"When the Going Gets Rough"- Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12: 20-33-- Mar. 22, 2015

Emily Heath, a UCC pastor in Exeter, NH, recalls her first day of preaching class in seminary. The professor read this passage from 2 Corinthians:

"We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights,hunger."

And then he said, "That's what the first Christians endured in order to preach the Gospel…you'll

probably survive this class."

Sometimes we contemporary Christians make the mistake of thinking we have it rough. [Emily writes].We have to compete with Sunday morning baseball games and yoga classes. Our pews

aren't full the way they were back in 1950. Our kids can't even sing "Silent Night" at school anymore! Some even say that modern American Christians are being "persecuted."

Except, really, we modern American Christians are pretty darn comfortable. [In fact, Emily suggests,] calling yourself Christian in our culture is one of the easiest things you can do. [Stillspeaking Devotional, 3/20/15]

Here in these last couple of weeks of Lent, we are closing in on the really tough part of the journey. We know where this journey is heading, and I don’t mean Easter–at least, not yet. The going gets rough here, as we re-tell, re-live, the story of betrayal, of arrest, of beatings, of desertion, of death and loss. It’s a story that is still literally being lived out in many parts of the world today, and even in our own comparatively "safe" lives, we experience betrayal, loss, suffering, and death. We cannot afford to skip over this part of the story, lest we lose the heart of what we claim to be our faith.

The passage from John that Sharon read for us this morning comes immediately after Jesus’ "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem and the growing dis-ease of the religious leaders about Jesus’ popularity. The "Greeks" who came to Philip, who wanted to see Jesus, are an indication of just how widespread Jesus’ notoriety had become–beyond the Jewish community. Jesus speaks to them about what’s on his mind–death. "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit..."

In John’s gospel, Jesus is a man in control. Writing as an old man, probably sometime in the late first century, John can see Jesus’ life from the perspective of hindsight. Of course it had to happen this way, he can say. Jesus knew what he had to do. There is no Garden of Gethsemane scene in John, where Jesus asks God to find another way for him to go forward, where tears fall like drops of blood; but here in this passage, we see a glimpse of that. "Now my soul is troubled," Jesus says. That’s the glimpse–but then he’s back in control. "And what should I say–‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name."

From the very beginning, John talks about Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s glory. That’s a hard thing for us to wrap our brains around. "Glory" as we think of it is a matter of celebrity, of triumph, of pride. God needed Jesus to die on the cross to get glory?! How is that good news? But God’s glory is not bought with blood. It is in that self- emptying, that letting go into the greater light, that seed dying in the ground so that it might bear much fruit that is a much better way of understanding God’s glory–infusing glory into everyone and everything. In John’s gospel, Jesus nods to his mother and the disciple he loved from the cross and commends them to one another–Behold your son, behold your mother–and a new family, a new community is born.

This is a Jesus whose soul may be troubled, but who knows what he must do, who knows that his calling is to go through the confrontation with the powers that be, with suffering and with death–not because it’s already determined, but because he chooses to follow that path. God’s heart is in his heart. God’s vision is his vision. He knows the way forward "by heart."

In another rough time, in the midst of grief and loss, of exile and humiliation, when hearts

and spirits were broken, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah,

"The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah....not like the one they broke, though I was their husband...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."

Jeremiah’s "rant" against the people is over. He’s warned them of the consequences of their betrayal and turning away from God, even though God was their "husband," or "master." And they have indeed experienced those consequences of trusting in other gods, in foreign and military powers, as Jerusalem was destroyed and the elite carried off into exile.

But now it is time for a new message–a message of energy, of hope, of deep healing, and the restoration of relationship. "No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." How often do we hear that the God of the Old Testament is the God of wrath, and the God of the New Testament a God of love? It is one God. Here in the "Book of Consolation," as this part of Jeremiah is often called, God is more like a loving, frustrated parent, who grieves over the consequences of a child’s actions. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love." God grieves over Israel and Judah, precisely because of love. And I cannot help but believe that God is grieving over our world today.

"I will write my law upon their hearts," God says through Jeremiah. "... They shall all know me." The heart is not just about feeling. It is about our core identity. God’s vision, God’s law, God’s love at the heart of our identity. I read somewhere this week that our lives are not about acquiring skills and experiences and wisdom until we finally become who we’re supposed to be, but rather a stripping away, a letting go of everything until we uncover who we’ve always been and are meant to be.

"Lent is our season of honesty," Walter Brueggemann writes. (Odyssey Networks, 3/16/15) – honesty about our brokenness as individuals and as a society, about how far we’ve gone from our true hearts which are filled with God. Like Jeremiah warned ancient Israel, Brueggemann points to our "indulgent privilege and strident exceptionalism" as a nation–an indicting, biting summary as Walter is so capable of. As long as we are in denial and illusion about how we have broken the covenants of neighborliness and with God, wholeness is not possible. The prophetic tradition cuts through the denial and strips away the illusion so that radical newness can break through. We are called to live as neighbors, in our local and global communities, sharing and being stewards of the resources of this beautiful planet. It might even be said that this call to live as neighbors and stewards, in justice and peace, a call that is at the core of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is the only way forward to any kind of sustainable future–just as Jesus knew that the way forward for him would involve sacrifice and dying to self.

When the going gets rough–and really, before the going gets rough–it is important to know what–or Who–is in our hearts. We talk about coming here on Sundays to be reminded of who we are and Whose we are. What do you know by heart? We’ve been using games to help us remember important parts of the psalms, which we know Jesus knew by heart as well, calling them out from the cross–"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" –Psalm 22. "Into your hands I commend my spirit." –Psalm 31. When we are wracked by guilt over something we did in the past, might we remember hopscotch and the line from Psalm ... – "Skip over the sins of my youth." When we feel like an utter failure, not fit for anyone to see us, might we remember hide and seek–"God, you do not hide your face from me when I am a mess." Feeling lost and abandoned? "Gather us in from north and south, east and west, O God." Think you’re the only one who seems to want to acknowledge God? "Day speaks unto day, and night unto night, the praises of God." Wondering how you should act? Follow the leader: "I will repeat aloud all the laws you’ve given. I delight in following your ways...."

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit..." That is not just way of wheat, it is the way of human beings, living in community in relationship with God. "I will write my law upon their hearts...and they shall know me." At our core, the most essential truth about us, is that we are filled and surrounded by the love and power of God. The challenge, of course, is to be open to that truth, and aware of that truth, day by day.

F. Forrester Church was pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York until his death from cancer in 2009. In his book, Everyday Miracles, he wrote,

The power which I cannot explain or know or name I call God. God is not God’s name. God is my name for the mystery that looms within and arches beyond the limits of my being. When I pray to God, God’s answer comes to me from within, not beyond. God’s answer is yes, not to the specifics of my prayer but in response to my hunger for meaning and peace. Choose life and trust life. Grow in service and love. Take nothing for granted. Be thankful for the gift. Suffer well. Dare to risk much. Consecrate your world with laughter and with tears. And know not what I am or who I am or how I am, know only that I am with you. This is God’s answer to my prayer. There are times when God is not with me, so many times. Times of distraction, fragmentation, alienation, brokenness. But when I open myself to God, incrementally my wholeness is restored. Perhaps that which I call the mystery of God is no more than the mystery of life itself. I cannot know, nor do I car, because the power that emanates from deep within the heart of this mystery is redemptive. It is divine. By opening myself to it, without every hoping or presuming to understand it, I find peace. The mystery of God will remain a mystery. That, I suppose, is as it should be. Anything less would fail to do justice to the every day miracles of consciousness, of love and pain, of life and death. Responding to these miracles, responding to God’s yes, I can do not other than to answer yes in return.

When the going gets rough, remember what and who is in your heart. Remember whose heart you are in. So may we too answer yes.

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Let God Love You!"-- Numbers21:4-9, John 3:14-21-- March 15, 2014

I realize it’s probably treasonous, but I don’t watch many sports on television. I don’t watch that much television anyway, but that’s beside the point. I do know that when I have seen sports events, somebody almost always is in the background, holding up a sign that says, "John 3:16." It’s been called by some as their favorite verse in the Bible–"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

In "born again," evangelical circles, it’s the last part of the verse that seems to be most important–"...everyone who believes in him may not perish..." If you "believe" in Jesus as God’s only Son, you get eternal life, or as they might say, you go to heaven when you die; but, if you don’t "believe," you will perish, that is, you’ll go to hell. Can I say there’s so much in that statement that is troubling and that has caused endless debates in the Christian Church? Back when John wrote this, folks would have heard this claim about Jesus in contrast to what was said about Caesar–Rome said Caesar was the only begotten son of God. Then there’s the whole understanding of "begotten" – wars have been fought over whether God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, and there was certainly no understanding back then of genetic material coming from father and mother. What is the substance of God anyway?

And I don’t even want to start today on what I think "heaven" and "hell" are about. Suffice it to say that I have seen plenty of instances of heaven and hell here on earth, right now, some of which I may have some influence over; but after death? I am willing to leave that up to God. But what I know and can affirm about God is in that first phrase–"God loved the world..."; and I believe God still loves the world.

What I’d like to see sometime is a sign that says, "John 3:17"–"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." After all, we’re talking about God’s love here–God loved the world like this... God sent the Son, or became the Son, so that the world might be saved, not condemned, through him. Now that’s good news!

