Text: Romans 8:26-39
Date: July 24, 2011 (Homecoming)
© Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
Homecoming. What a wonderful word, and a wonderful day. To see faces that we haven’t seen in a long time, to feel once again the power of place in our spiritual journey, to experience in a small, miniscule way what it must be like to arrive at our heavenly home, whether five minutes from now or a century. Homecoming.
I’ve had a number of Homecoming experiences this year. In part due to my Dad’s illness, I’ve become nostalgic for places that I have left behind, places that he and I have shared. We lived for five years in Marlborough, Connecticut, outside of Hartford when I was seven or eight years old, and I diverted on a journey last fall to go see my old house, and school, and church. It all seemed so small, and the distances so much shorter than I remembered. My school was gone completely, swallowed up by an expansion project now 20 years old. But as I drove slowly from school to my old home on Chapman Road memories came flooding back: the house where we used to trick or treat twice and the owner would pretend not to remember. The backyard studio where I took music lessons, now become a tool shed. The store where I bought sour apple chewing gum on the Fourth of July one year, just before the parade started. The Library where I read every Hardy Boys book ever printed. The Little League field where I sweated and prayed that the ball wouldn’t be hit to me, or if it was that I wouldn’t do anything stupid like get hit in the face with it. The house of a friend, whose father worked for Hostess; the pantry in the home had a magical Twinkie box that never ever hit bottom. I had to stop myself from ringing the illuminated doorbell and asking for a Yodel or Drake’s cake. Strangely enough one of my good friends from my Pennsylvania college now lives two doors down from this home in the tangle of relationships that we weave over a life time.
My old home was different. The deck was now a sunroom, the shingles painted rather than weathered. But the old apple trees out back were still there, along with an ancient grape arbor that was old when we lived there 40 years ago, the remnant of a farm long since subdivided. The church continues to thrive, now nearly in its 200th year; I know that because I was there for their sesquicentennial celebration in the early 70s, and my mom had to explain that it meant 150 years. There is still a wrought iron boot scraper at the front door of the church, beckoning those with mud on their shoes to nonetheless enter the house of God, fresh from the fields and the morning milking. The dairy farms have long since gone, of course, but the boot scraper remains; it used to fascinate me as a kid; I’d forgotten that. I went around to the back door, which was locked, but recalled the Sunday we left my brother at Church. I don’t know how, but we went tearing back to get him and there he stood with the pastor at the kitchen door waiting for us, secure in the knowledge that we’d be back. No one greeted me on this little trip down memory lane. After 40 years, most everyone I know there has moved on or would be unrecognizable to me, and I to them. Do they know that the kid in the back row of the Sunday School class who asked all those pesky questions wound up in the ministry? Probably not. We have, to use the usual term, “lost touch.”
Probably while I’ve been speaking the last few minutes, you’ve taken your own nostalgic trip, to that home that you left behind, the church where you grew up, the school, or job, or place of natural beauty that you’d love to visit just one more time. If so, perhaps you learned—as I did on my detour that day—that while places may hold a fascination for us or remind us of old times, it’s the people that we miss. We go home to where we are remembered because we don’t want to loose touch, to re-establish touch, to share a handshake or a hug or a story of long ago, to reinsert ourselves into the story of a place and a people that we miss.
Paul, in the eighth chapter of Romans, reminds us that there is no touch in our life that is ever completely lost. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” he asks. “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No….” I love it when Paul answers his own questions; it saves so much time. “For I am convinced,” he writes, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When I lead Young Adventurer’s Camp at Mechuwana, my co-dean Todd shares a story by Max Lucado with the kids, a story of the Wemmicks, a puppet people who are strangely similar to some non-puppet people that you might encounter from time to time. The Wemmicks often find themselves in some self-inflicted turmoil or another, but their most profound problems are usually solved by a visit to Eli, the master craftsman who fashioned the puppets long before they could remember. “Return to the workshop,” they are told, return to your Maker, and all will be well.” And it is. I watch the kids while Todd reads, and at some point, usually about half way through, most of them get it. I don’t explain that Eli is Hebrew for “My God.” That would ruin it. And for those who don’t get it right away, there’s that moment in the middle of the night when the brain puts the pieces together. “I know who Eli is,” a girl said to me the next morning a few weeks back. “Should we keep it a secret?” I asked. “Of course not,” she answered. “I’ve already told five people!” “Good girl,” I answered. “Good girl.”
