"Passing Through Deep Waters"-- Isaiah 43:1-2, 16-21, John 12:1-8-- March 17, 2013

The big ecclesiastical news this week, of course, was the election of a new pope– Habemus papam! And this pope from a new part of the world chose a new name for himself, new at least for popes–Francis, recalling the saint who lived in solidarity with the poor and the creatures of the earth. That is a hopeful sign, I think, and from what I’ve been able to tell from reports about the new pope’s words and actions this week, as well as from reports of his tenure as Archbishop in Buenos Aires, I am hopeful that he will be able to reach across the growing chasm between rich and poor and to bring the Vatican into a place of more integrity, at least in regards to its finances. I do not expect married priests or same-gender marriages or women priests in the Roman Catholic Church anytime soon, but I wish our brother Francis well. He will need all the wisdom, strength, and compassion from God he can get.

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old," God says through the prophet Isaiah. "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" Isaiah was prophet in the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon some 2500 years ago, but these words ring down through the centuries to us today in the church–the United Church of Christ as well as the Roman Catholic Church. "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says of these verses that they are "that most remarkable of all texts, that we should not speak until we decide if we trust it." (Cited by Kate Huey in Weekly Seeds, 3/17/13) For such a prolific scholar to single this text out as "most remarkable of all texts" should give us pause. "We should not speak [it] until we decide if we trust it." Do we?

Isaiah has indeed remembered the former things–God’s bringing the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and through the waters of the Red Sea, leaving horse and chariot, army and warrior to drown. God formed this ragtag bunch of former slaves into a people, marked by God’s love. God led them safely through the deep waters across the Jordan River, into the Promised Land. And now here in the exile, where their souls have been wounded, cut off from home and culture, they have almost forgotten who they are. [This, by the way, is why most of what we know of Hebrew scriptures–the Torah, the law–was pulled together and written down during the exile–so that all the generations wouldn’t forget who they were, and Whose they were.] Here in Babylon, it was all too easy to buy into the values of the culture around them, to worship the gods whose images and temples were all around them, whose customs reinforced another way of living.

But here is God, not only promising to make a way through the desert back home, but to "do a new thing." Don’t even remember the former days, of glory or of judgment, God says. Even now the new "thing" is springing forth-- do you not perceive it?–new things like making rivers in the desert, infusing all creation so that the jackals and ostriches pay God homage.

"Let go of the past and its pain," God says to Israel. How about that for a Lenten discipline? "Let go of the past and its pain." (Margaret Aymer, cited in Huey, op cit.) Might you do that in your family? Might we do that as a nation? Move on from the pain and humiliation and anger from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and even entertain the possibility of looking at the world through a different lens? "Do not remember the former things," says God. "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" What former things in your life might you let go of, and what new thing might god be doing in your life?

And what about in church? For some of us, the "former things" were packed sanctuaries almost every Sunday (and absolutely on Christmas and Easter), overflowing Sunday Schools, people vying for positions on the Church Council. But we are getting farther and farther away from those times. We look around and see fewer families with young children and more and more, admittedly remarkable, gray-heads. What’s happening to our committees and boards? Who’s going to chair the Snowball Bazaar? John C. Holbert suggests, "We are like those who define madness; we do the same things again and again and expect different results." (Patheos, 2/10/13)

....Which is why, of course, we are in the process of "re-thinking church." How can we let go of the past, while still honoring it, and truly be open to the new thing God is doing? For it is God who will do it. It’s tempting to think that it’s simply a matter of our coming up with the right set of by-laws, of creating a structure that will revitalize us, but Brueggemann reminds us that this newness is not something we can generate ourselves. We can only receive it. (Ibid.) God is doing this new thing. In some sense, we just need to get out of God’s–and our own–way.

So there is no need for fear. God has been with us when we’ve passed through deep waters before, when we’ve wandered in the wilderness, even when we’ve tried to turn our backs on God, God has not abandoned us. Bruce Epperly [Adventurous Lectionary, 3/17/13] reminds us that there’s a reason the rearview mirror in our cars is smaller than the front windshield. We need to be facing forward, not backward. We need to be opening ourselves up to God’s guidance, taking the time to listen, to discern, to trust, to welcome God’s "new thing" that even now is springing forth.

Dare we speak this text–"Behold, I am doing a new thing." Have we decided that we trust it? Or, as someone has asked, "Have we practiced a meager economy of expectations?" (Huey, op cit.) What about great expectations?! Again, Brueggemann tells us–"Biblical faith is geared to the future. It moves always to God’s coming miracle that pushes past old treasured miracles and old suffered judgments." God is with us, not only in the glory days of the past, but also in our present, and in an utterly new future. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Youth Group Potato Brunch, March 17,2013

The Youth Group baked and then prepared potatoes for the congregation on Sunday morning, March 17th.  The brunch included a salad, potato with choice of toppings, dessert and drinks.

Everyone was very pleased with the food and the service.  Due to the generosity of the congregation, enough funds were raised to send two teams to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bennington Bowl a Thon.

Please click the "Find Us on FaceBook" link at the bottom of this page to view the full album of the days events.

 

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"So Spacious..."-- Luke 15:1-3, 11-32-- March 10, 2013

Martin Copenhaver tells the story of two old friends who "meet in the park. Upon seeing each other they don't say a word. They sit on a park bench in silence for the longest time. Then one finally breaks the silence by saying, ‘Oy.’ The other responds, ‘Oy.’ To which the first replies, ‘Well, enough about the children."’ We may not know the details, [Martin adds] but we know this: family relationships are perhaps the most challenging of all." (God is still speaking, 3/9/13)

Where to start – or end – with this rich, well-known and well-loved parable that has come to be known as the Story of the Prodigal Son? It’s not a helpful title, really, as the word "prodigal" doesn’t appear anywhere in it, and if prodigal means "extravagantly wasteful" or "profusely giving,"as the dictionary says, it could apply to both the father and the younger son. And then there’s the elder brother, who-- an argument could be made–the parable is really about. "A man had two sons" would probably be the best way to refer to this story, as it leaves open all the possibilities.

The choir anthem told about the inner story–the story of the younger son and his father. It’s the heart-warming part of the story–the rebellious, younger son, feeling stifled and constrained at home, with wanderlust in his bones, asks his father for his portion of the inheritance. By rights, the first-born son would get 2/3 of his father’s estate, leaving one-third to be distributed to the remaining children. But to ask for one’s inheritance while the father is still alive is to say, in essence, "Father, I wish you were dead." Right there the young man has broken the commandment to "Honor your mother and your father."

Furthermore, the law also says,

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all of the men of the town shall stone him to death. So shall you purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear, and be afraid."

(Deut. 21:18-21)

Those listening to Jesus tell this story would not have identified at all with the father, but would have thought of him, as one commentator suggests, as "stupidly lax to pamper his immoral son." (Stan Duncan, If You Lived Here..., 3/7/13)

But the younger son is an American hero, isn’t he? "Go west, young man!" we encourage him. Make a name for yourself. See the world. Drink the finest wines, see the sights, gather your rosebuds while ye may...

But his story is also the American story...of thinking that money can buy happiness, that the more thrilling experiences I can wrack up–make sure I complete my bucket list–I will be happy. If I just consume enough–stuff, food, drugs, alcohol, success, power–I’ll be great, I’ll be happy. I’m entitled to the freedom to do what I want–without responsibility to anyone else. Alas, ending up slopping pigs is also too frequently where this American dream ends. All that "stuff" doesn’t buy us happiness. Instead of "finding"ourselves, we discover that we have lost ourselves. Not only do we find that we are starving for food that truly nourishes us, we find that we are starving for relationships that nourish us, for work that is meaningful and humane, for a way to get through the day that doesn’t involve a bottle or a pill. "When he came to himself," is how Jesus describes the younger brother’s realization. He came to himself.

Patriarchs did not run. It was not a dignified or honorable thing to do, to lift up the bottom of one’s robe to free up the feet, to move one’s aged body more quickly than it had moved in years, let alone to do all that to rush down the road to greet one’s good-for-nothing son. The townspeople would have come out to witness this errant, shameful boy drag himself with his tail between his legs and grovel in the dirt before his father, but this father runs through the gauntlet himself to greet and embrace his son. "Quickly, bring out a robe–the best one–and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" Talk about prodigal–"extravagantly wasteful," "profusely giving"!

All of that, it could be said–this whole inner story–is just a set up for what happens next. You’ll recall that David read the beginning of this chapter, the comments that prompted this story in the first place–"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes, the reverends and the good people of the church, were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable...."

If the younger son’s story is the American dream gone bad, the elder brother’s story is the established church’s sorrow and challenge. Of course we love the stories of people who’ve been "redeemed," who have found themselves, by the grace of God, and turned their lives around. That is the story of some of you sitting here. "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!"–written by a redeemed slave trader. It’s a story told over and over in testimonies in storefront churches, at AA meetings, in prisons, in support groups. We want to be part of that story–maybe part of helping people to find themselves, providing space in our buildings for meetings, wearing our t-shirts–"Second Congregational Church–Changing lives since 1865".

