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Luke 18:15-17 Rev. David Emery, preaching
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John 6:25-35. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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John 2:1-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Acts 9:1-20. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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John 21:1-17. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 24:1-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 19:28-43. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 18:18-30. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 14:25-35. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 13:1-9. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 10:38-42. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 9:51-62. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 17:11-19. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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John 8:1-11. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 19:1-10. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 3:21-22. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-12; Luke 4:14-21. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Proverbs 2:1-11. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Colossians 4:7-15. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Philippians 3:5-14. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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2 Corinthians 5:16-21. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Ephesians 2:4-10. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 2:1-7; 8-14. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 1:18-25; Philippians 4:4-7. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 1:67-79. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 1:26-38. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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2 Corinthians 8:1-9. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Hebrews 10:19-25. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Romans 10:5-15. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Galatians 6:9-10. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 John 1:5-9. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Luke 22:39-46. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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James 4:13-17. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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James 1:9-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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James 1:14-15. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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James 3:3-12. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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James 1:2-4. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 7:24-30. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 John 2:1-6. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 8:31-36. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Ephesians 1:3-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Psalm 130. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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John 6:22-34. Rev. Courtney Richards, preaching
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2 Samuel 18:31-33. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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2 Samuel 11:1-5. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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2 Samuel 9:1-11. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 Samuel 30:1-25. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 Samuel 24:1-7. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 Samuel 16:1-13. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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1 Samuel 8:1-20. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Acts 17:22-32. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Matthew 28: 16 – 20. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Ezekiel 37: 1- 14. Rev. Courtney Richards, preaching
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Luke 14:15-24. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 20:1-16. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 18:23-35. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 10:25-37. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 13:1-9. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 17:22-27. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Mark 16:1-8. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Rev. Courtney Richards, preaching
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Mark 8:31-37 // Mark 11:1-10. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Nehemiah 1:4-11 // Psalm 51:10-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Romans 12:2 // Colossians 3:12-20. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 18:9-14. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Hebrews 12:15 // 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 // Luke 15:25-32. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 1:9-15 // Psalm 62:1-2. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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A brief time of reflection for Ash Wednesday, which begins the Christian season of Lent … a time for looking inward to consider our faith, our witness, and the ways we connect with the ministry and life of Jesus Christ.
Participate as a morning devotion to begin your day … during the day on your own or with family … share with those who might need and find this moment meaningful … or close the evening with this reflection.
Remember that you have come from the dust, and to the dust you will return, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection. Repent, and believe the good news. Amen.
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Mark 9:2-9. Rev. Courtney Richards, preaching
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Isaiah 40:21-31. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Jeremiah 17:5-8. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Joshua 1:1-9. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 7:21-27. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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John 8:12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Ezekiel 36:26, Ephesians 1:18. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 1:1-8. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Isaiah 64:1 – 9. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 25:14-30. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 6:30-44. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 6:30-44. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Mark 2:1-12. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 22:34-40. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 14:22-33. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Matthew 6:25-34. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 5:1-11. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Romans 12: 9 – 21. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Romans 12: 9 – 21. Rev. Kevin Howe, preaching
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Romans 12: 9 – 21. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Romans 12: 9 – 21. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 15: 11 – 32. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 7: 36 – 50. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Jonah 1: 1 – 3. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Luke 8: 26 – 39. Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Exodus 3: 1 – 12 . Rev. David Emery, preaching
SERMON ONLY video below, following the worship bulletin.
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Romans 8: 26 – 39 . Rev. Courtney Richards, preaching
SERMON ONLY video below, following the worship bulletin.
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Romans 8: 5 – 6 . Rev. David Emery, preaching
SERMON ONLY video below, following the worship bulletin.
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Romans 8: 1 – 4 . Rev. David Emery, preaching
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Welcome! As always, mark your attendance and share your prayer concerns with our *Connection Card*.
We bring our tithes and offerings through online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
Join Children Worship & Wonder, telling one of our favorites, the parable of the mustard seed.
*
THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Call to Worship :: from Jan L. Richardson, Freedom in My Bones, August 2010
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘If My People’ (Jimmy Owens) :: Kelly Ford, vocal; Rick Fraley, piano; Susie Monger Daugherty, organ
> Scripture (Galatians 5: 13 – 26) & Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Peace Be Still’ (Hope Darst/Mia Fieldes/Andrew Horst) :: Colt Stubblefield, reader; Andi Gross, vocal; Tom Jurena, piano
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘America the Beautiful’ (Samuel Ward) :: Rick Fraley, piano; Erica Parker, cello
> Benediction :: from Frederick Douglass
Welcome! As always, mark your attendance and share your prayer concerns with our *Connection Card*.
We bring our tithes and offerings through online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
This week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the parable of the great pearl, will post for families on Monday.
*
THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Welcome :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> Call to Worship :: Coppelia, Canaan, Cambrie, and Anna Chebny
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘Beautiful Things’ (Lisa Gungor/Michael Gungor) :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert
> Scripture (Acts 3: 1 – 10) & Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘I Walked Today Where Jesus Walks’ (Greg Nelson/Gloria Gaither) :: Kelly Ford, Rick Fraley, Erica Parker
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; Steve Ray
> communion music :: Isaac Herbert
> Benediction :: the Chebnys
Welcome! THANK YOU for taking the time to mark your attendance and share prayer concerns with our *Connection Card.
We bring our tithes & offerings through *online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Phillip’s teaching in Samaria.
*
THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Call to Worship :: from John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘Breathe On Us’ :: The Rising Band
> Scripture (Acts 2: 36 – 41) & Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘I Surrender All’ :: Chancel Choir ensemble
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; Rev. Darlene Martinez
> communion music :: Susie Monger Daugherty
> Benediction :: ‘The Lord Bless You and Keep You’ :: Chancel Choir ensemble
Welcome! As always, mark your attendance and share your prayer concerns with our *Connection Card*.
We bring our tithes and offerings through online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling a wonderful story of Peter healing a man in Jerusalem.
*
THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Call to Worship :: Rev. David Emery
> Scripture (Acts 1: 1 – 11) :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> conversation with Phil Armstrong, 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission
> ‘We Will Stand’ :: Phil Armstrong, Kelly Ford, Donald Ryan
> Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Love Does’ :: Isaac Herbert
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; Susan Gross
> ‘Go’ :: Kelly Ford & Donald Ryan
> Benediction :: Rev. David Emery & Addie Timberlake
Welcome! As always, let us know you’re here by using the *Connection Card*. Share any concerns and celebrations so that we can be in prayer with you and for you. (These go directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
We bring our tithes and offerings through online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Pentecost.
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THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Call to Worship
> Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘10,000 Reasons’ :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert (and Autumn!)
> telling the story of Pentecost :: (from Acts 2) Dr. Richard Ward, Phillips Theological Seminary
> Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name’ :: Kelly Ford & Vicki Smith
> Communion :: Rev. David Emery; Neil Gilpin
> communion music :: Isaac Herbert
> Benediction
Welcome! As always, let us know you’re here by using the *Connection Card*. Share any concerns and celebrations so that we can be in prayer with you and for you. (These go directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
We bring our tithes and offerings through online giving You can also mail offerings to the church address, or contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of the ascension (and getting ready for next week: Pentecost!).
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THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Call to Worship :: Dan & Cheryl Pease; Ashley Pease, Ezra
> Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Kevin Howe
> ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ :: Kelly Ford & Vicki Smith
> Scripture (Philippians 4: 4 – 9)
> Sermon :: Rev. David Emery, Rev. Courtney Richards, Rev. Kevin Howe
> ‘Happy Day’ :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; Dan & Cheryl Pease
> communion music :: Vicki Smith, organ
> Benediction :: a sabbatical blessing for Rev. Howe
Welcome! As always, let us know you’re here by using the *Connection Card*. Share any concerns and celebrations so that we can be in prayer with you and for you. (These go directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Offerings are possible through online giving or can be mailed to the church address. (You may also contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.)
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Jesus asking Peter to follow him (again!).
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THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
Harvard Avenue master gardeners, hobby horticulturists, flora and fauna aficionados … or just folks who love pretty plants. THIS is your week to shine!
This week’s sermon theme – In the Meantime: Plant A Garden – is just for you, and we can’t wait for you to share pictures of your garden! (or someone else’s!) Show us what has been planted, and what has grown, around you!
Post to Facebook and Instagram, and hashtag it: #PlantAGarden – #LoveStaysHome – #BEingHACC so we can find each other! (And, as ever, send your pics to Courtney, if it’s easier.)
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Call to Worship :: Diana & Scott Booren, Carolyn & Connor
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘New Wine’ :: Mark Bleikamp, Andi Gross, Nathan Wilson
> Scripture (Jeremiah 29: 4 – 14) :: Colt Stubblefield
> Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘How Great Thou Art’ :: Kelly Ford & Vicki Smith
> Communion :: Rev. Kevin Howe; Hank & Cathy Leonard
> communion music :: Isaac Herbert; photos by Summer Lyons & Courtney Richards
> Benediction :: Booren family
Welcome! As always, let us know you’re here by using the *Connection Card*. Share any concerns and celebrations so that we can be in prayer with you and for you. (These go directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Offerings are possible through online giving or can be mailed to the church address. (You may also contact Business & Finance Director Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.)
Enjoy this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples by the sea.
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THIS WEEK IN WORSHIP
‘In the meantime’, how are you ‘making the most of it’? Did you repurpose a table to set up a home office? Have you baked your first ever loaf of bread? Adopt a dog so you can keep each other company? Is your family having ‘who can wear their pajamas the whole day’ contests? Find a flower growing that you don’t remember planting there?
Look around at the people and things of the moment, and share pictures of your “MOST”!
> Welcome :: Rev. David Emery
> Call to Worship :: Nancy Pittman
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Kevin Howe
> ‘Blessed Assurance’
> Sermon (text John 21: 1 – 17) :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Waiting for My Real Life to Begin’ (Colin Hay) :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; Ashley Gibson
> ‘Both of Us’ll Feel the Blast’ (Waterdeep) :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert
> Welcoming New Members
> ‘Your First Day in Heaven’ (Hamlin) :: Todd Maxwell, Kelly Ford, Ron Lee, Barry Epperley, & Donald Ryan
> Benediction :: Nancy Pittman
Welcome! As always, using the *Connection Card* lets us know you were in worship. Share any concerns and celebrations so that we can be in prayer with you and for you. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Offerings are encouraged through online giving or can be mailed to the church address. (You may also contact Business Manager Nedean Geurin to set up autopay and other giving options.)
You can also find this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Jesus commissioning the disciples.
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Since Jesus and the disciples are gathering for a morning meal on the beach, let’s do the same (sort of). Whether it’s simple cereal or a weekend spread; whether you’re in pajamas or clothes, costumes or church wear; send us your breakfast pics! Now you don’t have to choose: You can come to church AND come and have breakfast!
Post to Facebook and Instagram, and hashtag it: #ComeAndHaveBreakfast – #LoveStaysHome – #BEingHACC so we can find each other! (As always, you can just send your pictures to Courtney, too.)
> Call to Worship
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ (Dorsey/arr.Shaw) :: Avenue; director Barry Epperley; filmed pre-COVID @ Christ the King, Tulsa
> Sermon (text John 21: 1 – 17) :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘There Was Jesus’ (Williams/Beathard/Smith) :: Isaac & Sarah Grace Herbert
> Communion :: Rev. Kevin Howe; Deborah Gist
> ‘Here I Am to Worship/There’s Something About That Name’ (arr.Fraley) :: Kelly Ford & Rick Fraley
> Benediction
Find our *Connection Card* to share attendance, concerns, and celebrations so that pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Offerings are brought forward through online giving or mailed to the church address. (You may also contact our business manager to set up autopay and other giving options.)
You can also find this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of Jesus appearing to Thomas.
*
Today, as we hear the story of Thomas, we realize his questioning actually shows us how to be faithful. This week’s photo offering borrows from our sermon theme picture: **Show us your question mark!** Draw one and take a picture. Build it out of coffee cups. Lay your children on the floor in the right shape. Line up those flower pots. Thinking about a new quarantine cut? 🙂 Have some fun!
We all have questions; let’s see your question marks! Post to Facebook and Instagram, and hashtag it: #CanWeBeHonest – #LoveStaysHome – #BEingHACC so we can find each other! (As always, you can just send your pictures to Courtney, too.)
> Call to Worship :: Andy & Jennie McMillan; Addie, Kendall, Embry
> Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘Honest’ (Evens/Seibold/Wilson/Noel) :: Isaac Herbert
> Sermon (text John 20: 24-29) :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Why?’ (Harris/Koch/Clark) :: Kelly Ford & Rick Fraley
> Communion :: Rev. Kevin Howe, Jodi Howe; Bob & Sue Flint
> ‘How Great is Our God’ (Tomlin) :: Rick Fraley
> Benediction :: Bill & Betsy Richert
Please use this *Connection Card* to mark your attendance, and especially to share concerns and celebrations so that your pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Offerings can be made through online giving or sent to the church address. (You may also contact our business manager to set up autopay and other giving options.)
You can also find this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, telling the story of the road to Emmaus.
This week, as we remember Christ entering into the room where the disciples gathered, and breathing peace upon them, show us a photo of your home’s doorway/entry. (You can include yourself and family or not! Be sure to obscure/crop the house number.) Post to Facebook and Instagram, and hashtag it : #ChristEntersIn – #LoveStaysHome – #BEingHACC so we can find each other! (You can just send your pictures to Courtney, too.)
> Call to Worship :: Heath & Staci Pennington; Coco, Izzi, Breaker
> Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Kevin Howe
> ‘In Christ Alone’ (Getty) :: Kelly Ford & Mark DeLuca
> Sermon (text John 20: 19 – 22) :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Holy Spirit’ (Katie & Bryan Torwalt) :: Rising Worship band (Isaac Herbert, Andi Gross, George Halls, Nathan Wilson)
> Communion :: Rev. Courtney Richards; David & Jennifer Brock; Eli, Toria
> ‘Breathe on Me, Breath of God’ (Hatch) :: Mark DeLuca :: photos, Courtney Richards, honoring 50th anniversary of Earth Day (April 22)
> Benediction :: Tom & Anita Wertz
Please use this *Connection Card* to let us know you were here, sharing any prayer concerns and celebrations so that your pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Your tithes & offerings can be made through online giving or sent to the church address. (Mail is collected daily.)
You can also find this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, celebrating the events of Easter morning.
> Scripture (Matthew 28: 1 – 10) :: Rev. Kevin Howe
> Call to Worship :: Colt Stubblefield
> ‘Living Hope’ (Phil Wickham) :: Rising Worship band
> Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Darlene & Zoey Martinez
> Sermon :: Rev. David Emery
> ‘Joyful Joyful, We Adore Thee’ (arr.Maddux/Ryan) :: Kelly Ford & Donald Ryan
> Communion – Rev. Courtney Richards
> ‘Behold the Lamb’ (Townsend) :: Rick Fraley
> Benediction
Please use our Connection Card to let us know you joined in worship today, and to share prayer concerns with our pastors, staff, and prayer team.
> texts :
1) Luke 23: 32 – 38 (Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.)
2) Luke 23: 39 – 43 (Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.)
3) John 19: 25 – 27 (Woman, behold your son. Behold, your mother.)
4) Mark 15: 33 – 39 (My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?)
5 & 6) John 19: 28 – 30 (I am thirsty. / It is finished.)
7) Luke 23: 44 – 49 (Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.)
> music : ‘At the Foot of the Cross/Ashes for Beauty’ (Kathryn Scott) :: Sarah Grace and Isaac Herbert
Please use our Connection Card to let us know you joined in worship today, and to share prayer concerns with our pastors, staff, and prayer team.
> Gather elements to serve as your bread and cup, to be shared during today’s reflection.
> text : John 6: 22 – 35
> music : ‘Be Near to Me’ (Enter the Worship Circle) :: Rising Worship Band; Isaac Herbert, leader
‘Do this in remembrance of me.’
All are welcome.
Welcome to worship with Harvard Avenue!
Please use this *Connection Card* to let us know you were here, sharing any prayer concerns and celebrations so that your pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Your tithes & offerings can be made through online giving or sent to the church address. (Mail is collected daily.)
You can also find this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, celebrating the events of Palm Sunday.
+ Welcome & Call to Worship :: Rev. David Emery
+ Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Courtney Richards
+ ‘After All (Holy)’ (David Crowder Band) / ‘All the Poor and Powerless’ (All Sons & Daughters) :: Isaac Herbert
+ Scripture :: Matthew 21: 1 – 11 :: Rev. Kevin Howe
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
5 “Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
+ Sermon :: ‘The Gift of Desperation’ :: Rev. Emery
+ ‘Where There is Faith’ (Billy Simon) :: Kelly Ford, Andy Chrisman, Donald Ford
+ Communion Meditation & Prayer :: Rev. Richards
+ Benediction :: Rev. Howe
Welcome to worship with Harvard Avenue! Please use this link to send a ‘virtual Connection Card’ email : let us know you were here, and any prayer concerns, celebrations, news and information so that your pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you in the days and weeks ahead. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
Your tithes and offerings can be offered through online giving
, or mailed to the church address. (Mail is collected daily.)
You can also find a 15-minute video of this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, this week exploring the story of Zaccheus.
+ Welcome & Call to Worship :: Rev. Courtney Richards
guitar : Isaac Herbert
Here we are again … together, apart. Not distanced, but in solidarity: Here we are to worship. We’re so glad to have this podcast, a few moments to breathe, sing, pray, sit, listen, be. We hope you’ll use the virtual Connection Card email. Let us know you came to worship today, and share any prayer concerns, joy and needs and news that you might have, so our pastors and staff, elders and prayer groups, can care for you in this season.
Perhaps you want to pause already before we go further. Find a candle and bring it to where you’re listening. Get your Bible so that you can read the scripture with us in a few minutes. Find the right place to sit and listen with your heart. Close all the other apps, put down all the other devices. Take that pause now, if you’d like. We’ll wait.
And now here we are to worship. Here we are to say that God is still God. Here we are, beloved of God, beloved to one another, in our homes, creating sacred spaces, finding sacred moments … together, apart. Here we are. To worship.
+ Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Kevin Howe
Let us pray together.
Holy God, Giver and Author of Life, Maker of all Creation, we gather our minds and hearts together today in your Spirit, to seek refuge from the storms of life. In you we find strength for our living, joy and energy for new tomorrows. Lord, grant us your peace. Fortify our faith.
We name this day that there have been many times when the tragedies in our lives and on the news overwhelm us. And Lord we confess that our hope can begin to falter in your good news. We see troubles many and bitter, and yet Lord, you restore life.
