Sunday Musings

"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

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.

+++

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.

+++

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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"I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name. It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord."

4/21/2019

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FLASHES OF THE RESURRECTION
Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

+++

I’ve been trying to grab hold of Jesus for as long as I can remember.  As a young teenager, I had this incredible oversized 3-D postcard of the Shroud of Turin.  The thing was awesome.  If you held it to the light one way, you saw an artist’s rendering of the face of Jesus, inspired by a photographic negative of the Shroud.  Held one way, it was a death mask, eyes closed.  But if you moved the postcard the other way, the eyes of Jesus would open.  There he was, alive.  I would spend hours flipping back and forth and watching those eyes open and close. And I used to wonder: “What if I am looking at the very face of Jesus the moment he was resurrected?”

Believers in the Shroud’s authenticity maintain that this image of the broken body of the Lord was not made by traditional artistic methods.  Instead, they say, it was burned onto the cloth at the very moment of Resurrection, by a sort of radiation, a side effect – if you will - of all that life-giving glory. In the shroud, they say, we have physical proof for this most foundational of all Christian beliefs – that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Rome, dead and buried, was raised to new and everlasting life by the power of God.

The shroud is some people’s way to try to grab hold of Jesus. They need the Shroud to be authentic because that would make it an actual witness to the Resurrection – something no human could ever say.  All four Gospels agree on that.  No one was in the tomb when it happened. There were no eye witnesses to this event.  Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Whatever happened in (that) cave happened in the dark.  …it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.”[1]

So no one saw the actual moment.  But lots of folks claimed to have seen the aftereffect.  Ordinary people, like you and me, at different times and in different places claimed to have had encounters with the strangely elusive figure of the Risen Jesus, who appeared and disappeared at a moment’s notice.  We don’t know exactly what it was they experienced, but whatever it was, it was enough to change their lives forever.  Whatever it was, it started a world-wide movement that has become the world’s largest religion.  Whatever it was, it was enough that 2000 years later, here we are, in this room, to celebrate it.

Very early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark; while it was dangerous for a woman to be traveling unaccompanied, a grief-stricken Mary Magdalene went to the grave of Jesus anyway.  And when she arrived, she noted with fear that the stone had been rolled away from the mouth of the tomb.  And so she ran to tell Peter and another unnamed disciple that someone had stolen the body of Jesus, which was the most logical conclusion. Upon hearing this distressing news, the three ran back to the graveyard; each one looking inside the tomb, each one seeing no corpse.  Instead, the grave clothes were neatly folded on the slab; the face cloth carefully rolled up, something grave robbers would not have taken the time to do.  So that was perplexing.  But the notion of Resurrection never crossed their minds.

The two men being men decided that they needed to do something – anything - about this!  So, they ran off to tell the others.  They ran off… and left Mary by herself, still unaccompanied, grief-stricken, in the dark.

Suddenly, from the shadows, a stranger appeared.  Startled, Mary assumed that he was the gardener and asked if he knew where the body of Jesus had been moved.   “Please tell me,” she begged, “so that I can go and take the body myself.”  As if she could.  But grief does strange things to the mind.  And still there was no thought of Resurrection.

The gardener did not answer her question.  But he did speak.  He spoke her name.  And when he did, it was like a flash of lightening.  For just a moment, everything was as clear as midday.  “Rabbouni; my teacher” she cried and grabbed hold of him, hanging on for dear life.  Now that she had him back, she would never let him go.  But then Jesus made an odd statement: “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  “Do not hold onto me…” “Do not hold onto me…”And in that odd statement, an essential truth about the Resurrection is revealed.  It cannot, in any tangible way, be grasped.  Resurrection cannot be codified or put in a box or explained in a theology book or proven in a debate.  Resurrection can only be experienced.  And it usually comes to us as a flash of something too good to be true.

So, was it real? Was it a dream?  Was it the hallucination of a sleep-deprived, grief-stricken woman? Whatever happened to Mary Magdalene in that garden was enough to convince her to believe the impossible.  And so she ran back to where the men were now hiding in fear for their lives and Mary Magdalene, a woman, preached the first Easter sermon ever, boldly announcing to anyone who would listen: “I have seen the Lord.”

If only she’d had her iPhone with her! If only Jesus had whispered the secret word in her ear that only he would know.  If only he had given her something to prove that she wasn’t crazy.  But all she had was her experience.  All she had was that flash of the Resurrection.  And that is all that anyone has ever had.

Flashes of the Resurrection - maybe that’s what you came to church seeking today. That’s what the great 20thcentury Swiss theologian Karl Barth said.  Barth said that the reason people come to church on Easter or on any Sunday is the unspoken question clinging to our hearts and minds “Is it true?”

In her marvelous short story entitled “See the Other Side” author Tatyana Tolstaya writes beautifully about our human struggle to dare to believe what we hope is true, but cannot prove.  She writes: “We hear whispers, but we plug our ears; we are shown, but we turn away. We have no faith: we’re afraid to believe, because we’re afraid that we’ll be deceived.  We are certain that we’re in the tomb.  We are certain that there’s nothing in the dark.  There can’t be anything in the dark.”[2]

Except that the message of Easter is that the Risen Christ dwells in those shadows and in that darkness. What proof do I have of that? Only my own experience. For you see, there have been moments in my own life when I have been so low.  Like you, I have buried those I love.  Like you, my health has faltered.  Like you, my relationships have crumbled.  Like you, I have lost my job.  Like you, I have sometimes wondered – truly - if God exists and if I’m wasting my life doing what I do.  And like you, I have doubted this incredible nonsense about a dead man being raised to life. But… time after time after time, at the edge of despair, in the darkness of doubt, in the midst of grief, I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name.  It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1]Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor

[2]The New Yorker, March 12, 2007

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"Mary was faithful. Judas was not. But faithful or not, they remained his. And faithful or not, we remain his."

