Sunday, February 17, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
Luke 6:17-26
 
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.
 
Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
 
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This past week I said to Marcos, “Sometimes it feels like we have lived here for a long time already.”  That’s another way to say that we feel at home. And the reason we feel at home is because of all of you.  
 
Your welcome and hospitality were warm from the beginning.  You swept us off our feet during that candidating weekend.  We were nervous and full of hope and full of questions and doubts. That Friday night there was a cocktail reception with the leadership of the church, during which I was very careful about only having one drink.  On Saturday there was the all-church reception where we first met so many of you. And on Sunday, after the candidating sermon and vote, there was yet one more reception!   
 
At one of those receptions, a very nice couple who shall remain nameless, introduced themselves and then said: “We have two questions for you.”  “OK,” I replied.  “First question: How committed are you to a one-hour worship service?”  And let me tell you, during a candidating weekend, how you answer that question can make all the difference!  But it was their other question that came to mind this week as I prepared the sermon.  They asked, “How committed are you to preaching from the lectionary?”  Now if you don’t know what it is, the lectionary is a three-year cycle of biblical readings for all the Sundays of the year that give one the breadth and scope of the entire biblical message.  We usually read only one passage on a Sunday, but there are actually four passages assigned to each Sunday.  And I am committed to preaching from the lectionary because it forces me to confront passages I might ordinarily avoid – like this passage from Luke!
 
The Beatitudes of Jesus are some of his most beloved words.  But when we think of the Beatitudes, we’re usually thinking of the ones recorded in the Gospel of Matthew.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” etc.  Matthew gives Jesus’s words a spiritualized gloss, making them a little easier to swallow. But Luke’s words are bitter pills that get stuck in the throat.  
 
Luke is known for his editorial bias for the least, the last, and the lost.  And Luke proclaims that a new world order is coming in which traditional patterns of power and wealth and prestige will be overturned.  It’s not a message for the faint of heart.  
 
The writer Annie Dillard, in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes about atomic passages like this one.  She says: “…It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”[1]
 
Crash helmets, life preservers, seatbelts – it sounds a little dramatic until we really read these words: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you… “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”
 
Now I read that and think: where’s my crash helmet?   I read that and think that Jesus might actually be talking about me. We are the richest people in the history of the world, and still we imagine that we don’t have enough.  We never lack for food, in fact we could push the plate back more often.  Our days are filled with friends and shopping and trips and adventures.  And we think of these things as our blessings.  In fact, we sometimes call them that.  And we announce to the world on our t-shirts and coffee mugs and knick-knacks that WE ARE BLESSED!  #BLESSED!  
 
Now I will be the first to admit that I enjoy these things.  They make me feel fortunate. And I am.  But according to Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, possessions and position and power can blind us to our real need of God.  For people who have everything, Jesus is often the icing on the cake.  But he’s hardly the Bread of Life – that which sustains us body and soul.  
 
So, you can see why I would have naturally avoided this passage.  It’s too close to home.  And it seems, at first, a blanket condemnation of the good life.  But is that really what it is?  To answer that question, one must remember a foundational principle of biblical interpretation.  Obscure or difficult passages are always read in the light of the whole revelation of Scripture.  And we know from other Gospels that some very rich folks also followed Jesus – including a group of rich women who financed much of Jesus’s ministry. So, I don’t think this passage is a call for us to divest ourselves of all our possessions.  But I do think it is a call to examine our perspective on our possessions.  And I think upon close examination, we might come to see that some of the things we think of as blessings are actually obstacles. 
 
Scholars also suggest that this passage is not prescriptive: that is, it is not telling us how God ordained it all. Instead, this is a descriptive passage: it simply describes the world the way it is. It simply points out to us, in the starkest terms, the folly of our dependence upon riches.  And it is a description of how the poor, out of their need, are predisposed toward God. 
 
But this passage also gives us a remedy for what ails us – the rich of the world.  And it is found in a seemingly innocuous detail about the setting.  Matthew calls this event the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus delivers his Beatitudes in Matthew, he does so from the mountaintop, looking down at the people. But in Luke, this same event is known as the Sermon on the Plain.  Verse 17 says: “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.” 
 
And I think that this detail is a good place to start to try to understand this difficult passage. The Kingdom of God is found on a level place.  The Reign of God that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Luke is a place of radical equality and community, peace and plenty - not just for the few, but for all. 
 
In a level place, the poor of the earth meet and mingle with the rich who have the food and the power and mechanisms to relieve that hunger.  And that’s how we’re most comfortable thinking about ministering to the poor – from the mountaintop of our privilege, reaching down.   But in a level place, it’s a two-way street because the poor also have something that we desperately need.  And I have seen, again and again, that the poor and the downtrodden and the abused and the forgotten  - those folks love God in a way that we only aspire to.  They love God because they know they need God.  Their riches do not deceive them into thinking that they are self-sufficient.  And so it is that in a level place, we both have what the other needs.  The rich can feed the poor and the poor can teach the rich. And everyone is transformed. And that is the Kingdom of God come upon this earth.
 
This church will grow and be transformed as we are transformed. And that transformation we call salvation happens on a level place: face to face, hand to hand, heart to heart with the very folks we’ve always assumed had nothing at all to give us.  
 


[1]Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.
 

Sunday, February 10, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 5:1-11
 
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
 
 
Once upon a time there was a funny little man named Larry, who was a member of my father’s church.  And Larry had decided that I needed be toughened up.  You see, I was a sweet kid, but shy.  I preferred solitary pursuits to team efforts.  I could spend hours reading and drawing and getting lost in my imagination.  But for Larry, those were signs of weakness.  And so somehow, he convinced my parents that the cure to all that ailed me was a hunting trip.  And I was horrified.
 
One day soon thereafter, Larry picked me up at the crack of dawn. And he drove us deep into the woods.  There Larry taught me how to hold a gun.  He taught me some rudimentary gun safety.  And he taught me how to shoot. 
 
I remember a lot about that day: what I was wearing; the kick of the gun; trying to stay upright when I shot. But what I remember most was how I felt when that squirrel fell from the tree.  I had hit my mark. And Larry was more excited than I had ever seen him.  But I was sick.  I was sick not from some kind of philosophical orientation about hunting. I was too young for that.  I was sick because what I had just done felt as foreign to me as anything I had ever done.  It was something forced on me; something out of character for me.  And when I got home I told my parents, in no uncertain terms for a 12 year old, that I wouldn’t ever do that again.  
 
Sometimes I wonder just how much of my life I’ve wasted trying to be something that I was not, trying to please others, trying to fit into a mold.  How much time have you wasted doing that?  How much time have you wasted believing you needed to be someone other than who you actually are?
 
From an early age, we all react to what our parents expect from us.  Then later we respond to the peer pressure of our classmates.  And then we try to be what our bosses want us to be; what our spouse wants us to be.  And then we come to church and hear about all that God wants us to be.  And the overarching message in those messages is that what whatever we already are is somehow not enough.  
 
