Sunday Musings

"Jesus is the crisis of my world, because he will not leave me with a false sense of peace."

8/18/2019

A GOSPEL OF CRISIS
Sunday, August 18, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 12:49-56

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

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A few years ago, Marcos and I attended a family reunion in Indiana.  It was predicated on the fact that both my parents were turning 80.  And so, on the appointed day, in a restaurant banquet room, fifty relatives from both sides of the family gathered.  While on one hand I was excited to renew ties with folks I hadn’t seen in decades.  On the other hand, there are some folks you shouldn’tsee for decades!
I had a handful of concerns about how it all might go, but among the biggest was the fear that conversations about the good old days might turn into conversations about these political days in America.  I knew that tempers would flare if that happened, and so I had a prepared a response in the event that anyone tried to engage me in a political conversation I didn’t want to have.  I would simply say:  “Today is about my parents.  Let’s focus on them.”  And if that didn’t work, then I would excuse myself and walk away.

I came up with this plan in advance because I am, by nature, conflict averse.  I may have opinions about all sorts of things, but I would prefer not to discuss most of them.  It just doesn’t seem worth it to me, knowing how entrenched most of us are; how much we don’t really listen to each other; how much we prefer preaching to the choir.

So, you can imagine my relief and delight when on the morning of the big event, my mother announced (as only my mother can) that there would be no discussion of politics… or religion.  My father, the retired Baptist minister, was flabbergasted by my mother’s edict.  “What are all the preachers in this family supposed to talk about if even religion is off the table?” he wanted to know.  “Pop,” I replied, “there’s a lot more to talk about than religion... or politics.”

And that’s the truth.  There is so much more to talk about.  We’ve just gotten out of the habit.  We have so taken to yelling at one another and judging one another that we’ve actually come to enjoy it.  One of the wonderful things about a church like ours, with folks who have all kinds of opinions about all kinds of things, is that we learn to be community with people different from ourselves, and to talk about other important things.  That is one of your gifts to me.

So I delighted by my mother’s decision because I didn’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation with anyone that day. Truth is, I don’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation with anyone on any day.  -- But the unintended consequence of this unwillingness to discuss anything controversial is that society’s problems, so often tied to one’s religious or political points of view, are left unchallenged.  Harmony at all costs can exact a very high societal price.

And it was a price Jesus was not willing to pay. Jesus was alwaystalking about politics and money and religion – all the things that really honk people off.  He did it so often and so provocatively that it was considered dangerous by those who ran the show.  In the end, they killed him just to shut him up.

Today’s lesson is an excerpt of a long-running argument about religion and politics between Jesus and the religious establishment.  And in order to understand them, you really have to understand the setting. Jesus had begun his last ever journey ever into Jerusalem. So he must have felt fear and dread, and a sense of inevitable destiny.  So there was that pressure.  And Luke says that the Pharisees, who were never friendly to Jesus, began to be even more hostile.  They were cross-examining him at every turn, lying in wait to catch him in something he might say, intent on twisting his words and destroying his influence.  So there was that pressure too.  In addition to this, Luke says that the crowd that day numbered in the thousands.  People pressed against him and demanded his attention and made it difficult for him to move.  And worse yet, the crowd had trampled some folks trying to get close to Jesus.  And all of these pressures seemed to converge in this one moment, pushing Jesus right over the edge.

Suddenly, he raised his voice and no doubt stunned everyone into silence by shouting: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”

This portrait of the Savior shakes me up because it is so different from the way he is usually portrayed. Didn’t the angels sing ‘Peace on Earth’ as they heralded his birth?  Didn’t he promise to leave us a peace that no one can ever take away from us?  Don’t we call him ‘The Prince of Peace?’   So yes, Jesus, I do expect you to bring peace.  I don’t want to hear Jesus say that he came to bring us division. We’re very good at that on our own.

So what could this all mean?

Well, it is clear in Scripture that Jesus didspeak lots of words of peace.  He mended broken bodies and relationships. He taught.  He touched.  He loved.  But he also confronted - because his message was too important to get lost in a sea of sentimentality.  The peace that Jesus preached is not some warm, fuzzy feeling.  It is peace based in human justice and dignity. And maybe on this day, with so little time left on the earth, he wanted to make sure that we actually heard what he had to say.

The late theologian Fred Craddock once said,  “Jesus is the crisis of the world.”  And what Dr. Craddock meant by that is that Jesus calls us all to moments of decision. And sometimes those moments are uncomfortable because the Gospel of Jesus stands in judgment over allthe systems that rule the world. And he asks us to choose his way – the way of loving our neighbors just exactly as we love ourselves – over every other way.

Today we rejoice in the baptisms of Lance and Logan.  But even in midst of that joyous moment, did you hear the Gospel of Crisis referenced in the liturgy?  We asked the boys’ parents an ancient question that the church has used in baptismal liturgies since the beginning: “Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire the freedom of new life in Christ?”  In other words, there is a decision to make about the way you will live in relation to everyone else on this planet.  Choose wisely.

I don’t like conflict, but sometimes a conflict is exactly what I need to move me off center and to snap me to attention. And that means that a conflict can create a greater good. A conflict can be a tool of reconciliation.  But what a conflict can never, ever be is a goal. And that, it seems to me, is where we are stuck today.  We’ve come to enjoy the conflict far too much.  We’re not even on the lookout for what comes afterward the conflict is over.

On this day, and others, Jesus stirred up trouble.  He preached a Gospel of Crisis.  And he did that because he was remaking the world.  And then he gave us the Holy Spirit, so that we could keep on remaking it.

We all long for harmony and unity and peace. But staying quiet because we are uncomfortable; turning a blind eye to injustice and cruelty, is not how you get there.

Jesus is the crisis of my world, because he will not leave me with a false sense of peace.  Instead he calls me and you to a life a meaning and purpose, not just for ourselves, but for the world that he so loved that he gave his life.

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"No matter how many mistakes we make or people we hurt or sins we commit or doubts we have, in the end: All shall be well."

8/11/2019

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TRAVELING WITHOUT A MAP
Sunday, August 11, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

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When I lived in New York City, I loved the color and the movement and yes, even the noise.  But the noise I liked most of all was the clang of the deadbolts on my apartment door at the end of the day.  It meant that I was in and the world was out.  And that nightly ritual gave me a feeling of control over my environment. I needed those deadbolts in order to make sense of and to live successfully with whatever was on the other side of that door the next day.

Over the years I’ve realized that those deadbolts were a metaphor for the way I have lived much of my life.  I do love the world in all of its glorious unpredictability.  And I do love a good adventure.  But I also want some order and guarantees.

I think we all want that – we just reach for it in different ways: some of us through money, others through power or position or education. For me, it was religion. It was the amassing correct doctrine and the believing of all the right things through which I endeavored to exercise control over my environment.  A sure faith was as good as a deadbolt. If I had enough of that faith; if it was the right kind of faith, then nothing bad could really happen to me.

Was I delusional?  Maybe.  But then again, so were all the people around me.  Back when I was a teenager and a young adult, my family was involved in what is now commonly called “the Prosperity Gospel.”  The basic idea behind the Prosperity Gospel is that with a proper belief system, one can, by faith and sheer determination, control one’s environment.  You can literally stave off sickness.  You can literally bring on riches.  All of this is possible, the teaching goes, because you possess the Truth – with a capital T.  And it’s a very popular message because it promises to save us from our fears.  With the right kind of faith, we will not lose our jobs.  We will not get a serious illness.  A hate-filled gunman in Walmart will not snatch our life away.

