It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going.

It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going

a sermon based on Acts 2:1-21

given at Palm Bay, FL on Pentecost May 27, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

Growing up I had a real cool Great Grandfather around. Grampa Lou was actually in the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and had wonderful stories to tell about the Bay Area where I grew up.

He passed away when I was in my late teens, and I have missed him all these years.

I liked Grampa Lou a lot, he was a gentle man, tender and kind, a good male role model in my family.

Grampa Lou was married to my great grandmother, Nanny, another sweet soul. They were not rich in material things but they had a wealth of love that they showered on us when they drove down for visits from Oakland to San Jose where we lived.

I’ve mentioned before that alcoholism had an adverse affect on my childhood and my family. And the best gift Grampa Lou and Nanny brought was that love and sweetness into a home that was pretty tense for us four kids. And they always seemed to bring us little presents too, like a real old time silver dollar, or something sweet to eat.

One of my favorite gifts – which looking back I imagine they may have just grabbed from their desk to have something for me – was a magnifying glass.

I have it here. I usually keep it at my desk at home.

It’s one of the few things I have from my boyhood, and I treasure it. I think it was given to me by Grampa Lou when I was about eight or so.

It’s a simple thing really. But it has meant a lot to me, when I see it vibrates still with the loving hands that handed it to me decades ago.

Over the years I have used this little tool to examine leaves and sticks, and bugs and rocks, and my skin and lots of other things. It was fun as a kid to be surprised at what the world looked like magnified. There’s a fascinating beauty in the details of creation.

If truth be told, though, at eight years old my fascination with that tiny stuff made bigger lasted about a minute, maybe two.

What I actually loved about the magnifying glass when I first got it and for a number of years, was something I learned pretty quickly. In the Bay Area the sun shines bright a lot of the time. And a boy with a magnifying glass quickly discovers the joy of focusing sunlight into a beam, a beam that could start and ignite smoldering sparks that could with a bit of breath or wind be fanned into flames.

I am not sure Grampa Lou knew I’d be using his retired fine print reader to spend hours joyfully melting and burning stuff, but that’s what I did.

After I started this sermon, at home, I stopped at this very sentence right … now … and I went outside and burnt something for the first time in years with the magnifying glass. I was hoping to maybe insert a funny note about reliving my childhood for a moment hunched over a blinding bright spot on a piece of white paper as it smoked and I burned a crude “S” into it.

But instead something unplanned and wonderful happened, which is often the case with plans I make about sermons. I took the magnifying glass and a match and some paper outside. The match burst into flame under the magnified sun light – which was expected (but after all the years still pretty cool).

Then I focused the beam on a torn piece of white sheet paper from the recycling and I noticed something I never noticed as kid. The sky itself was projected onto the paper as I focused the beam. Right there on the white sheet I could see the sun’s round sphere surrounded by the puffy clouds it was peaking out of and the patch of blue it seemed to be hanging in – I could see the sky moving across the paper like a movie in real time.

How I never noticed that before is beyond me. But this was a new thing, a part of creation was reflected down onto my little piece of experimental paper.

I was so surprised that I suddenly felt one of those thin places where God’s presence seems more palpable. That wasn’t planned but boy did it feel great.

Feeling inspired, instead of an “S” I burned a “J” for Jesus, it just seemed the right thing to do. (See, here it is).

Forgive me, but there’s bit of word play about my little experiment at home. See it occurred to me that I was magnifying the sun (S–U–N) to create a “J” for Jesus in order to talk about magnifying the Son. S–0–N.

Because in the end for Christians, or I should say in the beginning, in the story today, it’s about magnifying Christ, The Son, in our lives.

And I didn’t just choose to point out I like to ignite things with a magnify glass for fun. See the metaphor in the story for the Spirit’s flames of love, is fire, right? Well wind and fire.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit … (Act 2:1-4 NRS)

You know how with a little spark from a magnifying glass, and a bit of breath, you can turn the smoldering spark to a flame?

That’s what we can hear the Pentecost story to be about. Only the flame is love (God is Love, right?) and the wind is the Spirit stoking, breathing on us, until our spark of God – of Christ in the world – bursts into flames of Love.

We know the flames and wind are metaphors because the story indicates they are: “a sound like the rush of a violent wind … Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them … ”

If you think about it wind and flames are a common images and symbols in the Bible for God making appearances on earth. Theologians call an appearance of God a “theophany” it’s a Greek word that translates as “God appears.” We don’t have an equivalent word in English, but that’s okay I like the sound of the word theophany. God appears.

And God does appear in the Bible often as wind or fire.

The world begins in Genesis with a theophany of God as wind, the breath of God, “ruah” a feminine part of Yahweh, sweeping over the dark void and creating the world.

Perhaps the most famous theophany is when God appears to Moses in the flames of a burning bush.

And the flame theophany motif continues in the Exodus story with God appearing as a pillar of fire at night before the Hebrews as they roam through the desert.

God is also experienced a number of times on mountaintops in fire and smoke as we hear in some of the songs and Psalm today. 1

The New Testament has flames in stories of God appearances too. Obviously in today’s text but there’s a more subtle one we might not even think about; it is in the gospel of John (21) the story of the last time that Jesus is seen begins with him beside a fire preparing to feed his followers.

I really like that image of Jesus. If you have ever sat around a camp fire you know how meditative they can feel. Fires can seem like portals to Sacred, even carry us to a thin place where we are more aware of God’s presence. Fire is a thing that can inspire awe and fascination.

And that is, in part, why it is a really good metaphor for how we experience love. Love is Scared and inspires awe and fascination.

And fire, though a thing, can like love, provide comfort when we are cold or in the dark. Fire like loves warms us.

And love like fire heats up our passion for individuals, but also for causes to help others.

The flames of love motivate us to not only be enamored with a spouse or partner, but, to have passion for others, those who are in need of care or protection or freedom from oppression or bondage.

Fire also symbolizes the Light that God is in our lives. The light of fire, like the Light of God, glows and attracts, it can show us a pathway, and make our way safe. It acts as a beacon on a hill for both warning us and guiding us. And we are, of course, supposed to be shining lights ourselves, lights that are not kept under a bushel.

faith. Love can also burn away that which troubles us in the faith, even hate we may arrive with or been taught. Jesus tells us that all of scripture hangs upon the commandments to love God and others.

We can hear that to mean that anything that is not love is consumed by love, so any – ANY– hate talk we hear in Christianity can be placed to the test in the flames of love.

If anything in the church or doctrines or scripture that is interpreted unlovingly cannot survive that test, it turns to ashes in flames of Love. Jesus’ teaching is that Scripture does not hang upon hate, it only hangs upon love.

That’s the testing ground not only for Scripture, but for Church doctrine, for tradition, for televangelists, for any sermons – even mine. If it’s not love oriented, it’s not God oriented.

I have mentioned before that I don’t believe in a torturous hell created by God. I have always rejected the idea that there are awful flames of hell for anyone.

But what if the flames of hell we hear about, are the flames of love surrounding and comforting, guiding and calling, those who are in need of love in order to temper a loveless or hateful life. A God who is love might just create that.

A soul in need of love getting surrounded by God who is love fits my experiences of God, who is not just as we say each Sunday, good all the time, but is also love all the time.

That God’s flames of “hell” could be flames of caring compassionate love like those in the story that alight on Jesus’ followers on Pentecost. Pentecost is a story of Theophanies. The flames alight on individuals and that is important and a different way of understanding God than other texts suggest.

For example there is a story in the Hebrew Scriptures where the Prophet Elijah does not die but ascends to heaven, and is caught up in a fiery storm. I am struck by how Elijah’s story is both sort of like the Pentecost story, but also the opposite of it.

Second Kings chapter 2 tells us that Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire and a whirlwind to heaven.

Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. (2Ki 2:9-11 NRS)

Elijah’s goes up in a whirlwind firestorm. The fire of God goes with him.

Jesus we are also told goes up, but instead of the wind and fire of God taking Jesus away, the story is that Jesus sends both down as theophanies to be experienced by and rest upon his followers.

One of Christianity’s gifts to theology is said to be centralizing the idea of the incarnation of God in humans. And the Pentecost is about just that. We are to be theophanies ourselves, in that God appears through us.

The flames of God are not just for the likes of Elijah in heaven after death. The flames of God can grow from sparks of God in each of us as they are fanned by the breath of the Holy Spirit into flames.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Mary’s song “The Magnificat” which is found in the beginning of the Book of Luke. The Magnificat is, as the name sounds, about magnifying God in our life. Mary sings that her “soul magnifies the Lord …”

John the Baptist later at the start of Luke portends that the One who’s coming will “baptize … with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The author of Luke wrote The Book of Acts of the Apostles, the story of the beginning of the church where today’s lesson comes from. And he begins The Book of Acts with Jesus’ followers being, as we heard read, baptized with the Spirit and with fire.

And the incarnation part of the story can get lost sometimes in all the flash and whirling, but, the reading today is in a very real sense a second coming of Christ in and through us.

The Holy Spirit fans the spark of God in us to a flame of burning love and in so doing our souls magnify the Lord.

God is incarnate in us and we are to burn with desire to help others, we are to be Light in the world, and we are to help Christ save the world literally, not just later in heaven, but now on earth.

Pentecost is the birthday of the church. But we do not blow out flames like we do on our birthday cakes, God huffs and puffs and makes the flames of love glow and grow in us – and stay lit.

May all of us let our sparks be fanned to glow and grow as flames of love lit in the here and now for as long as we live.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. Some of the information on fire in the Bible was derived from a website called Biblestudytools.com. Which can be found at this link: http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/fire.html

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Blessed and Blessings

Blessed and Blessings

a sermon based on Luke 24:44-53

given at Palm Bay, FL on May 20

by Rev. Scott Elliott

A young father enamored with his darling little boy asked his son “Do you want to know a secret?

His son replied “Uh-huh”

The dad lifted the boy up and whispered “I love you.”

The little fellow leaned back in his dad’s arms and said “Want to know a secret?”

His father smiled and replied “Uh-huh.”

The boy looked his dad in the eyes and lovingly whispered “I’m Batman.” 1

We have lots of pictures of our two boys, while they were growing up, dressed as Batman.

When we discussed favorite super heroes the boys always chose Batman over Superman explaining that Superman was boring, because he couldn’t be defeated really, so it didn’t seem fair. But Batman was a human, and did all these cool things as a life-like person, a human using human powers and earthly resources to do good.

Superman the character can be heard to be a bit like how many folks think of Christ as an other worldly man sent to save humanity. He’s a super nice guy with superhuman, actually other worldly, supernatural powers.

A lot of people see Jesus that way, like a superman. He doesn’t leap tall buildings or run faster than trains or stop bullets but it is thought by many that he could have. He is understood by many to have lived on earth with supernatural powers. He bends the laws of nature to help the others.

He changes water to wine.

He walks on water.

He stops storms.

He makes food quantities multiple.

He heals the sick.

He raises the dead.

Like Superman Jesus can be said to have used his powers for good. Jesus heals the sick. He feeds the poor. He forgives, even the sins of the despised and of criminals. He loves everyone and lets everyone into his community.

It is perfectly wonderful to believe that Jesus did these things with supernatural powers. It really is. Many, many folks do and many of us here do.

But some have trouble believing that Jesus was superhuman, with supernatural powers and it is actually okay to believe he was fully human, like us. It really is. Many folks think of the superhuman nature of Jesus as metaphor and story. This is an okay view too. It’s not a sin.

You see, what matters is not the natural or supernatural nature of how we view Jesus. What matters at the end of the day is that we the church, the community of Jesus’ followers, get that we are now the Body of Christ and that WE don’t have superpowers– as humans beings we cannot bend the laws of nature.

But all the same, as the Body of Christ in the world now we must still find ways to do as Jesus did and use what powers and resources we do have for good.

We are kinda like Batman in that way, right?

Using our human capabilities and resources for good we must be Christ on earth who heals the sick.

Using our human capabilities and resources for good we must be Christ on earth who feeds the poor.

Using our human capabilities and resources for good we must be Christ on earth who forgives, even the sins of the despised and of criminals.

Using our human capabilities and resources for good we must love everyone and let everyone into Christ’s community.

Everyone.

We are told in today’s Lectionary reading that on Jesus’ last day of being here on earth in a single body (in other words in the final days before the Church itself became the Body of Christ) that Jesus explained the role of the Messiah to his followers and then told them “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations …”

“Repent” means to turn, to change direction, from sin.

“Sin” means missing the targets God aims us at. Which are righteousness, justice, love and peace.

So as Jesus Followers we are to proclaim to the world a turning and re-aiming and shooting for the targets God aims us at. The target of justice, righteousness, love and peace.

