FIRST UNITED CHURCH of CHRIST » Sermons

SpiritPerfect for Dummies

Andrea Pegram — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:51:01 +0000

Texts: Psalm 8; John 16:12-15

“SpiritPerfect for Dummies” by John Severson

Many of you know that two of my retirement passions are photography and computing—and so while researching this scripture passage today—my mind easily moved to comparisons in the computer world I often live in and think in.

Listen to our text again from The Message:

“I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, God will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. God won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. God will honor me; will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything God has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ‘God takes from me and delivers to you.’

How many of you can remember back to when the experts said: Soon the computer will replace the book—but don’t worry about that—for the computer is the book’s best friend!? What they were taking about was the fact that every time a new software upgrade came out—a new and improved guidebook would soon follow. Some computer nerd would publish an accompanying translation of all the new program’s capabilities and innovations.

Back then, the first of these guides was WordPerfect For Dummies—which dummied down the gibberish of computer lingo into some semblance of English. They supposedly provided clear instructions—without technological details— and used lots of good pictures! They assumed that sooner-or-later we’d screw-up—and need to know what to do when we’d press delete instead of save—or how to cope with what our 2-year-old inputted while we were on the phone!

Jesus knew better than anyone that sometimes less is more. So addressing 12 confused faces—he shared his revelations about what it means to be spiritual. But even as he gently explained that there were more revelations to come—and maybe they couldn’t bear them now—he promised they would receive A GUIDE or a FRIEND—to help them assimilate the information vital for their future life and faith.

And this Guide for Dummies Jesus gives us is none other than the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit wasn’t offered as an inferior or watered-down messenger—but as the Spirit of Truth accessible to all believers—no matter how stiff-necked, close-minded, thin skinned, or hardhearted they might be!

They and we need Jesus’ great gift of this Spirit—to fill our hearts with the love that comes only from Christ—and continues to reveal Him afresh as the way, the truth and the Life—to each new generation of believers.

WordPerfect for Dummies touted itself as: a reference for the rest of us! But for the rest of us—the Spirit of Truth is our SpiritPerfect Guide into LovePerfect Living—the only living that can cast out fear from our lives.

SpiritPerfect living suggests four special things:

1. that SpiritPerfect Christians don’t profess to know everything….
2. they don’t rely on special, blazing revelations for spiritual insight. They expect to be guided into all truth—because they know that most of them acquire it bit by bit—not instantly!
3. they learn how to truly live and know that that’s no easy task….and
4. that SpiritPerfect Christians are guided in unexpected ways to the truth.

Someone has said that all of our worries about the future would stall-out—if we would just trust this Spirit to be our guide—if we would follow the Spirit where it leads. You see, the Spirit doesn’t lead us to a doctrine—nor to a theology—nor to a specific denomination. Rather it leads us only to one place—to a living vital relationship with Jesus the Christ.

In my new book—SpiritPerfect for Dummies—I would include these chapters:

CHAPTER 1: Log On!

Many churches have a committee approach to spirituality—lots of good resources and ideas—but not much action! To Log On means that the most important thing about our spiritual journey is that WE GET GOING, WE GET INVOLVED, and WE GET CONNECTED! We’ll never grow spiritually unless we stop thinking about it—stop preparing for it—and start trusting the Spirit!

CHAPTER 2: Multi-tasking

The Spirit brings teaching and guidance to all areas of life—not just to one. It might be more comfortable working on OR ministering to one thing—but that doesn’t get the job done. The Spirit leads us into a multi-tasking spirituality which keeps us moving. If you never intend to move, to change, to grow—then there’s no need for a guiding force! So even when the direction the Spirit seems to be leading feels ambiguous OR confusing—we mustn’t get discouraged—but keep at it, keep moving, keep expecting new insights, new experiences and new visions in the future!

CHAPTER 3: Text Manipulation

With the Spirit in the lead—our life story will unfold in a variety of surprising and astonishing ways. We’ll find that we’re often changing—moving around ideas—utilizing and applying the Truth in fresh and creative ways. Jesus’ great skill was bringing together an untried mix of people and ideas—a process that resulted in glimpses of the kingdom of God itself in our midst. Manipulating the text allows us to affirm our spiritual gifts—and bring together these gifts and ideas that aren’t usually thought of together—and then fusing and using them for the good of all. This is part of the Spirit’s guidance system!

CHAPTER 4: Save As

One of the Spirit’s function is to remind us of the Truth—and the Spirit promises to save what we’ve been taught and what we’ve learned—so that we can access, utilize and benefit from it throughout our Spiritual walk. The Spirit also reminds us to save what we’ve done—to keep it and to avoid fatally damaging or losing our files.

Remember—Jesus Saves and You Should Too!

CHAPTER 5: Use the Help Menu Freely

Following this guide can be both frightening and freeing as the Spirit guides us to the Truth. The Help Menus are there for a reason—for sometimes we get hopelessly lost or confused—and it’s then that the Spirit offers a Divine Help Menu—God’s Word, the Bible. Computing by the seat of your pants—or living just by inspiration—or composing your life as you go along may be exhilarating—but it takes faith to ask for the kind of help that enables us to steadily move forward on our Spiritual Journey.

The joy of SpiritPerfect Discipleship—is that we’re more free to love—to serve—to rejoice—and to live than any other people on Earth. Jesus promises this in John’s Gospel today:

You shall know the Truth—

and the Truth shall make you free.

Hear God’s Word today as a personal Word to you—and then log on—and get going on your personal journey of faith! Amen!

Changes

Andrea Pegram — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:24:47 +0000

Texts: Numbers 11:24-30 and Acts 2:1-21

“Changes” by Carol Rutz

When was the last time you heard a passage from the book of Numbers? Perhaps, like me, you regard some of those early Old Testament texts, collectively known as the Pentateuch or Torah, as a combination of terrific stories from Genesis and Exodus, followed by a rather tedious account of the Israelites’ sojourn in the desert. The tedium is exacerbated by a whole lot of rule-making in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—not that story is completely omitted—but the emphasis is on right behavior and priestly duties, plus dietary and social rules. The Ten Commandments are just one important feature of a hefty catalog of rules that regulate the Israelite community as the ten tribes earn their way into the Promised Land.

According to tradition, Yahweh revealed the whole of Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Scholars have determined that what was undoubtedly a sacred oral tradition was written down centuries after the events described. Regardless, the Torah has lost little of its influence over intervening millennia, and we must remember that in Jesus’ time, he and his followers were thoroughly acquainted with Torah and clear about how Jesus’ readings of and departures from Torah were radical interpretations that proved to be politically dangerous among his fellow Jews.

But back to our passage from Numbers. Earlier in chapter 11, Moses is exhausted and frustrated by the demands of the people. They have subsisted on manna for some time, and whereas manna was initially regarded as a miracle preventing starvation in the desert, now the people are dissatisfied. They want a more varied diet, they particularly crave meat. The Lord was angry, viewing the people as ungrateful, and Moses is in no mood to take the blame. He complains to the Lord that he didn’t ask for the responsibility for this crowd, nor is he able to satisfy them. How about a little help?

How’s that for speaking truth to power!

Despite his brashness, Moses is heard. The Lord has him gather 70 respected elders and announces he will come down and talk with them and Moses, taking some of the spirit that is on Moses and putting it on them. “They shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all yourself. (Num. 11:17)” The problem of meat will also be solved. Your assignment is to read on in Numbers 11 for the mixed results of that plan.

Meanwhile, the newly commissioned elders receive the spirit and they do prophesy—once. Later, a couple who were not in the commissioned group begin to preach, and then poor Moses just can’t catch a break. His closest advisors join with others to tattle on these upstart prophets. To his credit, Moses throws the charge right back at them: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them! (Num. 11:29)” As we turn to Luke’s account of the Pentecost story in Acts, let us keep in mind Moses’ admonition that all should speak through the spirit.

You will remember that the writer we know as Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke as well as The Acts of the Apostles. He was an educated Greek, probably a physician by profession, and to the best of our knowledge, he is the only Gentile writer represented in the scriptures. His standing as a Gentile and an early Christian is all the more remarkable when one considers that his work represents 25% of the New Testament canon, even more than the work attributed to the apostle Paul. Writing in Greek in the late first century CE, he was primarily concerned with the spread of the Gospel via the Holy Spirit, and this passage in Acts dramatically speaks to that purpose.

