Texts: Psalm 98, John 1:1-14

The assigned Christmas day lectionary readings are so different than the familiar Christmas Eve readings – we often tend to think of “the Christmas story” as a single narrative – involving Mary, Joseph, the Angel Gabriel, the census, Bethlehem, shepherds, a lonely stable, the star, and eventually the three wise men. But as some of you already know, that story doesn’t appear in any of the Gospels – that story is a combination of the two very different stories that appear in two of the Gospels: Luke describing Mary’s experience with the Angel Gabriel, the manger, the census, Bethlehem and the shepherds. Matthew tells the experience of Mary, but mostly Joseph, an unnamed angel, Bethlehem, the star and an unspecified number of wise men. Mark’s Gospel begins with Jesus as an adult, and John’s Gospel, which we read today, is a more poetic rendering of the coming of Jesus – told from a cosmic perspective rather than the individual or family experience.

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Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:1-20

For much of history, the most important attribute of what we think about a god was power – indeed often it’s the first thing people will say in describing God: all powerful. Never mind that such a portrayal is at odds with the Biblical picture of God, it’s what we want to see in a God. We like the picture of an omnipotent, impassive God – sort of a Divine Clint Eastwood. But as I said, such a portrait is at odds with the Biblical account of a God who is deeply touched by human concerns, and whose power – whether by God’s own choice or not – is limited in favor of human freedom.
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Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

We all know the Christmas story, right? Let’s see how much of it we can remember together before I tell the story again. I brought my nativity set from home to help us remember about the story – who is in the story??

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Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Luke 1:47-55

One of my favorites TV shows when I was a teenager was the original Star Trek series, starring William Shatner as Captain James Kirk, and Leonard Nimoy as the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer Spock, on the starship Enterprise. In one episode, called “The Galileo Seven,” Spock is leading a crew of seven in a shuttlecraft to explore a quasar-like phenomenon. But the strange cloud wreaks havoc with the shuttle’s controls and it crashes on an unknown planet where large creatures threaten the crew. Spock is known as being only concerned with logic, as Vulcans are; he is not distracted by emotion, which is a source of ongoing irritation to the passionate ship’s physician, Dr. McCoy, who is part of the shuttle crew. The gist of this episode is the race against time by the ship to find the shuttlecraft, and by the shuttle crew to repair their craft and rejoin the ship. Complicating matters is the prevailing mission of the Enterprise: to deliver medicine to a plague-battered colony at some distance. Finally, the Enterprise is ordered to abandon the search and leave the shuttle and its crew. At the same time, the shuttle crew has jerry-rigged the shuttle and left the planet’s surface. Yet, with communications still hampered by the quasar, the chances are slim to none that they will rendezvous with the Enterprise. Suddenly, logical Spock jettisoned the remaining shuttle fuel, and ignites it, leaving a flare in the remote hope that the Enterprise crew might be looking in their direction and will see it. Despite the slim probability, the Enterprise does see the shuttle, and transports the crew to safety just in time. Afterwards, the Captain asks Spock, “How is it that your well-known logic allowed you to make the choice to jettison the fuel, clearly an act of desperation? Desperation is an emotional state.” And Spock replies, “I merely examined all the options, and it was clear the situation was hopeless. The logical choice was an act of desperation. It was a logical choice, logically arrived at.”

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Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-39

There are so many ironies in this holiday weekend – and every year I feel it keenly as I begin to work on Advent preaching. It’s the time of year for me when the contradictions loom large between the life of faith, the liturgical year, the world INSIDE the church, and the life of the culture, the calendar year, and the world OUTSIDE the church. And it’s a time of year when the dissonance is really sharp for me between life in the church as the Body of Christ, and life in the Kingdom of God. It’s particularly ironic at this time of year, because after all, this is the time of year when the culture and the church SEEM to be on the same page for once – it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. But, it’s a time of year with so many contradictions for me. Here are some of them:

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Texts: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

My husband, Carl, worked for 22 years in the university police department for Northwestern University, most of that time as a sergeant. Boy, did he get annoyed when someone would call them security guards – they were trained in the Chicago Police Academy and were commissioned by the state. Anyway, one of the jobs they had was field duty at athletic events, and twice he was assigned as personal security for Coach Joe Paterno during Northwestern/Penn State games. So we have been following the events of the last week with more than a little interest. There’s another reason that we’ve followed with more interest – as I’ve mentioned before, one of our sons was molested when he was in the sixth grade. So we watched this both as fans of Paterno and as parents of a son who was molested. And I still found the story difficult, and hard to judge – in fact, I’ve been intrigued by those who have found it so clear that Paterno was in the wrong and deserved to be terminated, although he had told his superiors about his assistant’s behavior. On the other hand, why didn’t he tell the police? Why didn’t he fire his assistant? I’m hesitant to be part of the rush to judgment about Paterno, because I remember how I failed to call the police when my son was molested.