I love Homecoming. I love seeing familiar faces and welcoming strangers home for the first time. I love the food that is brought from homes and shared, reminding us that we are one family who are gathered in the house of the Lord, the home that always waits for our return, patiently, persistently, without judgment. But most of all, I love what Homecoming has to teach us, that the master crafter waits for us as well, waits for us in the door of the workshop where we were fashioned with our odd noses, bald heads, creaking joints, or shocking red hair. It is inevitable that we will leave places and people behind as we make the journey of life. Time or distance or both will see to it. We can always go back, but it’s never quite the same. God’s workshop, however, isn’t like that. God has traveled with us on every moment of the journey, from our newborn cries, to the many homes of our childhood, adolescence and adulthood, and even through and beyond death itself. God is the constant presence in our life, who knows us completely—the good and the bad, the public and the private, the recent and the ancient. But still God stands in the doorway, arms outstretched, eyes trained on the horizon, breathing slow and shallow, desperate to see that familiar face appear over the hill, a child of God come home. Amen.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, April 19, 2010
A National Day of Prayer
Did we even know that it was there until someone suggested we might lose it? It’s like that with a lot of things, I suppose. It’s the little things we take for granted in life, and the more routine they are, the less we appreciate them. Family dinners, summer cookouts, good health, an undisturbed night’s sleep, for example. But then life or law or circumstances or the passage of time take such things from us, and we wish that we had treasured them more when we had them.
I suspect it is that way for at least some of us with the National Day of Prayer on May 6 (the first Thursday in May). I have gone to the community prayer breakfast on that day at the Armory, a tradition that both Republican and Democratic Presidents have encouraged since before I was born. Perhaps because a government task force organized it, there didn’t seem to be a need to shoe horn yet another event into the church’s calendar. But then US District Court Judge Barbara Crabb on April 15 ruled (over the objections of the White House) that the National Day of Prayer (practiced in this nation since 1775 and made “official” in 1957) was in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In Judge Crabb’s words,
It bears emphasizing that a conclusion that the establishment clause prohibits the government from endorsing a religious exercise is not a judgment on the value of prayer or the millions of Americans who believe in its power. No one can doubt the important role that prayer plays in the spiritual life of a believer. In the best of times, people may pray as a way of expressing joy and thanks; during times of grief, many find that prayer provides comfort. Others may pray to give praise, seek forgiveness, ask for guidance or find the truth. And perhaps it is not too much to say that since the beginning of th[e] history [of humans] many people have devoutly believed that 'More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.'" Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 433 (1962). However, recognizing the importance of prayer to many people does not mean that the government may enact a statute in support of it, any more than the government may encourage citizens to fast during the month of Ramadan, attend a synagogue, purify themselves in a sweat lodge or practice rune magic. In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray.
Intellectually, I understand what her Honor is saying, that there is a real danger in allowing our secular government to set the religious agenda of the nation (one of the reasons that our ancestors wound up here in the first place). But spiritually I’m troubled, troubled at the loss of a single day when all of the nation’s denominations and faiths would unite their hearts in prayer to the Creator of us all. The government never told us how or what to pray, only that doing so—each in our own tradition—could be a great blessing to our nation. The President’s proclamation last year put it this way, “…Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill. Our world grows smaller by the day, and our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife; and to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.” Those are good and important words, and they will live on even if a nationally sanctioned day of prayer does not.
I would urge us not to surrender the spirit of the National Day of Prayer to the scrap heap of history. If indeed the Constitution requires elected officials to put this work down, then let the many people of faith take it up again, exercising their freedom as sons and daughters of God to bring the welfare of our national and global communities before the ever-watchful eyes of our maker. With or without a proclamation, the work of prayer belongs to all of us, and so I would invite each of us to set aside time for prayer on Thursday, May 6, to lift up to God our nation, its leaders, its poor, and its foundations of freedom and justice. Politically, we are all very diverse, but the faith that unites us is stronger than the momentary events of history. Let us unite our hearts on that day, and pray for God’s guidance and wisdom in these times.
Your fellow traveler,
Thom
I suspect it is that way for at least some of us with the National Day of Prayer on May 6 (the first Thursday in May). I have gone to the community prayer breakfast on that day at the Armory, a tradition that both Republican and Democratic Presidents have encouraged since before I was born. Perhaps because a government task force organized it, there didn’t seem to be a need to shoe horn yet another event into the church’s calendar. But then US District Court Judge Barbara Crabb on April 15 ruled (over the objections of the White House) that the National Day of Prayer (practiced in this nation since 1775 and made “official” in 1957) was in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In Judge Crabb’s words,
It bears emphasizing that a conclusion that the establishment clause prohibits the government from endorsing a religious exercise is not a judgment on the value of prayer or the millions of Americans who believe in its power. No one can doubt the important role that prayer plays in the spiritual life of a believer. In the best of times, people may pray as a way of expressing joy and thanks; during times of grief, many find that prayer provides comfort. Others may pray to give praise, seek forgiveness, ask for guidance or find the truth. And perhaps it is not too much to say that since the beginning of th[e] history [of humans] many people have devoutly believed that 'More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.'" Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 433 (1962). However, recognizing the importance of prayer to many people does not mean that the government may enact a statute in support of it, any more than the government may encourage citizens to fast during the month of Ramadan, attend a synagogue, purify themselves in a sweat lodge or practice rune magic. In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray.
