Waupun Union-Congregational Church 

March 26, 2023

“The Music Garden”

TRAD sermon outline

John 11: 17-45

Focus statement: Even in our most profound grief, Jesus can make resurrection possible through us, if we are willing to participate.

Behavioral purpose:

1. I’ve been thinking a lot about Keith this week.
   1. I planned to preach this text about a month ago and didn’t realize how close to home this text would hit
2. Story about Jack
   1. (First slide) Jack was a member of our Neenah church before his death at age 9. Wheelchair users, nonverbal, but expressed emotions through noises that were not words but reflected what words could not
   2. (Second slide) He lived his life with enthusiasm and joy, and especially loved music!
      1. the louder the better
   3. When he died, his loss was felt by the entire church.
   4. Henry’s eagle scout project
      1. (Third slide) music garden at MB
      2. A way to honor his legacy after his death
3. Jesus processes
   1. Waits four days before coming
      1. Jewish opposition wants to kill him
      2. worth the risk
   2. Anger
      1. Jews are consoling the family!
      2. “Where did you put him?”
      3. Even if these Jews really are consoling the family, Jesus is ever mindful of the opposition.
   3. Weeping
      1. We see Jesus weeping two times in the Bible.
         1. Jerusalem and this time
         2. Jesus probably wept when Jack died.
4. Jesus helps Mary and Martha believe
   1. “Your brother will be raised up.”
   2. “You don’t have to wait for the end. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
5. Doing the hard thing
   1. “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”
   2. Melinda Quivik (Liturgical and homological scholar)
      1. Jesus doesn’t do the easy thing (keeping bad things from happening), but instead does the hard thing (reversing destruction).
6. As I prepare to close: what does resurrection mean?
   1. The revolutionary act of creating meaning and hope out of despair and longing
   2. Jack: Moon Beach has a lovely way to honor his memory
   3. This church:
      1. Coming out of COVID: what have we learned?
         1. Making worship more accessible through Zoom
         2. reinvigorating old ecumenical partnerships with Waupun and Fond du Lac area churches
         3. new energy in our church that hasn’t been there since before COVID
7. What do we do now?
   1. We may not experience physical resurrections, but we can be a part of the new direction God is taking the church.
   2. It may not look the same as it did when we grew up, but we have the chance to participate in God’s work in the world.
   3. Because we believe in Jesus, we believe that death does not have the final word.
   4. May you find ways to be part of the resurrection and new life Jesus gives.

“Created Out of Diversity”

Peace United Church of Christ, October 24, 2020

EDIT FOR UCC WAUPUN 3/19/2023

Jacob Nault

John 9

Focus statement: God creates each of us in our diversity to witness God’s work in the world.

Behavioral purpose: “Dream with me”

My friend, Madison, taught me a lot about what it's like to live in the community. Madison was a seminary student with me at Eden. We started school at the same time, and we’ve both learned from each other in a number of ways. As she got to know me, she developed a very particular way of helping me and caring for me.

Many other people in my life have meant well when they’ve helped me, but sometimes I try to do something and it takes longer than they think it should take. So after watching me figure it out for a little while, many of those people will inevitably say, “here, let me do that for you.” Maybe it's something I've done a thousand times, and I could’ve done it myself. But in this society of efficiency, there isn’t much praise for taking extra time to do things or doing things differently than is commonly expected.

But Madison saw things differently.

Madison has been a model for me giving me agency over my own requests for help. She promised to avoid assuming that I need help, and let me ask. Then she remembered for the future and advocated for me when she recognized I might need something. “Remember, if we go anywhere, someone needs to go and pick up Jacob.” She asked how I would like her to discuss my disability, so that if it ever comes up in conversation, it is always done on my terms.

But unfortunately, most people in the Bible weren’t like Madison. In many ways, the Bible mirrors the attitude of our modern society when it comes to disability. Disability is seen in the Bible and the world as a Bad Thing that needs to be fixed. Capital B, capital T. People in biblical times were told not to associate with the blind person or the leper or whoever “they” were, and instead spoon-fed harmful theologies about disability. Unfortunately, this culture continues to persist in some religious circles today. One YouTuber who lives with spinal muscular atrophy recounted a time when he and his wife were on a dinner date, and a woman walked up to them and loudly began praying for his healing, as aghast restaurant patrons looked on. He didn’t ask for extra attention, and his life is quite fulfilling. But ableism makes no room for such a reality. In the woman’s worldview, there is no room for disability to be characterized in any other way than sad, pitiful, or pathetic.

If you’ve never heard the term “ableism,” you might be able to intellectualize a working definition based on your understanding of racism. Here’s another starting point to guide us in our work today, from a Facebook group called, “So Informed”. They write, “Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that people with typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the belief that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability. Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than,’ and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, and generalizations of people with disabilities.” You might ask, how does ableism show up in the Bible?

At the first reading of this text, you would be right to recognize political dimensions to this story. The Jewish leaders didn't know who this Jesus guy was, and he had committed what was considered a cardinal sin–doing anything of substance on the Sabbath day. To them, Jesus could not be affiliated in any way with God, and anyone who believed he might be was also a sinner.

But as this story unfolds from its beginning, the systems of ableism begins to appear. The disciples have had a conversation with Jesus asking who has sinned: the man born blind, or his parents. This comes from an all-too-common trope that the person with a disability, or someone who loves them, must've sinned for them to be in this situation, as if able-bodied or neurotypical people haven’t fallen equally short.

Jesus, however, denies that either the parents or the man born blind have sinned. He reminds the disciples that this happened to the man so that God’s mighty work could be displayed through him. Then he makes some mud out of his saliva and the dirt on the ground, rubs it on the man’s eyes, and heals him.

The Jewish leaders who see this are pretty upset, so they go to talk to the man's parents, after they didn’t like his answer.

They don’t believe he is actually sighted now, and they may also believe another ableist assumption: if there’s something wrong with him physically, there must be something wrong with him mentally, too, and he can’t speak for himself. So it’s better to go to someone who can.

 But then, they are met with a response that surprises them: “Ask him. He's old enough to speak for himself.”

The text says the parents tried to deflect the question, fearing that they would be expelled from the synagogue. But an anti-ableism reading of this text concludes that the real reason behind this was so that the parents could make space to let him speak, and have agency over his own personhood.

He takes the opportunity. He might not have known what to make of it, or that he even wanted to be healed in the first place, but he does know that something has happened that could only be possible through God. He berates the leaders for not listening, and for him having to repeat himself when he was speaking his truth. And then, because the Jewish leaders don’t have a better retort, they berate the man again and expel his family from the synagogue.

It seems to me that the Jewish leaders missed an opportunity, and our modern church equally misses an opportunity when it behaves in this way. We miss the opportunity to see each created being as an image of God, capable of witnessing God's work in the world in their own ways.

When disabled people—or anyone who is oppressed—are given the agency to express ourselves, out of our own lived experience, in whatever ways our bodies and minds allow us to, the church, and the world, has the opportunity to be a richer, more welcoming, more inclusive place.

I don’t believe that God intentionally gave me this disability, that it was God’s will for me to be disabled, or that everything happens for a reason in this circumstance.

When Jesus says, “this happened”, I don’t read that as an explanation for the disability. It’s not about saying, “This is why he was born blind. This is who we can blame.”

Instead, when Jesus says “this happened”, a more affirming reading might be as follows: this man was born blind. That’s a fact. But this happened so society can see God at work in the world.

I may not believe God made me disabled as a means for society to benefit from it. God didn’t make me disabled so others would be better educated, so someone would advocate for health insurance reform, or to call out discrimination when I find it. But I do believe God can use me and my particularities to share the truth that the good news of God’s love is for everyone. And God can do the same with you.

The simple truth for all of us today, friends, is this: God creates each of us in our diversity to witness to God’s work in the world. Then, God brings us together into one body of Christ, that we may work for justice and peace for all created beings.

The man who was born blind was utilized by God to speak truth to the Jewish leaders. If only they would have listened.

I’ve been able to use my experience to help give voice to disability theology and disability justice. And Madison has been a representative of the body of Christ, lifting me up and standing with me on the journey,

This church practices being the body of Christ every day. We celebrate diversity and continue to work for justice for all created beings. We are proud of the ways our church provides the kind of welcome many in this community have yearned for.

So what can we do to further make this a reality? This week, I invite you to dream with me.

Dream with me for a church, and a world, where wheelchair users and people with autism can be embraced in our church buildings, in our worship experiences, and in our public spaces.

Where stutters and slurred speech can become part of the understanding of what people who are loved by God sound like. Or maybe even what God sounds like.

Where people who look and act differently than we do are not looked upon with pity or disgust, but they’re looked upon with love, and they’re told, “you belong here.”

Where there are elevators for every staircase, and there is health insurance for every condition, without the fear that it may be restricted, or worse.

Dream with me for a world where racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, and any other discriminatory behavior is no more.

Instead, dream with me for a world where we come from all our particularities and witness to God’s work in the world, so that God’s work may be revealed through us. And then, let us do what we can to take the next steps towards peace, justice, and shalom for all. Amen.

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

Third Sunday in Lent 

March 12, 2023

Guest preacher: John O'Donovan

Today is the 3rd Sunday of Lent; Lent is a religious season where we are asked to take time to reflect on ourselves, on our beliefs, on our theology, and on our conscience.

When I was reviewing this familiar parable of the Woman at the well, some new ways of looking at it came to me - and I’d like to share them with you.

Do you remember a while ago there was WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? It was an evaluation or process we were to go thru prior to making a decision. We were to look at it and decide that if Jesus would solve the problem in a certain way then that was the right decision. The verses and parables that we have gone through today are a prime examples of what Jesus would actually do and that is what Jesus has and continues to do for us. They are giving us true lessons in who we are and how to act.

Everyone has some type of problem or hang up, or using the great euphemism we all have issues, and everyone has an opinion.

In the reading of John, we are acquainted with the story of the woman at the well. Jesus' followers have left him and he strikes up a conversation with a woman who comes up to the well that he is sitting by.

There is an importance here. The social norms of the time and place are not being followed. A man is having a conversation with an unchaperoned woman, and not just any woman but a Samaritan. A group of people who as a tradition, the Jews looked down upon. Besides all of this we also find out that she had had 5 husbands and that she was not married to the person she was now living with.

So how do these two interact well? The tradition of the time and place would have ruled that Jesus ignore this woman, and I believe further that she would have kept her distance until the Jewish man had left. But is that what happened?

There was no dismissing of the perceived lower-class person, no prejudging just because of who they were. Which is remarkable, being Jesus was the only person on Earth who could have rightly judged this person. Instead, Jesus talks to the woman, he engages in conversation just as he would with anyone. And they also listen to each other. There was no judging “a book by its cover.”

Jesus, you could say, preached to her. Preached salvation to her, the person he never should have been talking to just because of her ethnicity, an outcast, the Samaritan.

Every day we encounter other people. And if we are lucky, it will be a variety of people.

As we go out into the world, we will encounter people who are not like us, whether in appearance, language, customs, or a whole slew of other differences.

The Bible says that we are made in the image of God. The writer of that verse didn’t specify a race, nationality, or culture.

So, the person out there is not an image of God.

I’m not going to tell you that there are no bad or evil individuals out there, however I am going to say that if you are making that decision on just what you see then you are not doing What Jesus Would Do.

Why do we judge? In researching this I found some thoughts on the Internet.

The root of all judgment appears to come from one place and one place alone:  Our Ego.

When we see someone behaving in a way that we disagree with, we think, “I would never act like that! I’m better than that. That’s not our way, etc.” Putting someone down makes us feel temporarily better about ourselves.

Our own internal image of ourselves can be like a master magician, constantly deflecting our attention, and distracting us from our own shortcomings and the work that we need to do to improve ourselves.

The problem with judging people is that we reduce them down to a handful of characteristics – completely ignoring the fact that people are complex, three-dimensional beings with many different sides. For instance, we may judge someone based on their upbringing. By mentally labeling someone as spoiled, we dismiss the notion that they can sometimes be selfless and share.

After a moment’s observation, we tend to think we’ve got someone figured out for the most part, and we don’t leave much room to be proven otherwise. In truth, we’ve no idea if the person helping the person across the street is a good Samaritan, or if that person is at that moment stealthily robbing the person they appear to be helping.

How many of us have been dismissed, or walked the other way when you saw someone you assumed was homeless. Did the first thought that came to you is I wonder if they are going to use the change given to them for drugs or booze?

Now how would you feel if later you found out that same person was living paycheck to paycheck as many people do, got laid off due to the strange economics we are now going through,  and was trying to get money for insulin, since being laid off stopped their paycheck, stopped their insurance, but the layoff didn’t stop their disease or need for expensive medicine. Do we see the tattoos, the clothes, the unkempt hair, nationality, race, and use only that to determine if a person is worth your time or do you see the person, or do we see the person as one of God’s people?

In my personal life, I was given a chance to observe this many times over.

Prisons are where people - people that the majority of the community believe are society’s outcasts. I had a chance to talk to many of these men and women.  Many in this world have preconceived notions regarding those that are incarcerated. But I was surprised sometimes by the individual's life story.

Let me ask you, what is a person judged by our courts as a thief, a murderer, or someone selling illegal materials? What does that person look like?

 In that same regard, what does a Christian, a saint, or a good person look like? Do you have an answer to either of these questions? I know that I don’t anymore. After being in the criminal justice system, I can say that a thief, a murderer, and a drug dealer, all look like the person next to you and probably had a lot of the same life experiences you and the person next to you had, but somewhere their life took a different direction.

In the same regard, there are people who put out the image of being pious and religious, but yet they really are abusive, backstabbers, thieves, or worse.

The judgments and opinions about others, or groups of others, that we were taught or that we picked up through life may be wrong, or they may be right. We just can’t tell just from the outside. Everyone does not fit into a neat little category, nor do a few represent all of the group, nor is everyone the same.

Again, let me remind you, I am in no way saying that every person is good and that there isn’t evil in the world. What I am saying, and what I believe Scripture is saying, is that you need to try to get to know and understand the individual before you make your “judgment.”

The parable states that through Jesus’ discussion with this woman and her spirit opening up Jesus, Jesus went and spent time in the Samaritan Community, and many came forward and believed and now knew that Jesus was the Savior of the World.

The whole community changed because one person took the time and chance to find out about another, instead of dismissing them because that was what was expected in that time and place.

Don’t just judge a person by how they look on the outside. Look deeper. God has done that with you. Doesn’t the next person deserve the same?

Who knows, maybe that person you come across is already filled with God’s love - - and you would have missed the experience with that person if you had just gone by. Maybe that person has things to teach you, ideas that open your mind, or faith that strengthens yours. You’ll never know if you immediately dismiss them because they are not your kind of people.

Let’s change that acronym from WWJD to WWID - What Would I Do, and follow that up with the simple WID - What I Did. We were made in God’s image, and God sent Jesus to save the world. Jesus, a person who sought out the marginalized and those that were diminished by others instead of just walking by them, can we do any better than that?

“Strength for the Journey”

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

March 5, 2023

Focus statement: As Jesus calls us to accompany him on this difficult journey to the cross, God remains steadfast and continues to be with us through it all.

I was blessed to have two grandmothers who had very strong faith. On the surface, the two of them lived very different lives and had very different faith backgrounds, but I learned a great deal from each of them about living through periods of adversity.

My dad's mother was a devout Catholic. She was the mother of seven. I experienced her as a quiet, prayerful woman. She loved cooking, fishing, gardening, and taking long walks. I think the most important thing I learned from her was that I didn't have to be afraid of dying. Over the last several years of her life, we watched as various health issues took their toll on her body, and certain physical tasks weren't as easy for her as they once were. But she had such a strong faith that all of these things would pass away, and that she would be with God in heaven.  She also talked about the promise of being with her sister, Rita, in heaven. Rita had died in infancy and Grandma talked frequently about how much she missed her baby sister. One of the reasons she held so strongly to her faith was her desire to make that reunion a reality. She lived out her faith more completely than most people I've ever met.

My mom’s mother had a different experience. She was spunky, hated cooking, and was too susceptible to mosquito bites to take many long walks. She was a member of a progressive Baptist Church that was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention because they ordained a gay person. The kinds of adversity that came her way were different too. After many years of marriage, she suddenly found herself a lonely single mom. When she did remarry, her second marriage lasted five years because of her husband’s ill health. She died a couple of years ago, 21 days after being diagnosed with stage four bile duct cancer. She navigated the difficulties of her life while also maintaining a deep spirit of love. She had her flaws, to be sure, but she always tried to learn more about the world around her, to understand the people she shared it with.  I experienced her as a doting grandmother, and a loving mother to her children.

I couldn't possibly capture both of their individual faith lives in a short sermon illustration, but as I was preparing the sermon it struck me that each of them lived through different kinds of adversity. Moreover, each of them recognized their faith would see them through the difficult times of their lives.

I think the Psalmist can relate to this. The Psalmist is looking around, across God’s vast creation, saying, “in my life, when I'm feeling stuck, when things are hard, where does my help come from?”

The next line provides the answer. “Oh yeah, my help comes from the Lord.” The psalmist seems to be in awe of the fact that the very same God who made heaven and earth is mindful of God’s people when they need God the most. The psalmist understands that, in addition to the dimension of God as an unimaginable celestial being who sets the stars in place, there is equally a very intimate dimension of God—near to the broken-hearted, the lost, the lonely, and the oppressed.

After establishing from whom their help will come, the Psalmist speaks with confidence about how God will render that help. God's watchful eye will protect us in all of our days and nights. I especially love the way the Common English Bible renders this line—“Your protector won’t fall asleep on the job.” When I hear that line, I think about my grandparents, my parents, and other trusted people in my life who always made sure I was safe and felt loved. Who are those people in your life? Speak their names aloud if you’d like.  (Wait for responses)

In these beloved people, we see the likeness of God. Thanks be to God for them and their protective love.

The Genesis text offers another dimension to the understanding that God is on our side. God asks Abram and his family to trust the journey, as God leads them into a new home. God reminds them that God will be with them at every turn, protecting them from the will of their adversaries and providing them with abundant blessings. Moreover, because of Abram’s family, many generations of others will also be blessed.

In a similar way, my faith wouldn't have been quite the same without the witnesses of both of my grandmas. Sure, they had different views, different politics, and different theological convictions in some ways. But it was clear to both of them who would care for them in their times of adversity. When their health failed. When their siblings died. When loneliness crept in.

In just under a week, I’ll be taking my ordination vows into the United Church of Christ. It’s been a long time coming, and I’ve certainly been formed by the faith of those who have gone before me. As I take these vows, and as I wear the clergy vestments for the first time, I will give thanks for all the ways God has been by my side, and blessed me on the journey.

And you—you’ve surely found hope in God’s presence in your life. When your job or career has changed. When children came. When it was tougher than usual to make ends meet. God, your protector, didn’t fall asleep on the job.

When I asked your search committee about a time in recent history when your congregation endured challenges, they responded by talking about COVID, and how, like so many other churches, building community looked different. You couldn’t utilize the new kitchen you’d just remodeled to share meals together. Even the best attempts at meaningful faith formation felt isolated and at times, lacked connection. You ran into ideological differences.

But yet, this church is still here. And though it may not always seem like it, we’re getting through, during what is a very difficult period for the church at large. We’re navigating tough challenges with grace, courage, and faithfulness.

So what’s our task? What is God inviting us into this week?

This is the good news for today: As Jesus calls us to accompany him on this difficult journey to the cross, God remains steadfast and continues to be with us through it all.

As you go into this second week of our Lenten journey, may you consider the ways God has been your help, your guide, and your protector. May you share your story of God’s love with orders, and in doing so, may you be part of the hope that comes in uncertain times. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Message for Wednesday Lenten Worship

March 1, 2023

Focus statement: As God’s angels looked out for Joseph to protect his child from Herod, so God looks out for us as we journey with Christ to the cross.

When I was a summer staffer at Daycholah Center, one of the church camps affiliated with the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ, we did a number of emergency preparedness drills during staff training to learn how to keep our campers safe. We talked about all these different scenarios, which were absolutely frightening. Missing campers, active shooters, and so on. For many years, this had been a place of retreat and respite for me, even as a child, and I couldn't imagine that such a sacred space could be harmed in such a way. But the unfortunate reality was that we had to think like that, in order to continue our mission with integrity.

It strikes me that being on staff at summer camp meant working with a bunch of other college students. Some days, I felt like we lived in a reality show. We lived through interpersonal drama, personality clashes, and sometimes even questioning each other's maturity, and yet, when push came to shove and a serious situation arose, we were all united in the singular purpose of making sure each camper knew they were cared for and protected.

I wonder if this is how Joseph felt.

If he was planning on having kids with Mary, certainly wasn't the way he expected to do it. Receiving words and dreams from God's angels telling them Jesus was special, that he would save the world. Then suddenly having to protect this child from a greedy and power-hungry king who wants to rid the world of any threat to his power. That’s not exactly something you read about in What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

By a show of hands, how many of us would still want to have children if we knew that would be the consequence?

In the biblical account of birth of Jesus, we never actually hear from Joseph, so we don't entirely know what he felt. Not in a conversation to Mary, not in his own thoughts or prayers. The original storytellers of the gospel believed, for whatever reason, that his side of the story just wasn't worth getting into.

But it certainly isn't without its drama.

In the resources for the sermon series put together by the Iona community, they offer some skits from the points of view of these lesser-known followers of Jesus. We won’t be reading these skits in full, but I offer you part of Joseph the carpenter's story. In this skit, Joseph reflects on telling Jesus the story of the beginning of his life:

I told Jesus then how we’d fled
for our lives, under the dark; the stark fear and loss of leaving, saying nothing, fearing all
on the long road to Gaza, chariots kicking dust in the face,
and us parched, but afraid of the proffered lifts and drinks
and hidden costs,
me powerless to protect: he’d seen with toddler eyes.
We reached the sea and the coast ahead – but no waves parted,  though the full boat foundered on the further shore. We lived. Storytelling’s in the family. I taught him.

So ends the excerpt.

But even though Joseph might've had an imposter complex, even though he was probably bewildered by this turn of events, he might have understood that he was not alone. As the biblical text tells us, the birth of Jesus was part of a prophecy. The text traces some of that prophecy for us, saying first that Jesus is the one whom God calls out of Egypt.

Then, Herod retaliates against the magi for tricking him. Herod demands the killing of all children ages two and under. This brings to mind the story of Rachel, fulfilling another part of the prophecy:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

But it's little consolation for things to be part of a plan when you're running for your life.

That's why God's angels appeared to Joseph in dreams, instructing him on the best way is to keep his family safe. God's angels were on the lookout for any potential danger to Joseph, Mary and Jesus, both fulfilling the prophecy, and also fulfilling God's promises to God's followers throughout time: when we pass through difficult times, when someone is coming for our necks…God will be with us.

As God’s angels looked out for Joseph to protect his child from Herod, so God looks out for us as we journey with Christ to the cross.

I never did have to use any of those emergency preparedness drills at summer camp, but like Joseph, I had been given the resources to keep people safe if the need arose. I think God for God's care and protection, not only for me and my coworkers but also for the children and youth and trust to our care. Too often, the spaces that youth encounter in their daily lives are made unsafe by abuses of power and hateful ideology, but because of God's love, this space could remain a safe haven.

As we begin this Lenten journey, I have a question for you. (Actually a series of questions, but they communicate the same point.) How has God looked out for you? How has God kept you safe in the midst of difficult periods in your life? How has God given you the strength and the courage to carry on in difficult times, and surrounded you in love?

As you journey with Jesus to the cross, may your prayers remind you of the assurance of God’s love in your life. As you pray, may you give thanks for the time God has looked out for you. Then, after giving thanks, may you turn those prayers into action. Be advocates for those people who are threatened by unjust systems in our world, because of their race, their gender identity, sexual orientation, their disability, mental health condition, their socioeconomic status, and other systems that oppress, threaten, and demean. May you advocate for others because God has advocated for you. Amen. 

“How Are We Tempted?”

TRAD sermon for U-CC

February 26, 2023

Lent 1A

Focus Statement: As we start this Lenten journey, Jesus invites us to follow his example, resisting the forces that tempt us.

For those of you who haven't figured this out yet, one of my very favorite things is a good, flavorful cup of coffee. I usually take it black, but sometimes I'll go for a latte or mocha at a coffee shop. I love coffee so much that, truthfully, I've become a bit of a snob. I learned from my dad that coffee tastes better when you grind your coffee beans immediately before brewing, and I have my detailed list of likes and dislikes with different coffee roasts.

Several months ago I bought the most amazing coffee maker, which is pretty fancy and very expensive. I had been eyeing it up for a very long time but figured I would never actually get one. It makes the best home-brewed coffee I've ever had in my life. It’s certified to brew coffee at the exact right temperature, for the exact right amount of time. It undergoes a special process to ensure maximum flavor extraction from my freshly-ground beans. The flavor is deep and rich, especially when you brew freshly-roasted coffee.

I might justify to myself that I got it on sale. It was $100 off on Amazon Prime Day! How could I say no?

I might justify to myself that most people have a few nice things in their homes. I otherwise live a pretty modest life. But I have to admit that it’s not really something I can use to further my values, deepen my faith, or work for the kinds of change I feel passionate about. It's not a possession that calls me to live in response to the many gifts that God has given me in my life. It just makes great coffee.

Now, I certainly don’t feel guilty enough about owning this coffee maker to return it, and my dad was pretty sad that I took it with me when I moved from my parents’ house to Waupun! (Don’t feel too bad for him, we got him one for Christmas.)  But I will admit that I didn't really need this. I had a perfectly functional coffee maker that I got for just over $50, and it got the job done. So I guess you could say that I gave into temptation, even if the object of my temptation was fairly innocuous.

But sometimes the stakes are much higher than a coffee maker. In today's text from the gospel of Matthew, Satan, whom the Common English Bible renders as “the tempter”, promises all these things to Jesus and tries to exploit his vulnerability.

As I was re-reading this text as I prepared to preach for you today, it struck me that the scripture begins by saying the spirit led Jesus into the wilderness so that he might be tempted by Satan. Satan didn't just happen to show up. There is reason to believe it was all previously orchestrated to test Jesus’ resolve.

But why now? Hasn't Jesus just been baptized? And didn't we talk just last week about how God said, “This is my beloved child! Listen to him!” It would seem like a bit of a sick joke that God would be putting him to the test now, wouldn't it?

But this is exactly what the commentator Audrey West would argue. I’ll share with you her opening words to the commentary she published online. She writes, “It is no accident that Jesus winds up in the wilderness after his baptism. He is not lost, and he is not being punished for something he has done wrong (assumptions that people today sometimes make about their own “wilderness experiences”). The Holy Spirit has led him for a purpose: to be tempted or tested.”

So, in other words, the Spirit is making sure that Jesus’ own profession of faith is not merely skin deep as he imparts that faith to others.

But three separate times, Jesus doesn't take the bait, each time replying with a verse of Deuteronomy. Quoting from this particular book of the Bible was significant. If you read Deuteronomy, you'll find that this book spends a lot of time with people whose actions run counter to God's desires, and gives those people instructions on how to live according to God's will. So Jesus latches onto the teachings of Deuteronomy to demonstrate the strength of his faith, to alleviate any doubt about who he thinks is in charge here. And it certainly isn't Satan.

Since we just heard the text, I won't go into great detail on the specific ways Jesus was tempted, but I’ll talk just a little bit about what all of these temptations symbolize.

For one, since Jesus was starving, Satan tempted Jesus to make stones turn into bread in front of him, to which Jesus replied that bread was shallow nourishment in comparison to living life according to God's way.

Next, Satan tries to tell Jesus to literally put himself in danger so that he can save himself, but Jesus once again replies that this is an unnecessary test.

Finally, Satan tries to appeal to Jesus’ ego, saying that Jesus could have all the power he could ever want if Jesus would worship him instead of his creator. Power, after all, can do funny things to people who want status in the world. We've seen it throughout this last year of the Russia-Ukraine War, where Vladimir Putin wants to take control of as much neighboring land as he possibly can for his own self-preservation. But even after throwing the kitchen sink at Jesus, Jesus won't budge.

So Jesus passed the test. His plot is foiled, the devil goes away from Jesus and the angels take care of him.

I would like to think that all of us here would resist Satan's threats as well. But this text does offer us an important question to consider: how are we tempted? What kinds of things do we desire in our lives, and do they line up with what God wants from us?

As we start this Lenten journey, Jesus invites us to follow his example, resisting the forces that tempt us.

We didn't get to celebrate Ash Wednesday properly, because of the winter storm. If you'd like, you can receive ashes on your forehead or wrist in a few minutes. But this text offers a nice tie-in with the general message of Ash Wednesday, which focuses on our human frailty and the ways we have fallen short of God's desires. Sometimes, our temptations come from material possessions, like my coffee maker, and sometimes they come from other forces. But this week, I’d love to invite you to think about how you might resist temptation in your own life. Of course, we're not going to be able to do it all the time, and we're going to fall down and make mistakes. That's why we're human after all. Still, it's an invitation to be intentional in following the ways of Jesus Christ as we accompany him to the cross.

So my friends, may you be blessed with discernment this week of that which distracts you from living according to God's will for your life. May you be blessed both by knowing your own frailty, and yet knowing you are beloved simultaneously. As you consider your habits and the things that distract you from God's will for your life, may you be blessed with clarity for your faith journey. May it be so. Amen.

“We Are God’s Beloved. What Are We Going To Do About it?”

