June 11, 2017 "The Trinity of the Church"

Genesis 1:1-19 Matthew 28: 16-20 This morning is not about a Parable, or Historic Event, Healing, or Miracle. The great Coach of the Green Bay Packers Vince Lombardi is remembered for having begun every training season, by teaching the basics, going back to the fundamentals: “Gentlemen, This is a football. Your purpose in life, all our training, your way of life, your reputation, your family and happiness, your future, all depend upon your taking this from the line of Scrimmage and getting it over the Goal-line.” According to Matthew, that is what Jesus is doing here, going back to teach the basics. Mark describes Jesus was gone. Luke Acts describes he was carried up into heaven on a cloud. John describes he appeared to the disciples over and over. Matthew this morning is not describing The Great Parable, or our Commander’s Hope, or The Great Suggestion… Jesus’ instruction is not For us to find a comfortable church with potluck suppers and great music… Jesus never said “Try to do one nice thing every day.” NO, this is the Great Commission, the final words of the Messiah, giving direction to the Church as to what we are to be and do. Creation in Genesis, was not intended to be scientific evidence compared with Charles Darwin 8000 years in the future, for the origins of the universe. NO, In contrast to all the Cultures of History, and peoples of the Earth, who believed in worshipping Idols, gods they had formed with their own hands, or conception of different gods for different purposes: a god of love, a god of war, a god of fertility,etc. Abraham, and following from Abraham: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all hold to belief in there being only, One, true God. Our first problem, with this is that the same God responsible for beauty, love, joy, is the same God responsible for plague, suffering, poverty and death. If God is all knowing and powerful: “Why did the Holocaust occur?” Did God not know? Is God not all Powerful? Why have we been given ability to destroy Creation? Did God make this happen? Does God cause suffering and death? Second and related to this, is the Christian dilemma… Judaism received the Law and has waited for thousands of years for a Messiah to call all the world to come to God. Islam believes their holiest ancestor is the prophet Mohammed, but he was a man, not God. Mohammed went to Heaven to receive the Koran and returned, as a man. Christianity affirms that we believe in The Trinity, One God known through three personages, or three ways of knowing about and understanding the One God. A few moments ago we stood forth and affirmed what we believe with the Nicene Creed. Almost 300 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and The Day of Pentecost, The Emperor of the Roman Empire: Constantine became Christian, and in good Christian fashion he called for a meeting to debate and come to resolution on what we believe. That 2nd Council (The first was at Jerusalem regarding whether Christianity should remain within Judaism) was held at Nicaea, a location in Turkey which today is under water. Like any Theological Statement of Church Doctrine drafted by 318 Bishops, along with 2 priests and 3 deacons each, so 1800 believers, it is complicated and nuanced. So much so, that the Creed was revised again and again over the next 56 years until the form we have adopted in 381, and today even the most learned, and the most devout among us cannot explain God. Instead, what I hope we can claim is that we believe in the TRINITY of THE CHURCH. While we have a diversity of politics, and polarization of ideals, I am suggesting that instead of describing God, and the three ways God has come to us; THAT we begin with WE ARE CALLED, BAPTIZED, CONFIRMED and SENT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT; WE ARE TO WITNESS TO THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST FOR SALVATION; FOR THE SAKE OF GOD, AND THE CREATION GOD CREATED & LOVES SO MUCH. This passage begins with identification of the 11, identification that these leaders already failed him, and doubted and denied, and one betrayed him. Matthew’s Gospel harkens back to Creation that God put God’s self, God’s Divinity into everything created; however according to what follows, the only way for us to truly love God was to have a freedom of Will to choose to love, and SIN is that we did not choose God, we turned our back on God believing only in ourselves and our control. Matthew remember was the Gospel describing the coming Incarnation of the Christ as IMMANUEL, God with us. Here, the resurrected Jesus describes to the 11 that NOW he has all Authority. It is one thing to have Knowledge, to have power, and another to have ALL AUTHORITY in Heaven and Earth. What Jesus did by death on the cross and resurrection and gifting us with the Holy Spirit, is not only to heal the brokenness of Creation, but for God to develop All Authority because although separate from us God entered in, although we doubted and denied God suffered by our hands for our sins, and not even that could keep God from loving us. Our Goal as the Church in this time and place, is not to do great things, not to attract more members, not to build up the financial reserves or Budget and Program, not even to do great acts of charity and mission locally and around the world. We do not score points or make touchdowns! People come to Church because the goals and priorities and values of the world have not satisfied. The World has diminished our humanity. We have wasted the Gift that is God’s Creation. Instead of attempting to imitate the world, demanding the success of the world as the world measures success, the Church, this Body of Christ needs to be Counter-Cultural! We need to be weird! We need to do whatever it takes to love. Over and over again, I am stopped on the street, and have people walk up to me saying: “When my daughter wanted to get married, you not only opened the doors of the church to her, you went out to where she wanted to celebrate her marriage!” “When my husband was suffering depression, was abusive, out of his mind, you went to our home, you went to the hospital to see him, NOT to pray for him, or to give him last rights, BUT to demonstrate LOVE to us, and in that way redeemed us.” On Mother’s Day, someone from another church came up to me at the flower sale saying, “This community is full of scandals. Every time a new scandal hits, I see you, or this church walking along beside the guilty.” Guilt and Doubt and Faith are inseparable. Years ago, there was a cartoon, of the Church Business Administrator/Treasurer shouting to the pastor: “Someone is on the phone from Ripley’s Believe It or Not, wanting a Picture of someone on fire with Love for the LORD. Do we have one?” New Testament Scholar AW Tozer used to say the difference between the Modern Church and the Early Church of the New Testament is that “If God, Christ and the Holy Spirit were taken out of the Modern Church 95% of what we do, would go on, nobody would ever know the difference. In the Early Church, if the Holy Spirit were removed 95% of what they did, of who they were, would stop, and everyone would know. Years ago, we had a vision, of being open to others, locally and around the world, to demonstrate love. We rebuilt our resources, here in the building and in the community for use by others. We were the only Church in the area, where anyone could get married in the Church, if they believed in God, wanted to be married to one another all their lives, met with the pastor for marriage planning and counseling, had a NYS License and paid $100 to the Church. We rebuilt Presbyterian Manor with our own sweat and money, because we listened to the vision of the one who had gifted us with this, and we listened to the needs of the people who lived there. We recognized we could not prevent teenagers from having sex or drinking, we educated, we shared concerns, but no matter what we stood beside one another. In 2007 we opened a Health Care Facility in South Sudan. In 2014 when war broke out and the resources were destroyed by war, it broke our hearts. So much so, that the one who had created scale models of the clinic created this one with a Dark Cloud over it. But the believers involved persevered, without buildings, without equipment, in refugee camps, in Cholera and Famine. Finally it hit us, that the world was not a neutral place, this was a war-zone, which is why we were needed to act in faith. My challenge to you is dream dreams, to share ideas, to bring to the Council of our Church counter-cultural ways of our responding to the Call of the Holy Spirit, to demonstrate (Witness to) the love of Jesus Christ, which brings people into relationship to love God.