4/7/2019

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TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

Sunday, April 7, 2019 – Lent 5
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

+++
To understand the passage we’ve just heard, we have to back up to a previous and pivotal event.  Sisters Mary and Martha had sent word to Jesus that their brother Lazarus, upon whom they depended entirely in that patriarchal society, was very ill.  Despite the urgency of their message, Jesus delayed his coming.  Jesus delayed and Lazarus died. When Jesus finally arrived four days later, the sisters were overcome with grief, compounded with anger and deep disappointment.  But Jesus told them that if they believed they would see, for themselves, the shining glory God.  And then he stood outside Lazarus’s tomb, and through his own tears shouted down death: “Lazarus, come out,” he commanded. And Lazarus did.

Today’s scene takes place some days or weeks later. Now the tables are turned and it is Jesus who is standing at death’s door.   The religious authorities were after him precisely because he had raised Lazarus from the dead.  This was the opposite of “dead men tell no tales.”  In fact, this dead man had one heck of tale to tell.  It was enough to cause an insurrection. So Jesus had to go.

It was, in this atmosphere of dread and fear, that Jesus sat down to eat with this bes friends. There, at least for a few hours, he would be safe and sound. In the midst of the meal, Mary did a very odd thing.  She left the room and returned with a box of nard – a very expensive perfume with a fragrance somewhere between mint and ginseng. Nard was made from a little plant that grew in the Himalayas in far off India.  It would have been brought to Palestine by camel caravan, thus its high cost. It was the kind of exotic spice that might have been used to anoint the body of a dead person, in order to mask the smell of decay.  Maybe this box of nard was leftover from the time of Lazarus’s death.

Mary knelt down in front of Jesus and opened the box and began to anoint his feet with it.  That was odd too.  Unlike anointing one’s head as one might do to a king at a coronation, anointing one’s feet would have been understood as a death sign – something one does to a corpse. And then she wiped his feet with her hair.

It’s interesting to note here that in Mary’s actions we see a precursor to Jesus’s actions just a few days later.  Mary washed Jesus’s feet with the perfume and then wiped them with her hair.  Jesus washed the feet of his disciples with water and then wiped them with a towel.  Maybe Jesus was imitating Mary’s act of love.

It was an act of love, but not everyone was impressed with it.  Some of those present were no doubt scandalized that an unmarried woman was even in the room with the men.  And then she let down her hair – which an honorable woman never did except in front of her husband.  And then she touched Jesus’s feet, which was seen as an intimate act, and used her hair to wipe off the nard – another intimate act.

But for Judas, what was far more offensive than any of her actions was the waste of money.  And so he protested: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”  It’s a good question, actually.  300 denarii was basically a year’s wages.  Imagine the good that could have been done with that?  What would this church do with an extra $56,000 this year, which is the average American wage?  It’s a good question.  It’s the kind of question that comes up at every Annual Meeting I have ever attended. So, there’s nothing wrong with the question.

But John adds this detail to let us know that Judas’s motivations were less than noble.  He writes: “(Judas) said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”  These details about Judas are only found in John’s Gospel.  It’s as if John wants us to understand clearly the kind of person Judas was – a traitor and a thief.

In the past when this lesson has come up in the lectionary cycle, I’ve almost always preached about Mary.  She’s far more likeable.  In addition to that, anytime we can lift up a strong and faithful woman in Scripture, we should.  Women have been given the bum’s rush in the church’s history since about the second century.  So at Mary, the faithful, we should pause and pay our respects.

But this time around, I found myself wondering about Judas – the one whom dismisses as a thief and a liar.  It’s almost as if John doesn’t want us to look any deeper into this man.  Maybe he had a vendetta against him. And so what we are left with is a one-dimensional character, who is easy to hate and convenient to dismiss.

I was intrigued recently to read about something called “The Burning of Judas.”  In certain Mediterranean and Latin American countries, it is the tradition during Holy Week to make an effigy of Judas that is publically hanged on Good Friday and then burned on Easter Sunday evening.  Before burning, some people beat the Judas figure with sticks or explode it with fireworks. Sometimes this Judas effigy is simply referred to as “the Jew.”

Isn’t that odd, I thought.  Except, of course, it isn’t.  The Judas figure taps into a deep human need to pass the buck.  In Judas, people find an easy target to vent their frustrations and blame for the troubles of the world.  It’s not at all unlike what loud-mouthed media personalities do to gay people or black people or Muslims or immigrants.  It’s called scapegoating.  Judas, then, is a stand-in for those things we don’t like about others, which (by the way) are almost always things we don’t like about ourselves.

But we know that no one in this world is one-dimensional.  And we know that surely there was more to Judas than his worst moment and worst decision. Who was he before that fateful kiss of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane? Who was he before he began to steal from the treasury? Who was he when Jesus first met him?  What did he hope that God was about to do in the world through Jesus?  We have to ask these questions, because once upon a time there was a light in Judas that caused Jesus to invite him into the inner circle.

It’s easy to love Mary.  In her extravagant devotion; in her rejection of social convention; in her refusal to be put in her place, we see something strong; someone to admire.  And it’s easy to hate Judas.  In his bitterness and envy; in his dishonesty and betrayal, we see weakness, something to loathe.

In just a few minutes, as I invite us all to the Lord’s Supper, I will say these words:“The first time Jesus sat down to this meal, among those gathered there were one who would doubt him, one who would deny him, one who would betrayhim, and they would all leave him alone before that night was over—and he knew it. Still he sat down and ate with them.” Jesus sat down and ate with Judas.