Now maybe this way of believing sounds like craziness to you.  Maybe you don’t think of your faith as magic.  Perhaps.  But over the years, I have seen a bit of magical thinking in most religion.  We may not be looking for wealth or fame, but we still think that if we have the right intellectual beliefs, that this will save us.  Believing all the right things is what will get us into heaven.

But is that what faith really is? This year I had to ask that question again and again as I led the Confirmation class.  Each time we met, I wondered: what is it that I am supposed to be teaching these young people? Should I be articulating the details of the Apostle’s Creed?  Should I be teaching them Congregationalist history and theology and polity? Or should I be trying to teach them a way of life?  Should I be helping them to see God, especially when there are no easy answers?

The patriarch Abraham is called the Father of our faith.  And in this fractured world of ours, it is so vitally important to remember that Abraham is also father to the Jews and to the Muslims.  He binds us all together as siblings.  But what do we mean when we call him the father of our faith?  What kind of faith did he practice?  And how does that relate to our own experiences of faith in the world today?

Abraham, we are told, was a rich man from the land of Ur of the Chaldees.  He was, like all his neighbors, a pagan and a polytheist, meaning that he worshipped false gods.  But one day, when old Abe was just minding his own business, he heard a voice.  He heard a voice that, for whatever reason, he came to believe was the voice of the One True God.  And this voice told him to set out for a place he had never been before and to settle there.  And this voice told him that he would be a father, despite the fact that his wife Sarah could not have any children, and they were both already too old. And furthermore, this voice told him that he and Sarah wouldn’t have just children, but that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky or grains of sand on a thousand beaches.  So Abraham, with only an inner voice to guide him, set out on this journey.

He set out with only his inner experience to guide him.  There was no Bible for him to consult. There were no temples or priests or traditions. There was no one in authority to tell him that he was right.  All he had was the voice and his own convictions that he had been called. The book of Hebrews says: “(Abraham) set out, not knowing where he was going.” That is an astonishing statement. And Abraham is the father of our faith.

Abraham’s experience is so different from what most people think of as strong faith.  Strong faith is usually defined as propositional truths, as doctrine, as tradition.  But Abraham’s faith is defined as restlessness and “in betweenness.”  This is faith as inspired intuition. And it requires trust that one day you will arrive where you are supposed to be.

Recently I’ve been having trouble with my iPhone.  You see my phone doesn’t always switch between a Wi-Fi connection and the network connection automatically.  And what that means is that sometimes when I get in my car after having been indoors, I can’t connect to the network. And that means I cannot get a GPS signal.   And that means that I feel lost and frustrated and angry.  The only way I can reconnect to the network is to restart my phone.  I usually know how to get from point A to point B, but I want to hear Siri’s reassuring voice of authority that I am headed in the right direction.  I don’t want to just depend upon my instincts and experience.

Abraham set on, not knowing (exactly) where he was going.  And since we are his children, that means that, in order for us to grow in our faith, we have to set out.  We have to move.  And we very often do not know where we shall end up.

The medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich, was the first woman to write a book in the English language.  And that book entitled Revelations of Divine Love is a record of the mystical visions she had as she lay dying.  Well she didn’t die, even though they gave her the last rights.  Instead she recovered and wrote about all that she saw in her fevered state.  This little book is a little strange, as so many mystical things are.  But the reason it spoke so powerfully to me is that its underlying message is that there is no place in this universe where the love of God is not present.  And there is nothing that we can do to make God not love us.  And that assurance gives us the courage to set out, even though we do not know where we’re going.  As Julian put it:  “All shall be well.   And all shall be well.  And all manner of things shall be well.”

And that is the essence of true faith. That is the truth that allowed our Father Abraham and our Mother Sarah to set out on their great adventure.  And that is the truth that accompanies us every step of the way.  No matter where the voice calls us to go, no matter how implausible it may all seem, no matter how many mistakes we make or people we hurt or sins we commit or doubts we have, in the end: “All shall be well.   And all shall be well.  And all manner of things shall be well.”

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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Eat, drink, and be merry. Just make sure to do whatever you can so that others may have those same joys.

8/4/2019

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RICH TOWARD GOD
Sunday, August 4, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

In my church in New Jersey, there was a widow named Jo Hook.  Jo took a liking to me and I to her, and one day she invited me over to her house for dinner.  She was an incredible cook, but I can’t tell you what I ate that day.  What I can tell you, however; what I will never forget, is what her house was like.  Jo lived in this incredibly charming Colonia-era stone house that was chocked full of the treasures that she and her late husband had collected over a lifetime of travel and adventures.  And I was enthralled.

A few years later, Jo became ill and died. Since everyone loved her, the church was packed for her funeral.  Once we had laid her to rest, her family did what all families do when the parents are gone: they closed the house.  None of Jo’s children lived close by.  All of them led busy lives.  And so they hired a company to come in to that charming house and sell everything. I was curious, so I went to the sale. Strange people met me at the door and asked me to come in and look around, having no sense of who I was or who I had been to Jo.  And what I saw that day has never left me: literally everything in her house – from the furniture to the knick-knacks to the rugs and drapes and dishes and clothing had price tags on them.  Everything she had collected and purchased and been given and loved and held a precious memory was for sale.

A friend of mine once told a similar story about his friend, the heiress Alice Tully, of Lincoln Center fame.  When Alice died, all of her valuable things went to Christie’s Auction House in New York.  But the rest of it, photographs, dishes, even things like stockings went to another auction house where it was pawed over by strangers.  My friend told me that seeing that shook him so deeply that he wept uncontrollably.  He said: “No one’s life should be reduced to people groveling over stockings.”

We spend our lives collecting things that we love and that have meaning for us.  If you come to our house, you will soon learn that there is a story for every painting and vase and rug and knickknack.  We love it all.  But the hard truth is that one day, when are no more, people will take our things and divide them and sell them and fight over them and throw them away.

One day, someone in a crowd called out to Jesus: “Rabbi, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”  This was probably a younger brother who was unhappy with the unequal distribution of assets based on ancient Judaic inheritance practices.  In that day, it was customary for the oldest male child to receive 2/3s of the entire estate, leaving 1/3 to be divided between however many other males there were. Maybe the man in the crowd that day hoped that this rabbi with his radical new ideas would say something fresh about dividing inheritance money more equitably.  If Jesus had ideas about that, we don’t hear them here.  Instead, Jesus used the moment as a jumping off point to tell a story about the true measure of our lives.

Once upon a time there was a very rich farmer who had a bumper crop.  The harvest was so great that he didn’t have any place to store it all.  So he decided that he would tear down the barns he had and build much bigger ones to store the tremendous surplus.  Then he would kick back for the rest of his life, take an early retirement, and enjoy the fruits of his labor.  Sounds pretty good, right?  But the party ended before it ever began.  God spoke and said: “You fool!  This very night your life is demanded of you.  And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”  Jesus ends this unsettling story by saying: “So it is with everyone who stores up treasures for himself or herself, but is not rich toward God.”

This is not an easy passage to preach because it seems to fly in the face of ideas we hold dear – ideas like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps; like saving for a rainy day.  That’s certainly how my folks raised me. From the time I was a little kid, I was taught to work hard and save my money – the more saved, the better because you didn’t know what the future would hold.  My mother canned an abundance of food – hundreds of jars of green beans and tomatoes and corn and pickles and jam for those long Indiana winters.  Jesus certainly can’t be disparaging being prepared, can he? What was so wrong with the rich farmer building new barns to hold the surplus grain?

