Coming up

Sunday September 6: Worship with Communion at 10am. Nursery care is provided. Social hour with refreshments afterwards.
5 pm Sunday Supper
******************************************
BIRTHDAYS AND CELEBRATIONS: August 31 - Robert and Nancy Osgood's 52nd anniversary
September 1 - Edna Prouty, 87, Thomas Saunders, 9
September 2 - Heather McManigle
September 5 - Mickey Marchetti, 15; Bonnie Holden
******************************************
Sunday September 13 - Rally Day! Bring your vials of water that you collected over the summer from waters near and far. KIds are invited to bring their school backpacks for a Blessing of the Backpacks. Godly Play and Middle-High school class begin.
******************************************
Back to school items are now on sale. Items needed for CSW schools bags:
12 inch rulers
Boxes of 24 crayons
blunt scissors
hand-held pencil sharpeners
Or make a donation to Pat Lafontaine and she will do the shopping.
******************************************
Mon, Wed and Fri, 9:30am – 35 minute DVD-led exercise with group in Room 6 or 2
******************************************
SEARCH COMMITTEE:

During worship on July 26, the congregation commissioned, and gave its blessing to, the Search committee that will soon begin the crucial process of seeking our next pastor. They are a group of talented individuals who bring a range of experience and perspectives to the search. They have made a major commitment; we can assist them by communicating who we are as a church and what we hope to become, and by respecting their adherence to confidentiality. Here they are with a short item about each:

Ernie LaFontaine: led Re-thinking Church initiative
Bruce Smith: Vice-moderator
Kathy Shaw: active in Earth Advocates
Bonnie Holden: faithful member of the choir
Nora Parsons: former moderator, deacon, trustee, youth leader
Barbara True-Weber: whose passion led to the Earth Advocates
George Sohn: helped initiate Sunday suppers
Lisa Plummer: mother of Emma and Erica
Eric Webster: former Moderator and ONA member
******************************************
Adopt a room at Thatcher House. The Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless invites faith communities to adopt a room at the transitional living facility at Thatcher House pm Pleasant St. This involves making sure the room is painted and cleaned and welcoming to incoming families, as well as providing furnishings and household items for the family. If this is something you’d like to be involved with, please speak to Bruce Lee-Clark.
******************************************
Support Habitat for Humanity: Donate $5 and have one chance to win a handmade quilt which SCC helped make (or 5 tickets for $20) See Nancy Jean or Rebekah for tickets
****************************************
The choir needs a Metronome needed for music practice.
******************************************
Church library is now in Room 2, Education Wing
******************************************
Members of our church made, collected and assembled 309 School Kits, 107 Hygiene Kits and 41 Baby Kits. These weighed 886 lbs. and have a money value of $ 6976 and processing fees of $ 914. A mammoth job well done! The Church World Service truck picked up the kits, to start them on their journey to those in need.

Read More

"Letting Go"-- Acts 1:1-11, John 17: 6-19-- May 17, 2015

"In progressive churches like ours," my friend Mike Piazza writes, "we don’t feel compelled to take these stories [like the Ascension of Jesus] literally, though we do try to take them seriously." (Facebook post, 5/15/15] To take this story literally requires that we adopt the triple-deckered view of the universe of the ancient world, with heaven at the top, hell or the place of the dead at the bottom, and earth where we live our lives in the middle. There was only one "up," because it was also a flat earth, which except for some climate change deniers and a few others, nobody much believes today.

"Of course," Mike writes, "even a cursory glance at a globe tells us that ‘up’ for Jesus is a very different direction from ‘up’ for those of us living on the other side of the world." If we were to be taken "up"–to "blast off" as Jesus did in this story, we’d end up in a different place than he did....which calls into question what it means to "go and be with Jesus."

You see how silly it becomes, but this up and down language has crept into our current language and even our psyches. We talk about "the Man upstairs" or going "down there." "The problem is that part of us knows what isn’t true," [Piazza] which just adds to our discomfort about talking about any of this stuff, especially publicly. "Up there," we know, are the stars and galaxies and black holes. "Down there" is a molten rock center. So where and how does God fit into all this and what do we do with this story of the Ascension of Jesus?

One commentator suggests that the Ascension is much more of a church question than it is a Jesus question. [Texts for Preaching, year A] In telling the story of Jesus, including his death and resurrection and his appearances after that to his friends and followers, what were the early followers to say when people asked, "So where did he go after he had breakfast on the beach with you?" As any good mystery writer knows, there is the challenge of addressing the question, what do we do with the body?

Neither Matthew nor John feel compelled to solve that mystery. Matthew simply has Jesus tell his followers that he will be with them always, to the end of time, and John ends his gospel with Peter and Jesus and the beloved disciple, presumably John, walking on the beach, and the writer saying that Jesus did so many more things that the whole world couldn’t contain the books telling of them. Mark’s gospel originally ended with the women running away from the tomb, terrified and telling no one, which was totally unsatisfactory to those who came after; so an additional ending was written in, which included a hasty report that after speaking to his disciples, Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

It is only Luke who makes a big deal of the ascension, ending his gospel, part 1, with Jesus’ withdrawing and being taken up, and then beginning his gospel, part 2 [the Book of Acts] with a different story of Jesus being taken up in a cloud, out of their sight. "Men of Galilee," the two men in white robes suddenly standing beside them ask, "why do you stand looking up toward heaven?"

Luke writes the book of Acts to make clear that following Jesus is not just a spectator sport. We don’t get to be merely "admirers of Jesus, and in our better moments inspired to imitate him," as Eugene Peterson writes in his introduction to Acts,[The Message] The book of Acts tells the story of how Jesus’ followers–as clueless and fickle and cowardly as any of us–became so energized and filled with what only could be called the same Spirit and Power of God that was in Jesus, that they literally changed the world. We who gather here this morning are living testimony to that.