You have been our refuge and strength, our rock in times of need, and we ask Lord that you continue to make your presence known among our lives and in our world, especially for all those who suffer this day. There are many who need your healing touch, God, and we ask that you would enfold them and all of us in your never-failing care.
Lord use us to be instruments of your hope and love with the world, and may we continue to adhere to the ways of Jesus Christ your son, who taught us to pray saying…
+ The Lord’s Prayer
piano : Susie Monger Daugherty
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
+ Reflection :: shifting toward delight :: Rev. Howe
In the 58th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet pleads with the people of Israel to delight in the Sabbath and to delight in the ways of the Lord. And so my wondering today is this: How does one make a shift to delight?
You know, often we tend to view delight as something we have no control over; we either find something to be delightful or we don’t. And it’s far easier to view things this way, because if enjoyment is something for which we have no control over, then we need not entertain the idea of trying something again that we did not like the first time. If we have no control over that in which we find delight, we can simply double down on our expressions of displeasure and disinterest in activities or circumstances that we did not previously find to be delightful.
I came into this season of social distancing and quarantines with a strong predetermination that these practices would be ones in which I would find no delight. And that was destined to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I was bound and determined to find everything unpleasant about these circumstances for which none of us have control over.
Then about a week back I came across an article on the internet that invited me to see my circumstances in a different way. The article was entitled “QuaranTraining,” and it spoke of the creative ways that people from within the mountaineering and rock-climbing community were choosing to fully embrace their time at home. Here is a community of people who much prefer travel and the outdoors to the confines of home. And yet the article contains images from climbers all over the world who are finding that there are in fact many ways to train for their sport of passion in their homes and apartments. Parents beware! The images show people scaling bookshelves, hanging from the underside of their stairs, setting protective gear between cabinets—and not for the sake of security but rather for a light-hearted laugh. One man suited up in the attire he would use for scaling the highest peaks in the world, so that he could climb his six-foot ladder and cleaning dust-bunnies from the crown moulding!
Rather than stew in resentment about not being able to participate in their outdoor pursuits, the community is finding ways to lean into the discomfort of these new circumstances, and is even finding some delight in it. Where there was once the mundaneness of home, there was new adventure. Where there was once lemons, now lemonade.
A great deal of suffering in our lives is bound up in our struggle to preserve our predetermined ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world. Because it is rare that the circumstances of our days align with our notion of what we would have for ourselves, it can be a continual struggle not to sit our own self-imposed quarantine of resentment toward how things are unfolding. But our faith calls us to continually refresh the way we see our circumstances, particularly about how we see adversity in our living.
I think about the Apostle Paul’s words in the 12th chapter of Romans, where he says
“Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
It takes a real measure of faith to renew one’s mind – to free ourselves of our preconceived notions about how things should go, in this world in which we have very little control. But our faith offers us this beautiful invitation: To choose a new way of seeing our circumstances, to take up Christ’s invitation to lean into adversity with the confidences of God’s care and God’s presence. And when God is in the picture, there is always the audacious possibility that we will find delight.
This is my hope: That we will lean into God during this season, to find comfort and security in God’s presence, so that we may see our lives and circumstances anew, open to the radical possibility of delight.
+ ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ :: Avenue; Barry Epperley, director
+ Scripture :: Isaiah 58: 1 – 14
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator[a] shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.13 If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
+ Reflection : Prepare: delight :: Rev. Richards
We do not like being told what to do. We just don’t. The pioneering spirit of American lore is ingrained in us. (We ignore the parts of that history that are problematic.) We’ve spent our lives, and certainly our adult years, with incredible benefits and privileges. (Even the times that we’ve been down and out, or left behind, or gone without, we were still so far ahead of the curve …) We’ve also been told, and come to believe, that in this country, in this society, in this church, in this family, we can be and do anything we want.
And right now? In this moment in world, national, state, city, neighborhood, family life? It’s just not true. We cannot do and be everything we want to … right now. We cannot see all of the people we want to see – at least not the way we’re used to seeing them. We cannot do all of the things we want to do – at least not the way we’re used to doing them. We cannot go all of the places we want to go – and even the places we can go are fraught with restriction and limits.
We don’t like limits. We do not like being told what to do. It’s cramping our style, and changing our plans. It’s having a financial impact, and an emotional one. This has disrupted our schedule, our work, our school, our homes, our love, our grief, our health, and our spirits.
And?
It is making us sit still. And listen. Carefully.
We are getting a right-in-our-face lesson about caring for our neighbors. And learning that our definition of neighbor has always needed a little expanding.
It is making us think about our choices.
We are being forced to consider what is important, and what is not, and why we’ve always thought it was.
It is making us make things.
Phone calls to people we would usually just see. Appointments with coworkers we would ordinarily just go talk to. Meals with ingredients we didn’t even realize were in our house, let alone could go together!
This season has sparked some of the most creative communications – from drivewalk chalk, to posters in the window, to combined technologies across miles and time zones.
We’re expanding our understanding of education, what it is and how it happens and who’s involved. (And when we said over and over that we HAVE to figure out how to pay our teachers the money they deserve, we were absolutely not kidding.)
More of us are finding ways to move our bodies, even when our social movement is restricted. From breathing exercises, to living room yoga, to backyard catch, to neighborhood walks with dogs that are wondering why they’re suddenly not the ones who have to ask to go outside!
We’re picking up food from local businesses, and writing actual letters and using actual stamps. We’re cleaning out closets and dropping off donations. We’re paying attention to how we interact, and we’re being intentional with our words and with our movements. And we are remembering that everything we do can be done with someone else in mind.
And we’re finding – at least we’re trying to find – ways to reset our spirits. We’re digging out music we haven’t listened to in a while. That stack of books we’ve been staring at is actually getting read. We’ve rediscovered our love for crosswords, and jigsaw puzzles, and coloring books. And we are gathering with our church friends: listening to worship, reading prayers, doing video call bible studies, and calling and texting and emailing just to say hello.
Is not this the fast God chooses? That the oppressed would be released, that the lost would be found, that the discarded would be regathered, that the sabbath would be honored and the rhythm of life would be that which honors the best of who we are and who God intends us to be?
As you read and heard our Isaiah text today, adding verses as we have each week, and completing the chapter this time, we may at first think ‘Delight?! Where on earth can we find that right now?’
But it’s right there, in the text, and in us:
When we actively choose not to go our own way, but to honor the sabbath, to remember God’s holiness. When we feed on the heritage of our ancestors and delight in the keeping of God’s intentions for us … not for us as individuals, but recognizing that God’s desire and delight is for all of us, for everyone of us, all together.
So this week, while we are still sheltering, still safe, still healthy, still at home … where will you find your delight? Where will God’s delight be revealed to you?
Will you find a word here in Isaiah, or in the Psalms, or in a Gospel, and pray that word over your family? Will you write it on a post-it note … or sit it at your desk … or tuck it in as a bookmark … see it and repeat it and hold it close as strength and guide?
Will you remember, in the moments when anxiety kicks in, when fear comes too close, when case reports and patient counts become too real – will you remember that everything you feel is fine to feel, and normal, and part of this whole wild process. And will you remember that God is still, at the same time, right there with you?
Will you sit at an ordinary meal, and see it as communion – a sharing in the body of Christ? Whether by yourself, or with whoever else is sheltered with you, can you see that bread, that cup, that plate, those gifts, as the peace of Christ given to you, the salvation of Christ for your and for all? Can you even say those words, to yourself and to each other, calling each other by name … These are the gifts of Christ, for you
These are my prayers for us today, in this season that is not at all what we thought it would be. On this last Sunday of March, Kevin and I planned to lead worship out of this interim season the way we led into it: sitting side by side. But we are in spirit. And we are in spirit with each of you, rejoicing to welcome our new Lead Pastor, Rev David Emery, and know that you are praying with us for him as he leads us through this next moment and he joins us in worship next week.
So these are the gifts of Christ, given for you. These are the things I’m praying:
That we would delight in the Lord.
That we would take nourishment from all that has gone before us.
That we would honor God’s intent for us by living and loving with intention and compassion.
That we would trust, and not be moved.
+ ‘Those Who Trust’ :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader
+ Benediction :: Rev. Richards
guitar: Isaac Herbert
Our words of benediction today, from Quaker singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer. We’ll link to this full piece in the transcript; she is well worth your attention.
Now I don’t know and never will
What rises in the evening still.
How empty cups keep getting filled
How healing comes and hope rebuilds
Today I sense that all is near
Evermore and soon to be
Within us and between us is
Is everything we need.
(Carrie Newcomer, Everything We Need)
Go in peace, beloved of God. Go and stay : stay at home, stay in health, stay with God. Amen.
Welcome to worship with Harvard Avenue! Please use this ‘virtual Connection Card’ email : let us know you were here, and any prayer concerns, celebrations, news and information so that your pastors, elders, and prayer teams can be in prayer with you and for you in the days and weeks ahead. (These are emailed directly to our Connections Pastor, and you can note ‘pastors only’ if you choose.)
(Our online giving button should be ready on Monday. Programmers are doing lots of overhauls too!)
You can also follow this link to find a 15-minute video of this week’s Children Worship & Wonder, focused on the parable of the treasure.
+ Welcome & Call to Worship :: Rev. Kevin Howe
Friends of Harvard Avenue Christian Church, welcome to this week’s worship cast. We hope that this recording will be for you a sacred moment wherever and whenever you are listening.
We would invite you to fill out the virtual connection card when you engage this recording by clicking the link which can be found beside play button for this worship cast.
If you happen to be in a place where you could light a candle, we invite you to do so as a tangible reminder of Christ’s light, present to each of us as we worship. We would also invite you to grab a bible and read along with today’s scripture, as it is offered later in worship. Feel free to pause this recording now, if you would like to gather these things.
Now, let us go before our God with eager hearts and minds to worship the One on whom abundant life is built. Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
+ Pastoral Prayer :: Rev. Darlene Martinez
borrowing the ‘Prayer for the Pandemic’, from Cameron Bellm
God of all creation, we come to you today from many locations, but with one heart, joined together to commune with you.
Our prayer for today is that
we who are merely inconvenienced,
that we might remember those whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors
Remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home
Remember those who must choose between preserving their health or making their rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close
Remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips
Remember those that have no place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market
Remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home
Remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country, let us choose love.
During this time when we cannot physically wrap our arms around each other,
Let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbors.
Hear us now as we join in prayer the way that Jesus taught us to pray …
+ The Lord’s Prayer
+ Scripture :: Isaiah 58: 1 – 11 :: Rev. Richards
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
+ Reflection :: prepare: rebuilding :: Rev. Howe
After first hearing about the original Seven Wonders of the World, I recall the disappointment I had upon also learning that only one of these structures remains intact. Here are these amazing works of art and architecture that serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination, and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable. But they also serve as reminders of the impermanence of even the most impressive of our efforts.
For all the great things we humans have built, each one has met the same end. I think about the story in the Gospel of Matthew, when one of Jesus’ disciples calls his attention to the splendor of the temple in Jerusalem. The temple, like other magnificent structures, was a site to behold. It would have likely impressed just about anyone who laid eyes on it. Well, except you-know-who. Jesus tells his disciples, “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” (Matt 24:1-2)
As a reader strolling through the Gospels, you may have noticed that Jesus is not impressed with things that are big and shiny. This is perhaps part of the reason Jesus becomes weary of the crowds that gather around him in his ministry and their increasing affirmation of him. Jesus was no less impressed with his star-struck fans or the pursuit of a book deals, for that matter. He recognizes the same things in the eyes of those who marvel over his works as those who marvel over the temple and other edifices of humanity. Jesus is keen to steer clear of the seduction of greatness.
Throughout history, rulers and empires have often poured extravagant resources into the construction of buildings and monuments to highlight their greatness. But at one time or another, we have ALL been lured by the temptation to build structures of greatness in our own lives—outward signs that result from inward projects about self-importance.
Unfortunately, there are any number of these projects of greatness that one can pursue in life. They can involve proving our financial success, or building a professional career that sends us to the hall-of-fame, or achieving an optimal level of health and fitness. Even our religious beliefs and practices, if left unchecked, can be used in effort to build our lives up as things of self-importance and greatness. We hear of this in today’s scripture reading from Isaiah 58, as those seeking the Lord’s favor are met with God’s critique of superficial rituals and practices of fasting, that they were performed as signs of outward piety, rather than the acts of self-denial which they were intended to be. The Lord then reminds the people that a fast pleasing in God’s sight is one where practitioners seek to diminish themselves for the sake of acting with compassion and justice for others.
Perhaps the most unsettling about Isaiah 58 is that its indictment of lives and communities built upon projects of self-importance and greatness could easily have been written for our day and age. Many of us have fallen victim to the seduction of greatness and the hardships that come with its pursuit. We are lured in by promises of constructing our lives on such things that will either make us complete or offer us security or bring us fame and fortune. But while these projects seem enticing, building our lives upon them often keeps us penned down with anxiety and working toward things which never quite pan out to be what was pledged. There’s always just one more favor to do, one more promotion to get, one more enemy to defeat, before you can rest secure.
And adding insult to injury, we eventually find ourselves in a real-world version of the childhood story about the Three Little Pigs, when life’s Big Bad Wolves come huffing and puffing at the proverbial structures we have built in our lives. Perhaps it’s a crisis, a trauma, a disease, an illness that blows with such force that our lives are razed to their very foundations.
There’s perhaps nothing more unsettling than having to rebuild or remodel the project that is our lives. It’s uncomfortable work, to relocate the foundational assumptions of our thinking and doing. But the good news of our faith is that each time we undergo the process of rebuilding and remodeling our lives, we have this precious opportunity to leave behind those things which were merely projects for greatness, and pursue the construction of something more enduring.
We hear that the Lord promises to the people of Israel that, if they adhere to a fast comprised of humility and the care and love of neighbor through acts of compassion and justice, their ancient ruins will be rebuilt and they will raise up the foundations of many generations.
And herein lies the paradox of God’s ways: when we give up our plans for greatness and self-importance, God uses us to build something that cannot be lost, or destroyed or eroded by the years. It is by letting go our own wants and desires, that God takes people like you and me and builds something that is far greater than any of the Seven Wonders, including the Pyramid of Giza, which is the only one that stands right now…but will also fall victim to the sands of time.
Consider the example of Jesus as we follow his ministry in the gospels. We come to see how he constructs something beautiful for God by denouncing greatness and taking on a servant’s heart. He never constructed a temple, or even built a chapel for prayer. Instead, through humbling himself he built the Kingdom of the Holy, whose architecture remains faithful people who are ready to live their lives in accordance to God’s will. Its pillars are service, prayer, worship, peacemaking. The carved stones of this timeless temple are faith, hope, and love.
In the 2nd chapter of 1 Peter, the apostle calls us forth to build our lives not on greatness but on the cornerstone of Christ and his way of humility:
“Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’.” (1 Pet 2:4-6)
As people of faith, God asks us to rebuild our lives on a fast that is pleasing to the Lord. To all other projects, Jesus offers this sobering advice: Do not be led astray. One day, not one stone of these things will be sitting on another. Do not put your faith in that which is destined to crumble. Do not build the foundations of your life and communities on such things. Instead, find your hope in something that cannot be broken with a hammer, or destroyed in a war, or eroded by time. Put your hope in the kingdom.
As we move closer to Holy Week, my prayer is that we would seek to build more of our lives on the sure foundation that is the Lord: our rock, a solid place to lay the foundations of our living, especially in these unsettling times. And may we always strive to follow Christ’s path of humility and service, so that the glory of the Kingdom of God is that which we seek to build.
The glory of God’s Kingdom—where God’s love reigns supreme—is not the glory of the Taj Mahal, or London Bridge (which isn’t falling down yet, but it will). You might not be able to buy souvenirs of it like you would at the Eiffel Tower, or to purchase tickets for a guided tour like you could at the Louvre. But you can place a human life in the Kingdom of God. And all the edifices of humanity will crumble around it, and the home of your spirit will not even shake, and you will proclaim, “It is well with my soul.”
+ ‘It Is Well With My Soul’ :: Kelly Ford & Mark DeLuca
+ Reflection :: spiritual foundations in covid times :: Rev. Richards
How do we set our souls right? It’s the question of the season of Lent. How do we remove distractions, how do we step away from the things that interrupt us? What is it in our life that consumes our focus, and blurs our vision for who God is and who God calls us to be? What do we need to set aside in life as it is, to focus on life as it could be?
That is the question of every Lenten season. The weeks leading up to the celebration of the resurrection are supposed to be such a time of fasting – of paring down what only serves us, and guiding our hearts more completely toward what serves God.
Well. I supposed there’s nothing like a global pandemic to make you really hone in on things like trust and faithfulness, compassion and responsibility, community and mercy and love.
Here we sit, worshipping all in our own places. Finding sanctuary in different rooms. Seeing love take shape in ways we never could have imagined just a few weeks ago.
So how can you nourish your spirit? How are you establishing spiritual foundations in these shifting-sand days of COVID-19?
Being here in worship with us is a great start. Even though it looks and feels and sounds different in this moment, I hope it also looks and feels and sounds familiar, and remains a holy grounding and connecting moment for each of you, and for us together. Use the connection card link right below where you clicked play on this morning’s worship service; let us know you were here, and how we can be in prayer with you and for you in these days and weeks ahead.
While you’re naming how we can pray for you, consider how you might pray for others. Turning our gaze outward keeps us in tune with God’s will for our lives – that the whole body of Christ might be strengthened and carry on. Make a list of people you know, and maybe people you don’t know, who might be in need of God’s grace. Pray for someone each day. It doesn’t have to be fancy or formal, it doesn’t have to be out loud or written down. It doesn’t even have to be anything anyone else knows about. Simply thinking of and praying for others grounds us in community, in what matters most.
Listen to what your body is telling you about what’s going on in the world. We are the body of Christ, and right now that body is aching (more than usual). There is tension in the air and in our muscles. There is anxiety in our words, and our hearts race a little when we hear and repeat those words. Listen to your body, and answer its needs.
Sit still.
Breathe slowly and deeply.
Get away from that work-at-home desk once in a while.
Stand up and stretch.
Walk around the block.
Wave to a neighbor.
Listen to music.
Phone a friend. Use a video call if you can.
For now, caring for each other means not being together. It’s weird and we don’t like it and some of us may even think it’s overreacting, but it’s the best and healthiest and most critical and most compassionate choice we can make. For now, love looks like an empty sanctuary. And yet here we are to worship. Slowing down. Saying God is still God.
Worship. Pray. Listen.
Even in the darkness, we’ll find the light.