Well, as with so many stories in the Bible, in order to really understand them, you have to know the setting and culture.  To begin with, this man was no ordinary farmer. He was a major landowner.  This was an agri-business.  And that made him significantly different from almost everyone else in that society.  Most everyone worked the land, but the land they worked was not their own.  They worked for “the man.” And all of those non-land owners bought their daily bread, their staples, from “the man.”  His success or failure was essential to the entire community’s success or failure. He was, quite literally, his brother’s and sister’s keeper.

So, what he might have done with all that surplus grain was sell it to his neighbors at a reduced rate – meaning abundance for everyone.  He still would have made a profit just by the sheer volume of his sales. But instead he hoarded the daily bread of others.  One commentator has suggested that by doing so, he could dole that food out bit by bit, creating a demand that wasn’t really there and thus driving the price up.

In addition to that, the rich man completely removed God from the equation of his life and his success.  He speaks in the first person (“I” and “my”) eleven times in this short story.  Not once is there a mention of the God who created the seed and soil and sun.  There is no prayer of thanksgiving for the blessings of a bumper crop.  Instead there is a singular attention to what this wealth will mean for him and him alone.

But then God speaks.  And this is the only time in any of the parables of Jesus that God actually says anything.  And what God says should give us all pause: “You fool, your time’s up.  You’re planning for your future at just the moment that your life is over.  And all these things you have accumulated, whose will they be once you’re gone?”  As the writer of Ecclesiastes put it: “one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it.”

The rich farmer died.  And one day, we will too.  And all those things we have collected and loved and treasured – and maybe hoarded – will be left behind. And that singular truth, which our whole culture is poised to ignore, Jesus calls us to pay special attention to.  He tells us this story so that we will never forget.

Now, that being said, it’s also foolish to pretend as if our comfort and well-being is not important.  It’s foolish to pretend that having enough doesn’t matter.  It’s foolish to pretend that we don’t need to plan for our retirement. I certainly do!  But according to Jesus, what’s more important than that is to plan for one’s “expirement.”

So how do we do that?  Should we give all our money away?  I don’t think that’s what Jesus was saying.  That implies that the rich farmer’s main problem was that he was rich.  But there are lots of rich and faithful people in the stories of the Bible.  So money wasn’t his problem.  Fear was his problem.  He was afraid of not having enough.  And it was his fear of lack that drove him in his selfishness.  It is my fear of lack that drives me in my selfishness.

But the challengeof the Gospel (and I underline that word “challenge”) is the call to live by faith, and not by fear.  And we have to exercise that faith muscle because our whole world is driven by fear. But in this world of fear, we are called to a counter-cultural lifestyle – something Jesus called being rich toward God.  Well, how do you do that? It’s actually pretty simple.  It was the same thing the rich farmer in the parable was called to.  We are rich toward God by being rich toward all those who bear the image of God.  And that’s everyone.

So friends, by all means, enjoy your lives. I do.  Eat, drink, and be merry. I do.  Just make sure that you also do whatever you can so that others may have those same joys.  Be rich toward God.

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I don’t need the words. You don’t need words. All you need is intention and love and hope and good will and breath.

7/28/2019

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TEACH US TO PRAY
Sunday, July 28, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 11:1-13

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:

  Father, hallowed be your name.
  Your kingdom come.
  Give us each day our daily bread.
  And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
  And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’

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Walter was a member of my church in Manhattan – a very colorful member.  And Walter had lived a very colorful life.  As a young man, he had studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and then spent the better part of his adulthood traveling the world, learning languages and cultures that he then taught to others.  Of all those cultures, Walter was especially proud of his own African American culture.  And he was quick to tell you, despite his impressive life and resume, that his Christian faith was really nothing more than slave religion.  In other words, Walter connected most powerfully to the divine through the stories and music of his people and their search for freedom and dignity.

Walter helped me to understand that we all do that.  We all connect to God through our experiences, through the people who raised us and the communities that formed us.  And if Walter was right about that, then my religion is mountain religion. And part of that religious tradition is a dedication to a life of prayer.

As a child, prayer was all around me. My paternal great grandmother used to spend hours on her knees in prayer every day – this despite her severe arthritis. Her daughter, my grandmother, was also a person of prayer – sometimes very dramatic prayers.  When grandma felt she needed to repent of her sins, she would sometimes take on the air of an Old Testament prophet: dressing in tattered clothes, letting her hair fall down around her face, and throwing dust and ashes in the air.  My parents are a little tamer than that, but they pray for me and Marcos and this church every day – sometimes more than once a day.  And when my people pray, they actually believe that God hears each word they utter; and that God answers prayers in ways that are observable and verifiable.

Earlier in my adult life, I too prayed often and earnestly.  I used to carry around a list of people - dozens of names – that I prayed for every day. But over time, I found that these intense daily prayers often seemed to be more of a burden than a blessing.  And over time, I began to wonder if my endless shopping list which I called daily prayer, was really the kind of communication God desired to have with me. It seemed to me that at least some of my prayers were an attempt to convince God to do what Ithought best. And I started to wonder if perhaps the great Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard wasn’t on to something when he said: “Prayer does not change God, but it changes (the one) who prays.”

One day Jesus was praying, as he often did.  His disciples must have been eavesdropping because when he finished, they asked him to teach them how to pray.  And here we should pause for just a moment.  There is in modern American piety this notion that one should automatically know how to pray.  “It’s just like having a conversation with a friend,” people say.  Well, not quite.  Most of our friends aren’t invisible.  And most of our friends say something to us in return. So, prayer is notjust like having a conversation with a friend.  Prayer is something that even the disciples of Jesus needed to be taught how to do.

And so, Jesus taught them, using words we now call the Lord’s Prayer.  And while it is a beautiful prayer to recite, what we should also see in it is a pattern forprayer.  It contains certain elements that are building blocks of prayer: praise, petition, confession. And notice that our beloved ending: “For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever” is missing from this version, because it’s missing from the most ancient and reliable manuscripts of the Gospels.  It’s probably a later addition because a scribe didn’t like the abrupt ending.

So Jesus gave his disciples a model upon which to hang their words.  And then he told them a parable about being persistent in prayer.  And Jesus ends that parable with these memorable words: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

And that, it seems at first glance, is an invitation to ask for whatever we want, as if God is some sort of Santa Claus, dispensing wishes to those who haven’t been too naughty.  And that, I suspect, is how many folks think of prayer.  It’s asking God for what we think we need and then waiting to see if God will grant our wish.

But if that is your approach to prayer, then when you are in real need, when illness or loneliness or unemployment come to call, and you don’t get what you pray for, then the logical conclusion is that God is capricious and temperamental… or maybe even cruel.

Some of my biggest struggles with prayer have been the uneven ways in which they seem to be answered.  Some people get well, many don’t.  Some poverty is relieved, most isn’t.  God seems to favor one part of the world or one religion over another.  And that process of asking and waiting and hoping and being disappointed has disillusioned a good many people and helped to swell the ranks of the atheism.

But a closer examination of this passage leads us to another conclusion about the aim and purpose of prayer.  These verses don’t end with a promise that if you are good, then God will give you whatever you ask for.  Instead, Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask!”  What you are promised when you pray is not everything you ask for.  But it is everything you need.  The answer to every prayer is more of God – deeper understanding, further revelation, intimacy, belonging, trust, peace.  It doesn’t mean that we cannot ask God for what we think we need or others need.  After all, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to ask for our daily bread.  But the measure of an answered prayer is a deeper communion with God.