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Texts: Amos 5:18-24, Philippians 4:4-13

This last Tuesday was All Saints’ Day, All Hallows Day – of course, because it is the day after All Hallows Eve, known to us as Halloween. All Saints Day has long been one of my favorite days in the church year – not only because it’s the day upon which I was ordained fourteen years ago, but because it lifts up one of the essential teachings of the Protestant movement, variously known as The Ministry of All Believers, the Priesthood of All Believers, or GUESS WHAT? We’re All Saints, y’all!

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Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 8:31-36, Philippians 3:4b-14

Most of us find the holidays to be a time of digging into our traditions – in three-plus weeks when Thanksgiving comes, we’ll go back to our favorite family recipes: we’ll have the stuffing Mom made, we tweak the gravy like Grandma did, and it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Uncle Pete’s rolls, would it? Well, it could be! Twelve years ago a friend of mine from Milwaukee started a new tradition for Thanksgiving. Each year she serves a thematic meal. So the year of Hurricane Katrina, her family had a New Orleans meal. Another year they had visited Rhode Island and so they celebrated with a Rhode Island theme. My friend can be as feisty as I can be, so the year there was a lot of anti-France sentiment and the Congress was serving Freedom Fries, my friend had a French theme for Thanksgiving. This year, because her daughter, son-in-law and grandson will have just been at Disney World in Florida, she’s having a combination Disney/tropical theme.

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Texts: Matthew 22:34-46; Philippians 1:27-2:15, Frame Mission Statement

Two weeks ago yesterday I went to Madison for the ordination service of the Rev. Scott Anderson as a Presbyterian minister. Scott is a faithful Christian man, a gifted preacher, with a pastor’s heart and a call to ecumenism – he is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches. He is also a gay man who has been in a faithful, committed relationship for 20 years. You may have read his story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Stevens Point Journal, or the New York Times. Or you might have seen him interviewed on CNN. Scott’s ordination is a significant event in the Presbyterian Church, and the news media is watching.

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Texts: Genesis 4:1-16; Matthew 23:37-39

Today is the last Sunday in the Season of Creation – we’ve looked at God through the lens of forests, sun and moon, wilderness, rivers, four directions, and now today, we will learn about God and more particularly, our life in God, through the lens of land – la tierra in Spanish. And in Biblical culture, as in our own culture, ‘land’ carries a number of meanings. According to Biblical interpreter Ched Myers, in the Bible land principally meant four different things: mother of life, abundant sustainer of living beings, an altar for worship of the Creator, and a home place.

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Texts: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 13:22-30

My original thought about Four Directions Sunday was that it is celebrating diversity – the sense of welcome in the phrase “People will come from east and west, north and south, and sit down to eat in God’s kingdom.” I say this most times we celebrate communion – though not in today’s liturgy. It is a marvelous statement of God’s welcome and hospitality – threads that run through the entire Bible.
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Texts: Psalm 46, Revelation 22:1-5, John 7:37-39

The Cuyahoga River, in northeastern Ohio, is best known outside its region as “the river that caught fire”. I first heard of it in grammar school when I was in sixth grade and we were studying pollution – it was 1966-67, pre-Earth Day, and we were learning all about air and water pollution. And we learned about the Cuyahoga River fire of 1952 – a much more serious fire than the one many of us remember in 1969. In 1952, the river had caught fire and burned for three days. There have been over a dozen fires in the Cuyahoga River since the first fire in 1868 – that’s right, I said 1868. But the real watershed moment was in 1969 when it caught fire, briefly, again, and that fire became an emblem of the emerging environmental movement.
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Texts: Exodus 13:17-18a, 21-22, 16:1-5; Mark 1:9-15

I did a funeral yesterday for a dear family friend in Pennsylvania. Our families have chosen to be families together over the past 25 years. As I was preparing for David’s funeral, I looked back at our email correspondence. There was one about a long phone conversation we had, that I wrote him an email about, because the conversation had influenced my sermon the following Sunday. It turned out that the Sunday in question was Wilderness Sunday, three years ago. A remarkable coincidence. I don’t often re-use sermons, but as I read the sermon, it wasn’t out of date at all… and while I have taken out some paragraphs and inserted new paragraphs, it is largely a sermon that some of you have heard before and I hope you’ll be OK with that, as most of my usual sermon time was spent in traveling to and from my 27-hour visit home for this funeral.
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Texts: Psalm 104:19-24, Isaiah 60:1-5a