This deep feeling of inadequacy has a lot to do with the theory of Original Sin.  This theorybegins with the assumption that we are not enough and that we never really can be.  It is our sin, our shortcomings, more than anything else about us, that defines us in God’s eyes.  And while this theoryof Original Sin is deeply ingrained in the church, you might be surprised to learn that the church has not always universally believed it. Many early Christians did not believe it.  One of those was St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who was a second century bishop in France.  And Irenaeus, starting from a place of Original Blessing and not Original Sin, once famously declared that, “the glory of God is the human person fully alive” – YOU, fully alive.
 
The first time I ever read that, it was as if a bolt of lightning passed right through me.   Before that moment, I had never seriously considered that James Campbell, being most fully James somehow brought glory to God.  And my life and my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus have never, ever been the same since I read those words.
 
One day, Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret, more commonly called the Sea of Galilee. And the crowd was pressing against him, implying that there were lots of folks listening to the sermon that day.  Needing some space, Jesus noticed some boats on the shore and got into one belonging to a man named Simon.  He asked Simon (who would one day become St. Peter) to row out a little onto the lake. In addition to giving Jesus some needed space, the water provided some natural amplification. Then, true to the custom we learned about a few weeks ago, Jesus sat down to teach.  
 
When Jesus had finished speaking, he asked Simon to row out into the deep part of the lake and to let down his nets for a catch.  Now Simon and company had already been out on the lake all night, but had caught nothing. They had already washed their nets, which was a last step before going home to eat and rest.  This we know.  But what is not mentioned here, but is very significant for the story, is that many first century Jews had a fear of deep water.  For the Jewish mind of that time, the depths of the sea represented chaos or hell.  At its deepest, the Sea of Galilee was about 200 feet from the surface to the bottom – enough to make Simon pause when Jesus asked him to row out to the deep water.  And so he swallowed hard and protested: “Master, we have worked all night and caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will row out to the deep, and let down my nets one more time.”
 
We all know how this story ends. The fisherman, living in that pregnant moment between exhaustion and hope, let down their nets.  And when they pulled them in, they were so full of fish that the nets began to break.  And so, they called to their friends to bring their boats to help them.  But the catch was still so great that it threatened to sink all the boats – their terror of the deep close at hand. But somehow the boats did not sink. 
 
Now what do I always say about the stories of the Bible?  These are our stories.  We are the characters in these tales, meaning that these ancient stories have contemporary and universal applications.  That is the power of the Bible – it tells a very human story about God.  So what does this story have to say to us, about us?
 
Well, first of all, notice where Jesus is in this tale.  He isn’t on the shore, shouting instructions to the ones doing the work.  He’s in the boat.  And he’s not in that boat like some serene divinity.  Think of Jesus helping them to lower those nets into the sea. Think of Jesus struggling with them to pull in that heavy haul of glistening fish.  Think of Jesus laughing with them as they realized the riches that now filled their boats.  And that makes this a Christmas story!  This is a story of “God with us” – God working and laughing and crying and struggling withus in the everydayness of our ordinary lives.
 
Second, notice that Jesus doesn’t ask Peter to be or do anything other that what he already is and does. They were fishermen, before they were anything else.  They had learned this skill from their fathers and grandfathers. It was in their blood.  It was natural to them.  And that smelly job, full of calloused hands and sun burned skin could be used for the glory of God.  
 
So, what about you?  What’s your thing?  What is it that you know how to do so well that it seems second nature? And have you ever truly considered that this thing of yours could somehow bring in the Kingdom of God? 
 
Now, if you get that far – to imagine that your so-called ordinary skills can be used to advance God’s Reign in the world – don’t expect to be bored doing the same old, same old. Because God always calls us to more. God calls us out into the deep, where blessings lie hidden just beneath the surface.  Jesus asked Peter to row out into the middle of his fears.  And you know what?  Peter did not die!  He did not sink.  Instead, he was transformed into something called a fisher of people. 
 
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of our church.  I’ve been thinking about those pesky key indicators and what they say about this congregation’s slow decline over the last 15 years.  Those numbers are my deep place.  I look at them and sometimes feel afraid.  I feel out of my depth.  I wonder what you all expect of me.  I wonder what I expect of you.  And I wonder what God expects of us?  But pondering this passage makes me wonder: maybe all we need in this moment is to go deep; to use what we already know how to do, but in new and bolder and more faithful ways.  
 
Chances are in the months and years to come, God will call First Church into some uncharted waters. God will call us to go deeper than we have before.  God will call us to confront our fears.  
 
Because we might actually feel afraid as we try new things and let go of some old ones.  But Jesus says: “Fear not, for now you will fish for people, all kinds of marvelous people, as different and colorful and beautiful and as all the fish in the sea.”

First Congregational Church of Cheshire
Sunday, February 3, 2019
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 4:21-30
 
Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
 
 
The book of Job is one of the oldest books in our Bible.  But its message is contemporary.  It concerns the reality of human suffering and the resilience of faith, in the face of suffering.  Job has suffered some incredible losses: his whole family, with the exception of his wife, his health, and his fortune.  Yet Job refuses to relinquish his faith in God.  His wife, who has watched him suffer and suffered herself, is perplexed by his resolute faith. And so one day, at the end of her rope, she taunts him with these chilling words: “Do you still persist in your integrity, husband? Why don’t you just curse God, and die!”
 
I was 28 and in my first call. And I was living through what the mystics call “the dark night of the soul.”  Everything I had ever believed was suddenly up for grabs.  My house of faith was collapsing around me and I felt powerless to stop it. And because I had been taught that God could do anything, I was angry at God for seemingly doing nothing.  I was angry at all the unanswered questions about my life.  And I was so angry at the church.  And so, one night as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I looked up at the ceiling and followed Job’s wife’s advice.  I cursed God with all the emotion and anger and despair that I actually felt.  I cursed God and then I rolled over and went to sleep.  
 
I could not know it then, but what actually happened that night was the violent birthing of a profound spiritual transformation.  It was the demolition of all I thought I knew, and the beginning of the construction of something brand new.  My faith, once small and smug, would become expansive and inclusive and more grace-filled that I had ever dared to dream.  
 
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story "Revelation," the character Ruby Turpin is sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, judging everyone around her. Ruby imagines herself to be superior, by more than a grade or two, to everyone there, especially to a poor, unkempt teenager seated across from her, reading a book. Ruby thinks it sad that the girl’s parents did not groom her more attractively. “Perish the thought of having a child as scowling as this one,” she thinks.
 
As for the child, named Mary Grace, she listens for a while as Ruby chatters out loud about the superiority of poor blacks over "white trash." Then, without warning, Mary Grace fixes her steely eyes on Ruby and hurls her book across the room. The book hits Ruby in the head and she falls to the floor with Mary Grace on top of her hissing into her ear, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!"
 