The great preaching professor, Fred Craddock, once advised preachers that we are to "preach like you know they almost didn’t come." [Cited in Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher. org, 3/15/15] Now there are all sorts of reasons why maybe you almost didn’t come–it was a late night, sleep seemed more important, your kids put up a stink, you haven’t done laundry in a month, whatever–but one reason why some folks are reluctant to come to church is because they’re afraid they’ll be judged–judged by the people here, judged by God. Let’s be honest-- The Christian church in popular culture comes across as "judge-y." Do this, don’t do that, or else....if you’ve done this or that...shame. God loves you IF you do this, or don’t do that.

Isn’t that what the next verse is talking about–"Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Lots of "judge-y" words there. But what if we read this simply as a description of what it’s like to trust in–which I almost always substitute for the word believe in–the God who became incarnate in Jesus as well those who choose to put their trust somewhere else. Those who trust in the God revealed in Jesus, who have experienced the love of God, already have a sense of what eternal, abundant life is like. Those who put their trust elsewhere–in other gods like money, success, power–have missed out on that profound love and life. The word "condemned" conveys how great a loss that is, even though they and we may have no idea what that really means. Money and power and success seem pretty good! That’s as good as it gets, right? But "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor human imagination envisioned what you have prepared for those who love you," the apostle Paul writes.

"And this is the judgment," John goes on. John’s whole gospel is about judgment or moments of crisis, moments when you have to decide. That’s what this conversation with Nicodemus is about, although Nicodemus seems to have been left behind verses ago. Jesus keeps using words that can be taken in a number of ways–born again, born from above, wind, spirit–which are meant to keep Nicodemus–and us–off balance, keep us from thinking we’ve got it "figured out." Conversations like this create moments of crisis or decision. What is the source of your life? How were you born? Until Jesus – or John, really– says to this teacher in Israel, "God loved the world...God loves the world..." For all the law and the prophets, know this: God loves us. Sometimes that is harder to believe than God judges us.

Dan Clendenin is a self-described over-achiever. He’s tried all sorts of Lenten disciplines –giving up coffee and alcohol one year, another year eating only one meal a day to identify with the millions of people who, if they’re lucky, get one meal a day. He has found a certain value in all those experiences, in an effort, he confesses, to be good enough to earn God’s love. But this year, he said, he decided to try something different.

Trying to earn God’s love is a fool’s errand. [he writes] It isn’t necessary or even possible. So, for Lent this year I’m trying something different. I’m doing nothing at all. I’m trying to follow Edwina Gateley‘s wisdom to be quiet and still before God. To say nothing. Ask nothing. And do nothing. Nothing, that is, except [as Gateley writes] to ‘let your God/ Look upon you with his enormous love/ That is all.’ And that [Clendenin writes]is hard in a whole different way." [journeywithjesus, 3/9/15]

The Israelites, in that bizarre story which Lorna read for us earlier, complained about everything and everyone, including God, on their sojourn through the wilderness out of Egypt. So, the story goes, God "gave them something to complain about" and sent poisonous snakes to surround them and bite them. When they relented and apologized and went to Moses for help, God told Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and put it on a staff and whenever someone got bit by the snakes, they were to gaze upon the bronze serpent and so be healed. Who knows if this really happened or if it was just a really memorable story to teach a lesson–that God can use painful things to heal us? Sometimes it’s true–pain is often found on the path to healing and wholeness; but God sending biting snakes because he was angry? Not stopping the snakes from biting but offering the bronze serpent for after they’ve been bitten?

The serpent wrapped around the staff is still the symbol of healing, the Aesclypius, used by the medical profession. "So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live." Later on in the Bible, we read that the young king Hezekiah, who "did what was right in God’s sight," in rebuilding the temple after the exile, had to break in pieces the serpent Moses had made, because it seems the people had made of it an idol.

So, interesting that John should pick up on this image of healing--"just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness"-- to talk about the Son of Man being lifted up. Jesus "lifted up" on the cross, "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." Gaze upon him and be healed. How many of us, how many people in our community, our nation, our world, need to be healed of all sorts of things! God’s great outpouring of love and compassion, symbolized by the cross, was given not to condemn the world–not because God angry and punishing and could only be satisfied with Jesus having to suffer this much-- but to save the world. I wonder–is it possible to turn even the cross into an idol? To make it a thing in itself instead of pointing to the love beyond it?

Let God love you. "That’s hard in a whole different way," Dan Clendenin says. We do have a choice as to whether we will let the light into our lives and follow it. [Alyce McKenzie, patheos] Let God love you. Let God love you. "The love of God most High," wrote Julian of Norwich back in the 14^th c., "is so wonderful that it surpasses all knowledge. No created being can fully know the greatness, the sweetness, the tenderness, of the love our Maker has for us. By his grace and help therefore let us in spirit stand in awe and gaze eternally, marvelling at the supreme, surpassing, single-minded, incalculable love that God, Who is all goodness, has for us." [from Revelations of Divine Love] Let God love you–you who almost didn’t come this morning, you who may or may not have maintained any Lenten discipline you set out to maintain, you who may have been told or made to feel that you were unloveable. Let God love you.

For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. That is really good news. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"Taking Care of Business"- John 2:13-22-- Mar. 8, 2015

 

If you’ve been here in your seats for the past half hour or so and not just now settling in, wondering what happened to the beginning of the service, you know that Daylight Savings Time began this morning...as if we could "save" daylight. The sun shines as it will for as many hours as the earth’s rotation allows it in our spot in the northern hemisphere. Unless, of course, you’re talking about passive solar collectors that "save up" the sun’s energy, but that’s a discussion topic for another time.

Not only have our clocks shifted, but you may have noticed that the angle and location of the sun have shifted, so that sunlight comes through our windows at a slightly different angle than just a few weeks ago. I know this because all the dust and cobwebs in my house that have been lounging in relative obscurity for months now have spotlights on them. I know that the time for spring cleaning–and let’s be honest: winter cleaning–was weeks ago, but knowing that we still have weeks of grubbiness and mud season ahead of us, I just can’t bring myself to launch a full-scale cleaning. When it’s warm enough to open the windows, though, and feel the fresh air blow in, then, you never know–I just may have to haul out the white vinegar and lemon juice and Mrs. Meyers’ Clean Day and go to it.

Spring cleaning... "The Passover of the Judeans was near," John tells us, "and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!" Spring cleaning.

John’s Jesus doesn’t accuse the money-changers or animal sellers of being corrupt. He doesn’t call them "robbers" like he does in the other 3 gospels. He just says they’ve turned his "Father’s house into a marketplace." That was how the system worked. You came to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice for your sins, but the animals for sacrifice had to be unblemished, and you couldn’t guarantee that even if they started off the journey to Jerusalem unblemished they would arrive that way. And you couldn’t use Roman coin in the Temple, you had to exchange it for Temple coins, so the money-changers and the animal sellers were providing a service. It wasn’t the sellers themselves who outraged Jesus–it was the system that blocked the way to God that "consumed" Jesus.

As always, there were folks deeply embedded in the system who were not at all pleased with Jesus’ actions. Not only did the money-changers’ and animal sellers’ livelihood depend upon this system, but of course the priests and the Temple authorities obviously had a vested interest in it. The same is true today, isn’t it? in systems and industries that employ millions of people and benefit all sorts of companies and communities, but which are either destructive and/or offer false security. The coal industry is one example. The economies of whole states like West Virginia and Kentucky depend upon coal-mining for employment and revenue, and yet at an unsustainable cost to our environment and to the health of their workers. The same might be said of the whole fossil fuel industry.

The cleansing of the Temple, writes Dan Clendenin, was a "stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumptions, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and ours." (JourneywithJesus.net, 3/13/06)

John puts this story of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple at the very beginning of his gospel, not at the end, at the beginning of Holy Week, as the other 3 gospels do. In the other 3, it is the final straw that motivates the authorities to get Jesus arrested. In John, at the very beginning, it "announces the inauguration of a new era," as one commentator describes it, "one in which the grace of God is no longer mediated or accessed through cultic sacrifice, but instead is available to all who receive Jesus as God’s" anointed one. [David Lose, inthemeantime, 3/2/15]

By the time John’s gospel is written, probably sometime in the 90's, the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans for over 20 years. The Holy of Holies–where the Ark of the Covenant sat, containing the tablets of the 10 commandments, and the place where Israel’s God was thought to be present–was in ruins. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," Jesus says, but John tells us, "he was speaking of the temple of his body." The word used here for "destroy" has many meanings, but the most common one is "to loose," "to liberate." Jesus was "liberating" the temple, just as he would be liberated in death. "Spring cleaning," indeed! Maybe I should think of "liberating" my house!

Before there can be room for the new, the old must make way. "No one puts new wine in old wineskins," Jesus said, "lest the new wine burst the old skins." Right at the beginning of his gospel, John lets us know that Jesus is ushering in the new, turning over the old. So, there is a letting go, a disruption, an upheaval, a grieving even. All those money-changers and animal sellers had to find new jobs, just as coal-miners and oil well drillers and refiners must be re-deployed. The old structures and systems of the church must be overturned, lest we simply become fossilized angels in our walls, so it’s just as likely that we pastors will be in the unemployment lines along with the coal miners.