TRAD sermon for U-CC

February 19, 2023

Focus Statement: God reminds us that we are God’s beloved. As we rest in that knowing, we also have a sacred call to be part of the transformation.

Today I’m going to tell you a story about one of my favorite volunteers in children's ministry at a former church. I'm not going to use her real name, but we’ll call her Alice.

I arrived for my first days of work in this particular congregation as Children's Ministry Director two weeks before we were to have a huge Easter egg hunt for about 200 people, and nothing had been planned yet! No activities, no volunteers, no food, nothing except for the relief that the easter eggs had been filled a couple weeks ago. I was utterly overwhelmed, and I was still a full-time seminary student, so I had all those pressures too.

Alice had an idea for an activity, and I was all too eager to take that meeting with her, since it was one less thing I had to figure out. But I had also been warned to watch out for Alice. I was told that she could be a bit of an alpha-type person, and that she had various other pieces of her personality that made it hard to work with her. But I told myself that I would draw my own conclusions, and not let other people's opinions color my own too significantly.

The day of our first meeting, in walked Alice, with a dog that obviously had severe breathing problems but wanted nothing more than to sniff every bag of Easter candy that lay on the floor in my cubicle. After we had planned her activity, she helped me handle some other logistics, making phone calls and getting volunteers.

To make a long story short, her activity for the Easter egg hunt was incredibly successful. People loved it. And she was gleaming with joy, because it was so clear that she loved kids, but that she hadn’t been given the experience to share her ministry. Of course, Alice still had her quirks, but over the year and a half I was there, I watched Alice transform into someone who had found her passion, all because a community finally gave her a chance. This certainly wasn't all about me or what I did, but instead, the wider community of this congregation was taking notice of her gifts. Working with Alice taught me a very important lesson, that the gifts of an unlikely person might be exactly what the church needs if we're willing to embrace that person for who they are and what they can share.

I’ll connect the story of Alice to the story of Jesus in a little bit, but first, it seems important to remind us of what the story of the transfiguration actually means.

For many of us, the transfiguration story might feel a bit abstract or obtuse. What is the significance of Jesus’s clothing turning a different color or a voice from God? How do we understand this in our modern context?

Retired preaching professor Ronald J. Allen starts by reminding us of just how difficult it was to live in this biblical time. There were plenty of reasons why Jesus's disciples might be inclined to fear. After all, they were taking great risks in following this countercultural person who deliberately and unapologetically spoke out against the established Roman government, introducing a new way of living instead. It's exhausting paving a new way forward, and spreading a new religion.

This mountaintop vision would've felt familiar to the disciples, who had heard the story which has been kept for us in the book of Exodus, when God leads Moses up to a mountain. These mountaintop visions were a sign of important instruction from God. Indeed, the disciples fell over in fear—terror even—because they know how important these messages are. In their minds, they had better pay close attention and prove themselves worthy of receiving such a message.

But for Professor Allen, what makes this mountaintop vision different is that it has a huge dose of compassion. The significance of Jesus showing up at his resurrection body—brilliant white clothes—is a vision for the future, a reason why the disciples don't need to be afraid. It’s as if God said to the disciples, “I know it's really hard right now, but you're on the right track. Continue believing in my son, whom I love, and everything will be okay.”

Jesus tends to his friends with deep compassion, but also with a word of instruction. The disciples can't tell anybody what happened until after he dies, because no one will understand it unless they've seen it. Without experiencing Jesus's resurrection body, others won't understand the significance of such an event. So it's best to wait until they can see a sign. But make no mistake – this vision changed the disciples in a fundamental way, and gave them courage and hope in an extraordinarily difficult circumstance.

In some ways, the transfiguration story doesn't really have a contemporary parallel. We've never seen anything like this, so it doesn't make sense to us, either.

But it's also true that we see the transfiguration of people every day.

Alice became more confident in her gifts, more affirmed in her ministry, and felt a kind of validation that she may not have received before.

Those in the transgender community, who do the best they can to live in a body that feels inauthentic, can finally breathe a sigh of relief when their physical body finally matches their lived human experience.

For some of us, the transfiguration is less physically obvious, but deeply spiritually fulfilling, when we find an expression of faith that feels authentic to us.

In all these moments, when we experience these transfigurations, we hear God saying, “This is my beloved child! Listen to them! Experience their goodness. See for yourselves who I have made them to be.”

God reminds us that we are God’s beloved. As we rest in that knowing, we also have a sacred call to be part of the transformation of the world alongside Jesus Christ.

When we live authentically as the person God created us to be, we have the power to change perceptions, and even change the lives of the people around us.

We are partnering with Jesus Christ. Today is the last Sunday before Lent begins, which is the journey to the cross. For many, Holy Week and Easter are what solidify the mission of Jesus the most. Even though Lent and holy week can be a difficult time for some people, the transfiguration is a reminder that the pain and the heartache doesn't last forever, and that hope will rise again.

Let us go into this week, celebrating that we are beloved as we follow Jesus into these days. Amen.

“Stop Eating Baby Food!”

TRAD sermon for U-CC

February 12, 2023

Focus statement: Paul reminds us of God’s call to set aside our petty divisions and our watered-down faith, focusing instead on a genuine relationship with God.

My apartment at Eden Theological Seminary didn't have a dishwasher. I know that a lot of people have lived without dishwashers for a long time, but if you've never tried to wash dishes by hand with one hand, you know it's really hard. The dishes don't get as clean, and it's more difficult to get the tougher particles off of them.

To combat this difficulty, I wondered if I should rely more on plasticware that I didn't have to wash so much, rather than a more traditional silverware set. My parents said, “no, we don't think so. Plastic spoons are for college kids who don’t have sinks in their dorm rooms. You're an adult now! You may not have a dishwasher, but you have a sink!”

So, I got a silverware set secondhand and washed it as thoroughly as I could. Sometimes it was difficult, and sometimes I had to re-wash dishes a few times to get them as clean as I was accustomed to. But, I was an adult, and even second-hand silverware felt like a more adult thing than using plasticware on a regular basis.

Needless to say, one of my non-negotiable criteria for searching for housing in Waupun was that it had to have a dishwasher!

Paul seems to think that the spirituality of the Corinthians is only as deep as people who use plastic spoons all the time and eat food they don't have to chew very much. The lectionary this year has exposed us to a lot of Paul's writings to the Corinthians, and in them, Paul doesn't mince words when he calls the Corinthians out on their crap. They seem to love thinking about the wrong things, putting their faith in the wrong people, and in the process, forgetting what's most important.

At the beginning of our lives, of course, we need baby food, or else we're not going to survive. We start with milk, then we start with soft and semi-solid food, and then we graduate to food that is more nourishing and satisfying. We aren't meant to stay in one spot.

Paul likens believing in himself and Apollos to the Corinthians staying in that one spot. Surely they helped the Corinthians experience their faith for the first time. Their witness was obviously powerful to the Corinthians, or else they wouldn't be trying to build the early Christian church in the midst of such suffocation by Roman power structures. But they haven’t moved any further in their spiritual development, despite Paul’s repeated efforts to lead them further. He says, “Now you are still not up to it because you are still unspiritual.”

Paul has finally had enough. Chloe's people have told him all about the quarrels that the Corinthians I've been having, and this is Paul's chance to give the Corinthians a piece of his mind.

After venting his frustration, Paul refocuses their attention to what matters most. Paul and Apollos may have watered the tree of faith for the Corinthians, but it's only God who makes it grow. It's only God who will journey with them when they pass through the waters, through the valleys of hopelessness and despair. Further, because God journeys with them, they are to be God’s coworkers. They are responsible for helping others know the story of god's redemptive work, and the revolutionary teachings of Jesus Christ.

The Deuteronomy passage in today's lectionary reminds us of the stark consequences of refusing to do this work. If our hearts turn away from God's teachings, Deuteronomy says we will surely die.

Sometimes, the Scriptures give us comfort in uncertain times, and a reminder of God's deep love for us. But sometimes, the scripture is callout some painful truths in our practice of faith.

I'm not about to predict the apocalypse, and I'm not about to say that our lives will literally end if we don't follow God's will. (Some pastors might go there, but I'm not feeling that right now.)

Instead, when the church as we know it is changing, I think it's time to heed Paul's command to stop eating baby food. To stop professing a faith that makes us comfortable while we carry on with our divisions.

Paul reminds us of God’s call to set aside our petty divisions and our watered-down faith, focusing instead on a genuine relationship with God.

In the wider church, what does it say about our faith if we sing “Amazing Grace” on Sunday morning, and tell someone they’re going straight to hell on Sunday afternoon?

In the wider church, what does it say about our faith if we pray about the justice seekers and peacemakers, and yet are silent when our neighbor is being oppressed because of their race, gender identity, their sexual orientation, their disability, mental health condition, their political affiliation, or any other system that allows us to put each other in a box?

I could go on, but I think you get the gist.

Even though Paul is angry with the Corinthians in this text, for us here at Union-Congregational Church, I'm going to take a bit more compassionate angle.

We pride ourselves in living out the philosophy I begin worship every week with: “No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.” In many ways, I think we would say we really believe that. I've heard many stories of people telling me that it was this church that gave them a spiritual home.

But if what Paul says is true, that God is the one who helps us grow in our faith, I wonder what God is calling us to do as a response to that welcome? How can we make it more clear? How can we be God’s coworkers in that effort?

I think we have the capacity to move beyond the kind of faith that Paul calls unspiritual, the church politics and disagreements which distract us from the work of God. We have the opportunity to play an important role in our community if we're willing to work together, discern together, or even ask hard questions. None of those things happen while you’re consuming a faith made of baby food. Baby-food-faith might be satisfying in the short term, but it doesn’t change our lives or ask more of us.

When we stop eating baby food, God gives us spiritual food which calls us to chew on something instead.

So this week, I invite you to think with me about ways you have been God’s coworker, and how you feel called to work alongside God to help our church, and our faith, grow and mature. The church is in need of your wisdom, your hope, and your collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen.

"Let Your Light Shine!"

Sermon for U-CC (Confirmation Sunday)

February 5, 2023

Focus statement: Jesus encourages us to let our light shine, and live authentically in the reality of being God’s beloved child.

Today we have the incredible gift of confirming Eliza Neumann into the full membership of this congregation.

Of course, I have not known Eliza for a very long time, and I haven't been privileged to witness the full arc of their journey up to this point. But make no mistake—I have seen them claim an identity for themselves. They claimed this with me from the moment we first met. Like God renamed Abraham, Sarah, and others, Eliza has embraced a new identity of their own, claiming God’s blessing as they journey alongside God.

But it isn’t just their name. I have seen the bright smiles, caring hearts, and contagious laughs that radiate from their souls. In many ways, Eliza embodies what Jesus asks of us in today's scripture text, because Eliza is shining their light on the world as they share their journey of faith and life with others.

As Jesus often does, he uses a metaphor to explain his teachings. If salt loses its saltiness, he says, what good is it? The saltiness, after all, is the essence that spices our lives. Many of us would be perplexed if all of a sudden we could not have salt in our kitchens. In a similar way, our faith community would lose some of its flavors if any one of us stopped coming to our church, or was less active in some way. We would be that much less friendly, that much less humorous, and that much less generous. The sense of community would radically change, and while we would likely find a way to fill some of the gaps, there would always feel like there was something missing from those who faithfully maintain our building and make structural updates as needed, to those who show hospitality at coffee hour, to those who welcome visitors with joy and tenderness, to those who pray with one another in their time of need. If any one of those groups of people faded away, our whole identity as a congregation would feel off balance.

I thank God often for the gifts and graces of this faith community, as you have all welcomed me into your midst. Indeed, I might not have made the decision to come to this church if it hadn't been for the attributes that make you who you are. If you will, your saltiness is in your generosity, in your community care, in your humor, and in your love for one another.

This brings me to my second point.

Once you have found your saltiness, once you have determined what your essence is, Jesus has maintained that we should share it. You wouldn't hide your light under a bushel basket. You wouldn't write a song for anyone else to hear (most of the time). You couldn't share your reflections on your faith journey in the same way if you didn't have anyone with whom to share them.

So don't be afraid! Shine your light brightly for all to see, right?

Well, for some of us, it's not always that easy.

When we share part of who we are, sometimes we run the risk of people dismissing us, belittling our identities, or using some of our newfound vulnerability to hurt us or push us aside.

There is surely a risk with shining our light.

But here’s the good news: Jesus encourages us to let our light shine, and live authentically into the reality of being God’s beloved child, knowing that God is with us on the way.

Today is partially about celebrating the journey of Eliza, but this part of the message could just as easily apply to any one of us, whether we've been through confirmation or not. We are each on a journey to discover our true selves, and sometimes that journey poses some bumps along the way. The twists and turns can test our resolve, challenge our faith in God's presence in our lives, and even break our hearts. I think most of us would probably be lying if we said that our faith journey was easy or linear.

But we shine our light for others because they will see the presence of God through us. God has brought us all a mighty long way. When we claim our relationship with God, no matter where we've been or what we've done up until now, God will name us as God’s own beloved child, in whom God is well-pleased. God has brought Eliza a mighty long way to bring them to this moment of their faith journey. And God isn’t going to give up on them, just as much as God isn’t going to give up on any one of us.

So, as Eliza takes their confirmation vows in a few minutes, I invite you to think not just about Eliza's faith journey, but also about your own. How has God brought you a mighty long way? What have been the twists and turns in your life up until now? How have you resisted the powers of evil and worked towards a more just world? How can you do more of that?

My friends, confirmation is not a one-and-done commitment. It's not something we do to check off a box or because our parents want us to believe something. It's a lifelong proposition, and a lifelong invitation to share our light with the world because the world needs the zest and the passion that we have to offer.

So shine your light, knowing God is with you at every turn, every twist, every bump along the way. You are worthy, and you are more than enough in the eyes of God. You are God’s beloved child, and you have something to teach the world. You have an essence about you, a saltiness in the best possible way, which cannot be imitated or emulated by anybody else. God's light and God's love are shining in you. May you share that love everywhere you go, knowing that it is your Creator who gave it to you. Thanks be to God. Amen.

“From Hopelessness to Blessings”

TRADITIONAL Sermon for U-CC

January 29, 2023

Epiphany 3A, Matthew 5: 1-12

Focus Statement: Through the teachings of Jesus, we are reminded of what's important as we live a Christian life.

It strikes me that I didn't choose today's scripture passage off of my own agenda. This truly is the lectionary text for today, but it feels like a “God thing” that this is the text that is coming to us on the day of our annual meeting.

One pastor colleague of mine joked this week that this is one of the easiest texts for a pastor to preach on. In some ways, this text practically preaches itself! I won't deny that there might be some truth to that, but there's another reason why I wanted to dive into it.

On this day, when we chart the path forward for the coming year by making various decisions and thinking about what is important to our congregation, it seems particularly important to align ourselves with the mission of Jesus Christ.

The scripture is powerful enough on its own, without any context, but to truly understand the text, I believe that some context might be helpful.

So today, I'm going to offer some context to the world that the followers of Jesus were experiencing at that time. That will naturally lead us to talk about a significant difference in this translation of this familiar text, which will then give us some food for thought about the world we live in now.

First of all, we need to understand how utterly hopeless the followers of Jesus probably felt at that time. The commentator Jillian Englehardt reminds us that it might be easy to overlook just how hopeless these people were, as we read this text while living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In some of my previous sermons, I've talked about just how terrible and suffocating Roman occupation was, but I also recognize that none of us can truly understand what that's like because we didn't live it ourselves. The closest many of us have ever come to that is saying, “ such-and-such a president is such an idiot” or “a so-and-so politician is so evil”. Some of these politicians might make decisions that impact our lives to a certain degree, but we have the power of the ballot box on our side, and we can mostly go on with our lives no matter who sits in the oval office or the U.S. Senate.

That simply wasn't true for these folks. They had rulers they didn't choose who was personally making sure that people like them only lived a subsistence standard of living. They hardly had enough food. So much of their money was being unfairly taxed. They were dying from preventable diseases. Life was utterly hopeless.

So I can only imagine the level of re-orientation it would've taken for people to hear these words of Jesus—happy are those who are hopeless, meek, and marginalized. Happy are those who are persecuted for believing in Jesus Christ.

It took so much re-orientation because of all the walking in darkness, hopelessness, and sadness they have done. But at this moment, they see a great light that the darkness, hopelessness, and sadness cannot overcome. Jesus is showing them the way toward a better life, the path to true blessing.

Now, if you've read the Bible for a long time, you might recognize that this is a different translation of this text from what you might've heard growing up. I typically use the Common English Bible in our worship together, because I believe it's one of the more accessible translations currently available. Some of you might be more accustomed to a translation such as the New Revised Standard Version, which renders this text slightly different.

Instead of using the word “happy”, the NRSV uses the word “blessed”.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” And so on.

I found that difference interesting, and I wonder at times how it's different to talk about being blessed and being happy.

It seems to me that we can be blessed with good things, and still not be happy. Sometimes it's hard for us to get out of our rut of feeling hopeless.

It seems equally possible that we might not be blessed with everything we need, but in spite of that, we can still be happy.

I don't know which translation would be more correct for Jesus’s people, and I don't know that I have a preference between the two translations. Maybe you might, and I'd be interested to hear what you think.

But in either case, the message of Jesus here is as pastoral as it is prophetic. Jesus reminds us that those who are oppressed, marginalized, and dismissed by society, are the ones his ministry most directly benefits.

So how can I focus our attention on this day of our annual meeting?

For me, I think scriptures like this offer us an opportunity to refocus our ministry as we enter into this new year of the church’s life. Through the teachings of Jesus, we are reminded of what's important, and who needs our presence in the community the most.

Is our programming aligning with the teachings of Jesus Christ set forth in the Beatitudes?

Is our mission and outreach work benefiting those most vulnerable in our community?

Are we strong enough in our solidarity with those others might push aside or dismiss?

As the church, as we know, is changing, I believe we have important work to do if we wish to stay relevant. Our job as followers of Jesus is to find those who are in the greatest need of the love of God, and joyfully provide it to them however we can, without any agenda. After all, it is people such as these to whom God's richest blessings belong.

So, together, let us renew the focus of our ministry toward those who are most vulnerable. Let us work together for the coming of God's realm on earth, as it is in heaven. I can't wait to work alongside you. Amen. 

“Repent from What?”

TRADITIONAL Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

January 22, 2023

Focus Statement: Through Paul’s words and Jesus’ teachings, God is asking us to repent from the petty divisions of our world, and unite instead around the purpose of Christ’s redemptive work.

According to a 2021 report from the Pew Research Center, approximately three in 10 American adults are now religiously unaffiliated.

As you can imagine, this statistic is startling not only for pastors but also for many Christians, who yearn for the “good old days” when religion was supposedly a higher priority in peoples’ lives. When soccer games didn't happen on Sunday mornings, kids had less homework on Wednesday nights because teachers knew that they were going to a youth group.

This seems to give way to a few different kinds of responses.

We might change something about ourselves to become more relevant. One way our congregation has done this is the implementation of our media service. Not a lot of churches incorporate secular music and movie clips into a weekly worship service and then apply those points to our daily lives.

Some Christians use their belief in God as fire insurance, telling everybody else that they will be sorry if they don't fill the pews of our Christian churches, or help us balance our budgets. (I don’t think that’s us, but I’ve seen it in other contexts.)

Finally, some Christians get all “doom-and-gloom” about the future of the church. Giving is down, attendance is down, engagement is down… and it gets depressing for some people.

Every Christian is going to respond differently, which is why there are differences and divisions in every single church. And with those divisions sometimes comes infighting, or at least intense disagreement on the future of the church.

The funny thing is, no matter how people's beliefs shape their actions, all of this can be done in the name of the person we understand Christ to be.

Just like the Corinthians, our impulse is often to dig in our heels even further. Many Christians choose one of these three responses, without being open to genuine conversation about how to be part of the new thing God is already doing in our church and in our community.

When Paul asks the question, “Has Christ been divided? Were you baptized by Paul, or by Apollos, or by Cephus, or by others?”…of course the Corinthians know the answer is no. But Paul is criticizing the Christianity they have made in their own image, which is preventing them from focusing on the life and teachings of Jesus. Paul believes that focusing on his teachings, or any of the teachings of others waters down the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

I wonder at times if modern-day Christianity is falling into the same trap. We worship a Christ who breaks down barriers, favors the outcast, and challenges us to care for those in need. On the other hand, the kind of Christianity that has taken hold of some people in society is infused with hatred, fear-mongering, and discrimination. Our most vulnerable siblings in Christ—those who have been treated unfairly because of their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other self-made constructions—continue to be told, or shown, that the good news of God’s liberation does not extend to them. Society is divided on how far it should go to embrace the outcast when, in fact, we worship a God who already has.

If Jesus lived and died because of his love for people like us, then Jesus also lived and died for people who are not like us—for people who live or love or vote or believe differently than we do.

As usual, when God’s people are divided and fighting against each other, Jesus has a message for them. We have a prime example in today’s text from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus calls us to change our hearts and lives.

After Jesus proclaims to a crowd that God’s realm has come to Earth, he issues a command.” No sooner does he offer this command than he calls some of his first disciples. It seems that these disciples are like an illustration, an example of what he has just asked society to do. In this case, he calls two young fishermen, telling them to put down their nets and share the good news with people instead. The amazing thing is that they don't hesitate. The text tells us that immediately after Jesus invites them into a relationship with him, they immediately throw down their nets and follow him. No analysis, no conversation among themselves, just taking a leap of faith.

I'm not going to pretend that it's that easy for all of us. Some of us have been hurt by the church. Some of these divisions have made us question our beliefs, or maybe even feel spiritually homeless. Some of us might have stories of people who have hurt us. And in those cases, I wouldn't fault you for being a little wary of keeping the institutional church alive.

But there is good news today: Through Paul’s words and Jesus’ teachings, God gives us the command and the opportunity to repent from the petty divisions of our world and unite instead around the purpose of Christ’s redemptive work.

Responding to the call of Christ to change our hearts and lives seems to reject any sense of comfort on the surface. There are all sorts of topics that I was urged in seminary not to touch with a 10-foot pole until I have been at a church for at least a year.

But a deeper look at this might give us a different perspective.

At my ecclesiastical council, where I was approved for ordination pending a call to ministry, one colleague of mine asked me where I find hope in the institutional church when it is supposedly dying by every discernible metric.

I responded that I had faith in God who makes all things new.

I know that at first, Jesus’ call for change may not feel like a gift. We might have to talk about difficult things. We might have to learn how to forge a new path in a rapidly changing world. We might have to rethink how we do things from time to time.

But Paul reminds us of the power of the resurrection, new life after death.

Even as we see all the signs pointing to sweeping changes to the institutional church as we know it, we worship a God and Christ who can make beautiful things happen in the midst of discernment, and even in the midst of division, if we are willing to let God do that slow work in us.

So, my friends, today I ask you to think about something in your life, or in the broader church’s life, that might be due to some change or renewal. Even in difficult times, after all, the work of resurrection is both liberation and hope for us if we are willing to receive it.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

“The Faith To Do The Work”

TRADITIONAL Sermon

Epiphany 2A/MLK Sunday

January 15, 2023

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Focus Statement: Even through all the ways we struggle to live with one another in the world, God gives us every spiritual gift we need as we wait for Jesus Christ to show us the way toward the right relationship.

The night before his assassination, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech called, “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop.” For many people, the very end of the speech is quite eerie, as if he knew that he would die the next day. He talked about looking over the mountaintop and seeing the promised land. “I may not get there with you,” he said to his listeners, “but we as a people will get to the promised land!”

I’m going to read one other small excerpt of this address, but I’d invite you to listen to the rest of it on your own because his delivery is full of a kind of passion and urgency that I couldn’t possibly articulate. 

He said: “All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China, Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights. And so, just as I said, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.”

Martin Luther King Jr. lived his life according to his faith in God and enacted that faith through his work in the public square. In some ways, the excerpt I just read is just as relevant in today's society as it was in 1963. While it’s true that we have made significant progress, our society still has not evolved beyond the discrimination of that era. Our country still discriminates based on race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other identifying characteristics of humanity. The only difference now is that we might be more clever about how we do it.

This kind of infighting in our society parallels the situation in Corinth. The commentator Matthew L. Skinner paints the Corinthians as a deeply annoying, deeply divided people. There's a great deal of conflict as these people try to figure out how to build a church that works harmoniously towards God's desires for the world. In order for them to work towards these goals, Paul first has to remind the Corinthians who they are. They may be flawed, ragamuffin people on their own, but Paul reminds them first that they are part of the communion of saints. Paul even thanks God for these people, even when Skinner says they might have been like his “problem child”. Paul assures the Corinthians that they have everything they need as they wait for Christ to be revealed to them. In doing so, Paul attempts to call them away from their needless squabbles, focusing their attention instead on the liberating promise of God.

At the end of this particular passage, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they were called into partnership with Jesus. They have been given everything they need to work towards their goals.

In other words, they were given the faith to do the work, if they were willing to hold onto it. It wasn't going to be easy. They needed to learn how to live with each other and advance the message of Jesus, at a time where Roman occupation was working against them. They didn't need to complicate this any further by turning against one another.

But even so, the commentator Alan Gregory reminds us of Paul's belief that the Corinthians are more than their failures and more than their divisions. Paul believes that the Corinthians can work towards the kind of society that Christ models if they commit to a partnership with Christ.

In a similar way, Martin Luther King Jr.'s audience was mobilized because he didn't give up hope that the oppressed would find their way toward a fairer country, a country that actually embodied the ideals it said it believed. Rev. Dr. King held the country to its highest standards when, in some ways, it would have been easier to just give up and submit to suffocating racism. He understood that violence was not an antidote for violence and that only love would drive out hatred.

But it was not without risk. It would be incredibly dangerous to live among those who favor segregation, with the ongoing threat of dogs, water hoses, and corrupt law enforcement. But he mobilized his followers to press on, even in the midst of the greatest difficulties, because he knew that there could be a better future if people were willing to work for it and be a part of its coming.

So, what about us, here in Waupun? How do we live out the spirit of Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., and of Christ?

One of the ideals we are most proud of is that this church is a welcoming and inclusive congregation. We are a melting pot of different traditions; faith backgrounds, work backgrounds, passions, hopes, and fears. In our mission statement, we talk about living our core values and living Christ’s example.

Sometimes, living Christ’s example takes a lot of risks, doesn't it?

If we truly welcome all, are we willing to make a firm stance against hatred and exclusion, even if it might be easier to just get along with everyone?

Are we willing to be strong enough in our words and actions that others might ask us to explain them, or defend them?

As we think about this, here is the good news for today: Even through all the ways we struggle to live with one another in the world, God gives us every spiritual gift we need as we wait for Jesus Christ to show us the way toward the right relationship.

Paul assures us that as long as we work towards God’s hope for the world, we will be blameless in the eyes of Jesus Christ when we go to heaven. We worship a God that is faithful and will guide us in the way that we should go.

So this week, I invite you to reflect upon what it's like to live in a Christian community with one another, and what kinds of risks we might need to undertake in order to create the world God desires. It may not be easy, but I do believe it will be worth it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

“What Time Is It?”

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church, Jan 1, 2023

Christmas 1A/New Year’s Day

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13, Matthew 25:31-46

Focus statement: As we approach this new year, God gives us a task: to work for justice, peace, and well-being for all. Behavioral purpose

Last summer, my family miraculously all got together for a family vacation. We spent a week at a beach house on Carolina Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina. When we weren't enjoying the beach, we were eating half our weight in excellent seafood or indulging in what we like to call our “dip of the day”, which entailed trying a different chip and dip combination every single day! (We ate way too much on that trip.)

Around that same time, thing happened in our lives. Emily had just finished her first semester of grad school, and I was interviewing for pastor positions, and conducting a nationwide search. So we were all keenly aware that this might be one of the last times we had a family vacation with just the four of us. We knew our future work schedules might place different demands on our time. We hope to welcome partners or children into the family one day, which will change the dynamic of our family time.

We also knew that we wanted to stay connected with our roots. My mom is from North Carolina, and we happened to be there on the one-year anniversary of my grandma's death.

We hope and anticipate that there will be more family vacations in the future, but we are basking in the sweetness of the present moment. Even if that present moment involved getting up really early for sunrise, which isn’t a normal activity for this night owl!

As I look back on that trip, I think about the various seasons of life we were all in. Some seasons were ending, and others were beginning. I can imagine that many of you have reflected similarly on the seasons of life you’ve encountered. Also, on this New Year's Day, it's natural to take stock, set our goals and priorities, to look for ways we can better ourselves in the year ahead.

However, we decide to orient ourselves as the calendar turns. It seems to me that we can find helpful accompaniment in our text from Ecclesiastes.

For starters, commentator William P. Brown reminds us that positive and negative situations are paired in no particular order, to demonstrate the totality of the human experience. It’s a reality, for example, that someone we know will give birth this year, and someone we know will die this year. These are facts of life, whether we like them or not. But life and death also extend beyond the literal sense. There are also priorities in our lives that we may choose to build and grow, or other priorities we choose to let fall by the wayside because they don’t carry the importance they once did. Relationships end. Circumstances change. Priorities shift. Sometimes that change can be good, and sometimes that change can break our hearts, but nonetheless, it’s inevitable.

There are also those differences in situations that affect how we live our lives. Sometimes we stay silent when it's not our battle, and sometimes we have to advocate for the justice we want to see in the world. Sometimes, what is broken can be mended. Other times, it's best for our health if we don’t.