This, says O’Connor, is the violent, shocked beginning of Ruby’s redemption, the catalyst for her repentance and her heavenly vision. O’Connor reminds us that revelation often begins when a large book hits you on the head.(William Willimon, The Christian Century, 2004)
 
And that, it seems to me, is the Gospel truth. The most significant spiritual experiences I have ever had began in pain or anger or fear or disillusionment.  They were not the bright memories of a kind Sunday School teacher, or a wonderful sermon I once heard, or sublime music in worship.  More often than not, transformation begins in a dark place.  It is “The Gospel of Disillusionment.”  And it’s not something we’re not keen to talk about it in the church, for fear it will scare people off.  Why are we afraid of that, since disillusionment is a universal human experience? Renowned preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion – about ourselves, about the world, about God – and while it is almost always a painful thing, it is never a bad thing, to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth.”  
 
And that is the subtext of the Gospel lesson today: the pain of losing the lies we have mistaken for the truth.  The story this week picks up where we left off last week.  Jesus has just preached his inaugural sermon.  And Luke says that those who heard him were amazed at his gracious words. This was a moment of light and celebration and promise.  The people were proud of him, and by extension, they were proud of themselves. After all, they had helped to raise this Jesus.  Their village life had formed this Jesus. They, perhaps better than anyone else, understood this Jesus.  They were insiders, or so they thought.  
 
Everything was going along so nicely until Jesus took a verbal wrecking ball to their self-satisfied self-understanding.  Or as Flannery O’Connor might say, Jesus threw a large book at their heads.  And he did that to save them.   
 
“No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown,” declared Jesus in an apparent non sequitur.  And then he told some stories to prove his point and to demonstrate just how out of touch they were with the way God works the world.
 
Their common, beginning assumption was that they were the chosen people of God. And they knew that Jesus had recently done some mighty works in a town called Capernaum, which was a Gentile stronghold.  And if Jesus did mighty works for unclean outsiders - surely he would do even more for them, since they were insiders.  
 
So Jesus told them two stories, taken from Scripture, that contradicted their assumption of privilege.  And when he did, they were outraged.  To be displaced from a place of privilege makes all of us angry.
 
Jesus said: “In the time of Elijah, there were lots of widows in the land of Israel.”  (Now we pause here to remember that widows in that time were completely dependent upon male relatives to care for them.  If not, they faced potential starvation or forced prostitution.)  --But, Jesus continued, of all the widows in the land, God sent the prophet Elijah to a widow at Zarephath, a foreigner, not part of the covenant people.  And here, I imagine, there was the first uncomfortable and ominous silence from the crowd.  
 
Likewise, Jesus continued, in the time of the prophet Elisha, the land of Israel was filled with lepers: unclean, untouchable.  But of all the lepers in the land in need of healing, God sent the prophet to Naman, the Syrian, another outsider and unclean, a pagan and a foreigner.    
 
Well, this was just too much for the comfortable, church-going folk of Nazareth.  Their compliments suddenly turned to rage, such rage that a mob surrounded Jesus and drove him to the brow of the hill upon which Nazareth is built.  They had every intention to throw him off and then, if he survived the fall, to stone him to death.  This was a punishment for blasphemy, implying that what Jesus had said struck at the very heart of their religious self-understanding. 
 
Now it’s easy to judge them, but I think that their rage was completely understandable.  They felt threatened.  Their place in society was no longer secure.  And so they did what we do: they fought back and tried to eliminate the threat.
 
So what was Jesus up to that day? Was he just being a provocateur? Was he just being a rabble-rousing prophet?  Or did he actually love these hometown folks?  Did he love them enough to refuse to leave them where they were? 
 
Luke ends the story with the angry mob. But knowing us humans, I bet you that that was not the end of the story.  I bet that not all of them remained angry.  Some of them went home, and after they smoothed their ruffled feathers, were actually haunted by what Jesus said.  They too had this nagging suspicion that maybe the love of God was broader than the religious boundaries they loved.  Others of them had no doubt broken the law of God, and they too felt like outsiders or were treated like outsiders.  Some of them were hiding sicknesses or secrets that would one day exclude them from the community.  And for those people, these words hurled like a book across a room, were the painful start of a new beginning.   
 
Job, we are told, survived his ordeal and had all of his fortunes restored. Ruby, we are told, left that doctor’s office that day with a sore head, but the beginnings of a changed heart. And I woke up the next morning, surprised to still be alive – but here I am, a different man than I was.
 
The Gospel of Jesus saves us. But the work of salvation is not for the feint of heart.  Before anything else, there is the wrecking ball of the truth.  But after the dust settles, there is the construction of something brand new: beautiful and beyond compare.

January 27, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 4:14-21
 
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
 
 
As some of you know, I was raised as an evangelical.  And there were many wonderful things about that tradition that formed and continue to form my faith and ministry.  For example, I was taught a great respect for the Bible, and learned its stories and its teachings from a very early age.  And I learned a deep love for Jesus Christ, and a firm belief that he is, indeed, Lord of All.
 
I carried that evangelical label for a long time, even when my own life led me in a different direction.  But somewhere along the line, my comfort-level with the label began to change - because the church of my childhood began to change.  It seemed to get lost in the pursuit of political power. Something called the Culture Wars erupted and evangelical religion was right in the center of it.  And the basic message of Jesus – to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself – seemed to me to be eclipsed by the pursuit of power.  And to this day, I mourn that loss.
 
Truth is, I mourn a lot of things about the church – conservative and progressive.  I mourn that the church is so divided, just like our country.  I mourn that so many churches are closing, and so many more will. Experts tell us that 85% of American congregations are in decline.  I mourn the church’s diminished influence for society’s good.  I mourn the fact that the church has become a subject of derision, the punchline of a million bad jokes.  I mourn that we often brought that on ourselves.  I mourn that so many young people feel no connection to the church at all.  And I wonder, what will become of us?  And I wonder, how on earth did we get here?
 
I had an associate minister in my last parish who once told me that my problem was that I still believed in the church. He, on the other hand, claimed that he didn’t.  His faith was in God alone, he said.  But he had no hope that the church would ever fulfill its calling.  But I do. I guess I’m a dreamer.  But then again, so was Jesus.  
 
And what was his dream? Well, he laid it out in the very first sermon that he ever preached.  Jesus had gone back to his hometown of Nazareth.  At that time, Nazareth was a village of several hundred, many of them relatives of Jesus.  So there he was, amongst his siblings and cousins, their spouses and children and in-laws.    
 
It was the custom of the day that any male might be handed a Torah scroll to read a passage and then to make some comments about it.  On this day, the attendant handed the scroll to Jesus, maybe because he was home visiting. Jesus stood up to read, as was the custom.   Then Jesus sat down to teach, as was the custom.  These physical movements made a clear delineation between the words of Scripture and the words of commentary or sermon.
 