Jesus said he was referring to the temple of his body, and so we too can look to the temple of our bodies and our personal lives to see what needs to be overturned there. Is it the food we put into our bodies, or what we do with our bodies? Is it our assumptions or our self-centeredness? Have we turned the temple of our bodies into a marketplace, thinking that buying and consuming more will make it somehow more holy or acceptable? "Create in me a clean heart," the psalmist prays, "and renew a right spirit within me." Spring cleaning.

"Another world is not only possible," writes the great prize-winning author and political activist Arundhati Roy, "she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." To make way for that new world, that new church, that new life, there are tables that need to be over-turned, things that need to be thrown out, people that need to be upset. But in the great economy of God, nothing is lost, only transformed and gathered in. Perhaps Jesus’ anger and violence as he cleanses the temple frighten you. His dream–and God’s dream–for God’s people–the ushering in of the kingdom of God–was that sweeping, that comprehensive, that overwhelming. "If your dreams do not scare you," says Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, "they are not big enough." Dare we dream those kinds of big dreams?

God has big dreams for us and for our world...a world where everyone has enough, a world where each person and creature is treated with respect and dignity, a world where the diversity is vast and mind-blowing but the unity is no less dense and profound...a world where the power of love rules, rather than the love of power. This season of Lent gives us opportunities to take stock, to see what we can do without–which, I have a feeling is far more than we think–, opportunities to get real and honest, to go to places in ourselves, at least, that may scare us. But even though the song says Jesus had to walk that lonesome valley by himself and we must walk it by ourselves, I don’t really believe that. We do not walk into those hard and scary places by ourselves. God has been-- and is in-- all those places and, more often than not, provides us with companions to go with us. New life is possible. A new world is possible and is on her way. Can you hear her breathing?

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Re-think Life"-- Mark 8:31-38 -- March 1, 2015

 

We know that "gospel" means "good news." It’s also the name of a kind of literature that is not a biography or a piece of journalism, but rather the telling of a story that conveys "good news." Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the four gospels that are in our Bible, but we also know that there were many "gospels" in the ancient world that did not make it into our Bible–the gospel of Thomas, for example, the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Mary, the gospel of the Good Shepherd, to name just a few.

This passage from Mark’s gospel which David just read for us is the heart of Mark’s gospel, so important that we hear echoes of it at least two more times. "The Son of Humanity must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Wow! That’s the good news?! Spare me the bad news, right? Jesus doesn’t–spare them, that is. He goes on to say, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

How can this be good news? Suffering, rejection, death on a cross–sounds like everything I would want to avoid, and, if I’m honest, do try to avoid. The disciples have endured a lot of bad press over the centuries for being dense, for not getting it, for wimping out at the end, but let’s be honest–would we do any differently? Death as a central part of the path to glory is something of a deal-breaker, isn’t it? For us it is, but we know that for many people in the world even today, death as a martyr–or witness–is exactly the way to glory.

The disciples believed, as one commentator writes, that the "secret to life was strength and power, rather than vulnerability and love." (David Lose, inthemeantime, 2/23/15) We do to, don’t we? So they–and most people I know–saw Jesus’ miracles as signs of his strength and power, rather than manifestations of love. But when you think about any miracle that Jesus is said to have performed–the many healings, raising a mother’s only son from the dead, casting out demons, even walking across the water to be with the disciples–are they not at root manifestations of love first, rather than displays of power, for power’s sake?

Our culture reinforces the notion that the "secret" or the essence of life is power and strength, rather than vulnerability and love. Advertisements convince us that we are inadequate, not powerful or strong enough, without buying a certain product or service. Of course, "power and strength" are described in terms of wealth, or a certain definition of beauty, or body type, or sex appeal, or success in the workplace, but what all of these are going for is power and strength. We are told in many and varied ways that the way to happiness is to have or buy or be this thing and, oddly, to sacrifice our health and our relationships to get this "thing"–this amount of money or success or celebrity. We might want to notice what that way of life is sometimes called–"the rat race." I’m miserable now, but someday it’s all going to be worth it. Alas, we know that all too often, that someday never arrives, and if it does, it’s never as glorious as we had imagined. There’s always more that we think would make us happy. "For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" Jesus asked. "Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?"

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

If you saw the movie "Selma" or watched last Sunday’s Academy Awards and heard John Legend and Common sing their song, "Glory," you know the kind of glory they’re singing about. In the background is the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, from Selma to Montgomery, full of confrontation and suffering and sacrifice, even death; but we also know, don’t we? that we experience "glory–and, for that matter [as one writer puts it] power and strength and security–in those moments when we surrender our claim to power and strength and security and glory in order to serve others." [Lose, ibid.] The middle and high school class here experience that in their monthly service at the Kitchen Cupboard–it’s dirty and sometimes tedious work, but as they talk about the people who come to the Kitchen Cupboard each week, who find a clean and orderly place prepared for them as they seek to feed themselves and their families– over and over it is this service that the students say is the most meaningful part of their time together.

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." "Each and every time we make ourselves vulnerable to the needs of those around us," as one pastor says, "each time we give ourselves in love to another, each time we get out of our own way and seek not what we want but what the world needs, we come alive, we are uplifted, we experience the glory of God made manifest." [Lose] Have you not experienced that? Do you not know that to be true in your experience as a parent or a partner, when you have responded to the need of another, when you’ve done some random act of kindness or senseless beauty? I hope so. This really is good news.

And this doesn’t mean becoming a doormat to anyone who would walk over you. You do matter; who you are matters. The self Jesus calls us to deny or lose is "our inauthentic, self-interested, narrow, and defensive self," as Bruce Epperly puts it. [Adventurous Lectionary, 3/1/15] We are not to deny our genuine needs or to see ourselves as unworthy of love, respect, and dignity. These are not instructions for the battered wife to simply submit to her abusive husband or for the oppressed to accept their lot in life. "Our compassion," Epperly says, "may lead to greater pain as we identify with the pain of others and sacrifice what once were ‘necessities’ for the greater good of the whole. But the abundant life that emerges is more than we can ask or imagine." (Ibid.)

This passage at the heart of Mark’s gospel is, as David Lose puts it, "the Gospel’s theory of everything–the more we give, the more we receive; the more we seek to be a friend, the more friends we discover; and the more we love, the more we are loved." [Lose, op cit.] Or, as the late Leonard Nimoy, known to many as Mr. Spock, said, "The miracle is this: the more we share, the more we have." Death becomes part of a life of giving and receiving, of mutual accountability and interdependency. The self we give up is the isolated, self-serving, unassailable individual. Intimacy, support, vulnerability, love, and community are the nature of the life we take on. We cannot be our true Selves apart from relationship and community. That is our very nature, created, as we are, in God’s image, which is also essentially relationship and community–that’s what the Trinity is about.

The cross is the location and symbol of God’s commitment to be in intimate relationship with us, in our life and in our death. Take up your cross–take up relationship with God. That relationship is as intimate as the cells of your body, and as we are invited to take and eat the bread, take and eat the wine of this meal, we are invited into an unbreakable relationship with God, a relationship that even death cannot break. This is gospel. This is good news. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God!

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"New Paths!-- Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15-- Feb. 22, 2015

 

Surely you have heard that well-known Lenten song played in stores this time of year–"It’s the most wonderful time of the year..." ! No? Fr. Tom Gaughan of Sacred Heart St. Francis–St. John the Baptist parish has a sign in his office saying, "Happy Lent!" He’s had it since his days of working at Notre Dame University, and he says he still gets e-mails from students at the beginning of the season, wishing him a "Happy Lent."

That may not be your association with this season. Maybe you have memories of enforced fish on Fridays, of somber faces, of hymns only in a minor key, admonitions to give up something you love, be anything but happy. This was not a season of "good news"–after all, it’s the journey to the cross. But let’s not get Jesus on the Cross too soon, and let’s see what "good news," or "gospel," might be found that is deeper than the bad news, more resilient than death, present even amidst the suffering. Maybe we could be less hellbent on sin and death, as one pastor puts it, and more heavenbent on discipleship. (Rachel Hackenberg, CPR webinar)

Mark doesn’t dwell too long with Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. With typical brevity and dispatch, Mark merely tells us that after Jesus had been baptized, "the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." 2 verses. It is the Holy Spirit who sends Jesus out into Satan’s capable hands for testing, and he has the company of the wild beast and angels.

It’s hard not to bring in what we know from other parts of the tradition, from Matthew’s and Luke’s versions, where Jesus is tempted with bread and power and miraculous safety. Mark just says Jesus was tempted, or tested. "At root, [one commentator writes] all temptation is to forget who one is." (Bob Stuhlman, Stories from a Priestly Life, 2/16/15) Since Jesus had just been told by the voice from heaven, "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased," Satan was making sure he knew what that meant–not just a miracle worker, not a political leader whose soul could be bought, not an exceptional human being for whom the laws of nature had no hold. Better to get those out in the open before getting caught up in the demands and adulation of the crowds.

Actually, maybe it’s helpful that Mark just says Jesus was tempted in the wilderness without any further elaboration, because it invites us to imagine not only what Jesus might have been tempted with, but what we are tempted by. I can’t remember the last time I was tempted to turn stone into bread, but I have been tempted to worry more about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me. I find running for public office to hold zero attraction for me, but I have wanted to be in total control of my life. I tend more to back away from high places, without the slightest urge to jump off and fly, but I can spend an inordinate amount of time worrying over the weather and what that will mean for travel plans. And that’s just the beginning of the publicly suitable list of temptations I experience. There are plenty more where they came from, and some definitely not publicly suitable. How about you? There are the easy ones, having to do with chocolate or alcohol or shopping, maybe, but what about that root temptation–to forget who you are? For that matter, how many of us really know who we are in the first place? It’s tempting not to go that deep, isn’t it?