The Ecclesiastes text ends by alluding to a task God gives human beings. This passage doesn’t go into great detail on what that task is, but if you read further into Ecclesiastes 2 and 3, you’ll find a common theme of reflection on work and vocation, which is a worthy study on its own merits but not quite fitting with the rest of today’s message.

So, what about Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us? What is his task for us?

According to the text which has been kept for us in Matthew 25, Jesus talks about all the ways those who are righteous will follow his will. In other words, he offers a blueprint for some of the most important behavior, according to him.

He talks about what some would call the day of judgment, where both the righteous and the unrighteous will answer to Jesus upon their death. To the righteous, Jesus will say: “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.”

It turns out, it’s not about doing these things for Jesus specifically, but instead, seeing the face of Christ in one another, and caring for one another as Christ cared for us.

It might not seem at the outset that these two scriptures connect very well, but this second text actually leads us to the main point I want to make today: As we approach this new year, God gives us a task in every season of our lives: to work for justice, peace, and well-being for all.

As I begin to draw this message to a close, I’d like to ask you this question: “what time is it?”

I have a watch on, so I’m not asking what the actual time is. But I’m asking what time it is for our congregation, and also for you in your life.

We have our annual congregational meeting after worship in just a few weeks, and we’re about to reflect on the year, make decisions together, and present our goals for the future. As the year goes on, will we consider a new initiative? Will we do more community outreach? Will we reevaluate our mission or our programming, making the necessary changes to improve its effectiveness? Surely, opportunities await us to build, grow, reach, to give birth to something exciting in the life of our congregation. God will guide us in the ways that we should go, and God might reveal something you or I never thought possible.

And what about you? What seasons of life will you navigate in the coming year? Will it be like the story I shared of my own family, where some seasons were ending and others were beginning? Do you enter this coming year with excitement, with wonder, or even apprehension? My door is always open to you if you’d like to talk more about that.

As you consider these things, also be mindful of Christ’s call to you, and to us all. The season is always right to do justice, work for peace, and to care for our neighbors in need. Christ’s advocacy for “the least of these” is a vital part of the mission we’re called to co-labor with together.

So I ask again, what time is it?

What time is it for you? What time is it for the church? What time is it for our community?

As you prepare to answer that question as this new year dawns, may you remember Christ’s companionship, Christ’s care, and Christ’s call to action?

Happy New Year, friends. Let’s work with Christ to make it a season of hope. Amen.

“Fear Not—the Light Is On The Way!”

Sermon for 7 PM TRAD SERVICE, Christmas Eve 2022

U-CC Waupun

Focus statement: In the midst of living in a complicated world, we rejoice in God’s gift of Jesus, who brings hope to our world.

My parents have always been great gift-givers. They are good at giving gifts that surprise and enchant me, like my first iPod or our Nintendo Wii, and also gifts that are practical and necessary in this season of living independently. As a child, I used to hate getting clothes for Christmas, but sometimes that big pack of socks or that new sweater is just what a guy needs!

I’ve gotten some great gifts over the years, but it seems like Dad always has something special and unexpected in mind for Mom. Sometimes it’s something that the whole family can enjoy and appreciate, but many times it’s something especially for her, where he can demonstrate his appreciation for all the ways that Mom enriches our lives. Sometimes my sister Emily and I pitch in and share in this special gift-giving, and sometimes Dad gives this as his own token of love and appreciation.

One recent Christmas, my mom was grieving the loss of her father, and my grandfather, and remembering the journey of their relationship, with all its joys and challenges. That Christmas, Mom received a very special diamond ring, which was accompanied by a beautiful handwritten note from my dad. This note explained to Mom that while my dad was the one giving her the ring, it was really her own father’s generosity that enabled my dad to give her this ring. Her dad died a couple of years ago, and my dad gave her this ring in hopes that Mom would always feel the love of her dad surrounding her as she wore it.

I can imagine many of us have a story like this in our families. Some of the best gifts we can receive are symbols to remind us of someone important to us.

Of course, tonight we have many different scripture readings, and a solid Christmas Eve message could be made out of any one of them. But this year, I feel particularly drawn to the scripture which was recited by Linus van Pelt in that dramatic and beautiful scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

There are two main points in the text that I want to reflect upon tonight. The first is “don’t be afraid.” The second is “this is a sign for you.”

First, Luke's Gospel tells us that the shepherds were terrified, and I can hardly blame them. They were just minding their own business, taking care of the sheep, and all of a sudden an angel visited them to tell them this news that nobody else knew yet! I would be terrified too! Luke makes a point of reminding us that these people were shepherds. Nobodies. Ordinary people, doing ordinary things. They have such low status in society that they’re not the people with whom this kind of news would normally be shared first.

It actually makes sense when we think of the people Jesus cared about the most. His whole ministry, his whole life, his death, was for the nobodies, the outcasts, the downtrodden.

So we've received the good news of great joy. Now how do we find it? The second piece of the angel’s announcement is when they say, “this is a sign for you.” In other words, this is how you will know that what you are hearing is true. They're instructed to find a tiny baby wrapped in whatever cloth they could find, laying in the same place where animals eat. And against all odds, this was the person who was supposed to save the world.

The shepherds would have a right to be skeptical. But instead, their faith is so deep in what the angel has told them that they stop everything they're doing, throw caution to the wind and go find this baby. And at that moment, the whole world changed forever.

In some ways, the story is a lot like the story of my mom and the ring. In the midst of a complicated time in her life, my dad and my grandpa both gave her a sign that everything was going to be okay. That didn't mean the journey forward would be free of difficulties, but it was a sign that her father’s spirit was with her in the midst of it all.

The story also has some parallels with us, as a congregation. Over the last couple of years, this congregation has weathered many challenges. Retirement of a well-loved pastor. Other staffing changes. Covid. Online worship. Multiple deaths in the last month. And that doesn't even include the individual challenges you face in your lives outside here.

But this is precisely why the Christmas story is so beautiful. In the midst of living in a complicated world, we rejoice in God’s gift of Jesus, who brings hope to our world.

“Don’t be afraid” and “this is a sign for you” are not throwaway phrases in our time and place. Through the coming of Jesus Christ, God is telling us, both in our own church and in the world, that something wonderful is on its way.

Even though I've only been here for a month, I can see the new things God is doing in this congregation and the wider church. There are signs every day that God is working within us, among us, around us, and through us. These are the little moments where Jesus breaks through our world's chaos, grief, and wandering, bringing a revolution of amazing and unexplainable love.

So as you enter into this Christmas season, I invite you to ask yourself a question. How can you share the good news of God's love, which is true for all people? How can you remind somebody that, even in the midst of everything they've been through, they don't have to be afraid anymore?

As you enter the end of this Christmas season, don't be afraid, and search for the signs of Jesus coming into your life. Thanks be to God. Amen.

“Fear Not—the Light Is On The Way!”

Sermon for 4 PM FAMILY SERVICE, Christmas Eve 2022

U-CC Waupun

Focus statement: In the midst of living in a complicated world, we rejoice in God’s gift of Jesus, who brings hope to our world.

My parents have always been great gift-givers. They are good at giving gifts that surprise and enchant me, like my first iPod or our Nintendo Wii, and also gifts that are practical and necessary in this season of living independently. As a child, I used to hate getting clothes for Christmas, but sometimes that big pack of socks or that new sweater is just what a guy needs!

I’ve gotten some great gifts over the years, but it seems like Dad always has something special and unexpected in mind for Mom. Sometimes it’s something that the whole family can enjoy and appreciate, but many times it’s something especially for her, where he can demonstrate his appreciation for all the ways that Mom enriches our lives. Sometimes my sister Emily and I pitch in and share in this special gift-giving, and sometimes Dad gives this as his own token of love and appreciation.

One recent Christmas, my mom was grieving the loss of her father, and my grandfather, and remembering the journey of their relationship, with all its joys and challenges. That Christmas, Mom received a very special diamond ring, which was accompanied by a beautiful handwritten note from my dad. This note explained to Mom that while my dad was the one giving her the ring, it was really her own father’s generosity that enabled my dad to give her this ring. Her dad died a couple of years ago, and my dad gave her this ring in hopes that Mom would always feel the love of her dad surrounding her as she wore it.

I can imagine many of us have a story like this in our families. Some of the best gifts we can receive are symbols to remind us of someone important to us.

Of course, tonight we have many different scripture readings, and a solid Christmas Eve message could be made out of any one of them. But this year, I feel particularly drawn to the scripture which was recited by  Linus van Pelt in that dramatic and beautiful scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

There are two main points in the text that I want to reflect upon tonight. The first is “don’t be afraid.” The second is “this is a sign for you.”

First, Luke's Gospel tells us that the shepherds were terrified, and I can hardly blame them. They were just minding their own business, taking care of the sheep, and all of a sudden an angel visited them to tell them this news that nobody else knew yet! I would be terrified too! Luke makes a point of reminding us that these people were shepherds. Nobodies. Ordinary people, doing ordinary things. They have such low status in society that they’re not the people with whom this kind of news would normally be shared first.

It actually makes sense when we think of the people Jesus cared about the most. His whole ministry, his whole life, his death, was for the nobodies, the outcasts, the downtrodden.

We see this also in Linus’s retelling of the story. If you know Linus even a little bit, you know that Linus is kind of a misfit, and he always has his blanket with him. His sister Lucy chastises him endlessly about why he carries around that stupid blanket.  It's a safety object of sorts for him, like so many of us carry around our favorite stuffed animal. But we also know how faithful Linus is, because the minute he says, “fear not”, he drops his blanket, and smiles from ear to ear when talking about the good news of great joy which shall be for all people! I have a hunch that he would be the first one to go see the baby in real life, and not just because he played a shepherd in that Christmas play.

So we've received the good news of great joy. Now how do we find it? The second piece of the angel’s announcement is when they say, “this is a sign for you.” In other words, this is how you will know that what you are hearing is true. They're instructed to find a tiny baby wrapped in whatever cloth they could find, laying in the same place where animals eat. And against all odds, this was the person who was supposed to save the world.

The shepherds would have a right to be skeptical. But instead, their faith is so deep in what the angel has told them that they stop everything they're doing, throw caution to the wind and go find this baby. And At that moment, the whole world changed forever.

In some ways, the story is a lot like the story of my mom and the ring. In the midst of a complicated time in her life, my dad and my grandpa both gave her a sign that everything was going to be okay. That didn't mean the journey forward would be free of difficulties, but it was a sign that her father’s spirit was with her in the midst of it all.

The story also has some parallels with us, as a congregation. Over the last couple of years, this congregation has weathered many challenges. Retirement of a well-loved pastor. Other staffing changes. Covid. Online worship. Multiple deaths in the last month. And that doesn't even include the individual challenges you face in your lives outside here.

But this is precisely why the Christmas story is so beautiful. In the midst of living in a complicated world, we rejoice in God’s gift of Jesus, who brings hope to our world.

“Don’t be afraid” and “this is a sign for you” are not throwaway phrases in our time and place. Through the coming of Jesus Christ, God is telling us, both in our own church and in the world, that something wonderful is on its way.

Even though I've only been here for a month, I can see the new things God is doing in this congregation and the wider church. There are signs every day that God is working within us, among us, around us, and through us. These are the little moments where Jesus breaks through our world's chaos, grief, and wandering, bringing a revolution of amazing and unexplainable love.

So as you enter into this Christmas season, I invite you to ask yourself a question. How can you share the good news of God's love, which is true for all people? How can you remind somebody that, even in the midst of everything they've been through, they don't have to be afraid anymore?

As you enter into this Christmas season, don't be afraid, and search for the signs of Jesus coming into your life. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

December 18, 2022

TRADITIONAL SERVICE

Focus Statement: Even in our most desperate and desolate situations, we are waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ. He will remind us what it means to be in healthy and productive relationships with each other, and with the world around us.

Behavioral purpose: Today I’m beginning my sermon with part of a message I received via email from Rev. Franz Rigert, who’s our conference minister at the Wisconsin Conference UCC. Franz writes:

In December 1914, British and German soldiers were bogged down in trench warfare on the Western front of the First World War, the two sides dug in so close that they often shouted insults at each other. But in the dark quiet of that Christmas Eve, the Germans began singing Christmas carols. Soon jokes were exchanged, and weapons put down. The story is told of a lone voice shouting, “Tomorrow you no shoot; we no shoot,” and a British soldier answering, “You come halfway; we come halfway.”

On Christmas morning, the soldiers met in “no man’s land” to exchange handshakes, songs, cigarettes, and cheer. They even played soccer. But that Christmas truce prompted by the spirit of God was quickly squelched by the generals. Imagine what could have been if the voice of the angels and the love of the Christ child rested in every heart on the battlefield.

Franz goes on to reflect upon what the world might be like if we engaged in “Christmas truces” of our own, from such things as our political warfare, the discrimination we perpetuate, and all that separates us from God and one another. I’m happy to share the entirety of Franz’s remarks with you if you’d like, and I’ll try to get them posted on our church's Facebook page.

This week we lit the candle of peace, which seems appropriate given the Scripture for today. The Psalmist seems to waffle between desperation and anger.

First, the Psalmist desperately seeks hope in God’s presence. “Listen! Wake up your power! Come to save us!”

We don’t have much context into the Psalmist’s plight, or from what they need to be saved, but it strikes me that the Psalmist didn’t say, “Come to save me. Make your face shine, so I can be saved.”

The Psalmist is asking for God’s help in the restoration of their community. Restoration from apathy. Restoration from petty anger. Restoration from that which prevented them from following God’s will.

But often, desperation and anger go hand in hand. In the Psalmist’s desperation, they accuse God of turning people against each other and making them suffer.

We are rapidly becoming angrier at each other, at the world, and at God. We believe the only logical answer is violence, despair, and desolation. Worse yet, we accept that this is just how things are going to be. We accept that people are going to get angry with each other or kill each other before anything changes.

But the Psalmist understands that this is outside what God desires for the world. The Psalmist understands that God has an alternate vision for how the world will live in relationship with one another, and the Psalmist hopes—even demands—that God will show up and make it all better. Indeed, this is one of the deepest forms of prayer. Reaching out to God at all required that the Psalmist actually believed that God would respond. If the Psalmist didn’t believe that God would respond, why even bother?

We long for a relationship with God when times are difficult, scary, and hopeless. Michael talks about being in the arms of someone who believes in him in his despair—the kind of connection so many of us long for when we’re scared.

One thing that makes the Psalms one of my favorite books of the Bible is that each psalm captures a person's emotions at a moment in time, without the finality of some resolution by God. That very same factor makes them difficult for others. In this situation, I can see why many people might hear this song and say, “Man, this seems pretty bleak. How are we supposed to find grace in this? What does this teach us about God?”

I believe the Isaiah text in the lectionary can give us our answer.

Isaiah prophesied that God would give God’s people a sign of the coming of the Messiah. He says, “The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose well. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.”

This is our good news for today. Even in our most desperate and desolate situations, we are waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ. He will remind us what it means to be in healthy and productive relationships with each other, and with the world around us.

Sometimes living in healthy relationships with other humans is messy. For some of us, the people whom we will share Christmas with don't share our values, make us uncomfortable, or don't treat us in the ways we deserve to be treated. Sometimes the holidays are a reminder of fractured family relationships, or painful Christmases past, rather than a joyous celebration.

We might get cynical, or we might cry out to God, saying, “Save us! Save them! Make us care for each other again!”

The grace is that Jesus will do this. Jesus is going to come and make the world align with God's will once again. We need not fear a world that is drifting further and further away from what we understand to be right, because God is going to set things right again.

But this is far from a passive exercise.

The subject line of Franz’s email was “… and let it begin with me”, as in, “let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Part of encountering a world that is filled with the peace of Jesus Christ is to do our part to make it so.

So let us find ways to refrain from turning against each other. When we cry for God to restore us, may we be willing to do our part to aid the restoration? Amen.

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

TRADITIONAL Service

December 11, 2022

Advent 3A: Luke 1:46-55 and Matthew 11:2-11

Focus Statement: We may have different reactions to the coming of Jesus, but his coming will change the way we live in profound ways. We are called to respond with joyful expectation as we await his coming.

Behavioral purpose:

Raise your hand if you can say with confidence that you believe in miracles.

For those of you who raised your hand, did you hesitate first? Did you have to think for a minute? Were you waiting to see where I was going to go with this before you made a judgment?

In some ways, I will admit that I myself struggle to believe in miracles. Maybe I’m too cynical, or maybe I’m a product of a society that has to analyze everything, where everything has to have a reason for being. Sometimes the word itself feels overused to me since it's used to describe “miracles” that aren’t actually miracles.

Childbirth? Yes, I can say that's a miracle, no matter the circumstances of the child and the parents. But finding the one empty spot in the parking lot at a Walmart Super Center? Not so much.

People have many reasons to be cynical. Throughout the last few years, I’ve heard people talk about the exhaustion of listening to the nightly news, referring to an endless loop of violence and depression that dominates the narrative. It also has a cumulative effect on us as we grow older, which adds to the sadness as well.

Biblically, those of us who are cynical are in good company with John the Baptist today. He sends his disciples to go see Jesus, saying, “how can we be sure this is the one?”

One commentary by Stanley Saunders, who served on the faculty at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, suggests that there are two different emotions John could be conveying when he asks the question. He is either deeply hopeful and filled with awe that Jesus is really here, or he is exasperated because of a long line of people who have said they were the one chosen by God to bring about God's dream for the world. So John’s disciples go to Jesus for answers.

Jesus responds, “Go, report to John what you hear and see. Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”

As an advocate for just disability representation in the Bible and in the church, I have to note that using the curing of disabilities as evidence for Christ's presence is troubling. For me, and for many of my colleagues in the disability theology world, doing so perpetuates the erroneous notion that those of us who live with incurable disabilities are not worthy of or don’t experience love by God, by Jesus, or by society unless our disability is taken away. Sure, I experience the healing of Christ’s presence, but I don’t need to be cured of my disability to experience Christ’s, revolutionary love.  So while this is a biblical account, I want us to watch out for how folks in various minority groups are being represented in the biblical text.

Yet at the same time, the redeeming quality of this text is through its recognition of things that can only be possible through Jesus Christ, whose coming we await. At the end of this text, Jesus makes it clear that John the Baptist’s prophecy is connected to him, further cementing his mandate.

In her song in Luke chapter 1, which is commonly known as the Magnificat, Mary understands this too. She recognizes that her baby is no ordinary child, but instead somebody who will fundamentally change the entire world as she and her people know it. Whenever I encounter this text, I'm always amazed at the level Mary understood about what Jesus would do for the world, even as she got the news in such a shocking way. Somehow, the only way she knows how to respond to this news is to sing about it. She sings with passion, hope, excitement, and with wonder about what God is doing. If only they had a megaphone in Biblical times because I think Mary would’ve used one!

Mary resolves to choose joy in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances. She and Joseph had not gotten married yet, so in multiple ways, they were deviating from the social expectations of the day. Deviating from those social expectations had much graver consequences in those days than doing so in our society. I wonder how much that scared her. Mary’s song focuses more on her awe and wonder at what God is doing in her life, and praise for the character of God, and not much on whatever fears she might have. She chooses to raise her voice in praise even in the midst of all that uncertainty.

In our two scripture texts for today, we've seen two ways of responding to the arrival, life and ministry of Jesus Christ. To be honest, in some ways I don't fault either person. John the Baptist is cynical, or at least wary, that the presence of Jesus could be this miraculous. Mary is overjoyed at the miracle she knows is on its way inside of her. Jesus would go on to do unimaginable, liberating work. Feeding the hungry, holding space for those in need of love and grace, giving good news to the poor. All the liberation so many people find through Jesus Christ in their own circumstances truly is miraculous.

So what does this mean for us?

This is the good news for today: We may have different reactions to the coming of Jesus, but his coming will change the way we live in profound ways. We are called to respond with joyful expectation as we await his coming.

What does it look like for you to choose joy in this Advent season?

For some, we might find joy in spending time with our family as we prepare for the holidays together. We might even find joy in the chaos.

For some of us, the prospect of finding joy does not seem to resonate with our experiences. Maybe we're dealing with the loss of a loved one, or this season is difficult for us for some other reason. Perhaps you might find joy in the quiet, peaceful moments of sitting by a fire, reminiscing, or waiting for things to turn around. We might be cynical or exasperated because these have been exhausting times. But this is a miracle we can believe in, no matter how cynical, exasperated, or distressed we might sometimes feel: Jesus is on his way, and his life and ministry are going to make the world further aligned with God's hopes and desires. I find great hope in that: hope for you, hope for me, and hope for all of us. As we wait, let us do what we can to work toward God’s desires for the world. Amen.

Sermon for Union-Congregational Church

MEDIA Service

December 11, 2022

Advent 3A: Luke 1:46-55 and Matthew 11:2-11

Focus Statement: We may have different reactions to the coming of Jesus, but his coming will change the way we live in profound ways. We are called to respond with joyful expectation as we await his coming.

Behavioral purpose:

Raise your hand if you can say with confidence that you believe in miracles.

For those of you who raised your hand, did you hesitate first? Did you have to think for a minute? Were you waiting to see where I was going to go with this before you made a judgment?

In some ways, I will admit that I myself struggle to believe in miracles. Maybe I’m too cynical, or maybe I’m a product of a society that has to analyze everything, where everything has to have a reason for being. Sometimes the word itself feels overused to me since it's used to describe “miracles” that aren’t actually miracles.

Childbirth? Yes, I can say that's a miracle, no matter the circumstances of the child and the parents. But finding the one empty spot in the parking lot at a Walmart Super Center? Not so much.

Our song by For King and Country today joins us in the cynicism, or at least in exasperation. The song begins by talking about the exhaustion of listening to the nightly news, referring to an endless loop of violence and depression that dominates the narrative. It also has a cumulative effect on us as we grow older, which adds to the sadness as well.

Biblically, those of us who are cynical are in good company with John the Baptist today. He sends his disciples to go see Jesus, saying, “how can we be sure this is the one?”

One commentary by Stanley Saunders, who served on the faculty at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, suggests that there are two different emotions John could be conveying when he asks the question. He is either deeply hopeful and filled with awe that Jesus is really here, or he is exasperated because of a long line of people who have said they were the ones chosen by God to bring about God's dream for the world. So John’s disciples go to Jesus for answers.

Jesus responds, “Go, report to John what you hear and see. Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”

As an advocate for just disability representation in the Bible and in the church, I have to note that using the curing of disabilities as evidence of Christ's presence is troubling. For me, and for many of my colleagues in the disability theology world, doing so perpetuates the erroneous notion that those of us who live with incurable disabilities are not worthy of or don’t experience love by God, by Jesus, or by society unless our disability is taken away. Sure, I experience the healing of Christ’s presence, but I don’t need to be cured of my disability to experience Christ’s, revolutionary love.  So while this is a biblical account, I want us to watch out for how folks in various minority groups are being represented in the biblical text.

Yet at the same time, the redeeming quality of this text is through its recognition of things that can only be possible through Jesus Christ, whose coming we await. At the end of this text, Jesus makes it clear that John the Baptist’s prophecy is connected to him, further cementing his mandate.

In her song in Luke chapter 1, which is commonly known as the Magnificat, Mary understands this too. She recognizes that her baby is no ordinary child, but instead somebody who will fundamentally change the entire world as she and her people know it. Whenever I encounter this text, I'm always amazed at the level Mary understood about what Jesus would do for the world, even as she got the news in such a shocking way. Somehow, the only way she knows how to respond to this news is to sing about it. She sings with passion, hope, excitement, and with wonder about what God is doing. The singers of our song today ask for a megaphone, and this is clearly Mary’s megaphone moment!

Mary resolves to choose joy in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances. She and Joseph had not gotten married yet, so in multiple ways, they were deviating from the social expectations of the day. Deviating from those social expectations had much graver consequences in those days than doing so in our society. I wonder how much that scared her. Mary’s song focuses more on her awe and wonder at what God is doing in her life, and praise for the character of God, and not much on whatever fears she might have. She chooses to raise her voice in praise even in the midst of all that uncertainty.

In our two scripture texts for today, we've seen two ways of responding to the arrival, life, and ministry of Jesus Christ. To be honest, in some ways I don't fault either person. John the Baptist is cynical, or at least wary, that the presence of Jesus could be this miraculous. Mary is overjoyed at the miracle she knows is on its way inside of her. Jesus would go on to do unimaginable, liberating work. Feeding the hungry, holding space for those in need of love and grace, and giving good news to the poor. All the liberation so many people find through Jesus Christ in their own circumstances truly is miraculous.

So what does this mean for us?

This is the good news for today: We may have different reactions to the coming of Jesus, but his coming will change the way we live in profound ways. We are called to respond with joyful expectation as we await his coming.

What does it look like for you to choose joy in this Advent season?

For some, we might find joy in spending time with our family as we prepare for the holidays together. We might even find joy in the chaos.

For some of us, the prospect of finding joy does not seem to resonate with our experiences. Maybe we're dealing with the loss of a loved one, or this season is difficult for us for some other reason. Perhaps you might find joy in the quiet, peaceful moments of sitting by a fire, reminiscing, or waiting for things to turn around. We might be cynical or exasperated because these have been exhausting times. But this is a miracle we can believe in, no matter how cynical, exasperated, or distressed we might sometimes feel: Jesus is on his way, and his life and ministry are going to make the world further aligned with God's hopes and desires. I find great hope in that: hope for you, hope for me, and hope for all of us. As we wait, let us do what we can to work toward God’s desires for the world. Amen.

TRADITIONAL Sermon for November 27, 2022

(Advent 1, Year A)

Union Congregational Church

Psalm 122, Matthew 24:36-44

Focus Statement: God has gathered us together in a new relationship. We now await together the coming of the Christ child, who will reveal himself to us in ways we can’t imagine.  

Behavioral purpose:

Every day this week when I’ve come to the office to work, I’ve been filled with hope and expectation at the new things God is doing, both in my life and in the life of this congregation. On Monday morning, my first day as your pastor, I awoke in my new bed, in my new home, and was excited to meet new people, learn new things, and work with a new church.

As I was getting ready for work, I was reminded of my journey of getting to this moment. In some ways, my journey with this congregation came when I least expected it. The Associate Conference Minister Rev, Jane Anderson called me on a Saturday morning in July to let me know about the pastoral position at this church. I was just getting ready to attend a surprise birthday party for my aunt. It was literally 5 minutes until we were supposed to be out the door. “Is this a good time?” she said. I was a bit frazzled, and I actually thought I might be in trouble. It was just so strange that I was getting a call from the Associate Conference Minister on a Saturday morning! As I stand here with you today, I am so glad I took the time to take her call.

“Well, I know you’re short on time, so I’ll keep this short. There’s a really great congregation in Waupun looking for a pastor. Just lovely people, and I really think you should apply.”

Then Jane sent my profile to your search committee, and just three days later, I got an email request from Kathy and Jeff asking for an interview! Things unfolded pretty quickly for us after that, and it involved some important discernment on both sides.

The rest, as they say, is history, but it feels wonderful to know that something as unexpected as that journey could lead me toward something this good.

I don’t do this every week, but today I found pieces of both Scripture passages I wanted to bring forth for us today. But here’s the theme I’d like for us to consider: God has gathered us together in a new relationship. We now await together the coming of the Christ child, who will reveal himself to us in ways we can’t imagine. I’ll trace that theme throughout the rest of my message.

It strikes me that, on the first day of our worshiping together as pastor and people, our scripture starts out with these words: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’” Indeed, God has brought us together for such a time as this, and I am so excited! I am excited because of all the new opportunities we have together, the conversations we’ll have, the things we’ll learn, and the ways our faith will be deepened because we are together.

Additionally, the Psalmist calls their listeners and readers to pray for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem. Part of our project is to not only pray for peace and prosperity within Union-Congregational Church and in the wider church but to actually make it so. We are called to seek the good of that to which we are entrusted. That might manifest in treating our siblings in Christ with kindness, setting aside our own agendas for the good of all. It might look like tending to the needs of our wider community, putting our money where our mouth is, and even going beyond that.

Our second text might give us a more concrete directive. In Matthew’s gospel, the way we can work towards the realm of God is to always be ready.

In Biblical times, they didn’t know when Jesus would come. They lived in desperate times when they were controlled by greedy, rich rulers. They were told that Jesus was going to come and turn the world upside down. They didn’t know when he would arrive, but their directive was to remain vigilant.

We have a designated time that we celebrate the birth of Jesus, so perhaps that piece of the Scripture doesn’t resonate with us at first glance, but the sentiment continues to be relevant: Jesus is coming into our hearts, into our world, once again, in a new way. How will we respond?

My friends, I believe that we respond by embracing the unexpected. Advent is a season where we can give thanks for the gift of Jesus Christ, which was far greater than anything we could expect or imagine. He gave his followers a model for living according to God’s desires and served as their advocate in an unjust world.

In several ways, my call to this congregation showed itself in ways I could not expect. When Jane called me on that summer Saturday, I had no idea this church existed, and I really had no idea how much you would support me. You’ve already given me rides to and from church on short notice, and been so helpful in many other ways even in this short time.

Similarly, I wonder what unexpected gifts you can point to in your life. Perhaps it was a blessing that came out of a difficult time. Perhaps it has been watching the growth of your family, your children, and your grandchildren, grow into beautiful reminders of God’s presence in your life. 

As you move into this week, and into this season of Advent, may you remember those unexpected gifts with gratitude.