But how many of us are the elder brother or sister, not able to hear these stories of transformation without pursing our lips, just a little bit? How many of us are the elder brother or sister–the obedient, faithful ones who’ve been keeping the building open, who’ve sat in more meetings than there are hairs left on our heads, who look upon all the drama with more than a little skepticism and, may I confess? more than a little judgment? "It must be nice,..." we mutter as the story of journeys to exciting-sounding places unfold. "Yeah, while you were sipping bordeaux, I was pouring grape juice into tiny little cups." "Nobody knows half the things I’ve done for this church, while you get your face on the front page of the newspaper as part of a great ‘turn-around story.’"

How many of us elder brother and sister types find that we too have ended up in a "far country," estranged from joy, estranged from our best selves, estranged from those who would love us as we are, let alone estranged from any kind of a loving God?

Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who works in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and is the founder of Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries works with and hires gang members, teaches them skills, provides them with therapists, gives them hope, blesses them, loves them. Last Sunday morning he was on Christa Tippett’s public radio program, "On Being," and if you missed it, I urge you to listen to it or read the manuscript at onbeing.org, or read Fr. Boyle’s book "Tattooes on the Heart."

"The measure of our compassion," Fr. Boyle said, "lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship. [Here we go–family again!] So that means the decided movement towards awe and giant steps away from judgment." The decided movement towards awe and giant steps away from judgment. "So how can we seek really a compassion that can stand in awe at what people have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it?" That, Fr. Boyle says, is the measure of health of any community, church community or otherwise. When we take the time to really listen to people’s stories, to allow them to unfold in our presence, it has certainly been my experience that I am more often than not in awe of how much people are carrying around, and you’d never guess.

"If you presume [Fr. Boyle said] that God is compassionate, lovingkindness [and that’s a big IF–do you?], all we’re asked to do in the world is be in the world who God is." As Christa Tippett remarked, "But that’s huge!" To which Father Boyle replied, "Yeah, so you’re trying to imitate the kind of God you believe in. You want to move away from whatever is tiny-spirited and judgmental...you want to be as spacious as you can be [so] that you can have room for stuff and love is all there is and love is all you are, you know. And [he said] you want people to recognize the truth of who they are, that they’re exactly what God had in mind when God made them." He went on to say, "Alice Miller, who’s the late great child psychologist, talked about [how] we’re called to be enlightened witnesses...people who through your kindness and tenderness and focused attempt of love return people to themselves and in the process, you’re returned to yourself, you know." "And when he came to himself..."

Fr. Boyle then told the story of Louie, an exasperating, whiny, difficult kid who "works" for Homeboy Industries, "though work may be too strong a verb," Fr. Boyle says. On Louie’s 18^th birthday, he came to Fr. Boyle’s office and asked him for a blessing, as many of the homeboys and homegirls do. "Hey, G [Greg]–give me a bless, yeah?" they say. "Hey, G–give me a bless, yeah?" Louie asked. So, Father Boyle put his hand on Louie’s bowed head and said, "You know, Louie, I’m proud to know you. When you were born, you know, the world became a better place and I’m proud to call you my son, even though–and I don’t know why I decided to add this part–at times you can be a huge pain in the [butt].’ and he looks up at me and says, ‘The feeling’s mutual.’ And, you know [Fr. Boyle said] you’re not sort of this delivery system,...but maybe I return him to himself. But there is no doubt that he returned me to myself."

So spacious. God is so spacious, so vast, so "great and wild," as the poet Hafiz says. So prodigal. Always greater than we can imagine. "Whenever you land on a God who’s tiny or judgmental or exacting or concerned with some kind of purity code," as Fr. Boyle says, this sense of God as spacious and vast and always greater "sort of blows it wide open and knowing that there’s a need to have this blown wide open all the time."

Where do we begin and where do we end mining the depths of this brilliant, amazingly rich story of the father and his two sons that Jesus told? We are not told what happens next–whether the younger brother returned to being manipulative and selfish after he got some of that fatted calf in his stomach, or whether the elder brother ever came in to the party, or whether the father ever had his honor restored in the village. We don’t know. We can only choose the next steps in our story, whether or not we will come home, to who we are and Whose we are. But, what I know for sure is, there is a party going on.

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Tales of a Life- Changing Foursome by Jane Norrie

Jane Norrie has been a member of Second Congregational Church since 1977.  Her late husband was a UCC Pastor and Jane’s life work has included medical office management, technical support, as well as 15 years of experience as a therapeutic equine assisted activities instructor and director of the Ride and Shine Special Equestrians Program in Shaftsbury, VT.  Now retired, Jane continues to be active as a mentor for aspiring equine therapy professionals and as a coordinator of healing ministry activities at Second Congregational Church.

 

TALES OF A LIFE-CHANGING FOURSOME

 

Everyone loves a story, and my story today is in four chapters about four life-changing events in my life since 1977 – all of them associated with members of  our Second Congregational church family.  It was very difficult to limit myself to only four chapters, as many, many wonderful people and events flooded me with memories.  It’s a good thing I had Tom Steffen as my sermon writing coach as he is very good at insisting on staying within a 15 minute time limit.  Left to my own devices I might have gone on for at least an hour!

 

To set some historical context, we might take note that there was a somewhat revolutionary movement toward de-institutionalizing Brandon State Training School and placing its former residents within local communities near their families of origin.  In the early spring of l977 my husband David, recently semi-retired from parish pastorate due to health problems, received a phone call from Vermont State Conference Minister Charles Chamberlain informing us that UCS in Bennington was recruiting group home staff for a community care home for developmentally disabled adults transferring from Brandon.  Charles thought we might be interested in applying for this position.  We did apply and were hired to begin work on preparing a house at 215 Union St. to receive 7 residents, all young adults, 5 of whom had spent most of their life in Brandon State Training School.

Of course we immediately transferred our church membership to Second Congregational and were more or less settled into our new position just in time to celebrate the Bicentennial of the Battle of Bennington with the greatest ever Battle Day Weekend parade and all the fixin’s!  A short time thereafter enter Tom and Nancy Jean Steffen for chapter one of the life-changing foursome.

 

The stresses of our 24/7 residential staff position soon proved to be overwhelming for David.  In the early winter of 1977 he was admitted to Putnam Memorial Hospital’s ICU with gastrointestinal bleeding.  When I went to visit him early in the morning of his first hospital day I found him in a state of delirium, in 4-point restraints, unable to recognize me.  His nurse was handing me a telephone and telling me that Dr. Guerrero was on the line to speak with me.  I was on the verge of going to pieces when someone came up behind me, put his arm around my shoulders, took the phone and started speaking  with the doctor on my behalf.  That someone was Tom Steffen.  Later when I asked Tom what he was doing at the hospital so early in the day he told me he just “had a feeling” that he ought to go visit David.  I am very glad he listened to that inner guidance and came to my rescue, not only ministering to David’s and my spiritual needs but also insisting that I take time off from the residential job and stay at the parsonage for a few days until David’s health stabilized and we could see our way clear to re-adjusting our living situation in Bennington.  Tom and Nancy Jean’s hospitality was like a harbor in a storm for me.  While I was given respite in their home I also came to know Nancy Jean as a role model of a pastor’s wife like none I had ever known before, seeing her in action as a successful business owner in her own right as well as wife, mother and faithful leader in church life.

 

This was not to be the last time that Tom and Nancy Jean would come to my rescue as over the next ten years I learned to cope with being the main wage earner and caregiver to my husband who became increasingly disabled by severe heart disease and diabetes. David died in November, 1987, just 2 days before our 26^th wedding anniversary, at what had by then become Southwestern Vermont Medical Center’s new West Wing ICU.   Tom was there waiting for me when the staff asked me to leave David’s bedside as they began cardiac resuscitation.  Again Tom supported me as Dr. Guerrero told us that David had never regained consciousness.  And yet again Tom and Nancy Jean opened their home, now having moved to Margaret Lane, to me, my family and friends who came to attend David’s memorial service.  In the years since then both Nancy Jean and Tom have helped me to find out who I was as a pastor’s widow and ultimately who I am as a single woman, a person who continually learns and grows and who is very different from the young woman who moved to Bennington in 1977.

 

Chapter two of four tells of an influential woman by the name of Claire Santway.  Since 1977 Claire and I have become dear friends, perhaps even to be described as what Celtic tradition calls “anam cara” – soul friends.  Claire gave me a love of Yoga practice which she facilitated for a few of us in her sunny living room.  An especially important message for me would come through when, after guiding us in practice of several poses, Claire would tell us to lie still on our back for a few minutes to “relax and absorb the benefits”.  How often even now I need to remind myself to relax in order to absorb the benefits for my well-being which are offered in many surprising ways.  Even more important, however, is that Claire was the very first person to tell me about Reiki energy therapy and to demonstrate its benefits as a hands on healing modality which she learned through attunement to Reiki level I. This took place in the mid 1980’s at a gathering in a Manhattan city apartment where Claire’s teacher was a Reiki Master just one generation removed from Japanese Dr. Usui who promulgated a method of Reiki practice which has since spread throughout the world.  Eventually that introduction provided by Claire led me to use of Reiki for relief of  multiple sclerosis symptoms in my own body, and after a few years to my initiation as a Reiki Teaching Master as a student of Nancy Edwards here in Bennington.

