reallifepastor

I met with four families today who might be interested in joining our church.  Three of those families have young children.  All six parents said they want to raise their children in a church that teaches them that all people have worth in God’s eyes.  They want their children to know that God loves every person…and they want them to learn that at church.

At the same table sat two people who told us of church after church after church that did not welcome them.  One of those people said that, in her very lonely life as a teenager and young adult, the loneliest hour of every week was the worship hour.

Cut to lunch…my husband in tears because he hurts for the children of the world.  So many are wounded.  So many are abused.  So many are bullied.  “It starts with the children,” he said.  “It starts with the children.”

We must all love all our children.  We must use whatever means we have to advocate for their safety.  Kudos to the Sioux City Journal for devoting its front page–it’s FRONT PAGE–today to an editorial on bullying.

************************************************

(from Associated Press)

In a rare and forceful act of advocacy, an Iowa newspaper devoted the entire front page of its Sunday edition to an anti-bullying editorial after a gay teen committed suicide.

Relatives have said 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn Jr. suffered intense harassment, including threatening cellphone calls and nasty comments posted online, after coming out to family and friends about a month ago. He died April 15 from what the local sheriff’s office described only as a “self-inflicted injury.”

The Sioux City Journal’s front-page opinion piece calls on the community to be pro-active in stopping bullying and urges members to learn more about the problem by seeing the acclaimed new film, “Bully,” which documents the harassment of a Sioux City middle school student. It notes that while many students are targeted for being gay, “we have learned a bully needs no reason to strike.”

“In Kenneth’s case, the warnings were everywhere,” the editorial said. “We saw it happen in other communities, now it has hit home. Undoubtedly, it wasn’t the first life lost to bullying here, but we can strive to make it the last.

Editor Mitch Pugh said the newspaper has run front-page editorials before but has never devoted the entire page to one.

“A lot of newspapers shy away from putting editorials on the front page, but we feel we have to be a strong advocate for our community,” he said. “And if we don’t do that, we’re not sure who else is.”

Weishuhn’s mother, Jeannie Chambers, told the Journal last week that she and the rest of the family knew he was being harassed but didn’t realize the extent of the bullying. His sister told a local television station that Weishuhn, a freshman, had many friends and was popular at South O’Brien High School in Paullina until he came out. Then students turned on him.

Weishuhn’s family couldn’t immediately be reached Sunday by The Associated Press.

Pugh said the newspaper didn’t consult the family before printing the editorial.

“This was a bigger issue than one person,” he said.

Andy Marra, a spokesman for the national anti-bullying group GLSEN, said the Journal’s decision makes “complete sense.”

“Public education is absolutely vital to addressing bullying and harassment in schools,” he said, adding that community pressure could push schools to do more.

___

The editorial….

http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/opinion/our-opinion-we-must-stop-bullying-it-starts-here-and/article_adf6bdae-590f-5021-9eee-398dd2c13a22.html

Online:

Sioux City Journal editorial: http://bit.ly/ImgOYm

            Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  It’s Easter–the holiest day of the church year.  This is the part of the Christian story everybody knows.  As it says in the Apostles’ Creed, “He was crucified, died and was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead.”  Christ is risen!  That’s what all people of Christian faith believe, right?  But how do they believe it?  How do we believe in the resurrection? 

One way to believe in the resurrection is to take the biblical accounts of Jesus’ bodily resurrection literally…that is, to read the post-resurrection sightings of Jesus as a scientific treatise, a story of molecules and how the molecules of a man brutally killed then dead for three days revivify and give the man back to his disciples in bodily form.

Of all the interpretations of the resurrection, this is the one that’s gotten the most play throughout history–that Jesus literally came back, alive in flesh and bone, after his death. 

I don’t want to knock this interpretation of the resurrection; it has the weight of tradition on its side.  But, personally, I can’t spend too much time thinking—like, thinking—about it because, well, it just raises too many questions.  Why resurrect Jesus and no one else?  Okay.  There were others:  the daughter of Jairus, Lazarus, a slew of people at the end of Matthew.  But if that’s the sign of God’s power–people literally being brought back to life–then why isn’t the planet more crowded?  Why haven’t more people been brought back to life?  Or the really perplexing question:  Why hasn’t my loved one been raised from the dead?

Of course, these days, bringing molecules back to life isn’t as big a deal as it once was.  With all the machines and gadgets and wonder drugs now available, there are lots of ways to bring bodies back to life and keep them around for years.  So, maybe the bigger question about bodily resurrection isn’t, Why aren’t more people resurrected? but, So what?  If God raised Jesus’ body from the dead, so what?   What difference do briefly resuscitated molecules make in the grand scheme of things?  A few more days, maybe…but then what?  He leaves again, right? 

Now, before you start texting and tweeting and putting it out on Facebook that the pastor at Pilgrimage doesn’t believe in the resurrection, let me assure you that I do.  I believe in Jesus’ resurrection with every fiber of my being!  As Clarence Jordan once said:  “Of course, I believe in the resurrection, provided you don’t make me say that it’s so.”  Exactly!

So, believing in the resurrection literally—as if it is an actual recongregation of molecules—is one way to go about it.  But, for those of us who aren’t that sure about the revivification of Jesus’ molecules, might there be another way to believe in resurrection?   

Look with me at today’s Gospel lesson— Mark’s is the one resurrection story that does not include an eyewitness account of the post-resurrected Jesus. 

Jesus has died; his body has been laid in the tomb.  Sabbath begins.  As Sabbath ends, three women bring spices to the tomb to anoint the body.  On the way, they fret about how they’re going to remove the stone from the entrance to the tomb. 

Turns out, they needn’t have worried at all, because the stone already is moved.  A young man is there and tells them that Jesus is gone; he’s on his way to Galileeto meet the disciples there.  And here’s how the gospel ends:  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  THE END.  See?  No resurrected Jesus in sight.  Oh, he’s promised, he’s hinted at, but no one actually reports seeing a resurrected Jesus in Mark’s Gospel.

If you were following along in your Bible, you noticed that there are not one, but TWO alternate endings to Mark.  Later interpreters were so uncomfortable with—or embarrassed by—the missing resurrected Jesus in Mark, they wrote him in (like they did with Forest Gump in that movie).

But here’s the thing.  Whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark did so 40 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.  Don’t you think 40 years would have given the author enough time to think up a spiffier ending if he’d wanted one?  Unless his cartridge ran out of ink as the last page was printing, my guess is that Mark ended his Gospel in exactly the way he intended—with no eyewitness accounts of the bodily appearance of the resurrected Jesus. 

So, if eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus aren’t important to Mark, what is?  If we wanted to believe in the resurrection and all we had to go on was the Gospel of Mark with its abrupt ending, how would we, how could we believe in the resurrection?

Have you ever read a novel or watched a movie with an unresolved ending?  Frustrating, isn’t it?  And memorable.  It’s human nature to want stories resolved.  If an author doesn’t resolve a story, our mind keeps working at it until it finds a resolution.  How many of you are still trying to figure out the end of The Sopranos?

Which could be exactly what Mark was counting on when he ended the story the way he did.  He was counting on the hearers of the story—including us 21^st century hearers—to finish it for ourselves.  If he doesn’t show us the resurrected Jesus, what are we likely to do?  We’re likely to go looking for him ourselves, right?  If we see the resurrected Jesus in Scripture, it’s easy to imagine that all Jesus’ appearances are over.  But if he isn’t shown to us in Scripture, then what?  Then we’re going to keep looking for him in the here and now. 

So, have you seen him?  Have you spotted the resurrected Christ?  If not, where might we go to find the resurrected Jesus in our 21^st century world?  How do we believe in, that is, how do we live our everyday real lives as if resurrection is true?   Here’s how one person came to believe in resurrection.

Sara Miles is what you might call an accidental Christian.  She never meant to convert…but after wandering into a communion service at an Episcopal church inSan Franciscoone day, she couldn’t stay away.