"Yearning for the Unknown" May 21, 2017

John 14: 15-21 Acts 17: 14-32 This week our Associate Pastor came to me with a question from his readings “What is the difference between Pantheism and Panantheism?” Only Presbyterian Ministers would have a conversation like this, right?!! Pantheism was the Religion of the Greeks, who believed in another reality populated by gods. It is said that the streets of Athens were so filled with statues to different gods, that you had to constantly twist and turn to get around all the monuments. Pantheism is a plethora of different gods, with as many gods on Mt Olympus as earth is populated with people. Panantheism, was also Greek, but instead of anthropomorphizing gods, Panantheism believed that God is in all things, god is an ideal, a philosophical belief in beauty being in all things. But if God is in all things, then in nothing specific. Our Christian Faith has elements of Judaism, and Greek Philosophy, and Roman Religion, and Western European Ideals, and American Enlightenment, and our cultural norms. What is at stake in this is, What is the nature of God? What has set the Abrahamic faiths apart, from all the Pantheistic and Panatheistic religions of the world, has been Monotheism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam each believe that there is one God. The difference between the three, being that Judasim knows God to be named YHWH, Adonai, Jehovah or Elohim and the way to God is through the Law of Moses. Islam believes the name of God to be Allah, that Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were prophets, and the way to God is the Law of Koran. Our Scripture lessons today describe that defining Christianity is hard, because Jesus was fully human and fully divine, who himself described God as Father, of the same substance but separate; and while Jesus of Nazareth lived and died and rose again, providing a new Command, everything Jesus said or did fulfills God’s Law. Accordingly, Jesus was in Creation, and God in Christ. To love Christ is to keep Christ’s Command. All too often people try to make this into an if /then clause: If you love me, THEN You will keep my commandments. Meaning if you do not keep Jesus’ Commandments, you are not loving him. Horsepucky! Jesus here is giving them his Commandment, straight forward, without being watered down, Love God and Love One Another, which he then repeats again at the Great Commission. The Unity being that if you truly love God and one another you will fulfill all that is the Law in Jewish Torah and Islamic Koran. Except, Jesus is a realist! For thousands of years human beings have not been able to fulfill the Law. So even if we make it so simple as to replace the LAWs with LOVE, on our own, we still are not able to follow God, so Jesus promises he will not leave us “ORPHANOS.” This is the Greek word from which English gets “Orphaned” but which literally means “yearning for to most basic relationship of normalcy.” I do not think Jesus could have chosen a more ideal word, because when “orphaned” be it by the loss of a parent, or loss of a child, loss of a mentor, teacher, or dream, bereft yearning is what it feels like. You ache for: an intangible, a relationship, an unknown. When a nursing mother hears her infant cry, her body reacts, even among a hundred infants she knows her child’s cry. It is that searching look of a child for their father’s approval and pride, of a father for their child’s accomplishment, relationship, fulfillment. Being left Orphanos, is the Father standing at the end of the dock or the top of the drive willing their Prodigal to return home. Orphanos describes our feeling of in-completion, our need for God. What has been confused throughout centuries is we do not believe in Duality as God, we believe in a Trinity. We do not talk a great deal about the Third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is what connects God and Christ, so that Jesus can declare God is in him, and Jesus is in God, and can be in us. After the Ascension, Jesus returned to sit at the right hand of God, and the two are One. If God is identified as the Creator and Liberator; Jesus as the Redeemer who suffered and died and rose again; The Holy Spirit is “the Go-Between God” who when Jesus is with God, is the Divine connection with us. As wire is the link between power source and lightbulb; as pipe links the source of water with dry land; as the radar wave unites the transmitter to the receiver; as invisible electronic emissions link a wireless network to a laptop computer; so connects the Holy Spirit between God and us in order that you and I can be Christ’s presence in the world. When describing Christianity, people routinely identify the incarnation of John 3:16: “God so loved the world God gave God’s only begotten Son, not to condemn the world but to redeem the world.” Or, we describe the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in Romans that “No height nor depth, nor angels nor principalities, could keep us from the love of God.” What Jesus is saying here, is the giving of a New Commandment that fulfills all the rest: Love God and Love one another. But also, you will have the Holy Spirit, supporting and guiding, connecting you to God. Not only does Jesus say this in the Gospel of John, but Paul did so to the Greek Philosophers at Athens. The passage begins, that Paul was waiting for others at Athens. However, this waiting is a heavily nuanced passage. If the translator is being negative, Paul was “Distressed because they were so superstitious.” If Positive, the translator describes Paul as “Intrigued because they were so very religious.” Neutral would be to say, Paul was “Keyed Up…” The passage could mean either one. But addressing this, Paul describes having witnessed a monument to an “Unknown God,” this, he claims to be the Holy Spirit, True God. Don Richardson was a Missionary who described that in the 6th Century BC Athens was being decimated by a horrible mysterious plague. After trying everything else, the culture assumed it must be that one of the Greek Gods was angry, but which one as Athens was “the God Capital of the World,” where new Ideas deserved hearing. When all efforts had failed, they hired an outside consultant from the Island of Cyprus, whose name was Epimenides. Epimenides discerned that it was none of the known gods of Athens that were offended. Setting out to find a remedy, Epimenides took a flock of choice sheep, of various colors, deprived of food until they were hungry. Then at the appointed morning, they released the hungry sheep atop Mars Hill, a succulent green pasture. For sheep to not eat, would have been beyond understanding. So Epimenides watched, and to his amazement, several of the sheep did not eat, but lay down in green pastures, beside still waters. Altars were erected where the sheep had lain, dedicated to an Unknown God, and the sheep who had laid there were sacrificed. Immediately the plague stopped. Over the Centuries, these altars and the plague were forgotten, but in a time of reformation one of these altars to an Unknown God was resurrected by Paul as identifying the True God we yearn to know.

