"A Night To Remember"

 

            This was a night to remember.

            The shepherds, they would remember that night for the rest of their lives, remember the angels visiting them on the hillside, remember their visit to that stable in the little town of Bethlehem, remember meeting Mary and Joseph, remember, and this would be the greatest memory of them all, remember greeting the Messiah, the Lord, wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.

            Mary and Joseph, they remembered as well. They remembered how they had met, the plans they made together, the hopes they had for a married life together. They remembered that strange angel greeting to Mary, and the promise that she would be the one to bring into this world a special child, a child that they would name Jesus. They would remember the long pregnancy, the excitement of Mary’s visit to see her cousin Elizabeth; they would also remember the long trip to Bethlehem to take part in the census.

            And when the shepherds finally departed, having told Mary and Joseph the angel tidings, we are told that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Remembering it all, trying to put it together in her mind, trying to figure out what it meant for her and her young family.

            This was a night to remember long ago; and this is a night to remember for us as well.

            So many of our special memories are wrapped up in celebrations of Christmas. We remember the excitement we knew as children, lying in bed on Christmas Eve, tossing and turning and wondering if we could stay awake long enough to hear the reindeer prancing on the roof, or if Santa would eat the cookies we left out for him, or if we really would get that sled or doll or Red Raider BB gun that we hoped we would get. We remember the joy of the family dinner on Christmas Day, all the generations gathered around the table, the roast beast or the turkey and the special dishes and the candlelight. And then, later, some of us remember having that special someone with us on that day, so proud and excited and nervous and wondering if the rest of the family would take to them.

            Of course we all have other memories of Christmas celebrations, memories that might not always be so happy – the Christmas you were away from family and friends, serving our country oversees, perhaps in wartime; that first Christmas after the loss of a parent or a spouse or a treasured relationship; that Christmas when it seemed as if you were the only one not in the spirit of the season.

              To remember something is to have it come to mind, something which often just happens, not prompted by an act of will.  Anything can set that memory off – a similar event, a taste, a smell, a song heard on the car radio, something you glimpse out of the corner of your eye.

But to remember something can also be an act of the will; we will ourselves to recollect it, we chew it over until suddenly the memory comes to life once again.

I think this is why Christmas Eve was a night to remember for Mary and Joseph, and a night to remember for us as well. Mary and Joseph were trying to make sense of it all, trying to put it all together, trying to figure out what it meant for them and their lives that Jesus was born.

And this is our proper work this evening as well, to not just hear this old, old story once again, but to remember it, to try to put it all together, to make sense of it for us and for our times and our lives.

What difference does it make to you that God so loved the world that God took on human form and weakness and lived among us and taught us and suffered with us and died for us?

What difference does it make, for instance, that the Prince of Peace came to us, promising us a peace beyond all human understanding, when we live in a time when the status quo seems to be a constant state of war?

What difference does it make to us that the first Christmas prompted generous giving by everyone, by wise men from the East, from shepherds on a hillside, from animals at the stable?

What difference does it make that in the darkest night in the darkest time of year in one of the darkest eras of history a light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has never prevailed against it?

Bottom line, what difference does it make to us that Jesus was born?

Christmas eve is a night to remember, but of course the task is too much for just one evening. Which is why we gather together each Saturday and Sunday throughout the year, to remember. To retell the story until we come closer to getting it right, to hash it our, to chew on it, to seek its meaning for us in our lives, in the joys and sorrows of the one life we each have been gifted with.

So let us, tonight, remember – remember to not only welcome Jesus into our hearts once again, but to remember throughout the year to come as well. Then it will be both a merry Christmas, and a happy new year. Amen.

“No Room, Part 2”

No room. In the gospel accounts, we all know where was there “no room” for Jesus. There was no room in the inn. We just acted it out as part of our teaching time. We pretended that we were Joseph and Mary, carrying the baby Jesus and looking for a place where he might be born, going from door to door, knocking, asking, “Do you have room for us? Do you have room for Jesus to be born?” We were acting out the version of Jesus’ birth that Luke gives us.  And I don’t know about you, but every time I hear that account of the hunt for a room so that Mary could give birth to that little baby Jesus, I find myself with little sympathy for those innkeepers who had no room for Mary, Joseph and the soon to arrive baby Jesus.

            Matthew gives us another version of the birth of Jesus. But here there is no reference to looking for a room in an inn, there is no manger, no cattle, no shepherd. And yet, if you listened carefully, you heard that in Matthew’s account there also is no room for Jesus. And the one who had no room for Jesus was, incredibly enough, not some stranger to this little baby, not a commercial innkeeper or B&B owner, but Joseph himself.

            Now Joseph was not a bad man; quite the opposite, Matthew tells us that he was a “righteous” man. Joseph was a good man, a man who found joy and satisfaction in living his life in accordance with the commandments provided by God, which had been given to help people know how to live well with each other. And yet, he has no room for Jesus – because he is afraid.

            Of course he is. You see, Joseph was not only a good man, but he was also in love with a young woman named Mary, and she was in love with him, and they were engaged to be married, pledging their lives and their futures to one another. And then the surprising, shocking, devastating news breaks – Mary is going to have another’s baby. To Joseph, to any man of the time, this is a scandal, an embarrassment to him, something that just was not acceptable for a righteous man. Although Joseph’s love for Mary aches within him, he fears the consequences of welcoming Mary and her unborn child into his home and his life. And so Joseph makes plans to divorce Mary quietly, so as to minimize the public disgrace. There is no room for Jesus with Joseph.

