"Savoring Redemption" September 15, 2013

Jeremiah 4:23-28 Luke 14: 34 – 15: 12 Last Sunday, Rally Day, our worship of God was accompanied by a marvelous new Organist; the anthem of the Choir was conducted by an incredible new Director, a daughter of the congregation demonstrated her maturity of voice and character by singing a piece from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, and immediately after worship at the encouragement of our Session we as The Church embraced an issue which has been divisive and lacking for over 50 years, and we boldly acted to begin a search for additional leadership. Yet in all these things, we responded like the person who endured surgery and chemo therapy and radiation. We were incredulous at announcements of being healthy, we await the dropping of the shoe, the falling of the ax. People of the 21st Century believe there is always going to be a calamity, we await the next catastrophe holding our breath. Had there not been flooding in Colorado and fires in New Jersey, I do not know what we would have done. Being Christian is not accomplishing miracles and waiting for punishment. Believing in God is not looking for blasphemy, judgment, and devastation. Believing in God, being Christian is identifying that we were lost, we do experience tragedy BUT ALSO we have hope! We believe in unmerited, unwarranted GRACE. We have read the parables of Luke 15 so often, that we hear of the one lost sheep, and we skip over the 99 who are safe, to search for the lost coin, because that will lead to the Prodigal Son who comes home and the Elder Brother who did not know he too was lost, because that will lead to the rich young man, and eventually to the Crucifixion. What I would tell you this morning, is that the purpose of the parable of the Lost Sheep is not to lead to finding Lost Money, building to the Lost Son, but just the reverse. The last several weeks we have listened as Jesus described the Great Wedding Feast that God has provided and we, ALL Humanity claimed to be too busy to celebrate. We started a new business, we purchased a new home, we started a new project, we fell in love, we purchased new golf clubs, so could not be bothered with something so banal as faith in God, I mean faith in God has been around since Moses and the 10 Commandments, since Abraham wandered the desert. Why would we stop what we are doing to celebrate faith, to celebrate what we believe? Then we heard challenge and logical questioning of Who among us would not stop before taking out a mortgage to question if we could ever repay it? Who would enter a war without trying diplomacy, without having an exit strategy, without considering the End game? Yet, as logical and reasoned as those questions, if we stay with the Biblical text, if we listen to Jesus, the conclusion to be drawn is WE are the ones who enter into wars without a plan for peace or forgiveness. We are seduced by building and assessed values without consideration of the cost and true worth to us. We are the ones who deny our own place at God's Table, and are shocked and embarrassed. The key to understanding faith, to understanding all these parables from Luke, to being Christian is two things: FIRST, every time the lost is found, Jesus describes a CELEBRATION of REDEMPTION. The Shepherd comes home with the sheep on his shoulders and throws a party. The woman who turned her house upside down searching, and lit every lamp, when she finds the lost coin, invites all her neighbors to rejoice with her for the lost is found. The Father who welcomes home the younger son, who had wished his father dead, not only celebrates his redemption, the father seeks out the father's elder son to share the celebration. Redemption is costly and painful. Redemption requires that we not move on to the next, searching and waiting for what next, but that we go back to claim and reclaim what was lost. Recently, I spoke with a man who had fought in Vietnam, who when he came back was spit upon and hit and shamed for having fought for his Country. The indignation and pain were still as fresh as the day his plane landed and he took off his uniform, because the soldier had never really come home. Twenty-five years ago, many who were here knew a co-pastorate was a mistake, but we allowed it to happen. When the dust cleared and the Interim was here, we discovered that twenty years before, horrible abuses had been allowed to happen and we had just moved on without prosecuting, without redemption, without acknowledgment, so during that Interim we as a church had to go back and reclaim what we lost to memory. September 11th happened twelve years ago. That night, here in this Sanctuary our community gathered as we listened to this description from Jeremiah 4. Prophesied thousands of years before, Jeremiah described Ground Zero, where because of the impact and the airplane fuel there was no life, no birds, no bodies, no sound. If in Genesis, at the story of Creation, we voiced with God: “It was Good” then here as everything was attacked and destroyed, we want and need to say “It was Bad, It was Very Bad.” But if a dozen years later, we live our lives in fear, then the terrorists won. If we look on anyone with a turban, or dressing differently, as being a terrorist, then the terrorists won. If we fear the future, if we still act with the hostility that anyone who is not for us must be against us, then the terrorists won. We need a V-E Day or a V-J Day, the End to the Great Depression and Celebration of Recovery, celebration of the present and future hope! We as a congregation, undertook great debt and dismantling of what we had had, in order to create one of the finest instruments for worship in Central New York, so that this church can provide the community as patrons of music and the arts. We have growing Choirs, with wonderful personal abilities and