First Sunday in Lent

Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Matthew 4:1-11

The guy has a point, you know. Not that I’d ever go so far as to call Jesus a loser, but you have to admit that he doesn’t play by the rules most of us do. Rules, assumptions, norms, understanding of how the world works. Whatever you want to call it, he walks to the beat of a different drummer, that’s for sure. Can you tell me, please, why someone who hasn’t eaten for forty days would refuse to produce bread in whatever way he could? I assure you that it didn’t take any superhuman mind reading ability to perceive that after 40 days of fasting he was famished. What I don’t understand is why he wouldn’t succumb to a little something to snack on when it was offered, especially a nice warm loaf of bread. I don’t know how I ever got hooked up with this Jesus guy if he can say no to bread.

Then again, if I’m willing to stop and think about it for a few minutes – and if I’m willing to let you in on my inner workings when it comes to food, I just might be able to catch a glimpse of what the man was dealing with. I have to admit that my relationship with food operates on some kind of continuum. Near one end, there’s a place I visit far more often than I want to admit, I see food and it looks good, so I say yes. I’m offered food and I want to be polite, so I say yes. On my worst days, it really doesn’t matter when I last ate or what I last ate. If it strikes me as appealing, I smile and say thank you. When I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I had a mid-afternoon meal, deciding that that would be it for the day. I rehearsed what I had in the room that I could eat if I got hungry (some of it was even healthy), and decided to head back and tuck myself in for the night. But when the owner of the B&B recommended a place just down the road, and I knew this was my last chance to check it out, I headed back into the night. To my credit, I did waffle awhile before I went, and I only had a salad. But still, I didn’t need to be there at all.

There’s another place where I spend far more of my time, and that’s a place where I ponder and debate what I eat. We go out for lunch and I think about what we’re having for supper and how this choice will work alongside that. I think about the desserts I’ve eaten recently and the leftovers we have at home, and encourage all of that to add wisdom and restraint to the choice I make here and now. Sometimes it does; too often it doesn’t. Too often, I give in again and say, yeah, I should say no, but I’m not going to. This is what I want, and this is what I’m going to have. I’ll be good tonight. Or if not then, we’ll shoot for tomorrow.

But on my good days, on my strong and clear and focused days, I’m much more clear headed and able to say, no. Yes, those fries would taste good, but broccoli is better for me. I know that Janie’s apple cranberry pie is out of this world, but I don’t need it. I can have it another day. I know there’s still pizza in that box, but I don’t need another piece. For today, I’ll be better off if I stop here. I’ve had enough. I like the way I feel this way better than when I’m overstuffed, pumped up with sugar or overflowing with caffeine. I need to know when I need something and when I really don’t need another thing at all. I’m done.

What we eat is about far more than what we need to nourish and sustain our bodies. Whether we’re stuffing or starving ourselves, there’s a whole lot more going on than the food that is or is not going in to our bodies. Often it’s about deeper hungers and hurts, about restlessness and emptiness, about comfort and consolation and covering up some kind of hole that we neither want to glimpse nor reveal. So we bury it under food. Or clothes, computer games, alcohol, books, staying fit, accumulating a larger bank account or more houses or nicer cars. We don’t ever want to feel those feelings again, go through that humiliation again, admit that weakness again, catch a second glimpse of that hurt again, so we bury it, feed it, hide it, cover it and try our very best to run away from it.

In an amazing way, Jesus was saying, I could feed the hunger in my stomach right now, but even if I did, it wouldn’t feed my real and deepest hunger – and that’s for God and God alone. I’m not willing to let food take on an ultimate kind of importance in my life, or drive a wedge between myself and God. It’s not that he wasn’t into food – he was later accused of being a drunkard and a glutton because he and his friends had so much fun at the table. He did several miracles to feed thousands of people. But here, where the rubber hit the road, he knew that what mattered most to him was not visible or edible, tangible or collectible, bankable or investable. What mattered most was the word and love of God, and he wasn’t willing to do, say or eat anything that would move God out of first place.

When Jesus told his tempter that he would feed on the word of God rather than turn stones to bread, Satan picked up on that language and asked Jesus just how much he was willing to trust the word of God. In the Psalms, God said that if you fall, the angels will bear you up and carry you safely to the ground, so show me if you trust it. Climb up to the very tip top of this steeple and throw yourself over the edge. If you trust God enough, you’ll do it, and then you’ll have proof positive for yourself and for the skeptics you’re bound to meet along the way. To which Jesus calmly said, I trust God enough that I don’t need to test God. I know that when I need God, God will be there. But I don’t expect God to stand in the wings waiting for my beck and call, offering me a morsel of reassurance when and if I get a little anxious. In fact, more than likely I will get anxious, but God’s faithfulness doesn’t need an annual inspection to make sure that it’s still functioning as promised.

At which point, Satan moved on to the third temptation: the promise of ruling all the kingdoms of the world. In order to make this come true, all Jesus had to do was bow down in an act of false worship. Bow before me, and in the snap of your fingers, it can all be yours. I don’t know how much Jesus understood at that point of where his ministry was going to take him, but you have to wonder if he knew then what he came to know later, if he would have changed his answer. Clearly, he had come to establish a kingdom which would govern people’s lives. And to think, it all could have been his in the twinkling of an eye. Why not skip over all that unpleasantness of tauntings and trials, of scourging and ridiculing, or a cross and nails. It’s the end point that matters, right? Does it really matter how you get there as long as you get there? It’s a question that each of us has to answer from time to time, but for Jesus, the answer was clear and unquestioning. Yes, the way you get there matters every bit as much as where you get to. He was not willing to worship any one or anything other than God, regardless of how much easier it made the road. He wouldn’t try to soften the cost of discipleship if it meant turning away from God.

The people of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and during that time, they were faced with temptations about hunger, about putting God to the test and about false worship. And in each case, they failed their faith and their God miserably. Jesus began his ministry with 40 days in the wilderness and faced precisely the same temptations. This time, where the Israelites had stumbled, Jesus walked steadfast and sure. And we have and we do face the same temptations: questions of what we will use to touch and fill the hunger that lies deep within each of us, how much evidence and proof we want before we can trust, and how able and willing we are to walk the road in front of us, and whether we’ll try to short circuit the path in order to make it smoother and easier.

Jesus didn’t play by our rules and still refuses to live by our standards. One of the questions before us this Lent is whether we will be willing to listen to his wisdom and learn from his faith in order to live by his standards and walk in his path.

