August 26, 2012, "Puppies and Kittens"

Joshua 24: 1-2, 14-18 John 6:56-69 It has been said that some people are Cat People and some are Dog People, and of course some are allergic. And Yes, Dick and Kim, some in our midst are Turtle People as well. While there is acceptance that over time people grow to look like their pets, part of what I hear in the Book of Joshua this morning is that more than looks, how we live and what we believe, how we are hard-wired, how we act and react is also as Dog & Cat people. For, Puppies constantly embrace all of life. They may have just eaten, their bellies full, but if you place a fresh bowl of food before them they will devour what you give. If their master leaves the room and returns, it is as if they have not seen you in a month, beginning at their tails they begin to wag until their whole body is caught up in convulsions of excitement. Dogs cannot simply bark, they let loose in an effervescent stream of conversation. Cats are different. Cats are more aloof. Cats are finicky. Cats must choose if they want to deign to acknowledge your presence, in this reality, if they want to be hungry, and with a single sound can cry for you, or with a humming confirm to you that their lives are complete and satisfied. Joshua is a hungry puppy! As Moses' successor, Joshua has followed his master, since they lived as slaves. Joshua has followed God across the Red Sea, through the wilderness, over the Jordan into this land and through many battles. Now as they prepare to recognize and affirm who they are, Joshua pledges undying loyalty to God, not only for himself, but for all his family. Joshua invites all those who listen to commit themselves to God as well. The People, however are Cool Cats, unconvinced why they need to make any decision. This land seems good, but in Egypt the Pharaohs established cities for everlasting permanence. What traditions shall we follow, shall we have any traditions? We have constantly been at war, terrorists hate us, they have made us live in fear. How do we not hate them? What would it take for us to never fear again? Shall we accept what they believe? Or should we invade them and kill them before they have a chance to kill us? I am not certain my fat fingers can work that tiny key pad, and my thumbs cannot double and triple click to spell accurately, but those smart phones are so sleek and can do so many different things. Or should I wait for the next generation before upgrading? Nostalgia also creates idols for us. Do you recall watching Leave It To Beaver, where Father always knew best, could answer any question and provide for everyone's needs; the children always washed and brushed their hair before having dinner together in the dining room on ironed white table cloths; and no matter how long the day, the Moms always looked perfect, with not a hair out of place, with starched linen dresses and immaculate kitchens? We idolize what was never reality. In truth, the choosing is not what is difficult, the difficulty is in choosing what we will be committed to for the rest of our lives. Every season there are new shows. Every year, there are new cars, new phones, new fashions, what we thought was innovative and exciting, quickly becomes what we had done. Yesterday we celebrated a wedding. This congregation is an exception to the norms of churches. Where most congregations celebrate Memorials for those who died 40 and 50 times a year, and can hardly recall the last church wedding or baptism, we are blessed with annually having less than 10 of our members die, and yet we celebrate 25 and 30 Weddings and 12-20 Baptisms. Since the 1960s a new tradition has arisen of lighting a Unity Candle. Ironically, although the program called for the lighting, and the mothers had practiced their coming up onto the Chancel to light their candles, the couple had practiced their lighting into one eternal flame...when the decorations arrived there was no candle, and we as the Church let the couple borrow ours. As important of a tradition as this has become to people, I wonder how many know where their Unity Candle is, and relight the candle throughout their marriage? Choosing to light the candle the first time is not difficult. Relighting when the wick has burned down, when the candle has gotten old losing its elasticity and shine, and the tapers are just stubs, that is far more difficult. The ancient world had different Gods for every mountain, every woods, every experience of life. So you sacrificed to the God of Love, or to the God of War, and in times of drought to the fertility Gods, in times with impending hurricanes they prayed for security and safety against the storm: Isaac. What Joshua called the people to choose, was to not be finicky and fickle, but with passion and fidelity to adhere to the first Commandment, to believe in one God throughout all life and no other. This choice changes everything about what we believe. Instead of focusing on security, or passion, or the growth of the crops, we name and claim belief in a God who is present and caring in