And one more thing about prayer: I no longer think of it only as verbal.  I also think of it as an intention.  Prayer is an attitude.  Prayer can manifest as words spoken, but prayer can also manifest as a fond wish or a heart’s desire.  Prayer can be as simple as our breath.

A few weeks ago, I was at the Chautauqua Institution for some continuing education.  I listened all week to Father Richard Rohr, a man whose work I have read and admired for years.  Rohr is a Franciscan Catholic priest whose life work has been the integrated spiritual life. Rohr is all about breaking down the divisions of dualism and trying to get us to see God at work in everything and everyone.  He said lots of very interesting things, but the most profound for me was the way he ended his final lecture of the week.

Rohr spoke about the practices of prayer and contemplation, and many people’s struggle with them.  And then he told us this story that he had learned from a rabbi.  The rabbi said that the Jewish name for God – Yahweh – is not spoken, but rather breathed. “Its correct pronunciation is an attempt to imitate the sound of inhalation and exhalation.” (Yah – weh, Yah –weh…) And if that is true, Rohr continued, then with every breath, we are saying the divine name.  And with every breath, we are praying, as St. Paul put it, “without ceasing.”   That means that we actually pray as we emerge from our mother’s wombs.  And as we die, our very last act will be a prayer.

Well, when he said that, I cried like a child in spite of myself.  I cried because I long to have communion with God.  But sometimes I don’t have the words.  But I don’t need the words.  You don’t need words.  All you need is intention and love and hope and good will and breath.

“Lord, teach us to pray.”  Amen.

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This week is going to be whatever it will be: stressful, busy, burdensome, challenging. We can’t really change that. But we can choose “the better part.”

7/21/2019

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THE BETTER PART
Sunday, July 21, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

+++
Back in 1994, I was living in Cleveland, and I was in the midst of a very important decision. I was trying to decide if I was going to move east to go back to school and then seek a career in academia and leave the pulpit behind.  It was a huge decision and so I figured some dedicated time in a retreat setting was an excellent idea.  And so I set off to the Abbey of the Genesee in western New York state.

This famed abbey is a Trappist Monastery, meaning, among other things, that a general silence is observed all day, except during worship when the monks chant the Psalms. That is the only time words are spoken. Now, all that silence seemed like a great idea in theory.  But in practice -  it just about drove me crazy.  It was hard to share meals with other pilgrims and not make small talk – to say nothing of trying to get someone to pass you the salt.  And it was far more difficult that I had anticipated to spend all those hours in my room, reading and sleeping and praying and listening and journaling… in silence.

But just like a good, long, hard work out, when it was all over, I knew that it had been worth it. I came away from those five days with a renewed sense of purpose and direction for my life’s work.  I did move east.  And when I look back on that experience 25 years ago, I see a direct thread between those five days at Genesee and this day of standing before you. That strange experience of quietude literally brought me here.

So if that is true; and if I now look back upon my time at Genesee with fondness, if I can see how God’s spirit was at work in the midst of that forced downtime, then I have to wonder why I work so hard at avoiding that kind of silent downtime today.  I have to wonder why I seek busyness above all else.

We Protestant like to be busy. We call it the Protestant work ethic.  We believe in being busy because there is a lot of work to do in the world.  Our pilgrim forbears came to these shores to work – to build a new world, a city set upon a hill.  Now our Pilgrim forbears didn’t have any patron saints (they didn’t believe in such things), but if they had, then Martha would have been an excellent choice for them.

One day, Jesus was invited to the home of his best friends, siblings named Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.  And Martha was a bit like me when I entertain – she felt all the pressures of getting everything just right.  On any other day, her sister Mary would have been in the kitchen with her.  But on this day, Mary was acting very strangely indeed.

Instead of being in the kitchen, she was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him teach. That was odd, not just because Martha needed help, but because by sitting at the feet of Jesus, Mary had assumed the position of a male in that society.  Only men sat at the feet of a rabbi and absorbed his teachings.  Perhaps more oddly still, there is an intimacy implied in the Greek text.  The word construction implies that Mary sort of wrapped herself around Jesus’s feet; not wanting to let him go.  Maybe that upset Martha too.

And so Martha bustled in and out of the room, sort of slamming the plates down on the table and sighing dramatically.  She wanted someone – anyone - to ask her what was wrong.  But no one did.  Finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she did the unthinkable and brought the dinner guest into the middle of the argument. Instead of whispering in her sister’s ear: “Get off your butt and get into the kitchen” she addressed the guest: “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left all the work to me?  Tell her to help me!”  But Jesus answered her: “Martha, dear Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; (but) there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

“The better part.” Well, what could that mean?

The most common way to interpret this story is to say that Jesus is making a clear distinction between the contemplative life and the life based in activity, and implies that the contemplative life is far superior.  It’s the better part.  And I’ve heard a lot of sermons like interpret this passage just like that.  These preachers often laud Mary and chide Martha, as if the sum total of Christian duty is to sit around and think about Jesus while the world goes to hell.  But that interpretation is problematic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the story that directly precedes this one is the story of the Good Samaritan.  And the story of the Good Samaritan is all about doingthe right thing – not just thinking about it.

So if this is not a story about the superiority of the contemplative life over the life of good works, then what is the point?  Well, notice that Jesus never actually chides Martha for being busy.  Jesus doesn’t tell her to come and sit down and listen for a while.  Somebody has to make the meal and that too is worthy work.  So Jesus doesn’t disparage the work itself.  Instead, Jesus takes notice of Martha’s state of mind.  He identifies her problem like this: “Martha, dear Martha,” he says to her, “you areworried and distractedby many things.”

“You are worried and distracted by many things.” The Greek word for distracted has the connotation of being pulled apart or dragged in different directions all at the same time, like being drawn and quartered.  And don’t we all know what that feels like!   When I get like that; when life and its worries start to pull me apart, then as much as I love you and love this work, there is no joy in it. I can’t keep my focus.  I don’t remember my purpose.  I’m prone to being overwhelmed and depressed.

So Martha’s problem was not that she was busy.  My problem is not that I am busy.  My problem, on any given day, is that the “push me, pull you” of life distracts me from the very things that Jesus taught: love of God, love of neighbor, justice for all people, peace and love and laughter and plenty.  I forget “the better part.” I forget what it’s like to sit and listen to our rabbi teach.

And I think that what is true for individuals is also true for institutions.  How often does the church collectively listen for the voice of the Spirit?  Instead what we do when we feel afraid is ORGANIZE.  But what we don’t often see about ourselves is how worried and distracted we really are by budgets and buildings and endowment figures and membership rolls and growth projections and key indicators.

But it doesn’t have to be like that here either.  At Old South Church in Boston – a venerable UCC congregation, every Board meeting, every committee meeting begins with 30 minutes of prayer and Bible study and human connection.  Now, when I read that, I could hardly believe it so I emailed their pastor, Nancy Taylor, who didn’t know me from Adam.  We set up a phone call and I asked her if it was really true.  And Rev. Taylor told me that people in that once moribund congregation are actually clamoring to serve because for the first time ever they understand in a visceral way the connection between worship and work; between stillness and purpose.

This week is going to be whatever it will be: stressful, busy, burdensome, challenging.  We can’t really change that.  But we can choose “the better part.” We can choose to stay close to Jesus and all that he taught us.