The second chapter of Acts begins, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. (Acts 2:1)” What I did not realize until recently is that Pentecost was and continues to be a Jewish festival celebrated 50 days after Passover; Pentecost means “fiftieth.” Celebrated in ancient days to thank the Lord for the grain harvest, by the time Luke was writing, it was known as the festival commemorating Moses’ receiving Torah on Mount Sinai. (Remember Moses? The guy who wanted everyone to prophesy?) Pentecost, this religious holiday, is the reason that “they,” that is, all of the Jews, were gathered in Jerusalem, celebrating the giving of the Law.

So imagine a happy, festive crowd’s reaction to Luke’s dramatic scene: A great wind, tongues of fire, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the spectacle of Peter and the apostles all speaking in tongues. Luke describes the people as “devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem” (Acts 2:5), establishing at one stroke the religious nature of the Pentecost festival and the multinational, polyglot population dwelling in Jerusalem immediately after Jesus’ crucifixion. Peter and his colleagues were among fellow Jews at a Jewish holy celebration, yet the variety of nationalities demonstrates the reach of Judaism beyond the borders of Israel itself. Luke’s tongue-twisting list of languages corresponds to nations comprising the known world at the time—the world whose reception of the Holy Spirit is Luke’s primary concern.

With his usual flair for drama, Luke introduces manifestations of the Spirit—wind and fire—to capture the attention of those assembled for another purpose. The Greek word “pneuma” is variously translated as spirit, wind, and breath, providing a metaphor that places the Spirit in human experience both externally, as wind, and internally, as breath or life force. The power and urgency of the Spirit become more compelling as the Spirit takes visible form—tongues of flame on the apostles’ heads—as well as aural form through the puzzling variety of languages suddenly coming from the mouths of known Galileans. This amazing, multisensory experience captivates those present, although its meaning is far from clear. As people struggle to sort out the startling phenomena before them, they ask one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12) However mighty and impressive the Spirit’s display, people do not immediately grasp what is happening or how they are to respond.

At this point, Luke introduces witty skeptics who dismiss the speaking in tongues as drunkenness. This disrespectful comment sets up Peter’s elegant response, a powerful sermon that begins with Joel’s prophecy of the end times and extends beyond today’s passage. Peter’s quotation of Joel accomplishes important work, because it announces the pouring out of God’s Spirit as an indicator of the “last days,” the Judgment that all believers have awaited for so long. Peter goes on to explain how Jesus’ death and resurrection demonstrate undeniably that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, and that the Judgment is at hand.

To make this claim at Pentecost is to shift the festival’s emphasis from gratitude for and celebration of Torah to one of repentance and anticipation of Judgment. The Spirit is responsible for all of this, and Luke offers a clear message that telling the Gospel story is intoxicating, disruptive, joyous, and open to everyone. No, we’re not drunk, we are filled with the Spirit, and people from all over the world are invited to participate in this thrilling experience.

In fact, the spiritual frenzy is appropriate, given the powerful nature of what theologians call the Jesus event. Some of what the early church began to do was to remake some of the key Jewish traditions. Judaism and Christianity represent both continuity and change. Passover yields to a sacramental meal celebrated in remembrance of Jesus’ last Passover and his ultimate sacrifice. The exodus, the first covenant, is superseded for Christians by Jesus’ death and resurrection, which eclipses Passover in favor of what we now call Communion, and more important, Easter. The Sabbath moves from Saturday to Sunday because the empty tomb is discovered on the first day of the week—after the Jewish Sabbath. And now Pentecost is redirected from a festival of thanks toward repentance and evangelism. In our time, all of these holy practices retain contemporary observance among Jews, although Pentecost has become a minor holiday. As a result of the Jesus event and the apostolic project, important Jewish observances have been changed, taking on new significance for Christian believers.

I titled this sermon “Changes” because I saw a connection between the remaking of Jewish traditions and our congregation’s current period of transition. I’m willing to bet that some of those early changes were difficult to accomplish—just think how difficult it would be for us to shift the Sabbath to, say, Tuesday. As the church became more organized and centralized, such changes could be more easily communicated and enforced. Early on, as implied by many of the apostle Paul’s letters to scattered congregations, practices varied widely. The early church was indeed a spiritual movement, and orthodoxy came much later.

For our well-established congregation, change was supposed to be orderly and predictable. Our pastor retired, and the deacons made arrangements to cover several weeks in the summer as an interim call committee completed their work. Once our interim pastor arrived, we could expect to be in an interim situation for a year or two, commission a search and call committee to find the right candidate, call that person, and pick up where we left off. Hasn’t worked out that way.

As a result, we have had to step up, not just to make sure that Sunday worship services are well planned, but to consider issues of staffing, maintenance, finances, ministry within and outside of our building, and to do so patiently and faithfully, in the absence of ordained leadership. People have come through, as you all know. Attendance has been robust, and the efforts of everyone, staff and lay people alike, have been appreciated. Leaders have emerged to tackle serious matters and share their thinking with the rest of us.

However, there have been times—and we can expect more in the future—when we, like Moses in the desert, being weary of listening to criticism, express our frustration. I can just imagine Moses’ saying, “Do I have to do EVERYTHING?” Some among us may feel exactly the same way. We have continuity not just with Torah, but with Moses himself, an over-burdened, under-prepared leader who demanded help from the Lord. He got the help he asked for and was still criticized. In my reading of his situation, he anticipates the Acts account of Pentecost: Moses exhorted everyone to preach, reasoning that spreading the word of the Lord was the responsibility of all. In Luke’s language, everyone is expected to respond to the Holy Spirit and communicate the Gospel message with exuberance. That includes us, especially as we manage our transition and the inevitable changes thus far and those to come.

When Bill Poehlmann invited me to preach today, my first reaction was that Pentecost was way out of my league. His reply: “Not necessarily.” As I consider the message of Pentecost more carefully, I conclude that Bill is right: we are all invited to preach, exhort, and evangelize, to use those high-powered, New Testament verbs for the sake of the Gospel. Let’s make change—together.

To help us think about the varieties of spiritual expression, I have chosen some quiet hymns for today; in contrast, we will conclude with the most boisterous hymn I could think of, “Earth and All Stars,” printed in your bulletin. Sing out—with spirit!

Amen.

The Gospel Without Words

Andrea Pegram — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:07:16 +0000

“The Gospel Without Words” by Mary Carlson

St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”

While we can be a chatty congregation, preaching the gospel without words comes naturally to us at First UCC. I was reminded of our church community when I attended Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, DC this March. Ecumenical Advocacy Days brought together Protestants and Catholics from around the U.S. and the world to learn about domestic and international peace and justice issues, and then empowered us to go to Capitol Hill to lobby our elected officials. While diverse in our backgrounds, we came together on issues of common concern: people living in poverty here and abroad, the struggles of women, and other human rights and environmental rights issues. I heard the church preaching without words when I met people doing God’s work from all around the globe: Daysi Flores from Honduras, who tells the stories of women who are persecuted for advocating for workers rights and land reform in Central America; Veeda, the Pakistani head mistress of all the Presbyterian girls’ schools in Pakistan, who lobbies for the International Violence Against Women Act. Fabian Wilches, a young Colombian lawyer, who defends the rights of indigenous peoples in Colombia; Jon Kerr, who keeps an eye on transportation policy in Minneapolis so that mass transit planning will benefit poor neighborhoods without disrupting their fabric. Meeting these people helped me understand that the dollars our church sends to OCWM, our church’s wider mission, represent real people “preaching the gospel without words” in a multitude of ways and places. So often we have little idea of the exponential impact our OCWM dollars in the hands of people like these whose hearts are full of passion.

These people remind me what excites me about Christian community, a “hunger for the heroic”, as Dorothy Day once said, that can be expressed when two or three gather to bring about God’s kingdom on earth. While some participants lamented that their congregations would never embrace the call to advocacy, I realized that my home congregation “gets it.” We understand that when we support Paul Miller’s work with the Haiti Justice Alliance, we are both supporting Haitian people who live in poverty as well as educating ourselves about the political and economic realities that created a hungry Haitian people. My experience at the conference touched me so deeply that I was compelled to share some of what I learned with all of you, both to affirm what comes naturally to us as a church community, and to challenge us to grow in ways that are “right” for our congregation.

