"Believing in Rainbows" September 25, 2016

Genesis 6-8 Jeremiah 32: 6-15 Luke 16: 19-31 This morning, in addition to new members, we welcome Amour Aleer from South Sudan to America. In 2001, this church became sponsors to Andrew Chol. In recent years, we grieved with Andrew as the last of his birth family were killed in civil war, and he declared "You, this church, are my family." But also, Andrew found and married Mary Nankiir, and together they have five children. Both work full-time. So Amour, Mary Nankin's mother, has come to be Grandmother. A few months ago, Andrew came to me saying that Immigration and Naturalization Services needed an American to sponsor Amour, which meant my sending my taxes and all financial information to Nairobi... not for millions of dollars, but for the treasure of a grandmother! As we open the Scriptures and attempt to be a people faithful unto God, we have an impediment to address. Everything about our culture and relationships today is immediate, transitory and disposable. We tend to think in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, commitments a week from now, or on next Month’s calendar, the longest commitment we can imagine is marriage or children or a mortgage. While mortgages tend to be written for 20 or 30 years, even this is a changing definition, because many pay off their mortgages, where the word Mortgage was used because “mort” in Latin refers to “until death.” Generations ago, we described our “Word as our Bond,” and bonds defined our identity in relationship, as: Parent to Child and Husband and Wife, Slave and Master, Lender and Indentured Servant, between Nations, between a people and King, between God and Creation. A Bond not only defined what was owed to whom, for what and how long, but more, created our identity in relationship. We named this as an impediment, because the Biblical Bond of Commitment is not in days or weeks or years, but “Covenants” which last forever. Covenant literally means: cut into, as stone in the case of the 10 Commandments, or our intimate flesh in the Circumcision of Abraham, into our hearts with Jeremiah, or Written in the Blood of Jesus in Communion. Covenants are binding relationships, generation after generation, between humanity and God. But at times, both God and we as humans, suffer from Senior-itis, knowing there was something to remember but we cannot call it up until reCalled. At those later times, there appears to be a great reversal, as the enslaved are set free, the lost are found, the suffering are nourished. But do we foolishly stumble through life, or do we live intentionally trusting the Covenant, believing that the last will be first and first will be last? One of the earliest stories we learned as children is of Noah and the Animals, but this story is not about Noah. This is not the Arky Arky Song of children. Remember as we read in Creation, that God did not destroy chaos and darkness, but balanced these with order, light and land. Instead of 1¾ inches earlier this week, or the half-meter of rain that falls each day in South Sudan for the rainy season, imagine God unleashing chaos! God removing the firmament …the waters of the heavens above, and the waters of the Oceans, lakes and streams, all merge until everything is washed away. This is chaos and darkness. Did it happen? At one time, this region of Skaneateles was a great Salt Sea with choral beds and reefs, and that choral was fossilized as Ram’s Horn Corral; similarly where I came from in N. Michigan we had Petoskey Stones that also were Salt Water Corral fossilized over time. This is the Biblical story of God having created us with a Will of our own, and that Will choosing selfishness, hate, hurt, destruction in order to try to win / dominate; rather than choosing relationship with God and one another. If you make a bad bargain, if you purchase something corrupt, spoiled, cheating you, we try to return it, or we throw it out. This is the Biblical story of God destroying Creation, but over time, 40 Nights and 40 Days, God’s Anger is tempered by God’s Love. And God as Warrior elects to hang up God’s weapons of mass destruction, God hangs up God’s Bow, God makes a cut in the heavens, as Covenant to never again destroy all life. I Believe in Rainbows, not simply as refracted light, not as pretty colors, with pots of gold at the end, but as God’s Covenant to Love, forgive, hope, instead of destruction . In all of human history, there never seemed so foolish a bargain, as Jeremiah made. The Nation of Israel that came to the Promised Land with Moses and Joshua, settled in the land, but instead of replacing the Canaanites, the People of God adopted some of their practices. Under Kings David and Solomon the Nation grew in prosperity, until the Nation was so large as to divide into Israel in the North, Judah in the South. 150 years before Jeremiah, the Northern Nation of Israel was destroyed by Assyria. The Prophet Jeremiah preached that if Judah did not learn the lessons of faith, if Judah did not take to heart what had happened to Israel, Judah would be destroyed. This was not received as Good News, but as Treason against the Nation and King, and blasphemy against God, because in Judah was the City of Jerusalem with the Temple of Solomon, the House of God. Jeremiah was thrown into the dungeon, when the attacks from Babylon began. The armies of Judah were destroyed. The walls of Judah were crushed; when this vision came to Jeremiah, that he was to purchase his family’s ancestral land from his cousin. Imagine your buying land in Syria today, after years of constant bombing and killing. Now it is not God destroying Creation with the Chaos of Water, but people destroying each other with the