            And then, Matthew tells us, Joseph has a dream. Joseph is visited by an angel who has a message about the birth of one who is to fulfill the prophecy about a child to be called Emmanuel, or God-With-Us. This angel, this messenger from God, tells Joseph: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” Do not be afraid. And something breaks inside Joseph that night. It is as if a block of ice, formed by tears to encase a broken heart, suddenly is shattered, and Joseph is freed from the fear that prevented him for doing what his heart had told him to do, to take Mary as his wife, to love her as he had before, to accept this child to be born, to risk the embarrassment and ridicule, all so this woman, and this as yet unborn child, might have a home.

Once I thought that Joseph did as the angel commanded out of a sense of duty, that Joseph, so used to following God’s laws in his pursuit of righteousness, was simply following suit, obeying a new, more personal law. But now I think I had it wrong -- I believe that just as love came down on Christmas Day, love came down to Joseph that night, freeing Joseph from the debilitating fear that kept Joseph from truly loving not only Mary, but also this as yet unborn messiah. Love came down and battered open the doors to Joseph's heart, freeing him to do what he most wanted to do all along.

Like the father in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, who upon seeing his wayward son returning from afar, throws propriety and fear of what the neighbors will say to the wind and rushes off down the road to embrace, so Joseph is freed by love to love radically and deeply.

            In their nativity accounts, both Luke and Matthew ask us, will we make room for Jesus? Will we open the doors in our hearts to the baby Jesus, will we welcome him? Will we accept this one who has come to save us from our sin and aimlessness, or shall we shut him out?

            But the question is not only a spiritual one. The message of the incarnation, of God taking on flesh and living among us, is that there is no aspect of our lives and existence that God fails to make a claim on. We are called to embody our spirituality, to live out our religion in our daily lives.

And so the question also becomes, Will we make room for Jesus today in the concrete ways we live and move through this world?

Will we, for example, have room for the homeless Jesus when he comes to us here in West Barnstable or Osterville seeking affordable housing? Or will we, fearing the loss of community character, or fearing the loss of open space, or fearing the impact on property values, say “No room here, Jesus – try Hyannis.”

And will we make the minimal effort to support housing for the homeless Jesus through buying food certificates to use in our grocery shopping, at no extra cost to us, or will we refuse to do so out of the fear that someone might think we are on Food Stamps?

And will we continue to make room here at West Parish for the newcomer and the seeker, for those who have been turned away from other churches because “they didn’t fit in” or were different in economic or social background, or will we, out of fear of difference, close in our ourselves, becoming a musty museum instead of a vibrant, growing church? Will we continue to fund and resource our new 4:30 Saturday service, a service which yeaterday brought in 53 worshippers, many of whom were teens, children, and folk who had never been to West Parish before we started this service?

Will we make room for Jesus? Will we allow Christmas to happen in our lives?

            A couple years ago about this time in the season the volunteer staffers at A Baby Center in Hyannis received a call from the Department of Social Services. They were seeking assistance for some new foster parents who were shortly expecting to be placed with a newborn and a one year old.

            No one has room for foster children, especially in emergency situations, during the Christmas season. Most families are busy with their pre-Christmas preparations and holiday shopping, with parties and planning their family celebrations. Caring during the holidays for a newborn and her sibling, who likely would only be staying for a short while before being returned to their biological parents, hardly fits into the conventional idea of what Christmas is all about.

            And yet, here they were, two apparently normal adults, ready to take on their first foster children. But no Pollyannas these – they were anxious, they had fears: the infant was born addicted to crack, and was just emerging from de-tox – what would that be like, what would the baby be like? They had raised children, their own, but that had been long ago – would they remember how to do everything? She had a dentist’s appointment scheduled for the next day, how was she going to make that with two new children? And how was she going to get groceries and supplies? And would they get any sleep?

            The staffers at A Baby Center just laughed and hugged them, and reassured them, and told them to cancel the doctor’s appointment, to get the husband to go out for the groceries, and oh by the way, of course you won’t be getting any sleep. But do not fear – love will find a way.

            On the way out the door, arms loaded with diapers and wipes, car seats and receiving towels, a staffer said to this modern day Mary and Joseph, “Oh, one last thing. Do you realize that here we are, less than a week before Christmas, and today you are making room in your life… for baby Jesus?”

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What does Advent smell like?

   What does Advent smell like?

Not Advent as we have come to know it, as a commercially-intensive period leading up to the gift giving of Christmas, as the weeks in which we rush to get our Christmas decorations up that we might be in the holiday mood. So not the smell of evergreen bough and peppermint candy canes, not the spritz of genuine imitation aerosol pine scent for the artificial Christmas tree.

What does Advent – the season of waiting and hoping for the promised return of Jesus, the season that is like the deep dark blue of the sky just before the first rays of sunrise wake the rooster to announce to watchers the dawning of a new day – what does Advent smell like?

What does a promise smell like, what does hope smell like for you? Can you think of a time when there was a scent, a smell, a hint of something on the air that spoke to you of promise and hope?

            Maybe it was the early spring smell of a well-broken in leather baseball glove, a mitt rubbed to a soft suppleness through generous applications of Neats Foot Oil and a winter’s worth of being shaped around a Spaulding baseball by tight rubber bands. A scent that held the promise of  afternoons on the baseball diamond under a clear blue sky, punctuated by the ping of bat on ball, shouts of “dig it out!”, the anticipation of the next at-bat, the joy of hearing that first umpire’s cry of “Play ball!”

