Community of Saints

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:32-12:2, Revelation 21:1-6a, John 11:32-44

Good morning, friends. It is good to be back with you this morning, especially after an extra hour of sleep! Today is the Christian holiday known as All Saint’s Day, and it’s a pleasure to be reflecting with you on what it means to be a part of the community of saints, particularly in light of the opportunity we’ll have in a few moments to welcome new people into our local church and into communion with us. Will you pray with me?

Loving God, your grace is everywhere. You walk with us in every circumstance of our lives, even as we approach the end of life. Bless us, we pray, with the gift of faith, God. Calm our fears, heal our wounds, and open us to your new life, fully lived, in your kingdom without end.

I recently read the story of Kate Braestrup in her book Here if you Need Me. She is a chaplain to park rangers in Maine, and before she went to seminary her police officer husband had been planning to go into the ministry himself. But one day when he was on the road in his patrol car, he was hit by an oncoming truck and killed instantly, leaving behind his wife Kate and four children under fourteen. Knowing her husband Drew would have wanted it that way, she decides to be the one to prepare his body. Braestrup writes:

Tom, my mother, the two sergeants, and I dressed his body gently in a Class A Maine State Police uniform, crying a little, but laughing a little, too. It’s absurdly difficult to put clothing onto a body that cannot cooperate, and what was there to do but imagine Drew’s amusement at this necessary indignity and laugh with him?...

I washed Drew’s face with a soft, damp cloth. This is what Drew would have done for me, I thought. And in all the time that I shall live without him—time roaring and tumbling at me like some merciless, black avalanche – I will be able to tell myself that I bore our love with my own hands all the way to the last hard place. “Semper fidelis” I told him, washing him tenderly around the mouth and jaw and closed eyes, then smoothing his hair with my hand. Leaving the cool room where Drew’s body lay was harder than it was to enter it.

In our gospel lesson for today, we can imagine Mary and Martha, sisters to Lazarus, carefully washing his face and body, gently wrapping his hands and feet in bands of cloth, covering his face with a cloth, bearing their love with their own hands to that last, hard place. It is difficult for them, because of what could have been. “If only Jesus had been here,” they whisper to one another, sobbing. “If he had been here, our brother would still be with us.”

It is a new phenomenon that people in the United States rarely care for the bodies of deceased loved ones. Before the Civil War, people usually died in their beds at home. But with the trauma of the war, thousands upon thousands of young men were killed on the battlefield. Families began to pay undertakers to retrieve and preserve their son’s bodies, bringing them home for the last goodbye at the funeral.

I know most of us would not feel equal to caring for a loved one’s body. But I wonder if something is lost when we have so much distance from the facts of death and that final chance to show care once more to a loved one’s body, personally. I wonder if a certain amount of distance increases the fear death can command, since it has become less and less a part of day-to-day life.

In any case, as Christians, we have a unique perspective on death and how it relates to faith and a life lived in Christ. In our story today, Lazarus’ sister Mary tells Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus doesn’t dismiss the pain of the loss of Lazarus. He is greatly troubled and begins to weep, which, honestly, isn’t what you’d expect from someone who is about to raise his friend from the dead.

They go to the tomb – a cave with its entrance sealed by a stone. Jesus orders the stone rolled away, but Martha objects, based on what she expects to find. “Don’t do that, Jesus,” she warns, “He’s going to smell really bad.” But Jesus thanks God for the chance to demonstrate God’s goodness, and then calls to Lazarus, who rises and walks out of the tomb, still bound and covered by burial clothes.

We might wonder, hearing this story, why death exists at all. What is God’s purpose in it? Death is, for the living, a reminder of our own limits. As much as we have and do and try, or conversely, as little as we have and do and try, in the end death waits for all of us.

The raising of Lazarus pre-figures Jesus’ own resurrection. In fact, it is the act of ministry that, according to the writer of John, leads the powers that be to make plans to kill Jesus off. Yet Jesus’ resurrection is different, too. He is not brought back to life by a human healer, but by the unquenchable power of God’s own life. As Christians rooted in the power of the resurrection story, we have a promise and a hope for abundant life in Jesus Christ, in this life and the next. The resurrection of Jesus prefigures what God will do for all of us – make us holy, and give us new life, a new heaven, a new earth.

Sometimes we think of saints as being Christian superheros – people like Mother Teresa or Francis of Assisi, who gave up their lives to serve the poor. But I like the language we heard today in Hebrews. “We are surrounded,” the author writes, “by a cloud of witnesses.” Saints are made holy by what we witness – God’s saving power in our lives and in the world.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he sparked a new community of faith. This community of saints is made up of witnesses to God’s love, people made holy by God’s loving work in their lives through Jesus. We gather here as a community of saints, at St. Mark’s, not out of a sense of being extra good, but out of gratitude. We come giving thanks for God’s healing work in our lives, and we come with a desire to pray together, to encourage each other, to learn and grow, to serve and love, and to be sent out again to our individual ministries in the wider world.

Today, there is indeed much to be grateful for. We welcome Holly and Trish as new members of this particular local church – this little section of that great cloud of witnesses, living and dead, and we invite Miranda and Michael to the communion table today to share in the community of saints founded by Jesus. These are gifts of God’s grace.

The kingdom of God, oddly, is both present with us now and yet to be revealed. In the same way, we have new life in Christ, we are a community of saints, and at the same time, the fullness of that life is yet to be revealed. Last week, I attended the lantern parade at Patterson Park. It was after dark, and there were hundreds of people carrying lanterns of different shapes and sizes, parading together, carrying their lights with them. As I looked across the park and saw the line of lanterns curving over the dark hills, I had a sudden picture of what the kingdom of God might be like – a community of saints, carrying our lanterns together, bearing God’s light into the world. May God’s new life, new heaven and new earth be manifest among us. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Love and Reality

Scripture: Mark 10:2-16

Good morning friends. What a gift to be here together this morning. This morning’s gospel is a little more of a challenge than usual, so let us be in prayer together.

Loving God, we need your grace. Dwell with us here in this place. Open my mouth to share wisdom. Open our hearts to your word to us. Open our eyes to see your kingdom among us. You are the one we rely on. Guide and strengthen us, we pray. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I have to say that, honestly, I was not excited to preach about this week’s gospel lesson. The main topic is divorce – the Pharisees ask Jesus if it’s okay to get one, and he says, no, because marriage changes two people into one person. How can you split a person apart and have that be God’s will?

There is some political background here that explains why the Pharisees ask Jesus this question in the first place. The king of Judea at the time – Herod – had divorced his wife so that he could marry his brother’s wife. She had divorced the brother to be able to marry Herod. It was more drama than Princess Di, Prince Charles and Camilla.

John the Baptist, Jesus’ mentor, had spoken out against this as wrong, and as a result, Herod put him in jail. But when someone put him up to it, Herod had John killed, rather than go back on his word. As you can see, it was a big risk in those days to even comment on the local king’s domestic affairs. The Pharisees know this, so asking Jesus about divorce is another attempt at painting him into a corner. And instead of agreeing or disagreeing with the law handed down by Moses, Jesus goes back to the basic meaning of marriage in the creation. He goes beyond and above the law.

There’s a way in which Jesus is speaking out in favor of the vulnerable by going against divorce. Even today, divorce usually affects women more than men, in terms of economics. In Jesus’ day this was much more extreme. Women without a husband were left destitute if they had no male relatives to support them. Imagine the insecurity that kind of an arrangement would inspire! If a husband who decided to use that threat, even the possibility of divorce would be enough to take advantage of his wife’s vulnerability. “Because of your hard-heartedness,” Jesus says, “Moses made that law for you. But it’s not what God intended.”

So that’s some of the background to what’s going on in the gospel lesson this morning. But the big, glaring thing that’s sitting in the foreground for me is what happens in our lives today around divorce. I have plenty of family and friends who have been through divorce, and some who even midway through the process right now. I would imagine many of us have been through the experience ourselves or have seen someone we love go through it. And as Jesus faces down the Pharisees, he sure makes it sound pretty simple, as though choosing to get a divorce were like choosing to go to a new restaurant, instead of an old favorite. Divorce is painful enough, not something that most people choose happily or thoughtlessly. I don’t want to add yet another layer of guilt over something that is as much a tragedy as it is a sin.

And yet, here’s Jesus saying, ‘that’s not what God wants for you,’ and I want to say back, “Well, we can’t always do that.” Which leaves this huge gap – a chasm – between what God wants for us, and what can happen instead. One of the Greek words we translate now as sin has a meaning from archery of falling short and missing the mark. At its most basic, divorce represents our limits as humans – that there are some things that can’t be forgiven, some divides too deep to bridge, and some wounds that are simply fatal to a relationship. There is Jesus’ vision of love, and there is reality.

Divorce, of course, isn’t the only way we can fall short of God’s intentions for us, of course. It just has the dubious honor of being relatively public – something that all our friends and family and extended networks eventually find out about. By contrast, someone might betray their marriage vows by abusing their spouse for years without anyone besides the victim knowing for sure what is going on. Or what would it be like for us if, every time we held a grudge everybody in the church, and all our friends and family, knew it? I guess it depends on what kind of a grudge you’re holding. In love, Jesus calls us to forgive, but in reality it’s a hard thing to do.

What’s ironic, in a way, is that one of the things Jesus calls us to do is to love and care for those who are vulnerable and in need. This is an ongoing refrain. In the second section of our gospel lesson, he shoos the disciples away when they try to keep little kids from coming to him. Instead of sending them away, he welcomes the children, hugging them and blessing them, caring for them in their vulnerability. And yet, even though this is something so important to Jesus, our falling short on our care for the vulnerable rarely gets the kind of local publicity that a divorce does.

