JAMES CAMPBELL
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"Prayer provides an avenue for something I desperately need."

9/22/2019

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​A VALVE FOR HOPE
September 22, 2019
The First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
 
1 Timothy 2:1-7
 
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
 
 
In church, we make all kinds of assumptions.  We assume that people will like us if they just get to know us – not always true.  We assume that we have a better grasp on the Gospel than some others – also not always true.  And we assume that people probably know the basics of what we do in this room and why – definitely not true.  Increasingly Christians and Christian practice are an enigma to a great many people out there, and the only thing we can safely assume is that some folks out there think we folks in here are a little strange, and that we do strange things. 
 
Even if you grew up in church, you still may not know why we do all the things we do or what they’re supposed to mean.  And it’s too embarrassing to ask anyone, since we all pretend as if we know.  Take, for example, something as common as prayer.  What’s up with prayer, anyway?  What is it we’re actually doing when we pray, and what is it supposed to do for the world and for us?
 
As a child, I learned that prayer was mostly about asking for things I needed.  Every night, I would kneel beside my bed with my mom or dad and say, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  And then there was this addendum: “Bless mommy and daddy and David and Beth and Doodle (our dachshund) and please help me not to have any bad dreams.  Amen.” 
 
That basic idea of prayer as asking for things did not change so much when I grew up because that’s how all the other adults around me prayed.  My grandmother, for example, used to pray for parking spaces.  She would pull her big turquoise Cadillac Eldorado convertible into the mall parking lot and begin to circle, looking for a spot close to the door.  And all the while she would pray, out loud: “Now Lord, I need a parking spot.”  And she believed, with all her heart, that God would provide. I don’t know exactly what God’s track record was with my grandmother’s parking spots, but she prayed that way until the day she died.
 
So was my grandmother wrong to ask for such a thing?  In this world of incredible needs, is it selfish to pray for our own needs? 
 
The Epistle of First Timothy offers us some insight into prayer’s purpose and how it is we ought to pray.  This letter, although written in Paul’s name, was probably not written by Paul.  Scholars believe it was actually written after Paul’s death, some time near the end of the first century.  And it was a letter to a group of discouraged people whose faith was being severely challenged.  
 
You see, the early Christians all firmly believed that Christ would return in glory before all the original apostles died.  But by the time of this letter, all of the apostles were dead and Christ had not returned.  In addition to that crisis of faith, these early Christians were also being persecuted by the Roman government and by the synagogue authorities, which had begun to expel the Jewish followers of Jesus from the synagogues.  So there they were, feeling abandoned by God, cut off from their community, and actively persecuted by the government.  
 
Now I have to believe that those folks prayed for a change in their circumstances.  I certainly would have.  They no doubt pleaded for the return of Christ.  They no doubt asked for protection from the authorities, both religious and secular.  In other words, they prayed for their own needs.  
 
And they were not wrong to pray those kinds of prayers.  We are not wrong to pray those kinds of prayers – for ourselves and those whom we love.  In fact, the Bible exhorts us to take all of our cares to the One who cares for us.  The problem is that these kinds of requests tend to form the bulk of our prayers. And that focus on our own needs can turn us inward in a way that is actually prohibitive to spiritual growth.  
 
So, the writer of I Timothy, completely aware of the overwhelming nature of that community’s needs, also encourages another kind of prayer practice.  It’s an outward-focused prayer, broader than just the request for our daily bread.  He writes: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
 
Didn’t this writer understand what was going on in their community?  Didn’t he know the urgency of their own needs?  Of course he did.  But the writer also understood prayer as spiritual practice.  And the practice of prayer is meant to move us beyond our narrowness and self-absorption and narcissism – those very things that make up our society’s prevailing narrative.  The practice of prayer is about aligning yourself with something bigger than yourself.  It’s about the will of God for the whole world.  And that will, according to Scripture, is shalom, meaning not just peace but wholeness, completeness, and restoration.  
 
So, even in the midst of their significant personal needs, the instruction to those early Christians was to pray, first of all, for everyone; pray for all who rule over us, because those who rule over us have control over a great many people’s lives. And yes, even pray for those who persecute us, because, according to this letter, it is the will of God for everyone to be saved. 
 
To pray that way is rightly called a spiritual discipline because it’s work.  It can feel counterintuitive in the beginning.  But that practice builds spiritual character in us.  Like physical exercise, it builds muscle. A life of prayer aligned with the will of God for the whole creation is meant to be transformative; to change us from the inside, out. 
 
And even more than that, prayer provides an avenue for something I desperately need in this cynical and often frightening world.  In prayer, we give words to the hope that lives in us and yet that we are so often afraid to express.  Prayer gives us permission to be like children and to believe that something good is coming.   Prayer makes a space in us for that holy foolishness of actually believing that God’s reign will come on earth just as it is in heaven.  And actually saying that out loud is like a valve by which we release that hope back into the world where it is so desperately needed. And hope, let loose, can work wonders. 
 