And we must also proclaim that the sins, all of our missing of the target God aims us at, are forgiven.

And it’s not just our sins, it’s not just Christians’ sins, or the follower of Jesus’ sins that we are to proclaim repentance and forgiveness for Jesus declares “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.” ALL NATIONS. That my friends, is everyone. And that my friends is GOOD NEWS.

And the story gets better. This is Ascension Sunday, as you can tell from the text (and the sermon so far) it’s a commemoration of our stories of the last day that Christ occupied a single body on earth.

After telling the good news that we are to proclaim in Jesus’ name to all nations repentance and forgiveness of sins, Jesus then took his followers to the town of Bethany “and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.”

To bless the theological dictionary notes is “to praise, petition for divine favor, wish someone well, convey favor.” 2 It can be understood to infuse something with holiness and to ask and provide the hope of God’s favor

Jesus is about to leave – to ascend– and he blesses his followers. This is not the first time Jesus blesses. In fact the whole of his life, his living and teaching love was and is a blessing to all nations. Before he was killed Jesus was a blessing!

Indeed he was so much of a blessing while alive that his life set into motion vibrations of a “new song” that has resounded ever since. Jesus’ way of love and courage, of care and compassion, of inclusiveness of all are considered divine favors bestowed on us all.

And His resurrection is a blessing derived from those vibrations, that new song of God’s action in the world through us. God incarnate in Christ continues on. He lives on in us as Church, as people who step onto the way he trail blazed, the Way God’s light still points us toward and aims us at.

And so in life and at Easter we are blessed. And here’s the thing, at the Ascension we are blessed too. Jesus lifts us his hands and personally blesses his followers in the story – and we need to hear that as Jesus blessing us as followers now, too.

One blessing we are given – which at first may sound odd– is that once Jesus leaves, his followers can no longer look to the one Christ embodied person to physically lead and do Christ’s action on earth. Right? Jesus of Nazareth is ascended, not physically here.

When Jesus of Nazareth ascends we have to look to one another, to us gathered as Church, acting as Christians, to physically lead and do Christ’s actions in the world.

From Ascension Day onward it’s no longer up to one man– It’s up to all of us.

Professor David Cunningham puts it like this:

Ascension Day is not so much about the physical act of ascension, or even about the reuniting of the incarnate Word with the unbegotten Source. Rather it is concerned with the divine act of making space so that the mission of the church can begin. So long as God was in the world in human form, all eyes and hearts were fixed there. Jesus’ ascension makes space for the disciples to turn their gaze upon the world … The Word must like Shakespeare’s “well-graced actor” leave the stage … 3. (Prof. Cunningham)

In that last part, Prof. Cunningham is referring to the Duke of York’s line in Shakespeare’s Richard II. I am not sure the good Reverend knows that the quotes actually goes “the eyes of men after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next, thinking his prattle to be tedious …”

We are the Body of Christ that for two thousand years has had to follow the act of Jesus, the first Body of Christ we celebrate and revere. And people have long thought of Jesus as a superman. Our image of him is pretty much as not one of us. It tends to be of someone way better than any of us can ever be.

Even those of us who do not believe he was more than human tend to see him as well graced and seems a virtually impossible act to follow.

After Jesus “the well-graced actor” ascended the disciples as actors in the world do end up prattling a bit, and some appear to be a tedious, but, you know what? They did not let that stop them. We are told that “While [Jesus] was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”

And you know what his followers did? First “they worshiped him …” Then they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”

And here is the part I want us to focus on, from then on we are told “they were continually in the temple blessing God.” I’m going to read that again so we don’t miss what the very last words of the Book of Luke instruct us what the followers did, and are to do: after Jesus left “they were continually in the temple blessing God.”

Jesus blesses the followers. And after he ascends the followers begin “blessing God.” Blessing God.

Whether we think of Jesus as having supernatural powers or not, we know the followers of Jesus are natural folk, like you and me.

We are in super hero parlance not like Superman or other supernatural powered heroes, but like Batman, humans using human abilities and earthly resources to bless God.

We are to bless God. That is, we praise and provide favors and wish God’s way well, and convey favors for God in others and so upon God. In short, we are God actors on earth, by being the Body of Christ. We provide God with blessings.

We do this by continuing and keeping Jesus’ Way, by courageously bringing love into the world, opposing oppression, tending to those in need. It is no accident that Jesus teaches in Matthew 25 that we tend to Christ, to God incarnate on earth, when we tend to others.

We try to do just that here at Riviera United Church of Christ. We have a church that you can walk into and know that you will never be told God doesn’t love you as you were made. Indeed every week we are reminded that God loves us all, always and forever. That’s the heart of Jesus’ Way.

A part of that heart is not just hearing we are loved, but actually being love ourselves, going out into the world and showing love as individuals and as a community. We try to do that.

We have missions and ministries, like the garden out back that grows food for those in need, like a fund that helps the least amongst us, like a green team that educates on good stewardship of creation, like connecting youth with community through the performing arts. These are just some of the things we try to do.

We started putting together a plan for the church last year that was officially adopted last month.

One of our ninety-day goals was to “support Riviera Elementary,” something we have done in the past but have really started trying to “amp up,” to find even more ways to help.

As a part of this last year I contacted a fellow named Bob Barnes who started “The Children’s Hunger Project” to help send food home over the weekend for kids from homes with a need for food. This a project we have become more and more involved in. So much so that in the past ninety days our space has been used to facilitate the packing of back-packs, and people from the congregation help do the packing with Phyllis Rhinehart leading the charge.

These acts of love have been a blessing to the children, to the community, and make no mistake about it, it is one way we are in the temple blessing God. And I want you to hear how much of a blessing our pursuing this goal has meant. I received a letter from Bob Barnes which included these wonderful words:

Dear Rev. Elliott,

We are coming to the end of the school year and the end of a remarkable year for The Children’s Hunger Project.

Less than a year ago, we were at zero without even our 501 (c) (3) approval yet from the Internal Revenue Service. We end this school year providing food packages to 317 elementary school age kids each weekend at five local elementary schools. With a lot of luck with our fundraising efforts, we plan on feeding 1,000 kids each weekend during the upcoming school year that will start at the end of August. We hope to be providing food packages for kids in at least ten local elementary schools.

Since you know our “story”, Rev. Elliott, you know we should not even have to exist. The fact that we feed so many kids that might otherwise go hungry is a sad commentary on many levels. …With [a] focus on the innocent child, we will go forward and do what has to be done knowing that there are wonderful people such as you and remarkable congregations with a deep social conscience such as Riviera United Church of Christ.

Many of the kids we feed at Riviera Elementary School would not be fed had it not been for your congregation. Many of the kids we feed at other elementary schools have their food packages put together at our packing sessions each Thursday at Riviera United Church of Christ. What a blessing you and your church have been to our kids.

Your church, Rev. Elliott, has been instrumental in helping The Children’s Hunger Project on so many levels. Your money feeds some of our kids. Your building allows us to be much more productive in our packing operation. Your church volunteers are the backbone of our packing operation. More important, though, is the example you set for the religious community in recognizing that, while it is admirable to raise money to feed hungry kids “somewhere,” it is critically important to remember that there are hungry kids in our own back yard. When I speak with other church leaders I use Riviera United Church of Christ as a perfect example of a local congregation recognizing and addressing a significant hunger problem in their own back yard.

Rev. Elliott, please share this letter of appreciation with your congregation so that your congregation members will know of the remarkable part their church plays in feeding hungry kids in our community.

I hope we have earned the opportunity to continue the warm relationship between Riviera United Church of Christ and The Children’s Hunger Project.

On behalf of children who have no voice, THANK YOU.

Sincerely, Robert Barnes

On the day of his ascension Jesus blessed his followers … and his followers in turn blessed God by continuing to be the Body of Christ on earth as followers of Christ, acting as Christ in the world.

We are continuing that two thousand year old tradition at Riviera UCC.

And as you just heard, it matters much.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. I got this basic story out of Reader’s Digest April 2012 Issue and added my own descriptive words to it.

2. Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, 1996, “bless/blessing,” p 32.

3. Feasting on the Word, Vol 2, Year B, p 522.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

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WOW! Let’s Sing a New Song.

WOW! Let’s Sing a New Song.
a sermon based on Psalm 98 1-9 (NIV)
given at Palm Bay, FL on May 13, 2012
by Rev. Scott Elliott

There’s a joke that goes something like this: God created the world in the six days and rested on the seventh. On the eighth day God started to answer complaints.

One of my favorite authors, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, writes about two people on the Exodus with Moses who were looking down and complaining as the Red Sea parted and they never looked up, just looked down, and grumbled even more as the path Moses took them on became muddy and wet. They complained so much they missed the entire marvelous miracle God provided through the parting of the red sea.

Complaints are an old, old song of humankind. At one time or another we all have sung some negative verses of that song. And some of it is justified. It’s not that complaining is always a bad thing, but, life is not half empty. And we spend a lot of our time pointing out that it is, when the Truth is that life is way more than half-full.

Yet still we spend a whole heck of a lot of time letting God know things seem half empty. God can handle the kvetching, the complaining, but so much negative thoughts are not good for a soul or us as a whole, and they do not reflect the truly positive goodness that surrounds us most of the time.

It’s good to notice there are positive and good things; and it does us good to let God know we know things are not half empty, but, actually and truly way more than half full!

That’s what the Psalmist is talking about in our Lectionary reading today. He calls us to a NEW song to God. And the reason given for this new song is: “O sing to the Lord a new song for he has done marvelous things!”

I spoke last week about the awesome nature of creation. If you recall, I went on a bit about the beauty of the sky here in Florida. But I also mentioned many other things, the ocean, animals, people, the earth.

Our physical world is an absolutely incredible place, and there is no doubt whatsoever that God has done marvelous things in creation. Truly! Just take time to look. From the big to the small and all there is in between on this magnificent rock we inhabit, there is way more positive, than negative going on.

And when we notice that, it’s enough to sing a new song about – in fact a whole parcel of new songs – about God’s marvels just in the physical world of creation.

But the good news today is that there is more than the physical world to be singing new songs about. And the Psalmist in Psalm 98 is pointing out for us a whole other set of marvels that God has done, marvels that we ought to add to our reasons for singing a new song. The marvels referred to in the text are about the salvation that God has provided. We are told to:

Sing to the LORD a new song, for [God’s] has done marvelous things; [God’s] right hand and [God’s] holy arm have worked salvation … The LORD has made … salvation known [,] and revealed … righteousness to the nations. [God] has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

I chose the New International Version translation because it better captures the “salvation,” aspect of the verses, but the New Revised Standard better translates love, it calls it “steadfast love.” God loves us always.

God saves us, God gives us salvation known and revealed, and it’s not just to us as Christians, but comes in the form of righteousness to all nations.

And that word “salvation” can pack a lot of negative baggage, because of the way it is often tossed about in some forms of Christianity as meaning a special exclusive rescuing by God for those who believe a certain set of doctrines or beliefs.

But that is decidedly not what this Psalm is referring to. For one thing it is in the Hebrew Scriptures written long before Christianity, Biblically it can be heard as references to the Exodus, where God saves the Hebrew people from Pharaoh leading them from lowly bondage and oppression to freedom and the Promised Land.

God acts Exodus-wise.

Always.

God works toward saving the oppressed. God works toward good. God calls us all to our best. In the Exodus story, Moses is called to lead. The Hebrews are called to leave. And Pharaoh is called to let the people go.

All those calls are about making the world better and lives better and it’s done through justice and righteousness – and God’s steadfast love; and salvation is the result.

Understanding that God is the God of salvation is ultimately knowing God as the One who saves us, individually and collectively, from the lesser self we would otherwise be.

Moses’ life was bettered by the Exodus-wise God.

The Hebrews lives were bettered by the Exodus-wise God.

The world and even creation was bettered by the Exodus-wise God.

And this is the God that so long ago the Jewish religion came to love and worship and sing songs to. It’s the same God WE worship and sing to.

Psalm 98 can also be understood to reference the salvation given when God leads the Hebrews out of Babylon and back to the Promised land.

Christians can hear this Psalm talking about salvation for sure, because it does, but it is not about exclusive believe-this-way-or-that-way salvation, it’s God working in the world for peace through love and justice and righteousness everywhere, everyday, every moment.

Let’s not sing the old song of complaints, let’s sing new songs about the God who saves, who cares, who has steadfast love for everyone of us. For me, for you, for all our neighbors and enemies too.

At the end of the sermon listen to the Psalm as I read most of it again and hear how it calls us to rejoice in that SAVING work.

God has done that work and is doing that work and it, like physical creation itself, is a marvel and it deserves a new song.