In this passage, Jesus is inviting us to be part of the kingdom of God. What does it mean to live out a good marriage, and to live out good friendships, and to live out good relationships with our families, and with our co-workers and neighbors and random people on the street – what does it mean for our relationships to say that we are Christian? How does being part of the kingdom of God affect them? I’d like to lay out four ways.

First, there is treating others the way you’d like to be treated. Jesus talks about the married couple as being one flesh. This means seeing the health and well-being of your spouse tied to your own well-being. Decisions are made as a unit, for the good of the whole. Each person shares. The orientation of the partners goes from personal to joint. The reality, of course, is that sometimes we don’t feel it or remember it. According to one expert on the human mind, the way our memories are structured, we always are more aware of our own contributions and less aware of the contributions others make. Our own memories keep us falling short!

The Christian promise actually broadens this principle beyond marriage. In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul describes the whole church as the body of Christ. What would a church look like if we saw each other as being of the same body – that our needs and joys are shared – and that we cared for each other accordingly?

Second, there is forgiveness. Every Sunday we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness is not exclusive to Christians, but it is one of Jesus’ key teachings. And marriage is a great place to learn how to do it, and then get ongoing practice. But forgiveness is required in all our relationships. And learning to give up our rights when we’ve been hurt, to release them and to end the cycle of hurt, these are gifts of the Spirit and signs of God’s grace in a world so often bent on revenge and retribution.

Third, there is care for the vulnerable. Relationships in the kingdom of God are marked by respect, even for those who have little conventional power. Jesus calls the children to come to him, and he blesses and cares for him. This is something we’re called to imitate in the life of the kingdom, to regard with care and love those who might otherwise be overlooked or at a disadvantage.

Finally, there is the fact that all of our relationships rely on God. When we make marriage vows in a Christian wedding service, there is an acknowledgement that God’s covenant and God’s faithfulness under gird our own. In the same way, our fellowship in churches, in families, as neighbors, as friends, all rely on God’s grace. The huge gap between love and reality, must, ultimately, be filled by God.

This week, I did some work caring for my front lawn. As I recently learned, having a nice, healthy yard with lots of thick grass is the best way to prevent weeds. As it so happens, my yard right now has a lot more weeds than grass – clover, crabgrass, dandelions, something that looks like a houseplant, I don’t even know. The way to help the grass grow is by over-seeding. First you rake away the dead grass and grass clippings, cut the remaining grass down really short, and cast new seeds on the bare spots, where, if you water twice a day for two weeks, the seeds will sprout and grow, and crowd out the weeds. Ideally, this is done every year. We’ve been in the house three years and I’ve never done it before. I got about half a trash can full of stuff by raking the yard, and the yard is not that big. And big chunks and knots came out where the crabgrass gave way, so I put in some new dirt there, along with the new seeds.

What if our goal in our relationships were to encourage the good plants and crowd out the weeds? What if we were to sow encouragement and kindness, faithfulness and peace? Thankfully, we are alone in this journey. God walks with us, providing the light, sending the rain, raking away the dead grass in our hearts, and making room for the new seed so that when it lands, it will grow and flourish, leading us into that shining realm of God. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Wise Words

Scriptures: James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38

Good morning. I realize it may be promising a lot to call my sermon “Wise Words.” With a title like that, you may be expecting actual wise words to come from me, personally, which is something I simply can’t guarantee. The very first words the reading from James has for us today is directed at teacher such as myself. It is a warning, I think, to stay humble, since the stakes are high. I’m hoping, though, that by talking about James’ own wise words, we’ll be able to receive a wise word from God for today. Will you pray with me?

Loving God, you give us wisdom, you give us love, you give us your creation, and you give us one another, made in your own likeness. Open our hearts to your Wise Word for us today, we pray, and may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

“Talk is cheap.” We’ve all heard that saying, right? And it goes right along with another saying: “Actions speak louder than words.” In our reading today, though, James thinks about it a different way. Talk can be very expensive. So much evil can be accomplished by one little wagging tongue! It’s like a flame that sets a blazing forest fire. Just get a rumor started and it burns out of control, beyond the reach of even the people who started it.

How many of us have ever blurted out something that we later regret? Wait, let me rephrase that: How many of us have NEVER blurted out something that we later regretted saying? Any hands? Of course not – that’s a common universal experience. As James puts it, “Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check.” And, as another saying reminds us, “Nobody’s perfect.”

In James’ day, hardly anybody could read and write. The letter he wrote to the churches would have been read out loud to everybody in the church. So mostly, the way to get in trouble was with your tongue, not your pen. Before the internet, and still for many of us, there is the opportunity to say things in writing that we later regret. Of course, writing an angry letter takes some effort. You have to sit down and type it, or write it out by hand. Then put it in an envelope and address the envelope. Then you need to get a stamp and walk or drive to somewhere where you can put it in a post office box. Only after all that would you have the opportunity to start regretting what you’d said in your letter. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still possible to do, it just takes a little more time and effort than blurting something out in conversation.

These days, those of us who are wired up and plugged in have that many more opportunities for our unwise words to get out into the world to do their evil. And they have staying power, too! There’s Twitter and Facebook and Myspace and texting and plain old e-mail. All you have to do is click a button and your message is gone, never to return. I don’t know how many times I’ve answered an e-mail from someone, only to find that the next one I get from that person tells me to ignore the one I just answered. That’s an oops for both of us!

There’s great power in fast communication, but I think that if James were writing today, he would have to add texting thumbs or the computer mouse to his condemnations about the human tongue.

Because while James is talking about the tongue, we know of course that the problem is with our hearts, minds and souls, and that odd part of us that speaks something before the rest of us really has a chance to object.

To be honest, it’s possible to have the opposite problem, too, which is to not be able to say the things that really need to be said. As a Midwesterner with a tendency toward being quiet, I like it when James says these kinds of things, along the lines of listen quickly, but speak slowly. Maybe you’ve heard this saying: “God gave us two ears and one mouth, so use them accordingly.” James is worried about ways that flaming tongues can set fires of anger. But there are ways, too, that a silent tongue can kill by freezing.

So with all that in mind, it would really have to be a totally perfect person who could always say what needs to be said, never any more, never any less.

We see the difficulty of it in our Gospel story from today. Jesus knows what is coming for him. He takes the temperature of his disciples: “What are people saying about me?” he asks, “What are all those wagging tongues talking about?” That’s a pretty easy question – the disciples are clued in to the rumor mill – “Some say Elijah come back to life, some say John the Baptist – they know you’re important. Maybe a prophet.”

Then Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” This is a harder question. This is where talk gets expensive. Peter answers first, which is typical – Peter is the type to rush in and then regret it later. But this time he gets it right. “You are the Messiah,” he says. And not only is he right, but he’s brave to say so.

In those days, Messiah was a political position. Peter was basically saying to Jesus, “You should be the king, not that slob who’s currently taking up space on the throne.” Something like that, anyway. Or maybe to modernize it a little bit, “Hey Jesus, you should run for President. I think you’d get the votes.” Of course in there is the added overtone that Jesus would get an endorsement from God as candidate.

Existing Messiahs of the time, like King Herod of Judah, or the emperor of Rome wouldn’t take kindly to this kind of treasonous talk, encouraging an upstart challenger to the throne. Peaceful transfers of power in those days were pretty rare. Usually you died in office, one way or another. So those Messiahs were watching their backs. Speaking out against them was a brave thing for Peter to do. That talk is not cheap. That talk is expensive.

But what Jesus means when he says “Messiah” is very different, in some ways, from what Peter and most people would have expected at the time. Because the next thing Jesus does is start teaching about how as the Messiah of this new kingdom of God, he’ll have to suffer and die. This is not something Messiahs normally do, to put it mildly. Peter pulls Jesus aside, blurting out, “Not you, sir! Surely not you!” “Get with the program,” Jesus answers, “Stop trying to tempt me onto the wrong path!”

The kingdom of God Jesus is describing, speaking into being, really, is marked by love and sacrifice, not by power and war, as Peter was expecting. Jesus is the leader, the head, the King, the Messiah, of that alternative kingdom, that new way of living, that new reality.

We are invited into the new world of God over and over again. We are invited to learn these strange wise words of that realm found here on earth. In God’s world, power and influence mean love and service. Being the greatest means being the least. Being wise means being like a child, open to every possibility.

James compares the tongue to a rudder on a ship; it is small, but it can turn us in a new direction. What we say matters. What we say not only comes out of our hearts and minds and souls, but also comes back to them and influences them. What we say can bring hope, clarity and encouragement. What we way helps us learn what we really believe about the world. What we say matters because we can shape ourselves and one another for the good. James reminds his readers that each of us is made in the image of God. You are the Messiah, Peter confesses. May we, too, learn the wise words of God that will help us speak into and live into being God’s beautiful, promised and present kingdom of love. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Life As a Saint

You might be interested or might already know that Christians weren’t always called Christians. Jesus and the disciples would have been called Jews or Judeans, and the disciples in particular were just called that – disciples, students. Only later, as the movement got to be more distinct, and new people outside the Jewish tradition joined, did Christians get their name. So, when the apostle Paul was writing his letter to the people who have started a church in the town of Ephesus – the Ephesians – he doesn’t call them Christians, he simply calls them saints, or if you’d like to translate it a little differently, they are people who have been made holy by God.

In the time since Paul and the Ephesians, our faith tradition has acquired the name of Christian, and the idea of what a saint is has shifted, too. A saint is still someone whom God has made holy, but now we tend to think of people who have done amazing things in their lifetimes, and whose holiness extends even to miracles after their death.

But what if we went back to Paul’s way of talking about saints? What if all of us, the people of the church, are people God has made holy? What if we are saints, too? The reading from Ephesians this morning tells about life as a saint.