"Reconciliation" May 14, 2017

John 21:1-11 Acts 7: 51-60 I hope you enjoy the numerous Resurrection appearances of the season of Easter as I do. I love this 21st Chapter of John for several reasons, not least of which is fishing. One of my earliest memories was of having a bamboo pole and worms, catching sunfish on Pleasant Lake. In 1965 my parents, who were from Central NY bought a home on an identical lake in Northern Michigan. That same year, Field and Stream magazine, described having stocked that lake with fingerlings of Muskellunge. While we never caught one, Muskies were supposed to be a game fish that grew to enormous proportions. In the last few weeks I have had several who have reached points in their lives, like Peter, where it appears there is no future, no hope. This passage of Scripture is assurance that although we may not see God, dwelling on the past, replaying what we wish we had not said, Christ will never abandons us. The quest of faith is a search for reconciliation, for gathering up all the frayed loose ends of life, for finding meaning especially in the darkest, most difficult relationships, and in death that seems the ultimate finality. The 21st Chapter, similar to the prologue of John 1: “In the beginning was the Word…he came to his own people and his own people received him not…but to all who did he gave eternal life” …summarizes the recurrent themes of John’s Gospel of Jesus Christ: At the Wedding at Cana in Galilee, we exhausted the wine/ here exhausted fishing; when Jesus comes creating a superabundance both in quantity and quality. Nicodemus, in the dark of night, knew Jesus to be the Messiah sent from God, but suffered confusion and lack of understanding AND Jesus the light of the world provided illumination and depth of perception. Nathaniel and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, by a simple declaration: I saw you under the tree/ you have 5 husbands and this not your husband/ or having caught nothing on that side of the boat, try the other side; and the lonely stranger becomes a witness declaring: You are the Lord the Son of God. We have reconciliation: Peter denied Jesus 3 times and now vows his love 3 times, both standing before charcoal fires smelling the smoke, feeling the warmth. Jesus told the disciples to go to Galilee, and they went to the Sea of Galilee. In the Hebrew Scriptures: the Name of God: YHWH is “I AM.” In John, Jesus identifies I Am the Good Shepherd; I Am the Vine you are the branches; I Am the Bread of Life, I AM the SheepGate no one comes to the Father except thru me. Pontius Pilate asked if Jesus was a King? Here there were 153 fish. Astrology, Astronomy, numerology were common at that time, in Aramaic 153 corresponds to the letters “I AM God.” However, a subtle and vitally important thing, is that in the Bible we have accounts of being there with God at Creation, with Prophets and Kings, throughout the Gospels we have stories of being with Jesus, listening to him, seeing him. In the Resurrection appearances, you have people who know Christ died for us, who like us are going about their ordinary lives, walking on the road; meeting together for conversation, prayer and a hymn; fishing in a familiar sacred place; going about daily work; being lonely, listless, doubting, unfulfilled, when Jesus came to them. I think one of the earliest crises of the Church, a crisis of faith we each go through, is doubting “Where is God?” “Who is God?” “Will I live through this time, will I ever be happy or challenged, fulfilled?” The resurrection appearances indicate that even in the most common routines, When we are having a meeting discussing drainage… Running scales as a Choir… Celebrating a Wedding, Baptism, Memorial, Worship. Those are the times Christ comes to us, not to heal us of leprosy, not to replace our knees or hips, but to provide reconciliation of all the things that have troubled us; not simply to give us knowledge, but a limitless super-abundance, for everlasting. I imagine Jesus asked Peter three different times “Do you love me?” the importance of which being different. Whenever we have done wrong, let someone down, there is the feeling of being caught. There is also reflection on guilt that you wish you could have a do over. But the 3rd, I think is as a fresh affirmation of faith. As 8 and 10 year olds the imaginations of my brothers and I ran wild, because like Skaneateles we fished and swam in the same waters as Muskies. Although that lake was as pure and cold and clear as Skaneateles, swimming with a big fish with teeth, was frightening. Once, when I was about 35, I thought I saw that big fish swim passed me, Muskellunge, but my friends, family dismissed it as an idle big fish tale. In 2003 there was a movie titled “Big Fish” the main character of which is Eddie Bloom, who delights telling others fantastic mythic adventures about his life. His son’s favorite bedtime story, is about when Eddie and his friends were boys in this Village, and there was an old rundown house, overgrown with weeds, next to the swampy part of the Creek. Once when the boys were about 10, they went to this house at night, trying to get a look at the woman inside, whom they were certain was a witch. She has a glass-eye, that she keeps covered with a patch, and it is said that if you look into that dead eye you can witness your own death! The boys speculate whether they will die horrifically, or peacefully, whether alone or surrounded by loved ones? The other boys taunted Eddie to go look. Was he chicken, or would he march through her yard, walk up the front steps, knock on her door to look in the eye of death? Would you want to know? Maybe death is best left as a mystery. Knowing how, could mess you up, avoiding all the other occasions you faced the same circumstance, worrying about when, and why then. On the shore that morning, when three times over Jesus asked Simon Peter if he loves Jesus, and Peter responds with pledge of his commitment, Jesus does not say “I love you too” instead, as affirmation of Peter, who previously had feared confessing Jesus because he might be arrested and might be crucified beside him, Peter is told how he will die. All his life Simon Peter has been in control, and he will lose control of his life. He will become a prisoner for the Gospel and