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

1/19/2020

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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

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Listen here.
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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

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Listen here.
Picture
JUST ENOUGH LIGHT
Epiphany Sunday, January 5, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
Matthew 2:1-12
 
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
 
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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The following story is rated PG-13 for language.  

In the insular religious world in which I was raised, morality was defined very narrowly and mostly by personal behaviors. It was largely about what you did not do.  And what we did not do was smoke or drink of chew, or go with girls or boys who do.  And we didn’t swear.  Ever. 

 
At my Christian liberal arts college, we had chapel services three times a week.  One day a famous evangelical preacher named Tony Campolo came to address the student body.  Campolo was a sociology professor and ordained American Baptist minister.  Dr. Campolo was interested in moving evangelical piety far beyond the prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco and dirty words. 
 
In his chapel sermon that day, Campolo recited a lot of statistics about hunger and the daily deaths from hunger-related causes around the world. I don’t know what the numbers were back then, but today approximately 25,000 people will die from a lack of food.  That’s 9.1 million people per year.  So Campolo regaled us with these grim statistics and then he paused for dramatic effect and announced: “These people died today and most of you don’t give a…” (rhymes with “fit.”) – The audience gasped.  And then there was a stunned silence.  Campolo continued: “And the really tragic thing is that more of you are offended that I said that word than you are that 25,000 people died from hunger today.”  I don’t know how everyone else in the room experienced what he said, but I can tell you that my own Christian faith has never been the same.  It was a very effective sermon.
 
A few years ago, I was reminded of Campolo’s influence on my life because there was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about his son, Bart.  Bart Campolo, like his father, had also been a dynamic Christian speaker.  But Bart, unlike his father and unbeknownst to most, struggled with his faith. One day, while riding his bicycle, Bart hit a soft patch of dirt and had a very serious accident.  When he finally woke up in the hospital, he admitted what had been true for him for a while: that he really didn’t believe in God anymore.  The article detailed his journey from an evangelical preacher’s son to an evangelical preacher himself, and finally to a humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California. 
 
I read the article with great interest, not only because his father had been such a significant influence on me, but also because I am fascinated why some people believe and others don’t.  I too was raised by an evangelical preacher.  I too have had periods of intense doubt.  So what is the difference between us? Why do I still believe when Bart doesn’t?  Why is the pinprick of light in an otherwise dark night sky enough for me to believe in the Light of the World?  
 
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, wise men came from the East to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews. Traditional says there were three of them, but that tradition is only based on the number of gifts they brought.  And we don’t know their names, although tradition named them Gaspar, Balthazar, and Melchior.  And we don’t know what that they actually saw in the sky.  All we really know about them is that whatever they saw, it was enough to get them to take the first steps of a very long journey. 
 
Like so many other Bible stories, this one has been domesticated by time.  Its transformative truths are buried under tradition and sentimentality and familiarity.  But if we take a moment to unearth it from all of that, we find a subversive and transformative tale of how God works in our world.  
 
What do I mean?  Well, consider this: the heroes of this story are foreigners.  And more than that, they are pagans.  These Wise Ones received this revelation, not through the established channel of Judaism, but through their own religion.  They were like Zoroastrians, practitioners of a monotheistic Persian religion founded six centuries before Christ was born.  So, they were the wrong kind of people with the wrong kind of religion, and yet it was to them that the Christ was revealed.  
 
And consider this: they literally found God in and through their observations of the natural world.  It was a star and not a book or an approved theology that led them to Jesus.  This story reminds us that creation itself reveals the glory and truth of God.  And finally, the news of the Messiah’s exact whereabouts was delivered through the mouth of a duplicitous politician, wicked King Herod, proving once again that God can speak through anyone. These details, so often lost on us, are Matthew’s way of underscoring the new thing that God was doing in Christ – an out-of-the-box, draw- the-circle-wide, kind of thing.
 
But there’s one more detail in this story that breaks the mold of how we assume God works in the world.  Matthew’s story also strongly implies that the way to Jesus is not illuminated by a blaze of glory.  It is, more often, simply hinted at in the faint twinkling of a star. 
 
What do you mean faint twinkling?  Don’t we sing: “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright!”  Indeed, we do.  But that’s not what Matthew says.
 
Apparently, the star wasn’t bright enough to take them directly to where Jesus was.  The Wise Men ended up in Jerusalem, which is about 5 ½ miles from Bethlehem.  They had to stop and ask for directions before they could continue on their journey.  And once they did, the implication is that it was still dark.  Matthew writes:  as “they set out; …there, ahead of them, went the star.”  In other words, further revelation was only given as they put one foot in front of the other – meaning that they had just enough light to continue on their way.  
 
In an essay about her decision to adopt out of the foster care system, Mennonite pastor Joanna Harader writes of her own experience of having just enough light to take the next step.  She writes: “God did not lead us to adopt in any big and dramatic way.  There was no voice from heaven, no angelic visions, not even a series of inexplicable coincidences.  Just a dim gleam on the horizon, a slow but steady wind blowing in a certain direction, an accumulation of prayers and conversations that seemed to nudge us down this one blessed and treacherous path.”
 
Just a dim gleam on the horizon. 
 
I don’t know why Bart Campolo concluded that there is no God.  But I can tell you why I believe that there is.  It’s that dim gleam on the horizon.  It’s enough to get me to put one foot in front of the other.  And every now and again, just like the Wise Men, I actually stumble upon the Christ.  I turn a corner and there he is – the light of his glory blazing in my dark world, making everything clear.  It’s only a flash and then it is gone.  But it’s just enough light for me to know I am not alone.  And neither are you.
 
Thanks be to God.  Amen.
​

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"The glory of God is the human person fully alive."
Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, 2nd century