I am a child of the 60’s and 70’s and so I grew up on posters.  One poster I had said, “Bloom where you are planted!”  In other words, find your joy in your present circumstance rather than waiting or wishing for things to be better or different.  For most people, it is easier to plan for what we will do when life gets better than to decide what we will do right now with our life the way it is.  We plan what we will do when we are able to retire, or we say what we will do when money isn’t so tight, or think about what we will do when we feel better.  Very often I will make plans for a few weeks in the future when my calendar is open only to discover when that day arrives my calendar is full.  Our fantasy future always appears more manageable and has many more resources than our present reality. 

We should have goals for the future so we know where we intend to go but we must also be clear about who and where we are so we can map our way to our goals.  It is critical that we are able to see ourselves honestly and make an accurate assessment of where we are if we ever hope to make progress toward our vision for the future.  The ancient Jews had faith that God had chosen them and they were to occupy the “Promised Land” but the reality was they were living in Babylon.  Jeremiah told them to establish themselves in Babylon because that was their reality and trust in the promise they would remain a chosen people and would live in a promised land.  The important factor was to accept where they were and remember who they were.  We now understand God has many chosen people and any land can be the promised land if we make it so.  There is nothing to be gained by denying reality and insisting our situation must be different for us to be productive or happy.

This congregation is being challenged to make an honest assessment of who you are, what are your assets and liabilities.  We need to do this and do it honestly if we are going to be successful in planning our course to get to the vision we have for the future.  It will be important for us to come together and clarify that vision but the first and critical task is to be honest with ourselves and with each other just who we are.  Sometimes we confuse honest assessment with fault finding.  Being clear about who we are and where we are does not require us to criticize the past, we learn from the past and the past is what has brought us here.  We need to look at ourselves and consider if there are things we have done that are no longer taking us where we want to go.  We don’t criticize a young child for crawling before he or she walks.  Crawling is part of learning to walk but we do hope to go beyond crawling.  We need to find the things that have become habit for us that no longer suit where we are and who we are and let them go with much thanks for where they brought us.  I believe we are to thank God for the challenges in our lives, even the failures of our lives because they are part of what shaped us into who we are today.  I wonder if the reason nine of the lepers did not come back to thank Jesus for being healed was that they didn’t want to acknowledge they were once lepers and perhaps they were even a little annoyed they had had to live as lepers at all.  We are told to praise God in all things, not to praise God for all things.  In even the most horrible times of our lives, something is perfected in us, we are strengthened in some way.  We discover we can survive difficult challenges, perhaps we learn survival techniques we will need again and again in our lives, and we may learn we are a person of worth with skills.  We thank God for the person we are and where we are because we are God’s creation and we are where God has placed us.

This has been a very challenging week for me.  So much of what I have read and heard has made me heartsick.  I have read the accounts of four young men between the ages of eleven and eighteen who chose to end their young lives because of the way the people around them treated them because they were gay or were perceived to be gay.  I also read about an assistant attorney general in the State of Michigan who has created a blog to bully and intimidate the president of the student body at the University of Michigan because the young man is gay.  The office of the Attorney General is responsible to enforce the laws of the state and one of those laws protects against cyber bullying but there are no consequences for this man.  I have also followed the stories of a spiritual leader who is accused of using his influence with young men in a mentoring program to have sexual contact with them.  I do not know the truth of the allegations, I do not even know the extent of the bullying and harassment that drove the young men to suicide.  What I do know is that it is our underlying fear of that which is different that created a culture where these things could happen.  The assistant attorney general claims he is not attacking the president of the student body personally but is raising awareness of his radical homosexual agenda.  I believe what he believes to be a radical agenda is the desire to be treated like everyone else.  I think that is what we all want, to be treated like everyone else.  We don’t want to be like everyone else, what a boring world that would be.  We need to stop being afraid of people who think, act, or believe differently than we do.

There are approximately sixty places in the Hebrew and Christian Testaments where we are told to “fear not.”  Not being afraid is part of what it means to be a people of faith.  God has told us that fear and worry will not change our circumstances.  We are liberated from them by our faith that God has the future planned for us.  Some may want to claim that God’s command to “fear not” means God is going to protect us from challenges and disappointments.  I do not find any support for this claim.  God told Abraham to fear not and look at all of the difficulties Abraham and Sarah faced as they lived out their faith.  God told Moses to fear not and he wandered the dessert for forty years leading a contentious people.  God told Mary to fear not and she was forced to flee with her child and she watched him being crucified.  God’s commandment to fear not is not because there is nothing that lies ahead of us to fear but rather the command is to not waste time worrying and get on about living your life and following God’s lead because God has promised to be with us through whatever we face.  The author of Lamentations, whether Jeremiah or someone else, forecasts for the people of Israel a bleak future.  They will have to live though the defeat and degradation of their nation but God will be with them and will bring them home.  They will have to work and provide for themselves and for each other so a remnant will survive to come home.  We all have to do the hard work of living out our faith if we hope to make a difference in this world.  We cannot afford to sit by and hope God will do something about teen suicide, or violence against transgender persons, or hate speech toward people who seek to find God through traditions different from our own.  We are called as people of faith to live a life of hope as an example that they can endure whatever life throws at them.  It is hard work but the rewards are great.

