Let Us Go Over To the Other Side

Sermon for June 21, 2009
Scripture: Mark 4:35-41

You know Jesus can be difficult sometimes; just when we are settling in, getting comfortable here he comes telling us to go to the other side. We’ve had a long hard day. All we want to do is sit down to read the newspaper, have a refreshing drink, maybe watch some TV or a movie. Or if you were the disciples in Jesus time, maybe you were just about to relax on the shoreline and tell some fish stories about the day’s catch. And then you see that Jesus isn’t sitting down and he has that look in his eye. Finally he speaks and says, “Why are you getting comfortable, we need to go over to the other side.”

This isn’t the first time Jesus has told them to go over to the other side. In Matthew you may remember that he told the disciples to go over to the other side of the lake and he meets them halfway, walking on the water. Why can’t Jesus just relax, get comfortable on this side, the side we are already on?

In this particular scripture Jesus and his disciples had finished a very successful day of teaching and learning. They were on the Sea of Galilee, the kind of sea that could get very rough at nighttime or anytime. Most boats went around the lake,(it was really more like a lake) close to the shore, not across the lake. On the other side was foreign territory, the land of the Gerasenes—the place where Jesus drove out the demons from Legion into the swine who then hurtled down the bank into this same sea of Galilee.

The disciples were obedient and they all got into the boat. Knowing the threats as these local fishermen would have known, would you have gotten in the boat with Jesus? Do I go over to the other side when Jesus tells me to go? Or do I roll over and settle deeper into my comfort zone.
We know our side, the side where we are comfortable, where the risks are decreased. Yet Jesus is persistent. The first time he told me to go I was a teenager, very involved in church youth group. I thought about being a minister but it was just too scary. Not many women did that back in the 60’s. I wanted to get married and have children. I convinced myself that being a social worker made more sense; it would be just as good as being a minister. Maybe I would be a missionary social worker.

Getting back to the Bible story, we know that Jesus got in the boat with his disciples and quickly fell asleep in the back of the boat. A terrible storm came and they were so afraid. They woke Jesus up with a exclamation of blame, “Teacher do you not care that we are perishing?” You know the rest of the story, Jesus calms the storm and then it’s his turn to question, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Why won’t you go to seminary? Why won’t you go do missionary work in Africa? Why won’t you go back to school? Why won’t you read the scripture in church? Why won’t you go repair and build houses in New Orleans? What are you waiting for? What do you do with the rest of your life? Jesus says, Go! But I don’t have enough money; I don’t want to be so far away from my family. I’m too old! I’m too young! It’s so easy to think of excuses. It’s just too scary, too risky. That big storm may arise and then what would you do.

To the elders, I quote Fred Buechner, “ Keep going, Jesus says, because to keep going is to keep living and to stop going is to stop living in any way that much matters.” 1 Jesus says let us go over to the other side. Who knows how far it is to that foreign land or what awaits us when we get there if anything at all?

Where is our faith? Why do we have so much fear? Many of us fear current or potential suffering and pain, bad health, death of loved ones and of our own death. Some of us fear being alive without living. We fear loss and loneliness. In these days there are more things to fear than usual due to terrorism, economic troubles, and environmental damage. Some of us have the pain of broken relationships, alienation from family, concern about our children both young and old. Maybe we are hearing Jesus tell us to Go, and we are just too scared to go. We want to make the world a better place; we want to follow the words and actions of Jesus, but is the risk of a big storm just too much?

Faith is having trust in the company of Jesus Christ. It believes that the world can be transformed by love; that angry waves can be calmed, and no matter what comes your way, you are not alone. You may recall that our Gospels are filled with Jesus and angels saying, “Do not be afraid; peace be with you. This is not because there are no scary things in our world, yet they need not paralyze us. They need not stop us because we are not alone in the boat. Faith is about going to the other side, especially when we know that the odds are against us. It’s easy to get so comfortable that we don’t even hear Jesus telling us to Go over to the other side. However, I believe along with Fred Buechner that “Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and whatever we do in whatever time we have left—whether that be 5, 10, 20 or 50 years, wherever we go we can call upon him and he will come awake within us, to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us, each one, our way.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick says:

Fear imprisons, faith liberates;
Fear paralyzes, faith empowers;
Fear
disheartens, faith encourages;
Fear sickens, faith heals;
Fear makes
useless, faith makes serviceable;
And, most of all, fear puts hopelessness
at the heart of all, while faith rejoices in God!

My prayer is that we will help each other to increase our faith so that when we hear the call to “Go over to the other side” we will be able to get in the boat, knowing that the Holy Spirit is with us to the end of time. Amen and Amen

1 Secrets in the Dark, p. 296.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS LIKE?

Sermon for June 14, 2009
Scripture: Sam. 15:34-16:13, Mark 4:26-34

Another mystery of our faith—the Kingdom of God! By now some of you may recognize the phrases, “is like” or “is as if” as undoubtedly leading us to parables, one of Jesus’ favorite teaching tools. Jesus was never without a story and he fit the stories to his audience, their experience in life and their maturity. I know there are some of you out there that also have a lot of good stories, lots of ideas. Today’s sermon is going to be a congregation participation sermon. I haven’t done one of these for a while. When I do, I always learn a lot and I hope you do to.