In fact, the experience of God in the bread and wine was so powerful, it became central to Sara’s life…so central, that she started a food pantry.  Every Friday.  In the church’s sanctuary.  She served people from the communion table.  Nothing else seemed appropriate.

Word spread quickly about St. Gregory’s food pantry.  People came in droves.  Several of those people became regulars.  One of those regulars wasMarshall. 

One Friday, a grocery bag swinging from each hand,Marshallfound Sara.  “Can I talk to you?”  Sara led him to a quiet corner.  At first,Marshallcouldn’t speak.  Sara reached for his hand and took it.  Emboldened,Marshallbegan talking.

AVietnamvet, he had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.  The doctors at the VA had told him he’d have to have surgery within a few months or he’d die. Marshallwas terrified.  Every Friday when he came for food, Sara prayed with him.

“Finally,” Sara writes, “the day came whenMarshallsaid he was going in for surgery.  He grabbed me and started to cry.  I remember every detail of that moment: Marshall’s blue work pants, his funny mustard-colored corduroy coat, the damp warmth of his hands.  He laid his head in my lap while I held him, and all thoughts of sickness and operations and cures dissolved.  Everything around us slowed and hung there, until there was just God’s breath between us, rising and falling in our two chests, not separate at all.  It was an experience of grace.  It faded. Marshallsat up, blew his nose, and went off with his groceries.”

Sara “called the VA hospital the next week but couldn’t locate him.

“Many Fridays later,” Sara writes, “someone came up to me outside the church and grabbed me from behind.  I turned around.  It wasMarshall, and he was radiant.  ‘I died!’ he shouted.  ‘I died, twice, on the operating table, but I came back each time.  They said they thought I was gone for good.  You’re not going to believe it, but I’m here!”  (230)

“I didn’t believe in miracles,” Sara writes.  But “I had begun to believe in resurrection.”  She explains:  “I didn’t mean, by resurrection, havingMarshallstand up alive from the operation table and walk:  I saw no cause and effect between our prayers together and his improbable recovery.  Resurrection didn’t mean what I still yearned for in my loneliest moments:  to see my best friend,Douglas; or Martin-Baro; or my beloved father materialize again, even for just a moment, next to me. 

“I actually couldn’t imagine that I would see them again, in the flesh, in a drift of pink clouds in a place called heaven.  Resurrection, to me was mysterious and true in a way I could only glimpse for a second, before my mind refused to stretch that far.  It passed, as the Bible said, human understanding.  But I sensed it had to do with time, like the timeMarshalllay in my lap and we were both completely present and connected.  It was about the eternity available in a fully lived instant.”  (231)

How can we believe in the resurrection?  By being completely present and connected to each other.  The risen Christ is here all around us; all we have to do is look.

I want to end by reading an email I received recently.  I share it because it describes this way of living resurrection and how one person has experienced it here at Pilgrimage.  

“I was just watching NCIS, and there was a quote at the end that really hit me: “I want to see the people around me, not just the blurs as they fly by.” I think that is what is wrong with society today and what is unique about Pilgrimage.  We really see the person in our church family.  We take time to know them and embrace them.”  The quote “spoke to me because life has gotten so hectic; we rarely see the people right in front of us.  We are so consumed with ourselves, that we don’t always look at our fellow human beings.  How different would life be if we actually stopped and saw just how alike and different the people are that we interact with everyday.  How wonderful would life and the world be if we really saw the person in front of us and embraced that person at that time and moment.”

And how well we would be living resurrection.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©  2012

            Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  It’s Easter–the holiest day of the church year.  This is the part of the Christian story everybody knows.  As it says in the Apostles’ Creed, “He was crucified, died and was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead.”  Christ is risen!  That’s what all people of Christian faith believe, right?  But how do they believe it?  How do we believe in the resurrection? 

One way to believe in the resurrection is to take the biblical accounts of Jesus’ bodily resurrection literally…that is, to read the post-resurrection sightings of Jesus as a scientific treatise, a story of molecules and how the molecules of a man brutally killed then dead for three days revivify and give the man back to his disciples in bodily form.

Of all the interpretations of the resurrection, this is the one that’s gotten the most play throughout history–that Jesus literally came back, alive in flesh and bone, after his death. 

I don’t want to knock this interpretation of the resurrection; it has the weight of tradition on its side.  But, personally, I can’t spend too much time thinking—like, thinking—about it because, well, it just raises too many questions.  Why resurrect Jesus and no one else?  Okay.  There were others:  the daughter of Jairus, Lazarus, a slew of people at the end of Matthew.  But if that’s the sign of God’s power–people literally being brought back to life–then why isn’t the planet more crowded?  Why haven’t more people been brought back to life?  Or the really perplexing question:  Why hasn’t my loved one been raised from the dead?

Of course, these days, bringing molecules back to life isn’t as big a deal as it once was.  With all the machines and gadgets and wonder drugs now available, there are lots of ways to bring bodies back to life and keep them around for years.  So, maybe the bigger question about bodily resurrection isn’t, Why aren’t more people resurrected? but, So what?  If God raised Jesus’ body from the dead, so what?   What difference do briefly resuscitated molecules make in the grand scheme of things?  A few more days, maybe…but then what?  He leaves again, right? 

Now, before you start texting and tweeting and putting it out on Facebook that the pastor at Pilgrimage doesn’t believe in the resurrection, let me assure you that I do.  I believe in Jesus’ resurrection with every fiber of my being!  As Clarence Jordan once said:  “Of course, I believe in the resurrection, provided you don’t make me say that it’s so.”  Exactly!

So, believing in the resurrection literally—as if it is an actual recongregation of molecules—is one way to go about it.  But, for those of us who aren’t that sure about the revivification of Jesus’ molecules, might there be another way to believe in resurrection?   

Look with me at today’s Gospel lesson— Mark’s is the one resurrection story that does not include an eyewitness account of the post-resurrected Jesus. 

Jesus has died; his body has been laid in the tomb.  Sabbath begins.  As Sabbath ends, three women bring spices to the tomb to anoint the body.  On the way, they fret about how they’re going to remove the stone from the entrance to the tomb. 

Turns out, they needn’t have worried at all, because the stone already is moved.  A young man is there and tells them that Jesus is gone; he’s on his way to Galileeto meet the disciples there.  And here’s how the gospel ends:  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  THE END.  See?  No resurrected Jesus in sight.  Oh, he’s promised, he’s hinted at, but no one actually reports seeing a resurrected Jesus in Mark’s Gospel.

If you were following along in your Bible, you noticed that there are not one, but TWO alternate endings to Mark.  Later interpreters were so uncomfortable with—or embarrassed by—the missing resurrected Jesus in Mark, they wrote him in (like they did with Forest Gump in that movie).

But here’s the thing.  Whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark did so 40 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.  Don’t you think 40 years would have given the author enough time to think up a spiffier ending if he’d wanted one?  Unless his cartridge ran out of ink as the last page was printing, my guess is that Mark ended his Gospel in exactly the way he intended—with no eyewitness accounts of the bodily appearance of the resurrected Jesus. 

So, if eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus aren’t important to Mark, what is?  If we wanted to believe in the resurrection and all we had to go on was the Gospel of Mark with its abrupt ending, how would we, how could we believe in the resurrection?

Have you ever read a novel or watched a movie with an unresolved ending?  Frustrating, isn’t it?  And memorable.  It’s human nature to want stories resolved.  If an author doesn’t resolve a story, our mind keeps working at it until it finds a resolution.  How many of you are still trying to figure out the end of The Sopranos?

