SPEAK THE TRUTH IN LOVE Sermon on 6-13-06

Scripture: Ephesians 4:25-5:2 and Psalm 130

Our Ephesians passage today has so much good advice. I want to focus on how we as individuals in our church may speak in such a way that it will build us up and increase our bond to each other and our faithfulness to God. In keeping with my efforts to make you laugh, I found a couple of sentences that relate to this and many other sermons. First, “the average person’s idea of a good sermon is one that goes over his head and hits a neighbor.” And another, “Be a peacemaker …always remember that it’s hard to shake hands with a clenched fist.” And a final one which I hope doesn’t apply to DCC too often, “She was said to be a great preacher—at the close of every sermon there was a great awakening.”

Any of you that have been around churches for any length of time can recall times of anger, bitterness, hurt—sometimes so great that people leave the church and may not come back to the same church or any church ever again. As your pastor I do my best to be aware and listen to these hurts and make suggestions of how conflict might be resolved and/or forgiveness be given and received. The easier problems to resolve are those that are out in the open as opposed to those simmering inside, known or unknown to all the parties involved.

The author of Ephesians was addressing a young church, a church that included Gentiles who didn’t have a clue on what was expected of them. Not just the Gentiles in the early church but our church today don’t always know or agree with what it means to tell the truth. I’ve mentioned before that growing up I was told, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Sound familiar? We probably would all agree that speaking the truth in love has more to do with how we say things than what we say. We have all know people that just blurt things out without thinking and wish later they had said things differently. And on the other side how many times have you heard folks say I can’t tell her/him the truth as I know it would hurt.

There is definitely confusion about what Jesus has said and done with anger. In Matthew 5, part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to come out strongly against anger, comparing murder and anger, both meaning one is liable to judgment. A couple of verses later, Jesus goes on to talk about reconciliation, “If you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift” v.23-4. And of course we know that Jesus became quite angry at the money changers in the temple as well as rebuking his disciples, such as when Peter was trying to deny Jesus’ prediction about his crucifixion and resurrection. The Bible says, “he rebuked Peter by saying “Get behind me, Satan.” The wording in Ephesians is interesting: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. And do not make room for the devil.” (v.26-7).

In my clinical social worker days, I use to do assertiveness training. For those that may be unfamiliar with the term, it means speaking in a way that doesn’t put anyone else down and still expresses what you want to say. Although anger is often aggressive, it can be assertive, non-abusive but fully expressing with a louder voice than usual and more emotion how one feels. Expressing anger in this manner is what Ephesians is talking about. I truly believe that it is not wrong to feel or express anger; although expressing anger in a destructive, demeaning way is not okay. Let me give you an example: let’s say your young children continue to pull the kitten’s tail after having been reprimanded several times. An assertive anger response would be: I am really getting angry with you. I have told you not to pull the cat’s tale; it hurts him. Now stop doing it!” An aggressive use of anger here might be like this, “Damn you! Are you a dumb idiot? How many times do I have to tell you not to pull the cats tail? (and maybe following up with a slap).

Anger is usually a secondary feeling. As a therapist I tried to help folks see how anger is most often preceded by hurt, pain, grief or the like. One of the worst things you can do with anger is to stuff it, keep it inside where it can build up and cause inappropriate expressions, sometimes to people who don’t even have anything to do with the original anger or hurt. A fancy word that therapists like to use is transference. This means that you transfer feelings that you have had for someone else—past or present—onto a different person. These feelings can be either positive or negative. Sometimes a person looks or acts similar to an ex-spouse and so the slightest remark could bring forth much anger that was not at all warranted in the current situation. Keeping anger inside can also be destructive to yourself, often causing depression or physical problems.

That’s what I think the author is referring to in Ephesians when he says, be angry but do not sin. The sinning would be to inappropriately express the anger or to express it to someone who had nothing to do with stirring up the original feeling. The part about not letting the sun set on your anger is a caution to process your anger quickly so that you won’t act out destructively on others or on yourself. It’s not that anger is a sin but to let it live inside of you will often lead to some kind of sin—alienation from someone, inability to forgive. So the point I want to leave you with in terms of anger is that Christian love and peace do not come about from withholding your anger or lying about your feelings. It’s better to be authentic than to be phony nice.