+ ‘Find the Light’ :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader
+ Benediction :: Rev. Howe
We’re glad that you could engage in this worship cast with us. And as we go forth from this moment, may we do so with the aim of anchoring our lives on the sure foundation of the Lord; the One who is our rock and our salvation. May we seek to establish ourselves as part of the timeless structure that is God’s kingdom — with Christ as our cornerstone, and the enduring materials of faith, hope, and love. Amen.
+ Welcome & Call to Worship :: Rev. Courtney Richards
Our highest call as people of faith, as those who follow the ways of Jesus, is to love. For now, love looks like an empty sanctuary. It looks like love of neighbor, over love of self. It looks like concern for the greater good, over doing what we’d rather. We know that faith is active, that it is lived out, that it moves and breathes in the world. But today – for a number of days we don’t yet know – we’re moving differently, and breathing slower, and we’re doing all of this each in our own place. Yes, it is strange. And it’s something we’re still sorting out. What we know for sure is that sanctuary is more than a room. It is the soul-deep truth that we are held and loved by the God who made us. For now, love looks like an empty sanctuary. But God is here, wherever we are, and sanctuary is wherever we find it.
+ ‘Sanctuary’ :: Rev. Kevin Howe
+ “Pandemic” (Lynn Ungar 3-11-20) :: Rev. Darlene Martinez
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath –
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny that now.)Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.Promise this world your love –
for better or worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
+ Pastoral Prayer / Lord’s Prayer :: Rev. Howe
Holy God, Word among all words,
you were there in the beginning.
You remain still the most important word
that is spoken into our lives;
one of grace and love and mercy.
We give thanks for the word of Good News
that you have imprinted on our hearts,
and we ask that you give us awareness of that Word this day,
and the strength and courage that comes from knowing You are with us.
Take our words and live your grace through them.
Transform our words and change our lives through them.
Take our voices and use them to speak out against the injustices
that are out of line with what You would have this world be.
And when our words are too deep to speak aloud,
we pray that your Spirit will speak them for us,
so that all the words of our mouths
and the meditations of our hearts
will be acceptable in your sight.
We lift these things to You, O God,
Word beyond all words.
Amen.
+ ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness’ :: Kelly Ford and Mark DeLuca
+ from ‘For Courage’ (John O’Donohue) :: Rev. Martinez
Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.
+ Reflection :: “change” :: Rev. Howe
Change: the only constant everyone agrees upon and that everyone resists. Every day—at church, at home, at work—we are expected to adapt, to modify, to alter, to change. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt there is absolutely nothing in this world that is not changing, and for the most part, we fight every minute of that change. Especially, when it comes to deeply instilled routines and patterns of being.
Even trying to putting on our socks in a different order can make us feel like we’re starting our day off on the wrong foot. There are actual physiological explanations about the neurological connections in your brain that explain why this is so discombobulating, but the bottom line is: having to learn a new way of doing things—a new way of communicating, a new working, a new way of being church, does not come without its fears and anxieties.
Fear and anxiety are natural reactions when we cannot see the future or know for sure what will happen next. But the invitation to follow Jesus is an invitation to trust God with an unknown future. And this commitment comes with a promise. The promise of the gospel is that we can choose abundant life over our fears of what will come next. It is a promise that God will walk beside us and will equip us to be faithful even when our circumstances demand that we live into new ways of being and doing.
Our current context requires that we do things a new way. It‘s unchartered territory for many communities of faith, but the promises of God remain: God takes the people who are willing to lean in to the gospel during the changes of life, and with them God does beautiful, beautiful things.
In this time, what new and beautiful things will God do through you?
“Behold: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” – Isaiah 43:19
+ Scripture :: Isaiah 58: 1 – 11 :: Rev. Richards
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
+ Reflection :: “prepare: satisfied” :: Rev. Richards
We’ve been reading Isaiah 58 together this Lenten season. Beginning with vs. 1 – 5 on Ash Wednesday, we’ve added verses the last two Sundays. Today, our new verses, verses 10 and 11 … satisfying the needs of the afflicted, the Lord guiding us continually, the spiritual strength and refreshment of never-failing waters.
Wow. I feel like the fact that this happens to already be our text for today … for today of all days, for all that our worship on this morning changes and means … it is a sermon in itself, just as it is.
It is impossible to shape a theological reflection, to consider a scripture and what it might say to us, and not address the events of the day. That’s part of the purpose, right?
Here is text, a sacred word from within our faith history … words spoken to and about God, words gathered to represent God’s speaking to us, words shaped and retold by people who encountered God and wanted others to know what it meant and that it mattered.
We take these sacred texts, and we consider how others have shared them … who was the original audience? What was going on that the speaker or writer was trying to address? How were these words held or shared within the community? How have other audiences absorbed these same words in the generations since?
And then we do the work of the ‘so what?’ … so what does this mean for us? All these generations removed from the original scene, entire millenia past the prophet’s first speaking, what do we do with a call to fasting, to compassion, to justice, to mercy?
We sit in our homes, on a spring Sunday morning, and listen to worship we can’t see, with people we won’t join for a while, and imagine a place and a day when our familiar room is filled again with laughter and song and familiar greetings and ritual practices.
What do we do with this sacred text, these words of the prophet?
We get out our church directory, and we pick up the phone, and we call the person we usually sit next to, and we ask how they are, and how they feel, and what they need.
We keep our eyes open for new ways to be together … for writing notes to people we haven’t seen in a while … for texting happy birthday wishes and anniversary greetings. We take advantage of the technology at our fingertips to see each other’s faces even when we can’t be in each other’s spaces.
We read that book we’ve been meaning to. We choose a scripture to calm our spirits. We search out music that brings meaning. We watch our children, and our friends, and our neighbors, create new things in the midst of this wild and unknown season.
We remember the meaning of a fast. That Ash Wednesday started us into a season called Lent, where we’ve said from the beginning that it isn’t a diet plan, it isn’t about giving something up to get credit for being good at being good. We hear the words of the prophet bringing the word from the Lord that the fast to seek is one that clears distraction, and sets aside personal privilege, and brings forth community, and empowers those who need encouragement, and cares for those who need help, and does it all in the name and for the sake of the One who is in and above and beyond all that we could ever fear, or know, or imagine.
This feels like a very dark time. And in so many ways it is. In biblical imagery, darkness is often a way to name what feels like the absence, instead of the presence, of God. And so light is its opposite; light is the image that brings God closer to us, and us closer to God.
So maybe right now, wherever you are, whoever you’re with, maybe right now you can light a candle.
Sit for a minute with that light.
Take a slow breath in, and then let that breath out.
Feel the yoke of worry release from your shoulders.
Break free of the urge to dismiss, and demean, and even just to be frustrated.
Breathe in, looking toward that light.
Unburden your spirit of the evil and distraction that wants to rest there.
Later today, maybe even in just a few minutes, when you’re washing your hands – again – for those 20 seconds … consider that blessing of water that never fails. One of our great resources in this public health moment is the simple task of hygiene – of opening a faucet, of using soap, and washing our hands. As the water runs over your skin, as it does its work on you and for the health of the community, sing a doxology, give thanks.
This is a season of uncertainty and chaos. It can also be a season of creativity and wonder. Of inspiration and miracle. Of God’s breaking in and light coming forth. That is the promise of our faith, and the foundation of our life … that God will make a way, where it seems there is no way. The words of the prophet remind us, when we focus on the work that is ours to do, when we remove the distractions that tell us we can’t do it, then the Lord will be satisfied and we will be strengthened, and the life-giving waters of grace and mercy will flow with abundance.
Our time spent physically apart from one another does not mean God is apart from us. God is closer than ever, and the Spirit is at work to bind our hearts with steadfast love, with relief for our parched and anxious souls, with streams of life, which never fail.
+ ‘My Feet Are On the Rock’ (I Am They) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader
+ Benediction :: Rev. Richards
Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping;
that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping;
that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest with peace.
(The Song of Simeon)
Isaiah 58: 1 – 9a
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
Many of you may recall a time when churches across this nation wielded a powerful tool of faith formation, which they used o shape the hearts and minds of their youngest members….Behold! The felt board (or flannel board, or flannelgram).
It was a felt board located in my childhood Sunday School classroom, where the stories of Jesus’ healing acts first took to root in my imagination. There, on that fuzzy canvas, I witnessed before my very eyes no less than the miraculous healings of many sick and demon-possessed people, as one-by-one they were gingerly removed from the felt and replaced by depictions that replaced their tears and scorn with bright expressions. Flannelgraph Jesus had done it again, against all sort of aliments, and despite the fact that he had been mushed up on that board in so many times that he often fell off the easel mid-miracle.
From those formative years, the stories of Jesus’ healing ministry travelled with me as assurance that Jesus has the power to heal—a truth which has been confirmed by the subsequent decades of life lived. But perhaps because of these stories’ familiarity, for a great deal of my life there were many aspects of these healing stories that went unquestioned and unexamined. Until along came a seminary professor, who, with one simple question, pulled the flannel board out from underneath my understanding of God’s healing action in our world. The question he asked was this: What is going on that there so many sick people everywhere that Jesus goes? Why are there so many sick people in the gospels?
After posing the question, the professor, Warren Carter, who now by the way teaches New Testament here in town at Phillips Theological Seminary, went on to describe for us the backdrop of Roman Empire and the damage that it inflicted upon people. I would like to read you some of his commentary on this, and I quote:
“The Gospel reflects its imperial world…Roman imperial structures and practices were bad for people’s health. Some 70-90 percent of folks in Rome’s empire experienced varying degrees of poverty—from the very poorest to those who temporarily fell below subsistence levels. Understandings of hygiene were limited; social stresses were high; water quality poor, food insecurity was rife with low quality and limited quantities. Such factors resulted in widespread diseases associated with poor nutrition and a lack of immunity. These [things] were death-bringing in a world that required physical labor for survival.”1
By equipping me with a knowledge of the real-world context in which the gospels played out, it enabled me to move Jesus’ healing ministry off the backdrop of a felt board and into the world we live in—enriching my understanding of God’s healing work in the this world of ours. In a world where imperial structures make people ill and then ostracize them for it, it is harder to simply see Jesus as a street doctor spinning miraculous cures. There is something more that is taking shape in all these healing stories.
As the treatment of diseases, cures are wonderful. But cures are always transitory. Even if you and I were to be cured of some of those things which ail us, eventually these beautiful but feeble bodies of ours will fail. But Jesus is not just in the business of cures. He is in the business of healing. And this healing goes far beyond the treatment of disease. It also addresses the social and spiritual dimensions of living.
In the context of the gospels, Jesus’ healing binds the wounds that have been inflicted by imperial structures that leave poor people limping along. His healing brings restoration to social systems that—to this day—are divided by sickness.2 You may notice that following the healings of Jesus, the once-ill are free to be incorporated back into social relationships and worshiping communities, no longer confined to the outskirts of town. Coupled with Jesus teachings, all this healing points to the wholeness of things when it is God’s kingdom—God’s empire—reigns supreme.
But there is something else I would invite you to consider about the type of healing that takes place in the gospels. And that is this: the sick and demon-possessed are not just healed from something, they are healed for something. Jesus doesn’t just free people from things, He frees them for things…freed for following him on his path, freed for giving more of themselves, freed for transformed thinking and living—for pouring their own lives out in gratitude and service to God.
And it should be noted that people who are freed from things but have no spiritual calling for anything wider than their own ambition, tend to collapse inward underneath the weight of their own self-interest. And this is what we see taking shape at the beginning of this morning’s scripture passage from the Book of Isaiah.
Here, we’ve picked up the story of the people of Israel shortly after they have been freed from ravages of Babylonian captivity. But what was at first a celebration of this freedom had fallen into bickering among the people over who should rule, the fighting of factions grappling for power, and the abuse and overworking of laborers in the daunting task of rebuilding their city. And we read that while the people are being attentive to the ritual ordinances of the law by fasting, it is clear that they have completely neglected the ethical demands of it.
Instead of a fast that puts the priorities of God first, their fast is a self-interested one. And the prophet Isaiah calls them out, sharply. He says “Look here! All this bowing down like a bulrush, all this this spreading of sackcloth and ashes…this kind of fasting ain’t gonna’ get your prayers off the ground. Do you think the way to create an audience with the Lord is the mere outwardly display humility—to put on a pious long-face and parade around solemnly in black?”
“No” the Lord says. “This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, to get rid of exploitation in the workplace, to free the oppressed; to share your food with the hungry, invite the homeless poor into your homes, put clothes on those who are out in the cold, to be available to your own kin. Try this kind of fast and you find that your light will shine, and healing will spring up quickly.”3
Something that always captures my eye about this scripture is just how dreadfully specific it is about what actions will bring forth healing. You would be hard-pressed to simply spiritualize it and say to the hungry, and poor, and naked “We’ll be praying for your souls.” And yet it is a temptation to which the church has been drawn time and again.
Author Brain McLaren speaks to what he perceives as a failure of today’s church. He says that “the Church has specialized in dealing with the ‘spiritual needs’ of its members to the exclusion of the physical and social needs of its neighbors. It excels in addressing the destination of a person in the afterlife while failing somehow to address the significant social injustices of this life.”4 When it comes to a fast that is pleasing to the Lord, there is to be tangible attention to those in need.
Sadly, I know far too many folks that have lost their faith in the church to take on this kind of fasting. And it isn’t necessarily because they don’t believe in God—many of them still believe that God is calling us into the world. But they have more suspicion than ever that the church is mostly concerned with its own success and survival, rather than the kind of fasting that brings God’s healing liberation to those at the fringes of broken social systems.
And to this I say that prophet Isaiah’s call to repentance is one that we—the church—must heed. We must own the fact that the church has not always acknowledged and touched the broken places of our world, where modern day empires have left people sick and ailing. We must reckon with the hard truth that the church has not always recognized how comfortable it has been sitting on the dock of the bay, working only to pay its bills and keep the lights on. And, particularly for the modern-day church with all of its buildings, I believe that we must name that our calling is not to the safe harbor of our sanctuaries or facilities, but out in the highways and byways of a wounded world.
As the pastor that has been charged by this community of faith to focus on community engagement and outreach, the question I most frequently ask is, “What does it look like for this congregation—in this community—to participate in the healing that comes from a fast that is pleasing and acceptable to the Lord?” There’s such great need within our city for people that are ready to create spaces where healing and wholeness can happen.
I give thanks for the ways that many of you are already engaged in responding to the needs of those who have been cast aside because of broken human structures:
as you serve food at the Day Center for the Homeless;
provide support for the community of Chacraseca, Nicaragua;
as you offer up hospitality to families in situations of homeless by hosting them in the building through Family Promise;
as you supporting the feeding ministry of Iron Gate; and address food insecurity through the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma;
by tending to the ways that our environment has suffered the consequences of broken systems through our Green Team;
by building houses with Habitat for Humanity of Tulsa;
providing a community garden space for an international congregation here in town;
supporting our neighboring schools and students,
and the list goes on. I’m thankful for the ways you are taking seriously the call to serve our in our community.
And during this season of Lent, I would invite you to deepen in your fasting even more. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, the fast we are called to is not easy. It IS a fast and so it is not without its costs to us. It may not require us to forgo food. But it will require us to forgo our own wants and desires for love of neighbor. It may not require the discomfort of feeling hungry, but it will surely require the discomfort of getting one’s hands dirty in the sickness of the world. You be required give, and give, and give some more—to pour yourself out on God’s people. But thanks to the healing of Christ Jesus, we have been freed for this ministry. And I’ve been told that if we stick to God’s prescript fast of self-denial (as Christ showed us)…when we pour out our lives for the poor, the dispossessed, the sick, the oppressed, God’s healing work will be made known. And I recall, very distinctly, from the days of the old felt board, the story when Jesus surprised his students by saying “Just as you did it to the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.”5
1 Warren Carter, Working Preacher, “Commentary on Matthew 4:12-23” https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3138
2 Davis, Scott M. “Healing and Exorcism.” The New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching, by Paul Scott Wilson, Abingdon Press., 2008, pp. 79–80.
3 Isaiah 58:5-9
4 Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: When the Worlds Biggest Problems and Jesus Good News Collide. Tomas Nelson, 2009.
5 Matthew 25:40
Isaiah 58: 1 – 7
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Over dinner recently, a teenager I know entertained her dad’s friends by imitating him, repeating the phrases used in their house most often:
Where does that go?
Why is that light on?
Are you done in that room?
Where does that go? {That one is repeated fairly often.}
We all need course correction from time to time. In our daily habits, in our personal relationships, in our local and national organization, sometimes just in our own self-understanding.
In biblical history, in our faith history, that is where prophets come in. (And no, if you see him sometime soon, I did not just equate the father of that teenager to a prophet. Don’t let him think I did.)
Isaiah is one of the ‘major prophets’ we turn to, who had a great deal to say about where the people of Israel were, and how they were behaving, and what they should actually probably be doing instead. We are a few days into the season of Lent, when we take time to look more closely at our spiritual practices and see where we can more closely shape ourselves into what God has in mind.
‘Lay down your burden.’ ‘Take up your cross.’
In the New Testament, we take both instructions from Jesus … but they seem contradictory. How can we follow them both at once? Perhaps we can take this less as pressure and more as permission: to not do it all but to do what we can, to know that who and how we are IS what Jesus desires, and that God’s grace will do the work to make us work as we need to in the world.
The Christian recognition of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and moves through 40 days: a season of releasing that which controls us, those things to which we cling too tightly, anything that keeps us from depth of experience and fullness of faith.
As we look toward the coming-again Christ, this Savior reborn in resurrection, how do we overcome fear and death to bring about new life? How do we prepare ourselves? What do our hearts need to be ready for a Messiah?
The prophet Isaiah has guidance to offer. We’re going to spend this month’s Sundays looking at Isaiah 58. Just this one chapter, which we started on Wednesday night, and we’ll continue to add verses each week. We want to take a slow walk through a significant text, taking a careful look at the things that make for holiness, preparing to live life that brings us closer to God.
Prophets have ‘uncommon access’ to God’s will and intent. We see them in roles similar to the work of shamans in other cultures.
Prophets aren’t predictors or fortune tellers. They know the future God will bring, but not because of a crystal ball. “Rather, the prophets know in deep and intimate ways about the character of God”, about the ways God has worked and still can work in the world, reminding the people to align themselves with that.
Sometimes they come from outside the normal scene, to speak a new word into community. New
insight or caution and correction can encourage and empower transformation that isn’t otherwise possible with someone you know. But sometimes they are part of a culture and community, and so speak into social setting as advocates for things that are in line with God’s will.
Prophets speak as the word of God and spirit of God moves them. The poetry of prophecy reveals the reimagination of life when lived in God’s attention, purpose, and intent.
The declarations of the prophets are generally about judgment and deliverance: Judgment against those who resist will surely end badly. But deliverance says that “in, through, and beyond judgment, God will work newnesses that are beyond {anything imagined}.”
