Sunday Musings

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A STRIPPED DOWN EASTER
Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Mark 16:1-8

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

One of my treasured possessions is an antique secretary that my mother gave to me many years ago, when I graduated from college.  This secretary was not passed down from one generation of her family to the next.  Instead, it came to us like most of the things in our house.  It was the product of my mom’s keen eye and her absolute devotion to a good bargain.

She dragged it home one day and proudly announced that she had only paid $15 for it.  I remember that my father scoffed when he saw it because, as he said, it didn’t look like it was worth $15.  And quite frankly, it didn’t.  That secretary was covered by 15 layers of black paint.  But like I said, my mom had a keen eye.  And she was sure that underneath all of those layers something simpler and far more beautiful would be found.  The harsh chemical process of stripping it down would reveal that.

Stripped down.  That’s how life feels right now, doesn’t it?  Trauma has a way of stripping us all down to what is essential.  Crisis clarifies what really matters; and in the process, reveals to us what is truly beautiful.  In the midst of this world-wide pandemic, what really matters, we have discovered, are our relationships and families and shelter and food and community.  These things are suddenly no longer the afterthoughts of our perfect lives.  And all those superfluous layers which we think are so important – our preoccupations with political wrangling and social climbing and mindless spending are suddenly exposed for what they really are – just so many layers of old paint.

Stripped away.  Now I will be the first to admit that I don’t necessarily like this process of stripping away.  And I especially don’t like what has become of Easter this year with everything stripped away.  You see, when it comes to Easter, I like all those layers.  I love the drama and the pageantry and the music and the flowers and the churches full of people.  But this year, I proclaim the empty tomb in an empty church, to people huddled in fear behind locked doors.  And I don’t like it.

But I also suspect, in this odd and disconcerting time, that we are now as close as ever we can be to that first Easter.  That first Easter was not marked by full churches and glorious music and festive brunches.  Instead, its hallmark was something called “terror and amazement.”

The Gospel of Mark is the oldest gospel and thus Mark’s account of the Resurrection is the first.  But it’s a bit misleading to even say that Mark has an account of the Resurrection, because what he really offers us is a description of its aftermath.   And his account is really short.  It’s only eight verses long and has a very unsatisfying ending.  Who ends a gospel with fear?

Mark’s ending was so unsettling to some anonymous monks in the Middle Ages that they added several other triumphant conclusions to this Gospel.  You can read both of them in your Bibles; along with footnotes that indicate that neither of these happier endings is original.  Meaning that Mark meant to end his Gospel with a very human reaction to trauma.

Early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb, carrying the spices they had purchased in order to anoint the body of Jesus.  As they walked along, they wandered out loud who would roll the stone away for them.  But when they arrived, the stone had already been moved.  And that was unsettling.  But more unsettling still was the presence of an odd young man, dressed in a white robe, and sitting on the right side of the slab where the body of Jesus had been.  And that just frightened them. The young man must have seen their fear and so he tried to calm them. “Do not be alarmed,” he said, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised.  He is not here.  Look, this is the place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him…”

The young man’s speech didn’t seem to work because, we are told, immediately afterwards the women were seized with what the Greek text calls “tromos” and “ecstasis” – trauma and ecstasy. I imagine bodies shaking, minds reeling, mouths dry, cold sweat – all the classic signs of being terrified.  They were terrified on Easter Sunday.
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As I said, the Gospel of Mark never presents the Risen Jesus to us.  The other Gospels do, claiming that people actually saw him - in the garden, on the Road to Emmaus, in a locked room.  They not only saw him, but they touched him and ate with him and listened to him. But in Mark, there is only a promise.  The young man who told them that Jesus had been raised also told them where they could see that for themselves.  He said: “Go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there (out there in the future, in the living of your lives, in your everyday) you will see him, just as he told you.”

And so they set out on a journey into the rest of their lives, into the unknown of tomorrow, into a world dominated by a hostile Empire that crucified their Lord.  They went, hoping, wondering if this outlandish promise could possibly be true.  But they went, because the promise was all they really had.

That’s all we really have too.  All the other layers of what it means to celebrate Easter have been stripped away.  Even coming to church has been taken from us.  But we are not bereft this Easter.  We are not left on our own this Easter.  Like the women, we have the promise that the Risen Christ goes before us into whatever it is that frightens us.  It is there that we will find him.

Perhaps this year we can actually grab hold of that promise.  Because if this were just like any other Easter, with bonnets and brunches and chocolates and friends, would we really hear that message?  Would we come to church and leave unmoved by a message meant to move the whole world?  It’s possible.  All those layers might get in the way and obscure the truth that is meant to set us free.

If there is any blessing in this empty church on Easter Sunday, it’s this powerful reminder: one does not come here to find the Risen Christ.  He was not in the tomb.  And he will not be contained in this or any other sanctuary.   He’s out there, ahead of us.  He’s out there, in the days of our isolation and fear and boredom yet to be.  And he is out there, in those days beyond this crisis.  There we will see him.

We are left to imagine that an empty tomb and a strange young man did not quite convince the women that Christ was alive.  It was their going to Galilee that did that.  They got there to find what we find - that there is no place on this whole earth, no fear so stark, no valley so deep that the Risen Jesus will not appear when we need him most.   And when he does, we join the faithful women in proclaiming: The Lord is risen; he is risen indeed!

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The weeping God wraps us in the everlasting arms as we grieve, and grieves with us.

3/30/2020

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A WEEPING GOD
Sunday, March 29, 2020 – Lent 5
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

I used to love a good theological argument, especially when I was in seminary.  My friends and I would gather for some food and then stay up until the wee hours of the morning, debating and arguing the minutiae of what we thought we knew.  But once I got into the parish; once I started to deal with real people’s problems; once I started to deal with my own problems, well, then it just seemed like a colossal waste of time to argue about what we could not possibly be sure of.

Our lives and our faith are full of ambiguity.  And ambiguity is always a tough sell in world looking for the next sure thing.  It’s a tough sell in the midst of a global pandemic.  People want answers and people of faith want a faith that speaks directly to the crisis of our time.  They want a God who intervenes.  This week alone, I read about a charlatan TV preacher selling a coronavirus cure.  I saw a politician claiming that this virus could be eradicated if we would all just repent.  Two different approaches, but the same promised result: an answer in the midst of the miasma of this current moment.  An answer.