die for it. Rather than death the same as Jesus, he will ask to be crucified upside down, witnessing the world as all mixed up. On the night of Communion, the night of Jesus’ arrest, Peter had looked death in the eye and ran away in fear. Few things, even death, cause us the same fear as a loss of control. But witnessing his death for what he believed, Jesus says to Peter: Follow me. 10 year old Eddie Bloom nervously squeezed through the fence, and in the dark, crept through the overgrown weeds, then climbed the stairs and knocked at the door. He hears rustling inside, when suddenly the door swings open and the old patch-eyed woman is standing right there. Eddie says to her: “Maam, my name is Edward Bloom, and there are some folks out here who would like to look you in the eye.” He leads her back to where the other boys were hiding. Only two left are brothers, Zack and Don Price. Zack lifts the eye patch, and the film’s Director shows us what looks like a Black and White home movie where the 10 year old Zack now a grown man is standing on a ladder, when the ladder goes out from under and he lays on the pavement dead. Having fallen from a ladder, at that point, I was reaching for the remote. But Eddie turns to the woman, saying “I have been thinking about death. On the one hand seeing yourself die could really screw up your thinking. On the other hand, if you knew you would die in your bed, you would have no fear going to war, or driving a car, eating weird food, stopping a bank robber, because you know you would survive. So it could kind of help you to know.” The woman smiles crooked teeth at him, and lifts her patch. This time, the Director does not show us what Eddie sees, but we watch Eddie’s expression. When she replaces the patch, Eddie says “Huh, so that’s how I go.” Concluding the bedtime story to his son, Eddie says “From then on, I no longer feared death.” I have always trusted God with eternity, after I died, but now I am beginning to trust God with the ordinary things of my daily life. Ten years ago my brothers and I sold our parents’ lakefront home in Michigan. A year ago I saw on the internet, that the biggest fish in the State of Michigan had been caught, it had been caught in the water of that very lake, right in front of my parents’ home, living for years under the drift wood. They showed the photo of three adult men, standing side by side, with their arms outstretched, holding this 55 inch long, 50 lb 8 oz fish with rows and rows of teeth. But the best part is that Muskies were seeded in that lake 42 years ago. If this one had been found there and grown to this size, there were others…

"Abundant Life" May 7, 2017

John 10:1-10 With all the Sermons that have been preached over all the years about the Church being Sheep, about the Good Shepherd, and about whether we widen or make narrow the Gate, there is a terrible confusion about our passages this morning, because the 23rd Psalm and John 10 are not about these but about Abundant Life, life in communal relationship with God and one another! You belong. You are loved. When given a choice between life and death, we choose life. This is the goal of all the Vitamins and Exercise and Diet. A longer more Abundant Life is what every Advertisement promises. It is what Oprah and Ellen, and Joel Olsteen, all are selling. Human nature is so constructed, we do not need to consciously think in order to live to be able to breathe, to have our hearts beat, to swallow, to digest, to see or hear. There is Life, and Eternal Life, and resurrection, but this morning what we address is abundant life, the search we all undertake for purpose, meaning, fulfillment. How different life, if instead of stumbling out of bed, to all the appointments of a day then having a drink or taking a pill to sleep/ remember the times of life when we worked hard and played hard and slept soundly knowing we were making a difference for others. What the Vitamins and Exercises and Diets, and Talk Shows all promise, are secrets to possessing abundant life faster, through hidden ways others do not possess. The power of the Wizard of Oz, was in realizing that you already have the secret, that is a Heart, Courage, a Brain, or a Home, but you had to come to see that you did. You belong. You are loved. Remember weeks ago, we read of Jesus’ Disciples asking “Who was it that sinned, this blind man or his parents, that he was born with this affliction: Blindness?” and Jesus said “Neither, but that God might be revealed in him.” Which then raised questions whether the man, or the Pharisees, were the ones who were blind? This is a 99 verse passage in the Gospel of John revealing that Jesus is Sent from God, but Pharisees refused to see. That Jesus is the Light of the world but humanity preferred darkness, easy answers for survival, compared to following the way to Abundant Life. In total, this is a passage making reference to being included and excluded, about sin and purity; BUT the truth revealed back in John 3:17 is that Christ came not to condemn but to forgive. You belong. You are loved. While there are a few in our community who have raised sheep, a contemporary analogy to John’s metaphor of a Sheep-gate, would be those so computer-savy in ways I will never understand. We would call them “Nerds” of “Geeks” except instead of being the oddballs, our society now covets their skills. But what they enjoy most is “hacking”, finding back-doors and secret-passages into software. When Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong Videogames first came out, I recall my kids enjoying playing for the joy of play, the novelty of something new, until they were told that there are secret codes, that allow you to accumulate more prizes/ faster, and the game changed from the surprise of learning trying to win the game, to accumulation of rewards that were not even rewards but “virtual” points in a game, competing against others at having the highest score of all time. Perhaps as an example we can all identify, like many cars, my Mini Cooper has a computer chip imbedded within the key. Without even being next to the car, I can push a button and the doors lock, a different button and the lights flash and horn sounds, another and the windows roll down and sunroof opens, there are those with automatic ignition and