First, to be a saint is to be part of peaceful cooperation within a community of saints. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” Paul admonishes. Practice humility, gentleness, patience, and peacemaking. Live together in unity, because as saints we are hoping together in one God, one Spirit, and one Lord. Work out differences with understanding, not self-righteousness, and be quick to see the other person’s side. Being a saint means being a part of a community of saints.

Second, to be a saint is to have particular gifts that are meant for the good of the community of saints. Paul names a few – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, whose job it is to, as he puts it, “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” In other words, some of the saints have gifts to help organize and encourage others, and all of the saints have gifts to do the work of ministry. Being a saint means contributing your gifts to ministry.

Finally, as a community of saints, Paul calls the church to be committed to truthfulness and maturity so that every part can work properly and we can become the body of Christ in active service to the world. Being a saint means being part of something bigger than we are – God’s vision for the world.

In the middle ages in Europe, townspeople gathered together to construct huge, beautiful cathedrals. But many of them took hundreds of years to build. Now we can go and see the finished product and marvel at the grandeur of these awe-inspiring houses of worship. But what was it like for the people who worked for years and years, just to lay a foundation? What was it like for the stonemason who spent his whole life on a wall or two? And yet as a community of saints, the Christians of that time built cathedrals. They were part of a vision that was larger than themselves.

The life of a saint that Paul describes is something like being a worker on one of those cathedral building sites. Being a saint means being part of a community of saints. Workers on a cathedral site need to be able to cooperate with each other. Good communication, patience, humility, and working for the same boss are all important things that help workers actually accomplish something together.

Being a saint means contributing your gifts to ministry. There are many different gifts and skills needed on a building site. Some people work well with stone, others can handle wood. Some people are good with designs and plans, others are strong and patient with hard work. Some are good at giving money, some are good at bringing water to thirsty workers. Building a cathedral requires many people and many gifts.

Being a saint means being part of something bigger than we are. What that something bigger is, in the case of building a cathedral, is pretty concrete. You’re building a giant church building. What Christians all over the world have been building for many years, with differing degrees of success, is a different kind of cathedral – a cathedral of people, relationships, and transformed lives, a structure of human beings living their lives in obedience to Jesus. Each person is both the worker and the materials for this cathedral, and together we build and shape one another with our practices of love, hospitality, justice and faithfulness. Together we are building the body of Christ. Together we are building the kingdom of God.

This morning in our Candle of Hope, I read a story about a town of saints – people God has made holy. They aren’t rich or strong by the world’s standards, but what they have, they give, without expectation of reward, and trusting, by God’s grace, that there will be enough. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus gives them and us hope for enough, even in times of scarcity and insecurity. “I am the bread of life,” he says. “I am the manna God sent to the people of Israel, wandering in the desert, to make them a holy people.” God laid a foundation in Israel, in those forty years lived in trust that God would provide. Jesus now feeds us our daily bread – hope, comfort, fellowship – and today in our communion we remember and give thanks, trusting that there will be enough. Thanks be to God, Amen.

The Holy in the Familiar

A year or so ago, I was in the BWI airport waiting to catch a plane with Heather. A man came up to us asking if we had seen his cell phone case. He was wearing converse sneakers, a pair of bright red jeans, a loose olive sport jacket, and a pencil-thin mustache. We hadn’t seen the case. He seemed anxious about finding it. As he walked away to get an airline employee to make an announcement, I realized that he looked a little familiar. In fact, he was dressed in kind of an arty way. I took me several more minutes to realize that we’d just seen native Baltimore movie director, John Waters. I’d seen him a few times on TV, but never before in person.

Please don’t think that I am trying to make a strong association between Jesus and John Waters, but I think there is a little parallel in our Scripture today with my experience at the airport. Being there at the airport made it harder for me to recognize John Waters than, say, being at the premiere of his newest movie. In the same way, the people from Jesus’ hometown are not expecting to see a hometown boy be the source of tremendous spiritual power, or great new gifts from God. They recognize Jesus as the guy they watched grow up, and who’s supposed to know his place. And that’s all they can see. They don’t recognize Jesus on a deeper level as someone capable of teaching them something new, and they don’t recognize that he may be something more than the person they thought they knew. They certainly don’t see him as the Messiah, the Son of God.

To be fair to these hometown folks, we should ask ourselves the question: if Jesus grew up in Morrell Park, and showed up at church to teach one Sunday, would we recognize him as Messiah? Can you imagine yourself saying, “Well, that’s nice, but it’s Jimmy’s kid, after all.” Or, “I knew her when she was a baby – she can’t teach me anything,” well, then you know where those townspeople of Nazareth are coming from. But on the other hand, what if you were able to see the holy in the familiar?

Seeing the holy in the familiar is a hard thing to do. The routine of our day-to-day lives can numb us to God’s presence. It’s easy to get comfortable with routine, and then to be upset by any changes in it. But it’s also easy to feel like, in the midst of repetitive work, that God is nowhere in sight. In the middle ages, there was a monk named Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence had managed to find the holy in the familiarity of his work. Life in a monastery was very routine. Prayers were said at certain hours, and the work of keeping things running – cooking, cleaning, tending to animals, caring for the crops, all had to be done day in and day out.

Brother Lawrence found a way to practice the presence of God in all he did. If he was baking bread, he made it into a prayer. If he was cleaning the kitchen floor, he made it into a prayer. After a while, his prayer times almost felt less prayerful than the times he was doing his work. Brother Lawrence found a way to see the holy in a familiar routine.

We can also lose sight of the holy in the familiar when we think that God will speak to us and care for us in miraculous and unexpected ways. Sometimes that happens, but many times God works through the people around us.

There’s a story about a man whose house is beset by floodwaters. As the water is just at his front door, his neighbor drives up in a big, sturdy pickup. He calls out, “Hurry, Jerry, get your things and let’s get out of here!” Jerry responds, “No, I have been praying about it and I am waiting for God to rescue me.” The neighbor tries to argue, but Jerry won’t budge, so he drives away.

A few hours later, Jerry is packed into his second floor because the floodwaters have risen 8 feet. A boat drives by and the national guard officer calls in the window, “Get in the boat, sir – let’s get out of here!” Jerry responds, “No, I’ve been praying about it and I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

A few hours after that, Jerry is sitting on his roof with the water lapping at his feet. A helicopter flies over and a ladder descends. “Climb the ladder!” a voice calls from above. “No!” shouts Jerry, “I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

A few hours later, Jerry is in the afterlife. He’s feeling upset so he goes to God. “God,” he says, “I prayed and prayed. Why didn’t you rescue me?”

God says, “I sent you a truck, a boat and a helicopter. What were you expecting?”

Finally, we can sometimes lose sight of the holy in one another. I’d like to close with a story that I first read in M. Scott Peck’s book called A Different Drum. I’ve modified it a little bit. It’s called the Gift of the Rabbi.

There was once a thriving monastery, but after many years of service it began to decline. By the early 1900’s, it was so diminished that only five monks were left in the crumbling main residence. This group included the abbot and four monks, all over 70 years old. Very clearly a dying order.

The abbot, tormented by the imminent demise of his order, decided to visit the nearby hermitage of an old rabbi and ask him whether he might have some advice on how the monastery could be saved. As the abbot was explaining the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only express his sympathy.

“I know how it is!” he cried out. “The spirit has left the people. It’s the same in my congregation. Almost no one comes to the synagogue any more.” And so the old abbot and the old rabbi cried on each other’s shoulders. Then they read passages out of the Torah and talked together on profound matters. The time came for the abbot to take his leave. They embraced each other. “It was wonderful after such a long time that we’ve come together again,” said the abbot, “but still, I haven’t achieved the aim of my visit. Is there nothing that you could say to me, no advice that you can give me, which could help me save my dying order?” “No, I’m sorry,” answered the rabbi. “I have no advice to give. The only thing that I can say is that the Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery the brothers circled all around him, clamoring: “Well, tell us, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help me,” answered the abbot. “We just cried and read the Torah together. The only thing that he did say, though, just as I was about to leave – it was rather mysterious – was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant by that.”

In the following days and weeks and months, the old monks brooded over this, and asked themselves whether the words of the rabbi could possibly have some kind of significance.

The Messiah is one of us? Could he have possibly meant one of us monks here in the monastery? If so, then which one of us could it be? Do you believe he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant one of us, then presumably the abbot. He’s been our spiritual leader for more than a generation.

On the other hand, he could also have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light.

Certainly he couldn’t have meant Brother Elred! Elred with his bad moods. But looked at more closely, even if he’s a thorn in the side for people, Elred is practically always right. Often quite right. Maybe the rabbi actually did mean Brother Elred!

But surely not Brother Philipp. Philipp is so passive, a real nobody. But, on the other hand, almost in magical fashion, he has the gift of always being there when you need him. He simply appears at your side, as if by a miracle. Maybe Philipp is the Messiah!

Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me. In no way could he have meant me! I’m just a very ordinary person. But, assuming he meant me - assuming I’m the Messiah? Oh God, not me! I really couldn’t be so much for You, or could I? -

As they began reflecting in this manner, the old monks began to treat each another with extraordinary respect, just in case one of them really was the Messiah.
And for the most improbable case of all, that each one of the monks himself could be the Messiah, they also began to treat themselves with this same extraordinary respect.

The rare visitors to the monastery, began to sense this exceptional respect which had begun to surround the five old monks, and which seemed to have penetrated the entire atmosphere of their home. The place began to have something oddly magnetic about it. Indeed, it took on an almost irresistible quality.

And so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that eventually novices began to ask for admittance, and that thanks to the rabbi’s gift the monastery awoke to a new and vibrant life.