At the close of Ecumenical Advocacy Days we listened to a Catholic lay person, Jack Jezreel, who started an organization called Justfaith to energize congregations to work for justice, and in so doing, he discovered that the entire congregation came alive. As he talked about being a congregation that does not just feed hungry people, but educates itself about the farm bill; a congregation that does not just buy olive oil from Palestine, but studies the history and politics of Middle East conflict; he asked the group if their home congregations would embrace this two armed approach. The majority of listeners smiled and sadly shook their heads that no, their congregations wanted to help people, but weren’t interested in studying the root causes of the problem. But I thought to myself, “my congregation gets it.” My congregation understands that service and advocacy go hand and hand.

Jack Jezreel talked about the church as a place that gathers and sends. We gather to worship, educate ourselves and our children, support one another, have fun, and then we go back into the world of work and family and service. We love ourselves; we love our neighbor. He asked if we could imagine a church where half of our resources and energy went to sustaining our local congregation, and half went toward sending us out to serve. Again, I could imagine it, because over the years I have observed our youth, who seem more interested in being sent than gathering; and they are most eager to gather when it prepares them to be sent. Under Cher’s leadership, our youth ministry has nurtured youth by preparing them to serve. This lesson was learned so well that even though Cher will not go with the youth to Alamosa, Colorado this year, there is a full complement of youth and leaders who are ready to go.

Where is our congregation today in this model of gathering and sending? Jesus gathered the disciples for the Last Supper, then he sent them out into the world. He said, “I have come to give you life, abundant life.” Is there a link between this circular energy of gathering and sending, and abundance? As Marge Tarr reminded me, economic circumstances may dictate how much we give away outside of our own family or congregation from year to year, but we always keep the goal of giving and service as our priority, knowing that when we come together in order to give, we perpetuate a healthy cycle of gathering and sending.

What I learned at Ecumenical Advocacy Days is that a “sent” church is a heroic church engaged in service and political vision. A sent church has a vitality that is attractive to both youth and adults. Our children (and us) want a church that’s relevant, challenging, meaningful, even life changing. This is a church where gathering and sending are in balance. This is a church where we hold each other accountable, and hold each other. This is a church where we give our lives away together, and in giving ourselves away, comes abundance. This has always been the legacy of First UCC Northfield. As we heard in the reading from James, “my works will show my faith.” When we translate the idea of service into concrete corporate action, we come alive and hearken back to our true identity. When we are sent out in common service together, we deepen our affection for one another.

Some in this congregation are familiar with the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. The quotations in the sermon today are taken from the church’s website, journey inward/journey outward. You cannot join the Church of the Saviour without also joining a small group of church members that laughs, loves, and serves together. It is service to those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit; service to those near or far; service in a way that is congruent with our talents and abilities: as individuals, as small groups of people, and as First UCC Northfield. As we prepare for a new minister and a new beginning, can we find ways to be involved in this congregation that bring joy to ourselves and joy to others? Can we find a few other people who have a similar vision of being sent, and gather together around a common passion? Often, when we come together in the senior complex we live in, or in our work places, or working on a committee for the city, we find we are working with people from our congregation. When we volunteer at Healthfinder’s, or the Y, or the library, we find we are working with people from our congregation. We can acknowledge, perhaps without words, that we are sent to do good work in the world together.

The Church of the Saviour model claims that the heart of being church is learning how to be on an authentic journey with others—inward toward our true selves rooted in Love—outward toward some part of the world’s deepest joy and greatest pain. As Sue Monk Kid wrote, I don’t happen to think the Risen Christ promised to be quantitatively more present with two or three people than with one–or that he is present in a special way. But I am convinced he means that if I choose to live my Christian life alone, there are great limitations to what God can say or do or be in my life. But if I have chosen to be accountable to a few people, to meet with them and talk about life as I see God unfolding it to me, then God has a chance to hold up a mirror and show me who I am.

So we roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty working 1:1 with someone in need, as well as advocating to create just systems that reduce the need for our assistance. We feed our souls, both individually and corporately, so we have the ability to discern where to focus our energy. This is a tall order! Lest we become discouraged or overwhelmed, Henri Nouwen says,

If we want to have all our bases covered before we act, nothing exciting will happen. But if we dare to take a few crazy risks because God asks us to do so, many doors, which we didn’t even know existed, will be opened for us. Maybe as a congregation we can take a few crazy risks to live out our values of peacemaking, compassion, and justice, and many doors, which we can’t even imagine today, will be opened for us. And in experiencing the crucifixion and suffering of the world, we will find our own new life and resurrection.

During my stay in Washington, DC, I worked in the garden at an organization called Nth St. Village where our daughter, Sarah, is completing a year of service through Lutheran Volunteer Corps. Nth St. Village provides a wide array of services for homeless women. As I planted and weeded, the women of Nth St. joked why would my daughter make me work out in the garden? The women assured me they were watching out for “our girl,” making sure she was “staying safe,” holding her in their ample embraces. Look how the seed that Cher planted has grown. Look how the circle of love flows between giver and recipient so at some point it’s hard to know who is the true giver and who is the true recipient.

As Jack Jezreel writes, “This is the heart of the Good News. It is good news, not just for those victims whose wounded lives might be healed by the work of compassion, justice, and peacemaking, but for the workers as well. It gives life and restores us as we recognize our common brokenness. This is the paradox of the cross: the embrace of human suffering is somehow the route to our own resurrection.
Today is Cher and Kira’s last Sunday in our community. What is Cher’s legacy to us? She has given our youth, and by extension, our congregation the experience of journey inward/ journey outward, the change that occurs inside us and among us when we come into contact with people who are poor, scared, in trouble, or wounded in some way, and we dare to sit beside them. You don’t see the majority of the youth who Cher has touched here with us this morning, because they are flung to the four corners of the world, doing God’s work in the world. Thank you, Cher, for helping us to see how we can be transformed. May this serve as a model for new life for our congregation as we move forward together.

In closing, we will take a few moments of silence, listening to God’s voice together.

With each breathe you take, imagine you are breathing in God’s peace given especially for you, and breathing out God’s love for each person in our world.

Imagine you are sitting in the light of God’s love; that loving your neighbor and loving yourself are in balance.

Is there a unique call for you to do God’s work in the world in a way that makes use of where you are in your life at this time? Maybe you have found calls that gives joy and meaning to your life; maybe you are looking.

Are there people who join with you, support you and hold you accountable, and give you grace and forgiveness when you need it?

Are you drawn to a place of silence: the woods, the garden, the lake: first morning light or quiet before sleep? Imagine yourself resting in that space.

May you deepen the journey inward and outward in ways that are as natural to you as your breath, as God’s spirit within.

4th Sunday of Lent

Elaine Frandrup — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:25:54 +0000

Sermon by Rev. Betty Clark

Where are the balloons? Where is the parade? Where is the party and the food to celebrate this miracle?

Whenever I have read this story in John’s gospel, I have wondered why nobody seemed happy about what had happened to this man who had been blind for his entire life!

But I should have been a bit suspicious right at the beginning of the encounter because the disciples with Jesus were not interested in the fact that this was a man who had been blind his entire life, but rather, wanted to know what his SIN was, to have caused such a judgment!

In order to understand the world around us, we like to be able to take it apart and find what we determine to be the cause of an event and then decide what effect it might have on our lives, if any!

Here Jesus tells the disciples “You ask the wrong question. Look instead at what God can do.”

This story unfolds in a way that can seem very strange to us. But I want you to let go of the familiarity of the story and try, instead, to put yourself in the position of each of the characters. So often in biblical stories, we see ourselves as the recipient of Jesus’ works or as Jesus, himself! So let us examine each of the main responders to the blind man after he regains his sight and see if we can identify with each one.

I was taught a long time ago that a key to understanding what others are going through is to try to put myself in their place. To let go of my own natural responses from my perspective, to break away from my assumptions and to open myself up to not only understanding the other more compassionatly but to learning something about myself that I may have been unwilling to acknowledge before.

Jesus has made a clay paste and put it on the eyes of the blind man and then sent him to wash at the Pool of Siloam. When the man does as he has been told he discovers that he can now see. Imagine for a minute what it would have been like for this man, who had never seen anything – not the sunlight, the grass, the people, before. I think that I would have rushed back to see those very people that I had only heard before and share the wonder of what I had just experienced.

I would have expected that these folks, my neighbors, perhaps friends, would be happy for me.

Instead, some of these people don’t even believe he is the same man! And they want to know how this had happened to him. See yourself as one of these neighbors - you have walked by this man every day for years and the fact that he was blind was just that — a fact.

What would be your first reaction to him claiming to see? Wouldn’t you want to know how this had happened and who else had been involved? That is not an unreasonable response. So the clear-sighted man tells them about the clay and the washing and the sudden awareness of sight but he cannot tell the the “who” of the event. And so they turn him over to the authorities!

