Sermon: "This Old House"

King Street UCC, Danbury, CT

Anniversary Sunday

August 16, 2009

“This Old House”

1 Kings 8:(1,6,10-11), 22-30, 41-43

"But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27)

Sometime in the early 1970s, the president of AT&T called all his company managers into a large conference room for an emergency meeting.

Attendance was mandatory.

Speculation ran high as to what announcement would be made.

Perhaps a breakthrough in technology. Perhaps a downsizing of the company. When all were seated, the president went to the podium and said, "The telephone as we know it no longer exists."

Muffled laughter rippled through the room. They all knew he was joking. They had used telephones that morning. The president then said: "Anyone who does not believe what I just said can leave this room right now and pick up your final paycheck on the way out."

The room quickly quieted down. No one left.

Then they noticed that all the phones that had been in the room that morning, were gone.

The President said once again, “The telephone as we know it no longer exists, your job today is to invent one."

He then proceeded to break the managers up into small groups and they spent the rest of the afternoon designing a telephone from scratch. They asked themselves, what kind of features would we want in a new phone?

Some wanted one with no cord, one that could be carried in the car, or on the street.... and wouldn’t it be great to know when another call was coming in, or to be able to forward calls to another number, or to be able to transmit not just sound but documents, text and video!

About 60 new features distinguished the telephone invented by this impromptu gathering. Many of which we take for granted today, from call waiting to cell phones to text messaging, and the list has not yet been exhausted.

With this story in mind, imagine now as we enter the third millennium, that we come here to King Street church one Sunday morning and much to our shocked dismay, we find a vacant lot where our church once stood.

In the middle of the lot there is a little note tacked on a piece of tattered plaster. The note is written in Hebrew and the same note has been left on vacant lots all over the world where Christian churches once stood, from towering cathedrals to tiny one-room chapels. Translated, the note reads, "The church you have always known no longer exists; – the walls, the pews, the altar, the set in stone beliefs and assumptions. All of it is gone."

"How can this be?" We ask in abject puzzlement.

How can all that we have built be gone?

In the background, we hear God laughing and saying, "Given the world the way it is, with its devastating problems and amazing opportunities for joy, given what you know of how Jesus lived in the world, and how human beings are meant to honor the covenant made with God, the real question is, 'How can your churches NOT be gone?' "

Then God looks us straight in the eye and says, "The church you have always known no longer exists - Your job today is to build a new one.”

This scenario comes from the book “Dying Church, Living God” written by the late author and chaplain Chuck Meyer.

In his book Meyer addressed the problem of the continuing decline of our mainline Christian denominations. The term mainline refers to those Protestant denominations that were brought to or established in our country by our immigrant ancestors – the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Congregationalists, who are the forbearers our own United Church of Christ.

Modern day prophets like Meyer paint a picture of the future that is not very pretty. The church as we know it is dying.

While evangelical and other non-denominational churches have grown over the past 20 years, mainline denominations like our own have shown a steady decline in membership. Although some mainline Christians have switched to non-denominational churches for theological reasons, an even greater number have chosen to leave the church all together.

According to a recent poll, 87% of Americans declare themselves to be religious, but less than 20% go to church on a weekly basis.

It has been said that in 50 to 100 years Christian churches in America will be like many of the churches in Europe today – kept open during the week as tourist attractions or museums, while they remain locked and empty on Sunday mornings.

There is no shortage of reasons given for the decline in church membership:

Some cite the tendency for mainline churches to cling to language, music, and traditions that are out of step with the times and which no longer speak to the people of today.

Others blame the current cultural preference for individualistic forms of religion that emphasize self-help and prosperity messages, while downplaying the social justice and politicized teachings of the Gospels.

One obvious factor contributing to the decline, is the steady loss of young adults, many of whom say they are disillusioned with the hypocrisy of Christians who profess to love thy neighbor on Sunday, while doing everything they can to exclude their neighbor on Monday.

Mainline churches have not been blind to the downward trend in attendance, and there have been attempts to adapt to the current culture and attract new members.

Yet despite efforts to modernize worship services with rock bands and power point presentations, and the push to emulate mega churches by offering one-stop conveniences like coffee shops, fitness centers, and movie theatres; mainline membership rolls continue to shrink.

For doomsayers like Chuck Meyer, changing the design of our church buildings or our style of worship is tantamount to arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It doesn’t matter how we change the scenery - the ship is still going down.

And there is nothing we can do to prevent it.

And the prophetic voices tell us that we shouldn’t try to prevent it.

Like the AT&T executives in our opening story,

We shouldn’t be asking ourselves, how do we save our old church, but rather we should be asking: “What kind of church will we build in its place?”

We have to wonder, if in the summer of 18 hundred and 30, the eight people who came together to form the First Christian Church of Danbury and Patterson looked at the empty patch of land on the corner of South King Street and asked themselves “What kind of church will we build?”

The church as they knew it no longer existed, as the sons and daughters of new world settlers or as immigrants themselves, they had left behind the church of old, and were now staring at virgin land that was ripe for change. Everything around them was new.

While churches and homes in their family’s native countries had stood for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, most of the houses that dotted the countryside of the small farming settlement known as Danbury had stood for less than 75 years.

The United States of America itself was barely 60 years old.

There were only 24 states in the union.

The entire population was reinventing itself as it went along.

200 years before our church’s founding, our congregational forbearers, the Puritans left their home country because the Christian church as they imagined it to be looked quite different from the church as it was.

Even in the early stages of the Protestant Reformation, when people’s understanding of what it meant to be a church was experiencing a radical shift, there was no one set way to be a Protestant Christian as opposed to being a Catholic Christian.

What there was was a sense that the churches we had built were too defined to house the indefinable nature of God. The box we had built around God was too elaborate, too restrictive and reflected our own image rather than the unknowable image of God.

The people who founded our church 179 years ago had something in common with the Puritans, and the Protestant Reformers, and the first ragtag band of disciples who called themselves followers of Jesus Christ.