 

Third chapter in historical progression tells of the family of David McMullen and Desmond Clohossey who moved from Staten Island to Bennington around 1987. They were attracted to Second Congregational and soon became active members.  They were men of varied talents- gardening, music, carpentry, home decorating to name a few.  Desmond was almost totally deaf so of course he and Dave were fluent in American Sign Language.  They lived in the neighborhood of the farm where I boarded my horse – a wonderful thoroughbred named Calypso Kid.  Desmond loved the horses, dogs, cats and other  animals at the farm and wanted to learn horseback riding.  So in exchange for sign language lessons I gave him riding lessons.  He learned to ride a whole lot faster than I learned how to sign!  In the course of our friendship both Dave and Desmond taught me many life lessons.  One of the most outstanding for me was a new way of understanding the KISS slogan which was popular at the time.  Keep it simple, stupid was the common usage, but Dave taught me to change that to “Keep it simple, sweetheart”, insisting that one should never call oneself stupid.  Many’s the time this turn of phrase has helped me deal gently with myself in difficult circumstances.  So it was that Desmond became my first equine assisted therapy student and Dave became another dear friend of the Celtic anam-cara sort.  You may have guessed by now that Dave and Desmond were homosexual partners.  It was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and while they lived their lives with us they helped our congregation work through the process of becoming Vermont’s first Open and Affirming congregation.  Towards the end of his life Desmond still came to visit Calypso Kid, now unable to ride but still loving to touch and groom The Kid and to delight in the fact that he could hear the barking of  Jesse the Golden Retriever who came to play fetch the stick.  Dave’s last lessons to me and others in a circle of caring friends from 2CC were about how to provide end of life hospice care when hospice care was still a rudimentary idea to most folks.  As many of you know, I went on to become a professional in equine assisted therapy programs, and of course I still often remember Dave when I tell myself to keep it simple sweetheart.

 

KISS may also stand for keep it short sweetheart.  Thus I have arrived at my fourth of the life-changing foursome – Estelle Bennett Atwood.  In a way she ties together my beginning years in Bennington with my present life because it was her legacy which made it possible for UCS to open the Atwood Center for Services to Developmentally Disabled Adults.  Many of the folks whom I first knew when they moved into the community from Brandon State Training School are today served by the Atwood Center Programs which make it possible for them to live up to their highest potential in the community.  It has been a joy and a privilege for me to remain connected with this population in several ways over the years and to see amazing changes in their lives as they have learned to hold jobs, to live independently and find great satisfaction in life through the mentoring and social skills development programs available through the Atwood Center.  I remember Estelle as an amazing woman who was a stalwart of our congregation and legend has it that she was still going to the gym to pump iron well up into her 70’s.  I in particular thank God for Estelle’s wisdom, compassion and generosity which inspired her to endow the Atwood Center as a place where special people find safe haven to discover and nurture the goodness within each one.

 

I rejoice in the imagery from Rev. 22 of the beautiful river flowing from the throne of God with the Tree of Life growing on its banks – the tree which bears fruit for 12 months of the year – the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, for the healing of people.  As with many stories, mine has a prologue in which I was a horse crazy kid, my dog at my side or (best yet!) trail riding on horseback.  Even then I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and somehow I did know about the reality of healing touch.  My epilogue is yet to be but I’m sure it will be strongly influenced by the amazing place that is Second Congregational Church, Bennington, Vermont.  You as a congregation have given me formal affirmation to pursue healing ministry.  You support me in adventures of learning about dowsing, labyrinths, healing with sound (oh my!).  You pull me back to being reasonably well balanced when I’m on the brink of becoming wild-eyed revolutionary activist.  Now I live cautiously in the world of internet communication and I sometimes fear that with all our social media we have opened a Pandora’s box the contents of which is way beyond control.  With the development of the Hadron Collider and discovery of the Higgs-Bosson particle I fear we may be in danger, like Icarus, of flying too clos to the sun and falling back into the sea of chaos.  Yet God is in that Higgs-Bosson particle and God seeks a wholesome, holy and healing relationship with all creatures, with all creation.  I am a Vermonter by choice, sure that there are saints and angels hovering round to help guide us into ways of living wisdom.  So always I strive to rejoice in the words of Psalm 121 – “The Lord will protect you from all danger; He will keep you safe.  He will protect you as you come and go, now and forever.”  Amen.

 

Message shared in worship.

Scripture- Psalm 121 and Revelation 22:1-6

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"Come to the table"-- Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9-- March 3, 2013

Some of you may know that I was born in Oklahoma, but because we moved from there when I was 3, my memories of that time and place are pretty limited, just sensory memories mainly– primarily that of being carried down into the backyard storm cellar to escape from tornados, and the smell of melting tar from the streets on hot summer days. Beyond those very early years, I’ve never been back to the southwest, though would love to sometime, but I marvel at the almost unbelievable temperatures that get reported from there in the summer–well over 100 degrees for days and days. "It’s a dry heat," some explain, but it’s still hot, and recent years of drought have only worsened the situation.

I understand that there are signs now throughout Grand Canyon National Park that say, "Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not." Stop! Take a break from snapping pictures or taking videos. You could be eating dust before you know it if you don’t drink some water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not.

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters [reads the sign in the wilderness of exile]; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live."

Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not. Do you know that you are thirsty? Have you been laboring for that which does not satisfy–working more and enjoying it less? Spending your time and money on that which doesn’t deeply nourish you? In the midst of a national and global climate that is obsessed with scarcity and debt, marked by rancor and frustration, this invitation through the prophet Isaiah sounds like sweet music or perhaps, as our rampant cynicism might say, "too good to be true." "Buy wine and milk without money and without price?" How good can that wine or milk be? And who’s giving it away? What’s in it for them?

UCC pastor Kate Huey wonders whether we are "settled so comfortably into a routine and worldview that keep us busy and distracted that we’ve lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can’t name those feelings on our own." (Weekly Seeds, 3/3/13) Have you noticed how hungry and thirsty and homesick you are?

Last Sunday’s magazine section of the NY Times featured a cover story about the processed food industry and how it has researched, engineered, and invested in producing food and drink "products"that we are literally addicted to. "I feel so sorry for the public," said a former chief scientist for Frito-Lay. We don’t stand a chance as our palates become accustomed to and then crave the sugar, fat, and salt these items contain. Cheetos, as it turns out, "is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure," one food scientist said, and then focused on "the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. ‘It’s called vanishing caloric density,’ [he] said. ‘If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it...you can just keep eating it forever.’" (NY Times Magazine, 2/24/13, p. 47) I don’t know about you, but I’m salivating a little right now. Let’s hope there are Cheetos on the food table for Sunday Social. "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters..." Isaiah issues an invitation from One who loves us, who offers us what we most deeply yearn for, though we may have become distracted with sugar, fat, and salt, let alone home improvement shows, or the latest exercise kick, or yet another health concern, or a car or home repair, or, or.... Come to the table, he calls, set with a rich feast of food and drink that satisfies our deepest hunger and thirst. Come home, to a community of love and meaning, committed to making the world a better place, to being a blessing to ourselves, our neighbors, near and far. It’s an invitation to stop, drink water. You are thirsty whether you realize it or not.

Jesus said the same thing essentially, when some people told him about recent disasters in which a number of people had been killed. Were they worse sinners or offenders than others? they implied, but Jesus dismissed that line of arguing and said, "No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." In other words, Stop. Drink water. You are thirsty whether you realize it or not. Disasters happen to the good and the bad, can happen to any of us. To focus on them–and it’s hard not to, since we are fed a steady diet in our 24-7 news cycle–to focus on one disaster after another and all the bad news is to become fearful, hopeless, and uncertain. You will always be tossed about, able only to react to whatever comes along.

The important point, Jesus said, is to orient your life toward the source of Real Life, the source of living water, the source of the feast that satisfies our deepest hunger. That’s what "repent" means–re-orient your life toward God. Rather than blaming God for disasters as punishment, know that you can experience God in the midst of hardship and suffering, an ever-present help in times of trouble, as the psalmist says.

These practices along the way, these "disciplines," if you will, that we’ve been looking at and perhaps trying during this season of Lent, are meant to help us orient our lives toward God– building reminders into your environment to remind you of the sacred in the midst of the ordinary–a candle, a bowl of salt on the coffee table, perhaps, reminding you that you are to be the saltiness of the earth, not just consume salt; daily prayer–whether simply noticing your breath and taking the time to breathe deeply, or longer periods of sitting or moving meditation; being aware of our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit and so tending to them, through exercise and healthy eating and rest. These are ways to practice everyday, when things are humming along, and when things screech to a halt, or we are thrown for a loop by illness or disaster or death, we have some handholds, or footholds, or soulholds to hang on to, keeping us centered in our true center.

Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not. Isaiah and Jesus call us away from wanderings and distractions not because they are to be condemned but because they ultimately do not get us anywhere, they’re unsatisfying, except for the briefest of times– "vanishing caloric density" in all sorts of ways.

Come to the table, they invite us. Come eat and drink food and wine that is infinitely satisfying and nourishing, come and experience community. The church, in whatever form it finally or even transitionally takes, is centered around the table. What if we as a church community not only provided and served the food for the 4^th Sunday of the month’s Sunday Supper, but also came and filled out the community around the tables? (Don’t worry, Tom. We’d help with setting up the tables.) Come to the table. Come to this table. This is the bread of life and the cup of blessing. All are invited. Let us keep the feast. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Wed., Feb. 27, 2013--For "Speaking of Religion," Bennington Banner, March 2, 2013 — This I (Don’t) Believe

A while back, National Public Radio sponsored a series of reflections entitled, "This I Believe," in which people from a variety of walks of life spoke and wrote about what they trust in, "what they know for sure," as Oprah puts it, what they have concluded is true from their experience of living. These reflections were less a series of statements like, "I believe that...the world is round,...Pluto should be called a ‘planet,’...blondes have more fun...." but rather, "I believe in...the power of kindness to transform ... the necessity of expanding our notion of ‘family,’....the importance of immersing children in nature... " In other words, "belief" less as an assent to a list of facts or declarations or propositions, and more as "trust in" conclusions drawn from experiences, a deeply-held sense or knowledge or intuition that seems to hold true.