This summer we’ve been trying a little stillness after the sermons; a time to reflect upon what we’ve heard.  We’ve been sitting in silence for 90 seconds or so.  But today, we’re going to go a little deeper.  Today we will sit and be still for three minutes.  There are no assignments during this time.  You don’t have to close your eyes.  You don’t have to strain to hear.  You don’t have to think of something holy.  If someone makes a noise, let it roll right over you. Just need to breathe and be present and let whatever happens, happen.

And this is what I hope will happen: that if you’re anxious and worried, you will feel the everlasting arms under you.  I hope that you will be able to breathe - deeply.  I hope that your shoulders will relax and your brain will quiet down.  I hope you will have a glimpse of the nearness of God and your dearness to God - something Jesus once called “the better part.”

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What's your secret? What’s the one thing you don’t want anyone else to know?

7/7/2019

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I’VE GOT A SECRET
Sunday, July 7, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

2 Kings 5:1-14

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

+++

What’s your secret?  Not the kind that you might reveal in a parlor game or at a cocktail party.  I mean – what’s your secret?  What’s the one thing that you don’t want anyone else to know? Is it a treasure or is it a curse? And if it’s a curse as most secrets are, have you ever wondered what it might be like to be free of it?

Silence keeps a lot of our secrets, but not all of them.  Some are more difficult to conceal.  They’re visible if we’re not careful.  And so we smooth our wrinkles with fancy products.  We wear slimming devices to give us the illusion of health and beauty. We hide scars and blemishes with clothing and make-up.  And it can be expensive to keep those kinds of secrets.  Dolly Parton once famously quipped about her so-called eternal youth: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!”  Indeed, it does, Dolly.

Once upon a time there was a high-powered Syrian general named Naaman.  General Naaman commanded the army that had defeated Israel.  And 2 Kings reports, rather surprisingly, that God actually favored Naaman over God’s own people.  So this man was a well-placed mover and shaker in the ancient world. But despite his success and wealth and power, Naaman had a terrible secret.  He had leprosy.  Now when the Bible speaks of leprosy, it’s often a general reference to any skin disease – not just Hansen’s Disease where people loose fingers, toes, and nose.  Naaman’s condition might have been something like severe psoriasis.  But whatever it was, skin diseases were highly feared in the biblical world.  They were all thought to be contagious.  So having a skin disease put you on the outside.

Maybe Naaman’s leprosy was in a place where he could hide it under his clothing.  But folks in his household knew what he had, because they had seen him in various stages of undress.  Those in the know included the little Jewish servant girl who had been kidnapped away from her family during a raid into Israel and given to Naaman’s wife.  This little girl had seen Naaman’s shame and suffering. But she also knew of a prophet back home named Elisha.  And she knew that if Elisha prayed for Naaman, his leprosy would be healed.  So she told Mrs. Naaman all about it, who told her husband all about it.

I imagine at first he resisted the idea.  Who wants to go to your enemy for help?  But in the end, Naaman’s secret made him desperate enough to try.  He asked his king to write a letter to the king of Israel describing his desire to meet the famous Elisha.  At first the king of Israel thought it was a trick – setting up an impossible to meet demand - meant to humiliate Israel all over again.  But the prophet insisted that he would help this foreign general. So Naaman set out and took gifts for the prophet: one-thousand pounds of silver, six thousand gold coins, and ten sets of the most beautiful garments you’ve ever seen.

The great general arrived at the house of the prophet and expected to be greeted for the great man that he was. But instead, Elisha didn’t even come out to say hello.  He sent out a messenger to tell Naaman to go and wash himself seven times in the muddy, unimpressive Jordan River.   Well, this was too much!  Not only had General Naaman gone to his enemies for help; not only had he been met by a messenger and not the prophet himself, but he had been told to strip down and humble himself and wash in this sorry excuse of a river.  He was furious and began to storm off.  But just before he left, his own servants intervened: “Sir, you would do much more than this to be cured.  All you have to do is go wash yourself.  What do you have to lose?”

And that made sense, so Naaman relented and walked down to the river.  He removed his clothing piece by piece.  Maybe in doing so he revealed diseased parts of his body that no one had ever seen before.  And then he walked into that muddy water and dipped himself seven times; a biblical number that always implies “completeness” or “wholeness.”  And each time he came up out of that water, his skin looked better until at last he was restored.  And his terrible secret, once exposed to the light, completely lost its power over him.

This story is notable for all kinds of reasons, but one of the most striking is its bold upsetting of the social order.  Jesus makes reference to this story in Luke chapter 4 as an illustration of how the Gospel upsets the social order; God’s love and care is for all people – not just us so-called chosen ones. Naaman: a Syrian, a pagan, an outsider, and an enemy of Israel was the one upon whom the favor of God rested.

So that upsets our understanding of the way things ought to be.  But so does this: the Word of the Lord came through the lowly ones no one paid any attention to.  It was through the mouth of a female child and a slave – a nobody - that the word of the Lord came to the mighty general.  And instructions for his healing were delivered by another nobody – a mere messenger of the prophet. And then it was Naaman’s own servants who implored him not to storm off, but to at least try the muddy Jordan to see if it would work. Healing and wholeness were facilitated by those whom we ignore. And if you read the Bible carefully and fully, you will see that this pattern repeats over and over again. And we’re still learning the lesson to listen to those no one else hears.

This is a story about how much those things, by which we stratify society, don’t matter to God at all.    This is a story about how our social stratification keeps us trapped by our secrets. This story is about pretending to be perfect as we compete for social acceptance.  And the Good News of the Gospel in this story is that our salvation is found in the very thing we run from: our commonality with everyone born.  Standing naked in the world makes us free.

Once while at my church in New York City, I had taken ill and was in and out of the hospital several times over a number of weeks.  The leadership of the church knew about it, but I had sworn them to secrecy.  I didn’t want anyone else in the congregation to know that I was sick.  But the people of my church were not idiots.  They saw my pale face and need to sit down during worship.  They saw my occasional grimaces of pain.  I insisted to keep up this ridiculous façade up until one day one of my leaders – a New England Congregationalist by the way - called me out on it and told me that I was being silly by trying to hide my illness. She told me I needed to trust the community to do for me what I could not do for myself.

And so, I let them care for me and comfort me and worry about me.  I took off my armor.  And I stopped pretending that I was different just because I had a title.  I stopped keeping that secret.  And once exposed to the light and to the water, it not only lost its power over me, but it served as a bridge between me and the people of that church.

Today little Cecilia was washed in the waters of baptism - her skin fresh and beautiful like any child’s.  That’s also what happened to Naaman.  But those waters of grace are also available to any of us who are tired of hiding and longing for a new beginning.  From these waters we all rise, healed and made whole.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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"We humans need to make a difference in the world. We need to attach to something bigger than ourselves. What we need is what Jesus offers."

6/30/2019

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TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Sunday, June 30, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

+++

Once upon a time, I left the ministry for a period of ten years.  That was far longer than I ever imagined it would be. But I learned a great deal during that time – about myself and God.

I did all sorts of things during those ten years: I was a professional actor, I wrote a couple of plays, I worked in a performing arts photo library, and I worked in a high-powered, Broadway theater press office.  In the press office I answered the phones and did data entry and ran errands and planned award ceremonies and even met some pretty big name stars.  It was in the environment of a Broadway press office that I learned the full power of words when trying to sell an idea.  I learned how valuable it could be to substitute one word for another, or to leave a word out entirely.  Good publicity is about selling an idea. And on Broadway, selling a good idea is about selling tickets.

I was a pretty quick study in learning to promote an idea or an event or a person.  And when I finally came back to professional ministry; when I was invited to lead a congregation in need to revitalization and growth, I used those skills to sell that congregation to those who were seeking a spiritual home.