Intellectually, I understand what her Honor is saying, that there is a real danger in allowing our secular government to set the religious agenda of the nation (one of the reasons that our ancestors wound up here in the first place). But spiritually I’m troubled, troubled at the loss of a single day when all of the nation’s denominations and faiths would unite their hearts in prayer to the Creator of us all. The government never told us how or what to pray, only that doing so—each in our own tradition—could be a great blessing to our nation. The President’s proclamation last year put it this way, “…Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill. Our world grows smaller by the day, and our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife; and to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.” Those are good and important words, and they will live on even if a nationally sanctioned day of prayer does not.
I would urge us not to surrender the spirit of the National Day of Prayer to the scrap heap of history. If indeed the Constitution requires elected officials to put this work down, then let the many people of faith take it up again, exercising their freedom as sons and daughters of God to bring the welfare of our national and global communities before the ever-watchful eyes of our maker. With or without a proclamation, the work of prayer belongs to all of us, and so I would invite each of us to set aside time for prayer on Thursday, May 6, to lift up to God our nation, its leaders, its poor, and its foundations of freedom and justice. Politically, we are all very diverse, but the faith that unites us is stronger than the momentary events of history. Let us unite our hearts on that day, and pray for God’s guidance and wisdom in these times.
Your fellow traveler,
Thom
Monday, September 21, 2009
Text: I Corinthians 9:19-23
Date: September 20, 2009
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
©Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
“I have become all things to all…”
Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all … so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (I Corinthians 9:19-23, NIV)
I’ve always been fascinated by the Civil War. I don’t romanticize it, at least I hope I don’t. But it was such a defining moment in our nation’s history, that I find it hard to look away when a documentary or film comes my way, reminding me of that troubled period in our nation’s history. My Great great great grandfather Jim Blackstone fought with the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, or so the family legend goes, and my grandfather said that he could still remember Grandpa Jim’s sword hanging over the family fireplace when he was a child. That tale and others made my first trip to Little Round Top at Gettysburg a moving, emotional experience. How many of Grandpa Jim’s friends and neighbors had died on that very spot? Had he ever gone back there to remember, or was it too painful to recall? I’ll never know.
I was reminded of that experience by watching the 2003 film Gods and Generals last week. It’s not the most amazing film you’ve ever seen, a bit dry in places, but there is Joshua Chamberlain striding across one battlefield after another, and for people who live in this city in this state, well, it’s just something you ought to see. When I’m teaching on the Portland campus of the seminary, I teach in the Joshua Chamberlain Room, and there his picture is, staring down at me for three hours every week. It is an intimidating experience. I always imagine him thinking as I walk out of the classroom, “For this I saved the Union?”
Civil War. It is probably the most horrendous kind of war, because it turns family members, fellow citizens, and those who share a common heritage, into blood enemies. One of the most memorable scenes in Gods and Generals, the film I mentioned, involves the battle at Fredericksburg. At one point in the battle a regiment of Union soldiers made up of recent Irish immigrants finds they are attacking a similar regiment from Georgia in a large open field. Brother against brother, fighting for a country that is not yet even their own. Later that night as the wounded and dead are tended to, one of the town’s Irish American residents recalls how Fredericksburg 20 years before had sent corn grown in that very field to relieve an Irish famine. “I can’t help but wonder,” she remarks, “did we save the lives of boys on both sides, just so that they could come here to kill one another?”
It was against the backdrop of watching Gods and Generals that I later that night turned on the news. And the clashing words of partisan opponents that I heard troubled me, troubled me because these were my fellow citizens, filled with such anger for their fellow citizens, and I began to understand how the Civil War could have come to be.
I don’t mean to suggest that we should start stocking up on canned goods and cannon balls, but I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 will object if I say this is one of the most painful periods of national disagreement in my memory. Perhaps, then, it is a fair question to ask of the Gospel this morning, what is the role of the church when the forces of social and political strife bring such emotions to the very door of our church, our sanctuary, our holy place? Indeed, what does God ask of us when such issues sit the pews between us, hovering spoken or unspoken as we sing our hymns, pass the peace, confess our sins, listen to God’s word, hear the sermon, make our offerings to God, gather at the table, pray for our neighbors, and receive God’s benediction?
Has the Gospel traveled such ground before, we might ask. And the answer of course, is “absolutely.” Perhaps the greatest benefit of Bible Study is to discover that there is very little that we experience in life that earlier generations haven’t already weathered by the grace of God. Notable exceptions include trying to get children’s toys out of their packages, foods that explode in the microwave, and telephone menu options. Those particular plagues are unique to this day and time. Most everything else has already happened to somebody.