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Second Sunday after Epiphany

Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Isaiah 49:1-7, John 1:29-42

How do you make decisions? I suppose it depends what the decision is, but I suspect most of us have a preferred and instinctive style. There are those who gather facts, do research, weigh pros and cons, and in a perfectly rational, linear sort of way decide what’s what – which car to buy, what to eat for dinner, how much money to give the church, what career to enter and whether and when to change jobs. A + B = C, so of course C is the plan. No questions asked, no conversation required. Others of us feel our way around the choices. We may try to use logic, and on some decisions actually succeed at doing that, but overall, it’s a matter of feel and instinct and intuition and just knowing what’s right in some inarticulate deep in the gut sort of way. Or continuing to weigh the options until the course of action does eventually become clear.

One part of the question of how we make decisions is the question of how quickly or slowly. I have a friend who likes to say, I’m a Gemini and we’re the worst at making decisions, so don’t leave it to me! One of my favorite ways to talk about the timeline for decision making is the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. According to this framework, there are four categories of pairs that talk about how we function in the world, and one of those pairings is a continuum referred to as Judging or Perceiving. A “J” as we like to refer to those on the Judging side, asks straightforward, rational sorts of questions, learns when the deadline is, goes to work and comes up with a result promptly – well before the deadline. A “P” or perceiving type of person is the creative sort who wants to know what the options are and will spend an eternity of time exploring those choices. Give them a deadline or they will never feel like they’ve weighed all of their choices. Why narrow down and focus in prematurely? You never know when something better might come along, so stay open and flexible; creativity takes time.

I may well be missing something, but it seems to me that all of those variables and categories go out the window when it comes to this morning’s Gospel lesson and that roadside encounter between John’s disciples and Jesus. They may have been J’s who make decisions quickly, but there was absolutely no time allowed for data gathering and linear thought. John watched Jesus walk by, said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” And his two followers turned away from John and headed off behind Jesus. Just like that. And while P’s are apt to operate on instinct and intuition, no self-respecting P would ever jump that quickly. Who knows who else might be coming around the next bend? Maybe they would have a better approach. Were they all simultaneously feeling restless and uneasy and ready for a new adventure? Had they grown bored with John? Or disillusioned? Had a falling out the night before about the words he used when he baptized or gotten sick and tired of that dismal diet of locusts and wild honey? Had their conversations filled them with so much anticipation that words like Lamb of God and Messiah triggered a knee jerk readiness to launch themselves from their current location? Just what was so compelling about the sight and sound of Jesus, or the words that John spoke about him, that caused them to turn away from everything they’d known up to this point to head off into the sunset behind a complete stranger?

I don’t think we know. I’m sure that John had set the stage and prepared them for their openness to Jesus. But I also think there was something so uniquely compelling about Jesus that, once Andrew and his friend were in Jesus’ presence, nothing other than discipleship made any sense. Rational or not, logical and linear or wild and wacky, it really didn’t matter to them. They had gotten a whiff of something unique, and in the very depths of their being, they simply knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they had no choice but to up and follow. And so follow they did. In the end, it really wasn’t even about thinking or decision-making; it was about doing. There was something magnetic and overwhelming about being in Jesus’ presence, and what else could they do? Jesus walked up, John said, here is the Lamb of God, and two disciples turned and followed Jesus. He asked them what they were looking for, and they asked him where he was staying. He told them to come and see.

I’m well aware, as I assume we all are, that Jesus is no longer here in the flesh, walking the road in front of our houses, calling us to come and see and to follow him on the road to Boston or to Concord or wherever he may be headed. And yet here we are. For some reason, and with differing levels of commitment and confidence, we’ve decided to follow, or at least to check this Jesus thing out. Has something grabbed us by the lapel that we couldn’t resist or ignore, so we turned on our heels and set out to follow? Or are we still exploring and pondering and trying to decide how seriously we’re going to take this fellow Jesus? How do we decide? From where do we hear God calling? What is it that compels us enough that we just might pull a few things together and take off to follow in someone’s wake? Have we found him in the church? Will we? Or somewhere else altogether?

I was drawn to words I read this week by a man who was busy making his way inside a religious organization. He wrote:

     I went into religion partly because I was not very good at dealing with the world… In my innocence I confused spirituality with droopiness, and I imagined myself with equally droopy colleagues, sighing blessings to each other.
     I got a rude shock. Synagogue (and church) …meetings are not the Communion of the Saints, and an awful lot of religious business is concerned with balance sheets, not blessings. At international meetings where the pace is hotter, I got used to seeing clerics fingering calculators as expertly as their beads.…
     This led to a crisis in my religious life. My religious organization was a place where I gave blessings; this was after all what I was paid to do. But it was not a place where I seemed to receive any – at least not obviously. As my teacher tartly remarked when I complained to him, the congregation employed me to solve their problems. I didn’t pay them to solve mine.

The writer goes on to say that he got a lot of his blessing and inspiration from places he hadn’t expected – from the world he had rejected: in airport lounges, bars, cafes, bus queues. And to his astonishment, the still small voice of God even came to him through a juke box. He listened over and over to words familiar to many of us: “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” Young girls had picked them. They had given them to their men. The men went to war and were killed. Out of their graves flowers grew, and then young girls picked them again. With those words as a backdrop, he was in a café in Germany and saw a young girl and a boy at the next table. A vase of flowers sat between them. He says, “The full tragedy of Europe came home to me, and I knew the work I must do. So many people had to be reconciled to break that terrible repetition. God had spoken. (Lionel Blue, Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, pages 52-53)

The religious organization to which he turned failed him and did not provide blessings. Through the juke box, God spoke and said, Come and see, this is work I am doing, this is work you can do, come and see. Come and work with me.

Contrast that with the story of a Japanese Zen Buddhist who spent time in a French monastery. After he had been there about a month, he only had one question. It seemed to him that the monks did not live very well. They worked hard, their food was neither good nor plentiful, and they did not get enough sleep. “Yet you are joyful,” he said, “and I want to know: from where does this joy come?” (Kathleen Norris, The Christian Century, January 15, 2008, page 22) Come and see. Come and walk with us.

If the Church is now Christ’s body, called to carry on Jesus’ witness and ministry, what do you think people see when they look at us and our life together? Do they see a community more concerned with balance sheets than blessings, or do they see a group of people overflowing with joy even in the midst of challenges and struggles? God spoke in Nazareth through Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. God speaks through Benedictine monks and juke boxes. How clearly is God speaking through us? When we invite people to come and see, what do they see? What’s the message, the song, the light that we’re sharing with the world? I pray it will be one of joy, of hope, of love and of peace.

