The Rev. Bethany Peerbolte
October 20, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 1:29-31; Mark 12:41-44 There are special moments in every teacher’s life when they see the lightbulb turn on in a student’s mind. All the hard work explaining and demonstrating and running through the concept over and over finally pays off. The student gets it and the teacher swells with joy. This story in Mark is a joyful moment for our teacher, Jesus. He has just arrived in Jerusalem with everyone else for Passover. As the crowds grow, Jesus finds a spot in the temple to “people watch.” He should see righteous displays of faith from the people of God. This is a festival that attracts all the religious celebrities to one place and all their fans. If you want a good example of how to worship God, this should be the place to take notes. What Jesus observes is not very encouraging. He sees people taking on far too much work in the temple because they think it will somehow win them friends, or respect, or a place in heaven. He hears loud praying so everyone will know exactly how religious that person is. He sees people dressed in their glitziest robes, passive-aggressively positioning for the best seat in the courtyard. He hears offerings being made one coin at a time, so that the clinking of their donation fills every ear. Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink. Jesus gets frustrated with the missteps of God’s people. How are they still not getting this?! Abraham explained it, Moses explained it, the prophets explained all of this. Why are they still treating God in this way? He hears it again, clink, clink…then nothing. Jesus looks up to see why this person has delayed putting in the rest of their coins and sees a widow walking away from the offering jar. A smile spreads across the teacher's face. She gets it. She gets it! This woman understands what an offering is and how to give. Jesus quickly gathers the disciples and points her out. “This woman has given the biggest offering of anyone here,” he tells them. We easily understand that Jesus does not care about the amount of an offering, but we struggle with what he does care about. Many interpret this scripture to mean we should all give until it hurts. Jesus says these others will not even miss the money they have given, but she will, so we think he is saying we should all give until we would miss the money we give. However, I think Jesus is holding this widow up as an example for a different reason. We don’t know anything about this particular widow. We only know from the context that she is probably very poor, as most widows were. We know widows had a low standing in the community and had no power to speak up for change. Widows were dependent on the kindness and generosity of others to survive. But that doesn’t mean they were worthless. Widows were probably reliable childcare, surely some of them made the best soup in town, and maybe others were great storytellers. In the best-case scenario, widows were still a part of the community, maybe not valued like Jesus would have liked, but they were still included. This widow was included in the Passover events. She was allowed to come into the temple to participate in the festivities, so she was still an active member of the community. Jesus has watched the life of this community all day. Jesus isn’t against what the temple stands for in theory. Jesus likes that this is a place for people to gather, he loves that they feel close to God here. The temple is a place where people come to learn. Even Jesus, as a child, learned in the courtyard and is now teaching there. If he hated the temple he would not go there to participate in the life of this place. Jesus likes the general ministry of the temple and the community it supports. So, let’s assume this community was doing its best to support the widows in their midst because they knew these women were valuable members, and God wanted them to care for the widows. If that was the case the temple probably took up an offering for a widow’s ministry. A ministry this widow would have been a benefactor of. Then she finds herself with two extra coins at festival time. She could go and buy herself a celebratory pomegranate. Yet, she gets it. She gets that she has received blessings from this community and heads to the temple to drop her two coins in the jar. When I first started working for a church, I had this awkward realization. If I give my tithe but then get a salary from which the tithe comes from, am I giving at all? It was this weird “catch 22” dilemma I still wrestle with from time to time. I think this widow at some point wrestled with the same thing. If I give these two coins today but then get a full meal tomorrow, am I even giving anything? In a roundabout way am I just giving to myself? Yes… and that’s what she understands. Giving to a community that supports you and benefits you is just giving to yourself. This is a good investment strategy too. Buying stock in products you need and purchase is a good idea. Giving to a ministry that offers something for you ensures the community will still be able to do the ministry it is doing, and you will continue being supported. Jesus holds this widow up as an example because she understands this concept. Not because she gave until it hurts, she donated to what helped heal her. When we get to stewardship season, church leadership starts to trip over themselves to try and teach this idea in a new way. We think somehow stewardship is such a foreign concept that members just don’t get it. But we aren’t doing anything in the church that isn’t happening in every store in the world. Money is exchanged for a need or a want. The concept is easy, the problem is when we give to the church that feeling of mutuality gets blurred. There isn’t an immediate exchange of goods or services. Here in our church, we can take for granted that money comes in and great ministries thrive. The link between the two gets lost. For the widow, it was very tangible. Without the temple’s widow ministry, she would be hungry and so she feels a strong pull to give what she can to keep the temple open and working. She depends on it being funded. That isn’t something just the widow or the needy can feel. If we take a moment to reach out for that link and find it for ourselves, find what we depend on here in this community, we realize we are all beneficiaries of the ministry of this church. Some of us come here to learn, from staff who spend their working hours planning the education. Some of us receive a “Basket of Love” at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some of us have been visited by a Pastor or a Deacon, that without a paid church phone bill would not have happened. Some of us have met lifelong friends here, or have children who have supportive, loving friends here because this building is a safe and clean place to gather. We are all beneficiaries of the ministry of our pledges, tithes, and offerings. Giving to this church is giving to ourselves. Let me take a quick, side tangent to explain three words. Tithes, offerings, and pledges. Tithes - we usually have some sense of its meaning. A tithe is 10% of a person’s income. That percentage was established by a few Biblical texts that suggest 10% is a respectable amount to give to ministries doing God’s work in the world. There are hundreds of sermons written about the tithing texts. This is not a sermon about those verses. All I want you to have in mind is 10% is a tithe. An offering, then, is anything given above 10%. It is above and beyond what is sufficient. Offerings were and are taken for special causes or needs in the community. We recently took an offering for Hurricane relief. That leaves pledges. Pledges started when churches realized they needed to have a clue about what was going to be donated in a year to set a budget. Pledges are the commitments we are willing to make, and the expectations we place on ourselves for the coming year. We are lucky that we operate in a pledge structure. For the widow, she had to have money at the ready when the jar ran out. We get a little more wiggle room on the timing. So, knowing about tithes and offerings, we make a pledge. It is the declaration of the commitment we feel we can uphold over the next year to support the ministry of the community we value. And just like Jesus gathered the disciples to learn from the widow’s offering we are being asked to look at her example today too. Because she gets it. When Jesus saw that woman give her two coins, he must have swelled with joy seeing someone get it and live it out. I felt the same way when I heard about Jack. Jack gets it too. Jack is five years old, and he goes to our Hand-in-Hand day school. Another ministry we can take for granted, thanks to your pledges, tithes, and offerings. Jack comes here to learn and to play with his friends. Every day after school he doesn’t head straight to the parking lot, he actually comes into the sanctuary to say hello to God. If you haven’t heard your voice echo in this room when it’s empty, I highly encourage you to try it someday. After Jack has met with God he walks into our administrator, Jan’s office, and gets a piece of candy from her candy bowl. With sweet in hand, or more likely in belly, Jack heads to the parking lot to go home. Someone in Jack’s family has realized that it takes some effort to keep the candy bowl full. Since it is one of Jack's favorite things about this place, they have taught Jack that he should support the candy bowl stash. Every so often Jack brings a bag of candy for Jan. This is not an easy thing for Jack to do. Holding that big bag of candy, even a five-year-old can work out, “If I keep this bag, I get it all. If I give this bag, I have to share.” The link between giving and receiving in the church gets blurred because one donation gets spread between so many different beneficiaries. It’s like ordering fries for the whole table. Everyone benefits, but the temptation to feel like we have lost something because we didn’t get to eat every last fry sometimes sneaks up on us, and we second guess if we want to order fries next time. Taking the time now to think about what we love about this community and making a pledge to keep that ministry thriving helps us defeat that temptation. We ask ourselves now, how much do I value the ministry of this place? Do I want to be the kind of person who buys fries for the whole table, who gives to the ministries I value? Just like Jack must ask himself. Do I love getting candy enough to hand over the excess of candy I have this month? Hopefully, the answer is yes, and we can all benefit from the gifts we all give. I heard someone in a podcast this month say, “A sermon is not the words a preacher prepares over the week, it is the moving of the Holy Spirit in each person’s heart and mind.” I want us now to sit and listen to the sermon the Holy Spirit is preaching to each of us individually. May we be as brave as that widow to live out what the Spirit has taught us today. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