Today in our communion, we have the chance to look for the holy in familiar elements of bread and juice. And we have to chance to look for the holy in each other and the people of our communities. May we seek God in the familiar, and may we find. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Born into the Kingdom

Our Gospel lesson for this morning pivots on a single word, which in the Greek has two meanings. The Greek word is "anothen," which means both “from above,” and “again.” It’s like the word bow in English, which could mean “take a bow,” or “the bow of a ship” at the same time. It’s the context that helps you know what it means. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Our story starts with Nicodemus, an important man – a teacher, a leader, an all-round well-respected guy, coming to Jesus at night, when people are less likely to notice. It’s not totally clear what he’s hoping for with this meeting – maybe to pick up a few tips on self-improvement, maybe to report back to his people about Jesus’ particular philosophical positions. He starts the conversation respectfully – Teacher, he says, we know you are the real thing – we can tell by the miracles you perform.

What Nicodemus gets, of course, (you know how Jesus is!) is something more than an intellection to-and-fro dialogue, or a set of five points for maximizing his personal potential. Instead, Jesus takes it way outside the realm of what Nicodemus was expecting. “Believe me, because it’s true,” he says, “No-one can see the kingdom of God without being born….” And here’s that word, “anothen.” When Jesus says anothen he means it both ways – being born again, AND being born from above. The new birth is from above – from God.

Nicodemus doesn’t get the pun Jesus is making though. And to be fair, who can blame him? So far, in the gospel of John’s telling of Jesus’ ministry, this idea of new birth or new life has not come up. In fact, the idea of the kingdom of God hasn’t come up in the gospel yet. The readers are learning about this for the first time, along with Nicodemus. So far, we’ve seen Jesus’ baptism, we’ve seen his miraculous changing of water into wine, and we’ve seen him clean out the temple of all its commercial activities. It’s clear from what he’s done so far that he’s a pretty important person to listen to, but it might not be totally clear just yet why he is important, or what his message is.

The kingdom of God is the message, but the way into it is a very strange and counter-intuitive one, especially for someone like Nicodemus who has some position, some power, some influence. Because the way into the kingdom for Nicodemus is, in a way, to humble himself, to become a child again, to start over, to be born all over again from above. Of course, if you’re already in the position of being humble and broken down, it’s a little easier to hear Jesus’ message of a new life, started over.

There’s something interesting to think about with the word “born,” too, which is that it’s not something we do for ourselves. Someone else bears us into the world – we are borne by our mothers. In the same way, entering the kingdom of God is something that God does. As Jesus puts it – you have to be born by water (that is, the regular way) and by the Spirit, to see the kingdom of God.

What does it mean to see the kingdom of God? Well, one traditional way of talking about the kingdom of God is as somewhere you go after you die. It’s God’s holy city, complete with clouds, St. Peter, angels and harps. That’s the picture you see in cartoons anyway. But Jesus was teaching about a kingdom of God that starts in this world. This new realm is spiritual, yes, but it’s also social – things like who we spend time with and eat with, it’s also political – how our leaders are expected to behave, and how each person is committed to service for one another’s’ good, and it’s also economic – what we receive belongs to God, and is due back to God as part of our way of life. In fact, to say the kingdom of God, in one way, is to say a way of life. It’s the way of life that as Christians we’ve been trying to live out – with varying degrees of success for about two thousand years now.

But Christ’s vision is still very much with us, and Jesus asks: what would the world be like if everyone lived according to God’s vision of peace and mutual care? But his vision is also one about seeing what is already there: Jesus asks: what would the world be like if everyone saw what God is already doing to bring about a reality of peace, beauty and love?

There’s another important way that we can talk about the kingdom of God, which is as the family of God. Just as in regular life, each of us is born into a family of some kind, being born again from above by the Spirit means being born into the family of God, with God as our adoptive parent. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, shares about the freedom and the beauty of living life as the children of God, born by God’s Spirit. He says, “you did not receive a spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father! It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

I realize that the phrase “children of God,” or “child of God,” can sometimes be used so many times that it starts to lose its meaning. But really it is a very radical statement. The word, “Abba,” which is closer to “Dad,” or “Papa” than “Father,” in English, shows a sense of familiarity and closeness between parent and child. If God is our parent, and adopts us into a new life, then we would hope to see the family resemblances as we grow up under God’s care and discipline. And really, it’s probably good to remember again that there are other ways an all-powerful being could treat its creations – as slaves, or playthings, or robots. But God regards us as beloved children.

Finally, the most important part of this metaphor about our relationship with God is the deep love it conveys. Sometimes you’ll hear parents say about their children, “It’s like my heart is on the outside of my body, walking around in the world.” If human beings feel this way, how much more does God, whose capacity for love is so much greater and purer than any human’s! As the gospel lesson puts it, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”

Finally, as children of God, one of our joyful tasks is to invite new friends into the family, to encourage new birth into the kingdom of God. How is this done? Through love.

There is a story about two men riding on a train many years ago. At first, one of the men is very slow to talk about himself, but it’s a long train ride, so after many hours, he tells the other man his story. This young man has been away from home for many years, and has gotten into some trouble with the law. He hasn’t had the chance to write home very much, and he doesn’t know how his family will feel about his homecoming, so he tells them in a letter to make a sign for him that he can see from the train. If they want him to come home, they should tie a white ribbon around the apple tree in front of the house, and he’ll get off the train and come home. But if they are ashamed, and rather he stay away, they should just leave the tree empty, and he’ll know to stay on the train and find somewhere else to make a life.

As they get close to where the family home is, the young man is so nervous that he asks his new friend to look for him. They round the corner, one man looking out for the other whose eyes are closed in fear and hopefulness. “It’s all right,” the older man says, “you can look.” The young man opens his eyes in relief, but relief turns to joy when he sees not just one ribbon in the apple tree, but the whole tree, white with ribbons, fluttering in the wind and welcoming him home.
May our welcome on God’s behalf be as warm and as strong. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Sustained by God's Love

Rev. Amy Sens
May 3, 2009
Scriptures: John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3:16-24

Good morning, friends. Today we have the opportunity to reflect on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In the United Church of Christ, we recognize our unity by agreeing together that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. Jesus is our leader and our organizer, our pastor and our guide through our life together as the gathered people of God. A very old metaphor for that leadership, dating even from the time of David in ancient Israel, is of the king and leader as shepherd of the people. I hope that today we will be able to reflect on what it means for Jesus to be our Good Shepherd. I’d like to begin with a sung prayer. If you know it, feel free to sing with me. Let us pray.

Open our Eyes, Lord

I have to admit at the outset that the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one that gives me some trouble. First of all, none of us here, so far as I know, have a lot of direct personal experience with sheep and shepherding. I went to the Maryland State Fair a few years ago and watched the 4-H kids present their sheep for judging. I had no idea how loudly and frequently sheep do their bleating. And it sounds just a little bit human. It’s weird. The kids were maybe 10 or 12 years old, and their sheep had a tendency to get away from them. So if you want to control a sheep, you kind of grab it around under its mouth, and then it gets real still. One boy in particular tried to do this with his sheep, but it ignored him, and wandered around, barely under control. When one of the judges came over, though, to grab the sheep under its chin, it stopped dead in its tracks. The judge was clearly experienced in dealing with sheep.

So I think that if we were rural folks, living day to day with sheep, knowing how much it costs to buy a sheep, or when they have their lambs, just like we know where the nearest Farm Store or Wal Mart or grocery store is to our house, or how to use the telephone, then I think the metaphor of a Good Shepherd would make a lot more sense, and help us understand intuitively what God is saying to us through the gospel lesson today.

I also don’t like the idea of being called a sheep. As I mentioned, the sheep I saw at the state fair were obnoxiously loud, not very disciplined, and jumpy. Rumor has it that sheep are kind of stupid, too. For example, they can’t drink water out of a running stream, and they follow the herd whether or not the herd is going in a good direction. They go wandering off, they get lost, and they can’t defend themselves against wolves. I know it’s Jesus saying it, but it’s kind of a blow to the ego to be identified with a sheep, even if they are kind of cute.

Finally, the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, in my mind, somehow seems to go hand in hand with tame, nice, white Jesus. This is the Jesus who never gets angry, never starts a fight, is always polite, and would be a good person to bring home to meet your mother. This is the Jesus of the What Would Jesus Do? bracelets, since I’m guessing that the answer to that question – What Would Jesus Do? – for those wearing the bracelets, isn’t usually to upset authorities, confront hypocrisy, or call for the inclusion of outcasts in society. The truth is, though, that if you read the Bible, there’s a lot more to Jesus than being nice. Jesus wasn’t white, he wasn’t always polite, and sometimes he even got angry. In the gospels, Jesus is full of life, filling the pages with his wisdom and his wittiness, and his spirit of BOTH love AND challenge.

So I think when our metaphors about Jesus as the Good Shepherd obscure Jesus and tame him, making him into a kind of a blank wall of niceness, then there is a problem. Jesus is more than that, and we lose out if we forget that.

We can see some more of what it means for Jesus to be our Good Shepherd in this morning’s gospel lesson from John. First of all, Jesus is the Good Shepherd as distinguished from a hired hand. The shepherd is the one who owns the sheep. The shepherd has skin in the game. The guy they hire to watch the sheep, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same investment. “Hey, I just work here,” he says as he runs away, leaving the sheep vulnerable to the attacking wolf. It’s the difference between a homeowner and a tenant, a business owner and an employee, a parent and a babysitter. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says, “and you belong to me.”

Second, as the good shepherd, Jesus knows his sheep. I don’t know about you, but when I’ve driven past a field of cows beside a highway, I wouldn’t have the first clue about telling them apart. They all look the same to me. And yet, I could pick my cat Tuesday out of a crowd any day. If you have a pet, you know – they have their own personalities, habits, and moods. In the same way, we’re not just part of an indistinguishable mass for Jesus. Jesus knows each one of us – our personalities, our fears and weaknesses, our hopes, strengths and joys.