Speech is powerful and sometimes we will say things—hopefully, not intentionally but that too happens--that will hurt someone else. The Ephesians are told to put away bitterness and wrath and anger and malice and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you (31-2). In Psalm 130 we hear, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered.” V.3-4. When we are hurt badly, it’s so hard to forgive and it is even harder to forget. In Jeremiah, the prophet is telling the people about good times ahead for Israel when God will restore the fortunes and make the people honored. It will be a time of rejoicing and the Lord will forgive all their iniquity (wrong doing), and remember their sin no more. (32:34b) It’s not that God is forgetful; it’s that God does not hold our wrongdoing against us. God does not bring it up against us. Dr. Rev. Benjamin Reeves shares this story:
Two businessmen who were roommates in college met at a convention they were attending with their wives. One night they started reminiscing in the hotel bar and before they knew it, it was wee hours of the morning. They knew they would be in trouble with their wives, and the next day when they happened to see each other, one said, “Well what happened with your wife?” “When I walked in the door my wife got historical.” “Don’t you mean hysterical,” said the other man. “No, historical. She told me everything I ever did wrong. She got historical on me!”

God doesn’t get historical with us. I know it’s pretty hard to forget and in some ways for one’s self-protection, remembering is important. What doesn’t help is to hold these memories up and throw them back at the person when something happens.

In this church since I have been here—almost 3 years—there have been some incidents where things were done and said in such a way that people were hurt. Most of you probably can remember one or two. We have not always done our best in handling these situations. I do believe the kind of advice that is being given in Ephesians today is important for us to keep in mind as we continue to have the inevitable conflicts. I remember a former pastor of mine pointing out that it’s easy to show Christian love when we agree; it is when we disagree that our actions and words will show how seriously we take the teachings of Jesus. Reconciliation and forgiveness, including forgiveness of ourselves is so very important. The Ephesians passage tells the church that what we say needs to be useful for building up the body of Christ, part of which is here in Deering Community Church, so that our words may give grace to those who hear. The passage ends with telling us to be imitators of God, to live in love, as Christ loved us. Compassion, generosity, goodness is what we receive from God and what God wants us to share with others.

The author writes about not grieving the Holy Spirit. Grieving the Holy Spirit is disappointing the Spirit by not following the example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul. The Spirit wants to bear the fruits of love in us and through us. Forgiveness is so fundamental. Forgiveness means giving, not holding oneself back or holding something against others. To forgive we need to express the hurt and anger, let it go, and embrace those we have had hard feelings with just as God embraces us, no matter what we have done as long as we seek that forgiveness. God did not just tell us to love. God came and acted among us as love, in Jesus, the Christ. Jesus passed this love on to his disciples and continues to pass it on through the generation of faithful followers. God is still speaking to us. May God help us to speak truth in love, deal with our anger and whatever else may be blocking the Spirit from our life. May this church in Deering become a Beloved Community where we can help each other grow spiritually, learn forgiveness, and live in love as Christ loved us. Amen and Amen.

Are You Hungry? Sermon for 8-6-06

Scripture: Psalm 51, John 6: 24-35, Luke 6:24-25

Much of what I’m going to preach today is based on a sermon entitled “The News of the Day” by Fred Buechner in his book, Secrets in the Dark.[1] How many of you watch the nightly news? Some of you early birds may listen or watch news in the morning. I read the NY Times online every morning and then catch either the 6:30 or 11 pm news on the TV. Now of course every day the news is different; however there are certain themes that always seem to appear. There’s always something going on somewhere: most often there is conflict, if not killing, in the Middle East, in Africa, in our own streets. People are always fighting for more power, for revenge, for oil, for freedom, for land. On the other side of the news, there’s always some group or some nation trying to find ways to bring about peace: “the Arab sits down with the Jew. Labor sits down with management.” One of the most overriding themes in our news around the world is the topic for this sermon this morning: hunger and its close cousin, homelessness. So many people are starving to death, especially children and yet we know that there is enough food to feed everyone if it could be evenly distributed. In preparing for this sermon, I read that on Super Bowl Sunday, a period of less than 4 hours, Americans eat 4 million lbs of popcorn, 9 million pounds of tortilla chips, 12 million pounds of potato chips, 13 million pounds of guacamole dip! Wow! I wonder where they find that many ripe avocados!