So, let’s try it.  We’re going to take four minutes and be silent.  If there is a siren or a baby’s cry or a cough, just let it roll over you.  And it’s fine to pray for yourself and those you love.  Sometimes those needs are so pressing that we have to give them attention before we can turn our attention elsewhere.  But then I ask you to turn your attention elsewhere; to think about some place in the world or situation that seems hopeless and really needs God’s help.  And I want you to focus your energy and thoughts and desires on that place or situation or sadness.  You don’t have to know what to ask for. You just have to hold it in the light – and allow hope to rise in you. And at the end of those four minutes, we will gather up all of our prayers and hopes by saying the Lord’s Prayer together.
 
So let us pray…
 
 

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"Our God is a laughing God, who delights in us..."

9/15/2019

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THE LAUGHING GOD
Welcome Sunday, September 15, 2019
The First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 15:1-10
 
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
 
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Back in 2014, when I was in the midst of my doctoral studies, I had scheduled some one-on-one phone time with my academic advisor to discuss the direction of my thesis.  She was a very busy woman and not wanting to waste her time, I had made some careful notes to guide the conversation.  But just a few hours before that conversation was to begin, I realized that I had no idea where I had put those notes.  I began my search rather calmly, sifting through the papers on my desk at home and looking through my notebooks.  But each search proved fruitless.  And so my searching became more frantic.  And the self-talk began: “I must have put them some place safe – so safe that I now cannot quite remember where.”  But that self-talk quickly turned to this self-talk: “You always do this.  You’re always putting things some place so safe that you can’t ever find them.”  And finally, it turned to this: “You’re such an idiot.”
 
In a last ditch effort; I emptied out all of the contents of my bag, in the vain hope that those notes were stuck to something else.  But they weren’t.  Once that bag was empty, however, I noticed all the schmutz in the bottom of it. Where does all that stuff come from: lint and tiny pieces of paper and bits of prehistoric breath mints?  And so I opened the guest room window of our fourth floor New York apartment and held the bag upside down, giving it a vigorous shake.  And that was the precise moment when I remembered where my notes were: they were on the flash drive that I had forgotten to take out of my bag before shaking it; the flash drive that was now plummeting to earth, landing on the roof of the commercial space that fronted our building.  
 
It was early morning and I was not yet showered or dressed: bed head, bad breath – the whole nine yards.  But in that moment, I could have cared less.  I needed that flash drive.  And so I ran down the stairs and to the security guard station and told them what had happened.  “Speak to the construction workers,” the security guard said.  I did, but a construction worker told me that the supervisor would not be there until 8 am.  “Oh please,” I begged him, “Let me go on the roof.  That flash drive has my whole life on it.”  He only hesitated a second before he said: “Come with me.” The next thing I knew, I was inside a construction zone, climbing a ladder in my flip flops and running across the roof of a Citibank.  And there it was – glistening in the sun like a treasure. “Thank you very much,” I said to the rather bemused man.  “I really appreciate this.”
 
How sad that I could not extend that same kindness to myself in that moment.  I could not relish having found what was lost because I was too busy reproaching myself for having lost it.  “Oh, that was really stupid,” I muttered all the way back home. 
 
Why was I so upset? Because I had been so very human.  And it is human nature to lose things.  Our lives are so busy and complicated and full of possessions that how can we not lose things?  But take heart, fellow losers, because even God loses things sometimes. 
 
One day, the religious folks were complaining that Jesus was hanging out with all the wrong people.  “What kind of prophet is he,” they whispered, “eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors?”  And in response, Jesus did his Jesus thing and told some memorable stories: “Which one of you,” Jesus asked, “having a hundred sheep and losing one would not leave all the others and search for the one until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he nuzzles it and puts it on his shoulders and carries it home.  And then he calls all his friends together to help him celebrate.  In the same way,” Jesus said, “there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than the ninety-nine who don’t need repentance.”
 
And then Jesus pushed the envelope even more by referring to God in the feminine: “What woman,” Jesus continued, “having ten silver coins and losing one of them, does not light a lamp and sweep every corner of the house until she finds it?  And when she does she calls all her friends together for a big party saying “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”  “Just so,” Jesus concludes, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
 
Traditionally, these stories have been interpreted primarily as stories about repentance.  But while repentance is certainly a theme of these stories, I don’t think it’s the main point and here’s why.  The lost things in these tales are not capable of repentance.  A sheep can’t understand that it was wrong to wander off after tastier grass. And a coin is an inanimate object that just happened to roll under the sofa through no fault of its own.  And since repentance in the Christian tradition is about a change of heart and a purposeful decision to turn and walk in a new direction, how can the main point of these stories be repentance?
 
Some scholars suggest that these are really not stories about us at all, but instead are stories about God – and more specifically, about how God responds whenever lost ones, like us, are found.  
 
God’s reaction to finding lost things is very different from mine.  I can’t really enjoy the discovery because I’m too lost in self-recrimination. But God’s reaction to finding the lost?  God throws a party.  God rejoices. God sings.  God dances.  God laughs. Notice that Jesus said that when sinners repent, there is joy in the presenceof the angels.  So it’s not the angels who are rejoicing; it’s God.  Biblical scholar Frederick Buechner goes so far as to say that these parables ought to be read as jokes – jokes about the outlandishness of our God who will do anything to find us, and does so laughing all the way.  A laughing, party-throwing God: is that how you imagine God responding to your lostness? Or the world’s lostness?
 