Which could be exactly what Mark was counting on when he ended the story the way he did.  He was counting on the hearers of the story—including us 21^st century hearers—to finish it for ourselves.  If he doesn’t show us the resurrected Jesus, what are we likely to do?  We’re likely to go looking for him ourselves, right?  If we see the resurrected Jesus in Scripture, it’s easy to imagine that all Jesus’ appearances are over.  But if he isn’t shown to us in Scripture, then what?  Then we’re going to keep looking for him in the here and now. 

So, have you seen him?  Have you spotted the resurrected Christ?  If not, where might we go to find the resurrected Jesus in our 21^st century world?  How do we believe in, that is, how do we live our everyday real lives as if resurrection is true?   Here’s how one person came to believe in resurrection.

Sara Miles is what you might call an accidental Christian.  She never meant to convert…but after wandering into a communion service at an Episcopal church inSan Franciscoone day, she couldn’t stay away.

In fact, the experience of God in the bread and wine was so powerful, it became central to Sara’s life…so central, that she started a food pantry.  Every Friday.  In the church’s sanctuary.  She served people from the communion table.  Nothing else seemed appropriate.

Word spread quickly about St. Gregory’s food pantry.  People came in droves.  Several of those people became regulars.  One of those regulars wasMarshall. 

One Friday, a grocery bag swinging from each hand,Marshallfound Sara.  “Can I talk to you?”  Sara led him to a quiet corner.  At first,Marshallcouldn’t speak.  Sara reached for his hand and took it.  Emboldened,Marshallbegan talking.

AVietnamvet, he had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.  The doctors at the VA had told him he’d have to have surgery within a few months or he’d die. Marshallwas terrified.  Every Friday when he came for food, Sara prayed with him.

“Finally,” Sara writes, “the day came whenMarshallsaid he was going in for surgery.  He grabbed me and started to cry.  I remember every detail of that moment: Marshall’s blue work pants, his funny mustard-colored corduroy coat, the damp warmth of his hands.  He laid his head in my lap while I held him, and all thoughts of sickness and operations and cures dissolved.  Everything around us slowed and hung there, until there was just God’s breath between us, rising and falling in our two chests, not separate at all.  It was an experience of grace.  It faded. Marshallsat up, blew his nose, and went off with his groceries.”

Sara “called the VA hospital the next week but couldn’t locate him.

“Many Fridays later,” Sara writes, “someone came up to me outside the church and grabbed me from behind.  I turned around.  It wasMarshall, and he was radiant.  ‘I died!’ he shouted.  ‘I died, twice, on the operating table, but I came back each time.  They said they thought I was gone for good.  You’re not going to believe it, but I’m here!”  (230)

“I didn’t believe in miracles,” Sara writes.  But “I had begun to believe in resurrection.”  She explains:  “I didn’t mean, by resurrection, havingMarshallstand up alive from the operation table and walk:  I saw no cause and effect between our prayers together and his improbable recovery.  Resurrection didn’t mean what I still yearned for in my loneliest moments:  to see my best friend,Douglas; or Martin-Baro; or my beloved father materialize again, even for just a moment, next to me. 

“I actually couldn’t imagine that I would see them again, in the flesh, in a drift of pink clouds in a place called heaven.  Resurrection, to me was mysterious and true in a way I could only glimpse for a second, before my mind refused to stretch that far.  It passed, as the Bible said, human understanding.  But I sensed it had to do with time, like the timeMarshalllay in my lap and we were both completely present and connected.  It was about the eternity available in a fully lived instant.”  (231)

How can we believe in the resurrection?  By being completely present and connected to each other.  The risen Christ is here all around us; all we have to do is look.

I want to end by reading an email I received recently.  I share it because it describes this way of living resurrection and how one person has experienced it here at Pilgrimage.  

“I was just watching NCIS, and there was a quote at the end that really hit me: “I want to see the people around me, not just the blurs as they fly by.” I think that is what is wrong with society today and what is unique about Pilgrimage.  We really see the person in our church family.  We take time to know them and embrace them.”  The quote “spoke to me because life has gotten so hectic; we rarely see the people right in front of us.  We are so consumed with ourselves, that we don’t always look at our fellow human beings.  How different would life be if we actually stopped and saw just how alike and different the people are that we interact with everyday.  How wonderful would life and the world be if we really saw the person in front of us and embraced that person at that time and moment.”

And how well we would be living resurrection.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©  2012

Perhaps by this fifth Sunday in Lent you’re getting as tired of covenant as our Israelite ancestors did.  God’s first covenant was with Noah, after the flood.  In it, God promised never again to destroy creation.  (Rainbow)  Later, God made a covenant with Abraham, promising the 99 year old man descendants more numerous than the grains of sand on the shore.  (Sand)

Then, a few hundred years after that, God gave the people Ten Commandments, the laws that offered guidance on how to keep our end of the covenant.  (Commandments) Then—just a few years after that–our ancestors rebelled.  (Snake)  Are we surprised?  My guess is that no parent in the room is surprised.  Create a rule for your children and what happens?  They test it, right?   

            Poor God.  From the beginning all God wanted was to be in relationship with human beings.  And human beings—from the beginning–were testing the limits of that relationship.  God kept God’s end of the covenant; human beings…not so much.

            Today we get yet another version of the covenant.  God is nothing if not creative!  And persistent.  Every time the covenant stopped working, God created another one.

This covenant comes through the prophet Jeremiah.  Listen. 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house ofIsraeland the house ofJudah.  It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of thelandofEgypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the lord.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house ofIsraelafter those days, says the Lord:  I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.   (Jer. 31:31-34)

            (Heart)  “I will put my law within them,” God says.  “I will write it on their hearts.”  “No longer shall they teach one another, or say… ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

            Parents, again, you get this, don’t you?  How does rule-making go with your children?  Rules are very concrete at the beginning, right?  Let’s say, someone gives your child a gift.   What’s your automatic response?  “What do we say, Jackie?”  Thank you.  Another gift:  “What do we say?”  Thank you?  And another:  “What do we say?”  Thank you. (Cue eye roll.)  Then one day, the child receives a gift and before the words can even form in your mind, your child says, “Thank you!”…the words full of meaning and true gratitude.  

            That’s what seems to happen here.  God has tried several forms of the covenant with the people, all of them focused on external actions.  “Don’t kill, steal, lie, covet…”  With this latest version of the covenant, though, knowledge of God goes deeper.  Now, people won’t have to consult a rule book or a stone tablet to know how to behave.  Now, they’ll know God so well—and love God so much—that they’ll simply live their lives in ways that seek to please God.  And they’ll do so, not because God said so, but because they want to.

I know it’s been a stretch for some of us to have stayed in the Old Testament for so many weeks.  Jesus says some hard things in the New Testament, but he’s a whole lot easier to deal with than the God we often encounter in the Old Testament.  Killing most of humanity in a flood?  Sending serpents?  Sending an infant to a couple in their 90s?  Talk about cruel!  The God who does all that is hard for us to relate to, much less to trust and love.

            But before we dismiss these covenant stories out of hand, there are two things I hope we don’t miss. 

            The first thing is the fact that God constantly adapts the covenant to the new circumstances of the people.  Having no covenant—this is before the flood—didn’t work, so God made the covenant with Noah.  Eventually, the people needed more clarity, so God made the covenant with Abraham.  That worked for a while, but then the people needed, like, clarity, so God gave them the Ten Commandments.  And now, after centuries of maturing in their relationship with God, the people are ready to go deeper… which is why God now writes God’s laws on their hearts.

            Sometimes, it’s easy to think of God as this stoic stick-in-the-mud who doesn’t change at all.  Looking at these covenant texts in the Old Testament, though, we see a God who is constantly adapting and trying to keep the relationship with the people fresh.  Whatever it takes at each stage of the relationship to keep things vital, God does.

            At the same time that God continually adapts to the people, there is one unwavering constant.  This is the second thing not to miss in these covenant texts.  Listen again to the end of v. 33:  “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  Sound familiar?  Sam, read Genesis 12:7 for us.  “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring.”  Again in the next verse God tells Abraham, “I will be [the people’s] God.”