Ascension Day is sometimes celebrated with a release of balloons or a flock of doves, which is dramatic and often beautiful, but we run the risk of being like those early disciples whom the angels asked, "Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" Whether Jesus was taken bodily up into the clouds, or whether he descended into our collective unconscious, as Walter Wink suggested, or whether he went to be "with God," which is the point of the Ascension story, or whether he still walks the earth in an infinite variety of disguises, it is clear that all of these meanings require that we "let go" of Jesus, let go of the time- and body-bound Jesus, let go of our limited understandings of him, our presumptions that we an know all about him, let go even of thinking of thinkiong we have to be "like him." Each of us has to live the life given to us, in our own unique fashion, though shaped and informed by the life of Jesus of Nazareth, embodying his spirit in individual and collective ways. We are still in "this world," which God continues to love. "God loved the world so much that God sent the Son," we remember from John 3:16, but God continues to love the world and sends us to convey and incarnate that love. "I do not ask you to take them out of this world," Jesus prayed in that great final prayer in John’s Gospel," but I ask you to protect them from evil."

You may have heard of –or even read--the apocalyptic novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins entitled, "Left Behind" – all about what happens after God has "raptured" the true believers out of the world. Episcopal priest Mark Davis has entitled his weekly blog and translation of the gospel text of the week, "Left Behind...and Loving It." We are those who, indeed, are left behind after Jesus’ first coming,–after he went to be with God-- and so we are the ones now through whom God so loves the world.

But there are things we need to "leave behind" too, things we need to let go of. So many of Jesus’ stories were about letting go–selling all that you have to give to the poor, as he told the rich young ruler; finding the pearl of great price worth everything you have; leaving the oxen untried, the investment not examined, even leaving the dead to bury the dead when the invitation to the wedding feast is issued. Jesus’ death on the cross, of course, was the ultimate "letting go," the ultimate self-emptying. "Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it," Jesus had said, and in this ultimate losing of life on the cross, he opened up to the ultimate finding of it in resurrection life.

"There’s really no other way to do this [writes Nancy Rockwell]: to rise into eternal life, to transcend the limits of mortality, to move forward into time, beyond time-- than to let go." [Bite in the Apple, 5/10/15] Over and over, as I have talked with folks who know they are close to the time of dying, it is not so much the letting go of the physical body that is hard–in fact, for many, that feels like a relief; but it is the letting go of the presence of loved ones that is difficult. And so, how often do we hear of someone holding on to life until all the necessary good-byes have been said, the estranged son or daughter has come to the bedside, all the grandchildren have been present one more time. Or, just as often, the letting go happens when the loved ones have given their assurances that, however difficult, they are willing to let go, they will not hold their loved one back.

The story of the Ascension of Jesus is a story of letting go–letting go of limiting the power and presence of God to one man or one way of being Church, letting go once again of our old notions of endings. They had "lost" Jesus once, those first, close friends of his thought, when he died on the cross, and then, Good God, he was alive once more in their midst, in a new way; and now another kind of ending or death, an ending of his being with them in that resurrection body. "And they know [now, as Nancy Rockwell writes] that, when an ending comes, along will come a new beginning. Nothing is final. Yet, nothing will ever be the same again, either." [ibid.]

Jesus has gone to be with God–that unity which he experienced so clearly in life–"I and the Father are one"–that unity is even deeper now. For those first companions and followers, their experiences of the Divine took on the face and likeness of Jesus. He was still with them, but in a new way. Nothing would ever be the same again, either. So it is when a loved one dies. They too have gone to be with God, and sometimes when we experience God’s presence, it is with that loved one’s face.

"Let it go." How interesting that that’s the song from the Disney movie "Frozen" which has been sung over and over by little kids and pre-teens until their parents can’t stand to hear it anymore... except that with some distance even adults can affirm its theme of letting go of others’ expectations that limit and hinder your own gifts and potential to spring forth. "Let it go." What is ti that you need to let go of? An old self-image? A grudge or bitterness? A notion of what would make you happy? A past that will never come again? A prejudice or fear that keeps you from experiencing new people, new ways of being?

"In the end, only three things matter," the Buddha said. "How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of the things not meant for you." Surely those words are in the same stream of wisdom as Jesus’ teaching, including "into your hands I commit my spirit..." "Let it go." It is the stream of mercy and love that carries all of us and our loved ones and all of creation, for that matter, so that indeed, Jesus’ prayer – "that they may all be one" – will be fulfilled as we let go into God. Unclench your fists. Open your hand so that God may take you forward.

May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

"At Home in the House of Joy"-- John 15:9-17-- May 10, 2015

 

A dear friend told me that he experienced our worship as one long season of Lent. I think he may even have used the word "dreary." As you may guess, that was not exactly the tone I have been aiming for. At first, I was heart-broken. Then, with a little distance and a reminder from a friend in my Positive Psychology support group, I have been able to recognize this friend as what Emerson called, "a beautiful enemy." "In a friend," Emerson wrote, "I’m not looking for a mush of concession, a person who will agree with everything I say. Rather, I’m looking for a person who will be a beautiful enemy, a person who will challenge me, help me in my appren-ticeship to the truth."

"A billion sermons have been focused on Jesus’ love," Mark Davis writes, but "I would guess few persons have ever heard a sermon on Jesus’ joy." [Left Behind and Loving It, 5/10/15]

So, forget about the beef–Where’s the joy? What about Jesus’ joy?

"As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you," Jesus said. "Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s command-ments and abide in his love. Abide in–make your home in–my love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete."

Now, keeping commandments hardly sounds like a recipe for joy. It conjures up, rather, images of somber forebearers making sure no one danced, played cards, sang the wrong kind of songs, drank alcohol, swore, smoked, laughed too loud, or had too much of a good time. It still is many people’s image of the church. "One long, dreary season of Lent."