Third, as the good shepherd, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep. And I think this gets at the idea of nice Jesus versus real Jesus pretty clearly. In verse 18, Jesus says, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” Jesus has power and strength to lay down his life for us, and to take it up again. Jesus is not tamed or cowed by the powers of the world. Instead, he is master of them and of us as well.

What does this mean for us today? Jesus as our Good Shepherd offers us both comfort and a challenge. In the epistle reading we heard from 1 John this morning, there is the comfort of knowing God’s tremendous love for us. It starts, “We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us.” Jesus gave us everything – his ministry of teaching and healing, his message of the good news of the kingdom of God, and then in the end, his very life, his death, and his resurrection. This is the model of love for us.

And in our day to day lives, we continue to live sustained by God’s grace. God leads us into green pastures day after day in the food we eat, the friends and family we meet, in the rising sun and the falling rain. God calls us to still waters of rest and refreshment, and God walks with us through the dark and dangerous valleys of our lives.

At the same time, there is a challenge in the image of Jesus as the good shepherd. We are no longer our own – we belong to Jesus, and we’re called to follow where he leads. The full verse of 1 John goes on to say, “And we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” through the service and ministry God calls us to. This may feel like a tall order sometimes, to love not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And yet, even in this challenge, God is the source of our love. Love comes through us in response to God’s love. Like so much wool, from well-fed sheep, I suppose. It’s not like sheep sit around trying to grow out their wool: “Edna, I can feel it growing!” “Are you sure Angela?” “Yeah! I’ve been working really hard on my wool-growing exercises!” I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

That’s fun to imagine, actually. Anyway, my point is that the key to learning to live in God’s love and learning to share it is to abide in the graciousness of God’s gifts to us. Even the gift of human love is, ultimately, from God, our Good Shepherd, our Maker, and our Guiding Spirit. We are sustained, now and always, by God’s grace. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Death Swallowed Up

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009
Rev. Amy Sens
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8

Good morning. Christ is Risen! Thanks be to God. Today, I’d like to take some time with you to think about what it was like for those women on that very first Easter, and to consider what it means for us. Jesus’ resurrection is a bold claim by God on all of our lives. It is a miracle and a sign of hope. It is good news! Will you pray with me?

Prayer:
God, in the resurrection of Jesus, you have overcome death. We don’t know how this mystery comes about, or even, sometimes, what to believe about it. Open our hearts, open our minds, and open our lives to the risen Christ. These things we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The women who came to the tomb on that first Easter morning were not expecting a resurrection. They had been witnesses to Jesus’ bloody, brutal death on the cross. He had been their teacher and leader, and now he was dead. And as a final tribute to him, they planned to care for his body – to dress it and attend to it, and to apply burial ointments. They walk to the tomb where he has been buried, sad, mournful, and a little worried, “There is a big stone in the way of the tomb,” they say to each other. “Who will move it out of the way for us?” They are focused on the practical details. They are not expecting a resurrection.

Imagine you’re driving down a road you follow pretty often, maybe one that you take to get home, and you see signs of construction. There are orange diamond-shaped signs, there are workers with signs signaling “Slow,” or “Stop,” and there are traffic cones guiding you out of your usual lane. You would expect there to be some construction going on. All the clues point to it. What if, instead of construction, the road leads around a bend, and suddenly you’re at the edge of a cliff, looking out at the Grand Canyon? Would your first reaction be one of joy and celebration?

Death is one of the few constants in our lives. Loved ones and pets, dear friends and arch rivals, the famous and the insignificant, all of us, even we ourselves, will one day die. But in the resurrection of Jesus, God adds a big, fat, comma to the sentence where death used to be the period.

Everyone must die, (comma), but Jesus died and rose again.
Our lives must end, (comma) but Jesus promises eternal life
Death was the final answer, (comma), until God decided it wasn’t anymore.

The women coming to the tomb on that first Easter morning are expecting Jesus to stay dead. They are hoping to put a period at the end of his sentence. They are planning to honor what his life meant to them, and then to move on. So their first reaction is not joy and celebration. Their first reaction is surprise and fear. What can this possibly mean?

In the last two thousand years or so, we’ve had the chance to get over some of the surprise of Jesus’ resurrection. We’ve started learning to scale the majestic beauty of the canyons left behind when God swallowed death up. We’ve had a chance to reflect, and in some ways, to get used to the idea. But that question still sticks with us: What can this possibly mean? What can this mean for me and for my life? What can it mean for living a Christian life in response to the resurrection?

Death swallowed up leaves behind a big hole in the way things normally go. We can let go of fear. We can let go of our grudges and resentments. We can let go of the pressure to be perfect. The resurrection of Jesus changes everything.

I’ll close with a story. Once upon a time, there was a mining town where all the people dug deep under the ground to find what mattered most to them – veins of silver, sparkling jewels, iron and copper ore. But they worked so hard and so long that when they went underground it was dark, and when they came out of the ground it was dark. Even the children worked this way, scaling down deep tunnels, dimly lit, to claw and scrabble at the rock, hour after hour, day after day, year after year.

The people knew that there was sunlight during the day, and at night they breathed the freshness of the air. But they said to themselves, even as they thought of the daylight and the fresh air, “It is more important to fight the rock and find what we need, than to waste even a few moments in the sun. It cannot be so good, can it?” And they worked and worked. Then one day, a stranger came to the mining town. He looked like the mining town people, and he spoke like them, but he acted very differently. He came down into the mines to speak to the people, but then he would climb back out again, without any silver or jewels to carry away.

“What do you do without treasures?” the people asked him.

“The sun is my gold,” he said, “and the moon is my silver. Come with me and we can live in the light in freedom together.”

Most of the people thought this was foolishness, and went on working in the mines. “That freedom is death!” they said to one another, nodding in solemn agreement. But some of the young ones, and the tired ones, and the ones who didn’t have much of a stockpile to guard, these began to stay up above the ground with the stranger, even as the light was cresting the horizon with golden rays. And a few would leave their work early to catch the last gentle rays of the setting sun. The stranger would eat with them, simple meals, but ones he blessed with thanksgiving and joy. He would pray: “Today is enough for today, God, and we give you thanks.” The people were pale and tired from their work, but the sun warmed them, and the simple meals helped them feel strong.

One day the stranger was gone, and his new friends looked everywhere to try to find him, but he was nowhere to be found. To remember him, they began to eat their meals as he had, giving thanks for the beauty of sun and moon, and lifting their hands to God with joy. Together they ventured out further and further into the light, and their skin grew healthy and their tiredness melted away. And slowly, others began to join them and live the new life of freedom with them. Then one day, as they were eating together, they saw the stranger again. His joy was in the face of each person gathered around the table. And some of them felt as though they could hear his voice saying, “Today is enough for today, God, and we give you thanks.” And they were full of thanks, indeed. Alleluia, Amen.

The Path Jesus Walked

Good Friday, April 10, 2009
Rev. Amy Sens
Tenebrae Service

The word tenebrae, which is the name for the service we are holding tonight, means shadows. And in the readings and hymns we’ll hear and sing, we remember the shadows that fell on Jesus’ path as he faced his death on the cross. Each candle, as it goes out, is a symbol of the burden Jesus carries growing heavier and heavier.

There are theologians who argue that Jesus’ death on the cross was not a way of appeasing God, or somehow satisfying a heavenly judgment. I am inclined to agree with them, even though I know that’s not the usual approach. God did not plan or cause Jesus’ death as a way of totaling up the heavenly accounting, to make the balance sheets come out right. Instead, Jesus’ sacrifice in death in the Gospels, is both something that must not be, and something that is necessary and unavoidable. By dying on the cross, Jesus becomes the final necessary sacrifice, and his sacrifice is only necessary because it is the only way to bring about the end of sacrifice.

There are plenty of people who have walked the path Jesus walked – whose lives were demanded of them for the sake of ideology and fear, for the peace and the comfort of the powerful. We can think of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Cesar Chavez, who were assassinated, for example. Or the hundreds of thousands and millions who lost their lives to brutal ideology and unscrupulous powers in the Holocaust, and in the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur.

In Guantanamo Bay today, there are 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held in detention for seven years. They cannot be returned to China, because they might be tortured there, but politically, they can’t live in the US, either. So they’ve lived in no-man’s land for seven years, in a prisoner’s camp halfway across the world from home, and have watched their lives drain away slowly. They are caught in the cogs of the state machinery.

Jesus wasn’t a triumphant war god, like the Romans’ Mars or like Caesar, whom they worshipped. He was powerless by the usual standards of wealth or political influence, and so when he inconvenienced the powers-that-be, it was very easy for them to catch him up in the cogs of the state machinery, and spit him out again like so much refuse on the horrifying, humiliating cross.

But the Romans didn’t crucify some lowly insurrectionist. They crucified God. And suddenly everything is in question. How could the greatest political power on earth be set against God’s own self? How is it even possible for God to be crucified? And what does that say about all the other people we’ve crucified?
Jesus’ death brings to light all the other cruel deaths suffered by poor and powerless people, and peels away the sheen of legitimacy that power can sometimes use to paint over brutality and killing.

Jesus walked the path he walked, not to please God, not as a way of paying God back for all our mistakes, but to turn our world inside out. Jesus came in love, proclaiming a new kingdom unlike any the world had ever seen, and it was too much. The path he walked led to his death. Tonight we remember that path and the shadows cast on it, and we are mourners, witnesses and culprits. The path Jesus walked brings into relief our own faults as people and as a community. Let us walk this holy path with fear and trembling, and let us trust Jesus to walk the lonesome valley with us. Amen.