In living out our faith, and our hope we grow stronger in adversity.  We learn for ourselves we can endure what life throws at us.  I firmly believe untested faith is no faith at all.  The reward of living out our faith in the tough times is that our faith becomes stronger and deeper.  We learn to trust our faith more and the more we trust our faith the less we have to fear and worry about.  We know the tough times and the challenges will come and we know God will be with us in those times and we will find our way through.  I believe the foundation for teen suicides is not all the bullying or the hate speech.  I believe they turn to suicide because no one has taught them and shown them that there are going to be bullies and they are going to hear hateful words thrown and them and they cannot allow themselves to be defined by what others think about them, do or say to them.  I believe there is too much emphasis in our culture on being popular and being accepted.  Young people think it is more important to be accepted than to be yourself.  They work so hard at having people like and accept them that they cannot handle when they are rejected and tormented by their peers.  They believe there will be no joy in their lives.  There a some great projects available, The Trevor Project, and the It Gets Better project, that have videos of people sharing their stories and their encouragement for the teens to hang in there and trust life will get better.  I think this is great, but I fear not enough to the at risk young people are going to see the videos and the ones who do may not believe the message.  What our young people need is people in their community to live out the truth that we can endure taunts and bullying and live happy lives.  In fact the best response to the bullying and hate speech is to prove you are not what they want you to believe you are and that you can be happy and productive despite what they want you to believe.  The truth is almost everyone has been bullied and called vile names at some time in their life.  For me, it was my unshakeable faith that there is a God and that God loves me that allowed me to get past the hatred.  It helped that there were people in my life that shared with me their love for me and their encouragement that I was not what others called me but I was what God created me to be.

Each one of us has a job to do, to live out our faith, share our faith, and never let anyone believe they are defined by others or by their circumstances.  We must work hard at living out God’s unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves and sharing with others God’s unconditional love and acceptance for them.  It is hard work, but the rewards are great.  Amen.

(For those of you who read and do not see my sermons, I provided Norway and Colorado Blue Spruce seedlings to those who had a place to plant them as a sermon illustration.)

This seedling is about a half a foot tall when planted.  They will grow around one to two foot a year for the first twenty five years.  That means it will take close to fifty years for this seedling to reach its full maturity.  I don’t know how many of us plan to be around for another fifty years and even if we are, how likely are we to be living in the same place?  Planting these seedlings is an act of faith.  We are a people of faith and that should affect how we live in this world.

I am told we have become a culture of the immediate.  We expect communication to be immediate, we expect people to be carrying their cell phones at all times and immediately available to us.  We expect to be able to turn on our TV or power up our computer and see what is going on anywhere in the world immediately.  People over forty expect problems to be resolved in a half hour, while I am told people under forty expect solutions in a minute or two.    We have little patience for things that require time.  We want the recession resolved in a few months, we want the war over in a few days, and we want the Freedom Tower completed yesterday, we want what we want and we want it now.  It is very difficult to get anyone interested in a project that will take months, let alone years, or decades to complete.  We don’t build many cathedrals anymore.  And, if we do, we have all the modern equipment to build them in a matter of months rather than years.  I am told one of the causes of the rapid decline of our nation’s infrastructure is the speed with which we built our roads and bridges and buildings.  It used to be that these things were constructed over time and ground faults, or weak materials were identified before the project was completed.  There was a time when wood used in construction was allowed to cure over long periods of time before being used.  Now the wood used in construction will sometimes actually sprout because it is so green.  Getting things done quickly does not always mean getting things done well.

Sometimes taking our time and thinking things through can save us a world of hurt.  Have you had the experience of sending an e-mail or picking up the phone and calling somebody to let them know how you feel about them only to realize, had you taken the time to sit down and write a letter and put it in the mail, you would have never would have mailed it?  As a people of faith, we should realize there is more to our life than satisfying our immediate desires.  We do not live just for this moment or even just for our lifetime.  We are called to build a foundation that will support the generations that follow us. 

We will be entering into a stewardship campaign.  We will be asking each of you to make a pledge to the church as to what your level of giving will be for the next year.  We ask this so we can create a responsible budget for the church.  We have a building we need to keep in good repair so it will be available for years to come to provide a place for the Word of God to be shared and the people of God can gather to do the work of God in this community.  This congregation will be asked to make a commitment to a pastor in the coming year.  Making a commitment of financial support is only a small part of what you should pledge to the church.  We are also called to be the Word of God in action in the community.  Each one of us has the ability to raise up the future of the church as Paul raised up Timothy to see beyond earthy gain and preach a Gospel that will endure beyond this life.  We are asked to plant seedlings that may appear insignificant and we may never see grow to maturity based on our faith that they will be needed in the future.  We plant words of God’s love and grace in young minds and trust God will bring them to maturity.  We invest in buildings trusting in faith that they will be used by God in the future to provide sanctuary to people we will never meet.  We plant seedlings that will provide fruit and shade to people we do not know because we love them as God loves them.  Where would we be today if previous generations had done nothing to provide for us?