The most important part of prophetic declarations is that they reorient us: They set the entire world as the arena of God’s faithful work, showing how different life can be when God, and God’s will for the world, is the deciding factor in our action and life together.[1]
The season of Lent is about spiritual disciplines and the work of preparing, of opening our spirits for deeper encounters with God’s longing for us.
In the gospels, we receive instruction from Jesus about the ways we can prepare to be as God desires us. Give, pray, and fast.
When you give charity, he says … act like you’re not giving. Don’t show it.
When you pray … go into your room, shut the door, and do it there. Don’t let people hear you.
While you’re there praying … quit going on and on, just pray and get on with it. God already knows.[2]
This paradoxical, upside-down nature of the gospel keeps us guessing and sometimes it’s hard to know what we’re supposed to do and when and how. Generations before Jesus, those who taught and spoke into his own ancestral community – these prophets – like Isaiah – had something to say about the practices of fasting and giving as well.
As we’ve said, Lent has traditionally been marked by penitential prayer – study, self-reflection, the who-aml-and-what-have-I-done kind of prayer. But the extension of that – the enhancement of it – is fasting.
Fasting, in this sense, is not the lose-10-pounds-in-3-days Hollywood juice cleanse. The idea of fasting is removing distractions. That’s where ‘giving things up’ came from. While it is theoretically our understanding all the time, we take this 40 day season to look more closely, to be sure that nothing is in between us and our goal of being closer to God. We need to abstain from things that get in the way. And things are always in the way.
But when we remove them – when we fast from what distracts us, when we create a space – God’s hope moves in. We admit that we’re not who we should be – and there is room for God there. The whole entire idea of Lent in the first place – the whole idea of reflection and discipline and penance – is that in the end we are something better, somewhere closer to God, somehow truer to ourselves, than when we started.
Here’s the catch: Sometimes it’s our fasting itself that gets in the way.
What’s the question we ask during Lent (assuming we know what Lent is and that we’re maybe supposed to do something with it)? What do we say? We talked about this a few days ago at Ash Wednesday worship.
“What are you giving up?” we ask
Do we ask – What do you want God to make of you?
Do we ask – How can I pray for your spirit to be renewed?
Very rarely.
We say, with more than a little anguish and more than a little self -righteousness: “I can’t have cokes.” Or “We gave up bread.” Or “I’m not spending money on that.” Or “Why does Girl Scout Cookie Time have to come during Lent?!”
We often fast like it’s a badge of honor. Like it’s about us. It has been said that “Lent wasn’t created to resurrect failed New Year’s resolutions, but to put to death the very thing that makes resolutions necessary.”[3]
If whatever we think we’re supposed to be giving up is keeping us from paying attention to what God is trying so very hard do in our lives … if we’re so busy talking about the fast we choose that we aren’t actually fasting toward faithfulness, then maybe we should give up giving up.
Just a few chapters ahead of where we read from Isaiah today, the ones who were to be on watch over a lavish banquet God had prepared, had left their posts, and let it be devoured by wild animals. As today’s chapter opens, the prophet is told to warn and proclaim loudly, shouting out and lifting his voice like a trumpet.
After God’s word to the prophet about his responsibility to speak, the voice changes, and the prophet addresses the people themselves, with the twin calls to justice and righteousness the clear focus.
The people feel God has let them down, that God hasn’t seen their acts of faithfulness, or noticed how much they’ve done; they think God hasn’t cared about their fasting. The prophet doesn’t give them sympathy, but says basically ‘You’re right. God doesn’t care.’ Because there is a vast difference between what you say you’re doing to set things right with God, and the fact that right in the midst of your community, actual injustice still exists.
When fasting becomes just ritual, the results aren’t honored. The fasting that is done should lead to justice for the community, not credit for the individual. “Fasting that doesn’t alleviate these conditions, but worsens them, stands under prophetic condemnation. Fasting is meant to be a response of penitence and contrition, seeking God’s favor. Such attitudes are inconsistent with oppression and disregard for those in need.” Saying we’re seeking God, and striving for holiness, and longing for God’s presence – whether for the first time or for a long time, for 40 days or 40 years or just for 40 minutes on a Sunday morning – saying that’s what we’re doing doesn’t matter if the results do not show in our community.[4]
The prophet’s focus is on righteousness and justice. Righteousness means right relationship with God. This can only be found by investment in community, showing attention especially to the needs of the poor and oppressed. Those who are righteous live as contributors to community, to improve and carry on the community’s well-being.
This means recognizing our place in systems of oppression. It means admitting that privilege isn’t just a buzzword, but a reality. In Proverbs, the word righteous refers especially to those who live with integrity, whose very presence and actions contribute to the stability of the community.
Righteousness is taking care of the community, and is the primary marker of what God’s heavenly reign looks like.[5]
And so here at the start of Lent, only a few days out from being marked with ash and oil, having blessed the dirt and remembered our beginnings in it …
We are here to confess our sin. Sin, not in the sense of actions that are ‘bad,’ or even in the sense of inaction being harmful. Sin in the sense of separation. Sin as a state of being. We are here to confess that we are not always very good at this human being job of ours. We are here to say that we do not always get it right.
And God is here to remind us that sometimes, though, we do. And to remind us that always, God does. God gets it right, and trusts us to live toward righteousness and justice.
Frederick Buechner says
Justice does not preclude mercy. It makes mercy possible. Justice is the pitch of the roof and the structure of the walls. Mercy is the patter of the rain on the roof and the life sheltered by the walls. Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry.[6]
So we are here for both, in this season of Lent, these weeks in which we prepare. We are here for righteousness and hope, we will fast for justice and mercy.
We are here to turn over our need to judge. We are here to sacrifice our need to be right. We are here to remember that being privileged is not the same as being entitled, and that being here first doesn’t mean we’re the most important ones here. We come to the altar of justice, fast from our superiority complex, and receive the mercy of humility and gratitude.
We are here to relinquish our spiritual pride. We are here to remember that our faith was given to us as a gift, and we attend to it imperfectly, at best. We are here to rein in our quickness to make demands of others, or dictate to them a standard we ourselves refuse to uphold. We come to the altar of justice, fast from our arrogance, and receive the mercy of forgiveness and compassion.
We are here to cast out the demon of careless words. We are here to admit that sometimes we say things because we know they’ll make a point, and sometimes we say things not giving any thought to how they sound, or what they imply. We come to the altar of justice, fast from our carelessness, and receive the mercy of wisdom and thoughtfulness.
We are here to do away with the sense that we are not worthy. Even in the midst of remembering our flaws, let’s keep in mind that light still shines through cracked windowpanes, and blades of grass come up through broken sidewalks. We come to the altar of justice, fast from our self-doubt and shame, and receive the mercy of wholeness and new life.
Buechner goes on to speak of this freedom in faith, the freedom Isaiah reminds us to proclaim:
We have freedom to the degree that the master who we obey grants it to us in return for our obedience. We do well to choose a master in terms of how much freedom we get for how much obedience.
To obey the law of the land leaves us our constitutional freedom, but not the freedom to follow our own consciences wherever they lead.
To obey the dictates of our own consciences leaves us freedom from the sense of moral guilt, but not the freedom to gratify our own strongest appetites.
To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever leaves us the freedom of an animal to take what we want when we want it, but not the freedom of a human being to be human.
The old prayer speaks of God ‘in whose service is perfect freedom’. The paradox is not as opaque as it sounds. It means that to obey Love itself, which above all else wishes us well, leaves us the freedom to be the best and gladdest that we have it in us to become[7]
We will spend forty days seeking forgiveness and justice, and we will leave having received mercy and freedom at Easter. We are marked, on Ash Wednesday and always, not so that others will ask and give us credit, but so that during Lent and well beyond we see, and we ask, and we know that God is our God, and we are God’s people.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free…
[1] on prophets, Walter Brueggemann, Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes (WJK 2002), p158-161
[2] Matthew 6, my very loose paraphrase
[3] This was quoted by someone I read but do not know. It was cited only as ‘C. Holtz,’ so I cannot fully reference the source, but so appreciate the reflection.
[4] Christopher R. Seitz, ‘Isaiah’, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Abingdon 1996), pp498-503.
[5] on righteousness, Brueggemann, pp177-178.
[6] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words (HarperCollins 2004), p209.
[7] Buechner, p119-120.
Isaiah 58: 1 – 5
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Lent – from the old English word for spring – this season of decreasing darkness and increasing light, as the days lengthen toward Easter.
Lent is not … a diet plan.
It isn’t. It’s just … that’s not what it’s for.
I want, as your pastor, I want to be supportive and encouraging and empowering of all the ways you might seek to be in right relationship with God. But if you’re going into Lent and saying to yourself it’s about fasting, it’s about giving up, I’ll spend six weeks doing this (or not doing that), because it’s a good chance for me to take the discipline of spirituality and use it to jumpstart a discipline of controlling my choices …
I hate to say it, but I’m going to say it: If that’s what you have in mind, you’re doing it wrong.
If you’re here to sort of fire the starter’s pistol and take off down the track with some super pepped up Jesus-is-my-life-coach motivation for A Better Me in Forty Days, then … no.
This is not that.
That is not what Lent is.
Tonight we’re part of something very particular – perhaps peculiar – in the life of the church. Things happen in this worship service in certain ways for certain reasons … and those reasons are NOT that we aren’t creative and didn’t want to do a new thing.
In this evening, in this Ash Wednesday moment, we are blessing dirt. Ash and oil, mixed together and marked on our skin. We pray that it somehow becomes a blessing.
We come to recall the very moments of our creation – when God took the dust of the ground and formed a human vessel and breathed into its being the very breath of life. We are here to remember that we are created from the dust, and to the dust we will return. We are here tonight to say that we are divine creatures in human vessels and if that’s the case, then we should make the most of what we have.
Lent is not a diet plan.
Forty is a number used throughout scripture, matched with many sacred journeys.
Forty days and forty nights, Noah is at sea, his family wondering what’s going on, and two of every creature getting restless in the cargo holds.
Forty years, Moses wanders the desert, leading people who didn’t want to be led, and listening to them tell him over and over how he ought to be doing his job and how they were happier where they used to be.
Forty days, Jesus separates himself from the crowds, preparing for his ministry to begin. He is tempted in ways that are strikingly familiar: tempted to display his power; to take advantage of his unique and divine nature; to worship an easy master instead of doing the hard work of God’s realm.
So in the early church, around the 4th century, Christians began to mark a season forty days too.
Between today and Easter is 40 days, not counting Sundays. In the Christian tradition of the Lord’s Day, we should already be marking that day of our week as set aside for a focus on God’s work in the world and in us. Those Sunday worship celebrations remain. It is these 40 days in between, from Ashes to Easter, on either side of the Sundays, that we’re saying, right now, we intend to approach differently.
But how?
In those early days, believers had often started somewhere else first – a national religion that worshipped an emperor, or a generational ritual that honored multiple gods. So to learn and follow the teachings of this one Messiah/Savior, as a way to know the Divine Creator most closely, was kind of a big leap. So a season of preparing came into play.
New believers spent forty days in study and prayer, sometimes even mimicking Jesus and going off on their own to a wilderness. At the end of their study and following a Holy Saturday vigil, the new believers would be baptized at Easter and claimed fully into the life of the church.
In the same way that we stand and respond together when someone joins our faith community, the earliest believers recognized – or remembered – what we all really know instinctively. We are not here to be alone. God-breathed creations that we are, we are in this world with all the other God-breathed creatures, and if any of us is going to survive, let alone thrive, then we’d better live in ways that recognize and inspire the God-blessed nature of every one of us.
So as a new believer would study and pray in this 40 days season of preparing, the community of faith would stand with them and honor them by studying and praying as well. The road of faithful following is not one of ease, nor of comfort, nor even always total joy. And so if there is a journey to be taken, no one journeys alone.
Think about where you’ve wandered. Where have you stumbled? Where have you caught someone else? Who has travelled with you as you’ve become the person you are? Who do you need to look for, and find, to be part of your journey now?
Poet and pastor Jan Richardson offered this blessing for Ash Wednesday –
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you
to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.[1]
Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of the Season of Lent. Today we are part of a practice that happens the same way every year, for a reason. It is the day that worshippers take on the symbol of ashes “as a sign of humility before God, a symbol of mourning and sorrow at the death that sin brings into the world.”
In the earliest days, ashes were only for those who publicly confessed their sin and asked to be restored to the Church, or who renounced their mistakes and promised to dedicate themselves to study and this new faithful living.[2]
But again, Lent is not about one person, or even one kind of person. The church realized that if we were going to really welcome new believers, if we were going to take seriously the instructions of the Jesus we say we follow, then the entire church ought to be reminded of our own shortcomings. We need to take the time to name our sins, and to create a sign – in ash and oil on our foreheads – to be marked as run-of-the-mill human being sinful people. We start this season of Lent in mourning, so that we can look ahead together to the joy of resurrection and new life. The mark of the ashes is our shared confession, and it means that at the end of the forty days, we will share in the resurrection as well.
Lent – the dying, the giving up, the taking on, the prayer, the study, the fasting, the giving – isn’t about us, at all. It isn’t about us as individuals trying to be better people. It isn’t even about a whole community of faith pointing itself in a renewed direction. It is about setting ourselves aside, and recognizing that God is already working – working in us, working on us, and working for us – and that our job is to get out of the way of what God is already doing.
THAT is our fast. That is what we break from. That is what we set aside.
Anything that controls us. Anything to which we cling too tightly. Anything that keeps us from depth of experience, from fullness of faith, from holy and wholly flourishing.
Isn’t this what the prophet Isaiah is saying? We will spend the next five Sundays take a slow and thoughtful walk through this chapter of Isaiah. He starts where we start: By taking a true and careful look at what we’re doing and why.
‘Is THIS your fast?’ he says … you’re fasting so that people can see you? You’re posting on Facebook about what you’re ‘giving up’ so that everyone can know just how faithful and close to God you are? You’re practicing your following by talking trash about whoever doesn’t follow the way you do? Is that the fast you’re going for? Is that the focus you want your faith to have?
Is it?
This isn’t the fast we desire, and we know it isn’t what God has in mind for us. That’s why we’re here, to start this season of reflection by confessing, and by taking our mark for it. We admit that we’re not who we should be – and there is room for God to step in. We confess, individually and together, that we put other things ahead of our relationships and our faith – and when we do, God turns that confession to mercy. We fast, not so that we are made less, but so that God can make us more.
The mark of the cross is our confession, AND our forgiveness.
We are here to confess our sin. Not just to say that we’ve done things we shouldn’t, or that we’ve not done the things we should. But to say – again – that we have separated ourselves from God – again.
We confess that we
We confess. And we seek. And we will soon make the slow walk down this aisle to receive a mark our foreheads.
There is penitence, and there is mercy. We come to receive a mark of grace.
Ash Wednesday is about the mess of the human experience. It’ s about the oil and the ash making a print on our skin. It’s about the mud and the Breath that made us who we are in the first place. It is about preparing as individuals, and welcoming as a community, and confessing who we are, and knowing who we can be.
Before we come down the aisle, a short reminder of what taking those steps can mean (again from Jan Richardson):
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.[3]
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
[1] Jan Richardson, Rend Your Heart: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
[2] Dennis Bratcher, Christian Resource Institute, general historical sketch
[3] Jan Richardson, ‘Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday’, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
1 John 4:7-12
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.19We love because he first loved us. 20Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
At the center of the Christian faith, there is a story. It is the story of God’s unending love for the world. It is the story of the sovereign God of the universe choosing to come close enough to touch, and hold, and embrace, and deny, and betray, and crucify. We Christians tell the story of a God who is not distant and unapproachable, but who is available to each of us so that we may know that we are loved. But this divine love story is not just one that is to be told. It is one in which we are called to live. You and I are a part of the story of God’s love for the world.
During this sermon series, we’ve looked at four Greek words that are often translated into the English word, “love.” And we’ve aimed at faithful reflection on each—teasing out the differences so that we might better understand the complexities of loving relationships and make good on our call to love God and love neighbor. And so we’ve considered storge, or familial love—the kind of love that takes place through healthy family relationships. We’ve reflected on phileo, brotherly love, as it has been referred to, or that tie that binds us to those in whom we find deep and abiding friendship. We have spoken of eros, the love expressed through intimate, physical relationships. And today we conclude our series by considering the word agape.
Agape is a word mentioned often in the New Testament and refers to the love that God exercises towards the world through Christ. Agape is unconditional love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance as noted in the ways that Christ has suffered for love of the world and of us. Agape is not an abstract proposition. God’s love is not simply a theory. This love is about doing. We see that in Jesus. His love was not abstract, but rather concrete, active, lived love. And it is love that is bound to transform those who take it seriously.
During the brief time that I lived and worked in Atlanta, I attended a congregation there and was engaged in a Sunday School class with other young professionals. We met each week before worship service for prayer and bible study, and we were quite content with the rhythm and nature of our brief time together each Sunday. That is, until one day a visitor showed up to class. He was another twenty-something like the rest of us who had apparently been visiting many different churches around the area. And when we asked him if he’d be willing to share a little about his search for a community of faith he said to us, “Well, it’s been pretty interesting. I’ve gone to some churches and I heard a lot about Jesus but very little about the world. I’ve gone to other churches and I heard a lot about the world but not much about Jesus.” Then he continued, “Last Sunday in this congregation, I heard a lot about Jesus and a lot about the world. But here’s my question: if I hang out at this church, will I meet people who are like Jesus?”
Well, of course, we were all taken by surprise at this serious, yet simple question. And I looked into his eyes for any signs that he was just being cynical or accusing. But I have to tell you, what I saw were honest eyes asking a clear and earnest question: Does following Jesus show?
That question has stuck with me through these years. Is our love of God, our commitment to Jesus Christ, visible in the way we live? Many in our time are justifiably skeptical. They have heard messages of exclusion and judgment thinly covered in Christian language. They’ve seen acts of hatred done in the name of Christ and watched churches preach love while practicing condemnation. Does following Jesus show in the way that we live our lives?
According to our passage this morning from 1 John, there is a straightforward and unambiguous way to determine this. The test is this: Do we love one another? It is as simple—and as difficult—as that. Do we love one another?
Back in the day, before memes became the popular means for communicating all of life’s clichés, there were bumper stickers. I still see a few vehicles out on the roadways that have their back end wallpapered with these stickers, offering those of us behind them the opportunity—or misfortunate—of reading whatever the driver thought was worthy of risking the resale value of their car. There have been a few that have stuck with me over the years, one in particular that left me with a bit of sticker shock. It said, “I love my wife, I love my dog; but everyone else can go to …” – well, you can guess the destination. And there I was at the stop light thinking to myself, “My wife, my dog”… that’s a pretty short list to have to keep track of.