leadership who allow us to laugh and sing together. We have children in the church, babies being brought to Jesus, and children bringing their parents, and youths who are mounting with wings like Eagles, who run and do not grow weary. We are beginning a search to be far more and far different than we have been before. We need to envision this time in our lives, we need to envision coming to Church as a Great Celebration. We need to Hope and to believe in GRACE, savoring REDEMPTION. SECOND, for we said that to understand these parables from Luke, to be CHRISTIAN required two things: Second is that seemingly cast off phrase at the end of Chapter 14. “Salt is Good, but if Salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor the dungheap, people throw it away.” Throughout all of these parables, “PEOPLE” has been synonymous with the world, society, those who do not believe. And “people” have thrown their faith in God, their faith in the Church, away. So how do we restore the taste to salt? As much as many of us today try to avoid Salt, at one point salt was used as a Fertilizer, and as a weed killer, Salt is used to melt the ice, to preserve food, to enhance taste... The Taste of Salt, Saltiness, Salt provides SAVOR... SAVIOR! Christian Faith is not just about accomplishments, or being members, or morality, or righteousness. Christian Faith comes back to the reality of The Savior. Christian Faith is acknowledgment that we cannot live life on our own. When given the choice: we will not show up at the banquet, we will wage wars without anticipating an end, without planning for Peace, without welcoming home the soldiers who fought for us, without recognizing the costs and values and intrinsic worth. Being Christian requires that the church be more than a Free Parking Lot and a Building for Community use. Being Christian requires that we claim to BE: The Church in this time and place. The recurrent phrase throughout the Bible is the reality that ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD! So when Salt has lost its saltness, when people (WE) have thrown away what we believe, and who we are, we still need to trust that All things are possible with God... God can use EVEN US. Without redemption, we are a people without hope, and we are far from Hopeless, we are a people of Grace, who have not received redemption because it was deserved but because we are loved by God.

"The Benefit You Provide" September 8, 2013

Jeremiah 18:1-11 Luke 14:25-33 Perhaps like me, you love old movies, especially the Silent Movies with scenes of car chases, or riding a horse to chase a train. But as fast as those chase scenes seemed to be, realize that the cars in those old movies had a top speed of 24 miles per hour, and while racehorses today are bred to run up to 50 miles per hour for a quarter mile, when the cowboys were chasing a runaway train, saddle horses could run a maximum of 20 mph. Today, life comes at us so fast. We are surrounded by so much information, instant communication, there are an average of 300 emails sent to every business every day (85% of those being SPAM), so many decisions, that we rarely have time, or take time to clarify our convictions, what we care about and are committed to, especially in faith. But that, is what faith is all about! What are you willing to live for and die for? Not simply a choice between fish and beef, between soda, beer or wine, but between whether we choose what seems easiest and least costly in the moment, or whether the decisions of our lives will Benefit Others? Last Sunday we read the first half of the 14th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, with multiple reference to Weddings and Wedding Feasts, yet the second half of the Chapter this morning pertains to Bearing your Cross, Family, Building Towers and Waging War. Throughout the week, I wondered about the relationship between Weddings and Wars, between Family and Faith, and why these had been juxtaposed. The Gospels are not simply a collection of Jesus' sayings, but the telling of a story, like a word from the Prophets, or a sermon, to convince us to live our lives in faith, bearing the cross. Saturday morning, I came into the Church and had a message from the night before, from a couple who identified they had been engaged for over a year and had gotten their license and decided this would be the day to be married. They had no plans, no limo, no reception, no DJ, no flowers, no photographer. Suddenly the gear dropped into place, the relationship between these passages is not between Weddings and Wars, between hating your family of birth and choosing instead a family of faith, but that as individuals, as believers, whether we have thought things through, whether we are absolutely convinced about and totally convicted by our decisions? The SECOND part of this is what BENEFIT DO WE PROVIDE? Is our role as the Community of Faith, as the Church in the world today, to provide services to whom ever pays the fee? If so we are not a religious non-profit, but a corporation in the wedding business just like the photographer or DJ. Do we have convictions about Engagement and Marriage, or have we succumbed that weddings are about the Guest List and Flowers and Reception? How convinced and convicted are we of our role as the Church, that we have the authority and resources in order that we can provide people Marrying that we are not simply officiating but blessing their relationship, making their union a communion? Jesus' counsel to those who listen, is when facing a major decision, to undertake a major project, to commit to an act of war, to confront family, or to choose to believe in God, FIRST we need to sit down and center ourselves, to consider Our Own role and function in the world. We are not simply judges making decisions, Technocrats deleting and replying to emails, we are human beings living life, and in particular we continue to choose to try to be Spiritual, to be Children of God, to act as we believe. So before any life decision, we need to pray that we would be used by God, as an instrument of God to be of benefit to others. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah struggles that the Nation has lost faith in God, has become a secular culture. Jeremiah was instructed to go to the Potter's Shed. Years ago, I worked for a potter cleaning their studio, loading and unloading the kilns, and on my own time enjoyed throwing on the Potter's Wheel. I tried, in preparation for this morning to have a Potter's Wheel brought to the Sanctuary, but among all the schools and local artists none were able to loan us a Kick wheel. They had motorized wheels, but for worship, that is like starting an engine on a Sailboat, besides there would be the droning sound of a motor to listen over. So I need you to imagine with me, that we have a Potter's wheel. The Bible simply describes that Jeremiah saw the spoiled pot cut off, set aside to be reworked again… But even more, when even good pieces of pottery are rushed to mature to quickly, they crack. When they become too brittle or too saturated, or in anyway bumped, broken, ruined, they are dumped into a can, like a trash bin filled with water, where over time everything breaks down to its natural form. When this mass of primordial matter is no longer clods of waste, it is put into plaster, covered and left, until it is needed and ready to be reworked. Even the bisque-fired broken pieces can be ground to form grist and absorbent grit for the mixture. Nothing is ever lost, nothing is unusable to the potter. When time comes, the clay is pulled from the lump, and kneaded like bread, worked by pressure and folding, until uniform and of the consistency desired by the potter. It is not possible in terms of physics to place a pot in the exact center of a wheel. Even if by engineering and calculus we could determine the exact center and perimeter. Instead, the potter sits down, taking the clay they have worked, the potter sets and roots the clay to the turntable. There is the plane of reality we see and know in daily life where the potter centers and opens the rooted clay, but with the potter's wheel, what moves the turntable platter is an unseen rod connected to a stone. The artist, sets the stone in motion and rotation with kicking clockwise, creating the speed of centrifugal force, then on the opposite side sets their hands. It is the friction of rubbing against the hands, that causes the clay to yield and conform to find its center. None of us can one day decide we suddenly want to be more centered. It is the friction of rubbing against, of being worked and of yielding that brings us to our center. Only after the potter and clay are centered, does the artist reach out their thumbs to divide and open the clay to form a vessel. If the clay is not consistent, or circumstances happen with the pressure of the potter's touch, the rotation of the wheel, even the smallest thing, the pot can collapse. The ancient Hebrew word for clay or earth is "adama"and the creature formed from out of the adama is then called adam. Similarly, a word for earthen matter is humus and we are humans, or literally the earthlings from out of the earth. It happened that when the couple came down to the Sanctuary, this Potter's house, they were a couple of maturity who had known one another since high school. They had carefully thought through and discussed their relationship, their commitments, their family and their faith. They had forthrightly decided that all the other stuff that has come to be the business of weddings was not essential. The decisions before the church this day are not rushed, have not been taken lightly. Over 50 years, we have time and again done what Presbyterians do, we have formed Committees and talked and studied. Every time, every time, we have come back stating that what we the church needs and wants is to have an Associate Pastor, in order that one could focus on some things and the other could focus upon others. But every time, we have backed away from our convictions, fearful of the cost, fearful of change. We have tried Christian educators and Certified Christian educators, Co-Pastors and Parish Associates. For the last three years, our Session have explored our mission, our core values, our priorities, our finances, and differentiated the responsibilities. A significant adaptation in this decision, is that as Pastor, I need to let go of some things. In a church, a pastor seemingly becomes a bit of a control-freak, because you care, because you are invested, but in communion we choose intentionally to serve one another to benefit all God's Creation. There are several different emphases in every worship service, one is that we have been part of the primordial mass throughout the week, being worked on by all the sludge and water of life. We make a choice to come to worship, we get up on Sunday morning. We arrive and visit with strangers and friends. We pray as we listen to the postlude trying to transition from our secular lives to our faith life. Then we stop and pour out the water from the pitcher recognizing we often cannot take in one more thing, we must lket go of what has been in order to continue to take in to grow. There is a reality, an imperfection we as potters have had to adapt to, that due to the cost of housing, due to changes in our culture and jobs, the number of children enrolled in our schools in this community has dropped by 15%. SO the purpose of this associate is not simply as Youth Pastor, or Christian Educator, but to continue to reach out in new and advancing technologies, to provide greater visitation and pastoral care as well. In essence that the church would benefit by growing in new ways.