            Maybe it was that wondrous mixture of smells springing forth from your school bag on your arrival at the first day of school – the woody scent of meticulously sharpened #2 lead pencils, the deeper aroma of the pink rubber erasers, the tang of the vinyl three-ring binders. All holding out the promise of a new year and a new start, a clean slate, a chance to make new friends, to learn to love a new teacher, to discover things about the world you never imagined.

            Maybe the smell of promise and of hope was what greeted you on your return from college for winter vacation, the whiff you got of those Toll House cookies baked in anticipation of your arrival, or the pies baking in readiness for the evening’s celebratory meal.

Or maybe it was that Elysian fragrance that seemed to rise from dashboard and seat cushion as you found yourself behind the wheel of a new car, a scent that we all recognize by its scientific name, “New Car Smell.” A fragrance redolent with the promise of adventures on the open highway, of escape, of freedom.

            When I was a child my families summered in Ocean City, New Jersey, some 90 miles from our home outside Philadelphia. One glorious and much celebrated day, with school out for summer and the car packed to the gills, we would head out of the stifling heat and humidity of early June in Pennsylvania; back in those days before air-conditioning sanitized the passing scents, we drove through the noxious fumes of the gas refineries that lined the approaches to New Jersey, then down the long highways through the evergreen scent of the Jersey Pine Barrens, until, there it was: that heady salt marsh fragrance emanating from up ahead, followed soon by the salty tang of the bay as we approached the causeway to our summer home. As I drew in those seaside fragrances through flared nostrils there came, unbidden and yet not unexpected, the hope of a summer filled with body-surfing and laying in the hot sand, of sailing and bike riding throughout the town, of reconnecting with old friends, of meeting (this was later, but no less important for all that) new girls.

            Or maybe Advent smells for you like generic disinfectant, that ammonia-based pungent odor common to school stairwells and newly-swabbed church basement meeting rooms, like the one a man I know once frequented. Hope and promise smelled like that for him, a smell far different from that of smoke and gin and stale beer; Advent is ammonia transformed to perfume, a delicious scent that reminds him of the night he turned a corner, admitted he was an alcoholic, and began a rise to new life.

            What does Advent smell like? For John the Baptist, advent, the coming of the one for whom he prepared the way, smells like fire. He intends to scare us: repent, turn your life around, get a new attitude, get right with God; if you do not bear good fruit, you will be like a tree that is cut down and thrown into the fire; you will be the chaff, the stalks of the wheat, which will burn in an unquenchable fire. John’s hope is in the coming judgment, when our acceptance by God will be based not on our heredity, not on belonging to historic Israel, but on our response to God’s call for a decision, and on the fruits which grow out of that decision. John’s hope is in the fire that purifies.

            John, of course, got it partly right. In his sudden, abrupt appearance in Matthew’s gospel, in his call for a decisive decision on the part of the people, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”, John embodies the message that God is near, and that God’s ways with the world are often abrupt, unforeseen, unexpected.

            And yet the psalmist and Isaiah turned out to have better senses of smells than did the Baptist. What does Advent smell like? In Psalm 72, the Messiah is “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.” The One who comes to save and redeem and, yes, to judge, smells like a summer rain on a newly shorn lawn. Can you recall the heady fragrance of that rain, the delicate greening scent that the moisture brings forth from the thirsting tips of blades eagerly drinking the restorative waters, the ozone-rich air that smells of the earth when she was young and new? The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one who heals and feeds and uplifts our spirits.

            What does Advent smell like? For Isaiah, Advent and the promise and hope smell like a new-born babe. You know the scent, the one that rises from the scalp of an infant and speaks to you of how good and wondrous life is, of untold possibilities and potentials to be discovered and unleashed, of how much there is to be thankful for. This is not the smell of fire, from which we rightly run; the smell of a newborn awakens us to just the opposite reaction, it attracts us, it draws us in, it makes us want to hug and embrace and bury our nose in the new one’s hair. The Messiah, the one who comes to judge, is one we cannot help but run to and tenderly embrace.

            What does promise smell like, for you?

What does hope smell like, for you?

What does Advent smell like? Remember that smell, search for it -- and follow your nose. You just might wind up in a manger, or at the foot of a cross, or at the door to an empty tomb.

String Too Short to be Saved

       

     Donald Hall, the poet laureate of New Hampshire, went into his grandfather’s attic one day. Some people are keepers, and some are throwers, and Hall’s grandfather was most definitely a keeper. One of the many boxes in the attic was filled with short pieces of string, and bore the hand-lettered label, “STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED.” Hall later wrote a poem, which states the obvious, that his grandfather saved the string that was too short to be saved.

          Maybe you know what it feels like to be, in your own way, a piece of string too short to be saved.

          Because even with all the emphasis over the past decades on boosting self-esteem, on feeling good about ourselves, I think that deep down we realize that we really just don’t measure up, because we continually finds ways to fall short of living as we know we ought to live.

          The church has a word for that failing to live as we ought to live: sin.

          I think, deep down, we all know the power of sin in our lives. It is not just “out there”, where it is easy to see and label, but it is in here, in me, in you, and it is among us. It is in here, in each of us personally, and it is among us as well, a force and power that infects our institutions and social organizations.