All of the gospels have many parables but the parable about God as the seed sower is only in Mark although the mustard seed is also in Matthew and Luke. Eugene Petersen in The Message translates the passage like this: “Then Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time.”

What could this possibly mean? I’m sure most of you gardeners out there don’t just throw down seeds and forget them. Let’s look at the next parable: the mustard seed. The land I grew up on had lots of mustard plants. I really liked them. They usually were taller than the grass but never, as far as I know, did they grow into a big tree. Jesus is exaggerating to make his point. In the Middle East of Jesus’ time, the mustard plant was considered a weed. One of my references described it as a woody, fast growing and spreading, persistent nuisance. Maybe it’s a bit like our dandelions. Since I have so little grass I appreciate the dandelions, and I never have seen them grow as tall as they did this year. But what is Jesus’ point? What is the kingdom of God like?

I’m going to throw out some possibilities but I hope you will be thinking of your own answers. Could it be that the kingdom will grow without any effort from us? Maybe we don’t have to be concerned about evangelizing after all. If we look at our story from the Hebrew Bible lesson, we know that David certainly didn’t do anything to make God choose him. The youngest of the children in the family, he was out watching the sheep and Jesse, his father, didn’t even think about including him in the lineup of sons that Samuel wished to see as he hunted for the God-picked ruler of the nation. He was too young, and also slight of build and certainly not well regarded by his family. Who would choose him? Is the kingdom all about God’s grace?

Is the Kingdom a place, a plot of land somewhere? No, it has to be a vision of God and his son Jesus, a vision of what things will look like when they are as God wants them to be. What will that be like?

One more thought before I ask you to share your reflections. Some of you may remember that I grew up in Maine on Sebago Lake where my parents helped my grandmother run a tourist home. After my grandmother died, we became quite poor, as there was no will, and my mother had to divide up all the property with her two sisters. Not only did we lose our home and our many acres of woods and pastures, but also my parents lost their ability to earn a livelihood from the homestead. My favorite scripture found both in Matthew and Luke was: Be ye not anxious, consider the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air. They neither toil nor spin or sow nor reap yet they have all that they need. So do not worry as your heavenly Father will provide. Here too was that kingdom phrase, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be yours as well.” Mt. 6:33. So maybe the kingdom of God is a place where we do not have to be anxious. That first man just went to sleep and the seeds grew, he knew not how. So much of what we ponder about God and God’s world is a mystery for us.

Would some of you share what your thoughts and stories are on what is God’s kingdom?

To close I’d like to share with you a great mustard seed story, borrowed from Rev. Christina Berry: “Millard and Linda didn’t plan to stay longer than a couple of hours. They just wanted to see the place and hear the story. Truthfully, Millard just wanted to see what his pal Clarence had up his sleeve. See, Millard was a millionaire at age 29, And now, everything was coming apart. He should have been happy. But he was in poor health. Linda was saying she might leave him. The money wasn’t buying him any joy in life. So he went to see his friend Clarence. As it turned out, what Clarence had going was not up his sleeve, it was all over the place down there in rural South Georgia. It was Koinonia Farm, founded in 1942, as an interracial, intentional Christian community. There, people of all colors shared a simple life, committed to nonviolence, to justice, to following the teachings of Jesus.

From a small seed, Koinonia Farm grew, Clarence Jordan’s crazy idea of sharing in community as Christians, without regard to race or social class. It was a noxious weed, as far as its neighbors were concerned. They threatened the families of the farm. They bombed the produce stand – not once, but twice. They tried everything they could think of to make Koinonia Farms, and the people who lived there, go away. It was an affront to their way of life, and it would not go away. It stood over and against everything they held dear: private ownership, acquiring wealth, racial separation, and it would not go away.

Millard and Linda came for two hours and stayed for a month. After that visit, they put their marriage back together, gave away most of their wealth, and came up with the idea of “Habitat for Humanity.” Today, Habitat builds houses alongside people in need all around the world. From a small seed, a planned two-hour visit, a ministry of the kingdom grew. A tiny little seed, starting with a few houses in rural Georgia, flourished and grew and grew and grew, until it was everywhere, and it couldn’t be stopped.”