We can be like the rich person in the parable from Luke today and take all we can get out of this life with no thought for others or we can see every small gift we receive as a blessing from God to be shared and protected so we can pass it on to others.  I struggle with the parable because it seems to say the rich are going to hell and the poor and sick are going to heaven and I do not believe that.  I read the story slightly different and I am sure none of you are surprised by that.  I have a sense that we will all spend our eternity in the presence of God and what will make the difference is how we have prepared ourselves in this life for that eternity.  If we have lived this life for ourselves, taking all we can get, looking out only for ourselves then eternity with God is going to be difficult for us, we won’t have much that is familiar to us there.  If, on the other hand, we live this life seeking to know what God would have us to do, looking for ways to serve others as Jesus served, if we care not only about our own comfort and safety but care as much for the comfort and safety of others as we do for ourselves, then I think spending eternity in the presence of God will be all of our desires fulfilled.  What is clear to me, our faith should make a real difference in how we live in this world and what our priorities are.  I believe we are called by faith to plant seedlings that will feed and shelter generations that come after us.  Amen.

Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:13-31

I assume that all of us have had the experience of being lost.  I have mentioned before that I find Dayton to be a very easy town to get lost in.  Streets change their names without warning, they change direction more often than they change names, and my internal compass just gets all turned around in this city.  We all experience being lost but we don’t all respond to being lost the same way.  Some of us will never ask for directions, we prefer to use our logic and instincts to get us where we are going, some people will ask for directions, but not trust the directions they are given and still try to find their own way, and a small number of people will ask for directions, take careful notes and follow the directions exactly.  Daniel Boone is reported to have said that he never got lost but he was mighty confused once for several weeks.

People work out their relationship with God in similar ways.  Some people think they have no need of God to get by in their life.  They want to believe their intelligence and their intuition will guide them through life.  It doesn’t matter how many days, weeks, months, or years they have been confused, they are sure they aren’t lost and they don’t need any help.  Others know they are lost and they seek God’s help and guidance but they can’t really trust that God understands their situation and they decide they will still have to work out on their own.  And a small number of people know they are lost and they seek God’s guidance and they write down what they hear God saying to them and they try very hard to follow the directions.  They aren’t even afraid to go back to God regularly to check on the directions and make sure they are headed in the right direction.  We can only hope to find our way if we recognize we are lost.  We cannot know we are lost unless we know where we want to go.  If we have no idea where we are going, it is unlikely we will get anywhere.

Some people have a very shortsighted destination.  They expect only to get happy or to make good money and they have no sense of where they want their life to go in the long term.  They don’t know they are lost because they think they have a plan.  It is only when they realize their plan isn’t going to lead them to a long term fulfillment that they realize they are lost.  Some people have a long term life plan, to make something of themselves or to be important, or to make a difference in the world but they don’t know they are lost because they haven’t figured out what they need to do to arrive at those places.  God can provide us with the destination that is right for us and will provide us with guides to get us there but only when we realize we are lost and ask God to help us.

Some of us know we are lost and we seek help but we don’t trust the help we receive.  We may know we aren’t reaching our goal and we ask God for guidance but then we don’t listen to the directions God sends us.  We can be like someone who is on a trail and trying to reach the mountain top but all we do is to keep going around the base of the mountain.  We may be directed to someone who has guided others to the top of the mountain.  This guide may tell us first we have to get rid of some of the things we are caring because they will hold us back from the climb.  The guide may direct us to a path that goes up the side of the mountain, and the guide may tell us we need to take others along with us to be able to help each other over the rough spots.  Some of us may decide we don’t want to let go of any of the things we are carrying because they are precious to us and we have been carrying them for so long.  We may also decide we don’t want to take the path that goes up the mountain because it looks difficult and we are not familiar with it.  We may also decide we prefer to go it alone because we aren’t sure we trust others to help us.  It isn’t likely we will get where we want to go if we insist on taking the easy path and refusing to hear the directions God sends us to get us where God wants us to go.

Some people are very good at listening to God and following God’s directions but then they begin to think that God’s directions for them are meant for everyone.  Have you ever witnessed when someone asks for directions to get some place and two people give them different directions?  Quite often the two people will become quite combative about which directions are the right directions.  The truth is there may be many different directions that will get you where you want to go and the choice of which direction to take may depend on your circumstances.  I usually walk to the farmer’s market on Second Street from my home.  On Saturday, I was pressed for time, so I drove to the market.  I discovered the directions that take me to the market easily on foot are not good in a car unless you don’t mind going the wrong way on one way streets.  The followers of different faith traditions can act like the people arguing over the right directions to get from one place to another.  They know what has worked for them and they insist it is the way everyone must go.  This weekend we had a controversy over a Christian church’s plan to burn copies of the Qur’an to protest militant Islam and the plan to build a Moslem community center near the site of the twin towers destruction.  To me, this is similar to the ancient myths about the battle of the gods.  Each side trying to prove their god is stronger than the other person’s god.  It was not the God of Islam that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and it is not the Islamic faith that we should be afraid of, we should be afraid of any fanatics who wish to force others by violence to accept the supremacy of their way to God.  Christian fanatics are every bit as frightening as Islamic fanatics.  Fanatical Christians fanned the hatred for Jews in Germany prior to World War II and called them Christ killers.  It is my belief there is only one God, and there are a variety ways that humans have sought to understand and approach God.  I believe God rejoices when anyone seeks to establish a relationship with God.  I am content to allow God is God’s infinite wisdom and mercy to guide that seeker home.  I trust fully in God amazing grace that saved me from being lost.  God’s amazing grace that both taught me to fear and relieved my fear.  I once was lost, but know am found.  Thanks be for God’s amazing grace.  Amen.