As for the homeless, estimates—which are probably low—say that there are over 3.5 million residents of the US that have been homeless for significant periods of time, including 1.35 million children. Every night there are over 37000 people in NYC shelters. In rural areas the homeless are harder to count as they often sleep in their cars or in the summer at camping sites. Home has been defined as the place where if you have to go there, they have to take you in, and these people in the statistics as well as many others have no such place anywhere in the world.

So there we have some of the major themes of the daily or nightly news: wars and other violence, peace seeking, hunger, homelessness. Most of us watch these events unfolding on our TV screen almost every day. What we choose to do about it, individually and as a church,--how much money we donate, or how much of our time and energy we expend on these problems; what political candidates get our votes are all issues of great importance both for saving the world and for saving our souls.

Have you ever been really hungry? Maybe you have missed lunch or been out hiking or biking without stopping for any snacks. Or maybe you were fasting. I’m sure most of you can remember at some time having a gnawing in your stomach. However, there was no need for anxiety as you knew you would soon be able to eat. If you happen to be in a situation where there was not going to be much if anything to eat for an extended time, you might move from that simple longing in the gut for food, to a restlessness like an animal that has not been fed—a pacing back and forth, the longing hunger becomes the gnawing hunger. Finally weakness sets in and there’s just not enough energy or strength to do anything. When Jesus came to the crowds of people and tells them that he is the bread of life, he’s talking about a hunger that isn’t in the stomach, but a spiritual hunger. The first stage is an unsatisfied longing for meaning in our life. Maybe some of you started going to church because you recognized this lack of meaning in your life. You needed “food for thought” or a good sermon to “chew on”. The second stage is that restlessness where you pace and look hither and yon for something to satisfy us. You may go to ashrams, take up meditation, try Buddhist fellowship and spiritual reading, take up astrology or drumming, or many other things to try to find meaning. If this goes on long enough without success, you may become apathetic, bored, no zest for life, sometimes even to the point of wanting to end one’s life.

Jesus promises that he can take away this spiritual hunger. “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.” From Jesus we can receive food for our heart and souls. First we have to admit that we have a void in the deepest part of our being. Next we have to turn to Jesus. That’s pretty hard if your not use to it. This is the point where you may want to talk to a minister, attend church, share with friends who have a strong faith. In your prayers you can just say, “I’m desperate; I don’t know what to do. Please help me. I need to be fed.” When we come to Holy Communion, we have an opportunity to symbolically be fed by Jesus’ body and his blood.

Earlier we talked about the news of the world. Let’s now turn to the news of our own little world. Most of our news is not really big stuff, yet to us it is important. It is the kind of news that tells us that we are moving towards where we want to be or not. It may not be a war like that in Iraq and Lebanon; however it is a war that we all go through much of the time. It’s helpful to choose a time of day, often just before going to sleep at night to go over the battles of the day. What battles if any are we winning, or losing? “Which battles might we do better not to be fighting at all?” Buechner says, “We are churchgoers. We are nice people. We fight well camouflaged. We are snipers rather than bombardiers. Our weapons are more apt to be chilly silences than hot words. But our wars are no less real for all of that, and the stakes are no less high.” He goes on to say that maybe the highest stakes of all are the wars we wage within ourselves—“the battles we fight against loneliness, boredom, despair, self-doubt, the battles against fear, against the great dark.” We always have that “battle to become what we have it in us at our best to be, which is wise and loving friends both to our own selves and to each other as we reach out not only for what we need to have but also for what we need to give.”

Are you hungry? Most us have more than enough food to eat in a world where thousands starve to death every day, yet we do have our own terrible spiritual hungers. “We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better or worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.”

When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it was as much for our own sake as for the others. “Not to help find some way to feed the children who are starving to death is to have some precious part of who we are starve to death with them. Not to give of ourselves to the human beings we know who may be starving nor for food but for what we have in our hearts to nourish them with is to be, ourselves, diminished and crippled as human beings.

In Luke Jesus says, “Woe to you that are rich for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. We could add Woe to us if we forget the homeless ones who have no vote, no power, nobody to lobby for them, and who might as well have no faces even, the way we try to avoid the troubling sight of them in the streets…” And as we listen to the news each night, woe to us too if we forget our own homelessness. “To be really at home is to be really at peace, and our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no real peace for any of us until there is real peace for all of us.” This is the truth that underlies the news of the world and the news of our own humble lives.

