SIBOLETH, for which Jephthah put to death 42,000 of the Ephraimite tribe of the nation of Israel. Generations later, the descendants of Ephraimites were conquered and intermarried with another people and this new people are called Samaritans. To this day, to PRONOUNCE SHIBBOLETH is to Risk speaking truth, to risk being misunderstood by those who fear.

The End of Apathy November 9, 2008

Joshua 24:1-4, 14-25
Matthew 25:1-13
On Election Day, Veteran Commentator Tom Brokaw, used this phrase to describe the mood of the Nation, the mood of the World...THE END OF APATHY.

As much as we harken to images of Pilgrims and Washington at Valley Forge, within our memories, We are a People that out of the embers of Depression forged new industry in Agriculture and Steel. This is a people that in time of War and Oppression took up arms and sacrificed, not only of rubber and luxuries, but of our own sons and daughters. Out of that time, we became a Nation of new Ideals, Hopes and Dreams, which on a day in Dallas in November were killed. And if the assassination of our President were not enough, this was followed with the killing of Martin Luther King and another Candidate for the Presidency. The killing of idealism, hopes and dreams, in VietNam and Watergate and one scandal upon another. Like Joshua, we claim identity as a people who have wandered in the wilderness for forty years. There have been great accomplishments, the landing and return of men on the moon, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, the End of Apartheid. But the history making event of this week, was not only the electing of the first President from Hawaiian descent, but a record number of our Countrymen going to the Polls to exercise their responsibility for an end to Apathy.

Forty-Four Million Americans cast their ballots even before Election day. And another Hundred Million People made their decision in the next sixteen hours. The point is not whether you voted for this candidate or that, whether your party won this time or not, but that after a long season of apathy and complaint, people exercised their right to choose. Flipping a little lever, pulling a handle made not be as dramatic as standing before the Nation to declare “CHOOSE THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE, AS FOR ME and MY HOUSE WE CHOOSE THE LORD!” But Joshua's point, and that of Jesus in this Parable, are that THE END OF APATHY does not come in singular acts of commitment, but throughout a life.

Jesus compares The Kingdom of God to a Wedding. With the Bernazzani's second child's first birthday this morning, we remember her parents wedding and the beginning of the Act of Giving Your Hands in Marriage; and the giving of a Rose for times of stating our Commitment, that I Love You, I Forgive You; but also in A Wedding we declare to one and all, that while this day, this act of Commitment is the fulfillment of all your plans and ideas, hopes and dreams, the end of separate lives and the beginning of marriage, A WEDDING is the first day of a life of commitment, a life of sharing, no matter what.

In telling the parable, Jesus names some as Wise and some as Fools. All the Bridesmaids know it is a Wedding, they all come out with their lamps to greet the ones coming. All the Bridesmaids fall asleep, because the return is much later than any expected, and in the darkest part of our night. BUT some were prepared for a long night of waiting with deep reservoirs to draw from no matter how long it takes, and others were not.
This is a PARABLE and not AN ALLEGORY, for an Allegory has every element represent something else, and a Parable only needs to emphasize a conviction, a single point. The oil represents commitment, a depth of resolve that permits making a SACRIFICE of ALL one has. We want to read into this, shouting “But as Christians should the ones with oil not share with those who ran out?” But the point of this as a PARABLE is that if you and your neighbor each were asked to sacrifice what is most dear to you, how could your neighbor loan you what you would sacrifice? First you have to go and find what what you care about and are committed to.

Our culture no longer understands the word “SACRIFICE”, let alone the idea. We imagine giving a single canned good, cleaning out the spoilage from our pantry, or the loose coins from our pocket for the Salvation Army, as SACRIFICE. A Sacrifice is not something you can buy, not something you can earn, not a thing for a shelf, not made by simply showing up for life, or by putting in your time even in so noble a cause as the military, or a political campaign, or earning a living by inventing a cure for baldness. A SACRIFICE is not measured in value, or size. SACRIFICE come to us, from the simple pure understanding that God loved the World so Much, God Gave us God's Only Begotten Son. God traded being God for being one with us, having the miracle we take for granted, LIFE: breathing, witnessing the world around us as part of Creation, sharing and loving others, and as precious as that life, God gave God's own life for us.

Joshua makes the point, the people misunderstood in the Ten Commandments... GOD IS A JEALOUS GOD. Do not make this Commitment, if you are not prepared to follow through. Like us, the people declare, WE BELIEVE. To hold the people accountable, Joshua asks if they will be witnesses for one another, and the people say “We DO!” Then Joshua takes up a Rock, saying MAY THIS ROCK BE A WITNESS! And like us, some scoff, “How can a rock be a witness?” But as someone had inscribed on a rock for me at a birthday this summer, “FIFTY YEARS IS NOT A LONG TIME IF YOU ARE A ROCK!”

I love old movies, not just the ones from the 1970s or the 50s, but the Classic old Black and Whites. The other day, I came across a Gary Cooper Film: “MEET JOHN DOE”, not John Dau, but John Doe. While a Romance, and Political Intrigue, the film centers upon a man, a common ordinary outofwork John Doe. The story is that this man is so sick of AMERICA'S APATHY, our INHUMANITY, at Midnight on Christmas Eve, he would throw himself off a building as a protest. We live in a small town, why is it we hardly know our neighbors, walking passed them, resenting their being in our way? John Doe describes what a powerful force the John Does of this world would be, if they all decided to not be APATHETIC any longer, to take an interest in one another, to care about each other. You could not pick a John Doe out of the Crowd, that is the whole point, a John Doe is every common person, the shop keeper, the one who reads our electric meter, the lady in the cafeteria lunch line, each one doing their part in this world. What if, instead of ignoring each other, passing by one another as common, we reached out to one another, took an interest in them as precious.

As a congregation, we are blessed, blessed not only to be free of debt, to have a marvelous music program, to have this church as a center for community life, to have witnessed miracles throughout this year, but blessed to have the opportunity to baptize so many each year. AND Occasionally, to stop as we do so to recognize and remember what we have committed to do. For a Baptism is not simply the parents and the Pastor, but the whole congregation, every one of us committing to pray for this child of God.