But what are these "commandments" that Jesus says he received and kept from his Father, from God? Just one–love one another. Love is the commandment. Love is the sea we are to swim in. Love is the home we are to live in. Love is the air we are to breathe, so that Jesus’ joy may be in us and our joy may be complete. This living in relationship to him and each other – like a vine and its branches --is the path to true joy, not out of a dreary sense of obligation or self-denial, but out of an abundance and a fullness that overflows.

"No one has greater love than this," Jesus said, "than to lay down one’s life–one’s psyche, one’s breath, one’s soul–for one’s friends. You are my friends..." Again, who of us can–or even wants to–lay down our lives even for our friends the way Jesus did? Are we not back to this never-ending season of Lent, leading up to the crucifixion?

Of course, there are experiences of physically laying down one’s life for one’s friends. A Vietnam vet tells of his experience of literally risking his life for his friends, knowing they would and did the same thing for him, and in the midst of death he never felt more alive. When he returned to the States, he could hardly stand the lack of commitment of anyone to do anything for someone else–oh, if I’ve got time, I’m really busy you know. Or oh right, I forgot. That kind of attitude could get you killed in Vietnam –or Iraq or Afghanistan; and, for this vet, that kind of attitude was just as life-threatening back home. It took the fullness and power out of life, the breath, the spirit. It’s a story told by vets and aid workers and people who literally put their lives on the line for others all the time. We spend too much of our lives "phoning it in," living on auto-pilot, in a lukewarm mush. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

But there are many ways to lay down one’s life, to give of oneself, before that final "laying down of our lives" in death. A mother waits up for a child to come home. A teacher stays long after the school day has ended to work with a student. A business owner goes out of her way to make sure her customer receives exactly what he needs. A teen gives up a chance to go to the mall to rake up the leaves of an elderly neighbor. A child gives a favorite toy to a sick friend to keep him company. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

Process theologian John Cobb writes, "In the ancient world, friendship implied deep mutual commitment. Friends were materially committed, they shared a common purpose. According to Aristotle, friends sacrificed themselves for one another, even to the point of death." [Process and Faith, 5/10/15] "I do not call you servants," Jesus said, "but friends."

The thing about the friendship that Jesus talks about in John’s gospel "is that it centers in mutual abiding among God, Jesus, and the disciples," and, by extension through the presence of the Holy Spirit, among us. The late Henri Nouwen said, "The mystery of ministry[–our life and serve together–] is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God." [cited by Kate Huey in sermonseeds, 5/10/15]

This "other-centered, belonging-to-something-greater-than-yourself love" [Kate Huey, op cit.] is what our worship and our outreach and our life together are about, or should be. There is joy in discovering that when we connect to another person, even someone we had thought was very different from ourselves, that they and we are actually part of that "something-greater-than-yourself." Our notion of ourselves expands. This "is not a sacrifice," as Bruce Epperly writes, "but an expansion and growing of our authentic selfhood. Our willingness to go beyond self-interest opens us to the larger selfhood of Christ, whose love identifies with all creation." [Adventurous Lectionary, 5/10/15]

This joy–is there not joy in that?-- is the joy Jesus was talking about–this sense of discovering that who you are is actually one with the deepest, most essential force in the universe, which connects you to everyone else, in all times and places, and to the whole creation. That most essential force is Love, and even death–which we and our culture act as though it were the most important force in the universe–even death is not stronger than Love, cannot separate us from Love. So without denying the horror of crucifixion and "Good" Friday, without piously dismissing that experience as "Jesus’ joy," we can still affirm the joy that emerged from it on Easter morning, the Love that had gone through that horror and that death; the Love that went to the depths of human depravity, "descended into Hell," as the creed says, and emerged in resurrection power on Easter morning and even to this day.

I had the privilege several years ago of seeing and hearing the Dalai Lama when he came to speak at a conference at Middlebury College. Here was–and is-- a man who has experienced great suffering and sorrow, has seen his homeland overrun and his countrymen/women slaughtered. Yet the joy radiating from the man was palpable. The wattage of his smile was off the charts. Desmond Tutu is the same way, after all the suffering he has witnessed and experienced.

Surely Jesus was that way–a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but also a man of deep joy. I imagine the joy radiating from him and the wattage of his smile were also part of his "good news."

Surely there is joy in that, deeper than all the suffering and tragedy and cruelty we see everyday; and our worship, I would hope– our music, our prayers, our sermons, the way we interact with one another-- should bring us back to that joy. We are so concerned about being "proper" and reverent, so we’re not sure about clapping or laughing, but how do we experience and express joy? That is the truth that my beautiful enemy challenges me–challenges us–to apprentice ourselves to.

"Abide in me," Jesus said, "make your home in my love." It is the house of joy. So may our joy be complete. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

"Spring Cleanse"- John 15:1-8, 1 John 4:7-21-- May 3, 2015

There was a rumor of spring this week. I’ll admit I’m a little reluctant to believe it’s

really here–I haven’t put away my boots and heavy gloves. My parka is still hanging on the hook near the back door.

But there have been days–like today and yesterday–where you can almost hear the flower beds and gardens calling out to be raked and turned over, when the pruning shears practically leap into your hands to get to work. So the piles of rakings and the dead branches mount up, and our eyes search for green shoots and new blossoms.

"I am the True Vine," Jesus said, "and my Father is the Gardener, the Vine Grower. God removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit God prunes to make it bear more fruit." This is a springtime image, though for Jesus, it was the springtime of his crucifixion. Mere "pruning" was hardly what lay ahead for him–it seemed more like cutting down, destroying. But we do know that with his death–his "pruning"–new life did indeed spring forth, from a place we never expected to see it, and his once-terrified and hidden disciples became the fruit revealed on that vine, able to go out and bloom in a way no one would have expected of that rag tag group of followers.