But God asks something deeper of us than remembering the gifts we’ve already received. The birth of the Christ child can’t be just going through the motions every year. It’s too important for that.

God asks us to continue being ready for our lives to be changed by the gift of Jesus. Following Jesus, after all, is far from an easy task. It requires us to say yes to some things, and say no to others, even when it may be unpopular. It requires us to work towards the realization of something bigger than ourselves. It requires us to lead a life that is full of prayer, worship, and discernment, even as our society prefers living lives that make us happy.

But there’s something beautiful in waiting for the unexpected gift of Christ, who will show us how to live and be in relationship with one another, and with the God who made us.

So as you enter this season, be ready for your life to change into something new and beautiful. Stay vigilant, stay alert. Be ready for a Child who will turn your world, and your life as you know it, upside down. Receiving, and sharing, Jesus’s revolutionary love truly is the greatest gift we can receive. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Reign of Christ Sunday, Year C

November 20, 2022

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:32-43

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"King of Garbage"

[There is a scene in The Princess Bride in which the title character dreams.  It’s one of those dream sequences that we as the audience are supposed to believe--at first, at least--is actually happening in the storyline, but realize that we’ve been tricked when the character wakes up.  In this dream, Princess Buttercup is about to be crowned Queen through her marriage to Prince Humperdink.  She has presented to the crowd gathered before the palace.  As she enters the pathway that leads through the gathering of her new subjects, everyone bows down.  Well, everybody except for one person.  We hear an old woman yelling, “Boo.  Boo.  Boo.”  This old woman then proceeds to call the new Queen “garbage.”  She goes on to tell the others in the crowd to “bow down to her if you like.  Bow down to the Queen of Refuse.  Queen of Slime.  Queen of Filth.  Queen of Putrescence.”]

This morning’s gospel passage gives me a similar feeling as that description of the new Queen from The Princess Bride:  a monarch of refuse, of slime, of filth.  While they’ve been telling the story of the life of Jesus, the Gospel writers have been trying to convince us that Jesus is some kind of royalty.  Throughout the gospels, the writers are constantly using passages from the Hebrew prophets to “prove” that Jesus is the long-awaited king of the Jewish people.  Seeing characteristics like the justice and righteousness we hear from Jeremiah today (23:5) become personified in Jesus, the evangelists write about events that supposedly fulfill predictions that the prophets made centuries earlier.  These alleged fulfillments were all supposed to mean that Jesus was the long-awaited king--the one who would save the Jewish people from the cruel Roman occupation.

But when the Gospel writers had to write about the crucifixion, it became a little harder to maintain the idea that Jesus was king.  This kind of ending wasn’t in the supposed script.  How can the king who was supposed to restore the fortunes of Israel and Judah be executed in the worst possible way?  What kind of king was Jesus supposed to be, anyway?  Just as in The Princess Bride, was Jesus simply garbage, the King of Refuse, King of Slime, King of Filth, King of Putrescence?  Based on the image of Jesus hanging on a cross, it sure looks like it.

But we know a little about the kind of kingdom Jesus talked about (I hope).  We know that Christ’s kingdom intentionally stood out against Roman rule and its way of life.  We might also remember whom the Kingdom (or Empire) of God was open to, according to Jesus.  When we think about whom Jesus was welcomed into God’s kingdom, we might very well see how Jesus could be called the King of Refuse, Slime, Filth, or Putrescence.  The hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, and the least of these.  Knowing whom Christ’s kingdom is for might help us see Jesus as Sovereign of all this so-called garbage.

What Jesus preached represented such a threat to the way his society was run that the government had to put him to death.  There’s just no way around seeing that fact about Jesus.  Even if we disagree with the Roman Empire’s decision to crucify him, Jesus was executed as a criminal.  When the Roman soldiers had the title “King of the Judeans” inscribed above Jesus as he died, they were mocking his supposed claims to royalty.  What they got right, of course, was that someone who claimed to be King of the Judeans would indeed have been directly challenging the authority of the Emperor of Rome.  What they got wrong though, was that Christ’s sovereignty was not about the liberation of only the Jewish nation, but the release from the bondage of all creation.

As we will know, Jesus’ followers continued Christ’s mission after the execution of their leader.  They continued to see Christ–and not Caesar–as Sovereign.  And, as a result, they also continued to be executed as subversive threats to the Emperor’s rule.  The disciples’ claim that Christ was Sovereign continued--even after Jesus had departed from the earth--and it continued to be treated as the crime that it was, until, of course, the movement became co-opted by imperial interests.  What we may not realize in 21st-century America is that to genuinely claim that Christ is Sovereign and act accordingly still remains a threat to our way of life.  To call ourselves Christian is to continue this challenge.  We cannot ignore the plight of the poor and still say Christ is our Sovereign.  We cannot ignore the problems of our neighbors--whether down the street or on the other side of the globe--and still call ourselves subjects of the realm of Christ.  We cannot let society get away with ignoring the least of these and expect to live in Christ’s kingdom as our entitlement.  To make the claim that Christ is Sovereign, as we do on this special day of the church year, is to throw our entire system and way of life into question.  The world has not yet lived up to the Gospel, and Christ’s mission is left for us to fulfill as Christ’s Body.

When we pray week after week, “Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” it should mean something to us if Christ is our Sovereign.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we work to make sure the poor are blessed.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we put the last first.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we proclaim release to the captives and let the oppressed go free.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we make sure the hungry are fed and the naked get clothed, and the sick receive treatment.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we welcome all–whether outcasts, strangers, foreigners, or enemies.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we trust that truth will set us free.  If Christ is our Sovereign, then we pick up our cross and follow.

If the Roman Empire was based on the show of might, as crucifixions tended to illustrate, then one might ask what Christ’s reign could be based on.  I think that answer can also be found in the particular crucifixion of Jesus.  In this passage, we hear that there were two others crucified with Jesus, one on his right, and one on his left.  Most of us have heard this well-known passage before.  One of the criminals mocks Jesus and his claims that there is more to God’s kingdom than Roman justice.  The other criminal simply asks to be remembered.  Here is where the kind of power Jesus represents gets revealed.  Jesus does not ask this second criminal a single question.  Not what he’s done to get there.  Not if he immigrated illegally.  Not if he dealt drugs.  Not if he’s aware that he contributed to crime rates rising.  Jesus didn’t ask why he didn’t have money for cash bail or why he wasn’t good enough to qualify for parole.  He didn’t even ask to see if this guy was of the right religion.  No, Jesus tells him that on that day, he will be with him in Paradise.  That is the power of the compassion-filled grace that fuels Christ’s reign--the opposite of the power of the might be used by Rome and its brutality.

But there’s another thing we need to see in this passage.  I think that fundamentally, these other two death-row individuals represent the two kinds of people there are.  The first--the one who joins in the mocking of Jesus--is the one who accepts the world as it is.  He accepts Rome’s punishment and rules over the land and the people living there.  He is a victim, perhaps, but he joins in the victimization of someone else.  This criminal actually helps perpetuate the system of injustice.  He represents, I think, the kind of people who are hurt by the world and its unjust ways, and then respond by hurting someone else.

The other one, however, sees things differently.  He knows he’s under the heel of Roman oppression; there’s not any real question about that.  But he sees that there is another way.  There can be an alternative way for the world to be run where people aren’t tortured and executed for not bowing to the powers that be.  He recognizes, rather, Christ as his Sovereign immediately in the 42^nd verse when he asks Jesus to “‘remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”

This criminal is us.  Rather, he should represent us.  Despite whatever wrongs we have committed, whatever ways we think we have contributed to society’s labeling and leaving behind of the least of these, we too can see that God intends a better way of life for us, for all God’s children, and for all creation.  We can see Christ as Sovereign--not the Emperor of today’s world--and we can live out God’s kingdom every day, for all eternity.  For, just as Jesus said to that fellow rogue on the cross, Truly I tell you, you will be with Christ in Paradise.  Thanks be to God.

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

November 13, 2022

Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:1-19

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Religion with Relevance?"

 Back when the national setting of the United Church of Christ was investing much energy in the “God Is Still Speaking,” evangelism campaign, a catchphrase of one round of ads centered around the phrase “religion with relevance.”  Religion with relevance.  Sounds like a nice idea.  I wonder what that actually looks like, though.  We hear passages like what we have this morning from the Book of Isaiah about
“new heavens and a new earth” (65:17) or Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Luke about the coming signs and persecutions, and maybe our minds automatically put such powerfully poetic images in the category of “pie in the sky,” ancient religion stuff.  Exactly the opposite of what we might think of as religion with relevance.

But what if we were wrong about that?  Generally, these passages get interpreted in relation to descriptions of the end of things–the end of this age in which everything we know, including us, gets transformed fully into God’s realm.  What if it’s exactly these kinds of texts that hold real relevance for people of faith and our world in the here and now?  Indeed, what would it look like if we contemplated the real-world implications of words like these from Isaiah and Luke?

One commentator and pastor offers an answer:  “It was the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, and it looked as if the civil rights movement would suffer yet another defeat.  The powers that be had more jail space than the civil rights workers had people.  But then one Sunday…2,000 young people came out of worship at the New Pilgrim Baptist Church and prepared to march.  The police were shocked.  How much longer was this going to go on?  How many more people were they going to have to arrest?  The line of young people was five blocks long.  As the marchers approached the line of police officers and dogs, the notorious Bull Connor walked out to confront them, shouting for the firemen to turn on the hoses. 

“The line of young people came close—face-to-face with Connor and the firemen and police.  Then they knelt and prayed.  The Rev. Charles Billups stood and shouted, ‘Turn on your water!  Turn loose your dogs!  We will stand here 'til we die!’  After a few moments, Billups and the young people walked forward, and the firemen parted for them to pass.  Onlookers said it was as if the Red Sea had parted for the children of Israel.”

This commentator then goes on to ask a couple of questions I invite all of us to keep in mind:  “What kind of church does it take to nurture Christians capable of standing like that?  What does it take to live out the new creation and endure its struggles, the disappointments, and the hostility that Christians and churches face when they do so?”

After worship later this morning, you all will gather as a congregation—as you do every year—and listen to some information about next year’s budget, have some discussion, and take a vote.  Most likely, the discussion you have any questions you ask—if you bother to ask any—will be fueled by concerns about how you will meet expenses.  How will we keep the lights on?  How will we pay for insurance?  How can we meet all our financial obligations?  These are all good questions, and they show that you take the commitment seriously before you.  For, whatever your households may have pledged—again if you happened to pledge—you as a congregation are pledging again today your commitment and responsibility to meet whatever budget you pass.  Your vote as a body represents a promise—but more than that, a covenant of stewardship—and it is not to be taken lightly.

But what if our concerns as God’s church were more than simply how to get the bills paid?  That commentator also adds, “We’re in this kingdom business for the long haul.  Our hope is animated with Isaiah’s vision of justice and peace and rooted in the tough reality of Jesus’ call to endure.”  Do we buy that?  Does that description fit us?  What if we really did take this stuff so seriously that it seeped into how we think, how we act, and how we live as people of faith?  God declares, “For I am about to create new heavens and new earth…be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating…I will…rejoice in my people [are we ready to believe that?]…. No more shall there be…an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime [we have as part of our mission the physical wellbeing of all]…. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat [we have as part of our mission to end economic exploitation of all of God’s people]…. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together… They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD [we have as part of our mission to work relentlessly for real, lasting peace and justice where none are forced to live with violence].”

These concerns are very real.  And as people of God, they become our concerns.  I love to remark on the distinction between cultural Christianity and authentic biblical Christianity.  The former—cultural Christianity—is focused on self and one’s own kind, prosperity, and supporting the way things are.  Jesus’ warnings of persecution from the Gospel of Luke show this version of faith to be empty.  Biblically authentic discipleship, on the other hand, involves keeping in mind—always—God’s vision of new heavens and a new earth and counts the cost of that discipleship that inevitably comes into conflict with the ways of this world.  In one way, the two options for a church become teaching a faith that says to believe the right thing so that you can be good and go to heaven versus trusting a God of goodness and love so that you can do good and share God’s heavenly vision.

Again, that commentator asks, “What kind of church does it take to nurture Christians capable of standing like that?  What does it take to live out the new creation and endure the struggles, the disappointments, and the hostility that Christians and churches face when they do so?”

As we reflect on what kind of church we want to be (not just today when you vote on a budget, but week in and week out, especially as you enter into a new phase of ministry), let us prayerfully consider what real religion with relevance means for you as Union-Congregational United Church of Christ in this community we know as Waupun, for God’s reign is at hand.

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

October 30, 2022

1 John 4:17-21; Luke 19:1-10

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Fear Fest?"

            Does anyone happen to know what famous event in broadcast history has its anniversary on this very day?  On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles offered his radio version of “War of the Worlds.”  You’ve probably read or heard of some listeners’ reactions when believing the story to be a real news report of Martians landing and colonizing Earth.  It may be that some accounts of folks believing the broadcast to be factual to have been exaggerated, but years ago, one woman told me how she was in confirmation class at the time the program aired, and her pastor was so afraid that he sent everyone into the sanctuary to pray.  It may sound foolish to us so many decades later, but there were certainly people at the time who responded in genuine fear.

There’s no time like Halloween weekend to talk about fear.  It’s no secret, however, that there are some kinds of churches that think Christians have no business acknowledging Halloween.  In fact, just this year, a pastoral colleague and his family were attacked viciously on social media after he offered an opening prayer at his community’s Halloween festival.  (That happened right here in Wisconsin, by the way.)  So, as the person serving the role of your pastor and teacher–for the time being, anyway–I would like to set the record straight about how authentic Christians might approach Halloween.

First, tomorrow’s date–October 31–is an important one in church history for Protestants for an additional reason.  It is Reformation Day, the anniversary of theologian Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Saxony (now part of Germany), igniting the Protestant Reformation.  But it wasn’t a mere coincidence that Luther chose that date.  For All Hallows’ Eve was already an established church observance.  Hear that again–All Hallows’ Eve was a church observance.  Just as Christmas Eve is the day before Christmas Day, Halloween, of course, is the day before All Hallows’ Day; “hallow” means holy or saintly, as in “Hallowed be thy name.”  All Hallows’ Day is simply better known in contemporary English as All Saints’ Day.  (To not leave you hanging on a historical mystery, it was on this festival of All Hallows or All Saints that Saxony’s ruler dragged out to display the largest collection of relics in Europe–relics, as in bones and other remains of departed saints.  Luther opposed the common belief in relics as possessing special powers from God.  That’s why he chose All Hallows’ Eve to post his theological objections.)

  So, church history teaches us of the intimate connections between All Hallows’ Eve and Day and Christianity.  But, you may ask, how does a church tradition that remembers and honors all those who have passed from life to life remain relevant to Christians as the Halloween we know today?  More than anything, Halloween is a time to mock the forces of death and evil, and fear, remembering that these forces have no hold on us in the ultimate sense.  Precisely because of our rootedness in the love of God, we are free to poke fun at such things.  I’ve heard there’s no instruction repeated more often in the gospels than to “fear not.”  Today’s Call to Worship which we shared in the reading of the 46th Psalm–the traditional Psalm for Reformation Sunday–even reminds us that because of our trust in God, “Therefore we will not fear.”  And we heard the First Letter of John earlier explain, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (4:18).  A holiday on which we conjure the scariest images we can think of and then laugh in the faces of those images–well, I can’t think of a practice more grounded in Christian faith.  (I’ll even go so far as to claim that laughing in the face of evil and fear makes much more sense to me as a Christian celebration than that other holiday that seems to be centered around buying all kinds of stuff for people who don’t need it.)

Choosing to live in faith and love and trust over fear is hard.  Fear does have to do with punishment, as I John says because it also has to do with control.  Even our gospel reading from Luke mentions those good religious folks who don’t like Jesus visiting the sinner Zacchaeus, because sinner and outcast are virtually interchangeable in the gospels, and too often we’d rather be afraid of outcasts.  We’d rather be afraid of strangers.  We’d rather be afraid of a lot of other kinds of people.  We’d rather be afraid of foreigners.  We’d rather be afraid of those who look different or speak differently.  We’d rather be afraid of those who do things differently; rather, we’re afraid of doing things differently, because–too often–we’re afraid of change itself.  As a whole people, we feel threatened by the idea of changing the way our economy works, even if to allow God’s creation to endure.  We feel threatened by actual expert advice and pointing to best practices, because then we have to admit we don’t have all the answers, and we may have to listen to someone else.  Large segments of our population feel threatened by teaching accurate history, especially when it comes to inherited systems of racism.  Many of us feel so threatened that we fear our guns will be taken away.  Some of us feel threatened by the idea that we may be called to shift our understandings of faith to the discipleship of the whole church, and not just faith as another consumerist exchange; we come here to serve God and others and not merely to benefit ourselves.  Too many of us have felt threatened by possible changes to Sunday worship, even using further scare tactics arguing that changes will scare others away while ignoring what benefits positive change could invite.

Christians have no use for this kind of fear, this fear of what the future might bring.  It is, in no uncertain terms, an idol:  an excuse to resist not just the possibility of growth (of various kinds), but an excuse to avoid where God seeks to lead.  Risk-taking for justice, for what’s right, lies at the very heart of Christian discipleship.  Again, as the Psalmist proclaims, “we will not fear” even “though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam” (46:2-3), no matter what kind of chaos may surround us.  But the Christian faith has more to offer than just God’s comforting presence and love to get you through times of change; because of God’s goodness and grace, transformation is promised, and it gets called good news.  Change is what our faith is truly about; transformation is the work of the Christian gospel.  That’s why we are called to place our fear aside.

Last week, we heard of God’s message to the people of doing a new thing in their midst.  In the true Christian “spirit” of this season, let us “fear not” and indeed perceive this newness about to spring forth, even now.

“God Is Doing A New Thing” - Jacob Nault

Message for Union-Congregational Church of Waupun

October 23, 2022

Traditional Service

Isaiah 43: 16-21

Focus Statement: God ushers us into new possibilities, even at a time when we are unsure about the future of the wider church.

Behavioral purpose:

I attended the seminary at Eden Theological Seminary, a UCC seminary in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. This was the biggest move I had ever made in my life, and I had to say goodbyes to a lot of things. Among them were church communities that I had grown to love and my best friend of 12 years. But I was also aware that starting something new had to start with leaving behind some things in the past, and venturing bravely into the new tomorrow God was ushering me into.

I also found some bumps along the way. On moving day, we drove to St. Louis, leaving around 4 pm after dad got done with work, and getting there around midnight. We had set an air mattress and an overnight bag aside, so we could go to sleep right away when we got to my studio apartment on campus.

Well, it turned out the key fob to get into my apartment building had just been reprogrammed, and I couldn’t get in! We tried every door to the building, made as many frantic phone calls as we could reasonably make at midnight, and even tried to get lodging at area hotels. Nothing was available at a price we could afford. So, U-Haul trailer in tow, we slept—where else—in the van in the seminary parking lot!

That night was a memorable first night at the seminary for a few unfortunate reasons. But as I think about it now, I recognize that God was doing something new, even on that hot August night in the parking lot. The next morning I would wake up, start my new life in a new city, and learn more deeply about God’s call in my life.

For me, and hopefully for you too, this is a really exciting day! I’ve had so much fun getting to know you already, and this is an important step on an amazing journey for both of us! But I also recognize that I come into ministry in a strange time for the wider church, a moment where we’re still trying to figure out how to be in community as we journey forward from a time of deep desolation. We hope one day our church attendance will be like it used to be before COVID-19. We hope one day we’ll fill our staff vacancies. We hope one day our families and children will be as energized about faith formation as we were when we grew up.

Sometimes all this hoping gets exhausting, doesn’t it?

But it might be easier to navigate this uncertain period in the wider church’s life if we know people in biblical times experienced many of these same feelings. God is speaking to a deeply weary people. The Israelites have been in exile, wandering away from their home into an unknown place. With every step away from their home, they have to trust that God is going to help them through.

Firstly, God does this by reminding the people of ways God has already provided for them. It's as if God is saying, "Don't you remember? Don't you remember how I made my way in the sea? Don't you remember how I carried you through the desert? Don't you remember how I gave you food when you were hungry or drink when you were thirsty?” “Don't you know that I'm never going to abandon you?”

But then our text turns. God says, “Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?”

At that moment, the text ceases to be about how God has been present to the Israelites in the past and begins to be about how God will lead them into the future. God is going to provide for the Israelites, giving them what they need, and keeping them safe.

I wonder about the way the Israelites might have received these words from God. On one hand, they might have felt immense relief that God was going to protect them and care for them, finally listening to their cries for deliverance from their plight.

On the other hand, being told to forget things that have happened in the past, things that have helped them endure the hard times is no easy ask either.

When we are told to “forget about the prior things”, we might feel a similar difficulty. Our society’s expectations for overworking, or its tendencies to exclude or marginalize whole groups of people—these are habits that could go by the wayside without real negative consequences. 

On the flip side, some of our past is painful to forget, and we wish we didn’t have to accept significant change. Don’t remember what church was like when you were growing up. Don’t remember what life was like before COVID-19 radically changed many of our lives.

But all the same, we are called by God to recognize the new thing God is doing and to have hope in the new opportunities that God is preparing for us.

I have a great many reasons to be hopeful today, friends. The first reason is because of the grace we’ve found through today’s text. God ushers us into new possibilities, even at a time when we are unsure about the future of the wider church.

On your website, you talk about being a “people of possibility.” You find ways to respond to the needs of your membership, and to the wider community through initiatives like the community food pantry.

Your search committee embodied that sense of possibility to me right from the very beginning. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy which affects the left side of my body, and it also affects my vision to some extent. I was upfront in my ministerial profile that I don’t drive, so Jeff and Kathy Duchac offered to transport me from Neenah to both of my interviews. I’ve looked into the Waupun Taxi Service, along with other ride-sharing possibilities. I’ve also been assured, time and time again, that your congregation is very supportive of the needs of your pastor as that individual carries out the work of the church. I knew this might be the right church when it was clear that this committee chose to see potential where others might have seen a deficit. If you decide to call me your pastor, I promise to do my best to be openhearted to the possibilities right along with you, and I’m excited to grow in my own faith as you grow in yours. Whether you decide to call me your pastor or not, I believe the best days of this church are ahead of it, if this congregation holds strongly to its sense of possibility, radical welcome, inclusion, and of justice. God is clearly at work in this congregation, and if you call me your pastor, I’m prepared and excited to be part of it.

This week I invite you to think about something new God is doing in your life or something new you want to explore. Sometimes it might be uncomfortable, and who knows? You may even have to sleep in a parking lot! (I hope you don’t.) But may you know that, in these new things, God is with you every step of the way. Amen.

“God Is Doing A New Thing” - Jacob Nault

Message for Union-Congregational Church of Waupun

October 23, 2022

Media Service

Isaiah 43: 16-21

Focus Statement: God ushers us into new possibilities, even at a time when we are unsure about the future of the wider church.

Behavioral purpose:

I attended the seminary at Eden Theological Seminary, a UCC seminary in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. This was the biggest move I had ever made in my life, and I had to say goodbyes to a lot of things. Among them were church communities that I had grown to love and my best friend of 12 years. But I was also aware that starting something new had to start with leaving behind some things in the past, and venturing bravely into the new tomorrow God was ushering me into.

I also found some bumps along the way. On moving day, we drove to St. Louis, leaving around 4 pm after dad got done with work, and getting there around midnight. We had set an air mattress and an overnight bag aside, so we could go to sleep right away when we got to my studio apartment on campus.

Well, it turned out the key fob to get into my apartment building had just been reprogrammed, and I couldn’t get in! We tried every door to the building, made as many frantic phone calls as we could reasonably make at midnight, and even tried to get lodging at area hotels. Nothing was available at a price we could afford. So, U-Haul trailer in tow, we slept—where else—in the van in the seminary parking lot!

That night was a memorable first night at the seminary for a few unfortunate reasons. But as I think about it now, I recognize that God was doing something new, even on that hot August night in the parking lot. Like Sia sings in her song, “big dreams were becoming real”—my own dreams, the dreams of people who had encouraged me to go into this work…and, I hoped, God’s dream for my life. I was starting a new life, because of the many gifts I had been given along the way.

For me, and hopefully for you too, this is a really exciting day! I’ve had so much fun getting to know you already, and this is an important step on an amazing journey for both of us! Sia talks a good deal about this being her personal moment. And the thing is, I can identify with her! Right now I’m here leading worship, and soon you’ll be deciding whether you’d like me to continue to be here as your next pastor.

But I also know it’s not just about me at all. This is just as much about you, and what you hope the church has the opportunity to become in the future.

I recognize that I come into ministry in a strange time for the wider church, a moment where we’re still trying to figure out how to be in community as we journey forward from a time of deep desolation. We hope one day our church attendance will be like it used to be before COVID-19. We hope one day we’ll fill our staff vacancies. We hope one day our families and children will be as energized about faith formation as we were when we grew up.

Sometimes all this hoping gets exhausting, doesn’t it?

But it might be easier to navigate this uncertain period in the wider church’s life if we know people in biblical times experienced many of these same feelings. God is speaking to a deeply weary people. The Israelites have been in exile, wandering away from their home into an unknown place. With every step away from their home, they have to trust that God is going to help them through.

Firstly, God does this by reminding the people of ways God has already provided for them. It's as if God is saying, "Don't you remember? Don't you remember how I made my way in the sea? Don't you remember how I carried you through the desert? Don't you remember how I gave you food when you were hungry or drink when you were thirsty?” “Don't you know that I'm never going to abandon you?”

But then our text turns. God says, “Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?”

At that moment, the text ceases to be about how God has been present to the Israelites in the past and begins to be about how God will lead them into the future. God is going to provide for the Israelites, giving them what they need, and keeping them safe.

I wonder about the way the Israelites might have received these words from God. On one hand, they might have felt immense relief that God was going to protect them and care for them, finally listening to their cries for deliverance from their plight.

On the other hand, being told to forget things that have happened in the past, things that have helped them endure the hard times do an easy ask either.

But all the same, we are called by God to recognize the new thing God is doing and to have hope in the new opportunities that God is preparing for us.

What you’re about to experience now is a clip from the movie, Evan Almighty. God is played by Morgan Freeman, and Joan Baxter is played by Lauren Graham. God is talking to Joan about some challenges she’s having with her husband’s new project. I’ll tie it into the rest of the sermon after we play it.

I have a great many reasons to be hopeful today, friends. The first reason is because of the grace we’ve found through today’s text. God ushers us into new possibilities, even at a time when we are unsure about the future of the wider church.

Joan is unsure about her husband’s new adventure, but God tells Lauren about how important this new opportunity is for how God is working in her life, and in her community’s life. So I think it is with us. We have the opportunity to create new possibilities together—the deeper opportunity to love and serve God, even in uncertain circumstances.

On your website, you talk about being a “people of possibility.” You find ways to respond to the needs of your membership, and to the wider community through initiatives like the community food pantry.

Your search committee embodied that sense of possibility to me right from the very beginning. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy which affects the left side of my body, and it also affects my vision to some extent. I was upfront in my ministerial profile that I don’t drive, so Jeff and Kathy Duchac offered to transport me from Neenah to both of my interviews. I’ve looked into the Waupun Taxi Service, along with other ride-sharing possibilities. I’ve also been assured, time and time again, that your congregation is very supportive of the needs of your pastor as that individual carries out the work of the church. I knew this might be the right church when it was clear that this committee chose to see potential where others might have seen a deficit. If you decide to call me your pastor, I promise to do my best to be openhearted to the possibilities right along with you, and I’m excited to grow in my own faith as you grow in yours. Whether you decide to call me your pastor or not, I believe the best days of this church are ahead of it, if this congregation holds strongly to its sense of possibility, radical welcome, inclusion, and of justice. God is clearly at work in this congregation, and if you call me your pastor, I’m prepared and excited to be part of it.

This is not just my moment, but it’s also your moment. It’s our shared opportunity to work towards a new future for Union-Congregational Church, and for the church universal. This week I invite you to think about something new God is doing in your life or something new you want to explore. Sometimes it might be uncomfortable, and who knows? You may even have to sleep in a parking lot! (I hope you don’t.)

But may you know that, in these new things, God is with you every step of the way. Amen.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

October 16, 2022

Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Making a Judgment"

            A pastoral colleague of mine once shared that people in that person’s congregation had raised a complaint about hearing too many sermons and prayers about the poor.  I would hope that for anyone who is even somewhat familiar with the Bible’s contents, this criticism would cause some head-scratching.  There is no social ethic commanded more often throughout scripture than to care for the poor.  And today’s gospel reading is no different.

            This morning, we heard from Luke Jesus’ parable about a widow and an unjust judge.  Vivid characters always make better stories.  We tend to enjoy stories with characters to whom we can relate.  In fact, we’re often meant to identify with characters in these stories, but we have a tendency to identify with the incorrect characters.  We might prefer to judge nine ungrateful lepers, to take an example from last week, instead of hearing our call to see the Samaritan as a model of faithful gratitude.  Martin Luther’s advice, when you read of judgment in scripture to assume it’s talking about you, should be kept in mind, always.

            But this passage is supposed to be about prayer, isn’t it?  Doesn’t the whole story begin with the explanation, “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (18:1)?  Isn’t the judge supposed to be God, and we the widow?  Well, not if we pay attention to the words.  The judge is not like God, but someone “’ who neither feared God nor has respect for people” (18:2).  As one writer remarks, “I wonder if this parable isn’t about God at all.  I wonder if it’s about us, about the state of our hearts and the motivations behind our prayers.  Maybe what’s at stake is not who God is and how God operates in the world but who we are.”

