January 25 2015 "Ordinary, Epiphany or Repentance"

Jonah 3: 1-5 Mark 1: 14-20 Last week following worship, someone asked Why these Sundays are identified as Ordinary Time? The European Reformation stripped away all identification from what the church had become, trying to Re-form as close to the Early Church of the Apostles as possible. Therefore every worship service was celebration of the Resurrection, and there were no Liturgical seasons. However, in those days no one had iPhones or wristwatches, wall clocks in home or business, to tell the time. Churches tolled the Bells in the Towers to call believers to prayer, these several times each day were called Ordinals. Thus, every day was Holy, every day a celebration of the Resurrection and every day was Ordinary. In America, following WWII, we began a Liturgical Renewal, in conversation with the Catholic Church, we identified two cycles following six seasons of Liturgy throughout the year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. Yet in recent years, scholars have identified that in the early Church, Epiphany and Pentecost were never seasons, but single day Festival Celebrations, so we have The Day of Epiphany following the 12th Night of Christmas, and The Day of Pentecost 50 Days after Easter, and the days following each are Ordinary Days. Recently, I moderated another church's Session, and at the end of the meeting the Clerk offered the prayer: “Lord, we have been around for 214 years, let us be around another.” This morning we celebrate having been the church in this place and time for 214 years, but the focus of the church is and has been upon what is our mission, where are the challenges. Not only in the Church, but in every person's life there are Epiphanies, moments out of time, where we realize God's presence in our lives, challenging, blessing, conferring new identities and relationships. You have known a person, when suddenly you realize you do not want to live your life without them. You plan for the wedding, inviting witnesses, when suddenly you kiss and are pronounced as married. I recall imagining it would be okay if now we were to have a baby, and suddenly we were pregnant, but while the months went by and we adapted to all the changes, we were not Mother and Father until that moment of birth, when suddenly nothing was ever the same. I recall smiling for four days straight. In his coming of age novel “Uh-Oh” Robert Fulghum describes a young man in the 1950s who found a job at a Dude Ranch in Northern California. During the day, he shoveled stalls and groomed horses, at night he was employed to watch the Front desk, for which he was paid $1 per hour, and all the food he could eat. However, at the end of his third week, he realized that every day Lunch and Dinner were Hot Dogs and Sauerkraut, and the cost of these meals was deducted from his pay. He was outraged, coming back from dinner he complained for 90 minutes straight. Finally the Night Watchman stopped him, saying “The problem is not the Owner, or the Ranch, or the Cook, the problem is you do not know a problem from an inconvenience. When your house burns down that is a problem. When you have a disease without a cure, that is a problem. Everything else in life is an inconvenience, life is full of inconveniences. The Night Watchman had been a survivor of three years at Auschwitz, where he prayed for just one meal like this, or Hot dogs and Sauerkraut, and now they had it twice a day. For me, while there were relationships and roles in the Church which always felt right, the Call to Ministry has come over and over again, every wedding, baptism, communion, confirmation and memorial have felt holy, as if a moment out of time. The Wedding where the Flowergirl was so inconsolable I took her in my arms for the remainder of the wedding. The Wedding where the relieved Bride saw my hand raised for the Blessing, and High-Fived. The Baptism, where we gave the baby to a Soldier going off to war. My Anniversary here, where after my carrying every infant, on that morning we gave every child to others in the Church, and not a single child cried. The weekend where we had planned a Wedding and a Baptism and both were cancelled because they were not going ahead As a Presbyterian there have been Meetings, where in the midst of debate and prayer, understandings changed, commitments and convictions became tangible. I remember one day, shortly after our first child was born, that it was my day off and my spouse was out, when a call came asking if I would come right over. There, in the home of this couple, they confessed that over night in postpartum depression their only daughter had taken her infant to her husband's golf course and drown the child. Having my own child in our arms as they discussed this, transformed the moment from simply loss and shame at what had happened in their family, to realizing the grandchild they would never