Many people seem to think that Christianity is a set of "beliefs"–that it is a matter of saying "yes" to a series of statements of doctrine–"I believe this, this, and this... and if I believe this, this, and this, I am guaranteed to go to heaven." THIS I DON’T BELIEVE. While creeds and doctrines can be useful to teach about and try to put into words that which is essentially beyond words, I do not believe that they are the end or purpose of faith. If people’s lives are not tranformed by their faith, if their "beliefs" do not make a difference in how they live, then the words may be beautiful but inadequate. The United Church of Christ, of which Second Congregational Church is a member church, proclaims that, while we affirm the historic creeds, it is the task of every generation to articulate its own "statement of faith" that has meaning and power for its day and age. "God is still speaking," we say. "Preach the gospel always. If necessary, use words."

Christianity, from its very beginnings, has been a diverse and multi-voiced religion–that’s why there are four gospels instead of one. That is as true today as it ever was, despite what many people think when they hear the word "Christian." Frankly, I do not even recognize some of what gets labeled "Christian" as anything I know about what it means to be a follower of Jesus the Christ. When Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist folk from Kansas demonstrate at funerals of soldiers or gunned-down Newtown children with signs saying, "God hates [homosexuals]," "This is punishment for America’s sins," "Burn in hell," it’s all I can do not to want to return their evil with evil. But that, of course, would not be following the Way of Jesus. When, as was reported in this paper a couple weeks ago, the Newtown, CT Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor offered the benediction at the interfaith service for the slain children and teachers there, he was reprimanded by his church leaders for appearing to condone the doctrinal differences between the participating faith communities, and he apologized. That is at the opposite end of the spectrum from my United Church of Christ–and many other mainline Christian denominations–who seek whenever possible to work and witness together for justice and compassion with other people of faith. Our local Greater Bennington Interfaith Council and the Greater Bennington Interfaith Community Services are examples of people of faith working together to make our little part of the world a better place.

I do not believe that Jesus was only interested in the kingdom of heaven as a future, after-death, reality, but rather in the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, that he said "is in your midst," "it’s coming and now is." I do not believe that science threatens faith; rather, it is a different language seeking to understand the mystery. As Rabbi Harold Kushner said, "I take the Bible too seriously to take it literally." I believe the Bible is a collection of writings by inspired human beings, that speak of truths better spoken of in story, metaphor, poetry, and whose light and truth shine through the filter of particular contexts of time and place. We as a community of faith need to wrestle with what is light and truth and what is filter. Some people may conclude that because I do not believe these things (or because I do), that I am not a "real" Christian.

Many people assume that a Christian is "someone who believes that faith is primarily a belief system mediated by an infallible Bible. The reward for believing the right things is forgiveness of sins and certain knowledge of eternal life." Rev. Robin Meyers (a UCC pastor), in his book The Underground Church, explains that that may describe a "religious conservative," but there are also "religious liberals, [and many folks in between] who believe that faith is primarily about the transformation of self and society through the wisdom of spiritual truth. Liberals emphasize inclusion, social justice, and transformation over individual salvation, and resist all exclusive religious claims." I would simply beg to let that word "Christian" breathe and be embodied in lives rather only in words. It means–and has always meant–more than one "party line."

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Pastor, Second Congregational Church, UCC, Bennington

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"I’m going on anyway..." --Gen. 15:1-12,17-18, Luke 13:31-35-- Feb. 24, 2013

There is a small chapel on one of the hills overlooking Jerusalem which, tradition says, is on the spot where Jesus wept over the city. The wall behind the altar is made of glass, and so there is a beautiful view of the city. On the front of the altar, one observer writes, is the image of a rooster, "a bright, fierce-looking bird made out of colored tiles with a flock of little chicks under his wings." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, "Chicken and Foxes," P. 124)

Now, a rooster has spikes and talons–you do not want to get in a fight with a rooster–though some people apparently love to watch cock fights. Hens can be pretty fierce too–that’s where we get the term "henpecked," after all–but a hen’s main defense is fluffing herself up, pecking, and getting in the way of a fox who is after her chicks. By literally offering her body to the attacker, she can hope to satisfy his hunger with her large body so that he will leave her chicks alone.

"Get away from here," some Pharisees warned Jesus as he headed toward Jerusalem, "for Herod wants to kill you." "Go and tell that fox for me," Jesus replied, "...that I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem," he cried, "the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" "How do you like that image of God?" one preacher asks. "If you are like me [she says] it is fine in terms of comfort, but in terms of protection, it leaves something to be desired." (BBT, Ibid., p. 125)

"I’d turn back if I wuz you," the Cowardly Lion reads on the sign as he, Dorothy, Scarecrow & Tin Man enter the enchanted forest surrounding the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle. Sounds like a good idea to him, to all of them, really, but they lock arms and press forward. "Get away from here," some Pharisees warned Jesus as he headed toward Jerusalem, "for Herod wants to kill you." Wings outstretched, breast exposed, is the most vulnerable position, but Mother Hen Jesus presses on toward Herod the Fox.

Like the prophets before him, Jesus takes the path of most resistance, telling us not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. (Robin Meyers, The Underground Church, p. 113) Courage and commitment are our only defenses, but love is a fierce defensive weapon, stronger than death, as it turns out, though it never looks it at the time. Who would draw that conclusion from the cross? Who would draw that conclusion from the bodies piled up before the lines of British soldiers in Gandhi’s famous salt march? Who would draw that conclusion from the bullet-riddled bodies of children and teachers lying on classroom and hallway floors in Newtown, CT? Who would draw that conclusion as the fox licks his lips and picks a feather out of his paws? Love is stronger than death?

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it?" Don’t you think Jesus is still weeping over Jerusalem, and Washington, and Baghdad, and Kabul? "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing?"

"Most of our churches are friendly, comfortable, and well appointed," writes Rev. Robin Meyers, author of the book a number of us are reading this Lent–The Underground Church. "But who goes there expecting to be ‘undone’? Who expects to weep at recognizing the world as it really is, or to shudder at the certain knowledge that until we start taking risks it is likely to stay that way?" (P. 4) We are warned not to mix religion and politics, but who does not weep at the deadly foolishness that is being engineered in Washington? We’re all madly driving off a cliff, indiscriminately taking everyone we can with us–men, women, and children, young, old, everybody’s in this Sequester Bus–giving new meaning to the wisdom that an eye for an eye eventually makes the whole world blind. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Washington, Washington, city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you!" Who wouldn’t weep?

What’s a would-be follower of Jesus to do? If "I’d turn back if I wuz you" isn’t an option, what is? At the very least, it seems to me, every one of us can pray for our leaders in Washington and in Montpelier. While that may sound like something of a cop-out, a religious trifle, you may not have allowed yourself to be immersed in prayer enough. When we lift someone up into the powerful, even searing, presence of God and simply turn them over to God’s care and attention, praying that they be open to divine wisdom and direction and healing rather than directing God to have them vote "yay" or "nay" on some particular piece of legislation, we unleash a power that is far beyond our imagination or manipulation. And, by the way, this is not an entirely "safe" option–we may find ourselves caught up in the force of this power, and might even find that we need to contact our legislator, to express our views and opinions. And then we might find that we want to join with others working toward a new vision of the common good, either here in our community or maybe on a national or even international level. You just never know where a little prayer is going to lead you, so watch out for this second "Practice for the Way" whose candle we lit this morning. Courage and commitment may be our only defenses but daring greatly for Love is mighty armor indeed, as Paul referred to the "whole armor of God."

"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." "I’d turn back if I wuz you." We may wish that Jesus had chosen a mother lion or bear instead of a mother hen to describe God’s love and protection. We may wish that God hadn’t chosen a cross as a symbol of the extent to which God would go to save us and stay in solidarity with us through every evil and heartache and struggle and suffering life throws at us. But we know that sometimes love requires that we keep going on anyway.

What fox are you facing? Is it a relationship that you know will kill you–or at least sap all the life out of you? Is it illness or anxiety? Is it a person at work who makes your life miserable? Is it your own self-image that is eating you away from the inside? "I may be knocked down now," the southern expression goes, " but I’m goin’ on anyway. I may be scared out of my mind, but I’m goin’ on anyway... I’m goin’ on, because there is One who goes on with me. Jesus may have had to walk that lonesome valley all by himself, but we don’t have to. God has walked every valley we’ve been through and is with us now. Tears may be in both our eyes, but I feel his elbow locked in mine, I feel her strong wing gathering me in. The cross is not the end of the story. That’s just the first day. But the cross can give us courage and strength nonetheless. Hear this poem by Roger Courtney, entitled, "I am standing before the cross"--

I am standing before the cross in all its brutality

and feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

Why could the church not have a nice

life-affirming symbol instead of a cross?

Something to remind us to love each other and

that love will always triumph in the end.