They looked at the house we had erected in God name, declared it to be inadequate, and asked “What will we build in its place?”

In our scripture reading today, Solomon looked out at the Temple that he had built to act as God’s dwelling place, and he said:

"But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27)

The Temple that Solomon constructed in Jerusalem was not just a house of God, it was THE house of God. It took seven years to build. He used the finest of building materials: the cedars of Lebanon, cypress wood, gold, silver, bronze, and huge blocks of cut and dressed stone. He had master craftsmen carve into the walls of the Temple elaborate decorations of cherubim, palm trees, and flowers. He overlaid everything with gold – even the floor. It was a magnificent building, inside and out.

When all was ready, Solomon brought up the Ark of the Covenant, which had been residing in the Tabernacle, and installed it in the newly finished Temple, in the innermost sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, under the wings of the cherubim, carved of olivewood and covered with gold. As soon as the priests put the Ark in its place, a cloud filled the Temple and the glory of the LORD inhabited it.

This cloud that descended on the Temple is a sign of the presence of God. It is the same cloud that led the Israelites out of Egypt and protected them from the Egyptian army. It is the same cloud that descended on the top of Mount Sinai when God made a covenant with the Israelites and gave them the Law as a gift. This same cloud settled on the Tabernacle, that movable sanctuary, by which God was present with the Israelites throughout their wanderings in the wilderness.

In Solomon's prayer, Jerusalem is "the city that God has chosen.”

The Temple is the place of which God says, "My name shall be there.” Where passing foreigners will hear God’s name and be welcomed in. It is the place where heaven meets earth and where God's glory appears for all to see.

But it is important to note that Solomon's prayer does not confine God to the Temple. Solomon acknowledges that this "house" cannot contain God. Although the Temple was central to Israel's worship for many centuries, at the same time it was not essential. When the Temple of Jerusalem is destroyed, not once but twice, God is still present with God's people.*

The belief that God cannot be contained in a building still holds today.

How many times have we heard of churches destroyed by natural disasters or fire, yet the people still come together on Sunday mornings to worship – sitting on wooden planks under tarps, in rented trailers, or in space provided by other churches or the community.

Because most Christians know that the church is not found in the plaster or the cinder blocks, the church is found in the people.

Jesus said, “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be.”

This is why we date our church’s founding back to 1830, when eight people came together and said “we are a church," while this actual building didn’t come to be until 16 years later.

So, we’re left with the realization, if WE are the church, then to stem the tide of those choosing to leave the church, it is not our buildings that must change, its not the language, or the music, or the sound system that must change.

WE must change. We as Christians must change.

We must change the way we act and move in our churches and in the world.

We must embrace the Good News of the gospel – that God’s radically inclusive love and saving Grace is given freely to all – and not just speak these words on Sunday but live them on Monday.

We need to throw open the windows, and prop open our doors, so that all will hear that God’s name is spoken in this place, and that everyone, everyone, is welcome in God’s house.

Now, despite the dire picture I painted earlier about the decline of mainline Christian denominations in this country, there is hope to be found.

I’ve spent the last year living in Boston, attending my first year of seminary. During my first year, I had to choose a local church and interview for the ministerial internship that I’ll be starting this fall. To research my options, I made it a point to attend a different UCC church in the Boston area every Sunday - to get a feel for how they worship, how they serve, how they see themselves as “church” in the world.

While I came across a few churches that were stagnant – in their preaching, in their outreach efforts, and in their growth – and a few that were obviously dying – due to an aging membership or changing demographics in their community, the majority of the churches I attended were alive and growing.

These are churches that have held onto many of their traditions and the language of old, but they were not afraid to try something new.

There was a new emphasis on inclusivity and a new interest in social justice issues that came not just from a handful of members on a committee but from the congregation as a whole.

There was a new emphasis on living the message of Jesus, seeing it not just as a guide to make us better people, but as an imperative to make a better world.

There was a new enthusiasm, a new excitement, about changing what it means to be a Christian in the world today.

And I saw this excitement, this enthusiasm, not just in the UCC churches I attended, but also in the faces and the words and actions of my fellow seminarians – who are Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans – both young and old.

These are the people who will be pastoring the churches of tomorrow.

These are the people who are members of the churches of today.

The churches that must no longer shut their doors to the world and spend all their time and money on themselves - building elaborate sanctuaries, preaching sermons that focus more on the prosperity or damnation of the individual then the teachings of the gospel, sitting in judgment of the world and its evils but doing nothing to lessen the effects of those evils.

For prophetic voices like Chuck Meyer, this is the church of old,

the church that must die, to allow a new church to grow in its place.

A church that feeds the hungry, helps the suffering, clothes the naked, strengthens the fainthearted.

A church that hears the gospel as a call to go out into the world and serve others, while at the same time maintaining a space to serve the needs of its members and the immediate community.

A church that builds a house to Worship God, but knows that God cannot be contained in four walls of plaster and stone.

The hopeful news is that King Street UCC is one of these churches.

We are a church that is proud of it’s history, and we know that the way to keep our church alive is not to let go of our past, but to continue to ask ourselves, “What does God want us to do in the here and now - to ensure a better future for all?”

If we were to show up here next Sunday and find nothing but an empty lot, we would be overwhelmingly sad for our loss,

especially those of you who have spent a lifetime in these pews.

Those of you who remember what our church looked like before the sanctuary was expanded in 1980, or before the education wing was added in 1967.

There are even some of you who were here to see the Martin Room built in 1955, and who remember a time when the little church on the corner of South King Street looked the same as it had a hundred years before.

If we were to come here one Sunday and find all of this gone, we would be sad beyond all words.

But with God’s hopeful note clutched in our fingers, and with what we know of how Jesus acted in the world fresh in our minds,

Like our forbearers who built this church we would gather up plaster and cinder block and wood and ask ourselves,

“What kind of church will we build in its place?”

Amen

*Temple description adapted from WorkingPreacher.org - Kathyrn Schifferdecker

Random Bullets....