A professor of mine at Eden seminary, Rev. Dr. Clint McCann, is one of the world’s leading scholars on the Psalms – and I love his work. He writes that: “Psalm 98 presents justice and righteousness as the essence of the worldwide policy that God wills and enacts.” 1.

There are some tough things that go on in the world. Very difficult things.

Some things happen as a part of nature, people get sick and hurt and die. God does not will this. “Things happen,” and when they do we are held tight in the arms of God, who mourns and weeps with us. But, we are also called to the Light, to our best, to our salvation, even in the darkest of times.

And the wonder of that call is not that we are expected to “buck up” and deal with harm or loss, as if it’s ours alone to suffer with, but, that God not only suffers along side of us but calls us to be loved and tended to and understood to be Christ in need by others acting as Christ in love.

Jesus calls all Christians to tend to those in need, to be God’s physical and real presence in providing care and love to those in need – all those in need, whether it is family, neighbor, stranger, prisoner or enemy.

And it is not just when we are hurt by events by nature that God suffers and holds us and calls others to respond and come to our aid.

Indeed it is when such things happen outside the natural flow, when humans intentionally hurt, that God not only suffers and holds us and calls others to help, but, yells out for the intentional hurts to stop. Justice and righteousness is the essence of the world-wide policy of God.

God opposes oppression and injustice.

God opposes humans choosing to hurt each other and creation.

God moves to save us and creation from those who would willfully cause injury to ourselves and one another and creation itself.

And God does the saving through us.

Humankind hears the call. And many people respond and become God incarnate in the world through human action.

For example, God moving through humans has not just called for and shown compassion for those in bondage, but, has moved to oppose slavery and has made many efforts toward saving creation from it.

God moving through humans has not just called for and shown compassion for the discriminated against but, has moved to oppose it and made many efforts toward saving creation from it.

God moving through humans has not just called for and shown compassion for the impoverished, but, has moved to oppose it and made many efforts toward saving creation from it.

God moving through humans has not just called for and shown compassion for creation, but, has moved to oppose its abuse by pollution and over use and has made many efforts to save creation from it.

Now we all know that there is still a lot of abuse of humans and creation going on. But think about it, two thousand years ago governments and elites did not care much about the consequences of the things I listed. Slavery, discrimination, poverty and pollution were accepted and even promoted. But God suffering with humans and creation called out and moved humans to hear and care and act to change the world. And God still does this.

We have been rescued from a lesser world by the Exodus-wise God, the God who saves.

And the most important thing is that we are still being rescued. We are still being saved from our lesser being. God is not just still speaking words, but still speaking so we do God’s Holy and Sacred work in the world, saving humanity and creation.

Every Advent we discuss Mary’s song that she sings when she is with child. The song is called “The Magnificat.”

“Magnificat” is Latin for “Magnify” and it’s the title of the song because Mary sings a new song about magnifying God – that’s the Christian call. Mary sings:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name … He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty … (Luk 1:46-55 NRS)

God sides with justice and against oppression. God works for righteousness and justice. God takes care of those in need of care. God does all of these things by being magnified in us (God is magnified in us!). And governments and elites in history may not like that, but, God just keeps on working and saving the rest of us and them too.

Pharaoh’s way loses.

Babylon’s way loses.

Caesar’s way loses.

Slavery’s way loses.

Jim Crow’s way loses.

Sexism is losing.

Heterosexism is losing.

And we are called to stop poverty and pollution and depletion of resources and love will overcome those things as well. It will. That is what we have to sing and rejoice in a new song about!

Because, you see, in the end love wins and will always win. Because God desires it. God is love. That’s how powerful love is, IT IS GOD! That’s why it wins.

It’s a struggle.

It takes awhile.

And it takes us being God’s agents helping those in need and opposing oppression, but God through us can and will make sure that love wins.

And we need to sing, and sing, and yelp sounds of joy about that. And so does all of creation. Love winning is a good and great and Holy and Sacred and Godly thing.

And so, God be praised! The world is being saved.

John Holbert in Feasting on the Word puts it like this:

God is to be praised because the Sovereign is active, working justice, and righteousness in the earth, and calling God’s worshipers to join the cosmos in praise of that constant activity. 2

So, the good news is that the important things we sing the old complaint songs about are not just heard by God, but in the end ARE being taken care of by God, so, that love wins.

In our personal suffering God weeps with us and cares for us and holds us and mends us by being present, most especially in others called to care and help us recover.

We are to be the loving arms of God that hold the hurt, nurse the sick, welcome the stranger, and feed the poor.

Love wins when we tend to others in need.

In our collective suffering as people and as creation, God weeps with creation and holds it and mends it by being present, most especially in us called to care for the earth and oppose oppression of humans and other living things – and the earth itself.

Love wins when we tend to creation and the earth in need.

The bottom line is that WE can be God’s good news … and that those before us have been that good news.

And it has mattered.

And so,

The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations … all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

[Let us] Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn– shout for joy before the LORD, the King.

Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.

Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let [us] sing before the LORD [who] comes to judge the earth … in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

WOW! God cares, God Loves, God Saves us and all of creation. Let’s sing a new song! To God let us all compose a song of joy.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES
1. McCann, Clint, New Interpreters’ Bible, Vol IV, p. 1073
2. Holbert, John, Feasting on the Word, Vol 2 Year B, p 487.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Click Here to Listen to Scott’s Podcast.

Unseeable Love

Unseeable Love

a sermon based on 1 John 4:7-21

given at Palm Bay, FL on May 6, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

During his long career as a famous pastor at New York’s Riverside church, Harry Fosdick spent many hours counseling students from nearby Columbia University.

One evening a distraught young man burst into his study and announced, “I have decided that I cannot and do not believe in God!”

“All right,” Dr. Fosdick replied, “But describe for me the god you do not believe in.” .

When the student finished sketching the god he didn’t believe in Dr. Fosdick said, “Well, we’re in the same boat, I don’t believe in that God either.” 1.

I have heard modern day theologian Marcus Borg tell similar stories about students in his courses describing the god they didn’t believe in, and when they were done Dr. Borg counseled he didn’t believe in that god either.

I recently read that more and more people are asserting that they do not believe in God, and that ironically it has been the recent surges of Fundamentalism and Creationism and their angry, punishing, and exclusive god that has driven many of those folks to flee from God, their idea of God is to many unacceptable and unbelievable.

By now it should be no surprise to those of you who have been here for even a little while that I consider myself an atheist to an angry, punishing, and exclusive god. I personally do not believe that god exists.

I don’t believe in many of the details religious leaders and churches in the media paint onto God. So like Dr. Fosdick and Dr. Borg – and I assume lots and lots of other progressive theologians – I often tell Atheists that the God they don’t believe is one I don’t believe in either.

After I left the church as a teenager I thought long and hard on the matter of God. For those twenty some odd years no matter how long or how hard I considered the matter, I basically could come up with only two general truths (1) God is beyond our ability to comprehend and (2) God is love.

Or put another way God is incomprehensible, and God is love.

After I joined a church, and now have years of prayer and study and even three years of a great seminary education to consider, I have to honestly report that I remain at the same conclusions I drew before: God is incomprehensible and God is love.

And while this may not make total sense, my experiences since rejoining the church have bettered my life and deepened my faith and made it oddly clear that the more one studies and contemplates God, the more God increases in both incomprehensibility and love.

Today’s reading touches upon both that God is incomprehensible and that God is love when the author of 1 John writes “No one has ever seen God…” and when he writes that “God is love.”

Ironically the reason no one has ever seen God is not because God is literally invisible or transcendent (that is removed from us), but rather because God is, as Peter Rollins observes, the opposite of nowhere and anonymous, we cannot see God because God’s God-ness is too much for us grasp. God is so everywhere and so overwhelming in presence, power and properties as to be what Dr. Rollins calls “hypernonymous.” 2.

We simply cannot take all of God in, making God as a whole incomprehensible, unseeable. No words can convey what Divinity ultimately is. Silence is as good as words, some argue, better.

In fact as I read Dr. Rollins I hear him argue essentially in favor of this silence claiming it as a sort of A/theism, because whatever claims we humans make about God, no matter what, each and every claim is, and always will be, much less than what God is. So ultimately he argues we cannot believe in what we believe in God.

Kinda cosmic to consider. In this sense, the lesson today it is quite literally true, when it claims “No one has ever seen God.”

Interestingly in Exodus the God given name for God from the burning bush to Moses is “I AM WHO I AM.” (Exo 3:14). The great “I AM” that is, could not be seen, by even Moses. Often in scriptures we find that God’s face cannot be looked upon.

The Apostle Paul refers to this inability to see God as well. Speaking of Love, in perhaps the most famous chapter in all the world on Love, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that “now we see in a mirror, dimly,…” and that “now I know only in part.”

We can hear this in Christianity – as well as other religions of the world – as a recognition that humans do not and cannot, when all is said and done, understand much at all about God.

There is this great vastness of Mystery. We know far, far less than we don’t know. If God were represented in a model by the space of the whole church building the portion we know about God we can imagine occupying no more space than the place on our bulletins with Jesus’ face.

We know so very little, We cannot comprehend God. Again, as 1 John noted 2000 years ago, “No one has ever seen God.”

And let’s face it, set aside for a moment what we know and don’t know about the vastness of God in toto, in just this little God soaked corner of creation, science for all its rules and laws and deductions and discoveries and brilliance knows relatively little in relationship to what it does not know about the material world.

If we imagine the physical universe as the size this sanctuary we probably know in relationship to that what amounts to the size of Jesus’ face on your bulletin. It’s a start, but, barely much at all in comparison to what’s physically out there from the large to the small.

So both science and religion, when all is said and done, end at mystery and awe.

While science has just a small amount of knowledge of creation and the laws of nature, religion has just a small amount of knowledge of God and God’s nature – namely details about the two general truths I mentioned, God is incomprehensible and God is love.

Given these truths, worship of God and following God done right, has us continually in awe at the mystery and in love with love.

I posted a note out on a pole just outside the front door months ago that reads “For one minute please stand in silence and look at the sky and contemplate how awesome life is.” That’s a moment (if you take it) of intentionally practicing awe.

I don’t know how long it has been since you have looked up at the sky, but, I am forever in awe of the sky in Florida; day or night, dawn or dusk, the sky is a marvel here.

Wispy ever changing clouds and soothing blue from horizon to horizon on non-stormy days.

Bulky, gray and dark, wooly clouds roiling, flashing, booming and down-pouring on stormy days.

Sunrises and sunsets are tinged with the most amazing array and hues of pinks and reds and purples and oranges and gold and yellows.

And half of our time on earth here stars like pin pricks in an inky satin blanket decorate the night sky often with the moon in its various phases that I like to imagine as little sliver smiles, half smiles and the full laughing mouth of God.

From both scientific and religious standpoints the daily dome above our heads, the thin layer of atmosphere is nothing short of mysterious and beautiful.

And that’s just the sky. The ocean and the earth and the plants and the animals and humans are incredible too. All of it. There’s so much out there every day that can just take our breath away. If we stop and pause, it makes us in awe.

As I said, when it comes right down to it we don’t really know all that much about all that stuff, really, it’s just a part of the incomprehensible God that, as Paul puts it in the Book of Acts, “we live and move and have our being in.”

So we glimpse God…well little bits of God…when we pause and focus in. But no matter what it’s just an itty bitty glimpse, we cannot take in much, let alone all of God. It’s beyond us, unseeable, and not because God’s not there, but because God is everywhere soaking everything overwhelming us with Sacred presence.

And one of the forms of Divine and Holy presence we experience is love. We are soaked with God. And the Holy soaking is so obvious to us in love that for us the primary nature of what we name as God, the great “I AM” IS love.

And think about it, whenever love is involved we experience that there is always something more than those who share the love involved. A couple IN love, parents and their children IN love, people acting IN love to help a stranger, all of these “IN loves” involve more than people. They involve the very God we live and move and have our being in.

In other words, love is more than the sum of the total of the loved ones. That “more than-ness” is what we Theists call God.

God is manifest in love, so that when we love we understand and experience bringing out more of God’s presence in the world. The presence of the Divine and Holy is intensified in love. We can feel it, it moves us, it calls us to seek more of it. What’s more each and every person is a source of love.

And it is a bit ironic too that 1 John notes that those who claim to love God, cannot at the same time love God and be in hate.

Those who claim to hate any human and love God at the same time, are not, as the text notes, telling the truth.

Because the manifestation of the God that we name, yet not comprehend, is love, wherever there is love there is God, the great I AM. There is not love in the act of hate.

And God is in all people so hating anyone, amounts to not loving a bit of God – and all bits of God matter much.

It’s not possible to love God and hate a person. So it is that 1 John claims that “ those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their bothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

Love, being God, is not in the act of hate.