We are in the second week of the Season of Creation – this season that an increasing number of churches around the world are celebrating. This is the sixth year that we have celebrated a six week Season of Creation. Last week I discussed some of the reasons for a Season of Creation, but I neglected to mention an important theological dimension of it, and so I want to share that with you this week. Psalm 19 opens with these words, very suitable for this week’s theme of Sun and Moon – and I’ll be reading from the new translation, the Common English Bible.
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Texts: Genesis 2:4b-22, Revelation 22:1-2, John 3:1-16

This is the sixth year that Frame has joined with churches around the world in celebrating a Season of Creation. What we do here is not yet common, even among those churches who share in using the lectionary – the calendar of Bible readings that follows a three-year cycle, that we mostly follow from week to week. The Season of Creation follows its own lectionary – and while we don’t do it exactly the same as other churches, we mostly share in the same practices.

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Texts: Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21

This story of the call of Moses is probably one of the most familiar call stories in the Bible, and as with many who were called, Moses had plenty of reservations about responding to God’s call. One thing I love about the Biblical tradition – especially stories from the Hebrew Scriptures – is that the people of God feel perfectly comfortable arguing with God. God does seem to frequently call folks whose don’t seem inclined to respond with instant obedience. We can feel pretty comfortable that when we find ourselves uncomfortable, resistant or ambivalent about the call from God – which we probably don’t experience with the same clarity as Moses – nonetheless, our own ambivalence is well within Biblical norms.

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Texts: Exodus 1:8-2:10, Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20

One of the most prominent theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth, is said to have taught that preachers should come to the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other. His point was that preaching should not be disconnected from the real world – certainly, as Christians, our lives should be integrally connected with the world. The Bible tells the stories, again and again, of the people of God living out their faith in the real world. The Bible is not about a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by religious experience – it’s the story of how boys and girls and men and women lived in the real world – sometimes notably faithfully, sometimes not so faithfully. It’s the story of the challenges that people faced, and the choices they made, sometimes living faithfully in terribly challenging times, sometimes living faithlessly when times were easy. Then, as now, the question of who we shall serve in the world presented itself to people again and again. And indeed, that is the question that flows through all three of this morning’s readings.

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Texts: Genesis 32:22-31, Matthew 14:13-21

Two weeks ago we left Jacob as he was fleeing his brother’s wrath and heading out of Dodge, so to speak. He had cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance and even his blessing from their father, and as his brother was threatening revenge against him, he ran away, and went to live with his mother’s brother. While living there, he married two of Laban’s daughters, had eleven sons with the two wives and two of their maids. He also became very wealthy, and eventually began to want to return to his family, so he set off for his home, but he wanted to appease Esau in case Esau was still angry with him, so as they traveled, he sent his servants ahead with gifts for Esau, including: two hundred female goats, twenty male goats, two hundred ewes, twenty rams, thirty nursing camels together with their young, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. Then, as we heard, he sent his wives and children and servants and flocks across the river and he stayed by himself and wrestled until the morning with a man, who is later revealed to be God. God is unable to subdue Jacob, but does put out Jacob’s hip, causing him to limp for the rest of his life. But he doesn’t release God, demanding that God bless him before he releases God, and so God does.

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Texts: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52; Romans 8:26-39

Today is the third, and last, sermon in a three week series on hope – so, reviewing where we’ve been – two weeks ago, I opened with sharing that although I am, by temperament, an optimist, it has been hard not to feel pessimistic these days. In the news since then there has been plenty to discourage even the most diehard optimist – which is where I usually count myself.
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July 17, 2011
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Genesis 28:10-19a, Romans 8:12-25

Jacob was a punk. I hadn’t really thought of that way of describing him until I was reading a commentary by David Lose, a professor from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, and that’s how he described him, and I think it’s apt. Jacob was, indeed, a punk. He is commonly described as a trickster – prior to today’s passage, he has tricked his twin brother out of his inheritance, and even out of his blessing from their father, Isaac. He’s another great example of the less-than-stellar folks in the Bible, who nonetheless faithfully serve God and God’s mission in the world. This is not an argument against ethical behavior – nowhere does the Bible tell us that God is better served by bad behavior than by good behavior. But it is an argument against the excuses we sometimes give ourselves about why we don’t see ourselves as being God’s emissaries in the world – we sometimes tell ourselves that such work is for holy rollers, or for really good people – like, say, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, or Billy Graham. But while those are great examples of good people who lived to serve God, the Bible tends to more frequently tell the story of deeply flawed people who nonetheless effectively serve God.