October 13, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Isaiah 58: 6-11; Mark 10:17-27 They had it all. They were millionaires with all the trimmings. They could go where they desired. They could have anything they wanted. But something was missing. Their marriage was a mess. Their lives were not their own. They sensed that deep inside something was not right. So they gave it all up. They sold their home, gave away all of their money and committed themselves to doing whatever it was that Jesus desired of them. They took literally Jesus’ command to sell all and follow him. Their journey took them to Africa as missionaries, to a communal Christian community called Koinonia Farms, and then ultimately to found Habitat for Humanity. Millard and Linda Fuller had it all, but they gave it up in order to share their lives with the world…and now Habitat is the largest non-profit home builder in the world having constructed more than 800,000 homes housing more than four million people. It is an amazing story. So how many of you are ready to join me in doing this? Giving away all we have and doing something amazing for God? Yeah, me neither. I am afraid I love my possessions a bit too much to give them up. And that being the case, what are we to do with this story from Mark…and the Fuller’s story? What I hope that we will do with it is to see it as Jesus’ attempt to help this young man, and by extension all of us, reach his full potential as a God follower by helping him begin his journey into the very heart of God’s love. To understand this, we need to return to the story. Jesus is hanging with his homies, when a young man rushes up, kneels and asks, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.” For most of us, we would assume he is asking how to get into heaven. But this is not the case. For Jews in the first century, eternal life was something that one would receive here on earth when God’s eternal kingdom arrived here (on earth) and not there (in heaven). And since Jesus had been preaching and teaching about this coming Kingdom, the young man figured Jesus was the go-to guy. Second, we might assume that the young man is trying to earn his way into the kingdom. Again, this is not the case. He understands that as a Jew his inheritance is the kingdom, if he is righteous…if he stays true to Torah. Surprisingly Jesus does not disabuse him of this notion. Instead Jesus asks the young man if he had stayed true to the way of God by following the commandments. When the young man replies truthfully that he had indeed done so, Jesus loves him. What this means for me is that Jesus saw in this young man extraordinary potential; extraordinary potential to be a God follower. The same potential Jesus had seen in Peter, Andrew, James and John. Such potential that Jesus invites him to join the other disciples on their amazing adventure for God. The only thing the young man must do is to sell all he has, give the money to the poor and come along. Why does he have to do this? I would argue that he needs to do so in order that he take his foot off the brake and begin his journey toward fulfilling his potential as a follower of God. I realize it might sound strange that this young man needed to begin his journey, considering that he was already keeping many of the commandments. But the commandments the man was keeping, aside from honoring his parents, were the “Thou shall nots”; thou shall not lie, cheat, steal, defraud and so on. But those commandments are not the journey. They are the guard rails that protects us while we are on the journey. They keep us from wandering off the road and into a ditch, or from running into and hurting others along the way. The journey on the other hand is the “Thou shalls”; thou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and thou shall love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, the journey is what happens when we live Isaiah 58 by sharing our bread with the hungry, covering the naked, and housing the homeless, we are fueled for reaching our potential as followers of God. The journey is what happens when we share what we have. This lack of forward motion on this young man’s journey, raises the question of why hasn’t he gotten started? Why hasn’t he shared his bread with the poor and shown concern for his neighbors. Why has he kept all his wealth for himself? I believe the answer is because he has his foot on the brake and not on the accelerator, meaning he was living with an attitude of scarcity. Like so many people in this world, this young man had found that treasure, rather than giving him an attitude of abundance, had given him an attitude of scarcity. What is an attitude of scarcity? It is, the more treasure I have, the more I realize what I have to lose. The more treasure I have, the more treasure I believe that I need to stay afloat. The more treasure I have, the less, if any, can I share, because then I will not have enough. This is seeing the world with an attitude of scarcity. It is fearing that I will lose what I have, so I hold on to it more and more tightly with each passing day. My favorite story of this is of a friend in San Antonio, who was a wealth manager. One of his clients, in their early nineties, single, no family had assets in the millions. One day they were discussing what to do with the money, and my friend, who is very generous, asked, “Have you ever thought about giving some away?” The response was immediate and angry. “How dare you ask me to give any away. I may need it all.” This is an attitude of scarcity. This is the attitude that the young man brought to Jesus. What Jesus was hoping to engender in the young man, in order that the young man reach his full potential, was to shift his attitude about treasure from being one of scarcity to being one of abundance. What does abundance look like? It looks like: I have enough, and enough to share. I have enough, and don’t need so much more that I cannot love God and neighbor. I have enough and do not fear giving some away because I believe that just as God has provided in the past, God will provide in the future. It looks like Isaiah 58:11. “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” This is the attitude that allows people to take their foot off the brake and put the pedal to the metal and fully engage the journey; to fully live into our potential of being followers of God. God wants us all to reach our full potential as men and women who follow Jesus along the journey to the heart of God. For some of us, in order to reach our potential, we need to sell all and give it to the poor. For others of us, who are already on the journey and are living with an attitude of abundance, it is simply to keep our foot on the accelerator. As I look out at you all this morning, I don’t see anyone whose foot is on the break. I see generous people, willing to live into Isaiah 58. The challenge then for us is not to sell all that we have, but it is to continue along the way, along the journey of faithfulness. My challenge to you then is to simply ask yourselves this question, “How fast am I going and could I go bit faster by sharing a bit more of what I have with those in need?” he Rev. Dr. John Judson