all of life. The same God who heard us in our suffering, stands over us when we consider attacking others. The same God who grieved with us at the death of a child, is with us when we commit another in Baptism, having heard the waters poured out at the beginning and end of life. The same God who watched over us when our parents committed their faith in our Baptism, hears our Confirmation of what we believe, and is the same God who comforts and strengthens us when we bury the remains of our parents. Culture shifted with the Greeks and Romans. Instead of a choice between acceptance of the idols of the surrounding culture, or clinging to beliefs from Egypt and Mesopotamia, versus a relationship with God in all life; the Greeks and Romans each believed in a duality to life. There is the Philosophical world, the mystical, Spiritual Reality, and there is this life. For the Romans and Greeks, the point was either in living so morally in this life as to attain the life to come, or to divest one's self of this world and live philosophically, spiritually in a different reality. The point of John's Gospel is that Reality has Shifted, Almighty God has entered into this reality and is INCARNATE in Jesus of Nazareth. As Jesus worked miracles, as he preached and taught that his flesh was to be our bread, his blood was to be our drink, what he pushed people to claim was our choosing to receive, our choosing to accept him into our lives. As difficult as this commitment is for most of us, he asked for something far more difficult, that we accept that the one who is our Lord and our Savior died, was killed and as a corpse buried in stone, but nothing could separate us from the love of God. Instead of there being two realities, a Philosophical world and a Metaphysical; a Spiritual plane and a Human one; that life is permeable and not only must we choose to commit to a God who will be with us through all of life's stages, but this God actually will be with us demonstrating vulnerability, humility and ever deepening commitment. Ironically, the Gospel of John never once uses the noun: To have Faith. But more often even than all the Letters of Paul taken together, over 80 times, John uses the VERB “to Believe”. Belief is active, belief motivates our actions. Our Believing changes in every circumstance so believing is not a thing. Years ago, our church had a sign which was set in the days of horse and buggy, low to the ground and facing the street. Not only had that signed eroded, but times had changed, and car/bicycle traffic at 30 to 50 mph on Genesee Street never noticed there even was a sign. So we followed the rules and installed a sign with all the appropriate permissions. But no one, not in the government or in the local church leadership considered how bright a sign with florescent lights inside might be. There was no misleading, it simply was not something any of us considered when we committed to change. With the flick of a switch, we became the Kmart Church with the Blue-light special. We tried to adapt, we tried taping the bulbs with electrical tape to diminish their illumination, but eventually we found ways to use the sign foundation and brickwork, but replacing the signboard with something more elegant. A decade later, that sign of redwood has rotted, and we have committed to replacing it with a sign identical to what was but made of new materials for a new time.

August 19, 2012, "Subjecting"

To whom and what will you commit your life to be subject to? As Americans, part of our identity is that we are not the subjects of any King or Queen or Royalty. Simply to identify what we are not was grounds for Revolution, but does not identify what we do stand for. What is important to us? Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which we adapted this morning as our Call to Worship, identifies that “out of reverence for Christ, we subject ourselves to one another.” Grammatically, if we make ourselves the Subject of our own universe, we objectify everything else, and all the world, all the universe, becomes a projection existing in response to us... But if we subject ourselves to one another, as we live in relationship to others, our purpose in existence becomes doing whatever is necessary to fulfill them, in faith to bring them to God. If we subject ourselves to no one, we commit blasphemy because we make ourselves out to be God. In our minds we imagine ourselves as all powerful and all knowing; and yet, not the God of the Scripture, because that God, God Almighty intentionally chose to be incarnate, to be born, be real and die, to be subject to the needs of the world. Our Gospel passage from John this day begins with two crucial subjects. Faith is a life and death proposition, and Jesus Christ is the life of the world. This life is not of our manufacture, but is a gift, Christ's gift, and our life, our words, our actions, our relationships, what we do with our time, matters. Increasingly, the weddings I officiate, are not couples 18 and 19 years of age. One of the questions I routinely ask of every couple