• I’m leading Worship the next two Sundays at my home church. (Our pastor is getting married and she insists on taking a honeymoon…sheesh!) The lectionary for the past month, and for the next two weeks, has us plodding through John chapter 6 with all its imagery of the ‘bread of life,’ 'bread from heaven,’ 5 loaves feeding 5000, and ‘eat my flesh, for those who eat this bread will live forever’ – what fun! Seriously, how many weeks can we talk about bread? It’s our congregation’s Anniversary Sunday (179 years) so I’m stealing the 1 Kings reading from next week and talking about God’s dwelling place. We’ll resume John’s Greatest Hits of Bread next Sunday.

• I still have one paper to write for my summer Christian Ethics class, and I have absolutely no ambition to write it. Perhaps the professor will accept a sermon on bread instead.

• The fall semester starts just over a month from now (Sept 14) and I’m looking forward to going back to school. This year I’ll be a “Middler” which is seminary speak for ‘2nd year student.’ This means I can attend orientation weekend events and stand around looking all cool and experienced while the newbies….errr…”Juniors”….wander around bumping into trees and asking questions like “Where is Upper Noyes?” (A: above the Fair-Trade vegan cafeteria), “Can I park on the quad?” (A: yes, if you have the prerequisite ‘Obama for President’ and ‘Love Makes A Family’ bumper stickers) and “What the hell am I doing here at this liberal pinko seminary and just how many gay people are here anyway?” (A: ‘I don’t know’ and ‘a lot’).

• The shuttle service between our house and the vet’s office is running once again as our older cat Katie has had trouble…errrr…..“doing number 2.” I swear if it’s not one orifice it’s the other, on both cats. They need special pills, special food - I know more about their bathroom habits then my own. While Katie continues to poop behind the front door (welcome home!) and pee on the living room carpet, the other one wolfs her food down so fast she leaves puke piles all over the dining room. We’ve gone through a forest of paper towels just cleaning up after them. We never had this problem with our outdoor cats. Probably because they went off and did their business in the bushes with out a silly human hunched over them saying “does it look like she’s straining?” and “that poop doesn’t look right.” Poor kitties. If someone threw me in a cage and whisked me off to the doctor every time I was constipated I’d pee on the carpet too.

• I’ve been home for three months and I’ve managed to lose not a single ounce of the 10 lbs. I gained while I was away at school. I’ve been walking and running, albeit sporadically and I’ve made a conscious effort to eat better – more salad, less bread. But still the weight doesn’t budge. I refuse to believe that it has anything to do with being over 40. I’m just not as active as I used to be. I blame too much time spent in a chair with a computer on my lap or a book in my hands. And weekly pit stops at Cold Stone haven’t helped. Sure, their “Gotta Have It!” size has 800 calories, but it takes me three days to eat it, that’s gotta count for something right? (me – straws – grasping)

• Finally, if I may get up on my soapbox for a moment….the fiasco that’s going on with the health care debate in this country right now is frightening. Our health care system is seriously broken. Poor people are dying. Old people are suffering. Medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy and financial ruin in this country. Something needs to be done. I don’t know all the specifics of President Obama’s plan (I’ve been too busy cleaning up after cats) but I do know that he’s proposing a solution that has worked in other countries. What ever he does is not going to be perfect and they’ll be a whole lot of people who won’t like it for a whole lot of reasons. But can we at least stick with the facts? Can we at least sit down like grown adults and have a conversation about it? Is there really a need for people to get agitated enough to stand up and shout “OBAMA IS THE ANTI-CHRIST AND HE’S TRYING TO TURN OUR COUNTRY INTO A COMMIE PINKO SOCIALIST NATION!!” And Ms. Palin….telling people that Obama’s plan is “downright evil” and it will lead to “death panels” that will decide who lives or dies (you mean kind of like the HMO’s and insurance companies do now?) is such a flat out distortion of the truth that is would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive. Is this the kind of Christian that you want to be? One that resorts to spreading lies and demonizing others in a misguided attempt to 'fight evil'? Really? ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ and ‘what you have done to the least of my brothers you have done to me’ – are these not in your version of the Bible? You remind me of the stereotypical busy-body, leaning over her neighbors’ fence to gossip about so-and-so down the street and “oh my god can you believe what I just heard!” You thrive on spreading fear and half-truths. Like the moms and the church lady’s I know who love to forward emails warning about ‘AIDS syringes left on gas pumps’ and fictitious parking lot abductions and Muslims who want to destroy our way of life (“oh my God! Look what it says in the Koran!”). The sad thing is that people look up to you. They look at you and see themselves – a conservative Republican Christian mom who’s just trying to raise her kids right and get by. They trust you. They believe you. They don’t fact check. Which is why they forward emails based on lies that have been circulating since 1995. You have the power to sway their opinions towards the truth or away from the truth. It’s just a shame that as a Christian you’ve chosen to do the latter.

Separated at Birth?

Doctor Elizabeth Dehner from the pilot episode of the original Star Trek...




....and the "Snuggie for Dogs" spokesdog:



Why, the resemblance is remarkable!

Sermon: A Boy and his Lunch

The Trumbull Congregational Church, Trumbull, CT
July 26, 2009
“Radically Inclusive Love”
John 6:1-21

"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" (John 6:9)

John Mark was an inquisitive child. He lived with his parents and his three brothers in the small fishing village of Capernaum, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. John Mark was only 9-years-old but he was much more adventurous and intellectually curious then his three older brothers.
His mother sensed this, which is why on this fine morning she let him linger in the garden studying a butterfly while his brothers went on ahead to help their father with the morning catch.

John-Mark was fascinated by things that were out of the ordinary.
Most likely because he and his family were Gentiles living in a village that was predominantly Jewish. He knew what it was like to be different.
His family had moved here from Damascus before John Mark was born, after his father who was a fisherman by trade traveled to Capernaum seeking work. Even on the open sea, his father was a Gentile among Jews but he was happy, and that’s all that mattered.