A New Covenant

Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2009
Rev. Amy Sens
Scriptures: Exodus 24:3-8, Mark 14:12-26

Every year at my job during this time of year, I interview bunches of people who are interested in being volunteers as their full-time job for a year, and then my coworkers and I decide together where each person we’ve let in should go – which jobs, which cities, across the country. So, yesterday, I found out about 12 of the 19 or 20 people who will be coming to my cities next year. It’s a very exciting moment, even though most of these people are just names on a page, or sometimes voices over the phone for me. I begin to wonder, based on the barest of biographical data, what they will be like. Will they be kind and generous, or hard to please? Will they be good workers, or cause trouble at their jobs? Will they get along in community, or will they make their housemates’ lives difficult?

It’s a very exciting moment, thinking ahead to the new year that starts in August. And yet, it contains within it the seeds of disappointment, because I know that some of my volunteers will not be easy to work with. Don't get me wrong - they're all really great, but they're human, too. They will have trials and disappointments, and disagree, and make trouble. That’s part of the deal. That's why I have a job in the first place. It's to be expected.

So it’s amazing to me to see how Jesus handles setting up a whole new way of life with his disciples in our gospel reading. This moment is a very dramatic one in the lives of Jesus and his disciples. They have come into Jerusalem, the big city, to bring Jesus’ big and wonderful message of the kingdom – the realm – of God. There has been success and excitement, yes, in the entry into Jerusalem, in Jesus’ intellectual sparring with the chief priests, the temple authorities, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scholars, and other important people. And yet, there is danger in the air, too. Jesus, looking ahead, knows this is the last time he’ll be with his disciples, and what he chooses to do is to make a new covenant with them out of his own body and blood.

What Jesus’ covenant is modeled on, we hear in our story from Exodus, when Moses takes an animal and kills it to seal the people’s covenant with God. Moses presents the people with all the rules and regulations they are to obey, and they agree. “Everything that you have said, we will do,” they promise. It is a time of a new beginning, a new promise, and Moses will go with them to lead them into it.


And yet, when Jesus stands up to make a new covenant, he takes the place of the sacrificial animal, and he does it knowing full well that one of the very people he is eating with that night will be the one to betray him to that death. This is a new and bright beginning, but within it are the seeds of bitterness, suffering and death. A strange new covenant, indeed.

And yet, that is how God is with us. God doesn’t wait until we’re perfect to reach out to us and love us. God doesn’t wait until we have withstood every test, overcome every obstacle, and accomplished every lofty goal before being bound to us. Jesus covenants with Judas, even as he sits at the table, betrayal in his heart.

What I leave with in this story is that even though the new covenant Jesus begins on this night, bravely, with his own sweat and tears, with his own body, blood and soul, even though that covenant is already compromised, even before it is begun, in spite of all this, Jesus knows that God is at work and will bring about the new kingdom – the realm of God. “Truly,” Jesus declares, “truly I tell you, I will not drink the fruit of the vine again until I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Thanks be to God, Amen.

What You See And What You Get

Palm Sunday, April 5, 2009
Scripture: Mark 11:1-11
Rev. Amy Sens

Good morning, friends. It’s a pleasure to celebrate Palm Sunday with you. This is one of the most interesting Sundays of the year – there are waving palm branches – very exotic – and we have a preview, too, of the most important week in the Christian calendar, when Jesus is arrested, questioned, crucified, and dies, but somehow by God’s grace and amazing power, Jesus comes back to life again. But that’s all next week, and you’ll have to come to the services to hear about it. Today we just get a preview, and yet somehow the whole story is wrapped up – foreshadowed, if you will – in the story of Jesus arriving in Jerusalem. I’d like to begin with a sung prayer. If you know it, please feel free to sing along. Let us pray.

Spirit of the Living God

There are a lot of strange things going on in our Gospel lesson this morning – the story Mark tells about Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem. As Mark tells the story, this is the first time Jesus has ever been to Jerusalem; he’s a country boy, after all, from the back woods of Galilee. Up until this point, Jesus has been teaching people about the realm of God, a kind of parallel reality that supports our own, that exists at the same time as our own, and that is actually the true and real reality God calls us to live in. The kingdom – the realm – of God is present all around us, and all we have to do is turn our lives in a new direction and trust in the good news about it.

That has been Jesus’ story all along, out in the countryside, and the time has come now for him to bring the good news into the big city. Jerusalem. For the people of Judea in that time, Jerusalem has a long and storied history. This was the city David chose, in the glory days, as the center of his kingdom. And his son Solomon built the first Temple to God there. When the people of Judah were captured by the Babylonians, it was the destruction of Jerusalem that symbolized their defeat. And when the walls of Jerusalem were restored, and the temple was rebuilt seventy years later, it was the symbol of God’s favor and blessing – returning them home to their holy city. Jerusalem is the center of the culture, politics, and religion of Judea, and Jesus is arriving there for the first time.

What Jesus does is a little strange. He asks a couple of disciples to go into the town ahead of them and borrow a colt that has never been ridden on before. Then, his disciples put their cloaks on the back of the colt, and Jesus gets on it to ride it into town. They form a procession, with people laying down cloaks and palm branches in front of Jesus, and waving more branches and shouting, “Save us! Save us!” (which is what “Hosanna” means) “Save us, oh son of David, bring us into your kingdom!” A big crowd forms, lots of people are watching and maybe getting into the act, and then it’s over. The procession was actually the big deal – Jesus goes into the temple, looks around a little bit, and goes back to Bethany to spend the night with friends.

What on earth does all this mean? There are some things it would be helpful to know looking at this text. First off, Jesus saw himself as being in the tradition of the ancient Judean prophets – people like Hosea and Ezekiel and Elijah. These guys had plenty of speeches to give – usually to call Israel back to faithfulness to God – but sometimes they used their actions to communicate more than just words can. Hosea married a prostitute. Ezekiel built a model of Jerusalem, complete with an iron pan as a siege wall. Elijah set up a contest between himself and the prophets of other gods to demonstrate the faithfulness of Yahweh.

Jesus, on his way into Jerusalem, was telling us about the kingdom – the realm – of God. On the other side of town, also making his way into Jerusalem for the Passover festival, the biggest festival of the year, was the Roman governor, Pilate, and you can bet that Pilate wasn’t riding on an unbroken colt. He would have had a tremendous war-horse, and be preceded and followed by impressive displays of power – war-elephants, maybe, and regiments of soldiers in their dress uniforms. Today, we might expect Pilate to arrive in a sleek, well-armored limousine, while Jesus rides in on a scooter, and a borrowed one, at that. And yet the fun and the joy of it is that the crowd greets Jesus as a king – paving his way with cloaks and palm branches, and shouting, “Hosanna!” What you see is Jesus in humble attire, and what you get is the arrival of a new kind of kingdom.

I think I know some of what is going on with Jesus – he’s poking fun at the authorities, who think that their power in this life is somehow the most permanent and most meaningful. And I think he’s also bringing hope to the regular people, saying that there is another way to live, and God is with you to help you see it and live it. What I wonder about is the crowd. Do his disciples get what is going on? Do they trust in God’s new realm the way Jesus does? Or are they hoping Jesus will be the one to kick the Romans out of Jerusalem and Judea? Do they know who Jesus really is? What kind of salvation are they hoping for? What do they think is going to happen when Jesus starts spreading his message in Jerusalem?

We know the rest of the story, of course. Jesus is both less and much, much more than the disciples could possibly have realized at the time. And the salvation they call for, shouting “Hosanna, Hosanna,” is not just for the people of Judea two thousand years ago. It is for all people, and it is for us.

Jesus didn’t have a lot in terms of material possessions. He borrows the colt he rides into Jerusalem on. His disciples are mostly country people with very little influence or pull. And yet, who do you think Jerusalem was buzzing about that next day? The Roman governor Pilate and his latest set of dress uniforms? Or Jesus, riding on a colt and inviting everyone into a new way of life with playfulness, but also with bravery and strength? Who are we still talking about now?

This week, we’ll walk at Jesus’ side and remember the journey he takes into overwhelming suffering and a shameful death. This is not the journey the disciples were expecting on Palm Sunday. But what we know now is that to hail Jesus as our Sovereign and our Savior is more right and true than the disciples could have ever known. Let us enter into his presence with fear and trembling. Let us enter his presence with joy and thanksgiving. Thanks be to God and Hosanna in the Highest. Amen.

A Meal in the Kingdom

March 8, 2009 - Rev. Amy Sens

Scriptures: Exodus 12:1-17, Mark 8:31-38

Good morning, friends. It is good to be here with you this morning. This morning, I’d like to take some time to reflect on the meal, the sacrament, the ritual that we’re about to take part in together – the service of Holy Communion. Communion is a gift to us handed down from the very earliest Christians, handed down from Jesus. What we actually do is very simple, but the meanings and the symbolism are very rich. I know I’ll only be able to touch on a few things today, but I hope it will be enough to spark your own reflections as well. I’d like to begin with a sung prayer. If you know the song, feel free to sing with me. Let us pray.

Open our eyes, Lord

Jesus leaned back from the table. He and the disciples had been celebrating the Passover together, here in Jerusalem, remembering the escape into freedom by Moses and the Israelites. They had passed around flat, unleavened bread, a reminder of how the Israelites had eaten that night – in a hurry, with sandals on and bags packed, ready to escape into freedom. They had shared roasted lamb in memory of the roasted lamb the Israelites had eaten on that last night, the lamb whose blood painted on the doorways kept Israelite children safe from the plague God was sending, the lamb whose blood marked them as Israelite and not Egyptian. And they had eaten bitter herbs, a reminder of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.