On this Veteran's Weekend, I recall a time a few years ago, where we handed a baptized baby to a Special Forces Green Beret and asked him to carry the child as we vowed to pray for this child of God, and another who was going to prison who also carried the child as we vowed to pray for them. This child this day, could have been born in a war zone, like his parents before him. He could have been born in a world without any of the infrastructure we take for granted. It is ironic, that what we have been trying to do at the Clinic this year, what all the foundations around us in this community are working towards is establishing and building “SUSTAINABILITY”. To transition from a brilliant idea, to an on-going commitment that will self-generate for generations to come. We live in a time in human history, where the old infrastructure needs to be replaced, where old institutions no longer match our needs. Like Edison and Henry Ford, we are challenged to create new ideas, to forge new commitments, not simply for today, but to change the world for all time to come.

Usually around our house, I check with my spouse and kids before making a monumental decision, but in this case, like Joshua before me: “As for me and my household, we will choose the Lord!”

DETLAXE Backwards, November 2, 2008

Joshua 3:7-17
Matthew 23:1-12
A month ago, the last time we celebrated The Sacrament of Communion we read the account of the people receiving MANNA from God in the wilderness. The people were starving and afraid in a far off foreign wilderness, they cried out to God and had over abundance. That morning, a month ago, we celebrated as we have each year at World Communion passing multiple loaves, and afterward many described that they were offended by the excess of our having so much, too much for what we need to receive. BUT in fact that was the point, the point of that overextended hyperbole... that we do have SO MUCH, too much for what we actually need to receive and rarely do we see it.

I am told that now 60 years after WWII, some 3,000 Veterans are being buried every day, yet each one's life, the stories their lives tell, are unique. As a people of God in this place and time, we are blessed to celebrate a great number of weddings, and a great number of baptisms, and blessed to have to celebrate a relatively few number of funerals, yet each of these, every memorial, every baptism, every wedding, every communion, is unique, even when the couple say exactly the same vows and have the same music, even if they wore the very same dresses, each would be different. This day, as we break bread and hold the cup praying for redemption, the sacrament is the same and different from even a month ago. That was an occasion of GOD's GIFTS OF ABUNDANCE, this day we remember members of our body, of Christ's body, who are part of the spiritual communion no longer physically present with us in life. How MORBID we are, that we envision death as loss, that we grieve and rail against God for taking those dear to us, when part of the wonder of this sacrament is that God gave them to us and shaped our lives through these who loved us, who now are with God in peace.

Like Joshua and the Elders, whom we read this morning crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, in that act and this Sacrament, we recall the crossing of the Red Sea from slavery and oppression begun in economic desperation, to freedom and dependence upon God alone. We have a very human tendency to want to end every story of human life with AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. But the Bible, our life of faith is different, instead of each story ending, each life experience seems to bring us back to appreciate and exalt what God has done, ANEW. In the Ten Commandments, the nation of Israel was given one LAW to NEVER BREAK, “trust God”, and even before Moses had come down the mountain they had made an idol; reminiscent of the Garden and choosing to eat what was forbidden so that we might be in the place of God; we too have tried to imagine our lives apart from God, as if we were God, as if God did not matter. Crossing Jordan, Joshua and the Elders stood with the Covenant as the people passed by on safe dry ground with the raging water standing over against them, and they and we recall how in the Beginning God brooded over the face of Chaos, and called dry land to form from the midst of the waters, how humanity corrupted ourselves and after the flood God began anew, how God did not lead the nation from Oppression and slavery into the Promised Land, but into a wilderness apart, a season of spiritual searching, so as to be able to enter into the Promised Land giving thanks.

We are an ANXIOUS PEOPLE, a people who like to cut to the chase, to turn to the conclusion knowing how the story will end before determining if it is worth our investing time in reading. Like every generation before us, we want to be EXALTED, remembered. To some that means great wealth, to others great property, great number of children and grandchildren, even great grandchildren, yet others to have a great Name, having accomplished powerful deeds, to have our lives honored by being remembered. The media so often sensationalizes how we died, and how rarely how we lived. For the title of this morning's sermon, we spelt the word EXALTED backwards to emphasize the point that seeking to be exalted gets you no where.

Seeking to be Exalted reminds us of the SEVEN DEADLY SINS... Do you recall what these sins were? LUST, ENVY, WRATH, GLUTTONY, SLOTH, GREED and PRIDE. How ironic, that in our culture today, these are such common traits. Oh, we would not claim to aspire to them, but the very definition of
SLOTH is to live a life of ease, without worry or responsibility.
GREED is what we claim brought down Wall Street.
GLUTTONY seems a description of an obese society who satiate our pain by eating food.
From Sex & The City to Desperate Housewives and the Internet, LUST is part of us.
ENVY is all around us.
WRATH seems an apt description of a world at TERRORIST WAR.
Which leaves PRIDE, EXALTING Our Accomplishments, our Name. The subtlety here is that God Exalted Joshua and Israel by holding back Jordan, Joshua did not do this.

How easy it would be to take PRIDE, to be exalted in our accomplishments as a church, as a community, but the truth is, that time and again of our efforts we have run into walls. The very Session Meeting where we were to celebrate the completion of the Middle Building, we discovered the floor joists of the Sanctuary were collapsing.
We shipped all the pieces and every tool we could imagine needing for our building a Clinic in Africa, and the containers were hijacked, lost for weeks. But when the volunteers arrived, suddenly they drove up.
They needed to make concrete and the well ran dry, when God provided a Well Driller.
We did not do these things, we were EXALTED by God to have been able to serve.

