"A Yard Sale at Winterfest" January 27, 2013

Nehemiah 8:1-10 Luke 4:14-21 After the extended season of campaigning and elections, the last few weeks have been a season of Inaugurations, as those elected and re-elected to leadership have been sworn into Office, as President, Congress, Governors, Mayors, etc. And now we are in the next annual cycle of State of the Union, State of the State, State of the County, State of the Town, State of the Village Speeches. But in Skaneateles, we are in a different place and time, for this is WINTERFEST, when all the world embraces the cold! Rather than baskets of flowers, there are Ice Sculptures. When men and women in bathing suits saunter through the snow to slip into a hole in the ice, as if this frozen over glacial lake were a hot-tub. And this weekend Holy Trinity Lutheran Church celebrates their 100th Anniversary, and in Presbyterian Fashion we gather in our 212th Annual Meeting. Having put all the Christmas decorations back in their boxes, before carrying them back up the ladder, I saw all the other boxes, televisions and VCRs, 8 Tracks and vinyl Albums, photos, decorations and books, children's clothes and toys, school supplies and letters, that had not been opened in decades, and began handling each item, questioning anew if this were something to save or purge. Like preparing for a YARDSALE in the season of WINTERFEST, everything needed to be handled, pondered and questioned for its value and importance. The Church does this same activity every 500 years! 500 years after the Crucifixion, The Empire of Rome had been destroyed by invading Barbarian hordes with the mix of traditions and Christianity being adapted to culture, Gregory I often called Gregory the Great created the Monasteries for Priests and Scribes and Nuns to focus on the faith, while the world went about our business. 500 years later, at the turn of the first Millennium controversy split the Church, in what was referred to as The Great Schism. The Central issue was over the Virgin Mary. The underlying issue of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code is whether Mary as MOTHER OF GOD should be treated as a Fourth person of the Trinity? With this, was Jesus a human being, a great Teacher and Prophet; or GOD masquerading in human form? Far more than a 21st Century Mystery novel about a secret cult, The Great Schism challenged the meaning and importance of the Crucifixion. Was this the Messiah of God atoning for our sins, or a man, a martyr, the son of a Carpenter? With this, whether the Center of the Church would be at Rome, and the language of the Church be Latin, the Bread of Communion be Unleavened? OR as in the Eastern Orthodox, the Center of the Church was at Constantinople, the language of the Church was Greek and the Bread of Communion a Risen loaf? 500 years later, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Zwingli, Calvin, Wesley, Knox each challenged the authority of the Tradition, the authority of the Papacy and Rome, as well as each other, out of which arose all the separate Protesting denominations of Protestantism. In the 20th century, we have reached a time where the figures we are balancing are too cumbersome for us to sum in our heads and we punch numbers on a calculator. All our correspondence and information is too much to store on paper, in files, even in a single computer, so we have created “The Cloud” of information storage. Our entertainment are scripted shows of reality, dramas of REVENGE, SCANDAL, and DECEPTION, and replacing Game shows are Get Rich Quick Schemes trying to pitch ideas for Billionaire investors who describe their greatest even only priority is making money. In this climate and culture, we try to discern what the Church is and will be in the future. 500 years before Jesus. After the Babylonians had conquered the Nation of Israel and taken them away in bondage, destroying the Temple of Solomon, removing the people from their ability to speak Hebrew, to read the scrolls, to celebrate Passover, the Persians conquered the Babylonians. And the King of Persia, recorded in the book of Esther and our reading of Nehemiah this morning, was Ahasuerus. King Ahasuerus liked to surround himself with the very best and finest of things. He appointed as his CUP HOLDER a highly educated leader among the exiled Jewish people Nehemiah. Standing in the presence of the king of Persia, Nehemiah learned that the City of Jerusalem lay in ruins. Nehemiah was deeply depressed. Seeing this, the King directed Nehemiah to return to Israel, to rebuild the the City of Jerusalem. But, in addition to the people being beaten down by their economy, by war and enemies, there were factions among the people themselves. When the people have their first accomplishment of rebuilding, Nehemiah calls upon Ezra, a Scribe to act as Priest. Ezra takes the five scrolls of the Torah, the Law of Moses and all the people gather to listen. Ezra reads to them in the language of their ancestors, the Law of Moses. Certain words and phrases were familiar, but the meaning was strange to them. SO the priests and Levites interpreted the reading for them. This was NOT Law as in The IRS Tax Code, or Universal Health Care, what Ezra read for us was the COVENANT OF GOD, the promise of God to love us and never abandon God's people. And hearing the Words and understanding their meaning, the people wept. You are not to be separate individuals fighting over who has the most, but one people, a holy people set apart by God for God as holy! Being a holy people of God, you are to pray, and to feed those who are hungry, to care for those who are in need. Instead of a State of the Union speech, by elected leaders, this is the holy Word of God. Rather than description of new programs and appointment of officers, the reading of the Torah affirmed who we are as precious before God, what we are to do in care for others as our acting out our faith. According to the Gospel of Luke, 500 years later, immediately after Jesus was Baptized by John in the Jordan, he was driven into the wilderness where temptation was laid before him, temptation of Power, of Prestige, of Possibilities. Putting down all those temptations, according to Luke, the first public act of Jesus was to go to the Synagogue in his home village in Nazareth on the Sabbath. The custom at the time, was that any man able to read was able to come forward, to read the scroll for the day and offer a sermon. And Jesus came, and asked for the scroll and what was given to him was the scroll of Isaiah. He read aloud to the people the Charge to FEED the HUNGRY, SET AT LIBERTY the CAPTIVE, RESTORE SIGHT TO THE BLIND, and STRENGTH to the WEAK, that THE LAME SHOULD WALK and the DEAF SHOULD HEAR, and TODAY shall be made known as the Acceptable year of The Lord. And the people commented on how well he read, what conviction. But then as the sermon, Jesus sat down in front of them and said TODAY THIS SCRIPTURE HAS BEEN FULFILLED! Where Baptism had served as an Anointing and Claiming of Jesus... Where the Time in the Wilderness had been a Temptation of anything and everything he could do and possess... Instead, the Reading from Isaiah became JESUS' Mission Statement. The Sermon became the rest of his life, as he did restore sight to the blind, and provide food to the hungry, hearing to the deaf and strength to the weak. There are thousands of Churches around the World, which worship their past and are limited by care for their buildings, their programs, the history of the things they used to do. There are thousands of Churches around the World being Created without any tradition, without the theological foundations of who they are before God, but instead the Congregation determine what they believe. In this WINTERFEST, like some GREAT YARDSALE, we lay everything out: where we have come from and what we have done, Music and Mission and Witness, Spiritual Development and Nurture, and we are humbled to serve this community in this time, that we truly wrestle with what it means to be the people of God, to live in Covenant, to try to forgive and love our neighbors.