Jesus told the crowd and his disciples, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the son of Man will give you.” It is so easy to focus on our physical needs that we forget there are greater things, things that satisfy not only the body but the soul. As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion in a little while, the one whom we call the Bread of Life is broken and given to all of us that we may eat and live. Bread is a good image for us Westerners as it is such an important part of our diet. In some countries or regions of the world, we might use tortillas or even rice. Not all people in the world are familiar with bread. The point is that Jesus, whether we call him the bread of life or the tortilla of life, can satisfy those inner hungers as he becomes for us the God of love, the food that fills us and leads us through the Holy Spirit to go forward and bring about the K

[1] All unspecified quotes are from this source.

Abundance Pastor Barbara's Sermon for 7-30-06

Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

My first joke this morning is one that the Rev. Billy Graham tells on himself. Early in his ministry he arrived in a small town to preach a revival meeting. Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a young boy where the post office was. When the boy had told him, Dr. Graham thanked him and said, “If you’ll come to the church this evening, you can hear me give directions on how to get to heaven.” “I don’t think I’ll be there,” the boy replied. “You don’t even know how to get to the post office.” You know preachers preach what they need to hear just like teachers teach what they need to learn. Today’s topic of Abundance is something that I do okay with understanding most of the time; however, there are many things in this sermon today that I need to be reminded about.

You know I find myself very fortunate in being your minister as you have been so very supportive of me; very few of you have ever given me a hard time, been mean or insulting or expected that I could do miracles; however, this is not the case in most churches. The Search committees are always looking for a perfect pastor so they were all quite excited with the headline that announced: Good News! After hundred of years of ministers, a model pastor has been found—one who will please every church member. He is 26 years old and has been preaching for 30 years. He is tall, short, thin, heavyset, and handsome. He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spends all his time with older folks. He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work. He makes 15 calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing the lost, and is always in the office when you need him.

We have two scriptures today that go so well in describing abundance. In Ephesians Paul describes a world of endless possibilities with a God that is always “more” than we can imagine, a God that calls us to imagine great thins and to bring them about in our daily life, a God that says that the love of Christ surpasses all knowledge so that we may be filled with the fullness of God. And then we have the story of Jesus feeding 5000 men plus the women and children with five barley loaves and two fish and after all had eaten their fill, there were leftovers enough to fill 12 baskets. Both of these scriptures remind us that in each moment of our life, we can choose between scarcity and abundance both in our attitude toward the world and our resources. How can this be? Do you believe there is such a choice? The answer to this is found in our view of the world, our vision of reality as well as our willingness to trust God and others to supply our deepest needs.

Let’s look a little closer at our gospel lesson. This feeding of the 5000 is the only parable that is found in all 4 gospels. As some of you may know the gospel of John is usually quite different than the other 3—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—which we call the synoptic gospels because they are so similar. John’s story on today’s story differs enough that Biblical authorities believe he heard it from an independent oral tradition, not just copied it from one of the gospels or their source.

Many people who interpret the feeding of the 5000 say that many of the families there that day had lunch pails with them. When the small boy was willing to give up his lunch, that inspired the others to share what they had. His gift awakened others’ trust in God’s ability to supply their needs and inspired them to share their meals with their neighbors. On the other hand it is possible that this scene was the location of one of Jesus’ greatest miracles, that Jesus could activate deeper laws of nature that creatively transformed these elements into enough food to feed a multitude. Bruce Epperly[1] writing at the Center for Process Theology says, “While this interpretation {or the miracle}stretches our imagination, such bursts of energy are possible in the world described by quantum physics and process-relational theology.” I recently saw the movie, “How in the *&bleep*% did that happen” that points out many possibilities governed by quantum theory that makes these miracles seem perfectly possible. Epperly ends his semon with this quote, “Process-relational theology invites us to imagine a world of abundant possibilities one moment at a time. Grounded in the interconnectedness of life and the infinity of God’s possibilities, we will experience God’s abundant life and become God’s messengers of abundance to a world too often dominated by scarcity.”