One day, Jesus received word that his friend Lazarus was desperately ill.   Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha in a village called Bethany, about two miles outside of Jerusalem.  One day, Lazarus developed an odd cough.  That night, a fever shook him.  And with each passing day, he got weaker.  Finally, in full-blown panic mode, the sisters sent for their friend Jesus.  Surely, he would have an answer.

But despite the closeness of their friendship, Jesus delayed going to Bethany.  He delayed and said something odd about the illness of Lazarus being an avenue for the glory of God.  But then Lazarus died.  And when Jesus heard that he had died, he stayed where he was for two more days while the sisters grieved and wondered where their answer was.

When Jesus finally traveled to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days.  And that’s a significant detail because Judaism at the time taught that the spirit of the deceased lingered on earth for four days before passing the point of no return.  In other words, all hope was gone.

When Martha heard that Jesus was approaching the village, she ran out to meet him on the road.  She ran, powered by grief and anger, excitement and frustration.  She ran, and as she ran, she wept. When she got to Jesus, she erupted: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died!” And then perhaps, in much quieter voice, she said, “But I know even now that God will give you whatever you ask.”

And Jesus replied with these famous words: “I am the resurrection and the life…”

Martha latched onto the hope in those words and ran home to get Mary. They returned to Jesus, a group of mourners trailing them.  When Mary saw Jesus, she repeated the same accusation: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  And his death hit them all again with a cruel freshness.

When Jesus saw the depth of despair in the sisters’ faces; when he saw the raw anguish of grief, John says that he was deeply moved.  The Greek word implies not only that he was moved, but that that he was angry.  And I like that detail very much because it is my own experience that grief is often mingled with anger; that fear is often expressed as anger.  And seeing this in his friends, evoked the same in Jesus.  And Jesus began to weep.

“Jesus wept.” That is one of the most profound theological statements in the New Testament, for if you take the Incarnation at all seriously; if you believe that somehow Jesus is Emmanuel “God with us,” then that means that God, the Sovereign Creator of all that is, is deeply moved by our pain.  But God is more than just an observer of our pain.  God’s heart breaks at all human suffering.  And God weeps great, copious tears.

Some people don’t like to talk about God like that.  They want a God who is all powerful and far removed from the human condition.  But a weeping God is the only way that this Christian can make sense of the pain of the world.   Theological arguments about God’s power and glory cannot comfort me in the midst of my fears and frustrations.  But a weeping God who stands beside me; a weeping God who hung on a cross, that image offers me the kind of companionship that comforts me when there are no easy answers.

Of course, the story doesn’t end with weeping.  The story of God-with-us never does.  Jesus asked that the stone be rolled away from the opening of the cave.  And then he cried out in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come forth!”  And Lazarus did, still wrapped in his grave clothes, hands and feet tied, face covered with a grave cloth.  It must have been quite a sight.  And Jesus said: “Unbind him and let him go.”

I have loved this story for as long as I can remember.  When I was much younger, I loved it because it spoke of Jesus’s power to save us even from death.  But the longer I live; the more grief I experience, the more that God seems to delay in our moments of crisis, I see a more profound truth in this story of the raising of Lazarus.  This is the story of a God who does not always arrive in time table we set, but who does come in surprising ways, and always at the right time.

In the church I served in New Jersey, a young man named Doug hurt his knee in a church softball game.  It didn’t heal so he finally went for surgery at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan.  I went to visit on the day of surgery, but when I entered the room, he and his wife looked stricken.  They told me that the doctors had found a malignant tumor on his knee.  And not just any tumor.  It was a rare and virulent form of cancer with no known treatment anywhere in the world.  In two weeks, this young father and husband was dead, leaving a family and a parish in shock.

During those two weeks, I made a lot of trips to the hospital.  One day his wife asked me to step into the hallway, and without warning asked me, “Why do you believe in God?”  I knew this question was coming directly from her suffering.  At in that moment, any theological argument I had ever learned about the problem of suffering was meaningless.  All I had, in that moment, was my own experience of God.  And I remember that I said something like this: “I don’t believe in God because of anything I have ever read or been taught.  I don’t believe in God because of the Bible or because of the church.  I believe in God because whenever I have been in the depths of despair, I have known a companioning presence.  Sometimes it comes in people.  Sometimes it comes in words or in silence.  Sometimes it comes in my bittersweet longings and in my tears.   And sometimes, God even comes by way of a felt presence.  I believe in God because God comes whenever I need God the most.”  And her eyes filled with tears and she quietly replied: “Yeah, me too.”

In these unprecedented moments, many of us are afraid.  Some of us wonder where God is in the midst of it all.  Some of us even feel angry.  OK.  Because I think that it is in the tears and the questions and the anger that we will find God.  The weeping God stands beside us in the midst of our fears.  The weeping God wraps us in the everlasting arms as we grieve, and grieves with us.  And then, the weeping God stoops down to gather up all the broken pieces of our lives, all those things we count as lost, and from them fashions something new and unexpected.  We call that Resurrection.

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I have often wondered why the cultivation of the inner life is such a challenge for me. What is it, really, that I am afraid of?

3/2/2020

THE JOURNEY IN
Sunday, March 1, 2020 – Lent I
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

On Ash Wednesday, we began our shadowy journey called Lent.  It’s 40 days long, not counting Sundays, which are feast days because every Sunday we celebrate the Resurrection.  But even on Lenten Sundays, there is a certain ominous undertone present.  We feast under the looming shadow of the cross.

During Lent, we symbolically reenact the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting, praying, and steeling himself for the greatest challenge he would ever face.  Some of us fast and pray during Lent too, but if we really want to imitate Jesus on his Lenten journey, let me suggest that the best discipline might be something I’m calling today, “The Journey In.”

The idea of an inward journey does not come naturally to us Americans.  We are an exceedingly pragmatic people who expect quick results with minimal and targeted effort.  We are suspicious of too much introspection, which we derisively call “navel gazing.”  We mostly think it’s a waste of time.