            The constant in everything we’ve been reading the past several weeks is that God wants to be God to us.  God wants to be in relationship with us.  And because God wants to be in relationship with us, God is willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship with us work—put a rainbow in the sky, promise offspring to childless nonagenarians, set the law in stone, send serpents to get our attention, write God’s law on our hearts, or become one of us in the person of Jesus.  (Cross)  Despite the ways we fail to keep covenant, God remains true, God remains steadfast, God always keeps God’s end of the covenant.

            I wonder why.  Why would God work so hard at staying in relationship with us?  I’ve been thinking about this…and there is only one answer that makes sense.  Why does God remain faithful in covenant with us?  Why does God adapt the covenant when we need that?  God attends the covenant so faithfully because God loves us.  God wants to stay in relationship with us.  God always is willing to do God’s part to remain faithful to us.  Because God loves us.

            Do you believe that?  Do you believe in God’s love for human beings?  Do you believe in God’s love for you?  And when I say believe, I’m not talking about giving intellectual assent to the idea of a benevolent being in the universe who has positive regard for you.  When I say “believe,” I’m asking, Do you give 100% of yourself to the reality that God, creator of the universe, creator of you, loves you?

            When I was a student at Emory, Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to teach for a year.  In a class I attended, he talked about another class he’d been teaching.  He was teaching seminary students, right?  He was THE Archbishop Desmond Tutu, right?  So, everything he said—every thing he said—those seminary students wrote down, heads to paper, pens scratching away. 

            At one point, the Archbishop interrupted his own lecture to say, “Stop!  Look at me!  Don’t you know that God loves you?”  In that moment, he knew that they believed more in his words than their own.  He knew that grace, a true experience of God’s love for them, still was eluding them.  In that moment, he recognized that those ministry students were working hard at learning everything they could about God…but they weren’t stopping to experience God’s deep love for them.

            Addressing the difficulty most of us have believing—with all of our being–in God’s love for us, James Finley writes:  “The beloved says from the other side of the door, “Open the door and come in, so we can experience just how one we might become.”  You stand outside the door, reading one more book about how to open the door.  You note in your journal one more thought about what it might be like to walk through the door.  And all the while the longings of your heart remain unconsummated.” 

Do you ever feel like that?  Like, if you read just one more book, take just one more class, participate in just one more service project, copiously record the words of one more truly holy person…if you do just one more thing, then you will at last be able to feel God’s love?  To know—with your whole being—that God is with you and, not only that God is with you, but that there is no place God would rather be?  Do you ever find yourself desperate to feel God’s love?

From the beginning, God has wanted nothing more than to be in relationship with us.  That’s why God worked so hard throughout the centuries revamping the covenant…God kept doing whatever it took to let the people know that God would always be there.  What joy it gives God when we open the door of our heart and receive God’s love!

If you struggle to believe, not only in your head, but in your whole being, in God’s love for you, hear the rest of James Finley’s words.  It is an invitation.  “Let today be the day you open the door of your heart to God, whose heart from all eternity, is open to you….God has left the door unlocked and even slightly ajar.  God is waiting for you to open it and come walking through to experience that oneness with God that is the fullness of life itself.”  (from Christian Meditation:  Experiencing the Presence of God)

“Let today—today!–be the day you open the door of your heart to God.  Because God’s heart, from all eternity, is open to you.”  What I’m trying to say is that One fact remains that does not change:  God has loved you, loves you now, and will always love you.  This is the good news that brings us new life.  Thanks be to God!”

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan   ©  2012

Well.  I had no idea preaching the Ten Commandments would be so controversial.  Those of you who subscribe to the Pilgrimage Daily Devotions will know that nearly all this week’s writers struggle in some way with the 10 best-known rules in the Bible.

One person said that Jesus’ commandment to “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbour as yourself,” was commandment enough for her.  Another person is still struggling to figure out what she believes, but is pretty sure her God is more loving than the one who gave the 10 Commandments.  Someone else was dismayed at what she found to be an unforgiving God in the commandment she addressed.  Another person wondered if it was actually lying to tell your teenage daughter that she looks good when she really doesn’t but that you’ve already chosen your battle for this week and you just don’t want to “go there,” if you know what I mean.

Some of our devotion writers were leery of asking their real questions of the Ten Commandments.  One person even told us not to post her devotion if we found it too negative.

The truth is that all these reflections come from a long tradition of thoughtful biblical scholarship.  From the time Scripture was written—including the Ten Commandments– scholars have been wrestling with it, questioning it, and trying to figure out exactly what the writers meant.

Biblical scholars like…George Carlin.  Through some masterful scholarly work, Mr. Carlin was able to reduce the Ten Commandments to Two.  I wish I could take you through that exceptional bit of scholarship.  Unfortunately, his argument is a little too, um, technical to share in a sermon.

Then there’s the interpretation of that great Jewish scholar, Mel Brooks.  (Show video….History of the World, Part 1…you can find it on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I48hr8HhDv0

God Texts the Ten Commandments, by Jamie Quatero

Those interpretations are just for fun.  Here’s a real updated version of the Ten Commandments.  (Flash slides of the Ten Texted Commandments.) 

God Texts the Ten Commandments, by Jamie Quatero

1. no1 b4me  srsly

2.  dnt wrshp pix/idols

1. no omg’s
2. no wrk on w/end  (sat 4now; sun l8r)
3. pos ok –urm&d r cool
4. dnt kill ppl
5. :-X only w/ m8
6. dnt steal
7. dnt lie re: bf
8. dnt ogleurbf’s m8 or ox or dnkey.  Myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2ppl

ttyl, JHWH

ps  wwjd?

It’s easy to poke fun at The Ten Commandments…but at the end of the day, what are we to do with them?  Those of us who try to be faithful, who try to read the Bible critically and take it seriously, those of us who are certain that the Ten Commandments don’t belong in the foyers of government buildings….What are we to do with them?  Do we read them simply as ancient history?  Or might they yet inform 21^st c faith?

After reading this week’s devotions, I decided that, if I was going to get out of this sermon alive, I was going to need to spend some quality time with the Ten Commandments.  So, in the interest of self-preservation, I read through them.  Several times.  A funny thing happened.  The more I read, the more I was drawn to the fourth commandment, the one about remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy.  Now, it could be that my own rapidly approaching week of Sabbath (it begins at 12:30 today) is what caused me to linger on the fourth Commandment…but the more time I spend with these commandments, the more convinced I become that Sabbath is the fulcrum on which all of the commandments balance.

Let me explain.  The first three commandments are about how we relate to God–no other Gods before me, no idols, no misusing God’s name—while the last 6 are about how we relate to other people:  honor the parental units, don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet your neighbor’s stuff.  Sandwiched between these laws about how to relate to God (1-3) and how to relate to people (5-10) is #4, the one about Sabbath.  See?  Sabbath is right in the middle, like a fulcrum upon which the whole thing is balanced.

What might happen if we use that fulcrum to make sense of the other commandments?  What might happen if we look at our relationships with God and with others through the lens of Sabbath?  Let’s look at that fourth commandment again and see what happens. “Remember the sabbath—literally, the seventh—day, and keep it holy.  For six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”

Okay.  What’s the big deal about working six days and having Sabbath on the seventh?   The big deal is that that was God’s work schedule.  “In six days God made heaven and earth.”  God worked six days; we work six days.  God rested on the seventh day; we rest on the seventh day.

Now, we need to talk about what God did on the Sabbath.  When God rested on the seventh day, God did more than haul out a six pack and the remote, sit back in the recliner and watch the game.  No, making the Sabbath holy involved acknowledging everything that had been created and celebrating its goodness.  Remember in Genesis when “God saw all that had been created and saw that is was good, very good?”  For God, Sabbath wasn’t only about stopping work.  It was about stopping work for a particular purpose, that purpose being to celebrate the goodness of creation.