          And we know how impossible it is, really, to ever totally reform and put sin behind us. No matter how many times we resolve not to do it,

we blow up at the kids,

or succumb to road rage,

or refuse to forgive an old slight,

or grudgingly put up with the abuse,

or say to ourselves for the millionth time that I or my needs are not that important,

or give in to the fear which makes us grasp tightly onto our possessions, as if they could save us.

          If you’ve ever felt that you are string too short to be saved, Paul the Apostle’s words for us are bound to be good news for you. “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-11)

          God has saved us all – it has happened already, it has already been done, it is not something that you have to wait for – God has saved us all in that great attic. Nothing is ever lost to God.

Not the boy who stepped in front of the train.

Not the spouse that cheated and abandoned their family.

Not the solider who went over the line in combat.

Not the young woman struck down by cancer.

Not the child hurt by the trusted adult; not the adult who hurt the child.

Not even me – and not even you.

We will each appear to be string too short to be saved – and our God will judge us -- and yet God will not be frustrated, and will save us still, will not condemn us. God accepts the unacceptable. God loves the unlovely. With arms wide open, God welcomes you just as you are. You have been set free from the law of sin and death, you have received within you the Spirit of the one who was raised from death by God, so that you, also, might rise to new life through the in-dwelling of Christ.

          A string too short you might think you are, but you can live in the knowledge that you are worthy of storage in God’s spacious attic, where you shall be knotted together forever with all the other too short strings into a seamless tapestry, one with its creator.

So as the Thanksgiving holiday nears we can indeed say, "Thanks be to God!"

“’You Are Not a Winner’ – Don’t Believe It!”

Some time ago, on a day like most other days, I got up and proceeded to make breakfast for myself. Noticing that the fridge was empty of cranberry juice, my preferred breakfast beverage, I grabbed a new bottle out of the cupboard, and with only a minor amount of wrestling succeeded in unscrewing the top. As you know, often manufacturers will try to entice you to purchase their products by awarding prizes to those who are lucky enough to buy one of their products, and evidently Ocean Spray was running one of those sweepstakes at the time, as there was a short message on the inside of the bottle top. This is what it said, in capital letters and a bold font: “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”!

            Now the cap did not say, “Sorry, this is not a winning cap”, or even “Sorry, try again.” No, it had to make it personal, had to gratuitously rub my nose in it. Not only had I not won a prize, I was not a winner. Ergo, I was a loser.

            Annie Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, knows what I am talking about here. She knows how easy it is to fall prey to the message “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”, to fall into the trap of thinking that we are never good enough.

            In one of her essays she writes of buying a used car, of her fear of being taken, of how she hired a mechanic to evaluate the car, of how she waited until it got a clean bill of health. She did everything right. But then, just a few days later, right in the middle of a busy intersection, the car just died. Traffic backed up; no one would help; people were yelling at her. It was, she writes, “my own private New York City.” She goes on,      

“It would be hard to capture how I felt at that moment. It was a nightmare. Bad Mind kicked in. Bad Mind can’t wait for this kind of opportunity: “I told you so,” Bad Mind says. It whispers to me that I am doomed because I am such a loser.” (Page 109).

It was not the car that got the blame here, anymore than that bottle cap took the blame for not being my ticket to some fabulous prize. Lamott blamed herself, Bad Mind told her that she had failed in buying that car, that she was inadequate, that she was a loser.

Where do we come up with this pattern of self-denigration? Where do we get the idea that we only have worth when we are a success, when things go our way? Where do we get the idea that we are what we do?

Is it true that our value, our worth, our identity, consists only of what we do and how well we do it at school or on the athletic field or on the job or in the home?

If you go to work each day for years and years, if you work overtime and put everything into your job, and then one day it happens that there are lay-offs and they let you go – are you a loser?

If you marry the person of your dreams and eight years later they walk out for a newer, more attractive in their eyes model, are you a loser?

If despite all your efforts to reach out to others you look around and see you don’t have as many friends as someone else, are you a loser?

If despite all your cleaning and decorating your house still does not measure up to Martha Stewart standards, are you a loser?

We all want to be winners. We work hard at it, constantly looking for clues on how to be winners. Maybe it’s the right clothes, the right car, the right people to hang with, the right activities to do with them. Because maybe if we succeed and win and keep winning then we will get what we really want, deep down: we will be loved. Because everyone loves a winner.

If there ever was a winner, there’s Jesus. He’s our winner, isn’t he? He is the one we want to pattern our lives on, the one we want to emulate. Wise, loving, courageous, strong, compassionate, he had it all, and we know he was a winner in God’s eyes. God even said so in the reading we had today: “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well-pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11)

And yet, look at the timing of God’s declaration of love and delight. It comes not at the end of Jesus’ life, at the point where he is faithful even to the point of suffering on the cross; it comes not at an earlier time, when Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, knowing even as he did so that he was walking to his death; it doesn’t come even earlier than that, after the Sermon on the Mount.

No, God’s declaration of love comes right there at the start of the Gospel, before Jesus has even begun his ministry, before he has done anything to earn God’s love and praise. God’s love comes first.

This is the Gospel message: you are love, accepted, God’s child. As it was with Jesus, so it is with you. God saying to you, you are not a loser, you are my beloved, with you I am well-pleased. God saying to you, I don’t care about anyone’s yardstick, you are my child, and I love you.