Having sufficiently studied the butterfly and with the morning fleeting by, John Mark ran into the house, grabbed the lunch basket his mother had prepared for him and his brothers, and set off skipping down the road to join them by the seaside.

Before he arrived at the dock where his father normally anchored their boat, he noticed a commotion that had arisen on the shoreline. People were piling into boats and running up the road that skirted the seaside, chattering on about some prophet who had set sail with his followers and was last seen headed to the deserted shore on the opposite side of the Galilee.

John Mark had a sense as to who it was they were talking about.
It was probably the same prophet who had lured two local fishermen, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, away from their boats and their livelihood. Causing them to cast down their nets and leave their poor father to fend for himself.
John Mark had seen this prophet in the village quite often, and rumor had it that he had cured a man who had an unclean spirit living within him, and he healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law when she came down with fever.

Now John Mark was as open minded as they came, but casting out demons, and healing the sick? Come on!
John Mark had seen this supposed prophet-preacher up close - (what was his name again, Jeshua?) - and he looked like an ordinary man.
There was nothing special about him.

Besides, why would someone who had powers like that be living in Capernaum?? Why not just conjure up a castle and a bevy of servants and live the good life in Damascus or Antioch?
Why spend your nights sleeping on the ground, and your days talking to a bunch of dirt-poor fisherman in a back-woods place like Capernaum??
It just didn’t make sense.

And to top it all off, what this prophet was best known for was stirring up trouble in the local synagogue. John Mark didn’t attend synagogue himself but he had heard the older boys in town complaining about this heretic who was always getting into arguments with the local rabbis - challenging their beliefs and answering their questions with questions of his own.

Having been schooled by his father in the nuances of philosophy, John Mark loved a good argument as much as the next boy, but when it came to religious beliefs you either believed or you didn’t…right?
If your beliefs were different from the majority of those in your faith tradition then why stick around and argue with them?
Why not just go out and start your own religion? Build your own temple, pray to your own God?
It just didn’t make sense.

But with all the commotion going on by the seaside that day, John Mark let his curiosity get the best of him, and before he knew it he was running along the shore road, his lunch basket swinging beside him, making his way to the deserted place on the far side of the sea.

By the time he got there, there were already thousands of people gathered on the hillside overlooking the shore, about 5,000 men plus women and children, John Mark estimated. He was always good with numbers, in fact his father relied on him to calculate the day’s catch based on how many nets they had cast and filled.

The prophet Jeshua was standing in a boat on the shoreline. With bated breath John Mark watched him step out of the boat and walk up the hillside with his 12 followers in tow. John Mark waved to Andrew and Simon Peter but he didn’t think they saw him.
Once they reached the top of the hill, Jeshua signaled for his followers to sit down and then he leaned over to say something to the one named Philip.
John Mark could not hear what he was saying so he quickly pushed his way through the crowd to get himself within earshot of the action.
Using his lunch basket as a battering ram, he quickly found a way to make the tightly packed masses move aside and let him through.

John Mark poked his head through the front of the crowd just in time to hear Philip say to Jeshua,
“Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little."

Bread? Why did they need to buy bread? John Mark wondered.
They weren’t thinking of feeding all these people were they? Are they crazy? These people had followed Jeshua on their own accord. If they were stupid enough to come all the way out here without anything to eat then let them suffer the consequences. Let them find their own food.

As he thought this, John Mark instinctively tightened his grip on the basket that his mother had lovingly packed for him and his brothers that morning.
It was getting close to lunchtime and his father and brothers were most likely bringing in the mornings catch right about now.
They would be expecting John Mark to be there on the shore waiting to deliver the 5 loaves and 2 fishes that would sustain them for the remainder of the day.

Little did they know that John Mark was miles away from where he was supposed to be, having impulsively followed a preacher man who used parlor tricks and fancy words to convince others to do his bidding.
A so-called prophet whose own followers couldn’t agree on who he was or how his words and actions were to be interpreted.

John Mark didn’t know much about the Jewish faith, but what he did know is that there didn’t seem to be much consensus on how to interpret the words written in their sacred texts. They were arguing even now.

Off to John Mark’s right there was a group of men who called themselves Sadducees, who saw the written law of Moses as the only law, and rejected any oral traditions that grew out of the law.
They were convinced that Jeshua was a false prophet because he kept insisting that God would resurrect the dead. Resurrection was nonsense, and this Jeshua character was blasphemous for even speaking of it.

To John Mark’s left stood a group of Pharisees, who unlike the Sadducees took the law of Moses and used it to devise an ever increasing amount of rules and traditions to keep the faithful in line.
If you stepped out of line the Pharisees were the first to call you on it, and Jeshua was always stepping out of line.
He preached a form of Divine love that was overly inclusive and far too radical to come from the one true God.
God loves tax collectors and prostitutes? Jeshua was a heretic for sure.

Then there were the Zealots, who very nearly came to blows right there on the hillside that morning as they discussed how to lure Jeshua into their fold. The Zealots were political revolutionaries who believed that the only way to overcome the oppressive rule of Rome was to overthrow those in power using violent means if necessary.
The Zealots believed that Jeshua was sent by God to be the leader of their revolution, as he preached a message that was subversive and laced with anti-Roman rhetoric. Jeshua was the savior, the cosmic soldier who would lead them to power with a sword.

One group that was equally despised by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Zealots, were the Samaritans. They were outsiders, interlopers from the north, who practiced a watered down version of Judaism and were unwelcome in the cities and villages of Judea.
No one would even get near them on the hillside, and disdainful looks came from all around.
But the Samaritans liked Jeshua; he was a Jew who treated them as equals and he spoke to them with love.

Finally, there were the more common adherents of the Jewish faith.
Jews who went to synagogue on the Sabbath, followed the law of Moses and honored the traditions passed on in their communities.
They too were tired of Roman rule, but they were just as tired of all the infighting that went on within their faith.