Another writer says that the greatest temptation is to think that God is not present. (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 2/22/15) When we are in pain, when we are afraid, when the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, don’t we ask, "Where is God?" The real temptation is only to see God’s absence or God’s refusal to intervene–God has abandoned me–or forsaken me–which is why Jesus’ cry from the cross cuts through us so sharply. Yes, I know what that’s like. Where was God for those 21 Egyptian Christians beheaded by ISIS on the beach? Where was God when the bombs were flying between Gaza and Israel and the children were crying? Where was God in the Holocaust? On 9/11? Where was God when peaceful protesters were being bludgeoned and kicked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama? Where is God in my depression? Where is God in my loved one’s battle with cancer? The greatest temptation is to think that God is not present.

So this Lent, let us take an honest look at who we are, and who we’ve allowed ourselves to become, not to simply wallow in guilt or regret, but as a way of getting back to our true Selves, or maybe to discover our true Selves for the very first time. Let us take the time of confession seriously, remembering that "confession" means "telling the truth." The written prayer may not reflect exactly who you are or what you have done, but it no doubt tells the truth of something of the human experience. In the silence that follows, sit in the truth of who you are and, perhaps, how you’ve wandered from that truth. That’s not the end of the service, of course, for we are always assured of God’s pardon, always given the chance to begin again, reminded that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God, which we know in Christ Jesus.

And I invite you to take an honest look at who we are as a church, as a community, as a nation, as a planet. I invite you to write on the Joys and Concerns sheet the things in our church or our nation or our world that trouble you, that need to be spoken truly of, that need to be held up to God’s healing light. Our ongoing racial divide, the growing chasm between rich and poor, ISIS, climate change, whatever is out there in which we, as citizens of this community and nation and world, take part in, whether intentionally or not. Let us tell the truth about who we are so that we might also remember who God calls us to be, who we truly are.

After his 40 days in the wilderness, "after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." "Let’s do this thing!" When you think about it, good news might not be the first thing that might be on our lips after we’ve been tempted and tested by Satan. But that was on Jesus’ lips. The gospel is, as one woman put it, "a word from God embarassingly and disturbingly thrust into the present, announcing the gift of freedom in a time of captivity, the gift of peace to a world of conflict, and joy even as the

lamenting continues." [Liz Goodman, Journal for Preachers, Lent 2015]

The systems and structures and myths of our world "so often hold us captive and prevent us from imagining alternatives to their deadly ways," she says, so each week in Lent we’ll hold up those systems and structures and myths to God’s transformative power, "open a space where the new creation can be perceived." (Ibid., p. 10) Jesus emerges from being tempted to forget who he was and putting God to the test, as though God couldn’t be counted on to be present. That is the same old, same old way of the world. What Jesus preached was good news, new paths that lead to real life. "Re-lent," our UCC Lenten devotional books are entitled, and they offer us ways to... Re-lease. Re-form. Re-member. Re-kindle. Re-start. Re-vive. Re-form. Re-bound. Re-open. Re-claim. Re-invent. Re-boot...40 different ways. Let go of what doesn’t serve you or God.

"Give up indifference for Lent," Pope Francis urges us."I have decided to stick with love," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said. "Hate is too great a burden to bear." Give up hate for Lent. "Faith and discipleship look like courage, vitality, humility, community, and hospitality, along with death and sin," a young colleague of mine says. (Rachel Hackenberg, op cit.). "Let us be less hellbent on sin, more heavenbent on discipleship."

So the journey begins. We do not travel alone, and we are not left with only bad news. There is good news in the midst of the struggle. Happy Lent!

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“Epiphanies–So what?”-- Mark 9:2-9-- Feb. 15, 2015

Some weeks seem heavier than others. This week felt heavy, with the exception of a beautiful day on my birthday.

But there was word in the news of the death of Kayla Murray, the 26 year-old aid worker killed in the custody of ISIS, who wanted to serve and to alleviate the suffering of others. There was the tragic killing of 3 Muslim students in Chapel Hill, NC–Deah Shaddy Baraket, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha; and the excruciating re-playing of Yusor’s conversation on StoryCorps with her 3rd grade teacher. How blessed she was to be able to grow up in the United States, she had said. The news business itself had shadows looming over it, not only as Brian Williams confessed to inflating the truth and Jon Stewart, understandably, announced his leaving from the Daily Show; but also the sad deaths of reporter Bob Simon and journalist David Carr. The snow and bitter cold didn’t help either, not only as travel plans were upset but as the homeless struggle for shelter and warmth.

And those were just some of the more public sorrows and heartbreaks. I daresay we might be able to gather up just as long a list of sorrows and disappointments known personally by us or by our friends and acquaintances. Wednesday I turned the age my brother Bob was when he died, just 8 months after he retired from the ministry. I’ve been thinking about him this week. What about you?

So here we are on the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday, we sometimes call it, after the story in our gospel lesson today. “Six days later,” Mark begins his transfiguration story, 6 days after Jesus had told his disciples for the first time that he would be betrayed, rejected, would suffer, be killed, and 3 days later, raised. This mountaintop experience would change the way the disciples saw Jesus, and this epiphany of who he really was– radiant, beloved of God, not bound by death but able to keep company with those who had died–this epiphany would need to sustain them through the heartbreak of those terrible events that he predicted truly would come.

Metamorphothe is the Greek word Mark uses to describe what happened to Jesus. Transfigured, it usually gets translated here and in the other story Mark tells about this mountaintop experience, but in the only 2 other times it’s used in the New Testament, it’s translated, transformed. In Romans 12:2, Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your minds...” And in 2Corinthians 3:18, he writes, “...and all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of God as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” It’s not just something that happens to Jesus. It can happen to any of us. In fact, one commentator notes that “we need transfiguration,” (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 2/15/15) and we long for our own sense of glory, not in the narcissistic sense, but in that deep recognition that that radiance [which is what glory is] is in us as well.

This is a story about change and how we struggle with it, resist it–thus Peter’s blurting out, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Let’s just stay here. This is a story about changing the way we see the world, one another, ourselves, and so transfiguration means exposure, vulnerability. Jesus is utterly lit up. Think of the light over an examining table in your doctor or dentist’s office. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But, as sociologist Brene Brown discovered in her research on shame and vulnerability, vulnerability is “absolutely essential for wholehearted living.” Vulnerability is not weakness, she says, but rather is the most accurate measurement of courage, the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change. Connection is why we’re here, she says, and out of thousands of stories of heartbreak and disconnection, what emerged in her research was that a willingness to be vulnerable was the essential factor for wholehearted living and reconnection. “If we’re going to get back to each other,” Brown says, “vulnerability is the only way.” (TEDx Houston)

Transfiguration, transformation, vulnerability, as opposed to certainty and security, “seem absolutely essential for life and thus for a life of faith,” one Biblical commentator writes. (Lewis, op cit.) “Transfiguration means a new way of seeing the world. And replacing the lenses of our lives is a lot more complicated than picking out new fashionable frames. Because at the heart of the matter is that transfiguration not only signals change, but alters life’s direction.”

Ever since the beginning of January, we’ve been sharing “Epiphany moments” with each other–glimpses of God’s radiance or realm showing forth in the midst of our lives. We’ve heard about the surprising presence of loved ones who have died and yet are still very much present, even guiding us. We’ve heard stories of dreams, stories of connections with co-workers after listening to their grief, stories of seeing our children’s faces in new, fresh ways; and lots of stories of birds and experiences out in nature.

The poet Mary Oliver has spent her life finding epiphanies in nature. “I don’t like buildings,” she told Krista Tippett in a rare interview. “The world [though, meaning, the natural world] is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.” (Onbeing.org, 2/8/15) What do you pay attention to? Oliver asks us. Good question. Paying attention to the possibility of God’s showing forth in the ordinary, everyday events and places of our lives takes the focus off ourselves and puts it on God.

"I go down to the shore in the morning [Oliver writes in the poem of that name] and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall– what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do."

“Attention without feeling is only a report,” Oliver says. “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Another pastor gave her congregation the Lenten assignment of looking for parables, which, as it turns out, are quite a bit like Epiphany moments. “Parable literally means “thrown alongside,” Anna Carter Florence says. As in, boom, now you don’t see it, now you do. One minute you’re just humming along, everything’s normal, and then, without warning, you just collide with some flash of insight, and you know for sure that the kingdom of God has come near and you just saw a piece of it. You don’t know why. You don’t know how. You’re just glad you happened to be paying attention in the moment it broke.” [Journal for Preachers, Lent 2015, p. 3] She goes on to tell her congregation, “When you see something, say something. [That’s the sign that’s all over public transportation stations in big cities.] That’s what being a disciple is about–when you see something, say something.” [Carter, op cit., p. 8] Homeland Security wants us to pay attention to potential danger. The Gospel calls us to pay attention to God, which can also be potentially dangerous!