But perhaps that would be just too easy.

Perhaps we need reminding

that to love unconditionally often comes at a cost

when we cross the barriers of prejudice and exclusion

that society puts up to separate us from the poor and despised,

from our traditional enemies;

when we truly stand up for what is right

we too may be rejected and ridiculed.

The cross reminds us that love has no boundaries, no limitations.

We must keep loving, regardless of the consequences.

The cross is not a symbol of defeat

but a symbol of the victory of unconditional selfless love

which should support and inspire us to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

(Roger Courtney, on progressivechristianity.org)

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it?...How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing?" It gives a whole new meaning to the word "chicken," doesn’t it? Let us be on our way, or rather, "the Way." Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Wandering in the Wilderness" --Deut. 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13-- Feb. 17, 2013

As Bruce and I both have turned 61 in these couple of weeks, we are obviously firmly in the midst of the generation called "Baby Boomers"–the largest though, arguably not the greatest, of currently living generations. You have us to thank for the impending onslaught on Social Security and Medicare resources, but I learned in the last couple of weeks that we are also responsible for giving the travel industry the demand for "glamping" vacations. Glamping is the marriage of camping and glamour. "Luxury camping" is another way of putting it.

Boomers, it seems, want to get back to nature as we did back in the ‘60's–backpacking, camping, hitchhiking,...but now that we’re older, we don’t want to give up any of the amenities that have come to define our lives. We want to have wireless connections in the Serengeti, so we can keep in touch with our family and business associates. We want to have hot tubs in our "tents," which, by the way, are not your father’s–or your–old pup tents. These are platform constructions with queen-sized beds and indoor plumbing. We want to travel in Airstream campers that cushion the ride and have surround-sound stereo systems. (NY Times, Feb. 3, 2013, Travel, "We’re All Boomers Now") Ah, the wilderness experience....

That may be the kind of journey through Lent we’d also prefer–not your parents’ or even your Lenten experience, of eating fish on Fridays, wearing ashes on your forehead, endless confession and sackcloth, the whole thing fairly morose and depressing. Amen to giving up the morose and depressing part, but can we give up anything? Can we clear out any space in our lives and in our days to simply be with ourselves and God? Is it possible to pack and carry what is essential on our backs, without having a whole van and entourage following along behind? Can we spend any time considering who we’ve become and who we are becoming? Is there any way we could allow the wilderness to just be, well, the wilderness?

"In many cultures, there is an ancient custom of giving one-tenth of each year’s income to some holy use" (frederickbuechner.com, First Sunday in Lent)–in other words, a tithe. Our reading from Deuteronomy this morning describes one such offering of "first fruits," to be offered to the priest; and when the priest takes the basket of the offering and sets it down at the altar of God, the Israelite was to say, "A wandering Aramean was my father [or ancestor]," referring to Jacob, who went down into Egypt to escape the famine in his own land. These are instructions for when the Israelites have settled in the Promised Land, a "land flowing with milk and honey," "which [the text says]the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess." The tension, of course, comes between claiming the land as their own, despite all the people who already lived there– AND being reminded that "a wandering Aramean was my father," utterly at the mercy of God and strangers, and receiving this new land as a gift from God whose land it actually is. This tension vibrates today in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"40 years" wandering in the wilderness is the time it took the Hebrews to figure out who they were, where their strength came from, and where they were going. Jesus spent "40 days" in the wilderness figuring out who he was, what it meant to be the Beloved Child of God, as the voice at his baptism had told him, what it meant to be Jesus. "The church [writes Samuel Wells] marks Lent to discover in Whose strength it stands." (Journal for Preachers, Lent 2013, p. 12) 40 days is approximately a tenth of the days of the year, so we offer it for "some holy use," a tithe, if you will, given to the Source of our being.

The readings for this first Sunday in Lent are a "meditation (Walter Brueggemann tells us) on the primal human question: Who will make us safe?" (Sojourners, Feb. 2010) Deuteronomy talks about how God rescued the Hebrew people from slavery and oppression in Egypt; Psalm 91(the psalm for the day) proclaims, "Because you had made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent..." And then the verses that we hear in Jesus’ conversation with Satan–"For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone." The Epistle lesson from Romans 10 says that "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." I am certain that Paul was not thinking of this confession as a kind of magical formula, but again, it goes to the heart of that primal human question, Who will make us safe? Who will "save" us? So, 1)God provides for us, says Deuteronomy, 2)God protects us on our journey, the psalmist declares, 3)God saves us, confesses Paul. Those are the three tests put to Jesus in the wilderness. "Lent," Brueggemann writes, "is a time to sort out and refuse the other offers [for security] and to embrace the only reliable gift of well-being. Imagine choosing God or Jesus rather than money, control, or power–the usual seductions in our society." (Ibid.)

Beyond the giving up of chocolate, or eating fish on Fridays, and burying the Alleluias, these 40 days of Lent are an opportunity to ask ourselves, "What does it mean to be you?" Frederick Buechner offers some helpful suggestions for questions to ponder during these 6 weeks, one for each week, if you choose–

1. "If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?

2. "When you look at your face in the mirro, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

3. "If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in 25 words or less? [Remember our imagining of the gospel in 7 words?]

4. "Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

5. "Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

6. "If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

Buechner suggests that in the process of contemplating these questions, you might come to a clearer sense of who you are, who you are becoming, and who you are failing to become. (Whistling in the Dark, cited on frederickbuechner.com, op cit.)

The pattern of Lent–this paring down, this self-examination and deeper self-knowledge, this giving up and pondering what is worth giving ourselves to, even dying for–is the image of God’s giving up of everything to "have" us, if you will, to let us know how much we are loved, to show us the depth of the Ground of our Being, to use Paul Tillich’s phrase. "Lent is a time for setting things aside, (Sam Wells writes), even good things, to desire only God." (Wells, JP, pp. 10-11) I sometimes think that’s the ultimate lesson of our lives–to come to set things aside, even good things, like our possessions, our accomplishments, finally even our loved ones and our bodies, to desire only God, and then God folds us into that Great Love. Lent lets us practice letting go.

Belden C. Lane has written a book with a remarkable title–The Solace of Fierce Landscapes–Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. I confess that I am intrigued and terrified by it. But listen to this passage in which Lane talks about the true gift–the true "solace," if you will–of "fierce landscapes"--

...Ever distrustful of grace, I assent more readily to being destroyed than to being loved. It’s too much to presume that I might be the object of God’s deepest longing, profoundly loved by that which frightens me most. Why am I drawn to desert and mountain fierceness? What impels me to its unmitigated honesty, its dreadful capacity to strip bare, its long, compelling silence? It’s the frail hope that in finding myself brought to the edge–to the macabre, stone-silent edge of death itself–I may hear a word whispered in its loneliness. The word is ‘love,’ spoken pointedly and undeniably to me. It may have been uttered many times in the past, but I’m fully able to hear it only in that silence. (Cited in

An Almanac for the Soul, Marv and Nancy Hiles, p. 47)

40 days–or 40 years–seems like such a long time. Have you ever tried praying for 40 minutes? It seems like an eternity. It could be longer, it could be shorter, it means "as long as it takes"–as long as it takes for us as a church to figure out what we are here for and who we are here for; as long as it takes for us to shape our lives into some Christ-shaped vessel so that divinity may become flesh in our humanity; as long as it takes for us to figure out who we are and Whose we are. As long as it takes. Let us begin the journey together.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Transfigured–for real or Real?"-- Exodus 34:29-35, Luke 9:28-36-- Feb. 10, 2013

"Dr. Eben Alexander was a highly accomplished and widely published neurosurgeon who didn’t consider himself religious. He attended church on Christmas and Easter, but his real religion was empirical science. He describes himself as a "friendly skeptic."

In Nov. 2008, Alexander was admitted to a Lynchburg, VA hospital with "excruciating back pain," and slipped into a coma, which lasted for 7 days.

At the end of those 7 days, he opened his eyes and thrashed around in bed. After the doctor removed his ventilator, Alexander took his first unassisted breath in a week, calmed down, and then said, ‘thank you.’ Looking around the room at his family and doctors, he smiled and said, ‘All is well. Don’t worry, all is well.’"(Dan Clendenin, Journey with Jesus, 2/3/13)

Alexander had had an extremely rare form of meningitis, and during his coma "his brain’s neocortex had shut down. He describes it as ‘inoperative.’ It wasn’t that his brain was working improperly or poorly, he says, but that it wasn’t working at all." In a book published in 2011, Alexander describes "the profound spiritual experience he had when he was ‘completely free of the limitations of my physical brain.’" (Ibid.) Without going into the particulars of his very clear memories of that experience, it is Dr. Alexander’s conclusion that is particularly significant, which is that "whether you feel it or not, nothing can separate you from the Perfect Love that exists at the heart of the universe. [Clendenin] ‘This is the reality of realities, [he writes] the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or ever will exist.’" (ibid.)

For Eben Alexander, the veil which is the normal functioning of his brain, was lifted, and he got a glimpse of the Reality of realities that lies at the heart of the universe. He had an experience of transfiguration. Fortunately, one doesn’t have to have a near-death experience to catch a glimpse of what lies at the heart of the universe, but it may involve a letting go of the death grip we have on what we’re convinced is "reality."