Some examples of these are

• King David, who stole another man’s wife, and had the man murdered,
• the prophet Jonah who initially resisted the call of God to preach to the people of Ninevah, and then complained about God saving them because of his own bigotry against the non-Israelites,
• Moses, who killed an Egyptian before accepting God’s call,
• the apostle Peter who argued with Jesus, failed to understand the mission of Jesus, and denied Jesus, but who nonetheless was named the head of the church
• the apostle Paul who persecuted Christians before becoming a follower of Jesus…and a number of other characters throughout the Bible who were arrogant or faithless or sexually immoral.

God has clearly not limited participation in his kingdom to those people who are virtuous, good examples, and the kind of people we would choose to be leadership material. And so Jacob is right in line with the others. He’s a punk, a sneak, a trickster – and up to this point in his story, hasn’t shown much interest in the mission or whereabouts of God. And in that, he can be a great inspiration to us, because if he is an important cog in the machinery of God over time, then surely God might be able to make good use of us, too.

So sneaky punk Jacob is running from his brother, in whom his trickery has produced real rage, so he is running from his brother, who has begun to plot how he will kill Jacob. And when Jacob finally stops running, and goes to sleep, he has a dream in which the presence of God is so vivid to him that when he wakes, he says “Surely God was in this place and I did not know it,” and he makes a monument of stones, and names the place Bethel, means “House of God”, but we are told in our other reading that God breathes through all of creation – that God’s Spirit is within us, bearing witness with our spirits, and that God’s Spirit is even groaning from within creation. God lives here – God’s Spirit is woven into creation – surely God is in this place, this good earth where we live, but did we know it?

We often behave as if God is not here. We usually behave as if God is not here. We pray to our Father who art in heaven, imagining God to be far away; we open our meetings with prayer asking God to be present – as if we assumed God weren’t here already; and we say things and do things that do not suggest we understand the earth to be charged with the very presence and holiness of God.

Yet again and again the Bible tells us that God is here, that God is part of us, and part of the trees, the river, and the soil that nourishes the food that nourishes us. And this doctrine is called panentheiem. Unlike pantheism which claims that God is the trees, that God is the birds. etc. etc., panentheism explains that God’s presence flows through all things, but that all things are not, themselves, identical with God. We understand that, once we think about it – even little children understand that while Jesus lives in our hearts, that doesn’t mean that we are God.

God is more than us – God is beyond us – God is transcendent. When we say that everything is in God, we are understanding that God is more than us. And when we say that God is in us, and that everything is in God, we are also understanding that God is immanent – as near as the air we breathe. And so our need to belong to something beyond ourselves – and our need for intimacy are both met by God who is both beyond us and within us. And when we understand panentheiem – God in everything – we understand that we, the animals, the plants, the dirt are indeed all charged with the presence and holiness of God. God is indeed the life that pulses through the universe, so that when Jacob acknowledged “Surely God was in this place and I did not know it,” it turns out that he was speaking a truth about all places.

So what does this mean for our care of creation, and for creation’s care of us? It does suggest that we are part of an indivisible web of life in which each species is important, and nothing is without value. It also suggests that as we treat God’s good earth with respect, acknowledging the basic goodness of all creation – a goodness we heard reiterated again and again in the Genesis account of creation – God creates light and says it is good, God creates land and says it is good, God creates water and says it is good, God creates plants and birds and animals – good, good, good - we will indeed reap and taste the goodness of God. Life from life, good food from the good earth, good relationships within this good creation. And it also suggests that when we ignore this web of life, treating the earth as a thing to be used and discarded, the creation will indeed groan with the pain of God’s Spirit that is part of the creation, just as it is part of us.

And it suggests that although the earth is resilient, it is not immortal – that just as relationships can be broken, covenants can be disregarded, and life can end, the earth itself is subject to decay, and death. Our experience in life has shown us again and again that God’s good earth is one in which our choices have consequences – when we fall from a tree, our arm might be broken; when we fall in love, our hearts might be broken; and when we disregard the systems and laws of life, this good earth might be broken. 95% of climatologists – the scientists who have the greatest understanding of the earth’s climate – agree that global climate change is powerfully impacted by human activity and is leading to changes including increased volatility in snowstorms, global warming, melting of the Polar ice cap, etc. etc. We are seeing the beginnings of changes that climatologists warned us about only a few years ago. This is not new science, nor is it disputed among scientists. Unfortunately, in our country, it has become a political issue, and there are a number of business leaders and politicians who dispute the science – but there are not respected, independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies that dispute the science of climate change. It is deeply discouraging to many people that so many politicians and business leaders have chosen to take a short term view that is more concerned with their own success than the longterm impact on the earth – when did we, as Americans, become a nation of people who were unwilling to be leaders in the world, even when it’s hard? What happened to the legacy of the greatest generation, those folks who beat back the Nazi’s and innovated their way into winning the Space Race? Are we only able to invent things like facebook and iPods – new and better ways of amusing ourselves? OR Twinkies and deep-fried Snickers bars – new and better ways of harming our health? Are we no longer interested in finding the best way to do the hard and deeply important things?