So maybe this practice of looking for Epiphany moments, or looking for parables, should become one of our Lenten practices as well. Keep looking for signs, for glimpses, that the kingdom of God has come near, is coming near, because if you don’t pay attention to that, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed by all the heartache and heartbreak in the world, all the signs that the worst in human beings and random evil have won the day, that the cold grip of this arctic air mass is a metaphor for the icy hold that fear, insanity, cruelty, and greed have over us. “The only remedy for love,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, the only for love’s inevitable heartache and heartbreak, “is to love more.”

As we move from the season of Epiphany on this Valentine’s Day weekend and move into the season for Lent, let us keep our eyes and ears and hearts and minds open, to glimpses of grace, to signs of God’s kindom drawn near, to the presence of more Love which is the only remedy for heartbreak. And for that heartbreak, here, too, is a blessing--

Jan Richardson, whose images and blessings have been a blessing to me, wrote of finding all the cards and notes she had written to him in her husband’s things, as she gradually, painfully, goes through them after his death last year. After finding a handmade card with a heart on it, she recalls–“Looking at the card now, I think of the nurse’s words just after Gary died. I had placed my hand on his chest and remarked on how strange it was to feel a heartbeat and know it was only my own pulse. ‘His heart beats in you now,’ she said to me.” [http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/02/10] “If you’re living with a broken heart right now, [Jan writes] or know someone who is, this blessing is for you. In the midst of the breaking, may our hearts never cease to open.

"A Blessing for the Brokenhearted( There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thorea)

Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound when every day our waking opens it anew. Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still as if it trusts that its own stubborn and persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless." – Jan Richardson [op cit.]

May it be so. Amen.                                                                     Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Rhythms of Grace"-- Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39--Feb. 8, 2015

 

In these days of the Great 500-year Rummage Sale that the Church is going through, when what isn’t working and needs to be let go of is often clearer than what needs to be held onto and what needs to emerge, there is a lot of hand-wringing and wondering what we in the church are supposed to be doing right now, while "the sale" is going on. I was at a meeting this week where such a conversation took place, and someone remarked, "Boy, you know, as we’re reading the Gospel of Mark now, it seems like Jesus is just preaching and healing, preaching and healing. And people seemed to flock to him. Of course, he had the advantage of being able to actually heal people." We may have the preaching thing down, but the miraculous healing part–not so much maybe.

I’ve been inspired this week by the commentary of Mark Davis, an Episcopal priest and scholar, who writes,

Mark 1:29-39 is a story that poses an enormous problem for me. In this reading, it seems like everyone in sight who is sick or oppressed by demons come to Jesus and he heals them right and left. It all seems instantaneous and complete. The lame walk, the deaf hear, and those who are oppressed by destructive forces are suddenly no longer struggling. The Easter message of the Christian Church is that the spirit of the Risen Christ continues to be present with us today. But, our lame limp, our deaf sign, and those of us who are oppressed by destructive forces cope and seek help. It seems like those stories are either untrue or that if the Spirit of the Risen Christ is present among us–if–then Christ is among us in a way quite different from how the body of the living Christ once walked among us..." [Left Behind and Loving It, 2/1/15]

I am sure that is true–that Christ is among us in a way quite different from how the body of the living Christ – how the body of Jesus– once walked among us. That has been the challenge and problem for the followers of Jesus from the first Good Friday on– how do we continue without him, at least in the way we’d come to know him? That’s why all the Easter stories are different; that’s why they all struggle to describe how they experienced Jesus’ presence after he died. He was really there; but then he wasn’t. We were all locked in that upper room, and then he was there among us. We didn’t recognize him on the road, but then he sat with us at table and broke the bread...and then he was gone.

Neale Donald Wasch, author of the Conversations with God books, transmits this message from an inspired place–"Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That’s what religions must do right now if they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead." [cited by Kate Huey in sermonseeds, 2/8/15] Honor the tradition but expand the understanding.

Make no mistake about it. There are churches where the stories of healing are remark- able, and it’s not just the pentecostal, evangelical type of churches who claim this. Up at Grace Congregational Church in Rutland, the Rev. Bob Boutwell has a healing ministry that he’s been engaged in throughout his entire ministry career. Though now retired from parish ministry, Bob continues his healing ministry in regular healing services at Grace, in which at least one woman has been healed of her cancer. The doctors have no other explanation for it. The Healing Com-mittee of the Vermont Conference, of which Bob has been an important member, continue to present newly ordained and installed pastors with the bottle of healing oil for anointing the sick. Our own Jane Norrie has had a wonderful healing ministry among us, using her gifts of Reiki and listening to be bring comfort and healing.

Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. The story of Jesus’ raising of Peter’s mother-in-law [notice that Peter, the one who became the first bishop of Rome, was married, but that’s a topic for another time] –this story is one of those "troubling stories" as Mark Davis put it. Jesus heals her on the sabbath, first of all, which is only the beginning of his teaching about what the sabbath is for, and he simply takes her by the hand and "raises her up" from her sick bed, where she has been feverish and apparently gravely ill. So simple, yet so profound; and then there’s the note that once the fever left her, "she began to serve them." Some find this troubling too–that she didn’t even have time to recover or rest, but immediately begins to serve Jesus and the men with her.

But Peter’s mother-in-law was the head of this household. Her ministry of hospitality was what she was known for; it gave her dignity and worth. "What if resurrection [–being raised up] is being raised up to be who you always were and were always meant to be?" asks NT scholar Karoline Lewis. What if cooling this woman’s fever was just one aspect of her total healing, which was being restored to her place of belonging in the community? Jesus’ touch and taking her hand was an expression of or metaphor for love and presence, of relationship and intimacy, all of which are essential for real healing to take place. Whether or not any of us have a particular gift of healing, we can all offer the gift of presence, of touch, if it’s appropriate, of relationship. Honor the tradition; expand the understanding.

At sundown, that is, when the sabbath was over, "people brought those who were sick or possessed with demons to Jesus." Mark Davis thinks a better translation is "those who were demonized," that is, those who had been cut off from fully engaging in community. "And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons..." Day of Rest officially over! I imagine this going on late into the night.

And then we are told that while it was still very dark–is that an echo of an Easter morning story?–"while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." This was the necessary in-filling of power and grace for one who had been poured out and emptied the day before. "While it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out a deserted place, and there he prayed." This pattern is what made Marcus Borg, of blessed memory, as someone has put it so well, describe Jesus as a mystic with deep prayer habits. [Davis, ibid.] I wonder, in fact, if our neglect of these "deep prayer habits" is what limits our ability to heal.

Was this time in prayer, out in a deserted place, merely quiet contemplation, or did Jesus wrestle with God as to what he should do, where he should go next, should he set up shop, so to speak, in one place, and let people come to him, or should he keep moving? My guess is it was all of the above. And the guidance Jesus received was that he was to bring his message of God’s power and love to all the towns in Galilee, to all the "gaggles of gathering," as those early synagogues might be called [Davis] , away from the center of purity and holiness in the "Holy City." "Let us go on to the neighboring towns," Jesus told Simon and his companions after they had hunted him down, "so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do."

So what might this mean for those us asking what we are to do in this inbetween time, in this time of evolving and devolving? What would Jesus do in this time? Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. The spirit of the Risen Christ is present among us in a way different from those days before the first Easter; but people are still demonized, still broken or wounded in body, mind, and spirit the way that human beings have always been. Preaching with our words and our lives the good news of God’s love is still our calling. As is healing. But wholeness, as Davis says, "is not measured by physical or psychological perfection, but by connection to human community," any more than it was in Jesus’ day. Those whom Jesus cleansed of leprosy were most importantly restored to their place in community. Peter’s mother-in-law was "raised to do the things that gave her purpose and meaning... The person who carried a sick one to Jesus walked home arm-in-arm with that one. Those are not stories of magic, [Davis contends]; they are stories of human community being healed from the brokeness that sickness, disease, and mental illness can bring." [ibid.]

So we too can offer a place of healing, a place of welcome without regard to age, race, sex, economic condition, disability or sexual orientation, as our Open and Affirming statement says. And remember, that if the spirit of the Risen Christ, the presence of the Living God is truly among us and within us, you may be the only Jesus some people will ever meet. This touching, listening, healing presence is more than a little outside the comfort zone for many of us New Englanders. That may be why New England is the least religious region in the country, unless you consider sports a religion, in which case New England is quite religious. We don’t think we need –let alone want–touching, sharing, listening, healing. We’re just fine, thank you very much. Go, Patriots! Go, Red Sox!

But might it be that there are some in our community – maybe even ourselves--who have been made to feel shame, not for what they’ve done but for who they are? Might it be that there are some in our community–maybe even ourselves–who are weary from the running and working and striving, weary from feeling like they have to do everything by themselves? Might it be that there are some in our community–maybe even ourselves–whose bodies are broken or diseased or worn out and wonder if they are of any value anymore? Might it be that there are some in our community–and our community in Christ extends throughout the world, remember–might it be that there are some who are tired of war and violence and cruelty and ostracism? Is the need for healing any less here and now than it was there and then?

Honor the tradition; expand the understanding. There is preaching and healing still to be done. There is returning to the Source in prayer and meditation for guidance, courage, and renewal. There is "power in being part of a community that acknowledges our weaknesses, our fragility, and our brokeness."[Davis] So that even if we aren’t a center of miraculous healing waters, where piles of discarded crutches and eyeglasses litter the lawn, we might still be part of God’s healing in the world. "When our lame limp, [Mark Davis suggests] we will slow our gait to walk together. When our deaf sign, we will sign back, to communicate. When our oppressed seek help, we will provide space for counseling, for meetings, for ways to live in hope. And for those who are too far gone physically to walk, too far gone mentally to converse, too far gone psychically to engage, we will be gathered at their door, so they will not be alone. That’s healing and wholeness."