            A New Testament professor in the United Church of Christ also has much to say about this passage.  “The Parable of the Persistent Widow puts us in an uncomfortable spot.  We admire the Widow, whose determination wins her justice.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, we may well relate to the Judge, who is reluctant to administer that very same justice.  How typical, that we’re attracted to one character, while so many of us have more in common with the other.”  He goes on, “our imaginations gravitate toward the widow, as they should, but the parable itself focuses on the judge.  The spotlight rests on him from the beginning:  ‘There was a certain judge in a certain city.’  The parable tells us what the widow says to the judge, but it also tells us what the judge thinks and what he says to himself.”

            “Unwilling, annoyed, and finally provoked,” can be used to describe the judge.  “Perhaps the judge is too lazy to act; he doesn’t want to be bothered.  Maybe the judge simply disregards widows.  Given the judge’s public status, he might have ties with the widow’s oppressor….  The point is, this vulnerable woman’s plight does not move him to do the right thing.”

            And here’s the rub.  “As with the judge, our problem lies not in our ability but in our will to do justice.  Confronted by the scope of hunger in our world, we might find ourselves tempted to lose heart, precisely the response Jesus warns against in [the gospel reading’s opening verse].  Yet,” this professor points out, “the capacity to end widespread hunger already lies in our hands—not as individuals but as citizens of the United States and of the planet….  In working to end hunger, most of us are speaking up not for ourselves, as the widow does; instead, we’re advocating for our sisters and brothers nearby and around the world.

            “Unlike most of us, the widow must advocate for herself.  As we look to the widow’s example, we confront the reality of our own position.  In the terms of Jesus’ parable, those of us who are not vulnerable to hunger has more in common with the judge than with the widow.  We enjoy the privilege of deciding whether to get involved, a privilege that relies upon our security as people who have more than enough to eat.  We face a hard truth,” according to the professor, “our question, like the judge’s question, involves whether we are willing to execute justice.  God, who has been so abundantly gracious to us, calls forth our capacity to seek justice for others.”

            If we insist on identifying with the widow, however, and in deepening our understanding of prayer, then we should remember the old African proverb to “pray with our feet,” as we notice the widow’s putting prayer into action.  As our first writer observes, “the widow in Jesus’ parable is the very picture of purposefulness and precision.  She knows her need, she knows its urgency, and she knows exactly where to go and whom to ask in order to get her to need to be met.  If anything, the daily business of getting up, getting dressed, heading over to the judge’s house or workplace, banging on his door, and talking his ear off until he listens clarifies her own sense of who she is and what she’s about.”  She goes on, “there is nothing vague or washed out about this bold, plucky woman…  ‘Give me justice!  I will not shut up until you do.’”  Jesus is telling us in Luke that this is what discipleship of prayer looks like discipleship of constantly putting our prayer into action.  As the First Letter of John also instructs regarding what our faith should look like, “Little children, let us, love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (3:18).

Loving God and loving neighbor go together—we already know this (or we should).  But the scriptures are also abundantly clear—both Testaments—that our understandings of neighbor must include the poor, the hungry, and the vulnerable.  If you were to boil all the ethical instructions throughout scripture down to one, that would be it.  And so, the question gets left to us:  what judgment will we make–not about ourselves–but about others, those without our privileges?

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

October 9, 2022

Jeremiah 29:4-9; Luke 17:11-21

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Never Say Never?"

            For several weeks now, we’ve been hearing off-and-on from the book of the prophet Jeremiah and from the Psalms, voices lifting groans of pain to God for the tragedy of the Exile, the conquest and destruction of ancient Judah and the Jerusalem Temple, and the deportation of so many of its people into the enemy Babylonian territory.

            But something bigger changed in the tone of the scriptures this morning—did you catch this one?  We heard today from the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to all those people sent away into exile.  Finally, the prophet was sharing God’s words with God’s people after the unthinkable had happened.  Surely—the people likely expected—there would be instructions for resistance to the Babylonian captivity, a plan of escape even.  If God still has something to say to us—they probably thought—then there must be hope for immediate return and restoration.

            But those aren’t quite the words they got.  God’s words were shared in Jeremiah’s letter, alright, but their content differed much from what was expected.  “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles…sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters” (29:4-6).  In other words, get ready to stick around for a while.  Go ahead and make plans for the future, right where you are, even in the midst of people different from you.  Life goes on, and it’s time to adapt.  There is life after the exile; there is reason to go on after devastation.  Adjustments must be made to survive in these new circumstances.

            If the letter had stopped there, it would have been bad enough.  Sure, these instructions are pragmatic and practical; but they are not what the people wanted to hear.  For some, this sounded too much like compromise, like giving in and giving up.  “If we settle down in Babylon,” they may have thought to themselves, “then the Babylonians will have won!”  Whenever our current culture decries compromise as a dirty word, a famous quote from Winston Churchill sometimes gets thrown around.  Do you know it?  “Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.”  Of course, it’s one of Churchill’s most famous sayings, and it seems to be the guiding principle of many of our political leaders these days, as well as what many of the people of Judah could have been feeling at the beginning of their stay in Babylon.  The trouble is—just like with the Bible—when you quote something out of context, you can change a big chunk of its meaning.  This quotation as I shared it—and perhaps, as many remember it—cuts Mr. Churchill off mid-sentence.  Let’s hear the whole thing:  “Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in…except to convictions of honor and good sense.”  Including the rest of that sentence changes its meaning a bit.  Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, it may be said, emphasizes this last part of Churchill’s words.

            But as we heard, the prophet Jeremiah’s letter doesn’t stop there.  Apparently, God had (and has) more to say.  And it’s somewhat jaw-dropping.  The people are instructed to “seek the welfare of the city where [God has] sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (29:7).  This command goes beyond mere compromise.  The people of God are expected to show care and compassion for others, specifically the foreigners who conquered them.  As Jesus would point out centuries later, people of God are to love enemies—even foreign enemies.  And, and, God has tacked on through Jeremiah, “for in [your new community’s] welfare you will find your welfare.”  That’s to recognize that your well-being is tied up with everyone else’s around you, even the Babylonians, even the people you hate, even those you believe are nothing like you.  It’s a good thing Jeremiah sent a letter because I’m not sure how well this message would have been received in person.

            We certainly have trouble with it today.  Besides compromise as a dirty word, we as a society have a lot of trouble loving our foreign enemies, not to mention our foreign neighbors.  But this last idea—that our welfare is somehow all tied together—well, that’s just radical, isn’t it?  Politically, such a notion gets perceived as poisonous.  It’s us versus them, after all.  And when we win, that’s because we deserve it.  We don’t want to help those we see as lazy.  We don’t want to care about strange people from different places; they don’t do things the way we do them; we’d rather be afraid.  We don’t want to work together with others, even if it benefits all because we think we have the power to force our will on everyone.  And even religious leaders too often simply line up behind their faction—a situation Jeremiah appears to address in his own time:  “Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you…for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD” (29:8-9).  It is exactly these attitudes of my way (that’s the clear and divinely blessed only right way) or the highway—approaches that dominate our political and social views—that God warns against in Jeremiah’s letter to God’s people.

            We heard this morning from Luke’s gospel the story of Jesus showing mercy toward a group of people deemed unworthy by religious folks of receiving care and how they were made clean.  One turned back to thank Jesus, and Luke points out that this one was a Samaritan, a foreigner.  When we hear this story in a way that causes us to shake our heads at those nine ungrateful lepers, we’ve again missed the point.  As one commentator explains, “Yes, it’s an expression of gratitude.  But it’s also the expression of a deeper and truer belonging.  The tenth leper is a Samaritan, a ‘double other’ marginalized by both illness and foreignness.  By the first century, the enmity between the [Judeans] and the Samaritans was entrenched and old.  The two groups disagreed about everything that mattered to them: how to honor God, how to interpret the scriptures, and where to worship.  They avoided social contact whenever possible.”  The commentator goes on to offer that “this passage also speaks to questions of identity—questions of exclusion and inclusion, exile and return.  This is a story about the kingdom of God—about who is welcome, who belongs, and who stays.”  And to summarize, the Samaritan leper “sees that Jesus’ arms are wide enough to embrace all of who he is—leper, foreigner, exile.”

Biblical faith constantly pushes us to shift our focus from self to others.  We can only hope to be like this Samaritan, like this contaminated foreigner of another religious tradition who responds to God’s gracious welcome not by self-righteously assuming he was entitled to it somehow, but by simply and humbly giving thanks.  May we follow this example by going out into the world—whatever circumstances await us—and sharing this gracious Godly gratitude with all—regardless of friend or enemy—because we know that whatever our differing understandings may be, we together share this creation with all its gifts, and—whether we like it or not, whether we’re ready to accept it or not—we’re all in this same boat together.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

World Communion Sunday

October 2, 2022

Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 137; Luke 17:1-10

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"A Table of Reconciliation"

Forgive and forget.  Let bygones be bygones.  All that’s just water under the bridge.  Who’s heard—or spoken—these oft-repeated phrases over the years?  For some time, we’ve even been hearing from popular psychology how forgiving another doesn’t really need to be for that other’s sake, but for your own.  Letting go allows you to move on.  Maybe that’s how we understand Jesus’ words this morning regarding forgiving endlessly, better known in the Matthew version when Peter asks, “’ how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?’  Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’” (18:21-22).  Seventy-seven times?  That’s a lot.  But the traditional rendering of “seventy-times-seventy” is even more.  Can you imagine keeping a scorecard, keeping track of someone saying they are sorry 490 times?  That 491^st time, though, that’s just too much—that’s over the line.

The idea of forgiveness, perhaps, gets too light a treatment.  In truth, forgiveness is real work, and doesn’t—and maybe shouldn’t—come easy.  Even scripture attests to the challenge of forgiveness.  “Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” offers the Psalmist in today’s reading (137:8-9).  That’s one of those passages that you just can’t quite follow with, “The word of the Lord.”  It also doesn’t fit nicely into one of our “feel-good” understandings of forgiveness.  Here we have the heartrending cry of a people conquered and mocked.  Simply forgiving the Babylonians doesn’t bring the people home.  Letting bygones be bygones doesn’t rebuild God’s home in the Temple.  Letting go and moving on doesn’t restore Jerusalem.

In all honesty, the 137^th Psalm is one of my favorites, precisely because it is so emotionally raw.  There’s no consoling the Psalmist here.  There are no easy words.  Urging to “turn that frown upside down” won’t quite make the cut here.  The pain is too real and too deep.  And so we read or listen to the words as they are.  And we imagine.  Perhaps we relate.  But hopefully, we recognize this is no pie-in-the-sky religion.  True peace doesn’t come with simply ignoring glaring problems and injustices.  As I’ve cited before, Pope Paul VI is credited with saying, “If you want peace, work for justice.”  Just as peace isn’t merely the absence of conflict, neither is forgiveness–in the sense of our faith–simply moving on.

If we pay attention carefully to the gospel passage, we’ll see that neither is Jesus making some weak, feel-good statement on forgiveness.  He is not saying that victims need to continue to forgive abusers, for instance, and continue receiving abuse.  What Jesus says in Luke is this: “if there is repentance, you must forgive” (17:3).  That’s different from just one person letting go.  It includes transformation and change.  In biblical, theological, and liturgical terms, the purpose of forgiveness is to lead to reconciliation.  Such is why in worship, confession precedes absolution. (The move toward reconciliation is also why we pass the peace after our act of confession.)  This lesson from scripture teaches that forgiveness should always be offered when true reconciliation is sought. 

But, a word about letting go in order to move on.  Certainly, there is value in such an approach.  Letting go can be necessary and healthy.  But it is not the same as forgiveness in the way Christian teaching means.  Forgiveness includes a relational assumption, and so must include interaction.  The purpose of forgiveness leads to the restoration of the right relationships.  When that’s not possible is when allowance needs to be made to let go and move on.  But the two should not be confused.

“Happy shall they be who pay you back for what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”  Neither can we let this feeling be our ultimate response?  As Gandhi pointed out, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”  We can always find reasons to retaliate, whether they’re rational or not.  It’s much harder to respond differently, in a way that resists complicity with injustice or abuse and that refuses to perpetuate cycles of violence and spirit-killing stubbornness.  This is the way that challenges unacceptable realities—standing against the injustices of the status quo—and yet restrains actions so that those same pitfalls of self-righteousness can be avoided.  It is the way of proclaiming God’s reign in the face of the Empire but welcoming tax collectors.  It is the way of turning over the tables in the Temple but raising no weapon in defense when arrested.  It is the way of taking on the cross of execution, but proclaiming an empty tomb afterward.  No greater act of defiance in the face of earthly power exists than nonviolent resistance.  And there is no greater path that can lead to peace with justice.

This morning, we will celebrate worldwide unity with Christians at the communion table.  At this table of reconciliation that runs throughout every Christian sanctuary across the globe, everyone will be welcome—American or Russian or Iranian or Mexican, Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or Green, mainline Protestant or evangelical or Pentecostal or Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.  At this table, all will have enough, and we can model peace with justice.  At this table, we can share the very gifts of God, which include the invitation to the transformation of all, not for the purpose of satisfaction, but for sustenance in the journey ahead.  The call of Jesus is not to self-first consumerism, but to neighbor-focused discipleship.  And you, yes you, are welcome to take part, always.

"Getting Older" lyric video - Billie Eilish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AS9r_E0PY4

"Invictus" Movie Clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHqi6ZB_F0U

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

September 25, 2022

Jeremiah 32:1-15

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Hard Words…of Hope"

Jeremiah is one of my favorite prophetic books, and this morning’s passage provides another reason why.  Did you catch what was happening in that reading?  The intrigue itself is gripping.  We heard in the second verse, “At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem…” (32:2).  Do we realize what’s going on here?  It is the eve of the Exile, the utter conquest of what the people thought of as the promised land, the devastation of Jerusalem, the deportation of leaders and others to Babylon, and the most overwhelming crisis the people of God experienced in the Hebrew Scriptures.  It seemed as if the promise of the covenant between God and these people that went all the way back to Abraham and was made real through Moses in the time of the Exodus was in the process of being reversed.  It surely must have felt to the people that God had abandoned them, that God had forgotten all the good promised to them.  In fact, along with the Exodus and Creation itself, the Exile stands as one of the key events around which our Old Testament revolves.

And we’re still on only verse two.  But even the rest of that very verse—as well as the verses following—describe yet another troubling situation:  “and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him” (32:2-3).  Jeremiah, this prophet of God, was in jail.  And not in some Babylonian jail; he had been imprisoned by his own king.  Now, if we’ve been paying attention at all to what a prophet is and what a prophet does, this situation shouldn’t really come as a surprise to us.  As the rest of that section goes on to explain, Jeremiah has been jailed for doing what prophets tend to do:  saying something the powers that be don’t like.  Jeremiah has brought a message from God for which the king didn’t particularly care.  Jeremiah—as the prophet he is—has spoken truth to power.  Here, Jeremiah has reminded the king of the inconvenient truth that a nation’s sins and idolatry lead to consequences.  This idea also shouldn’t come as a surprise; we proclaim each time we repeat our tradition’s Statement of Faith that “God judges people and nations according to God’s righteous will.”  (That’s even in this congregation’s bylaws!)

Prophets still do this kind of thing, by the way, this speaking truth to power stuff, from pointing out that welfare reform in the ’90s really would hurt the poor; that there really were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; that the water supply of Flint, Michigan really was poison; that black lives really do matter; that legislation focusing on firearms really would save lives; that human-created climate change really is established scientific fact.  (Now, before moving on, I want to acknowledge that, undoubtedly, something in that list made you uncomfortable, as it should.  But do note that that list of critiques challenges those in power from either major political party, again as the prophetic word should speak truth to power…anyone in power.)

So, here we have a real example of what happens with a biblical prophet.  As explained, Jeremiah has sought to bring God’s message that challenged the powerful and finds himself in jail as a result.  Again, that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to the prophets of the Bible.  But we haven’t even gotten to the main thrust of this morning’s passage yet!  Although the Exile was imminent—although the nation's destruction was at hand—in the face of this nightmare reality, the message of God that comes through the prisoner prophet Jeremiah changes in tone, just a bit.  No, it’s not that the Exile would be avoided, but the message would be wider in scope, taking in more of a big picture.  Jeremiah has been told by God to take a symbolic action.  He is to buy a field and then bury the deed, to save it for later.

Well, that’s weird, isn’t it?  What a strange thing to do in the middle of a crisis!  It seems nonsensical to buy a piece of real estate–to purchase a plot of land–when that same land is about to be taken over by the Babylonians.  And this saving the deed for later stuff—that doesn’t make much sense, either, does it?  Why would God have Jeremiah do such a thing and then save the document for later when we don’t even know there would be a later….  Oh, wait—there it is.  God is using Jeremiah to make a statement:  there would indeed be a later.  No, this terrible event was not going to be magically taken away, but neither would it last forever.  See, God is making another promise through this prophetic act.  While real, the incredible suffering of the Exile would be limited to a period of time.  The suffering would come to an end.  At some point, the shame would be over.  The people would return.  There was yet hope for the future.  There would be a later when Jeremiah’s deed of land would mean something again.

That’s another thing a prophet does when serving as God’s mouthpiece—always offering a challenge to the powerful, to be sure–but, also proclaiming a vision of hope for the future when God’s ways are better known with truth and peace and justice becoming ever more real.  The first always has to be done to arrive at the second.  The challenge must arise before the vision can be realized.  But, at the same time, the first grows out of the second.  The challenge must always be rooted in that ultimate vision of justice and truth and peace for all—all God’s people and all God’s creation, when all have enough.

As we may find ourselves in times of crisis—either personally or collectively—let us not turn away from the voices of challenge, from those seeking to speak the truth in the midst of the powerful, but let us listen and respond; but let us further remember God’s promise and share the vision that all such crises—such times of Exile—are only temporary, that this too shall pass, that there is a later and a return, that as none other than Winston Churchill once quipped, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”  Thanks be to God.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

September 18, 2022

Jeremiah 8:18-9:3; Luke 16:1-13

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"High-Level Investments"

The old adage tells us that two topics we should always avoid in polite conversation are religion and politics.  Clearly, that advice cannot hold true for discussions held in a church, especially in sermons.  Ideally, a church concerned with social concerns will have to reflect on political issues, and hopefully, religion might be a topic that comes up in a sermon…every once in a while, at least.

But there is another subject that makes most parishioners uncomfortable—even more so than delving into political affairs.  Yes, this topic just makes people squirm in the pews, and it also causes pastors to speak with a certain nervousness from the pulpit.  So, I’ll just say it quietly.  This controversial topic is…money.  So, before I go on, let’s go ahead and get all the squirming out of our systems.  [Everyone squirms.]

Okay, now that we got that over with, the rest should be smooth sailing, right?  It’s really a shame that talking about money in church gets us so bent out of shape because money is such a common theme in the scriptures.  I’ve read somewhere that more than heaven or hell, more than sin and wickedness, the topic Jesus speaks more on than any of these others is wealth or money or property, what is left untranslated in older versions of the Bible as mammon.  In fact, what we may not realize is that many of our theological concepts were originally economic terms.  Words like forgiveness and debtor and talents and redemption all come from the realm of finances.  We still use these terms both in religious settings and in the marketplace—we even ask in the Lord’s Prayer to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  In later versions, the economic sense gets whitewashed, becoming trespasses in many churches, but in a world where peasants who toiled endlessly to make ends meet made up most of the population, the forgiveness of debt meant something much more tangible than just God’s forgiveness of our sins.  We think of redemption as something Jesus accomplished for us—synonymous with salvation—but we still use the original meaning when we go to the store and redeem our coupons.  Redemption involves acknowledging the worth of something, which is why we claim to be redeemed before God’s eyes.  Here’s the thing–all these words that we tend to think of in exclusively religious terms have not lost their original economic meanings when we come across them in scripture.  Often, both meanings are intended.

And so, material about monetary stewardship abounds in the scriptures.  And today’s parable from Luke’s gospel certainly falls into this category.  Much of what Jesus says comes unexpectedly.  (But couldn’t we say that for most of the parables?)  We are told of a rich man who employs an accountant to manage his assets.  The rich man gets wind of a rumor that his accountant is squandering the money.  (Now I think this parable would be much more interesting if it went into how this money was being squandered—don’t you think?)  So, as we might expect (for now), the rich man calls the accountant to accountability, asking for an accounting of the accounts.  Then, naturally, the manager is informed that his services will no longer be required.

So, the steward reacts in the smartest way he can think of—by granting every shopper’s dream and giving out discounts.  How much do you owe my boss?  One hundred?  Ah, let’s cut that in half!  And you, how much do you owe?  One thousand?!  Well, what do you say—let’s make it eight hundred!  This way, the accountant reasons, I will have some friends to turn to when I get thrown out on my ear.  (He’s simply building up his resume, see.)

And here’s where the twist comes in today.  When the boss finds out about the accountant’s little scheme, he commends him!  He offers his congratulations!  He pays his employee a compliment!  I’d like to see the accountant’s face at that moment of utter surprise.  But we don’t get to.  We don’t get to find out if the guy gets fired or not, and we don’t even learn if the plan works to earn the accountant some friends to insure job security.  And so, we have another typical end to so many of Jesus’ parables—open-ended, leaving us a little bewildered.

By definition, this passage concerns stewardship.  The accountant does exactly what a steward does—takes temporary care of someone else’s stuff.  In the end, all of us are mere stewards of everything we have.  We may have worked to earn it, but we can’t take it with us.  It was somebody else’s before it came into our hands, and it probably belonged to someone else before that.  Even things we create—the materials had to come from somewhere.  Just as nothing goes with us into the next world, nothing is really ours, to begin with, either.  Like this accountant, we are all stewards.  As the Psalmist reminds us, “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it” (24:1), and the “heavens are [God’s], the earth also is [God’s]; the world and all that is in it” (89:11).

Now, taking this accountant as a model for good stewardship might raise some questions for you.  Most clearly, this accountant is dishonest!  His boss hears the report that his money is being wasted (though do note that we never hear if that rumor is confirmed), and the accountant probably cost his boss much wealth when he went on his price-slashing escapade.  Is this what Godly stewardship is supposed to look like?  Lying and stealing?  Not exactly, I don’t think.  But his shrewdness is commended.  He used his brain in figuring out how best to use the resources at hand.  That is good stewardship.  Remember, when Jesus sent out the disciples, he instructed them to be as innocent as doves, but also as wise as serpents (Mt. 10:16).  Despite what some may have us believe, Christians are never called to act in ignorance.  Adhering to absolute trust in God does not mean one must also be naive.

But there’s yet another reason why the story of the shrewd manager serves as a good example of faithful Christian stewardship.  Why this parable is open-ended, I think–in that we don’t find out what happens to the manager’s job or his future career–is because that’s not really the point.  The main point is already right there in the story.  The cynical view of his debt-reducing antics assumes a selfish desire to befriend others as a safety net.  While this appears to be part of his motive, the accountant makes an interesting revealing assessment: relationships are more valuable than material goods.  As one scholar summarizes, “It is [the manager’s] resourcefulness and his realization that friends are more important than the money that finally commends the steward to the consideration of the disciples….  If even a shifty steward realizes that relationships are more important than money, how much more should the children of light realize that ‘true riches’ have to do with relationships rather than wealth or possessions?  It is in fact, as Jesus concludes [later in the passage], impossible to truly serve God if one is also trying to serve wealth and possessions.”

Now, again, that’s what I call good stewardship.  We give of ourselves not for the upkeep of a building or for a tax deduction or even for some guarantee of heaven, but to help build our relationships with others by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.  This is how we are called to be faithful stewards of all the resources at our disposal.  In this way, the purpose of stewardship and the point of mission become one—to serve the God of love in everything and with everything.

Hopefully, that’s nothing to squirm around about.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

September 11, 2022

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

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Forgetting Our Unity"

Something amazing happens in this morning’s scripture reading, but as amazing as it sounds to us, it’s something that actually happens somewhat often in our Old Testament.  The entire passage from the Book of Exodus focuses on a dialogue between God and Moses, but the conversation isn’t the amazing part.  Rather, Moses argues God down and changes God’s mind.  Despite God’s fierce anger at the people, God decides not to destroy them.  And believe it or not, major characters arguing with God and even changing God’s mind happens–as I mentioned–many times in the Bible.

So, maybe, the amazing aspect you find in this story isn’t that God and Moses hold this back-and-forth discussion; maybe it’s a piece of that conversation that amazes you most: that God even wanted to destroy the people, the same people God had just liberated from Egyptian enslavement.  What happened?  How in the world did we get to this point?

Those of us who have seen The Ten Commandments might remember the situation vividly.  Moses is about to go down the mountain carrying the tablets with the Commandments written on them.  The rest of the people are partying it up at the base of the mountain, with Moses’ brother Aaron leading the way.  The people have donated all their gold jewelry to mold this golden calf to worship in the place of the God who has rescued them from slavery.  We know from the movie that when Moses comes down the mountain, he too is angry and hurls the stone tablets at the people, breaking them.

But this morning’s passage occurs before Moses goes back down the mountain.  The people are already living it up at the bottom, but Moses is still talking to God after receiving the Ten Commandments.  Up on the mountain, God already knows what’s going on and that’s when God shares the plans to consume the entire Hebrew people and start over again with Moses.

But, again, why?  Why is God so angry, that God’s “wrath burn[s] hot against” the people (Exodus 32:10)?  Just a little partying is enough to set God off?  No; I don’t think that’s it.  Even though Moses hasn’t made it down the mountain, the people have already broken the First Commandment, which should be the most obvious of them all.  Anyone remembers from Confirmation or Sunday school what the First Commandment says?  “[Y]ou shall have no other gods before me” (Exo. 20:3).  Oh, the golden calf thing again?  Yes, that.  We are reminded in this passage itself of the difference between an inanimate object made completely out of gold and material riches and an active, living God who engages with the people in conversation, dialogue, and even argument.  (As we know, real communication can never be one-way.)  The difference is clear, but there’s something else here that, I think, really cuts to the heart of God’s anger.  What we just recalled as the First Commandment is only part of the sentence in those verses of scripture.  Here’s the whole sentence, which speaks to why the First Commandment should be so obvious:  “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2-3).

There is an old tradition in Jewish thought that says the first sin of the people comes in forgetting.  Of course, this kind of forgetting is not in the sense of dementia, and certainly, the tradition is not calling senior moments a kind of sin.  No, this kind of forgetting–as a people–comes in forgetting their origin as God’s people, their true identity.  In the case of our reading from Exodus, these “stiff-necked” people had already forgotten that it was not their own creation made from wealth and riches that had rescued them, but it was the living God of liberation who freed them from oppression.  And they would forget this essential identity as a people of this God again and again.  That’s how this way of framing the basis of sin works–a collective forgetting of the people’s origin and identity.

And so, on this “Re-Union” Sunday, how well do we as a people of God remember our origin story?  How often do we reflect on the identity embedded in the name of our congregation, “Union”?  Do we bother remembering how that vision or this congregation came about, with folks from different church identities leaving old labels behind and coming together as one in a vision for the future, to take part in the new thing God was doing in Waupun?  In the spirit of the question raised by this morning’s scripture reading, have we forgotten this original identity of our congregation as a people of God in this place?  Have we turned from this understanding and created new labels, new identities, and new idols dividing our congregation today?  Maybe not Baptists or Disciples of Christ or Congregationalists, but I fear we’ve adopted different labels.  When I hear of the dug-in heels clinging to identities of the 8:30 or 9:30 service, for instance, ignoring intentions to cultivate the gifts of each service for all and in the best interests in moving forward (one of the reasons we had a whole adult ed. class on worship some months ago), I wonder if we’ve become too stiff-necked ourselves.  When I see a group of people invested in one of those services stay away from our combined communion services month after month–or see some do what they can to actively avoid this conversation–I worry.  When it becomes clear that particular times of Sunday mornings have become our chief worship labels of choice (while our ancestors in the faith of this congregation were willing to leave behind entire denominational loyalties), I become concerned about how these idols of division have amassed so much commitment and how we have collectively forgotten our origins as God’s people–what vision first called us together–in this place.  What does it truly mean to “Re-Union” in our situation, and in the years ahead?  We can be sure that we won’t change any trends by not making necessary changes.

No doubt, self-reflection is hard.  Most of us would rather block out other voices calling us to examine our loyalties and commitments and asking if we have forgotten anything.  Maybe we prefer to pretend not to hear at all.  But our God does not just remain a Still speaking God but is also a living stubborn God, so bent on our transformation that God relentlessly seeks us out–that’s the truth of which the parables in Luke remind us today.  May we all share the humility in admitting truth and reality beyond our own limited perspectives, may we consider the idols that have sneaked into our lives and modes of thinking, and may we open ourselves up to God’s liberation into seeing the larger picture of God’s mission in both this community and the world.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

September 4, 2022

Philemon 1-22; Luke 14:25-33

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"The Full Package"

Maybe you all didn’t notice—or maybe you did—but we got a rare treat among our scripture readings today:  that passage from Paul’s Letter to Philemon.  I mean, how often do we get the privilege of hearing virtually an entire book of the Bible read to us in Sunday worship?