The big questions in today’s world are really not all that perplexing compared to struggles that the early church experienced in its earliest days. The role of women and slaves, the divine and human nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the importance of the Old Testament. These don’t sound like agenda breakers at the next church council meeting, but in fact the blood of Christians has been shed by fellow Christians over every single one of them. But perhaps the single most divisive controversy in the NT is the struggle between Christians of Jewish heritage and Christians of Gentile heritage. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but in case you’re not, put yourself back in Jerusalem on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit falls on people of many languages, and persons of diverse cultures begin to speak in languages that are understood by all. And suddenly Jewish disciples of a Jewish Jesus begin to realize that God’s plans for this new religious community are immense. And it is not long before Christians who speak Greek and Latin, who are not circumcised, who eat pork roast on Sunday, and who dress in togas start showing up at the fellowship suppers. And you guessed it, pretty soon there are romances in the youth group, and Miriams start making eyes at boys named Tiberius and Julius and before you know it there is a full blown clash of cultures going on. It’s why Paul is such a controversial figure in the New Testament. He is a good Jewish-Christian preaching, very successfully I might add, to Gentiles. And out there among the great unclean, Paul is taking offerings and sending them to the mother church in Jerusalem, where the traditionalists have to decide whether or not to cash the check.
I know all of this sounds like a silly dispute to us, but for first-century Christians it was a full-blown crisis. Page after page of the New Testament is dedicated to resolving it, resolving it in a way that heals community, and allows brothers and sisters to experience the unity of Christ. In Rome, it was easier since the Jewish and Gentile Christians could form separate congregations, but in small towns and villages it was heartbreaking. Every time a church supper came up, separate tables would be available for kosher and non-kosher families. Every baptism raised the question of whether the convert should first be circumcised as the law requires. (those of you considering membership at Green Street by the way will be relieved to know we have resolved that particular issue!). There were questions of intermarriage between the two groups, and the status of their children, and the nagging problem of “what do we do when the relatives come to visit?” These were not happy days; these were not easy days to be a Christian.
Then along came Paul, this hot-tempered, disagreeable, brilliant man who could argue from sunrise to sunset for a radical rejection of Jewish purity codes among the new Gentile Christian communities. This argument shaped everything that he was. He was passionate that the new converts were free to eat whatever they wanted without criticism from the hardliners, and he made that argument from one end of Asia Minor to the very heart of Rome.
But then, in today’s passage, a strange thing happens. The Spirit of God gets hold of Paul by the heartstrings and reminds him that being right isn’t the only thing, that to be incorporated in the Body of Christ is to be in a relationship of service to others, and some of those others were people whose dress, habits, language, surnames, food, or politics totally disgust, confuse, or enrage him. Paul thinks long and hard about that insight, and the result is this passage in First Corinthians, in which Paul unbelievably says that he is willing to set aside being right, for the sake of being loving; that he will eat a kosher meal, against all of his principles of dietary freedom, if it means he has the chance to tell his dinner partner about the incredible love of God. It doesn’t mean he’s given anything up; he can still go grab a BLT on the way home and not feel ashamed, and if someone asks his opinion, he’ll surely give it to them. He’s really good at that. But when it comes down to it, Paul—as he writes in I Corinthians—will do whatever he can, whatever he has to do, to share the Gospel. He will attach the greatest value to being in fellowship with a brother or sister, even if he or she disagrees with his most passionate views on the controversies of the day.
Now I want you to understand that this is not necessarily an easy sermon for me to preach. Like Paul and maybe like some of you, I often have strong opinions and a desire to share them, and I do. But we are asked by this scripture to remember that the brother or sister who disagrees with us on some issue or another is equally a beloved child of God, as well as a person trying to please God according to what he or she thinks God wants him or her to do. And the takeaway from this scripture passage is that we need to figure out how to live and minister in harmony with those who disagree with us, because the reality is that there are always going to be areas of disagreement in every community, and club, and church that we’re ever going to be a part of, unless of course we go start our own churches, slap our names on the door, and hope nobody comes.
I go through all this, this morning, because the secular world isn’t ever going to teach us this lesson, and because you are a congregation that is articulate, smart, passionate, and diverse. I don’t say those things to butter you up, but as a pastoral diagnosis. That is in fact who you are. And in this season of secular and political debate some of those passions are going to come into church and sit among us, particularly for the next seven weeks or so. That doesn’t trouble me. Christians are supposed to be passionate about justice and righteousness, just as God is. But on November 4, which I’m pretty sure is the day after election day, on that day when inevitably there will be winners and losers, on all kinds of issues, the nation is going to look around and ask itself, ‘How can we live like this? How can we be one nation under God and yet be so divided?”
On a day like that, it would feel so good to have the citizens of Kennebec County, Maine look around and say, “Hey, look at Green Street Church over there. I’ve never seen such a diverse collection of folks in my life, but through all this they kept feeding the poor, and giving thanks to God, and praying for the sick, and gathering around that communion table, where no one has power over anyone else, and every one of them is there as a guest of God. And when they go home at night, some of them watch Fox News, and some MSNBC, and some Public television, and some the Home shopping network. But when they are together as a church, there’s something about them that is more important than any of that. I wonder what it is.” And one will turn to another and say, with a sound of urgency in her voice, “Let’s / go / find / out.”