Jesus took Peter, James and John with him up on the mountain to pray. Moses went up on the mountain to meet with God. "Up on the mountain" is Biblical shorthand for "meeting with God." And up on the mountain, while he was praying, Jesus’ appearance was transfigured– his face and his clothes became dazzlingly, radiantly white, and two figures appeared with him, whom the disciples took to be Moses and Elijah. "They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." It was a timeless moment, and Peter, half-asleep, or in a kind of trance himself, sought to preserve it. "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." That idea was quickly brought to a close as a cloud of "dazzling darkness," as Barbara Brown Taylor describes it, came over them, and a voice from the cloud spoke. "This is my Son, my Chosen [or my Beloved]: listen to him." And then the cloud and the figures were gone, leaving only Jesus. The next day they returned to the valley, where a boy possessed by a demon awaited healing by Jesus.

Jesus’ face and clothing were transfigured in dazzling radiance. Moses’ face was shining so brightly that he had to wear a veil to shield its brightness from the others. These two men, the only two people who are described in the Bible with the word "meek," meaning not milquetoast but rather "utterly transparent" to God, both transfigured, changed, by their encounters with God, the Source of the Radiance. Abwun, Jesus addressed God. Father, Source of the Radiance, Creative Breath–all meanings of that Aramaic word, abba. Jesus went up on the mountain to pray.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my experiences of prayer are not normally accompanied by figures of light and dazzling clouds with voices. And yet, and yet, if prayer is, as one writer puts it, "a way of attuning ourselves to God" (David Lose, Working Preacher.com, 2/10/13) in those moments when I’ve let go of trying to do it "right" or been so attached to one particular outcome, when I’ve been able to let go of all the other things I think are so important and actually pointed my self in a direction that maybe, possibly, was "attuned to God," sometimes I’ve gotten a new perspective, a new way of seeing, a new way of experiencing a situation.

It’s not easy in our society which, one novelist describes as one of "Total Noise." (David Foster Wallace, cited in Clendenin, op cit.) To pull yourself away from the internet, turn off the television, the radio, the "shoulda-woulda-coulda" tapes that run non-stop in our brains and just try to "attune yourself to God" is no simple task. It is a practice. To set aside 5, 10, even 20 min. minutes a day, even, imagine! twice a day, to "attune ourselves" to the Perfect Love that exists at the heart of the universe, the Reality of realities, the truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or ever will exist. That takes intention, practice, if you will. The upcoming season of Lent may be just the excuse we need to make a daily routine of this.

During our second "commercial interruption" in a few minutes, Ernie Lafontaine will be talking about moving from hope to reality, about "getting real" about our hopes and dreams for this congregation as we move into God’s future for us. This process cannot just be about us, not even our best thoughts and ideas and plans. It has to be attuned to God. We need to take ourselves "up on the mountain" of whatever place or state of mind helps us to "attune with God," even to encounter God, which is an awesome, even terrifying, place to be. "Imagine an entire congregation begin transfigured," one writer says, "into a powerful and bright witness, a beacon of light and warmth for a weary, cynical world." (Sharron R. Blezard, Stewardship of Life, 2/6/13)

"Transfiguration is living by vision [wrote Walter Wink]: standing foursquare in the midst of a broken, tortured, oppressed, starving, dehumanizing reality, yet seeing the invisible, calling to it to come, behaving as if it is on the way, sustained by elements of it that have come already, within and among us. In those moments when people are healed, transformed, freed from addictions, obsessions, destructiveness, self worship or when groups or communities or even, rarely, whole nations glimpse the light of the transcendent in their midst, there the New Creation has come upon us. The world for one brief moment is transfigured. The beyond shines in our midst—on the way to the cross." [Walter Wink, Interpretation, in Imaging the Word, vol. 1, p. 142)

That is a vision worth living into. Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"What’s Love got to do with it?" --1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30-- Feb. 3, 2013

You could hear the sharp intake of breath as the tattooed and multiply-pierced young man walked forward to the chancel with the guitar under his arm. Stepping up next to him was a young woman in tight jeans and a streak of blue in her hair. They took a moment to plug the guitar into the speaker and adjust the microphones near their lips. Then with a chord that got everyone’s attention, their anthem began. "Woe to you hypocrites," they sang, directly quoting Jesus, but somehow sounding very "un-Christian." They listed the evident sins of the society they saw around them–the number of hungry and homeless people, violence in the streets and schools, drug and alcohol abuse, young people being judged for the way they looked.

It made even the woman who devoted much of her time volunteering in the soup kitchen feel uncomfortable. It certainly made the man who owned a business on Main St. angry. It confused the first-grader sitting with her parents.

When the minister stood up to deliver the sermon, you could see folks relax in their pews. The women and some of the men smiled and unconsciously touched their hair. The handsome young man standing in the pulpit made them feel sexy. He spoke so passionately and beautifully–he didn’t even use notes. The time during his sermon flew by, and if you’d asked anyone about it later, they most likely would have commented on how they loved to hear Rev. Jones speak, though they’d have been hard-pressed to tell you what he spoke about.

At coffee hour, a group of folks who were adamantly for gun control, upset about the growing violence in their own little town, glared across the room at a group of hunters and NRA members. The kids sat at separate tables, hurling cheetos at one another, while their doting parents looked on, reluctant to make a fuss. Older folks seethed with disapproval.

To everyone’s surprise, coffee hour was interrupted when a woman tapped on the microphone of the social hall’s sound system. "Excuse me," she said, waiting for everyone to settle down and give her their attention. "Thank you," she said when the room had quieted down. "I have a letter from our founding pastor, and it’s important that we all hear it. I received it yesterday in the mail, and when I first read it, I was almost insulted. Then I read it again, and, I’m sorry to say, I think we need to hear this.

"Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,"

the letter began. "I give thanks to God for you everyday for the incredible gifts that have been poured out upon you. It is one of the real privileges and joys of my ministry that I was a part of bringing you together and getting you started as a community.

But I have to say, I’m distressed at what I’ve been hearing about you. You’ve got all sorts of causes you’re trumpeting–that’s good. You’ve got musicians and artists coming out of your ears–that’s great. Rev. Jones is the talk of the town, and your prayer chain’s got a reputation for performing miracles–all wonderful.

BUT, what I don’t hear anything about is the Love you have for one another or for any of the people you’re supposed to be helping. In fact, I’ve heard that coffee hour is toxic, your worship service is just a fan club, and people feel like they should be kissing the rings on the hands that serve them food.

Listen--If I speak in the tongues of angels or celebrities, but don’t have love, I might just as well be feedback from a microphone. If I am engaged in all the right social justice causes and stir people up to act and demonstrate, but don’t have love, I am nothing.

If I contribute to the NRA, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the 5 All-Church Offerings of the United Church of Christ, but don’t have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

"I could be wrong," should be added at the end of any one of your pronouncements, maybe even at the end of Rev. Jones’ sermons. "I don’t know. I could listen more deeply" should be part of all your coffee hour or parking lot conversations. We just don’t know everything. Only God does. Love is what matters.

Coffee hour at the First Church of Corinth would never be the same, as you can imagine.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether they took the letter’s words to heart or filed a complaint against their former pastor. But that’s the setting of this passage on Love that we are more likely to have heard read at weddings, when everyone looks beautiful and beaming, when all seems right with the world. What’s not to love about Love? In fact, love is most important in times of struggle and confusion, when life is complicated and difficult.

 

The congregation in Nazareth couldn’t have told you that Jesus’ little sermon had anything to do with Love, but that was precisely what Jesus was pushing them to understand. Love isn’t confined to your little circle of family and friends, he was saying. I’m not here just to bring honor and fame to this little Galilean village. God’s healing and justice and mercy–all of which are part of God’s Love–aren’t limited to certain geographical or ethnic or religious categories. You are loved, but not just you.

There is a saying attributed to St. Augustine that says, "God loves everyone as if he or she is the only one." That’s the scandal of God, isn’t it, and the scandal of Love? Where’s the integrity? Where are the standards? Where is the judgment? "Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I now only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known."

"Now we see in a mirror dimly." "That should be the motto of every theologian and lover," Bruce Epperly writes (Adventurous Lectionary, 2/3/13) The love of God is bigger than we can get our minds wrapped around. The love of God includes each and all of us, yet is willing to struggle–even die–to teach us what that means. Love doesn’t mean the absence of conflict–in fact, conflict may be a way to teach us about love. Conflict is a given in human relationships–we are all different, have different experiences, different aptitudes and inclinations. Hiding or denying conflict is a recipe for failure. In healthy relationships, research has found, there is a 5 to 1 ratio between positive and negative interactions. While we need to accentuate the positive (as the song says), we really shouldn’t eliminate the negative. Working through conflict actually immunizes our relationships from the really big times of stress. Just like a wound that heals with a scar that is stronger than the original tissue, so acknowledging and working through conflict makes our relationships stronger. Conflict is actually necessary for the long-term success of committed relationships. (Tal Ben Shahar)

"This is my body, broken...this is my blood, poured out." What we consider "perfect"– the perfect relationship, the perfect church, the perfect loaf or cup–cannot grow and become available and nourishing to others until it is broken open, until it is tested. Perfect Love willingly opened itself up to suffering and death–foolishness to mortals, the wisdom of God.

So we come to break the bread and pour out the cup, so that we might be nourished and made new, and so that we might become bread and drink for a hungry and thirsty world. What’s Love got to do with it? Only everything.

