"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.