I would like us to be that church. The church that gets through times such as this, not by shushing the important conversations, as some churches no doubt will, but by ending every heart-to-heart sharing of convictions with the words, “I love you, brother; I love you, sister. You drive me nuts. But I love you.”
That’s important for us as we go about planning, and funding, and implementing the ministry of Jesus Christ in this place. But it is even more important to our neighbors, those who might well assume from the secular media that there is no future for America other than one long, constant, bitter, drawn out argument. As they go looking for better answers than that, I hope and pray and expect that we have a huge helping of God’s generous and inclusive spirit to share with them, not because we are of one mind about anything, but precisely because we are not: we who are so different from one another, and yet united in one ministry by our Savior, Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
Date: September 20, 2009
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
©Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher
“I have become all things to all…”
Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all … so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (I Corinthians 9:19-23, NIV)
I’ve always been fascinated by the Civil War. I don’t romanticize it, at least I hope I don’t. But it was such a defining moment in our nation’s history, that I find it hard to look away when a documentary or film comes my way, reminding me of that troubled period in our nation’s history. My Great great great grandfather Jim Blackstone fought with the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, or so the family legend goes, and my grandfather said that he could still remember Grandpa Jim’s sword hanging over the family fireplace when he was a child. That tale and others made my first trip to Little Round Top at Gettysburg a moving, emotional experience. How many of Grandpa Jim’s friends and neighbors had died on that very spot? Had he ever gone back there to remember, or was it too painful to recall? I’ll never know.
I was reminded of that experience by watching the 2003 film Gods and Generals last week. It’s not the most amazing film you’ve ever seen, a bit dry in places, but there is Joshua Chamberlain striding across one battlefield after another, and for people who live in this city in this state, well, it’s just something you ought to see. When I’m teaching on the Portland campus of the seminary, I teach in the Joshua Chamberlain Room, and there his picture is, staring down at me for three hours every week. It is an intimidating experience. I always imagine him thinking as I walk out of the classroom, “For this I saved the Union?”
Civil War. It is probably the most horrendous kind of war, because it turns family members, fellow citizens, and those who share a common heritage, into blood enemies. One of the most memorable scenes in Gods and Generals, the film I mentioned, involves the battle at Fredericksburg. At one point in the battle a regiment of Union soldiers made up of recent Irish immigrants finds they are attacking a similar regiment from Georgia in a large open field. Brother against brother, fighting for a country that is not yet even their own. Later that night as the wounded and dead are tended to, one of the town’s Irish American residents recalls how Fredericksburg 20 years before had sent corn grown in that very field to relieve an Irish famine. “I can’t help but wonder,” she remarks, “did we save the lives of boys on both sides, just so that they could come here to kill one another?”
It was against the backdrop of watching Gods and Generals that I later that night turned on the news. And the clashing words of partisan opponents that I heard troubled me, troubled me because these were my fellow citizens, filled with such anger for their fellow citizens, and I began to understand how the Civil War could have come to be.
I don’t mean to suggest that we should start stocking up on canned goods and cannon balls, but I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 will object if I say this is one of the most painful periods of national disagreement in my memory. Perhaps, then, it is a fair question to ask of the Gospel this morning, what is the role of the church when the forces of social and political strife bring such emotions to the very door of our church, our sanctuary, our holy place? Indeed, what does God ask of us when such issues sit the pews between us, hovering spoken or unspoken as we sing our hymns, pass the peace, confess our sins, listen to God’s word, hear the sermon, make our offerings to God, gather at the table, pray for our neighbors, and receive God’s benediction?
Has the Gospel traveled such ground before, we might ask. And the answer of course, is “absolutely.” Perhaps the greatest benefit of Bible Study is to discover that there is very little that we experience in life that earlier generations haven’t already weathered by the grace of God. Notable exceptions include trying to get children’s toys out of their packages, foods that explode in the microwave, and telephone menu options. Those particular plagues are unique to this day and time. Most everything else has already happened to somebody.
The big questions in today’s world are really not all that perplexing compared to struggles that the early church experienced in its earliest days. The role of women and slaves, the divine and human nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the importance of the Old Testament. These don’t sound like agenda breakers at the next church council meeting, but in fact the blood of Christians has been shed by fellow Christians over every single one of them. But perhaps the single most divisive controversy in the NT is the struggle between Christians of Jewish heritage and Christians of Gentile heritage. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but in case you’re not, put yourself back in Jerusalem on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit falls on people of many languages, and persons of diverse cultures begin to speak in languages that are understood by all. And suddenly Jewish disciples of a Jewish Jesus begin to realize that God’s plans for this new religious community are immense. And it is not long before Christians who speak Greek and Latin, who are not circumcised, who eat pork roast on Sunday, and who dress in togas start showing up at the fellowship suppers. And you guessed it, pretty soon there are romances in the youth group, and Miriams start making eyes at boys named Tiberius and Julius and before you know it there is a full blown clash of cultures going on. It’s why Paul is such a controversial figure in the New Testament. He is a good Jewish-Christian preaching, very successfully I might add, to Gentiles. And out there among the great unclean, Paul is taking offerings and sending them to the mother church in Jerusalem, where the traditionalists have to decide whether or not to cash the check.