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Luke 15:1-10

I am adding my scripture source texts to the end of this blog for those who are interested in what sent me in this direction.  I have had difficulty with xanga changing font color on the stuff I import so if you can't read it, run your cursor over it and it may appear like magic.

Some people may think the question is whether or not we are willing to be clay but that is not the question.  We are clay.  The question is to what potter molds us and how willing we are to be molded.  People who claim to be a self made man or woman in my opinion have short memories or are just plain lying to others and to themselves.  We have all been molded by others.  We were taught to walk, talk, and socialize by others.  We have learned our mannerisms by watching others and adopting what we liked in others.  We have chosen our beliefs from the many possibilities laid out before us.  Certainly we have chosen what we believe based on our experience but someone introduced us to the possibilities of belief.  Unlike the potter’s clay, we have some choice in who or what will be the potter or potters that mold us.

We can place ourselves on the potter’s wheel of the world and allow ourselves to be molded by the world but the world is most interested in producing a vessel it can use and not so interested in determining what the clay is best suited to become.  The world will teach us to do what the world thinks will most profit the world order.  The world will mold you into a person more concerned about production than relationship.  The world will teach you it is what you earn, what you spend, and how powerful you are that matters.  It is so sad to hear the story of the people who let the world mold them and, at the end of life, realize all the wealth and power mean nothing if you haven’t worked on the relationships in your life.  Dying people do not regret not having worked more and spending too much time with those they love.

Putting ourselves on God’s potter wheel means we will be molded by the potter that knows us best and the one who wants the best for us. God is the potter that can bring out the best in us.  God looks at what the world has made of us and can see how we are useless in that shape, doing those things, and God gently reshapes is into what we were meant to be.  God can take away our selfish desires to be the prettiest, or the most popular, or the most powerful and can reshape us into a vessel that seeks to meet the needs of the people around us.  There is nothing wrong with a pretty crystal water pitcher as long as the pitcher is used to bring water to thirsty people, nothing sadder than a water pitcher that is deemed too good to be used.  The same is true for us, if we think ourselves too good to be used to serve others, then we are useless.  There is also nothing wrong with popularity or power as long as we know they are secondary to our being used to make the world a better place and not for our glory or our honor.  Sometimes doing the right thing means we will be unpopular and sometimes we have to surrender power so we can be free to do what is right.  Sitting on God’s potter wheel means we don’t tell the potter what we want to be.  We are content to have the potter mold us into what God wants us to be.

Being clay also means we must be pliable, workable so the potter can shape us as the potter sees fit.  Imagine if you will a piece of clay that has certain areas it is willing to have the potter work with or change.  I would imagine there would be a tussle between potter and clay.  I would imagine the potter would grab hold of those areas and try to loosen them up, to make them flow into the master plan.  I would also imagine, if clay had feelings, it would hurt to have those areas the clay was guarding worked on by the potter.  It is like when you have a massage and you have some area in your body that is all tensed up and guarded and the masseuse works out the area and it hurts, it may even hurt days later if it was a particularly tense spot.  I would also imagine, if the potter can’t get control of the guarded area, the potter would have to just rip that part of the clay out and throw it away.  When we resist the potter’s will in our life, we risk the pain of having our resistance broken down by the potter or having those guarded parts of ourselves ripped out for the sake of being molded into what we are intended to be.  It is much better to release all areas of our life to the potter.  Corrie Ten Boom is quoted as saying, "Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open."

I believe this is what Jesus means in today’s gospel lesson.  I think the Message paraphrase captures the intent of Jesus better than other translation that say, anyone who does not hate father, mother, spouse, and children and even his or her own life cannot be my disciple.  Eugene Petersen paraphrases this as anyone who cannot let go of father, mother, spouse, and children and even his or her own life cannot be my disciple.  Jesus isn’t saying we are to hate these people in our lives, he is saying they cannot be more important to us than a love of God and desire to serve God.  If someone you love, has become more important to you than doing what you know God wants of you, then you have to love that person less and love God more.  It is my belief God will honor your love of God and your love of the other person but you must trust God and put God first.  Sticking with the pottery analogy, do you know what happens when the clay hasn’t been fully worked out, when there are still air bubbles or chunks of hard clay in the finished vessel?  What happens is when the pottery is stressed, when it gets into hot places, when you put it into the microwave, it will crack or explode at those places.  When we hold back part of ourselves from the potter and we get into hot water, or get into high pressure situations, or when we are bombarded by life’s micro wave we will crack or explode.  It isn’t easy being clay unless you fully surrender to the gentle, loving Potter.  Amen.