Mary was faithful.  Judas was not.  But faithful or not, they remained his.  And faithful or not, we remain his.  On the days of our generosity, we are his.  On the days of ours selfishness, we are his.  On those days when we don’t even understand why we do the things we do, we are his.  We are two sides of the same coin.  And the that coin belongs to Christ.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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"More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice."

3/31/2019

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A PRODIGAL CHURCH

First Congregational Church of Cheshire
Sunday, March 31, 2019 – Lent 4
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

+++

I have a friend who hates this story. He hates it because he was always a good son.  He was the one who stayed close to his parents and did what they needed as they aged.  Meanwhile, his brother was off cavorting and partying and spending time in prison and generally breaking his parents’ hearts.  My friend saw, up close and personal, the pain that his brother caused. And so, when he reads this story, what he sees is the unfairness of it all.  And it pushes his buttons.  And he hates it.

I was a little taken aback when he first told me this.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that his reaction to this story is more appropriate than most. This parable of Jesus is not supposed to be sweet. It’s meant to provoke us – like it provokes my friend.

This story is introduced with these words: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to (Jesus). And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  And that introduction tells us exactly who Jesus is trying to provoke with this tale: the religious establishment; in our day the church.

Once upon a time, Jesus said, there was a man who had two sons.  The younger son, more than a little spoiled, wanted his share of the inheritance before his father died.  This was a shocking request.  Since money was never distributed before a death, it was like walking right up to his father, staring him in the eye, and saying: “Drop dead, old man.”

So that was painful, but so was this: the young man also had no regard for the larger community that would have been adversely affected by the parceling and sale of the land.  You see large farms were the basis of ancient economies.  To divide them was to weaken them and thus weaken the economy.

Additionally, “the sale (of the land) itself was a shameful thing”[1]from a religious point of view, because the land was seen as God’s gift to a family.  And that land was to be preserved from one generation to the next because God had given it to them.  To sell it was to turn your nose up at the gift of God; to turn back on the covenant.

But even if none of that was true, it’s still hard to like the younger son.  His misfortune was his own fault.  He took his money and ran to a distant country, where he spent it on drugs and booze and parties and sex.  And then, when it was all gone, all wasted, a severe famine caused the collapse of the economy.  The only job he could get was slopping the hogs – about as low as a good Jewish boy could go.  But it got worse.  He was so hungry that the pig slop started to look pretty good.  And so there he was, a once rich young man, down in the trough with the swine. And then, and only then, was he sorry for all the pain he had caused.

Desperation makes all of us inventive. And so, the young man began to think of home and all the comforts he’d left behind.  He knew that his father’s servants lived way better than this.  And so, he swallowed his pride and put his tail between his legs and set out on his journey home, determined to live as a hired hand on the estate he once helped to rule.

While he was still far away, his father saw him coming, which makes me wonder if the old man didn’t sit in a tower all day scanning the horizon, hoping against hope that his son would come home.

And then Jesus said a very strange thing.  Jesus said that the father ran out to meet the son.  And at that, the crowd gasped because now Jesus was messing with gender roles. The social norms of the day would have required the father to maintain his dignity, no matter what.  The father would never leave the house to meet any child, let alone a wayward one. Instead, the father would stay put and force the son to humble himself by coming in to see the father. Scholars suggest that running out to meet the son was actually something a mother would do – but never a father.

When the father reached his son, he embraced and kissed him, despite the god-awful smell and the ritual uncleanness of having been with pigs.  The son started to apologize, but it was as if the father couldn’t or didn’t want to hear him.  Instead, talking over him, he ordered the servants: “Bring out the best robe we have and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  And kill the fatted calf and let’s have a party.  For my son, who was as good as dead to me, has come back to life.”

Not that’s a lovely ending, except, of course, that it’s not the end.  The older brother came in from yet another hard day of work, after a lifetime of hard days of work, saw the party and was immediately filled with a sense of having been wronged.  He had never left home.  He had always worked hard.  He had never broken his father’s heart.  And his no-good brother waltzes back into the family’s life as if nothing had ever happened. “It’s not fair”, the older son complained bitterly.  And he’s right.  It’s not. But it is compassionate.  And it is mercifulAnd when we are choosing for ourselves, which would we rather have when we’ve made a mess of things?

Some people have suggested that this parable should actually be called “The Prodigal Father” because, if you think about it, the father was just as extravagant and wasteful as his son.  He poured out his love as if there is no end to it.  And if the father is supposed to represent God, which is the traditional interpretation, then there is a lot of comfort in the notion of a God who is extravagant with mercy, love and compassion – precisely when we don’t deserve it.

But while we say the father figure is supposed to represent God, Jesus never said that.  Jesus’s parables are purposefully ambiguous so that we can draw our own conclusions.  Theologian Margaret Aymer writes that the father figure could also be interpreted as the church. She says that because remember that Jesus told this story in reaction to the religious authorities who wanted to keep a tight control on how Jesus did his ministry. And if the father in this story is a representation of the church, then notice where this extravagant love is actually poured out upon the wayward son.  It’s not in the house of the father, where he was in control.  It’s in the street.  Which makes me wonder, why we imagine that the most important things we do happen inside the fortress of this building?  What would it look like if we ran to meet the world instead of waiting for the world to come into our house?

Consider this: On Ash Wednesday this year, more than 270 people drove through Church Drive to receive the mark of their mortality and a prayer of blessing.  More than 270.  Some of them wept.  Many of them thanked us profusely.  -- That evening, about 50 of us gathered in this sanctuary for worship. 270 outside the building, 50 inside the building.  What does that say?  And if we can take ashes out of the church and literally into the street; if we can, like the father in the parable, run out to meet people where they actually are – then what else can we do out there?