Honor the tradition; but expand the understanding. So may we offer healing and hope to a broken and weary world. So may we keep returning to the Source of grace and renewal, both now and in the days to come. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Wow! That’s power!"-- Mark 1:21-28-- Feb. 1, 2015

There is something special and memorable about "your first time." I’m talking, of course, about your first time at a new church, although you may now be thinking about other "first times." Go ahead–I’ll leave you to your memories and fantasies. Catch up with us whenever you can.

My "first time" here at this church was my candidating sermon back on Memorial Day weekend of 1995. I barely remember the sermon, of course, but what I do remember is 2 little girls who made me feel extraordinarily welcome–one was Lauren Beckerman, who, at the age of 10 back then, came up to me and gave me one of her sweet, loving hugs. The other little girl, whose family has long since moved away, came up to me after the service and after the vote, took my hand and pulled me toward Webster Hall. "Come, on. You’d better get in there before all the cookies are gone," she told me. Ah, how right she was!

So we should pay attention to how the four gospel writers describe Jesus’ "first time," how we see him as he begins his ministry. In Matthew, Jesus climbs up a mountain and begins to teach–Jesus is teacher and new law-giver. In Luke, he goes to his home synagogue, reads from the scroll of Isaiah about God’s spirit being upon him to preach good news to the poor and oppressed–and Luke’s Jesus continues to lift up the poor, has women in his ministry circles. Jesus’ first public appearance in John’s Gospel has him changing lots of water into wine at a wedding feast. He brings abundance. He is the gateway to God.

And here in Mark, Jesus begins his public ministry with confrontation. He is a boundary breaker, as one commentator writes [Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org, 1/25/15] The heavens are torn apart at his baptism, breaking through the boundary of heaven and earth; he breaks the boundaries between clean and unclean as he exorcises the demon from the man who appears in the synagogue; he will even break the boundary of death, going to all those places where God is not expected to be.

So, here in the very first chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum, and the people remark about the "authority" with which he preaches, not like the scribes. The scribes had "authority" of their own, by means of their position, their credentials; but the authority of this "newbie" rabbi was different. An unjust judge or public official can have authority, by means of their office. A police officer has a certain authority, with the expectation that his or her orders will be obeyed. But there is another kind of "authority" that anyone can have. It has to do with the root of that word–"author." "The simplest, poorest person in the world," writes one woman, "can speak with a different kind of authority if they embody wisdom and integrity that others find compelling." (Kate Huey, sermonseeds, 2/1/15) Who is the "author" of your words or actions? Is it from your truest self, or are you trying to borrow someone else’s "authority"? It’s the same root as the word "authentic."

"They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority; and not as the scribes."

"Just then there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." In this place that’s supposed to be so "holy," so "clean," there (already) was a man with an unclean spirit. People sometimes say, "Oh, I’m afraid the walls would cave in if I entered the church," as though only "the perfect" go to church. Dare I point out that you and I are here within these walls, and other than that explosion back in the ‘60's, the walls haven’t caved in. People sometimes accuse us churchgoers for being hypocritical because we don’t always do what we say we believe. That may be true, but that is precisely why we need to gather with other folks struggling to line up their actions with their beliefs. "Just then in the synagogue, in the church, there was a man, there was a woman–or two or three or a hundred–with an unclean spirit."

So Jesus is confronted, first thing, with a man with–or "in"–an unclean spirit. I give thanks that it was a couple of little girls and not a demon who confronted me when I first came to this church! Nonetheless, as Bruce Epperly points out, this "unclean spirit" is more perceptive than the synagogue crowd in recognizing who Jesus is. [processandfaith.org. 2/1/15] "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God."

John Pilch says that our ancestors in faith believed spirits were more powerful than humans but not as powerful as God. [Cultural World of Jesus, Year B] This story, then, shows that Jesus has more power than ordinary human beings. We have more control over our lives and more power to effect change in them than did our ancestors, and so we are likely to dismiss stories of demons and spirits as irrelevant to our modern lives, a primitive way of explaining mental illness or epilepsy. But is that really true? We may not speak of them as "demons," but are there not forces that too often we seem to be at the mercy of ? The first of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous states that "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol." Demon Rum is what the prohibitionists used to call it. We are the most in debt, obese, addicted , and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history, sociologist Brene Brown reports.(TEDx Talk, Houston) Dianne Bergant talks about "demons of dysfunction and sin, ...of mistaken expectations that we find ourselves caught up in before we know it." (Cited by Huey, op cit.) In his book Engaging the Powers, the late Walter Wink wrote of ours as a society that is possessed by violence, by sex, by money, by drugs. You might want to test that out as you watch the Super Bowl this evening.

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Mark Davis translates this passage, "Just then there was in their synagogue a man in an unclean spirit, and it squawked out..." [Left Behind and Loving It, 1/26/15) He refers to a recent NY Times article by Johann Kari entitled, "The Likely Cause of Addiction...and It’s Not What We Thought." The "likely cause," the article claims, appears not to be simply chemical dependency, but rather the need for connection. It’s a fascinating article worth reading, but one of the things it does is separate persons with addictions from their addictions. "It’s not you," the author says. "It’s your cage."

So this man is in the cage of unclean spirit which squawked at Jesus. "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? ...I know who you are." This mix of us and I, plural and singular, gives a sense of the complexity of mental illness and addiction. Was the spirit afraid of being destroyed or hopeful of being healed? Neither mental illness nor addiction are outside God’s loving touch and healing.

Pseudo-Dionysius, writing in the late 5^th to early 6^th centuries, said that the demons come from their source as Good. However, he wrote, "They are evil insofar as they have fallen away from the virtues proper to them. They have changed in the domain of what was permanent in them. A weakness has appeared in the angelic perfection suitable to them." "He could be writing about me," Episcopal priest and author Suzanne Guthrie wrote last week. He could be writing about any of us.

I know that some of you find our prayers of confession to be needlessly remorseful and oftentimes not true to your reality. Amen. AND (not "but," AND) it is important that we check in every now and then to see if we, like those 6^th c. demons, have "fallen away from the virtues" that were given to us, have distorted what is inherently good in us, have wandered off the path toward our true selves that was set before us. How else will we be authentic?

Thomas Merton wrote about the early Desert Fathers and Mothers in the 4^th and 5^th centuries–

What the Fathers [and Mothers]sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion in ‘the world’....The simple men [and women] who lived their lives out to a good old age among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves....We cannot do exactly as they did, but we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the dominion of alien compulsions, and to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God." [The Wisdom of the Desert]

Jesus has been in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, being tested, honing who he really is–where his true authority lies and who his authentic self really is. He begins his public ministry here in Mark with a confrontation, which he can only survive if he stays grounded in the truth of who he is, and which will set the tone for the whole rest of his ministry. He "comes to oppose all those forces that keep the children of God from the abundant life God desires for all us, David Lose points out (inthemeantime, 2/1/15).

What forces keep you from the abundant life God desires for you? What is keeping you from being authentic, with your own authority? What are the demons that possess you, or at least flit around in your head suggesting any number of distortedly truthful things? Anger? Fear? Workaholism? Substance abuse? Peer pressure? Affluenza, thinking that having all sorts of material things will bring you happiness? "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us...or to heal us?" Is the demon searching for the Author of his life?

The image of Jesus as exorcist [writes Rita Nakashima Brock] is someone who has experienced his own demons...The temptation stories point to the image of a wounded healer, to an image of one who by his own experience understands vulnerability and internalized oppression. In having recovered their own hearts, healers have some understanding of the suffering of others.

Naming the demons means knowing the demons....The Gospels imply that anyone who exorcizes cannot be a stranger to demons...To have faced our demons is never to forget their power to hurt and never to forget the power to heal that lies in touching brokenheartedness.... Jesus hears, below the demon noises, an anguished cry for deliverance. Through...mutual touching, community is co-created as a continuing, liberating, redemptive reality." [in Imaging the Word, Vol. 3, p. 130]

"Our God is a God of the needy," someone else has said, "and our church is a fellowship of the needy...What it takes is for you to recognize your deep need and trust that God [in Jesus] is able to meet it." That was where the power of Jesus resided–in his own deep need and trust in God, the Author of his–and our-- life. If we are to follow him, that’s not a bad place to start.

So come, as if it were the first time, come to the table. In bread broken and shared, in the cup poured out and emptied, we are made whole and given new life. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Mary's notice for Benn Banner

Come, Seek, Pray, Learn..

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” wrote the great poet and author Maya Angelou. At Second Congregational Church, on this last Sunday in June, 2 weeks after the killings in Charleston, SC, Rev. Mary Lee-Clark will reflect on our response to that tragedy and the long-standing wounds of our nation, in her sermon entitled, “The Caged Bird.” Worship begins at 10 a.m., and all people of faith or in search of faith are welcome. Scripture readings include King David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel and two healing stories from Mark’s gospel. New members will be received.

Second Congregational Church is an Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ. We welcome all to our work and worship, without regard to age, race, economic condition, disability, or sexual orientation. Our building is located at 115 Hillside St. and is wheelchair-accessible. Nursery care is provided. For further information, call the church office at 442-2559.