Of course, I do realize that sitting and listening to long scripture readings isn’t exactly a treat for everyone (though I can’t imagine why not).  So, I’ll own up here and tell you there’s another reason the Letter to Philemon is a real treat:  in this extremely short book of the Bible—so short it’s not even divided into chapters—in this brief note from the apostle Paul (the shortest of all his letters!), we get a full basis for not only how different folks interpret Paul’s ideas, but how the whole of Christian faith and life is understood.  Did you realize all that was in this one scripture reading?

A little bit on the background of the letter that you may have picked up on during the reading.  The circumstances of this correspondence surround Onesimus, a runaway slave who had evidently embraced the Christian gospel and become a companion of Paul, the two apparently getting to know each other in prison-like good troublemakers might.  At some point, it was decided that Onesimus had to return to his legal owner, Philemon.  So, Paul sent him along on his way, likely carrying this accompanying letter.  (Part of me envisions schoolteachers pinning notes home to parents on kindergartners' shirts.)

I make light of this image, but know that throughout history, including our own country’s history until a mere century and a half ago, even raising the situation of this letter would have been very serious business.  Depending on the region, depending on the church, depending on the makeup of the local congregation and community, preaching on this passage would have been taboo in many places.  That’s because here we have an explicit biblical discussion on a very divisive social issue—both in Paul’s time and in our own country before the Civil War.  When we assume that the history of the institution of slavery has nothing more to teach us, we reveal a very short view of our own history and make a grave error in understanding both ourselves and our faith.

Many churches in the South before the Civil War, as well as many churches today, look at this letter and remark on the fact that Paul is actually sending Onesimus back to his master.  They point to the fact that Paul refrains from commanding Philemon to release his slave.  Paul writes that he “always thank[s]… God because…of [Philemon’s] love for all the saints and [his] faith toward the Lord Jesus” and that he has “indeed received much joy and encouragement from [Philemon’s] love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through him, [Paul’s] brother” (vs. 4-5, 7).  Undoubtedly, as far as the apostle Paul is concerned, the slave-owner Philemon is a devout Christian.  Even more than that, Paul also apparently goes so far as to acknowledge the legitimacy of slave labor.  He explains to Philemon, “I am sending [Onesimus]…back to you.  I wanted to keep him with me…but I preferred to do nothing without your consent” (vss. 12-14).  Clearly, Paul accepts the status quo of slavery and even adheres to its codes; why else would he be sending Onesimus back?  And so goes the argument (or so went, anyway) that Christianity and an institution like slavery are not in any way contradictory.

Such a notion may sound absurd to us in the United States of the early 21^st century.  It may boggle our mind that such a clear-cut moral and ethical violation as slavery could possibly have divided churches and that Bible-believing Christians were absolutely positive that scripture backed up their cause.  It may sound far-fetched, but in reality, it’s not all that different from what passes for Christianity in much of America today.  This is the interpretation that says that the point of Christianity lies in only the afterlife.  It is the interpretation that insists that the Christian faith remain completely apolitical and aloof from contemporary controversies—that neither scripture nor Jesus nor God has any interest at all in the social or political issues of our day.  It is the interpretation that not only upholds slave labor as a God-given institution but later remains completely immobile in the face of the injustices exposed in the Civil Rights movement (that is their problem, after all).  It is the interpretation that leads to claims made again and again that things like social justice are somehow not part of biblical Christianity.  It is the interpretation that allows some to waive a Jesus flag while they take part in an assault on the Capitol, murdering several.  It is the interpretation that comforts us in all our already-established beliefs and opinions, without the worry of hearing any voice from the wilderness crying out for us to repent or be transformed or—God forbid—to change how we live or challenge how we think.

And here’s some good news for this morning:  this is not a correct interpretation.  I don’t mean just a general “it-gets-Christianity-wrong;” I mean it’s an inaccurate understanding of this specific Letter of Paul to Philemon.  (It’s amazing what one can learn from reading the whole thing.)  Paul also writes, “For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love” (VSS. 8-9) and “I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary” (vs. 14) and here’s the real kicker—“Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother” (VSS. 15-16).  “So if you consider me a partner,” Paul goes on, “welcome him as you would welcome me” (vs. 17).  Wanting Philemon to get the point that Paul expects him to do the right thing in Christ regarding owning another human being, he mentions that he knows Philemon “will do even more than [Paul] say[s]” (vs. 21).  But just to make sure, and to keep Philemon accountable, Paul adds, “One thing more—prepare a guest room for me” (vs. 22), because I’m coming to check in on things, he seems to be saying.  Clearly, Paul has a full opinion on what should happen to the status of Onesimus, and plans to track its outcome.  It should really come as no surprise to us that the same man who wrote “there is no longer slave or free” in Christ might actually mean it.  Apparently, he also expects others to see and do the right on their own.

What is not news is that there is a great diversity of interpretations among Christians.  Although we are one, we are not the same.  Any proclamation of the gospel that implies everyday life, values for the here-and-now, how we treat all our neighbors, how we respond to systemic and institutional injustices somehow don’t matter for a person of faith—that kind of gospel is not of Jesus Christ or the God we find in scripture.  Our God is a living God, our God is an active working God, and our God seeks to transform the whole world to make all things new.  That means us too. 

We are called to join in such labor, now and forever.

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

August 28, 2022

Jeremiah 2:4-13; Luke 14:7-14

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Table Manners for Disciples"

Well, tomorrow is the first day of school in Waupun, and you know what that means:  the end of summer, the start of fall, and yes—as the commercials will soon be reminding us—the holidays lurking right around the corner.  Most of us think of holidays in terms of family gatherings.  Perhaps we have an idyllic picture in mind of a large Thanksgiving table filled with a fabulous feast, with all the members of the family sitting at the table, enjoying both the food and each other’s company.  All the family members, that is, except for the children—they’re over there at their own table in the corner.  (Seen, but hopefully not heard, of course.)  Does anyone remember the days when you had to sit at the kids’ table?  It was always a little disappointing, I think.  The kids’ table was always a mishmash of cousins of a wide range of ages (and personalities).  And the kids’ table was never as nice—usually a card table, nothing like the nice oak table the adults got to sit at, with candles and wine glasses and fancy silverware.  Meanwhile, the kids sat in folding chairs.  Clearly, there was a distinction being made.  There was nothing as exciting at holiday gatherings as when you were finally old enough to sit at the adult table.  What a wondrous change of world that was!

Jesus addresses table-seating arrangements in this morning’s gospel reading.  Jesus again uses the imagery of food and meal-sharing to make a point about humility and hospitality.  He advises, “’ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind’” (14:13).  Of course, in the time of Jesus, whom you ate with affected your social and religious standing.  If you've seen hanging with the wrong crowd, you could be excluded from the faith community.  But, as Jesus says, “’ all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (14:11).

Most of us rarely get the opportunity to truly humble ourselves.  Even those of us who do think about the poor and the dispossessed and the marginalized don’t often find ourselves in a place of real humility—and that goes for even pastors.  A fellow member of the clergy shares her experience of being humbled:  “One night, I was late to a board meeting at the local homeless shelter.  I ran into the building, with my three-year-old son in tow, only to discover the meeting room was locked and dark.  Slowly, I walked back through the dining room, trying to figure out if I had the wrong night or the wrong time.  A resident of the shelter, who was sweeping the floor, saw me and said, ‘Wait!  Don’t leave.’  Before I realized what he was doing, he called back to the kitchen, ‘Hey!  We got a woman with a kid out here.  Is there any food?’  I had been mistaken for a homeless person!  At first, I was insulted, but then, when he offered us a couple of cookies, I was touched.  This man showed me kindness and reminded me that real charity isn’t about stuff, but about compassion.”

“’ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’”  Often, our lack of humility is linked with our lack of compassion.  Sometimes, it takes such a role reversal to get the lesson across.  Often, we take others’ roles for granted—whether that of a homeless person or a worker in the service industry.  Columnist Dave Barry once said, “Someone who is nice to you but means to the waiter is not a nice person.”  But in today’s reading, Jesus calls us to welcome the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  Returning to holidays right around the corner, Labor Day weekend coming up provides us an opportunity not just to have another bar-be-cue or one last summer weekend get-away, but to reflect on how the laborers we take for granted fit the description of those we should be inviting to the banquet.

As another preacher laments, “Who are these people?  These are the hotel workers who struggle to go to work at hotels they cannot afford to sleep in.  They wash the sheets, clean the floors, sanitize the room, and then go home with little pay and smaller benefits.  Who are these people?  They are the janitors who clean our offices, sweep our floors, and vacuum our halls while being denied livable wages.  Who are these people?  They are the [many factories] workers who gladly took a job to provide for their families only to find that the working conditions are reminiscent of Third World countries in the richest country in the world….  Who are these people?  They are the security officers who are the first responders to fires, earthquakes, or terrorist attacks yet have difficulty sleeping at night because of their own lack of job security.  Who are these people?  They are the hospital workers who oftentimes are treated with little to no respect.  They are the ones who keep the hospital free from germs, so we can get well.  Who are these people?  They are the millions of immigrants with brown, black, [Asian], and white faces who struggle to provide for their families while living in a country that is redefining the American dream of justice to mean ‘just us’ while forgetting that [the vast majority of our ancestors] ‘forced or volunteer’ came over here on a ship….  Who are these people?  They are the millions of working poor struggling from paycheck to paycheck fighting to keep the lights on, food on the table, and a roof over their heads…in a world that demands the dollars first and people last.  All of them are struggling to find a place at the table.”

“’ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you” (14:13-14).  With these verses, Jesus provides us a blueprint of an extravagant welcome to offer for not only a party, but for faithful Christian living.  The very word hospitality does not mean inviting “your friends or your brothers [or sisters] or your relatives or rich neighbors” as Jesus reminds us (14:12). Still, hospitality actually means “love of the stranger.”

From their very humble origins as the escaped enslaved wandering through the desert with nothing since the Exodus, the people of God have always shared a strong connection with the exploited laborer.  Our ancestors in faith demanded from the pharaoh, “Let my people go.”  Let us be always mindful that to have the humility to stand with the oppressed, remember them, welcome them (to more than just the table), honor them, to work for real justice with them (opposing the pharaohs of our own day), is an indispensable part of our faith, and always has been.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

August 21, 2022

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 13:10-17

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Who’s in Charge, Anyway?"

 “Death is number two,” Jerry Seinfeld tells us.

Believe it or not, Americans actually share such fear with many of the greatest figures of scripture.  When God called Moses from the burning bush, one of Moses’ excuses was that he was “slow of tongue.”  When Jonah was called to proclaim God’s message of change and transformation to the enemy capital of Nineveh, he went the other way.  Even Jesus takes until his thirties to begin his ministry that including public speaking, and his first appearance in his hometown didn’t go very well.

In today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we have a similar situation: here God calls Jeremiah, apparently a youth, and Jeremiah responds similarly: “I said, ‘Ah, Lord GOD!  Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (1:6).  As we know, excuses didn’t work for Moses, they didn’t work for Jonah, and Jesus still had God’s work to do (even after his trouble in Nazareth).  And so it is with Jeremiah.  “But the LORD said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you” (1:7-8).  What’s more, God heaps even more responsibility onto Jeremiah’s burden by explaining, “’ See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (1:10).

Yikes.  Doesn’t that sound awful?  Has God told any of us something like this?  All that sounds exhausting.  Who would want that burden?  Well, as scripture tells us—not Moses, not Jonah, and not Jeremiah either.  (Even Jesus has his doubts in Gethsemane.)  It’s incredible how ordinary all these reactions are—they’re a lot like us.

But wait—we don’t have visions of God reaching out God’s hand and touching our mouths, do we?  We don’t run into burning bushes that talk.  Do we hear a voice from God like what’s described in these biblical stories?  I imagine not, at least for most of us.  But the same thing happens; we make the same kinds of excuses and convince ourselves someone else should do God’s work.

When the Congregationalists began organizing and meeting illegally in England in the late 16^th century, their foundational identity was grounded in the idea that Christ is the Head of the Church.  This wasn’t some abstract theological belief, it was a principle directly applied to how they understood themselves as a church.  For if Christ is the Head of the Church, then that means the Pope’s not.  Nor any bishops.  No monarchs either.  If Christ—and only Christ, the one true Good Shepherd—is the Head of the Church, then no other person or human can be.

Set against the backdrop of another Reformation principle—the priesthood of all believers—the Headship of Christ draws on the apostle Paul’s letters describing the church as the Body of Christ, with each of us serving as parts of that Body.  We each have different functions, but as Paul writes, “If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body” and “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?” and “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you” (1 Cor. 12:15, 17, 21), for the body to work to its highest potential, all the members need to do their parts.

This might sound like some basic call for everyone to get along, a pep talk for Christian teamwork, but these concepts hold much more power.  In the time of the apostle Paul, society was organized along the lines of a single, all-powerful emperor (as we heard a little about last week).  In the time of the early Congregationalists, the English monarch had created the Church of England for political expediency and sat as its ultimate and supreme Head.  The idea that only Christ can be the Head of the Church, then, was quite counter-cultural in both eras.  Again as Paul writes, “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many….  If all were a single member, where would the body be?” (1 Cor. 12:14, 19).

So why the history lesson?  And what do the words of Paul’s New Testament letters have to do with the calling of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah?  Because this seemingly common sense idea—that Christ is the Head of the Church—is still counter-cultural.  In our society, we have long preferred big-name individuals.  When we talk about movies, for example, we identify them by what big stars play a role—when someone mentions a movie, we ask, “Now who’s in that?”—we rarely remember the names of directors, producers, screen-writers, or any other member of the creative body we don’t see on screen.  It’s no recent phenomenon in American politics for name recognition and individual visibility to play larger roles than actual exchanges of ideas—televised debates haven’t been all that popular for some time, and when was the last time someone bothered to read a party platform?  Like corporate boards, we want our groups to be led by strong, dynamic individual personalities who can get the job done…so we don’t have to worry about it.  “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many….  If all were a single member, where would the body be?”

With such an individualistically-obsessed surrounding culture, the truth is that in every generation, the Church is in danger of forgetting its source.  (Christ is the Head.)  We might find ourselves coming to worship, singing a few songs, and then settling in our pews to watch some show where someone up front says all the words.  (Christ is the Head.)  All this time, we forget that liturgy—a more formal name for worship—actually means “work of the people.”  (Christ is the Head.)  We may not make the connection that if our tradition lifts as a theological principle that Christ is the Head of the Church instead of bishop, monarch, or pope, then it also means that neither is a Conference Minister the Head of the Church…or the pastor.  Christ is the only Head.  Christ is our Good Shepherd—the Shepherd of all of us.  The rest of us fall into that old Reformation category of the “priesthood of all believers,” which means that as we—each one of us—are members of the Body of Christ, we each have a calling to fulfill our part, and for the Body as a whole to answer Christ’s call, not only do we all have our particular responsibilities, but the responsibility of the whole Body itself to responding to Christ’s calling also falls to all of us.

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it,” writes the apostle Paul.  That’s true regardless of whether we’re “slow of tongue,” regardless of how afraid we might be of the people with whom we are called to serve, regardless of how long it may have taken us to get our act together to answer God’s call, regardless of how young we might be, and regardless of our gift—or lack thereof—for public speaking.  “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12).

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 14, 2022

Isaiah 5:1-10; Luke 12:49-56

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"These Present Times"

One of the pleasures I experienced after being called to my first congregation in a farming community in western Minnesota was soaking up all the wise sayings surrounding crops and weather and nature.  I didn’t realize, for example, that the phases of the moon affect crops like several farmers explained.  Or that the first frost in the fall always occurs six months after the first thunderstorm of the previous spring.  Nor did I know of the tradition there of planting potatoes on Good Friday, every year.  I wonder if that custom is meant to be some kind of metaphor for putting Jesus into the ground, with faith in the certainty of new life breaking forth.  That, of course, would mean that the potato represents the resurrected Jesus.  I guess I don’t see the resemblance.

Jesus speaks of this kind of rural wisdom in this morning’s gospel reading.  He observes, “’ When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain;” and so it happens.  And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be a scorching heat;” and it happens’” (Lk.12:54-55).  Jesus didn’t even need an Old Farmers’ Almanac.  If you see clouds, it might rain; if the wind blows from the south, it might get hot.  Sounds like everyday common sense.

But Jesus doesn’t bring up this conventional wisdom in a laid-back, folksy kind of manner; instead, he goes on:  “’ You hypocrites!  You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time” (12:56)?  The present time.  What in the world is he talking about?

As you may know, the present time of Jesus was dominated by one word:  Rome.  As we also know, the Roman Empire stretched across the known world at the time, even with tribes outside the Empire often having to pay homage to secure peace.  They had to pay the price to keep the peace.  And peace was something the Empire prided itself on.  In the century after the books of the New Testament were written, the Empire would attain its height of territory and power the ancient western world had never seen.  This period of glory and prosperity would even be called the Pax Romana—the Roman Peace.  Most of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East—the area all around the Mediterranean Sea, with all the tribes, nations, and races—were united under a single government with a single ruler.  That means that parts of three continents were dominated by one power.  That’s quite an accomplishment in the ancient world, especially considering there were only three continents known to so-called western culture at the time.

Many history books treat the Pax Romana as the climax of an ancient civilization.  Which makes Jesus’ words all the more perplexing.  Not only does he present that strange question about the meaning of the present time, but earlier in the passage he comes close to sounding like some kind of extremist—“’ I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! …Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division” (12:49, 51).  What is Jesus’ problem?  Isn’t Jesus supposed to be the “Prince of Peace”?  Is this the same Jesus who told his followers to love our enemies and that the one who lives by the sword shall die by the sword?  The words Jesus utters here might get him to put on the no-fly list in our own present time.

The Pax Romana was quite peaceful for the powerful.  It was quite luxurious for those with riches.  It was quite glorious for the leaders who did the conquering.  But the Peace of Rome came as a vastly different experience for the majority of the Empire’s population who were peasants surviving on a mere subsistence income.  Tribes that were conquered were usually not at peace with the loss of their lands and being sold into slavery.  And there was little glory for the thousands who were crucified—Jesus, of course, being only one of those—for representing a threat to the way the Empire was run.  The burden of the Pax Romana had to be laid on someone’s back, after all.

Pope Paul VI is often quoted as saying, “If you want peace, work for justice.”  As you may have heard before, peace does not mean simply the absence of conflict.  Real peace is much more fully encompassing.  As I hope we can see, the Peace of Rome was not true peace.  True peace does not favor the powerful few over the many dispossessed.  True peace cannot be imposed as an overlay upon strife or suffering.  True peace cannot exist when others are left outside.

The prophet Isaiah makes this even clearer when he reminds us that God “expected justice, but saw bloodshed” (5:7).  Jesus reveals his view of the way the world works when he says, “’ I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’”  God is not a God of the status quo; Jesus and the prophets make it plain that social injustice is intolerable to God.  The prophets constantly remind God’s people that leaving an unjust situation is one of the gravest sins a people can commit and that it’s actually a breaking of the covenant with God.  As one commentator puts it, “According to Jesus, the kind of peace society enjoys at the expense of the poor, the widow, and the orphan is not the kind of peace that God envisions.  God envisions a peace that is just for all.  When we consider Jesus’ words in this way, then we are able to discern a warning that is consistent with Jesus’ loving concern for everyone.”

So, what is the meaning of our own present time?  Isaiah tells his people, “Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land” (5:8)!  It sounds like God isn’t very happy with nations in which the wealthy can live so affluently at the expense of the poor.  And we can conclude from the words of Jesus in the New Testament that peace gained through conquest will not be left untroubled.  That prosperity gained from the slave labor of foreign workers will not go unchallenged.  That the constant incarceration of enemies of the state will not secure the Empire’s borders nor make its citizens safe.  That a society that allows distinctions among God’s people between “clean” and “unclean” will be turned upside down (thanks be to God).  That Christ promises always to bring division to an Empire in which leaders claim to be God’s anointed representative on earth.

If you want peace, work for justice.

And again Jesus asks, “’ You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?’”

It remains a question for the ages.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

August 7, 2022

Isaiah 1:10-20; Luke 12:32-40

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"A Biblically-based Identity"

Several years ago, while attending a Conference’s annual gathering in another state, I found myself in a conversation with a military chaplain-turned-college instructor, then retired.  He had taught at a college in the state, officially affiliated with another mainline Protestant denomination.  This former professor was complaining about how the mission statement of the college had continued to change during his time there.  He explained the process he had witnessed—how the school had moved from naming itself as “church-affiliated” to specifically “Christian” to “evangelical” to “biblical.”  In his view, the focus of the school’s self-understanding had become more and more narrow to the point that these increasing changes not only played a factor in his decision to retire but also strained the relations with the sponsoring denomination.

The truth is that this form of self-labeling is far from an isolated case within Christianity most visible in our culture.  For quite some time, the culturally dominant version of Christianity has been following this same path.  Listing itself as merely affiliated with a church wasn’t adequate for the school; its leaders felt the need to make sure everyone knows its Christian identity.  But even that wasn’t enough.  There are lots of views out there calling themselves Christian, so this narrative goes, so we need to be more specific—evangelical Christian.  But even that failed to drive home their message of identity.  For, in their minds, they’re not just a church-related school, they’re not just evangelical Christian, but they’re biblical—they’re biblically-based evangelical Christians.

Now we might have a whole discussion about what all these words mean, but at the very least it shows how much the labels of our language fail.  It looks like the leaders of the college were trying to get at something very specific about their worldview, their outlook, and what they actually believe.  I think it’s a gift to be able to communicate the essentials of one’s beliefs, but there’s something about this process that didn’t feel quite right to that retired teacher.

The prophet Isaiah shares a set of harsh words for his readers this morning.  In this passage, Isaiah reports God as “weary of bearing” our religious observances (1:14).  Through the prophet, God goes so far as to say “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen” (1:15).  Ouch.  I wonder if this kind of divine abandonment represents exactly what that school fears; that if the college doesn’t make its faith commitments explicitly clear in words, God might abandon them.

Words.  It’s amazing how often we get hung up on them, and that undoubtedly goes for church people as well–myself included!  As I mentioned, that college thought that if it got the words right—describing the right worldview, of course—then it would be meeting God’s requirements and find itself a beneficiary of God’s promise.  Although getting the words right clearly has value in the world of communication, we would do well to recognize their limits.

We can begin by learning to listen better to what words are being spoken to us.  This same passage begins by declaring, “Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom!  Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!” (1:10).  Ah, Sodom and Gomorrah—we know what this passage is going to be about, don’t we?  That’s cultural Christianity talking.  Listen to what kind of behavior the prophet actually lists a little later on:  “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (1:16-17).  Cease doing evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.  You don’t hear those things get touted too often by the televangelists or other self-appointed spokespersons for the Christian faith.  (By the way, I feel like every time the word justice comes up in scripture, it needs to be pointed out that criminal justice—making sure someone goes to jail—usually isn’t the context; but more often than not, it’s social or economic justice that’s meant—in other words, making sure all of God’s people get what they need.  As you might be able to see, that understanding makes much more sense here.)  So, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.  Those are all ways of saying to look out—and stand up—for the other, especially the voiceless and powerless.  Again, that’s the opposite of cultural Christianity’s promise of prosperity for obedience.  And when we flip on the TV and hear the words of the prophets, we’re much more likely to hear some half-baked theory on the end times than about standing up for the poor and downtrodden.  (Allow me to let you in on a little secret—the Bible has much more to say about one than the other.)

Oh sure, the Bible has some stuff about end times, like today’s lesson from Luke about “’ the Son of Man…coming at an unexpected hour” (12:40).  But even here, I wonder if that’s cultural Christianity telling us what to hear again.  When Jesus instructs, “’ Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit” (12:35), while it’s clear our faith should be a faith of action and not one of merely passive consumption, couldn’t the kind of action for which we should be prepared be…oh, I don’t know…something like seeking justice, rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, pleading for the widow?  And when we are to “’ be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that [we] may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks” (12:36), instead of envisioning some kind of warrior-conqueror Christ riding in with the horsemen of the apocalypse, maybe Christ can come knocking on our door as…the oppressed, the orphan, the widow—doesn’t Jesus say something somewhere about how caring for the least of these is the same as caring for Christ?  (Yes, it’s in Matthew 25, by the way.)  So, why do we have to hear these verses the way cultural Christianity tells us?  The same perversion of Christianity that prefers the rich over the poor, weapons of war over peace, fear of differences instead of welcoming the stranger in our land, and hatred of foes instead of love for the enemy.  Let me make this clear—messages cloaked in that kind of Christian language are most certainly not biblical.

At the end of the day, we do have to discern exactly the essentials of our faith.  To be people of active faith—to be people whose sacred texts implore us without hesitation to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow—to be the kind of people God calls us to be meant to leave behind all the labels we like to use to limit—er, I mean define—our identities, and go into the world and proclaim God’s good news of love, justice, mercy, and peace for all…and as St. Francis of Assisi liked to add, if necessary, use words.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

July 31, 2022

Hosea 11:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Bigger, Better, Faster"

Most of us have heard of the Seven Wonders of the World.  If pressed, we might even be able to name a few of those ancient spectacles.  But, for the most part, we can’t see them.  We can look up images of what they might have looked like, or even travel to where they were, but with one exception—the pyramids—all of those much-trumpeted triumphs of human creation are gone.  They simply don’t exist anymore.  They didn’t last, because nothing lasts forever.

Few of us will ever be in a position to create a new wonder of the world, but we fall into the same trap, nevertheless.  We want to make things last—forever, if possible.  We set up solid foundations before we erect a building.  We make sure the siding will hold up against the seasonal elements.  We keep family treasures tucked away someplace safe, so we can pass them on to the next generation.  If at all possible, we seek to make our marks permanent.  We want our traditions and heritage and toil and work to last, and lasting longer than the Seven Wonders of the World would be great.

The area many of us most want to last is our finances.  We don’t ever want to run out of money.  Who wants to be poor?  Who wants to be hungry?  This is why, if we’re able, we set up retirement accounts and pension plans.  This is why we put money into mutual funds and invest in the stock market and pay insurance premiums.  We are afraid of what might happen otherwise.  We tend to think that if we make enough preparations, we can be free from the anxieties of “what if?”  We want to feel secure, and we want it to last.

And so it is with the rich man in Jesus’ parable from this morning’s gospel reading.  Apparently, this man was a farmer in a region that produced bumper crops.  So, this farmer’s biggest problem is not a lack of material resources, but where to store his crops.  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem for most of us to have?  So, just as we like to tear down to re-build things bigger and better, the rich farmer decides to tear down his current, inadequate barns to put larger, more sufficient ones in their place.  Then in his mind, all his problems will be solved.  In his words, “’” And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry”’” (Lk. 12:19).  As far as he’s concerned, Easy Street is right around the corner.

But we know, especially if we’ve seen those T-shirts and bumper stickers, “The one who dies with the most toys still dies.”  As soon as the rich farmer believes he has financial security within his grasp, he dies.  His many years of labor just to get to this point have been spent in vain.  All for nothing.  He never even got around to eating and drinking and enjoying himself.

I bet there are too many of us for which this story strikes a chord.  But most Americans certainly don’t consider themselves wealthy.  What about the truly rich?  Aren’t they able to enjoy themselves?  A bit in the Clergy Journal once shared, “Stories about the lie of materialism are numerous.  A Dallas Morning News article followed up on 42 individuals who each won about a million dollars in the lottery.  Some paid off debts, but some did not.  New boats, cars, and pickups were the order of the day.  Even winning a million dollars did not buy happiness, as some winners got divorced and had domestic problems; some developed life-threatening illnesses.  Money cannot protect people from life—or death.”

Jesus himself says as much when he introduces his parable: “’ Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (12:15).  So, what’s the answer, then?  In what do our lives consist?

Of course, turning to God is probably the answer you’re expecting to hear at this point.  And it’s true.  But, let’s be honest, sometimes this God stuff can be a little confusing.  Did you catch how God is portrayed in our reading from the book of Hosea this morning?  “Ah, send ‘em back to Egypt since they won’t listen to me,” is what God says at one point in our passage.  “If they want to kill each other off with their weapons, that’s their problem!  They don’t seem to care that I want to teach them another way.”  But then the tone changes on a dime.  “How can I give up on my people?” God asks.  “I still love them, after all.  Okay, okay, I’m not going to be mad anymore.  I’ll just keep reaching out.”  But then, again, just a bit later, “Their lies!  Their denials of truth!  They insist on budding up with oppressive foreign powers!”  (Amazing how timeless scripture can continue to ring…)

Hosea paints an image of a God torn between eternal love and devastating disappointment with the failure of God’s people to live justly.  It’s true—this picture has God changing God’s mind, waffling, flip-flopping.  One could conclude from this reading that we’ve got quite the fickle deity.  And this is the God to whom we’re supposed to turn instead of building bigger barns?

Yes.  God’s indecisiveness in this text comes from the reality of God’s love for all the people, but not all the people loving each other.  What our part should be is anything but unclear.  We stop putting our stuff first.  We stop putting ourselves first.  We stop putting only our own kind first.  In the psalm for the day—which we used in our Call to Worship—God’s people are identified not as those with the bigger barns, but as those who have been gathered from lands all around, those who wander in desert wastes, those who are hungry and thirsty.  When God laments over our schemes, when God complains that we are bent on turning away from God, it is when we refuse to show love and compassion to exactly the people who need it.  You can’t reconcile calling yourself a lover of God with wanting to put up a wall to keep God’s people out.  We can’t continue allowing freedoms to be stripped away from parts of the population–increasing the exploitation of portions of God’s people–and remain comfortable calling ourselves disciples.  We can’t expect our inaction in the face of weapons “rag[ing] in [our] cities” and elsewhere (in the Book of Hosea’s own words, 11:6) and not expect judgment from God.  This judgment upon injustice we hear through the prophets comes precisely because God is love, and love stands up for those being treated in the same way that too many in power in our own time treat such people with less power.  As that psalm concludes, “For God satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry God fills with good things.  Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of” God.