"I Love to Tell the Story" September 01, 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Luke 14: 1-23 We were at a Wedding reception yesterday, and several different people introduced themselves saying “I used to go to church, but all they ever talked about was Attendance and Money, then there was a fight about music and we stopped going.” Let us challenge the most basic precepts of Christianity today: The purpose of faith is not Attendance, not Money, not Music, not even the perpetuation of Religion. The purpose of Faith is to love God, and loving God to change the world! As a pastor, a part of my job is simply to act as Cheerleader, not to judge whether we can give more or attend more, but to say “Well done, good and faithful servants of God!” This is Labor Day Weekend. Opportunity for us all to have one last day of summer before school begins and we return to routine. This is an opportunity for us to stop in sabbath to recall who we are and what we do, to remember our context. We have made the American Dream marrying, raising children to get a good education so as to get good jobs, so as to marry and raise their children until eventually at 65 or 70 we can retire and enjoy life as a permanent vacation. BUT WHEN did a vacation from reality become life's goal? When did our children change from aspiring to be Engineers, or Teachers, Captains of Industry, to dreaming of one day being retired? As the Old Testament Nation of Israel, the people were to remember that your most basic identity is “You were slaves and God rescued you.” God gave you the Covenant of the 10 Commandments, and your purpose your identity is to follow the Law, to live the Commandments, to love God with all your heart and soul and strength. As Christians, we are to remember that left to our own devices we get into trouble, we sin, so once, for all time, God became incarnate, took on human flesh and lived and died to make a difference in our lives. God did not become human, did not suffer and die on the cross just so we would have a religion to worship on Sundays! God changed reality, God took on human flesh and the immortal became vulnerable, became human, mortal and died for us, in order to rescue those who were in misery, the child prostitutes, the drug addicts, the untouchables in every society. When we forget that salvation, that rescue of the Lost, we make the Church into a Fraternity a club instead of the means to change the world. Advancement, Progress, is a wonderful thing, and more than any generation before us, we have witnessed in our lifetimes the radical advancement of technology. But often, too often, we become so entranced with our accomplishments, our ability to make ourselves safe and secure that we are blinded to the reality of the way things are, blinded to Creation, blind to the needs of others, the vulnerable, those who live in misery. The last couple years for vacation we have gone out to Cape Cod, to step away from our routine, lie on the beach and read and listen to the rhythm of the ocean, to sea whales and seals and sharks, to build castles and rest. We discovered marvelous beaches, National Parks, virtually deserted, with pristine endless sand. One of the beaches, has a natural inlet caused by the rising of the tide, to create a channel and sand bar just across on the other side. Families seem to prefer this beach because they can spread out their blankets and wade in the channel which is a little warmer than the ocean, there are virtually no waves, and you can enjoy the salt water, enjoy the sand, without getting knocked over and turned upside down by waves, getting sand in your suit and salt in your throat. But as the tide recesses, the water in the channel disappears and the shoals are revealed, the stinky, smelly silt at the bottom of this basin. This was the indictment of God through Jeremiah. Because the people wanted to settle in a place without worry, wanted to live in cities, without concern whether there was enough pure clean water, they built for themselves cisterns to catch and hold rains, brooks and streams. Generations later, much like we and our children, the children of Israel had come to know only that water came out of a faucet, from a pump, from the reservoir. Their minds could not fathom that the rains and snows through every year provide the water to replenish the reservoir we drink. But for the last many decades the Nation has been at war. Concentrating all efforts on war and survival, the infrastructure of the cisterns had cracked. Their technology had let them down, and being dependent for survival upon a broken infrastructure, their faith in themselves rather than God, like their water, had gone down the drain. Incredulous, the Lord indicts the Nation, “God saved you from the Pharaohs, those who called themselves gods of Egypt and had made you slaves. The Lord God saved you from the Canaanites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and all those who worshiped and were led by false gods and idols. God gave