At that church, what we were selling was an inclusive Gospel.  It was a message of broad acceptance for people who had never felt accepted in the church.  And our campaign worked!  Many new people came over the years.  The membership doubled while I was there.  We made it easy for folks. But there were moments when I wondered exactly what it was that we were selling.  Sure, it made people feel good.  But was it the Gospel?

Here at First Church, we’re getting ready to put together a five-year plan for growth and sustainability.  We will try to understand our own vision and purpose.  And then we will strive to sell it to the town of Cheshire.  But the same question still haunts me: what will we be selling and will it be the Gospel?

These are questions for the entire modern American church, as we seek to navigate these very troubled waters; as we seek to grow at the very same time that record numbers of people are abandoning organized religion.  What’s our pitch?  What’s our advertising strategy?  What, exactly, are we selling?

But we’d better not ask Jesus, because Jesus is a terrible marketer.  Jesus doesn’t seem to know the first thing about word-smithing or massaging the message or softening the sharp edges.  Instead, Jesus can sometimes scare me to death.

In the Gospel lesson of the day, we are told that Jesus had “set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  This wasn’t just any old trip to the Holy City.  This would be his last – and he seemed to know that. And so he gathered his courage and made up his mind and “set his face.”  Along the way, some people decided that they would like to follow him. To the first who said he would follow Jesus wherever he went, Jesus didn’t say, “Welcome friend!”  Instead he replied by declaring his own poverty and homelessness: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” How’s that for a marketing strategy?!

To the second person who wanted to follow but first needed to go home and bury his father, Jesus replied (and I can hardly believe this one): “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

And finally, to the third, who was willing to follow Jesus but just wanted to stop by the house one more time to tell his family goodbye, Jesus replied: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Maybe we should put that on a banner on the front of the church!

So what on earth do these words of Jesus mean?  How might we understand them in our own life and times? Frankly, I’m not sureBut here are some things for us to consider as we hear and try to understand these difficult words of Jesus.

First of all, these words are framed by their setting.  Jesus was on his way to his death. What “Follow Me,” meant just days before the crucifixion and what “Follow Me” meant when he first started his ministry three years before were probably two vastly different things.  Threats of violence and the specter of death have a way of clarifying one’s purpose. Jesus knew his time was short, and so even the important distractions of family funerals and family goodbyes, paled in comparison with what was about to happen.  Death was imminent.  So, the timeline matters and might help us understand Jesus’s bluntness here.

Second, some scholars imagine that perhaps Jesus was talking to himself just as much as he was talking to others. Maybe Jesus, in setting his face, also had to set his mind on facing what awaited him in Jerusalem.  He couldn’t afford to think about his own family in those days.  He had to keep his own hand on the plow.  – Now we know from other stories that Jesus cared for his family because even on the cross he made arrangements for his mother to live with John.  So Jesus loved his family, but he simply couldn’t afford the luxury of an emotional return home.

So maybe Jesus’s words were defined by the timeline of the last days of his life.  Or maybe Jesus was talking to himself as much as he was to anyone else. But even if those things are true, there is still a message here for us.  His words are about life and death, priorities and decisions.  And they remain a hard sell.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with selling your church to the world.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with finding an appealing message and marketing it to those who seek a spiritual home.  But I do think that there is something wrong when churches and preachers don’t admit that the call to discipleship is a call to sacrifice and service.  Remember that the defining symbol of our faith is a cross – the ultimate sacrifice. The cross is ugly and terrifying. But it’s also transformative because it calls us to a new way of living.

Lots of folks are terrified that Jesus will ruin the church if we let him speak for himself.  But here’s the thing: multiple studies indicate that church growth is directly attached to people being asked for more - not less.  People want to be challenged to change the world. For decades we have pretended that asking less will get us more.  Meanwhile our churches continue to empty.

But we humans need to make a difference in the world.  We need to attach to something bigger than ourselves.  What we need is what Jesus offers: Resurrection!

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis, once famously said, Christ invites us to “come and die.”  And what he meant was not some morbid sense of self-hatred.  What Bonhoeffer meant was that Christ calls us to die to what we think is life and to be raised into true life.  Come and die to selfishness.  Come and die to fear.  Come and die to hopelessness.  And then rise to something new, and bold  - something that will transform you and the world.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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And if this story really is our story, then in the end, no matter what a mess we make of everything – there will be stillness and there will be redemption.

6/23/2019

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THE SOUND OF SILENCE
Sunday, June 23, 2010
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© The Rev. Dr. James Campbell

I Kings 19:1-15a

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus…”

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“Hello darkness, my old friend.”  That phrase has an uncomfortable familiarity for anyone who has ever suffered from depression or chronic pain or addiction or loneliness. Maybe you are one of those people. And so was a man named Elijah.

The prophet Elijah was running for his life from King Ahab and his pagan wife, Queen Jezebel.  The reading you heard today picks up immediately after a confrontation between the priests of Yahweh, the God of Israel and the priests of Baal, the god of the Canaanites. Elijah had challenged the priests of Baal to a duel of sorts, to see whose god was the most powerful.  They set up an altar and then called on Baal to send fire from heaven to consume the animal sacrifice.  We are told that nothing happened, no matter how loudly they called out.  Their gods were silent.

And then it was Elijah’s turn.  And being a bit of a show-off, Elijah ordered that all that raw meat be drenched with water, again and again to make the fire more of a challenge. And then he called upon the name of the Lord – just once.  And fire came from heaven and devoured everything in its sight.  That display of power emboldened Elijah so much that he took a sword and killed all the prophets of Baal.  He slaughtered them.  What a bloody, awful mess that must have been.

This infuriated Queen Jezebel, whose god had been humiliated and whose priests had been murdered.  And so she promised that she would do that same to Elijah within 24 hours.  And so Elijah did what I would do: he ran for his life.  He ran all the way to Beer-Sheba in the Negev desert, about one hundred miles to the south, in the neighboring kingdom of Judah.  And he did that on foot – fear and adrenaline driving him.

When he finally stopped, he was beyond exhausted.  When he finally stopped, he was frightened and alone and deeply depressed.  And if you have ever been deeply depressed, you will understand what Elijah did next. He prayed to die.  "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life…” And then he lay down under a broom tree and waited for his prayer to be answered. But instead of dying, Elijah fell asleep.  And if you have ever been depressed; if you suffer from depression; if you have ever been overwhelmed by anything, then you know how sweet the escape of sleep is. You may not feel rested afterwards, but at least you have temporarily escaped your misery.

Before too long, an angel of the Lord tapped Elijah on the shoulder and said: “Get up and eat.”  When I’m depressed, food hold no pleasure.  Maybe it didn’t for Elijah either. But there it was, by some miracle, fresh bread and water.  And angels of the Lord are very persistent.  So Elijah sat up, ate and drank.  And then he fell back to sleep again. But the angel of the Lord returned and tapped him on the shoulder one more time.  And wonder of wonder, there was more bread and more water.  “Eat this,” the angel said, “because we’re going on a journey.”

Elijah and the angel traveled to Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, the dwelling place of God.  And there on the mountain Elijah found a cave to hide in.  “Maybe here I will be safe,” he thought.  But before he could really settle down, the voice of the Lord came to him, saying: “What are you doing here?”  “What do you mean ‘What am I doing here?’” Elijah bellowed back at the sky. “I am a wanted man.  I thought I was doing the right thing.  I thought I was doing your will.  But now there is a bounty on my head.  And I am all alone in this world.”