The Passover meal Jesus ate with his disciples was a meal reminding them of how, a thousand years before, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, had remembered the people of Israel, caught in slavery to the Egyptians, groaning under the weight of their oppression, their very existence threatened as the Egyptians tried to keep them from having sons. God remembered them, and staged a tremendous intervention, sending leaders – Moses and his brother Aaron – and plagues to convince the Egyptians to give up their power and their profits from the Israelites. And, once freed from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites lived in a new reality, one in which their allegiance belonged, not to a Pharoah, a human leader, but to God. They ate manna in the wilderness, and lived by trust in God.

All this, Jesus and his disciples remembered in their Passover Meal. And then Jesus added just one more thing. “Listen,” he said, “Tomorrow, I’m expecting trouble from the authorities. I’ve been teaching you about a peaceful kingdom, but what they’re hearing is war. I’ve been gathering the sick to heal them, but they see me gathering supporters for a violent revolution. I’ve been giving good news to the poor about God’s reign here on earth, but they’ve heard it as bad news for them. So, I’m expecting trouble tomorrow, and I don’t expect to make it out alive. And I want you to remember me whenever you eat together.

Look at this bread. It’s just regular bread. But now for you it will be my body when I’m not here. And when you eat it, I will be here. Thanks be to God! Look at this cup of wine. It’s just regular wine. But now for you, it will be my blood, my life which I’m giving up for you and for the sake of God’s kingdom on earth. Whenever you eat and drink, friends, remember me. I have tried to teach you about a new reality – about God’s reign here on earth – and I don’t want you to forget. Sometimes the world can look like just the regular world. But now for you it will be infused with God’s grace, God’s presence, and God’s beauty, just like the bread, just like the wine. Thanks be to God!”


Throughout his time in public ministry, Jesus taught about the kingdom of God. Sometimes we might think of this kingdom of God as being in heaven – something we don’t get to until after death. But what Jesus is talking about, this reign of God, is something that he saw the beginnings of here on earth. “The kingdom of God,” he teaches, “is like yeast that a woman hides in a bag of flour. It’s very small, but it makes loaves upon loaves of bread rise.” “The kingdom of God,” he teaches, “is like a mustard seed. It’s very small, but it grows into a tremendous, flavorful bush that the birds themselves rest in.”

And today, in our gospel reading, we get a taste of what that realm of God will look like, based on what Jesus, its anointed King – its Messiah – says and does. He has just asked the disciples who they say he is, and Peter gets it. “You are the Messiah,” he says. And then Jesus starts teaching that this will mean his suffering, death, and resurrection. Peter gets very upset, because to him Messiah means the guy in charge, the guy who gets waited on, who makes the important decisions, who commands the army, and, incidentally, whose friends get influential political appointments as well. But as soon as Jesus admits to being the Messiah, he gets it all wrong about what it means to BE the Messiah. “Not you, Lord, surely!” Peter rebukes. “Get in line, you tempter!” Jesus answers back. “You are thinking about human things, not divine things. You don’t have your eyes on what God is doing in the world now.”

In the United Church of Christ, we talk about communion as a symbol and as a sacrament. It’s a symbol in the sense that we recognize that the bread doesn’t literally become Jesus’ body, the wine is not somehow changed into blood, while still physically having the properties of wine. But at the same time, communion is one of our two sacraments, which is to say, we recognize that God is present in it in a special way. This is a place where we meet God, not just in our minds or our spirits, but physically, with the taste of the wafers on our tongues, and the wine in our mouths. Through communion, God feeds us a meal in the new world God is creating. This is a meal in the Kingdom of God.

Because of that, this is a meal that reminds us of what the realm of God is about. It is a meal that brings healing and forgiveness, as Jesus brought healing and forgiveness. It is a meal that brings a radical equality – people from all stations of life, men and women, young and old, powerful and weak: all are welcome at the table. This is a meal in which we remember that Jesus was our leader and our teacher, and he lived that out, not by taking advantage of his powerful position, but by serving his disciples, stooping to wash their feet, and stretching out his arms to conquer sin and death.

This is the meal we eat today, a gift from God to the people of God, thanks be to God. It is a meal that creates a new community – a new communion – connecting us to people all around the world, from the past up to the present and into the future, through Jesus. And it is this community, the church universal, created by God, that works together, first to see and then to encourage, the growth and indwelling of God’s holy and beautiful realm on earth.

There is another name for communion, which is Eucharist, and which means giving thanks. Let us give thanks today and every day for God’s gift to us in Jesus, and God’s vision for us which we remember in this meal eaten in the Kingdom of God.

Sermon 02/15/09 (1 Corinthians 9:16-23)

“Fond Farewells”
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 15 February, 2009
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
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 When I came to St. Mark’s two and a half years ago I thought I might be a hospice worker. One of my roles as your “Transitional Minister” was to help you discern where God was leading this little church. I thought, when I started here, that my role might be to help you die as peacefully as possible. If a congregation can suffer from depression, this congregation suffered from it. That first Christmas Eve several people were in tears, sure that it would be our last.

These were valid fears. Our bank account was going through its own “recession” back then, and the pews were pretty empty. We were doing some good ministry -- the 12-step groups, the Wellness Center -- but our big church building was empty a lot of the time. We were kind of a shell.

Two years later, that shell is full and bursting with energy. Our bank account is in better shape, our pews have more people in them on Sunday mornings, and I can hardly keep track of everything that goes on here during the week. I think every room in the church is either being used regularly or has definite plans for the near future. I cannot emphasis enough how proud I am of the transformation that has taken place at St. Mark’s. I don’t care if I’m starting to sound like a broken record. (It’s my last Sunday anyway, so you won’t have to hear it again.) I am proud of this church and I’m not afraid to say it.

What happened so drastically in these two years? Some of you have kindly attributed the change to my presence here, but I honestly don’t think that’s it and I think it’s dangerous to think that. If a pastor is the reason for a church’s success, then why bother going to church if that pastor leaves? I think we all know that doesn’t make sense.

On the contrary, I believe the reason St. Mark’s has come to this point of healing has more to do with the determination of its members to proclaim the gospel. I think that somewhere along the line this congregation made the decision that they didn’t want to die -- and so they did everything in their power to keep on living. That power blissfully includes the grace of God, and God was surely with us during this time, lighting a fire in us and giving us the strength to go on.

It is this same power, and this same call, which will remain with us as we go our separate ways. It is my fervent hope that you will keep coming around here not just because you love the people who are here but because you feel called to proclaim the Gospel. The Apostle Paul describes himself as “enslaved” to the Gospel, and while I don’t care for the language of slavery, I get his point. On the one hand, we have a choice whether or not to accept the call of discipleship. I am grateful that so many members of this congregation did just that, and got to work when St. Mark’s needed it most. On the other hand, once we accept that call we are tied to it in a way that is difficult to escape. Once we begin proclaiming the gospel it’s hard to stop doing it -- and that’s a good thing.

So, what does it mean to “proclaim the Gospel”? How have we been proclaiming the Gospel together here at St. Mark’s? When Paul uses the phrase, he is speaking literally of preaching to people who are not yet followers of Christ and inviting them to join the church. We have done some of that here. Our membership has expanded, and we work hard to welcome visitors who come through our doors. Maybe we even invite friends to join us on Sunday mornings. But “proclaiming the Gospel” goes beyond Sunday morning. We “proclaim the Gospel” whenever we open our church to people in the community -- and we do that a lot around here. And we “proclaim the Gospel” individually whenever we “act as Christ to neighbor” -- when we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

I don’t see any reason why that can’t continue after I leave. I would be devastated if it didn’t. You are enslaved to the Gospel -- you must continue to proclaim it, realizing that God will uphold you when you have a difficult time. I, too, am enslaved to the Gospel -- the good news of Christ -- and that is part of the reason I am leaving you now. God is calling me in another direction, and while I love you dearly I am compelled to follow where God leads me. Right now, it seems, God is leading me to Minnesota.

Separations like this are difficult. I have, in some ways, tried to be “all things to all people” here, in that I have had a wide variety of experiences within this little congregation. I am eternally grateful for what I have experienced here and for the kindness and love you have shown me. But my first responsibility is to God, as is yours. Just as God is calling me to new adventures in a new place, so God is calling this congregation to new adventures right here. This does not necessarily mean that God will never call you away from here. But if you ever leave this church I pray it will be because God is calling you, and not because you become lazy or complacent, or even because you have a conflict with someone in the congregation. It is easy to do that. Pastors run away nearly as often as church members do. But if we -- pastors and parishioners alike -- are to be true followers of Christ then we will go where God leads us and stay when God wants us to stay somewhere.

I pray that I am making the right decision as I leave you. I pray that you will make the right decisions in where you choose to worship. And I pray most deeply that this church will continue to thrive as I have seen it do. I pray that St. Mark’s will continue to be a blessing to the community of Morrell Park, to one another, and to the world.

Now let us pray as one.

Sermon 02/08/09 (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)

“Keep Your Eye on the Prize”
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 8 February, 2009
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
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 How many of you watched the Super Bowl last Sunday? I actually watched the game, and there were actually parts of it that I enjoyed. (Not just the ads either.) I wanted the Cardinals to win, of course (out of loyalty to the Ravens), and it was thrilling when they got ahead in the game. As disappointed as I was that they lost, the end of the game was exciting, and I have to give props to the Steelers. They played a good game.

It’s thrilling to watch good athletes do what they do best. Professional athletes have amazing skill, and we can be in awe of the hard work they have done to get where they are. The amount of exercising, self-control, and concentration it takes to become a professional athlete is awesome. I think this is why people were so disappointed when Michael Phelps made his recent gaffe. We revere our athletes as examples for the rest of us, and it was hard for a lot of people to admit that Michael Phelps is actually human and could do the same stupid things any normal 23-year-old might do. “He’s the winner of 8 Olympic medals! How can he be human?!” we wonder.