Chaos of war. I say Chaos of war, because if you remember the earliest ancestors of Israel, Abraham and Sarah, were from the City of Ur in the Country of Chaldea. Their Chaldean people over time had risen as new Nations of Assyria and Babylon, today Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. In this time, Assyria had invaded Israel and Babylon was attacking Judah, so this was the people of Chaldea attacking descendants of Chaldea. And in the midst of War, while imprisoned in a jail cell, Jeremiah bargains to redeem his right to purchase this land. Jeremiah has a scribe who accompanied him writing down what the Prophet said. Jeremiah instructs Baruch, his Scribe to write down this covenant of redemption of the land, and to put one copy into an earthen vessel to be buried in the ground in this place, another copy for Jeremiah to carry. That not just a week or months, or years from now, but generations in the future, the world would know there were those who believed this was the Land of Israel, and even in the Chaos of War, there were those like Jeremiah who trusted and believed God would remember and honor God’s Covenants and redeem the land and people. In Hebrew every name has meaning, Baruch literally means “Blessed” which is why every prayer in Hebrew begins Baruch Adonai elehenu: “Blessed is the Lord God!” In Luke, Jesus tells the story of the chaos of poverty and wealth. Dives is a man so affluent he is covered from head to foot in purple silk, he eats the finest of delicacies from the most expansive of tables. Where gates of a dungeon imprisoned Jeremiah, the gates of the wall of Dives’ keep out Lazarus, who instead of being thrown into the dungeon has been thrown outside the wall to be ignored and forgotten. What powerful word pictures, that Lazarus would have gladly licked up the crumbs from the floor beneath Dives’ Table, but instead the dogs licked at Lazarus wounds. Both die, and in his suffering, Dives’ witnesses Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. The irony of this Biblical story is that the poor man who suffers and dies is named Lazarus, just as Martha and Mary’s brother, Jesus’ friend who was brought back from death to life. Lazarus’ returning one from death to life made no impact on the Pharisees and Scribes and the brothers of Dives, but Jesus’ own death was not only the return of one from death to life, but the new covenant sealed in Christ’s blood.

"Deceiving God by Hiding From Ourselves," September 18, 2016

Genesis 2 Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 Luke 16:1-13 As we begin this morning, I confess to being struck by how we seem to live from crisis to crisis, yet when crises happen, we avoid responsibility, and like ostriches hide from ourselves. Instead of questioning what did I do, where were my priorities, we blame others and ask “Where is God?” “Why did God not do something?” “Is there a God?” In the time when Jeremiah was very young, King Josiah had all of the little chapels and churches and altars across the countryside, that people went to every day to pray, torn down, so there was only one, and it was The Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. Annually every person could come to Jerusalem to worship, making sacrifices to God and Taxes to the King, the King and the Temple were at Jerusalem, so the Nation would be assured of prosperity. The people of Israel made the assumption that no matter what, God would protect them. Like the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, they believed God had all the answers; they may have to endure invasion or embarrassment, but because Jerusalem was the City of God, where God chose to have God’s Temple was built, they believed God would protect them, all the while doing whatever fulfilled their desires. The problem was not only that they sinned, not that they fell short of the glory of God; but that they did so self-righteously pursuing their own desires, hiding from themselves, without regret. Throughout human history we have based our development and actions on the rules and assumptions given us, but our world is radically changing, not only in careers, technology, cars that start with a button, parallel park themselves, drones able to deliver pizzas, but such radical change people have questioned what is real and true, and our assumptions of identity are being challenged. In my short experience in Central New York, 35-40 Century-old companies have closed. So what is Camillus without Camillus Cutlery and Camillus Casket Co., what is Mottvile without the Mottville Chair Co? We went swimming the other day, Skaneateles Lake is down at least a foot in depth, what is Skaneateles without Skaneateles Lake? The Wills and estates given to the church over our first 130 years came with donor instruction “to be invested as the most prudent person would do.” After the Great Depression, for the next 70 years, that was changed to “invested as a reasonable investor would” because they recognized that without taking some risk you would lose major opportunities. Today, the economy and markets are so different, our most basic assumptions of “whether to trust” are challenged. So we must ask, What is important, what is vital? If you were going to lose everything, what would you do? As a pastor, I get very excited when there is direct application of the Bible to our lives. I love the stories of Moses parting the Sea, a voice coming from a burning bush, or the prophet Balaam about to curse Israel when his donkey tells him he is being an Ass, Jesus walking on water, or kings and wisemen kneeling before the Savior of the world, but it seems “The Word of God is rare,” because Biblical events are rare. For 50 years our Presbytery