"You have already been cleansed–or to keep the gardening image–you have already been pruned by the word I have spoken to you," Jesus told his disciples. "The same Greek root refers to pruning and cleansing," a note in my Bible tells me. So we prune our trees and shrubs, we clean our houses, some people undertake a "spring cleanse," drinking only liquids to "cleanse" their bodies of accumulated toxins. My friend Maria Sirois is teaching a course at Kripalu this spring called "Clearing the Clutter: Making Space for Positive Change. "Clutter is more than what crowds your physical environment," the course description says. "It can be found in stress-based thoughts, confusing feelings, and unclear visions that weigh us down. What you choose to remove from your life is as important–if not more important–than what you choose to bring into it."

Surely making space for positive change is what our Next Level process is about. Part of that process will involve getting clear on our vision, sorting out our feelings and thoughts about what our future as a church community will look like. What do we need to let go of? Because we cannot simply ask our new pastor to continue doing everything I’m currently doing plus all the other things we want him or her to do to reach those we are not reaching. "What you choose to remove from your life is as important–if not more important–than what you choose to bring into it."

But in addition to the pruning and cleansing, the removing and the cutting away–what we might think of as the "negative" aspect of this image of the vine–there is the life and the nourishment and the thriving that is involved. "Abide in me as I abide in you," Jesus said. "Make your home in me" is another way of putting it. "I am the vine, you are the branches," he said. "Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing."

Bruce Epperly calls this "spiritual horticulture" [Adventurous Lectionary, 5/3/15] – practices like intentionally staying open to divine energy, cutting out what is non-essential or harmful, seeing the intimate connection with other branches; "clearing the clutter and making space for positive change," as Maria puts it. So, in addition to clarifying our vision, discerning what needs to be let go of so we can take on new initiatives and a new way of being, we must also intentionally stay open to divine energy. Another way of putting that is, we’ve got to pray about this process. What is it that God intends for us as we move into the future? You may or may not be involved in the meetings and plans and financial calculations, but at the very least I beg you to pray about this. Listen for the leadings of God’s Spirit. Bring that wisdom to our life together.

This organic image of the vine and branches is one of complete interchange and flow of energy. We are nourished by God’s love and power and in turn we bear divine fruit. "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you," Jesus said, "ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." That may be a little misleading for those of us used to instant gratification, with little patience for slower, organic unfolding. Mark Davis offers this translation instead– "Whatever you may resolve, require and it will come into being for you." [Left Behind and Loving It, 4/28/15] This is more than a wish or a hope. This is a thoughtful, considered resolution of what is required. If we are abiding in–making our home in–God and from there resolve something, it will come into being for us, Jesus promises. "Both God and we are agents," David observes, "in a joyous circularity."

Communion is another word for this relationship. "This is my body, this is my blood. Take and eat. Take and drink." In some mysterious, mystical, yet very real way, in the sacrament of communion we take Jesus into our bodies and we become his body, one with all the others who are part of that body, as well as, I believe, the whole world, for whom his body was broken and given. "You can’t be a Christian by yourself," Sara Miles concluded from taking communion, first in a church and then in food pantries all over the city of San Francisco.

In her book, Take This Bread, she describes her first communion–

One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans–except that up until that moment I’d led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.

Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food–indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people. And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I’d experienced. [p. xi]

Miles, both a professional chef and a war correspondent, shared that astonishing hunger and her desire to feed people by setting up a weekly food pantry around the altar of the Episcopal church she became part of, and when that began to outgrow their space and volunteers, she helped to set up several more pantries and meals out of churches in San Francisco. For her, it was simply an extension of the sacrament of communion.

The hunger was, at root, the same. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote, "It’s really the hungry who can smell fresh bread a mile away. For those who know their need, God is immediate–not an idea, not a theory, but life, food, air for the stifled spirit and the beaten, despised, exploited body." [cited by Miles, op cit., p. 75] Do you know any hungry people? Any stifled spirits or beaten, despised, exploited bodies? Are you one of them? This is the food we have to offer here, and there are so many we’re not reaching–not with our doctrines or theology or our "beliefs," but with the experience of being part of a sacred body and being fed the very bread of life. How can we not move ahead in faith–to go out into our community and bring this food to the hungry, this drink to the thirsty?

"I am the vine and you are the branches," Jesus said. "Make your home in me." How does Jesus "abide" in bread and wine? How is he "really present" in this meal? Countless ecclesiastical arguments and even wars have been fought over this, but I invite you to observe your own experience, as we serve one another in this meal, as we move forward to the bread and cup, or as we pass them along the pew.

Do not shrink from the person beside you, the shoulder ahead of you in procession...[the priest at Sara Miles’ church said in a sermon]...Feel Christ’s body there; feel the shoulders of humanity...God has made these people into Christ’s body for you to caress, to anoint, to comfort, to give and receive and share affections. These people and the human race outside our church doors." [Miles, op cit., p. 113]

"We are leaves of one branch," wrote a French man back in the 19^th c. [Jean Baptiste Lacordaire], [we are] drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden." We are members of one body, one loaf, one cup, we are reminded in this meal. Let us keep the feast!

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

Update on Eaarth Advocates

The cold reality of human impact on the environment

Update on Eaarth Advocates’ Environmental Activism
So, Why is “Eaarth” spelled with two “a’s?

Answer: Because the earth that God created, and that our grandparents grew up on, no longer exists. It has been changed irrevocably by human activity. Bill McKibbon in his book Eaarth uses the different spelling to denote the forever-changed earth that we have now and which we need to protect from further damage.
The Eaarth Advocates group in our church grew up from grassroots concern – what can we do, individually, as families, as a church, and advocating in the wider world…. to care for our planet?