Jesus’s sermon that day was exceedingly short. He simply read the passage from Isaiah and then said: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 
 
Well you could have heard a pin drop because the people understood this passage to be about the Messiah, the promised Savior. But Jesus certainly couldn’t be that, could he?  And so they began to whisper: “We’ve known him since he was a boy.  We know his family.  We know that crazy story about how he was conceived.  He always was a little strange.  Just who does he think he is?”
 
Who indeed?  In this short sermon, Jesus makes quite a claim about who he is.  And as shocking as this claim was, it’s even more shocking when you dig a little bit.  It’s shocking because of what Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah.  And it’s shocking because of what Jesus did notread from the scroll of Isaiah.
 
So let’s look first at what he read: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
 
Now, this was a passage that everyone in the synagogue would have known because it was an essential part of their national narrative.  Its original context was the Babylonian exile – that awful time in the past when the people of God had lost a war with Babylon, and the best and the brightest had been carted off to live in a foreign land.  The Holy City had been destroyed, and with it, their sense of identity.  This passage, then, was a bright promise of restoration and a return home. 
 
Biblical scholars say that in this inaugural address, Jesus actually laid out his vision for everything else he ever did – from his teaching, to his miracles, to his great compassion.  And in saying: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus claimed that the work of God continues in every age. God’s people are called to the holy work of good news, release, recovery, freedom, and favor every day. 
 
Now, what Jesus didn’t read.  The attendant handed Jesus the scroll with the passage to be read already marked.  But Jesus made an incredibly bold editorial choice right on the spot.  Remember that the original context was the bitter captivity of Babylon.  And after that kind of humiliation, the people wanted to see their enemies punished. This passage concludes with a prayer for “the day of vengeance of our God.”  But Jesus did not read that part.
 
Renowned biblical scholar “N.T. Wright suggests that this omission (therefore) would have offended those first-century Jews who understandably hungered for God's vengeance on all of their enemies..." Don’t we all.  But set a different course for his own ministry, and thus for the ministry of his church – for the ministry of this church.  
 
And that brings me back to my original quandary: how did so many of us Christians get so lost on the way?  How did we come to understand our faith primarily as power and control and political will and even vengeance?  How did we forget the basics of humility and service and forgiveness and compassion and justice?  
 
I have stood in this pulpit for one year and one week.  And during this time, I have observed your faithfulness, your diligence, your love, and your commitment to welcome all in Christ.  What a wonderful congregation this is.  - But I have also observed your struggles with some basic questions like: what is our mission?  What is our purpose?  Why are we still here? How do we stay here?
 
Friends, these are frightening times for the American church. And so we reach for solutions we know. Our go-to model has been the American business model.  It is for most churches.  We see the statistics and trends and ask, “How are we doing as a church?” which really means how are we doing in terms of membership and attendance and giving.  We talk about market share and demographics. We think about branding and promotions. I think about those things all the time. But maybe the more pressing question is: how is our soul?  How is our commitment to the Gospel?
 
Immediately after this service we will gather in the Parish Hall for our Annual Meeting.  And we will primarily use a business model to discuss where we are and how we’re doing.  And that’s OK.  But I think we can go a step further as we reflect on Jesus’s first sermon.  Instead of simply talking about the budget and how much we are allotting for this or for that, what if we also asked: how does our budget and its priorities actually bring good news to poor people?  How does my pledge; how does your pledge proclaim release to those who are captive to addictions and depression and hopelessness?  How does the work of our boards and committees light up the dark places in this town and the towns around us?  How do our programs relieve oppression – not teach us about oppression, but actually relieve it? How do we use this beautiful building and our beautiful Green to make it clear that 2019 is the year of the Lord’s favor?  And how do we do that without grasping for power and control?
 
Jesus took the scroll, stood, and read: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."  
 
And now he hands the scroll to us.  What will we say?


[1]http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_january_27_2019

The Baptism of Christ Sunday
January 13, 2019
​
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
 
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
 
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
 
 
Congregationalism is a religion of the people.  The people run the church.  The people raise the budget and decide how it is spent. The people vote on important issues like purchasing property and calling a minister.  And because this is a church of the people, it’s in our DNA to think of ourselves as a community of equals. And so we are – kind of.  Even in our religion of the people, some things are reserved solely for the clergy. There are certain priestly functions that only the ordained can do.  According to the faith and order of the United Church of Christ, of which we are a proud part, only ordained ministers can bless the bread and cup for a service of Holy Communion.  And only ordained ministers are authorized to baptize people into the household of God. 
 
These two acts - baptism and communion – we call sacraments.  And while our Catholics sisters and brother have seven of these sacraments, we Protestants only have these two.  There are lots of historical reasons for that, but primary among them is the both of these acts can be tied back directly to the life of Jesus Christ. Baptism and Communion are both things that Jesus himself did.  And because Jesus did them, and because we are disciples of Jesus, these things are holy, set-apart, sacred.  
 
Today is set-aside in the liturgical calendar as the Baptism of Christ Sunday.  And that information is usually met with one of two responses.  The first one is: “Who cares?”  What on earth does the baptism of Jesus have to do with life in 2019. For second response to the baptism of Jesus is: “uh oh.”  Why “uh oh?” Well, think about it.  What have we been taught about baptism?  Isn’t it about sin and redemption?  Aren’t there notions of being washed clean?  Isn’t there something in there about that perplexing idea of original sin?  But the Scripture says that Christ was without sin.   So, what on earth was he doing in the muddy Jordan that day?
 
To make things more complicated, Jesus was baptized by his cousin John.  And in the ancient world, to be baptized by someone meant to submit to their authority; to be their disciple.  But the New Testament is rather clear that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, including John the Baptist.  
 
And the Gospel of Luke presents a third rather embarrassing problem with the Baptism of Jesus.  Luke claims that when Jesus was baptized, John was already in prison awaiting execution. That’s embarrassing.  So which was it: John was in prison or John baptized Jesus? 
 
So to celebrate the Baptism of Christ is complicated.  And these contradictions make us nervous.  But I think we’re nervous because we’re trying to make Scripture fit into neat theological equations.  We already know what we believe and we don’t want the Bible to get in the way.  And so we push and shove these stories through the pigeonholes of doctrine and church history, trying to tie up all the loose ends.  But it has been my experience that grace – sometimes amazing grace - is often found in the questions and contradictions and loose ends. 
 
John the Baptist was preaching repentance out on the banks of the Jordan River.  To repent simply means to turn and walk in a new direction.  And who doesn’t need to do that?  It was a popular message and people thronged the banks of the Jordan. One day, Jesus happened along and decided that he should be baptized too.  And John saw the contradictions and protested.  But Jesus was undeterred and John finally relented.  When Christ came up out of the water, the spirit of God came down like a dove, and a voice announced: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
 
In Luke, this story is told simply – he gives it all of half a sentence.  And notice what is not present in this story or in any of the other Gospel’s accounts. There is no talk of original sin being washed away; no ordained priest or pastor there to administer the sacrament; no holy water; no sacred space; no special clothing: just some people down by a riverside, under an open sky, wanting a new life; and longing to know that they mattered.  And there was Jesus among them, using what was there - common water - to help remember what is true.  
 