I think that sometimes too.  This Journey In does not come naturally to me either.  I am too lost in and too addicted to my administrative and practical tasks.  I think I should be more introspective, but there never seems to be the time.  And I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that because I imagine that you imagine me in my study, pouring over the pages of Scripture, praying constantly for the needs of the church and the world, and walking down the sidewalks of Cheshire dispensing blessings.  And I imagine that you imagine me to have made peace with myself, having confronted my own demons in my own wilderness and coming to a place of tranquility and self-awareness.  I imagine that you imagine all of those things.  But, in the words of George and Ira Gershwin, “it ain’t necessarily so.”

I have often wondered why the cultivation of the inner life is such a challenge for me.  Why must I always be so busy?  What is it, really, that I am afraid of?  Because I am afraid, you know.  If I’m not reading or cleaning or reorganizing or surfing the web, then I’m lost YouTube or Netflix hole.  God forbid I should just be still in the silence.  But in the Wilderness, all you have is the silence – a silence so profound it seems to have a weight of its own.  And it frightens me.  I wonder if it frightened Jesus too.

There are lots of curious elements in the story of the Temptation.  First of all, there is the daunting physical challenge of spending forty days and nights without food in what is one of the world’s most hostile environments.  I saw this wilderness once.  It was 117 degrees that day.  The wind-blown sand pummeled my body and forced my eyes shut. It was a desolate and terrifying landscape.  And when I saw it, I wondered how on earth anyone could stay in such a place for forty days and nights?

So the setting is curious.  But so is the other main character in the story.  Satan is not portrayed here or anywhere else in Scripture as our comfortable caricature of a little red man with horns and a pitchfork.  Instead, Satan is portrayed as a real force in the world and one to be reckoned with.  The uncomfortable implication of his character in this tale is that evil is organized and crafty and brilliant.

But perhaps the most curious element of all is the set-up for this story – how it is that Jesus got to such a place.  The Evangelist Matthew tells us.  He writes: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”  Come again?  The Spirit of God, the Spirit of life and love and goodness and truth, that spirit led Jesus to that awful place?  And if that is true, then it implies a rather strange partnership between light and darkness.  Matthew seems to imply that darkness has its function in the spiritual life.   And The Journey In will often take us to dark places before we ever get to the light.  Maybe that’s why we avoid it.

Well, why wouldn’t we?  Who wants to poke around in the shadows if you don’t have to?   And so we run from them, and thus, sometimes quite inadvertently, we run from the truth that could set us free.  The famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”  So St. Matthew and Dr. Jung seem to agree that the shadows of our lives, so often encountered on inward journeys, should be engaged because the shadows have something to teach us.

So there was Jesus, all alone, with his shadows. He was hungry and tired when suddenly the devil appeared with three distinct temptations, and all of them meant to distract him from his shadows.  The first was the temptation to satiate his very real hunger.  “If you are God’s Son,” the devil said, “then turn these stones to bread.  You won’t feel so alone if your belly is full.” And isn’t that the truth?  Food is a great distraction from shadows.  Second, there was the temptation to test God by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple.  “If you’re God’s own dearly loved Son, then throw yourself down so that angels can come and rescue you.  Then you’ll be the center of everyone’s attention.”  Adoration also distracts us from our shadows.  And finally, there was the temptation for power and prestige.  “Do you see all the glittering kingdoms of the world?” asked Satan.  “Just bow down and worship me and all of these shall be yours.  Bling and money and toys distract us all from our shadows.  And we even think they will dissipate if we just have more.

But that wasn’t true for Jesus and it isn’t true for us.  And so Jesus, our teacher and guide and friend, showed us by example that there is power in staying in an uncomfortable and dark place until the Journey In has done its perfect work.  Jesus would not, he could not have been ready for the betrayal and trial and cross had he not first gone as deep as he did.

Now, there is one more very curious element to this story.  It’s easy to miss it, coming as it does after the drama of the Temptation of Jesus. At the very end of this passage, Matthew rather undramatically states that angels came and ministered to Jesus.  The Greek word for angel is diakoneo, from which we get our word deacon, which actually means “one who waits on tables or serves food.”  And what a powerful idea that is – bright winged angels with baskets of the bread of heaven, to comfort and sustain after such an inward journey.

In 2005, in the middle of one night, the phone rang.  That’s almost never good. Marcos’ mother had died, and so suddenly we were up and packing and calling the airlines and trying to get ourselves to Brazil that same day.  It was all so overwhelming and dark and full of the shadowy unknown. We worked until morning, when suddenly there was a knock at our door.  I opened it to find a rather new friend named Jeff that we had met at church.  Somehow, he had heard our news and had come over to say how sorry he was. He only stayed for a minute.  But before he left he pressed some bills into my hand.  It wasn’t a great deal of money, but it might as well have been a million dollars.  Jeff knew how expensive those last-minute tickets were.  And he wanted to help in whatever way he could.  I will never forget that because in that moment I understood in a new way, that in the darkness, God sends angels.  And they never come empty handed.  They bring baskets of bread and wads of bills and warm embraces and whatever else we might need to remind us that we never, ever take these inward journeys alone.

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"...actually engaging this book, mixed in with our own experiences of life and love, hope and longing, will not leave us content to stay where we are."

2/19/2020

THAT TROUBLESOME BOOK
Sunday, February 16, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 5:21-37

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

OK, wait.  Did Pastor Alison just say, “The word of the Lord?” And did you really just reply, “Thanks be to God?”  Were you kidding?  What part were you thankful for: threats of hell fire, the restrictive teaching about divorce, or a guide to self-mutilation?

This passage makes me think of my good friend Dean. Dean is a Catholic and loves to tease me about what he sees as Protestantism’s overdone devotion to the Bible, which he often refers to as “that troublesome book.”  We Protestants do have the Bible as the centerpiece of our faith.  “Scripture alone” or “Sola Scriptura” is one of the principles of the Protestant Reformation. It’s part of what makes us Protestants.  But after having heard today’s Gospel lesson, you might be tempted to agree with Dean, that the Bible sometimes is a troublesome book.