Gary Charles, one of the writers in the Feasting on the Word commentary explains it like this:

Since no one has ever seen God, and since the nature of God is love, our love is not self-generating but comes to us as an unsolicited and undeserved birthing gift from God, Human love is not some self potential that we must only learn to tap. For John, human love is always derivative of God’s love. 3

Another commentator put it more succinctly “no love, no gospel,” pithily observes William Self. I like that. And that is actually how my Atheism toward the angry, punishing exclusive idea of god pushed in the media by some always boils down: “No love, no gospel.” which means no God in that hate stuff. 4.

God is love. That is two edged. It means all love is God oriented. And it also means that anything non-loving is not God oriented. That’s why the text notes that if you hate your sister or brother, you are a liar if you claim to love God.

God is in all humans, all of our sisters and the brothers; and in all love. God is not in unlovingness. The act of hate of another is hating a part of God.

And we don’t just get that from today’s Lectionary reading. Jesus filtered all of the law and the prophets through love. In Matthew 22 Jesus basically claims all of scripture hangs upon the commandment to love God and others…“No love, no gospel.”

And the brothers and the sisters referred to in the text today are, of course, not limited to blood line brothers and sisters, or even Christian brothers and sisters. As Claudia Highbaugh notes:

The John…text makes a radical affirmation that those who say “I love God,” and hate their bothers or sisters are liars.” There can be no question here about relative notions of relationship. In no way can there be a denial about this statement. Whether your “brother or sister” is related by blood, or a neighbor, or an in-law, or among recent immigrant population, you cannot love God without loving the persons who are in your line of vision.” 5

Which leads me to some final words about communion. All of you in the line of my vision and each other’s vision are, at this church, welcome and gladly invited to the Lord’s Supper.

It’s God’s, the One who is incomprehensible and love at the same time’s, table.

Following 1 John’s theological claims, here at Riviera United Church of Christ, ALL are considered brothers and sisters that are loved and all are entitled to choose to a partake in Communion. Theists, Atheists, other religions, young, old you name it, this table is yours – if YOU choose to want to share in it. And if not, that is respected as well.

We love the Love that is in you, the love we name God and we respect you just as you are as a bearer of love by whatever name you might call it.

We welcome as much love as we can get at this table. It’s the table that remembers Jesus’ open table and community and love.

And because God is not just love but also incomprehensible, at this table somehow more than just we are present at it.

The love we share as we share in the bread and the cup is more than the sum of all of us and this place and the things involved. We are in awe of that more-ness, that great incomprehensible I AM.

And being in awe of that is how we aim to end up one way or the other in worship done well. And the more we focus on the I AM, the more-ness in the world, like stopping to look at the sky, or admire any other part of creation, or help someone in need, or mindfully take communion, we sense the omnipresence of Holiness of God.

The bread at the Lord’s Supper can be understood today as a metaphor for the earth, given to us, as a gift from God. The earth is broken and with love we can aim toward new life, one day mending the breaks through our call to be Love in the world.

The cup at the Lord’s Supper can be understood today to be the spirit of God, incomprehensible and loving, poured out for us… but, tasted only in part, not fully known. The leakage of more God out for us, a Way of love, a cup of the new covenant created by our remembering that Christ (God incarnate in the world) lives on pouring more love into our broken world.

At this table, in a few moments, we will purposefully turn towards our incomprehensible God (who is love).

Know that whoever you are at this very minute just as you are – you are welcome and invited to join us as we abide in God as God abides in us…we can be awestruck together as one IN love.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Hodgin, Michael, 1001 More Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking, p. 149.

2. See, Rollins, Peter, How (Not) To Speak of God, 2009. I base a number of the ideas in this sermon Rollins’ notions of (what I name in my head) the super presence God.

3. Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol 2, p. 469

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid. At 470

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Click Here to Listen to Scott’s Podcast.

We Are God’s Children

We Are God’s Children

a sermon based on 1 John 3:1-7

given at Palm Bay, FL on April 29, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

We ARE God’s children.

I read this story recently: A grandfather and granddaughter were sitting and talking when the young girl asked, “Did God make you, Grandpa?” “Yes, God made me,” her grandfather replied.

A few minutes later, the little girl asked, “Did God make me too?” “Yes, He did,” the older man answered.

For awhile the little girl studied her grandpa, and then her own reflection in a mirror. Her grandfather couldn’t help but wonder what was running through her mind. At last she spoke up. “You know, Grandpa, God’s doing a lot better job lately.”

Well, despite the little girl’s observation I think God’s has done a good job on creation all in all. On children for sure, but even on us grandparent-aged folk.

That Easter exists is to me proof of the general goodness of creation and humanity. Easter is about remembering and honoring a peasant, prophet, sage – a child of God who went around preaching and practicing love. A person God raised up for us to live on continually bringing love into the world.

In Jesus’ story Easter means that we remember that love wins. God and humankind have kept that victory glowing for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I’m talking about Easter because Christians actually keep seasons on their official calendars a lot longer than Hallmark and the secular world.

Christmas season, most of you may have figured out from that song about the “partridge in the pair tree,” lasts twelve days.

Well, Easter season lasts even longer, it’s fifty days long (it ends on Pentecost which means fiftieth). That’s fifty days when we consider and especially celebrate this season of hope and its great promise of the truth: that love wins.

Easter remembers that earthly power could not crush or stop the love that Jesus taught and spread. Jesus went about taking down all the barriers to community that he could. Everyone is loved. Everyone. And on Jesus’ Way that we follow this still holds true, everyone is to be loved.

Because love wins on Easter, Peter notes that God commands we are to call no one profane or unclean.

Because love wins on Easter Paul notes that in Christ there is no Jew and Greek, there is no longer slave and free, there is no longer male or female.

See, no matter what the barrier, no matter the social construct love is supposed to trump it and knock it down.

In Christianity – done right – Love wins. Always. Our call as Christians is to make sure this happens. Not just to those we like – and not just at Eastertide, but to everybody all year long.

Today’s reading starts with: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God; and that is what we are.” These words may not sound like it now out of the context of their rough and tumble dangerous time for Christians, but they are extremely powerful … “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God; and that is what we are.”

These words were written in a culture where to call someone your father was to make them the patron to which you owed allegiance. It was very much like calling a mafia don, your godfather, only not illicit-gangster-like but in the everyday world back then. Your patron father took care of you and you did him favors when he asked, you owed him your allegiance.

Caesar was the highest godfather-like figure of all who were conquered by Rome. Those who didn’t do as Caesar wanted, those whose allegiance were not given to Caesar as godfather were killed or otherwise disposed of.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God; and that is what we are,” means first and foremost that God was to the early church the Godfather of Christians. God was to whom they owed their allegiance, not Caesar. God was the One who took care of them and for whom they did favors; not Caesar. Caesar – earthly powers – are intentionally up front and in the open, taken out of the power loop in the early church.

Christians bowed to no human as their patron. They had one patron and it was God the Father. It was a dangerous thing to claim.

That was way back in the day. Today we tend to just hear “Father” as a common name for God, even a name with sexist baggage as Christianity later became enmeshed into the patron system itself and sadly, shamefully, women went from equals and leaders in the community under Jesus and Paul and early church communities, to second class members of the church.

Calling God “Father” seems now different in meaning, but, we should hear it this morning as a very endearing name – Jesus started it by calling God “Abba” which means “daddy” or “papa.” Jesus Followers have kept up the tradition every since, though mostly with the more formal Father.

And we should hear calling God, “Father” back then in this reading also as a sign of resistance (at the risk of arrest, even death), a protest by our early church brothers and sisters against calling Caesar (and anyone else) Father. Calling God “Father” was to take a stand against allowing allegiance to go to anyone but God. There was no godfather but God the Father. And the deeds those early Christians did were loving deeds in allegiance to their Father.

We don’t live in a time and place where we think claiming God as our patron, our Father, will get us into much trouble. But actually it can. If we pledge our allegiance to God alone we’d get in some trouble. We’d find it very unpatriotic to not pledge allegiance to our flag. Some of us would have a hard time not giving allegiance to one political party or another, or to a doctrine, or a denomination, or even to the Bible, a book written by men and compiled by the later Roman Empire’s elite church men.

Christians can pledge allegiance to such things, but, not above or in conflict with an allegiance to God who is love. All earthly powers and things must be taken out of the ultimate power loop and we must bow to no human, no institution, and no thing as our patron or idol. We must have one patron our Father, God.

A highschool friend of mine on facebook posted this quote two weeks ago: “What you worship has a great influence on what you are….“You become like the god you worship.” (credited to Jack Hayford). This is critical insight, because as the verses for today note we are children of God.

The God we follow is our Father and we are God the Father’s children.

We do indeed “become like the god we worship.” We are our God’s progeny, in the creative sense, in that God made us, but also in the who-we-worship sense, we make attributes of the God we worship our attributes.

If we worship a god who is angry or punishing or exclusive about who “he” (sic) loves then we become angry or punishing or exclusive in the love we have.

We need look no further than angry televangelists or angry exclusive churches whose followers heap hate and anger on those they don’t agree with, those they believe their god hates and brings punishments upon through natural disasters, death, illness, or whatever.

Such punishments are understood to be handed out by the god they worship to stop whomever it is their god heaps hate and anger on, which is always – uncoincidently – those whom the followers hate.

The aim of these children of an angry god, at least in this respect, is not toward love, but toward claiming they are the right ones, they are the elite saved ones, and that there is anger and punishment for the non-elite, those who do not believe as they do.

If we worship the God of Jesus in the Gospels – who is indisputably Love and loves everyone – then WE aim toward Love and love of everyone. We become children of a loving God in that respect. And we become like the God we worship, we aim toward love.

When humans saddle God with attributes that are unloving toward anyone (and I mean anyone) that Love aim is thrown off.

This is why Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God and others.

This is why Jesus insisted we love our enemies.

This is why God commands Peter to call no one profane or unclean.

This is why Paul teaches in Christ there is no difference, we are all one.

When we worship God as Love heaven breaks in.

When we put contingencies on Love hell breaks loose.

The early church proudly brought in the vast rainbow of people Jesus taught them to welcome and embrace. The rainbow of people God made.

This church (RUCC) since before I got here had its arms out wide swooping in this great rainbow spectrum of people. Since Jesus and the early church did this; why would we as church not welcome, love and honor ALL too, just as they are?

Well we do try to do this! Our rainbow buttons and banners along with the words “God’s Love Has No Strings Attached” evidence this. Our new “God loves everyone … no strings attached” with everyone holding hands stickers and buttons do this too.

Because of the broad embrace we hold out to the public many people think of this church as an open welcoming church of radical love. And it is not limited to heterosexual, non-heterosexual, whites, people of color or male and female. Accepting all, taken to its logical conclusion, means accepting into and a part of Jesus’ community: everyone.

Folks from other churches and religions are welcome here. Atheists, liberals, conservatives, unbaptized, Greeks, Jews, Slave, Free, Males and Females, you name it, we embrace them as Jesus and the early church did. God’s communion table at this church reflects this, everyone is invited, no fence is up. All may partake.

The UCC motto is “Wherever you are on life’s journey you are welcome here.” “Wherever” means you are welcome as you are, no strings attached. At this church we take that very seriously because we have indeed become like what we worship, children of the God with the rainbow breadth embrace, whose love has no conditions.

There is a cost to being children of the God of the wide embrace. Some do not want the embrace to be that wide, and they decide worshiping an all embracing God is not for them. It is not because they are not welcome here, but because they understand the welcome to be narrower, they are not comfortable with embracing all whom God made.

And while there is that cost, there is an even greater benefit. Lots and lots of people love knowing that there is a church filled with followers of Jesus who like him reject no one, no one. And we are trying to spread love in places many churches reject, but God does not.

I get compliments all the time from people I meet on the street; from people on the internet; from other clergy, on how awesome it is that this church is so courageous in following Jesus and being so loving trying its best to hold its arms out as wide as Jesus’ – as wide as God’s.

People visit our website locally and from all over the country. There have been over 1300 page visits so far this month and we have over 900 visits to “A God Vlog” a few weeks-old presence we now have on YouTube.

And locally new people visit our church, and I am happy to report a number do stay. There is a list in the lobby with at least fourteen names of wonderful people interested in coming to our new member meeting next week. How awesome is that? Those meetings are a powerful place to learn that the God of the wide embrace has many children.

We are gathered as one today because we are meeting to discuss and decide our plan for the future. The plan proposed has been worked on for over a year by our planning team and has been influenced and modified since publication in January. Jay did a wonderful presentation at the annual meeting and we have had three meetings and conversations in the congregation to gather input and make adjustments.