This week, we finally go to the POLLS to elect our Nation's and Community's leaders. Too many in this season have given their allegiance to one candidate or another, for a Church to do so would put in jeopardy our tax exempt status, but we would abandon our sacred responsibility of challenging and teaching, and lifting up the voice of Scripture if we did not say:
God has told you, O mortals, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
To be thoughtful voters, we pray to be free from the cacophony of voices that speak to fear, hate and self-interest rather than faith and commonwealth.
To be informed voters, protect us from partisan opinions, half-truths and easy answers.
And when we seat our leaders upon the Judgement Seat, may we follow as they instruct us, for we have placed our trust in their leadership and they in God; yet as has been revealed to us so many times, may we have the wisdom and responsibility to do as they say and not necessarily as they as humans do.

2nd Ten Commandments 2 Greatest Laws

Exodus 38:1-12
Matthew 22:34-46
We study engineering and economics, physics and philosophy, so as to know.
We study poetry and music and art so as to listen, to see, to feel life's rhythm.
The call to worship this day, was written a decade ago, when the Arizona State legislature dropped all study of creative writing, art and music from the public school curricula. What seems self-evident, is that governments want answers, fix the economy, bomb the enemy, make peace, without full comprehension of the means, the weight and value of balancing and changing priorities.

When we do turn to the Scriptures, we seek wisdom and faith, as if these were set apart from human reason. Years ago, there was a New York Times' Best Seller “All I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarden”. Which emphasized the basics of cooperation, sharing, compassion, loyalty. There are times when life seems so complicated, time is a commodity and there is no where safe or secure to invest. Times when, rather than seeking complex new leaps of understanding to balance pointillism with string theory, we need to listen to the needs of others and act out of a commitment of love. Faith does not require that we know the language of dogma, distinctions between Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, between a Hermeneutic and Proof Texting, faith requires a commitment of covenant. In Western society, we tend to imagine a commitment as if a warrantee. Covenant commitment is not for 1 year, or three, or a lifetime, but for all time.

Part of the wonder of this morning's readings are the importance of visiting an idea a second time. A first effort may be experiential, may be flawed, might be forgot, but a second time underscores and makes permanent. Contracts are legally binding, Covenants are cut into stone or into us in love. An odd, but true reality, love cuts us, love can wound, can scar, can disfigure, but as covenant is cut into our lives.

We are a cynical stiff-necked people, who hear the word love, and drop into an overtly sentimental ridicule of “The Church Lady”, where everything is “SPECIAL” and we bless one another's heart with saccharin sweetness. We emphasize that, this love is different, this is not as perverse as eros, or as flowery as romance, AGAPE is a special kind of love Jesus made up. He did not. The Greek language had just as many words for love, just as many emotions, as we do. But what Jesus describes in Greek with AGAPE is what in the Old Testament was named as “hesed” a steadfast love, a living covenant, that could simultaneously suspend a myriad polarities with the reality: because you are loved.

Exodus records that God loved Israel, loved the people so much as to protect them from oppression; to give the enslaved, freedom; and part seas for them. But as often happens in first love, the people did not appreciate what was offered. The power and beauty of the 10 Commandments we know, the 10 Commandments here written on two stone tablets, are that knowing how fickle we are, having already been betrayed and abandoned by us, God offers the covenant anew. Not ignoring what took place, for God is named as one who can visit suffering on a people for four generations, but God is also steadfast in mercy, in loyalty, in compassion. The 10 Commandments are not about LAW, they are an emphatic statement of COMMITMENT from God, that God will be with us, God will be faithful, and God can transform what was broken into something of value.

There has been a Wendy's Commercial this Summer, emphasizing value. One friend asks the other for a dollar, then offers to trade that buck for the 99 cent sandwich the other is enjoying, and the one enjoying the sandwich recognizes that what is in hand has increased in value and they do not want to give it up.

We have been witnesses to miracles. Imagine a young couple, who are afraid that if they bear a child they may pass along DNA that their child would endure what they had suffered as a child. But before the child is born, they diagnose a more serious problem. Despite all our prayers to make the suffering go away, to relieve them of their plight, the child is born, and with a series of surgeries is healthy and a great gift. Suddenly all their earlier fears are forgot.

There is a certain irony to Exodus 34, because where the first version spelled out four laws of relationship to God and six of relationship within human culture, eight in the negative and two Thou Shalts, in the dictating of these commandments, God instructs the people of Israel to avoid their enemies, to not cook lamb in goat's milk, and rather than worshipping fertility Gods to observe three offerings annually, an offering at the time of planting, an offering pledging future commitment when crops first begin to bear, and an offering at harvest, yet while the people attempted to follow these as a kosher people, the 10 Commandments were remembered as stated in the first version.

In total, the Old Testament Rabbis had counted 618 different laws, 248 positive and 365 thou shalt not, associated with 248 parts of the human body and 365 days of the year. We have followed the last several weeks as the Pharisees and Saducees each tested Jesus about Authority, about the Sanctity of Marriage, about the Resurrection of the dead, and the Power of the Empire versus the Kingdom of God, finally this morning a Theologian is put forward to challenge Jesus on the nuances of all the laws and commandments of what it is to be Kosher. Of the 618 different laws, cooking meat in its mother's milk, versus circumcision, lying, versus simple coveting, pride versus murder which is the greatest? According to Hebrew Law all the Commands were equal, if Sin is brokenness from God to do what you desire as if there were no God, what difference if that is because you were prideful, or murderous? Yet, Jesus replied, the way we need to understand the Laws, the key to everything is to follow the Covenant to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Here the purpose of the Second is not that the first was insufficient, but that the two together, support and reinforce one another. like the form of the cross, we love God, and we love one another, everything else is understood through these covenant commitments. One need not know every single iota of every law, if you follow these covenant commitments, for all the Law and the Prophets are based upon these.

Having been tested in all these ways, Jesus then tests his listeners. Some have suggested Jesus might be the Messiah, so he asks of the Pharisees, Saducees, Scribes and Theologians: :”How is the Relationship between Beloved King David and the Messiah?” They respond The Messiah is Son of David, as recorded in David wanting to build a house for God and God instead making a Covenant for all future generations that God would be present with the Son of David. To which Jesus then sings one of the most loved of the Psalms which identifies David addressing the Messiah as Lord. It would be as if in the midst of the Political debates last spring, if instead of trying to explain their faith and religious loyalties, the Candidates for our highest Office, our greatest Powers, simply stood before the Nation and humbly sang “Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, twas blind but now I see.”