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“Home Again”-- Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10, Luke 4:14-21 -- Jan. 27, 2013

The lesson from Hebrew scripture and the Gospel lesson that have been paired together today describe what has become a familiar scene for us–the reading of Scripture to a gathered community and an interpretation or teaching of it.  Ezra the priest reads the law of Moses to the people of Israel, recently returned from exile, who have gathered in the square facing the Water Gate.  Jesus returns to his home synagogue, after being baptized and tested in the wilderness, and is handed the scroll with the prophet Isaiah on it, a portion of which he reads to them, concluding with “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

It’s what we do every Sunday morning here–someone reads a portion of our tradition’s Scriptures–usually one from our Hebrew tradition and one from the Christian testament–and they often conclude that reading by saying, “May God add understanding to the hearing of this word” or “This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is good news!” or “Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.”  Our more liturgical brothers and sisters say, “This is the word of the Lord.” And the response is,   “Thanks be to God!” and, after the gospel reading, “This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” with the response, “Praise be to you, Lord Jesus Christ.”

For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, there are certain written words that are considered sacred, or scripture–the Torah, the Bible, the Koran.  Other traditions have texts and sacred writings which illustrate eternal truths, but for the Abrahamic faiths, God is somehow present in the words on the page.  We differ across and within traditions as to how we understand that Presence--  Is it word for word, dictated by God, or are the words “God-breathed,” as Eugene Peterson says, through their human authors in their very concrete human contexts?  Did “God say it, we believe it, that settles it”? Or, as we say in the United Church of Christ, is God “still speaking”?

Wrestling with the texts is a time-honored Jewish tradition.  In fact, Israel’s name means “one who has wrestled with God.”  (You may recall the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel.) Students of the Torah sit across from one another and literally go back and forth, debating, arguing, examining all sides of the text.  The Talmud is a collection of stories and commentaries of the rabbis who have imaginatively expanded the text.  Faithful Muslims memorize the Koran–
the whole thing–so one must immerse oneself in that text, understand what you’re saying, if you are to be able to hold such a body of work in your heart and mind.

We Christians, on the other hand, especially those of us in the more “liberal” traditions, are more likely to regard our bibles as holy but prefer to keep them at arm’s length.  We may know or recognize a few passages–we recognize the shepherds and angels in the Christmas story, for example, or the creation story in Genesis, but do we know that there are two different creation stories there?  How many of us can really find our way around our Bibles, and when we happen upon one of those bizarre or especially troubling or violent passages, do we know what to do with them, except slam our bibles shut and exclaim, “That’s why I don’t read the Bible!”  You may have grown up in a different time and with a different approach to the bible, but I can tell you that more and more people have no training or experience at all in reading, let alone wrestling, with the bible, and the public exploitation of biblical texts to condemn or exclude people is becoming many people’s only exposure to this sacred text.  That’s why one of the 3 main goals of the UCC is to educate about and immerse our members in this text so that we can offer a different understanding and living out of its truth.

In the story from Nehemiah which David read for us this morning, the people wept when they heard the law and had it interpreted for them.  (From the very beginning, the texts have been explained and interpreted.)  We are not told why they wept, but I imagine that after being in exile for a couple generations, and coming to understand their exile as the consequence of their having turned away from God and God’s law, that it was a bittersweet homecoming to their Truth.  This is how God wants us to live, this is who we are meant to be, this is our true identity...and look how far we’ve gone astray from that.  The recognition of that and the deep understanding of the pain that wandering and turning away had caused them dropped them to their knees.  That is what a recognition of guilt–what we’ve done or haven’t done that has caused harm to ourselves or others–can do, but it should not leave us there, on our knees, weeping.  As long as we can recognize those actions or thoughts that have taken us away from our true center, we can get up off our knees and continue the journey, wiser to the pitfalls that await us and that have tripped us up before.

“This day is holy to the Lord your God,”Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites say to the people. “Do not mourn or weep...go your way..” Eat and drink and share what you have with those who don’t have anything... “and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Even Jesus picked and chose verses from Scripture, or at least Luke does as he tells this story.  These words are actually from a couple of different chapters in Isaiah, and Jesus leaves out, “to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.”

Here in this season of inaugurals, we might think of this as Jesus’ inaugural address.  This is his vision for his ministry, this is how he understands his calling–anointed by God to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of God’s favor.  This is what the kingdom of God looks like.  It has arrived and it is still coming.

But just as some Americans heard President Obama’s second inaugural speech as visionary, hopeful, empowering and others heard it as a power grab, a frightening liberal rant; so too the people in the synagogue in Nazareth had different responses.  Our assigned reading for today ends at a rather deceptive point, for next week we’ll read that while some thought Jesus spoke remarkably well, especially for a carpenter’s son, others thought he had become too big for his britches, and in fact, by the end of the scene, the crowd turns into a mob trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.  “What child is this?!” indeed!

Good news to the poor, release of the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and God’s kingdom come sound like good news in the abstract.  But when you start to get real, the news sounds less good–you mean, good news for the poor means I have to share? You mean, I’m actually holding some of the chains of those prisoners?  You mean, my eyes are the ones that need to be opened to the truth?  You mean, the structures that oppress some people actually benefit me?  You mean, God’s kingdom come means my comfortable world will get shaken up?  This is the “good news”?  And for Jesus’ neighbors, who were some of those who were oppressed, where was that phrase about ‘the day of  the vengeance of God’?

Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address was, like Barack Obama’s, relatively brief as inaugural speeches go, but it was actually critical of the nation, it named slavery as one of the sins of the nation.  Like Obama’s speech, like Jesus’ reading and interpretation, it too engendered wildly different and emotionally charged responses.  Jesus’ choice of text and his interpretation of it are good news only to those who acknowledge that all is not right, that too many people are hearing and living only the bad news of shame, of oppression, of exclusion.  This isn’t some “new age” thinking that Jesus has come up with–he reaches back into the tradition, back to ancient notion of “jubilee,” “the year of God’s favor,” where every 50 years, all debts are forgiven, the land returns to the original owner (who, by the way, is God) and all slaves and prisoners are released.  It is an old hope given new life.

Leslie Cooke writes, “Too long we have been concerned that our gospel should give offense; it is time we were concerned that it is not giving offense enough.  Our condemnation is not that [people] sometimes oppose the gospel but that so many ignore it.  If people paid us the tribute of their antagonism, we should have less cause for concern.”  (Faith Stakes a Claim, cited in Vt. Conference e-Kit, 1/24/13)   Are people criticizing and staying away from our churches because we are setting too many people free from the prisons of self-hatred and doubt and fear?  Are our numbers dwindling because we feed too many hungry people or house too many homeless people?  Or are we just too easy to ignore?  Does anybody notice what we do?

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” Jesus read, ““because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”   The story of that reading in the Nazareth synagogue is not over yet–we’ll read what comes next next Sunday, and Jesus’ vision continues to guide us as live into God’s future for us.  In the meantime, I offer these words which echo those of Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. and all those who throughout the ages, have called us to come home to our Truth–

Within the belljar of your heart let freedom ring...
And if that means one gesture today of permission to love your self or another a bit more kindly so be it...
And if that means a clarion call against oppression in your own backyard so be it...
And if that means a shofar blast of awakening to the potential within each of us to care for one another so be it...
And if that means a resonant voice in front of a crowd naming a shining future that is possible in a time that is dangerous then so be it.
What ever it looks like, however it sounds, however small or grand the shift, let freedom ring.
We must wear this mantle and carry this staff as if it was gifted to us...and it was...and we must.
(Maria Sirois, Daily Inspiration, 1/25/13)

May it be so.  Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Awash in Abundance"-- 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11-- Jan. 20, 2013

John’s Gospel is anything but a free-flowing journal or documentary. It is, rather, a carefully constructed, even poetic, statement of faith, beginning "in the beginning"–back before time even began–"In the beginning was the Word"--and ending–or rather, trailing off–into eternity–"But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

John’s Jesus is cosmic, totally in control, intentional, and, frankly, a little obtuse in some of his discourses. So, when we come fairly early on to the story of the wedding at Cana, we might be tempted to think, "Oh, ok, Jesus and his friends did do normal things like attend weddings." And wouldn’t it be funny, if as some have suggested, that Jesus and his buddies were such partyers, such big wine-drinkers, that they are, in fact, the reason why the wine ran out early?

It might be tempting to think that, but we’d be missing John’s point. "On the third day,"John begins the story. The third day after what? Jesus has just finished calling his first disciples–the third day after that? Or is it like, "On the third day after Jesus was crucified..." More likely that. We should keep our eyes open for resurrection life here.

"On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee..." The setting is a celebration of love. Marriage and weddings are over and over used in the Bible as symbols of the love between God and humanity, full-bodied, sensual, energetic. The Song of Songs is an erotic love poem tucked in the middle of our Bible, devoted to just this kind of love. This wedding at Cana is the setting for the first of Jesus’ signs, John tells us, a sign telling us about the nature of Love. It is to be celebrated. As one commentator writes, "God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in." (Robert Brearley, cited by Kate Matthews Huey in Weekly Seeds, 1/20/13)

We read that "the mother of Jesus was there." She is not named, and we have not met her before, as John’s gospel has no infancy narrative. If we’re looking for an insight into their family dynamics, neither of them comes off particularly well–Mary is a little nagging, maybe even the stereotypical Jewish mother–"They have no wine"–and Jesus’ response seems a little short and even disrespectful–"Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." As one commentator suggested, "If I said that to my mother, I’d be in need of a healing after that." Like a People Magazine article, we may be hoping for some insight into the mother-son relationship, but John is not interested in that. In fact, this is the first of just two appearances of the mother of Jesus (she is never named) in this gospel–here, at the first of the signs that Jesus did–and at the cross, the final sign, when Jesus commends her to John’s care and she to his, creating the new community, literally with his blood. She is present at both times when, as John says, "Jesus revealed his glory."