These Pharisees, the religious authorities, were also skeptical and when they realized that this act had been accomplished on the Sabbath they were certain that this man couldn’t be from God for he had violated one of the rules of the Sabbath. Now put yourself in the place of these authorities - you are leaders of the church and the people bring in someone with this wild tale of being blind and now seeing. What would you do? Ask some questions? I am sure I would ask some questions. And when the answers did not satisfy then what would you do? In this story, they went directly to the rules – and came to one conclusion –that the person involved with this formerly blind man could not be God’s representative. You know I value rules — they make life much simpler. The question for each of us is, however, do we turn to the rules to avoid looking more deeply into something we don’t understand ? Do we use the rules to allow us to walk away from an issue saying that it is not within the purvue of the church? Questions for us to consider.

The leaders decided that this man before them was probably not blind to begin with and so they bring in his parents. His parents feel intimidated by the authorities and so they claim him as their son who was born blind but they back away from any other involvment with him.

Do we, as the church, or as individuals, ever find ourselves in that situation where to stand up with someone against the authorities will put us in a difficult position -? I would not like to think so, but I do believe it is worth my time to consider what I might do.

The man born blind is wonderfully consistent through out all of these confrontations with neighbors, family and religious authorities.

He does not know who cured him, he only knows that “I was blind, and now I see.” And he comes to realize through these encounters that only a man of God could have accomplished such a remarkable thing.

After he was thrown out of the temple, Jesus came to him once more, having heard of his trials. Jesus asks if he believes in the Son of Man, and acknowledges that he is this person. The blind man declares his belief and worships him.

This is an account of a miracle. We can choose to believe it or not. Are we able to see ourselves as having been blind at times in our lives and through experiences we may or may not understand, we suddenly can see clearly? Many years ago I found myself in South Korea as a social worker for Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota. I was there with a colleague to bring back to Minnesota some 10 children who were being adopted by Minnesota families. I was also to bring back a little girl, about 7or 8 years of age that my family and I were adopting. However, her visa had been delayed and the government did not seem eager to have it ready by the time we were to return to the U.S. The director of the LSS agency of South Korea, a fledgling agency at the time, called me the day before we were to return and told me that I would have to go to the governmental offices myself in order to get the visa and bring our new daughter home with me. I had a young Korean man who would be my guide. To say I was nervous would be inaccurate. I was just plain scared! But we began our trek through the governmental offices. I did not speak Korean and so my guide would precede me to each desk and make some comments. Then he and the person at the desk – another man – would look at me and laugh. Suddenly, in that place, I got in touch with what it must be like to really be in the minority — when those in power made no attempt to withhold their contempt. How frightening when. in a new situation, you become aware that you look very different from the majority, and you don’t speak the language and you have no one to help you. Suddenly an older, distinguished gentleman came into the office, walked over to me, bowed and said “Mrs. Clark?” I knew I had been saved! But I also knew that I would not ever forget what it felt like to alone in a strange land and know I did not belong. I had thought myself enlightened about such things only to find out how different it was to actually be in the minority. That learning was a gift to me. I was blind but then I began to see.

Search your hearts and find those times when you, too, have been give new sight. If we are open to it, it happens often. If we close ourselves off by being rule-bound, or frightened about what we might lose if we stand firm or try always to understand “what” and “why” and “how” instead of accepting the miracle, the gift of grace.

In a few moments, we will share the communion bread and cup with each other. This is one of those opportunities that comes to us on a regular basis - and sometimes, I fear, we can approach it as just another part of “church”. Sometimes we find ourselves trying to describe it, or defend it. Neither of those responses are needed.

We have been invited to share the bread and the cup that Jesus shared with his closest friends.

And we have been asked to remember as we participate in the sharing of the bread and cup the gift from God that was and is centered in this man Jesus. In the act of sharing and remembering, grace abounds and once more we see.

“Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

Where is God?

Elaine Frandrup — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:46:31 +0000

3^rd Sunday in Lent – March 27, 2011

Sermon by Reverend Betty Clark

Where is God when an entire country suffers through an earthquake, a tsunami, and radiation fears?

Where is God while families are living lives of desperation as they try to locate members of their own families and those of their neighbors, knowing that the odds of finding them alive grow smaller each day?

Where is God when in nation after nation (you choose the one that concerns you most), there are leaders that order their military forces to fire on their own people?

Where is God when poverty covers the globe and people die because they are unfortunate enough to live in a poor country with few resources?

Where is God when people in wealthy countries are forced from their homes and their jobs and end up living on the streets?

Where is God when illness destroys families? Where s God when loneliness and desperation mark so many lives?

Where is God when churches, all themselves “Christian,” put each other down, instead of working together to lift each other and the world up?

Where is God when you have given up a life of some security, escaped from slavery, and find yourselves without water?

The first questions are mine. And perhaps, yours. The last question was that of the Israelites finding themselves in the desert and losing trust in God’s word as Moses as relayed it to them.

It is true—God, though Moses, had led them to freedom and the promise of a land of their own. It was a powerful motivator, that promise! And they were anxious to leave Egypt, even if it had been a good place for their fathers—it was no longer a safe place to be and there was no doubt that they had moved from being welcomed in the community to becoming slaves.

And so, they successfully cross the Red Sea with the help of God opening the seas before them and then closing the waters on the following soldiers. And it is true that as they traveled and suddenly were without water and food, God, once again, came through and provided for them. Now, however, they find themselves, once again, thirsty! They begin to murmur!

When I was a student at United Seminary, we had a class on the Old Testament. And Professor Merrill was an excellent teacher but he was also somewhat demanding. When we came to the Exodus stories and came to this one, he went on at some length about the people and their murmuring. As students, we couldn’t resist. From that moment on, whenever we felt the assignment was excessive we would, in unison, start saying, “murmur, murmur, murmur,” and would continue until he said, “That’s not funny!” Whereupon we all laughed, including our Professor, and moved on. Murmuring is part of our DNA!

As the Israelites continued with their murmuring, they began to confront Moses until Moses began to resent their aiming their anger at him and said, “It is God that you are questioning.”

God didn’t get in the middle of the argument—(wisdom!)—but encouraged Moses to pick up the staff that had helped him quiet the sea, and to find water the first time, and told him to take the elders and go to a large rock, hit it with the staff, and the rock would open and spew forth water to drink! God also told Moses, “I will be with you.”

The frustration of no water was not the real frustration. It was of course, very real—they could not live without water. But the underlying fear was that they had been abandoned—that God was no longer with them and if that were true, they had no future.

It did not matter at the moment that God had always cared for them—had always been there for them—had led them with pillar of fire and cloud when they were lost and without direction. They had very short memories! They were a lot like we are.

God could not enter into a covenant with a people who felt God was untrustworthy. And it would take many years of wandering in that wilderness before these people could, unequivocally, trust God to always be present. There were many times when that trust faltered. Many times when they came back to trust God once more.

My question for us is, do WE trust God to be with us? This has not been an “easy” sermon to put together. Mainly, I believe, because I am really preaching to myself and allowing you to listen in.

Oftentimes clergy are prone to put themselves in Moses’ shoes! “Ah, woe is me! I have worked hard to keep these folks faithful! I have told them time and again what they must do and still they question me! O God! What can I do?” My difficulty with that attitude (I am not saying I haven’t been there) is that I entered the “professional” ministry at midlife—I was fifty-one when ordained. And so I spent many years in the pew. And I am here to say that the murmuring is not only from the people, it is often from the clergy as well—who is asking the question, “Where is God?” We all are!

One of our clergy tells the story of a recent encounter he had. He had only recently returned to pulpit ministry and was meeting some of his clergy colleagues in the community. One of them told him that he had tried to introduce this fellow’s predecessor as the pastor from Plymouth Congregational Church. He had been quickly corrected and told to use the term “minister” instead! He then asked why it made such a difference.

The new minister suggested that each of them fulfilled both the pastoral and the ministerial roles as the circumstances dictated. Then he went on to say: Pastor comes from a pastoral setting in which the shepherd guides the sheep and the sheep willingly follow. Most Congregationalists (and I would say, UCCers!) know little of this, because we value our freedom so much. There are few sheep, if any, to be led in Congregational Churches. Our work is more analogous to herding cats!

Moses probably felt the same way about the Israelites. Freedom is a wonderful gift—but it requires that those to whom it is offered must make a choice and become participants along with the one making the offer!