The answers to life's problems do not have to be complex, the language of faith need not get in the way. What matters, the only thing that maters is our COVENANT COMMITMENT, our Love and Devotion. I have tried to start a tradition, that was begun years ago in my becoming a minister. After College and Seminary Graduate School, candidates for the ministry sit for four four hour written exams similar to passing the Bar in Law, or Medical Boards for a Doctor, after which you are permitted to find a Church that wants you. Then, and only then, are you able to stand before the Presbytery as the Elders and Ministers ask whatever questions they desire. And since the reUnion of the Presbyterian Church in 1984, every time a minister changes Presbyteries they are questioned all over again. The first time I was examined this lasted for two hours. At the end of which you are escorted from the room as they debate and vote on your preparedness for serving a Church. As I was led back into the Sanctuary after the vote, the Presbytery rose to sing: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” as reminder that the blessings we seek are not the Culture's values of Celebrity, Wealth, Notoriety, and Security, but God and God's love alone

Seeing and Notseeing Is Believing, October 19, 2008

Exodus 33
Matthew 22:15-24
Yesterday, I was at our sons' Parents weekend, where we heard the former Majority leader of the US Senate Dr. Bill Frist speaking about economic development in Underdeveloped countries. After the lecture I introduced myself and described we had created a Clinic in South Sudan and provided for it for two years. He responded dismissively “O yes, religious groups have done a number of wonderful things.”

I was speaking with someone on the Nominating Committee the other day about the church, who described “We've created a very fragile, dangerous consortium. All these separate cliques, side by side. We know that in other times the church has been divided against itself. The world has so many different people's of differing cultures, differing nationalities, ages, orientations, all of which seem to be in competition. It's going to take a firm and authoritative hand to keep all these divergent groups working together!” And we are diverse , we claim that diversity as a value, trying to be as diverse and mutli-talented as possible, but, it doesn't take a heavy hand. What is required is an ABIDING PRESENCE, a covenant that we will trust one another and trust God; the presence of the holy and the presence of one another, that we can be the body of Christ in this place and time, together.

There are those among us who are rationalists, who know that SEEING is BELIEVING, we want to build success upon success, accomplishment upon accomplishment, to invest only in that which can guarantee a sound future.
There are also those among us, who theorize that for BELIEF to be Belief, our BELIEF must be in WHAT IS NOT SEEN. Science, Law and Physics can determine the mathematic probability of every contingency, but there are limits to our knowledge, limits to what we can prove, there are also times when rationalism and pragmatism and technology are simply too stiff, too cold and practical when we need human touch and re-assurance, support and prayer, at which point we BELIEVE because the alternative is hopelessness or a reliance on fate.
There are also those Second Grade Grammar teachers among us, who will insist that we need to use the plural adjective, that rather than SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING, What is proper is that SEEING and NOT SEEING ARE BELIEVING, but it is precisely the interplay and juxtaposition of these TWO as ONE where faith is alive and real. SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING.

If the Bell Choir were each to play all their notes all at the same time, or even as ever each chose to do, there would be sound, there might even on occasion be chords, but we would not call this music. ONLY when every one of the choir have rehearsed together and built trust in one another, being there when needed and having made mistakes, as well as the power and presence of silence, does music resonate.

Last week we read together that the people became anxious because of the delay of Moses on the mountain. The people wanted predictability, wanted a guarantee that WHEN I pray, my wishes will be answered. When I make an offering, I will get what I desire. SO they made an Idol, the GOLDEN CALF. Moses came down the mountain and broke the calf, naming that what they had done was to repeat the Sin of Adam and Eve in Genesis, because they chose to do for themselves as if God did not exist. Moses then went back up the Mountain at Horeb and God says “GO on Your Way, take the people” Go to the Promised Land and get it over with. To which Moses says NO LORD, Not without you. There can be CHEAP GRACE, where we rush to get to the end, where we accept without understanding or forgiveness, without claiming and accepting all that has gone along, but the point is not to GET LIFE OVER WITH.

In the late 1980s, George Steiner, Cultural Critic and Philosopher of Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia, went so far as to describe that every great work of ART, all great LITERATURE deals with the SEARCH for “LIFE, DEATH and GOD”, everything of worth in culture is a transcendent journey that without God is humanly impossible. We could send rockets to the moon, but there would be no questioning of WHY, no search for anything beyond ourselves, without God being part of our lives. An artist can follow all the rules to technically paint or sculpt like one of the Masters, but without faith, without conviction and calling, life would lack passion, life would lack meaning. We can marry and have children, but how different the experience when we come together with shared hopes and dreams and belief in the impossible. We pace the floor at night with our children wishing we could take away the ear ache, make the cancer vanish, allow them to succeed, and where life fails to struggle and wonder, WHY GOD?

Moses does what neither Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac or Jacob had done before him. All the Patriarchs had encountered God, responded to God's call, walked with God, and struggled with faith when circumstances did not fall their way; but most were like Jonah wishing they could get away from God, only to discover that they could not, so they would do as God commands. Moses demands that God be in his life. Moses demands that life, that marriage and the community, and the raising of children, the daily and lifelong struggles, all of it, all of life, WHAT IS SEEN & UNSEEN, be HOLY.

I am convinced that there are painful times in life, which God uses. I would not go so far as to blame God for causing suffering in the world; but that there are times when our lives, our understanding and knowledge and schedules are SO FULL, we have left no time or space for what is holy, that we are humbled. And in those struggles, the car accident that almost killed us... the economic collapse that means we cannot retire to do as we wanted to do, but instead must continue to be of service... the doubts of fidelity that we realize there is GOD in our lives. In the silence and in the struggle, and the juxtaposition of the two, there is FAITH.