I know all of this sounds like a silly dispute to us, but for first-century Christians it was a full-blown crisis. Page after page of the New Testament is dedicated to resolving it, resolving it in a way that heals community, and allows brothers and sisters to experience the unity of Christ. In Rome, it was easier since the Jewish and Gentile Christians could form separate congregations, but in small towns and villages it was heartbreaking. Every time a church supper came up, separate tables would be available for kosher and non-kosher families. Every baptism raised the question of whether the convert should first be circumcised as the law requires. (those of you considering membership at Green Street by the way will be relieved to know we have resolved that particular issue!). There were questions of intermarriage between the two groups, and the status of their children, and the nagging problem of “what do we do when the relatives come to visit?” These were not happy days; these were not easy days to be a Christian.
Then along came Paul, this hot-tempered, disagreeable, brilliant man who could argue from sunrise to sunset for a radical rejection of Jewish purity codes among the new Gentile Christian communities. This argument shaped everything that he was. He was passionate that the new converts were free to eat whatever they wanted without criticism from the hardliners, and he made that argument from one end of Asia Minor to the very heart of Rome.
But then, in today’s passage, a strange thing happens. The Spirit of God gets hold of Paul by the heartstrings and reminds him that being right isn’t the only thing, that to be incorporated in the Body of Christ is to be in a relationship of service to others, and some of those others were people whose dress, habits, language, surnames, food, or politics totally disgust, confuse, or enrage him. Paul thinks long and hard about that insight, and the result is this passage in First Corinthians, in which Paul unbelievably says that he is willing to set aside being right, for the sake of being loving; that he will eat a kosher meal, against all of his principles of dietary freedom, if it means he has the chance to tell his dinner partner about the incredible love of God. It doesn’t mean he’s given anything up; he can still go grab a BLT on the way home and not feel ashamed, and if someone asks his opinion, he’ll surely give it to them. He’s really good at that. But when it comes down to it, Paul—as he writes in I Corinthians—will do whatever he can, whatever he has to do, to share the Gospel. He will attach the greatest value to being in fellowship with a brother or sister, even if he or she disagrees with his most passionate views on the controversies of the day.
Now I want you to understand that this is not necessarily an easy sermon for me to preach. Like Paul and maybe like some of you, I often have strong opinions and a desire to share them, and I do. But we are asked by this scripture to remember that the brother or sister who disagrees with us on some issue or another is equally a beloved child of God, as well as a person trying to please God according to what he or she thinks God wants him or her to do. And the takeaway from this scripture passage is that we need to figure out how to live and minister in harmony with those who disagree with us, because the reality is that there are always going to be areas of disagreement in every community, and club, and church that we’re ever going to be a part of, unless of course we go start our own churches, slap our names on the door, and hope nobody comes.
I go through all this, this morning, because the secular world isn’t ever going to teach us this lesson, and because you are a congregation that is articulate, smart, passionate, and diverse. I don’t say those things to butter you up, but as a pastoral diagnosis. That is in fact who you are. And in this season of secular and political debate some of those passions are going to come into church and sit among us, particularly for the next seven weeks or so. That doesn’t trouble me. Christians are supposed to be passionate about justice and righteousness, just as God is. But on November 4, which I’m pretty sure is the day after election day, on that day when inevitably there will be winners and losers, on all kinds of issues, the nation is going to look around and ask itself, ‘How can we live like this? How can we be one nation under God and yet be so divided?”
On a day like that, it would feel so good to have the citizens of Kennebec County, Maine look around and say, “Hey, look at Green Street Church over there. I’ve never seen such a diverse collection of folks in my life, but through all this they kept feeding the poor, and giving thanks to God, and praying for the sick, and gathering around that communion table, where no one has power over anyone else, and every one of them is there as a guest of God. And when they go home at night, some of them watch Fox News, and some MSNBC, and some Public television, and some the Home shopping network. But when they are together as a church, there’s something about them that is more important than any of that. I wonder what it is.” And one will turn to another and say, with a sound of urgency in her voice, “Let’s / go / find / out.”
I would like us to be that church. The church that gets through times such as this, not by shushing the important conversations, as some churches no doubt will, but by ending every heart-to-heart sharing of convictions with the words, “I love you, brother; I love you, sister. You drive me nuts. But I love you.”