In this time of Jesus’ ministry there was much abundance; so many signs Jesus was doing; so many in the crowds that followed him; so many pieces of bread leftover. Where Jesus’ disciples saw scarcity, Jesus saw and brought about abundance. John’s gospel is filled with “I am” statements about Jesus. Here Jesus says a little later that he is the bread of life which definitely fits with the Ephesians statement that through Christ we will be filled with the fullness of God. No scarcity here. What causes the disciples and so many of us to see scarcity and not abundance? Could it be fear? Fear notices scarcity and says, “There’s never enough, certainly not enough for everyone.” Fear makes us think that we are in danger; it makes us grab on to the wrong things; as a nation it makes us arm ourselves to excess and challenge, even preemptively attack other countries because we are afraid they will attack us. It makes us as a church cut out programs in the budget because there are not enough pledges to balance the budget.

Do you know that after every feeding story there is a boat story in our gospels? In John’s story today the disciples see Jesus walking on water and are afraid. At first they do not recognize him. We can be so scared that we can’t even see the hand that reaches out to us; we can’t even hear the voice of the Lord saying do not be afraid, to know that God is God and we are God’s beloved. To understand this parable—including the boat on the stormy sea is to know that wherever we may be, Christ our Lord is within easy walking distance and we are not alone. Love surpasses all knowledge Paul tells the Ephesians. Love that feeds hungry crowds can’t be explained; love that turns no one away but reaches out to all can not be explained; love that causes one to sacrifice for another can not be explained. To understand about the multiplication of the loaves means that we begin to realize that first and always that Jesus is with us no matter how bad the storm, no matter how far we are from shore. This story helps us to understand that everything God gives us is the gift of the relationship with God, our parent, the divine Spirit. The story of the loaves means that Jesus feeds us, not only bread to eat but the gift of Christ himself, a gift that is never withdrawn, never lost, never overpowered. This, my friends, is ABUNDANCE.

What does all this mean to our church here in Deering, NH? Do we think too small? Are we dominated by the bottom line? By tight budgets and shrinking memberships? One of the authors that I read said that new ideas for ministry are strongly encouraged to follow these 3 steps:1. the idea; 2. who will do it; and then 3. how will it be financed. If the idea is a good one it will be funded some how: from the general budget, from a special offering, from user fees, from individual gifts, from the endowments. He said that a third of their programs are funded outside the budget. Our Chicken BBQ is a good example. This year we were hoping to have $ in the budget to fund it, but had to cut it out. We considered taking up a special offering; we didn’t want to charge a fee but would accept food dishes from those who wanted to bring them. And a few very generous members make special gifts as part of their donations to the church. We must be sure to not stop good ideas just because “We can’t afford it.”

What do these two scriptures mean to us? What can we expect? Do you ever start your day with an affirmation similar to “This is the day that God has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.” What about adding, “What great thing does God call me to do this day? Who knows what it might be? Can we be open and available to whatever opportunity comes our way? Bob Deffinbaugh says that there are some principles to be learned from Jesus’ miracles and I want to share a few of them. First, Jesus teaches us to do more than we are humanly able because with his help we can. The disciples think feeding the crowd is impossible; however, with Jesus power they can do it. 2) The magnitude of the task should not be used as an excuse for not attempting it, especially when it’s God’s command, such as love your neighbor as yourself or love your enemies. 3) Those of us God uses to minister to the needs of the crowd are those who gain the most from serving others. “As we give ourselves in the service of others , God cares abundantly for our own needs.” (Deffinbaugh) 4) “When we face difficulties, we should be careful not to limit the ways we expect God to minister through us.” God delights in doing the unexpected.

In ending let’s look again at the Ephesians scripture. Paul says God’s great power lies within us. He says we have “the power to grasp the length and width, and height and depth of the love of God for us.” This power helps us grasp the vastness of God’s love for us. We can than do far more than we ever could think or imagine or even ask from God. What is this spiritual abundance? We may get our core values and principles form the Bible and theological teachings, yet the Power within us is God. Paul writes, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; not I but Christ who lives in me.” Inside us is the power of God. John writes that the power of Christ shall dwell in us always. This power is the true abundance. With this power our life will be abundant, filled with the fullness of God no matter what our standard of living. Praise be to the Power that’s available to us all, the power that makes Love our home. Amen

[1] Bruce Epperly is director of continuing education and associate professor of practical theology at Lancaster Theological Seminary and writes for Process and Faith at http://www.processandfaith.org/