And God replied: “Go to mouth of the cave, for I am about to pass by.”

Suddenly, a violent wind began to blow.  It was so strong that it actually broke the stones into pieces. “This must be the Lord,” Elijah thought.  “For the Lord is mighty enough to break the stones.”  But the Lord was not in the wind.  And then there was an earthquake.  “Well, then this must be the Lord,” Elijah said.  “For the Lord is Sovereign of the earth and make it quake whenever he pleases.”  But the Lord was not in that either.  And then there was a fire, and Elijah knew that God sometimes appeared as fire. Hadn’t God sent down fire to consume the sacrifices of the prophets of Baal?  But the Lord wasn’t present there either.  Wind, earthquake, fire - any of these spectacles might have saved Elijah from his enemies.  Each of these demonstrations seemed like something his mighty God would do.

Elijah looking for God in these displays of power are more revealing of Elijah than they are of God.  Wind, earthquake, fire – this is how we want our God to be revealed against our enemies. We want a God who beats his chest and raises her voice and rattles the saber and calls a team of lawyers.  That’s how we define power.  That’s how Elijah hoped God would reveal her power.  But God, we are told, was not in any of those displays. God was not in any of it.  And that seems an important thing for us to ponder as so many loud, violent people claim to be speaking for God.  God was not in any of it.

After all of these fearful and noisy manifestations, there followed what the Hebrew language calls the “qol damamah daqqah” – what the King James Version of the Bible translates so beautifully as a “still, small voice.” As much as I love that turn of phrase, it is probably better translated as “the sound of sheer silence.”

Profound silence seems to have a weight of its own.  It pushes down on us.  Profound silence will get our attention when nothing else will. So after the wind and earthquake and fire, when it was suddenly and deafeningly silent, Elijah came to the mouth of the cave to see what on earth had happened.  And God said again: “What are you doing here?” But this time, something shifted in Elijah; something softened and he was ready to listen.  And God said: “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus…”

This is a marvelous story for many reasons, but perhaps most of all because it is our story.  It is the story of anyone, anywhere who has ever been overwhelmed and underwhelmed; anyone searching for meaning; anyone who has ever been afraid or made a life-altering mistake; anyone running from loneliness, illness, poverty, fear, depression, or anxiety; anyone wondering where God is in the midst of pain; wondering is God is anywhere at all; anyone distressed at the inequality and unfairness of life.  This is your story.  And it is mine.

But if this is truly our story, then that means that our stories are full of angels. Our stories are about generous gifts of food and drink in the midst of a wilderness.  Our stories are about a God who loves us enough to ask us again and again: “What are you doing here?” until we move on to something better. And if this story really is our story, then in the end, no matter what a mess we make of everything – there will be stillness and there will be redemption.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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"In a world where we cannot even have a civil conversation about our common civil life; First Congregational Church of Cheshire could reflect a different reality called Heaven."

6/2/2019

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ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
Sunday, June 2, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. “It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

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I was raised with very vivid images of heaven. There was a lot of talk in our church about the way you lived your life and how you would be rewarded, or not, in eternity.  The righteous would go to heaven – a land of endless delight. And the wicked would go to hell – a place we shuddered to think about.  And because we talked about it all the time, it became my primary concern to end up on the right place.  When I was in the 5thgrade or so, I had a very memorable dream that I actually made it to heaven, which was a big surprise. The even bigger surprise was that heaven looked exactly like my elementary school gymnasium!

That was a little disappointing as the heaven talked about in church had streets of pure gold.  In our heaven, we all would receive mansions of our own, made of the finest alabaster, encrusted with jewels.  In our heaven, we would literally shine like the sun.  We would be as powerful as Jesus.  We would sing with the angels. There would be no more sickness, no sorrow, no death.  Everything wrong would finally be made right.

That was a powerful message for people of my father’s congregation – populated, as it was, with the working poor, and the sick, and the forgotten, and the despised.  For those folks, this life wasn’t so great.  But heaven would be.  And so heaven was their goal.

Some years ago now I was driving home from a church retreat with one of the leaders of my congregation in Manhattan. This man is a theological sort, having a seminary degree and a PhD in philosophy.  We were talking about all sorts of things, when I made a casual comment about heaven.  Suddenly, there was a heavy silence in the car.  I finally looked over to see if he had fallen asleep only to find him starring at me slack-jawed. “You mean you actually believe in heaven?” he asked.  I was so taken aback by the question that I stuttered and stammered and finally said, “Yes, I do!”

I’ve met a lot of church people like him since then. Maybe you are one of them.  Maybe you are not at all sure of what happens to us when we die. Or maybe you feel sure that nothing happens to us when we die.

Recently, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times interviewed the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York.  I know Serene and know that she has a new book coming out, so I wanted to read what she had to say.  Kristof asked her, among other things: “What happens when we die?”  And here is what a seminary president had to say:  “I don’t know! There may be something, there may be nothing. My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife. People who behave well in this life only to achieve an afterlife, that’s a faith driven by a selfish motive: “I’m going to be good so God (will) reward me with a stick of candy called heaven?” “For me,” she continues, “living a life of love is driven by the simple fact that love is true. And I’m absolutely certain that when we die, there is not a group of designated bad people sent to burn in hell. That does not exist. But hell has a symbolic reality: When we reject love, we create hell, and hell is what we see around us in this world today in so many forms.”[1]

I read her comments and I remembered my conversation with David, and I came to this inevitable conclusion: I must not be very theologically sophisticated - because I do believe in heaven.  I may have left a lot of my childhood religion behind me, but not the foundational idea that love never ends. I remain convinced that there is another reality just beyond our ability to perceive it with our senses.

And that, it seems to me, is what Scripture teaches.  Dying upon the cross, our Lord Jesus turned to the repentant thief and promised: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

That seems pretty clear.  So I believe in heaven, but I’ve also come to see the idea of heaven as multi-dimensional. Heaven is not simply a destination for eternity.  The Bible itself speaks of heaven as future tense, but also present tense.  It speaks of heaven as “there” and “here” and all around us. The same Jesus who told the repentant thief that he would be in Paradise that day (some sort of destination in the near future), also said: “the Kingdom God (another phrase for heaven) is already inside of us (here, now).”[2]  And, it seems to me, that’s the part of the message that the church has so often ignored. It’s way easier to talk about an afterlife than it is to talk about radically changing this life. And maybe that’s what Dr. Jones was trying to get at.  Working to get into heaven cancreate a self-centered faith.  But working to unleash heaven on earth – well, that’s another proposition altogether.  And while that might sound far-fetched or impossible to you, that is exactly what Jesus taught us to prayer for: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earthas it is in heaven.”

So what would that look actually look like – heaven on earth?

The book of Revelation is a book of endings.  It’s an apocalyptic vision of how all things consummate – a new heaven and a new earth. It’s an odd and wondrous and often hard to understand book.  And therefore, I almost never preach from it.  But this week, as I read the twenty-second chapter’s description of heaven, I couldn’t help but also remember Jesus’s words: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”

And how is heaven described in Revelation 22? “The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let everyone who hears say, "Come." And let everyone who is thirsty… come. Let anyone who wishes… take the water of life as a gift.” Everyone, anyone, take the water of life as a gift.  That’s what heaven (there) looks like.  And that’s what heaven (here) looks like.