is “Why get married?” A recent wedding was for a 70 and 80 year old, who had each been married previously, and I think I left them speechless. I recall describing that you are about to complicate your life, your children's estates, you will love Social Security benefits by being married, this is not a casual decision, “Why marry?” It's a wonderfully open-ended question, which could lead to describing why marry this person, or why you believe you are ready to be married, sometimes one in the couple has a sense of humor and describes making an honest person of the other. But the only response that matters is: “I have thought this through, and I cannot live without this other, I want to live as part of their life.” Conviction about what matters, committing to what/who matters to us, these are faith statements.Yesterday, someone asked me why we should offer a Children's Choir? Whether it is for entertainment, for child care, because adults like having one, or because we want to teach music theory and dynamics? To me, the answer is the same as the reason we invested our time and energies and resources in rebuilding this church, in doing mission, in anything we do as the church, or in life... Because after consideration and thinking through, we want to meet people where they are, providing them this opportunity to know God in Jesus Christ. What we need to provide may be different for every individual, and in future times just as in the past the how may change, but the commitment to live in response to the needs of others, sharing who we know God to truly be, does not change. Tragically, the authors of the Lectionary, because of concern for time in worship, and focusing upon what they have identified as most important, have truncated our lessons for this day. If we were to read all of the first three chapters of I Kings, we would come to understand a fuller story of Solomon. That as an adult, Solomon's father King David died. Solomon was not the first born, but the very youngest, and David's family life was like a soap-opera. Solomon, the firstborn of Bathsheba and David after they married, is ordained King of Israel to fulfill the promise of God, that instead of David building a house for God, God would create a monarchy, a lineage and House of David. Solomon, like his father David begins a life of trying to respond to everything, making everyone happy and satisfying no one. He has built a large palace for his pleasure. He has taken a wife from the Princesses of Egypt. He has made a practice of touring ancient places to make sacrifices, because it seems what you do when visiting these places. By editing out all of this, Solomon steps onto the stage of Scripture, as a fully defined individual who already knows how to be wise. Like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, Solomon already has wisdom, but only lacks a diploma, only lacks God's recognition. Instead, knowing what a very human man Solomon was as King, what the Scripture emphasizes, is that honoring the covenant with David, God chose to reveal God-self to him. God is the initiator in this relationship, and given the option of what he will be commit to needing in life, rather than choosing power, wealth, sex, elimination of one's enemies, Solomon chose wisdom. But that order of sequence is crucially important. Solomon was not the initiator of relationship with God. Solomon was not fully developed, with wisdom of his own learning and reasoning. Solomon was a very human man, whom God chose. God intentionally chose to reveal to Solomon God's reality, and in response Solomon chose to be subject to God, for which he was given all the blessings a king could ever desire. The whole of the 6th Chapter of John is too big to grasp as a unit, so the authors have given us pieces over 5 weeks. First with feeding the 5000 bread and not a particle is lost. Then with explaining that Jesus is the true Bread of Heaven and access to the Father. The difficulty with listening to this morning's passage without all the rest, is that it appears as though Jesus was recommending Cannibalism, to eat my flesh and drink my blood. The emphasis here is not on the flesh or blood, but on Jesus' saying it is MY Flesh and MY Blood, MY being and MY life-force that you need to take in. Martin Luther once described in a sermon to his congregation: “I wish I could get you to pray, the way my Dog goes after meat.” The point was not comparing the people of God to dogs, but that they would hunger for the word, they/we would ravenously consume their/our relationship with God. Many a great travesty took place in the Reformation. A great deal of good came as well, prior to the 1200s people recognized themselves as sinners and being sinful were not trusted to handle the Bible, the worship service was unintelligible to the people because it was chanted in Latin, there was a great deal of emphasis on magic and the buying and selling of indulgences as if buying our way into heaven. But the greatest travesty of the Reformation was that in the separation of the church, Catholic