These translations come from The Message Bible:

How are we to worship God?  There can be a great deal of anxiety about doing worship correctly.  We are going to have a day to teach anyone who wants to participate in worship the fundamentals of the different tasks.  The reason for this is not so people never make mistakes or so that everyone knows the correct way to do worship.  The purpose is to give worship leaders a basic understanding of the rituals so they can be more relaxed as they lead worship.  I cannot be certain where the fear of doing something wrong originates.  I cannot think of any examples of God punishing someone for making an error during worship.  The Bible has some very specific information about temple building and furnishing, and there are guidelines for those who serve as priests but there isn’t a great deal of detail about what worship should look like.  There is recorded an incident where someone reached out to steady the arc of the covenant when it appeared about to fall off the ox cart but that wasn’t a worship service and I believe it had more to do with when we handle sacred things as if they were ours to control.  I do not believe God is standing by waiting for someone to make a mistake in worship so God can zap them.  Much of what we have today in the form of communal worship was created by religious leaders of many different faith traditions.  We have come to equate a sacred space with sacred symbols and repeated prayers and songs, and readings with the worship of God.  What we do together as a faith community to celebrate our faith and our God has become loosely synonymous with worship but the service and the ritual are not worship, they are a container for our worship of God.

The true worship of God is found in the way we live our lives. Coming to the sanctuary and doing the rituals and saying the words is meaningless unless what we do here springs from the joy we have in what God has done through us during the time we are not in sanctuary.  The sacred texts make it very clear we worship God when we serve in humility, when we are willing to be used of God and not expect any reward or recognition for our service.  Let me be clear, receiving recognition is not the problem.  The problem is our expectation of receiving recognition.  Serving others because it makes us feel superior is not service, serving others because it will look good on our resume is not service.  True service is when we do what we can to make the world a better place for everyone.  True service recognizes that we are all dependent upon each other and so we must all be willing to give and receive help without believing our worth is defined by whether we are a giver or receiver.  Too often our praise sounds like, “God has given me all I need and more and I will give to those God hasn’t blessed out of my abundance.”  How much better to say God has given the world enough that all can have what they need and must make sure it is equitably distributed.  Service done to honor and glorify God is true worship.

Our communal time of worship is when we come together to share what God’s abundant love has done in and through our lives and to give God praise for that abundant love.  We come together to find strength in each other’s stories.  We come together to find opportunities to serve with others.  We come together so our song of praise can become a chorus of praise.  We do not come together to show off our fine outfits, or to show off our importance, or to prove how much more blessed we are than others.  Anything we bring to this service that is not God honoring and God glorifying diminishes the service.  True God worship isn’t about us at all and it isn’t about the others who are present.  God worship can only be about God and demonstrating our worship of God by living humbly and sharing what we have been given so all may have enough.  Amen.

What does it mean to be “called by God”?  We often associate being called with ordained ministry; we speak of someone having a calling.  It is true, I was called into ministry; and more specifically I was called into intentional interim ministry.  In some ways, God’s call to me is an echo of what God said to Jeremiah, “Your job is to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish, and then start over building and planting.”  Called to pull up the old habits that no longer serve the congregation, to take apart the barriers to growing ministry, and demolish the idols of past practice and then building healthy ways of being church and planting the seeds of future vision.  I am called to do this and I am called to do the tearing up, the taking apart, and the destroying with you.  I am called to build and plant with you because what we build and what we plant will be your place and your garden long after I am gone.  I am not called into solitary ministry; we are all called by God into ministry.

God knew each one of us as we were being knit in our mother’s womb.  God was knitting into our fabric the gifts and talents God knew we would need to follow our calling.  Being called by God is not unique or special.  What we are called to do is unique and finding our calling is special.  I believe true peace and contentment comes to us only when we find our calling.  I have heard people say they have never received a call from God.  I have also heard my fellow seminarians speak of the moment of their call and how clear and dramatic it was.  It is my experience that the call of God is not always dramatic and it is not your one call.  In the Hebrew texts, the call of God does often seem to be clear and dramatic, frightening even.  I believe these are the encounters with God that were recorded in the ancient texts because this is what was required to break through into the experience of the ancients.  They didn’t have that much experience with God to recognize a God encounter of a milder sort.  It is clear to me that David had God encounters that were not dramatic and frightening.  My explanation is that David developed such an intimate relationship with God that it was not necessary for God to startle him or speak to him with an authoritative voice.  Jesus came to show us that God encounters did not have to be frightening experiences.  We do not have to approach God with fear that God is going to be displeased and strike us down.  God made us to be in communion with God, God is not seeking opportunities to punish us when we seek relationship with God.

It is my experience and my belief that those who preach of a judging and punishing God are the ones who have never really felt and accepted God’s amazing grace.  They are serving God as an insurance policy against burning in hell.  They know nothing of God’s love and grace, they believe you earn your way into God’s good graces and seem to believe part of their work to earn their own salvation is to convince others of their unworthiness and how much God abhors them.  There are some evangelists who even seem to have a scorecard on the number of souls they have saved from the pit of hell, as if our salvation has anything to do with anybody other than our God and us.  We are not called to scare people into behaving as we believe they should.  We are called to share the Good News of God’s desire to be in relation with us, to walk with us and guide us in this mortal life.  We have Good News to tell and each of us is uniquely called to share this Good News.