What does the theology of panentheism, and these stories from this morning’s lectionary readings tell us about our Christian responsibility, and about any basis for hope amidst times that are discouraging for those who are interested in the environment? It says a lot.

First, God is in the same predicament that we are – God shares the earth with us, is with us, and for us. God is invested in creation. When Paul writes that God’s spirit groans with all creation, we should understand that God experiences pain at the suffering of the earth, just as God experiences pain at our suffering.

Second, we should understand that just as God desires and works for our redemption, so too does God hope and work for the redemption of all creation. The earth was not created just for our delight, but we and the earth were created to share in the delight of God. And we do – when we feel a swelling in our chest looking at a field of corn waving in the wind, or a sense of awe at a majestic mountain in the sunset, or the tenderness when we see a fawn – that, too, is God’s spirit sighing with our spirits.

Third, our choices matter – for better and for worse. We can make a difference. When we ignore the cries of the earth, when we pretend that God is far away, when we treat the earth as disposable… it does, indeed, suffer death. When Paul was talking about choosing the way of flesh, he was not describing simple biological flesh, but for Paul, the way of flesh meant the way of rejecting God, of choosing death instead of life.

My youngest son is 21 and will go to summer school this afternoon before his senior year of college in the fall. He just returned two weeks ago from spending a year studying at Oxford University. It’s been lovely having him home. And we spent some time this past week watching Harry Potter movies as anticipation of the final episode, which we saw early Friday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed. And I was reminded as I watched these, that one of the things I like best about the Harry Potter stories is the emphasis on the importance, and real consequence, of our choices. Our choices matter.

Fourth and finally, God has hope, and if God has hope, then so should we. And we need to remember, that we are the embodiment of the hope of God: we are part of God’s continuing creation experiment, and we are part of God’s hope for the earth. Even if we are punks, or consider ourselves not terribly wise, or good, and even when we sense that we don’t have much power – we are part of God’s hope. And it may well be true that none of us has much power in the world – but we each have some power. And so it is all the more important that we use our power - our choices and our actions - in a way that is faithful to the mission of God. When we choose badly, there are bad consequences, when we choose faithfully, the kingdom of God is expanded in the world.

If all we can do is a little, how very critical it is that we do what we can do to advance the mission of God, to affirm the life and gifts of God, to love the creation of God, to share the love of God for the world. We are the grounds of God’s hope for the world, and God – who created the earth and all that is in it, who loves the earth, who is with us, and for us, and who continually calls us from death to life – this God is the grounds of our hope, for ourselves and God’s good earth.

Amen.

Texts: Isaiah 55:10-13; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

The year I graduated from high school, the singer Paul Simon recorded a song called American Tune and some of the words went “Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken and many times confused, yes and I’ve often felt forsaken and certainly misused, oh but I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m just weary to my bones. Still you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant so far away from home…so far away from home. I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered, don’t have a friend that feels at ease, I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees. Aw, but it’s alright, it’s alright for we lived so well so long…still when I think of the road we’re traveling on, I wonder what’s gone wrong. I can’t help but wonder what’s gone wrong…..”
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Texts: Matthew 28:16-20, Genesis 1-2 (selected)

Today is Trinity Sunday – and Christian churches throughout the world, ministers are using examples like the shamrock, or the steam/liquid/ice dimensions of water, the apple, trunk and leaf of an apple tree, or my personal favorite – the heat/light/and orbital center of the sun to explain the concept of a Trinitarian God. And we’re using those few Scriptural passages that have any Trinitarian references – you might have noticed in the Creation Story – the wind, or spirit, of God hovered over the deep… and later, God says, “Let US make humans in OUR image….” It’s not a lot, but it IS there. While many Christians might not have a lot of interest in the Trinity, theologians will tell you that the concept is integral to Christianity – take out the Trinity and you get something else – something like Unitarianiasm, or the Church of Mormon.
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Texts: Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21

“Big wind, lotta dust, no rain….” This is how an American Indian chief described the first Christian Church service he attended: “Big wind, lotta dust, no rain….” [I may have been at that service... hope I wasn't leading that service!] It sounds to me as if he was describing a church service in which what was said bore no connection to peoples’ lives and from which there were no practical results – no impact.