While I was still a seminary student I was part of a women’s group that met regularly both for support and for growth in our chosen work. Each time we met we would begin with a question. At one such meeting the question asked was “what is the most important aspect of God to you?” Not a simple question. It was quiet for some time, and then one of the women spoke up. She said: “The most precious aspect of God for me is God’s unfailing faithfulness.”

We have been offered a drink of “living water.” We have said yes to the opportunity to follow the footsteps of Jesus on our journey. We give God thanks when our blessings overwhelm us. We must also give God thanks for God’s faithful presence when the struggles of life weigh us down. And we must pull our own weight and do what we are able to do on behalf of others.

Where is God? Right here, my friends. Right here. Amen.

Banking on Tomorrow

Andrea Pegram — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:46:45 +0000

Banking on Tomorrow by Interim Minister Jeff Barton

Exodus 32:7-14 and Luke 15:1-10

The stories read this morning from Exodus and Luke are quite familiar. The larger context is important, or course, but an adaptation and condensation for our purposes today might well focus on the issue of money. Are we a community that fears what is before us so that we will spend recklessly – not in faith but in an idolatrous surrender to what is popular? Or are we a community that knows the promise and possibility of God before us so that we will be persistent in seeking the treasures given to us towards the opportunity to spend and give in celebration with each other as a people of joy and mutual covenant?

Which would you bank on, if forced to choose, today?

I’ve been pleased to partake of the Defeat of Jesse James Days festivities here in Northfield these past days. I hope the walleye on a stick vendor will still be there for my lunch today. And I’ve enjoyed the bank robbery and town response reenactments maybe a bit more than is seemly. But in context with the DJJD weekend, let me use our 7 minute Northfield historical legend to offer 7 points to ponder as we enter this interim year together. I’m banking on you knowing — that while three points and a poem may be a more standard outline for a sermon — I won’t more than double the time you are held at risk nor will you take up arms against my attempt to rob you of the rest of your Sunday. Consider these seven observations previews of coming attractions in our time together. And there will not today, alas, be a feature presentation following the preview trailers to which I’ll now attend:

Point 1 – If we are to be a community that is truly one of seeking the goodness of God and the promise of our Christ, we need to seek with expectation and with purpose for that which seems lost. The craziness of leaving 99 sheep to find one is a story for another day. But that shepherd, and our seeking the lost coin example, both offer a sense of purpose that is not merely a spiritual exercise. I’ve often wondered about the wisdom of seeking the lost coin in context with the expense of spending what might have been even more to celebrate the rediscovery of the missing money. But I’ve more or less come to appreciate that – as a person of faith participating in a community of shared concern and ministry – the celebration costs were already budgeted to be spent. Thus the lost coin might not have been the tenth to be offered to God, but the tenth to be saved when the larger portion that was already committed to the work and need of the community in faith was offered to feed and sustain the neighbors.

Point 2. The exodus peoples, like a church during an interim, is threatened with challenges and gifted with opportunities. And it is hard, at times, to now which is which. Moses might have been an interim pastor, or not, but regardless he dealt with a faith community in a time of transition. There was lots of murmuring, one of my favorite Biblical concepts even if it is negative. And there was the repeated call to return to Egypt and slavery, where at least we woke up each day knowing what to expect. And there was the fearful sense that if Yahweh was going to be so hard to figure out, we would be better off putting our wealth where we could see it in the form of the golden idol. God calls us to seek without guarantee because in confidence and trust we do find the future to be blessed, for us and for those generations yet to come. For the exodus people that was the promised land, a place that would not have been reached if they had stopped around the idol that they had made.

Point 3. The world around us is filled with temptations to stop seeking the future. Just when we sort out many ( but never all ) of the challenges for our generation, new challenges arise. We , I pray, mostly come to appreciate that our society is better off when we include and affirm those who were seen and less than us, when we discover that there are others who are different as well. In our own lifetimes and this congregation we have come to put aside a general (though never particular, I understand) discounting of African-Americans or women as capable leaders for both lay or clergy roles in our faith covenant. Now we seek to share our sense that our sons and daughters will be open and affirming to yet others – gay, lesbian, Asian, Latino, or even vegans in this dairy state – who were not even on our radar when radar itself was new. We seek to be in respectful cooperation and conversation with Judaism and Islam, and wonder why that’s so hard for so many still. Why that’s hard for us at times. There is still value and promise worth seeking for as we look to celebrate the possibilities for us as humans in community and as servants of a still – speaking, still – teaching, still – giving God.

Point 4. September is designated as Recovery Month by those who search and seek every day for the freedom from captivity to the idol of addictions. A couple of Sundays ago I was less then thoughtful to some as I shared what had been my stories about my high school reunion and about the state fair horticulture awards. Thus, I want to urge us all to be mindful within any community we all are called to celebrate with those who discover another day, or week, or year of sobriety. the recovery of a lost coin among many, or a lost season in a life of more productive purpose, is reason for angels to rejoice, and for all of us, myself foremost, to be thoughtful and affirming.

Point 5. (Do you hear the pistols firing from the 11 am re-enactment yet? Good, let’s continue.) The word is becoming known here at First UCC that we face a stewardship challenge for our 2011 annual budget. Some of you understand already that in the past years we have been able to subsidize the local ministry budget of First UCC with otherwise undesignated reserve funds, the blessings of the stewardship of past members and better economic seasons. Let me be clear without being overly concerned, those reserves will not be available in the year ahead, or in the years beyond that. As our 2011 stewardship campaign unfolds, beginning with the annual letters to be sent off to you this coming week, let’s be in shared covenant for what has been discovered. We at First UCC still are generous at the highest levels for our wider mission commitments, and that’s worth a festival all by itself. We at First UCC will need to seek and find more lost coins, or discretionary bills, for the work of our local ministry in the years ahead. We have been blessed to have the impact of the national and global economies mitigated over the past few years by the stewardship of others. Other congregations across the nation have not often been so fortunate. Now it is the season for us, together, to diligently and persistently find all that we can to make 2011 a year, and the future a season where the promise of God for us and for all will continue to be celebrated with the joy of giving and the pleasure of sharing the good news our faith makes known.

Point 6. Stewardship is not, this year or ever, merely the assigning of a percentage of one’s annual income for donation to the budget of the church. The idea of the steward is more about enjoying the bounty of someone else’s wealth as a servant or employee tending the garden, managing the woods, conserving the game, harvesting the orchards, seeking the welfare of the herds and flocks. Consider the call again of these lessons today. How many of us might, just might, be urged to ask a family or a friend who has been absent from First UCC for some time to return? Sometimes seeking the lost is a little more literal than most often we might consider. If 10 or 20 “lost” (still in the area and not yet covenanted with another congregation) households could be returned to our covenant community and our congregational life, we would show a sense of faithfulness worth celebrating. And by the way, we don’t ask folks to return because we need their money. We urge folks to re-covenant with us because we our sense of party and rejoicing will be greater with them, and with new friends and members, all gathered in shared thanksgiving for the grace of Christ and the light of the Spirit on our way.

Point 7. This interim season is remarkably important. Now as I am an intentional interim ministry specialist, you might expect me to say that. But over the coming weeks and months, we need to be open to the future and seeking the gifts of God for us and this Northfield region with extra attention. The average length of a pastorate (when associates are included) is less than four years in UCC and similar traditions. Its been three times that long since you have done the visioning and re-prioritizing of your own sense of future that a pastoral search and call process encourages. Oh, I don’t mean to suggest that you are the same congregation you were in the mid 1990’s, for it’s good to be in a church tradition that doesn’t cringe to use the concept of evolution. But what we do, and what your search and call committee, to be designated and commissioned in the same next weeks that our stewardship drive will take place, what your search and call committee will undertake in servant leadership with you will matter more than anything else you have done for the future of the next decade or more of First UCC and its local ministry. This is a time to turn one’s eyes gladly from what we have to what we might discover about our life and work and worship together. It’s a time to seek, persistently and diligently, the promise and possibility of God for us, and to celebrate all that we find in thanksgiving and with joy.

(Ok, I still hear no gunfire from division street, and that’s good.)

So, there it is. 7 points, each of them a preview of what we will together share as we keep banking on our future in the good news of Christ’s gospel for us and for our neighbors. Seek, find, spend, rejoice. Amen.

Blessings

Sandy Johnson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:38:41 +0000

My time as minister of First UCC has been filled with blessings, so that’s what I preached about on my last Sunday.