You know, for reasons I can’t begin to explain, there are so many folks who believe that it is perfectly okay for us to pick and choose—among various lists and categories—those whom we will love and those whom we will not. But agape does not take into account these categories that we construct. If we are to follow the example of Jesus, we are not called to just love those that are easiest to love, or those most capable of responding in kind. Our faith proclaims an all-encompassing love accompanied by sacrificial acts.
For years now, one of the ways that this congregation has taken action toward loving all people has been through our collaboration with Week of Compassion. To get everyone up-to-speed, WEEK OF COMPASSION is the relief, refugee and development mission fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Our support of Week of Compassion has enabled us to show compassion through disaster response, humanitarian aid, sustainable development and the promotion of mission opportunities.
The impact that we have through Week of Compassion is great and widespread—both here and abroad, but I thought you’d be interesting in learning that Week of Compassion helps to fund a program called Global Mission Internships, which allows young folks between the ages of 21 and 30 the opportunity to serve alongside one of our many international mission partners.
To place young adults in the missionary context allows them to explore ways that we can extend the love of God to others across the globe. It is a powerful program. We currently have a couple from within our congregation that is serving through this program. 
Dusty and Kelsey Riebel just began serving alongside on of our denomination’s partners based out of Quito, Ecuador, and I very much look forward to hearing from them about how the Spirit is at work in that place.(1)
From 2007-2009, I also served as Global Mission Intern, thanks to the support of Week of Compassion. I was able to follow a calling to ministry alongside our sisters and brothers in Honduras; an experience that has deeply shaped my faith. And it was during my time there that my eyes were opened to the nature of agape love in a way it had not yet been revealed in my life.
I was on my way to meet with local leaders of a small, far flung village that was located in the heart of the Mosquito Coast, a massive expanse of rainforest most famously highlighted in a strange Harrison Ford movie of the same name that came out after the original Star Wars movies. There, in the jungles of La Mosquitia, there are no roads, the river is the highway—and long dugout canoes, called pipantes, 
are the means of transportation to your destination. These pipantes are impressive vehicles but, being wood, are also vulnerable to the occasion encounter with rapids that come at the rainy season, like the ones that flipped the vessel that I was traveling in…dumping us passengers and our contents into the quickly moving waters. I was soaked, but worse yet-already two days travel into the jungle, I was without my pack–no snacks, no clothing, no money…just little ol’ wet me.
I arrived at Krausirpe that afternoon and, in this strange twist of events, my first impression to these folks was no longer that of long-expected guest coming to offer support and guidance—I was first and foremost a stranger in need of help. I was the one who needed tangible expression of God’s love, and the community did just that for me, caring for me with food and supplies until my departure.
What I learned from that trip to the jungle, and the humble village of Krausirpe, is that it’s easy to forget that we are also the neighbor that stands in need of God’s love from others, and it is beautiful to see the face of Christ in those around us.
It is something that I hope that we are able to do for those around us, because we are called to pay God’s love forward to those around us. It’s the notable turn that agape takes in the scriptures. Notice that the passage this morning does not say “since God has loved us this much, we also ought to love God.” (That would be the logical conclusion to the sentence.) But what does it say? “Since God has loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11) This is the important turn of agape love—the love of God is not reciprocal. But then again, how could it be? We humans could never love God as God loves us. Of this the author of 1 John proclaims that God’s love is made complete when we, in turn, pour out love to those around us. It is then that God is made known in us—and divine love’s intention complete—when we pay it forward in concrete acts of compassion, justice, and kindness towards others.
Author, journalist, and radio host, Krista Tippett wrote that “When all is said and done, none of us will be judged on how much we accomplish but on how well we love.” (2) And so it is for church; we will be measured by love—how much of God’s love pours back into the world. And I’m convinced that there has never been a more important time to live out of that call.
We’ve spoken often of the divisive rhetoric and hateful actions that threaten to tear us apart. In such a time as this, an abstract love is simply not enough; we are called to more than that. And to attempt to love the world as Christ has loved us is a difficult, soul-searching, life-changing demand. Loving like Jesus requires each of us to question our intentions, and actions, and priorities, and commitments—to ask ourselves, “I wonder if God sees it that way? I wonder if I’m investing my whole heart and soul and mind in ways that God would intend?”
Attempting to model agape—unconditional, sacrificial love—is perhaps the single greatest challenge we are issued as disciples of Christ. But, friends, here is what I know: you can quote scripture until you are blue in the face, shout out pious proclamations of pure love for Jesus, you can boast and brag about how much faith you have, or how devoted you are to the idea of God’s grace and love, but simple fact remains that the only real evidence of our love of God we have to offer is the life we live. Can we love one another as Christ has loved us?
At the center of the Christian faith, there is a story—a story of which we are a part. It is the story of agape—of God’s unconditional love for the world that we are called to share as best we know how with every bit of creation. Church, may we be defined by nothing less than love.
(1) Keep up with the Riebels on their Facebook page, and at their blog.
(2) Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters – and How to Talk About It. (Penguin Books, 2008) p111
Song of Solomon 8: 5 – 7
Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
leaning upon her beloved?Under the apple tree I awakened you.
There your mother was in labor with you;
there she who bore you was in labor.6 Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.
One of our adult Sunday School teachers, having looked at the text for today and spent a few minutes looking at the study guide questions earlier this week, passed me in the building that day and said ‘Oh hey, and good luck Sunday!’
It took me a second and then I recognized, of course, what they meant. Goooood LUCK. A text from the Song of Solomon. Song of Songs. The only book of the bible probably LESS read than the book of Revelation – and probably even more feared. Good luck.
A while back there was a tongue-in-cheek top 10 list making the rounds with church folk: ‘You Know You’re Not Reading Enough Old Testament When…’. High up on the list? Your kid is reading from Song of Solomon and you demand to know ‘Who gave you this trash?’
Good luck!, they said.
Song of Solomon is the English translation of the title, and points to the very first verse of the book, where Solomon is mentioned. It’s probably not to say that he wrote it, but that he might have inspired it. It’s more accurately called Song of Songs. Whatever it is, though, this book makes us nervous. We don’t like talking about this.
I mean, we talk about LOVE all the time. God IS love, we say. In church, in our faith, in Christianity, love is supposed to be the thing we talk about – and live out – the most. But this love is what we talk about least. It seems like the thing we’re not supposed to talk about. But we’re going to.
No, we’re not going to talk about sex. Not exactly. So take a breath. But we are going to talk about love. The real kind. The soul-deep kind. The kind that the scriptures in this Bible we claim to trust and hold dear and value as our guide and teacher proclaims. We’re going to talk about this kind of love.
It’s hard to read. Not because it makes us uncomfortable, although it might. It is pretty vivid love poetry. There are also some strangely awkward and even violent moments that seem like a really sharp turn away from the love story, and then next think you know it’s all gazelles and flowers and you’re back to the lovey-dovey stuff. The language is admittedly a little weird.
A bunch of preachers got a kick this week out of sharing an article from the Babylon Bee, which is a satirical online news source. Hear me when I say satirical – they make fun of church stuff and church people – and I will confess to you that most of it is funniest to those of us who are the very inside-church types … and I’ll admit to you that sometimes it gets a little rude … and I have to point out that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the satirical religious news and the real stuff.
Having said all that, I did laugh pretty hard when several friends shared this article during Valentine’s week, not even knowing I was preaching from Song of Solomon.
Everyone knows that the best way to show your love to your significant other is to hand them a heart candy with words on it.
Now even Christians can partake in this beloved Valentine’s Day tradition with these new candies emblazoned with messages straight from Song of Solomon.
“Your spouse will swoon upon reading that her teeth are like a flock of sheep or that her nose is like a giant tower,” said the CEO of Solomonhearts, David Meyers. “It’s a foolproof way to let her know how beautiful she is and how much you love her.”
Messages include touching, romantic poetry like the following:
Hey, tower neck!
Ur teeth are sheep
You have goat hair
Ur legs = marble pillars.“Note: not actually foolproof and we do not guarantee any swooning.”.[1]
So yes. It is a strange book to read, and makes us a little nervous reading it, even in worship, even the very mellowest verses that we selected for today. But it is metaphorical language of the most personal and beautiful kind.
We use metaphors all the time to describe our human experience – ‘peace, hope, joy, community, death, faith and so on.’ This poet relies on metaphor ‘to describe the most elusive of all human experiences: love.’ It is both ambiguous and explicit, reality and fantasy, literal and metaphorical.
This Song of Songs, with its wide range of emotions, the abrupt changes in settings, and the shifts from one speaker to another only accentuate[s] the pathos of the poetry with its focus on the passionate, bewitching, vacillating, and unpredictable character of human love.[2]
As we started this sermon series, exploring the four words the Greeks use to name LOVE, we told you that two of the four words don’t actually appear in scripture. Eros is one. But it is here, in ideal form. It is fully human love – partnership, a matching, a pairing between consenting lovers who are free to fully give themselves to each other.
Such bodily wisdom comes with having lived some life, with maturity, with a sense of being responsible for yourself, and responsible for the care and nurture of the divine gift in another. The very act of creation is intimate. God breathes life into the dust of the earth. The Creator of the Universe holds and forms each of us. The embodiment of love, the sacred clay that receives the divine breath is who we are … and it’s who the other person is too. That is not to be taken lightly.
This text sets the narrator up in a strong body- and sex-positive voice, and we’re not quite sure what to do with that. That says more about us that it does about the text. We have spent so long saying our bodies are bad, and have to be hidden unless perfected, or worked on to meet an arbitrary cultural standard, that we have forgotten to talk about the ways that our bodies are intended for our good.
We in this country spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to control our bodies. Objectified, surveyed, judged, our flesh is seen as an instrument, a means to various and sundry ends. The hair shirts of [long ago] have become the exercise bikes of today. … The flesh is not just a conduit for the holy: the flesh IS holy. We can rejoice in it.[3]
Eros is about responsibility. Maturity. Mutuality. Partnership.
So even though the word isn’t used specifically, what does the text have to say about eros love?
Rev Dr Renita Weems, renowned Hebrew Bible scholar and preacher, offers a great introduction to the Song of Songs:
Readers attempting to read the Song of Songs for the first time are invariably astonished to discover that such sexually provocative language and imagery can be found in the Bible. Contained in the eight brief chapters of this little-read book are some very titillating romantic speeches between a woman and her suitor. Their exchanges about their love, passion, desire, and longing for each other can hardly be matched by classical secular romance writings. … the matter of the Song’s place within the Bible has been and continues to be the subject of considerable debate and speculation.
… in the Song of Songs, human sexuality is explored and delighted in so as to make some very specific assertions about female sexuality, to counter some definite notions about beauty, and to insist in a rather dramatic manner on a woman and man’s right to love, irrespective of prevailing cultural norms, whomever their heart chooses.[4]
Described as everything from a single love poem, to more than 30 separate poems, from a recitation of a cultic fertility ceremony, to a drama that idealizes the love of God for Israel (or in the Christian extension, the love of Christ for the church) – there are many opinions, and no consensus. Interestingly, it is one of only two books of the 66 in the Bible (Esther is the other) where God is not mentioned by name. It is also the only one where the main character’s voice is directly and specifically female. It’s not about her, it is her speaking.
She is portrayed as tender (a lily, a dove, a gazelle), and named for her strength (a pillar, a tower). She waits for her lover in a garden, and is herself a garden. The woman and her lover go to the vineyard, and they themselves are intoxicated by each other’s physical presence. Every comparison of the humans, to any of the rest of the created order, is there to reflect beauty and freedom.[5]
We have to read with a faithful eye, and draw the line between what makes us uncomfortable – pornography, which is sensation without emotional feeling – and what is eros, erotic love, that which is sacred and celebrates the divine and the human at once. They are very different things.
What, then, does this love poetry show us about God’s love for us?
Scholar Phyllis Trible suggests that the poetry in Song of Songs provides
the redemption of the love story that went awry in Genesis 2-3.
In this setting, there is no male dominance, no female subordination, and no stereotyping of either sex. … [it] defies the connotations of ‘second sex’. She works, keeping vineyards and pasturing flocks. … {They are never referred to as husband and wife, nor as parents.} In fact, to the issues of marriage and procreation the Song does not speak. Love for the sake of love is its message…
The emphasis is on the shared nature of love. Ilana Pardes reminds us to look at the reciprocity.
For once the relationship of God and His bride relies on mutual courting, mutual attraction, and mutual admiration, there is more room for hope that redemption is within reach.[6]
Now that sounds like a scripture I want to read. In church.
What can we do with this kind of love? Not the kind that fills the world with silly love songs. (Although, I love a good love song, don’t get me wrong.) But what can we do with the kind of love that is true and deep and rich and mutual and safe and trusted, that respects bodily autonomy, and rejoices in physical intimacy based in the sacred connection of the souls that make the bodies work?
We must treat this as something very personal. Not shameful, or hidden away, but love that is personal. This very text has given us permission, instruction, even demands, to be heard very publicly. The poet does not go into speeches about the need for love to be complete and free and full and unfettered and without limits.
It’s not up to us to overwrite our expectations onto another individual or onto others’ relationships. She spins metaphors and similes, uses figurative language to advocate for balance in relationships, mutuality and interdependence, fulfillment not just procreation, and ‘uninhibited love not bigoted emotions’. [7]
In this Song of Songs, the poet uses deeply intimate and personal lyrical language to remind us that love is a revolutionary act.
Poet Mary Caroline Richards says that
At the center the love must live.
One gives up all one has for this. This is the love that resides in the self, the self-love, out of which all love pours. The fountain, the source. At the center. One gives up all the treasured sorrow and self-mistrust, all the precious loathing and suspicion, all the secret triumphs of withdrawal. One bends in the wind. …
Do not speak about strength and weakness, manliness and womanliness, aggressiveness and submissiveness. Look at this flower. Look at this child. Look at this rock with lichen growing on it. Listen to this gull scream as he drops through the air to gobble the bread I throw and clumsily rights himself in the wind. Bear ye one another’s burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law.
Love is not a doctrine, Peace is not an international agreement. Love and Peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.[8]
As a gift from friends in seminary, I have a devotional book that I’ve turned to for more than 20 years. In it, author Jan Richardson quotes a poem by Alta, empowering us for this embodied revolution of love:
love is believeable.
keep that as a smooth stone, for sometimes you will be the
only one to love. for sometimes, you will be hated, & all the
love within reach will have to be your own, & what you can
tap from the spirits who fly to be with us at those moments,
& lend us their wings. who land on the lamps to give us com-
fort & courage, when we think we have nothing to say. When
we have nothing to say, perhaps it is time to listen. …love is free, sometimes, & costly othertimes. we may only
have each other. our true touch. we may only have.[9]
So this morning, if you are next to someone, and you’re comfortable taking hands, would you do so? You do not have to, but you may. Close your eyes. Feel their palm against yours. Feel God breathing inside your own breath. And receive this blessing:
Blessed are you who touch with integrity and grace,
for you give flesh to the good news of Christ.[10]
Amen.
[1] Babylon Bee https://babylonbee.com/news/song-of-solomon-sweetheart-candies-now-available
[2] Renita Weems, The Women’s Bible Commentary; ed. Newsom & Ringe (WJK 1992), p 156-160.
[3] Cries of the Spirit; ed. Marilyn Sewell (Beacon 1991) p205.
[4] Renita Weems, The Women’s Bible Commentary; ed. Newsom & Ringe (WJK 1992), p 156-160.
[5] ‘Woman/Lover/Shulammite’, Women in Scripture; ed. Meyers, Craven, Kraemer (Houghton Mifflin 2000), p 310-311.
[6] Trible, O’Connor, Pardes, as quoted in Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes; Alice Ogden Bellis (WJK 1994) p199-202.
[7] Reems.
[8] Mary Caroline Richards, ‘Centering’, in Cries of the Spirit, p58-59.
[9] Alta, in The Shameless Hussy, Essays and Poetry by Alta; quoted in Jan Richardson, Sacred Journeys (Upper Room 1995), p178.
[10] Richardson.
Romans 12:3-10
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. 9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.
[singing]
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.1
For many years that song was the way that this congregation responded when someone would come forward and stand here where I am this morning to join this community in membership. The song’s words “Blest be the tie that binds” are an affirmation of just how powerful our connection to one another can be when we take seriously Jesus’ call to love one another just as he loves us.
If you’re at all curious, the song was written by a pastor named John Fawcett, who served a poor congregation in Wainsgate, England in the middle of the 18th century. John had come to form deep and meaningful bonds with the motley crew from this town that one writer described as being as “poor as Job’s turkey.”2 So, understandably, John Fawcett was hard-pressed to provide for his family while serving that community.
Well, one day, a large church in London came asking for John to serve their congregation. It was a move that offered his family a chance at financial stability. So John agreed and was set to go. But on the day of their departure, seeing the deep sadness of those impoverished folk that he had come to love; the despondence of those who he had come to call friends, John is said to have turned to the crowd and pronounced from atop the wagon, “We’ve changed our minds! We are going to stay!” And he did. Serving alongside those people for 54 years. Sacrificing the shot at financial stability, for love of the poor folks of Wainsgate. Even establishing an education center for the community’s children out of his home.2 “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love!” he wrote.
To me, it is always awe-inspiring to consider what some people will do for the sake of those they call dear friends. I hope you can think of moments in your own life, when a friend has shown just how unconditional their love for you can be.
The Apostle Paul, whose writings make up a sizable portion of the New Testament, spent his years considering the impact that these sorts of loving relationships could have on Christian believers. Today, nearly two thousand years later, it’s easy for us to make the mistake of reading his letters as though they were dissertations designed to shape Christian theology for all time. But really, the letters of Paul were written to Christian communities who struggled with how to live together. Take a look, and you will see that behind all those theological treatises is a care and concern for building Christ-like relationships. Paul wanted to help people see how they could come to work out meaningful and loving relationships in Christ…which are the building blocks of the community we call “church.”
In the passage from Romans that we just heard read, Paul paints a picture of church at its best. And in verse 10 of his appeal, Paul says “love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor” and in the koine Greek with which his text was originally written, that statement uses variations of the Greek word phileo.
Now, I am to understand that you are all experts on phileo because you saw the Super Bowl commercial, right? Which highlighted the four primary words used in ancient Greek that get translated to our English word “love.” And in this sermon series, we are taking time to look at these four words, not because of the commercial, but because doing so gives us some means of teasing out and making distinctions about different types of love; especially, since love is such a primary focus of our faith.
Phileo is the Greek word that describes a sort of love that has an emotional connection that goes beyond acquaintances or casual friendships. It suggests relationships that our bound tightly together in enjoyment, appreciation, and deep care—hence the translation in this text as loving each other with mutual affection. In other translations, it says “Be good friends who love deeply” (MSG); “Love each other like the members of your family.” (CEB); “Have kindly affection one for another with brotherly love, in honor preferring one another;” (KJV).