heated seats. Because my car is about a dozen years old and the chip is wearing down, the radius for this to work has decreased, but if I put the key to my head, conducting through matter rather than through air, that invisible force has a greater range. However, there are thieves possessing gadgets, who can steal the computer chip code then walk up to your car and drive it away. So no longer can I be certain of locking out others. The Pharisees had become so embroiled in determining who was in and who was out, who sinned and who was righteous, that they were blind to God, blind to the light of the world. When you have backdoors or passwords, or secrets to abundant life, it is like driving to the top of a Mountain, versus hiking the trails one foot in front of the other. You get the product, to view the panorama, but without experiencing the awe of how to get there. Growing up in Michigan, near the border to Canada, we were taught French in Elementary School. While there were recitations, and vocabulary, what I remember most was when we were able to use our reading ability in French to read the adventures of The Little Prince. What most of us recall from the Readers’ Digest version was that the Narrator crashed his plane in a desert where he met a Little Prince from a tiny far off distant planet, and on this planet were 3 volcanoes and a single rose. The Little Prince devoted his life to the care and nurture of that rose. However, in one of the Prince’s Adventures, he met a Fox, and the Fox begged the Prince to tame him. The Prince learned that the process of taming is about spending time together, some might describe wasting time together, waiting for each other, being vulnerable to the other’s needs, which made each the Fox and the Prince unique to each other. While all the world has a sameness to it, they were each unique to each other by being responsible for each other. The line I recall is: “You see clearly only with the heart, all that is essential is invisible to the eyes.” The difficulty of the search for Abundant Life is not only the work that is involved, but just as with taming the fox, we have to be willing and able to be vulnerable. You belong. You are loved. So much of our lives, particularly since 9/11 is about protecting ourselves, guarding ourselves so we appear to have everything all together. There is a balance between security in order to guard against being abused/ and /vulnerability that allows us to feel, to experience, to love, to believe without proof. And yet, while this is a balance, in protecting ourselves from disappointment, from hurt, in locking out all others, we numb ourselves and cut ourselves off from feeling. The difficulty is we cannot choose what to numb, when. We hide secrets and tell half-truths about ourselves to steel ourselves with emotional armor. You belong. You are loved. Judaism and Islam never fathomed Christianity. Because according to both, God is God, and Humans are Creaturely. The Law as difficult as it is to adhere to, was to identify sin, to guard us from sin, from falling away from those identities and that relationship as mortal creatures with God. In the same way, the Jewish hope of a Messiah was to bring us to God, not to be a God for us, let alone to be both God and Creature. Islam cannot conceive of the Divine so profaning God’s-Divine nature as to conceive a child with a human. Even Muhammed was only a prophet bringing believers to God, and carrying the Law to the people. The primary claim of the Christian Reformation, has been that Jesus is both Fully Human and Fully Divine. MaryLou Osborne left a note in her Bible: We long to be human beings on a Spiritual quest, But in reality we are Spiritual beings living human life’s journey. We yearn to be Divine, to be invincible, to be superhuman and untouchable, but doing so we blind ourselves to our humanity, our vulnerability our spiritual nature. You belong. You are loved. There are no shortcuts, there are not ways to steal in the backdoor for abundant life, because Abundant Life is not a Possession to be Acquired! Abundant Life is a Promise, the Promise of a Gift from God, a gift of God giving God’s self to us. That promise is that we are loved, we are accepted, we can be human and open ourselves to one another, even naming our broken nature and need for forgiveness. You belong. You are loved.

"Journeying Together" April 30, 2017

Acts 2: 36-41 Luke 24: 13-35 Funny, the settings and times in these Easter stories… Mary went to the tomb early before the rising of the sun hearing her own name spoke by a voice she recognized… The evening of that day, the first day of the week, the disciples were in the upper room locked, behind closed doors, for fear, when Jesus breathed saying Peace… Seven days later, they had fished all night catching nothing, when Jesus asked Peter a third time, “Do you love me?”… Our reflection on the resurrection today, comes from Luke not John, and starts out mid-afternoon, of that first day, on the Road to Emmaus John’s Gospel is chocked full of miracle stories, reaching pen-ultimate crescendo at the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and then the crucifixion. But Luke, is different, for Luke the focus is less on the miracles, signs and symbols, than on who is healed, the poor, the blind, the children, a Gentile from Gerasene filled with a Legion of demons, a Samaritan woman, a woman bleeding for 12 years. Why they were going to Emmaus is not stated, except that the reason they had gone to Jerusalem was now over. They went to see the Messiah. They went to witness something life changing, world altering, revolutionary. All the hopes and dreams of a thousand generations hung on the head of that Rabbi from Galilee. Dreams broken, destroyed as he was judged, whipped, hung out on a cross to die. 3 days after the crucifixion, all that was left was to go home. Reweaving fishing nets, counting other peoples’ money at Tax Offices, returning from being AWOL, picking up the pieces of missed appointments, relationships, debts, merciful routine. Instead of Jesus’ Crucifixion insert “When diagnosed with an incurable disease, when downsized through no fault of your own, when the investments you made over a lifetime are swallowed up in the market, when the person you loved no longer recognizes