again hold, and the daughter's pain at taking the life of her own child in this way. The point this morning is that often we take every day as being Ordinary, and witness these moments out of time as being holy, as being Epiphanies, and we return to living ordinary lives, rather than stopping to change direction, or even to laugh at ourselves. Routinely, when we come to worship, we put on our Sunday best, and we sit quietly in the pew, as Prayers and Scriptures are read over us, Anthems and Hymns are sung by others and we try to slip out as quietly as we entered. Every article on the Internet, every filmclip on U-Tube, every book in the library is different. Some are Cat Videos, some are not fit for public consumption, some are classics, some are jokes. The Book of Jonah is one of the World's Greatest Jokes. The book of Jonah begins “Now the Word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amattai.” In Hebrew, every name has meaning, and Amattai means “My Truth, My Security, Consistency.” The name Jonah is Noah written upside down. The point of the Joke, that would have been immediately apparent to anyone knowing the meaning of names, was that instead of the Prophet Jonah being equated with God, he is linked to His own Version of the Truth, his Consistency, which is what will be called into question. And when the water comes, instead of the man of God being spared and everyone drowning, he alone gets wet. The Word of the Lord comes to Jonah, Son of his own Truth, saying Get up and go up to Ninevah, which is the Capital City of the enemy Assyria, modern day Mosul in Iraq, located to the East. Jonah is offended that not only is this Israel's Enemy, this is an Unclean people. In order to understand the Joke, we have to pay attention to direction. Because instead of Going UP to the great city of Ninevah to the East, Jonah goes down from to the Shore at Joppa buying a ticket to go West to Tarshish. Going down to the Docks, he goes on-board and goes down into the hold of the Ship, where he lays down and goes deep into sleep. Jonah is a story of Escapism, a story of Depression, where he is constantly going deeper down, instead of going up, always trying to go in the opposite direction instead of going east to confront his enemy. When a great storm comes up, it is caused because God hurled a great wind over the waters. In Genesis, God's Creation out of Chaos began with the Spirit of God/The Wind brooding over the face of the waters of chaos. While self-serving, Jonah is Consistent and Truthful, so when asked the reason for the storm, he admits this is his problem. The Sailors throw him down into the sea, where he is swallowed by a ship and carried to the lowest place in all Creation. But there is the belly of the fish, Jonah has an Epiphany, where he prays to God asking to be saved. And yet, the problem of the whole story is: Was this only an Epiphany in the depths of his Ordinary Life of Consistency based on His Truth, or will Jonah take this as Opportunity to Repent, to Turn Around to God. Jonah goes ashore, and while among an unclean people, he is dripping of fish-puke, his hair bleached white from the stomach acids of the fish. He is in a foreign land where they only spoke Farsi, he preaches in Hebrew, and the whole of his sermon is 5 Words: “40 Days And Ninevah Destroyed.” This is not exactly the Word of the Lord, Not Repent in 40 Days or else, but 40 Days & Ninevah Destroyed. After which, Jonah sits down and begins counting down, 40 days, 39 days, 38. However, the power of God, everyone in this foreign place repents, even the animals are depicted putting on sackcloth clothes, from the King to the lowest peasant repents. And God forgives. The power of Repentance and Forgiveness, in Mark's Gospel is about three things. First, knowing John the Baptist was arrested for having Preached Repentance, Jesus comes preaching Repentance. Life is not about the consequences, whether we succeed or fail, or are proven right, only about whether our lives effected other people so they could see God. Second, throughout Mark's Gospel, everything happens “Immediately.” People do not stop to evaluate, Simon and Andrew do not call a meeting. James and John do not even talk with their father, but immediately leave what they had been doing, how they had been living, to Follow Jesus. Finally, that God does not Call us to Repent to do something unrelated to our lives, going from being a plumber to doing brain surgery. But Fishermen to become Fishers of Men and Women. To have earned a degree in the tensile strength of concrete 60 years ago, and volunteering to go to S. Sudan. From having managed projects for the Oil Companies, to managing creation of health care in Africa. From having been a teacher, to teaching Sunday School. From having taught Nutrition and Home Economics, to teaching people in our own community about using food instead of feeding our garbage disposals.