For the past year, we’ve been turning our attention to what it means to “Draw the Circle Wide.” In our boards and committees and staff meetings, we have been seeking ways to expand our welcome. We’re in the midst of considering becoming an official Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ – a national designation that proclaims that all are welcome to follow Jesus with us.  And while throwing our doors open is wonderful in concept, it can also be a bit frightening in practice. And some might wonder if we are open to everyone, will we actually stand for anything?  I think that’s a good question, worthy of pondering.  And here’s my take on an answer: if we do it right, if we are prayerful and faithful, if we seek to follow Jesus as we draw the circle wide, then what we will stand for is heaven on earth.  Everyone, anyone, take the water of life as a gift.

In a world of division and suspicion and hatred and fear; in a world of scapegoating and backstabbing and lies and manipulation; in a world where we cannot even have a civil conversation about our common civil life; First Congregational Church of Cheshire could reflect a different reality called heaven.

On the front of this building we boldly proclaim: “You are our neighbors.  No matter who you vote for, your skin color, your faith, or who you love, we will try to be here for you.  That’s what community means.  Let’s be neighbors.”  Is that just some sentimental, politically correct pabulum?  Yes.  Unless, of course, we live it out.  Unless, of course, we put flesh and bones on those words. Then it is nothing less than God’s will realized, “on earth, as it is in heaven.”

“The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let everyone who hears say, "Come." And let everyone who is thirsty… come. Let anyone who wishes… take the water of life as a gift.”

[1]“Reverend, You Say the Virgin Birth Is ‘a Bizarre Claim?’”, Nicholas Kristoff, The New York Times, April 20, 2019

[2]Luke 17:21

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"For by your simple practice of justice and love, you are proving to a cynical world that Jesus is indeed alive."

5/12/2019

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SIMPLE ACTS OF RESURRECTION
Easter 4, May 12, 2019
The First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Acts 9:36-43

Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

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I was 28 and a just few years into my first call.  One day the phone rang in the parsonage and the voice on the other end said: “Jack has had a heart attack.  Please come to the hospital right away.”  This was surprising because Jack was only 37.  In addition to being an active member of the church, he was a husband and father to two young sons.  One of his sons had found him in the garden and ran to call 911.

The hospital was very close to where I lived and I arrived quickly.  His wife Christine and his mother and father – all active members of the church – were huddled in a hallway of the emergency room.  “How is he?” I asked. “He’s gone,” his wife said.  But I couldn’t understand that.  I could not compute that. “You mean they moved him to another hospital?” I said.  Christine had to say, “Jack is dead” before I could wrap my mind around it.  He was only 37.

They asked me to go into the room and see his body.  I didn’t really want to, but I did. I had never seen someone so freshly dead. “I’m supposed to say a prayer,” I thought, but I had no idea what to say.  What do you say to God in the face of death? Eventually I prayed that God would receive Jack’s soul and comfort his devastated family. I thanked God for the years that Jack had had on the earth.  But it never crossed my mind to pray for Jack to be brought back to life.

But that is exactly what the Apostle Peter prayed for.  A good soul named Tabitha (or Dorcas in Greek) who lived in Joppa (which is modern day Tel Aviv) had become ill and died.  As was the custom, those who loved her lovingly washed her body and then laid her out in an upstairs room.

I don’t know what those folks thought Peter could do for Tabitha at this point, but when they heard that he was in the town next door, they sent for him to come without delay.  And so he did, and was immediately taken upstairs.

The room was full of widows and that implies that Tabitha was a widow too.  You might remember that in that time and place widows were at the very bottom rung of society, without rights and often without resources.  But unlike most, Tabitha seemed to have had some resources.  And with that money she used to buy fabric.  She had a gift for making beautiful clothes, which she would give away to those in need.  In that way, Tabitha was providing an essential service to some of the most vulnerable members of society.  But now she was dead and there was no one to fill that gap.

Peter cleared the room. Maybe he was remembering the time that Jesus did the same thing before raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead.  Or maybe he just needed to gather his thoughts and his courage.  Once everyone was gone, Peter knelt beside the lifeless, gray body and began to pray.  What on earth did he say?  What on earth did he feel?  What on earth ever possessed him to finally blurt out: “Tabitha, get up!”  And oh my God, she did!  Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at Peter and he helped her to sit up on the edge of the bed.  And then he threw open the door and invited her friends to come and see for themselves what God had done. The story concludes with this news spreading like wild fire and because of it, many people believed in the Lord.  Well, no kidding.

This story and every story in this early church history book called The Acts of the Apostles, are meant to underscore the idea that the power of the Resurrection changed everything, and that this power was available to all the followers of Jesus.

Some people get tangled up in trying to understand if this story about Tabitha is supposed to be a factual report or a metaphor.  I won’t tell you what you’re supposed to think, but let me remind you of this: miracle stories in the Bible are meant to get our attention so that we don’t miss the main point.  The miracle itself is rarely the main point.

So, what’s the point here?

Tabitha’s claim to fame in the early Christian church was simply this: “that she was devoted to good works and acts of charity.”  In other words, she was a good church lady – a widow who spent her time helping others. We’ve all known people like that. There are people like that in this church.  They are kind-hearted and quiet and devoted.  These people have kept a good number of our churches going for a very long time. Without any fanfare, they make lunches for the poor and tutor children and write letters to Congress and raise money for mission and teach Sunday School.  They are, like their patron saint Tabitha, devoted to good works and acts of charity.

To the rest of society, they are often invisible. But there is often much more to these folks than meets the eye. There was much more to Tabitha than meets the eye.

The writer of Acts makes a point of calling her a “disciple.” Now that may not seem like much to the casual reader, but this is the firstand only timein the entire New Testament that a woman is called a disciple; that the feminine form of the Greek word is employed.  And the explicit message of using such a word is this: that Tabitha was equal to any of the male disciples.  And that means that her ministry of making clothes for the poor was as vital to making the Resurrection a reality as anything that the men folk did – including raising the dead.

The great Tabitha stands as a witness that goodness is its own reward. And that is not a reference to some kind of church lady piety.  Being good in the eyes of God is about being just and generous, in an unjust and stingy world.  Tabitha made clothes for the poor. But what it is for you?  What do you do that bears witness to the Resurrection?  And do you think of it as being just a vital as the work Alison and I do?

Most folks don’t. But you should. The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor says it like this: “To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone.”[1]

Whatever your gift, whatever your contribution, whatever your ministry or passion, don’t you dare disparage it. Don’t you dare think of it as less than. For by your simple practice of justice and love, you are proving to a cynical world that Jesus is indeed alive. Resurrection didn’t just happen once.  Resurrection happens in the everydayness of our lives: moment-by-moment, person-by-person, good deed by good deed – “the way dripping water changes stone.”

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1]Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

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"Jesus is the crisis of my world, because he will not leave me with a false sense of peace."

"No matter how many mistakes we make or people we hurt or sins we commit or doubts we have, in the end: All shall be well."

Eat, drink, and be merry. Just make sure to do whatever you can so that others may have those same joys.

I don’t need the words. You don’t need words. All you need is intention and love and hope and good will and breath.

This week is going to be whatever it will be: stressful, busy, burdensome, challenging. We can’t really change that. But we can choose “the better part.”

What's your secret? What’s the one thing you don’t want anyone else to know?

"We humans need to make a difference in the world. We need to attach to something bigger than ourselves. What we need is what Jesus offers."

And if this story really is our story, then in the end, no matter what a mess we make of everything – there will be stillness and there will be redemption.

"In a world where we cannot even have a civil conversation about our common civil life; First Congregational Church of Cheshire could reflect a different reality called Heaven."

"For by your simple practice of justice and love, you are proving to a cynical world that Jesus is indeed alive."

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