you as important, when our baby our only child overdoses, when at death we do part.” Confrontations with normalcy, the in-breaking of reality, are hard to take because more than disrupting reality, they destroy the illusions and hopes and dreams we lived for. Confronting the realities of life remind us that there is an end to dreams, to relationships, endings over which we have no control, and under which we feel as captured prisoners to a cruel conqueror. After disappointment in our lives, there is return to routine,… except life is different, it can never be the same. What difference is there in miracles, sermons of a Savior, if death still has ultimate power and dominion over us? When Simon Peter preached this sermon in Acts, every person was cut to the heart, responding “What can we do?” and while John the Baptist and Jesus each had come preaching Repentance, on that day 3,000 repented & were baptized. What are the conversations when on the way to nowhere? What can be important, what is worth saying, when there is only tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… These two were part of the extended disciples, who were not looking for a proleptic in-breaking of the End Time, a Resurrection in the midst of life, but only a contrast to that mythic Genesis “In the Beginning” as if here were “The Day of the Lord“ or Resurrection After our individual Deaths. They spoke as if Fate rather than Destiny were their rule, as if what had been killed was not only Jesus, but their Faith in God. Although Luke spends only the clause of a sentence on their having been in conversation before the stranger joined them, we each know “the conversations of meaninglessness” that last a lifetime. I thank God, that on Easter morning, Bill did recover. I thank God for each of you who responded and acted in concern. But I also Thank God this reality happened on Easter morning, that on Easter, we would be horrified by the shock of reality. As the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the fever of life is over, and the busy-ness of the world is hushed, the couple on the road recognize the presence and shadow of another on the road beside them. A stranger who asks a strange question “What is the conversation you are holding with each other as you walk?” In anxiety and fear, our options become limited. It is hard for us to break the cycle of depression, until we reach bottom and dwell there. These two had been caught having kept the conversation going in only one direction, down. When the stranger interrupted, they stopped still. Hope is recognizing, suddenly realizing there are other options, to witness a Crossroads, where our circumstance with the world// intersects with eternity and God… I think that what the stranger did was to challenge that “Faith is not the Opposite of Doubt and Fear…That is Certainty!” Faith, is by definition “Trust despite a lack of evidence.” Faith is more tension-filled and therefore more exciting than knowledge, or facts or proof. Faith is living AS IF all of the promises of God are True!” It is acceptable to doubt, it is even required in order to truly believe. Doubt is sort of like the porches on our houses, thresholds you have to get over, in order to get inside, or go out into the world! But many of us make ourselves comfortable on that threshold, the threshold of doubts instead of risking. What always shocks me about this Easter season, is that Jesus holds no grudge. Part of me expects Jesus to walk up behind these two on the road, and smack them upside the head. “What do you mean abandoning me in a tomb?” “Why did you betray me?” “How dare you leave me on a cross to die!” “Some-kind of believers!” But Jesus did not. There is no accusation in any of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection, no condemnation, only forgiveness. When it comes to being wrong, most of us have a hard time admitting it. Even when caught, we see ourselves as justified, we never raped, robbed, pillaged or murdered! But pretty good people, okay-lives, was not what Jesus sought in disciples. He found bad guys, people who knew they had been wrong, and offered them forgiveness. The Catholic Theologian James Alison wrote a book on The Joy of Being Wrong, his point being that only those who have been wrong can ever hope of being forgiven. But the real Gospel, the Good News that inspires repentance is that while Jesus never smacked anybody for being wrong, he also refused to leave us there. EVEN after death, he began patiently painstakingly explaining : Creation as a Resurrection story, because death is a piece of the fertility of life. Seeds must fall, be buried and decompose, in order for abundance to come. The Flood demonstrated how out of total devastation, still there was a remnant. Abraham and Sarah are two who were as Good as Dead, yet their lives were not over, they still had laughter. The Law is dying and rising with new interpretations, not letters carved in stone. The rise and fall of Empires and Superpowers, the suffering and return of refugees, the despair of the suffering servant, expectation of the return of Elijah, are witnesses to God’s promises. Resurrection changes the Scriptures from stories about the past, to miracles in our midst, because God lives. What if we embrace death not as the ultimate reality, but as the penultimate? What if endings, walls, only become obstacles to us, inspiring us to volunteer? The point is not to see death as a passageway from a lower to higher reality, because that diminishes the importance of life; but that this life, relationships, love and faith are vitally important to the meaning of Life! And yet, even that is not all, because God has more to be revealed. If anything, I believe we in the church have done a disservice to Christian faith, by emphasizing the brokenness of the bread. Yes, in recognizing our sins/ in the breaking of the bread, they recognized him; but he also gifted us with: Life in a new Covenant, life in hope of reconciliation. Our Faith is not in the suffering on the cross, but in the resurrection that his death was not meaningless, his death was not the end. We live with the reality of life all around us. There is death, hopes and dreams are routinely destroyed by reality, but still we trust and believe as if God’s Promises are True.