The Ancient Empire of Rome was in many ways the cultural opposite of our own time, not that one is good and the other bad, both have their limitations. But in our time and culture, it would be rare and odd for a person to stop in the midst of their work to pray. Often when greeting folk on Sunday morning, they will comment on the weather, and I will respond “GOD DOES GOOD WORK” and they will look at me as if humorous. It is as if, Faith in God is safe so long as it is kept within this house of worship, within Sunday morning. In the Ancient Roman World, they would be equally PROFANED if you brought something worldly into Religion. Religion was a place for faith in the UNSEEN, the MYTHIC and MYSTIC and SPIRITUAL, and to bring logic, or reason, or world events, into a house of worship was seen as evil. In the Ancient Roman Empire, the culture had so legislated the difference between what is SEEN what is REAL IN THE WORLD and WHAT is UNSEEN/ what is of God, that you were required to use different money in worship than in the culture. As a Roman Society, you paid taxes, you bought and sold and traded in ROMAN Currency. But within a Temple, you made an offering with a living thing, if you had come a great distance and could not or had not brought a heifer or a goat, you could buy them, BUT you had to use TEMPLE CURRENCY not Roman Coinage. Like going through International Customs you traded all the Roman currency you had on you so as to bring nothing worldly into this place, and when you left you sold or gave away everything of the Temple so as to take nothing out into the real world. The Pharisees ask a POINTLESS Question, IS IT LEGAL TO PAY TAXES? Not is it Righteous, is it faithful, is it moral or ethical, or As a man of faith is it WRONG to support the Government...but is it LEGAL. And Jesus replies, by saying I do not have a Coin of the Empire, do any of you? When they produce one, they have already “Profaned Themselves” by having brought that thing into this place.

But he goes further, to question the inscription and picture on it. At which point, he is naming this challenge as a Question of AUTHORITY. The question is not whether it is legal or right to have to pay taxes, but if you have to give to both, which is more important, what is the greatest authority in our lives? And they describe that the image of Caesar is on the coin, to which Jesus claims and you are created in the image of God, so render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God.

The issue of our times is not Should we go into despair over the Market, nor Can we continue living Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow we may die, WE DO NEED to change our priorities and question what is of greatest value, but in that profess we are created in the image of God.

A Presumptuous People, October 12, 2008

Exodus 32:1-14
Matthew 22:1-14
We are a PRESUMPTUOUS people, filled and pre-occupied with our own anxieties.
Would that we could be the people we envision ourselves to be: Joyful, Faithful, Ethical, Moral, Just, acting to follow through on clear priorities... However, Jesus aptly names that when Called, we have other things to do. The parable describes that among those called, the first is a wealthy land-owner who claims “I have just bought a piece of property and must go inspect what I have bought. The point is not that he bought land sight unseen, but that having bought this land, he wanted to go stand in the middle of his possession and see all that was his. He wanted to walk up and down upon it and take pride that all this was his and his alone. He could not be distracted by a responsibility, even to the King.
The second is a business man who claims to have recently purchased ten pair of oxen and he wants to try them out. The point is not that the fields need to be plowed, not that the oxen are in any danger, but simply that he has bought ten pair of oxen, and like our having a fleet of new cars, he cannot be content until he has driven each, he wanted to touch them, put them into service, he wanted to witness what profit they could provide for him. He could not be distracted by a commitment even to their King.
The third professes, I just got married myself, ignoring that he could have brought his bride to share the honor of attending the King's son's Wedding, ignoring that he could have understood how important this was by having himself gotten married, ignoring this could have blessed his marriage, he wanted to be alone. He saw his priorities foremost. He could not be distracted by an obligation even to the King.

We put our own wants ahead of the world's needs, our demonstration of free will ahead of God's plan. It is the middle of October in Central New York, we have a National Holiday celebrating the discovery of our Continent by Western Europeans over 400 years ago, and on this weekend off the temperature is going to be 75 degrees. Some of us, cannot wait for the first snow, others want to return to mid-summer when the weather was not as beautiful in our eyes as the Autumn has become. Still others, want to hold this moment in time, preserving the color of the leaves, the smells, sound of geese, failing to recognize that the smell is of decay, color the change brought by the trees withdrawing moisture into their roots, flocks preparing to fly.

The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, even Computerization, each were attempts to equalize all humanity, that with public education, with access to information and technology, the human condition would be improved. In so many ways our circumstance has been improved. We now live in a time where quality health care is described as both a basic Human Right and a Moral Responsibility, rather than a privilege of the aristocracy, or an obligation of the State. Where access to owning a home has been perceived as a right all in our nation could attain. Where education is perceived as not only available, but essential. Where technology has made things available cheaper, faster and smaller than ever before. But with all this we do enjoy, we still are human, like two year olds we still want more and we want what we want when we want. Binding our anxiety, we presume to demand our fulfillment of our desires, hurrying up life, foolishly trying to get it over with.

This is the story of God's creation of the Garden of Eden and The Fall of Adam and Eve, all over again. God had saved the people. God brought them out of slavery and oppression into nature's wilderness, which the people presumed to be AN EXILE. God fed the people and gave them water, God gave the people the LAW and Commandments, which the people did not have to, but freely accepted. The Covenant was cut, offerings were made, the smell of the burnt cereal offerings filled their nostrils, the blood of the sacrifice of ten bulls was sprinkled on the people to seal them in God's Covenant. In the intervening 12 chapters, between Chapter 20 where they receive the 10 Commandments and 32 which we read this day, Moses went up Mount Sinai where God planned and specified in great detail what the Ark of the Covenant would look like, how the Tent of meeting was to be adorned, how the Tabernacle was to be filled with music, all to inspire the people with awe. The purpose of worship was not to be an obligation, not a tax paid to the gods for fertility, pleading for blessings, or changing the economy to benefit our portfolio. God's desire was for the people to be in relationship with God to co-create a Tabernacle and Tent and Ark representative of the Covenant Relationship God had made to this people setting them apart for all history, setting them apart from all others, saving them and preserving them throughout generations. BUT Moses was gone too long. The people became anxious for leadership. The people were idle, and they wanted to do something with their anxiety, so with the blessing of Aaron the idle people made an IDOL of Gold. Inso doing, just as the first humans ate of the FRUIT God commanded not to eat, this people broke the commandment to have no other Gods.