When Camden was only six months old we took a sort of pilgrimage to a holy place, a place that always had special meaning for me, my grandparents’ farm in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. My grandmother, Camden’s great-grandmother, was 93 and bed-ridden, at home with round-the-clock nursing care. We had feared that our visit would be too late, but the day finally came when we drove down that old shaded lane and parked beside the barn and walked out of the mid-August heat into the cool of the old stone farmhouse, and there she was. I held her great-grandson, all of six weeks old, out to her, and laid him in her arms. It took most of her strength, but she bent way over and kissed him on the top of his newborn-smelling head and crooned gently, “He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy.”

Camden’s great-grandmother got it. At six weeks of age, no accomplishments behind him, no awards received, no achievements racked up: “He’s a good boy.” Loving him simply because he is.

“You are my beloved .. with you I am well-pleased.”

God’s message for each one of us.

So own it. And live it. 

“Live for Greatness”

“Live for greatness.”     So reads the boldface ad copy on an advertisement from last week’s New Yorker magazine. In the background, a softly-focused photo of the talented and fetching jazz musician Diana Krall; in the foreground, an Oyster Perpetual Datejust Special Edition Rolex watch. “Live for greatness.”

    You may have heard the story of three masons who were working at chipping chunks of granite from large blocks. The first seemed unhappy at his job, chipping away but looking frequently at his watch. When asked what it was that he was doing, he responded, rather curtly, “I'm hammering this stupid rock, and I can't wait ‘til 5 when I can go home.”

A second mason, seemingly more interested in his work, hammered diligently, and, when asked what he was doing, he answered, “Well, I'm molding this block of rock so that it can be used with others to construct a wall. It's not bad work, but I'll sure be glad when it's done.”

The third mason hammered fervently at his block, taking time to stand back and admire his work. He chipped off small pieces until he was satisfied that it was the best he could do. When questioned about his work, he stopped, gazed skyward, and proudly proclaimed, “I am building a cathedral.”

In  the Bible (Haggai 1:1-15), it seems that what God is concerned with, as Haggai brings God’s message to the people, is a building – the Temple. The message is clear, the goal clearly stated: you people have rebuilt your homes, and in a grand style, paneled walls and all; but you have left my home, the Temple, in ruins; so call the contractor, line up the subs, hie thee to Home Depot, and get to work chez moi!

            But a closer reading reveals that it is not just about a building, it is also about the building. It is not just about a noun (a building), but about a verb (rebuilding). And what it is that needs rebuilding is not just a structure, but a Spirit-filled, outwardly focused community which lives as if it were an outpost of the promised kingdom of God.

            For the problem in Jerusalem ran much deeper than a structure which lay in ruins –there was a community which lay in ruins as well. The first was emblematic of the second. God had brought the exiles out of two generations of captivity in Babylon, had restored the people to their former home, had blessed them in abundance. But what is their response?

The wealthy construct for themselves the ancient equivalents of present-day McMansions, homes luxuriously appointed with fine paneling. The powerful, the religious and political leaders, refuse to provide the funds for the reconstruction of the Temple – an expense which would have cut into their pocketbooks. Once this had been a people keenly aware of and dependent on their God, a God who stood with them in time of trial, who had comforted them when they were afflicted, who brought them out of captivity into new life; once they had cherished their covenant with their God, a covenant which called for them to live in response to the blessings they had known – to love God and neighbor, to look after the poor and the widow, to live lives of thanksgiving to God and blessing to others. But no longer.

            And so Haggai’s message to them—and to us – is that it is not just about the building, it is also about the need to be building. It is about the Temple, because the Temple is more than a building – it is the site of God’s life-giving, community-sustaining presence. The call to rebuild the Temple is a call to rebuild the Spirit-filled, caring community as well.

            They were called to live for greatness – to harken back to the story of the three masons, to not just chip away at a rock, not just build a wall, but to construct a cathedral.

             And how can we not remember, on this Founders’ Day at West Parish of Barnstable, Henry Jacob and John Lothrop? Two men who lived for greatness in their day, who despite persecution, imprisonment, and loss responded to God’s call to form the first congregational church, and then brought it over the stormy sea to safety here on Cape Cod.

And how can we not remember, on this Founders’ Day, Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins? That same Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins who lived for greatness in her time, who  over the course of three decades, laboring not to build a cathedral, but to restore this Meetinghouse to its original glory – not just for its own sake, although that would have been enough, but as the keystone towards the revitalization of the West Parish Congregational Church.

            I’m not so sure that many of us find it in ourselves to live for greatness these days. Maybe it has a lot to do with the tough economic times we have known over the past decade. Maybe it has something to do with the entertainment-saturated culture we live in, when the media glues its attention on trifles like cable celebrity Kim Kardashian and her shocking (!) decision to end her 72-day long marriage. Maybe it has something to do with our culture’s move away from that foundational understanding on which this nation was founded, the idea of community and covenant and being in this together, and towards the sort of radical individualism which constricts our view of the good life to what is good for me, period.

            Mary Oliver’s poem (Magellan) is a call to live for greatness, lest, she warns, “we go down in comfort and despair.” Thank God that in the time of the prophet Haggai, at a time when the community was going down in comfort and despair, God’s call came to the people to live for greatness, to work together and give together and sacrifice together for the good of the entire community – and that, as they together risked the wildest places, they experienced a community reborn. And thank God for God’s call to us in this day as well, a call for us to live for greatness; thank God for the gracious invitation to us to be partners with God in that most holy of tasks, that of building, one person and one heart and one community at a time, the kingdom of God.

            Come, Lord Jesus, and be with us, for we would be a-building; we would risk the wildest places, and live for greatness. Amen.