the Nation a land of freedom, with blessings. YET, not only have you forgotten God, you wasted and destroyed the blessings that were here! Never before in the history of humanity, never in the history of the world has there been a people who rejected God to worship themselves as their own gods. There have been people who had no faith, no God, who found God. There have been people who worshipped idols who found God. But this is a people who have thrown away and polluted the blessings they were given, the freedom and identity they had been given by God Almighty, in order to have cisterns to control water when they wanted, and then allowed the cisterns to fall into disrepair. The problem was that they failed to tell their stories of faith, to pass these to a new generation. Let's try something this morning. In Harry Potter, what are the names of Harry's Best Friends. And of he who shall not be named? But what is it that was written on the wall in the book of Daniel? We know our culture's stories, we know about vampires and werewolves, but are unfamiliar with the symbols of faith. But such is the complaint of God before all Creation. Reading the Gospels, we can look for the standard set-ups. Whenever someone is wronged, or oppressed, we know Jesus is going to try to help them, that is who Jesus is. When there is a Wedding we know that the real Bridegroom is Jesus. Whenever there is a Feast, we know this is going to be related back to Communion. When my brothers and I were little, we watched reruns on television. We got to the point that we knew every time Lassie and Timmy found a well, Timmy would fall in; when The Lone Ranger came on, we knew every time Tonto went to town he was going to get beat up. We would chant at the television, “Don't Go to Town Tonto!” SO when on the Sabbath Day, Jesus goes to a Feast at the home of a Most Respected Leader among the Pharisees, we know there is going to trouble. Even more, Luke tells us, they were watching him! CS Lewis was a great Theologian and story-teller of a generation ago. Lewis claimed to believe that God was not a terrible Judge of who goes to Heaven and who goes to hell, but rather that each of us, in choosing to act I faith, choosing to participate decide for ourselves if we want to be with God in heaven or not. “Dropsy” was a medical term of the day, today we would describe this as “edema”. The man's heart and kidneys are retaining fluid, making it hard to breathe, giving him high blood pressure and he needs a diuretic. In those days, anyone who was in any way lesser, was put down as having sinned and therefore shunned as a lower caste. Rather than rejecting this man, or belittling him as sinful, Jesus does asks the crowd what we expect Jesus to do? And there is silence! Jesus asks whether you would have concern for your business or your pet when they are in danger on the Sabbath, and again when there was silence, Jesus heals the man. According to Luke, never again was Jesus invited to the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath,... indeed the next time Jesus shares a meal it is with a Tax Collector, and then at the Last Supper. Like at our own parties, when there is a pregnant pause, a total lull in the conversation, someone can be counted on to say : “Hey, How about those Cubs!” In this case, a man fills the void by saying “Blessed is he who shall eat Bread in the Kingdom of God!” Which Jesus takes as a cue to share a Parable about a Wedding Feast, where the Save the Date Cards had been mailed out and received. But come the time of the wedding, all of those with something else that they could be doing, were doing it. So the Wedding Banquet, the Feast in the Kingdom of God is for the poor and the homeless and all who are in need. As a pastor who officiates at a lot of wedding, there are a great many Wedding stories, one of my favorites comes from about a decade ago. A family were celebrating their daughter's wedding with all the usual and customary anxiety. When two days before the wedding the Mother of the Bride's best friend experienced the death of her husband. You might imagine, both their families going into chaos. Should we postpone the wedding? Should the best friend of the Bride's Mother who is in mourning, not attend or wear black? As the Church, do we refuse having a Funeral on a Saturday, because we are scheduled to celebrate a Wedding that afternoon? As it turned out, the two each recognized the needs of the other. At 10am we had a Memorial, and seated beside the grieving widow was her best friend also in tears. At 3pm that same day, we had a Wedding, and as the father escorted his daughter up the aisle, the Bride's Mom stood in the front pew accompanied by her best friend beaming with pride. In the ancient world, much like our own, HONOR and GLORY, ACCOMPLISHMENTS & PRIDE were among the highest of people's goals. This morning's Scriptures invite us to consider that if we are loved by God, everything else will take care of itself, and we can humbly enjoy our role in life.