"Principles and Prayers at Parties" January 18 2015

I Samuel 3:1-20 John 1:43-51 Following a heated political argument at dinner, in the opening episode of Downton Abbey, the Grandmother pronounced a loaded chastisement of those arguing, in what will become a classic line: “Principles like Prayer, are Noble of course, but awkward at a Dinner Party!” Twenty odd years ago Bill Clinton, after election and before being sworn in as President described that “Faith is like Butterfly Collections, meaningful to the individual, only taken out for examination in private.” I think these descriptions echo the context of our time and both our readings today. Distinct from the time of Genesis or Exodus, the Book of Samuel identifies “The Word of God was rare in those days” the vision of Eli the Priest of God had grown dim, his sons routinely stole from the offerings for themselves. Different from Easter or Pentecost, in the days following Jesus' Baptism, Jesus is a stranger introduced to Nathaniel, who identifies Nathaniel as “I saw you sitting beneath a fig tree reading Torah.” Referring to an educated person of leisure, who has time and resources to sit in the comforting shade of a familiar tree interpreting what is sacred without anyone's guidance or challenge. The point of Context, being that our circumstance stands in sharp contrast, as if standing out in relief against the flat background. In the First Testament, following the Exodus from Egypt and the 40 years in the wilderness, Moses promised that God would be faithful providing another to carry on the role of leadership as they entered the Promised Land. So began the period of Judges with Moses followed by Joshua and that fabled period of Samson, Gideon and Deborah. The central character now to be born, is the Last Judge like Moses, one who as Priest would ordain Kings for Israel, ordaining both King Saul and King David, who also in turn becomes the First Prophet, followed by Nathan, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and John the Baptist, speaking truth to power. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The Book of Samuel begins as each of the stories of The Judges began, identifying an individual's life circumstance as a setting for faith. Moses was born to a Levite Couple in Egypt, Ruth began when a famine drove a couple into exile in Moab. Setting up this story, Elkanah like Joseph with Rachel and Leah in Genesis, had two wives, Hannah whom he loved and also Peninnah. Why Elkanah had two wives is not explained, but there were wars every spring, so there was a shortage of men, and polygamy allowed for the perpetuation of the species. Peninnah is described as being so fertile, if she so much as looked at her husband, she got pregnant. As contrast to Hannah, Peninnah flaunted her sexuality, taunting Hannah and ridiculing her about how easily she got pregnant, where Hannah could not conceive. Hannah becomes so desperate to experience having a baby, she fasts and prays, begging God, that if she could she would give this child to God not as a sacrifice but as a priest so devout that they would never cut their hair. Several times, parishioners have described poor little Samuel abandoned at the Temple by his mother, but throughout history, it was common practice to give a child and their inheritance as well, where pastors choosing a seminary education and career is a recent development. Along that lines, Mario asked that we remind you in an effort to pay for our mission trip, if you would like to leave your children at the church next Friday, they will be cared for! Our first Testament passage actually includes two stories. The first is that Hannah so wanted a child that she prayed, begging God. How do you pray? One of the most common questions from any believer is “I don't know how to pray, teach me to pray?” Most of us, like the Butterfly collection analogy, try to be inconspicuous when praying. We have taken Jesus' instruction in Matthew that you pray so as to not to be seen by others: meaning prayer is private and stoic, invisible as if statues bowing in silence. Hannah wants so much to have a child she is begging God, she is rocking back and forth, raising her fists and ranting at God, but knowing God hears she prays moving her lips not making a sound. Eli the priest witnesses what she is doing, interprets this woman must be drunk! Hannah responds it is not that I have poured out liquor until I am drunk, I am pouring out my heart and soul for God to drink in. When is the last time you cared so much about anything as to pray to God like Hannah? Once her prayer is answered, Hannah faithfully gives the child to God, and now in the second story God Calls, in a voice no one else hears, to Samuel. When Samuel hears this he looks for answers everywhere except with God. Over and over during the night, he hears someone calling his name, gets up and wakes Eli asking what do you want, until Eli instructs Samuel to call upon God. How often we look for how we can control a problem, can I lose weight, can I exercise, can my family fix this, can my doctors correct this, what can our Government or elected officials do? And last of all, as if risking response to a voice in the night saying, “Speak Lord, for Here I am.” Hearing the voice of God, Samuel then has to decide whether to speak power to those in authority or not. To be a whistleblower, to challenge the status quo makes for good television plots but is threatening and has its repercussions. The beautiful irony of the words of Scripture are that in spite of Eli's eyes having grown dim, he sees what God is saying to Samuel and what God is calling to be done. Blind, he still has insight and vision. Listening to the Good News of the Gospel, you have to wonder. John the Baptist witnesses to Jesus. John's disciples Andrew and Phillip follow