“Souls Made for Community”

     I want to let you all in on a little known fact about myself. I share this with some reluctance, because I don’t like to brag, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I am all puffed up on myself, but facts is facts, as they say, so I’ll just spill the beans and let the chips fall where they may. Here it is: I am a GREAT golfer.

            I know, I know, you might object. You might say, ‘But Reed, you don’t even own a set of golf clubs!” You might say, “But Pastor, the closest you come to golfing is watching the Masters on television.” You might even add in, “Reed, you never practice golf, why you have never swung a golf club since you were in high school anywhere except on a miniature golf course.”  All true, yes.

But let me tell you – I am a great golfer because in my head I know I am. I don’t need to practice to be a great golfer, because in my heart I believe I am.

Lots of folk think they are great Christians. Now they don’t own a Bible, and if they do it is gathering dust on a bookshelf. They might on occasion turn on the TV to watch a televangelist. They may even have a bracelet with WWJD on it – what would Jesus do. And they have not seen the inside of church since they were back in high school. They are Christians, they insist, because they believe they are.

In the same way that I am a great golfer.

            The Rev. Mary Luti, who is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and preached at my installation here some years ago, tells of a wonderful person who came to see here one day and said that she had been coming to church for quite some time, but had not been raised in the faith, and wanted to become a Christian And then she asked where to begin.  Mary reflected on this. Perhaps reading the Bible – always a good thing – unless you get bogged down in the boring “begat” sections. Perhaps reading a book on theology – again, always a good thing, but the Christian faith is about more than head-stuff. But she said instead, “Keep on coming to church, become part of our community.” Because what better way to learn it than to live it, and to live it in its rich, living, organic form?

            Which is, of course, the problem for anyone of us of sound mind. It is why so many people in all sincerity say, “I am spiritual, not religious.” Because being spiritual is something we think we can do on our own, without all the other stuff that comes with being part of a faith community – including, of course, all those problematic people. The personality conflicts, the power plays, the insensitive remarks, the enabling behaviors. As one theologian once put is, “Church is the place where the one you can’t stand always is.”

            Sounds a lot like a family, doesn’t it? Like a family, and not one of those idealized old-time Leave it to Beaver type families, but the messy kind we all pretty much end up in, with Uncle Frank who tells the same boring jokes and dozes off in the easy chair, and grandma who can’t resist pinching your cheeks and telling you how much you have grown, and the little sister who can’t let go the grudge now forty-year old, and on and on.

            But then there is the other side to family, families they stay together by keeping in touch, by being there for one another, offering support and encouragement, providing  comfort in times of trouble or loss, showing up for each other, and so much more.

            Paul the Apostle (Ephesians 2: 19-22) reminds us that we are part of a new family, a Christian household of faith, part of God’s family. Which is a great thing these days, because while it was once true that we lived in a Christian culture, that is just not the case these days. We are in a very real way aliens in the society we once created. So how much more important it is that we are no longer strangers and aliens from God, but have joined a new family, a new household.

            So getting back to the golfing analogy, the question is not merely an intellectual one: “Do you believe?”, or “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”, or “What would Jesus do?” It is also the political and social question: “Will you join up?” And, more importantly than that, will you come to practice? It is like that cartoon going around the internet, with Jesus speaking to a young man kneeling at his feet, and saying “No, when I said follow me, I did not mean on Twitter.”

            We are souls –spiritual beings --  made for community.

“God’s Place of Business”

Jacob is a fugitive on the road, with only a stone for a pillow on a bitterly cold night in the wilderness. Jacob lays down to sleep, alone and without a friend in the world, without even so much as a rote prayer before bedtime. (Genesis 28:10-19a)

            And right there, at the strangest, loneliest, most apparently God-forsaken moment in his life, God comes to Jacob. As if often the case in the Old Testament, God comes to Jacob in a dream.

            In that dream, there is a stairway to heaven – but it is not a stairway that Jacob buys or even builds, and it is not a stairway that he climbs to meet God somewhere up in the clouds high above. It is a stairway that reaches down from heaven to earth, and upon which angels are going up and, more importantly, down. Angels, in Jacob’s time, were thought of as spiritual beings who were God’s messengers.

But then Jacob realizes that the Lord God is standing right there beside him, and the next thing you know Jacob is being given the same blessing and promise that had been given to his father before him, and to his grandfather, Abraham, before him: a blessing of land, and a future of untold generations who will in their turn be a blessing to the world.

And then there is even more: a promise that this fugitive, alone and on the run, would never again be alone, for his God would be with him, guiding and protecting and bringing him back safely to that very place.

            The claim of this account of Jacob and the stairway from heaven is this: that God’s place of business is right here, and that we are God’s business. We all – even the ones who grasp and trick and steal from our brothers and sisters and who flee like fugitives and even forget to say our prayers or come to church – we all are God’s business, right here, right now.

You may have come to church this afternoon because you thought you were about reaching out to God, reaching up to God. But the account of Jacob and the stairway tells us that God is just as busy reaching out to you, that God’s place of business is not up there somewhere, not on the 964^th floor of a skyscraper whose top lies nestled in the clouds, but right down here,

on the shop room floor,

 in the cubicle with you and your laptop,

in the kitchen at dinner time,

in the bedroom as you discuss the events of the day with your spouse.

In each and every one of those places, you might accurately echo Jacob’s astonished gasp, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!”

 This is the meaning of the account of Jacob and the ladder from heaven – this is God’s place of business.