Believe it or not, these strange words are actually a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount.  Just a few moments before, Jesus had said gracious, marvelous, easy-to-preach-on things like “Blessed are the peacemakers…” and “You are the light of the world.”  But then he says this!

So what is going on here?  And how are we modern people to understand it?  Well, context is everything, as is so often the case.  These strange words are actually introduced and framed by verse 20, which we heard last week.  Jesus said: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  What follows is Jesus explaining what it means to be inwardly righteous as opposed to just outwardly religious.

This passage opens with what scholars call “The Antitheses of Jesus.”  Jesus makes a statement based on a thesis of the Law and then provides an antithesis. For example: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder.’  And then the antithesis: “But I say to you, if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ but I say to you if you even look at someone with lust, the adultery already lives in your heart.”

Lots of folks interpret these antitheses as new teachings from Jesus that somehow supersede the Law. But that assumption leads to the slippery slope of assumed Christian superiority over Judaism.  But remember that Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it.  So I think that what’s really going on here was something very common amongst the Jews of Jesus’s day. You see, the use of thesis/antithesis was not outside some forms of rabbinic interpretation and practice.  Jesus was searching for and unearthing the truth that often lives in, under, and around the words on the page.  Jesus engaged in a lively conversation with Scripture, not just because he was Jesus, but because he was a faithful Jew.

But having a conversation with Scripture is not how most of us think of the Bible. When I was a kid there was a popular bumper sticker that my grandparents proudly displayed on the bumper of their Cadillac.  It proclaimed: “God said it.  I believe it.  That settles it!” In other words, the Bible is not a conversation.  It’s an order from headquarters!  Therefore, we did not engage in historical or literary or social criticism.  And we certainly never thought to add anything to the conversation.

But I don’t think that’s how Jesus read the Bible.  Jesus seemed to know that the truth is found in that meeting place between the words and human hearts and imaginations. Jesus’s interpretation of Scripture was very people-focused.

What do I mean?  Well, consider this: Jesus brings up the law that forbids adultery.  But he doesn’t just repeat it and tell the people they should obey it.  Instead Jesus looks for something deeper and more transformative than just keeping your clothes on.  Jesus makes the astute and helpful observation that our deceits actually begin long before the deed is executed.  Jesus names the fact that an unchecked thought often finds a place to nest in our hearts and minds, long before it ever destroys lives.

And then to make sure the people remembered this teaching, Jesus employed a common rhetorical device from his time and place.  It’s called the rhetoric of excess - a purposeful use of irony and humor and exaggeration to drive the point home.  Of course he didn’t really want folks to pluck out their eyes or cut off their hands.  But he did want them to remember what he said.  And his colorful language did the trick.

So what about what Jesus said regarding divorce?  Where is the people focus there?  It seems like he’s just being a hardliner.  --The Law of Moses taught that all a man had to do was give his wife a certificate of divorce and he could be done with her.  In a patriarchal society, this left all the power in the hands of the men.  And since divorced women were damaged goods, unable to support themselves, they were often driven into prostitution just to survive.  So when Jesus said that divorce should be avoided at all costs, it was the vulnerable members of society that he had in mind. In 2020, his words might strike us a restrictive and unenlightened, without nuance or understanding.  But if you were a woman in the crowd that day, knowing that destitution might be just around the corner when your husband was having a bad day, you probably heard those words as life giving and life preserving.

These are just a few examples of how Jesus read the Bible in conversation with it.  But for the most part, we don’t do that.  We have been taught to respect this book, but we haven’t been taught to engage it with our whole selves. We’ve been taught not to question it and therefore, when life seems to contradict it,  we have been forced to ignore it. But it doesn’t have to be that way.  A lively conversation with this book can transform your understandings of God and the world and even yourself.

So how can you get started? Well, let me offer some quick bits of advice for anyone who needs them. First of all, don’t start at the beginning.  This is not a novel.  It’s a collection of 66 books, in many different literary genres, written over thousands of years by multiple authors.  So instead, start small. Read one of the Gospels.  Mark is the shortest and the earliest.  Or read one of St. Paul’s letters.  Or read the Psalms.  But only bite off as much as you can chew on any given day.  If that’s only one verse, that’s fine.

Number two: follow Jesus by reading the Bible as a conversation.  In other words, don’t discount your own thoughts and questions. If something strikes you as odd or untrue, make a note of it.  If you don’t like it, argue with it.  Arguing with Scripture is an old and holy tradition through which the truth can emerge. And don’t worry - there won’t be any lightening bolts aimed at your head because you question or dislike what you read.

Number three: take your own interpretations seriously.  Don’t discount your own experience of life as you read about the lives of others in the pages of this book.  The Bible is largely about how humans just like us experienced God.  But you have experienced God too.  How does your experience help you understand what you’re reading?

And finally – and this one is really important - always read Scripture through the lens of love because God is love. When you read something strange or difficult, ask yourself: how does this passage help me to understand the greatest commandment - to love God and your neighbor as yourself?  How does this passage make me a more loving and generous and kind person?  And if it doesn’t, then just move on, and come back to it later.

So, back to my friend Dean and his comment that the Bible is a troublesome book.  He’s right, you know, because actually engaging the words on the pages of this book, mixed in with our own experiences of life and love, hope and longing, will not leave us content to stay where we are.  The living Word of God will call us toward the transformation of ourselves and the world.  And that is troublesome, but in the best possible way I know.

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So give us a little shake, Jesus. Wake us up. And then send out to be bright and briny, loving and kind, merciful and just.

2/9/2020

BRIGHT, BRINY PEOPLE
Sunday, February 9, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 5:13-20

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Her name was Patricia Walter and she was my seventh grade English teacher.  I loved her, but she terrified many of my classmates.  Mrs. Walter demanded strict order in her classroom.  Her academic expectations were exceedingly high for our grade level.  She had us seventh graders diagraming Shakespeare.  She made us memorize the rules of grammar and the parts of speech.  And she was famous for her pop quizzes.  She would say things like: “Take out a sheet of paper and list the common prepositions.  You have three minutes.”  And to show you how effective her method was, allow me to demonstrate, lo these many years later: “of, in, by, to, for, with, at, on, from, into, under, toward, between, down, among, over, across, against.”