Amen.
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Epiphany Sunday

Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor

Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12

There’s no way of knowing, so I suppose it’s pointless speculation, but I have to wonder if they were restless and looking for something new and exciting to break the monotony, or if they’d just settled in for a long winter’s nap. Was it a delightful 75 degrees, cool breeze, gentle sun, and the perfect day to set out on an adventure? Or was it the coldest night of the year, winds howling, snow blowing, not fit for man nor beast, with every weather person in the country advising no one to go out regardless of the emergency? Were they deeply in love with each and every person who shared their houses and lives, still basking in the joy of a new marriage or reveling in the delight of a new baby? Or were they more than grateful for a chance to get away and the gift of a moment’s peace? Were they looking for a life-changing, world-rearranging journey that would finally help them make sense of their existence, or desperate for a quiet corner there they could crawl up in a ball and try to recover from the rat race that had left them utterly and completely depleted? Just who were those wise guys anyway, and what in the world compelled them to pack some treasures in a saddlebag and head out across the desert with nothing more than a flickering strand of light to point the way?

It was an amazing journey that led them to King Herod’s door asking the whereabouts of the child who had been born king of the Jews. We don’t know much about them – even less than we’re inclined to think we know. Regardless of what the old carol says, they weren’t kings. They were magi, which means their work was a combination of astrology, astronomy and dreams. We don’t know how many of them there were. Sure, they gave three gifts, so we seem to have latched on to that number, but Matthew didn’t think the count was significant enough to pass along. They came from the East, probably from Persia or Babylon, which was a long way from Jerusalem, so without a doubt they’d been on the road a long time. This was no idle Sunday afternoon meandering for lack of anything better to do; this was a major commitment and investment of time and resources. They’d come from the East, which means they were Gentiles and not Jews. And yet they’d come in search of the newborn king of the Jews. It’s all really quite odd, don’t you think?

Sure, maybe we can write it off to the astronomy thing. A new and intriguing star in the sky would get to folks who spent their lives watching the stars, and would be bound to tug at their curiosity and lead them outside. But these days, that would mean outside to set up a telescope, to find the best vantage point for viewing and studying. No need to leave home for that. And yes, Jews had been in exile in Babylon, so maybe these folks had bumped up against some of them and knew about their hopes and longings and the ancient promises about a king who was to come and make everything right. But that was a king for others – not them. What sort of curiosity could possibly stir them deeply enough to propel them out of their living rooms or off their observation decks and send them out to trudge across the desert for a year or two? What sort of longing and desire that attached itself to them so deeply that they were wiling to invest so much in such an odd journey?

From what I can find in the text, it was something about the newborn king of the Jews. It wasn’t just a star they were following. It was a king they were seeking. And not just out of curiosity, but so that they could pay him homage, so they could give rich and extravagant gifts, so they could fall at his feet and worship him, show him their hearts’ devotion, welcome him to the world and seek his wisdom – perhaps for their lives and everyone else’s at the same time.

I marvel at their openness and their longing. Something latched on to them in such a way that they couldn’t ignore it, whether they wanted to or not, and so they set out. They were open to more than what they already knew, more than they’d experienced, more than they could understand or explain, and so they followed it. Followed the star, followed their intuition, followed the longing that refused to give them a moment’s rest or peace. And while I don’t know what they expected to find once they found this child that had been born king of the Jews, I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a carpenter’s son, born to a peasant woman, with some strange sort of scandal circling around about when and how he had been conceived and where he had come from. And still, none of that stopped them. None of that appeared to matter to them. They recognized him for who he was, they worshipped him, they praised God for the ways in which God was working and moving in the world, they offered their gifts and they offered themselves to this child, and to the God who had sent him in to the world.

Perhaps there’s been a time or two in your life when something latched on to you and wouldn’t let go until you gave in to it, followed where it was leading, and gave yourself over to something you couldn’t begin to understand or explain. I hope so. But I also know it’s not the way we’re apt to do things – individually or as a congregation. We’re much more rational than that. And logical. And predisposed to assuming we know the answer before a question is even asked. We’re cautious and reserved, measured and intentional. But if that’s the only way we ever work or move or live in the world, we just may miss the miracle of new life and new possibility that is being born in our midst. We just may miss out on the presence and miracle and gift of a new born child who has been born to lead us, has come to save us from ourselves and all that threatens to harm us, has come to lead us to God and one another.

I pray these words by Kate Compston will become our words and our prayer for the journey that lies ahead.

Beckoning God –
who called the rich to travel toward poverty,
         the wise to embrace your folly,
         the powerful to know their own frailty;
who gave to strangers
        a sense of homecoming in an alien land
and to stargazers
        true light and vision as they bowed to earth –
we lay ourselves open to your signs for us.
Stir us with holy discontent over a world
which gives its gifts to those
        who have plenty already
        whose talents are obvious
         whose power is recognized;
and help us
both to share our resources with those who have little
and to receive with humility the gifts they bring to us.

Rise within us, like a star;
and make us restless
till we journey forth
to seek our rest in you.
(Kate Compston, in Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year A, page 44)

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Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Alice M. C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39

What time is it? How you answer that question depends on a lot of things, like how precisely you set your watch, and when the last time was you did it. For most of my life I’ve had a small enough watch that there were no numbers on it and no second hand, so my times were always approximate, compared with the computer that regularly goes in search of Greenwich Mean Time, precise down to the very last second. Now that I’ve graduated to numbers and a second hand, you’d think I’d work toward more precision, but I’m still leaving that to my computer and cell phone. And then there’s the question of what time zone you live in. As a family, we currently live in all 4 time zones across the continental US – which always gives us pause when it’s time to call someone. Which zone are they in, what time is it there, and is it too early to expect them to be home, or late enough that they may be trying to get some sleep before the baby wakes up again? And then there are our friends in Zimbabwe, who part of the year are five hours ahead of us, part of the year 6 hours – and I can never remember which part of the year is which. And actually when we’ve been with them, we’ve learned about another time altogether, which we affectionately refer to as Zim time. Zim times says they’ll pick us up at 8, so we get ready and stand and sit and pace until they finally show up sometime later, sometimes much later. And if there’s a place they want to stop on the way to where we’re going, they stop. A person they think you should meet, even though there may be two hundred people who have been waiting for you for more than an hour, you stop and meet this other person – because it honors them to do so. It’s a time that’s slow and easy paced, more open to life and people, less driven by external measurements and expectations.