And more than that, just as Jacob, with all his faults, with all his lack of faith, with all his flawed life and wrong choices, was God’s unfinished business, so too we, with all our varying degrees of faith, with all our pasts of wrong choices, with all our flaws and defects of character – so too we are God’s unfinished business.

It is the meaning of the incarnation, of our Christmas celebrations – that God came to us as Jesus to save the world and everyone in it; and it is the meaning of Pentecost, that God sent to us the Holy Spirit to help us in our journey. Because we are God’s unfinished business.

You may have the recently released film “Soul Surfer”, which is based on actual events. Brittany Hamilton, a teenager living in Hawaii, was a successful surfer who was on the cusp of dominating the professional surfing circuit when one day a shark took off one of her arms. Surfing was her life, and so she believes there is nothing left for her. But after recovering, she learns to surf with one arm, and determined to make a comeback, enters a surfing competition – where she is thoroughly beaten by her rivals. Devastated, on a whim she goes off on a mission trip with her church youth group to Thailand, where to compound her despair she learns that her lack of an arm makes her pretty useless on the construction site. But then, on a day off from the work, she finds herself down at the beach, and learns that she has a gift for teaching – she finds a surfboard, and teaches a young child to get over his fear of the ocean through learning to surf.

On her return to the states, she finds that her home is snowed under my mail – fan letters from around the world. She cannot understand it at first – she had failed in her comeback attempt at competitive surfing. But then she starts to read the letters, and finds that her attempt had inspired other-abled folk around the world, inspiring them to find ways to make new lives despite the setbacks that had been visited upon them. Far from being a failure with nothing to live for, Brittany discovers that she is a gift that gives hope to countless others who face their own struggles with disabilities.

Brittany Hamilton had thought her life was over when she lost that arm, but God had unfinished business with her.

And God has unfinished business with you as well.

No matter what your past, no matter what your faults, no matter the catalog of excuses and lists of back-sliding, no matter the bad habits and the repeated failures – God has unfinished business with you.

God loves you, and God loves you just the way you are – but God also loves you too much to leave you that way.

Thanks be to God, you are God’s unfinished business.

The Gift of Rules

         

My generation – those of us who came of age in the late Sixties and early Seventies – did not have much time for rules. Rules – laws, regulations, even the unwritten customs that governed how our parents lived – were viewed as mere legalism at best, oppressive totalitarianism at worst. We rebelled against dress codes, hair length, the draft, drug use laws, sexual mores, the unwritten rules about the proper roles of women and men in society, and more. A popular song summed it up for us, with its refrain, “Signs, signs, everywhere there’s a sign, blocking up the scenery, breaking up my mind, do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” We rebelled against everything in the name of freedom.

            So of course we – well, at least speaking for myself – have never been big fans of the Ten Commandments, the original engraved in stone set of rules. And a close corollary of this denigration of the Ten Commandments is the tendency to view the Old Testament as all about law, the New Testament all about grace, to think that Jesus was all about freedom, his Jewish tradition about a binding, legalistic ritualism.

            But when I understood the context of the Ten Commandments, I came to see them in a whole new light, and to understand that far from being an oppressive list of “thou shalt nots”, they instead are gifts from God, gifts designed to help the community thrive and flourish.

            Try to imagine what life was like for the enslaved Hebrews. They had no laws of their own – they were subject to Pharaoh’s rule alone.  Where they lived, what they did, when they woke and when they slept, all were dictated for them by their overseers.  Who was their god, the one who exercised total domination and control over everything in their lives? – Pharaoh. What was their sole task? – to obey unquestioningly, and to fulfill the work quotas.

            And then, suddenly and without time to prepare, they find themselves with more freedom than they know what to do with, a wandering group out in the wilderness, with no history of self-government, no law books, no rules or regulations or even ingrained customs by which they might order their society. All they know is the old way, a way of totalitarian control by an autocrat, where the chief values are unquestioning obedience and meeting production quotas.

            Which is where God steps in. With a set of rules, yes, but first, with a reminder. A reminder that this God is all about freedom.

            “Then God spoke these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery….”

            It is as if God starts off by saying, “Before we begin, let me remind you about who I am – I am the one who heard your cries when you were enslaved back in Egypt, and the one who acted on your behalf to bring you to freedom. No longer are you Pharaoh’s – now you are mine. No longer are you chattel to be brutalized and exploited by an Egyptian overlord; now you are mine, and I am all about giving you what you need, as a community, not only to live, but to live abundantly. So listen up….”

            When we get the youth group together each year, one of the first things we do is sit down and together come up with a set of rules by which we agree to live with each other. Rules like “no put-downs”, and “we will treat each other with respect”, and “no drugs or alcohol”, and so on. Everyone knows that these rules help us to live together as a youth group, they help prevent the kind of splits and divisions which can ruin a group. Do they restrict our freedom to do things – sure. But in the name of helping us build a life-affirming community.

            It is, of course, the same with those Ten Commandments. Far from being an arbitrary set of legalisms designed to hem us in, they instead are God’s vision for us of a flourishing, life-affirming community. And because those Commandments are linked to the Exodus, to God’s bringing the Hebrews up out of the brutality and exploitation of Pharaoh, they can be seen as a vision of an alternative reality, God’s reality, which God hopes we will we embrace.