The plan has been filtered through this idea that we are children of the God who is love; the God who has arms out wide swooping in the entire rainbow spectrum of people, the God whose love has no strings attached – as the Bible puts it, the God of steadfast love that endures forever.

The plan is an effort to move into the future with an eye toward doing as Jesus and the early church did, welcoming, loving, and honoring ALL just as they are, spreading Love around through words and deeds, growing, while taking care of people in need and worshiping God, our Father who is love.

The vision statement changes in the plan the present vision statement from “Thinking openly, believing passionately and serving bolding” to include our Love center. The plan proposes our vision statement be modified to read “RUCC exists to experience and share Christ’s unconditional love by: thinking openly, believing passionately, and serving boldly.”

I love that statement.

All of you should have seen the plan by now. It’s a big arrow and that new vision statement is at the point of the arrow. It’s a summation of our purpose as the loving God’s children: “RUCC exists to experience and share Christ’s unconditional love by: Thinking openly, believing passionately, and serving boldly.” That’s beautiful stuff.

There are lots of other words on that arrow as you have seen. But the arrow itself points at five “needs” we feel deeply burdened by and uniquely qualified to meet in the context of being a church full of the children of God, whose Father is love, the God who has arms out wide swooping in the entire rainbow spectrum of people, the God whose love has no strings attached.

We listed five amazing general needs to pour Christ’s love into.

The arrow points at progressive theology, that is understanding love as the center of faith and action, and allowing open thinking. Theological questions, concerns and ideas are as welcome as every person who walks through the doors of this building.

The arrow also points at ministries that arise out of this love centered open thinking progressive theology. They are: non-traditional ministries, multi-generational ministries, crisis-needs ministries and cultural-diversity ministries.

All of these are needs we believe we can work to provide, through Christ, as the children whose Father is love – the God who has arms out wide swooping in and loving that broad rainbow spectrum of people; the God whose love is steadfast and endures forever.

It is through all of us acting as conduits of love, of God, that has made the congregational meeting to consider this plan a reality and the hope of its implementation a real possibility.

“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God[?]…

“And that is what we are.”

AMEN.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Click Here to Listen to any of Scott’s Podcasts.

No to Hate, Yes to Peace

No to Hate, Yes to Peace

a sermon based on Luke 24:36b-48

given at Palm Bay, FL on April 22, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

This past week, including today, is “National Days of Remembrance” of The Holocaust.

None of us likes to do it, but we must from time to time turn our attention to the darkness that haunts humanity. We must turn and look it in the face, because its face is us. Humans doing terrible things to one another. It’s a part of our history, it’s a part of our lives even today. And we must look into the darkness to see what we must NOT do, and what we MUST oppose, and where the light is amongst the shadows, where Love lurks in evil acts.

The Holocaust was still occurring only a dozen years before I was born. It occurred in many of your life times. It IS NOT ancient history.

It is our history and it is ugly, and it is scary and it is full of meanness and evil, it is full of incomprehensible acts hate.

And that evil and meanness and hate grew and grew and nearly took over the world as many looked on, or looked away, or felt un-empowered to stand in the way.

Holocaust museums exist around the nation. I visited one two weeks ago on Maundy Thursday during Holy Week. Such museums exist to help us remember and to thwart similar evils from rising in the world; to keep us aware that meanness and evil and hate can happen and grow still.

The genocide in the first decade of this century in Darfur is an example of this in all of our lifetimes.

Let us not forget either that the apartheid in South Africa was not too long ago.

Indeed, our own nation has been disfigured in the distant, and not so distant, past by the genocide of Native Americans; internment in concentration camps of Japanese-Americans; and the brutal enslavement, discrimination and racism toward African Americans, not to mention antisemitism, sexism, heterosexism and a number of other isms present in our nation.

That a smoldering danger of further disfigurement lays below the surface still is evidenced by the 2012 accosting of an unarmed teen lawfully walking down the street that led to his death less than a hundred miles from here.

Trayvon Martin was first approached and accosted, not because he was doing anything wrong, but because he was African American. And in the end he died, he became a tragic victim of events that in one way or another leave an acrid smoke that rises out of smoldering racism.

I bring the terrible tragedy of Trayvon Martin up because the flames in the ovens of The Holocaust began on the streets as smoldering racism and antisemitism and heterosexism and suspicion and accosting long before Hitler and his followers fanned those smoldering sparks into the flames that are now burned into our collective memories.

Jewish, Roma and Black human beings were treated as disgusting impurities in humanity by the German culture.

Poles and other Slavic people were consider second class citizens.

Homosexuals and the disabled were not considered as worthy as fit heterosexual Germans.

Socialists, communists and Jehovah Witnesses were looked down upon as social misfits.

All of these types of human beings were placed in lower status and in very low strata, beneath the other Germans – suspect and mistrusted, denigrated and bullied.

Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party came along and played to those prejudices, pitted “real” German-beings against those considered lesser beings in the minds of the culture.

The superior German, Aryan race, was, they claimed, meant to dominate the world and cleanse it of the impurities. As a result Jews, Romas, Blacks, Slavics, mentally disabled, physically disabled, socialists, communists, Jehovah Witnesses and homosexuals were discriminated against. And many, many of them eventually systematically deprived of jobs; businesses and property; rounded up; imprisoned; enslaved; tortured; worked to death; or executed.

At LEAST twelve million, MILLION, human beings were slain in the name of German superiority. Smoldering sparks of racism and antisemitism and heterosexism burst into flame and seared and scarred history and humanity with evil acts that haunt us even now more than sixty years later. They will – and should– haunt humanity throughout time.

Two weeks ago at the Holocaust Museum, I could not help but think what it was like. I could not help but consider that I might have been a victim. My family’s oral history has my veins flowing with blood that is Jewish and Black. My personal history has had me labeled a homosexual.

My belief as a follower of Jesus that we must tend to the poor and disabled and make sure all have enough food and care to survive has had me judged a socialist.

It is very likely despite my mostly German blood and this very white veneer, that I would have been deprived of jobs and property, been rounded up, imprisoned, enslaved, tortured, worked to death or executed.

Think about this today: is there something in how you were born or raised or that you ARE that would have had you inside the gates in stripes in a concentration camp? Or someone you know.

My guess is that a lot of you all might be thinking you could have been or would been, or you know someone who would have. It IS a terrifying thought. And that’s just role playing based on what we are.

Not what we have done . . .or at least what I fancy and pray I WOULD do if I were in a Nazi Germany-like country. Namely stand up and protest. Be a Christian who loudly proclaims –risk or not– that we are to believe in love and to love and oppose the injustices of such a nation.

In Jesus’ name I pray and I hope that is what I’d do.

I hope that is what we’d all do.

But maybe we wouldn’t. Maybe we would say “Oh it’s just those others that they are rounding up.” Or “Let’s not rock the boat.”

This could happen, because there were Christians in Germany. Like us they thought they were a Christian nation.

Yet not one institution – including the Church – in Germany protested the rampant racism and antisemitism that evolved. People, as a whole, went along with it.

If every Christian in Germany had done as Jesus did and protested, The Holocaust would not have happened. At Easter I repeatedly mentioned how Love Wins! .. and it will, and does, but only when we stand up for it and spread it around and protect others with it.

Even one person standing up and proclaiming love can change the world. That is after all what Jesus did to the violent Empire of his day, the Roman Empire.

Rome conquered Palestine the place Jesus grew up in two thousand years ago. Rome treated most people in Palestine as lowly second class humans and many as expendable.

And Rome crushed anyone who protested, who advocated any sort of revolution.

Jesus protested the way in which most people were treated and treating each other. He advocated a revolution of love. A way of living and being in which every single person is honored, cared for, equal and loved. Rome arrested Jesus, sentenced him to death and killed him because he stood up for love, spread it around and protected others with it.

The Bible calls us to act as Jesus did, to do what we can to stop hate with love.

And it’s not just the Bible that calls us to this, The Holocaust does too.

People often ask where was God in the Holocaust?

God was there, God is there now. If we listen we can hear God. God is calling, pleading, yelling, screaming, out to us to be repulsed by it; to loath it; to never want it to happen again; to shed tears at the loss and hate; to oppose such oppression and to side with and care for the victims, to envelope them and protect them with love, which is God. God’s speaking there alright.

We can hear God in our desire to not face this stuff now or ever again.

We can hear God in our heartbreaking when we think on it. When can hear God in the stories of the innocent victims.

Rick is going to read us one such heartbreaking story. It’s called “Daniel’s Story.”

RICK READS “DANIEL’S STORY”

My name is Daniel. In 1933, around the time your grandparents were kids, I was six years old. I want to tell you the story of what happened to me and my family. And, what happened to millions of other kids and families too. I grew up in a country called Germany. It was a beautiful country, and we were proud to be Germans. My father fought in the first World War and won a medal for being a hero. I wanted to be a hero too.

There were many Jewish families in our town and everybody got along. We liked our town, and we were very happy there..My father owned a hardware store. Sometimes, he’d let me go there. I really liked helping him out. And he liked helping me. I was just learning to read and every day we spent time reading together. I loved picking out the words I knew.

My mother was real pretty. And, she made the best chocolate cake in the whole world.

Then there was Erika – I called her my favorite sister. She’d giggle and say, how can I be your favorite sister – I’m your only sister!

Right after that, Erika and I, and all the other Jewish kids, were kicked out of old school. Now we had to go to a school for Jews only. It wasn’t so bad, but we missed our old friends.

I was fourteen when the Nazis made all German Jews wear yellow stars. I felt pretty angry. My mother tried to make me feel better. “Look, now you have a pretty star just like Daddy,” she said. But, I didn’t feel any better.

Germany had been at war for years now, but this time there would be no medals for Jews. Jews didn’t belong anymore. Pretty soon, we didn’t even have a country. The Nazis took our house and just about everything we loved in it. They were sending us away, and there wasn’t much we could take with us. As we walked to the train station, we tried to stay calm and proud. We all wanted to cry, but we didn’t. We didn’t say anything either – we couldn’t say a word.

They put us on trains and took us far away. They made us live in a special neighborhood surrounded by fences and barbed wire. This was called a ghetto, and we couldn’t leave. Soldiers with guns guarded the gates. It was strange and scary – so many new people – like Gypsies from Austria and Jews from all over Europe, speaking so many languages.

We were forced to live in a small room with two other families. No one ever had any privacy. We hung bed sheets to separate us. I really missed having my own room like I used to. We all missed so many things.

We suffered in this ghetto for three years, but at least I was with my Mom, Dad, and Erika. Many other children weren’t so lucky. We were all put to work – even Erika and I – from sun-up to sundown, and we never had enough to eat. The ghetto was dirty and smelled awful. Bugs and rats were everywhere, and people were always getting sick. It was like jail. The Nazis treated us like criminals. Even so, we tried to live a normal life. The grown-ups still tried to teach the children, and we tried to be good Jews.

One morning I saw a boy lying on the street. He didn’t move. I said a prayer – for him and for us. I felt like the Nazis had stolen our lives. When we felt we had nothing left, we shared our memories and dreams. Father said, “No one can steal your mind and your heart; what we think and feel makes us human.” Many people came and went. Some died. Most were taken away by the Nazis, but we never knew where.

Then it was our turn to go. The Nazis forced us into a long, dirty freight train. There were so many of us nobody could move. I was scared I would suffocate. We had no place to sit. Even worse – no place to go to the bathroom.

That terrible train ride seemed to take forever. Suddenly, Nazis yanked open the doors, and we were blinded by the sun. I will always remember that awful smell in the air. Guards surrounded us. They took all our things. “Men to the left! Women to the right!” they shouted. Dad and I hugged Mom and Erika before they were separated from us. The Nazis made us throw our clothes into a big pile. My clothes were the very last thing left from home. The Nazis made us wear prison uniforms, but they were the criminals.

We were in a concentration camp with all kinds of people that the Nazis hated. One whole part of the camp was for Gypsies; and there were many children there. Dad and I had to sleep in a bunk with eight other Jewish men. We were all starved and beaten and forced to work like slaves. Dad and I shared the few crumbs we had – and we always looked for Erika and Mom. We missed them more than anything.

One night a boy told me that thousands of men, women, and children were gassed to death every day, as soon as they got off the trains. We learned that Mom and Erika were killed the day we arrived. I felt my heart would break. I cried and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

One day, the Nazis took us out of this place and back to a camp in Germany. It was no better. We were only there a short time before American soldiers came. They opened the camp and we were finally free! My father and I barely survived. We were among the lucky ones. Mom and Erika were not. I’ll always remember them. Whenever I see children playing, I think of my little sister. I hear her giggles and see her smile. Whenever I see a mother holding her child’s hand, I remember my own mother – and the last time I ever saw her – holding Erika’s hand.