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"Now?!"- Psalm 62:5-12, Mark 1:14-20-- Jan. 25, 2015

There are some things that you have to respond to immediately–a fire alarm, for example, a tornado alert, labor pains coming 2 minutes apart. As one mom reported, "My son was born 10 weeks early. I hadn’t even finished What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Hey, I hadn’t even taken any childbirth classes." But "immediately," she and her husband called the doctor, and her son was born not too long after.

Mark launches into Jesus’ ministry "immediately"–no pause to talk about his birth or growing up, just 8 quick verses to introduce us to John the Baptist and then Jesus appears on the scene to be baptized. "And [then] immediately the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness." Jesus returns from that wilderness testing just after John is arrested, and Jesus takes up John’s message, "proclaiming the good news of God and saying , ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’"

Jesus walks along the shoreline and, seeing Simon and Andrew casting their fishing nets, calls them to follow him and become fishers of people. "And immediately, [Mark says] they left their nets and followed him." Same thing with James and John–"Immediately he called them; and they left their father and the hired men and followed him."

"Mark begins like an alarm clock," Ted Smith comments, "persistently declaring the time and demanding some response." (Cited by Kate Huey in weekly seeds, 1/25/15) "God is on the march in the ministry of Jesus," another remarks (William Abraham, in Huey) and as usual, Eugene Peterson sums it up bluntly with "Time’s up!" (The Message) The time is now.

It’s tempting to focus on the response of the fishermen. On one level, it sounds like "The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers"–"IMMEDIATELY THEY DROPPED THEIR NETS AND FOLLOWED HIM," eyes glazed, bodies stiff, their movements not their own. Bruce Epperly suggests that Jesus had spent time with these fishermen, talking with them, telling them about this Kingdom of God that was present with him, and this was simply "the right time," when he asked for their decision. [Process and Faith, 1/25/15] That happens to us, doesn’t it? Someone proposes something to you, plants a seed, the germ of an idea, which then you think about, mull over, and at some point–at "the right time"–you know you’re going to do it, it’s the right thing to do, now is the time.

But Barbara Brown Taylor says that focusing on the disciples’ response is putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. (Cited in Huey) The focus, she suggests, should be not on the disciples’ action but on God’s action. God has the power to change lives. This isn’t a story about our power to change. Jesus doesn’t ask the fishermen to add one more thing to their busy lives. He gives them a new identity, a new way of being. They will still be fishing, but in a whole new way.

One wonders if our "call" from God isn’t simply being more fully who we really are but perhaps in a whole new way. Maybe you are a math teacher, but your "call" may be to teach much more than math. Maybe it’s to teach kids how to be whole human beings, their true selves, working as whole beings the way that mathematics –which you love--works as a whole. Or maybe you run a business–a photography business, say–and yes, to stay in business you have to sell pictures but maybe your call is to help people see in a whole new way, to discover beauty in surprising places, maybe even within themselves. "Follow me and I will make you fishers of people." "Follow me and I will make you teachers of wisdom, revealers of beauty, patrons of children, healers of souls."

What would make you drop everything to take up a new life? A marriage proposal? A job offer? An invitation to travel? A crisis halfway around the world, like an earthquake in Haiti or the Ebola crisis? I have such huge respect for those doctors and medical personnel who have put their careers on hold to offer 3 months–or more–of service at great risk to their own health to fight the Ebola epidemic. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so physically uprooting. One writer asks, "What might be so compelling to invite you to leave what you know and venture out in quest of, and in service to, something new?" [David Lose, working preacher.org] He wonders if just such a question might shed light on why our churches are in decline here in the west.

The 2 causes most often cited for that decline in church attendance, he says, are 1. the move from an age of duty to an age of discretion. People no longer see church attendance as a "duty" they are obligated to, but rather have many choices to help them make sense of and get the most out of life. And the second reason is, he says, that "many [would-be]church-goers haven’t found the Christian narrative a particularly helpful lens through which to view and make sense of their lives." And that’s mainly because we haven’t communicated that narrative or story in a way that’s helpful or compelling. "So what if we decided," he asks, "to talk about what would make the time we spend together on Sundays more compelling? What would church need to look like to make it worth their time? How can our congregational life enable them to become the kind of people they want to be and, even more, believe God is calling them to be?" Whereas many of us are looking for "comfortable," and have found "comfortable" in this place, others are looking for compelling, a call that is worthy of their lives. [Greg Carey, Huffington Post, 3/19/12] Serving on a committee or listening to an interesting talk or having coffee with nice people is not compelling.

Bruce Epperly puts Jesus’ invitation this way– "Will you follow me into the realm of uncertainty, with no guarantee of success, or will you settle for familiarity and security? There are risks in following me, but the promise is that you will have many adventures and discover more about yourself and God than you could ever imagine." [Ibid.] Now that’s compelling. How do we translate that into the life of our church?

We’ve been sharing "epiphany moments" with each other this month, but maybe we’ve been too tame about that. Karoline Lewis, a professor at Luther Seminary, defines an epiphany as "an immediate and meaningful understanding of something. Surprising. Sudden. Profound... There is nothing comfortable about epiphanies. They rock your world." (workingpreacher.org, 1/18/15) Not, "Hmmmm, that’s interesting," but rather, "Yikes! There you are. What will you do now?" Maybe we should add a second part to our Epiphany moments–maybe after describing the moment we could offer a sense of how it changed us or our understanding. (We’ll see if anyone dares to offer an Epiphany Moment next week!)

"For God alone my soul waits in silence," the psalmist says in today’s psalm. For God alone. Can you imagine that kind of longing? That readiness to respond? That clarity about what is really important in your life? Can we imagine as a church being that hungry, that "leaned in" to listen for and discern God’s call to our congregation? "Faith is being grasped by Being-itself," Paul Tillich wrote. Are we ready to be grasped?

"Follow me," Jesus said to Simon and his brother Andrew. "Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John...mending their nets. Immediately he called them; and they left...and followed him." They thought they were just going to work that day. They thought they’d have the usual conversation with their father. But in a moment, a

moment that was not a minute but was the fullness of time, their lives were changed, and they were made new, all while they were mending their nets ...

This is how Andrew King imagines it ["Mending Their Nets"]--

It is a day that could be like any other.

The water is calm in the morning light

as the gulls thread the air with their singing.

The sun is warm on the backs of their necks

as the fishermen bend to their mending.

The blunted points of their wooden needles

float in, float out of the webbing –

create a loop, pinch with finger and thumb,

thread the needle through and then around again,

tighten the knot, pick up the next mesh –

callused hands repeating the operation

that has been handed down, fathers to sons,

from generation to generation.

The net’s hole rapidly closes. Conversation

weaves in, weaves out while they’re working,

returning often to talk of a preacher

whose words have set their hopes rising,

the hopes handed down like the knowledge

in their hands, woven into the fabric of living.

The wind is warm on the cheeks of his face

as the preacher comes near with his message.

The world is torn, there is brokenness of heart,

there are wounds everywhere in creation.

But the preacher has news, good news of change:

that God’s healing love is accessible,

and he knows this good news can mend the torn world,

can be threaded into every heart’s beating.

Now the preacher is calling them, calling their names,

calling them to take up new labour,

calling them to see, with the vision of hope,

people gathered in newness of community,

one they will help build, like a great catch of fish,

abundant with fresh possibility.

The water is calm in the morning light

and the gulls continue their singing.

The sun is warm on the backs of their necks

as the fishermen join Christ in his mending.

It is a day that is not – and yet could be – like any other . . .[A Poetic Kind of Place, 2015]

May we be awake to that kind of day when we are called to be part of this great vision of hope, people gathered in newness of community, which we will help build,...abundant with fresh possibility. It could be today.

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Coming Up at Second Congregational Church

Coming Up:

Saturday, May 16 - and Sunday, May 17 Plant sale, together with instructions on how to make good black earth by composting (good for your garden and the environment)
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Sunday, May 17
- after worship - Members of the Pastoral Relations Committee, Next Level Task Force, or Administrative Council will be available in the Clayton Room for one-on-one conversations about the proposal. There will be another open meeting in the sanctuary on Sunday, May 24th, and on Sunday, May 31st, there will be a congregational meeting to vote on the proposal.
- Spring Meeting of the Southwest Association in Wallingford will celebrate Wallingford Congregational Church’s reception into the United Church of Christ.
5 pm Sunday Supper
7 pm Bible conversation at the Lee-Clarks'
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Wednesday, May 20, 10:30 a.m. – From Age-in to Sage-ing, Part 2. We’ll spend 2 more weeks finishing up discussion of this book. Join us in this discussion of how we can contribute to the future of our families, our communities, our earth. In the Clayton Room.
Drive to the upper rear parking lot and see our finished SOLAR PANELS. They are all hooked up and will soon be ready to use.
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Members of our church made, collected and assembled 309 School Kits, 107 Hygiene Kits and 41 Baby Kits. These weighed 886 lbs. and have a money value of $ 6976 and processing fees of $ 914. A mammoth job well done! The Church World Service truck will pick up the kits on Monday.
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Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 9:30am - 35 minute DVD-led exercise with group in Room 6 or 2
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BIRTHDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS: If you would like your or your child(ren)'s birthday and/or turning age printed in the announcements, please write your name and/or birth year on the appropriate date on the 2015 calendar hanging by the office door.
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The choir needs a Metronome needed for music practice. If anyone has one they would like to pass on, it would be greatly appreciated.
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Healing Pathways Ministry - From now until June, Jane Norrie is offering educational workshops on demand to help folks of all ages and stages explore the fascinating realm of energy wisdom. If you wish to host a workshop in your home or to attend one, contact Jane at (802) 780-8405. A minimum of 3 and maximum of 5 participants will join in learning about our energy circulatory systems and practice ways to keep mental, emotional, physical and spiritual selves in wholesome shape. Average workshop lasts about 2 hours. Members, friends and anyone from our wider community are welcome to attend. There is no charge but you are invited to offer donations to the Deacons' Fund.
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"Hearing Voices"-- Genesis 1:1-5, Mark 1: 4-11-- Jan. 11, 2015

 

Here we are just two and a half weeks after Christmas, and the Baby Jesus is already a grown man. Mark cuts to the chase even more quickly in his gospel, bypassing any story or even mention of Jesus’ birth, and begins his account of the "Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" with John the baptizer appearing in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It is here, on a river bank, that we first meet the man, Jesus. He has come with the "people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem," to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.