We had an interesting conversation about time recently in Diaconate. Now, in the big scheme of things, it wasn’t one of the most important conversations we’ve ever had, but in its own way, it did have significance. The conversation was about how we’re going to measure these weeks between Pentecost and the first Sunday in Advent. It’s a season that stretches on nigh unto forever and for most of the years that I’ve been in ministry, we’ve counted those weeks as how long it’s been since Pentecost: three weeks, ten weeks, twenty-seven weeks. In the past couple of years, the United Church of Christ desk calendar has started to count them differently, and that is to name them and count them as ordinary time. I’ll admit that the first year I saw that shift, I wrinkled up my face, and said, well, that’s weird. I’ve never done it that way before. Why are they suggesting this foolishness? So I ignored it for a year, or at least I thought I did, but apparently something was stewing inside me. Because the second year, it resonated in a different way, and I began to like the sound and feel of ordinary time.

The truth is that the Christian calendar of the church year talks about the seasons after Epiphany and after Pentecost as Ordinary Time. While Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter are all seasons that last for a certain number of days or weeks, there are these two other periods of time that follow the day of Epiphany and the day of Pentecost. They are weeks when the suggested lectionary readings make their way through the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Epistles and the Gospels. The color is green, as a color for life and growth and the ongoing nature of what it means to be in this world. We’re not pointed in any particular direction by a season of preparation or of birth or of suffering and rejection and failure or resurrection. We’re living life as it comes, and seeking to be faithful in the midst of that.

I’ve come to really like the notion of counting these weeks as ordinary time, because of what they suggest to me about how we live and what it means to be people of faith in the world. These are not the high, holy days of religious observance; these are the common, everyday, ordinary days of getting up in the morning, getting the kids off to school or day care or summer camp, getting ourselves out of the house, tackling the chores that stretch before us, meeting the challenges that land in front of us, making the choices and decisions that everybody has to make from time to time, carving out some time to get away on vacation or to sit quietly while an aging parent reminisces, and catching a ballgame or a documentary on TV before we go to bed. And being aware of God in the midst of it all. Honoring God’s claim on us, responding to God’s call to us, living as the people of faith that we say we want to be. It’s one thing to set aside a season for religious things; it’s quite another to live everyday as disciples and followers and people of faith. It’s one thing to turn to God for an hour or so on a Sunday morning, it’s another thing altogether to weave God and discipleship into our work and our play, our spending and our investing, our loving and our wrestling. Ordinary time meddles in the everyday things we do with our every day lives – from how we treat the people we work with and for, those who work for us and wait on us; to what we do when we discover the cashier gave us more change than we had coming to us; how we respond when we hear racist jokes or watch someone being abused; what decisions we make about economics and politics and the cars we drive and the funds we invest in. God lives in the midst of all of that. God asks us to be attentive to the presence of God, and responsive to the call of discipleship – wherever we are and whatever it is we’re doing. You never know when God is going to make her presence known, so pay attention – even in the most ordinary days of ordinary time.

Take that Gerasene pig farmer for example. He was just trying to make a living, raise enough food to feed his family, produce some meat he could take to market with the hope of bringing home the supplies and cash he needed to make ends meet. I don’t know how diversified his operation was, but I suspect that herd of swine represented a very significant investment. And I don’t know anything about the world of pig farming in ancient Gerasa, but a good number of the farmers I’ve lived around have barely eked out a living; certainly not had enough that they could afford to go throwing it over a cliff and into a lake. And for what? For that pathetic old lunatic who lived out in the graveyard. Yeah, sure he was a nuisance. A menace, actually. The men of the village did everything in their power to keep their wives and kids away from him. The man was mad and they all knew it. He ran around buck naked, screaming all sorts of wild things at the top of his lungs night and day. They’d periodically tried to lock him up in order to keep people safe, but nothing could contain him. He’d spin and swirl and foam and froth until he broke free of whatever shackles they’d use, and then be off again to roam the woods and cower behind the tombstones. They’d had lots of conversations about what ought to become of him, and let me assure you, none of it had included their swine herds. Not that Jesus had consulted them, of course. He’d stepped out of his little boat, walked ashore and before he could think twice, the lunatic was sprawled at his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me. Jesus ordered the demons to come out of the man, which they did – and then begged him not to send them back into the abyss. They preferred the swine herd, so the swine herd it was – filled with a whole platoon of demons, driven over the cliff, and drowned in the lake.

Word of this spread throughout the town and the countryside as fast as sensational news always spreads, so the townspeople came running – only to find the lunatic clothed, in his right mind, and sitting at Jesus’ feet like a disciple. He looked different enough that they hesitated, but only a second – before they turned on Jesus – stunned and appalled by what he had done to the herd. Who cared about this reject? How dare he take their livelihood and throw it into the sea? They were filled with rage, with overwhelming fear at what he had done and how much more he might do, and they ordered him to get back on the boat that brought him to their village before they tossed him overboard to sink alongside their pigs. As Jesus was climbing aboard, the man who’d been liberated from his demons pleaded with Jesus to let him come with him, but Jesus said no, your work is here. Stay with these farmers and tell them what God has done for you. Help them to see and feel and believe in and accept the power of the Most High and most loving God.

Not exactly a technique we’d tend to recommend to convert people to Christianity, but there they were, a man liberated after years of torment by a legion of demons, and a farming community with one fewer swine herd. The man was welcomed by Jesus as a disciple, and the ministry to which he was called was to stay home and help the people he lived among see and feel and accept and embrace the presence and workings of God. It was far from a high, holy day – the people weren’t even Jews! But here they were, like it or not, confronted with the power of God, and the way of God, and the inescapable clarity from God that quality of life matters, wholeness of life matters. This human life matters, has been restored and stands now in front of you as an example of God’s intention to restore and heal and build up and liberate.

I don’t know how God will work in the midst of our summer and fall and all of the weeks of ordinary time that stretch ahead of us. I don’t expect that it will be nearly so dramatic and costly as it was for the farmer of Gerasa, but how do I know? Who are we to predict and assume the ways of God? Let’s enter these weeks of ordinary time open to the presence of God, searching for the hand of God, doing what we can to be open and receptive to what God is doing in our midst. You just never know where God may show up. The question before us is how we will respond when the time comes.