October 6, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 41:37-40; John 14: 15-17, 25-26 “Why do you ordain women? Don’t you know the Bible doesn’t allow it.” That statement was not something I expected to hear as Cindy and I were waiting in line at Greenfield Village for a 4th of July event, several years ago. We went with friends and being there early were waiting in line with a thousand other sweating attendees. Someone how I struck up a conversation with a man behind me. We exchanged pleasantries. I learned he had worked for the State Department in Cambodia and he learned that I was a Presbyterian Minister. When he discovered my true identity, he wanted to know which Presbyterian denomination I worked for. When I told him, he said that he belonged to another Presbyterian denomination, one that only ordains men and then proceeded to ask why we ordained women. Over the years I had developed my elevator speech to answer that question, though I have not used it since I left Texas, where I used it a lot. My answer was the Paul said that there are neither male nor female in Christ; that Paul had affirmed the ministry of the pastor couple Pricilla and Aquilla; and that there had been a female Apostle, named Junia. None of that seemed to matter as he trotted the usual Bible verse that seem to oppose women’s ordination. Realizing that this conversation was not going anywhere productive. I finally said something to the effect of, “Sure there are those passages, but sometimes the Spirit teaches us something new.” As He considered how to respond to that thought, the gates opened, Cindy grabbed me and we left before his head could explode. The Spirit teaches us something new. For many Christians this is a frightening idea. It is frightening because many of us see our faith as having a nice, neat set of rules that have been handed down from the saints of old, and that those rules are etched into stone and so therefore the Spirit has nothing new to teach us. It is as if there came a time when an iron curtain descended upon the Christian world, such that those ideas and understandings of the past could never be changed. So to say that the Spirit might teach us something new is, for some, heretical. Yet that is not at all what Jesus says in the upper room. As he and the disciples are leaving Jesus says, “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will (and this is my translation) continually teach you everything and continually remind you of all that I have said to you.” What does this mean? Let’s pull it apart back to front. The Spirit will remind them of all that Jesus has said. What has he said, “A new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus sums up all of his teachings in this one new commandment. They are to live as servants of one another, loving each other as Jesus loved them. The Spirit will continually teach them everything. What is it that they need to be taught? How to love one another in new and different situations. Jesus, I believe, understood that the church would find itself facing new and unexpected situations with each passing year. No manual of operations or rules cut in stone could cover them all. What was needed was the Spirit to be present to continually teach them how to apply the love of God in each new moment. This is why we say that the Spirit helps us live God’s love. So what is it that we have learned that those before us did not know? What is it that the Spirit has taught us? For the church, we learned that slavery, though affirmed in the Bible, is wrong. We learned that women do not need to be subservient to men, though there seems to be that tendency in scripture. But we also learned some things here at First Pres. I say this because over the last 185 years of our history, the leadership has been almost all white men, because women were not allowed. But then about fifty years ago something began to happen. The Spirit began to teach us that God gifts men and women not only for faith but leadership. Eventually that led to women in leadership, not only as elders but as ministers, such as Louise Westfall, Amy Morgan, Joanne Blair, Kate Thoresen, Julie Madden and Bethany Peerbolte. The work of the Spirit did not end there though. It changed our understanding of inclusion and the best way to see that is to remind ourselves of our inclusion statement. “As Everybody's Church we strive to be a faithful, open and inclusive community. We welcome the full participation of all people of any ability, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other life circumstance.” In other words, the Spirit has helped our church become a place where God’s love and welcome in Christ is poured out to all. It has helped us live God’s love in new and amazing ways with each passing generation. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 29, 2019 Listen Watch PrintVersion Psalm 86:8-13; John 14:1-7 I am a gadget guy. I love all kinds of gadgets as long as they are not too expensive, or I can buy them refurbished, I will get them to play around with. One gadget I bought years ago was this small, square piece of electronic amazement…my first GPS. In my previous church I drove thousands of miles to visit churches all across south Texas. I thought that this would come in handy, but as it turned out, I never actually used it, until Cindy and I went on a visit to visit friends living in Olympia, Washington. We were arriving at the airport after 10pm and would have to find our way not only to a street address but to their condo, buried deep within a large condo-complex. When Cindy asked about finding our way, I told her it would not be an issue since I had a GPS, as I secretly kept saying to myself, “Please work.” Well we got our car, set up the GPS, plugged in the address and dutifully followed the instructions. It got us to the complex and then navigated us deeper and deeper into the condo darkness. Finally, there was no more road. Frustrated, I asked Cindy to use the cell-phone and call. Our friends answered and said that they would turn on their porch light…and right in front of us this light came on. At that moment I could hear the technology angels singing. How many of you have used one of these things…or these days used your phone, or one in your car? They are amazing, aren’t they? They can tell you not only your route and where to turn, but let you know when you are at your destination and then what services are available when you get there. Over the years, as I have pondered this technology, what has come to me again and again, is that I wish I had one for showing me exactly what God would like for me to do. One that I could punch in my dilemma and up would come the appropriate instructions for doing the will of God in my life. One that would accurately take me to God. Sort of a God positioning satellite. Any of you ever wish you had one of those? Well if you, like me, wish you had one…you do…we do. We have Jesus of Nazareth. He is our GPS, our God Positioning Son. This is in fact the claim that he is making in this 14th Chapter of John, when he and the disciples are about to head out into the mess of his arrest and crucifixion. He tells them that he is the way, and the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the father except through him. In saying these words Jesus is not giving us a password to heaven, but an invitation to a life-long journey. He is inviting us on a journey in which we discover how to live as human beings who reflect the image of God into the world. First, Jesus is the way. I don’t know about your GPS, but mine has a blue line showing me the way I ought to go. If the little, here-I-am icon is on the blue line, I know that I am on my way. This is how that “the way” is used in scripture. The way describes a journey into the heart of God. If we look at the Psalm from this morning, we read. “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in truth.” We will come to the truth in a minute. What the Psalmist is asking for are the directions, the way, to God in order that he or she might walk, might live, in the right manner. The image in Hebrew and later in Greek for “the way”, is literally the right path. So, when Jesus tells his disciples that he is the way, he is telling them to follow him, follow his way of life, if they desire to encounter God. We know this because Thomas, earlier in the upper room said, “we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus reply is, follow me. And what does that following look like? It looks like what Jesus had just done for the disciples, he had taken off his outer garment, taken up a towel and washed their feet like a servant. After which he said, as I have done for you, do for others. In other words, Jesus is telling them that the way to God, is the way of the servant. We can see this in the other Gospels when Jesus tells his friends, I have come not to be served but to serve. And in Philippians Paul writes that Jesus humbled himself becoming a servant. Our GPS, our God Positioning Son says follow the way of Jesus; the way of the servant. Second, Jesus is the truth. One of the great things about GPS is that it helps me not only with my route, but it reminds me of best practices while I am driving that route, such as staying within the speed limit…which I have to say is irritating, but still necessary. Perhaps surprisingly to many of us, that is what the truth is all about. It is about helping us practice a life that is true, or faithful, to God’s desires for humanity. I realize that this may sound odd. Normally when we think of truth, or what is true, we think of facts, or things that are provable. This is not what truth means in scripture. One way to understand this is to return to our Psalm. “Teach me your way O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Give me an undivided heart…” The truth in this case has nothing to do with facts, it has to do with living, or practicing faithfulness. It is practicing the way of loving God and loving neighbor. It is a reminder for us not just to stay on the main route following Jesus as a servant, but to follow the practices Jesus showed us. There are many of these practices; compassion, honesty, humility, prayer, acceptance of outsiders, among them. But perhaps the greatest of these is forgiveness. I say this because Jesus makes it clear that forgiveness is an act of God. We can see this in the story of the Prodigal son, in Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery and in forgiving Peter after his betrayal. For John then, one of the practices of Jesus that we are to follow, is that of forgiveness, because forgiveness demonstrates the image of God, as the one who forgives. Our GPS, our God Positioning Son says follow the way of the servant