That’s important for us as we go about planning, and funding, and implementing the ministry of Jesus Christ in this place. But it is even more important to our neighbors, those who might well assume from the secular media that there is no future for America other than one long, constant, bitter, drawn out argument. As they go looking for better answers than that, I hope and pray and expect that we have a huge helping of God’s generous and inclusive spirit to share with them, not because we are of one mind about anything, but precisely because we are not: we who are so different from one another, and yet united in one ministry by our Savior, Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Formal Dance
In Augusta, it's called the Chizzle Wizzle Ball, a formal dance at Cony High School which occurs the week of the Chizzle Wizzle show, a student-run variety show which is claimed to be the "longest continuous student variety show in the United States". Year # 118 for them in case you're wanting to offer some competition! :-)
Hanging out at the formal wear shop in early March, one begins to understand that such events are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Even weddings are largely "smart casual" affairs these days, but tuxes, cummerbunds, and white shoes are few and far between. It's easier for the guys, of course. They know that if they basically all look alike, then they haven't messed up. The girls, however, live in dread that there across the dance floor will be someone else in an identical dress. When I lived in Aroostook County, where bridal shops are few and far between, such occurrences were commonplace. There are treasured photos of two, three, even four dance-goers in identical dresses lined up together, all displaying a "less than amused, but I'm a good sport about it" smile.
The end result of the fancy clothes and the dinner and the newly scrubbed and vacuumed "ride" is a sense of separateness. The effort to which one goes to get ready for the big dance sets that time aside as "special." We know going in that the pictures and memories of this night will last a lifetime, and so we prepare.
On Holy Thursday, our church will be remembering Jesus' final night with his disciples, how they shared a meal at Passover. At some point during the meal, the youngest participant is invited to ask, "Why is this night different from all others?" It is the question that opens the door to the telling of the holy history of the Hebrews' deliverance from their oppressor.
We are approaching a holy season. Let us not drown these days in ordinariness, diluting their power in a vat of the "every day." Let us cloth our hearts and spirits with prayer and fasting and repentance, coming to God's holy festival days with a sense of expectation.
Why are these nights (and days) different from all others?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
How Much to Warm a Church?
I imagine staring at your energy bill for the last few months is not the most pleasant task of the day. It's even less pleasant in a church setting, trust me. Thousands of dollars spent for a black liquid of unknown origin, all of which has been burned and exhausted up and out the chimney. As Winter yields to Spring, what do we have to show for it? Were the community and congregation better off because these four walls we call "church" contained heat on cold days? I surely hope so, and in my gut I believe so. But it is terribly intangible as I stare at the numbers on the page. What is the monetary value of worship? Of a community supper? Of the person who sits in an office or a classroom and talks of God and his or her relationship to the Divine? Was heating the church building "worth it?" Did we get our money's worth? I suppose it's like a pot luck supper. "If you walk away hungry, it's your own fault," my high school pastor used to say, standing behind the steaming casserole dishes and bean pots. Creating and heating a space for God's abundance to be made known is our way of setting the table, I guess. I'm personally grateful for all the folks who came to the party this winter, some of them old friends; some of them new to the church. I can't imagine life without worship and church, and so we'll pay our fuel bill and try to smile while we do it. In truth there is no putting a price on community and worship, even if both sometimes come with a bill. Warmer days are here again; let us give thanks in the House of the Lord!
Anyone remember this song of praise from the 1970's?
Anyone remember this song of praise from the 1970's?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A Church in a Parking Garage?
While hurrying down a hallway in an anonymous parking garage in Portland yesterday, I was halted in my tracks by the symbol of my church on a sheet metal gray door. It gradually dawned on me that I was standing outside the worship and office space of our new experimental faith community in Portland: New Light Fellowship (www.newlightportland.org). Officially at 185 High Street, with plenty of parking which surrounds and towers over it, New Light is a community of United Methodists rethinking what it means to be a church (their entrance on High Street is actually a LOT more attractive than what I discovered is the back door). I got the grand tour from a long-time friend Allen Ewing Merrill who co-pastors the community along with his wife Sara. Also showing me around was Erica Tobey of Green Street UMC fame who had just discovered thousands of excess postal labels left by the previous tenants. (Lord only knows what she'll do with them; I suggested name tags, but that's probably a federal crime or something.)
It's been a fascinating journey for the New Light group. Rather than starting with a congregation and urging them to join small groups, New Light has begun as small groups meeting in homes who are just now starting to worship in a larger gathering on a weekly basis. Their space is cozy, flexible, and filled with possibilities. I don't know what new churches will look like in the 21st century, but my guess is that this is how they will start, with bonds of relationship and community in Christ. All that church stuff can come later (or not!).