Well, here’s some of what we’re thinking: on Palm Sunday there will be a donkey named Star out on the Green.  And there will be a big media push to let the children of Cheshire know that.  Our Palm Sunday liturgy will not start in here, but out there, on Route 10, with a donkey and a robed choir and vested ministers and palm branches and music and proclamation and children and all of you. We will take our liturgy out on the street.

Or consider this: we’re working on an event called “The Blessing of the Backpacks,” an interfaith gathering on the Green to bless all of the children of this town as they go back to school next fall.  At the same time, we’ll be collecting new backpacks for school kids in next-door Waterbury.  That too is church on the streets.  But why should we stop there? Would it be too much, too risky, too improper to offer people communion on the streets or in their cars?  Or prayers for healing?  Or a blessing for people’s pets? Or outdoor summer worship?  Or a town-wide picnic?

I don’t say any of this naturally because I’m a church nerd and I love what we do in this room.  But what I love more is meeting people where they actually are. More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice.

[1]http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_embracing_love_2019, accessed on March 25, 2019

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MOTHER JESUS

3/17/2019

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Sunday, March 17, 2019 – Lent 2
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

I distinctly remember the first time I ever heard someone refer to God as Mother.  I was a college student in small town Indiana and periodically attended the local United Methodist church.  “God language” was in the news a lot back then, with the Methodist bishop of that area creating quite a stir by referring to God as Mother.  One Sunday the pastor of that local church preached a sermon defending the bishop’s statement.  And then he led us in the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “Our Mother who art in heaven…”  I remember that I didn’t like that very much.

About the same time, there was an article in Newsweek Magazine about a controversial crucifix on display in the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York.  It was called “Christa” and portrayed a naked woman hanging on a cross.  I remember I didn’t like that very much either. In fact, I didn’t like it so much that I wrote a rather heated letter to the editor.  Thank God they never published it!

Talking about God as Mother is less controversial than it used to be.  We understand language to be a product of one’s time.  And we’ve also learned a lot about the Bible’s original languages and how those languages refer to the divine using both male and female imagery. For example, the Hebrew name for God “el Shaddai” can easily be translated as “the many breasted one” – a poetic way to say that God gives nurture to all of her children.

But Jesus was a biological male, right? And so we refer to Jesus as our Lord and our Brother.  But Jesus as a mother?  That’s just seems weird.  But a few years ago I learned about how the concept of Jesus as Mother is actually a very old one.  In the mystical theology of the High Middle Ages, Jesus as our Mother was popularized by such monumental figures in Christian history as Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart.  Where did they get such an idea?  Well, at least in part, from the Gospel lesson that Pastor Alison just read.

One day, and quite out of character, the Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod wanted to kill him. It was a chance for Jesus to run away and escape. But Jesus didn’t run and hide.  Instead he replied rather provocatively: “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”– a reference to the Crucifixion. In calling Herod a fox, Jesus was implicating him in murder and mayhem.  Foxes were thought of as bloodthirsty and always looking for an easy kill, like in a henhouse.

Jesus ran with that association in what has become his famous lament over the city of Jerusalem.  And I want you to pay particular attention to how he talks about himself. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hengathers herbrood under herwings, but you were not willing.”

This week I watched a YouTube video of a hen protecting her chicks.  And it’s just as Jesus described it.  The mother lifts her wings and the chicks run underneath them.  And then she folds her wings back into place with the babies safely underneath.  If a threat comes too close, she will peck and make noise and stand her ground.  A mother hen can be fierce that way. But at the end of the day, if the aggressor is stronger than she, then all she really has to protect her chicks is her own body.  She places herself between the danger and the ones she loves.

That’s just what mothers do.  The tragic history of our world is filled with the stories of self-sacrificing mothers.  Sometimes mothers stand in the way of bullets – like those in the New Zealand mosques desperately trying to shield their children.  Sometimes they lay over their children during earthquakes. Sometimes mothers hoist their children to dry ground even as they themselves drown.  The mother preserves the life of her children no matter what.

It was Herod’s job to keep the peace with Rome.  But it was Jesus’s job to challenge the oppression of Rome.  So the old fox, in order to keep his power, was determined to kill the mother hen and gobble up her chicks.

In some popular American Christianity, Jesus is portrayed as some sort of macho superhero.  Those folks would have us believe that Jesus could have chosen to kill his enemies on Good Friday, but instead, in complete superhero self-control, he choses death.  But that is not the way Luke tells this story. Instead, Luke shows us Jesus, vulnerable and human, hurtling his body against the systems of evil in order to protect the chicks.

The great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes beautifully of this passage, and I quote “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm.  She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles.  All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body.  If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.  Which he does, as it turns out.  He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cries waken them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her – wings spread, breast exposed, without a single chick beneath her wings.”[1]

The Gospel’s power is counter-intuitive precisely because it is not now, nor has it ever been, about brute strength or political power or the accumulation of riches.  That’s how we think of power, sinful as we are.  But the Gospel of the Hen is all about sacrificial love.  It’s about putting yourself between the slobbering foxes of this world and those least able to protect themselves.

That’s what Jesus did.  That’s what any mother would do.

[1]https://www.religion-online.org/article/as-a-hen-gathers-her-brood/

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LED RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF TEMPTATION

3/10/2019

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Sunday, March 10, 2019 – Lent 1
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” ’

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,
“Worship the Lord your God,
   and serve only him.” ’

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you,
   to protect you”,
  and
“On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’
Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

+++

Do you believe in the devil? That’s a very different question than do you believe in God?  Believing in God is still, at least partly, acceptable in our world. But if you espouse a belief in the devil, well, some folks might think you’re crazy.