So, here in the story of the wedding at Cana, Mary (we can name her) moves the story along, rather than being fleshed out as a real person. "They have no wine," she tells her son. "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." From a Positive Psychology standpoint, we might say that Mary is focusing on the negative, on the lack. Jesus deflects her concern, and then moves to reveal the positive, the abundance that is hidden within this situation.

We are talking about a lot of water being changed into wine here–something like 150 gallons. This is in-your-face abundance and excellence, not just a slight improvement. It’s a miracle, of course, but Jesus is the one so open to the energy and power of God that he could channel it in all sorts of ways. He was an infinitely clear vessel for that channeling, but we know that all of us and all of nature are vibrating with the same energy. "Cleave the wood and I am there," Jesus teaches in the Gospel of Thomas. God is in the wood-- and beyond the wood, of course–but all the miracles of Jesus reveal an interrelationship–a luminous web, as Barbara Brown Taylor calls it–between everyone and everything. And so the water is transformed into wine, and good wine at that. "In turning water into wine," Dan Clendenin writes, "Jesus offers us excess for our emptiness." (Journey with Jesus, 1/20/13) Then of course there’s Soren Kierkegaard’s cryptic observation back in the 19^th c.–"Christ turned water into wine, but the church has succeeded in doing something even more difficult: it has turned wine into water." Ah yes, "too holy to be happy..."

"Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk, " the steward says to the bridegroom, who had been perilously close to being shamed for not having enough wine, "but you have kept the good wine until now." The first wine served, perhaps like love at its beginning, is savored and enjoyed. But as time goes on, it’s easy to have our senses dulled, to become numb to the beauty and rich flavor that love can bring to our lives. "The thrill is gone," as the song goes. And not just from love, but, for so many people, the thrill is gone from life. There is a lot of pain–even trauma–present in our society, and we have become a culture of self-medicators. This past week’s drug raid revealed not only a surprising number of sellers and possessors of drugs in our community, but, as the hospital’s emergency room displayed, a large number of users whose supply had suddenly been dammed up. And that’s just the illegal drug users. That doesn’t begin to address the number of legal abusers of alcohol. We are a society full of pain, seeking to numb it by any number of means.

"You have kept the good wine until now." Jesus reveals, in this first of his signs, that not only is love abundant, it is to be savored, paid attention to, nurtured, not taken for granted. And it takes work. Imagine those workers lugging the water up and down the ladders to fill the stone jars, the "drably dutiful," as one commentator wrote (Robert Brearley, op cit.) They were involved in a miracle of abundance, and they had no idea. When we’re washing the dishes or wiping the tables after Sunday Supper, are we aware that we’re involved in a miracle of abundance, as hungry people are fed and welcomed?

"They have no wine," the mother of Jesus tells him. "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." Jesus seems reluctant to act at first, and indeed, Carol Lakey Hess points out the "scandal of divine reluctance–God’s seeming absence or inaction in the face of human suffering and need in any age or place....In a world where for so many there is not clean water–let alone fine wine–where is the extravagance of God? In a world where children play in bomb craters the size of thirty-gallon wine jugs, why the divine reluctance? Like Mary,[she suggests] perhaps we have a role in the story, if we truly believe in God’s goodness and generosity, for we can ‘nudge God with our observation; they have no wine.’" (cited by Kate Huey, op cit.) Perhaps like Mary as well, we can lift our observation to God and at the same time, prepare for God to act–"Do whatever he tells you," she tells the servants.

"When human resources are at an end," (Alyce McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, Patheos, 1/13/13) Jesus’ "signs" show us, God is able to pour wine into our water jars and life into our lifeless forms. Four years ago, the United States was filled with more hope about its future than I have experienced in my lifetime. Millions of people gathered into Washington DC to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama without a single incidence of violence. The hope seemed to infuse even the criminals. Four years later, the level of hope is considerably lower. As one African American preacher said, to a great extent,"promises remain unfulfilled, hopes have been dashed, dreams shattered." (Rev. Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson, Odyssey Network, "A Vision for America," 1/20/13) "We have not quite run out of money yet, [he says] but we are running low on courage, vision and leadership." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of the Beloved Community is not yet realized.

Like the mother of Jesus, we can acknowledge the situation. There are too many without the basic necessities of life–food, shelter, health care, education–let alone the less tangible necessities–hope, dignity, justice. The jars are empty for too many of our neighbors, for many of us as well. But we must not just focus on the lack. Jug by jugful, even spoonful by spoonful, we can begin to fill the jars with the full expectation that God can transform our labors and our longings into abundance beyond our imagination.

Is it "our hour" as a church, as we come to our Annual Meeting, to be transformed into something truly remarkable, something that can save our neighbors and loved ones from shame, offering life that is not just existence but even flourishing and thriving? "Now there are varieties of gifts," Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, "but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." We are blessed with an abundance of gifts. How can we share or reveal our abundance with the world and with future generations, even to the 7^th generation, as Ernie commended to us last week? Henry David Thoreau said, "It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see." Do we see water or wine? Deficit or abundance? Decline or possibility?

"You have kept the good wine until now. Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory." May God’s glory be revealed in us. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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2012 Giving Tree

Every year our Mission Team works with local agencies to provide gifts for families in Bennington County.  This picture is of the tree crafted by Andrea Lampron and all the wrapped gifts collected.

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"Called by Name"-- Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-16, 21-22-- Jan. 13, 2013

 

My brief meditation this morning is really just the introduction to, and underpinning of, Ernie’s presentation a little later on about the challenges and opportunities we face today in the life of our church. And as we all become part of "the church" when we are baptized, it is fitting that we should look at the story of Jesus’ baptism which he shares with us.

All four gospels tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, but each has their own unique perspective. In some, the whole crowd hears the Voice from heaven, which some take to be thunder, saying that this Jesus is God’s beloved son. Others, like the one we read in Luke, have the Voice speaking only and directly to Jesus–"You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased." The Spirit descends like a dove–"in bodily form," Luke tells us–and this tangible, feathered Presence alights on Jesus’ river-drenched body. Baptism happens in the midst of embodied life, in the presence of earthly elements. It’s not just an abstract, heavenly symbol.

"I have called you by name; you are mine," God says to Israel through the prophet Isaiah."Do not fear for I am with you...–everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." Jesus was not and is not the only the only "beloved." God calls each of us by name, calls each of us "beloved," but our response to that claiming is "personal and situational," as Bruce Epperly writes. (The Adventurous Lectionary, 1/13/13) We are free to ignore that claim upon our lives, free to refuse to believe that God is able to love even us–as unworthy, or as flawed, or as confused as we may be or have been taught that we are. Even Jesus had to choose whether or not to accept the affirmation of the Voice–his public ministry lay before him, and he had to be tested in the wilderness to see whether this was a path he was going to take. But, as Epperly writes, "Fully alive, Jesus was fully open to embodying God’s vision in his own unique way, sharing God’s vision, energy, and power for the wholeness and salvation of humankind." (Ibid.) When and if we are "fully alive," God is able to work God’s vision through our unique selves, and we become part of God’s transforming wholeness and salvation of humankind.

Some of us were baptized as infants, and so "remembering our baptisms" may be a pretty fruitless enterprise. Others of us do remember our baptisms, as we were baptized as young or older adults in what is often called ‘believers’ baptism." Still others of us may not yet have been baptized, but for whatever reasons, consider ourselves part of the church community. It is said that Martin Luther, on particularly bad days, would look at the sign he had written for himself near his desk–"Remember your baptism." It’s not the sprinkling or the immersing in water that we are to remember. It is the affirmation and claiming that happens when we are baptized–"You are my beloved child," God says to each of us. Baptism doesn’t make us or our lives holy or sacred or mistake-proof, but it affirms, acknowledges, recognizes that we are, indeed, sacred beings, called by God, "created for God’s glory, formed and made by God," as Isaiah said.

Baptism is not just private and personal. It is a "powerful bonding experience," as UCC pastor Kate Huey writes, in which we understand ourselves as belonging to a community that is "engaged with God in the transformation of the world, in bringing a new world to reality at long last." (Samuel, 1/13/13) That’s why we yearn for and pray for God’s kingdom to come–"Thy kingdom come"--it has already been ushered in by Jesus but it is not yet fully revealed. Baptism "connects people with promises too big to fit into the world as it is presently constituted," as another commentator puts it (Richard Swanson, cited by Huey, op cit.)

Which is where we as a church community come in, where our discussions and prayerful discernment of our future come in. What we shall be has not yet been revealed. What shape or form the church will evolve into is still unknown. But by our baptism, each one of us has a part, has a stake, in what that future will be like. Our unique, individual gifts, and the gift of this particular, unique church community, are called into service by God for the transformation of the world. We can choose to respond to that call or we can ignore it. But the difference between those responses is literally the difference between life and death. "Choose life," God begs us. What will be our response?

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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