You’ve got to wonder what drew all those people out into the desert to see this wild man, wrapped in camel’s hair, subsisting on locusts and wild honey, shouting about the need for turning your life around, getting it back on track to where God wants you to go. Here was a man who lived "off the grid," we might say. But clearly he was a man intoxicated with God, convinced that God was furious with the way things were currently going, and positive that God had something– someone-- in the wings, waiting to sweep in with fiery passion, to purify and set things right, to usher in a way of living that would please God.

There are times and places when such a "wild one" is very appealing–times when things seem utterly out of control, or calcified with sameness, places that are so full of excess and tawdriness that radical simplicity and necessity seem like a welcome relief. I think that longing is behind many of our New Year’s resolutions–after the feasting and partying and accumulating piles of "stuff," we long for paring down, for cutting back on food and drink, for getting up and moving, for clearing out, for simplifying. Cheryl Strayed’s book "Wild," now made into a movie, illustrates such a longing. After too long a time of poor choices and being out of control, walking the Pacific Coast Trail alone appears to be just the cleansing, testing path she needs to take. John, like the camels whose skin he wore, represented that long, arduous trek, the "long, difficult miles in which we heal," as someone has put it. (Nancy Rockwell, bite in the apple, 1/5/15)

The Temple and its elaborate structure and rituals and priesthood claimed to be the only way to God, the only way to forgiveness, but it also was incestuously intertwined with the Roman occupation. John’s wild and crazy call to a baptism of repentance sounded strangely clear and pure. And so the crowds from the whole Judean countryside and from all of Jerusalem were going out to him, and along with the crowds came Jesus.

"The human imagination is consumed with images of water," Frank Yamada writes (cited by Kate Huey in weekly seeds, 1/11/15). And it’s no wonder–our bodies are primarily made up of water. We live in the waters of our mothers’ wombs for 9 months before we are born. We can survive longer without food than we can without water. Water cleanses, purifies, gives birth, destroys; and our biblical heritage reflects that obsession with water, beginning at the beginning–when God’s Spirit hovers over the face of the waters, the deep, the tahom. The stories of Noah and the Exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea carry on the theme; and the waters of baptism are no less primal and important.

This baptism of John’s in the River Jordan was about as far away from the sweet, relatively dry, sterile, and contained infant baptism that we are used to...just about as far away as John in his camelhair loincloth and locust-encrusted teeth is from me, or most other ministers you know. Though it is dangerously dried up now, the Jordan River then was a muddy, rolling body of water full of history. It was the boundary that the Israelites crossed over from their wilderness journey from slavery into freedom in the Promised Land. It was the site of the prophet Elijah’s ascent into heaven in a chariot of fire, as his prophetic mantle was passed on to Elisha. The Jordan was a place of transition and succession, pregnant with possibilities. (Alistair Roberts, "Politics of the Individual," 1/5/15)

John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins–a call to return from the exile you’ve imposed upon yourself, the exile you’ve experienced from God. The Greek root of the word for repentance means to "go beyond the mind you have." John’s call to repentance comes to us too, across the years and miles. Go beyond the conventional notions you have about God, about church. Be baptized, or, remember your baptism.

It was to this river bank and to this baptism that Jesus came. Mark’s description of the baptism is typically short, but hardly sweet, in just 3 verses–

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

The heavens didn’t merely "open"–they were "torn apart." The only other time Mark

uses this word is toward the end of his gospel, when he says that the curtain in the Temple was "torn apart" when Jesus died. No soft, diffuse stream of light doing "the God thing" from the sky here. And someone has described the Holy Spirit as a "dive-bombing dove," who would shortly drive Jesus further out into the wilderness. (Elton Brown, cited by Huey, op cit.) Jesus is the only one who saw any of this, according to Mark, but it’s not clear if others heard The Voice–"You are my Beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." Was it a loud, booming, masculine voice, or more gentle, like the bat qol, or "daughter of a voice, the echo by which God speaks into a world that no longer hears God’s voice," as Richard Swanson describes it. (Ibid.) What do you think God’s voice sounds like? Do you expect it to knock you over, or do you need to be attentive, still, to perceive it?

Do you–do we-- even listen for God’s voice? What voices do you listen to? I am occasionally struck by the number of different voices that are carrying on conversations inside me, and, yes, I’m an introvert, by that I do not mean to suggest that with a prescription or two from a psychiatrist something can be done about those voices. I’m talking about the voices of my parents, say, which I still hear as a pretty grown-up child–voices that remind me that my shoes could use a little shining, or those dishes need to put away, or, "You know, the lazy way is really to put those things away the first time, so you don’t have to go back a second time," or "Who do you think you are?" I don’t know–does anyone else hear their parents’ voices inside their heads? I particularly love it when I hear my parents’ voices coming out of my mouth when I’m speaking to my own children.

But there are other voices that we hear and often pay way too much attention to–voices that may say, "you’re so stupid... lazy... a waste of space...." "You’ll never be successful." "You’re not good enough....pretty enough... smart enough.... athletic enough...rich enough." "You’re too old...too young...too fat...too skinny." "You’re not worthy of being loved. Nobody will ever love you...." The voices of shame.

Which is why this baptism of Jesus–why our baptism–is so important. Whether booming or a whisper, the voice at Jesus’– and our–baptism says, "You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter. With you I am well pleased." This is who you are. Beloved. This is who you are, Jesus,–God’s Beloved-- as this same, dive-bombing Spirit will drive you further out into the wilderness in the very next verse, to be tested and tempted, to hone your identity before you begin your public ministry. This is who you are, children of God, –God’s Beloved--as that same Spirit compels us out into the world, into our homes, our places of work, our relationships, our activities. This is who you are, Second Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Bennington, –God’s Beloved--, as God troubles the waters, as God’s Holy Spirit hovers over the chaos and mess and violence of our world.

Nancy Rockwell describes John’s river ritual as a "drowning to the old self and rising into a new self that is now brother/sister to all ethnic groups, races and nations, even breaking the forbidden boundaries of gender and class." [bite in the apple, 1/5/15] This baptism is a dying and being resurrected into a new self, into a brand new day, that will have its own challenges and trials, but also its own joys and arrivings. This baptism, this renewal, this fresh start into the abundant life of Christ that God intends for all of us is available to each of us, either through baptism for the first time or a renewal and remembrance of our own baptisms. The bowl from the baptismal font will be in the back of the sanctuary for you to dip your hands in –or maybe wash your face in--as you go out this morning.

But I also believe that we as a congregation are called to this baptism, this renewal, this fresh start into the abundant life of Christ that God intends for us, because there are people dying out there to hear the Good News that they are beloved of God. "On an average day in the United States, 9 churches close their doors for good." [Angie Mabry-Nauta, The Christian Century, Jan. 7, 2015, p. 22] 9 churches a day. I am certain that none of them began with that in mind, and most likely, none of them before maybe 10 years ago thought this would ever happen to them. But we would be foolish to think it could never happen to us. We would be foolish to listen to the voices that say, "We’ve never done it that way." or "We’ve always done it this way." or "That makes me uncomfortable." or "I don’t know anybody who does that." To listen to those voices instead of the voice of the One who calls us into the troubled waters, the One who calls us to let go of notions and ways of being that no longer serve God or God’s people, that no longer bring to birth, to listen to those other voices is to lead us into exile.

We’ve been toying with the idea of a new name for our congregation–not just "Second" anything, but something new–"Hope United Church of Christ," someone has suggested, although there is another smaller, fundamentalist congregation here in Bennington that has taken Hope for its name. What about, New Day United Church of Christ, with the slogan borrowed from another progressive church, "You can change the world from here"? There’s even a great choral piece, recorded by the King Singers, called, "You are the new day," which I love. That’s not really the point. I’m sure together we can come up with a name that more accurately describes what we wish to be about; what we are called to be about. But be about it we must be. And soon.

Think about your own, new beginning that God can bring about, no matter what your age; and think about the new beginning that God can bring about for our church as you listen to this blessing for a New Beginning by the Irish philosopher and poet, John O’Donohue–

For a New Beginning

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
~john o Donohue~

John O'Donohue
Source: To Bless the Space Between Us

May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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