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Texts: Ephesians 1:15-23, Acts 1:1-11

The story of the Ascension is one of those stories that it is easy to get stuck on – obviously, it’s an episode that brings with it some difficulties for those who struggle with what I’ll call supernatural events in the Bible. From my perspective, there are a couple of natural responses to those kinds of incidents: (1) to take them at face value, believing them, (2) to dismiss them as impossible, disbelieving them, (3) to not worry about those details, but to seek the meaning in the passage apart from the miracles. I tend toward the third approach.

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Texts: John 14:15-21, Acts 17:16-31

This story of Paul in Athens is one of my favorite stories about the Early Church – Paul is waiting in Athens for his traveling companions Timothy and Silas, and while he is waiting, he explores the city. Harvey Cox, who taught at Harvard Divinity School from 1965 to 2009, has pointed out in a recent book, The Future of Faith, that our experience of the world in general is much more like Paul’s experience of Athens than like our own grandparents’ world. Paul’s world was cosmopolitan and multicultural. And so was the world of Jesus – even in remote Galilee, which was less urban than Jerusalem or Athens, there was cultural diversity. Galilee had long been a place where Roman soldiers had been rewarded with land, and there were also people of other nationalities living there, dating from earlier occupations. By contrast, the world my grandparents grew up in was pretty homogeneous, and while of course, there were cities, the culture as a whole was more dominated by rural norms than by urban culture. My parents both began their childhood on farms, and I’ll bet many of you also have rural roots.
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Texts: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; John 14:1-14

Today in worship I have the same challenge that characterizes most of my days: so much to do, so little time. With all that we are celebrating today: the faithful work of our Sunday School teachers, the baptism of Norah, and the commissioning of our mission team, there is not a lot of time for a sermon. So I will resist most of the interesting material in the Gospel and hone in on one portion… and just think, some people thought we wouldn’t even have this time. Yesterday I saw this message on facebook: “For those of you disappointed that the Rapture didn’t come, relax – it’s not the end of the world.” My husband was really relieved that the Rapture turned out to not happen, because he is looking forward to the Dunkin’ Donuts that is supposed to be coming to Stevens Point. The Rapture is not mainstream Christian theology – it is a fringe teaching that emerged in the last 200 years. And actually, the whole concept is sad to me – why is it so important to people to believe that the God who loves them wants others to suffer? Continue...

So much of the preaching of Jesus seems to be somewhat mysterious…and indeed, we’ve reflected often on the role of mystery in faith. And my own sense of mystery in faith is not a passive shrugging of the shoulders about something I don’t understand while saying piously, “Well, it’s a mystery….” I think of mystery as something much more affirmative – an acknowledgement that not everything in our faith is about rational discourse, but that much of what is rich in spirituality is non-rational – experiential realities which are diminished as they are analyzed. In that sense, I suppose, mystery is somewhat akin to wonder.

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Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

There was a young Jewish man who studied Talmud day and night. One night, he ran into the village square frantically shouting, “What is the meaning of life? I must know the answer!: The people finally persuaded him to go to the rabbi. Sitting across from the young man in his study, the rabbi stroked his beard – “Well?” “Rabbi, I must have the answer: what IS the meaning of life?” The rabbi looked at him… slowly stood up… crossed the room… and struck the young man across his face! “Don’t be a fool!” the rabbi said to the shocked student, “You have a perfectly good question! Why would you want to trade it for an answer?”
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Texts: Isaiah 55:1-13; Luke 24:13-35

I have to level with you – I was really bummed when I heard what the Green Team had set for this year’s Earth Sunday theme: Food. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the environmental impact of our food choices, because I do. And it’s not that I don’t understand how connections between my faith and my food choices, because I do. But, over the last 6 years, as I have spent a lot of time learning about food and its connections to our health, the environment and our deepest values, I have come to also understand that our food choices are deeply personal. The food we eat connects with our traditions, our family life, our emotions, and even our sense of identity. Many of you know that about a year ago, I made some significant changes in the way that I eat. Like anyone who has undertaken significant change, I’m pretty zealous about this subject. And zeal is fine, but can all too often lead to self-righteousness (which I’ve learned is far easier to achieve than actual righteousness). Self-righteousness has no place in faithful preaching, so let me acknowledge to you that I have strong opinions about the food I eat and how it connects to my own faith and health. While some of this sermon overlaps my choices, this sermon is not about the way I eat. Food choices are very personal: I know that the choices I make are not choices that will make sense to everyone else. But we need to know the impact of our choices on the world around us. So with those comments as a preface, I am going ahead with the Green Team’s theme of food for Earth Sunday, because I like to do what I’m told (although that last statement will come as a real surprise to my parents when they read today’s sermon).
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Texts: Jeremiah 31:1-6; Matthew 28:1-10