and practice forgiving. Finally, Jesus is the life. As I got used to using my GPS, one of the things that I appreciated was that you could see your destination and you knew how long it would take you to get there. It was kind of fun when my daughter and I used the GPS when we drove her to college in Oregon. However, on one stretch though, it said take a left in 324 miles, which meant the distance seemed to take forever to traverse. Even I was asking are we there yet? And I think that in some ways, this is the way getting to God seems…it takes a life time. But what Jesus offers that differs from our trips with a GPS, is that we get to enjoy the destination now. We get to enjoy the life God offers us now, because Jesus is the life. And what is this life? It is being enfolded in the very love of God. It is experiencing the ever-growing love of God the more that we follow in the way of Jesus and live the practices that Jesus taught. I say this because as we discovered three weeks ago, in part one of the Five Part Story, that God is love and that God pours God’s love out for the world. Jesus is the way to God and Jesus invites us on the journey. What I would like you to do this morning with your sticky note is this, to think of one Jesus’ practice…compassion, forgiveness, humility, prayer that you would like to work on this week as part of your journey, write it down and then take it home, to remind you that Jesus is the way to God and that you are on the road with him. The Rev. Bethany Peerbolte
September 22, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 11:17-24 Today we are looking at the third part of our five-party story. God chooses a family. Now the idea of family can be complicated for many of us. For some, family is not a particularly inspiring or joyful word. But this family we will be talking about today is more than genealogies and 23 and me. This is a chosen family. Our chosen family can have traditional family members in it, but it also includes the friends who are more committed to us than others. The ones who have stuck by us through things that make them more like family, in our eyes, after the struggle is overcome. A regular friend is someone we know and like to hang out with. Normal friendships come and go. When times get hard, regular friends leave, but when you are part of a chosen family there is a deeper commitment to stay in the relationship through those hard times. Often there is a shared goal or ideals. There is even an expectation that they will help each other become better people. When God puts together a family this is the commitment it is founded on. They will stick together through the hard times and help each other be the best version of themselves. When God chooses a family, the world is a mess. Humanity has wandered far from God and sin has spread fast and taken a strong hold on creation. God has tried many different ways to get through to humanity. In fact, by chapter 12 of Genesis we are already on plan E. Humanity has messed the other plans up. Plan A was Eden, Adam and Eve messed that up with a quick snack. Plan B was not to restart everything. Instead God let Adam and Eve live with their new knowledge. That ended up with a flood and Noah started Plan C. Plan C worked for a while, but then humanity tried to invade heaven with a huge tower and God had to send them to different corners of the earth to think about what they had done, Plan D. God’s original plan hasn’t ever changed, the implementation has just been adjusted. The plan has always been to bless the whole world. The problem is the channels through which God blesses the world keep getting gummed up by sin. So, God gets to thinking again about another way to bring blessings into the world. This time the plan is a family, Plan E. God wants to start a family like none other. A family that would be the example to the rest of the world of what life is like with God. One group of people on whom God can lavish with blessings, who God can teach to dispense these blessings to others. God will bless this group, this family, so that when the world sees them it will be clear how good and powerful God is. This family will be a bright spot in the middle of a sin stained world. They will learn from God how to spread their brightness just as far and fast as sin can travel. God will give the family a set of rules, the Law, and these rules will help them live in a way that will bless the world. You may wonder why God doesn’t just remove sin from the earth and get us back to Eden. After the flood, God is not too keen on removing things anymore. There was a lot of loss in the flood that God would rather not repeat. Sin has become so enmeshed in creation it would be hard to clean it up without losing creatures and people God loves. When sin came into the world it did not take hold of 100% of some things and 0% of others. We all have some sin in us and some good. To ask God to take sin out of the world like that (snaps finger)? Well we saw how that worked out in the Avenger movies. No, the solution must be an antidote to counteract the effects of sin, even as sin lives on and thrives. The formula for that antidote is God’s chosen family. God starts with Abraham and Sarah’s family. It’s small, just the two of them. They haven’t been able to have kids yet, but God promises them they will start a great nation and their descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky. This is an incredible blessing for God to give. But that is the plan, to bless the family so they can spread blessings around the world. SO, it’s a good idea to make sure this family grows! God goes to Abraham and establishes the relationship. The exact reason why God chooses Abraham over every other human is not entirely clear, but I’ll bet is has something to do with the way Abraham responds to God. When God asks Abraham to leave his home and go somewhere new, Abraham obeys. His willingness to trust God and be a good partner in this plan solidifies his place in God’s family. Abraham is not perfect, he has sin in him too. He has moments where he distrusts God’s promise to give him a son. But every time Abraham wanders, God reminds him of the promises and reaffirms God will continue to bless Abraham and his family so the family can bless the world. Abraham does have a son and his family grows; God’s family grows. Now because this family is blessed there are others who see them and want to be a part of that, and guess what? They can join the family. That is the beauty of a chosen family! It also can get ugly when the family members don’t agree on who can join. This problem pops up in our new testament reading. God’s family is still going strong. It is even stronger since Jesus came to do some extra teaching and defeated death. The family plan is more or less still working. But since Jesus, more and more outsiders want to join the family. And some who were in the family have chosen to leave. There is a lot of confusion about who should be in and who should be out. This is especially true in Rome. Paul writes to the church in Rome and uses a well-known practice of grafting one plant onto another to show how God’s family works. (Read Romans 11: 17-24). Olive farmers would cultivate plants for the best output of olives. They picked plants for their size of fruit, flavor, and color. As they worked with the plants they would run into a common problem: a highly cultivated plant would stop growing olives all together. Plants produce fruit to survive. When a farmer tends to a plant’s every need it can lose its survival instinct. Wild plants are in hyper survival mode and put a lot of energy towards producing fruit. When a cultivated plant stopped producing fruit the farmer could graft cultivated branches onto wild plants and jump start fruit production again. Paul compares this to God’s family. If gentiles want to join the family, they will not only be welcomed but grafted onto the main trunk of the tree to receive the same blessing as everyone else. And if a branch no longer produces good fruit to bless the world then that branch will be cut away to make room for another producing branch. Again, we see God’s family receiving blessings, but also being expected to bless others, to produce fruit. Paul warns those who are receiving God’s blessings to not look down their noses at fallen branches. Instead they should be in awe of how God’s family works. Those who were outside the family can be integrated thoroughly into God’s family. He also reminds them that just because someone does not believe now does not mean they will be rejected later. Even if a branch falls off, God can graft it back on at any time. And here is where I think God’s family gets really compelling. Yes, we are blessed, but there are times we do not feel particularly blessed. Those hard times will come. But if God’s family works like an olive tree it means we are allowed to have a bad season. When we aren’t feeling the sun shining on our branch, the branches around us are still collecting the sun and turning it into food for the whole tree. If I am feeling wilted, I still get fed! I still can produce good fruit because of the nourishment of the trunk. There will be seasons where we feel like we are accepting more blessings than we are giving but it takes two to make a blessing work: one to give the blessing and one to receive it. Yes, we all want to be the giver, but the system doesn’t work that way. You do your part in the family just as well when you are a recipient too. If I am in a down season, that does not make me any less a part of the family. What matters is a person’s commitment to the call to be a blessing when the opportunity arises. And