The health of this congregation and any congregation is dependent on not how often we tell ourselves we are loved of God.  The health of this congregation is dependent on how well we encourage everyone who comes here to discover their call and provide them with a way to live out that call.  Our spiritual health is not demonstrated by how well we feed ourselves, our spiritual health is measured by how well we feed others.  We have been called to serve not to be served.  At the Size Summit, I was introduce the concept of bibs or aprons.  Too many people come to church with a bib on, they expect to be fed.  The scream and cry if the food doesn’t come fast enough or if it isn’t to their liking.  People in bibs often burp and spit and do little that is actually productive.  On the other hand, people who wear aprons are prepared to serve, they are looking for work to be done and the resources to do it.  People in aprons are more mature than people in bibs, they communicate concern about others and seek instruction in how to improve what they do.  People put on aprons with the expectation they are going to be put to work.  The health of this congregation or any congregation is dependent upon how quickly and successfully we move people from wearing bibs to wearing aprons.  Amen.

Isaiah 5:1-7

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Luke 12:49-56

We are God’s garden!  God has lovingly prepared where we have been planted.  God prepared the soil, filling it with the nutrients we need, God has sent the water, and the sunshine we need to grow.  God gardens like Ruth Stout gardened.  If you have never heard of Ruth Stout, you should take time to learn about her.  Ruth didn’t believe in tilling the soil, or planting in tidy segregated rows, or pouring chemicals on the soil to make things grow.  She just scattered her seeds on the ground the way seeds are planted in nature.  It might be more accurate to say Ruth Stout gardened the way God gardens.  Eternal Joy MCC is one of God’s garden patches.  God has provided for this garden patch.  You have a building to worship in, you have so many people within the denomination who have and are caring for you, you have leaders and volunteers who give generously of their time and talents, and you have each other to come together and worship and serve God and care for each other.  God has planted only the best here and has taken such good care of this garden so God has great expectations for what Eternal Joy MCC will produce.  God expects the sweet produce of justice, mercy, caring, and love to grow here in Eternal Joy MCC garden.

I think we all find it difficult at times to live and grow in God’s garden.  Some of us would prefer more structure in the garden.  We aren’t pleased with the others growing around us in the garden.  My mother used to sing a ditty to me, “I’m just a petunia in an onion patch.”  Some of us feel that way.  We wonder and we complain that the others around us in the garden aren’t like us.  Sometimes the onions make us cry, sometimes we get poked by the thorns of a rose.  Maybe we feel the melon plant is crowding us or stealing our sunshine.  The sunflower is such a show off and stealing all of the attention.  We see something new sprouting in the garden and we are very concerned that it may be a weed and we should pluck it out before it can grow and spread.  We may even spend a lot of energy trying to make sure there isn’t any cross pollination going on in the garden.  We are concerned about the foolishness of the pansies or we concern ourselves whether other plants are abusing the nitrates in the soil.  It would be so much easier in the garden if we had just been planted in neat rows with others of our kind.

Our Gardener isn’t concerned about tidy rows and uniformity in the garden.  Our Gardner knows that variety keeps the soil healthy, God knows that in the diversity of the garden even greater things can grow.  Cross pollination can result in new and exciting produce.  God doesn’t want just a garden of healthy vegetables, or sweet fruits.  God wants the garden to have a few nuts, and beautiful flowers that don’t do anything but add color and fragrance to the garden.  God knows the garden needs carrots, potatoes, and other tubers who aren’t showy at all but produce great things out of the view of others.  Our gardener wants us to discover what we have been planted to do and then do it to the best of out ability.

Being part of God’s garden requires that we grow where we are planted and produce what God has put in us.  Sometimes we are called to produce even when we don’t see the outcome of our production in our planting season.  Lots of things grown in God’s garden are not used until long after God has harvested them.  Sometimes our task is to produce the seeds that will be used in future gardens, sometime we are the compost in which other plantings in God’s garden will grow.  We live in God’s garden in faith, faith that the Gardner has a plan and will work it out through us.

The Gardner plants us expecting to produce crops of justice, mercy, and love.  The Gardner has the right to expect these crops because we have been planted in the soil of God’s love, we have been nurtured in God’s Wisdom, we have been watered with God’s justice flowing over us, and we have received the light of God’s Word.  We have been given all we need to produce good fruit.  It is very important that each one of us consider whether we are producing the fruits God desires from this garden.  Are we producing justice?  Do we treat each other the way we would be treated?  Do we reserve judgment until we have heard all sides of a situation?  Do we rely on solid witness or do we let rumor and gossip affect what we believe about another?  Do we look at another’s soul and not their appearance?  Are you producing the sweet fruit of justice or the sour fruit of selfish injustice?