"The Christ Came Back" April 23, 2017

John 20: 19-31 In order to begin today, we need to put aside everything we think we know. Because that is the problem in this story, that is the problem we all have with Easter, that is the problem we have with faith. “Putting aside what you think you know.” Putting aside everything you think you know about “Doubting Thomas”. Putting Aside,… NOT forgetting about all together… but putting aside for now. This morning’s reading comes in contrast to the circumstance of Mary, Simon Peter and the other Disciple, that first new morning. Remember that at Dawn, Mary came alone, Jesus had told Mary not to hold him, not to cling to him, because he had not yet ascended to the Father, remember that, and put it aside. These events take place, on the evening of that day, the first day of the Week, when the disciples were Again Gathered in the Upper Room, but without Jesus, without Judas, without Thomas, the place where they had celebrated the Passover marking Freedom through Faith in God, Freedom from the Empire’s Oppression, but here now, instead of an Exodus, instead of a New Covenant, because of the oppression of their fears they were hiding behind a locked door. How often we hide behind our justifications, behind our logic and reason. We distance ourselves from life by the complexity of our arguments and words. When we feel too much, we use knowing. This week the News carried a Youtube Video from a photographic safari in Africa. It seemed a herd of elephants went to a riverbank to drink, and the littlest Elephant-child got its nose bitten by a crocodile. The more the Elephant-child pulled the more the crocodile refused to let go. The more the crocodile bit down, the more the elephant pulled. Ultimately, the whole herd began charging to stomp the Crocodile and it retreated, and the Newscasters reported that neither elephant nor crocodile were harmed. This reminded me of when our children were very little, before the days of Internet, WIFI, DVDs and CDs. One Easter, their grandparents sent us a set of Cassette Audio Tapes. Grandpa had recorded reading several of Kipling’s Just So Stories, about how the elephant-child got its long trunk; and there were also a number of songs, among these was one from the 1800s titled “The Cat Came Back”. Truth be told, the lyrics are horrible! Mister Johnson had troubles of his own, he had a yellow cat that wouldn't leave his home; He tried and he tried to give the cat away, he gave it to a man goin' far, far away. But the cat came back the very next day, The cat came back, we thought he was a goner But the cat came back; just couldn't stay away. A neighbor takes the cat across the ocean on a ship, the ship sank and the cat came back the very next day. A Boy sent the cat to the moon, but the rocket crashed and the Cat Came back the very next day. That then reminded me of this season of Easter. Most often we think of all the parables and teachings of Jesus, arguments for compassion, ethics, morals, righteousness, the quoting of Scripture; in our minds are stories of the miracles of his birth, of changing water into wine, feeding 5000, healing the blind, the lame, those with Leprosy; but in this season, we celebrate throughout the 7 weeks of Easter, “The Christ came back on the third day, they thought he was a goner but the Christ came back on the third day.” They abandoned and betrayed him, arrested and judged him, put him on a cross to die, but The Christ came back on the third day.” They took his body down from the cross and sealed it in a stone tomb, with guards outside, but “The Christ came back on the third day.” Despite the door to the Upper Room being locked for fear, “The Christ came back on the third day.” On the Road to Emmaus, at the breaking of Bread: “The Christ came back on the third day.” They fished all night, catching naught, believing he was dead and gone, “but The Christ came back on the third day.” Time and again in our lives, we believe God does not care, nobody cares, but yet again “The Christ comes back on the third day.” There are a set of problems with understanding our Scripture this day. Problems which begin with Thomas’ name: Thomas, Didymus, called the Twin. The problem is that in Hebrew the name Thomas literally means The Twin. In Greek, Didymus also means The Twin. While there are reasons to question and doubt, the story about a Virgin Birth, there has never been explanation of whose Twin Thomas was; and Dan Brown has not yet suggested that among Jesus’ brothers was a Twin. No, I think perhaps, what this is saying is that Thomas was part of two Communities. Communities are more than neighbors, friends and colleagues, they are the group which gives you identity. Our birth community establishes for you, our sense of right and wrong, and good and evil, hopes and dreams. By being part of the Church, baptized and claimed, you are part of the community we call the body of Christ. Thomas was one of the chosen twelve disciples, and also one of a group of realists, pragmatists who struggled to know and understand and explain. They believed in a duality to the universe, that there was this life, this reality that was evil, and a resurrection that was perfection. There are two other references we have to this disciple: first when Lazarus had died, saying “If he has only fallen asleep, he will recover.” Jesus told them plainly “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” Thomas said to the other disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” And at the Table, when Jesus said “Believe in God, believe also in me! In my Father’s house are many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.” And Thomas replied: “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” To which Jesus replied, “I am the way and the truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known the Father.” Thereafter, at the Last Supper, the Arrest, the Crucifixion, Thomas is not named. I believe that on that night when all the disciples abandoned Jesus, when Judas betrayed Jesus, when Peter denied Jesus, Thomas gave up. Gave up all faith in Jesus, gave up being part of the community and went to join the realists for his community. When the resurrection happened, when Mary and Peter and John went to the Tomb, Thomas was not there. When the Risen Christ appeared to the others, the Bible reports: “Thomas was not with them.” I believe that’s a loaded statement, that he was no longer part of the community. But a week later, he was there when Christ came to them, and here Christ offers the most realistic defense of faith. At times, we all question and doubt, but of all things Jesus offered: “Here are the wounds of my suffering, put out your finger and feel the holes of the nails, the wound of the spear, do not be faithless, but believing.” At which, Thomas is no longer identified as The Twin, because he declares what no one before had said: “MY LORD & MY GOD.” In the Roman Empire, only One Authority could be called LORD, Caesar. In Hebrew, only God could be called God, to name anyone or any other god this was blasphemy and idolatry. But Thomas’ pragmatic declaration is what all of us have sworn in Baptism and Confirmation, that “Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior.”