One day, my father announced that he had taken a new church assignment and that we would be moving.  I still remember the morning I walked into Mrs. Walter’s classroom before school started to tell her the news.  Her response was to organize a going away party for me.  And I vowed to never forget her.

And I didn’t.  We stayed in touch for years, exchanging letters and enjoying the occasional visit.  Fifteen years after that initial goodbye, I invited Mrs. Walter and her husband Ray to my ordination.  They did not RSVP, but sure enough there they stood in the receiving line when it was all over.  They had driven four hours one way just to be there.  I was so overcome at the sight of her in that receiving line that at first I was speechless and then I burst into tears, sort of humiliating myself.  She hugged me and then she took me by both shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and in her voice of English teacher authority, announced: “You can be anything you want to be.  You can go as far as you want to go.”  And I knew that she meant every word of it.

Those words took root in my heart, as words so often do.  Words are living things, and so what we say to each other and about each other have the power to give life or to destroy it.  Psychologists suggest that for every negative message elementary aged children hear about themselves, they will need to hear ten positive ones to restore their self-image. So, words can hurt.  But words can also heal and empower.

The Gospel lesson today is a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount – a beautiful collection of the kinds of words that heal.  Jesus had just finished telling that crowd of common folk about how blessed they were even when they didn’t feel like it.  He said, “Blessed are you poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are you who mourn, for you will be comforted.”  “Blessed are you meek, for you will inherit the earth.”

But then Jesus shifts gears dramatically.  Instead of referencing the people primarily by their frailties and pain (poor, mourning, and meek), he talks instead about what else is also true about them; something not quite as evident to most as our weaknesses.  Jesus speaks of their innate gifts and their potential, proclaiming: “You are the salt of the earth…  You are the light of the world…”

Do those words surprise you?  They’re a bit shocking in that they don’t fit so easily with the dominant theological narratives most often proclaimed by the church. “Jesus is the light of the world, but people certainly aren’t,” we are told.  Or, we make these words proscriptive as opposed to descriptive. In other words, this is Jesus telling us to be better – to become salt and to become light.  But that is not what he said.  He simply announces an identity that most of us are hesitant to acknowledge: “You are the salt of the earth.”  “You are the light of the world.”

Now it’s also true that Jesus warns us in this passage about loosing our saltiness and hiding our light.  And lots of preachers focus on that.  But consider this: in order to loose saltiness, you had to be salty in the first place.  And in order to hide your light, you had to be light in the first place.  And that starting point is a radically different take on the human condition than most of us are used to hearing.

But this idea about innate human potential as a by-product of being made in the image of God is actually a very old idea in Christianity.  The Celtic Christians and the Roman Catholic Franciscans and Eastern Orthodoxies and others begin their theology with an idea called Original Blessing as opposed to Original Sin.  Original Blessing, taken from the Creation account in Genesis in which God pronounces the whole creation “GOOD!”, teaches that before we are anything else we might be; before any of our weaknesses and sins, we are made in the divine image and likeness.  And that is our primary identity.

But it’s a hard sell. We simply accept the notion that we are hopelessly tainted and incapable of goodness. And so when a thundering preacher labels us as sinners in the hands of an angry God, we believe it.  And we don’t just believe it about ourselves.  We believe it about everyone else.  We see the world through the lens of the negative.  For example: statistics consistently show that violent crime has been on the decrease in this country for some years now. And yet, more people than before think of this world as a fearful and dangerous place.  We are suspicious of strangers.  We will give up our freedoms for the mere promise of safety.  It’s a world defined by a very dim view of others.  And yet, Jesus said to all those others: “You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.”

So what was Jesus actually saying? Well, it was a mouthful.  In the ancient world, salt was a very precious commodity.  Entire empires were built out of the exportation of salt.  Salt was sometimes used as money.  The word salary comes from the Latin word “salarium” meaning salt money.  Salt was also used to preserve food.  It was sprinkled on sacrifices and understood as a metaphor for wisdom.  Salt was rubbed on newborn children as a blessing.  So, when Jesus proclaimed, “You are the salt of the earth” it was a declaration of our God-given ability to preserve and to bless creation.

The light metaphor is a little easier for us to understand.  Without light, everything dies.  Turning on a light can banish our fears.  Light helps us to see a way forward.  So, when Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” it was a declaration of our God-given ability to facilitate growth and banish fear and bring understanding.

But can we believe that about ourselves?  After decades of practiced and self-protective cynicism, can we believe it?  And knowing what we do about the human capacity for evil, can we believe it?

Well, maybe it’s not a matter of belief.  The Christian faith is not primarily about a set of beliefs or dogma or creeds.  Christian faith is a living experience, a transformation that Christ works in us.  It’s a way of living in the world that makes the truth  self-evident.  As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “It works if you work it.”  And the same is true of our Christian faith – it works if you work it.  So maybe friends, these unbelievable words of Jesus would be more believable to us if we thought about them less and acted on them more.

I’m sure the first folks who heard this didn’t believe it either.  “What did he say,” they asked one another.  “We are the salt of the earth… we are the light of the world?”  “Yeah, that’s what he said.”  And with those shocking and life-giving words, Jesus took those meek, poor, sad people by their shoulders, looked them in the eye, gave them a little shake and simply reminded them of their true identity as children of the Most High God. And if they could dare to believe it, they could change their world.  And many of them did.  If we could dare to believe it, we could change our world too.

So give us a little shake, Jesus.  Wake us up.  Set us straight.  Help us to see what you do. And then send out to be bright and briny, loving and kind, merciful and just.

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Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. That’s a beautiful, spiritual idea. And religion, done right, can actually help to get us there.

2/2/2020

RELIGIOUS, BUT NOT SPIRITUAL
Sunday, February 2, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

It was at this moment that I understood the world had truly shifted: Marcos and I were at a very fashionable garden party up in the Catskills, hosted by some friends of ours.  It was a beautiful summer evening, and we had gathered on the large deck as the sun dipped behind the mountains and a sudden coolness came to the air.  As one does at these kinds of things, we mingled.  I’m not the most natural “mingler” in the world, but I’ve learned to fake it.