Jews needed to stand together, not tear each other apart, and Jeshua just may be the one to unite them. They believed that Jeshua was a King - the Messiah that God had promised them. A King who would bring them together, lead them to freedom, and reinstate their standing as God’s chosen people.

With all the religious arguments going on on the hillside that morning, John Mark couldn’t understand why the first words out of Jeshua’s mouth had to do with food.

Perhaps Jeshua thought if he fed the masses, they’d actually listen to what he had to say.
Then again, Jeshua was always going on about the need to feed the hungry and give to the poor, maybe he was just demonstrating what he wanted others to do. Leading by example.
John Mark had also heard that the people who followed Jeshua would often have meals together and break bread in his name, maybe this was just his way of indoctrinating them to the practice.

While John Mark pondered the possible explanations for Jeshua’s sudden preoccupation with food, he noticed that Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, had spotted him in the crowd and was headed in John Mark’s direction.

“What do you have in the basket?” Andrew asked.
“Just a few pieces of bread and some fish,” John Mark stammered.
“Just enough to feed me and my brothers,” he quickly added, as he moved to hide the basket behind his back.

Andrew quickly snatched the basket and looked inside.
“Come with me, boy,” he said.

John Mark obediently followed Andrew.
He could not disobey the command of an adult and admittedly he was fascinated with the idea of getting closer to the man named Jeshua.

Andrew approached Jeshua, and with some weariness in his voice he said, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?"

“Make the people sit down,” Jeshua said, and then he took the basket from Andrew and he opened it.

“Oh, come on,” John Mark thought to himself. “That’s MY lunch AND my brother’s lunch. What are we going to eat if Jeshua gives our food to all these people?”
John Mark was all for feeding the hungry and giving to the poor, as long as he and his family didn’t go hungry in the process.

Then Jeshua reached into the basket, took the bread and gave thanks to God, and then he passed the basket amongst the people.

The crowd pushed forward, with those in the second and third rows reaching in desperation to get their meager share before it was gone.
Those in the back row knew that there was no hope that they would eat that day.

John Mark just stood there. His lower lip began to quiver.
What had he done?
His family wasn’t rich. His father worked hard to catch those fish.
His mother worked hard to bake that bread.
Now because of his curiosity and his stupidity he had lost the only meal they would have that day.

As the people continued to pass the basket and he saw the five loaves, and then the two fish being broken apart and dropped into waiting outstretched hands, he felt the tears begin to sting against his cheeks.

And then something strange began to happen.

The basket continued to be passed along the hillside, eagerly grasped by the twentieth, and then the thirtieth, and then the fiftieth person. Soon one hundred people had dug their hands into the basket and brought them out again with bread and fish overflowing their grasp.

How could this be?

The tension in the crowd soon turned to giddiness.
Waves of laughter began to erupt as people followed the progress of the basket in amazement.
One man yelled to a friend as he reached into the basket, “Hey Bartholomew! Isn’t that the same fish that I just ate?”

The anxious fear that had descended upon the crowd when the small basket of food first began to circulate, was gone.
The fear that there would not be enough to go around, was gone.
The fear that the Sadducees, or the Pharisees, or the Zealots, or the Samaritans would take more than their fair share leaving nothing for anyone else, was gone.
The belief that one group or one person was somehow more or less deserving of reaching into the basket, was gone.

Suddenly John Mark understood why this prophet teacher known as Jeshua was so preoccupied with food.
Food was what sustained them.
Without food they could not live.
Yet food was a scarce commodity.

By giving the people an abundance of food Jeshua had shown them how much of their fear, and mistrust, and desire for power over others, came from a feeling of scarcity.
The feeling that there is not enough to go around.
When the scarcity was turned to abundance all of the people’s fears slipped away, and were replaced with joyous cooperation.

Could the same be said of love? John Mark wondered.

Did people fear, and mistrust, and exert power over others because they believed love was a scarce commodity?
Did they believe that love was so scarce they had to hold on to it, or hoard it, or withhold it from others to ensure that they would never go without?

What if there was enough love to go around?
What if love existed in abundance?
What if love could be passed along in a basket with each person reaching in and taking their fill, and passing it along to the next person without thought of who it was they were passing it to?
Nothing would be held back, no one would be denied, no one would go hungry, in a world of abundant love.

When we hear this story today, we wonder:
Did Jesus really perform a miracle when he fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fishes?
It can be argued that as human beings we too have the power to feed all who are hungry. Yet because we haven’t yet figured out the logistics of how to do it, or shown a willingness to pool our resources, we continue to act out of scarcity rather then abundance.

But ensuring that no one is starved of LOVE does not require logistics, or pooled resources. We don’t need to figure out how to grow it, store it, or truck it to areas where it is scarce.
It costs us nothing to give, and it is priceless to receive.

So why do we continue to hand out our love in small portions; acting out of scarcity rather than abundance?

Why do we love God, and our ourselves, and our families, and our friends with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our strength, but our basket comes up empty when it comes to loving someone who has wronged us,
or someone who holds a religious or political belief that conflicts with our own,
or someone who comes to our country - legally or illegally - speaking another language and using valuable resources that were meant for our own?


When we claim the name of Christian it means we’ve chosen to walk with Jesus.
That means we no longer carry that basket on our own,
Our hand is on one side of the basket, and Jesus has his hand on the other.

If we hold this image in our mind, we’ll see that when Jesus extends his love to someone, we must extend our love as well. Even if that person is someone that we just can’t conceive of loving.
We have to resist the urge to snatch the basket back and say,
“I’m sorry Jesus, my love just doesn’t stretch THAT far.”

"I can’t love a prostitute, I can’t love a tax collector,
I can’t love a criminal, a sex offender, a drug addict, a political tyrant, or a cowardly martyr who straps a bomb to his chest, killing hundreds of innocents in the name of God.
My love just doesn’t stretch that far."

But this is where we get confused.
Jesus didn’t say that we had to approve of the behavior of others in order to love them.
And here’s the big secret - We don’t even have to LIKE the people that we are called to love.