We seem to understand that there is a sort of deepening of love between friends when we use a phrase like, “I love you like a brother/sister/sibling.” That is phileo, and it is an important type of love to the Christian community because it is a deep part of what it takes to embody the way of Jesus in the world. In fact, it’s the only way; We cannot learn to love, or forgive, or show compassion, like Jesus taught, unless we commit ourselves to the messiness of human relationships. And so my word of encouragement to you this day is to expand the circle of those you call friends and work towards deepening those relationships.
But there is something else that must be said here, because we usually lean towards forming friendships with those who are most like us (or at least appear most like us, outwardly). We are encouraged by what is modeled to us in our culture and through the metrics of social media to cluster in comfortable enclaves of sameness, and to avoid the discomfort of difference. This lie has been handed to the church to some extent as well, sell visions of church as a tribe of like-minded individuals defined by a static set of convictions and a uniformity of perspective. This concerns me. The perception that the church is a club for likeminded people who already have it all figured out creates a barrier to meaningful community and radical hospitality.
And after all, we tell ourselves that birds of a feather flock together. But birds flocking with cats, impossible, right!? It seems for Yasha the parakeet and Fozi the housecat.4 
It seems a meaningful friendship for them.
Or how about Anjana the chimp with her tiger cubs Mitra and Shiva?5
Or the friendship I am most delighted in, that Bubbles the African elephant and Bella the black lab have formed?6
Yes, turns out, they have more to bond over than you thought they might at snap judgement, like a mutual love for water and general aquatic antics.
But I digress. This is perhaps an entirely too cute way of trying to get at something far more serious: don’t buy the lie that is handed to you by our culture which says you only stand a chance with those that think and feel and act and vote like you. Many are finding it easier to end relationships than to listen to a different point of view. What was once disagreement has become outright disdain. And it’s so easy for churches to become conformed to this view of the world; a world of us versus them, polarized extremes, fractured relationships, shouting matches, hatred spewed on social media. God forbid we ever become so puffed up with pride in the church that we forget to listen to brothers and sisters who do not agree with us.
Rachel Held Evans, was a theologian and writer who tragically died last year at the age of thirty-seven. She was full of love for the church and, out of that love, she challenged the church to deeper engagement. In one of her blog posts she wrote, “Let’s learn to argue better. I have no problem with Christians arguing with one another. Really. We’re brothers and sisters, for goodness sake! Of course we’re going to argue…But surely we can allow differences to exist without questioning one another’s commitment to the faith and without rooting for one another’s demise.”3
I hear the Apostle Paul’s words echoing in my head, “Do not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement…For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we—who are many—are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…”4 I get that this is not an easy time to belong to people who don’t already share all your opinions or take part in the same social enclaves. To be conformed is easy. It is comfortable. It is tempting. It is not faithful.
Living out phileo also means that we will belong to others—other perspectives, other backgrounds, other ideologies, and, yes, even other political parties. To form loving relationship with those that are different than us is to assemble the Body that Paul speaks of. And seeking to build abiding friendships like this is to the greater lie of an age that pushes isolation, division, fear, and anger.
The Apostle Paul seems to believe that the faithfulness of our living is determined by the quality of the relationships that we form. So what if we did what Paul says? What if we loved with mutual affection? What if the church was a place where we were so friended up in deep and abiding ways that we could tell our stories and be ourselves without fear of rejection or judgment? What if we were to invest in relationship in such a way that we were able to really rejoice with those who are rejoicing and truly weep with those who are weeping? Oh, how desperately the world needs those who want to build loving friendships!
Listen; belonging to this congregation is no spectator sport. It is in our core values here at Harvard Avenue Christian Church—when we say “Beloved,” we mean to say that we are ready to do the work of building relationships grounded in love—that in deep friendship, we find profound fulfillment, greater joy, stronger character.
And this is what gives me hope about the future of the church. Because the community called the church—with all its flaws, imperfections, limitations, and faults—can be a holy place of building deep and abiding relationships of mutual affection. It can be community that outdoes itself in honoring one another as the beautiful children of God that all people are.
I believe that this community here at Harvard Avenue has learned something about the goodness of phileo. And we’re still learning. We’re continuing to learn that we need one another. We are learning that the impulse to divide is a snare that leaves us all short of God’s vision. We are learning that genuine community does not require conformity. We are learning that the God whose grace and mercy brings us together is far more powerful than all that seeks to separate us. In other words, we are leaning that we belong to each other. For as siblings in Christ, we are bound together.
[singing]
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Oh Lord, may it be so in this place.
1John Fawcett. “Blest Be the Tie that Binds” 1782.
2 Dr. Michael Hawn. History of Hymns: “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” June 13, 2013. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-blest-be-the-tie-that-binds
3 Ibid.
4 https://www.thedodo.com/cat-bird-best-friends-2295178086.html
5 https://scoopempire.com/unlikely-animal-friendships-that-will-make-you-melt/
6 https://www.boredpanda.com/elephant-dog-friendship-bubbles-and-bella/
7 Rachel Held Evans. “Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between.” JJuly 16, 2012. https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/liberal-conservative-christianity
8 Romans 12:3-5
John 12: 1 – 8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”I wonder if in this moment, when Jesus is being loved with a grace upon grace kind of love, an abundance of love, a love that you could even smell, with a fragrance that would linger for days, that Jesus remembered his mother. Three years ago. Back in Cana. At that wedding. His mother, who loved him, who knew who he was and what he was capable of doing. His mother, without whom, I wonder, when Jesus’ ministry would have actually gotten started.
Jesus insists it is not his time, but his mother knows better, as mothers often do. Because of her insistence, Jesus starts doing what he came to do. Because of her encouragement, Jesus realizes the time really had come. Because of her love, Jesus can do what he was sent to do. Jesus’ mother loves Jesus into his future as the Word made flesh.
Now, in Bethany, Jesus finds himself in the same kind of position, the same kind of transition, the same kind of situation. Immediately after [this] Mary anoints Jesus, he will enter the city of Jerusalem. And so, Jesus needs that same encouragement, that same love, to do what he must do. Mary’s extravagant love for Jesus makes it possible for Jesus to show extravagant love in what follows — washing the feet of his disciples, handing himself over to be arrested in the garden, carrying his own cross, dying, rising, and ascending. Mary loves Jesus into his future as the fulfillment of, “for God so loved the world.”[1]
Preacher Karoline Lewis wrote that last spring, reflecting on the text from the Gospel of John read this morning. I read her words over and over. ‘A grace upon grace kind of love.’ ‘Because of her encouragement.’ ‘Because of her insistence.’ ‘Because of her love.’ She ‘loves [him] into his future.’ Isn’t that the kind of love we long for? The kind of love that roots us and grounds us, that holds us fast and moves us forward, the kind of love that the Greeks surely had in mind when they talked about love.
But which love? But was it storge? Phileo? Eros? Agape? So much love! So much.
Let’s take the four Sundays of February and work on love, we said. It’s the month that our culture has decorated with hearts and flowers and chocolate and all our human designs on love. So let’s make the faith connection. Let’s take the four words the Greeks use to describe love. Greek is the language in which the New Testament was written. Let’s take those four words, and explore the scriptures where those words are used. Love is throughout the scriptures … God IS love, after all … Jesus is love incarnate, the very physical form of the most extraordinary love there is …
And yet here’s what you’ll find: Two of the four Greek words … phileo and agape … are plentiful in the New Testament. The love that comes from close friendship, ‘brotherly love’. And the love that binds humanity together in compassion and mercy. Both words are used again and again.
And two of the words … storge and eros … the love associated with natural and instinctive family-like bonds, and the love of intimate partnership, romance, and physicality … those two words do not actually show up in scripture itself. They are certainly there conceptually. And they are in the language of histories and related non-biblical literature of the time. But not IN the texts themselves. (Guess who’s preaching those two words?)
But there’s so much to work with, so much overlap and blending together of these ‘kinds’ of love, we want to take some time to refresh our memories, or to see for the first time, and to look more broadly, at just what God has in mind for us when it comes to love in this world.
Many of you have met my mother. She has always been my biggest fan. She deeply and truly believes that I am fantastic; there’s no talking her out of that. And she is convinced, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that I can be and do anything I want. On the one hand, I could set that aside, and say ‘You have to think I’m great. You’re my mom.’ But. On the other hand, who has a better understanding of who you are and what you’re worth than the one who set you into motion?
That’s storge. It’s the kind of love the Greeks meant when they talked about family bonds … the natural, instinctive, and when they’re working well, the selfless kinds of love that we find most often in kinship.
The word storge isn’t used in the New Testament, except in the negative. 2 Timothy has a word that focuses on the lack of such love; the word is translated as heartless, devoid of concern, without love. In Romans, Paul uses a word to describe humanity’s sinfulness as having “no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.” He says one of the marks of the last days will be when families are at a loss for natural love.
Let’s remember that ‘family’ – in biblical realities as in the present day – took on a wide variety of shapes and combinations. We fool ourselves if we think that ‘family’ looked then (or looks now) like any one thing. Many families in the Judean culture were very similar to those in the Greek and Mediterranean cultures, consisting:
… of several generations: an older, free adult male, his wife, their grown sons, the wives of those sons, and [their children]. Grown daughters of the older generation typically became part of the households of their own husbands and lived elsewhere; this could be as close as another courtyard in the same village or town, or much farther away. High maternal mortality rates also meant that households might consist of a free man, his children by one or ore prior wives, one or more daughters in law, and grandchildren, one or more current wives, their children from a prior marriage, and the children of the most recent marriage.[2]
That, of course, doesn’t even include the legally enslaved members of a household, or the children, whether born through their own relations, or because of their slave-owners. The ‘biblical family’ has a very (very) broad definition.
And it is in the midst of this first-century definition of ‘family love’ that we gather today, with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, the sisters and brother whom we see throughout the four gospels. At this moment in the gospel of John, Jesus has revived Lazarus from the dead, and the sisters have staked their claim to real relationship with this one who can do such things, and who they clearly love.
There is mention of and debate about other – biological – family of Jesus. There are suggestions of as many as four brothers, and event two sisters. We don’t know. Joseph isn’t mentioned again after Jesus is in the temple as a child – does he die? Was he ill? Is he that much older than Mary? We don’t know.
But this family – these three siblings – seem to have adopted Jesus in as their own. The deep affection that is shown in word and in deed … Jesus’ true affection for Lazarus … Mary and Martha devoting themselves both to their brother’s well-being, and to caring for Jesus when he is in their home during his travels. This is a ‘family of choice’ if ever there was one.
They gathered for a meal, all there together. And in the presence of her family, with a devotion she both learned from them, and shared with others, she anoints Jesus’ feet with a costly fragrant oil, wiping them with her hair. While we could wonder if this is a more personally intimate act, every indication from the scripture, and from the people as we see them in the story, is that this is an expression of extravagant devotion, of great love, literally poured out to honor this one who is part of their lives, and in their home.
This is not the version of the story where Martha is seen as complaining about her work, and what she sees as Mary’s lack of work. This is a story of family gathered for a meal, including the brother who was lost but then reclaimed to life, and two sisters who serve with devotion – one offers a meal, and one a blessing. This is natural, instinctive abiding, family love.
When you have had your life given to you – Lazarus quite literally, and his sisters nearly as much so, given that they would be destitute without him – when your very life has been handed to you by Jesus, don’t you want to honor Christ in every way extravagant way you can? ‘When Jesus has become the reason for our very existence, we have a different sense of values and what worth really means.’[3]
I love that John included the observation that ‘The entire house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’ (v3) She has showed such great love that it cannot go unnoticed.
Mary has anointed Jesus so lavishly that all present can participate in it…. The odor of death has been replaced by the odor emanating from Mary’s extravagant love. … Mary is the first person in the Gospel to live out Jesus’ love commandment. … Mary models what it means to be a disciple: to serve, to love one another, to share in Jesus’ death.[4]
When it’s working as it should, it is the love we learn in the family that roots us. When we tend the soil of family affection, and nurture that abiding love, it spills out in extravagant love for all. Both Mary and Martha do what Jesus calls us to – serving faithfully, loving generously. They do the work of faith-full-ness.
There is a movement afoot to have … let’s call them ‘messy’ dinners.
It’s a dinner party. With rules. To keep it messy:
Kelley Powell talks about the first time she and her friend Laura decided to this – get their families together, spend much-missed time with dear friends, and not put the pressure on to get the place magazine ready, and for everything to be just so. The 7 year old walked through the house in muddy shoes. The 9 year old started a glue and glitter laden craft project right before Laura was coming over. They ended up in the smackdown of the year right in the middle of the living room and then clambered over each other to get to the door when the bell rang. And Kelley says it took her a few deep breaths and a glass of wine to let it all go and enjoy the moment, but now she and Laura and their families are trading messy dinner parties every month. Host a messy dinner. See your friends more often.[5]
This is the kind of home Jesus is welcomed into – a family’s home. Sisters and a brother. The one they thought they’d lost, now suddenly back with them. And this Jesus, whom they love as their own, is sitting at their table. Historian and scholar Justo Gonzalez offers a great reminder:
In the midst of a pragmatic society, we wish to be efficient, to make certain that everything counts and that there is no waste. In the church we look for responsible budgets that make the best possible use of every cent. This is a requirement of responsible stewardship. However, for this to be true Christian stewardship it must be founded not primarily on efficiency but on an overwhelming love that leads to what others may consider mere waste…. Mary spills her perfume with wild abandon for no other reason than this: Jesus is there. There is no calculation here, no consideration for efficiency, no sense that this is a waste. There is nothing but sheer love and gratitude for what Jesus has done.[6]
What we see in this generous outpouring of perfume, of love, is also an outpouring of faithfulness and discipleship. It is instinctive and natural, and every bit the storge love of the Greeks. Jesus raising Lazarus shows the fullness of life available with God; Mary’s anointing shows the fullness of discipleship, what it means to serve and follow entirely.[7]
It is messy and hard and imperfect and sometimes just awful and sometimes only occasionally right. But it is, somehow, ‘a grace upon grace kind of love.’ We love family into their future, even when that future is uncertain, whether that future is painful or wonderful, or first one and then the other. We love them into their future. And they love us into ours.
[1] Karoline Lewis, Dear Working Preacher 4-1-19 https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5309
[2] Ross Kraemer, ‘Jewish Family Life in the First Century CE’, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford, 2011) p537-540.
[3] Peter Woods, The Listening Hermit, https://thelisteninghermit.com/2010/03/15/
[4] Gail R O’Day, ‘John’, The Women’s Bible Commentary (WJK 1992), p299-300
[5] https://www.mothering.com/articles/host-crappy-dinner-see-friends-often/
[6] Justo Gonzalez, ‘Living By The Word’, The Christian Century, 3/5/19 https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/april-7-fifth-sunday-lent-john-121-8
[7] paraphrasing Gail O’ Day, ‘John’, The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, p703
Ephesians 3: 14 – 21
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Somewhere in my early high school years, we realized I needed glasses. Conveniently, one of our church members, who also happened to be one of my best babysitting customers, was an eye doctor. So off to Dr Blair we go. Several rounds of ‘Is this better? Or is this better?’… ‘A? or B?’ later, and I’m on my way out the door with glasses.
Shortly thereafter, I graduated to contacts. I was also graduating high school, and I think those things were related.
I’ve been putting contacts into and taking contacts out of my eyeballs for … a lot of years. Every day. And for the longest time, when I needed a new prescription – because once all of that college reading and seminary paperwriting kicked in, and all of the reading and screentime that the last 25 years of ministry has involved, I needed a new prescription – I would still make the trip to see Dr Blair. Yes, at home in El Paso. Visit the Mom, see the eye doctor. Because when you find someone you trust to do things to your eyeballs, you stick with them. And because of the Favorite Babysitter status I’d earned with his daughter (who was by then, of course, an adult), I still got a “student” discount well past my student days. God bless him.
Dr Blair retired last year. I mean, of all the nerve.
Also last year, I finally got so annoyed with the contacts I was wearing, and the glasses that were at least three prescriptions old, that I made a quick stop here in town … and I now wear multifocal contact lenses. This is both incredibly weird, and really great. I get, theoretically, how bifocals work on actual glasses lenses. You’re looking through a lens that’s sectioned off and it corrects for what you need corrected. But when that lens is a liiiittle piece of plastic that goes onto the surface of your eye? I mean, how does it know what you need?! But it does.
At the same time, I’ve started giving my eyes a rest on the weekends. (I know, I should probably give other things a rest as well.) And here’s what I’ve learned: I can become unreasonably annoyed by even the smallest smudge on my glasses. You have to find something to clean the glasses with. And while sleeves and shirttails are convenient, they’re not always the best. Fabrics have different finishes and sometimes they leave more smudges than they clear. And carrying an actual for-real glasses cleaning kit is way too much responsibility for those of us who are only-occasional glasses wearers.
But here’s what happens. My friends who are legit glasses-wearers always have those cleaning kit things handy. And they share. And people will always offer friendly advice. Like the best cloth they’ve found to clean glasses. Have you tried this thing in particular? Or here, use mine. I even know one couple, who both wear glasses, and we were sitting around one night, and she was saying something and just took off her glasses, holding them off the side, and he just took them from her, took a cloth from his pocket, cleaned them, and handed them back. Never broke stride.
There’s the vision we have.
And the things we correct for.
And the people who make sure we have what we need.
Be loved.
Believe.
Become.
There’s where we start – we’re loved.
There’s where we go – to sort out what we believe.
And there’s the vision that the first two make possible. It’s who we become.
There is a physicality to vision, to what we see and what we don’t.
The same with the vision that God has of us, and for us.
There is a place and a time that God sees for our lives … here, and now, and always. It is easy in the life of faith to focus on the things to come … as if what we do or say earns us some future seat at a special event. But the gospel message of Jesus Christ is that heaven comes to earth … the kingdom of God is here, at hand.
There is a physicality to vision. Not just the thing we’re seeing, but the literal way we are seeing it, and where we are when it happens.
In this 3rd chapter of the letter to the church at Ephesus, we are basically overhearing a prayer. “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father…” (Eph3:14)
But it isn’t a prayer of ‘help them get themselves sorted out so they all get to heaven’. It’s a reminder that God is already at work in us, not waiting on us to arrive for some reward, but here and now, where we are – as we are – God is doing God’s glorious thing. The word glory is even used! (Who got ‘glory’ as their star word this year? Anyone?)
This is a prayer we’re hearing, probably a letter that the early believers, figuring out how to be church, gathered in their secret places, would have read over and over and been able to nearly recite together by heart. They knew what it meant to bend their knees, to give themselves over to a spirit so powerful they had to just let go.