As I was mingling, I suddenly came face to face with a very elegant woman.  We chatted for a moment about the view and the delicious food and our mutual friends.  She told me a little about herself.  And then she asked me the dreaded question: “So James, what do you do for a living?”  There was a pause, as there always is when I’m asked this question, as I tried to get the lay of the land.  After a few seconds, I replied: “Well, I’m a Congregational minister.”  For a split second, her polite smile vanished before she managed a recovery. “What’s that?” she asked - just like that.  And so I gave her the user-friendly answer that I have perfected over the years.  But about three sentences into my perfect explanation of what a Congregational minister is, she mumbled, “Excuse me” and walked away, leaving me in mid-sentence.

It wasn’t always like that, you know.  When I first started in ministry back in late 80s, there was still a general respect for the clergy.  I was treated with some deference in the grocery store and at the barbershop and the gas station.  But those days are long gone.  With each passing year, American society is less and less religious, and experts see no slowing in that trend. With each passing clergy scandal, ministers and priests and rabbis and imams are more and more distrusted.  Nowadays, I don’t often tell people what I do for a living unless I just have to.  Why would I invite that kind of discomfort when I’m only trying to get my haircut?

Now despite this decrease in religion in America, spirituality is said to be on the increase.  People now proudly declare themselves “spiritual, but not religious.”  Maybe that describes you or someone you love.  Frankly, it describes sometimes me, when I feel fed up with religion but am still inextricably drawn to the spiritual life.

To declare oneself “spiritual, but not religious” implies that these two things are somehow opposed to one another or at least organically unrelated.  And while this may feel like a new thing happening in the world, it’s actually a very old thing.  There has always been a tension between religion and spirituality.  There has always been the temptation for religion to try to codify and control the things of the spirit, followed by an inevitable pushback.  And we see that tension in this passage from Micah.

We don’t know much about Micah except that he was a small-town boy from a place called Moresheth, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem.  He was a younger contemporary of other prophets you may have heard of like Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea.  Interestingly enough, scholars note that there are some striking similarities between the writings of Micah and Isaiah, implying that there may have been collaboration between the prophets, or maybe even a prophetic school from which they all borrowed.

Micah’s prophecy is presented as a courtroom drama.  God is the plaintiff and the people are the defendants.  And in the closing argument, God makes a striking case against the people, particularly the upper echelons of society, the intelligentsia, and the cultural elite, accusing them of being particularly hypocritical.  God also laces into the clergy, declaring them all false prophets.  And the rich, God says, are the most violent of them all.  Yet all of those accused were religious.

Well, apparently, Micah was a pretty good preacher, because the people saw the error of their ways and responded with fervent repentance.  And as a way to show their repentance, they did what they knew best.  They became more religious!  Instead of sacrificing three or four rams to show how sorry they were, they would sacrifice a thousand! Instead of one hundred gallons of their best olive oil, they would offer ten thousand of rivers of oil.  They even went so far as to offer their first-born children.  They were sorry for what they had done and they thought that more religious observance was the cure.

They were not so unlike many of us.  Sometime we feel sorry for our selfishness or dishonesty, and decide that the cure is more piety.  We will go to church every Sunday! We’ll make a bigger pledge!  We’ll say our prayers every night!   But those things don’t necessarily get us what we need.  And according to Micah, God doesn’t want more religion.  What God wanted is more spirit.  God wants personal transformation that results in societal transformation.

So, how does Micah describe that?  Well, his answer is one of the best-known verses of the Bible: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

If you Google that verse, you will find scores of beautiful images that you can post on Facebook and Instagram.  It will make you seem “woke” and enlightened.  But what does it actually mean, from God’s point of view, to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God?

In our current state of political division and entrenchment, the word justice has become a bomb we lob at one another.  Each side lays claim to its true meaning.  But the biblical notion of justice, to which we are all called whatever our political opinions, is enshrined in what we call the Golden Rule.  To do justice is to do unto others exactly as you would like them to do to you.  The great theologian Cornel West puts it this way: “Justice is (simply) what love looks like in public.”

And what about kindness?  Aren’t we kind already?  Well, we might be nice, but kind is something far deeper. The Hebrew word translated here are kindness is “chesed” – a very rich word that references the idea of holy covenant and obligation between people.  This is not about smiling at the cashier at Big Y.  Chesed is about trust and vulnerability as an essential building block of human relationships.  In this way, justice (doing to others as you would want done to you) and kindness (vulnerability and trust) are cousins.

And humility?  Well, is there any more precious commodity in our world today?  In a culture in which we are regularly encouraged to think of ourselves as the best or #1, cultivating humility as a spiritual discipline is about as counter-cultural as you can get.  So, what is it?  Well, here’s a very simple definition of humility: to be humble to remember that God is God… and you are not.

The prophet Micah proclaimed that the religious life is not necessarily a spiritual life. Micah preached that religion cannot make one just and kind and humble.  But here’s the thing.  It sure can help.

And that’s the truth that some “spiritual, but not religious” folks don’t quite understand about what we do in this room – that religion practice can serve an essential purpose in our spiritual quest – because justice and loving kindness and walking humbly is hard work, and best done in community, with others who will hold us accountable and pray for us and laugh with us and cry with us.

Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly.  That’s a beautiful, spiritual idea.  It will make this world a better place.  And religion, done right, can actually help to get us there.

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"The most important thing the church can do in this world is to feed and water hope."

1/19/2020

A HOPE THAT DOES NOT DISAPPOINT
January 19, 2020 – Dream Sunday, MLK Weekend
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Romans 5:3-5

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

I’ve loved birds for as long as I can remember.  So you can imagine my delight when we moved to Connecticut, hung a bird feeder from the dogwood in the front yard, and watched from our living room as they came to feed.  We’re have been lots of sparrows, some cardinals and blue jays to add a splash of color, the occasional yellow finch, and every now and again a redheaded woodpecker far too large for the feeder - but undeterred nonetheless. But there is one type of bird that has eluded my affections for a long time.