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Pentecost Sunday — Playing with Fire

Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Romans 8:14-17, Acts 2:1-21

Annie Dillard has written:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk, pages 58-59)

How many of you, when you hauled yourself out of bed on a Sunday morning, or sat with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper, debating whether or not to go to church, have ever pondered those sorts of questions in the midst of your musings? Do you expect to need life preservers and crash helmets when you come here? Or what about when you pray? On your own, while you’re working or walking or going about your business? Or when you go to a quiet, still corner and spend some time in private with God? What do you expect to have happen then? After Dillard likens worship to playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning, she says this about prayer:

The eighteenth-century Hasidic Jews had more sense, and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer, whose work required invoking the Lord, bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for the slaughterhouse. He felt, every morning, that he would never see any of them again. For every day, as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest, “Have mercy.”

Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day: “How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite ‘Hear, O Israel.’ When I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life… Perhaps I shall not die this time either, but how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer?” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, page 59)

The words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to plead for mercy. To pray the words, Hear O Israel, meant to send his soul to the utmost rim of life, a place from which, on a daily basis, he could never be sure he would return. Is that your experience? Is that your expectation?
I have no idea what Peter and his cohorts thought or expected on that morning in Jerusalem. What they knew was that Jesus had been killed, had risen from the dead, had appeared to them a couple of times, and then told them to sit tight in Jerusalem until their marching orders arrived. They’d been doing that now for 50 days. They’d prayed. They’d selected a successor for Judas. I have no idea how much pacing and twiddling of thumbs had been going on. I have no idea what they thought they were waiting for, how long they thought they would have to wait, how much they were sitting there in that upstairs room because they were eager and expectant about receiving the gift and power that Jesus had promised, or how much they were there because they didn’t know where else to be or what else to do. Were they eager to get back out there and get back to working for the Lord? Or were they in some way relieved that they had an excuse to wait and hide out and recoup. Take all the time you want, God, we’re in no hurry whatsoever. In fact, if you never come back for us, that just might be okay. It’s nasty out there. We’ve done our time, and not all that well, as I’m sure you recall. No need to rush on our account, we like it in here just fine.

All of that is just my weird and wondering conjecture. I have no idea what was going on for any of them. Yes, they were waiting; but I have not idea if it was patiently and expectantly or nervously and with a sense of dread? But I do suspect it’s fair to say that they didn’t see what was coming. What possibly could have prepared them for that transformation of the Jewish feast of Pentecost? By the time Pentecost rolled around, they were doing what they did every year to celebrate the harvest and give thanks to God. That doesn’t mean they were prepared for the heavenly special effects that rushed in and took center stage.

When they looked back on it and tried to piece together what had happened, the first thing they could remember being aware of was a sound like the violent rush of a mighty wind, maybe like the deafening sound of a tornado spinning inside the house, tugging and tearing and ripping at everything within and around them. While they were madly trying to protect their ears from the thunderous sound, and as they dared to open their eyes, they began to see tongues of fire dancing all around the room. A raging bonfire right in the middle of the room, leaping and dancing around each of their heads, sitting on their shoulders, nibbling at their ears. When they looked back on it, it reminded them of Moses’ burning bush, because once again there was fire everywhere, and yet nothing was being reduced to coals and ash. At the time, all they felt was overwhelming fear and amazement. It was when they started speaking that the crowd started swarming. Because, indeed, they were speaking in every language conceivable, even though none of the twelve knew more than one or two. Words were streaming from their mouths, and though it was centuries before the technology that allows everyone in the room to listen through a headphone to a simultaneous translation of what is being said at the podium, they did all understand. No matter who they were or where they were from, the disciples were speaking so all could understand – the words at least. It was hard to understand more than that. The crowd was dumbfounded by all of this; and while some stared in amazement and asked, what does this mean? others rushed in with their cynicism and dismissed it all by saying, don’t pay them any mind – they’re drunk – and at nine o’clock in the morning, if you can believe it!

At which point, Peter worked his way to the front of the crowd, found a soapbox to stand on and began to interpret it for them. No, my friends, these people are not drunk – except with God’s Holy Spirit. For indeed, what the prophet Joel predicted years ago has now come true: God’s Spirit is being poured out on all people, and that means things are about to start happening, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. Or dreamed or imagined or conjured up with the wildest hallucinogens. God is at work here and now, and that means that the young whom we try to dismiss for being immature and uninformed, or condemn for being disrespectful and wild, will prophecy to us about the ways and will of God. And the old whom we tuck away into quiet corners and write off as out of touch or behind the times if not down right senile will in truth be imagining and dreaming about the unheard of and unprecedented possibilities that God has in store for us. Put on your crash helmets and your life preservers, secure yourself to the pews you’re sitting in and hold on – because things are changing, and only God knows where we’re going. Hold on, because ready or not we are heading up and moving out!

And everything did change for them, and for none of them more than Peter. He’d been a good friend, but he’d also done so much trembling in his boots that at the last minute, he’d totally failed his best friend. But now, with the arrival of the Spirit and the rod it drove up his spine, he was on fire and unstoppable. There wasn’t an authority he wasn’t willing to take on for the sake of Christ’s gospel. There wasn’t a demon he wasn’t willing to put in its place, a threat he wasn’t able to stare down, an outcast he wasn’t eager to embrace. Tell him to never again use the name of Jesus, and he’d buy a case of t-shirts plastered with the word so he could broadcast the name to the world. Tell him to speak no more or else he’d be locked away for ever, and he’d preach like there was no tomorrow. Put him in prison, throw away the key and the Spirit would set him free.

My friends, today is Pentecost, and that is the very same Spirit that we are here inviting into our midst. Maybe you had no way of knowing that’s what we’d be up to when you decided to come this morning. And I was after all the one who put the liturgy together, so you really can’t be held responsible for that. But we need to be careful, because what we’re doing today isn’t just about dressing up in red and having a little birthday party for the Church that is nearly two thousand years old. Today, we are playing with fire – a holy fire that seeks to transform and inspire and change and lead us. To places we’ve never been before, or imagined or dreamed of or dared believe in. Places of justice and wholeness, of peace and possibility, of truth telling and courage living and mercy sharing and love growing.

I’ve been struck with some reading that I’ve been doing this week and how it relates to the traditional symbols of Pentecost. We think about the gift of the Holy Spirit and the sound of a wind that entered the room. We’re fond of the cooling breeze that comforts us when the temperatures climb above 90. But the text says it was the sound like the rush of a violent wind – a tornado, a hurricane, a cyclone – a power to be reckoned with that had the potential for horrific destruction, as well as the promise of transformation and change.

And on Pentecost we think of fire. Was it a small warming flame that the believers could warm their hands over? Was it the refiner’s fire that purges and purifies and strengthens? Or was it a raging forest fire that laps at any form of life it can reach and spreads and jumps ditches and resists containment? I’ve often treasured the very small pine cone I was given when we left Minnesota, a jack pine, which only releases its seeds in the searing heat of a forest fire. There are forms of transformed life that only come to be in the midst of and after that sort of heat. We don’t like it; we resist it; we run from it; but in doing so, we may also run from the very transformed life that God is offering us.