Mercy is another fruit God seeks from the garden.  Do we offer the same mercy to others we seek from God?  We all rely on God’s mercy but are often stingy with dispensing mercy.  How often we pray, “Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me.”  Would you be comfortable if God forgave you with the same measure you are willing to forgive others?  Mercy is a quality that does much for the one who gives forgiveness than the one who receives it.  Carrying around anger and hurt just eats away at us; it consumes our energy and exhausts us while the one we are angry with sometimes doesn’t even know and, if they do know, may not care.  Mercy doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be misused, it does mean letting go of the expectation the other will pay the debt we feel they owe us.  This may be why some pray, “Forgive me my debts while I forgive my debtors.”  Are producing sweet mercy or bitter unforgiving grudges?

The fruit of love means we see each other the way God sees them.  God is love, perfect and unconditional love.  Loving another means we don’t focus on all the unimportant exterior stuff and we see their soul and know it is part of God just as our soul is.  I have read that our love of God is no greater than our love for the person we love the least.  Ouch!  God has said we will be known by our love for each other.  Loving each other doesn’t mean our garden will always be in harmony.  I believe God accepts that we will not like everything else in the garden but God does expect we will love everything else in creation.  Our love will motivate us to seek good for even those things we don’t like.  Are you producing the sweet fruit of love or the bitter fruit of hate or indifference?

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Luke 12:32-40

As a clergy person, I receive a wide variety of theological information.  I don’t agree with all of it but I find reading it keeps me informed about what are the issues that people of faith are dealing with today.  One constant concern is whether people have faith and how that faith is expressed.  Some people have expressed concern that we, as Christians, no longer engage in public displays of our faith.  They are concerned that children are no longer lead in prayer at school; I have met many teachers that I don’t believe have any business teaching children how to pray or for what they should pray and I cannot imagine any way children can be prevented from praying in school if they have been taught how to pray at home.  The issue here appears to be that some people would like to force children to pray even when prayer has no meaning for them.  Some are concerned when there aren’t manager scenes on the courthouse lawn or when stores say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”.  I like to see manger scenes and it doesn’t bother me one bit if there is a Santa’s workshop nearby.  I don’t think my celebration of Christmas is diminished if Hanukah symbols are displayed next to manager.  I don’t feel insulted if someone expresses the hope that my holidays are happy rather than recognizing only one holiday that should be merry.  The issue here appears to be the desire to assert the primacy of the Christian faith over the faiths and beliefs of others.  Another concern that has been expressed by those who feel we are not witnessing to our faith has been the absence of grace said at restaurants or other public meals.  I wonder how many of us have had the experience of seeing people say grace over their meal and then proceed to be rude to their wait person, openly critical of the people dining around them, and perhaps even engage in abusive language with each other at the table.  You see, making children pray in school, or manger scenes on public property, or Merry Christmas greetings, or even saying grace very publically will not make this a Christian nation and will not prove we are a faithful people.  It is only when we act in ways that demonstrate that we wish to live as Jesus taught us to live, only when we act out our faith in ways of charity and justice will we demonstrate we are a people of faith.

Some are also concerned about whether this church and our denomination are still Christian.  I have been following a conversation on laylink, an unofficial web group for people interested in MCC.  It is primarily composed of lay persons affiliated with the denomination but it also includes clergy and persons not affiliated with an MCC congregation.  The discussion has revolved around whether MCC is still a Christian denomination and whether all of the churches affiliated with MCC are Christian churches.  The reason for the concern originated with a question about what requirements the various churches have for membership.  It was pointed out that the MCC by-laws require members to be baptized Christians.  Someone else posted their church had removed the requirement that members be baptized Christians as this permitted persons who were not and did not wish to be baptized to still have full membership participation.  This lead some to say this meant that church was no longer a Christian church.  Others lept into the fray and said the whole denomination was moving away from our Christian heritage and pointed out the MCC logo had been changed from the Chi Rho Cross to the globe and flame effectively removing Christian symbolism from our denomination logo.  I have heard others at other times bemoan the fact that many churches no longer require each person who approaches the altar to reverence the altar or the cross.  Others say we have diminished our witness because we no longer require people to stand as they are able for the reading of the gospel.  I have heard others complain that we, as a denomination have ceased to sing the hymns of the atonement of the blood of Jesus and we no longer preach about sin and redemption.  These people fear that these are all symptoms of the lack of Christian faith in our denomination and our churches. While I agree these are all important traditional ways of expressing our faith, they are rituals and worship experiences that speak intimately to many members of our congregations.  I also know that requiring our members to be baptized, or putting the cross in our logo, or bowing to the altar or cross, or standing when we hear the gospel, or even preaching the salvific power of the blood of Jesus to cleanse our manifold sins, will not make this a Christian denomination or church.