We don’t know how the tiniest of seeds becomes the greatest of all shrubs. In the same way, we never know how or when the still speaking GOD will use any of us or how God will use this church to bring about the Kingdom of God, whatever that may be. We’re called to observe whatever is our mustard seed and see where that crazy plant growing all over the place takes us. We don’t know where it is going to take us, but we know we aren’t going to be standing still! It just may take us to the Kingdom of God. The One who plants us, the One who calls us to grow like crazy, the One who makes all things new, has some big plans in mind for us! Amen and Amen

Mysteries of our Faith

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 6-7-09
Scripture: John 3:1-17

There was an early father of our Christian faith named St.Augustine. This great theologian was so obsessed with the mystery of the Holy Trinity that he wrote 15 volumes on it. I want to tell you a story that some of you may have heard before. Augustine was at his wits' end, trying to understand this concept. One day he was walking on the sandy beach by the ocean. He was talking to himself about the Trinity: "One God, but three Persons. Three Persons--not three Gods but one God. What does it mean? How can it be explained? How can my mind take it in?" And so he was torturing his mind when he saw a young boy on the beach. He approached the boy to see what he was doing. The child had dug a small hole in the sand. With his hands the boy was carrying water from the ocean and was dumping it into the little hole. St. Augustine asked, "What are you doing, my child?" The child replied, "I want to put all of the water of the ocean into this hole." Once more St. Augustine asked, "But is it possible for all of the water of this great ocean to be contained in this little hole?" And the child asked him in return, "If the water of the ocean cannot be contained in this little hole, then how can the immensity of God be contained in your small head?" With that the child was gone.

If you were listening to the Children’s Story, you may be ahead of Augustine and have somewhat of an understanding of the Trinity. Let me say that the Trinity is not a concept that you will find in the Bible. It was in the 10th century that the church established this doctrine. The early Christians discovered that they simply could not speak of God without speaking of the three ways in which God had been revealed to them. The most familiar phrase is Father Son, and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit although here are some others: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Abba, Servant, Paraclete. An Indian, Raimundo Panikkar, keeping in mind the threefold experience at the heart of Hindu as well as Christian faith formulates it this way: Source, being, and return to being, which relates to God is above all, through all, and in all.i One that I like a lot is the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love. I do see God as a relational, dynamic, tri-personal mystery of love, a community of sorts. Those of you who have listened to my sermons for awhile know how important community is to me. So it’s not surprising that I would see in the Trinity this one God in a relationship mode with a Mother/Father, Creator, Christ our Savior and teacher, and the Holy Spirit our guide, relating to each other in holy community—a dynamic, three way love.

I like to use the metaphor of a dance, borrowed from Barbara Brown Zikmund. This dance is not rock and roll or hip-hop, where each person does his or her own moves, or ballroom dancing where two partners dance together. The dance I’m thinking of is more like the circle dance with each person of the Trinity joining hands together in a dance that has no beginning and no end, a dance where both the dance itself and each of the partners is eternal. No partner is greater than the other. Just like the metaphor of the human body for the Church, each partner has it’s own specific role as it moves in rhythm showing joy and love. This community of the Trinity is not static but ever moving, and it is moving right here today in this church and in each of our own beings.

Now what does any of this have to do with the Gospel reading of being born again? First of all, both the Trinity and being born again are great mysteries in our faith. In this passage we have Nicodemus going to pay a visit to Jesus. Nicodemus was a religious man of some note; in fact the scripture called him “the teacher”, not “a teacher”, pointing to his religious pre-eminence. Yet for all his pre-eminence, Nicodemus was missing something. There was an emptiness there, something was not quite right with him. He went by night to visit Jesus as it would not have been proper for such a man to be seen as interested in Jesus. Nicodemus expresses confusion, not unlike our own when we come upon something that does not fit with our preconceived notions of who God is. Who among us would not have questioned Jesus saying we had to be born again—at our age? The word Jesus speaks is that Nicodemus must be born "anothen"—a Greek word that can mean either "from above" or "anew." Maybe we should consider both words-- both a time of birth ("anew") and the place from which the new birth will come ("from above").ii Here we have a birth, generated by the Spirit, a transformation initiated by God and being proclaimed by Jesus. How’s that for an example of the Trinity? I wonder if some of us, whether baptized or not, could be waiting in these days after Pentecost for the coming of Spirit who will recreate us from above? Is it possible that we all may need to be born again in order to have our minds open to the newness of the Still Speaking God that never stops creating and surprising us. In these past five years have you been open to new things happening in this church—maybe a new way to consider race, refugees, women in prison, gay relationships, people from other countries and other faiths? Both individually and as a congregation, I believe the Spirit has been moving among us, giving us new birth.

Barbara Brown Zikmund says “When we worship a triune God we celebrate the love which flows in God’s eternal dance of togetherness, and which we know through Jesus Christ as Lord of the dance.”iii She further points out that in a Trinity where God is no longer seen as a solitary we can see a vision of a community where we are in mutual relationships, working together with shared responsibilities for justice and care.

As we prepare ourselves to celebrate Communion I invite all of you to come join in the dance. You and I, your families, your friends are all invited to come join the dance of unending joy. The Trinity circle breaks open and the Christ, the Spirit, and the heavenly Parent are still holding hands as they invite us to join in, to create an ever larger community as we become their partners in gathering up all of life to keep dancing the radical dance of justice and love. Please come and join in the dance. Amen.iv

i From Trinity and the Religious Experience of Mankind, used in Elizabeth A. Johnson’s She Who Is (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001) 210.
ii New Proclamation B 2009, referenced in SAMUEL at the UCC sermon site.
iii “Trinity and Women’s Experience”, The Christian Century, April 15, 1987, pp.354-356.
iv Parts of today’s sermon were taken from previous Trinity sermons I have preached.