It all began years ago when I had a job in Times Square working for a theatrical press office.  One day while running errands, the largest pigeon I had ever seen made a target out of me as I was walking down Broadway.  Its gift was so forcefully delivered that it knocked the glasses right off my face!  A few people screamed and everyone else kept their distance.  I spent the next hour or two trying to clean myself up enough.  And ever since then, I have regarded pigeons as the enemy.

My dislike of pigeons reached its crescendo some years later when we moved into a new apartment.  It had windows on three sides, and after years in a very dark first floor apartment, we were hopeful for some sunshine.   We didn’t have much, but every afternoon for about an hour the sun would light up the fire escape and cast a soft glow in all the rooms.  When the spring came, I filled several planters with the brightest, reddest impatiens I could find.  And every time I walked into the kitchen and looked out the window onto the fire escape, I had this feeling of deep satisfaction.

I loved my flowers.  But unfortunately, so did the pigeons. Who knew pigeons ate impatiens?!  They would sit in a row on the railing waiting for me to turn my back before they feasted. And then one day, to my horror, I discovered a pigeon actually roosting in one of my planters, its overfed body crushing the life out of them.  I angrily chased it away.  Every day, I chased all of them away.  But every day those pigeons returned.

Finally, one of my neighbors told me about something called bird spikes – those awful little plastic spikes mounted on window ledges that would not kill the pigeons, but would certainly discourage them from landing.  Soon every window ledge in our apartment looked like the Berlin Wall.  I had conquered them or so I thought.  -- But those pigeons were persistent, despite the obstacles. They found other places to land, still near enough to our windows for me to see what looked like disdain on their faces; still close enough for me to hear their constant cooing.  They never let me forget that they were still there.

Emily Dickinson famously wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune--Without the words, And never stops at all…”  Maybe Dickenson was thinking of pigeons when she wrote those words about hope, because hope, like pigeons, is persistent despite our best efforts to try to chase it away.

Hope both amazes and perplexes me.  Human history should have beaten the hope right out of us by now.  The sins of the fathers and mothers are indeed visited upon each generation.  We seem doomed to repeat our history, and yet hope springs eternal.  Hope sings on.  Why is that?  Why do we continue to hope despite all the evidence to the contrary?  Why does hope survive in the face of what seem to be insurmountable obstacles blocking its fulfillment?

Last week in Confirmation class, as we prepared for this Sunday, I asked the students to name some of their fears and then to name some of their hopes.  Their fears were significant.  They wonder about the future of the planet as it warms, and what that will mean for them and their children and civilization, as we know it.  They expressed fear that another world war was looming on the horizon.  Serious stuff that worries me too.  And yet, when I asked them about their hopes, they seemed to spring to life.  They said they hope for a better future.  They hope for unity and true acceptance among all people.  They hope to make a positive difference in the lives of others.  –In the midst of this fearful moment, where does their hope come from?  Where does your come from?

From a psychological perspective, hope allows people to approach their problems with a frame of mind that encourages them to strategize for success. Hope increases the chances that you and I will actually accomplish our goals, despite difficulties.  In this way, hope is essential for our flourishing and our psychological well-being.  But again, where does it come from?

From a biological perspective, hope helps to ensure the survival of the species. Hope helps us to adapt and evolve and to even thrive in spite of tremendous obstacles.  But where does it come from?  And why is it so persistent?

St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that, “hope does not disappoint us.”  Now that was quite a statement to make in the first century because the Roman Empire was mighty and vast, while the church was small and weak.  Even so, the early Christians were viewed as a threat to Rome.  They were a threat to the social order because Christians claimed that a dusty rabbi named Jesus was Lord, while the Romans proclaimed that Caesar was Lord.  That made the Christians heretics and politically dangerous.  And so they were persecuted.  Christians were hounded and imprisoned, discriminated against and martyred.  And yet it was to these suffering people, living in the very seat of imperial power, that Paul proclaimed that their suffering would produce endurance, and their endurance would produce character, and their character would produce hope, and hope would not disappoint them.

This rather ridiculous message, that despite the state of the world, hope does not disappoint, has been the message of the church since the very beginning.  What else could the resurrection mean except that hope is triumphant against all odds? That belief has inspired saints and sages throughout the centuries to do marvelous things.  It has been the catalyst for massive social changes in every generation as people seek the Kingdom of God.  And it was on full display on this day…

On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave what is now considered one of the finest and most defining speeches in American history, entitled: “I Have a Dream.” Delivered to over 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in our nation’s capital, Dr. King argued for the resiliency of hope in the face of overwhelming odds; hope in the face of entrenched racial discrimination and the violence that protected it.

Interestingly enough, Dr. King’s prepared remarks that day did not contain the most famous words we all know – that refrain “I have a dream.”  That phrase was actually from other speeches he had given previously, but did not plan to give that day.  But one point while delivering his prepared remarks, the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who had sung before his speech, shouted out from the crowd, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”

And going off script, he that’s exactly what he did.  Dr. King did what God’s prophets have always done.  He spoke the hopeful word of the Lord, despite how ludicrous it sounded.  He spoke the word of the Lord, despite the current circumstances of the people.  He spoke the word of the Lord and it stirred hope in the hearts of those people. And it was a hope that did not disappoint, as that moment became a catalyst for change in American society.

I cannot listen to his speech without tears. No matter how many times I have heard it, its words move something deep inside of me.  It’s hope.  And hope, it seems to me, is so resilient because it comes from God.  And it rises in us because we are made in the image and likeness of God.  Therefore it is irrepressible.  It calls to us, because it bears witness to a truth that is larger than we are.  It rises in us, despite all odds, and sometimes it even changes the world.

And because that is true, because history bears that out as the truth, it seems to me that the most important thing the church can do in this world is to feed and water the hope God has planted in each person.  If we don’t do that, who will? Who will remind the people that they are made in the image and likeness of God? Who will tell them, again and again and again, until they believe it, that they are loved beyond compare? Who will proclaim to them that this present moment need not define the future? Who will help them to see beyond this world’s brokenness to its shattering beauty?  Who will show them a hope that does not disappoint?