blessing others comes in a million forms. A smile, letting someone merge on the highway, sitting and listening to someone, playing with a child, these are all ways to be a blessing and no one is greater than the other. We may feel short on blessings but can still offer these things to others. Blessings are funny things too. The more you give, the more you have. This week Forbes had a piece about giving back as a good business model. Scott Moorehead is a coauthor of Build A Culture of Good: Unleash Results by Letting Your Employees Bring Their Soul to Work. In this book, Moorehead and his coauthors make a case for promoting philanthropy in the workplace. Moorehead is the CEO of his family business and started seeing employee turnover skyrocket. He discovered that most employees only saw the business as a paycheck and had not developed a deep sense of loyalty. Moorehead decided the solution would be to connect and give back to the community where the employees lived. This “culture of Good” as Moorehead calls it, has cause their employee turnover to become just half of what peer companies see in a year. And it’s bringing new customers to the cash register. The more you give the more you have. It seems God was onto something with choosing a family that would live their lives to bless others. Not only does that work help others, it makes for a better sense of self and belonging. It feels good to belong to a family that is committed to creating a culture of good. A family that will help each member be the best version of themselves and support each other through hard times. God’s family wants a culture of good to take over the world and works every day to keep the ripple of blessing moving in the world. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 15, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 3:8-13; John 8:1-11 Our training was pretty much the same though we joined the Peace Corps 32 years apart. I joined the Peace Corp in 1977 and my daughter joined in 2009. We had language school six days a week, eight hours a day. We were given cultural sensitivity training so that we knew how to dress and act in ways that would not offend our host country citizens. We were given lessons about and exposed to local foods so that nothing would surprise us…that one did not work. All of this was the same old, same old…except my daughter received one extra unexpected bit of instruction and that was uxo training; uxo standing for unexploded ordinance. They were given this training because in Cambodia where she had gone there are somewhere between four and six million live landmines and unexploded ordinance. This is how she explained it to me. The training was pretty basic: don’t walk across fallow fields with no cattle or people walking on them. Don’t go down paths or roads that look abandoned, if you see a mine or a uxo (unexplored ordinance), call the trainers organization and tell someone in the village. Keep kids away from uxos and don’t let them touch them. Ask the elders in the village you are moving to about land mines and where not to go. Always obey signs that say keep away (not that there were too many of those- it was mostly just word of mouth where the mines were). I have to say that this is not what most Peace Corps parents wanted to hear about. I tell you that story this morning because I want you to lock that image into your brains; the image that to be safe you keep to the paths that people know are free of uxos. I ask you to do that because it will help us understand the second part of the Five Part Story, We Wander Far from God. One of the most often used images for what it means to be faithful in the scriptures is the image of following God, meaning to walk in the paths that God has established. These paths are those that lead to life giving ways and away from death dealing ways. They are the paths that keep us safe from the “landmines’ that are scattered about us in the world that would diminish our humanity. The paths, the safe paths, are defined in the Old Testament by the Torah, or the Law of Moses and in the New Testament by the life and teachings of Jesus. They could be summed up as love God and neighbor. Granted, there is no guarantee that if people follow these paths they will have perfectly pain free lives but following these paths will allow folks to find the life, love and joy that God desires them to have. Unfortunately, as human beings, we have a nasty tendency to go down other paths, paths that look enticing but are filled with a variety of uxos, waiting to be tripped. We can see this in both of our stories this morning. Our Genesis story picks up after the “don’t eat that fruit” incident when Adam and Eve decided that they didn’t need to listen to God’s warning about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They knew better but they still ate. Then the uxos began to explode. There was the uxo of fear. There was the uxo of shame. There was the uxo of blame. The same is true for our Jesus story out of the Gospel of John. In this story there is a group of people who are out to get Jesus. They are trying to trap him. They decide they can do this by catching a woman in the act of committing adultery and bring her before Jesus to see what he would do. If he condemned her, they could call him a rigid legalist. If he let her go, they could say he did not love the law. Both the woman and those who were trying to use her to trap Jesus had wandered off the path and into a minefield. The woman, by breaking her marriage vows, had blown up her marriage and her reputation. The people trying to trap Jesus had become those who violate the Torah’s command to love neighbor, by using her as a thing, rather than treating her as a human being. In the end of the story as they all slink away, we can see that they understood that they had stepped on uxos as well. It would be nice to believe that humanity has learned how to stay on the path of loving God and neighbor and to avoid uxos over the past two-thousand years. Unfortunately, it would seem as if this wandering off the path is somehow hard-wired in us and in our cultures. This reality occurred to me as I was looking back over last week’s sermon about God Loves the World, in which I mentioned the four ways that we know God loves us. God gives us creation, community, leisure and love…and yes for those of you who were here last week, I changed the third on to leisure…sounds a bit better than couch. As I thought about those four ways of receiving God’s love, I realized that rather than allowing that love to keep us on the path, we have taken those gifts for granted and used them for our own ends, leading us to wander into fields of uxos that have harmed us and harmed humanity. Let’s do a quick review. God loved us and gave us this amazing creation which has the ability to sustain us with air, water and food. As human beings we have clear cut and burned off the forests that provide us with oxygen. We have polluted the air and the water. We are in the midst of epic global warming, that is melting glaciers, increasing world temperatures and raising sea levels. We have not treated our God’s creation as we should and so we stepped on the uxos of floods, rising sea levels, asthma, inedible fish because of mercury poisoning…and I could on and on. God loved us and gave us community in which we might find care and support. Instead of offering our support to others, especially those who are not exactly like us, we became tribal. My tribe is better than your tribe. My tribe is superior to your tribe. My tribe can conquer and enslave your tribe. In becoming tribal we stepped on the uxos of division, racism, sexism, homophobia, war and violence. God loves us and gave us leisure because God did not want us working ourselves to death. Biblically this is called sabbath. Yet we Americans anyway, have found a way of ignoring sabbath and working ourselves into the ground. The Japanese have a word for working oneself to death. It is Karoshi. Unfortunately we don’t have such a word even though we work more hours than the Japanese. When we work this hard, we step on the uxos of depression, burn-out, shortened life spans and ill health. God loves us and gives us love. God pours God’s love into us that we might love God and neighbor. Yet we have kept this love for ourselves, or at best only offered it as a friends-and-family plan. And when we have done this, we have stepped on the uxos of unforgiveness, isolation, anger, hatred and so many more. In one way or another we all wander off these paths and into the uxo fields that lead us and the world away from the life, love and peace God offers. I say this not to shame us, but to remind us that wandering is part of the human condition. It is what we do. But I don’t want you to go away feeling depressed. And you shouldn’t for two reasons. First you shouldn’t feel depressed because wandering far from God is the second part of the Five Part Story. The first part is God Loves the World, meaning the foundation for our faith and life is always that God loves us. The second reason we should not go away depressed is that We Wander Far From God, is only the second part of the Five Part Story. What this means is that we have three more parts, each one focused on getting us back on God’s path…each one focused on how God’s love refuses to let us wander forever and offers us forgiveness and new life on each and every day. My challenge to you this morning then is to have you take out your super-sticky note…then ask yourself, in which of the ways we wander far from God, do I need to be more self-aware of not doing so well? Do I need to care more for creation, do I need to be less tribal, do I need to practice more self-care or do I need to allow God to love me more so I can love others more? Once you have decided, write that down, take the sticky note home, and put it next to your note from last week…then remember God’s love for you, and practice staying on the path in an intentional way. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 8, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 1:26-31; 1 John 4:7-12 They were back. Regardless of all the time and money my parents put into their home, they were back. The “they” that were back were cracks in the walls and gaps between the walls and the ceiling. They were there because in Houston, homes are built “slab on grade”, meaning that the land is graded, rebar is laid and concrete poured, much like people do with driveways here in Michigan. The problem in Houston is that the soil is like a sponge. When it gets wet it expands and when it dries up it contracts. In addition, the soil does not rise and fall evenly, so that over the years, the soil under foundations is shifting at different rates, thus twisting and turning the foundation in different directions. Twice my parents had holes drilled in the foundation and piers and jacks put under the house to stabilize it. Both times it failed. So, when my father finally sold his house two years ago, the cracks were still there. I have to say this image has become my perfect metaphor for life. If we don’t have good foundations, cracks are going to appear. It doesn’t matter what part of life we are talking about; relationships, businesses, educational institutions, if they do not have a firm foundation on which to exist, cracks will appear and regardless of our best efforts to fix them, they may crack and fail. The same is true for our faith; that if our faith does not have a firm foundation on which to stand, it too will crack and perhaps fail. I say this because just like my parent’s foundation was continually stressed, so is our faith. Our faith is twisted and turned by stressful moments in our lives; stressful moments when we deal with difficult relationships and jobs; with vacillating health and illness; with painful layoffs and interviews; with stresses in society of war, recession, politics and uncertainty. Any or all of these can call into question what we believe or why we believe it. It can even cause us to lose our faith, as with one pastor I knew who quit believing in God because of the horrific tragedies that encompassed the world. The question before us then, is what sort of a foundation do we have that will ensure our faith can weather the ever-occurring stresses that life brings? The answer can be found in scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, and that answer is, that God loves the world. Yes, the foundation that will support us in all times, if we allow it to do so, is to personally see and experience God’s love for the world and for us. I realize that in the face of what we have witnessed over the past several weeks, shootings, hurricanes, and the like, it might be hard to speak about God loving the world, but if you will walk with me, I hope you will see this that this foundation is present around us and in us. How do we know God loves us? We know because God has given us this creation. The writer of Genesis makes it clear that this creation is a gift of God intended to supply the needs of every living thing. It is good, meaning that it serves the purpose of bringing forth and sustaining life in all its fullness; in all its richness and diversity. This planet provides us with air to breath and water to drink. It provides us with soil to till and minerals to extract. It provides us with seeds to be sewn and rain to nourish them. This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. And while that was an amazing feat, what amazed me as much were the pictures of the earth, this blue-green ball floating in a sea of darkness; a globe teeming with life in the midst of a seemingly endless field of stars and galaxies. We can make God’s love a foundation for our lives when we realize just how miraculous is this creation on which we live. Want to see God’s love…look at the beauty of creation. How do we know God loves us? We know God loves us because God has given us community. The Genesis’ writer offers us a theological account of the creation of the physical world whose penultimate act is the creation of human beings. The writer states that we are created male and female, and in God’s image. This description is not about who we are to marry or about sexual orientation, it is about community, that we are not made to exist alone. It is a reminder that God did not make isolated individuals who were to live apart from others, but that God created us to be in intimate communion with one another. And one of the great gifts of God according to the Bible is that God did not just create one kind of people who looked and spoke and acted alike. Instead scripture tells us that God created the nations, or in Greek the ethne…from which we get the words ethnic and ethnicities. What this means is that God created us in a wide variety of skin colors, languages, sexual orientations and cultures. And these nations, God’s children, are intended to be a tapestry that is as vibrant as the tapestry of the physical world around us. This vibrant diversity of humanity is what enriches the world. Want to see God’s love, look at the people around you. How do we know that God loves us? We know that God loves us because God has given us couches. What I mean by that is that God has given us rest. Had we continued reading this passage we would have heard the story of the final day of creation, when God rested. The scriptures read that “on the seventh day God finished God’s creation and rested.” Chances are God was not worn out or tired. Instead God was making clear in the beginning that rest, time away from work, time to enjoy the company of community, time to enjoy this amazing creation, time to give thanks to God, is a gift that we are supposed to take advantage of and enjoy. What that means is that God wants us to take some time and appreciate all that we have been given. God wants us to take some time and experience the love that God offers. God’s love for us is so great that God does not want us to work ourselves to death, but instead to rest and recharge, or to use Biblical language, God wants us to enjoy a sabbath. Want to see God’s love, take a nap and relax. How do we know God loves us? We know because we can love others. We know because the love we give to others is the love God has given to us. And for us as Jesus’ followers, we trust that the love we have comes through Christ. John 1 puts it this way, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” In other words, we know God loves us because we are capable of loving others. In college I was a business major and though I don’t remember much of what I learned I remember two things. First there is LIFO (last in first out) and FIFO (first in first out). This morning I want to give you another four-letter concept, LILO. This is love in, love out. We believe that we are capable of loving others because God loved us; because God has poured God’s love into us. And this means that not only can we love those who love us, but we can love those who are difficult to love. We can do this because this is what God does. God does not just love people who look like us, think like us, speak like us. God loves the world and everyone in it. We can also do this because Jesus told us we can. Jesus speaks about this when he says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them…but love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6:32, 35) LILO means that we have been given enough love to love God, neighbor and stranger. Our faith has been given a firm foundation in God’s love for the world. My challenge to you then is to take out your sticky note and write two things on it. First, I want you to consider which of the ways of experiencing God’s love, creation, community or couch, is most meaningful to you and then write it down. Second, I want you to write down the name of a person, or perhaps a group of people that you would not normally love, or find hard to love, it can be their initials, on the sticky note as well. We will give you some time to do this. Then I want you to take these notes home and place them somewhere where you will see them every day. Then as you read them, first give thanks for God’s love that comes to you. But also, to ask yourselves, how can I work to love this person. The Rev. Joanne Blair