Reverence for athletes is not just a modern phenomenon. The original Olympic games began in Greece in 776 B.C.E. -- hundreds of years before Christ was born! Those games included foot races, chariot races, boxing, and wrestling, and typical prizes were olive wreaths, palm branches, or woolen ribbons. (No million-dollar endorsements in those days.)

In our Epistle reading for this morning, the Apostle Paul mentions two athletic sports, running and boxing. It appears here that Paul had an appreciation for sports and that he may have done some running and boxing of his own. He is at least aware of the dedication it takes to be a serious athlete. ...So, why does he bring up sports? What do sports have to do with the Gospel? The same “self-control that athletes exercise in all things” is a necessary component of being a good Christian. He’s essentially telling his listeners to behave themselves, so they can win the race. But here is where the self-control of an athlete and the dedication of a Christian part ways. What does an athlete get if he or she practices that self-control and wins the race? He or she gets something that won’t last -- in Paul’s day, a piece of greenery, in our day, money in the bank. What did Santonio Holmes get for winning the Super Bowl? He got a fancy Super Bowl ring, a trophy, a bunch of money, the admiration of his peers and millions of fans. What did Michael Phelps get for winning so many swim races at the Olympics? He got a bunch of gold medals, millions of dollars in endorsements, and the honor of having girls scream and faint from excitement when they see him.

These seem like pretty great rewards. The Pittsburgh Steelers are the envy of everyone in the NFL because of that trophy and those rings. Other professional athletes are in awe of Michael Phelps. The screaming fans that come when one wins the game (or keeps on winning) are a thrill. And, boy, those millions of dollars sure would be nice to have in an economy like ours. I think this is one of the reasons we look up to our sports idols so much -- they have things we want, like money, and fans, and dedication, and plain old human ability. But here’s the thing. As great as all those rewards are -- the money, the fans, the trophies -- they can’t top off the reward that we are waiting for as Christians. Paul points out that if we live as Christians successfully we will get a permanent reward: eternal salvation.

We have more incentive to practice self-control than any athlete. Granted, it is the grace of God that will get us into Heaven and not anything that we do here on earth, good or bad. But by practicing self-control we will be pleasing God. Now, in what ways should we control ourselves? How will we go about “winning” this race? Our reading for this morning doesn’t give specifics -- it’s a tiny piece of a larger scripture that contains more details. Throughout his letter to the Corinthians Paul warns against being jealous of one another, or fighting. He talks about the importance of being trustworthy. He warns against being arrogant and boastful. He talks about sexual immorality (do not commit adultery). He goes off on “thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers.” It sounds like we have to follow a whole bunch of rules when you list everything that Paul includes in his “good and bad behavior.” But basically, in the words of Jesus, he is telling us to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and love our neighbors as ourselves.

God loves us, even though we are not perfect. (Yes, God even loves people who make mistakes, like Michael Phelps.) But when we practice self-control and work hard at being a Christian, our rewards are endless. We will have the satisfaction of knowing that we are pleasing God and loving our neighbor, and we will have the rewards of eternal salvation.

In a few weeks we will baptize two young people into the faith and family of the Christian church. Miranda and Michael, I hope you have been listening. Basically I’m telling you that being a Christian is a big deal and an important responsibility. I don’t just sprinkle a few drops of water on your forehead and send you on your way. You are being welcomed into the church, and that means that from now on you are being asked to act like a Christian. This means that you love one another and treat other people the same way that you would like them to treat you (no matter who they are, and whether they are Christian or not). It also means that you are part of a new family, and that we will help you when you make mistakes or when you have a hard time. This is part of what it means to be a Christian too.

Whether you are brand new to this church, like Miranda and Michael, or whether you have been here a very long time, I hope you will continue to learn what it means to be a Christian and that you won’t do it just for the big reward you get at the end.

Now let us pray.

Sermon 02/01/09 (1 Corinthians 8:1-13)

“Puffy Knowledge”
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 1 February, 2009
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
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 When I worked as a chaplain, my favorite term was “myocardial infarction.” It was just fun to say. Myocardial infarction. Does anyone here know what it means? ... Well, as fun a term as it is to say, “myocardial infarction” means something very serious. It’s a medical term for heart attack. I would likely not have known this if I had not worked in a hospital for a year. ...Some medical professionals have a habit of tossing around big words when talking to their patients or patients’ family members, and I could have been told that a loved one of mine had just had an “M.I.” (myocardial infarction) and not had the slightest clue what they meant.

I used to love playing with toy cars when I was a little girl. My dad and I would take my Matchbox cars on long “trips” through the family room, and I would spend hours “vrooming” them around the house. I even got to the semi-finals in a Matchbox car race in my sixth grade science class. But aside from checking fluid levels and changing a flat tire, I know very little about what’s beneath the hood of a real car. I dread going to the repair shop with a problem I don’t understand, because some mechanics are notorious for talking over people’s heads -- and a few unscrupulous ones especially enjoy telling women they need unnecessary repairs.

Of course, we do this in the church too -- use big words, talk over people’s heads, show off our vast knowledge at the expense of people who are new to the game. There are the theologians (a theologian is someone who studies God, by the way) who revel in writing sentences that last for two pages and using the biggest words possible. My favorite church word is “pneumatology” -- study of the Holy Spirit. It’s another one of those fun words to say. ...Hmmm...I wonder if someone could have a pneumatological myocardial infarction. That would be, I guess, a “spiritual heart attack”? Anyway, we theologians have our share of big words. I’ve even known some preachers to pepper their sermons with enormous words, probably enjoying the fact that most of the people in the congregation have no idea what they’re talking about. I have read some sermons from the 19th century that make no sense at all, and I don’t think this is only because the preacher is using the language of an earlier era.

Well, preachers (and medical professionals, and auto mechanics) who do this are not following the Apostle Paul’s instructions from this morning’s Epistle reading. (Epistle, by the way, simply means “letter.” We call 1 Corinthians an “Epistle reading” because we are reading the letter that Paul wrote to the church in the town of Corinth.) “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” he says.

The community at Corinth was clearly having some issues, between people who have been following Christ for a while (and therefore sort of know the ropes) and new believers. I share with you an explanation of this text by Rev. Sarah Buteux:

“Back in first- century Corinth, religions abounded, and a traditional rite of most faiths involved the sacrifice of animals and other foods to the various gods and goddesses. But food sacrificed to idols was still food that could be eaten. Rules varied, and most likely the person who offered the sacrifice at a temple would not partake of the food, but after the rite, the officials of the temple might eat it –for in most traditions, including the Israelite one, the food offered to God was the food the priests lived on – but that food could also be sold in the general market to raise money to support the temple itself.

Now apparently, there were people in this young community who believed that food sacrificed to an idol was defiled and should not be touched. But Paul argues that idols cannot defile food, because idols represent gods that do not exist. There is only one God in Paul’s mind, and that is the Lord. Therefore this food that is being sacrificed to idols is really food being sacrificed to nothing.”1 [End quote]

So, Paul thinks the food can be eaten like any other food. No spiritual problems will take place if one has eaten food that has been offered to imaginary idols. But Paul stresses that just because he (and the other enlightened Christians) know that it’s not a big deal to eat this food doesn’t mean the new folks will know. In Rev. Buteux’s words, “They would be confused. They would feel conflict that could become damaging to their faith.”2 Therefore, they should just not eat the food. They will save the new Christians from unnecessary confusion. What they know is not nearly as important as the spiritual wellbeing of their neighbor. Loving the neighbor is more important than knowing the truth.

What are some ways that we can follow Paul’s guidance today? Are there any ways in which we use our knowledge against our neighbor? I can think of some easy examples that don’t even involve the use of big words.

Those of us who have been coming to St. Mark’s for a while know exactly what to expect. We know what to do when we arrive. We take a bulletin (and we know what a bulletin is) from the greeter. Then we go sit down. We know what the different segments are in the bulletin. We know the right words to say and when to say them. But when a visitor comes to St. Mark’s for the first time they might not know all these things. I didn’t know what the “Candle of Hope” was when I came here for the first time. It took me a while to figure out what you really meant by that. When I saw “Lord’s Prayer” written in the bulletin, I knew what that was but I didn’t know what words to use. Should I say “trespasses,” “debts” or “sins”? I knew the rest of the words, so I was just quiet during that part of the prayer, but what if I had never been to any church before? What’s the “Lord’s Prayer”? What’s a “Call to Worship”? What about a “Benediction”? What does it mean to “Offer one another the peace of Christ”?

We become complacent in the way we do worship and in our lack of explanation, because we usually have the same group of people here every Sunday. We might have a visitor or two or three, but we figure that they will be able to follow along. After all, we know what’s going on, don’t we?! In the context of Paul, we eat food sacrificed to idols because we know it’s okay to do so -- since idols aren’t real. But the people who come here for the first time are confused, wondering what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Most churches do this. We don’t bother to explain what the worship service will be like every Sunday, because we figure people already know. But there have been times when I, who have been attending churches since the age of 3, have no clue what is going on in a church that I visit. I find it so helpful if someone is assigned to help me, the visitor, with any question I might have, or if there is some explanations written down somewhere, or, preferably both (since, as a visitor, I might not be able to read or even to see). By doing this, the church would be showing the visitor that it was more important to show love to the visitor than it was to avoid being redundant by explaining things at the beginning of church every Sunday.

I encourage St. Mark’s to give some more thought to how we welcome newcomers who enter through the door. Do we wow them with our amazing knowledge of how the church works...or do we reach out to them in love, as Christ -- and the Apostle Paul -- have taught us to do?

Think about it. Now let us pray.

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1 “Knowledge vs. Love,” sermon by Rev. Sarah Buteaux for Sunday, February 2, 2003. Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel, 50 Quincy Street,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts  02138  U.S.A. Accessed via http://www.swedenborgchapel.org/read_sa_sb2003_5.html on 31 Jan., 2009.
2 Ibid.