How often, when we are anxious, depressed, filled with fears and blah, we try to fill that void with something gold, something that sparkles, that is new, tangible, malleable, able to be owned and controlled. But that chocolate, the land we own and possess, the oxen and cars and tools of production, do not satisfy.

God had planned to co-create a relationship that would inspire. God had planned that worship like a fine feast would be planned and simmered, developed and nurtured for the people to find fulfillment. The people wanted to have something that would fill the void. Something they could point to when anxious and follow the ritual of their making to that which they owned and possessed, and having paid the duty, having fulfilled their obligation, all would instantly be right with the world. Mom could kiss the boo-boo and make everything right. Dad could repair the broken toy as good as new.

The struggle of God and Moses, the struggle we each encounter, was what to do when the covenant is broken. God's response is “LET ME BE ALONE” so as to get even with this people. God is not simply going to let the people that God saved go after idols of their own making. God is not simply going to kill and destroy. God had created this people, like the act of creation itself, so God would plunge them into primordial chaos. AND MOSES, this man of faith, says “NO LORD”. God says “Do not worry, I will make a great nation out of you, I promised this to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who was renamed Israel, long ago, I promise this to you as as a person of faith as well.” And Moses says “NO GOD.
You are a Rational, Reasoning God, and this is a teachable moment, not a time for vengeance.
Your Reputation with other Nations, with all the world, is on the line, if you do this, no one is going to remember the people broke covenant and made a golden idol. The people will recall God set them free and killed them.
Repent God, and allow the people to repent. And Moses recounts for God the story of faith, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Israel. And this Nation called Israel, as well.” Then Moses came down the mountain to call the people to also repent. Throughout time, we have described God as UnChanging, what we mean by that is that GOD'S COMMITMENT, GOD'S FAITH and COVENANT IS, though God can repent, forgive, choose to enter in and make a difference.

How rarely do we as people of faith do what Moses did! Rather than inventorying our assets. Rather than counting our accomplishments, or going off to be alone. Rather than checking and repositioning our portfolios. To stop, to recall the “spiritual” moments in our lives, to retell our stories of faith.

I recall about three years ago, going along with the Boy Scouts as an Advisor as they climbed the Presidential Range of the Appalachian Trail of the White Mountains. We began the hike, and the mountains became taller and taller when suddenly it occurred to me that these boys were seventeen year olds and I was middle aged. That first day, I convinced myself that all I had to do was survive, keeping up, until we got to the camp that night, and I would not have embarrassed my son, so I could hike down the following day. When midmorning we reached a plateau and looked out over the 50 miles of mountains we would be hiking, I recognized there was no way down, all we could do was trust God and trust one another to get us through this journey.

I recall a weekend about two years ago, when we had a wedding planned for a Saturday afternoon, and during the week there was a death of another family. What none of us could have anticipated, God's sense of humor, was that the mother of the Bride and the daughter of the deceased were best friends, so that morning the mother of the Bride sat with her best friend and consoled her at her loss, and that afternoon the daughter of the deceased sat beside the Mother of the Bride proudly watching the daughter they had raised together walk up the aisle.

There was a man who was very angry at life. He used to throw things and swear, lose his temper and spit on people. One day a friend sat down with him and said “What's wrong with you hat you do this?” He responded that he acted out this way at Church, because they Church preaches forgiveness, so no matter what he did, people had to forgive him. His friend told a different story, that when he had been very young his mother had died, and the whole church took responsibility to love and care and act as mother for a mother-less child. Rather than a place that had to forgive, this was a people who demonstrated love and commitment and faith.

The question is not, is there brokenness in the world. There is. The question is whether we bind our anxiety to shiny objects filled with empty calories that entertain us to death, or whether we see these as faith stories, examples of God in our midst and we change.

Realize, it is not enough, simply to be baptized, to have once long ago claimed a relationship of faith. The parable of the Wedding Garment is that the King invited everyone, good and bad. When the King entered the Banquet Hall, the ing saw one who had not prepared for a Wedding Feast, but who had simply come for a free meal. Elsewhere, those who were caught recognized their wrong and prayed for the opportunity to change. This one did not, he could see nothing other than his own hunger and desire.

God's Law or Love: Yes! October 05, 2008

Exodus 20
Matthew 21:33-44
The former slaves of The Pharaoh of Egypt had cried out from oppression and GOD made them FREE!
These former slaves of Pharaoh had cried out in hunger to God, and received MANNA from Heaven.
These former slaves of Pharaoh had complained of thirst and received WATER from solid Rock.
Afraid of the strangers around them, complaining against one another, God had provided them leaders.
Now finally, the people come to pay the piper, to receive the LAW and know what the Lord commands.
As slaves of Egypt, Pharaoh had ordered they build Pyramids and Statues, the Great Sphinx, National Monuments against all Eternity that not even Napoleon and his armies, or Hitler and the Nazis could eliminate from the face of the earth.
In order that they live, Pharaoh had commanded they kill their own babies and they had done so.
In order to be fed, Pharaoh commanded they labor without straw to bind the mortar, still they worked.
What now would this LORD require of them, for having destroyed their oppressor, for feeding them?

The 10 Commandments are strange and awesome, both because of what is required, and what is permitted, as well as the underlying pre-suppositions of what is referred to as the LAW of MOSES.
Despite satirists over time suggesting there were three or four tablets, 12, or even 40 Commandments, there are but 10. Four explicitly defining relationship to God, and 6 of our relationship to one another.
2 Requirements, and 8 Prohibitions. All of which makes one pause to consider, which is easier to fulfill, a Law that requires YOU MUST, or YOU SHALL NOT?
You shall Honor your Parents means that ALWAYS, in everything continually, you MUST.
You shall NOT COVET allows that you can do anything, and everything, all that is required is that you not desire to possess, to fight over, to guard ownership, and by the process of naming we insert the opposite that we SHALL DO, Have Compassion, act in love and devotion.