Despite that, the popular image is still around.  We speak of the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, trying to convince us to choose the bad or the good. We say things like “the devil made me do it.” When I was kid that was even a popular thing to see on tee shirts thanks to the comedian Flip Wilson and his character Geraldine, who was always trying to resist temptation and always failing and always saying: “The devil made me do it.”

And so we giggle and pass the buck to an imaginary little red man with horns and a pitchfork because that is so much easier than seriously considering what might be at stake when we are tempted.

According to Scripture, temptations and their consequences are very real, nothing to joke about.  They are so real that Jesus himself taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” And that makes the story we heard today especially strange because according to the story, the polar opposite happened to Jesus. Jesus was led into temptation by the Holy Spirit.  Isn’t that odd?

So why would the Spirit of God lead Jesus into temptation.  A clue is found in the Greek word translated here as “temptation.”  Remember that translations are often editorial choices.  And this word can just as easily be translated as “test.”  And to say that Jesus was led into a “time of testing” as opposed to a “time of temptation” implies that there was a goal or purpose to this test that might have been worthwhile.

So, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness in order to be tested.  The wilderness refers to an arid region in southern Israel between the fertile lands near the Mediterranean and the sands of the Sahara.  There is life there, but it hard to see and it is very isolated.  It’s not the kind of place any of us would naturally seek out.  Maybe Jesus wouldn’t have either, except the spirit led him there.  And I wonder if the physical setting wasn’t a big part of the test. Isolation forces us into interior places we would not go on our own.

Years ago, a friend and I drove from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  Somewhere in the beautiful, snow-capped Arizona mountains, I became acutely aware of just how far out in the boondocks we were.  We had not passed another car for a very long time.  All the radio stations had disappeared. Suddenly we crested one of those mountaintops, and there before us was the road down the mountain and across the valley - a straight and seemingly endless line to the horizon.  There was no sign of life: no humans or animals or telephone polls or electrical wires. I had never experienced such isolation, and so I asked my friend to stop so we could get out. We goofed around for a while and threw snowballs and yelled at the top of our lungs, just because we could.  But then we got quiet. And once we stopped making noise, I experienced the most profound silence of my life.  There seemed to be a weight to it, pushing me down toward the earth. And frankly, it really frightened me.  We were just out there in the midst of all of that nothing, exposed and unprotected.  After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I insisted that we get back in the truck and drive, quickly, toward civilization.

I’m better with silence now, just not too much of it.  I find that when there is too much of it, then all of these interior voices that I try so hard to ignore suddenly have room to speak.  My doubts and fears and questions all swirl to the surface in a demand for my attention.  And I wonder if that wasn’t part of the test for Jesus.  Maybe in the silence of the wilderness, Jesus confronted those ideas that the noise of his world, and the business of his life, usually helped him to avoid.

And maybe it was in that quietness and in his swirling thoughts, that the devil appeared. Now don’t get caught in the trap of trying to imagine a little red man with horns.  The devil is far too crafty for that.  New Testament scholar N.T. Wright suggests that what was really going on here was “a string of natural ideas in Jesus’s own head.  (They were) plausible, attractive, and made… a lot of sense.”  And that is true to my own experience of temptation.  I have never seen the devil, but I have been bedeviled by my thoughts. And those thoughts are often plausible and attractive and make a lot of sense. That’s what makes them so tempting. They often appear to be justified and logical; that is until we get underneath them and understand our motivations and what fears are being played upon.

So the devil came to Jesus with three very natural human desires. The first was the temptation to satisfy his hunger. After 40 days of fasting, Jesus must have been famished.  And so, it was a most natural instinct to look at a stone and perhaps hallucinate what it would be like as a loaf of bread.  And the voice in his head said, “If you are God’s Son, then turn that stone into a chewy focaccia.”  And Jesus struggled to understand his own motives and the fears that underlay them and finally muttered: “One does not live by bread alone.”

The next temptation was about his need for excitement and the stroking of his ego. Jesus was shown all the glittering kingdoms of the world, with their wealth and power. And Jesus wrestled with his priorities.  And Jesus, remembering all the things his blessed mother had taught him, finally shouted into the wind: “Worship God only.”

And then the devil quoted the Bible. And we should all make a note of that. The devil whispered, “It is written that the angels of God will protect you.  So throw yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple and let Gabriel catch you.”  And that was the temptation to prove who he really was to all the doubters.  But Jesus clutched his head and groaned: “Don’t put God to the test.” And with that, we are told, Jesus passed his test. And in passing the test, Jesus gained what he did not have before: the essential skills needed to face the biggest test of his life or any life.

All of these temptations – in fact, all temptation is really only about one thing: Distrust.  Distrust.  The devil was sowing seeds of distrust.  “You better do this yourself, Jesus.  You better look out for number one because no one else is going to do it.  You better grab the brass ring.  You better use everything you’ve got to get all you want.”

And if all temptations are really the temptation of distrust, then Jesus’s tests and temptations are mine as well: to see faith as a weakness, to see trust as dependence, and to insist on taking charge of everything.  Instead of grabbing hold of God, we grasp for the illusions of control.  Jesus was about to have no control over what the forces of religion and politics were about to do to him.  But he still had his trust in God.  No one could take that from him.