Keeping Sabbath for us is similar to God’s keeping Sabbath—we too keep Sabbath when we stop to remember and celebrate the goodness of God’s creation.  But for us, because we’re people and not God, Sabbath begins by honouring the Creator.  That’s why the Scripture writer says, “the seventh day will be a Sabbath TO the Lord your God.”  Sabbath isn’t just about chilling, as important as the occasion chill session might be.  First and foremost, Sabbath is about celebrating who God is and who we are in relation to God.

And Sabbath is also about honouring other people.  Listen:  On the Sabbath, “you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”  Nobody works on the Sabbath.

I know.  Slaves?  That’s not very Christian, is it?  It’s important to read these commandments in the historical context in which they were written.  We’re talking 3500 years ago…. back when all women and many men were considered property; back when most people assumed there were many gods and that those gods acted arbitrarily.  If the gods acted arbitrarily, what was to prevent property owners from acting arbitrarily, too?  Nothing.

Though we aren’t always thrilled with the idea of laws being part of faith, it’s important to keep in mind that the advent of laws in the ancient world—especially laws that treated human beings (and even livestock) with respect…that was an amazing step toward social justice for the day.  Before the first recorded law code—attributed to the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the 17^th c. BCE—people had to guess at how to behave.  To have a set of laws that clearly explained how one should behave, not only toward other people, but also toward God?  That was cutting edge human rights for the ancient near east.

So, we have in this fourth commandment a call to rest, and to rest in such a way that we acknowledge God for who God is—creator of all things—and also acknowledge other people for who they are—human beings who deserve rest after a hard week’s work.

At its core, the idea of Sabbath is about honouring everything in creation—including the creator—for who and what it is.  If we honor the creator and everything God created, then—if you think about it–we won’t even have to think about how to keep Commandments 1-3 or 5-10.  If we honor creator and created, then those 9 commandments will simply fall into place.  If we honor God, we won’t have other gods, make idols, or misuse God’s name.  If we honor other people, we’ll honor those who nurture us; we won’t want to kill, steal, lie, commit adultery or covet.

Well.  Would you look at that?  I’ve reduced the Ten Commandments down to one and I did it without all that technical language Mr. Carlin uses!

This is all well and good, but I haven’t really answered the question on the board in the narthex.  Should the Ten Commandments be repealed?  That’s what happens to most laws when they become outdated, right?  In fact, it’s pretty much what Jesus did when he said that all the law could be summed up by “Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbour as yourself.”

So, should the Ten Commandments be repealed?  Might they still help 21^st c. Christians navigate their faith lives with integrity?  I don’t know.  I kind of like them.  They’re clear, simple, fairly easy to remember.  And I’m telling you, I really like that one about Sabbath.  Remember who God is?  Remember who human beings are?  Respect all creation?  Those are good things, right?

Ultimately, each of us will decide by the way we live our lives whether or not the Ten Commandments still carry weight for us.  Today’s invitation is simply to look at them again to see what might be gained from them.  Might they helpfully inform your faith?  Might they yet provide clarity for your faith journey?

In the bulletin, you’ll notice that some blank tablets have been provided.  I invite you to use those tablets to write your “commandments,” or, in the spirit of our Lenten theme, you might choose to call them your covenant.  What laws or principles guide your actions as you live the life of faith?  What covenant commitments do you make to the God who has covenanted to love you and to be God to you?  Is it the Ten Commandments (or the fifteen)?  Is it Jesus’ love Commandment?  Is it something else?

As you think about your own covenant of faithfulness, I invite you to hear one written by Francis Macnab.  Hear now “Ten New Commandments.”

Ten “New Commandants” for the 21st Century – Dr. Francis Macnab  (from the Seasons of the Spirit resource…visit www.seasonsonline.ca)

 Commandment  1 Believe in a Good Presence in your life. Call that Good Presence: God, G-D – and follow that Good Presence so that you live life fully – tolerantly, collabora­tively, generously and with dignity.

Commandment 2  Believe in a God-Presence in your life that will lift you constantly to live harmoniously in your­self and with others, always searching for your best health and happiness.

Commandment 3 Take care of your home, your environ­ments, your Planet and its vital resources for the life and health of people in all the world.

Commandment 4  Be kind and caring of the animals, the birds, and the creatures of land and the rivers and the seas.

¹²Commandment 5 Help people develop their potential and become as fully functioning human beings as is possible from birth, through traumas and triumph to the end of their days.

Commandment 6  Be magnanimous and excessive in your support of good causes, and use your affluence and ma­terial goods and scientific skills in altruistic concern for the future of the world.

Commandment 7  Study ways to encourage and sustain the dignity, hope and integrity of all human beings and study ways to help all human beings embrace their dignity, hope, and integrity.

Commandment 8  Be alive to new possibilities, new ways, and to the unfolding mysteries and wonders of life and the world.

Commandment 9  We often focus our lives on many things and pursuits that promise our fulfilment. Study the deeper things of the Spirit, and the things of ultimate concern for all human beings. Be part of an evolving life-enhancing Faith that will also bring a new resilience to the future.

Commandment 10  Take time to worship the great Source of all the positive transforming energies of life, and search to be at one with “the spirit of the good, the tender and the beautiful.”

from “The New Faith and the 10 New Commandments” by Dr. Francis Macnab, 2008, http://www.stmichaels.org.au. Used by permission. Attention is drawn to Dr. Macnab’s books; A Fine Wind is Blowing © 2006 and This Hungry Time © 2009 (Spectrum Publications).

 In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan   (C)  2012

**************************************

Exodus 20:1-17

So, we’re into this whole thing at my church about creeds and statements of faith.  Because ours is such a diverse congregation, ideas and feelings about such statements run the gamut from “What’s a creed?” to “Worship isn’t complete with out one.”

I spent my early years in a more creedal tradition–United Methodist.  My experiences as a Baptist, though, were more formative.  Staunchly “non-creedal,” I learned from my baptist mentors that requiring people to believe certain things in a certain way wasn’t the way of Christ.  (Ironic in light of all that happened later in my life as a baptist!)  Because all believers had their own connections to God, we all had freedom to believe how we believed.

If you were to sum up my past experiences with creeds, I guess you could say that I can recite the Apostles’ Creed by heart AND that I feel guilty about it.

But now, I’m now a UCC pastor, a denomination that has strands of both creedalism and noncreedalism.  And I pastor a church that has strong representation from both strands.  While I’ve been trying to be a good mediating presence, I find now that I need to confront my own noncreedalist leanings.

The thing that convinced me of my bias against creeds was the first comment made in Sunday school yesterday:  “In your sermon (see the previous post), you seemed to be justifying over and over the use of creeds in worship.  Was that really necessary?”

Don’t you hate it when they “get you” in the first comment?  The comment sparked an engaging conversation about how we come from such diverse traditions…about how the “justification” parts of the sermon could have been helpful for congregants who come from noncreedal traditions.  As the conversation wore on, though, I realized that it wasn’t congregants I was trying to convince in the sermon, but the preacher.

But after yesterday’s Sunday School conversation, I’m convinced–strongly convinced–of the importance of using creeds in worship.  Here’s what happened.

As we shared together our experiences of saying–or not saying–creeds, the conversation took a deep dive into theology.  “Here’s what I believe about God.”  “Here’s how I believe in God.”  “For a long time, I just didn’t get the Holy Spirit.  Now, I think it’s what guides us when we’re wanting to do things to help others.”  “I know a lot of people who have problems with the Trinity…especially the Jesus Christ part.”

As I sat back and listened to the theological depth of the conversation and realized that it stemmed directly from conversation about creeds and statements of faith, I realized that creeds and statements of faith are good things.  Very good things.  Rather than pinning us down theologically, they give us a framework within which to wrestle with our faith.  And if we speak them and discuss them in community, they can be a tremendous source of spiritual growth….