We have by virtue of believing in A NEW TESTAMENT, with a NEW COVENANT, perpetuated an understanding that the LAW of EXODUS was somehow insurmountable, unable to be lived.
BUT what Jesus described was not ABANDONMENT of the Law as unattainable, but rather, that he would demonstrate how we could so live into the underlying presuppositions of GOD'S LOVE that the LAW becomes self-fulfilled. By our undying commitment, by our willingness to sacrifice for what we love, by our Communion we more than fulfill the Commandments.

Often, people have examined these LAW by LAW, one after another, as if we could somehow find the loophole, the way around all the rest. VITAL to our understanding of the Law, is accepting their UNITY, that all our human relations are built upon our relationship as Human Creatures to God.

The difficulty, is that the GOD OF EXODUS is not a “USER-FRIENDLY GOD”.
We have a tendency to believe that either LONG, Long Ago, before Noah, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the CREATOR OF THE WHOLE COSMOS of universes and therefore in this Post-Modern, Computerized, North American culture, GOD cannot be concerned with what you and I do, think, feel;
OR that there is NO God, that God is the best desire of Human hearts and human aspirations. That as an ethical and moral people we have projected our philosophical ideals to Create a God of our making. Both of these are impotent and unreal. The One Time Creator God is far too distant in time and space, unconcerned, TOO LARGE to have care and passion and compassion for us.
The God of our best ideals, ethics and mores, is TOO SMALL, utterly dependent upon the values and emotions and beliefs of this people today.
BOTH Assume, there is No God, so we live as if we were God. That God has no hands but our hands. Countering both, is the God of EXODUS, who was so close at hand and attentive as to hear the people's cries, and TO CARE, and to enter in.
The God of Exodus was so powerful, that the most powerful and affluent of all the Pharaohs of the Awesome Empire of Egypt was manipulated into confrontation with all his resources, and in the end, the Pharaoh and Egypt, and all their technology and riches and weapons of war, were laid desolate.

For the last several weeks, our National Attention has been focused on the Economy, most recently the CREDIT Crisis, before that UNEMPLOYMENT, before that the STOCK MARKET, before that the HOUSING MARKET, before that GAS PRICES; and we have discovered the implications of our fears and our economy upon the whole world.
In response our leadership created a BILL, which was VOTED, ADOPTED and SIGNED into LAW, granting Powers and Authorities, Tax Breaks and the Ability to Tax the General Population in order to guarantee and protect our limited resources.
One Law, that gives authority for those trusted to use $850 Billion.
A Law to protect and save our investment for the protection and control of our limited resources.

In a WORLD OF POLYTHEISTIC IMAGINATION, God's Law requires we have faith in God alone.
The Bible assumes that Nations will put trust in Presidents and Governments in our ability to create Laws.
The Bible assumes humanity will desire to put faith in The ECONOMY.
Humanity will believe in our own power to wage WAR.
We will devote lifetimes, slaving to own and recreate a piece of Land, this is the reason behind a MORTGAGE that in Latin refers to until death.
For LOVE, for LUST, for PLEASURE for ETERNAL REMEMBRANCE, for PROSPERITY, for REDEMPTION, for PEACE, for CHILDREN what would we do? The 1st COMMANDMENT undercuts all else, that we place our trust, NOT in Washington, Not in Wall Street, not in POLITICS, not in the ECONOMY, not in WAR, not in EDUCATION, but that we place our faith and trust in the limitless generosity of God.
This is a God who does not allow us to use the resources of the earth to make statues or monuments or tombs against eternity, to show our devotion.
This is a God who Not only does not ask us to SWEAR DYING ALLEGIANCE, but who does not allow us to swear, by heaven, or by the name of God.
This is a God who demonstrating the sufficiency of Life, that we do not need to fear or be anxious, entreats us to regularly stop working to SABBATH, to reflect on life in all its fullness.

Repeatedly this week, in Board Rooms, in the Newspaper, in the Political Debates, INSTITUTIONS and AUTHORITIES were asked to name ethics and values, to define marriage, to define the rights and relationship between two who live a committed partnership, to describe what are the legal responsibilities we have for persons in our care and whether a person has the right to refuse treatment, to refuse what authorities determine to be best in order to live out their days and die as they choose, to define the responsibilities of a wife, a mother, a husband a father.
IF we begin with the belief that GOD and GOD alone is GOD, and that all our relationships evolve from the generosity of God. We need a few basic Commands to live by, and the number of BILLS needing to be passed to be LAWS, the rush to save to save the Economy, or to fight a War, or our political battles over Marriage, over defining human relationships will be few.

If instead, we begin, in our fears and our desire to possess to own, to be GOD, then we fail to understand the garden of life in which we live. We fail to see the winepress and the tower for what they can do, and instead guard and covet, even killing the Son of God, when our authority is challenged.

DELEGATING TRUST September 28, 2008

Exodus 18: 13-27
Matthew 21:23-32
Ordinarily, we follow the Lectionary, a three year week by week schedule of readings, to encourage reading the diversity of the Bible, and that every Church of every denomination would converse with the same passages, and hopefully one another. BUT, these are not ordinary times.

Following the Lectionary, after the Crossing of the Red Sea and Manna from Heaven, prior to receiving the 10 Commandments, we would ordinarily read of the peoples' grumbling and complaining leading to Moses naming that place on the journey Massah / Grumbling and Meribah / Complaining. I am uncertain why the Religious Authorities suspect we need to read about the people grumbling and complaining, every year, twice each year? So I looked at the passages between this and the next, and discerned these three which we never are given to preach, the justification being that these deal with the specific circumstances of that specific people in time. This is the differentiation that when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL” the minister is preaching; when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THY NEIGHBOR'S CHICKENS” the pastor is medling.

The three passages between The Grumbling and Complaining of Massah and Meribah and Moses receiving the 10 Commandments, are:
That the wandering tribe of escaped Hebrew slaves were attacked by the Canaanite tribe of the Amalekites, and Joshua went into battle against Amalek. While Moses stood on the hill watching them, whenever Moses raised his hands to appeal to God, Joshua would win, and whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek would win. So Aaron and Hur, held Moses hands up for the whole day until Joshua and the Lord had saved the people.