To remember what is true – we all need that.  And so, we take pictures to capture a beautiful moment. We keep journals to remember beautiful thoughts.  We hug our friends and lovers to remember their bodies.  These are outward and visible symbols of an inwards and spiritual grace – sacraments if you will. 
 
Once a month, we gather around this table to eat bread and drink cup in order to recall, with our bodies, the Last Supper of Jesus.  There is something holy about the physicality of it. But the challenge of baptism is that most of us have absolutely no memory of it.  We don’t recreate it with our bodies.  And that, it seems to me, is to our detriment.
 
The great Protestant reformer Martin Luther needed reminders of his baptism.  Like so many other great spiritual leaders, Luther was constantly plagued doubt and despair. To drive back those demons, he kept an inscription over his desk that simply read, "Remember, you have been baptized."  And when that inscription alone was not enough, he would touch his own forehead and say out loud: "Martin, you have been baptized."  
 
My mentor in ministry, the Rev. George Bailey, had his own way to remember his baptism.  George was a character; a fresh and original thinker, very often misunderstood.  But what he was was a mystic.   I will never forget his sermon in which he encouraged us to use our morning showers as a way to celebrate and remember our baptisms.  “That’s what I do,” he said.  Each day as the waters poured down on his head and body; George Bailey remembered that grace and love and mercy were poured out upon him day after day after day. And then he stunned us all into silence when he declared, in no uncertain terms, that his morning shower wasa sacrament - an outward and physical reminder of an inward and spiritual reality.  
 
The physical world connects with the spiritual world.  And once you understand that, then the simplest gifts of life aremeans of grace.  And could it be that that was why Jesus was baptized?  Do you think it’s possible that before he began his three intensive and difficult years of ministry that he wanted to feel, on his own skin, the abundant grace and love of God?    
 
At the conclusion of this sermon, and as the choir sings, Alison and I invite any of you who so desire to come forward and remember your baptism.  We will stand at the head of these two aisle.  You will receive some simple water on your forehead, and when you do, we will say: “Remember your baptism and be thankful.”
 
These waters are not magic, but they are powerful.  They are powerful because they help us remember, with our bodies, those things thing we long to be true but often forget: that the grace of God is deeper than the oceans; that the love of God is an ever-flowing river; that the forgiveness of God washes us clean and gives us a fresh start – not just today, but every day.   
 
Amen.    

Sunday, January 6, 2019, Epiphany
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
Matthew 2:1-12
 
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
 
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
 
 
One summer evening, long, long ago, I stood with my grandmother out in her backyard.  Twilight had descended and the first faint twinkle of the North Star could be seen.  She pointed it out to me and then taught me this: “Star light, star bright, first star I’ve seen tonight.  I wish I may, I wish I might, get the wish I wish tonight.” And then she told me that I should always wish upon a star because some of those wishes would come true.  And she was right.
 
I’ve always been drawn to the night sky.  I think most of us are.  We lift our heads and stare into the vast expanse, and wonder who we are and who God is, and what life is about.  That makes stargazing an act of praise as old as the human race.
 
But it used to be a lot easier than it is now. Some years ago, I read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about light pollution and how it prevents us from seeing the night sky the way that all of our ancestors did. The article pointed out that most of us have never really seen the full glory of the heavens, even when we’re out in the country.  There’s simply too much artificial light.  And so, the American entrepreneurial spirit being what it is, something called astrotourism has arisen.  And for a fee, these tour companies will take you far out into a deserted place where you will see what our ancestors saw for free. 
 
Today is all about a star.  It’s the Feast of the Epiphany, the last day of the twelve days of Christmas.  It’s a day when our attention turns to the heavens, and in particular to that one star so ensconced in our collective Christmas consciousness that we cannot think of Mary and Joseph and the Baby Jesus without it. Today we remember those mysterious Wise Men who looked for Christ led only by a brilliant star and their astrological calculations.
 
Scholars debate what it is they actually saw.  Was it an alignment of the planets?  Was it a comet?  Was it a supernova?  Some people doubt the veracity of the whole tale, noting that in the folklore of many ancient cultures, a star heralded the birth of a great person or a god. Perhaps, they say, St. Matthew used this common belief simply as a literary device in order to signal his readers that the birth of Jesus was something truly extraordinary.  
 
I find all of this very interesting, but I’m not sure we’re supposed to get lost in speculations about what the Wise Ones actually saw, if anything. It seems to me that our attention attention is better spent on the human characters in this tale.  I’m more interested in the Wise Ones themselves, because, like in so many of the Bible’s stories, they are actually us. 
 
So, who were these Magi?  Well, that too is up for debate, but one thing is clear: they fit the uncomfortable pattern of so many other biblical characters.  They were outsiders, unlikely heroes, not the first persons you would think of to go looking for the Lord.  Scholars suggest that they may have been magicians or astronomers or astrologers or pseudo-scientists or fortune-tellers or horoscope fanatics.  But by any decent religious standard of their day or ours, they were heretics. In addition, they were the wrong race, and they came from the wrong part of the world, the East – a place where the enemies of Israel often came from.  So, their placement as heroes of this tale is noteworthy.  They had lots of things against them, but this one necessary thing for them: they were curious. 
 
So believing that they had seen a sign in the heavens, they set out on their journey.  And like other starry-eyed dreamers, they encountered plenty of opposition along the way. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, they met a king named Herod, whom they thought could help them find this Child-King. But Herod was a despicable man known for his cruelty.  He murdered his wife, his three sons, his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law, his uncle, and assorted others.  And because his ego was so fragile and he was easily threatened, once he heard that a new king had been born, he decided to murder him as well. But the Magi, feeling uneasy, never told the king where Jesus was.  
 
Backed into a corner, Herod did what any despot would do: he punished everyone. He ordered the murder of all the baby boys under the age of 2 who lived in and around Bethlehem.  We call this horror “the slaughter of the innocents.” And the only reason that Jesus survived was that his desperate parents escaped across a border into Egypt – the Holy Family, refugees running for their lives.
 
These unlikely characters are heroes of the Gospel, for all kinds of reasons. But mostly, they are heroes because they followed the light of God wherever it took them. They are heroes who threw caution to the wind in order to find the truth.  They are heroes because, in this search for truth, they thwarted the desires of the wicked who seek to obscure the light.  
 
The magi are long gone – but their spirit is still alive in any of us who search for the light, who believe in the promise, despite all the evidence to the contrary.   We know what they world is like, yet here we are singing and praying and hoping and working for this luminous idea called the Kingdom of God. We live in a world of drones and suicide bombers and terrorists, yet we work for and look for and expect the arrival of the Empire of Shalom.  We gaze at the stars and dream of a world where children are not gunned down in school, and women are believed, and greed doesn’t melt the polar icecaps.  All of this seems foolishness to those who have no hope.  But we have seen a star.  
 