It may seem weird (if you think about it, that is) that a prayer that sounds like a benediction and blessing would be shared in the middle of a letter, with so much instruction and reminder still to come. It might have been the random writing choice of Paul – or one of his students writing as Paul (there’s some debate about that).
But I think it’s actually more strategic than that. In this season where we are challenged to be and do certain things in certain ways; when the world is trying to tell us what we’re worth and what we aren’t; when people we don’t even know decide they are the arbiters of our value as human beings … before we get to any kind of instruction about our behavior, our choices, our decisions, our practices … this letter to the Ephesians points out that FIRST we are to remember that we. are. God’s. beloved. Everything else goes from there.
Sally Brown wrote to preachers some years ago about this text:
The indwelling presence of God is sheer and utter gift, not a reward for merit. God chooses to live among us, God’s glory fills us. This is sheer grace, unimaginable possibility, life-giving hope.[1]
This prayer, that we would not just recognize but truly know the richness of God’s presence, beyond our understanding – as it is said, “surpassing knowledge” – is not just about something beyond our capacity to understand. It IS that tremendous. It is indeed. But it is also something, that we simply can’t contain. The spirit of God just IS.
Which perhaps is a helpful thing for us to keep in mind as we await and receive and respond to information today in our own congregational meeting! Well beyond any information we can gather, God’s spirit is at work. Has been, and is, and will be.
We can only sort of make out the image. We have to adjust the lenses, look through the right glasses, be in the right place to get the things inside our brain to register what is happening around us. Let alone to sort out what sort of vision we’re offering to others.
Our three BE core values have guided us for nearly a decade, and are still at the heart of who we’ll be for the decade to come. It sounds good to say them: be loved, believe, become. They’re simple and roll together easily. When you’re here you’ll be loved, as you are, for who you are, with all we are, as Christ commands.
Together, in the strength of community, we’ll explore what and how we believe, and why.
And as the world clamors to make us self-centered and self-interested, we will work to be just the opposite … to become who God has called us to be: engaged, compassionate, looking beyond ourselves, and looking with care on the world God so loves.
This is 3-Be vision.
This is what we’re asking you to be part of, with that additional insert in your bulletin today. How will you connect in this new year? What opportunity opens your eyes and excites your spirit? Add these to the offering plate or return them to the office and we’ll move right away to engage that vision together.
God has done and will do far more than we can ask or imagine. And when we get small glimpses of that, our imagination tingles just a bit, because we are here together:
We want to grow the choir, they said. And so we committed to excellent worship and meaningful music and now we need to figure out how to get more chairs up here.
My mother has died and my heart is broken, and so a family gathers, and friends gather with them, bringing food, and desserts, and standing to welcome, and for as long as you need.
We have 400 or more pieces of paper to hand out every week, and each of those bulletins also has an insert. And so every single week, friends sit in the office and get that folding machine going and the bulletin you have today is in your hands because of them.
Every time you gather, do this in remembrance of me. So Christ instructed his first disciples, and so disciples have done for generations since. And every week, deacons arrive before worship begins to be sure that communion is prepared, and offering can be received, and everyone who comes will find their way and their place.
Certain pants and shirts and accessories are required uniform at most public schools today. But for many, those pieces are too costly and families were straining to provide basics for their children. No scholar should go without, our Disciples Women said, and so a closet was cleared and clothing was purchased and our neighborhood students have what they need when they need it.
We are happy to help get the space ready for the holiday season, we’ll take our Sunday morning hour together to do it. And while that Sunday small group carried garlands up and down stairs, draped railings and mantel in greenery, some of them also noticed that a few folks were on their own, not connected to a group. And so they said Do you want to help? And they did, and so they did. And the laughter was great and the décor was beautiful.
Will you pray for me? For my nephew? For our friends? We are so honored when you ask. And if someone is going to ask, then they should know that someone actually prays. Your pastors, the church staff, our elders, and two prayer groups take the time to read, and listen, and bow heads and speak names. Prayer matters, and transforms, and we want you to know that.
We are preparing for a new year, and for a new pastoral leader, and we don’t know what all that will mean. And rather than step back and wait … the church stepped forward … with confidence and hope and made 2020 our strongest stewardship response ever, with total pledges that surpass last year’s budget, and continued, even in a transition year, to steadily welcome new visitors and new members, fully half of whom came into membership after the announcement and during the interim season.
“If there is a divine being who made everything, including us,” Rob Bell said, “what would our experiences with this being look like? The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made [God] up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage [of scripture], we find God reminding people that [God] is beyond and bigger and more.”[2]
While God is doing more than we can imagine, Ephesians also says that God is doing it through us. And if God is working through us, then we can do more than we can imagine.
God is more than our grief … God is our shield.
Christ is more than our teacher … Jesus is our shepherd and guide.
God is more than our worry … God is our calm.
Jesus is more than our uncertainty … Christ is our salvation and our rock.
The Spirit is more than a notion that wanders around and sounds like something good that we might like if we could find it. The Holy is right here. The Divine calls us to join in. To clear our vision, to drop our walls, to dance with joy.
God can do, has done, will do more than we can ask or imagine.
“I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus,” Rob Bell went on to say. “Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.”
I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
[1] Sally A. Brown, Preach This Week 7-29-12 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1333 (the ‘not waiting on a reward’ part is hers too)
[2] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (HarperCollins, 2012)
Mark 10: 46 – 52
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher,[a] let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
(manuscript to follow soon!)
Joshua 23:14
‘And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you; all have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed.
There he is perched, a hopeless and dejected young prince, gazing over the surface of a small pond. A look of disillusionment flashes across his face as he looks into the calm water only to be greeted by his own likeness mirrored back. “That’s not my father. That’s just my reflection,” he says turning to the one who had promised him an encounter with the dead King. And then, with wisdom that can only be found with the most learned of primates, Rafiki, the mandrill, immediately interjects, “No. Look harder.”
And sure enough, prince Simba’s reflection gives way a rendering of his father. And what follows is a scene that is engraved in the memory of every young, impressionable mind in 1994. Behold, the lion king, Mufasa, appearing in the thunderclouds to his successor. “Simba,” his voice thunders, “you have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me…Remember, you are my son, the one true king. Remember who you are. Remember…”
You know, it’s a shame how disappointingly prone we are to forget even the simplest of things, from time to time—not the least of which is who we are. If you are like me you find that in the hustle and bustle of our distracted lives, forgetfulness plagues us far more than we would care to admit.
( … it’s still edible! )
Now, the good news is that many slips of the mind carry with them only minor consequences. Like, for example, forgetting the chocolate in your car…
But then there are those times when our forgetfulness is a bit more embarrassing. Like showing up to the marching band competition 
only to realize that you left your instrument at home. Not to worry; just play it cool.
And then, there are those times when our absent-mindedness is a bit more costly, 
like that time you forgot to put the drain plugs in the new boat? Hmmm.
But friends, rest assured, you know nothing of the consequences of forgetfulness, until you have borrowed your wife’s cell phone and she says “The password’s my birthday!” 
…*sigh*. I am still digging my way out of that one.
Yes, we are disappointingly prone to forgetfulness. It’s one of the primary reasons that you and I are here this morning: so that we can remember of some things which we are inclined to forget; namely, who we are and whose we are.
The single verse of scripture that was read this morning, contains the words of Joshua. He was a central figure for the people of ancient Israel, becoming their leader after the death of Moses. And we pick up on Joshua’s story near the end of his life. He knows he is about to die and that there is going to be a season of transition for his people. And he knew that seasons of transition are always good season’s to refresh the memory about who and who’s we are. So Joshua gathers the Israelites together and starts in to his farewell address. He says “Look, I’m about to go the way of all the earth, so I need you to remember something. I need you to remember, in your heart of hearts, that not one of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you has failed; all of them have come to pass. Not a single one of God’s promises has failed you.”
Joshua then goes on to set the record straight by looking over his shoulder into their collective past.1 “Once upon a time,” he says “God called to your ancestor Abraham and promised him that if he would go from where he was living to a place where the Lord would lead him, that he would become the father of a whole nation. Of course, Abraham and his wife Sarah had no kids and they were old (I mean really old!). But sure enough, God kept the promise, and they had a child, Isaac. And Isaac had children of his own: Jacob and Esau. And from there…just look how many of us there are!
“Or how about the time our people were enslaved in Egypt and God promised to liberate them? God called upon the unlikeliest of duos to help with the escape: a fugitive named Moses and his brother Aaron. But God kept the promise. And Egypt got hit hard with plagues and Moses got the people out of Dodge.
And remember just how intense the chase scene was? The Egyptian were in hot pursuit with chariots and cavalry, had our people pinned at the edge of the Red Sea! And your ancestors cried out to God…and God heard their cries. And the Lord made a way—right through the middle of the sea…and left the Egyptians waterlogged behind ‘em.”
Well, Joshua was preachin’ now. And he was going to drive the point home so he continued: “And how about that time we roamed around for 40 years in the wilderness. We were at our wits end, worn out and discombobulated, only to be bought into a land where people wanted to pick fights and curse us. But God promised us a land of milk and honey. And see here, that God has handed you a land for which you did not work, towns you did not build. And now you’re living the good life. Please, don’t you forget how faithful God has been to you. Not one of his promises has failed you.”
It was the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said that much of what the Bible demands can be summed up in one imperative: remember.2
Remembering who we are and whose we are as a people of faith, is about employing a certain kind of vision. A vision that involves looking our shoulders to see God’s proverbial footprints in the sand of our lives. When comes to our faith, remembering is more like an art form, than it is the rote memory of facts and figures. It’s about telling stories of the past—from our personal lives and our shared life together—that help establish a precedence or expectation in which to ground our living. When we recount the stories of God’s people in scripture and add to that our own glimpses of God’s good works, we are offered the chance to jog our memory about God’s track record of faithfulness to those who put their trust in God.
To remember that we are God’s and that God remains faithful to us, is truly a scandalous act of resistance in a world that tries to peddle us the lie that we are unloved and unclaimed. When we reach back to see that we are, in fact, all children of God, precious and cared for by our Creator, that allows us to operate out of love and justice for our neighbors and ourselves, in a world that so often functions out of doom and gloom. Recalling the stories of God’s accompaniment with God’s people, allows us to move into an uncertain future with the assurance of a long-established precedent; that God that has promised to love of this world and bring abundant life to it, and that not one of God’s promises has failed.
But if we don’t take time to stop and remember, it seems that our daily worries begin to erode our memory. Worry, it seems, has a way of making us forgetful. I don’t know about you, but I have found quite a bit to be worried about these days. I worry about the future of this country we live in. The future of the world. I worry about the future of this congregation. I even worry about whether our mostly unused milk jug is reaching its expiration date.
And in the thick of all this worry, I start looking for places to run and hide. Ironically, instead of using the past to remember the things that will give me the strength to move me forward through the storms of my living, I begin to use the past as a place to hide. I start running towards a half-truth of the past that I have created shaped in my mind and have come to know as “the good ol’ days.” A fairytale escape located somewhere in years gone by where everything was much better, easier, and far simpler.
I have to tell you, I started in using this small paper calendar as my go-to planner for this year, simply because it was lying around and seem the ideal practical size. Well, only about a week ago did I pay any attention the theme of the calendar. It’s titled “Simpler Times,” and has these pictures of beautiful paintings from artist Terry Redlin that invoke nostalgia for a bygone era. Images of summer fields with children in their knickerbockers, frolicking about; wintry wonderlands that strangely warm my soul.
On a particularly stressful day last week, I grabbed the calendar and was drawn in to the serenity of the cover picture: 
a winter scene, complete with a gorgeous log home—windows lit with warmth. A couple setting off in a horse-drawn sleigh, and children playing around a disgustingly perfect snowman. And I said, “Yes, take me there and double time.” The good ‘ol days. A simpler time.
And no sooner than I had mentally inserted myself behind the reigns of the sleigh, my mind followed the plot a bit further. “So, after this sleigh ride…do I have to get the horse back in the barn? And what am I gonna’ do to pay off the mortgage on that fancy cabin? I’m guessing the kids aren’t quite at night…so much for simpler times.
A desire to run and hide in the past is a temptation of every generation. When the Israelites where in the wilderness wandering about aimlessly, they started yearning for simpler times. They said to one another “This is brutal. We’re going to perish out here. Honestly, Egypt seemed simpler than this.” But the Lord wasn’t interested in sending them back to a terrible past they had conveniently reframed as the good ‘ol days. In their worry about the challenges of the present moment and fear about their future, the collective memory of Israel about the trustworthiness of God had become a bit fuzzy.
Our own worries, fears, and anxieties also carry with them a profound question of God’s trustworthiness. Can God be trusted with a world that seems out of control? Can God be trusted in a time defined by deep division and incivility? Can God be trusted with the future…with your future? Can God be trusted enough to release my stranglehold on control, through power and possessions? No matter how we ask it, the question is this: Can God be trusted?
Our answer to that question and our subsequent actions will hinge on whether we will take the time to look back over our shoulder and what we will choose to remember. What stories will you tell yourself when all seems lost? What will you choose to remember when the going gets tough? What will you call upon when the future seems far too uncertain?
As disciples of Jesus, we have been asked each time we gather together to remember him. That is at the heart of what we are about as a community. Our mission is one of remembrance of the Good News of who we are and whose we are in Christ. To let our living and the ways we respond to the world around us be directed by the remembrance of a trustworthy God who acts and speaks, who lives and deal in surprising and beautiful alternatives far beyond our small visions of what our lives and this world can be.
So, have a look over your shoulder. Do some searching into the past, uncover something that may help jog your memory this week. And I pray that you will come to remember in your hearts and souls, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you. Not one of them has failed. Thanks be to God!
1 Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
2 Renderings of the stories from Joshua 24:1-12
Matthew 2: 1 – 12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Like many people, and perhaps even many of you, my last 10 days have included a lot of time on the road. (And by a lot of time on the road, I mean A LOT OF TIME on the road.) The great part about road time is playing catch up on podcasts and stories and conversations I’ve been meaning to listen to but sometimes miss during a regular work week. One of my favorites is NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
This news quiz has been on the air for 20 years, and recently replayed a conversation from this summer, with beloved actor Henry Winkler. Host Peter Sagal spends a few minutes in conversation about Winkler’s work and current projects, and then he plays a quiz game called ‘Not My Job’. As they say, this is the game where they ask famous people who are really good at something to answer questions about a thing they probably know nothing about. Henry Winkler‘s game? Three questions about things that twinkle. Stars.
It’s Epiphany Sunday. We’re here to talk about stars.
Soooo … YES. We’re going to play the game. The Fonz got 2 out of 3 right (which is enough to win). Let’s see how you do. Ready? Here we go.
We’ve learned some interesting things about stars and since we started venturing into space, including which of these?
(a) Stars can get bored.
(b) Stars smell like burnt steak. or
(c) Stars: they’re just like us.
Actually ‘Stars: They’re Just Like Us’ is a feature in Us Magazine.
The real answer was stars smell like burnt steak. We didn’t know this is literally true until astronauts went out to space in spacesuits and came back and with a whiff of their spacesuits felt weirdly hungry. It turns out that stars give off a number of chemicals, one of which smells like burnt steak. The smell of space.
Who knew?
Next: Williamina Fleming classified tens of thousands of stars during her decades-long career at the Harvard Observatory. But before that she had another job; what was it?
(a) One day the head of the Observatory got frustrated with the staff and said “My Scottish maid could do better!” He hired her and she did.
(b) She was a theater critic who said “People are boring. I want to watch something else. or
(c) Nobody knows. She just showed up one day wearing a silver suit and said “I can help you.”
If you said ‘a’ you’re right! Turns out she was one of those undiscovered geniuses who became a brilliant mathematician and astronomer. She discovered among other things the Horsehead Nebula and this Scottish maid is considered a science hero.
One more. Here’s your chance to redeem yourself: Our sun is a star of course. For about 30% of people, staring into the sun will cause sneezing fits. What is the scientific name of this reflex?
(a) squinty sneezing.
(b) solar snot. or
(c) Autosomal Compelling HelioOphthalmic Outburst, or ACHOO.
Yep, it’s ACHOO. [1]
The word is definitely an onomatopoeia, or a word that makes the sound of what it is – ‘ah’ is the intake of breath, ‘choo’ is the sound of the sneeze itself – and it IS actually the acronym for the sneezing disorder that affects almost 1 in 3 people!
Well, now you know a little more about stars. And your pastor’s listening habits. (Both may explain a lot.)
But it IS the day for stars … one in particular. “We have seen his star at its rising,” they said, “and have come to pay him homage.”
Celebrated as early as the 3rd century, before Christmas was even part of the calendar, the Feast of the Epiphany was to acknowledge all the many ways Christ is revealed to the world: the nativity event; Jesus’ baptism; the wedding at Cana; the visit from the Magi. All occasions where the Divine was revealed to be right with us in human form.
In the 4th century, believers began to celebrate the incarnation – the nativity/Christmas event – as its own Feast Day (eventually taking over the December 25 date), and the Feast of the Epiphany evolved and became more focused just on this particular event, engaging with wise travelers and brilliant stars.[2]
Though our modern western culture has turned the entire month of December into ‘Christmas’, the season of Christmas actually begins on Christmas day, and goes until Epiphany (which is tomorrow). THOSE are the 12 Days of Christmas. For many, Epiphany is the most important, the culmination of the Christmas season. Twelfth Night celebrations, particularly in French and Latin American cultures, take on vibrant life and festivity.
Maybe we need more imagination … more festival … more wonder. Maybe we need less certainty and resignation and packing it away and being done with it. Epiphany – epiphaneia – refers to the coming of God into the world, the manifestation of the Divine not just as a phenomenon and a sense, but as actual flesh and blood humanity. Epiphany is about appearing – the appearing of a star, and the appearing of a savior. What could happen if we took more than one Silent Night’s candlelighting and broadened our view, extended our senses, engaged our entire lived experience to be its own kind of epiphany: What if our whole life was tuned to the way God appears with us, in us, around us, and works through us? What if we had stars in our eyes, and they changed our entire vision?
Perhaps – just maybe – this brilliant star, rising over Bethlehem – is God’s longing to change us.
We say it every year, and every year it has been true – and if there’s ever a year that we don’t think it will be the case, then your pastors need to re-evaluate – every year we say: This will be God’s biggest year for us. The year ahead is bringing the best of what’s to come.
2020 will be such a year for us. As I look at 2019’s accomplishments, ministries, changes, and challenges – as I sort through the pieces that we’ll share in the 2019 annual report later this month at our congregational meeting – I am in awe of what God has done. How God has held us. How we have uplifted each other. How the community around us is different because we’ve been here. And how we are different because we have been willing to let God lead the way.