Recall that when Moses saw the burning bush, he had been keeping the sheep of his Father-in-Law Jethro, a priest of the Midianites. When Moses went back down to Egypt, and led the people out away from Pharaoh, Moses had left his wife Zipporah and their two sons Gershom (we were alien in an alien land) and Eliezer (my father's God saves us) with Jethro upon the mountain. Now Jethro brings the family to Moses. As Moses recounts to Jethro what took place, how God had saved them at the Red Sea, Jethro led Moses in making an offering and thanking God.

The following morning, Jethro noted that Moses was both leading the people, judging between the people on every complaint, and appealing to God for guidance of this people. This is probably the first event in human history of a leader being challenged about burn-out, and needing to be taught to delegate.

These are passages about TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE; and we are in a time in human history where TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE are lacking. These are not simply matters that we can choose, I am going to trust / or I am not. CONFIDENCE must be lived into and developed day after day, from isolated grand occasions and repeated small events, through increasingly greater delegations of commitment, as well as retracing our steps, asking for forgiveness and looking for help when we struggle.

This week our Nation's leaders explained that we are in a fiscal crisis. If something bold and dramatic is not done, the wheels of our Nation's economy will grind to a halt; and that very lack of inertia, that lack of momentum would require even greater resources than doing something now. Both sides had been quick to blame the other, both have been sobered by fears of impending doom, but the underlying issue, the underlying issue, is one of TRUST, Consumer CONFIDENCE, questioning how to cultivate a willingness to follow and to risk.

Israel had been a rag-tag mob of grumblers and complainers, former slaves, who knew only to do what they were told or be beaten, they knew not how to TRUST or to believe. What was dramatized for Moses and the people, was that when Moses appealed to God they were saved. Literally, over and over throughout the day, when he lifted his hands in prayer, they were victorious. Yet, whenever he tired or was distracted, when his hands and his Confidence faltered, they were beaten.

There are times when daily prayer, the grace before a meal, or sleep, seems rote and ritual, but these are the simple foundations of trust and faith. We are extremely fortunate as a congregation to celebrate a number of weddings and baptisms. One of the elements we include in weddings is a daily reminder to pray for each other. To awake in the morning and realize how blessed we are to have been given each other. In the middle of the day, to stop from our busy-ness, to name the blessing of challenge and life lived for those whom we love. In the evening, not to ignore each other taking life for granted, but to talk together and inquire about changes, because we do not have the ability to read one another's minds, but the responsibility to ask what is upon their hearts as they grow and change through life. And before the end, before we lay down the last time, to thank God for having given us the blessing of one another to share life.

Not only in perpetual acts of faith, but when especially blessed, to stop and name our Trust in God. Jethro returns with Moses' family. Jethro hears the wonder of all that has taken place. And Jethro models for Moses and all Israel the human need to Thank God, to make an Offering. A decade ago, at a family gathering, their three year old wandered down to the water and out on the docks. Suddenly the family festivities were interrupted by the barking of their dog, and when they investigated they found the child had fallen in the lake and the dog was pulling him to shore wet, surprised but safe and sound. The dog received a special treat, and they made a special offering, saying they were so thankful their grandchild was alive.

So often, we are caught up in wedding receptions and family birthdays at who is sitting next to whom, whether they have the right meal, whether the fireworks will be inspiring, that we forget the reason for the reception, for the feast, for the gifts, all began with this simple act of Jethro teaching Moses to make an Offering to God in thanksgiving for their blessings.

There are those who are waiting for me to dance around Jethro's instruction to Moses of the need to delegate. Years ago, our congregation was extremely divided because of a failed co-pastorate. It did not seem to matter, what the issue was, whether turning the Sanctuary, replacing the roofs, problems with the Nursery School, or the Organ, friend had been turned against friend into differing camps. So the new pastor exercised authority, bringing all decision-making, all power and responsibility back to the pastor. We used to have what we described as ALL COMMITTEE night, which meant that all the Committes met simultaneously and the pastor literally ran from one to another, with problems or ideas surfacing just as soon as you left, until the pastor was set to have a nervous breakdown. We separated committees to meet at different times on different days, and gradually delegated Christian Education Committee to the Christian Educator, Finance to the Business Administrator, etc. But time has passed again, we as the Church have grown and changed to where it appears we may need an Associate Pastor. LET ME BE CLEAR, THIS IS NOT CONSIDERATION OF A CO-PASTOR, but rather a delegation of authority, of trust and confidence, that just as in Israel they gathered in small groups, in 10s and 50s and hundreds and thousands, so we may need to have those who work especiallly with youth fellowships, with mission.

If we were to do so, we need to be clear of the trust and confidence we share. These are difficult financial times, when everyone is a little uncertain about the future, and this has specific financial consequences. We can be thankful that the Finance Committee and Session have nurtured the endowments of the Church, to allow us the opportunity to consider this even in times of economic unrest. We need to talk together, to share concerns and ideas and hopes and dreams, especially including those who will be most effected.

One of the questions we must ask ourselves in this, and continually address in all we do, is the question of our Motivation, of our Authority. The question of the Temple Authorities to Jesus, and his reply to them, questioning where the Authority of John the Baptist came. Do we consider these options because of our own desires, out of concern for the community, are they motivated by evil, or by God? We must function according to sound business practices, but we are not simply a business, we are “The Church in this time and place”, so we must question whether the things we take on and those we delegate, the wars we fight and the offerings we make, are done in response to God, as an offering and prayer, a sacrificial commitment of who we are, or out of a lack of trust, a lack of confidence and fear?

Often, especially within the Church, we celebrate commitments, but the demonstration of our faith comes when our confidences have been challenged, our trusts and convictions taken out from under us. Then, can we be thankful, can we trust? Belief is not so much a statement of Sunday morning, but the daily struggles to raise our hands to volunteer when you have been wrong before, and the fears in the dark of night.