            And so the first commandments remind us never again to submit to false gods, to the Pharaohs who would enslave us, either through military might or, as more often is the case, through the seduction of promises of wealth, or fame, or security, or a life of ease. And the latter commandments seek to enhance human community by putting limits on the acquisitive capacity of members of the community – the power individuals have to take by might or cunning from more vulnerable members of the community. As Old Testament theologian and preacher Walter Brueggemann reminds us, “”the protection of property is to be understood in the first instance not as a rule of property, but as a defense of the weak against the rapacious capacity of the strong.” (Theology of the Old Testament, p. 185).

            The Ten Commandments are, at base, not just law, but law rooted in God’s amazing grace, gifts freely extended to us, gifts embodying God’s wisdom, gifts setting out God’s vision for us of a world where God’s love is lived out by God’s people, in community, together. An amazing grace, not just for individuals who once were lost, but for the entire human community, that together we might truly see.

So this is the question for us.  Is it enough to just live by the rules, to “shalt not” when the Bible says “thou shalt not”? Or does God call us to do more, to not only see into the vision of a good life lived in community, but also to strive to make that good life in community a lived reality for all its members?

“On Holy Ground”

In the reading we just heard we had about Moses’ encounter with God (Exodus 3) – the same Moses that would go on to challenge Pharaoh and his army, the same Moses that would lead the Israelites through the parted Red Sea waters, the same Moses that would accompany them on their 40 year trek through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land.

            It reminds of that story about President Bush’s trip to the Holy Land. Israel Prime Minster Ehud Olmert and President Bush had a scheduled meeting. Olmert arrived late, and Bush let him know in no uncertain terms that he did not like to be kept waiting.

            Olmert replied, “I am sorry Mr. President, I was meeting with someone more important than you are.”

“Who is more important than the President of the United States?” Bush demanded.

            Olmert replied: “Moses; I was meeting with Moses.”

            “You know Moses?!”, Bush exclaimed. “Get him on the phone. I want to talk to him.”

            Olmert picked up the phone, dialed, listened, and then hung up. “He doesn’t want to talk to you,” he told Bush. “He said the last time he talked to a bush it cost him forty years in the wilderness.”

You gotta love this account of Moses and the way in which God comes to him. Moses, who was raised in Pharaoh’s court and knew just how oppressive the Egyptians were to the Israelites they had enslaved, is going about his business as a shepherd when one day he is walking up a mountain and saw something amazing – a bush. A bush on fire. A bush on fire with a flame that did not consume it. And then he hears a voice calling him, saying “Moses! Moses!” And when Moses answers, “Here I am”, that voice tells Moses that he is in a very special place, a holy place, and so he should take off his shoes.

            We aren’t shepherds, and we don’t often find ourselves on mountainsides surrounded by bushes which might catch on fire, so maybe we should not expect God to speak to us through a burning bush on Mt. Sinai. But still, we might well ask, what are the common things in our lives through which God’s message might come to us?

Maybe in the text messages and tweets and Facebook postings that fly across our digital world;

maybe in a conversation with a troubled co-worker over break;

maybe in the car pool to soccer practice,

or in a walk on the beach, or on the morning news,

or even in a wooden building some almost 300 years old.

Maybe holy ground is not just over there, in what is often called “The Holy Land”, maybe holy ground is everywhere and anywhere that God might speak to us, if we had ears to listen and eyes to see.

            But if we were on holy ground, if God were indeed calling to us, what might we expect to hear? I think we can take three clues from the account of Moses and the burning bush.

            First, just as Moses’ call was linked to the cries of his people crying in captivity, so too our call will likely be linked to the cries of those in need in our time and place – the suffering of the unemployed, the homeless, the bereaved, the ill.  Those televised purveyors of the Prosperity Gospel will tell you that God’s call to you is all about you, you, you – about making you richer, you more successful, you increasingly insulated from the pain of the world. God’s call to Moses reminds us that we are called to be a servant people, to partner with God in caring for our neighbor.

            Second, we can expect that God’s call to us will not be a welcome one! Like Moses, we will have plenty of reasons that we just don’t want to belly up to the task placed in front of us. I am not faithful enough. I am already over-committed. I don’t have the training. The job is too big for me. It’s all rather vague – I think I’ll wait until I get more of the details. It’s too hard.

            And finally, we can expect that when God calls us to a task, God will equip us for it as well. The same God who gives Moses what surely must have seemed to him to be an insurmountable task, also promises to be with him, with power, every step of the way.  It may look to the casual onlooker that Moses stands naked before Pharaoh, on his own, unaided and powerless. But the person of faith knows that this is far from the truth, that when Moses stands before Pharaoh, God is with him, fully engaged in the struggle.

            It is the same with us. When God calls us to a task, that call comes with the assurance that we will never be left alone or unaided. It is not for nothing we have that adage, “One plus God makes a majority.”

Who was Moses to lead his people up out of slavery to the Promised Land? Only a man called by God to do so and gifted with the resources to make it happen.

Who was Nelson Mandela to lead South Africa into a post-apartheid era of racial harmony and reconciliation? Only a man called by God and then gifted with the patience and wisdom and ability to embody extravagant forgiveness  so as to transform a nation and inspire the world.           

                       

Who were Lauren Abraham, Sharon Minehart, Dianna Henson, and Bobbie Jordan,  to do something new in a 400 year-old church, worshipping in an almost 300 year-old Meetinghouse, to start up a new worship service on Saturday afternoons? Only regular folk called by God and then gifted with the inspiration and enthusiasm and will to do the work to make that new thing a reality.

Friends, we stand on holy ground. So let’s roll up our sleeves, get to work, and rejoice!