Blessings

Numbers 6:22-27;Matthew 5:1-10; Psalm 23 (choir; arranged by Bobby McFarrin)

There are two things that Ministers can do at the end of worship: they can send you forth with instructions about changing the world, or they can offer a blessing. Last week I gave you plenty of instructions (and copies of the handout are available for those of you who missed that sermon), so this week I will speak to you of blessings.

I have had many opportunities to ask for God’s blessings on your behalf, and this morning I want to revisit some of them. I will have a few words to say about each of the blessings, but my real aim is to offer these cherished words again to all of you.

We begin, as Christian life does, with baptism. I have presided at 116 baptisms in my time here. Six or eight of them have been for adults, and another dozen or so for confirmation youth who had not been baptized as infants; the majority have been infants or young children.

So after I have marked their foreheads with water and spoken the ancient words of baptism, and before we process around the sanctuary, we have said these words together:

The Holy Spirit be upon you … child of God, disciple of Christ, member of the church.

In the teenage years, the time comes for our youth to make a personal choice to follow the way of Christ and to be a member of this company of Christ’s followers. We call that time confirmation, and we have marked this event together 96 times with both solemnity and celebration. Each young person comes forward with her/his family, kneels on the steps, and receives this blessing:

May the God of all Grace, who has called you to Christian faith and service, confirm and strengthen you in the Holy Spirit and keep you a faithful disciple for all of your days.

As time passes, young adults – and some who are not so young – choose to unite themselves in marriage, making a sacred covenant of love, care, and fidelity; I have presided at 99 weddings and covenant services since I came to Northfield. The blessing that we offer to them names Abraham and Sarah as watching over all the families of the earth. I want to remind you that the descendants of Abraham and Sarah had some very interesting, complex, and blended families – for example, that the 12 sons and 1 daughter of Jacob had four different mothers – two wives and two servants. So although I have often offered this blessing at weddings, it is also offered to all of those who make a home for themselves …

May the God of Sarah and Abraham, who watches over all the families of the earth, bless your new family and establish your home in peace and steadfast love.

We offer a blessing, too, to all of the people who find their way to our congregation and choose to become members with us in this manifestation of the Body of Christ. There have been 251 new members (in addition to the Confirmands) since October of 1997. People come to our church along many paths: some from other churches where they have been active, some from churches where they have been disappointed or angered, some from no church background at all. And wherever they come from, we offer them these words:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,

build upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

The blessing that affects me most profoundly each time I offer it is the one that comes at the end of a funeral or memorial service; I have offered it 131 times as I served as your minister. Technically these are “The Words of Commendation,” but I think of them as a blessing for the one who has died and the ones who grieve:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant ….. Acknowledge, we humbly pray, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a son/daughter of your own redeeming. Receive him/her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed est of everlasting peace, and into the company of all the saints in light.

The blessing that we have shared most often, week in and week out, is the one that comes at the end of the Sunday worship service. I do not know where these words came from, though I think I cobbled them together. I wanted them to be loyal to the historic understanding of the Triune God, but I also wanted them to be unconventional enough to catch your attention each week as you returned to the world. I offer them now, and will again at the end of today’s service:

And now may the power and abundance of God our Creator, the mercy and compassion of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, and the courage and vitality of the Holy Spirit of Our Sustainer, go with you this day and always.

I have always believed that the members of this congregation know what the world needs, and are ready to go out and get to work. I still believe that. So this week, I do not offer any more words of commissioning, but only these words of blessing, which I offer with all my love and gratitude for our time together.

Amen.

Prayer for June 27, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of all times and places, we offer our prayers today for our own congregation.

We thank you for the pioneers who came before us and established a church here in your name and in the Congregational tradition. We remember their faithfulness, their determination, and their generosity, and we pray that we may be their spiritual heirs in all of these virtues.

We thank you, too, for the women and men who carried forward these ideals through the years, who invested their talents and energies in the congregation and the community. We are grateful, too, for the bonds they formed with other churches, and for the worship, education, and outreach we have shared with our sisters and brothers. Let our continuing work and support for the church, the community, and the world be a living prayer of thanksgiving for their legacy to us.

And we thank you for calling us, in this century, to be part of the Body of Christ in this place. Inspire us, we pray, to honor the traditions of the past while moving boldly into your future. Help us to speak your word in today’s words, and to follow your way in today’s ways.

But we remember too, O Holy One, that being your church is easy on days of celebration; grant us the courage and stamina to be your church on the ordinary days, the days of challenge and crisis, the days of sorrow and blessing, the days of abundance and of need.

We confess to you our temptation to allow our congregation to be a theological debating club, or a community betterment society, or a social service agency. These are worthy activities, but they are not enough to make us your church. When we are tempted to be less than you call us to be, shake us back into clarity about our vocation as your hands, your voice, your feet, your heart. Interrupt our preoccupation with meetings and events, startle us out of our tired habits of worship, and scuttle our careful plans for the future. Ignite us, instead, with the power of your spirit, that it may fill us with the fire of our love for you and of our longing for the promised world of your Shalom.

All this we pray in the name of the one who lived among us as our brother, and lives among us still as our Risen Savior, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ….

The Church of Our Dreams

Sandy Johnson — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:51:24 +0000

When I taught college classes, I learned that the best way to get students’ attention was to number the items I was lecturing about. So I used that tactic to share my dreams for the future life of the congregation.

The Church of Our Dreams

Psalm 42; Romans 12:9-18; Luke 5:36-39

At some meeting or another, you may have heard me talk about “the church of my dreams.” That’s the church where things run smoothly, priorities are set and kept, volunteers are delighted to offer their talents, and the stewardship drive is always successful.

But for the last 12 ¾ years I have served not “the church of my dreams,” but this church.

Nonetheless, as I head into my last week as your Minister, I still have dreams for this church. So this morning I am going to offer a “charge” to this church – a list of things that I hope you will do and be in the future. My list is not quite as elegant and poetic as the one St. Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans; to make it easier, there is a handout. Here’s what I hope you will do:

Come to church. I know, it won’t be the same without me. More importantly, it won’t be the same without you. During this time of transition, through the Interim period, and into the tenure of the next Minister, the church needs everyone. And whatever has brought you to church in the first place is still a need in your life – you still need to express gratitude and praise for God, you still need to explore the scriptures, you still need to hear a word of forgiveness, you still need to share words of caring and hope. So come to church.

Give money to the church. If you already pledge to the church, dig down and give a little more. If you don’t pledge, call the church tomorrow and ask Elaine to send you a pledge form. Your commitment to the church will feed your own spirit as well as support the ministries and programs that you value. At the very least, you all need to contribute $3480—which is the amount that my pledge would have been for the rest of this year. That’s $580 a month.

Give money away. Some of the finest hours of this church have come when we have – together – given money away. The obvious examples are the $20,000 checks we gave to Health Finders and to Permanent Supportive Housing, and the $10,000 to the UCC seminaries – all gifts during our Sesquicentennial celebration. But there are dozens of smaller, equally meaningful examples: the Sunday School children’s fund raisers for the Heifer Project, the Mission Trip youth raising money for the PALS program in Alamosa, New Mexico, the small (but significant) gifts to our now-ordained members when they were in seminary. We are at our best when we are at our most generous. Keep doing it.

Say Thank You, Often and Earnestly. Our generosity grows most verdantly out of grateful hearts, and we can cultivate those grateful hearts by thanking one another. There are never too many gestures of appreciation, too many thank-you notes, or too frequent recognitions of those who serve faithfully and well.

Don’t forget that you are an Open and Affirming Congregation. I want to say this in two ways. Part A: remember that our faith (and our advertising) calls us to welcome people wherever they are on life’s journeys; please keep doing that. Some of the most remarkable stories of transformation and spiritual growth have happened to people who you might not expect to have come here in the first place. Part B: remember that we have a special vocation to welcome and affirm members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Our commitment to equality is so strong that we easily forget that there is much work left to be done to assure that GLBT people, and their covenanted relationships, are treated fairly and with dignity. Until there is no harassment or bullying in schools, until there is no stigma for same-sex couples at Prom, until the Minister signs marriage licenses for all the couples who make vows of love and fidelity – until then, there is a lot of work to do as an Open & Affirming Church.

Trust your leaders. The people who volunteer their time to oversee the work of the church need your encouragement, your prayers, and your trust. Assume that they know what they are doing; they usually do. Do not assume that your opinion is wiser, more faithful, or practical than theirs unless you have actually studied the problem, done the research, evaluated the options, and consulted with others.