It’s a shame we can’t visit the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or see the Colossus of Rhodes.  But in the end, these incredible human constructions will mean the same as who built the biggest barns.  In God’s kingdom, the one and only thing that matters is that love is shared.  Love all kinds of people.  And that means God’s justice for all the people of God.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

July 24, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Genie in a Bottle?"

Let’s begin with another fun question today:  if you came across a magic lamp with a genuine genie, and you had not three wishes, but one, what would you ask for?  Or, if you don’t like the genie in a lamp scenario, more directly, if you could have one thing—anything—what would it be?  What would you ask for?

Well, I have good news for you again!  According to today’s reading from Luke, Jesus is just as good as any genie in a bottle.  He says right there in black and white print, “’ Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For anyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened’” (11:9-10).

Did anyone have any idea it would be as simple as that?  So, I guess to get all those things we just decided we wanted, all we have to do is say a little prayer!  What do you think—will that work?  Has anyone ever tried that before?  Maybe I’m being a little unfair.  I agree there is a difference between praying for what we want and what we need.  There is a difference between praying for a new yacht and praying for your cancer to go into remission.  There is a difference between praying before stepping to the plate to take your at-bat and praying for an end to world hunger.

And Jesus says as much when he teaches the disciples to pray in this morning’s passage.  You may have recognized those simple words as an early version of the Lord’s Prayer.  Note the prayer does not ask for selfish things—may God’s holy name be honored; may God’s kingdom come; forgive us and lead us to be just as forgiving of others.  Nor does it ask for things that are clearly mere wants—may we receive the food we need for our daily sustenance; don’t lay unnecessarily heavy burdens on us.  These are simple things.  No yearning for the hottest sports car here.

It sounds like, then, that as long as we pray for just what we need, we should get it, right?  And yet we know that we and so many others are still brought to “time[s] of trial” (11:4).  The question of why bad things happen to good people is an eternal one—one with which believers have always struggled.  But with this passage at hand, the question shifts slightly to “Why do bad things happen to people who pray?”  There have even been attempts to answer this scientifically.  Maybe you’ve heard of experiments performed to see if prayer works.  Sometimes, you probably hear that science has even proven the efficacy of prayer.

Beware of such claims.  Yes, there have been experiments.  Results from the largest study of its kind up to that time came out in the spring of 2006.  For those scientific-minded folks among us, here's how the experiment worked.  The study randomly divided bypass surgery patients from six hospitals into three groups: Group 1 was prayed for by strangers after being told that they might or might not receive prayer; Group 2 did not receive prayers after being told the same thing; Group 3 was told they would receive prayers, and they did.  What were the results?  Which group experienced the best recoveries?  Well, patients in Group 2 fared the best—meaning they had the fewest number suffer from complications.  This was the group that did not receive any prayers.  Who did the worst?  Group 3 suffered from the most complications; the group who was told they would be prayed for did actually receive prayers.  So, the summary result of this study was that not only did prayer not help the recovering patients, but it may have made things worse.  What’s more, the study has since been repeated with similar results.

Wow.  That flies in the face of most of what we believe about prayer, doesn’t it?  Maybe we should cut out the “Prayers of the People” section of our worship service—we don’t want to do any harm, after all.  But how surprised about these results are we truly?  Do we really think those who die from cancer survive if they just pray hard enough?  That sons and daughters who die tragically well before their time could have been spared if they had simply spent more time praying?  That God refused to help every one of the millions of victims who died in the Holocaust because they forgot to pray?  That those who starve to death and suffer from obscene poverty can escape through mere prayer?

That’s still the genie-in-a-bottle approach to God.  In theological terms, it does not make sense to me that when a loved one is lying in a hospital bed, dying, that the God of grace and peace who loves all will intervene to save that life, only after waiting to hear if a good prayer is offered.  Is God really at our disposal in that kind of way?  So, what the heck is the point of prayer then?  One commentary provides this observation: “A big stumbling block to prayer is misunderstandings about prayers.  Some people believe that God is Santa Claus or One who writes blank checks, and they are disheartened when their prayers do not come true:  We need to pray, as did the disciples, to open the door of our mind to the Holy Spirit.  The primary purpose of prayer is not to tell God what we want, but to find out what God wants of us.  Prayer is a means of receiving the will of God, the power of God, and the love of God.  Effective prayer releases the will of God into the life of the believer and into the world.  The greatest gift we have today is the gift of God’s presence in the Holy Spirit.”

But wait a minute!  Doesn’t Jesus say that “’ everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds’”?  Yes, but Jesus has more to say.  What will you receive?  What will you find?  Jesus answers, “’ how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask’” (11:13)!  Jesus does not say that you will always get what you want or even what you think you need, but he does promise that the Holy Spirit will be constantly available.

Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Spirit’s presence means mere “comfort” or “peace.”  The Spirit also leads.  As another commentator explains, answers to prayer “come in the context of a community that is willing to wager—no willing to stake its life—on the belief that prayers are answered and that God does respond to human need and suffering.  To stake your life on this claim means letting God have access to your own hands and feet when they’re needed.”

God is not the genie in our magic lamp.  Prayer is more than asking God for things—whether it wants or needs; whether selfish or not.  In fact, I think that’s only a tiny bit of what prayer is supposed to be.  Prayer is a conversation with God, and conversation entails listening.  Listening and responding.  To ask for an end to hunger is an empty prayer unless it includes working to end hunger.  To ask for an end to poverty and suffering and war means little if it doesn’t include a response to allow ourselves to be part of the solution.  Offering thoughts and prayers will not end gun violence, for instance–surely, we can see that by now.  For us to take prayer seriously means that the distinction between prayer and mission, between talking with God and taking action, vanishes.

That’s the difference between God as the genie in our bottle and the Still speaking God.  God may be still speaking, but a decent prayer still lets God get a word in.  Prayer can work and does change things, namely the one doing the praying.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

Anniversary of Moon Landing

July 17, 2022

Genesis 1:1-10; John 15:1-5

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"A Different View"

[YouTube clip.]  That comes from, of course, President Kennedy’s speech in 1961, eight years before the first landing on the moon, an event that gets remembered this week each year on July 20.

So, let’s have some moon trivia today to wake us up—what do you say?  Feel free to shout out the answer if you think you know it.  So, let’s start easy—what was the name of the mission that first landed on the moon?  [Apollo 11.]  In what year did we last send astronauts to the moon?  [1972.]  The first human to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, had been raised in what religious denomination?  [United Church of Christ.]  (That’s why I think we have a special reason to remember this momentous event.)  How many knew of the UCC connection before?  It’s true, the first human to set foot on the moon really was one of our own.  Okay, now we’re going to get a little tougher.  On what day of the week did Apollo 11 land on the moon?  [Sunday.]  It was the only moon mission to land on a Sunday.  Alright, now here’s a tricky one—what was the first food and drink consumed on the moon?  We’ll come back to that…

When I mention I’ve been planning a “space day” worship service, sometimes I get strange looks.  What in the world does space exploration—or even the moon landing in particular—have to do with religion?  There’s no real link between the two, right?  The reality of history shows us otherwise.  [Earth rise image.]  Here’s one of the most iconic photographs ever taken in space.  It comes not from the Apollo 11 mission, but from Apollo 8.  Launching on December 21, 1968 (exactly ten years to the day before I was born, for real trivia buffs out there), Apollo 8 included a famous television broadcast as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve that year.  The astronauts showed this very image and took turns reading the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis, which we also heard earlier.  The religious language was how they chose to express what they were experiencing as they gazed at this image.  It was these images from Apollo that went on to inspire Earth Day.

But that’s not the only connection between faith and space exploration.  [Image of space window.]  Does anyone know what that is, or where it is?  That is the famous Space Window in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., meant to honor American exploration of space.  But there’s a particular feature of this window that makes it more unique.  That spots right in the middle is a moon rock—a real one—built into the design of the window itself.  And that rock came from the Apollo 11 mission.  When we reflect on God’s creation, let us not forget how wide and vast that creation truly is.

You know what?  I’ve gotten so wrapped up in these images, I’ve forgotten all about that last trivia question.  Anybody come up with the answer yet?  What were the first food and drink consumed on the moon?  Well, I’ll give you a hint—it’s the same food and drink we consume here in this place about once a month and on special days.  That’s right, the first food and drink consumed on the moon were communion bread and wine.  As the Guardian reported some years ago, “Before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out of the lunar module on July 20, 1969, Aldrin unstowed a small plastic container of wine and some bread.  He had brought them to the moon from [his Presbyterian congregation], where he was an elder.  Aldrin had received permission from the Presbyterian Church's General Assembly to administer it to himself.

“The surreal ceremony is described in an article by Aldrin in a 1970 copy of Guideposts magazine: ’I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me.  In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.  It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

’ Perhaps, if I had it to do over again,’” Aldrin goes on, “‘I would not choose to celebrate communion.  Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all [hu]mankind – be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists.’”  According to one biographer, Aldrin radioed to Mission Control, “’ Houston… I would like to request a few moments of silence.  I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever or whoever he [or she] may be, to contemplate the events of the last few hours and to give thanks in his [or her] own individual way.’  Then with his mic off, Buzz read to himself from a small card on which he had written John 15:5, traditionally used in the Presbyterian communion ceremony.”

Speaking personally, whenever I see actual images either from the moon missions or other endeavors of space exploration–like, for instance, from the brand new James Webb Telescope this week–I find myself in awe.  I don’t understand how such visuals reminding us of how big God’s creation really is—and how small we really are—can hold anything less than spiritual significance.  Accounts of the moon landing routinely emphasize that getting to the moon had been the hardest thing humanity has ever done.  There were visions of the time that this event would lead to further human exploration of our solar system—the feeling was that this was the beginning of something, not merely a culmination.  And yet, we haven’t been back since—when was it?  1972.

Such big things don’t get done when science and spiritual imagination get artificially separated.  Such big things don’t get done when fundamentalists are placated and allowed to speak for us as Christians to the point of altering real science that gets taught in the classroom.  (Let’s let trained professionals teach what they were trained to teach.)  Such big things don’t get done in a society in which we think editorials in the Wall Street Journal hold as much (or more!) legitimacy as peer-reviewed scientific journals.  Such big things don’t get done in a society in which we pick our own news sources, regardless of objective credibility.  [Earth rise image.]  Such big things don’t get done when scientific consensus about what we’re doing to that place gets relegated to a mere political position.

It’s not just science that suffers in today’s conditions; it’s our spirits, our souls, as well.  Truth isn’t just what we can measure or observe—but it sure includes those things and doesn’t deny them.  But the truth is bigger and points to meaning, the meaning of the incredible scope and wonder of the cosmos (of God’s creation), meaning that we really are only a small speck in an incredibly expanding universe, meaning that both faith and science tell us we are connected in more ways than we can possibly explain (no matter what walls we try to build, or how much we insist on utter independence).  And because of these meanings, we can see that these are spiritual values.  As the scriptures themselves even remind us, let us always “worship in spirit and in truth.”

For the unspeakably grand creation and cosmos, thanks be to God.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

July 10, 2022

Amos 7:7-16; Luke 10:25-37

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Walk on By"

Don’t you love it when things are easy?  Well, today’s our lucky day.  From the gospel this morning, we heard the parable we know as the Good Samaritan—one of the most popular and well-known of all the parables of Jesus, and for good reason.  If we grew up going to church or attending Sunday school, we’ve probably heard this parable, so often we could recite it in our sleep.  And more than that—it’s easy to understand; we all know what it means.  It’s about showing kindness, all about being nice.

The story, as we just heard it, and have heard it so many times before, begins with a man who is attacked and robbed while walking along the road.  He is beaten up so badly, that the scripture tells us he was left “half-dead” (Lk. 10:30).  Well, a priest shows up, but when he sees the injured man, he crosses to the other side and walks on by.  Next, a Levite—a lay religious leader—appears and does the same thing.  Finally, a Samaritan, one of those people we know as good, kindly, neighborly people come upon the man and decides to help.  The Samaritan treats the man’s wounds, takes him to an inn to recover, and promises to pay all his expenses.  How nice.  And that’s where we get the name “Good Samaritan.”  To be a good neighbor, as we’re taught, is to take pity, stop, and help, just like the Good Samaritan.

I think that’s probably the surface-level understanding of this story most of us know.  But as often seems to be the case with the stories Jesus tells, the true significance of this parable goes much deeper.  It’s not really about simply being nice or even kind.  What the story really describes is taboo-busting compassion and mercy, which involves much more than mere politeness.

The story appears to begin innocently enough.  Our Bible tells us, “Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus” (10:25).  Lawyers.  See, even Jesus gives them a bad rap.  I wonder if the long tradition of lawyer jokes got started with the Bible.  If anyone has any good lawyer jokes, I would like to start compiling them–I could use them at home.  Anyway, the lawyer asks a question many of us might like to ask, “’ What must I do to receive eternal life” (10:25)?  Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer—what do you find in the scriptures?  Like Jesus does in the other gospels, the lawyer quotes Leviticus and Deuteronomy by summing up our religious obligations to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (10:27).

Ah, I hope most of us recognize these words as the Great Commandment.  In the other gospels, when Jesus summarizes the law with these verses, it’s usually the end of the story.  But not so in Luke’s version.  In Luke’s narrative, this conversation’s just getting started.   We read on, “But wanting to justify himself [lawyers], he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”  For Luke, the parable of the Samaritan addresses this question.

A word about Samaritans.  Despite the images and descriptions we’ve grown up hearing, a Samaritan was not known as a nice person in Jesus’ time. Samaritans were thought of as a mixed race.  They claimed to be descendants of the 10 Northern Tribes of Israel who were “lost” after the Assyrian conquest.  For good Jewish folks, and that includes most of Jesus’ original audience when he first told this parable, Samaritans were like dogs—an unclean race of phonies who desecrated the name of God by claiming to worship God at a shrine other than the true Temple in Jerusalem.  They were traitors to the true faith; they were “fake Jews.”  And as we all know, there’s nothing worse than a phony (except for maybe a lawyer).

It’s hard to capture the shock value this parable would have carried in its original setting.  When a Samaritan shows up as the good guy at the end of this story, it was quite a twist.  Depending on who you are, you could substitute all kinds of people in the role of the Samaritan to get the same effect: a strange-sounding immigrant, a drug addict, even a non-Dutch person who ain’t much!  When we’re commanded to love our neighbors, we might be surprised just who our neighbors are (which is what the lawyer was asking).  And I don’t mean just the people who live next door to us.

Let’s give it a try.  Re-imagine this story in our own place and time, so we can get a sense of what it meant in its own time and place.  One evening, a man was walking down Highway 151 between the Fox Lake and Waupun exit when he was mugged and beaten up badly.  It so happened that a pastor was driving down that road, saw the man, but decided to keep going.  She had had a long day and was late for a committee meeting.  So next, a member of the Church Council was driving down that same road and also saw the man.  The Council member actually stopped to take a look at what had happened, but then moved right along.  He also was late for the committee meeting, and he had to give a report.  But then, an Iraqi Muslim was driving by.  What in the world was he doing around Waupun?  Who knows.  Was he a terrorist?  Don’t know.  Was he on his way to cause some kind of trouble?  Maybe—there’s just no way to find out.  But he stops, and it was his heart that was filled with pity.  He went over to the man, treated and bandaged his wounds, carried him back to his car, and drove him to the hospital there across the street from us.  At the desk, he told the staff that if the man didn’t have any insurance to pay, he would gladly take care of the medical bill himself.

When Jesus asks which of these three acted like a neighbor, he’s really asking which of these three represented the Kingdom of God.  The answer, as we know, is not those who were in a hurry to take care of their everyday, mundane church business.  (By the way, for Council members, this is not an excuse to skip meetings.)  But as it is more often the case than not, God’s compassion and mercy are shared outside human-made structures and circles.  In our contemporary version of the story, it is the Good Iraqi who brings God’s compassion.

Who is our neighbor?  Frequently, it’s the one we choose to walk on by.  An immigrant with few English skills in a low-wage job who can’t afford to feed her children?  Walk on by.  We have welfare programs for that, and we don’t want to encourage more to come.  An addict who has been in and out of rehab so many times no one thinks he’s worth another chance?  Walk on by.  He just wastes the community’s resources.  A single pregnant woman with few options unsure of where she might be giving birth?  Walk on by.  Everyone knows what a real family is supposed to look like, and besides, she needs to learn some responsibility.

We find in the reading from the prophet Amos today mention of God holding a plumb line, a symbol of the standard by which God’s people are judged.  When we assume this standard rests on socially-acceptable behavior or right belief, then we make the same mistake as the priest and the Levite in the parable.  God’s standard—the plumb line in God’s hand—measures something quite different:  true compassion and mercy, especially across lines we should all know better than to cross.

In truth, there is nothing easy about this parable, nor about living out God’s Kingdom in which we see all of God’s children as our neighbors.  And yet Jesus calls us to “Go and do likewise” (10:37).

Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C

United Church of Christ Anniversary Sunday

June 26, 2022

2 Kings 2:1-3, 6-14; Galatians 5:13-26

Union-Congregational UCC

  Waupun, WI

"A For-Prophet Church"

“He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.  He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah’” (2 Kings 2:13-14)?  Do you ever wonder that—where is the God of Elijah?  It’s not quite the same question as “Where is God?” or even “Where is God in the midst of suffering?”  To ask “Where is the God of Elijah?” is to wonder, specifically, where is the God of the prophets, where is the source of the prophetic word?  Elisha asks this question, of course, because he finds himself as Elijah’s successor.  Elijah’s mantle represents pretty big prophetic shoes to fill.

Now whenever I use the words prophet or prophetic, I feel the need tugging at me to make sure everyone’s on the same page—a prophet is not a “fortune-teller.”  Being prophetic—in the biblical sense—does not mean being able to predict the future.  (It does happen to involve the future—usually God’s vision for it.)  To be a prophet is to proclaim God’s message.  And that can be in either word or deed.  Prophets are often seen as speaking truth to power.  To be prophetic, then, means to bring God’s word against the powerful.  A prophet upsets the apple cart.  A prophet points to the difference between God’s ways and the ways of humanity, insisting that God’s ways demand social and economic justice.  A prophetic word is usually challenging, and those comfortable with a conservative status quo are almost always the ones most offended by prophets.  That goes for Moses, that goes for Elijah, that goes for John the Baptist, that goes for Jesus, and that goes for Martin Luther King, Jr, to name just some of the most obvious examples.

At a General Synod many years ago—General Synod being the name of the national gathering of our denomination—I heard a featured preacher claim that she believes the United Church of Christ is the most prophetic church in the world.  It’s a bold claim.  Even now, it still causes me to pause and consider.  In that setting, she didn’t have to include in her sermon the historical reasoning behind the claim.  But I doubt that when we’re back in our local congregations’ settings, we see things the same way.  Let me ask all of you—have you ever thought of the United Church of Christ as prophetic?

Well, maybe we should.  Although officially, the anniversary we celebrate of the United Church of Christ this weekend goes back to only a merger occurring in 1957, we know that the roots of our predecessor traditions go back centuries more.  And that history is chock-full of prophetic acts.  We’ve heard of this history before, perhaps only occasionally, but it’s a history we should get to know well.  As our denomination continues to declare that “God is still speaking,” we know that the work of God’s Spirit does not end at the close of the New Testament.

The challenging unjust authority runs deep in the veins of the UCC, as when the Pilgrims brought Congregationalism to North America, refusing to acknowledge any monarch or bishop or Pope as Head of the Church, but only Christ.  This conviction would continue to play itself out politically when Samuel Adams and other Congregationalists served as leaders planning the Boston Tea Party at a meeting in Old South Church, refusing to accept the injustice of a militaristic multinational empire as sovereign.  Back in Germany, as cooperative-minded Lutheran and Reformed Christians sought to unite, they refused to allow older, anti-rational literalistic understandings of religion to hold authority over them, and so they birthed the gift of modern theology.

And so we have a history of loving God with heart and soul and mind, but we also have quite the history of loving others as ourselves—a history rife with a commitment to social justice, including civil liberties.  It was the Congregationalist strand that was the first in North America to condemn slavery publicly in 1700, and the first church to ordain an African American in 1785.  It was this same piece of our UCC heritage that worked for and secured the release of the Amistad captives, it was another Congregationalist—Harriet Beecher Stowe—who was blamed for contributing to the outbreak of the Civil War by writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and it was our own UCC national offices that led the efforts that achieved the federal ruling in 1959 that airwaves actually belong to the public.  (You see, by 1959, it was already clear that certain stations in the southern U.S. were blocking out news coverage of the growing Civil Rights Movement.  The urge to filter news to fit one’s own belief system was alive and well even back then.)  We’ll hear more about our religious tradition and race in American history next week, with special attention on the Amistad.

But these strands of the UCC—always on the cutting edge of loving neighbor, and therefore, standing (prophetically) for social justice—weren’t limited to race.  In 1853, those old Congregationalists ordained Antoinette Brown the first woman pastor since New Testament times.  In 1972—just three years after the Stonewall Riots launched the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement—the UCC ordained the first openly gay male pastor, Bill Johnson.  By the end of that decade, the UCC had also ordained the first openly lesbian woman minister, Anne Holmes.  A word about these decisions that too often gets forgotten—they were not some kind of decrees handed down from a national office.  They were local decisions, just as approval for ordination has always been in the UCC, meaning that these folks were approved by their local churches and recommended to their local Associations for ordination.  They went through the process and were found fit for ordained ministry.  Then, in 1985—again, let’s not forget how long ago that was—I think I had just finished kindergarten when the General Synod of the UCC proclaimed the national setting of the denomination to be Open and Affirming to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.  Later, transgendered people were added to the statement.  And, since then, the General Synod reaffirmed UCC support for marriage equality—including same-gender marriage—in 2005.

Throughout history, none of these stands were popular with other good, religious folks—not abolitionism, not modern theology, not acknowledging and lifting the religious vocations of underrepresented people, not a revolution against the world’s imperial superpower.  These stands were not only unpopular, but they were also often dangerous.  Do you know what that reminds me of?  Something we heard just a little earlier:  Prophets are often seen as speaking truth to power.  To be prophetic, then, means to bring God’s word against the powerful.  A prophet upsets the apple cart.  A prophet points to the difference between God’s ways and the ways of humanity, insisting that God’s ways demand social and economic justice.  A prophetic word is usually challenging, and those comfortable with a conservative status quo are almost always the ones most offended by prophets.

The question then becomes not is the United Church of Christ truly prophetic, but are we bold enough to follow Elisha’s lead?  For Elisha did not seek merely to continue Elijah’s work—he prayed to “’ inherit a double share of [the prophet’s] spirit’” (2:9).  Elisha hoped to be twice the prophet Elijah was—the same prophet who, as we heard last week, was being hunted down by the powers-that-be.

“He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.  He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?’”

Do you ever wonder that?

Second Sunday after Pentecost

June 19, 2022

1 Kings 19:1-15; Galatians 3:23-29

Union-Congregational UCC

      Waupun, WI

"Is That Really All?"

Apologetics.  Hermeneutics.  Eschatology.  Sanctification.  Justification by grace through faith.  These are the kinds of terms folks who go to seminary learn about.  Maybe you recognize some of those words and phrases; maybe not.  But, in any case, they sure do sound like big words, don’t they?  This is how pastors learn what the Apocrypha is, and where the sacristy is.  It’s how we keep track of the differences between a litany, a liturgy, and a lectionary.  But as you’ve probably heard, “the devil’s in the details,” and so similarly, it’s the small words that can change entire ways of thinking and being.  Is the Kingdom of God “near” or “at hand”?  Are we saved by–or through–the “faith of Jesus Christ” or “faith in Jesus Christ”?  These are all different—and correct—ways to interpret the Greek of the New Testament and represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the enormous power of small words.

One such word that holds so much power in the grand scope of Christian thinking, discipleship, and church life is all.  All.  A-l-l.  No, this is not some commercial for laundry detergent.  In many ways, this small word encompasses the radical nature of Christianity, and history shows us that understanding its meaning is the central source of contention and conflict throughout Christian history.

Speaking of conflict in church history, we heard this morning from the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  As you may have heard from me before, I absolutely love Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  Why?  Because we get such a glimpse into the real human emotions behind those “big names” of first-generation Christianity that we read about in the Bible—people like Peter, James, John, Barnabas, Titus, Silas, and—of course—Paul himself, the one who wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else and whom scholars place as the most important figure, after Jesus, in founding the Christian faith.

And here’s some of what Paul writes to the Galatians in the first couple of chapters—much of which he means about those other big-name figures: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ…let that one be accursed!”  (1:6-8).  And later on, when describing a meeting with this upper-level leadership, Paul writes, “But because of false believers secretly brought in…we did not submit to them even for a moment” (2:4-5).  Do you realize whom Paul is talking about meeting in these verses?  Peter and John and James.  He goes on, “And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually made no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those leaders contributed nothing to me” (2:6).  And in case you’re not getting the picture about these early pillars of the church, Paul keeps going, “But when Cephas [another name for Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles” (2:11-12).  “And the other Jews [Paul means Jewish-Christians] joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray” (2:13).

What do you think of all that?  Did you realize these New Testament figures had such harsh language and disagreements with each other?  I think it’s clear from these verses and others that Paul is downright ticked off…yes, even at people like Peter and James and John.  Perhaps it’s not exactly how we were taught to envision the leaders of the New Testament church—arguing and bickering and name-calling.  (We wouldn’t even want that in the church today, right?)  On one level, there’s a lesson here that conflict has always existed within Christianity, even right here in the early church described in the Bible.  But, that’s not all; there’s an even larger lesson here.  That is, why is Paul—who wrote on more than one occasion of how the different members of the Body of Christ are called to work together—why is he so angry, at others in that same body, no less?  What is this conflict all about?

Just as this description of the church might sound familiar to us Christians today, so also might the conflict itself:  who’s in and who’s out?  Or another way to put it: do all really mean all?  But we’ll come back to that.  The major conflict of the early Christian movement requires understanding that those original generations of Christians identified first as Jewish.  Christianity was not a separate religion then, but a particular group within Judaism.  That means that the first Christians all observed the Jewish rituals, including dietary restrictions and male circumcision.  The strictest of the religious advised avoiding Gentiles (non-Jews) and saw them as potential polluters of the movement that sought to follow the Messiah.  When Gentiles began showing interest in this radical movement of transformation that proclaimed a victim of the Empire’s violence as the true sovereign of the world, it created some problems internally.

The immediate conflict lying behind the Letter to the Galatians started between James, Jesus’ brother on the one hand, who was recognized as the leader of the church in Jerusalem; and Paul on the other, who advocated full inclusion of all people—even Gentiles—into the Jesus Movement.  Let’s hear that again—full inclusion of all people.  Again, that’s all people.  (Peter, in Paul’s eyes—by the way—was a waffler; at one point agreeing with Paul on the mission to Gentiles, but then being persuaded by James and his faction to observe the traditional ways more strictly, thus more exclusive.)

But back to that claim from Paul.  How do we know that a full welcome was his belief?  One commentator describes it this way:  Paul “told the Jerusalem Christians that their welcome did not go far enough….  It was a new day.  Even these non-Jews were children of God with no strings attached.” According to Paul, “all the old categories they had followed all their lives were too confining.  What about ethnic or religious divisions, they asked?  Paul said no.  Surely, they said, socioeconomic forces must be taken into consideration.  Paul shook his head.  The Jew[ish Christians] persisted:  don’t tell us that gender differentiations don’t matter.  For a third time, Paul said no.”  As the commentator continues, “What followed was absolutely subversive.  ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ.’  They noted his emphasis on all.”

Does all really mean all?  We know as churches we have conflict; do we ever have conflict over these kinds of questions, questions regarding who’s welcome or not?  What would it mean if we took Paul’s claim and applied it to our own divisions today regarding who’s in, and who’s out, and consider how the church goes about its business with such inclusion in mind?  Could Paul have really been serious, that all are in?  If so, should that change anything about what we’re doing?

That commentator concludes, “Paul’s words to Galatia keep upsetting every generation: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ.’”  That’s all.

Video Sermon from June 12, 2022

By: Rev. Kelsey Peterson Beebe

(can be printed upon request)

https://files.constantcontact.com/4fc4c9cb001/22458357-8219-4ed1-a680-0eaf23ca1d4f.pdf

Day of Pentecost, Year C

June 5, 2022

Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Ancient Words & New Spirits"

“And suddenly from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2).  Such is how the Book of Acts describes the arrival of the Holy Spirit on that first Christian Pentecost, the origin story of the entire Christian Church.  As the passage goes on to describe, “And at this sound, the crowd gathered and was bewildered…” (2:6), and the people found themselves “[a]mazed and astonished” (2:7).  How disorienting that experience must have been; how confusing, how chaotic, how upsetting!  Again, as Acts explains, “All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’  But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine” (2:12-13).