owned and operated Vanderkamp, up in Cleveland, NY. “Owned and operated” translated as “incurred debt” and was a constant source of controversy. Cost of the camp and interest on debt were built into the Operating Budget of the Presbytery; but there was also a mortgage from the purchase of the land; and a 2nd mortgage for the building of the Lodge; and annually costs exceeded expectations; as well as being a rustic camp where kids often got broken arms or bee stings and the Camp/Presbytery were sued. But those who first met at the camp fell in love and married there, were blind to the costs; while those who were paying the bills could see nothing except increasing debt. To be completely transparent, I had a reputation of closing and selling Church camps: when serving one church I turned the camp into a Conference Center and the grounds into a Medieval Festival like at Sterling and Fairhaven; in another church, I sold the camp to the Nature Conservancy to protect the endangered Glass-bellied Lizard. So when a Balloon Payment on the mortgage was coming due for refinancing, I asked that we research the total that is owed. The Camp had new Managers who came to the meeting where the Presbytery would debate the costs and deficits of the camp, fearing that they would lose their jobs before they ever got to start. Hearing the total costs and recognizing that regardless of what we did, the Camp was part of the identity of the Presbytery, I followed the example of this parable and made a motion; that by keeping the Camp in debt, we had limited what they could do, so let us forgive the amount owed by the Camp to the Presbytery and also pay off the mortgage. If the Camp then succeeds, well and good; if not, the camp would be without debt when sold and those who did use it would have received the best possible experience. In our culture, everything seems to have a price tag, a cost or value. Years ago, a woman died, her Will specifying that she wanted to have given to the Church $100,000 and that she wanted to give her children $100,000 each. When she did die, her costs for care and final expenses used up everything she had. And you know, that does not matter, because we know, and her children know, that although she had no money, we were so important to her she wanted to give us this. Of all the stories of the Bible, one of the best known is the Genesis Story of the Garden of Eden. There is a basic human acceptance that in the Garden, as originally created, we were sinless and righteous, we were in right relationship with God. But when they ate the apple, they hid their nakedness from God, and when asked who told you you were naked, Adam’s reply was “The Woman, whom you gave me, she did this.” There is no sense of responsibility that: I am sorry, we did, or I knew better and I chose to… the first response to accusation and loss, has been to hide, seeking cover by shifting blame to others and to God. Reading this afresh, I have tried to get away from all our preconceived notions about what this story is about, and hear it afresh. Why, when Genesis 1 described Creation with humanity as the final accomplishment, and God rested… why is there the story of humanity being the first of God’s creations with responsibility for naming other things? Reading the two chapters back to back, I have come to believe that the first faith statement is about God, “In the beginning there was God” nothing else. God creates every element of creation gifting responsibility to humanity; that is the meaning of “God rested,” not that God was tired, or gave up, but that the story shifts attention from God to being about humanity. Which then raises the second question about God: Why, if God is all knowing, did God put the tree of knowledge in the Garden? Why not in another Garden, why not with a fence or river around it? Did God want us to fail, want us to be tempted to sin? How do we imagine God the Creator, as Judge and Punisher, or as a Teacher? Do we still believe as the Choir sang: Teach me O Lord the way of Thy Statutes and I will Follow!”? When God came looking for humanity, walking in the garden in the afternoon, was God hunting them, accusing “Who told you You were naked?” or teaching them to recognize that they had made a choice separate from God, separate from being part of creation, in fact opposed to God and creation even opposed to each other. The basic understanding of Sin is not that there are Sins and Blessings, Good and Bad, but that anything, anything and everything, which we choose to hide from ourselves, from one another and from God, that which we cannot admit to ourselves is Sin. The word which leaps out at me, in this passage is “subtle” the serpent was more subtle than any other creature. The issue of faith is not black and white, not about always right and always wrong, but discerning what is vital, what is true, what destroys relationships and what builds. When they chose to eat of the tree the humans did not die, but something in them did die “their relationship of trust with God.” When trust is broken, it takes lifetimes to rebuild and if not attended to the broken trust is passed on from generation to generation. The point of Jeremiah’s question “Is there no balm in Gilead?” is that at that time, Gilead was the medicinal center of the Ancient world, Gilead had an herbal balm for every malady. Just as the Temple of God was at the Center of the City of God, but when the balm does not take away pain, when the Temple ceases to be a place of God, do you blame the balm, do you blame the Temple, do you blame God, or do we seek deeper answers questioning the value of relationships, questioning what we have been doing, and maintaining integrity: try differently?