Good luck, New Light Fellowship. I have a feeling you'll have a lot to teach us in the days ahead.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Wedding Season
One of the neatest things I get to do as a pastor is weddings. I know, horror stories about "Bridezillas" abound. But the 200 or so ceremonies I've presided over have by and large been wonderful times of mutual love and family support. Folks do get stressed, sometimes about inconsequential things, but at some point the power of the loving commitment they're making always breaks through. The couple are pledging mutual love "forever," and even in today's jaded world, that's a big deal, a REALLY big deal. It's probably the most foolishly hopeful thing we do as people of faith, and yes it doesn't always end "happily ever after." Nonetheless, it is a moment when we reach out beyond ourselves towards the One who created us, with a prayer that we mortal creatures be capable of making a life-long commitment. Despite the naysayers, faults, and failures along the way, marriages are capable of bringing amazing joy into our lives.
One of the debates going on in my state at the moment is whether gay couples should have the right to marry. Although United Methodists aren't allowed to celebrate same sex marriage ceremonies, it is an on-going debate in our denomination as well. The State of Maine law being considered doesn't require churches to change their practice or beliefs, but provides gay couples with a license that can be used by a civil officer, or by a clergy person who represents a church that is willing to offer marriage to such couples. To me that sounds like a matter of equality and justice, that all adults should have the option to marry the person whom they love the most. I've heard the arguments that providing gay couples with the right to marriage will somehow diminish or threaten my heterosexual marriage, and that the institution of marriage is irretreviably connected to physical procreation. The former argument just doesn't "ring true" for me, however. Why would I love my wife any less because a gay couple next door decides to commit to one another for life? Wouldn't that example strengthen my belief in the blessings of marriage and family? I've never gotten the "procreation" argument either. Though I'm very proud of my three kids, and they've brought a lot of joy into our lives, I don't think that my marriage is "over" or "less than" now that we're expecting not to have more children. God willing, we have decades of married life together yet to be, and we know many couples who are blessed by mutual love and partnership in the absence of children. We also, of course, know a number of gay couples who are raising children too. Don't those families deserve the same support from society that we offer to "straight" parents?
The debate for the churches centers on what the Bible says and means, of course, and it should. We are a people shaped by a God, a book, and a tradition, and modern trends shouldn't casually change that. At the same time, how many thousands and millions of faithful gay couples have to sit in our pews before we open our minds to taking another look at the Scriptures? I know that some churches don't have the option of rethinking the literal meaning of sacred texts, but mine does, and with that freedom comes responsibility: responsibility to free slaves, and ordain women, and maybe--just maybe--to bless God's gift of love to mature, responsible people, without getting hung up on ancient taboos, lifted out of law codes we've long since set aside for any other practical purposes.
Anyway, such things don't get settled in a blog, and feel free to make liberal use of the "comment" link. In the meantime, say a prayer for all the folks who take on the blessing and burden of loving another. They help bind us together and make a positive difference in our communities, even if laws and customs need some time to catch up.
One of the debates going on in my state at the moment is whether gay couples should have the right to marry. Although United Methodists aren't allowed to celebrate same sex marriage ceremonies, it is an on-going debate in our denomination as well. The State of Maine law being considered doesn't require churches to change their practice or beliefs, but provides gay couples with a license that can be used by a civil officer, or by a clergy person who represents a church that is willing to offer marriage to such couples. To me that sounds like a matter of equality and justice, that all adults should have the option to marry the person whom they love the most. I've heard the arguments that providing gay couples with the right to marriage will somehow diminish or threaten my heterosexual marriage, and that the institution of marriage is irretreviably connected to physical procreation. The former argument just doesn't "ring true" for me, however. Why would I love my wife any less because a gay couple next door decides to commit to one another for life? Wouldn't that example strengthen my belief in the blessings of marriage and family? I've never gotten the "procreation" argument either. Though I'm very proud of my three kids, and they've brought a lot of joy into our lives, I don't think that my marriage is "over" or "less than" now that we're expecting not to have more children. God willing, we have decades of married life together yet to be, and we know many couples who are blessed by mutual love and partnership in the absence of children. We also, of course, know a number of gay couples who are raising children too. Don't those families deserve the same support from society that we offer to "straight" parents?
The debate for the churches centers on what the Bible says and means, of course, and it should. We are a people shaped by a God, a book, and a tradition, and modern trends shouldn't casually change that. At the same time, how many thousands and millions of faithful gay couples have to sit in our pews before we open our minds to taking another look at the Scriptures? I know that some churches don't have the option of rethinking the literal meaning of sacred texts, but mine does, and with that freedom comes responsibility: responsibility to free slaves, and ordain women, and maybe--just maybe--to bless God's gift of love to mature, responsible people, without getting hung up on ancient taboos, lifted out of law codes we've long since set aside for any other practical purposes.
Anyway, such things don't get settled in a blog, and feel free to make liberal use of the "comment" link. In the meantime, say a prayer for all the folks who take on the blessing and burden of loving another. They help bind us together and make a positive difference in our communities, even if laws and customs need some time to catch up.
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