Jesus to discern who he is and what he wants, to which Jesus says “Come and See.” Andrew seeks out his brother Simon, whom Jesus calls Peter, because Andrew, Simon and Phillip all are from the same town Bethsaida, and all have been looking for the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets. But knowing who his friend was, Phillip seeks out Nathaniel, and does not take offense or get defensive when skeptically Nathaniel responds “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” In the world today, with so many Clergy abuses, with embezzlements, with church closures, if a leader of the church were to speak to any issue, one response might be “Can anything good come out of the Church?” With so many having left the Northeast for warmer climates, with the disrepair of the infrastructure of our cities; If asked “Can anything good come from Skaneateles?” would people respond: 200 inches of snow, Welch Allyn Equipment, TC Timber Trains, Finger Lakes Wines and Necco Wafers, or would we describe our faith in God? There is an old adage about Marriage described as The Seven Year Itch. How often after seven years of marriage, couples look for affection in others. The problem I believe is that after several years we begin to take one another for granted believing nothing new nothing unexpected can come from the other. Jesus' response to Nathaniel is marvelous. Nathaniel believes Jesus to have the Vision of God to have seen he was beneath a Fig Tree reading the Scriptures, when the phrase means one who is self-confident that he needs no one else, especially in understanding the Scriptures. And what Jesus promises is you will share in the vision of Jacob, Father to all the tribes of Israel, you will see the point of connection between Heaven and Earth, between God and Humanity, in faith you will indeed see connections and struggle with what is most important. We have worked to be known and recognized as a Community Center and resource. We are the center of Music in this Community. When people discuss Mission, Locally and Internationally, this church is the focus. But what would it be, if we were Jacob's ladder? If this were not simply an Accessible Building, Presbyterian, Fine Music and Missions, but a holy place where Heaven and Earth meet, where in the moments of silence we listen for God, where we pray not in silent reverence but so convulsing in faith people wonder if we were drunk? All of which leaves us with Downton Abbey, and whether having Principles and Prayer while Noble are awkward for us? Whether our Principles and prayers are for us things relegated to the closet, compromised and hidden as secrets, or whether our Principles and Prayers are what truly do matter in life? What would life be, if our Principles and the Prayers we offer to God became the Context against which the circumstance of our lives stood out?

"Rituals for Beginning Again" January 4, 2015

Isaiah 60 Luke 2:21-34 Rituals are important to us. Rituals help to ground us, providing context and meaning, surrounding us with a witnesses who have been here before. There are rituals of Christmas and of New Year's, of Engagements and Weddings and Funerals. One that I think very important is continuing to do what that person did, baking their favorite cookies, making their favorite recipes, every Christmas Eve I can hear my father's voice in the reading of the Story. All of us, as we have been part of families giving birth to children have felt the rhythm of rituals. Rituals of Expectation. Rituals of Sharing Good News. Rituals of Naming. Rituals of Consolation and Redemption. There is the ritual of the woman telling her partner. As much as bridegrooms plan for how they will get engaged, I think women plan for how to share this news. Then there is the shared secret, that expectant glow of waiting with something only the two of you know. Then the excited ritual of telling grandparents, aunts and uncles. The nesting. The ultra-sounds and checkups. The waiting and preparing. The birth. The announcements. The Baptism, when we claim this child as part of the body of Christ. The gown passed on from generation to generation. Confirmation and for leaders Ordination. In all the years I have read this story from Luke, I made the mistake of lumping all the stories of Jesus' infancy together, which for Matthew and Luke and for Judaism were uniquely distinct rituals. Mary gave birth to her firstborn. Eight days later he was circumcised, at which point he was given a name. 31 days after the birth, because he was a firstborn son, Joseph would have sacrificed a first born calf or lamb. 40 days after giving birth, Mary and Joseph would go to the Temple at Jerusalem to make an offering of two turtledoves and two pigeons, at which time Simeon and Anna each became prophets. The Wisemen come from far corners of the earth, Herod in fear of a newborn king has the infants in Bethlehem killed, and in fear of Herod the family flee to Egypt, so that like Moses he would come up from Egypt. I fear that in our culture today, we have lost the importance of rituals. We each look for new experiences, to be the first to create something different than the world has ever known. As such we have great expectation throughout Advent for the coming of Christmas. We light each of the candles. We decorate the tree. Packages begin to appear. Relatives come. We sing Silent Night, and afterward in a post-partum depression, we look round at the wadded wrapping paper, the needles from the tree upon the floor, our debts and waistlines, and we question “Is this all there is?” and we hurriedly pack everything away as we get ready for the next. Doing so, there is no time for reflection, for meaning, for consolation and redemption. The wonder and the power of Isaiah comes in that for 59 chapters the prophet has described their dark