And we think about the Spirit as a dove that descended upon Jesus at his baptism. The Iona Community refers to the Spirit as a wild goose, and while I’ve never really found words for what that evokes in me, it’s a symbol I love. Whole books have been written about geese and the model they offer the church: how they share leadership, support each other, travel by some deep instinct. And the wild part of the phrase also calls to me of that which is untamed and uncontained, exploring and stretching and probing. But this week I happened upon another bird image for the Spirit, that of a red-tailed hawk. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the ways in which the church community has tried to think of God as a stuffed bear, comforting and soothing, or a great friend who would like to get to know us all better, if we can find the time. If we cannot, then God will love us anyway. (Leaving Church, page 189) She also writes about the red-tailed hawk who hunts the fields around her house. She says,
I knew that she ate the wide-eyed field mice with the white bellies whom I liked so much, along with any chick that strayed too far from its mother’s shadow, but I could not hold that against her. It was the price of her wild beauty, the price I paid to watch her fly. To see her fold her wings and stoop, falling through the air like a lightning bolt on her prey… (Leaving Church, page 179)

For a couple of years, I’ve walked closely with a person who wrestles with an unprecedented set of feelings, behaviors and experiences, and together, we’ve struggled to understand them. Is this an addictive attempt to fill a deep seated hunger that in truth only the person and God together can fill? Or are these feelings a gift of the Holy Spirit, whose wings are carrying new life, new hope, unprecedented visions, and undiscovered possibilities? I don’t know. But what I do know is that it’s only in riding on the wings of that red-tailed hawk, by engaging in a prayer that takes this person to the utmost rim of life, by listening to the violent winds of the Spirit as it whirls around, will the person ever come to the place of a life transformed by the grace and power and love of God.

Worship in the presence of God is not for the faint of heart. And celebrating the gift of God’s Holy Spirit at Pentecost is much more like playing with fire than lighting the candles on a birthday cake. But here we are, dressed in red, saying the prayers and singing the songs I chose for this day, so we might as well fasten on our crash helmets, crawl into our life preservers, and sit back to hear what God is going to say to us today, and where God is going to lead us in the days to come.

Happy Pentecost, my friends. Amen.

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Palm/Passion Sunday

Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 19:28-40

It's all been building toward this moment. Way back in the 9th chapter of Luke, we were told that Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. Now in our day, that might mean he programmed his little GPS unit, which by the way he called Jill, to get him to 100 Main Street in downtown Jerusalem; so that every time he reached an intersection, Jill could tell him to go straight, right or left. She could tell him to travel straight on highway 12 for 7.3 miles and then turn left onto route 303 east. But neither Jesus nor gospel writer Luke knew about GPS or canned mechanical voices named Jill. When they told us Jesus pointed his face toward Jerusalem, they were telling us he was headed for trouble. He was headed to that capital city where people seemed overly sensitive and highly political and had very little sense of humor – especially for one who was so doggone consistently honest and forthright and unwilling to strategize or posture or suck up. No, if Jesus arrived in Jerusalem with his entourage in tow, and neither he nor they had toned down any of the rhetoric, there was bound to be trouble. But once he set his face toward Jerusalem, there was no turning back. No steering him off course, no slowing him down, no distracting him into going a different direction. He was like a well trained retriever with its prey in sight. He set his face toward Jerusalem, and Jerusalem it was going to be. End of conversation.

I’m not one who believes that Jesus had looked at a blueprint of the week. I believe he knew in the depths of his bones that it wasn’t going to go well, and given everything he knew about life in the capital, he may have had some pretty strong hunches about what to expect. But I don’t think he had 20-20 foresight that told him exactly what was going to happen, when. I doubt that he’d planned it, but I also don’t think he was surprised when he hit some sort of wall when he saw all those moneychangers taking advantage of the piety and faithfulness of poor Jews. He couldn’t stand it for one more second, so without a second thought, he started overturning tables and telling the scalpers to get out of the temple! Needless to say, that didn’t go over well – and may actually have been the final nail in his coffin. But that didn’t make it any easier to listen to his disciples snore while he pleaded with God for an easier path. I can only imagine the size of the knot in the pit of his stomach when Judas and the soldiers showed up to arrest him. Even though he knew Peter didn’t have enough starch in his spine to withstand the pressure, it still tore at his soul when the rooster crowed and he knew that Peter had washed his hands of him. I think those acts of abandonment and betrayal hurt more than the whip and the thorns and the weight of the cross cutting into his bare shoulder and the nails. Knowing his friends had tucked tail and fled had to hurt the most. Even though he didn’t know all the details of all of that, I think he had a pretty good hunch how it was going to play out. And still, he climbed on that colt and rode his way into Jerusalem; still he said what needed to be said, still he did what he knew in his bones he had to do, still he held fast to who he understood God had called him to be. He didn’t want to go where he was about to go, but in midst of it all, he knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t avoid any of it, if to do so he had to turn his back on God.

I don’t know if you heard it or not, but the passage we heard from Philippians opened with the words, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… Sort of a haunting call, isn’t it? And even though I really don’t expect any of us to ever be nailed to a tree, so we don’t have to be ready to go there, I do think there’s a whole lot in the story that may be asked of: to speak unpopular truths, to be willing to offend powerful people for the sake of justice and love, to stand up and be heard when people are being taken advantage of or abused or belittled, to walk the path we believe God has set before us even if every one of our companions and cohorts falls by the wayside when the heat gets too high. Jesus walked knowingly, courageously, faithfully – toward Jerusalem and into Jerusalem and toward the cross up Calvary’s hill. And he asks us to walk with him – in faith and discipleship and love, wherever the road may lead. The question that’s left for us is how far we’ll be willing or able to walk with him in faith.

Reading:
“He Will Walk” from Stages on the Way: Iona Community Worship Group

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Second Sunday in Lent

Rev. Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Matthew 5:21-24, Matthew 18:15-22

I learned a lot of lessons as a child. We all did. Many of them we don't even become aware of until much later, if at all. But one of the lessons I've always been aware of was the one that taught me, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. And then there's the very specific image of me as a young adult driving my first car, an old car when I bought it that got much older the day it soaked in a flooded street. I remember talking on the phone with my parents' mechanic and being very frustrated by what I was hearing and how I was being treated. When I got off the phone, I said something fairly strong and very angry, to which my mother replied, don't feel that way. Put those two messages together, don't feel that way; and if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all; and I was totally set up to be nice and sweet and polite; to do my very best to not feel anger or frustration, but if, God forbid, such feelings should creep into my mind and heart, then to keep them to myself. And while it's easy to poke fun and mock that dynamic now, it's not as easy to overcome it and relate in a different way.