September 1, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Genesis 39:19-23; Matthew 25:31-46 This week we conclude our series on Matthew 25 and our focus is on visiting the prisoner. By now this scripture should be very familiar to you. As we hear it yet again this morning, I invite you to close your eyes while I read it and listen for God speaking to you. These words are Jesus’ last discourse before the final days of his earthly life. In today’s scripture, the image of Jesus shifts from shepherd to king, and we are reminded that no power can match the power of the reigning Lord. And we are reminded that loving God and loving others as oneself is set forth as the linchpin for life in God. I think we’ll all agree that Joseph, in our reading from Genesis, is a good man. And while God’s sovereignty and God keeping God’s promises are key points in Joseph’s story … we can imagine ourselves visiting Joseph in prison. Because Joseph is a good man, and a sympathetic character. And as our scripture from Matthew talks about giving food to the hungry, giving something to drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, giving clothing to the naked, and taking care of the sick... we can pretty-well wrap our heads around that, at least from a distance. But what about the person who is hungry because they spent all their food money on booze? What about the person who is naked because they gambled away their clothes? What about the person who is a stranger because they were kicked out of their home? What about the person who is sick from using dirty needles? It becomes a little more challenging. And what about the person who is in prison? Often, when we think of prisoners in the Bible, we are sympathetic toward them. We think of Joseph, Samson, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Peter, and Paul. We think of those who were imprisoned for their boldness of faith and speaking truth to power. But today, in the United States, that is not why people are in prison. People are in prison for committing crimes, and most of them are guilty. Some of the crimes seem rather petty by comparison, and some are quite ugly. Some of the prisoners seem rather sympathetic, and some are not very nice people. If the United States’ prison population were a city, it would be the 5th largest city in our country.1 But rarely, if ever, do we think about prisons or prisoners unless we know someone who is incarcerated. Yet despite prisoners being shut away from the world, God does not want those in prison to be forgotten. God forgets no one, and so we are to forget no one. We are all God’s children. And God loves all of God’s children. Today I really want to push us… because I need to push myself. Those in prison are part of the needy. Forty-three years ago, my life changed dramatically. One evening I had a 7-hour conversation with a man I knew slightly but liked, and it left me feeling uneasy about his current mental state. The next day, he committed a serious crime, called the police to report himself, and has been incarcerated ever since. Obviously, I became a key witness in his trial. I was only 23 at the time, and I was not prepared for how this shook my world. When I went to check on him, I learned that not one person had reached out to this man. Not his friends, and not his family. And so, I made a promise that this man would not be forgotten. It was the first time I really felt God calling me to something. I visited him every week in jail for a year until he was sent to prison … and then I wrote him regularly and visited him as often as I was able. I learned that we are all fragile … that we all have a breaking point … and that some people have absolutely no one to offer them a bit of compassion. And I was reminded again that we are all, indeed, God’s children. As the years go by, my friend has shared in my meeting my husband, having a family, going to seminary and being called to this church. He knows of my passion for ministering with people with disabilities, and he will sometimes send me articles on the subject. And I remain his only link to the outside world. Today’s scripture is a reminder to me that in the past few years, I have not been very faithful in keeping the promise I made … and I am the worse for it. Loving those who are undervalued is not only a key expression of our love of God … it is a vital demonstration of God’s love for us. We cannot understand God’s love for us if we don’t continue to share it with others. And we do it with “real-life, this-world” deeds. And sometimes those deeds can be as simple as writing a short note. Our daughter, Katie, is opposed to the death penalty. And so, she went to Michigan Law School and now works as a federal attorney whose only clients are on death row. Her goal is to have the death penalty removed, case by case. Let’s be honest, she serves those whom society considers the “least of the least.” I have to say, I am very proud of the work she does. Though I am not exactly thrilled with some of the circumstances … she is following her passion and her beliefs. But even more than that, I am proud that she sees beyond the crime committed and seeks to know the person she is representing. While still in school, Katie did an internship in New Orleans, and lived in Sister Helen Prejean’s office. You may remember Sister Helen as the nun portrayed in the movie, “Dead Man Walking.” One of my favorite quotes by Sister Helen is, “We are not the worst moments of our lives.” That is how our daughter relates to her clients, and I believe that is exactly how Jesus is directing us to live and reach out to others. I’ve said it here before: We are not commanded to like each other. We are commanded to love each other. Each and every one of us is a child of God. And we are called to see Christ in the other … and let the other see Christ in us. That is what Matthew 25 is about … and this passage offers relief from the pressure of having to have all the answers before being able to act. When you serve the needy, you are doing it unto Christ. And you see the Christ in them. And they see the Christ in you. And that includes those in prison. Just ask Jesus. 1 CNN, April 21, 2019 (To learn a bit about prison ministry, visit: crossroad.org or prisonfellowship.org) The Rev. Dr. John Judson
August 25, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version Deuteronomy 24:10-13, 17-18; Matthew 25:31-40 Over the past several weeks we have been studying Jesus words about how we are to show the love of God to those Jesus calls, the least of these…meaning those who are in need. We have talked about feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger and visiting the sick. Today we talk about clothing the naked. Now I realize that this is probably the strangest of all of the acts with which we are to show the love of God. After all, why would people be naked. However, this situation of persons being without clothing was a reality in the ancient world. And so in order for us to understand this phenomenon, we need to talk about clothing and money. Let’s begin. In the ancient world, unless people were the Bill Gates of Bible times, people only owned two pieces of clothing. The first was like a long T-shirt like inner garment that draped down to around the knees. It was easy to make, wear and clean. When you worked you would tie up the bottom and you had a pair of shorts. The second article of clothing was a cloak. This was a heavier item made from a single piece of cloth. It did not close in front and had two arm holes. Again if you were rich you might get sleeves as well. The cloak served as a person’s coat in the cold, a rain coat in the rain, a cover for sleeping and a protection from the wind. It was the most essential piece of clothing a person could own…and because of this, it was valuable. Now let’s talk about money. Money in the ancient past was coinage and most people had little if any ready money. More often than not people dealt in trade and barter. However, there were those who found themselves in dire need for seed to sew, supplies for their trade, an animal to raise, or money to pay for food. So the question became where did you get the money you needed? The answer was you borrowed. And to borrow, you need something to use as collateral; something that had value. Since people often had nothing large of value, say a home or land, they would offer their clothing as collateral. First, they would offer their cloak. The person doing the lending would take the cloak and give money in return. The Torah made it clear that the cloak was to be returned at night to keep the one in debt warm and safe. Often though, those who were in debt could not repay that debt on time and so the lender would not only keep the cloak but they would lend more money with the inner piece of clothing as collateral. What this meant then was that the person in debt was naked. This was a humiliating state. Everyone would know that they were poor and in debt. People would make fun of them. They would be forced to work in the heat of the day with no cover. They were robbed of their humanity and dignity. This condition was made even worse when the Torah was ignored and the lenders did not return the clothes but kept them. It would not only cause these people to be seen as being unworthy of care, or compassion, or a second chance, or even of God’s love. It would risk their health and their lives. We know this because in a book called Job the writer talks about this. He writes: The needy are kicked aside; they must get out of the way. Like the wild donkeys in the desert, the poor must spend all their time just getting barely enough to keep soul and body together. They are sent into the desert to search for food for their children. They eat what they find that grows wild and must even glean the vineyards owned by the wicked. All night they had to lie naked in the cold, without clothing or covering. They were wet with the showers of the mountains and lived in caves for want of a home. The wicked snatched fatherless children from their mothers, and took a poor man’s baby as a pledge before they will lend him any money or grain. That is why they must go about naked, without clothing, and are forced to carry food while they are starving.” And so when Jesus tells his friends that they are to clothe the naked, these are the people they are to clothe; those who have fallen on hard times, those who are poor, those who have no dignity. And their friends were to clothe them because by so doing it welcomes them back into community, into family and reminds them that God still loves them. In today’s world we seldom see people walking around naked. What we do see are those whose clothes are dirty, ragged and insufficient to protect their