ages, the darkness on the face of the earth. How one nation has destroyed another. How people have forgotten what they stood for, lived for and died for, as leaders and rulers quested after power, rose and were destroyed. The Nation of Israel had been beaten by the Babylonians, carried off in bondage as slaves, their Religious Temple and Capital City of Jerusalem laid waste. After decades of oppression and exile, the refugees were allowed to come Home, returned to the Promised Land, the city of David described to them by their parents and grandparents, ...but arriving, found it in rubble. At which point, Isaiah here prophesies that the Lord will console them, there will be redemption for the nation of Israel. The faith story is no longer about capturing another Tribe's Land of Milk and Honey, of establishing a King and Monarchy, but instead through the prophets what God is doing and will do, the glory and light that will shine upon them and through them to all the world. Redemption has no meaning to a people who have never lived in darkness. Consolation becomes a trophy for having participated and not won. If you watched the Rosebowl game, I was proud of the Quarterback and the Coach, in stark contrast to their team who after 29 straight victories, over two years of winning left the field as if in disgrace. The QB and the Coach remained to congratulate the victors. Instead of this being a time of expectation that after which we ask is all there is, there are rituals established to provide meaning and redemption and consolation. Matthew and Luke, the only books of the Bible which describe the birth of the Savior, name for us that after Christmas, after the Shepherds and the Angels on the 8th Day, the beginning of a new week the baby was circumcised following the Law of Abraham. In Judaism, a baby is simply referred to as “The Child” until they are circumcised and presented at the Temple, where they are given their name. At the end of the first month, in a Patriarchal society, the father recognizing this will be the head of the family makes a sacrifice. Following the Ritual of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, instead offering a Ram, the father was to reflect upon their faith in God and their role now no longer as an individual or a couple but as a parent. And after 40 days, that Biblical number of completion, redemption from the flood, redemption in the wilderness, after 40, Mary having given birth to her first born was to go to the Temple to make a sacrifice after which she could go out in public. In a Patriarchal society if the baby were a girl, it would be after 80 days! I have never been completely certain what that represents. And at the Temple there is Simeon and Anna, two individuals who are only named here. David Steere was a famous Presbyterian preacher and a mentor for me in Michigan growing up. David conjectured that actually Simeon went to Temple every day, and every child that was brought forward, he took in his arms like the Baboon taking up Simba in the Lion King. David always made Simeon seem so foolish that day after day, he came to the Temple, hoping and praying for the redemption of Israel, that every child would be could be the Messiah. Yet, having carried around this Sanctuary every child for the last 18 years, I have come to understand that this is not only about baptizing, or claiming, but that every child provides us a glimpse of God among us, one who is simply content to be alive. There is a pointed twist that I think we need to emphasize here. Not to the parents that “this child will pierce your heart also” but to those being ordained and installed, that being in leadership in the church is not simply about balancing budgets and making decisions, or even about responsibilities of faith. But that we live in a time of change, a time where the church is struggling with what is darkness and what is light, and making decisions as moral decisions, rituals of faith that cut our own hearts remembering the words of Jeremiah that there will come a time when the name of the Lord shall be written in each believer's heart. Which leads us to the tradition of the Kings, which in the church we have made into an afterthought, visitors for 12th Night. In trying to create rituals we have ascribed to these names Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar, representing Europe, Asia and Africa, Youth, Mid-Life and Age. Actually, we have no idea how many there were, only that there were three gifts recorded, the same gifts as recorded here in Isaiah 60. But rather than creating rituals for what this could be, we need only hear the story and understand the motivation of people. People searching for faith from the far corners of the world come to Jerusalem looking for a Savior the King of Kings. Herod was a puppet king of Rome, so jealous for power he had all his own family killed. Herod hears of this new King and filled with fear he calls his Cabinet together. His advisors could have considered things politically or economically, instead they looked to the First Testament Prophets. Here they could have picked up Isaiah 60, which would have named kings coming to Jerusalem on Camels with Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. And identified that eventually the Messiah would have to come to Jerusalem as the seat of power. Instead, they chose the prophet Micah who had named Bethlehem as the birthplace of David to be the birthplace of the Savior. So the Wisemen went 9 miles south to this little Village, instead of Jerusalem. With rituals, it is always important what tradition you choose to follow which memories to preserve, rather than making it up as you go. Part of the wonder and beauty of Rituals is realizing we are not alone, others have gone before us and we are experiencing Rituals of Beginning Again.