and Protestant, we divided our emphases. The Catholic Church claimed authority, and emphasized that access to God is through the Mass, through the consuming of Jesus Body and Blood. Where as the Protestant Church emphasized individual understanding, the teaching and affirming of what we choose to believe. The two together are true. In recent years, there has been a great resurgence of interest in all things spiritual. When we ask anyone, what spiritual is, they have a hard time defining it, more Bible, more Mission, the Spirit that seems lacking in W.European and N.American churches. The point is not to suddenly start doing the stuff, imitating mystical practices by reciting incantations and doing we do not understand, that again would be magic. The agony of the Protestant Church is that we placed such emphasis on cerebral understanding, that we thought we could figure out God. If we create a democratic system with a hierarchy like General Motors, if each individual follows the curriculum, we can all win, everyone can attain success. However, the point of faith in Jesus Christ was not prosperity, or even comfort with what we have and do not possess. The point of spiritual mysticism is not that you simply close your eyes and you are praying. Or that if you eat bread and drink wine and it makes you a better person. We close our eyes to focus, shutting out all distractions. Listening for God. When we break the bread, we do so aware of the brokenness in our lives and our agony at having caused this and at staying in that broken place. Would that we were not the FROZEN CHOSEN, but PASSIONATE PRAYERS, COMMITTED COMMITTEES, a people of God who come together not because it is that time of the week or month but because we are committed to God, committed to making a difference in the world, and we live our lives trying to do whatever is necessary to fulfill the other persons' needs. We emphasized last week together, that Jesus' use of the word Father is not exclusive, but explains the intimacy and love of God for humanity...this is our access to God, just as others come through the Law, or Enlightenment. But the point at which we do separate ourselves is in subjecting ourselves to God, doing whatever is needed, because God subjected God's-self, Holiness, Divinity, to be One with us.

August 12, 2012 "Necessary Replenishment"

I Kings 19:4-8 John 6: 35, 41-51 There are those among us, who describe belief in God the Father, the Creator of all things. They reference climbing mountains, where you cannot see from rock cairn to rock cairn because of the fog, where the sounds of traffic and human life are lost in God's open air sanctuary, and you can hear as far as the eye can see. All around are evidences of God's presence, the scurrying of ground squirrels, the leaping of a fox, the smell of the pines. We take a boat out into the ocean, in awe at the majesty of whales surfacing, even breaching up out of the water. We stand outdoors in the dark and watch the Perseid meteor showers, with a dozen shooting stars an hour and we are certain, there is a God. There are those among us who have come through great adversity, a car accident, a cancer, a war, and who know personally the meaning of the lyrics “God saved a wretch like me.” There are those for whom Jesus is their personal savior, and that life event was a catharsis from which they never expected to survive. Actually they would tell you they did not survive, a part of them died and they now live differently in response to their Savior. The irony is that as Christians, most of us fall into one of these groups or the other, yet we claim to believe in The Trinity. The third person of God is the Spirit which sustains us, who blows upon us in the ordinary times in between. The Spirit who brooded over and blew upon the face of the deep. The Spirit who blew upon the disciples creating the early church. The spirit who replenishes and nourishes us and gives us strength far beyond our own. The Spirit who is not known as the Giver of the Law and Commandments, or who suffered on the Cross for our sins, but is the spirit most us encounter in daily life. When we are exhausted and burned-out, when it seems as though every circle of our lives is dealing with the same negativity and there is no where to escape. When we can no longer get in our own way, when we can no longer control our lives, the spirit comes to feed and nourish us, giving us healing as simple as sleep and warm bread, cold clear water. Our Old Testament Reading this day is probably strange to most of us, because it falls in between two very well known and amazing stories of faith. The first comes after the time of King David and King Solomon, when the Nation of Israel was divided between Israel and Judah. Ahab was King of Israel and Jezebel was his bride. As Queen, Jezebel has been on a personal crusade to tear down every Sanctuary to God in Israel, replacing them with her stuff, her altars for sacrifice to the Idols of Baal. In a bold act of faith and defiance, the Prophet Elijah declares a contest, winner take