There are always going to be people who get under our skin or rub us the wrong way. Just as there will always be people who exhibit behaviors that our society doesn’t condone.
We’re allowed to dislike each other. We’re allowed to hold each other accountable for our actions.
If someone has broken a law, we can seek restitution, offer rehabilitation, and place limits on their freedom to keep them from doing further harm.
But it is our LOVE for those we dislike, that keeps us from doing harm in return.

If we love someone we wish them no ill will.
We don’t delight in their misery, we don’t seek revenge,
We don’t inflict pain as restitution for our own pain,
We don’t ask God to enact divine judgment upon them.
We simply pass them the basket, just as Jesus passed it to us.

The Pharisees were right. The love that flowed from Jesus was radical in its inclusiveness.
And try as we may we rarely come close to showing that same radically inclusive love for others.

But with Jesus our small acts of love spread much farther then we could ever imagine.

Just as John Mark saw his meager lunch gain the power to feed thousands,
the love that we show others has the power to change the world.

And that my friends, is miraculous!

Amen.

Put on your dancing shoes!

I posted this on Facebook yesterday and I liked it so much I figured I'd post it over here for those of you don't do Facebook.

The joy coming from these people just gives me goosebumps.
I want to officiate at this wedding!!

Dress for Success

I'm supposed to be working on my sermon for Sunday...
so I'm blogging instead.
See, I told you doing pulpit supply would get me to blog more often. ;-)

Two days ago I finally did something that I've been avoiding for months (and dreading for years) - I ordered my first clergy robe.
I need to have one for my Field Ed internship this Fall, and I'll be filling in for my pastor when she takes her sabbatical next summer, so it was time to stop fighting my belief that I have not yet "earned" the right to wear a robe and go ahead and order one.

I ordered TWO, actually.
A white alb:



...and a black Geneva robe:




I prefer white, and the alb is lighter in weight so I'll probably end up wearing that one next summer, but the pastor at my Field Ed site holds the belief that white should only be worn when one is performing the sacraments, such as on Communion Sunday (once a month in the UCC). On non-communion Sundays the pastor is filling the role of "teacher" and thus should wear the more academic black robe.

I've talked to other pastors about this and they claim there is no hard and fast rule and its simply a matter of preference, but when in Rome do as the Romans do, so I will be wearing a black robe at my Field Ed site.
(Conforming to the Romans...Jesus would SO not approve)

The plan is that I will be licensed by our local association to consecrate communion at my home church before next summer, so I can wear my white alb during the sabbatical fill-in safe in the knowledge that I'm not violating any unwritten dress codes.

As for feeling that I have not yet earned the right to wear a robe, I find that many of my fellow seminarians have mixed feelings about this. In the UCC tradition, its ok for seminarians to wear robes/albs as long as they don't wear a stole, because it is the stole that distinguishes one as being ordained. In other traditions its ok to wear an alb when not ordained, but not a black Geneva robe.
Personally, I feel like I'm play-acting when I wear a robe, and to me, a black Geneva gown without a stole looks too much like a graduation gown or a judges robe.
I don't feel pastoral when wearing one, I feel like a poser.
Perhaps that will change once I have a year of Field Ed under my belt, but right now I still feel like a lay-member who fills in for the pastor every once in a while.

Some seminarians have practical reasons for not wanting to purchase a robe until they're officially ordained - clergy robes are expensive ($165 for the alb, $200 for the robe, and that's on the cheap end). Most seminarians are on limited budgets, so why purchase a robe that's only going to be worn a few times at a Field Ed site during the second year, when it may be another two years before one becomes officially ordained? Students who are on the part-time 5-years til graduation plan have an even longer wait, so if you buy a robe in seminary make sure you don't gain any weight or it may not fit when you finally get to wear it. ;-)

While I've had a few pastors tell me that its inappropriate and impractical for a seminarian to purchase/wear a robe, and I still feel that I've yet to earn the right to wear one, the pastor at my Field Ed church requires it, so a robe I shall wear!

And if you need any civil cases decided in the mean time, give me a call!

Summer Soliloquy

My, my …there sure are a lot of cobwebs around here…
This is what happens when I leave my blog unattended for so long.

I don’t know why I always feel the need to spew out a list of excuses when I haven’t blogged in a while. A sense of guilt washes over me as if I’m writing a long over due letter to a far away friend who has been checking her mailbox everyday awaiting my reply….
“Oh why doesn’t she write?” she says, with tears flowing down her cheeks, “Why has she forsaken me?”
**sigh***…..

Ok, enough of that, here are my excuses:

Top Ten Reasons Why Mocat Has Not Blogged in Two Months
(presented in reverse order in homage to David Letterman)

10. Took an online summer class in Christian Ethics – reading/writing/nuff said…
9. Doing pulpit supply over the summer– more reading/writing
8. Spending way too much time on Facebook
7. Organized my SO’s books by genre/author – one week, 4 bookcases, books piled everywhere – a book-geeks dream job!
6. Spent a week in California visiting the mother-in-law and sunning by the pool.
5. Facebook
4. Have spent the entire month of July watching the Tour de France
3. Started walking/running regularly to lose the 10 pounds I gained at school
2. Spend 2 hours every night playing video games on my laptop while watching the NY METS lose….again.

….and the number one reason why I haven’t blogged in two months:

1. Facebook…..and as of last week, Twitter….


Yes, I am easily distracted.
What it comes down to is that between school and doing pulpit supply I spend so much time writing on my computer that the last thing I want to do on my ‘down’ time is to spend time writing on my computer.