New wine.  The phrase comes to us carrying deep Christian imagery.  Of course, we might associate wine as one of the traditional elements of communion, which we’ll share later this morning (and that kind of renders moot Peter’s objection regarding who drinks wine at nine o’clock in the morning!  He even got the time right for today).  We might even recall Jesus turning water into wine or that passage about the problems with putting new wine into old wineskins.  But let’s not overlook the intent of the line as we have it here from Acts—it comes with a sneer.  The accusation of being filled with new wine means, for one thing, getting drunk on cheap wine.  But the connotations extend further beyond even class distinctions.  In the ancient world, antiquity itself was a virtue.  Having a long history of tradition was highly lauded as a value.  Leaders had to have a pedigree and honorable ancestry.  Make no mistake, invoking the phrase new wine was an insult, which fits right in with the sneer in that verse.

Values of history, tradition, insisting on doing things the way we’ve always done them…you know what that kind of reminds me of?  The church.  Right?  During a visioning session at a congregation, my spouse served in Missouri, a question was asked to the group regarding what the purpose of the church is.  One man—a former Council president—immediately raised his hand and answered that it served as a place to record family history and genealogy.  For him, that was perhaps the essential function of the church.  Such an answer, by the way, makes pastors want to smack our own foreheads, though we’ll do our best to hide it.  Yes, it’s true that church documents like baptismal, confirmation, and wedding certificates greatly assist those doing genealogical work.  But to name the primary purpose of the church as preserving the past really does just get it plain wrong.  What that better describes is a museum.

So we might also sneer at new wine.  We might also hear God’s promise to make all things new as a threat, an idea we heard about just recently.  We might also feel amazed, astonished, and perplexed when God’s new Spirit shows up, ripping through the gathered community, leaving a buzz of diverse vocal sounds in its wake.  We might feel that all the “newness” the Spirit brings means that everything that’s older, everything we’re used to, and all we know about our own identity gets thrown out.  And—let me share some good news with you—that’s not the case.

We heard the Pentecost story from Acts this morning after hearing that old story from Genesis of the Tower of Babel.  Theological interpretation often pairs these two stories up, because tradition has it that at Pentecost—when everyone could understand everyone else—the curse of Babel—when all human language was confused as part of God’s judgment of human pride—that curse got reversed.  But the idea that Pentecost reversed Babel has always struck me as a little off.  In the Tower of Babel story, humanity shares a single common language before God scatters all the people.  A couple of things about motivations in this passage should be noted.  First, pride’s a bit of a misleading misnomer in this story.  The people had become obsessed with building, with producing without regard for anything else.  Commentators hone in on the text’s description of brick and mortar because there’s another passage in our Old Testament that evokes a similar image: it is exactly the work with brick and mortar that Egyptian taskmasters demanded from the Hebrew slaves at the beginning of the Book of Exodus.  As a result, many interpreters now see God’s judgment in this passage as connected not to pride necessarily, but to the exploitation of labor, of being obsessed with bottom lines and results in no matter the non-monetary damage.  Human laborers are not cogs in some machine.

But there’s another detail here that also gets lost by convention.  God’s division of human speech into different languages is not a punishment because of what happened at Babel.  Unfortunately, translations often confuse the Hebrew (especially ironic here), but if we listen with the highest attention we hear a revealing admission in the fourth verse:  the people decide to embark on this building project, for "otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’”  See, the people already knew what God intended.  Diversity is not a punishment for pride; rather diversity is the will of God.  The story testifies to human efforts to block it, to try to build structures against it, again at any cost.  (Building a structure trying to block God’s purpose for diversity—may be that part of the story doesn’t sound so long ago, after all.)

And these insights have to bear for the passage from Acts.  In the Pentecost story, the people don’t return to using a single common language—in fact, the text is very clear on this point: “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (2:6) and “’ in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power’” (2:11).  God’s will continues to seek diversity, but also understanding through that diversity.  See, the diversity of languages remains, but God’s Spirit brings the gift of understanding.  The former situation, then, is not reversed; rather it is transformed.

With such a situation in mind, it should come as no surprise, then, that when Peter stands up to respond to that sneer of new wine, he cites a prophet of the established tradition to help give meaning to this new thing, a prophet that had envisioned God doing new things like sons and daughters proclaiming God’s message, as well as the enslaved, “both men and women,” in short that God’s new thing always involves God pouring out the Spirit upon all flesh (2:17-18).

Again, God sends the Spirit to be poured out upon all flesh.  When God’s Spirit blows through and transforms our ministry, it feels like a new thing.  Because it feels new, we may not know where it leads.  And because it promises newness, we may grow anxious about what we’re challenged to leave behind.  But remember, God’s Spirit of newness does not ask us to dispense with our history or our identity, with our past or our heritage.  But God’s Spirit does come to transform God’s ministry (and it is God’s church, not our independent enterprise) in this place.  Let us, like those gathered when the day of Pentecost had come, find ourselves open to receiving God’s new Spirit that works transformation by adding to what God has already created us to be.  And let us make the connection between old and new and rise to speak this vision from God.  Amen.

Ascension Sunday, Year C

May 29, 2022

Acts 1:1-11; Acts 16:16-34

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"On Earth, As It Is in Heaven"

While our thoughts these days may be on graduations or even Memorial Day weekend and kicking off our summers, the scriptural story we started at the end of last November–believe it or not–isn’t quite finished with us yet.  Here we have the eleven disciples listening to the final words from the risen Christ as he begins to float up into heaven and become one with a cloud.  Then, like some scene taken straight out of a Mel Brooks movie, we’re told that two men in white robes show up, standing there, and say, “why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  Or the way I envision this scene, they actually ask, “What are all you bozos staring at?”  Is this really how we conclude the Easter season?

Part of me thinks this line might be directed at us Christians today.  I’ve heard of too many folks who think the church is supposed to be an escape from the real world; that we talk about supposedly heavenly stuff in here, so you can get through the week out there.  If that’s what church was for, then there wouldn’t have been much reason for God’s incarnation in Jesus coming to earth in the first place.  We could have talked all about God in heaven without the real-world problems of injustice or oppression or violence, as in Jesus’ execution under an imperial power, but we think that’s kind of important to the story, don’t we?  The church is here on earth, for a reason, but we’ll get back to that.

This Sunday in the church year is always a strange one.  Besides being Ascension Sunday, it is also the last Sunday of Eastertide, but not yet Pentecost.  It’s got this “in-between” feel to it; we’re still supposed to be celebrating the risen Christ, but at this point in the lectionary, he’s not here anymore, and we aren’t really sure what we’re supposed to be celebrating, because the Spirit isn’t scheduled to descend until next Sunday.  Why does Jesus have to go up before the Spirit comes down, for the rest of us, at least?  And is Christ ascending supposed to be a good thing in that Jesus’ work on earth is finished (is it really?), or do we find some sadness here, because in the story Christ’s presence is not with the disciples at this time?  It is a strange tradition--this stuff about the Ascension--may be on second thought it would be easier to talk about everyone’s summer plans.  What are all us bozos staring at, indeed?

But I don’t want to let the Ascension off the hook, not quite yet.  If we read this stuff about ascending in the clouds and vanishing anywhere else, we might call it mythological.  (Of course, we could always use a reminder that myths need not be untrue.)  It seems to me that the function of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles--and especially the first two chapters--are to show a legitimate continuity between Jesus and the movement that became the church after Jesus’ death and Christ’s resurrection.  And naturally, this connection was expressed in the way ancient storytellers knew how--in mythical language; language that is true not because it tells a story in a straightforward, factual way, but because its meaning is true.  Again, what are all of us bozos staring up at the sky for?

In-between times–times of interim, literally–can be some of the most important moments in the life of faith.  These are moments of stopping, taking a look at where we are and where we’ve been, and wondering what the Spirit-filled church might look like moving forward.  There may be no better time for discernment than those times we find ourselves in-between.

Could there be a more apt description for graduates, by the way, especially if your next plans of life don’t get started until the fall?  Here you are on the brink of an entire in-between season, perhaps torn in all your thinking between reflecting on all that’s been, and all that will be.  The same goes for families of graduates.  For many, households are about to look and feel and sound very different, but perhaps there’s some time before that change becomes long-term, a time to consider, again, everything that has come before while reflecting on everything that may lay ahead for your graduates and your family.

But when it comes to thinking about church–what it is, what it is called to be, how it should function, for me, there’s just no getting around the apostle Paul, especially when reflecting on what the season in which we celebrate the Risen Body of Christ could mean as a whole: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the Body, though many, are one Body, so it is with Christ….  Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:12, 27).  Even though we don’t physically see Jesus here with us, we remain connected to Christ.

Regardless of how we see the Ascension, the Spirit is promised.  However, we think of resurrection, we are the Body of Christ.  Christ is there, there, in you and in me, and here.  And as the Body of Christ, that means we keep doing the ministry of Christ; we keep doing the kind of stuff Jesus did.  That remains true no matter what the calendar says, and it means that we always continue to have work to do in God’s service, work here on earth, because as one New Testament scholar has commented:  “Heaven’s in great shape; the earth is where all the problems are.”

So, again, why are all of us bozos standing around looking up at the sky?

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C

Rural Life Sunday

May 22, 2022

Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:22-22:5

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"A Whole New World"

Is anyone here a fan of the not-that-long-ago sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond?  Do you remember Marie, that quintessential nosey mother-in-law?  But more specifically, do you remember that running joke when Marie would complain and wave her arms in crisis because there was too much fruit in the house?  She was worried, of course, about the fruit going bad before there was time to eat it.  But, furthermore, do you remember what first sparked that problem of too much fruit in the show?  A gift of membership in a fruit-of-the-month club.  That’s what I think of when I hear that verse in this morning’s reading from Revelation describing, “On either side of the river is the tree of life, with [here it comes!] its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month” (22:2).  Marie Barone would have a fit!

But we shouldn’t laugh, because the Book of Revelation is no laughing matter.  It is, after all, about the end of the world.  How dare a preacher make light of such serious material.  We all know we shouldn’t joke about the end of the world; rather we should be afraid, shouldn’t we?  Isn’t Revelation a scary book with all kinds of beasts and monsters and its Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  What could be scarier than the end of the world?!

The truth is we don’t hear many sermons about Revelation in mainline churches, and the truth further reveals that the situation is not new.  By far, the Book of Revelation was the most controversial writing to make it into the New Testament, and the universal acceptance of its inclusion literally took centuries, and then it was questioned again at the time of the Reformation.  It is so full of strange symbols and numbers and mythical creatures, that it’s not exactly an easy-to-understand read.  In fact, I know one pastoral colleague who wouldn’t even answer questions about it from congregation members.  “You go and make sure you understand everything about the first 65 books of the Bible first,” he would explain, “and then we can bother talking about Revelation.”

But, we’re gonna talk about it a little this morning.  And I’ll even admit that much of the book uses scary imagery–that often gets wildly misinterpreted and misapplied by our siblings in Christ who do talk about it more than we do.  There are two things you ought to know about the Book of Revelation as a whole: 1) it’s not scary because it predicts the end of the world, and 2) it doesn’t really predict the end of the world.

So why do we find it scary?  And why does it use such graphic and violent imagery?  Like the rest of scripture, the Book of Revelation is very much a product of its time.  In this case, that time was near the end of the first century when some Christians were yearning for and imagining and envisioning what it might take and what it might look like for God to vanquish their mortal enemy.  And who was that mortal enemy?  Well, the same enemy who had killed John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and so many of the rest of them:  the Roman Empire, which gets coded as “Babylon” throughout Revelation.  That was a handy code because any Jewish-Christian who read the book (or heard it read) would understand immediately; Rome had destroyed the Second Jerusalem Temple, just as Babylon had destroyed the First.

We heard some references to the Jerusalem Temple in this morning’s reading, and, I think, they also point to the real reason why Revelation might be scary to some, why it might sound threatening.  The author–John of Patmos, probably not the same John of the gospels–“saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God” (21:22).  No temple?  That’s kind of a big deal.  You may remember that the Temple had previously been understood as the place where God actually dwelled.  Any vision of the fullness of God’s reign and presence must surely include the re-building of this holy sanctuary, right?  Apparently not.  But don’t God’s people need to maintain their institutions, their structures?  With God’s full self-present, human institutions tend to get in the way.  But doesn’t God’s promise to restore all things mean God will bring back our “Golden Age”?  No, that’s not the promise of God, and we have arrived at the true threat underlying the message of Revelation.

Last week, we heard again the famous vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” (21:1).  That is a new heaven and earth, by the way, not a return to the old.  To dissuade any who think I might be adding too fine a point, the rest of that verse also reads, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”  Here is where we tend to mishear something very important from scripture:  God promises to make all things new; God does not promise to bring back the old.  That God does a new thing means just that–God goes beyond all our old ways of doing things; a living God is not–and indeed cannot–be a god of the way we’ve always done things (which we tend to misremember anyway).  At its heart, the Book of Revelation–and in truth, much of scripture–looms as threatening because it reminds us in no uncertain terms that God is a God of transformation, of change, of new heavens and a new earth.  The God of the Exodus cannot be the same god of systemic injustice of any kind, and the God of the Resurrection cannot be a god of the ways that lead to death.  Therefore, the God who makes all things new is not a god of the status quo.  Under an Empire that thrives on conquest, exploitation, strife, division, and keeping all in their place, this kind of talk is dangerous.

But, nevertheless, this remains a God who makes all things new.  It is not a God who comes to destroy creation, but to transform and renew it.  Revelation is not really about the end of the world at all, it is merely about its “birth pangs” as the apostle Paul writes in one of his letters.  Revelation imagines the time when empire, oppression, and injustice have been overwhelmed by the power of God in what some New Testament scholars call “God’s great cosmic cleanup.”  Just as we might remember from the story of Noah and the rainbow, God does not will the destruction of Creation but instead seeks not only to preserve it but lead it to flourish against those forces–again to paraphrase the apostle Paul–that subject it to decay.  Revelation reminds us of what Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans which in turn hearkens back to the truths we find in Genesis: God comes down on the side of Creation and justice and love and will not put up with any human institution that fails to honor them.  That’s what Revelation is actually all about.  And that can still be scary stuff to some.

And so, yes, with apologies to Marie Barone, in the new creation there will be all kinds of new fruit…and plants and creatures and diversity of life of every kind–far beyond anything we can imagine, because God so loves the whole world and cares for all creation to the point of taking on as God’s own the active work of renewing, of transforming, of blessing.

As God’s people, do we?

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C

May 15, 2022

Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Stranger = Danger?"

Let me tell you, as a vegetarian, I usually get some grief when a passage from scripture pops up in the lectionary like the one we heard today from the Book of Acts.  Here, Peter explains a vision he’s received in which he is shown “’ four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air” (11:6).  As Peter explains, “’I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.”  But [Peter] replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”  But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  This happened three times’” (11:7-10), because, as we know from the scripture readings lately, major events regarding Peter always have to happen three times for him to get it.

Dreams have special meaning in scripture, as does repetition.  We appear to have both in this passage.  Now, the meaning of this vision makes sense only when we remember that Jesus and all the earliest Christians—including Peter—were Jewish, understood their discipleship as part of their Jewish identity, and in those first generations, still followed all the dietary restrictions in the Torah.  As the Jewish Torah is also part of our Bible, we can find precise instructions in Leviticus, such as which foods are clean (and acceptable to eat) and which are not.  So, when Peter is shown all these different kinds of animals—unclean creatures according to his religious tradition—and told to “Kill and eat,” it is an affirmation of something Jesus says in the gospels that declares all foods clean and therefore okay to eat.  Maybe you can see why this passage might challenge a vegetarian perspective.

But Peter realizes—again, after hearing the message three times—that this declaration isn’t really about food; or, rather, it isn’t just about food.  That in itself shouldn’t sound like a shocker to us.  In fact, anybody paying attention to the beginning of the story can already figure that out.  We read, “So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’” (11:2-3).  Or, how could you eat with those people?  It’s in response to that charge that Peter explains his dream, that same dream with its key line, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  Note that the actual menu Peter shared with his uncircumcised friends is never mentioned.  Clearly, the issue is with whom Peter shared that meal, not what they ate.

So, for Peter, what did this “what-God-has-made-clean-you-must-not-call-profane” thing really deal with?  We can tell from Peter’s description almost immediately after his vision that the “’ Spirit told me to go with [some visitors who had just arrived] and not to make a distinction between them and us’” (11:12).

Not to make a distinction between them and us.  Well, that’s not how we like to operate, is it?  Most of the time, we’d instead make distinctions between them and us—wouldn’t we?  Isn’t that the primary way we see the world?  Oh, you know those Beaver Dam people…  Or how about that divide between 8:30 & 9:30 people?  You know how that other service is!  Or those East Coast Cultural Elites—they need some good ole’ Midwestern values…  In this story, Peter clearly understands that the instruction, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” applies to people.  But how far out does our line go?  How far can we push our boundaries?  Or more importantly, how far does God in Christ call us to open our circles?

The apostle Paul famously writes to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28), but we tend to leave those categories at that.  Never mind the ethnic and religious implications of no longer being “Jew or Greek;” or the erosion of social and economic classes—yes, you better believe in that “social-justice” kind of way—when there is no slave or free; or even what it might mean as we continue to struggle with gender roles if “there is no…male and female.”  But is that it?  Is that as much as Paul intends or as Jesus calls us to challenge our human labels?

As Jesus explains in Matthew, “’ You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  But I say to you, Love your enemies…’” (5:43-44).  It’s hard to love enemies!  That means that to love as Jesus has loved includes loving Afghanis, Iraqis, and people from Beaver Dam.  Loving as Jesus loves means loving beyond just our families or just our communities or just the people who look like us or who agree with us or who have the same kind of hair like us or who dress like us or who sound like us.  It means loving beyond our religious boundaries, our cultural boundaries, and our national boundaries.

We hear from the Book of Revelation this morning “a loud voice…saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.  [God] will dwell with them; they will be [God’s] peoples’” (21:3), and the best Greek manuscripts do indicate that this last word is plural—that is God’s peoples and not just God’s one people.  According to Revelation, that is the vision for God’s heaven on earth.  And so, may our love for the other be so great that we too can recognize and declare along with Peter, “’ If then God gave them,’” the Gentiles, the others; in Christian history, that means us, “’ If then God gave them the same gift that [God] gave us when we believed…who was I that I could hinder God?’” (Acts 11:17).

Once again, all means all.  Loving as Jesus invited us to love means loving all, even if we can find religious rules in our own scriptures telling us otherwise.  Our God is a living God, a Still speaking God that breaks down all barriers.  Who are we that we could hinder God?

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C

May 8, 2022

Acts 9:36-43; John 10:22-30

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"Just a Sheep?"

It may be confusing this morning to hear that the church has its own name for Mother's Day–the Festival of the Christian Home–but it wasn’t very long ago that the Fourth Sunday of Easter had its own special name apart from that; does anyone happen to know what it was?  Good Shepherd Sunday: the day we celebrate the depiction of Jesus as our Shepherd, and we remember that all of us are sheep, mere sheep, dumb sheep.  Well, maybe that’s not the message.  But the largest Christian group on campus where I went to college (before seminary) kinda liked that image.  They could easily be spotted around campus because they often wore these bright yellow T-shirts with bold, black lettering on the front that read simply, “Follower.”  That’s all it said—“Follower.”  Sounds almost like something out of a science fiction novel; just picture all these people walking around a university with their bright, yellow “Follower” T-shirts.  What made it even worse is the variety of Christianity their group followed.  It was a rather fundamentalist type that gave the T-shirts a chilling, cult-like feel.  Is this what being a sheep is all about?  Is that what following Christ is supposed to be like?

As we hear this morning, scripture certainly has a lot to say about being a sheep.  The 23^rd Psalm—the most famous of all psalms—declares the LORD as a shepherd who makes the psalmist lie down in green pastures.  God leads the psalmist beside still waters and restores the soul.  Even more, God leads us on the right paths for the sake of God’s name.  In John’s gospel today, Jesus tells some people that they are not among his flock, because his sheep know the sound of his voice (10:27).  But more than that, his sheep have “’ eternal life, and they will never perish” (10:28).  Well, sign me up.  It sounds like that flock has some good benefits.  How hard can it be to follow, anyway?

We have some farms in the area—before I go on, does anybody have any sheep?  Has anyone had experience handling sheep?  Can anyone explain how sheep are led?  I must be honest, I don’t have a lot of experience dealing with sheep outside a petting zoo or county fair.  But from what I’ve read, sheep get a bad rap for having poor eyesight.  Sure they don’t see well, but apparently, they have an excellent sense of hearing.  (This is how, of course, they hear their shepherd’s voice, as in the comparison Jesus makes with his followers.)  A lot of people seem to think that sheep are pretty dumb.  That is where we get the image of sheep mindlessly following a shepherd.  Why did those “Follower” T-shirts rub so many people the wrong way?  But this stereotype of the dumb sheep isn’t quite accurate.  From what I read, contrary to popular opinion, sheep are in fact quite intelligent.  I didn’t know that.  More than that, sheep cannot really be pushed or herded but must be led.  By the one shepherd, of course.

Believe it or not, our reading from Acts is also all about sheep.  Today we hear a story about Peter—one of the most prominent of the original sheep—learning more about what it means to be a sheep of Christ after Christ’s resurrection.  When you stop and think about it, that must have been a little trickier than before.  In essence, the sheep were being asked to follow a shepherd who was not even there physically.  Peter and the others could no longer afford to be “disciples,” but apostles whose ears are so attuned to the shepherd’s voice that they can hear it and follow whether they see the shepherd or not.  (Not all that different from being sheep in-between settled pastors.)  To be a Christian sheep after the Resurrection, or in a time of transition, means something very particular.

So what do Peter the sheep do?  Well, he travels to Joppa, and there encounters a woman named Tabitha, or Dorcas in Greek.  Dorcas had apparently died.  And Peter was able to raise her back to life.  The event sounds simple enough, but there are two very important things about this healing that tell us even more about being a sheep in Christ’s flock.

First, in the words of one pastor, “This was the first time [according to scripture] in the post-resurrection church that a disciple had exercised the authority of life over death in this way… Peter’s act made clear the fact that the resurrection of Christ had now been passed on to the apostles, and that the resurrection was now at work in the life of the earliest communities of believers.”  In other words, Peter was living out his calling as part of the Risen Body of Christ in that he accepted Christ’s ministry—the work of the shepherd—to be his own.  He followed the shepherd’s voice to continue Christ’s mission.  Christ was alive inside him.

Yet, there’s something more here reminding us what it looks like to be a sheep in Christ’s flock, and that’s Dorcas herself.  Although Dorcas was not a bishop or preacher or Council member (as far as we know), she was a sheep of the flock, but moreover, she also had been raised from death like the Good Shepherd himself had been.  Just as Peter found that he was able to continue the ministry of Christ, so did Dorcas share in the resurrection power of being part of Christ’s New Body.  And what kind of stuff did Dorcas do, anyway, like a sheep?  We’re told, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity” (9:36).  More directly, she embodied the same compassion Jesus showed.  To use another pastor’s words again, “Compassion…is much more than kindness, far more radical than simply being nice.  It is fulfilling the requirements of a godly life as described by Micah:  doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God…. Dorcas became a symbol of resurrection life…because her simple acts of compassion and caring expressed, in a visible and tangible way, something of the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  Through Dorcas, Christ’s resurrection was again made real for those around her.  This is what it means to be a sheep in Christ’s flock.  This is what it means to follow Shepherd’s voice, even if we can’t physically see the Shepherd right now.

I’m still not a big fan of those bright yellow T-shirts.  I think it’s probably because they’re not clear about whom or what they’re following.  Serving as a sheep in this flock is no cakewalk because the shepherd’s voice we’re called to follow–the voice we’re called to trust to guide us into the future–leads us away from inaction and apathy into new life and movement.  Whenever we’re tempted to turn off our brains and stop discerning, to go along with the crowd or old ways without a thought, let us be mindful of what it means to follow Christ’s lead and listen for the voice of our good shepherd to do as Jesus did.  In that way, Christ’s resurrection is made real within us.

Third Sunday of Easter, Year C

May 1, 2022

Galatians 1:13-17; John 21:1-19

Union-Congregational UCC

Waupun, WI

"A Holy Breakfast"

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I agree that it’s definitely one of my three favorites.  It’s really hard, I think, to beat a good breakfast.  The eggs.  The bacon or sausage.  The toast or biscuits.  The fish and bread.  The fish and bread?  Fish and bread don’t sound like your traditional breakfast foods!  And yet, these foods are what Jesus offers in this morning’s reading—as he does many other times throughout the gospels—but this time, for breakfast.  Evidently, Jesus knew something about nutrition and wanted to make sure the disciples made time for some breakfast.  As they say, you are what you eat.

Okay, well maybe the purpose of this meal wasn’t exactly to emphasize the importance of breakfast, but I think Jesus does have a special purpose here as he gathers a group of his disciples around a charcoal fire, grilling fish.  The charcoal fire is not just some background detail.  The gospel writer makes sure to include a charcoal fire in this scene for a reason.  Just a few chapters ago in this same Gospel of John, it was also around such a flame that Simon Peter denied that he knew Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest (18:17-18).  As we may remember, after Peter’s third denial, we don’t really hear much from him until Easter morning.  The gospel tradition has us believe that—along with almost all the rest of the male disciples—he fled. 

Despite all his rashness and bold declarations, he fled.  Jesus stood before Pilate without his “Rock,” because his rock had fled.  The man whom tradition has considered the leader of the band of the Twelve was nowhere to be found while Jesus suffered on a Roman cross because he had run away afraid.  When the chips were down, when the powers-that-be came for the One who had made such a ruckus in the Temple, Peter abandoned the cause.

Much has been written and preached about the incredible guilt and shame Simon Peter must have felt after that rooster crowed, as he and the other disciples hid in fear, and I can only imagine that such a description fits.  With the last chance Peter had to defend his friend and teacher, he denied him three times.  That’s quite a sting to live with.  Of course, as we know, that night would prove to be far from Peter’s last chance to live and act out his faith, and in this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus asks him three times—for each of the three denials—“’ do you love me?’” (21:15-17).  Jesus’ instructions along with these questions are very interesting, and point again right to what loving Jesus is—or should be—all about, what remains the true essence of the Christian faith, but there’s something else here that should not go unnoticed.

The charcoal fire on which Jesus grills fish indeed reminds us of the events of that night Jesus was arrested, and because of that, there is another connection between this morning breakfast scene and that dark night of betrayal, desertion, and arrest.  The meal.  We know that night as Maundy Thursday, and the event from that night we remember most often is the Supper.  John’s Gospel tells us, “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them…” (21:13).  That’s this morning’s passage I’m quoting, by the way, “and [he] did the same with the fish.”  In case we missed it, that’s communion language again.  Yes, I know it’s not the Last Supper, but the basic claim we as Christians make about Holy Communion—that Christ is somehow present at the Table—clearly includes this passage in which, “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.”  Not the Last Supper, but maybe a First Breakfast?

As Jesus so loved to use his meal-sharing as teaching moments—a chief purpose of communion itself—neither does this morning’s breakfast passage lack in this category.  And here we look again to the conversation between Jesus and Simon Peter that occurs, according to the text, “When they had finished breakfast” (21:15).  The purpose of Jesus’ questions is not only to grill Simon Peter for his denials like Jesus had grilled the fish.  There is a lesson in Jesus’ words; every time that Simon Peter affirms his love for Jesus, Jesus responds back with instructions—instructions that are at the very heart of faithful Christian living.  Respectively, Jesus says, “’ Feed my lambs’” (21:15), “’ Tend my sheep’” (21:16), and “’ Feed my sheep” (21:17).  In this setting, one of the last stories we have of Jesus talking with his closest friends and associates, that’s what he tells their apparent leader:  Take care of others.

He doesn’t say, “Condemn others in my name.”  He doesn’t say, “Focus all your energy on yourselves.”  He doesn’t tell his closest followers to “just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done.”  He says nothing about who’s going to heaven or hell, he offers no exact creed that should be said each Sunday, and he offers no words on the right ways to think or believe…except to take care of others.  And he says it three times!

Try to imagine the fullness of this scene.  The Good Shepherd has just served breakfast—with himself as host—using words to remind his followers of the promise of the Last Supper, that by ingesting, by taking into your own body a part of Christ’s body, you partake of that same Body of Christ; you are made a part of it.  You are made one with this executed criminal; you are made one with the oppressed; you are made one with all who suffer.  You are made one with God.  So, as this Good Shepherd—the Host—has just fed you, he tells you—again, as members now of Christ’s Body (you are what you eat, after all)—to go and take care of the sheep, to go and feed others as you have been fed.  You and I and all of us are empowered to serve as shepherds together and do the taking care of, because—as we are reminded in our partaking of the Body—Christ dwells inside each of us; we are all called to shepherd, drawing upon the variety of gifts given to all of us.

What is remarkable in this story is that Jesus spends no time scolding Simon Peter for his denial, but instead uses this communion breakfast to teach him and all of Christ’s disciples this message.  If we spend too much time focusing on the guilt or shame of our own failures, we miss the message.  If we linger too long in the ritual and simply remain feasting on the bread and fish—trying to replace discipleship with ceremony—we will miss the message.  To love Christ is not to become embroiled in any of these things as the source of our identity, but to love Christ more than these means to take care of others.  It really is as simple as that.

In reality, we need to answer this question more than three times.  In fact, we need to answer it every day we seek to follow Jesus, every time we see suffering, every moment we witness injustice, every opportunity to speak up for the oppressed, every instance we find ourselves immobile, wrapped in our own guilt.  So, let me ask you just once more for today, do we love Christ more than these?