….just as they were for me yesterday.

Thanks be to God!

This Lent we’re exploring the idea of covenant.  One source defines covenant as:  a formal agreement…between two parties that establishes a relationship and in which… mutual responsibilities may be enacted.  Like marriage.  That’s a “formal agreement where mutual responsibilities are enacted,” right?  Or neighborhood covenants where we promise to keep our hedges trimmed and the HOA promises to keep the pool clean.

Or the UCC.  We love the word covenant in the UCC.  That’s because ours is not a hierarchical church system.  We stay connected to each other because we choose to stay connected, not because some bishop has told us to do so.  We promise to make contributions of money, service, and fellowship to the denomination and the denomination, in return, keeps us connected with other UCC congregations.  It’s all by choice, not by command.

Did you know that Pilgrimage has a covenant?  Can you quote it?  Have you ever seen it?  On your way out today, take a look at the framed document above the Narthex table.  And no, we didn’t just put it up this week.  It’s been there forever.

Covenant is a strong theme in Scripture.  Last week, we looked at the covenant God made with Noah, the one where God promised never again to destroy all flesh by flood.  Today, we get the covenant God makes with Abram.  I’m going to read it again.  This time, though, when I point, you say, “Abram was 99 years old.”  Got it?

“When Abram was 99 years old, God appeared to Abram, and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.  I ²will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.  Abram was 99 years old.  Right.  Abram was 99 years old and God promised to make him “exceedingly numerous.”   ³Then Abram fell on his face.”  Laughing, perhaps?  Or maybe he was just tired.  After all, Abram was 99 years old. 

Nah.  I’m joking.  Abram probably fell on his face out of awe and gratitude.  Remember–the cultures around Abram believed there were lots of gods, all of whom acted arbitrarily.  For a single God to come, invite a human being into mutual relationship, and then make promises to him?  Yeah.  That would be pretty awesome.  And overwhelming.  So, Abram falls on his face to show his respect to God.

As great as all that is, God’s not done yet.  The promises keep coming.  ⁴“As for me,” God says, “this is my covenant with you:  You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  …⁵⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful.  Abram was 99 years old.  ⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”

Isn’t that just the coolest?  God wasn’t out there doing God’s thing, unconcerned about what was happening to human beings.  No.  God was choosing to be in mutual relationship with us.  God was choosing to be claimed us.  “I will be your God.”  God made an everlasting covenant, an eternal promise to stay in relationship with us.  See what I mean?  Very cool.

But back to Abram.  How old was he again?  Abram was 99 years old.  The reason I’ve had you repeat that phrase so many times is to emphasize just how fragile the promise is.  Last week, we heard a novel character question the wisdom of a God who would put all the divine eggs into one ark-shaped basket.  This week, the promise comes in an even more fragile container:  God chooses to entrust the promise of exceedingly numerous descendants to a 99 year old man—one who was, as Paul later writes, “as good as dead”—and his young whippersnapper of a wife, 90 year old Sarai.

If you read through the book of Genesis, you’ll see that it’s full of threats to the promise.  Time and again, God tells our ancestors that the next offspring will be birthed by the woman who is barren, or in the land decimated by famine, or to a near-criminal.  You read these stories and you think, “What was God thinking?”  Why do things so far outside the box?  Why choose to keep God’s promises in such risky ways?

But…I don’t know…I wonder if God sends us promises in risky packaging because God wants to show us how seriously God takes the covenant.

Think about it.  If the promise is sure and comes through righteous people of proper child-bearing years in a land of plenty, how inclined will we be to nurture that promise?  If it comes all neatly-wrapped and fully-formed, how much time will we spend with God, working to fulfil the promise?  Not much, I’m guessing.  “Another gift from God?  Oh, just put it over there with all the others.”  (Yawn.)   If God’s gifts came as expected, we wouldn’t be awed; we wouldn’t be overwhelmed.  We might not even be thankful.  But when a gift arrives against which all the odds are stacked?  That is a gift we appreciate.  That is a gift that overwhelms us.  That is a gift for which we offer our thanks again and again and again.

So, maybe God chooses to present divine promises in fragile containers because it keeps us in constant contact with God.  It keeps us thinking about what God might be hoping for the world.  It keeps us working with God for the best possible world there can be.  Maybe God’s offering the divine promise in so fragile a container—Abram was 99 years old —isn’t the sign of God’s foolhardiness, but rather is a sign of divine genius.  A risky promise will keep us working at it, nurturing it, doing what we can to keep it alive and help it thrive.

Among the suggestions you made in our last Town Hall Meeting last Fall was to regularly repeat a creed or the UCC Statement of Faith in worship.  Because we come from so many denominations and because we create such a wide space for people to wrestle with their faith, sometimes it seems like, as one person said in Sunday School recently, “We don’t stand for anything.”

The truth is that we do stand for something.  A lot, actually.  (Happily, the naysayer later recanted.)  And not only do we stand for something, we stand on something:  a deep and rich tradition of Christian faith.  Regularly repeating a Statement of Faith in worship would remind us of what we believe as a Christian community of faith.  It also could be a way of nurturing the faith that is within us, fragile containers that we are.

Before we get into this Creed/Statement of Faith business, though, it’s important to acknowledge that we come from diverse religious traditions, some of which use creeds all the time, others of which stay as far away from them as they can.

In creedal traditions—think Catholic, Episcopal, Reformed—creeds have been a means of connecting worshipers to the basic tenets of Christian faith.  That said, they also have been used as tests of faith:  Believe this and you’re part of us; don’t believe it and you’re excluded.  Some of us—like Baptists–come from traditions where our ancestors in faith were the very people excluded by creeds.  For that reason, we—understandably—avoid creeds.

Being raised in a non-creedal tradition, I’d like to share how I’ve made my peace with repeating creeds or statements of faith in worship.  I now think of statements of faith as testimonies of faith rather than tests of faith.  If I read something as a testimony of faith, it doesn’t mean I understand everything I’m saying.  It only means that I’m trying the best I can to live up to the Christian ideal.  In reading those words, I am trying the best I know how to keep my end of my covenant with God….and I’m doing so by repeating words that the faithful have spoken—in some cases—for hundreds of years.

One more word about Statements of Faith.  Saying them by ourselves in the quiet of our own homes—that’s okay, but it’s a pretty lonely way to testify to our faith.  I’ve tried it on my cats.  I don’t think they find my testimony of faith in God very convincing.

Statements of faith are meant to be read in community.  When read together, they remind us that we don’t have to go this faith thing alone.  For instance, say you’re reading through the Apostles’ Creed in worship.  You might be able to confess some parts of the Creed with confidence, while other parts just baffle you.  The cool thing is that, for every phrase you speak aloud with uncertainty, there likely is another person who is speaking the same phrase with confidence…and, by the same token, what might baffle them is something you can declare confidently.  That’s the beauty of repeating statements of faith together:  It reminds us that we’re working out our faith together.  Where faith is concerned, we don’t have to go it alone.

So, why am I saying all this?  I’m saying it to explain why we’ll be repeating more Statements of Faith in worship in the coming weeks.  We will do so because it is good regularly to remind ourselves of what we believe and also because it is vital (and helpful) that we do so in community.

Because we’re looking at covenant today and because we just happen to have a covenant for our community right here (hold up bulletin), I invite us to read the Pilgrimage Covenant together.  As you read, think about the words.  Do they resonate with your experience as a person of Christian faith?  Are you trying to fulfil these words in your life as a member of this community?  Do you find comfort in speaking these words with others?

Let us stand and testify to the covenant we make with each other and with God and in so doing, nurture the fragile faith that is in us.  And let us do it together.

We covenant in love with God

and with one another in our pilgrimage,

seeking to respond to the will of God.

We recognize and accept our individuality

and diverse backgrounds;

we rejoice in our commonality that

urges us to follow the Christ life,

as it is revealed to us through Jesus.