Eventually, the Wise Men turned around and went home.  The star faded from the sky.  The Epiphany had passed. But here’s the thing: the Wise Ones still had each other.  They still had their shared experience.  They still had a common story.  And whenever doubt and fear came to call, they could sit around a fire and reminisce about that Star and that incredible journey and that dazzling Child, whose face they never forgot.  
 
And imagining them reminiscing together, makes e think of all of you. The truth is, you aren’t just my job. I actually need you because I cannot do this Christian thing on my own.  I cannot, on my own, look at this world and still believe in the coming Reign of Peace.  But withyou, I can sing.  And with you, I can tell stories.  With you I can remember all that is beautiful and hopeful.  
 
We have each other.  And we have a Star.   

December 24, 2018 – Christmas Eve
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 2:8-20
 
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
 
 
As a child, I had a very rich interior life. I loved to spend time alone in my room.  I would lie on a hillside in our yard, stare at the sky, and get lost in the clouds for hours.  In school, I was often scolded for daydreaming.  And I fell in love with books - because books had the ability to take me even deeper into that interior world. 
 
A few years ago, it struck me that I hadn’t read a work of fiction in several years.  And I found that realization deeply disturbing, given my life-long love of books.  So, I bought a novel and set out to read it.  But I kept losing interest.  I would read one paragraph and then not have any idea of what I had just read because I was always thinking of something else.  And so, I put that book aside and bought another one.  But the same thing happened because I was always thinking of something else. I was always multi-tasking – this thing we’re constantly being told to do.  And this brought me to the sad conclusion that I had lost one of the great pleasures of my life – the ability to ponder. I had forgotten how to be quiet and allow my thoughts to run where they would.  
 
At first, I feared that this inability to concentrate might be a sign of illness.  It was, but not in the way I thought.  I was the victim of my electronic addiction. I was a victim of the relentless battles for my attention; the relentless onslaught of bad news; the relentless barrage of advertising.  In place of a book, I always had a device in my hand.  I went to bed with a device in my hand.  I was still reading a lot, but never one thing for very long because something else was always clawing for my attention. Maybe you know what I mean. 
 
Perhaps the worst part of that is that as our capacity for concentration has decreased, our capacity for fear has increased.  With each click, we are confronted with more bad news, and then worse news. So then we click and shop or we click and flirt.  Why do we do it?  Why this constant connection; this constant distraction?  I think we do it because we are deeply afraid of silence.  We are afraid of our own thoughts.  
 
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Then the angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them: “Do not be afraid.”
 
“Do not be afraid.”  This is the most-often repeated command in the entire Bible – far more than don’t kill or don’t steal or love one another?  And yet we don’t really take this commandment seriously.  The best we seem able to do is to put our fears on hold for a few days, mostly by activities or diversions.  Most of us will do that with Christmas, as we eat, drink, and make merry. But on Wednesday, there will be some breaking news that demands our attention.  On Wednesday, there will be credit card bills.  On Wednesday, there will be doctor’s appointments and work conflicts and family arguments. Tonight and tomorrow, we make merry. But what about Wednesday when all the excitement is over?
 
After the shepherds stopped fearing for their lives, the angel told them where Jesus was. And then a choir of angels sang “Peace on earth!”  When that spectacle was over, the shepherds set out to find this baby.  And Luke says that they went with haste – excitement crackling in the air.  And they found the Holy Family.  And they told them what the angels had said about this Child, the words tumbling out of their mouths as they spoke over one another.  After all, this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them. 
 
But Mother Mary’s reaction to this incredible news was completely different from the shepherds.  Luke says that Mary “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”  And that strikes me as really significant as all the emphasis is put on glory and angels and shepherds and stars.  Why doesn’t Mary shout for joy at the words of the shepherds?  How did pondering help her to frame her reality?  
 
It’s a good question because Mother Mary’s reality was challenging to say the least: still a young teenager, a new mother, with a very confused husband, disappointed parents, a life-time of poverty on the horizon, living under an oppressive government, being a second-class citizen.  What did pondering do for her?
 
I think it made room.  I think it created space in her heart and in her mind for something new. Her fears were still there, but now there was also room for the promises of God.  There was room for faith.  
 
And that, it seems to me, is the key for how we actually obey this commandment to fear not.  It is not by filling our minds with as many diversions as we can.  It is not by filling our lives with noise and accumulation of things and the bolstering the illusions of control.  We learn to “Fear not” by making room for the Word of the Lord to dwell with and interact with all those things that frighten us.  
 
And what is that Word that Mary pondered?  Well, it became flesh and lived among, full of grace and truth.  That Word was born into poverty to teach us the real riches of living.  That Word healed the sick and fed the hungry and touched the unclean.  That Word upset religious and social conventions that got in the way of mercy.  That Word wept at the tomb of a friend, and danced at a wedding, and died a very human and painful. And that Word rose to new life in the midst of fear.  
 
I did learn to read fiction again, but it took time and practice.  I had to work at it and be deliberate about it.  --I’m still working on not being afraid, but I’m getting better.  I’m learning to make room for the Word of the Lord.  And Mother Mary continues to show me the way.

Advent 3, December 16, 2018
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 3:7-18
 
John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
 
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
 
+++
 
When my grandmother died, we did what all families eventually do: we divided her things, each according to interest or need. Some of my cousins needed the furniture and appliances.  Some of my aunts thought they needed the jewelry. I didn’t really need anything, but there was one thing that I wanted.  Unfortunately, it was long gone – a victim of my grandparents’ moves to smaller and smaller places as they aged. 
 
My grandma was a great keeper of Christmas – the sacred and the secular joyfully mixed together. She saw no contradictions in the parties and shopping with church and nativities. She would sing Silent Night and Silver Bells in the same breath. 
 
And nothing represented her ability to mix the sacred and the secular better than the object that disappeared, the one I longed to have to remember her by. It was a little garish, a little too shiny, tacky really - but she loved it and I loved her and so I loved it too. It was a statue of Santa Claus, kneeling at the Manger.   It was THE secular symbol of the season bowing down to worship the One whose birth we all await.
 
I thought about that statue again this week as I read about the so-called “War on Christmas.”  It’s a battle that has raged for years now. In this culture war, some of us say things like: “Keep Christ in Christmas” or “Wise Men Still Seek Him” or “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.”  And I believe all of these things to be true.  But I also think that when we say these words, we are often drawing a proverbial line in the sand; a declaration that, above everything else this day might be, it really belongs to us - the followers of Jesus. 
 
On the other side of that great divide, there are those who say that while this festival began as a religious holiday, over time it has evolved into something completely different. They say that now it’s really more about family and travel and feasting and gifts.  They say that in a pluralistic society, where people practice many faiths or no faith, the holiday has become broader, by necessity, in order to encompass everyone.
 