And that is, at least in part, what these 40 days of Lent are about.  We quiet down and pause to remember that our own illusions of control are just that: illusions.  In Lent, we are called to plce our trust wholly upon the Lord.  This is the way of the Cross – the cruciform life, and we all walk it whether we want to or not.  But here’s the thing that Jesus found out, and here’s the thing we all find out: deserts and temptations and crosses and tombs are never ever how our stories end.  The God we trust sees to that.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

3/3/2019

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Transfiguration Sunday, March 3, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

As a child, I believed that all the miracles of the Bible happened exactly as they are described.  And that belief was easy to sustain, because I was a child.  But it got harder as I grew up, as I was exposed to science and philosophy, theology and anthropology, history and comparative religions.  And so, it was that over time my ideas about miracles morphed and changed.  I still believe that God acts in the world, sometimes in ways that defy easy explanations. But I also have come to believe that the point of a miracle is very often not actually the miracle itself.  The Bible refers to the miracles of Jesus as “signs.”  That is, they point us to something beyond the mere reporting of strange facts.  They point us back to God and to ourselves

Now making that connection is easier to do with some miracles than with others.  For example, when we speak of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we may not completely understand what happened that first Easter morning, but the message of the miracle is loud and clear: God’s love is stronger than anything – including death. Likewise, when he read that Jesus took one boy’s lunch and fed 5000 people with it, we may not know exactly how that happened, but we see clearly God’s concern and care for our physical needs: food, shelter, community. When Jesus heals a leper, we may not understand that physiologically, but we connect in powerful ways with our own yearnings for health and social acceptance.

But what about the Transfiguration of Jesus?  Where do we see ourselves in a glowing Jesus on a mountaintop?  How is that event a sign – pointing us toward God and ourselves?

The Transfiguration is reported in all three of the synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Some details differ in each, but the main point is the same: Jesus was transfigured in a blaze of glory.  -- Luke tells his version like this: about a week before the Transfiguration, Jesus had told his disciples that he would suffer and die.  Nobody wanted to hear that news.  And so, when Jesus asked Peter, John and James to go away and pray with him, I suspect they welcomed that opportunity with open arms. Maybe, they thought, Jesus would explain what he meant.  Maybe they could change his mind.

And so, they climbed a mountain in order to escape the crowds. While Jesus was praying, his face changed and his clothing became dazzling white.  Then Moses and Elijah appeared and engaged Jesus in a conversation about his impending death.  Upon seeing such a sight, Peter exclaimed that they should build some shrines to memorialize this wondrous event.  The icing on the cake was a cloud that suddenly descended upon them, while a voice announced: “This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him!”

And then, quite typical of a miracle, it was all over before they could even begin to comprehend it.  This left them frightened and confused. Luke reports that: “they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”  Well, why on earth would they? What do you say about a glowing Jesus?

So what could this event mean?  One of the most common interpretations is to emphasize the appearance of Moses and Elijah as representatives of the Law and the Prophets, and thus a continuity of God’s revelation through the Jewish people. This three-way conversation on the mountaintop seemed to confirm that Jesus fit into divine history in a unique way.

Others take that thought further by proposing that the appearance and then disappearance of Moses and Elijah actually signified their diminishing importance.  While in the past God’s people were to obey the law and heed the prophets, in the coming of Jesus God’s new commandment was simply to “Listen to him.” But taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of thinking has led to some truly dreadful persecution of the Jews by the hands and at the indifference of Christians who assume themselves to be spiritually superior.

Other scholars see this story as a literary device.  They are quick to point out that this tale is not that out of the ordinary for the ancient world.  Mountains and clouds were often seen as places where the gods dwelled.  Remember, Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Law. The Greek gods were said to live on Mount Olympus.  And later some of the Roman gods were thought to spend time there as well.  So, they say, maybe Luke was using a common cultural myth to make a point about the divinity of Jesus.

Finally, perhaps the most common explanation is also the simplest.  Maybe the Transfiguration was God’s way of visually demonstrating that Jesus was different, special, chosen. Transfiguration is the visual proclamation about who Jesus is.

But no matter which of these you accept, we are still left with a strange story that seems to have little application to us.  And we are still left wondering where we might be found in the details. And I am left wondering if there is any transformative power for James Campbell, or for any of you, or for the ministry of this church, in the story of a glowing Jesus on a mountaintop.

Well, actually, I think there is. In my reading, I came upon the musings of Episcopal priest Adam Thomas, who also wondered about where we might connect most powerfully with this story.  And Thomas suggests something a little radical, a little out of the ordinary, but intriguing.  Perhaps, he writes, this story is not only about how Jesus looked as he was transfigured. Maybe it’s also a story about how we look – not to ourselves, but to God.

Now, we look at ourselves and what we see is our weaknesses and our sins and our secrets.  We see bodies that age and become frail and sick and die. But God, we are told, planted the divine image in each and in all.  There is in you and in me something of the divine DNA.  Scripture proclaims this.  And so, when God looks at us, God sees part of God’s own self. God looks at us and we are luminous with the possibilities for goodness and grace and transformation. Maybe that is what St. Paul meant when he exclaimed: It is “… Christ in (us), the hope of glory!” Colossians 1:27.

And I think that the practice of seeing ourselves from God’s point of view might be a really interesting Lenten discipline.  What if in the confessing of our sins, we could imagine that each word of confession rubs a little more tarnish off our inner glory? What if in acts of Lenten charity and justice, we opened our eyes to see the blazing glory of God in everyone else - especially those we hate?  What if the silence of Lent, we dared to listen to the voice of the One who knows us best, saying: “You are my daughter.  You are my son.  You are chosen and beloved.  And believe it or not, you shine.”

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#BLESSED!

2/17/2019

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Sunday, February 17, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 6:17-26

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

+++

This past week I said to Marcos, “Sometimes it feels like we have lived here for a long time already.”  That’s another way to say that we feel at home. And the reason we feel at home is because of all of you.

Your welcome and hospitality were warm from the beginning.  You swept us off our feet during that candidating weekend.  We were nervous and full of hope and full of questions and doubts. That Friday night there was a cocktail reception with the leadership of the church, during which I was very careful about only having one drink.  On Saturday there was the all-church reception where we first met so many of you. And on Sunday, after the candidating sermon and vote, there was yet one more reception!