And as we thought about a theme for 2020, the word ‘vision’ is the obvious cliché. 20/20 vision. We are SO very clever! But in this case, in this place, VISION is the only word that suits the occasion. As we move closer to the call of a new Lead Pastor to serve with us into the future … as our leadership in all areas of the church continues to dig deeper and reach farther … as the world around us continues to cry out for justice, compassion, and truth … the vision that God is placing before Harvard Avenue Christian Church is bold and exciting, and I have absolutely no doubt that God is already stirring the hearts of leaders – those here and those to come – and this entire congregation to continue our forward motion … into a new year, a new vision, a new season of imagination and festival and wonder.
In ancient days, lives were guided by constellations. Stars pursue a steady course – they represent an ordered universe. If that order is interrupted by a star phenomenon, it would seem God was trying to say something, announcing something special by breaking into the divine order. Breaking into the order of things seemed to be a general sense within history itself; there are multiple accounts from a variety of historians, philosophers, teachers, and writers, about an expectation, a waiting, a sense among the people, of the coming of a king.[3] Which made the ruling king very anxious.
The wise ones, these magi, follow a star until it stops, over Bethlehem. And once they have offered their gifts and bowed in respect, they receive a caution in a dream, and are rerouted for their trip home. God’s Messiah remains protected. As the wise men had received word in a dream and did not return to give Herod intel, so too Joseph received a warning and the Holy Family makes their own escape. Foreigners, travelers once again, they are saved by divine intervention and human will. We have to remember that God is the God of all, even those – especially those – no one else wants. Try what we will – no matter what a ruler may say, no matter how a king may try to subvert the ways of the world to his control – God will still prevail.
Who are the wise ones in our day? Those who humble themselves. Those who accept wise counsel. Those who follow to all faithful extremes. Those to whom God is revealed. Who praise God when they find the Holy One, just as they were promised.
So let’s open our hearts. Let’s expand our imagination. Let’s get some stars in our eyes. And into our hands.
YES! It’s almost time! In just a minute, the deacons are going to pass trays with cards in them. There are 580 cards, each with the VISION image on one side, to remind us of our shared word for the year. And on the other side is a single word. And no word is like any other, all 580 handed out in this space are different. (The only duplications are the words on cards that our children will receive in their worship space today.)
No, I have no control over who gets which card. I’m accused of that every year. ‘You got this one just to me!’ (Y’all, I do NOT have that kind of power, and if I did I’d use it somewhere besides on these cards!) Every card has its own word, and we place them face down so that you really are choosing quite at random … the idea of the star word is not that you choose it, but that it might choose and guide and call to you.
It isn’t magical. It also isn’t compulsory. If you want to pass the tray and not take one at all. That’s fine. I think you’ll be missing out on something interesting and maybe even something wonderful. If you take a card today and promptly lose it, forget about it, or ignore it, then you do.
But here’s what I hope for you:
If the deacons would come pass the trays, and everyone select your card. Don’t go rooting around in there to find the one you like! Just pull one at random and hang onto it for a moment. We’ll pray over them together before we go.
Henry Winkler has star words. I mean, he didn’t call them that, but in the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me conversation, he said:
“I live by two words: gratitude and tenacity. Tenacity gets me where I want to go, and gratitude doesn’t allow me to be angry along the way.”
You’ve drawn your word. I am confident there is something in it for you.
Just see. Just see what happens.
See where it leads you. Where it shows up. How it works on you. How you might work on it. Use it as a guide, as a companion, as an opportunity.
Resolutions are easy to make, and easy to slide by.
The idea of the star word is that – like the star of Bethlehem – it will guide, and we will follow it with imagination and wonder, and it will come to rest just where it needs to.
May we see our word today and think we know exactly what it means for us.
Or may we realize we need the rest of the year for it to reveal itself.
That’s not anything we direct, and it’s not anything we predict.
It’s simply something we open our eyes to see. It’s God’s vision, with stars in our eyes.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, give us a new depth of vision to understand the mysteries of your revelation. Let us grasp the full revolution brought about by your reign. Let us absorb the wisdom of your ancient story, which sets aside the domination of kings like Herod and ushers in kings who worship, who surrender, who are awed by the dimensions of divine power. Give us, also, Lord, a spirit of celebration, so we can revel in the magnitude of your joy and your renewal of the human heart. Amen.[4]
[1] www.npr.org/waitwait Nov 30 2019 (orig Aug 10 2019)
[2] Emilie Griffin, God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas (Pennoyer/Wolffe 2007), p163-168
[3] Wm Barclay, The Bible Study Series: The Gospel of Matthew, (Westminster, 1975), pp23-33
[4] Griffin
Hebrews 11: 1 – 16
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks. 5 By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death; and “he was not found, because God had taken him.” For it was attested before he was taken away that “he had pleased God.” 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 7 By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”
13 All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14 for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
Luke 2: 1 – 20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
We made it! He’s here! That’s it. That’s Christmas!
Now it’s just time for dinner, and a night’s sleep, and Santa Claus, and time with people you love (or at least with people you like) and more food, and all the big gift reveals (be sure to let me know who gets the red-bowed Lexus in this December-To-Remember Celebration), and maybe some time to just sit on the couch, and then church one more time next weekend and then it’ll be the new year.
We made it! He’s here! That’s it. That’s Christmas!
I mean, that’s all we want to hear tonight, isn’t it? Maybe the song we love, and light a candle – carefully, you guys, pay attention to the candles – and hear that the baby is born, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laying in the manger. What else do we need?
Maybe just a story first?
As you know or have seen if you’ve been with us in worship during the Sundays of Advent for the last several years, we set our creche on the communion table, so that it is front and center throughout our worship season. Creche is French word for crib … it’s the nativity scene, with the characters who play out in the story. Each Sunday through Advent, at Christmas, and on Epiphany, we add to our scene as the story unfolds. We ask children to bring these characters forward; we close our service each week with a focus on the figures who tell us more of the story.
We begin with Mary, chosen as the God-bearer. Mary, who is Luke’s “model of obedient, contemplative discipleship. She is not defined by her biological motherhood but blessed for her belief (1:45), as are all who ‘hear the word of God and obey it’ (11:27).”[1] Mary births the Lord into the world. Her first born son, a gift like the first fruits of the harvest, the first seat at a banquet, the first choice among all others. She reminds us that we each have a role to play in bringing Christ into the world.
The nativity story continues as another character takes his place. Joseph, the carpenter, steps into the divine dream for the world, and carries it forward with uncertain steps, yet constant faith. Already a man of heart and compassion, he crafted a plan to be sure Mary wasn’t scandalized. And then God’s messenger intervened. And Joseph responded with faith and not fear. Joseph reminds us that home is where we make it, and that the Prince of Peace may find a home in us.
We come on the third week to bring the shepherds as they watch. We have this image of shepherds as dirty and mistrusted, and perhaps in some places and times that was true. But we also see in the Hebrew Scriptures where shepherds are the heart of a community, and men like Moses and David are both associated with shepherds.[2] So we bring a shepherd to the scene, and we have to admit that much like them, we’re never fully prepared for the glory of God to surround us. And yet we know that it will, and that we will be different because of it.
After a Sunday filled with huge sounds of praise – with drum and bell, with guitar and voice, with band and choir and orchestra all around – we come tonight, in the same space, that somehow feels a little different … and have added the central figure. We’ve invited Jesus in … into the room, into our lives, into the world, again.
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Two Sundays ago, as she was leaving the sanctuary with her friends for their morning of Children Worship and Wonder, Kaylee stopped at the back door and asked me a question: Remember last year at Christmas when I carried the Baby Jesus in? Yes, of course, I said. Wellll … and she tilted her head and paused and looked at me. Well … I wondered if I could do it again this year. But I want Sophia to do it with me this time. We want to do it together. Now, this is usually a pretty impromptu thing, and I usually try to invite different children every time, or at least in different combinations. But COME ON. Like I’m going to say no to that question! Can I carry in the baby Jesus, and can I have a friend do it with me?
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Earlier today, in thinking about who we would see at each hour tonight, and all of the roles that are played in making this service happen … deacons to serve communion, receive offering, hand out candles … musicians to move us through this special night in ways only they can … each of you, gathered here, making worship a true gathering of the faithful … I also thought about children to ask to carry in the Baby Jesus figure. And so I asked Bodhi and Parker’s mom if they would. And she immediately said yes, that they loved doing it last year. And I thought to last year, and them walking in together, brother and sister with such confidence and excitement. This is usually a pretty impromptu thing, and I usually try to invite different children every time, or at least in different combinations. But COME ON. On a night like this? You want to be READY. And they were. So could they do it again? |
Um, yes. Yes you can. Of course. Because you have just made the whole entire point of Christmas Eve:
Jesus is ready to join us. We are ready to have him here. We are eager to get him to his rightful place. And we want others to be there with us.
Yes. That’s what we want in this world, and yes, friends, as we’ve heard in scripture and learned already tonight in this room … our little children will lead us.
And Mary, really, is still a child herself.
Mary, daughter of Anna and Joachim, a descendant of Leah and a member of the tribe of Judah. Given her heritage, she would know the history and the scriptures, she would know that it was the angel of death who went through the king’s camp and caused soldiers to die; she would know an angel wrestles with Jacob and leaves him limping; she would know an angel causes fire to appear in front of Gideon.[3]
So when you’re already in a precarious spot (unwed, pregnant), to then also have an ANGEL appear, say to you ‘Do not be afraid’, give you the most stunning and unbelievable announcement ever … and then to still be the one to say ‘let it be with me according to your word’ … that is faith over fear. That’s Christmas.
Just before the birth story we heard tonight, Luke tells Mary’s story within Elizabeth’s. The angel announces this astonishing thing to Mary, who replies at first with … ‘How?’ How can this be? But Gabriel’s answer to her ‘how’ question is not to give her the science … his answer is to say that Elizabeth is also expecting, even in her age. For nothing will be impossible with God. Your kin will be in this season with you. And Mary rushes to Elizabeth, and her cousin addresses her the same way the angel has already: “Greetings, favored one. Blessed are you among women.”[4] There it is. The hope that casts out fear. Knowing she won’t be alone is the antidote to being afraid.
That’s for us, too. God is here. We made it! Jesus is here. That’s it. That’s Christmas.
We hear tonight about the angel going to the shepherds in the fields. It reminds us that the word of God, and the announcement of that Word, is going to happen in places that are less than obvious. The word of God, from the messengers of the Lord, proclaimed on a hillside in the middle of nowhere, to a bunch of guys no one would expect to be favored with much at all, let alone with news like this.
The word of God is proclaimed here tonight. But the sermon is only preached in this building. It is heard in the world. The word of God is made alive and real outside of the church walls. Which means it should live in us. Which means we need not be afraid. That word of God will come to us, and we need not be afraid to live like it has. God didn’t wait for the shepherds to get the news through the grapevine. God came right to them, as angel and then as a messiah. God coming to us in the world means we don’t have to wait to get to church to meet God, or for God to meet us. The news is given to the unlikeliest, anywhere. Like us.
God coming to the shepherds, who are fringe people, and questionable, is God’s way of reminding us that what we see as the world order doesn’t matter. Who or what we think is in control isn’t (especially when we think it’s us). What we think is set and planned can all be undone by the vulnerability and surprise of God’s reaching into our lives.
You know, this wouldn’t have happened … the savior would not have been born in the City of David, in Bethlehem, if Joseph and Mary hadn’t gotten to where they needed to be. The census requirement made that location happen. So here’s a thought: When we are where we’re supposed to be, God is born among us.
God shows up through the pain of childbirth, the blood and sweat of a teenage girl, the fear of a couple who have been told, but still have no idea, what’s coming next. How can we be anything other than certain that God is not just with us but for us, steadfast and sure and longing for us to be steadfast and sure when we tell the story too.
We speak the unspeakable by putting it in the voice of angels. The name of God was too sacred to pronounce, the closeness of God was too unfathomable to imagine. So a divine being intercedes, to bring news of joy, peace … to settle our fearful souls. Where can we be angels, messengers, God-bearers, home-makers, story-tellers, hope-bringers in this world of ours?
Can we start tonight?
We have a church member who faithfully writes on the Connection Card each week. Listing only initials, they list those I’m assuming are friends, family, even themselves, and then notes a word or two next to each: ACM, peace, hope; KD, confidence, trust. Sometimes it’s one or two, sometimes it’s several, but every time, every week, it makes me pause, and think What deep faith. What true prayerfulness. What a great gift this dear one has offered to their beloveds, and what a lesson in constancy and hope they are teaching this pastor.
Tonight, I pray we’ll celebrate more than the beauty and peace of Christmas. I hope we’ll celebrate the interruption and disruption of it all, too.
There is no room in the inn. But a way is made, to a manger. Once we find room, once we make room, God’s peace comes. Christ will be born, one way or the other. It’s just a question of where.
The shepherds heard, came, saw, and went. Their whole purpose was to see and know the child. Their response was to tell about him. And they did it – they showed up, and they heard, and they went, and they told – together.
When we think we can’t … God says we can.
If we long for more … God says it’s coming.
Though we look for it in our little corner … God reminds us that it’s a broader view than we can imagine.
When we hear what can be … God says yes, even for you.
If we wonder how and if … God offers us others to be by our side.
Though we wonder if we’ll find peace … God reminds us that hope, and love, and joy are action words too.
Thank you for listening to the story tonight … but most of all thank you for being part of it.
We made it! He’s here! Do not be afraid. That’s it. That’s Christmas.
[1] Jane Schaberg, ‘Luke’, The Women’s Bible Commentary (Newsom & Ringe, eds., WJK 1992) p279
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford 2011), p101-102
[3] Lindsay Hardin Freeman, Bible Women (Forward Movement 2014), p401
[4] Meyers, Craven, Kramer, eds., Women in Scripture (Houghton Mifflin 2000), p116-118
Matthew 11: 2 – 10
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 4 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6 And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
You’ve made the trip into the attic, or the garage, or the basement, or the shed, to drag out all the boxes and bins and bags. You open each one, remember what’s been packed where, and remind yourself of where it sits or hangs or stands. Inevitably, something you know you had is no longer where you thought it was. And there’s one bulb out somewhere in the hundreds of them, and now that whole section is dark. Do you dig through for spares? Do you go get something new? Do you just cram another strand in there, or decide this year you’ll go without lights and next year you’ll fix it – knowing good and well that you’ll forget between now and next year and you’ll do this all over again. And as you unwrap each piece, you tell and retell the story that goes with it. And you find a place for everything. And inevitably the dog ends up in the Styrofoam, and the cat slips into the lowest tree branches, and you realize that it’s time to glue Joseph’s head back on (again), and you find a place to put the Baby Jesus figure so that he can make his appearance in the nativity on Christmas morning. (Hopefully this year you’ll remember where he is.)
And there’s the choir concert one night, and the band concert the next night. And your office party is a pitch-in lunch, and theirs is a dress-up dinner. And the babysitter’s at her friend’s party, so you hope maybe the college friend next door is home from school already. You thought you were so far ahead on the shopping and then you realize that you still haven’t figured out what to get your brother-in-law. And you forgot you need a Secret Santa gift for the teacher. And maybe something for the mail carrier; they work so many extra hours this time of year.
And everyone’s coming to your house for Christmas dinner because your sister decided to remodel her kitchen and of course it isn’t done yet. And is that a tickle in the back of your throat? Why are you so tired? Uh oh. A light’s on down the hall. Who’s gotten sick in the middle of the night? And why is there water on the kitchen floor? How does a refrigerator just suddenly quit working entirely?
So. Everyone’s feeling that JOY of Christmas, right?
Well, one of the things you managed to do in the middle of everything else that we think this season demands of us … you managed to get to worship today. That may have included its own series of comical events and annoying circumstances and even near-disasters, but you made it. You’re here. So maybe we can take a moment of pause together. And breathe. And consider. And refresh our memory, about the JOY.
Today’s text is a departure from the timeline. It’s a much later part of the story and maybe not one you would first think about when you think of this time of year. But it’s also a series of events that help us refresh our memory, and help us pause, and breathe, and consider the source of our joy.
John the Baptist was born just before Jesus. His mother Elizabeth was Mary’s cousin. We see in the other nativity telling, in Luke, that when a pregnant Mary visits a pregnant Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps with joy as the two greet each other. It is one of the simplest and most beautiful moments of scripture. The gift of a child in Elizabeth’s age, and the gift of a child in Mary’s innocence, resonates in each woman’s spirit and they are deeply and wondrously linked from the earliest moments of their being.
John spends his life as a herald for Jesus: the one who goes before him to declare the way, to proclaim the good news of the Messiah, the one who will save the people. John calls the community to repentance and doesn’t sugar coat it even a little bit – they need to prepare themselves, be ready, be different, pay attention. He steps from the wilderness, from his locust-eating and hairshirt-wearing, and baptizes Jesus, as the skies part and the voice of God declares it all blessed.
This is no ordinary preacher, and no ordinary relationship. It is deep, and profound, and lifelong, and sometimes unexplainable.
In this text from Matthew, John has landed in prison … for telling the truth. King Herod had visited his brother, seduced his brother’s wife, come home and disposed of his own, and taken the sister-in-law as his new bride. John, not one to mince words, called him out on that debacle … and, as you might imagine, that didn’t go over well. So, here is John, in prison.
As he had traveled and preached and told the stories of Jesus and who he was for the world, John had gathered his own following, his own students and disciples. While in prison now, he had heard from them about the ways Jesus continued to teach and preach and heal, how he was drawing attention and gathering crowds and troubling the authorities and stirring up notice.
And John had to wonder: So why am I the one sitting here in this jail cell? After all this, is this what it’s come to? Has all of this been worth it? Or has it been for nothing?
But it’s for that very reason that John’s question strikes us as odd: He’s been right there the whole time, leading the way, clearing the path, setting things up, getting people ready, preparing them to hear the good news of God’s love from God’s own Son. How in the world does he still need to send his disciples to Jesus to ask that incredibly puzzling question “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
But we ask it too, don’t we? Even from this side of history, even knowing how the story starts, and how it goes, and how it ends, and what it means. We still sometimes ask ‘Is this it? Is that what we’re looking for?’ It makes sense that perhaps we would wonder if we match up with Jesus’ expectations. We know the many ways we can fall short of following faithfully.
But this scripture, this moment with John in his prison cell, this moment when he’s seen and done and lead and heard and been part of all the ways that Jesus shows all of us to be: In this moment, John seems to make a way to say that maybe when we think we’ve met all that was expected of us, we will still find a moment to wonder if Jesus is matching up with what we expect of him?
But how does Jesus respond? Does he tell John̵