Today I’ve had a rare convergence of events that lead me here – it’s a rest day in the Tour de France; I prepared this Sunday’s Worship bulletin last week because the church secretary is on vacation this week; I’m taking today off from sermon writing because I preached yesterday and I need at least a day to recharge my spiritual batteries; my online class is over apart from one more paper that’s not due until late August; the books are organized, though some are neatly stacked on a table because we need to buy another bookcase; and I HAVE to clean the house today because I’ve let it go way too long, so I’m procrastinating by blogging.

hmmmmmmm….yet when I have writing that I HAVE to do I procrastinate by cleaning the house, funny how that works out…

With my summer class over I expect that I will be blogging more often over the next two months before school starts again. Doing pulpit supply seems to open up the more introspective/blogging side of my brain, while writing papers for school seems to shut it down. That may change with me doing Field Ed in the fall. Working in an actual church for 15 hours a week should give me lots to talk about over here!
So, now that I’ve started my house cleaning by knocking out my blog cobwebs it’s time to get moving and tackle the real cobwebs.
The kitty cats better run and hide….me and my Dyson are ready to roll!

Who are you and what have you done with my seminarian?

Ok, so I failed miserably in my Lenten effort to spend less time on Facebook and more time here. For the few readers that still check here to see if I've popped my head out of the ground, you'll be happy to hear that I have T-minus 7 days until the end of the semester. I have one final class on Monday, 3 papers left to write for Friday, and then I'm loading up the Subaru and heading back to CT for the summer. Woo Hoo!

This semester has been a blast, and I know after a few weeks of decompressing at home I'm going to miss my new family up here. I'm going to miss eating with them 3 times a day, attending classes together, worshiping together, and walking down the hill to get ice cream. I'm going to miss how a 2 minute walk across the quad to drop off a paper in the office takes 20 minutes because inevitably I run into 2 or 3 people I know and we end up exchanging the usual "how are you, what are you doing today, how many papers do you have due, what are you doing over the summer" pleasantries.

I'm going to miss the students whom I've come to know and love and who'll be graduating in 2 weeks and I may never see again. And believe it or not, I'm even going to miss Systematic Theology. As mind bending as it was, it was my favorite class, and because it lasted two terms it gave me a sense of continuity in the midst of all the new challenges that I took on this semester.

I managed to get pretty decent grades on my papers in my two hardest classes, Systematics and Christian History; and I made it through my dreaded “Preaching without notes” class unscathed. In fact, I did much better than I expected. We each had to preach three 10-minute sermons without a manuscript, an outline, or notes of any kind. This was a format that was entirely foreign to me and I really struggled with how to even write a sermon that wasn't going to be read but rather spoken, partly from memory and partly extemporaneously. But somehow I was able to do it.

Part of the scariness of taking a preaching class is having to endure the critique that follows each sermon, as not only the professor but one’s fellow classmates have the green light to offer brutally honest criticism, constructive or otherwise. But while my classmates came out of each class feeling pummeled, by the professor and each other, I experienced a sort of detached euphoria. I did not receive a single negative comment, from anyone. In fact, the professor said I had a natural instinct for phrasing, use of illustrations, and sermon construction; and he held up my delivery to the rest of the class as “a wonderful example of effective preaching.” I was floored.
The only comment that came close to being negative came from a student who mentioned that the end of my third sermon, while strong, wasn’t as strong as my previous efforts (I had run past the allotted 10 minutes, so I shortened my intended ending).

The ‘detached’ part of the euphoria I experienced after hearing all this praise, comes from not knowing exactly who this person is who gets up in front up people and belts out these sermons. As someone who has spent most of her life hovering in the background being ‘the quiet one’ I don’t know how I suddenly came to have the ability to stand up in front of people, make full eye contact, and PREACH.
I don’t know where the words come from, I don’t know where the confidence comes from, so when people start pouring on the praise I can’t help but swivel my head around to see who it is they’re talking about.

I of course, think they’re all either delusional or are just trying to be nice (although they seem to have no qualms about offering criticism to everyone else in the class) and I still find myself obsessing over the smallest mistakes. Halfway through my second sermon, I lost my train of thought and forgot what I was going to say next. Panic set in. After pausing for what seemed to me be an obvious “oh my god I forgot what I was going to say” length of time, I wandered over to the table where I had left my Bible and took a peek at the text to jog my memory. I thought I had screwed up in a major way but amazingly none of my classmates noticed! Afterward, they praised me for including a “dramatic pause” that allowed them to “mull over” what I had said previously (ha!). My professor was the only one to notice the peek I took in the Bible and he praised me for “handling the glitch in a professional manner” and for “not panicking” (double ha!).


The biggest lesson I’ve taken from this class is the realization that nothing about good preaching is ‘easy.’ Two of the best preachers in my class (both African American), make it look so easy when they get up there and string words together that can’t help but move the Spirit within you, but they consistently talk about how “nervous” they are in the pulpit and how inadequate they feel when delivering God’s message. Neither of them is new to preaching - one is an ordained DMin student and the other has been preaching in her home church for years. I’m starting to realize that nervousness and feelings of inadequacy in the pulpit are not signs of an insecurity that must be overcome, or symptoms of being a ‘newbie’ that one outgrows as time goes by.
We’re all scared to death up there, and as one of my professors put it, "If you’re not scared to death you probably have no business being up there!"
It’s not just about making oneself vulnerable by presenting a creative work that will inevitably invite critique from the listeners – its’ about delivering the message of the “Good News” – a message that is in its very nature subversive, counter-cultural and not always easy to hear - God loves everyone. God saves everyone through Grace. No one is excluded. No one is to be hated. No one it to be left behind. This is the message that God sent through Jesus.
It is a message that is comforting to some and threatening to many.
It’s no wonder that preachers who ‘get’ what it is they’ve been called to do are shaking in their boots when they preach God’s Word.

….but this preaching without notes thing? That’s a little too nerve wracking.
I’m going back to the manuscript…or at least an outline..for now.

Clean and Clear you're my hero....

Well, so much for my Lenten promise to update this blog everyday!
I want to know, what happened to the last two weeks? Time is just whippin' by!