Jesus Christ is risen – this is the major feast of Christianity, celebrating what many find to be the central truth of our faith: the resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent appearance of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost transformed the early disciples from a frightened grieving collection of confused followers of the teacher Jesus into a confident, empowered community on a mission to serve Jesus Christ. The new life of the resurrection was not confined to Jesus – it became a means to a new quality of life for his disciples as well. And the story that the Church has told in the two millennia since then is that Jesus is the means to new life for the rest of us as well.
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Texts; Psalm 188:1, 2, 19-29; Matthew 21:1-11

“This is the day that the Lord has made,” says the Psalmist, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” And most of us, if we have any familiarity with the Palm Sunday story, think that it is a happy story, a story about the people of Jerusalem welcoming Jesus and acclaiming him as a hero. And it sure looks like that…until you get to the last verse which states that “when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking ‘Who is this?’ The crowds [that is, the people following Jesus] were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’” Most of the people in Jerusalem didn’t know who he was – they saw the parade and went to watch. For most of his ministry, Jesus had been in Galilee, well to the north of Jerusalem. Galilee was kind of the boondocks in those days – considered to be the hinterlands. The idea that the Messiah would slip into town quietly was pretty farfetched, and the only reasons they took it seriously, in all likelihood, is because of the crowds with them, and because this was the fulfillment of a prophecy. And who doesn’t get intrigued by a parade?? And this would be a very different parade than the usual Imperial processions that periodically entered Jerusalem – those were always a show of might and power with many soldiers, horses, etc. This was a gentle man on a colt…. and the people.
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Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45

One of the wonderful things about life in community is that sense of connection that develops among people. We may not all know one another, but nonetheless, there is a sense of connection. When we hear about someone suffering a crisis, even if it’s someone we don’t know them very well, we all hurt a little. And when there is good news to share, we all feel a sense of gladness. We’re connected to each other.
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Texts: Psalm 23; 1 Samuel 16:1-13

The concept of “thin places” is one that has long been associated with Celtic spirituality – the ancient peoples of the British Isles: the people who became the Welsh, the Irish, the Scottish and English. Thin places are those places where what separates the ordinary and the holy is thinner – places where one has a particularly keen sense of God’s presence. Most often we think of such places as being wild places – places in nature where one experiences a sense of holiness, a sense of wonder and awe, and perhaps a sense of connection with that which is most profound in life, although defining an experience of God’s presence is not an easy thing to do.
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Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25; John 4:5-30, 39-42

Wednesday evening as I was preparing ashes for Ash Wednesday services, I overheard the beginnings of a conversation among youth group members. “Do you like politics?” one asked, and then answered himself, “I don’t really.” A moment later, I walked into the kitchen and heard yet another youth talking about how his family was going to be impacted by the proposed budget changes in our state. Continue...

Text: Matthew 7:1-28

Six weeks ago we heard a dramatic telling of the Sermon on the Mount, and we have been taking an in-depth look at it ever since. And now here we are at the end of it…and I feel like I should be able to summarize it in a cogent and helpful way. AS I thought about how to summarize the Sermon on the Mount, my first thoughts were: Yes, Jesus said it. He meant it. We should do it.
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Texts: Isaiah 49:8-16a, Matthew 6:19-34

The Quiet Man is a wonderful movie, filmed in 1952, starring John Wayne as Sean Thornton, an American boxer who travels to Ireland to explore his roots, and co-starring Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate Denneher, the feisty Irish woman with whom he falls in love.  Several of us watched this movie one Friday night here a couple of years ago – the Chicago TV station WGN used to broadcast it every St. Patrick’s Day.  Despite a scene that thoroughly offends me as a feminist, it is one of my favorite movies (and I don’t expect a movie made in 1952 to have the same sensibility that we have in the 21st century), but I do want to give fair warning on that.  Anyway, the movie is a favorite, and I watched it again the other night as I considered this week’s sermon because the film is a lot about Mary Kate and what she treasures. 
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Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-18
So we’re in our fourth week of the Sermon on the Mount, and today’s passage is not one that is ordinarily ever read on a Sunday morning. In the lectionary, however, much of today’s passage is scheduled every year to be read on Ash Wednesday. I hardly ever read it then, I have to confess, because it has struck me as beyond ironic that we would read a passage about keeping your religious practice to yourself and then mark ourselves with ashes in such a way that anyone who sees us knows we have gone to church that day. But I have come to understand that such a reading of this passage is a mistaken reading – so today we’ll take a closer look at this passage and try to get a truer understanding of it. And along the way, especially because of the events of the last week, we’ll take a look at political action in today’s world for disciples of Jesus Christ.
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Texts: Leviticus 19:1, 2, 9-18; Matthew 5:38-48
People cheering in the streets – dancing with joy, tears streaming down their faces – it was quite a week, wasn’t it? And depending on which day I’m remembering, that could describe Green Bay after the Packers won the Super Bowl (way to go!), or Cairo, Egypt after Hosni Mubarek relinquished office. Context makes a difference, doesn’t it?
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Texts: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37