At one of those receptions, a very nice couple who shall remain nameless, introduced themselves and then said: “We have two questions for you.”  “OK,” I replied.  “First question: How committed are you to a one-hour worship service?”  And let me tell you, during a candidating weekend, how you answer that question can make all the difference!  But it was their other question that came to mind this week as I prepared the sermon.  They asked, “How committed are you to preaching from the lectionary?”  Now if you don’t know what it is, the lectionary is a three-year cycle of biblical readings for all the Sundays of the year that give one the breadth and scope of the entire biblical message.  We usually read only one passage on a Sunday, but there are actually four passages assigned to each Sunday.  And I am committed to preaching from the lectionary because it forces me to confront passages I might ordinarily avoid – like this passage from Luke!

The Beatitudes of Jesus are some of his most beloved words.  But when we think of the Beatitudes, we’re usually thinking of the ones recorded in the Gospel of Matthew.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” etc.  Matthew gives Jesus’s words a spiritualized gloss, making them a little easier to swallow. But Luke’s words are bitter pills that get stuck in the throat.

Luke is known for his editorial bias for the least, the last, and the lost.  And Luke proclaims that a new world order is coming in which traditional patterns of power and wealth and prestige will be overturned.  It’s not a message for the faint of heart.

The writer Annie Dillard, in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes about atomic passages like this one.  She says: “…It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”[1]

Crash helmets, life preservers, seatbelts – it sounds a little dramatic until we really read these words: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. “Blessed are you when people hate you… “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Now I read that and think: where’s my crash helmet?   I read that and think that Jesus might actually be talking about me. We are the richest people in the history of the world, and still we imagine that we don’t have enough.  We never lack for food, in fact we could push the plate back more often.  Our days are filled with friends and shopping and trips and adventures.  And we think of these things as our blessings.  In fact, we sometimes call them that.  And we announce to the world on our t-shirts and coffee mugs and knick-knacks that WE ARE BLESSED!  #BLESSED!

Now I will be the first to admit that I enjoy these things.  They make me feel fortunate. And I am.  But according to Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, possessions and position and power can blind us to our real need of God.  For people who have everything, Jesus is often the icing on the cake.  But he’s hardly the Bread of Life – that which sustains us body and soul.

So, you can see why I would have naturally avoided this passage.  It’s too close to home.  And it seems, at first, a blanket condemnation of the good life.  But is that really what it is?  To answer that question, one must remember a foundational principle of biblical interpretation.  Obscure or difficult passages are always read in the light of the whole revelation of Scripture.  And we know from other Gospels that some very rich folks also followed Jesus – including a group of rich women who financed much of Jesus’s ministry. So, I don’t think this passage is a call for us to divest ourselves of all our possessions.  But I do think it is a call to examine our perspective on our possessions.  And I think upon close examination, we might come to see that some of the things we think of as blessings are actually obstacles.

Scholars also suggest that this passage is not prescriptive: that is, it is not telling us how God ordained it all. Instead, this is a descriptive passage: it simply describes the world the way it is. It simply points out to us, in the starkest terms, the folly of our dependence upon riches.  And it is a description of how the poor, out of their need, are predisposed toward God.

But this passage also gives us a remedy for what ails us – the rich of the world.  And it is found in a seemingly innocuous detail about the setting.  Matthew calls this event the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus delivers his Beatitudes in Matthew, he does so from the mountaintop, looking down at the people. But in Luke, this same event is known as the Sermon on the Plain.  Verse 17 says: “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.”

And I think that this detail is a good place to start to try to understand this difficult passage. The Kingdom of God is found on a level place.  The Reign of God that Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of Luke is a place of radical equality and community, peace and plenty - not just for the few, but for all.

In a level place, the poor of the earth meet and mingle with the rich who have the food and the power and mechanisms to relieve that hunger.  And that’s how we’re most comfortable thinking about ministering to the poor – from the mountaintop of our privilege, reaching down.   But in a level place, it’s a two-way street because the poor also have something that we desperately need.  And I have seen, again and again, that the poor and the downtrodden and the abused and the forgotten  - those folks love God in a way that we only aspire to.  They love God because they know they need God.  Their riches do not deceive them into thinking that they are self-sufficient.  And so it is that in a level place, we both have what the other needs.  The rich can feed the poor and the poor can teach the rich. And everyone is transformed. And that is the Kingdom of God come upon this earth.

This church will grow and be transformed as we are transformed. And that transformation we call salvation happens on a level place: face to face, hand to hand, heart to heart with the very folks we’ve always assumed had nothing at all to give us.

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

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GOING DEEP

2/10/2019

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Sunday, February 10, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Once upon a time there was a funny little man named Larry, who was a member of my father’s church.  And Larry had decided that I needed be toughened up.  You see, I was a sweet kid, but shy.  I preferred solitary pursuits to team efforts.  I could spend hours reading and drawing and getting lost in my imagination.  But for Larry, those were signs of weakness.  And so somehow, he convinced my parents that the cure to all that ailed me was a hunting trip.  And I was horrified.

One day soon thereafter, Larry picked me up at the crack of dawn. And he drove us deep into the woods.  There Larry taught me how to hold a gun.  He taught me some rudimentary gun safety.  And he taught me how to shoot.

I remember a lot about that day: what I was wearing; the kick of the gun; trying to stay upright when I shot. But what I remember most was how I felt when that squirrel fell from the tree.  I had hit my mark. And Larry was more excited than I had ever seen him.  But I was sick.  I was sick not from some kind of philosophical orientation about hunting. I was too young for that.  I was sick because what I had just done felt as foreign to me as anything I had ever done.  It was something forced on me; something out of character for me.  And when I got home I told my parents, in no uncertain terms for a 12 year old, that I wouldn’t ever do that again.