In 2014 Mary and the Eaarth Advocates group focused on giving each of the weeks of Lent an environmental theme tying together worship and social hour activities. The first week, Eaarth Advocates led Sunday worship, emphasizing mindfulness of our relationship to the earth, and, for the social hour, Jan Day prepared delicious snacks that were all locally sourced. She also brought in items available in the supermarkets that are brought from the far side of the world at tremendous cost in fuel and therefore in greenhouse gases that contaminate our atmosphere and are the major culprit of global warming. The second week’s focus was on the atmosphere, and we made prayer flags during the social hour. The third week the focus was on water; the congregation was invited to submit words that spoke to their concerns about water and a “word cloud” was composed from those words. The fourth Sunday the topic was energy; kids and adults insulated all the electrical outlets in the building. The final Sunday a scavenger hunt led people to explore energy efficient and environmentally friendly things in our church.

This year, everyone is invited to take part in our Environmental Eastertide during the period from Easter to Pentecost on May 24. On Easter Sunday, Eaarth Advocates Jan Day and David Durfee convinced the Easter bunny to bring eggs for adults as well as kids; each egg contained a tip for making the earth a sweeter place for us and our descendents, in addition to jelly beans and wildflower seeds. On April 12 Barbara True-Weber and Kathy Shaw made a Spring Cleaning Display with non-toxic cleaning options and a list of what ingredients to avoid when looking for cleaning products. On April 19 the Eaarth Advocates led worship, exploring food and farming in connection to care of the environment.

On April 26 there will an opportunity during the social hour to learn about bats as well as about other organic, non toxic ways of dealing with insect pests in our gardens. Come see how bats are a natural pesticide against insects, much better than chemicals. Sunday May 3 we are all invited to ‘dress down’ (or come as you like) and, after worship, help clean the inside of our church with non-toxic materials. On May 10, Mother’s Day, come see the artwork that invites us to honor and celebrate our Mother Earth. The weekend of May 16-17 we plan a plant sale, together with instructions on how to make good black earth by composting (good for your garden and the environment). Eastertide concludes on May 24 with Pentecost Sunday. Our celebration of the installation of our solar panels will follow later, possibly in June.

Throughout all this we aim to further the ways in which we are a congregation of what the United Church of Christ calls “Green Justice” – building a community spirit based on care of God’s creation at the individual, community, and global levels.

Read More

"Living Within Love"- John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3:16-24-- April 26, 2015

At first glance, the "fuzz factor" may seem to be pretty high in today’s readings–fuzz as in fuzzy wool of sheep, fuzz as in the images of love that we see on greeting cards or in movies or ads, fuzz as in many of our associations with shepherds, from the little kids in bathrobes portraying the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night in Christmas pageants or the pastel pictures of Jesus holding lambs in his arms. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," begins what is many people’s favorite psalm. And who, in this harsh, cold, often frightening, world, doesn’t need a warm blanket, a strong but gentle protector, let alone love?

As you may have come to expect by now, before we get all comfortable and cozy, we would do well to look at how the first readers, the first listeners, of these passages might have heard them. The image of shepherd was a familiar one to the Jewish community. Their leaders were referred to as shepherds–good shepherds or false shepherds. Moses was a shepherd, herding his flocks when he saw the bush burning but not being consumed. And David, of course, often called the Shepherd King, was a beloved, if not complex, figure.

But shepherds were not sentimental figures. In fact, the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night on Christmas Eve would have been the last people anyone expected an angel messenger, let alone an angel choir, to come to. They were not folks you’d want to get too close to–smelly, rough, dirty, not the most sociable of characters. And the word that usually gets translated as "good" when Jesus says, "I am the Good Shepherd," is more often translated "beautiful." You didn’t often hear the words "beautiful" and "shepherd" put together. "I am the Good, the Beautiful, Shepherd," Jesus said. Really? How does that work?

The image of shepherd was not sentimental, but it was intimate. Sheep do, apparently, know and respond to their shepherd’s voice. And, of course, a good shepherd knows his or her sheep. You have to wrap your arms around a sheep to shear them, and of course, you can only shear one sheep at a time. You can’t just "know the flock."

From both the passage from John and the 23^rd psalm, we know that being a shepherd is risky business–the table is set in the presence of enemies, and Jesus uses words like bandits and thieves, wolves, and strangers. He talks about laying down his life for the sheep. Which, of course, is what he told his disciples to do–lay down their lives for one another. "We know love by this," the writer of John’s letter says. Yikes! So much for the Hallmark version of love!

Martin Luther King Jr, who knew a thing or two about laying down his life, told his congregation in one of his sermons that when he spoke of love,

I am not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge [people] to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will...We speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers [and sisters].... [Cited by Ryan Herring in Sojourners, May 2015, reviewing Cornel West’s The Radical King].

"I am the Good Shepherd," Jesus says. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep...The hired hand runs away [when a wolf comes], because a hired hand does not care for the sheep." The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Why is Good Friday good? That was one of the things we wondered about a couple weeks ago, in "wondering" about Easter. Why is Good Friday good? One of the reasons it’s good, perhaps, is because we are shown how far Love will go with and for us–not running away from our deaths, from our experiences of being crucified, not even our experiences of doing the crucifying and betraying. Love–God’s love-- does not run away, like the hired hand. Love lays down his life, her life, for the other. For us. That’s good news.

"We are not loved by God because we are precious," the late Henri Nouwen wrote, "but we are precious because we are loved by God." I am–God’s name–I am the good shepherd. God knows us–in the incarnation, as one writer puts it, God knows the people [us] from up close" [Bernard Brand Scott, in Kate Huey’s sermonseeds, 4/26/15] and — still, often to my amazement– and yet, God loves us, willing to lay down God’s life for us.

But not just for us. "I have other sheep," Jesus says, "that do not belong to this fold." Bruce and I actually have an embroidered version of this that someone in one of our churches made for us–"I have other sheep which are not of this fold." Let’s not get too smug here [in other words], too parochial or exclusive, as Christians sometimes have a tendency to get. "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."