all, between worship of Idols and worship of God; a contest between the Queen's 500 Priests versus Elijah. Like the Olympics everyone turns out on Mount Carmel. The 500 Priests of the idol Baal go first, and nothing happens. They sacrifice a bull, and nothing happens. All 500 priests in their finest robes and greatest ornamentation begin whipping and beating themselves to get the attention of Baal by their screams and suffering, and nothing happens. Then it is Elijah's turn. Elijah sacrifices the offering and places the pieces on the altar to God. Elijah digs a trench around the altar, then pours bucket after bucket of water over the top of the sacrifice to God. He pours so much water over the top, the ground beneath is saturated and the trench over-flowing. Then calmly and quietly, Elijah prays to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that all would know there is a God in Israel. Suddenly fire comes down from heaven consuming the offering and all the water. And having witnessed the power of God, the people believe. After which, Elijah has the 500 priests of Baal put to death. When Jezebel learns of what Elijah has done, she makes him an enemy of the State, by killing her priests Elijah has committed treason and must die. So Elijah runs from Mt. Carmel searching for the Cave in Mount Sinai the very cleft of rock where Moses witnessed God's glory pass. Elijah was desperate for some proof of God's existence, an earthquake, a fire, a flood, and all those things did happen, but God was not in any of them. Then God spoke to Elijah, in the still small voice, saying “What are you doing here Elijah?” which goes on to instruct all that Elijah and Elisha are to go ahead and do. In-between mountains is our passage this morning. It is unclear, whether Elijah is most scared of the Queen's threats against him, that he is a wanted man with a price on his head; or whether Elijah is frightened because when he commanded God to receive his offering, God did. The last two weeks we have become experts in every athletic competition... when the competitors leap from a 4” wide board completing a double backward summersault, we cry out “Stick-it” and ache when they stumble. When the volleyball players throw themselves in the sand to prevent the ball from touching ground, we feel it. But the story that rarely is told, is what happens after the event. What do you do after everything you have trained for throughout your life, what has consumed you for at least the last four years is done, and whether you are the best in the world, or you missed your opportunity, the goal is no longer there. What then? This passage actually has two parts. First describing what Elijah felt. He has gone down – south, away from Israel, into the wilderness. Everything about this passage speaks of isolation and depression, even the Broom Trees which ordinary grow in multiples as do Lilacs or Fruit trees, but this one stands alone. Elijah throws himself beneath the tree reminiscent of Jonah, when God did exactly what that prophet had expected. Elijah who called for the contest, who sacrificed the offering, who dug the trench, who poured water over the top, Elijah who called upon the name of God to receive the offering, suddenly is completely and totally passive. Depression is not weeping and wanting to do negative things, but the inability to get up, to follow through on any task, to be totally helpless. But it is at this point that the second half of the story comes, for the spirit of God does not leave Elijah. The spirit visits him, calling him to wake, eat, drink. Dealing with depression is not complex ideas and rational arguments, but necessary replenishments, knowing you are not alone. Not just once, but repeatedly going through the basic necessary replenishments. Life is not about monumental events! Life requires breathing. Swallowing. Eating, Drinking, Sleeping. This is why Jesus described himself as being the bread of life, one of the basic building blocks necessary for existence. Faith in God is not unavailable. Faith in God is as easy as eating bread, which in one form or another we have at every meal. There are few passages in all of Scripture which seem as exclusive as this. “No one comes to the Father, but by me.” However, no other faith describes God as personally and intimately as Father. Judaism describes coming to God through The Law. Islam by following the teachings. Buddhism by enlightenment. Only Christianity describes faith as intimately and personally as receiving Christ as nourishment for life, recognizing God as your parent who loves you. All any of us need in life is a little encouragement, a cup of cold water, a taste of fresh hot bread, to know that others care and support you. This is what the Yost Scholarship was intended to do. Never was it designed to pay for a full college education, but a gift to pay for books. In this morning's awards, the total amount is now expended, this scholarship was necessary replenishment to help those far from home to know others had gone before them and they are not alone.