My story is only one of the many that happened to children all over Europe. Over one million children were killed by the Nazis. We must remember so that no one will ever hurt people like this again. Listen to the stories of others who were children when all of this happened. Listen and remember. 2

That choking up and those tears we felt are God’s as much as ours.

And it’s not just in the victims’ stories that we hear God. We can hear God in the stories of those who loved the hunted neighbors by hiding and protecting, feeding and caring for them, lying and sneaking them to safety.

There is a story I have shared with you before about an act of love. The story is retold by Rabbi Lawrence Kuschner. Chris is going to help me read it.

CHRIS: A light snow was falling and the streets were crowded with people. It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of [Kushner’s rabbinic students had a great-aunt Sussie who] had been riding a city bus home from work…

SCOTT: When SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner.

CHRIS: [The rabbinic] student’s great-aunt watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face.

SCOTT: When the man next to her noticed that she was crying he politely asked why.

CHRIS: “I don’t have the papers you have. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.”

SCOTT: The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. “You stupid [dog],” … “I can’t stand being near you!”

CHRIS: The SS men asked what all the yelling was about.

SCOTT: “[Darn] her … My wife has forgotten her papers again! I’m so fed up. She always does this!”

CHRIS: The soldiers laughed and moved on.

[The] student said that her great-aunt never saw the man again. She never knew his name. 3

Nameless people do wondrous acts all the time in the Bible. Nameless people have done such acts throughout history.

They all had names, of course, their namelessness makes it an action all of us nameless in history can do. The action of Love. WE MATTER MUCH. What we remember is not the name but the action and that people just like us did – and can do – amazing acts of love in the world.

For Jesus’ followers that love has a name. It’s Love incarnate, we call it Christ.

May we all do what needs to be done in the name of love to stop hate, to extinguish smoldering racism and antisemitism and sexism and heterosexism.

No demeaning jokes.

No bully name calling.

No belittling stereotyping.

No other-wising.

No excluding people based on how God made them, or the God they worship, or even whether they worship God or not.

Those are the “not dos,” but there is “yes do” stuff too. We must love – we must work toward excluding hate, opposing hate and stopping hate.

Let there be no more Hate.

Let there be no more Holocausts.

Please dear God, no more.

The reading today reports that after Easter Jesus stood among his followers “and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

Christ is here now saying the same thing. “Peace be with you.” There is only one way PEACE is going to happen. We – human beings – have to bring love and justice and peace to all.

We must be peace makers.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

AMEN.

Ceremony of Lights for the Victims of the Holocaust – adapted from work of Rabbi Adam Fisher

RICK: We will now light a candle and pause a moment for the victims of the Holocaust.

SCOTT:

6 Million European Jews. (CHIME)

3 Million Soviet prisoners of war (CHIME)

3 Million Polish Catholics (CHIME)

Over half a million Serbians (CHIME)

A quarter of a million Roma (CHIME)

80,000 German opponents (CHIME)

70,000 Disabled Germans (CHIME)

12,000 Homosexuals (CHIME)

2,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses (CHIME)

Unknown number of European and American Blacks (CHIME)

Please join in the responsive reading 4:

SCOTT: The human spirit is the light of God.

ALL: As we look at these lights, let us imagine over 12 million candles

CHRIS: Each with name of a human being

ALL: Each one signifying a unique and precious soul

RICK: Each a person who struggled and had hope, each a part of a family

ALL:They worked, studied, took walks. They laughed. They cried.

CHRIS: They did the ordinary things of life.

ALL: Celebrated births and weddings, mourned at funerals.

RICK: All were a part of humanity, each one was a separate individual created by God.

ALL: Each one suffered, each one killed in the name of hate. Each one loved in the name of God.

SCOTT: May they rest in peace.

A: May we learn to live in peace. AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0008_0_07841.html

2. Daniel’s Story – abridged version of the work of Carol Matas fictional story based on real life events

3. Kushner, Lawrence, Invisible Lines of Connection, (1996) p. 81

4. This was adapted from a candle lighting liturgy by Fisher, Adam in An Everlasting Name: A Service for Remembering the Shoah

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Thomas, the Only Doubter?

Thomas, the Only Doubter?
a sermon based on John 20:19-31
given at Palm Bay, FL on April 15, 2012
by Guest Preacher, Jay Pierce

On the church calendar today is the 2nd of the 7 Sundays of Easter. The Easter season culminates in celebration of Pentecost, this year May 27th. For this second Sunday of Easter the lectionary brings us the well known story of Thomas. This story is so well know that it has lead to the common usage of the phrase “Doubting Thomas” as a synonym for the word “skeptic”. This story has always been a comforting one for me as it opens the window to not blindly accepting the Word, but a call to explore it and reach our own conclusions that it is true.

For those like my self that come from a background with much training in science and math, Thomas’ Missouri like “show me” attitude seems perfectly logical. “You saw what? I want proof of that!”

We carry this type of examination out today on every technical advance. For example, the theoretical physicist comes across a new discovery, peers validate the theory, and the experimental physicists set out to observe it.

But Thomas comes from a time well before the Scientific Method was invented and drilled into us as part of our formal education. So let’s look at the available information about Thomas so that we can better connect with him.

Thomas does not get any stories in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He gets one reference in each book, a remarkably similar passage that merely lists all 12 of the disciples. Acts is no more instructive with the one mention of Thomas being an attendance list. But John, written using different source material than the other three gospels and Actsi, records Thomas in four distinct occasions. In three of these he is quoted as part of a greater scene. These give us a small but direct glimpse of Thomas.

In his first appearance in John 11:16, Thomas shows tremendous strength and loyalty, rallying the hesitant disciples behind Jesus. The hesitance is that Jesus is preparing to go into Judea to raise Lazarus from the dead. In the last trip to Judea there were attempts to stone Jesus. Thomas says “Let us also go, that we may die with him”ii. So we can see that the later skepticism is not generated from being a weak follower, there must be another cause.

The second appearance is at John 14:5 during the Last Supper. Here Thomas is confused about Jesus’ statement that the disciples already know the way to heaven. Thus he asks Jesus for clarification: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”iii Jesus responds with a very powerful and often quoted response: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know my Father also.”iv

From this second quote we can add inquisitive to zealous as adjectives that describe Thomasv. But it is still not much to go on. Therefore, we have to turn to other sources that the scholars have thankfully found and investigated for us. Most of this information comes from the Gnostic Christian verbal traditions that eventually were recorded. We can’t say for certain that they are precise history, but still are interesting in building a rough characterization of Thomas.

One of the curious things from today’s passage is the reference to Thomas as a twin. This reference never is clearly explained anywhere within the Bible. There is some research that indicates his name was not actually Thomas, but rather Judasvi. In early Greek Christianity, his name is Didymos which is both a word for “twin” and a proper name in Greek. Some references use the name Judas Thomas to clarify the situation. The “twin” nickname becomes more popular than Judas as amongst the disciples there was also Judas the son of James and the eventual traitor Judas Iscariotvii.

Although not a certainty by any stretch, there are Gnostic references that imply and directly link Thomas to his twin. The 3rd Century Acts of Thomas point to Judas Thomas being the twin of Jesus himselfviii. In the Book of Thomas the Contender, a conversation between Jesus and Thomas recorded just before the ascension of Jesusix, the twin relationship between the two is also implied.

The Gnostic stories have Thomas going on to India to spread the good news of Jesus Christx. His preaching is still evident today in southern India where the St. Thomas Christians are still a vital communityxi. The message of Thomas is one that western society certainly has not accepted en masse as he taught abstinence for many if not all worldly pleasures in order to focus on entering heaven after death. His preaching’s are on the extreme edge of this school of behavior, even recommending abstinence from “relations” within a marriage in several places in The Acts of Thomasxii. In the end, this tradition has him dying as a martyrxiii.

Now that we have a glimpse of whom Judas Thomas may have been and the stories that have developed regarding him, let’s return to John’s passage and reexamine it. In setting the scene, early Easter morning Mary Magdalene has gone to the tomb to find it empty only to have the risen Lord come and comfort her. As Jesus requests, she reports her experience to the apostles.

As this week’s passage starts the disciples are still holed up in their hiding place on Easter evening. Jesus comes to them without disrupting any of their house fortifications to protect themselves from the potential of Jewish mobs seeking them out.

Jesus easily identifies himself and gives instructions and the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out those instructions. However, for reasons unknown, Thomas was not with his fellow disciples that evening. When the events of the evening are recounted to him at some point within the next week, he does not accept the story at face value. Instead he demands the Lord come again if he is to become a believer.

One week after the risen Jesus’ first appearances, exactly where we are today in relation to the Easter celebration, Thomas has his request fulfilled as Jesus returns to the disciples again and singles out Thomas to provide the requested proof. Thomas immediately accepts Jesus who in turn then blesses those who believe but have not seen.

There are many powerful, interesting, and important aspects to this story. One point of interest is within the book of John, this story is Pentecost, the day the church receives the gift of the Holy Spiritxiv. Also, Thomas’ proclamation of “My Lord and my God” upon seeing Jesus is the only explicit confession of Jesus’ divinity in the book of Johnxv. Although these tidbits and others found in this passage are all interesting on their own academic merit, they are not the powerful portion of the story to everyday life.

On Easter Sunday, the two appearances of Jesus have some common themes. The first similarity we can see is how unbelievable the concept of resurrection is to humankind. Mary is shocked to see her teacher before her eyes. It is a wonderful expression of surprise but surprise it is.

After Mary fulfills the instructions of Jesus to spread the word to the disciples, where do we find them: Out preaching the good news? Empowered by the news to slip out of town so they could then begin spreading the word? No, they are still in their building hiding behind locked doors and windows. John doesn’t directly write they doubted Mary’s sighting. However, since Simon Peter and the other disciple that was with him Easter morning can testify to parts of Mary’s story the rest should be creditable to the group. Therefore it certainly appears through the lack of action from the group that John is giving us ample implications that the disciples doubted the first report they heard that Jesus had risen.

Most if not all Christians have our moments of doubtxvi. If we look back in time through Christian theology, we will see the thoughts of the times given to why Thomas doubtsxvii. The reasons assigned to the doubt are not as important to recognize as it is to recognize doubt has existed as long as belief in the resurrection has been recorded.

And not unlike the historical changes of the root of doubt, it is common for a modern individual’s type of doubt to change across their lifetime. When young, it may well be the rationalist dominating the questions, “Who has actually seen the dead rise?”xviii As time goes on and our faith matures, the possibilities of the power of God may allow us to overcome the rationalist. “Why is this not true, we don’t understand the scope of God’s powers” may take over ones perspective. Or perhaps one opens the window to belief through a less literal interpretation of the written words.

But most likely, the doubt returns. By middle age, a more mystical point of view is often setting in where the doubt may be thought to be coming from the dark shadows of the soulxix. And later in life it may well be “If Jesus is indeed God, how could he die and still live?” that is the question that drives doubtsxx. And let us not forget the moments through out life when the agnostic point of view seems to make more sense than anything; as we can’t figure out what is beyond what we can sense and prove to ourselves.

Reverend Elliott has referred to those moments where we can feel the power of the Lord close to us and the Spirit filling us as “thin” spots. If there are “thin” spots, then the moments where our doubt is at maximum may well be called “thick” spots. I know I certainly have experienced both and most likely you have too. Clearly Thomas and the others in this story are experiencing both, giving us firm theological understanding that our behavior is not abnormal, but the same as our earliest Christian ancestors nearly two thousand years ago.

Another common thread we can see in many appearances of Jesus is that He has come to them at times of great need. Mary is exceedingly distraught when finding the body gone and Jesus finds her and comforts her. The disciples are locked up and scared, and Jesus finds them to give them the Holy Spirit to go forward. And our most hardened doubter, Thomas, who was a zealous and courageous student of Jesus before the resurrection is pursued by Jesus to bring the light to him.

It matters not how doubting or why doubting or when doubting, when most needed He arrives and provides the “thin” place to comfort the soul. And not only does He come; He comes no matter the difficulty to reach us. The disciples locked doors and windows do not stop Himxxi. It matters not the surroundings of the moment as He comes to Mary out in an open, public space. And it matters not in the awkwardness of the moment as one of the disciples is naked while fishing in a later appearance. When in our thickest moments and when we are not in the least looking, He will find us.

For reinforcement this scene is repeated in other stories across multiple locations in the New Testament. As one example just in the next chapter of John we find Jesus appearing again to the disciples after a night of fruitless fishing only for Him to put an over abundance of fish in their net.xxii Could this story really be a story of soul searching of the disciples rather than that of physical fishing? Certainly the rest of John chapter 21 leads us this way.