Do those other sheep include migrant workers? immigrants fleeing from wars and poverty and violence? People who, like the shepherds of old, are dirty and smelly and socially inappropriate? What about Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus? Might they be part of God’s flock? What about the "nones" as in "what is your religious affiliation"? "I have other sheep that are not of this fold." We heard this weekend at Annual Meeting about physicist David Bohm, who wrote, "No one piece [of the universe] can have the entire picture of the whole." Maybe we can hear from science, from quantum physics what we apparently haven’t believed from Jesus–"I have other sheep that are not of this fold"–unless the fold is as big as Love.

"I came that they may have life," Jesus says in the verse just before we began reading this morning, "and have it abundantly." "God is my shepherd. I have everything I need." Abundant life, not more stuff. And abundant love, love for you just the way you are. You are enough. Right now. Already. What if we could really believe that–"You are, each one of us is, a beloved child of God and you are enough." Do you know anyone else who needs to hear that? For whom hearing you say that and believing it might just plant a seed that could change their life? "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."

Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador was fatally shot while saying Mass on March 24, 1980. He had just read the passage from John which says that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Archbishop Romero himself became that seed that bore fruit in the struggle for justice for the El Salvadoran people. Weeks before he died he said, "A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed, what gospel is that?"

Now, we may not think that proclaiming a provoking, unsettling, get under your skins kind of gospel is any way to grow a church. Who wants to give up a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening, to be unsettled? Maybe that’s our problem. We’ve been too fuzzy. We’ve been too boring. We’ve been too harmless, too innocuous. Who cares about a gospel that only stays on the surface of things, that only offers a momentary pleasant diversion, that never goes deep enough to the real, root causes of human suffering?

I got a Facebook message from a friend of mine this week, addressed to all her "minister friends." [I think she meant that in a kind way–her dad was a minister.] It was a link to a blog from the Sojourners community in Washington, DC, entitled, What Struggling Congregations Need to Know to Renew Their Churches." Those congregations addressed are struggling in the same ways we are–declining and aging membership, diminishing resources, ... The answer offered was: "There is too much shallowness." I hope we go deep, but maybe not deep enough.

"We know love by this," John writes, "that he laid down his life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." The word for "life" here is psyche, which looks like our word "psyche," often used with the sense of "soul." Martyrdom is not everyone’s calling– literally laying down one’s life for another. But "martyr" does come from the root word for "witness." What might it mean for us to "witness" to this incredible Love that knows us intimately, that does not abandon us, even in death, in all the kinds of death that we experience in life? Might it mean, for starters, that we could speak openly, in public, that we are part of Second Congregational Church? Might it mean that we could, individually as well as collectively, maybe even in a variety of media, that we could love, not in only in word or speech, but in truth and action, and so counteract the messages that our culture is blasting out that you are not loveable, you are not enough, you are not worthy of love or generosity?

How far are you–are we–am I–willing to go for love? Maybe begin by thinking about how far you’d go for your children or other loved ones. Would you do that for a stranger? For an "unattractive" stranger? Would you go to the point of civil disobedience? Would I have gone to Selma? Would you go to the place of confrontation–as in a drug or alcohol intervention–or a public demonstration? Would you or I go to the place, the action, the statement that would not make people like you/me? For love? How far would go for love?

"It’s your public face, your public invitation," our new Next Level coach said, "that we can work on taking to the next level." I believe she can help us develop such a process that has integrity for us, and I believe the proposal to begin the search for our next pastor points us in that direction. The Next Level–"up" from or beyond-- our current comfort zone is almost by definition a place that is unsettling, uncomfortable, but it s place of growth and new life.

"I am the Good Shepherd," Jesus said, "and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." "We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? [Brothers and sisters], let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."

The flock that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of is bigger, wider, more diverse, more abundant than we an imagine. It’s as big as love. May we live within that flock and be guided and shaped by the Shepherd, with joy, with courage, with hope. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

Read More

"Thomas the Twin Reflecting"--John 20:19-31--April 12, 2015

"Thomas the Twin Reflecting" John 20: 19-31 4/12/15

Thomas was called "The Twin"–Didymus is the word–and maybe he’s the Twin of all of us. I consider him a fraternal twin of mine, in spite of the 20 centuries between us. It’s always bothered me that Thomas has been called "Doubting Thomas," because it’s always said with that kind of shaming tone of voice–Mm, Mm, Mm, accompanied by that headshake. Like the other disciples were all that brave and believing and pure.

Thomas was the only one with guts enough to leave that upper room where the others were locked in on that first Easter night. And did you notice, they were still there, locked in, a week later, only this time Thomas was with them.

My twin brother, Thomas, was the one who, when Jesus said they were going to where Lazarus had died, even though they knew there were people there who wanted to have him arrested, Thomas was the one who said, "Let us go and die with him." I’d like to think I’d have the same courage as my twin brother.

Paul Tillich said that "Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it’s an element of faith." In fact, he said, "The opposite of faith is certainty." I like that. "The opposite of faith is certainty." If you’re all that certain, if you know who’s in and who’s out, what God is and what God isn’t, then why do you need faith? You’ve already got proof. "Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith...the opposite of faith is certainty."

Khalil Gibran–the Lebanese poet who wrote "The Prophet"–put it this way–"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." I think we’ve pushed Thomas – "Doubting Thomas"– away from us for too long, and we’ve become lonely in the process. Jesus didn’t push him away, –"he didn’t scold me"--and he won’t push us away either.

"The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews," John tells us. It wasn’t just the doors that were locked. William Sloane Coffin wrote, "You can’t think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart’s a stone, you can’t have decent thoughts–either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind." [cited by Kate Huey in sermonseeds, 4/12/15]

I guess that’s where I wish I were more like my twin brother Thomas–not locked down in fear, but out looking for answers. "The opposite of love is not hate," God says in Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God. "The opposite of love is fear." I know fear shuts me down. I know it narrows my vision. The walls and blinders go up when I think about what might happen on those snowy roads, what random, crazy, wounded person is going to pull out a gun and start shooting, what we are doing to the air and the creatures and the water and to each other on this planet. "The opposite of love is fear." "A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

Thomas, my twin brother, at least had a heart full of love. In that wonderful painting by Caravaggio, Jesus presents the wounds on his side to Thomas and Thomas reaches forward, practically falls into Jesus, his eyes wide with amazement. It’s almost as if, as someone has written, he’s saying,"There’s another world in there!" [David Lose, inthemeantime, 4/10/15] .