August 5, 2012, "Satisfied, Satiated, Salvation"

Ephesians 4 Mark 6:24-35 There is a certain arrogance about preaching, that as humble or sincere or devout as the minister may be, we believe we can explain to you the Will of God better than the Prophets! We can interpret the mind of Christ better than he himself did! We can offer the words of Scripture in a way that will permit you to hear the mysteries of God in ways no one else in all human history has ever done. Faith and Life are not about some private knowledge of the preacher. There is also an arrogance about being a member, and having been an elder or deacon, having peaked behind the curtain of leadership, we think we are closer to holiness, we know about the inter-workings and struggles to make everyone happy, and therefore have some greater authority than others do. We have perpetuated a mistaken impression in the church... Annually when we ordain and install our Elders and deacons, 95% of the church rise up for the laying on of hands. The theological significance is that those who have gone before stand behind and support the current leadership, by placing our hands upon the shoulders of another we confer the spirit of God which rested upon us to the next. However, there has come to be an acceptance that the 95% have done it before, paid our dues, are safe from being asked and we now know better than to be the ones who get elected to responsibility. The wonder of the church is that the experiences of every occasion in the church and the people involved, are perpetually new. That really is the crux of everything in the church today. There was a time in European history, in which Church leaders believed we knew better, what the world needed, than the masses ever could. The worship service was recited in Latin over the people, because it was holy, because it was mystical. The people did not understand, but the point was not understanding, not to make the people happy. The point was Authority. We are now in a period of human history in which people have chosen for themselves what they want to have and want to believe. And I would readily admit as your pastor, that I have attempted to bend and stretch to make people happy and discovered that sometimes like Jonah beneath the withered plant, People do not want to be happy! What Jesus did was different. He showed the people other layers of understanding and meaning, in symbol and word and healing touch, Jesus allowed the people to meet him and be challenged to go deeper in their faith and experience. 5000 people had been fed with 5 loaves and 2 small fish, creating a superabundance left over. Having been fed the day before, the following morning the people came back and when they could not find him where he had been, they crossed over to the other side of the lake looking for him to satisfy their hunger. Jesus spoke to the people of Manna in the wilderness. He spoke to them of Bread of Eternal Life. He spoke to the people of how he himself was that sustenance. Like poetry, what Jesus described was not rational, not an equation to be reasoned and understood. Life is experiential. John Calvin was once asked to explain the mystery of Communion. He replied that he would rather experience truly forgiving and being forgiven, sharing with one another and through one another with God, than trying to explain how this occurred. The Enlightenment had been this great experiment, designed to reveal and explain all the hidden laws of the universe, that we might eventually know the actions and reactions of this machine called Life. Knowledge was equated with Power, believing that if we knew how to get bread every day, we could satisfy ourselves and be satisfied. Following the Enlightenment has come The Information Age, in which by technology we could be informed not only with knowledge, but informed about everything past and present throughout the world, informed socially about what other people are doing and what they are thinking. Our televisions and smart phones now give us information on 1000 different channels from around the world, while scrolling additional headlines, stock market changes, the weather and sports at the bottom of the screen. Our addiction to information is perpetually satiated with ever new devices, but being informed about so much, having our senses satiated with more than we can process, we have retreated into passivity. The problem is that we adopted the literal words of the Lord's Prayer, without comprehending Jesus' teaching the crowds in John 6. We have recited “Give us this day our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors...” believing we have the right to make demands of God, and knowing the hunger of daily wanting to be satisfied. What Jesus challenged the people was to believe in changing their lives, to believe in salvation where we are not focused upon our needs and wants, but on what we can do together. Ephesians describes that there are a variety of gifts, no one within the church possessing them all! Within the church we need one another. What I find amazing about this passage is that no one has “legitimate” ground to stand on. We have been in the Olympics throughout the last 10 days and for the next week, searching for the greatest in the world. According to Ephesians, even Jesus is described as while being the one who ascended to sit at the right hand of God...ascending means he had descended. And descended actually means not only to be among us as the incarnation, but even to the depths of humanity in hell. Paul describes himself, not as a great Apostle, he was not even one of the Disciples, but as a Prisoner for the Lord. How different our feelings of responsibility and accountability if we claim our identity as having been found guilty and serving as prisoners of the Lord who then are also Children of God. As opposed to claiming identity in the first place of being Christians, and more than Christians Presbyterians. We have not spoken mjuch of Salvation in recent decades. Like the 2nd Coming, like Evangelism's knocking on doors, Salvation has been among the words we tried to avoid. But we dare not, because the point is not meeting our needs, not satisfying our desires, or amassing an abundance that we can pass on to our inheritors. Salvation is about being changed to accept our reality, including the worst of it and also claiming God's presence in our lives to transform our nature, which there is no room for if we are attempting to satiate our desires.