About 21 years ago, when our three sons were roughly 6, 3, and a few months, we were leaving the house once when the eldest, Jason, slammed the door.   “”Whoa, Jason,” I said, “Are you angry?”  “Well,” he responded, “When a man makes a mistake….”  “Oh,” I said, “So you’re a man?”  And a that, Tyler joined the conversation – you all know Tyler as a 6’2” man with a beard and deep voice, but at that time he sounded more like Mickey Mouse, and so he chimed in, saying, “Sure he is!  We’re all men!  We’ve always been men!  We’ll always be men!”   And suddenly I had a whole new understanding of what our life together would be like.

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Texts: Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-20

For those of us who follow the lectionary – the three-year rotation schedule of Bible readings for worship – this is an extremely unusual year. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount only comes up in the lectionary every three years, but unless Easter is very late, as it is this year, we don’t get to it all. Three years ago, we only had one week of it before launching into Lent. But this year, due to the calendar and a little tweaking, we will read the entire Sermon on the Mount over this and the next 5 weeks. Normally, we just get snippets here and there. And the Sermon on the Mount is an extremely significant passage – it is the longest single speech by Jesus in the Gospels. The Sermon on the Mount has been described variously as “a short course in Christianity” and “a summary of the teachings of Jesus” but there has been debate for hundreds of years as to the meaning of these three chapters from Matthew’s Gospel. This year, although we’ll be studying them piece by piece in the sermons, we had an opportunity to hear the teachings as a whole last week, and that full picture is wonderful to have as background.
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Texts: Matthew 4:12-23; Isaiah 49:1-7

Last week, we talked about what it means to confess Jesus Christ in the 21st Century – and I should have explained a little. When we use the word “confess” it is a reference to confession of faith – so I really was saying, “What does it mean to confess faith in Jesus Christ?” And even then, that question is not entirely clear – what does “confess faith” mean? Does it simply mean to believe? I think it means more than that…it is not merely saying that we believe that Jesus exists or lived on the earth. To confess Jesus Christ is not so much a statement about what one thinks about the life of Jesus – it is about what meaning Jesus has in your own life. Or as the British theologian James Alison puts it, “Faith is not an assent to a set of propositions, an assent to live according to some sort of principles or practice, even – it is a belief in an Other coming towards us and transforming us. It depends on the reliability of that Other. To have faith in God is very different from consenting to an ideology. It’s not so much about what we do, but what the Other is doing to us, and how that affects who we are and what we do. It’s a belief that we are undergoing something at the hands of an Other that enables us to live differently.”[1] So to confess Jesus Christ is to say that in some way, our own life takes its meaning from Jesus Christ. And that will mean different things to different people – as I said last week, many of us have a commitment to pluralism – we don’t insist that we all have the same understanding of God.
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Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

It used to be that we understood what we meant when we talked about Christianity. Christianity was about Jesus – Christians believed in Jesus as the Son of God, and tried their best to follow him , using the Golden Rule “Love your neighbor as yourself….” as the guiding principle. And God loved the people who believed and followed Jesus. For those of us who grew up in the mainline Protestant tradition during the 60’s or earlier, that was the gist of Christianity. For Catholics there were some additional issues like going to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, and abstaining from fish on Fridays. For evangelical Christians there was the thing about being born again. But basically, we all knew what Christians were.
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Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-23

Today we are celebrating Epiphany, which actually comes this Thursday, January 6th, and is the time when we commemorate the story of the visit by the Magi to honor the birth of Jesus. Most of what we commonly think of as the Christmas story – the angels, Mary, the shepherds, the trip to Bethlehem for the registration ordered by Caesar – come from Luke’s gospel. None of these elements are present in the story in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew tells a simple story of Jesus being born in Bethlehem (no journey though – for all we know from Matthew, Mary and Joseph might have lived in Bethlehem). And then in the second chapter, these stories tell the story of responses to the news of the birth of Jesus – responses by insiders and outsiders, by Herod, King of Judea and by the Magi. For a number of reasons, these two responses seem very separate from one another, but there are connections, and both the connections and the contrasts can be informative to us.
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