Thomas’s whole perception of reality changes when he looks inside those wounds. He’s no more certain than he was before, but he is full of wonder, full of love.

"Blessed are you," Jesus says to him, "blessed are you who have seen, and blessed are those who haven’t seen, and yet believe, yet trust." So, all of us are blessed as well, we who haven’t seen, but still, somehow, on the occasional Thursday morning, or a quiet Monday afternoon, –we are blessed when we "believe" or trust in the One whose wounds open up a whole new world to us.

Another of our twin brothers, Wendell Berry, suggests this approach– "Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what [humanity] has not encountered, [we have] not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answer. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias." [from Manifesto for the Mad Farmer Liberation Front]

The Risen Christ gives us his peace. So, along with Thomas, may we give him our hearts. Let us pray...

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

​

Read More

Early Easter 2015-- John 20:1-18

You may have heard of the custom in the Ubuntu African tribe, where

...when a woman of the tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes to the jungle with other women, and together they pray and meditate until they get to "The song of the child." When the child is born, the community gets together and they sing the child’s song. When the child begins his education, people get together and sing the song. When the person becomes an adult, the community gets together again and sing it. When it comes to the time for a wedding, the person hears his or her song. Finally, when the person’s soul is going from this world, family and friends gather and, like at birth, sing their song to accompany the person on the "journey".

"In this Ubuntu tribe, there is another occasion when men sing the song. If at some point the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, they take him or her to the center of town and the people of the community form a circle around her or him. Then they sing "their song." The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment, but is the love and memory of one’s true identity. When we recognize our own song, we have no desire or need to hurt anyone. [Tolba Phanem, singingteachers.wordpress.com]

You could do a lot worse than to imagine God or the Church as the One who knows your "song," who knows your true name, before you were born, who sings it to you in all the joys and sorrows and wanderings of your life, and then sings it to you as you pass into new life.

Jesus had taught Mary Magdalene her true name. She had heard her own song in the melody of his voice, in his teaching, in his healing, in his laughter. But the events of the past three days had muffled that song, had blurred her vision, had broken her heart.

She went to the tomb alone, as John tells the story, "while it was still dark." She finds the stone rolled away from the entrance of the tomb, and assumes the worst. Running to find Simon Peter and John, she tells them that someone has taken the Lord’s body and hidden it. They come and enter the tomb, and, John says that the disciple whom Jesus loved saw the empty grave cloths and "believed." Then the men go home.

Mary, though, cannot leave, any more than she could have left that Good Friday scene of crucifixion. When she finally bends over and looks into the tomb, she sees two in angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. She still thinks somebody has stolen Jesus’ body, and continues to weep. "When you live only in a Good Friday world," a wise woman observes, "and your eyes have gotten too used to the dark, and you are crying over a stolen body, a stolen hope, a stolen promise, everyone you meet is not a potential friend, but a potential thief–even two angels sitting in an empty tomb." [Shannon Johnson Kershner, Journal for Preachers, Easter 2015, p. 35]

Mary even assumes the gardener is a potential thief–"Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." And Jesus says to her, "Mary." "What an empty tomb, two angels, folded linens, and a separated wrapped up hanky could not do, [one writer says] the call of one’s name does. This is a beautiful moment." [Mark Davis, leftbehind. 3/30/15] Mary has heard her song, her true name, and at last she is able to see clearly and truly. "Rabbouni!" she cries, and falls at his feet. "Don’t cling to me," Jesus tells her. This is not where the journey ends. Go and tell my brothers and sisters.

Life in God’s reign is far more than "surviving," more than simply becoming accustomed or adjusted to the Good Friday world that so many people–and most of us at times–can only see. The only way out of that Good Friday haze, as one woman puts it, is to remember our true names, or, when we forget them, to have them sung to us. It may not be the actual song, like the Ubuntu tribe sings, but we might hear it in some other music, in poetry, in the hug of a friend, the laughter of a child, in a dream or vision, in the voices and faces of all kinds of people, in the view from a mountain. "Mary," he said, and she knew who he was and who she was.

"While it was still dark," Mary went to the tomb. The darkness does not last forever, and in fact it is precisely out of the darkness that the dawn arises. God does some of God’s best work in the dark–at the creation of the universe, on Christmas Eve, on an early Easter morning, "while it was still dark." In your darkest hour–at the bedside of a loved one, when you feel like a failure, when your life is a hot mess, when the pain seems never to go away, when you feel all alone –know that God is especially experienced at this kind of thing. Listen for your true name, perhaps the name given you at your baptism. Perhaps your true name, your own song, has only become clear to you in the years following your baptism. Maybe you’re still waiting to hear it. Know that your searching, your straining to hear it, is part of the melody. And know that this One, whom death could not contain, is even now singing the song of every heart which is open to Love and Truth. Like a bottle of precious essential oil, a fragrant perfume of the most beautiful flowers and blossoms, broken open and filling the world with its fragrance, so the risen Body of Christ infuses and pours over the wounds of the world, including each one of us.

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed." It was when she heard him call her name that she too experienced new life. Listen for his voice–"You are beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold." He’s singing your song.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

"Ragged Edges"- Mark 16:1-8-- Easter 10 a.m.– April 5, 2015

You can see why they thought it must have been a mistake. Mark couldn’t really have intended his gospel to end like that–"So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." He even ends the sentence with a preposition–gar–"for". There must have been a mistake. The real ending of the gospel must have been lost or torn off–surely there was an appearance of the risen Jesus, some happy reunion with the disciples, something other than the women running off in terror and saying nothing to anyone, "they were afraid for..."