I've been learning a lot of hard lessons recently, but one of the loudest, strongest and most consistent is that some things have to be said if a relationship is going to be alive and vital and valuable. To try and stay sweet and nice, inoffensive and unhurtful – which can become untruthful and dishonest when you're not looking – is like covering a relationship in saran wrap. You can't do a lot of moving or living or growing, to say nothing of breathing, wrapped in saran wrap. To try and bury anger or hurt or disappointment or frustration or preference or desire or need makes relationship next to impossible, keeps it from getting real, suffocates the very life out of it. Now, the other side of that learning is that not everything needs to be said. It's the figuring out of what does that holds the challenge. When I get around to contemplating speaking the hard feelings, I tend to wrestle with questions of why: is it because I want to lash out in anger and see how deeply I can wound someone who has wounded me, or is it because I have some feelings that need to be shared, a perspective that needs to be honored, some honesty that needs to be named before any sort of relationship can go forward. All of it's hard, at least for people with my DNA.

If any or all of that's true for more people than just me, and if what I've just said relates to the challenge of one on one and personal relationships, just think about what happens in the life of community, in the life of the church. How much of our energy do we spend making nice to each other, and how much do we spend being real with each other? How many people do we avoid or ignore, and when do we decide to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of building up relationships and encouraging understanding and nurturing a sense of pulsing, living, quality community? I've often remembered an interchange I had in one of my first congregations. The organist really wanted to take a Sunday off so that she could go to a family wedding. We were having trouble finding a substitute for her, and were busily brainstorming options of who we might ask that hadn't already turned us down. She was about to give up the idea of the wedding when I came up with one more person’s name. She looked at me and shook her head and went on to tell me about something that had happened between them 25 years earlier when they were in high school together. She explained that she hadn't had anything to do with this person since and there really wasn't any way she could ask her to play the organ for her now.

Contrast that with Matthew's report of Jesus' instruction that if someone hurts us, we should go to them and talk together in private. If those words make us squirm and seem a bit unrealistic in terms of the way we tend to function in the church, what do you make of his next suggestion: if the person doesn't listen to you when you talk one on one, then take a couple more folks with you next time you go to call. If that doesn't work, bring it before the congregation as a whole. Every time I've referred to this text around the life of any congregation, I tend to hear something about how pushy that seems, how unfair, how confrontational and harsh that feels. And yet, I think Jesus is saying something very loud and strong about how much relationships matter. One commentator observes that where Jesus is concerned:

…nobody is written off in haste, no one is fired on the spot, no one slams the door in another's face in rage; to the contrary, a sea of energy is expended trying, time and again, to make peace. In contrast to the attitudes of the prevailing culture ("If somebody hassles you, forget them. It's their problem, not yours."), relationships are of precious and enduring value in the church. When a relationship is broken, it is worth going back over and over to work toward reconciliation. (Thomas Long, Matthew, page 210)



Jesus ends his teaching by saying, eventually, if they won't listen or respond, let them go – let them be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. But before we take too much comfort in that message that we can eventually give up and walk away, we need to remember how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors: he ate with them, he cavorted with them, he took no small amount of heat for keeping the door open to them. Or in other words, if the other person doesn't want to be reconciled to you, after you've given it your best shot, let them go. But the door stays open should they ever change their minds.

Community matters. The quality and honesty and richness and unity of community matters in profound ways to Jesus.  Earlier in the same gospel, we hear Jesus’ words that if anyone comes to the altar to present a sacrifice to God and while there, remembers that a brother or sister has something against them, they should go and be reconciled, and only then come back and present their offering. Reconciliation matters. Forgiveness matters. Building bridges and reaching out to one another and doing everything in our power to come together and to come to the table together – that’s what matters and what Jesus was calling his early followers to, and what he’s still calling us to.

I was deeply moved recently to read the story of the Palestinian Christian priest Elias Chacour who finally tired of presiding at the sacrament of communion in his congregation, knowing that many in the pews hated each other, had not talked with one another in years, even decades, and bore grudges dating back to the previous generation. One Sunday Father Chacour locked and barred the doors to the church. Then he told the congregation that he had no intention of presiding at the service and sacrament or of unlocking the doors until those at odds with one another confessed their sins, offered forgiveness, and made peace. What followed, after a stunned silence, was nothing short of remarkable. A policeman got to his feet, confessed his misdeeds and asked forgiveness. Others followed. When the Lord’s Supper was finally celebrated, it was no longer a mockery. It was a sacrament in which members of the congregation recognized one another as the body of Christ. (What's Theology got to do with it?, Anthony Robinson, page 185)

Community matters. The quality and honesty and richness and unity of community matters in profound ways to Jesus. Building bridges and reaching out to one another and doing everything in our power to come together and to come to the table together – that’s what matters and what Jesus was calling his early followers to, and what he’s calling us to as well.

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First Sunday in Christmastide

Rev. Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Colossians 3:12-17, Luke 2:41-52

Today may only be the 7th day of Christmas, but it is the last and final day of 2006. I remember talking with a family last Sunday who said, we just need this year to be over. There's been too much struggle, pain and loss. Let's put it to bed and start over again! 2007 has got to be a better year for us. I don't know whether you can relate to that or not. Maybe you're feeling upbeat, hopeful and excited about all of the potential of the new year. A whole new year to create and inhabit, a whole blank screen to fill, a whole lot of open potential and promise to explore and discover. We are ready and waiting – bring it on!

Standing here on the brink, I want us to take some time and think carefully about how we enter the new year that awaits us. We can let it happen to us. We can keep hold of all the baggage we've accumulated over the course of this year and drag it with us into the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. We can throw it all off, hit the delete button at the stroke of midnight and walk into 2007 as free and unencumbered as a butterfly just stretching its wings from the freedom of the cocoon. We can draft the perennial list of good intentions and hopeful resolutions and stand back to watch and see how many we even remember in the morning – much less on the 15th of the month. We can take the bull by the horns and force the year into compliance with our will and our wishes (good luck with that one). We can pause here at the threshold and look ahead with prayer and reflection, asking God to go with us into this new land, walking beside us as companion and compass, so that we might walk in faithfulness and hopeful confidence.