wearers from the elements. If we are honest with ourselves, we look at those folks and we think that they must be poor, homeless, perhaps because of drug addiction. If they came to us for an interview, we would be hesitant to hire them. If they came in a light jacket in the winter, we might wonder what is wrong with them. And so our task, rather than clothing the naked is to insure that all persons, young and old, have the clothes that they need. Warm clothes in the winter. Decent clothes with which to get a job. Clothes that give them their dignity and remind them that God loves them. One ministry we support that does this is The Open Door at Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit. For more than 50 years, Fort Street Presbyterian Church’s Open-Door Program has been a beacon of hope for those most in need in our downtown Detroit neighborhoods. This open-door program feeds nearly 1,000 people each month, provides hot showers, fresh clothing, social service referrals, medical and dental screenings, flu shots, eye glasses, and health care information. But, most of all, they provide hope. Every Thursday, they open their doors to serve a hearty meal to more than 200 people who are homeless, need a hot meal or just want to enjoy the camaraderie and support of others. They also offer a Soup and Sharing Session on Wednesdays. Guests participate in small-group faith sharing, pray together and support each other with advice and words of encouragement. Food boxes are prepared bi-weekly for individuals and families who are food insecure. Pickup is on a designated day and time. Recipients are referred by churches, schools or agencies; self-referrals from those in need are also accepted. Volunteer opportunities are available in serving food, operating the clothing closet and in giving administrative support. Email [email protected], or call 961-4533, x107, for more information about volunteering. You and I have been called to clothe the naked. The Open Door is one way to do this. I hope that you will consider how you might carry at this command and serve the least of these in this world. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
August 18, 2019 Listen Watch Print Version 2 Kings 4:32-37; Matthew 25:31-40 She heard a faint knock at her hospital room door. “Come in” she replied. But instead of the door opening, she heard a voice say, “Jamie, how are you doing?” She knew exactly who it was. It was her pastor. “I’m doing better,” she said. “That’s great,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “Would you like a prayer,” the voice continued. “Sure,” Jamie replied. Then the pastor would offer a prayer, say a quick good bye and head off down the hallway. One of the things that happens when you go to a new congregation as the pastor is that you hear stories about your predecessors. This was a story about one of mine in a former church. People said that he was a good preacher, but he had this thing about not being able to go into hospital rooms. In fact, he would have preferred not to go to the hospital at all if it had been possible. Even so, they like him and actually preferred his hospital visits more than that of another pastor they knew. This other pastor would not knock, but would walk in, pull up a chair, put his cowboy boots on the bed and proceed to chat until the cows came home…regardless of how badly the person felt. I would guess that when it comes to visiting or caring for the sick, most of us are somewhere between these two pastors. For some of us this activity comes naturally, for others it is learned and for many it is something to be avoided. And this is not a criticism. Being with and around those who are ill or those who are dying is not a gift many of us naturally possess. In fact, there are many reasons it could make us uncomfortable. We may be uncomfortable because there may be viruses or germs that could cause us to be ill. We may be uncomfortable because we are unsure what to say or do. We may be uncomfortable because we cannot fix the person and make them better. We may be uncomfortable because death makes us nervous. And this discomfort with being around those who are ill is nothing new. Whether it is in the Old Testament or the New, people avoided the sick as well. They may have avoided them because they believed that their condition was contagious. This would have been the case with leprosy or the plague. They might have avoided someone because they believed that the person was ill because God was punishing them, and being honest, how many of us would want to hang out with someone God does not particularly like? Or they may avoid those who are ill because their illnesses are caused by demons…and let me say that demons in the time of Jesus meant “lesser gods.” What I mean by that is that while Jews believed that YHWH was the highest God, many still believed that there were lesser deities who could interfere in one’s life. This is the case in the Gospel story of the Gerasene demoniac who was inhabited by multiple demons. So, again, who would want to hang out with that kind of a person? Finally, people would avoid those who were dead or dying because to be in contact with a corpse made one, at least temporarily, unclean. And so, across the millennia people avoided being around the ill and the dying. That reality then is what makes our stories this morning so extraordinary. Let’s begin with our Elisha story. The woman in the story had a long history with Elisha. She had welcomed him into her home, think about last week’s story of welcoming and feeding him. Elisha realizing that she was childless, tells her that like Sarah and Hannah, she would have a child late in life. Her child is born, but seven years later he dies. Believing that Elisha can do something about this, she grabs a donkey, rides out, finds him and refusing to take no for an answer, shames him into returning with her. When he arrives, Elisha enters the room, which would make him ritually unclean, and prays. Then he lays upon the child, and the child warms. Getting up Elisha walks around the room, bends over the child and the child is revived. Elisha then calls in the woman and returns her child to her. Why God chose to bring this child back to life and chose not to bring others back I cannot say, but once again, what we witness in this story is that God cares for the whole personand their health and wholeness. Our second story follows suit. As Jesus is teaching about how we ought to act toward others, he tells us that we are to care for the sick. “I was sick, and you took care of me.” Remembering the belief that sickness is either the result of God’s displeasure or of demonic presence, the affirmation of caring for the sick is again, rather remarkable. It meant putting oneself in harms way. But what I think is critical about Jesus’ command is the word he uses for this type of care. I say that because the vast majority of other translations use the term visit. I was sick and you visited me. The implication is that one’s obligation is to drop by in the hallway and pass on a prayer, or perhaps put your cowboy boots on the bed and chat. This is a visit. But the Greek word used here comes from the root of Episcopoi, from which we get the word, bishop, or shepherd. What this means is that we are not simply to visit the sick and dying, but we are to care for them and about them on God’s behalf. We are, in other words, to be God’s presence with them. We are to be the embodiment of God’s love for them and with them. In other words, this is more than a pop-in visit, it is to seek their welfare as best we can. This reality opens a wide range of possibilities for what it means to care for the ill. It could be praying for them. It could be writing them a note. It could be dropping off a meal. It could be running errands for them. And it could also mean, sitting with them and letting them feel God’s presence through our presence. All of these are ways in which we can follow Jesus’ command to care for the sick. This morning there is one more way of caring for the sick which many of us have probably never considered, and that is caring for the dying. To talk more about this, I have invited Sue Bay to speak with us about N.O.D.A., or No One Dies Alone. What is N.O.D.A.? Let me explains. For many people, their last few days or hours of life are spent surrounding by family and friends, where the love of those that they know fills their dying moments. For other people, this is not so. There are those who have no family or friends to be with them, or their family cannot get to their bedside or there is estrangement, or perhaps their death comes so suddenly that no one can travel quickly enough to be present. It is in these cases that N.O.D.A. volunteers become the loving companionship that might not otherwise be present at the time of death. No One Dies Alone (NODA) provides emotional support to patients who would otherwise be alone at the time of their deaths. Volunteers offer a comforting presence to patients that are expected to pass away within 48-72 hours. Volunteers go through an extensive training program in order to be comfortable with sitting with those who are dying and to be present with a clear mind and an open heart. The volunteers are on call for service, usually serving two hour shifts which may involve holding the hands of the patient, soothing rubs of arms or foreheads, reading aloud, playing soothing music, and saying reassuring words. Persons interested in learning more about NODA or becoming a volunteer at Beaumont Royal Oak, may contact Kevin Hickey at 248-551-1338 or by email at [email protected]. |
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