"Witnesses to the Resurrection" Easter April 16, 2017

John 20: 1-18 Every week, every summer, until I was 8, my brothers and I played in Mt Edna Cemetery. At the time, this was not at all strange. For each summer we spent on the farm with our Grandparents in Fulton, and Grandma insisted that before the Sun rose on the first day of the week, our family went to the Cemetery to lay fresh flowers. Grandpa would carry a bucket up the hill to fetch water for the flower urns at each headstone, Grandma would remove the decayed ones, separate and arrange fresh flowers that smelled nicer. All the while my brothers and I played tag or hide and seek behind the headstones. When Grandma was finished, she would call us together and we would have a prayer sitting on the ground amidst all the stones of our ancestors. We never thought this was creepy, it was not something we did because we were preacher’s kids. We were told this was an honor we could pay to those we were supposed to love, before the new week started. We had grown up with death as a reality. We had been blessed to know our Grandparents and Great Aunts and Uncles, who each were older than Grandma and well past 90, so visiting their graves was pretty much like visiting them at their homes. Both in their homes and at the Cemetery, we were encouraged to run around outside, then come inside and quietly sit still as the grand-folks talked, on the way home Grandpa always stopped at Foster’s for Ice Cream. The only difference that I could see was that Great Aunt Ethel had a Parrot, Aunt May had Cats, Uncle Zeek gave us Silver Dollars, both of our Aunts smelled of perfumes, Uncle Zeek’s house smelled like Uncle Zeek, while at the Cemetery there were no pets and no smelly stuff. We were encouraged to go to the Cemetery regularly, even though Grandma always cried. We knew the headstone in the shape of a lamb for our Cousin Bert who died as a child. The only things we did not understand, were why there were already headstones and graves for our grandparents though they were alive, and the purpose of that little stone house without windows. Grandpa said it was the Mausoleum? My brother said it was the Tomb where Jesus had been buried. Amongst ourselves, we decided that it looked like the stone house in the Sunday School Pictures where Jesus stood outside and knocked, so as Church was God’s House, each of our Great Aunts and Uncle had their houses, that the Mausoleum had to be Jesus’ House, except it seemed strange the doors were always locked and there were no windows. The winter after I turned 7 Grandpa died, so we went to Fulton the next summer, but Grandma no longer lived on the Farm, and my brothers claimed to be too grown up to play Tag or Hide and Seek among the Headstones, so we stopped going until as a minister I was called upon for the burial of my Grandmother. We live in a death defying culture. A World where we try to live forever, believing in Carpe Diem taking vitamins, having face-lifts and tummy tucks and exercising at Y to try to beat death at its own game. But as much as we focus on celebrating the person’s life, instead of dwelling on grieving, there is a mortal imperative in appreciating we are creaturely, and the whole point of Easter is celebrating the reality that we die, but also we believe in more. We, the church, the family and friends who survive are gifted with responsibility to serve as witnesses to their resurrection. Sooner or later we all die. Confronted with the dark realities of death, cemeteries seemed more like prisons than playgrounds, holding our hopes and loved ones captive, burying our dreams and secrets, locking shut the future inside that Mausoleum without windows. In Israel, the Tour Guide insisted we go to the Holocaust Museum. 90 Minutes surrounded by those images was overwhelming. But part of the Holocaust Museum was the Children’s Memorial - Yad Vashem. Truthfully, I wanted no part of this. But entering we were reminded of Abraham called out in the night to look up at the heavens, counting the stars as future generations and families who would believe in God. Then there were a dozen candles burning, and these were reflected in mirror upon mirror, until you were lost in a maze of darkness surrounded by over a million points of light. These symbolized the 1,200,000 stars who died never reaching the Confirmation of their Bar’Mitzvah. After surviving the agony of Friday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb before the sun rose on the new week. When she was hit with the most painful reality of all. The headstone that sealed the tomb was rolled away, the tomb was opened, the body gone. Before she knew what she was doing, she was running, running back to the Upper Room, running to find Peter. Mary was helpless, hopeless… Not only had Jesus been arrested, beaten, judged and crucified, because of the Sabbath they had not been able to anoint the dead with oils or perfumes, death sealed in a tomb without windows, the door locked with a stone; and yet now, even worse, she had no idea where they had taken him, who had taken him, he was gone for ever. Jesus had encouraged them to play at imagining a different world, where everyone could be forgiven, where Masters wash servants’ feet, where Lepers can be cleaned, where the Blind can see and those possessing Sight are the ones truly blind. In a world of scarcity, he had fed 5000 starving people from a little boy’s lunchbox, with enough leftover that no Tupperware party could contain. He had led them in playing Hide and Seek at the Cemetery, when he got caught, when their team lost and the game was over. Jesus’ piece was not only knocked over, removed from the board. But what she did not seem to know, what all of us forget, is God is still in the game. One of the things I love about Easter, is that there are curious details, “the other disciple outran Peter” which one of the early interpreters described as Peter was weighed down by so many burdens, doubts, fears, even his being married, so the other disciple was able to outrun Peter. Peter who ALWAYS jumped at conclusions, who saw connections no one else could see, was weighed down by guilt and could not see it. One disciple sees what could not be possessed and believes; another goes away uncertain yet later becomes the leader of the disciples, of the church; and one who could understand and accept heard nothing until her name was spoken and recognized him. Easter came to each differently, not on their terms, but as each needed. Where Peter and John had seen the cloth that covered him and the cloth that shrouded his face, there were angels. Mary seemed un-surprised there were angels. The only thing surprising was that asked “Why she was weeping?” What else should she do, what else could she do? When all hope is lost, when you are captive to tyranny, to technology you cannot understand, to consumerism, to terrorism, when unknown others win and you are forced to lose at life, all you can do is weep. Only days before, she and the disciple brothers had been playing follow the leader with Jesus, they had been running around on the Sabbath, they had thumbed their nose at death… Lazarus’ sister had described a stench, but Jesus conquered death calling “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” and as if unfrozen from Tag, Lazarus came out. Not long ago we celebrated a wedding, and the Bride’s sister was the Maid of Honor. The Maid of Honor was tough as nails, she had just graduated from the Marine Academy, but this was her sister, the sister she had always struggled to get along with, the sister who smothered her with love, tried to put makeup on her and make this marine girly. At the reception, the Maid of Honor provided a heart-felt speech, fighting back her tears. At one point the Bride tried to hug her and her sister insisted “Don’t hug me, because if you hug me I cannot get through this.”