We affirm that the church’s mission includes

concern for growth and personal faith

and for social responsibility in an ever-changing world.

We will work for justice, peace, and truth

both now and in the years ahead.

In our humility we depend upon the Holy Spirit

to challenge, lead, and empower us.

We look with faith toward the triumph of God’s righteousness

and hope for eternal life in God’s presence.

While we acknowledge other faith expressions, we affirm this covenant.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan (c) 2012

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ²And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,

⁴“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

¹⁵God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Noah’sArk.  It’s a familiar story, right?  God said to Noah, There’s gonna be a floody, floody…  the animals going into the ark by twosies, twosies and coming out by threesies, threesies… The rainbow in the sky.  God’s promise never to destroy the earth again.  It’s a familiar story, one just about everyone knows.

Do you ever wonder, though, what was going on behind the scenes, below the deck?  What was it like to live on a boat in the rain with animals and in-laws and odors?  What was it like to be cooped up in a big wooden box for 6 months?  In short, what was it like to be Mrs. Noah?   [Vickie:  Mrs. Noah Speaks, by Madeleine L’Engle]

Noah’s Ark…A nice story…until you consider the details.  A boat with animals on it makes for great artwork…but in reality, it makes for great work.  Eight family members on a small boat with animals sounds cozy…but the reality?  Probably less so.

And what about the people who didn’t make it onto the boat, the ones who died in the flood?  How could a loving God destroy everyone on earth except one family?  That’s where the details of this story get uncomfortable.  It’s the part of the story a recent novel addresses.Narrated by Re Jana, the daughter of one of the construction workers hired to help build the ark, the novel In the Shadow of the Ark (Provoost, Anne.  In the Shadow of the Ark.  New York: Berkley Books, 2001 (translation, 2004) wrestles with the theological question of what kind of God would kill nearly the whole human race.

At one point, Re Jana eavesdrops on a conversation between her father and Noah, who is called The Builder.  “How should I imagine this Unnameable god of yours?” Re Jana’s father says.  “Like an eternally raging hurricane?  But who can possibly stay angry for the length of time this plan is taking?”

“He is disappointed rather than angry,” the Builder says.

“If disappointment drives him, he must make clear what he expects.  His directives should be unambiguous; there should be no doubt about what his wishes are.  Only then can he justify punishment.”

“Many things are so obvious they do not need rules.”

“Those with that sort of understanding are rare.  Many live in ignorance.  And what is learned now will soon be forgotten again.  What makes you confident your god will not do the same thing all over again in 500 years, to your children and your children’s children?  That he will not destroy your cities again and will not butcher your descendants?”

The Builder says:  “The Unnameable does not bear malice.  He has only become tired of human kind.  I have long discussions with Him, and I assure you, He does not act rashly.  His spirit will not quarrel with us for eternity.  Believe me, after this, there will be clear rules, commandments, and prohibitions that are so plain they will not need explanations.”

My father shook his head.  “I do not ask for rules.  I ask for judgment, the understanding that makes it possible to deviate from the rules if the need arises.”

“That understanding too will come.  With the passing of time.  And with (hu)mankind’s maturing.”

“Is this then the time of beginning, the time of mistakes and trials?  To me it sounds more like the endtime.  It seems to me that soon everything will be finished.”

“Let us say that a new time is coming.”

“A new time for whom?  For a handful of candidates?  That is reprehensible.”

“It is the crime that is reprehensible, not the punishment.”

“How can there be a question of crime for a people that does not have a system of justice?”  “Give this people a system of justice…and they would not become depraved.  No god would find it necessary to destroy them.  Whoever does not apply justice in punishment causes blood feuds.  Whoever does not permit punishment forces it underground.  Talk your god around, appeal to his reason.”  “Or is the Unnameable destroying us for your benefit?  So that you will be able to live in a better world?”  (218-19)

Hard questions…and, no doubt, questions many of us have asked of this story ourselves.  What are thoughtful people of faith, those who believe in a loving God, to make of such story?

A few weeks ago, we revisited the story of Jonah and the big fish.  Do you remember what I told the children that day?  I said there are some things in the Bible we take literally, things like, “Love your neighbour.”  There are other things in the Bible, though, that are just stories.  Jonah and the big fish is a story.  Noah and the ark—it’s a story.

I won’t say it’s “just a story,” because the kind of story it is is really important.  The geological record shows many floods in antiquity.  Every culture throughout antiquity that experienced a flood made up a story about it.  Why?  To have some control over it, right?  If we know what caused the flood, we can prevent the next one.

Our flood myth is no different.  Like other flood stories, our story helped our ancestors to explain what was happening.  It gave them a feeling of control over a completely out-of-control event.  Our ancestors in faith explained the flood by saying it was God’s punishment for “wickedness.”  How might they avoid a future flood?  By becoming more righteous.

The place where our story diverges from other flood myths is at the point of the rainbow.  Let’s read again what God promised during that ancient ritual.

⁹“¹⁰¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

The sign of the covenant is a “bow set in the sky.”  Some scholars see the bow as just that, a bow (like from a bow and arrow).  I prefer to go with the traditional rendering of a rainbow….because rainbows in the sky, we see.  Have you ever seen a bow-and-arrow bow in the sky?  Me neither.

Because this is a sign I want to see; I want to be reminded of this covenant.  Because this covenant is one God makes with all creatures and all people.  “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.”  That’s the thing that’s so amazing, so forward-thinking, really, about the Judeo-Christian tradition’s flood myth.  In it, God doesn’t only make a promise to God’s people.  In our flood myth, God makes a promise to all the earth’s people…all earth’s creatures, in fact.  If you think about it, what this flood myth says about our ancestors in faith is pretty remarkable:  Our ancestors in faith saw the love of God extending to all people.

So, even though this story, this myth, has a prehistoric, pre-enlightenment feel to it, the moral of the story is as contemporary as it can be:  If God’s protection and love are for everyone, shouldn’t ours be also?

If such a flood threatened today, would we build an ark just for members of our own family or faith family?  No.  We wouldn’t think of it.  We’d agree with Re Jana, who said:  “To save (hu)mankind, you need a fleet, not a single vessel.  What sort of god carries all his eggs in one basket?”  (293)

Our ancestors in faith understood the first flood to be the judgment of an angry God. But based on how they ended the story—by expressing concern and love for all creatures and people—maybe they learned a little from the story.  Maybe they learned that judgment now rests, not in God’s hands, but  in ours.  Will we hire people to build the boat then close the door on them when the rains begin?

Or will we build a fleet?  Will we crowd all the animals and one very human family into a tiny boat?  Or will we build enough boats for all the construction workers and their families?  I’m pretty sure that today, we’d build a fleet…enough boats for everyone, enough vessels to save everyone.

And, because she liked it so well, we’d build one tiny boat for Mrs. Noah, her husband, her children, and the platypus.   (At 8;30, David played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  At 10:00 Monty played it.)

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©  2012

Genesis 9:8-17

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹²God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”¹⁷God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Today at church, so much depended on daffodils. 

Last week, a member cut daffodils from her yard, brought them to church, and set them on the communion table.  It was such a beautiful gift.

This week, another member cut daffodils from her yard, brought them to church, and set them on the communion table.  Another beautiful gift.

Then at the end of the service, I saw two different people carrying daffodils out the door–a woman whose non-Hodgkins lymphoma has just gone into remission and another woman who was taking her bunch of flowers to her elderly mother-in-law who is no longer able to attend church.

Today’s sermon ended with this line from a novel called The Elegance of the Hedgehog:  “A camellia can change fate.”  Daffodils, too, I think.

Thanks be to God!

            Had the Gospel writers been lyricists instead, the story might have gone something like this…  (So Good to Be Here…a song by Marty Haugen…in Monty Python fashion, the disciples sit back and relax and simply enjoy being with Jesus.)