So what do you think?  As for me, well, I am of both minds.  I think that the ship has already sailed on the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.  But I also see December 25 as one of the most holy days of the year.  I guess I am my grandmother’s grandson.
 
Sometimes I wonder what Jesus thinks of all this fighting over his birthday. Sometimes I wonder what Jesus thinks about all of our fighting in general.  And I suspect he is not pleased. I say that because during his ministry, Jesus was often dismissive of arguments about words.  You could say that he wasn’t so concerned with what we call orthodoxy – that is the right beliefs and the right words to describe them. Jesus always seemed more concerned with orthopraxy – that is the right behaviors in regard to our neighbors. 
 
And that is the setting for the Gospel lesson today.  A bunch of regular folks like us had gone out into the wilderness to hear the preaching of this character named John the Baptist.  Scholars say that many people believed that John was the Messiah because of preaching and popularity.  He was famous long before his cousin Jesus. 
 
I don’t know why John was so popular because his sermons weren’t exactly crowd-pleasers.  They didn’t make people feel good. Instead, after they gave up a days work and hiked for hours under the hot Mediterranean sun, this is how he greeted them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
 
When the Gospel of Matthew reports this same story, these harsh words are reserved for the hypocritical religious leaders.  But in Luke’s Gospel, it is the regular folks who get blasted by these words.  And instead of being offended, these people were convicted.  These people knew they needed to change.  And instead of storming off in a huff, they replied: “What then should we do?”
 
And that question, it seems to me, is not just a question about life in general.  It’s a question about Christmas and how we keep it. As this most holy day approaches, what should we do?  I dare say it’s not to fight over whether or not someone says Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.  And I don’t think it’s simply about coming to church.  I don’t even think it’s about the intellectual belief that Christ is the Savior of the World.  It’s something far simpler and more profound.
 
“What then should we do?” they asked. And John replied: “If you have two coats, give one of them away.  And do the same with your extra food.”  Life is not about accumulation.  Some of the people in his congregation that day were the hated tax collectors, who made their money by over-charging people and pocketing what was left over.  They too asked: “What should wedo?” And John replied: “Don’t collect any more from the people than what is required.”  There were even some despised Roman soldiers who had come to be baptized and they too asked: “What should wedo?”  And John replied: “Don’t extort money from anyone by threats or accusations. Instead, be satisfied with your wages.”
 
Now what is really striking about these answers is that even though John was preaching an apocalyptic message, proclaiming that the whole world was about to change, his call to participate in that change was incredible simple.  It was something everyone could do. To the crowds he said "Share." To the tax collectors, he said, "Be fair." And to the soldiers he said, "Don't bully."  SHARE. BE FAIR.  DON’T BULLY. 
 
Fidelity to the Gospel of this One who is coming does not have to be heroic.  The Good News of John’s message is that in all of our lives, in every moment of every day, we can participate in the Incarnation.  We can enflesh the divine.  We can prepare the way of the Lord by sharing what we have, by insisting on fairness to every person ever born, and in this mean-spirited age, refusing to ever bully anyone. 
 
God doesn’t want us to argue about Christmas.  God wants us to BE Christmas.  The Incarnation of God in Christ is replicated every time any of us does the will of God.  And that, it seems to me, is the transformational power of the Gospel.  It begins with the simple question: what should Ido? 
 
What should you do? What should I do? How will we keep Christmas all year long?  SHARE. BE FAIR.  DON’T BULLY.  And thus prepare the way of the Lord!
 

Advent I, December 2, 2018
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
                                                                        
 
Jeremiah 33:14-16
 
33:14 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
 
33:15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
 
33:16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."
 
+++
 
My father didn’t mean to squelch hope.  In fact, he was trying to instill hope in his children, and so he would say things like: “Next year, we’re going to buy a new house and everyone will have his or her own bedroom!”  Or “Let’s all go to the movies tonight, and you can have any kind of candy you want.”  Or “On your next birthday, I am going to buy you a new bicycle.”  My dear dad meant what he said, but the limits of his Baptist preacher’s salary, with three kids to raise, meant that most of the time, despite his best intentions, he was not able to do what he had promised.  For years, every time my dad would speak magnanimously about the future, my heart would fill with expectation.  But after awhile, seeing the same pattern of disappointment repeated again and again, I eventually stopped believing the promises.  Hope deferred is hope denied, and as a teenager I became silent and cynical when he would speak, mumbling under my breath: “Promises, promises…”
 
Inadvertently, my father prepared me on for a lifetime of the disappointments that come when promises are not kept.  As adults we learn the hard way that employers and lovers and churches and governments often promise us the moon, only to keep us earthbound and disappointed by not acting on their word, by not fulfilling their promises.  
 
And so here I am, distrustful of anyone who makes big promises.  Here I am, adorned with my cynicism like a coat of armor.  I tell myself that it’s better to expect nothing than to be disappointed.  And at this time of year in particular, I give my cynical coat of armor an extra shine. I’m a bit of a Grinch.  I cringe at the forced merriment. I bristle at the crass commercialization of this most holy time of year.
 
But then last Wednesday evening, I walked into this space and for the first time ever saw those stars that Alison made suspended above our heads.  And something inside of me began to stir.  My cynicism seemed to soften a little around the edges.  And I let myself wonder if maybe, just maybe, I could afford a little hope.  Maybe I could dare to let my spirit rise to meet the Advent promises of God, despite all evidence to the contrary? 
 
Jeremiah the prophet lived through the reign of three, less-than-stellar Judean kings.  And as a prophet he railed against the political intrigues of Jerusalem. He preached against the cynical use of religion for political gain.  And all the while, he watched as these kings broke promises, made dirty political alliances, and always kept their own best interests at heart.  And because Jeremiah called them out, he was not their favorite person.  They had the power to simply dispatch him permanently.  But there would be a heavy political price to pay.  So instead, the king threw old Jeremiah into a cold, dark prison - his only crime being the courage to speak truth to power.  
 
Eventually, the corruption rotted the foundation of the government and the Judean kingdom fell, hard.  Great calamity followed.  Babylon conquered them, destroyed their cities, desecrated their holy places, and forced the best and the brightest of them into exile in Babylon.  The poor and vulnerable were simply left behind to live in the ruins of their former greatness.  Think Damascus.
 
Such an incredible devastation seemed to leave little room for hope.  But that’s always the moment that hope appears.  And the word of hope was spoken by the same prophet who warned of calamity. In the nuclear winter of their discontent, Jeremiah told the Babylonian exiles the most incredulous thing.  He said that the kingdom would be restored; that the ruined cities would be rebuilt; that the glory of the Lord would once again hover over the land.  It seemed impossible to believe amidst the rubble of their dreams, so far from home. It seemed impossible to believe living, as they did, as desperate refugees. But Jeremiah proclaimed the word of the Lord, which often sounds like a little bit of nonsense.  He said: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”  
 
That righteous branch was a baby named Jesus. But here’s the thing: Jeremiah prophesied it.  But he never saw it.  It happened, but he was already dead.  And therein lies the power and the challenge of hope.  The word of the Lord shall surely come to pass, but it may be on some distant horizon.  And there is no guarantee that our eyes will ever behold it. 
 