We use the expression that we are in a relationship, the expression makes it sound like being in a dwelling, like I am in a house or I am in an apartment.  I think the comparison is a valid one.  Some of our relationships a like a house, some are like an apartment, and some are like a hotel room, and I suppose some are even like a homeless shelter.  Some relationships are long term and enduring like the commitment one makes when one buys a home.  Just like home ownership, long term relationships require maintenance.  You have to be vigilant about cracks in the foundation, you have to watch out for infestations that weaken the structure, and you have to take care of the furnace so it will continue to produce heat.  Unfortunately we sometimes treat our long term relationships more like a condominium than a house.  We expect someone else to do all the work to maintain the relationship.  We want to have the relationship and still be free to do whatever we want.  Other relationships are more like apartments.  We need the relationship for a limited period of time and then we will move onto other relationships that are better suited to meet our needs.  I had the opportunity to spend time with some of my classmates from forty years ago and I realized some of those friends and I have matured in very different ways and we would probably not choose to be friends now.  I also have connected with classmates I had little in common with in high school that I now very much value their friendship.  There is nothing inherently wrong with apartment living, it is good for the season and purpose and there is nothing wrong with friendships that we out grow.  I used to worry about friends I lost track of over time and I still do miss some of the people that once were very important in my life but I also realize we have both moved on and the value of the friendship is now the memory of what was.  I think the important thing is we treat the apartment relationship with the same care while we are in it that we would give to a home relationship we intend to keep for a long time.  Some people trash apartments because they see no reason to invest in the upkeep of a place that is just temporary and they are bad tenants just like people who trash their relationships are bad friends.  And some relationships are like a hotel room.  We meet the person at a time of critical need and the relationship provides us a safe place for a short period of time.  I think of my role as a social worker at the hospital as being like a hotel friendship.  I made very intense connections with families for short periods of time.  We shared intimate and critical information with each other and felt very close and then it was time to move on.  I have been blessed with people who have been motel friends for me and I know there were times in my life that I could not have gone on without them and yet we have no connections with each other now.  And sometimes a relationship can be very much like a homeless shelter; we don’t spend time selecting the person, we don’t even want to know a great deal about them or look too closely at them or have them look to closely at us, we just need to know we are not alone.  I think these are the relationships we have when we call a crisis line, or when we strike up a conversation with a total stranger just to hear a voice and know someone else hears us.  Homeless shelter friendships aren’t what most of us seek out, but they serve their purpose and often times they can be the difference between life and death.  Each type of relationship serves its purpose and it is important we understand what we are seeking when we enter into a relationship.  There is great potential for hurt when we are seeking a homeless shelter and the other person wants to be our house.  The best way for our relationships with others to be mutually satisfying is when we have clear communication on what it is we are seeking and what we are prepared to offer in the relationship.  We really need to speak plainly and directly to each other.

We also need to be clear about what kind of relationship we want to have with God.  The choices are pretty much the same as the choices we have for relationships with each other.  Most of us would probably say we want our relationship with God to be like home ownership but we most often act like we are looking for a rental, hotel, or homeless shelter relationship.  Very often people turn to God in desperation, like a homeless shelter.  They have done anything to make sure God would be there when they are in crisis and they don’t plan to stay connected with God once the crisis is over.  They turn to God, ask God to help them out, make promises to stay in touch but go back to running their life their own way once the crisis is over.  They may even deny they used or needed God once they are back on their feet.  God is there for us when we turn to God in crisis but God would much prefer we used God to be prepared to survive the crises that will surely come in our lives.  Some of us might best be described as using God like a hotel home.  We anticipate the points in our lives when it would be good to have God on our side so we make some contacts with God to make sure of availability and even make some commitments to hold our space with God.  Maybe we join a church so we know there will be a place for our wedding, baptisms, and funeral.  Maybe we attend some services and classes just to get acquainted with God for the times when we are going to need a spiritual haven.  Maybe the majority of us prefer a rental arrangement with God.  We spend a lot of time with God, we put care into finding God space that works well with our lives but we are also free to pick up and move to another arrangement if this one starts to feel too confining or if we don’t like the neighbors that move into the area around us.  We may even want to keep our options open in case we are introduced to a different god that we like better or that doesn’t require as much from us.  I believe God accepts being our spiritual apartment, our holy vacation spot, and theological shelter but I believe God most desires to be our divine dwelling for all times.

I believe God becomes impatient when we don’t make the commitment necessary to dwell fully in God.  God became impatient with Israel and Judah because they were fickle and ran off with other gods and forgot the covenant they had with YHWH.  God becomes impatient with us when we treat God as less than our permanent dwelling place.  God wants us to treat our relationship with God like we would a home we intended to inhabit for the rest of our lives.  We should examine the foundations and go back regularly to make sure nothing is weakening the foundation of our relationship with God.  We should be intimately familiar with the systems within our relationship what heats us up and what cools us down and how to we repair the system when we no longer feel the heat of our passion for God or when we can no longer cool our temper or are anger.  We need to know what keeps the light on in our relationship.  Are their areas of our relationship that have been plunged into darkness?  God wants light to shine on all or our life, not part kept in darkness.  We need to know if there are leaks in our relationship that are letting things into our lives that don’t belong there, things that will eventually damage our relationship with God, maybe even eventually make our habitation with God impossible.  And we need to be concerned about the neighborhood we are living in, are the things we need to do to help our neighbors?  Are their problems in the neighborhood that need to be addressed?  We need to see our relationship to God as not only a commitment to being fully present in God but also allowing God to make us fully present with all of creation.  I know God will be there when I need shelter, when I need a safe place and it is my prayer that I will make God my dwelling place in all times.  Amen.