I only have a month and a half left in the semester and I very stupidly sat down and calculated all that I have left to do in my classes in the that teeny, tiny, minuscule amount of time:

Two 10 page papers for Systematic Theology.
Three 4 page papers, one 10 page paper, and one 60 minute Worship service for my Worship class.
Two 10 minutes sermons, one 5 page paper, and three 1 page preacher reflections for my Preaching class.
Three 2 page papers, one 15 page paper, and a creative Timeline for my Christian History class.
And hundreds of pages of reading for all of the above.

After looking at this list I just have one thing to say:

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Well, the one good thing about facing all of this work is the ego boost I received at my birthday dinner the other night. I was dining with three fellow classmates - two 30-year-olds, and one 25-year-old - so I was the old lady in the bunch.
The conversation went something like this:

Beth: Remember when we were in high school?
Kate: Yeah, I was so into the grunge look, I wore flannel shirts everywhere!
Ruth: And the music was so cool...not like the crap they have today.
Me: You guys were lucky, all we had when I was in high school was designer jeans, big hair, and Flash Dance.
Beth: What are talking about? You're OUR age!
Ruth: Yeah, aren't you like 32?
Me: No dears, I'm 43 today!
....long awkward pause....
Beth: Wow....so like, what kind of moisturizer do you use?

Bless their hearts.



My secret to eternal youth

We are purr-fect, just as God created us...

More proof that God has a sense of humor:

I spent 25 minutes picking out a shirt/blouse to wear to my Field Ed interview today...but when I got to church there was no heat in the building because the boiler broke down last night and we all had to keep our coats on for the whole meeting.

A fellow student graciously loaned me her car to drive to the interview...but it wasn't until I pulled into the church parking lot that I noticed the "I'm A Militant Agnostic and Proud Of It!" bumper sticker on the back.

The "other student" that the Field Ed committee said they were meeting with today (and who I thought was competing with me for the position)...turned out to be the CURRENT field ed student who meets with the committee every month.

Somewhere God is chuckling to him/herself and having way to much fun at our expense.


My favorite bumper sticker:

My way or the highway...

I'm staring down the barrel of another Systematic Theology paper that's due next week, so today I'm contemplating the different lenses through which we view our religious beliefs and the beliefs of others.
We learned in class that theologians divide these lenses into three categories:

Exclusivism: My path is the only true and valid path.
Inclusivism: Other paths are valid because they contain similar truths to mine, but my path is still the only way to 'ultimate truth'.
Pluralism: All paths are equally valid because they all lead to the same truth.

Pluralism seems to be the belief du jour among religious liberals these day. Even the Dali Lama has said it doesn't matter which path we travel as they all lead to the top of the mountain - but for him the top of that mountain contains only Buddhism. See, the problem is we're all looking for different things at the top of the mountain - communion with the one God, salvation through Jesus Christ, nirvana (the complete loss of self), oneness with the Brahman, etc.
These are not just different ways of merging with the 'one' - the Big Cheese that we envision running this dog and pony show - because for nontheistic faiths there is no big cheese to merge with. The goal of Christianity is relational - our self in relation to God. The goal of Buddhism is the release of the self, and as long as we're hung up on having a 'personal relationship with God' we've missed the point.

So what's on top of that mountain? A bunch of selves and non-selves arguing over who has the right to plant their flag on the top and claim THEIR summit as the ultimate truth? (in this analogy the selves would win, because the non-selves no longer exist ;-)

My Systematics professor, a well-known theologian who has written several books on this subject, is not satisfied with the definition of religious 'Pluralism.'
In his mind it still reeks of Exclusivism, because it assumes we're all headed towards the same ultimate truth, which we're not. He fully concurs that Christianity is the only true path to 'salvation', simply because it's the only faith that has 'salvation' as its goal. Do you want to walk the path of Jesus and be redeemed in the presence of the triune God? Then you better follow the path of Christianity because its the only road that leads there. In the same manner, if my goal is to completely detach from my sense of self and thus not be 'in relation' with any 'one,' then I need to follow the path of Buddhism, because I'm not going to get there by climbing the mountain that leads to a relational God.

What my professor proposes, and I concur, is that it doesn't make sense to be Exclusivist, Inclusivist, or Pluralistic, because all three assume that it's possible to know enough about other faiths to judge them as true or false.
There may be one 'ultimate truth' but it's impossible for us to know what it is because we lack 'ultimate knowledge.' It's impossible for us to fully experience any perspective other than our own (the story of the blind men feeling the elephant comes to mind).
Even my professor admits that his belief - that God relates to us in different ways according to culture, time etc. which accounts for range of differing religious beliefs - is tainted. Because it assumes that there is a single theistic 'being' running the show.

So, can the 'ultimate truth' be BOTH a single relational being, and 'nothingness' at the same time? Who knows...we certainly don't.
Which means it makes more sense to view religion as a whole series of mountains, each with their own path to the top. We have no way of knowing which peak is the highest, or closest to the 'truth,' - I suspect that they all fall way short of the mark.

I believe in a religion of 'revelation' - that we pick up on small snippets of the truth, filter that truth through our limited minds, and end up with a vague understanding of why we're here and where we're supposed to be going.
Christianity works for me because I believe that this 'revelation' comes from a single, relational 'Creator' God who came into this world in human form to show us 'the way' to the top.
We all agree that religion is about 'knowing' the truth, we just disagree on what that truth is and how we come to 'know' that truth.

What gets me is that after sitting through a 3-hour lecture on all of the above in class this week, some of my classmates still wear the badge of "Exclusivist' with pride. In their minds, Christianity is THE only way to the top of THE only mountain.
And not just any Christianity, but their form of 21st century, Protestant, North American, euro-centric, middle-class, literalist, Christianity.
The 'narrow way' indeed.
For me, this is like claiming to have the knowledge of God.
It's like arguing over who comes first and who gets to sit at the right hand of the Lord.
I believe I remember our 'personal savior' saying something about humility.

Then again, I could be wrong.
But isn't 'knowing' that we could be wrong the whole point of humility?

Go ahead, wrap your head around that one. ;-)