"We Love To Tell The Story" September 11, 2016

Genesis 1 Jeremiah 4: 18-27 Luke 15:1-11 We love to tell the story of Unseen things above, of Jesus and God’s glory, of Jesus and God’s love, We love to tell the story, because we know ‘tis true; it satisfies our longings as nothing else could do. We love to tell the story, twill be our theme in glory, to tell the old old story, of Jesus and God’s love. Through out the last several years I have driven many of crazy by intentionally using rhyming poetry and iambic pentameter for the Call to worship and Assurance of Pardon, the Hebrew Psalms for our Prayer of Confession. I have done so to emphasize that our Worship of God is different from everything else in the norm of our daily existence; and in the same way, poetry has a different cadence than the speech of mortals, poetry calls attention to images of nature and life and emotions, just as we do in prayer and worship. Beginning with Rally Day this morning, instead I hope to have us begin each Sunday worship with retelling of a story of our faith in God. This week, I met with a couple planning their wedding, and the groom grew up Roman Catholic from Europe. At one point he stopped to say, “I went to Parochial School where we memorized verses, we memorized what Page Number, Chapter and Book, we could find those words upon. But you are asking us, to think about the words, to apply our story to the Bible stories.” That is my hope this year, this will be our theme, to tell the old old story of Jesus and God’s love. We love to tell the story, more wonderful it seems, than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams. A century ago, we did not have all the information and technology, we have today. We each are bombarded with noise and stuff, commercials and sound-bytes, news and spin, scripted reality, movies and television characters, and changes to real life. In an earlier time, you could read a Proverb in the morning and all day long reflect upon those words. Now, we have not only ideas, but new and different information changing our responsibilities every 90 seconds. Making our theme “We love to tell the story” my intent is that each week, we might have one story from the Bible, one thought to reflect upon throughout our lives until we meet again. Second, an important reason we tell stories, is to be reminded of our place in the world. In the Beginning, there was a great void in time and space, an absence of order, control, life and light. The image is like a nightmare, where you are in absolute darkness and have no knowledge, no understanding where anything is. And in this waste and void, God called for light: in balance with the darkness. Have you recently watched an old movie, not in High Definition, not in Panavision or Kodachrome Living Color, but in Black & White. Suddenly it hits you that you recognize greater texture, shadows and shades of grey seem to take on new meaning. So it is in the story, with light balancing dark, chaos not eliminated but balanced by order. Phrase by phrase, verse by verse, element by element God builds Creation. every part interconnected and interdependent upon all the rest, such that if any one part of God’s Creation suffered or died, all creation suffered the void. And we as human beings were formed out of the humus of the ground, earthlings out of the earth, dust from dust, HOWEVER created in the image of God. That does not mean, we each had to have chin whiskers or the same eyes, or shape. Created in the image of God, is that as God loves Creation, so also do we. This weekend, we celebrated the wedding of Abby, whose father is an Elder and Deacon of this Church, he is also the President of the Manor Board and Stage Manager of the Skaneateles Festival, Conductor of the Auburn Symphony Orchestra, a Retired Music Teacher, and he is the son of Arthur Frackenpohl who was Head of the Music Department at Crane Music School and a renowned composer. I share this, because when the music began, every member of their family instinctively had rhythm and knew how to dance. Arthur’s love of music, was passed to his son who married a Piano teacher, and their son and daughter. “Created in the image of God with dominion over the earth,” is not an invitation for us to Play God or to Control or Use up Creation’s resources, or to Create whatever we imagine we could do without ethical, moral concern for the world. Created in the Image of God, is affirmation of our relationship to dance with every element of the world. We love to tell the story ‘tis pleasant to repeat; what seems each time we tell it, more wonderfully sweet, for some have never heard it as the message of salvation, from God’s own holy Word. A Third Reason we love to tell the story, is that telling stories, and retelling them in differing times and circumstance, with differing listeners, we interpret the story differently, with greater and greater