So in the later manuscripts, the ones copied faithfully by the monks, Jesus does appear to Mary Magdalene, and to the disciples, and sends them all out to spread the good news. He even tells them they’ll be able to do all sorts of things–cast out demons, handle poisonous snakes, drink poison. You get the feeling that maybe the monks or one of Mark’s followers got carried away with their own imaginations about what the ending of the gospel really should have been–not "they were afraid for..."

But they were frightened. All the gospels–even the ones with longer endings–say that the discovery of the empty tomb wasn’t an immediate cause of joy and celebration. We may shout, "Christ is risen!" and respond to such news with "Christ is risen indeed!" But the first reaction to that discovery was more like, "Holy ... you know what! Let’s get out of here!" Instead of confidence and joy and a desire to go and tell others, the first followers of Jesus responded with fear and silence and running away.

The apostle Paul wisely insists that there is no resurrection that is not resurrection from the dead. Tom Currie suggests that "the church has always wanted something less miraculous. We would like a resurrection that would be more like self-improvement, a resurrection that would not so messy, so intrusive, so threatening."[Journal for Preachers, Easter 2015, p. 3] "Because," as another writer notes, "when a guy executed for sedition is raised to new life, the line between life and death suddenly grows paper-thin. As a result we’re asked to re-assess all our familiar assumptions." [Mark Skinner, Odyssey Networks, 3-30-15]

You may be here this morning under protest. Not only may the whole "Church Thing" feel incredibly uncomfortable and even alien to anything else in your life; but you may also be thinking this "resurrection" stuff is just impossible to believe. It’s a fool’s crutch. You should know you’ve got lots of company–a company that goes back thousands of years–all the way back to that first Easter morning when the women got away as fast as they could and no way were they going to tell anybody about they’d found. A person could get killed for saying stuff like that; and they did. At best, you’d be called a fool; and they were.

Mark is not interested in proving that Jesus was raised from the dead. The ending of his gospel–what I think was the real ending–leaves us all in krisis–in a moment of crisis or decision, which is what that word means. Maybe it’s incomplete by design, as David Lose says, for "no story about death and resurrection could possibly have a neat and tidy ending." It’s open-ended so we’ll jump in. "It’s only just getting started,...[he says] Resurrection isn’t a conclusion, it’s an invitation." [David Lose, inthemeantime, 3/30/15] Your future–our future-- must be lived into, and we have to decide how we will do that–paralyzed by fear, deadened by cynicism, carelessly without hope, or trusting in the power that is able to bring life out of death.

"The ‘Fear not’ of the Easter message [Tom Currie writes] is not a declaration that there is no reason to fear or that our fears are illusions which we can ignore or wish away. It is not even a message that tells us that death has no power....The reason we are told to ‘Fear not’ is not that there is not reason to fear, but that amidst our fears, amidst our running away in terror, our walking in discouragement and isolation, there is one who has broken through the imprisoning bonds of death, one whose fellowship has overcome that deep loneliness that death intends for all of human life, one whose risen life is always a life together." [Currie, op cit., p. 4]

"Do not be alarmed," the young man in the white robe said to the women. "You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here...But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." Death is a scary thing, but we know that life can be a scary thing too. And we know that life is full of all kinds of little deaths–disappointments, failures, sickness, injury, betrayals, moving, graduating, divorce, losing a job, losing a loved one, endings of relationships. We get lots of chances to practice dying during our lifetimes, and it doesn’t always feel good.

But the message of the Easter story is that we don’t have to live our lives in a state of fear, despite what the news media and politicians would sometimes have us believe. We can acknowledge our fears and anxieties–after all, our bodies have built in ways to handle dangers and assaults– but then we might remember to breathe, especially if we’ve practiced taking deep breaths in the midst of anxiety. And maybe in that moment we can remember that we’re not alone. There is One beside us who’s been through all those little deaths and the Big Death, who did not run away but went through them, so we wouldn’t have to be alone, so we wouldn’t think that God wasn’t right there with us. And then on the other side of death–whether big or little–we are still not alone. We may be different, our loved ones are not present in the way they were before, in those same bodies, but they–we–are still held, together, in God’s loving embrace. Just how that all is is a mystery. Words fail us here; it gets messy and ragged. We might even end the story with a preposition.

"So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Mark’s gospel may have ended there, but we know the story didn’t end there. They must have eventually told someone, because we’re hearing the story today! As Fred Craddock said, "When the women finally find their voices, what powerful witnesses! No glib and easy Easter words here. They had been to the cemetery." [Christian Century, 4/5/03] Their story passed the reality check of their own experience of encountering the risen Christ. Their story passed the reality check of the experience of generations of followers who have experienced the presence of the Risen Christ, who have experienced new and abundant life even after the most crushing of defeats and death.

The resurrection is not a conclusion but an invitation. Enter into the story. Don’t let your head become a dead end for possibility. Open up to new life. Be part of the blossoming of hope –and blossoms always start out as little things–seeds or bulbs or buds. So find one small act to begin the revolution–you might help us transform the cross into not just and ending but a beginning. Place, if you will, one of the flowers into the wire, and help us create a symbol of new life. Become part of the good news!

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Rev. Mary Lee-Clark

Read More

Easter Bloom

In Lent last year, 2014, a fire-pit bowl was brought into the sanctuary and filled with stones from a local stream. People of the congregation were invited to write their concerns, regrets, and "sins" on purple slips of paper and to slip them in between the rocks. On Easter the bowl was transformed with greenery and bright yellow forsythia. Later the purple slips were burned.

Read More

Maundy Thursday worship service

Maundy Thursday worship service of simple supper in remembrance of the Last Supper, with communion, music and readings:

Read More

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

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

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

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

probably survive this class."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

Read More

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More