I've been vaguely aware for years of a tradition called Watch Night, which is the practice of gathering together for worship at the end of December 31. I've never attended, much less planned and led one of those services, nor is that a part of our tradition. Who knows if that's because we're so intent on partying, or because one midnight service a year is enough – and we certainly don't need them two weeks in a row! If we're going to be up past midnight, let's at least be hooping it up when the ball drops. And then hightailing it for bed, just as fast as we can get there.

As I did some reading this week about Watch Night, I learned a couple of interesting things, one of which seemed logical and made sense; one that amazed me. The tradition of gathering for worship on New Year's Eve is actually a Methodist tradition, as John Wesley encouraged his followers to covenant and rededicate themselves to God. What better time to commit and covenant than at the beginning of a new year. And so, many congregations gather anytime between 7 and 11, to sing and celebrate, pray and promise that the new year will be one offered to God and lived in a covenant of faithfulness. In fact, I noticed that the sign in front of St. Luke's announced a service tonight at 11 pm – so if anyone is looking for a group to gather with, that would be the place.

I also discovered this week a very different tradition, and that's one grounded in African American churches and that reaches back to December 31, 1862. Imagine if you can, African- Americans gathered that night in homes and churches all across this country, anxiously awaiting the news that the Emancipation Proclamation had actually become law. When the clock struck midnight signaling the start of the new year, all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. As the news was received, prayers, shouts and songs of joy rose up as people fell to their knees and thanked God for this great and glorious new day. I'd like to share a poem with you that speaks to some of the wonder of that incredible day.

                                    Watch Night

                                                i.
            We gather
            with quiet invocations and fervent shouts
            in prayer houses built by our ancestors.
            It is the anniversary of freedom's eve,
            the beginning of a new year;
            and our voices ache with jubilee songs
            our feet moving, our bodies possessed
            our spirits remembering.
            It was on this new year's day long ago that enslaved Africans,
            their children,
            and their children's children
            became irrevocably free.
                        On the 1st day
                        of January, A.D. 1863,
                        all persons held as slaves
                        within any State
                        or designated part of a State
                        the people whereof
                        shall then be in rebellion…
            The freedom words
            that were woven into sweet-grass baskets,
            hidden in the words of negro spirituals,
            preached aloud at campground meetings,
            sung to black babies in sleepy-time songs,
            would become the law of the land.
                        Alleluia.
                        Praise the Lord.

                                                ii.
            Then freedom's eve became freedom's day
            (after 100 days of waiting,
            three years of a bloody civil war,
            more than two centuries of servitude)
            as an answer to the petitioners plea:
            How long, my Lord, how long
            Truly there was a reason why
            so many were gathered
            on that new year's eve in 1862:
            skins dark as the midnight sky,
            or pale as the sand on a sea island beach.
            Truly there was a reason why,
            embraced by the traditions from across the seas,
            our ancestors had the griots
            tell those wonderful stories of home.
            Truly there was a reason why,
            they created drum sounds with their feet,
            their hand-claps, and their rhythm sticks;
            spoke of a future free of shackles,
            waited and watched till the morning came.
            They trusted the words of Lincoln:
            Shall be then, thenceforward,
            and forever free.
            They believed the words of Leviticus:
            It shall be a Jubilee for you
            and each of you shall return to his possession,
            and each of you return to his family.
            But could they really have faith
            (this time)
            that the righteous would truly be blessed?
            for the comings and goings of life
            can never be foretold.
            How long, my Lord, how long?

                                                iii.
            There was no word at midnight,
            nor at daybreak,
            but past dusk on new year's day came a message:
             tapped across telegraph wires,
            spoken at great mass meetings,
            the proclamation had been signed,
            emancipation was forever.
            God's chosen would be free.
            It was written:
            … upon this act,
            sincerely believed to be an act of justice
            warranted by the Constitution
            upon military necessity
            I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind
            and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
                                                            iv.
            Now, more than a century later,
            in churches and chapels and houses of prayer,
            on the anniversary of freedom's eve
            on watch night:
            we gather
            to welcome yet another year;
            to bring in the jubilee.
            Waiting anew for the midnight hour
            with whispers and shouts,
            singing and silence,
            libations and thanksgiving.
            Remembering that we were not always
            free.             

Charyn D. Sutton,
(from "Behold, a New Thing! A Watch Night Service Celebration", Worship Ways, United Church of Christ,© 2002)

And so, here we are, on the threshold when one year yields to another. I don't know how you will spend the midnight hour, but I do want us to pause now with a little more than thirteen hours to go and reflect on what awaits us. Few of us will ever know the wonder of such a profound gift as a proclamation declaring us free in such bold and radical terms. But we do receive lesser versions of that gift every day, as our slate is wiped clean, our past is washed away and we are set free to begin again. We don't need to carry the accumulated baggage of our year with us into the new year, or the one after that, or the one after that. Yes, there are a lot of things we can't change, but there are also a lot of stains and regrets and grudges and grievances that we simply don't need to take with us. We are free in the heart and eyes of God, and now is a perfect time to lay our burdens down, so that we might dance our way into the future that awaits us.

And it is precisely in the presence of this gift of grace and freedom that is it also good and right to rededicate ourselves to live lives of faithfulness in the year that is to come. To enter 2007 having made a covenant with God, a pact if you will, about our intentions and our hopes and our commitments and our resolve to be God's people in the year that awaits us. I was struck by the lesson from Colossians because of its call that we dress ourselves as God's chosen ones: with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. That we bear with one another, that we forgive each other, that we clothe ourselves in love, with the peace of Christ as the chart and compass by which our lives are governed. And then the text goes on to address our life together as a congregation. As one commentator writes,
We are to teach and admonish each other and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Jesus did not come to give a ticket to heaven to a host of rugged individuals. He came to create a body who in peace and love would reveal the truth of God to the world and live as his representative people…We are called to love God and our neighbor, and that implies real acts. (page 394, Leonard R. Klein)
…as individuals and as a congregation.

We've just spent a season immersed in words and visions of peace and justice, of promise and hope, the song of angels bringing God's good will to all humanity. Let us clothe ourselves in those words and promises and visions and realities. My friends, let us go forward into this new year clothed in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and forgiveness, wrapped in the presence and love of God, bearing God's love into the world, with the peace of Christ as the chart and compass by which our lives are governed. Let us be a body of believers who in peace and love would reveal the truth of God to the world and live as God's representative people.

Happy New Year, my friends. And Merry Christmas all year long. Amen.

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