            Ah, yes.  So good to be with Jesus…away from the hustle and bustle of disciple-life…away from the crowds, all those faces to feed… away from annoying neighbors… away with Jesus for a spiritual retreat.  Oh, yes.  It was so good to be there with Jesus!

            But here’s what I wonder.  How was it for those who weren’t with Jesus?  How was it for the rest of the disciples–the rest of the world–who hadn’t been invited up the mountain for this special retreat?  How was it for those who couldn’t get childcare or time off work?    Basically, what I’m asking is, How was it for Andrew?

            Do you remember a few weeks ago when Jesus was calling his disciples?  Who were the first to be called?  Someone read Mark 1:16 for us.  “As Jesus passed along theSea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake.”  “Follow me!” he calls. They do.  Then who does he call?  Someone read Mk 1:19.  “As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John.”  “Follow me!” Jesus calls.  They do.

            Two sets of brothers:  Simon (aka, Peter) and Andrew, James and John.  So, here’s my question about today’s Transfiguration scene:  What happened to Andrew?  Jesus called Andrew at the same time he called Peter, James and John…which, by the way, is the same group he calls to go with him to pray inGethsemanethe night before his crucifixion.  So, how come when Jesus has something really important to share with his inner group, it’s only Peter, James and John?  What happens to Andrew?

There’s no way to know, really.  In truth, I haven’t found a commentator yet who even cares about Andrew.  The focus of this scene is Jesus and how he’s glorified and how God reminds the disciples who are there that Jesus is God’s son and that human beings should listen to him.

But don’t you find it strange that Andrew is left out of that crew?  What happened to him?  It could be that nothing happened.  That’s just how it worked out.  Or maybe Andrew had taken an inopportune bathroom break.  “Man!  I could have seen Jesus and Elijah and Moses…if I only hadn’t had that third cup of coffee!”  Or maybe Jesus specifically chose Peter, James, and John to witness his transfiguration because he knew—with their passion (James and John were called “Sons of Thunder”) and, um, loquacity—those three would, when the time came, tell everybody about what had happened on the mountain.

            Of course, maybe it wasn’t so much that Andrew wasn’t chosen to ascend the mountain as it was that he was chosen to stay below and keep things running.  I mean, look at the three Jesus did take up the mountain.  This amazing, wonderful, very spiritual thing happens, and they don’t have a clue what to do with it.  Peter says, “It’s so good to be here!  Let’s make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’  He did not know what to say,” the Gospel writer tells us, “for they were terrified.”  Is that really who you’d want in charge of the crowds down below?  People who—at the first little revelation of the almighty—would blather the first thing that came into their heads?

            There’s no way to know why Peter, James, and John went with Jesus and why Andrew stayed below, but I have an opinion.  I think Andrew stayed below because Jesus trusted his leadership.  Jesus trusted Andrew to keep things going down off the mountain, away from the auras and revelations and other mountaintop experiences.  Jesus trusted Andrew because Andrew’s spirituality ran deep enough to find God in the ordinariness of life…even without fantastic, big-fat-hairy deal revelations of God.

            That’s the real work of faith, isn’t it?  Finding God in the ordinariness of life?  How great to have sudden, spectacular revelations of God…moments when, in a flash of insight, your whole understanding of yourself and God and the world is transfigured.

            But how seldom those kinds of revelations occur.  Spiritually speaking, most of us spend our lives searching for God down in the valley, not up on the mountain.  And even if we do have one or two mountaintop experiences, the real work still, always, is finding God down below.

            Last week in Sunday School we talked about how to make a difference in the world.  Responding to stories I’ve told about people making really big differences, one person asked something like, “Do I have to go out, find someone who’s dying, and save their life in order to be a good Christian?”  The general consensus of the group was that the best way to make a difference in the world is simply to live our lives with as much integrity as we can…because the truth is, we never really know what kind of difference we’re making.

            Then Joyce Baker told us about the year with no first grade.  Joyce served as a medical missionary inHondurasfor 30 years.  Her work focused on women’s health.  Day in, day out, she’d do preventive health exams for women in a certain village and teach them about family planning.  The family planning piece was important.  Joyce told us about the time when she was delivering twins.  When the first twin was delivered stillborn, the infant’s father, who had many children already, said, “At least that’s one less mouth to feed.”

            At first, Joyce was startled by the man’s comment.  It seemed so cold.  But then she realized that, in a place of abject poverty, another mouth to feed meant stretching already scarce resources.  A new life literally risked the lives of other family members.

            Joyce told us that her work with women in the village was, well, kind of boring.  Day in, day out, the same thing:  these health exams for women, teaching them about family planning.  Just doing her job.

            But then one day a few years into her stint, she learned that the village school wasn’t going to have a first grade class the next year.  There weren’t enough children that age.  At that point Joyce thought:  Wow.  I guess I am making a difference!

            Okay.  Now, I’m anticipating what I’m going to hear in Sunday School today:  “What?  Do I have to get a medical degree and become a missionary to be a good Christian?”  One more story about making a difference in an Andrew kind of way, down off the mountain, just living your life with as much integrity as you can.

            In the novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Renee Michel is the concierge of a luxury apartment building inParis.  Among her duties is tending to the gardening around the building.  Early in the novel, the drug-addicted son of one of the wealthy tenants goes away.  At the end of the novel, Jean returns.

            “You know, I didn’t come back here to see the apartment or the people here,” Jean says when he visits Renee.  “I came because there’s something I can’t remember, something that helped me a lot, already when I was sick and then afterwards, when I was getting better.”

            “And you think I can help?” [I ask.]

            “Yes, because you were the one who told me the name of those flowers one day.  In the flower bed, over there”—he points toward the far side of the courtyard—“there are some pretty little red and white flowers, you planted them there, didn’t you?  And one day I asked you what they were but I wasn’t able to remember the name.  And yet I used to think about those flowers all the time, I don’t know why.  They’re nice to look at, and when I was so bad off I would think about those flowers, and it did me good.  So I was in the neighborhood just now and I thought, I am going to ask Madame Michel, maybe she can tell me.”

            Slightly embarrassed, he waits for my reaction.

            “It must seem weird, no?  I hope I’m not scaring you, with this flower business.”

            “No, not at all.  If only I’d known the good they were doing you…I’d have planted them all over the place!”

            He laughs, like a delighted child.

“Ah, Madame Michel, you know, it practically saved my life.  That in itself is a miracle!  So, can you tell me what they’re called?”

            “Yes,” I say.  “They are camellias.”

            He stares at me, wide-eyed.  A tear slips across his waiflike cheek.

            “Camellias…” he says, lost in a memory that is his alone.  “Camellias, yes.”  He repeats the word, looking at me again.  “That’s it.  Camellias.”

            I feel a tear on my own cheek.  I take his hand.  “Jean, you cannot imagine how happy I am that you came by here today.”

            “Really?”  He looks astonished.  “But why?”

            Why? Renee says to herself.  Because a camellia can change fate.  (292-5)

“So Good To Be Here”—Jesus’ solo: 

            We must walk down the mountain to the valley below.

            There is no time to linger, you have so far to go.

            Though the way may be weary and your spirits be low. 

            Walk on, walk on into the valley.

            Though some will mock and shame me, and death will fin’lly claim me,

Yet I will rise anew to go before you on the way.

Now the sky turns to midnight in the valley below. 

Soon the storm will be breaking and the fierce winds will blow.

Through the dark and the lightning lies the way you must go,

Walk on, walk on into the valley.

When you must face tomorrow with all its pain and sorrow,

My love will burn within you so your hearts will know the way.

From the peace of the mountain to the trials down below,

You are called now to labor, be the seeds God will sow.

Bring hope, bring healing to that world of woe.

Walk on, walk on into the valley.

Walk on, walk on into the valley.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©  2011

 Mark 9:2-9

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.