Another year is coming to a close.  And this year, like all the others past, has been filled with broken promises.  This year, like all the others past, is full of dust and ashes; fear and loathing.  Some of us are tired.  Others are afraid. And yet here we are, under the stars, waiting, longing, dreaming, hoping, praying for the kingdom of God to come upon this earth just as it is in heaven. 
 
And so it is, at this time of year, despite myself, that I feel the nudge of hope.  Something in me stirs as we sing and listen and recite the old, old the story about a God who never gives up on the human race; a God who came to us as one of us, born into poverty and oppression to an unwed teenage mother and a terribly confused father. 
 
Given that I’m a Grinch, I’ve often wondered why hope springs eternal despite all the messes I make.  And this is the only conclusion I can draw: that hope is the gift of God.  It is the image of God shining in each of us.  
 
There are stars in the sky.  There is music in the air.  And there is that promise that simply will not let us go. So let’s begin our Advent journey.  Let’s sing the songs.  Let’s light the candles.  Let’s sit in the silence.  Let’s open ourselves to HOPE. 
 
 

Matthew 6:25-33
Sunday, November 18, 2018
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Matthew 6:25-33
 
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
 
 
I hate airports and it has nothing to do with my fear of flying.  I hate airports because of what happens as you wait to fly.  I’m not referring to being herded like cattle or those people who always refuse to wait for their section to be called or those folks whose cell phones seems to be extensions of their heads.  What really drives me to distraction are the ubiquitous televisions with their speakers embedded in the ceiling so that no matter where you are, you cannot escape the talking heads of cable news.  So there I sit, already nervous about getting on a plane, while plastic-looking people remind me of all that has gone wrong in the world that day – including, one time, an airline disaster!
 
A wise critic once observed that cable news is designed for people addicted to anger and fear.  They sell dread, innuendo, and suspicion.   But TV is a business, and so they wouldn’t peddle those things if we didn’t gobble them up like a Thanksgiving feast.  
 
Of course, there are real reasons for us to be afraid.  We live in a beautiful but broken world.  The murderous violence in houses of worship and nightclubs and concerts is so stark in part because it reminds us of what we all know to be true: that life is fleeting.  Life ends and sometimes not in the way we would hope.  And so we embark upon elaborate journeys of denial. We look for someone, anyone to save us from our fears.  We want to believe that they actually can.  And cynical politicians and giant corporations and power-hungry religious institutions rush into that place of fear and tell us that they can save us. They know we are afraid and they use it against us.
 
A therapist once told me that I was addicted to fear.  I was shocked by that opinion because fear is the one thing I have spent my life trying to avoid at all costs - or so I thought.  But over time I came to see the truth of what he said - that being afraid somehow made me feel more alive.  It was an occupation, an adrenaline buzz, a lover, an addiction. But it was also exhausting and debilitating, like some dread disease. 
 
The Rev. Dr. James Forbes, former senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York City, likes to say that the theme of the entire Bible can be boiled down to these two words: “Fear not!”  And if that is true, and if we are on some level addicted to fear, then the call to “Fear not!” is perhaps the most countercultural command in the Bible. 
 
“Fear not!”  Jesus repeats this mantra in the Gospel lesson today, but with different words. This passage is taken from the so-called Sermon on the Mount, a collection of some of the best-known sayings of Jesus.  Today we heard Pastor Alison read: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” 
 
The larger context of this passage is about a proper perspective on money.  And if there is anything that we are truly afraid of, it is the lack of money.  That is an old, old human concern, and the folks who heard Jesus preach that day knew a lot more about that concern than we do.  
 
Assuming that those who heard Jesus speak were a representative sampling of the society at large, then 2-3% of them would have been aristocrats, people of Greek or Roman background, family connections, old money.  For them, Jesus’s instruction not to worry about food and clothing would have been easy enough. They never did.  --Then there were the tax collectors and the major landowners, 12-14 % of the population.  They worked hard, but they always had plenty to eat. --Then there were the priests and the scribes.  They may not have been as rich as the others, but this 4-5% always had full bellies, plus they wore the most beautiful clothes of all.  --But everyone else, a full 78% of the general populace, was really poor.  And of the poor, there were levels of poverty.  The destitute – not the people at the bottom of the barrel but the people under the barrel were the beggars and disabled and prostitutes who were always only a few days away from starvation. 
 
And so there they sat, mostly poor, listening, hoping, longing for words that would relieve their fears of economic insecurity.  They knew Jesus sometimes talked about money, but on this day, there was no zealot’s talk of economic revolution.  Instead, Jesus simply said: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”  
 
Well, yes Jesus, but if you don’t have those things, you can’t live! -- What kind of thing was that to say to poor and frightened people?  Why couldn’t Jesus have said something inspiring about God rescuing us from our fears?  Isn’t that what we all want. But the Gospel doesn’t promise us rescue.  Instead it promises us salvation.  And there is a significant difference between the two.  Salvation is often not about a change of circumstance, but a of perspective – in biblical language, being born again. 
 
Jesus asked the people that day: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life?” That’s a question we all should answer, every day.  And then to try to help them move away from worry as a default mode, Jesus talked about flowers and birds.  He reminded the people that God loves them more than these.  But that alone is not the truth that saves us.  Our salvation is found in remembering howbirds and flowers experience the world.  These beautiful creations experience the world in the only way they can: in the present moment – not tomorrow or next week or next year, but right here, right now.  Jesus was teaching the supremacy and glory and blessing of the present.
 
And then as if to underscore the supremacy of the present, he concludes with these practical words: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.” In other words, be present now.
 
I wish I were better at that.  How I struggle to even relax into this moment without thinking of what comes next in the service and what I need to do tomorrow and how we will meet our stewardship goal. Worrying about what has not yet happened is my addiction, and the root of most of my fear.  
 
Jesus wasn’t preaching the Gospel according to Bobby McFerrin that day: “Don’t worry, be happy!”  How cruel that would have been to those who first heard it; those who had no idea if there would be food for tomorrow.  How cruel that message would be to those of us living in the forward shadows of terror and racism and hatred and climate upheaval.  Jesus never said: “Don’t worry, be happy.”  Jesus said: “Don’t worry, be present.”
 
Be present.  Consider in this moment how good it is.  We are here together.  We are alive. We know the warmth of human touch. We can ponder beauty and wonder and mystery and awe.  We are able to reach out and help others.  That makes this present moment an incredible gift. And for that gift, may the Lord make us truly thankful.