Make Room for Beginners and Amateurs. The church needs to be a place where people can try new things, develop their talents, and make mistakes. Watch our musicians for good models: Theo, Chris, Bob, and Janet not only make room for beginners, they help those first efforts to be authentic contributions to our worship and our other programs. Go and do likewise.

Come to church on Wednesdays. The WFFF program that was initiated last year was a smashing success. It brought people together to share meals, learn new things, and make connections. Do something to help this program continue: offer to help in the kitchen, help pay to hire a cook, read stories or play games, get to know someone you never knew before.

Put up Banners. This one is personal. I love our worship space and deeply appreciate the handsome makeover that celebrated our sesquicentennial. But I also really miss the dramatic changes that we used to make for the seasons of the church year – banners, hanging swaths of fabric, and the like. I hope you will look at the sanctuary and imagine ways that the space could be periodically transformed to enhance our worship.

Figure Out what it means to be Congregational in the Twenty-First Century. First, let me remind you that being “congregational” does not mean that every member participates in every decision. Being “congregational” has meant, in the past, a belief that God works in and speaks to every gathering of the faithful: every local church, every conference, every part of the national setting, and so on. Our task is to discern what ministries God is calling us to, and what ways of organizing and resourcing those ministries is most likely to be faithful and effective. I am pretty sure that those ways are not only the ones we have been using for the past 50 or 60 years, and I hope you will take seriously the task of finding ways for the church to be nimbler, more responsive, and more focused on what is truly important than we have been in the past. Get new wineskins, people.

Allow yourselves time to grieve during the coming period of transition. My retirement is a bittersweet moment for the congregation and for many of you individually. And in the natural grieving that will be present in the next few weeks it will be important not to let the bitter overtake the sweet. Part of the normal process of grieving is to experience not only sadness, but also anger, confusion, lethargy, irritation, and impatience. It is awfully easy for these natural responses to develop into conflicts, resentments, or dysfunctions of various kinds. I hope that will not happen here. I hope you will trust your leaders (see # 6!) and your Interim Minister, and that you will treat one another with patience and understanding. One of the best ways you can show your appreciation for my ministry is not getting into a fight as soon as I leave.

And finally: Lighten Up. We who care deeply for God’s world can easily be drawn into despair, worry, or just plain over-earnestness. We who aspire to compassion sometimes forget that compassion is not just about sadness and suffering, but also about joy and healing. The Gospel of John puts it this way: What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. [John 1:3b-5] We are people of the light, and we ought to live and work and worship together in ways that the light is visible to everyone who watches us. So I hope you will play more, laugh more, sing more silly songs, and let your light shine.

You will notice that I haven’t said anything about strategic planning, capital fund raising, governance reorganization, or air conditioning; I’ll leave those for my successor. But while you are working on all those things, I hope you will remember these 12 dreams that I offer today, dreams for the health and vitality of this wonderful company of God’s people.

Amen.

Prayer for June 20, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

Holy One, we pray this morning for all the people who have been fathers to us, both men and women – those who sired us, those who raised us, those who loved, challenged, and corrected us.

We are grateful to you, our divine parent, for all of the people who have stepped into our lives to bring your love to us in human form. We thank you for the faith and fortitude they have shown, for the sacrifices and compromises they have made on our behalf, and for lessons they have taught us. Bless each of these, and fill them with the knowledge of the ways that they have contributed to our lives.

We acknowledge with special compassion those people whose care for us was limited by their own shortcomings and by the events and complications of their own lives. Bless them for their loving intentions, and give us loving hearts to receive their gifts gratefully, even as we also acknowledge our disappointment or loss.

We thank you, too, Gracious God, for the opportunity to offer nurture, encouragement, and mentoring to others. Help us all – men and women, old and young – to demonstrate the best of what fathering is: love, discipline, hope, and health. Forgive us when we fall short of these ideals, and give us persistence and patience to continue these relationships.

In a world where men’s work is often disrespected, underpaid, unrecognized, and devalued, we ask your particular blessing on the men who serve you and others faithfully, and on the women who respect, reward, recognize, and value them.

All these things we pray in the name of the one who honored his own father and invited men into the ministry of the church, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us …

First offered (with other pronouns!) on Mother’s Day, May 13, 2007 and on Father’s day in 2007 & 2008

Who Do You See?

Sandy Johnson — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:44:30 +0000

A ll four Gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus, but the version in Luke does not focus on the extravagance of the act. Instead, Luke directs our attention to a poignant question: “Do you see this woman?”

Who Do You See?

Luke 7:36 – 8:3

Over the last 12 ¾ years I have drawn on many sources for my sermons: personal experience, movies, books, songs, visual art on the wall, even jokes, texting, and Facebook. But I never expected to use Terry Mitchell’s doctoral dissertation

in a sermon; Terry is my former husband.

He did his graduate work in social psychology with Dr. Fred Fiedler at the University of Illinois. Fred studied leadership and had developed a questionnaire that asked subjects to describe the co-worker they most preferred to work with, and the one they least preferred to work with. In a whole series of studies, there was a positive correlation between the tendency to say nice things about one’s Least Preferred Coworker and various measures of leadership effectiveness.

What Terry did was to tease out what might lead someone to say nice things about a co-worker who he/she didn’t enjoy working with. The research Terry did (and I don’t recall the details, but I am sure it involved lots of questionnaires!) showed that high scores on LPC (Least Preferred Co-worker) were actually measures of cognitive complexity – the ability to hold several pieces of information simultaneously, even if those bits of information were complex, inconsistent, or even paradoxical. So a manager who could identify both good and bad traits in a staff member was likely to be more effective than someone who saw only good or only bad.

The Pharisee who hosted the dinner in today’s reading saw only bad in the woman who came into his house with an alabaster jar of ointment. He saw a sinner.

Jesus, on the other hand, had a more cognitively complex view of her. He acknowledged that she had sinned, but he saw more in her and of her than that. He saw her as a person who had offered the traditional courtesy of washing his feet when he entered; he saw her as a person who greeted him with a kiss; he saw her as someone who honored him by anointing him with oil. He saw her.

That compassionate vision is notably scarce in our public life at the moment. The loud voices of 2010 come from observers who see in only one dimension, who simplify persons and problems by ignoring all of the complexities and nuances. Those oversimplified visions are then expressed in sound bytes that exaggerate differences, inflame emotions, and contribute to an adversarial culture of litigation and conflict.

Part of our vocation as Christians is, of course, to be peacemakers. And the making of peace requires us to push back against this culture of one dimensional vision and to insist that persons are more than just

The language of this is to use fewer nouns and more adjectives in our descriptions of one another. Instead of “hawk” or “dove,” we might say “woman who believes force is necessary to defend freedom,” or “man who is dedicated to peace,” Instead of “tea party member,” we might say “person concerned about the dangers of excess government power,” or perhaps even “person concerned about the dangers of excess government who is also a fly fishing enthusiast and a Scrabble player.”

The point is that these nouns – man, woman, person – turn our attention to the wholeness of individuals. They provide us avenues on which we can search for common ground, areas in which we might find common concerns, places where we might act together and move forward together. Peace making grows when we look at one another the way Jesus looks at us.

There is also a kind of peace within ourselves that grows when we look at ourselves the way Jesus looks at us. One of the gifts I found in middle age was the capacity to own all of myself – to become much clearer (though not perfectly clear!) about my talents and my shortcomings, my strengths and my foibles, my virtues and my habitual sins. I turned away (most of the time) from scolding myself for what I don’t do well, and turned towards finding ways to accomplish those things – often by cooperating and collaborating with others. At the same time, I began to find ways to truly appreciate qualities and skills that are mine, and to find ways to express and use them with joy and satisfaction.

Inner peace does not mean turning a blind eye to real sin. We are careful, even cautious, about the use of the word “sin” in our congregation and in our progressive Christian tradition. Many folks come to our church precisely because they have been uncomfortable (or even harmed) by a language of sin that is blaming, shaming, and punitive. Let me suggest this morning that if we are going to see ourselves and others through the eyes of Jesus, we need to reclaim the word “sin” and the truth that it represents.

That truth is that we are not the people we want to be, and we are not the people that God hopes we will be. We begin our worship every Sunday with a prayer of confession precisely for this reason. Our spiritual journeys – as well as our relationships and daily lives – are hampered by the ways in which we are self-centered, distractible, greedy, and conventional. And some of those roadblocks are reasonably labeled as sin. The good news for Christians is our conviction that God forgives our sins and offers us renewal of life, but we are not spared the knowledge that we have erred, that we have exploited others, that we have failed to care for our neighbors or work for justice, and that we have let our devotion to God be crowded out by the business and busyness of our lives.