number of meanings, lest history relegate the event to a simple Date and Place and Time. Some of us were, but I was not born or, aware on December 7th, 1941, a day we recall as “a Date of Infamy.” Having been born afterward, Pearl Harbor to me is simply the Memorial in Hawaii where America was forced into WWII. Pearl like Antietam, or Boston Square, or Gettysburg, or Salem, seemed to be towns built around tragic events in History. Fifteen years ago in 2001 a Ben Affleck/Cuba Gooding film was made about that attack; and for the first time, I imagined Pearl Harbor as the Pristine Tranquil Waterfront Marina of 20 of America’s Naval Fleet, including 8 enormous Battleships anchored asleep, a Sunday morning with people going about life in the Garden of Eden, believing they were a million miles away from war. I do recall The First Gulf War, when hour after hour the television showed missiles flying and bombs exploding. I recall our eldest child age 2 standing in-front of the television saying “no more, no more war, no more bombs.” I recall sitting on the Chancel step with the Children of the Church, explaining to them that we had hoped and prayed that they would be a generation that would never know war. Each war of the 20th Century had been a war to end wars, yet there is evil in the world, there are people trying to enslave and to kill others because the others want to be free, because they think differently, or look differently, or because they are in the way. I recall, that week, fifteen years ago, but tell the story differently now, wanting to tell the story out of love. The Sunday prior, we read these very same stories from the Bible. We read Jeremiah, as a Prophet 600 years before Jesus describing the destruction of Jerusalem, Israel being carried off by Assyria and Babylon. On Tuesday evening, we sat in shock and horror, as Jeremiah’s description was all too literal, and we learned the Biblical practice of Lament. Fifteen years have gone by. Fifteen years of unending war. Refighting in the same places. I was struck this week, by interviews with 15 year old High School Students, those who would be in Confirmation this year, who have no recollection of what was lost, of what life was like before. In these years, we once celebrated a wedding on the 11th of September and the couple questioned whether it was irreverent, or a sacrilege to marry that day, which had also been her parents’ anniversary and his grandmother’s birthday. Retelling the story, it comes to me, that Jeremiah also said, “But God will not make a full end…” There comes a time for laying down the anger, and the retaliations of unending war, and to remember the Police and Firefighters and First Responders who ran into the area and into the crumbling burning buildings, to seek the lost. I have a good friend who for 20 years was pastor over in East Syracuse, the Church Deb Thomas now serves, who went to Battery Park as a Pastor and First Responder that week, to volunteer helping the women and men who survived and those who were trying to seek the lost, to process their faith and feelings. After he came home, he developed a lung infection from having, even with a mask, breathed in the vapors of burning jet fuel and the ash of building materials, and he died. But before he died, he was asked whether knowing this would be the cause of his lost life, would he still have gone? He responded, “There is nothing heroic in this. Our faith story is to seek the lost to be found and redeemed.” What Jesus’ own listeners would have heard and recognized, was that as a hired Shepherd you were personally responsible for every sheep and lamb. If one was stolen by a wolf, bear or lion, the Shepherd needed to bring back to the owner a leg or something, to prove the Shepherd had not stolen the sheep. His life, his family’s reputation, his identity as a professional Shepherd was dependent upon proving he had done everything to rescue the lost sheep. In that culture and time, women did not work professionally outside the home. The Silver Coins a Woman had, that were hers and hers alone would have been her Dowry. These coins represented the only thing she had that was hers, and what she could give to her daughters. Losing one, would have been like losing her own child. I know I ask a great deal, in adding one more thing to your lives each week. In asking that you attend and bring others to hear the Biblical story, in addition to the Lectionary, but this is what gives context to everything else in life. This old old story of God’s love and our love, is what provides meaning to life. We love to tell the story for those who want it most, seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. And when in scenes in glory, we sing the new new song, twill be the old old story that each have made their own. We love to tell the story, twill be our theme in glory, to tell the old old story of Jesus and God’s love.