Sometimes I wonder just how much of my life I’ve wasted trying to be something that I was not, trying to please others, trying to fit into a mold.  How much time have you wasted doing that?  How much time have you wasted believing you needed to be someone other than who you actually are?

From an early age, we all react to what our parents expect from us.  Then later we respond to the peer pressure of our classmates.  And then we try to be what our bosses want us to be; what our spouse wants us to be.  And then we come to church and hear about all that God wants us to be.  And the overarching message in those messages is that what whatever we already are is somehow not enough.

This deep feeling of inadequacy has a lot to do with the theory of Original Sin.  This theorybegins with the assumption that we are not enough and that we never really can be.  It is our sin, our shortcomings, more than anything else about us, that defines us in God’s eyes.  And while this theoryof Original Sin is deeply ingrained in the church, you might be surprised to learn that the church has not always universally believed it. Many early Christians did not believe it.  One of those was St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who was a second century bishop in France.  And Irenaeus, starting from a place of Original Blessing and not Original Sin, once famously declared that, “the glory of God is the human person fully alive” – YOU, fully alive.

The first time I ever read that, it was as if a bolt of lightning passed right through me.   Before that moment, I had never seriously considered that James Campbell, being most fully James somehow brought glory to God.  And my life and my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus have never, ever been the same since I read those words.

One day, Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret, more commonly called the Sea of Galilee. And the crowd was pressing against him, implying that there were lots of folks listening to the sermon that day.  Needing some space, Jesus noticed some boats on the shore and got into one belonging to a man named Simon.  He asked Simon (who would one day become St. Peter) to row out a little onto the lake. In addition to giving Jesus some needed space, the water provided some natural amplification. Then, true to the custom we learned about a few weeks ago, Jesus sat down to teach.

When Jesus had finished speaking, he asked Simon to row out into the deep part of the lake and to let down his nets for a catch.  Now Simon and company had already been out on the lake all night, but had caught nothing. They had already washed their nets, which was a last step before going home to eat and rest.  This we know.  But what is not mentioned here, but is very significant for the story, is that many first century Jews had a fear of deep water.  For the Jewish mind of that time, the depths of the sea represented chaos or hell.  At its deepest, the Sea of Galilee was about 200 feet from the surface to the bottom – enough to make Simon pause when Jesus asked him to row out to the deep water.  And so he swallowed hard and protested: “Master, we have worked all night and caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will row out to the deep, and let down my nets one more time.”

We all know how this story ends. The fisherman, living in that pregnant moment between exhaustion and hope, let down their nets.  And when they pulled them in, they were so full of fish that the nets began to break.  And so, they called to their friends to bring their boats to help them.  But the catch was still so great that it threatened to sink all the boats – their terror of the deep close at hand. But somehow the boats did not sink.

Now what do I always say about the stories of the Bible?  These are our stories.  We are the characters in these tales, meaning that these ancient stories have contemporary and universal applications.  That is the power of the Bible – it tells a very human story about God.  So what does this story have to say to us, about us?

Well, first of all, notice where Jesus is in this tale.  He isn’t on the shore, shouting instructions to the ones doing the work.  He’s in the boat.  And he’s not in that boat like some serene divinity.  Think of Jesus helping them to lower those nets into the sea. Think of Jesus struggling with them to pull in that heavy haul of glistening fish.  Think of Jesus laughing with them as they realized the riches that now filled their boats.  And that makes this a Christmas story!  This is a story of “God with us” – God working and laughing and crying and struggling withus in the everydayness of our ordinary lives.

Second, notice that Jesus doesn’t ask Peter to be or do anything other that what he already is and does. They were fishermen, before they were anything else.  They had learned this skill from their fathers and grandfathers. It was in their blood.  It was natural to them.  And that smelly job, full of calloused hands and sun burned skin could be used for the glory of God.

So, what about you?  What’s your thing?  What is it that you know how to do so well that it seems second nature? And have you ever truly considered that this thing of yours could somehow bring in the Kingdom of God?

Now, if you get that far – to imagine that your so-called ordinary skills can be used to advance God’s Reign in the world – don’t expect to be bored doing the same old, same old. Because God always calls us to more. God calls us out into the deep, where blessings lie hidden just beneath the surface.  Jesus asked Peter to row out into the middle of his fears.  And you know what?  Peter did not die!  He did not sink.  Instead, he was transformed into something called a fisher of people.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of our church.  I’ve been thinking about those pesky key indicators and what they say about this congregation’s slow decline over the last 15 years.  Those numbers are my deep place.  I look at them and sometimes feel afraid.  I feel out of my depth.  I wonder what you all expect of me.  I wonder what I expect of you.  And I wonder what God expects of us?  But pondering this passage makes me wonder: maybe all we need in this moment is to go deep; to use what we already know how to do, but in new and bolder and more faithful ways.

Chances are in the months and years to come, God will call First Church into some uncharted waters. God will call us to go deeper than we have before.  God will call us to confront our fears.

Because we might actually feel afraid as we try new things and let go of some old ones.  But Jesus says: “Fear not, for now you will fish for people, all kinds of marvelous people, as different and colorful and beautiful and as all the fish in the sea.”

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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."

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

"I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name. It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord."

"Mary was faithful. Judas was not. But faithful or not, they remained his. And faithful or not, we remain his."

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

"More than a proper church, I want a Prodigal Church, running into the world with wasteful gifts of love and mercy and understanding and justice."

A PRODIGAL CHURCH

MOTHER JESUS

LED RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF TEMPTATION

SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

#BLESSED!

GOING DEEP

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