And this is not all we see in common in these appearances. In the appearance to Mary, the first appearance to the disciples, the appearance to Thomas, and the appearance to the fishless disciples they do not recognize Jesus at first. In some of the stories, there is a significant, direct, and face to face conversation between Jesus and the other party. Yet in each story it takes time to realize it is Jesus that is presentxxiii.

This makes tremendous sense to me. The thin places where I have experienced the comfort of the Lord have come not through figures that were the image of Jesus. No, they have come in a choir soloist singing a stirring rendition of “Oh Holy Night” during a Christmas Eve service. Also in an otherwise vocal and active Alzheimer’s patient calmly and silently sitting alone with me and my father-in-law Bert as Bert’s life was nearing its final moments. None of these people had nail holes or cuts in their sides, but they certainly were a conduit between the Lord and me.

So let us rejoice in the message that John brings us here. It matters not if you doubt that the stories literally happened or not. It matters not if you even have thick places where you doubt the love of God. As John and others in the Bible point out, this is human nature, unchanged through the ages.

Most importantly, let us remember John’s critical point that when we need Him the most, God will come to us. And He may also come to us at times when we are not in need but open to His presence. And most of all remember that since His comfort and love may not be quickly and clearly recognized for what it is, try to remain open to it at all times, for it will come.

ENDNOTES

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, (New York: Oxford, Augmented Third Edition, 2007) 167 New Testament.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, (New York: Oxford, Augmented Third Edition, 2007) 172 New Testament.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, (New York: Oxford, Augmented Third Edition, 2007) 172 New Testament, John 14:6-7.

Herbert Lockyer, All the Men of the Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervon, 1958, from paperback combined with All the Women of the Bible) 327

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 528

Herbert Lockyer, All the Men of the Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervon, 1958, from paperback combined with All the Women of the Bible) 327

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 528-529

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 529

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 529

Herbert Christian Merillat, The Gnostic Apostle Thomas (Los Angeles: The Gnostic Society, 1997), Introduction, http://www.gnosis.org/thomasbook/intro.html

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 533-534

Herbert Lockyer, All the Men of the Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervon, 1958, from paperback combined with All the Women of the Bible) 327

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 401

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Volume 6) (New York: Doubleday, First Edition, 1992) 529

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400, 402

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400, 402

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400, 402

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 402

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, (New York: Oxford, Augmented Third Edition, 2007) 181 New Testament.

Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Westminster John Knox, 2008) 400

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Love Wins

Love Wins

a sermon based on Mark 16:1-8

given at Palm Bay, FL on April 8, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

My last summer of seminary was spent as an intern in my home church in Lincoln City, Oregon. It was a wonderful experience working with my pastor as a pastoral colleague, tending to the spiritual needs of people in a community I loved and left on my journey here to this community I deeply love.

That summer we stayed in the long empty parsonage used for storage and classrooms and an occasional out-of-town guest or two, which we had become.

My oldest son Jordan – whom I adore – was eighteen at the time and very much into making movies. He and some friends reunited that summer and worked long and hard on a film project or two.

One of those movies turned out to be an exceptional music video with a song Jordan wrote, sang, and mixed all the music for. The video is called “Danse Vampire,” and as the title suggests it’s about a vampire.

Somewhere during the filming (unbeknownst to me) Jordan got the idea to use a life sized prop coffin kept in the parsonage garage from our theatre days. He and a small crew of teens carried the coffin through the town’s back streets down to the beach (which alone must have been quite a sight).

They walked the coffin down a long set of stairs to the sandy beach and then repeatedly tossed it into the cold Pacific to capture it on video coming back in various ways, including riding on it like a surfboard.

Apparently someone looking out over the beach found this worrisome and called the authorities.

Pretty soon a state trooper arrived looking out at the boys from a nearby bluff with binoculars, and then he took his cruiser down the vehicle ramp and approached, not quite sure what to think.

I’m guessing it may have been his only ever teens-with-a-coffin-on-the-beach call.

I was not there, but, Jordan later reported that the trooper was very nice, told them a concerned citizen had called, and so he had to ask what was going on?

Jordan and the other teens stood around and explained what they were filming.

The trooper smiled, put his notepad back in his pocket, opened the cruiser door as if to leave, but then stopped, nodded toward the coffin and said “Um, I just have to ask. There’s nothing in there, is there?”

To which my son smiled and opened the lid showing the trooper that the coffin was empty.

I am sure the trooper was much relieved that the teens he’d encountered had not taken to playing in the surf with a real coffin. That moment when the coffin was opened to reveal it was empty had to be a relief.

I know that this may seem like a bit of an odd story to tell on Easter Sunday. But it ties into The Easter story.

One connection is that humans tend to be afraid of stories about people who are raised from the dead. Such reports tend to be relegated to dark tales of the likes of monsters, vampires and such. In our culture, as a rule, it tends to never be a good thing to encounter the dead or the undead.

And as we heard in the reading from Mark the women who discovered the empty tomb Easter morn “fled for terror and amazement had seized them.” Who could blame them?

Another connection to my son’s adventure is that the coffin, to everyone’s delight, is empty – that there is NO BODY turns out in both stories to be a good thing. In the Easter narrative it’s scary, but, boy does it turn out to be good news.

Easter is full of brightness and pastel colors, it has this buoyancy and exuberance to it. At its heart it is about the good news that Jesus’ Way of believing in love and loving carries the day. There’s so much hope in that good news. You see, the truth is, in the grand scheme of things – no matter what – Love wins. We don’t have to fear: LOVE WINS! There is no better news than that.

And actually that good news carries the week, Holy Week. A week that starts with a triumphant entrance into Jerusalem by Jesus on Palm Sunday. While earthly empire’s Pontius Pilate astride a steed marches in from one side of town with pomp and circumstance and a show of arms amidst a fearful crowd; Heavenly Empire’s lowly-to-Rome, Jesus of Nazareth comes in from the other direction on a lowly borrowed donkey amidst a lowly but joyful unfearful crowd.

Jesus is protesting the earthly empire’s way, and he demonstrates all through his life, the Heavenly Empire’s way.

The powers of our world lined up that day, mankind’s fear-mongers and power elite (Rome and its leaders), and Heaven’s love-mongers and non-elite (Jesus and his followers).

A clash was inevitable – and a clash occurred. Jesus continued his protest from king-on-a-donkey parade to disrupting the temple that was run by Rome and its selected elite.

Jesus stood up against the do-nothing-or-too-little-for-justice temple in protest.

Just as we heard a few weeks ago worship alone without efforts at doing justice, opposing oppression and tending to the needy is rejected by God, worship without acts to transform the world for the better is unacceptable. Jesus protests the temple’s unacceptable behavior and practices.

That first Holy Week Jesus stood up to Rome and the temple and let God’s transformative Way of love be known front and center.

Mankind’s fear-mongers and elite responded to Jesus’ protests with the cruelty and darkness of its angry justice, its peace through violence. Jesus is arrested, tried, mocked, tortured and crucified.

And by Friday the game is up. Jesus is dead. Crushed by Rome, mankind’s power elites, for daring to protest Rome’s way with God’s way. It’s a shadowy time. All the hope of Palm Sunday is dimmed to darkness.

That is earthly empires’ way. That’s how it goes in history when power elites run things. Love-mongers in one way or another are demonized, run down, and hanged out to dry and die.

God seems to have forsaken us when the worldly power flexes its muscle and rolls over those who challenge it. Jesus last words in the original part of the book of Mark are “My God. My God, why have you forsaken me.” 1. It’s a black and white horror film, it seems that those acting like monsters win.

And it didn’t start Holy Week for Jesus. After his first sermon mankind tried to kill him right there and then. But it is not until Holy Week that it finally succeeded. 2

And the fear-mongers, earthly power elites it would seem should have won the day. On Good Friday Jesus is dead. Make no mistake about it. He is killed, dead. Even his followers are sure of this and afraid.

Yet, as Rev. Robin Meyers points out the “heart of the gospel is ‘fear not.’ Our story does not end on Good Friday, but begins on Easter morning.” 3

Mankind’s elite way of running things, you see, doesn’t win! THREE CHEERS! God – and thankfully Jesus’ followers – refuse to let it. Mankind’s way is not the way of Heaven. When God’s Way of running things unfolds love-mongers are not run down and hanged out to dry only to die. Christ is raised up! Love wins!

Heaven’s Way IS full of brightness and pastel colors, it has a buoyancy and exuberance to it. Believing in love and loving carries the day. It’s the Easter Way. It’s the way of hope and love and justice, it’s the way of non-violent peace for all.

There is so much hope offered in Love’s victory over death, Love’s triumph over fear mongering and violence. Fear and violence cannot defeat love! Love wins!

The tomb is empty. THE TOMB IS EMPTY. We know now something the women at the tomb didn’t understand until later, the seemingly impossible occurs. Pontius Pilate loses. Jesus lives. Love wins!

Jesus defeats death and lives on resurrected because he followed love, God, with all his being. Jesus was experienced as living after he died because he was so soaked with love.

Jesus lived after he died, from Easter morning onward, Jesus lives forever more.

When these claims were first made nay-sayers could ghoulishly claim that Jesus was an executed criminal and was now amongst the living dead, a ghost, haunted by his crimes and untimely death. (not alive, but haunting his followers for his crimes, for their crimes).

But see, the tomb is empty! The body of Christ is not left in a cave or a coffin, the body of Christ lives on. Christ lives on.

Come that first Easter morning Christ is experienced HERE and THERE: In the garden. On the road. On the beach. In a room. Christ is NOT dead, NOT some ethereal sprite.

The Jesus Rome killed from Easter onward is alive, is real, is not put to rest in a tomb.

God so loved the world, AND God so loved his love-mongering child Jesus that God plays a get out of grave card in the deadly game Rome plays with non-elites. God trumps Rome’s death machine.

Love you see cannot die. It goes on and on and on, forever. Jesus so embodied love while he was alive, he was experienced as love by his followers … and still is.

His lovingness lives on today. Jesus is vindicated by history. When we look back Jesus is the one we want to follow, to be like, not Pilate, not Caesar.

Even most power elites in the Western world today will make this claim, that Jesus is the one who was doing right way back then and that his doing right way is to be emulated. They may not follow Jesus’ Way but they at least laud it. Far and wide that one man’s love has echoed throughout time.

And it’s not just history that proves Jesus right and Rome wrong, God vindicates Jesus. The Creator has created a new life for Jesus, one that continues on.

Some how, some way Jesus’ life continues on in a very dynamic way. He doesn’t just live on in the pages of history but lives on fantastically vibrating through time. What he did – the love he spread – matters still. There is this living, breathing Way we can hold on to and embrace and soak into our very being.

One way to look at it in kinda of modern terms is that Jesus’ life, his way of living, of being love, was so powerful, so Godly, God used it to create a portal, a way that we can step into and experience the power of God’s love.

Theologian John Cobb calls this way a “field of force,” 4 I like to think of it as a passage way, a sort of combination portal and path up the mountain of life that brings us to a higher way of being. It’s Easter’s portal and path to Love.

While Rome was building roads to bring its violent peace about the world, Jesus built a pathway up life’s tough and treacherous mountain which we can access and get on the path with Christ, to God incarnate on earth. It is a path filled with the bright light of love. It’s a path built to bring Christ’s non-violent peace, and liberty and justice for all to the world.

We can hear some of Easter’s portal’s opening affects in the Gospels. As a result of the portal Jesus is experienced in the breaking of bread.

Jesus is experienced in other people, a gardener, a traveler, a fisherman. Some how some way after death Jesus is risen and experienced in these folks.

An opening to the Easter portal and path through Christ is reflected in others.

We can hear some of Easter’s path affects in the Gospels too. The portal is open and as a result of stepping onto the path Jesus created, God’s love is spread far and wide.

First Jesus’ followers keep loving each other, and form communities to bring love to those in need through hospitality and care, through making and continuing to blaze the path of love by tending to those in need, by opposing oppression, by welcoming all – stranger or friend, Gentile or Jew, Male or Female. ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY!

A Eunuch, a transgender man, is happily and equally brought into the church by Phillip and respected and loved there as the goodly creation of God’s that he is.

Peter teaches that no one is to be called profane or unclean.

Paul teaches that all are equal in Christ.

The Book of Acts reports that amongst Followers of Jesus there is a sharing and distribution of wealth that isn’t about what one gets by greed, but by what others in the world need.

The Way of the world, Caesar’s way is rejected. A completely different way is offered by going through the field of force Jesus set up, entering a portal to God, getting on that path to God leads to a place where everyone is cared for – including each of us and our worst enemies – and everyone one on that path moves toward love.