There are versions of the story of the anointing of Jesus in all four of the gospel accounts. The other three all focus on the expense of the ointment that the woman uses, and Jesus’ defense of her action. I love preaching from all three of them, because they give me an opportunity to speak about extravagance – a virtue that is often missing in the church. But in this version of the story, it is the question that Jesus asked the Pharisee that haunts me: “Do you see this woman?”

I began by arguing that this text calls us to a kind of cognitively complex way of looking at one another and ourselves, but I must end by arguing that the complexity we need is as much spiritual as it is cognitive. We are called to search for and nurture the capacity to see persons and events with spiritually complex eyes. We are invited to look more deeply and more prayerfully at one another, to see sin when it is present, but also to see generosity, hospitality, affection, ambition, and hope. We are called to look at the world with eyes that love, with eyes that see with both clarity and compassion. May the story of this ancient sister of ours lead us in that direction.

Prayer for June 13, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of Birth and of Resurrection, we pray in gratitude and anxiety about the opportunities you put before us in the Gospel.

You have promised us forgiveness if we repent and ask for it; you have offered us grace without conditions or restrictions; you have even offered us life beyond life. We praise you and thank you for these remarkable gifts.

We pray for wisdom and courage to receive these gifts with an open heart. Help us to accept your mercy on our sinfulness, our neglectfulness, our thoughtlessness, our heartlessness. Help us to accept your mercy even when we may not be ready to forgive ourselves, and even when those whom we have wronged are not ready to forgive us. Bore through our resistance to hear this good news, past our sense of fairness and propriety, and into our hearts that are longing for your healing and forgiving touch.

We pray for energy and imagination to enter the new phases of life, the new chapters of our autobiographies. Temper our solemn moods with moments of levity, with breaths of laughter, with flashes of humble reality about our own foolishness and self-importance. Let us, instead, be refreshed by the winds of your spirit; bring us the lightness and liveliness of young adventure, the freedom to experiment and make mistakes, the depth of confidence to follow your call.

Save us, we pray, from the illusion that nothing will ever change, that nothing can ever change. Illuminate, instead, the first steps of the new road that you have put before us. We do not expect a highway without shadows, but we do look to you to accompany us through the dark stretches, and to remind us of the light ahead.

As the summer begins, refresh our understanding of the faith, and renew our commitment to live as disciples of the one who came to us as a baby, who lived with us as a brother, and who is present with us still as our Risen Savior, even Jesus the Christ. Let us pray together now in the words that he taught us …

November 28, 2004

Enough

Sandy Johnson — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:21:17 +0000

The story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath got me to thinking about scarcity and abundance, and about what is “enough.”

Enough

1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146

Two sermons emerged for me this week from the passage about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The first one is inspiring and the second one is troubling. Inspiration first.

There is enough.

Again and again in the Bible we are reminded of the extravagance of God’s creation, God’s grace, and God’s providence. Time and again hungry people are fed – by quails and manna in the Old Testament, and by loaves and fishes in the New. People who offer hospitality, like this widow, are rewarded with unlimited food (in this case, a jar of meal that was no emptied and a jug of oil that did not fail.) [1 Kings 17:16]

Believing that there is “enough” is a powerful force in our lives. When we believe there is enough, we are likely to be cheerful, generous, and optimistic. Contrariwise, when we believe there is not enough, we are likely to be cranky, selfish, and pessimistic.

The widow from Zarephath begins by worrying that there is not enough. Her worry nearly causes her to neglect one of the primary obligations of life in the ancient Middle East, which was to offer shelter and food to travelers and strangers. Using those words we often hear from angels (Do not be afraid), Elijah gently convinces her to make him a little cake of the meal and oil. Her first reward is, as I said a moment ago, unlimited supplies of flour and oil. Her second reward is the miraculous healing of her son.

The problem with interpreting the story this way is that it can easily lead you to believe that doing good deeds is the road to material reward. Some of you may have encountered preachers who proclaim a “Gospel of Prosperity,” which asserts that God wants you to be wealthy, and if you will believe that fervently enough and work hard enough, riches will come to you. It is true that you can find examples in the Bible where virtue is rewarded … but it is also true that we all know a great many cases in which the only reward for virtue is, as the saying goes, virtue itself.

That leads me to the troubling sermon. I am troubled that I live with a faith that proclaims that God provides enough for all people, and yet I live in an economic system that doesn’t work that way.

I remember taking basic economics in college, and being startled by the definition of economics: the allocation of scarce resources. Capitalism works because some goods and services are scarce, and it doesn’t work very well if everything is abundant. Communism and Socialism have tried to even out the distribution of wealth, often without great success.

Please do not lean forward in your seats and start taking notes; I am not going to say anything that will really resolve this underlying and troublesome contradiction in our lives. I have no solution to this dilemma.

But I do have a suggestion: live like the widow, and give what God’s asks from you.

Lend you behavior, your voice, and your energy, as often as you can, in support of the abundance side. And lend your behavior, your voice, and your energy, as often as you can, to gently refute the scarcity side.

What this strategy will do is to make you aware of how often we are invited, encouraged, and bullied into believing in scarcity and acting in selfishness. It happens in the marketplace, which shouldn’t surprise us, I guess. But it also happens in public life, in the political arena, and about issues as varied as a Spanish translator for Northfield, a football stadium for the Vikings, or medical care for wounded military veterans. The discussion is almost never about what is the best, most compassionate, most generous ways we can meet the needs of our community; it is almost always a lament about what we can “afford” and what we can’t.

Now before you take a deep breath of relief, let’s confess together that this point of view is possible because I am a white, well-educated North American who has never faced a night without shelter, a day without food, or a future without possibilities. I am, as most of you are, richer than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, and most of those who are alive now. It is pretty easy for me to preach about “abundance.”

I don’t think it helps to feel guilty about any of that, but it does help to be honest about it. It does help to recognize that we cannot really talk about economic justice unless we are willing to listen to the voices of our brothers and sisters whose labor really is exploited, whose efforts are really not appreciated, and whose skills are really not rewarded.

And it also helps to remember together that God’s promises of abundance are usually made in the plural and not in the singular. We lose that in most English translations of the Bible, because in English, the word “you” is both singular and plural. We have been quick to hear God speaking to us individually, and much slower to hear God speaking to us as communally, as part of communities and communities of faith.

For those of us who grew up in the United States, it is easy to believe that being a Christian is just part of the culture. We expect our Christian values to be in line with the values of the world around us. We do not expect to be counter-cultural people. And yet …. we are.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we do not believe that some people deserve to be enormously wealthy while others are in need; we do not believe that scarcity is a good and necessary thing; we do not believe that important decisions should be made primarily on the basis of their cost.

And if we should find ourselves waffling on those convictions, reading Psalm 146 will make our faith firm again – affirm and confirm who we are. The ancient poet reminds us of the character of God: the one who created heaven and earth, the one who executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets prisoners frees, opens the eyes of the blind, and lifts up those who are bowed down. This is the God whom we love, whom we worship, and whom we serve. And this is the God who does not let us be inspired without also troubling us, nor to be troubled without also inspiring us.

Prayer for June 6, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of our hearts and minds, this morning we offer our prayers for those circumstances in our lives that we cannot usually bring ourselves to say aloud. Help us to name before you and one another the disappointments, shames, sorrows, and shortcomings that eat away at our faith and our wellbeing.

We pray for our relationships that are conflicted, dispirited, or unfulfilling.

We pray for ourselves and our loved ones who live with mental illness.

We pray for ourselves and our loved ones who live with chronic health conditions.

And we pray for those who live with them, care for them, and advocate for them.

We pray for those whose access to health care is limited by finances, geography, or prejudice.

We pray for everyone who has been betrayed, cheated, or defrauded.

We pray this morning for those who live with addictions and alcoholism.

We pray for those who are estranged from their loved ones.

We pray for those who have lost their employment, and those who have not been able to begin their work lives because they cannot find a job.

And since our miseries are often accompanied by economic challenges, we pray for wisdom about money, time, and emotional energy.

Finally, we pray for the secrets of our hearts that we can speak only to you.

All of these things we pray in the name of the one who listens with loving attention to all of our sorrows, and who bears them with us, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us …

(May 31, 2009, August 23, 2009, October 11, 2009, Jan 17 2009))