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Baptism is a physical reminder of a love that will go to any length, descend to any depth, take on any ugliness… in order to raise us up.

1/12/2020

BAPTIZED IN TRUTH
Sunday, January 12, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

It was 1968.  I wore a pair of gold trousers, a white turtleneck, and some matching gold socks.  Very sharp.  I stood in the wings watching my father wade into a deep pool of water.  I don’t know what he said to the congregation, but I do remember that he turned to me and invited me to join him in the warm pool.  I swallowed hard and began to move toward him.  Even though I walked on my tiptoes, the water came right up to the bottom of my nose.  My dad reached out his hand and drew me close, pulling me through the water.  Then he said some words about baptism and how I had decided (at the ripe old age of seven) to follow Jesus for myself.  My dad instructed me to cover my mouth and plug my nose with one hand, and then to grab my wrist with the other (like this).  With one of his hands, he covered mine.  And with the other, he supported the back of my head.   Then he said something very much like this: “Upon your profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his divine command, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The next thing I knew, I was literally plunged under the warm water.  My feet went out from under me as I lost all sense of control.  But I wasn’t afraid because my dad was literally holding me.  And when he lifted me back up out of the water, the congregation rejoiced that I had made my own profession of faith.

Mine was a baptism based on a personal decision.  And it was baptism by full immersion in water.  It’s called Believers Baptism, a reference to the fact that you need to be able to believe first before you’re baptized.  There is a whole theology around why this is the “right” kind of baptism.  Like all theology, it grows out of a particular reading of the Bible, mixed in with lots of history and tradition and firm opinions.

That’s very different from the kind of baptism we see around here.  More often than not, we are baptizing babies and children.  We place a small amount of water on their foreheads.  No immersion here.  And this too is based on a particular reading of the Bible, mixed in with lots of history and tradition and firm opinions.

So who’s right?  That’s a question with a very long history.  That’s a question over which blood has been spilled and people excommunicated.

After I was ordained, I remember a conversation with my dad in which he was trying to understand how someone raised with Believer’s Baptism, someone who had experienced it personally, could possibly be baptizing babies.  And so we talked about the Bible and tradition.  We talked about what baptism means.  We talked about what we think happens to a person in baptism.  We talked and talked and talked.  And at the end of all of that talking… we agreed to disagree.

So, what do you think?   What does baptism mean?  What happens to the person being baptized?  I know folks who love to debate questions like that.  I used to be one of them, right in the thick of those debates.  But I tired of such conversations a long time ago because I understood what those arguments were really about.  Most arguments about theology, it seems to me, are attempts to make divine things fit into our already conceived worldview. Theological arguments are about defending your own tradition or your history or your preferences. They are about protecting the status quo.

Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say.  I’m not saying that good theology is not important.  It’s just that theological discussions so rarely happen with open hearts and minds.  And while many claim to have the Bible as their source, many also do all kinds of intellectual acrobatics in order to make the Bible say what they want it to say, instead of letting the words of Scripture challenge and mold us.

Today’s reading from the book of Matthew does challenges some sincerely held beliefs about baptism and about who Jesus was and about what it is he came to do.

Matthew writes: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.”  What a seemingly innocuous statement.  Except that it’s anything but innocuous.  You see, in the Judaism practiced in ancient Palestine, to be baptized by someone meant that you were submitting to his authority; that you were literally becoming her disciple.  So, what on earth was Jesus, who is Lord of all, doing submitting to anyone’s authority or becoming anyone’s disciple?

In addition, John was preaching about baptism as a sign of repentance of sins.  And yet the book of Hebrews declares that Jesus was “one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) So what on earth was Jesus doing participating in a ritual of repentance?  Didn’t that send the wrong message about the Sinless One?

Hi cousin John very clearly understands the problematic nature of Jesus’s request and protests: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”  John gets the dissonance.  John understands how this challenges the dominant theology of the day. But Jesus replies: “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

This shocking story does not fit easily into anyone’s theology of baptism.  And it certainly messes with our Christology – our beliefs about Christ.  In fact, the early church found this story to be a huge embarrassment and mostly ignored it.  We no longer ignore it, but we do all sorts of theological acrobatics in order to make this story fit into our beloved systems.  We say things like “Well, Jesus was just going through the motions, but he didn’t really need to repent.”  Or we say, “Jesus might have been baptized by his cousin, but he certainly did notsubmit to his authority.”  These are arguments from silence – a particularly weak way to make one’s point.

But theology is not arithmetic.  When talking about the Divine, one plus one rarely equals two.  Our problem is that we have superimposed our Western assumptions about the nature of truth onto what is actually a living, breathing, dynamic relationship called faith.  And when we do that, we often miss the transformative truth of who Jesus was and how he came to remake this world.

Did Jesus need to repent?  Did he submit to his cousin’s authority?  To get lost debating those questions misses the more important point all together.

The River Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, empties into the Dead Sea.  And the surface of the Dead Sea is the lowest place on the surface of planet Earth.  And that details sets the stage for introducing the main point about the Baptism of Jesus.

You see, this is not so much a story about what happened in the water that day as it is about shared human experience.  This is a tale of flesh and blood, tears and pain, laughter and hope.  This is a story about the Incarnation. This is another scandalous tale about how far down God would come to meet us where we are; to identify with us fully in our messy, complicated, sinful human condition.  This story dares us to ask: did Jesus only pretend to be one of us or did he come all the way down, into the mud and silt of this beautiful but broken world.

The blessed waters of baptism are many things to many people.  Folks may argue about those meanings if they wish.  But I am satisfied with this meaning alone: these waters are physical reminders of the fathomless love of God.

In a few moments you will be invited to come forward, if our wish, to receive some water on your head and to hear these words: “Remember your baptism and be thankful.”  Some of us can actually remember it.  Many others cannot.  You’re not really coming to remember an event.  You’re coming to remember a love that would go to any length, descend to any depth, take on any ugliness… in order to raise us up.

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It’s just enough light for me to know I am not alone. And neither are you.

1/5/2020