We are both attended to by God and are empowered as God’s agents on that path. And this makes all the difference. It makes us high-spirited, it makes us teem with Love and it calls us, and causes us, to share love and The Way as far and as wide as we can, “Go Ye into all the world” Jesus tells us.

The Easter portal puts Christians on a path of love. And such a path is essential. As Augustine long ago wrote “We without God cannot and God without us will not.” 5.

Jesus’ resurrection, his rising up and continuing on in history and in the Body of Christ that we know as the Church (that is, all Christians) is the hope and the promise of Easter. It is both a gift and a calling. It is how God works in the world through Christians.

And it’s lovely. Because when we accept the gift and the calling, it’s proof that Christ lives, that love wins.

And that means Christ is risen, risen indeed.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. Just a side note for now, as I was working putting the finishing touches on this sermon I was struck by the good news that Mark’s Good Friday story leaves room in the Christian community for Atheists– as Atheists. Jesus’ last words are “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Which means “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In those final words one could reasonably conclude that the God that humans know is gone. What would it mean if Christians – like other religions– admit that Atheists have a place at the table along side of us Theists? And does an Easter that means humans arise set free to act godly on their own, necessarily conflict with an Easter that means we are set free to be God’s actors in the world?

2. Meyers, Robin, The Underground Church, p 198

3.Meyers, Robin (2012-01-12). The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (p. 217). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

4. Cobb, John , The Process Perspective, p 41.

5. Borg, Marcus, Crossan, John Dominic, The Last Week, p. 209

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Called to be a Doing Love Church

Called to be a Doing Love Church

a sermon based on Jeremiah 31:31-34

given at Palm Bay, FL on March 25, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

In 1976 when I met my wife Nancy I was an avid agnostic and frankly I strongly disliked Christianity. I had unfortunately experienced it as quite judgmental and unloving. I didn’t like the church. There was some trouble with this. See Nancy’s parents were both avid Christians.

Even so when Nancy and I first lived together I proudly put up a poster with words from my favorite fiction writer, Mark Twain. The poster had a huge picture of Jesus above the words.

When Nancy’s parents came to visit I forgot to take the poster down. Sure enough they saw it. The words below the picture of Jesus had this famous quote of Twain’s: “If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.”

I felt pretty bad about that incident, it was disrespectful and may have hurt Nancy’s parent’s feelings. My dislike of Christianity had a personal affect upon others that I cared for.

It should be obvious that my jaded view of Christianity and the church has drastically changed over the years, because, well, if some of you have not figured it out I’m a very Christian minister of this very Christian church. Both of which try quite hard to be non-judgmental and loving.

And a part of my journey getting here was that I had to get to know my Christian in-laws – there was no way around it – and I learned to love them both very much.

Indeed in my experience I have never met a more Christ-like Christian than my mother-in-law. She is as full of love as anyone can hope to be – as is her daughter, my wife, Nancy.

Through experiences of Christians close to me my understanding of Christianity began evolving way back in the mid – 1970s.

It took a long time but eventually I came around to see that Mark Twain was wrong, that Christ was actually here and one thing Christ could be was a Christian.

That’s not to say that there are Christians and forms of Christianity that Jesus would never be, it is to say that Christ IS here now and Christ CAN be found in Christianity and Christians. In places like this church and thousands of other communities that follow Jesus’ loving Way.

My understanding of Christianity has clearly evolved.

Today’s text is about a whole people’s understanding of God evolving. The catalyst was not a poster and a loving mother in-law. It was utter defeat and humiliation. See God works in a wide range of mysterious places.

Babylon was a powerful city-state in 6th Century B.C. It went about conquering other peoples and nations. And one of its techniques was to round up all of a conquered enemy’s leadership and important people and march them back to Babylon and keep them captive there.

The idea was, as you might imagine, to gut the enemy of its leadership, stymy rebellion, and soften up the rest of the population in hopes they’d be more docile and easier to control.

In the early 6th Century Babylon began conquering Judah. There were revolts, but, by 587 B.C. Jerusalem was burned and the Temple destroyed and most everybody who was a leader or other elite was captured, with basically farmers and workers left behind. God’s promised land was taken and most of God’s people too.

Some fifty or so years later in 539 Cyrus the Great of Persia would act as the Messiah was expected to act by conquering Babylon, letting the captives go, and reestablishing the kingdom of Israel.

Once home the ex-captives were allowed to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, with Cyrus giving back much of the treasures taken by Babylon from the Temple during the Exile. 1

The passage we heard read so well from Jeremiah was written during this Exilic experience. God’s people had had their world turned upside down. Everything was topsy turvy. “Where’s the God who sides with us?” was the big theological question of the day.

We heard a few weeks ago in the Genesis 17 story that Abraham and Sarah were given new names and blessings and promises of being the co-founders of nations of God’s people as a part of the re-imagining God that occurred during the Exile experience.

As we discussed that Abraham-and-Sarah-renaming story we heard how God was evolving in human imagination from an-out-there-away-from-us-angry-punishing-god, to the Holy One who cares enough to initiate personal relationships with us – men and women, small flawed beings that we are.

Today we have another Lectionary Text from the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s from Jeremiah and it too reflects this re-imagining, this evolution of understanding of God that goes on.

The People of God needed to wrestle with and understand that the Exile was not the result of God hating and punishing them, of God being out there transcendent and distant and unfaithful to them in light of the Exile.

The Exile created a very real crisis of faith. And Jeremiah is helping reform and reestablish faith in God. But in order to do that God needs to be understood in a whole new way, as does the relationship between God and God’s people. The Exile shatters the preexisting image of God that Israel had imagined.

The Feasting on the Word commentary puts it like this:

PARAGRAPHWhen the Babylonians razed the temple in Jerusalem and dragged King Zedekiah off in chains, it destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity. The people of Judah faced a crisis. Not only had they lost power and prestige, freedom and security; they had also lost God– or at least the assurance of God’s faithfulness, which may amount to the same thing. An unfaithful god is no better than no god, and probably a good bit worse. 2 (Feasting on the Word)

And so we have this remarkable beautiful deep and rich text from Jeremiah promising a new covenant, offering hope through a vision of God who is so close that our own hearts carry the Word, the Law, the essence of what God wants and is.

God is so close that every single person, from the culturally highest to the culturally lowest, is understood to know God, to actually know God.

The high priests and the clergy in the Temple do not have an elite “in” with God.

The scribes and others who can read are not alone privileged with access to the Law.

And God’s forgiveness is not doled out by specialized human mediators. All of human iniquity is forgiven, and sin is remembered no more.

God has evolved in the imagination of humankind from an Ancient Near East aloof and moody super power warrior, to a God who cares, a God who loves, a God who’s there.

Listen again to the text from Jeremiah 31 and you can hear God evolving in human perception to a very personal-present-accessible-to-all God:

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 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 the land of Egypt– 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 of Israel after 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 NRS)

The Law that is written in human hearts is in essence the Torah, or the essence of the Torah.

Quite often I remind us all that Jesus claimed all of the Torah, the Law and the Prophets, hangs upon God and Christ’s commandment to love. Love God. Love others. This is relational stuff.

Religion is about how we relate to creation, and most especially other humans. And in this Judeo-Christian tradition of ours relationship is supposed to be all about love, all the time. Which is why you hear me say that all the time. Because it is ALL about love.

And that love stuff is in our hearts. It’s written there. That’s the Law boiled down and embossed in our very being. And love is not just the essence of the Law, love is also the primary characteristic of God. God is love.

And so in our hearts, our very soul we have Love, the very spark of God within. And we know this. All of us. Love sits within us all calling us to believe in Love and to the action of love.

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…

We are not called to believe specific dogma, doctrines or creeds, we are called to do deeds.

Jesus did not run around pushing certainties about God like many churches do today, Jesus ran around doing some thing. Jesus’ thing that he did, was love.

In fact, the very early church followed Jesus’ suit and did not push and teach one another correct creeds. They went around doing loving deeds. They responded to the Law writ on every person’s heart, to love, by becoming doers of love.

Listen to how the followers of Jesus in the early church became God’s hands and feet in the world– these are excerpts from a new book (The Underground Church) by Rev. Robin Meyers,

The early church was … an underground movement, a growing, largely secretive collection of “stations” where rich and poor alike chose to practice a radical form of hospitality, a generous but scandalous communalism, and to commit themselves at personal risk to nonviolent resistance and the protection of the stranger and the alien. They were not sustained by the assurance of personal salvation in the form of a ticket to heaven. It was not conformity of belief that united them, not hierarchy, not creeds. Rather it was a powerful confidence that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, God had changed everything.

…[T]hey responded in a strange and unexpected way. They did not fashion creeds and demand that they be taken as vows. Rather they simply refused to worship Caesar, stopped practicing animal sacrifice, threw open the doors of their underground assemblies to all who would come, redistributed wealth, and made the dangerous claim that “Jesus Christ was Lord.” 3.

Jesus was Lord, not Caesar. And they did not do all of this for personal salvation in heaven’s sake.

It was confidence that God had changed everything through the Jesus story. God’s Law of love was understood to be in our hearts, but it was also re-imagined that that love could blossom and grow and bring heaven to earth through the new Way Jesus showed us and left us. What he taught, what he did, how he continues to live in us, mattered much.

A Christian duty in those early days was to actively strive in the world for an alternative way of being, a way where all have enough, a way where Christian communities do love in the world and oppose oppression, seek justice and tend to those in need. That’s still our duty now!

The prophets in the Bible tell us time and again that God does not want us to worship without doing.

In Hosea God says: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

In Amos God proclaims: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amo 5:21-24 NRS)

Isaiah has a similar claim: …bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation– I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isa 1:13-17 NRS)

And the prophet Micah asks: “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

And the answer is given in this beautiful prophetic verse we love here so much: 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6:6-8 NRS) 4

Worship alone does not cut it. It’s good, but it is not enough. We cannot just come here on Sunday hear the word, sing some songs, and pray. The prophets claim that God rejects that if that’s all there is.

We must move from this space out into the world doing loving things in the world.

That Law God has written upon our hearts is going to call and call and call us to action. The great American evangelist Billy Graham has noted that “The word of God hidden in the heart is a stubborn voice to suppress.”

So let’s not suppress that voice. Let’s answer it. We need to take time this fine Lenten Season to figure out how we are going to answer God’s call in our hearts to loving action in the world.

What can we do small or medium or large to cultivate love blossoming in our family, a stranger, our neighborhood, our city, our state, the world?

There’s lots to do at the church, time, treasure and talent are always needed here.

And there’s lots to do in the world and through other organizations, as well as this one.

There are things we can just do to bring more love to friends, family, enemies and the earth.

Let’s DO. Let’s do love and justice and peace here and out there. Let’s DO love.

We are God’s people.

God is our God.

From the least of us to the greatest we Know God.

Let’s figure out how we are going to go and do something loving about it.

Let’s help bring heaven to earth bit by bit.

This Lent let us prayerfully discover where we are called to act out God’s love in the world and then plan to do it and then really do it committing time and talents and treasures.

That’s what God’s people do.

That is the Way of Jesus.

It’s the Way of Love!

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, “Exile,” “Babylon” (1998).

2.Floyd, Richard, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol 2, p. 122

3. Meyers, Robin (2012-01-12). The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (p. 44, 47, 48). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

4. I got this idea of listing the prophets from Crossan, John Dominic, The Greatest Prayer.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Pastoral Prayer for Trayvon Martin and His Family, Our Nation, and George 3.25.12

Pastoral Prayer for Trayvon Martin and His Family, Our Nation, and George 3.25.12

God, we gather today with your love written on our heart and we have been hearing from our hearts a call from the deep and sorrowful tragedy of the senseless killing of a youth, our brother Trayvon Martin. We pray for the family of this young man tragically lost in our state, less than a hundred miles from here.

We are outraged and saddened that this awful type of violence happens. We pray for this nation too full of fear and violent words and acts. Please guide us, help us, as a your people to stop feeding fear and feed love – what you have written in our hearts – instead.

Teach us to not only be outraged at injustice and systemic failings, but to also remember in our prayers to not demonize doers of evil. It is hard for us to remember they are your children too, broken images of You.

Show us how to be doers of love and pray not only for Trayvon and his family, and that “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” but for George, the man who killed Trayvon, and George’s family as well.

Teach us to hate no more, to love even those perpetrating acts of hate and racism; fear and violence. We must, as Jesus taught, love all even our enemies. It’s so hard to do this. Show us the way. Teach us what that means and how to do it.

Guide us out of the wilderness of racism, God so that no one is suspect, no one is an other because of the color of their skin, or any other way that You made them, for all of humankind are your beloved children.

Lord please, please, guide us to love.

This we pray in your name. Amen

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