Today we begin another year of our work together – a work that is almost 300 years old.  And ours is a rather serious work, given the state of the world. And when your business is so often so serious, it’s easy to forget the joy.  It can seem disrespectful to laugh and celebrate in the midst of a world of pain.  But God does God’s holy work of saving the world, and us laughing all the way. And that makes me wonder, sometimes, about the kind of God people experience when they visit us. Is it an angry God?  A dour God? An outraged God?  Or perhaps, worst of all - a boring God?    
 
Sometimes I fear that our worship is a little boring and we’ve just learned how to live with it. Sometimes I worry that some of us so concerned with not becoming a happy/clappy church that we forget to be happy at all; to laugh at ourselves and to delight in the God who laughs with us, even as that God is finding us.    
 
There used to be a banner on the website of the Old South Church in Boston, that read: “Old South Church – a place where life is too short for long-faced religion.”  Maybe that was their way of saying to Boston what Jesus said to Palestine 2000 years ago, and what I hope we’re saying to Cheshire in 2019 and far beyond: that our God is a laughing God, who delights in us and our potential to shine in this world like a precious, found coin. 
 
Thanks be to God.  Amen.
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This world has plenty of Jesus admirers.  What it needs is disciples.

9/8/2019

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​FAMILY VALUES
Sunday, September 8, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
 
 
Luke 14:25-33
 
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
 
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Marcos and I recently returned from a wonderful time in his native Brazil, visiting family and renewing ties with old friends.  This was my 17thor 18thvisit, but let me tell you, it never gets old. I am still thrilled by the sites and sounds, smells and experiences.  True to form, I ate too much and drank and sang and laughed.  It was a good vacation. I hope you had a good vacation too.
 
It was busy here at church in the weeks before I left, so, I didn’t do what I usually do before I go away on vacation.  Usually, I look ahead and do some preliminary research on the sermon for the week after I return.  I do that because I find that subconsciously I’m already formulating my thoughts for the post-vacation sermon.  And it makes my reentry a little easier.
 
Well, thank God I didn’t do that this time!  If I had, I would have spent my South American holiday fretting about what I was going to say to you about this: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” 
 
These words are shocking.  They shock us because one of our most fundamental values as a society is the love of family. It’s right up there with baseball and apple pie.  We’ve even elevated the modern nuclear family as a bedrock of our faith.  Travel across these United States and you will find churches in every town with names like “Family Life Center” or “Heritage Family Church.”  
 
It’s interesting to me that we have come to deify so-called family values as much as we have, because the Bible does not speak about family values in the same way that we do. Most biblical families didn’t look anything like ours. Men often had more than one wife, and if they were rich enough, plenty of concubines too.  Females – both wives and daughters - were thought of as property.  And only the oldest male child inherited the bulk of the family’s wealth.  Those were the family values of biblical times.  
 
But even though those values were so much different than ours, we can safely assume that there was still a lot of love there, that there was commitment and loyalty and sacrifice and joy and comfort and celebration.  And we can assume that they were just as gob smacked as we are by these words: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” 
 
Luke makes a point of telling us that “large crowds were traveling” with Jesus on that day.  And Luke says that before speaking these shocking words, Jesus turned around to look directly at the people.  
 
In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to Matthew, the character of Jesus is often shot from behind so that the perspective of the viewer is that of someone in the crowd following him.  But every once in a while Pasolini has Jesus turn to deliver a difficult saying directly to the camera, almost as if daring the viewer to continue following him.  Maybe that’s what Jesus did here.  Maybe he wanted the people who thought they wanted to follow him to know exactly what that meant.  
 
So, what are we to do with this difficult passage?  Cut out losses, sing a hymn, and go home?  Well, we could, but we might miss an important lesson.  And there’s actually some good news in it, believe it or not.  There’s also challenging news here.  But first, the good.  
 
What Jesus meant by the word hate and what we mean by it are two very different things.  For us, hate is a visceral response to something repulsive.  But when Jesus uses the word hate in this passage, most scholars agree that was employing something called Semitic hyperbole – a common kind of speech that was a purposeful exaggeration in order to make a point.  It was a teaching tool; a rhetorical device.  And Jesus employs it throughout the Gospel accounts. 
 
In addition, in the ancient world, in which extended families were everything, “hating” one’s family didn’t mean that you had a negative emotional response to them. It meant doing something that would have been embarrassing or shameful for them - like running off after some dusty rabbi named Jesus and leaving your responsibilities behind.  We know this is the case because “letters survive to this day of some Roman families who complained that their son or daughter had run off and joined some (cockamamie) group called the ‘Christians.’” (Robert Tannehill)
 
So, the good news is that when Jesus said hate and when we say hate, we mean very different things.  But there’s also the challenging news, and it’s simply this: being a disciple of Jesus actually costs us something.  And sometimes it costs us a great deal. 
 
I don’t preach that very much.  After all, how do you build a church, grows it membership and ministries, by telling people how hard it’s going to be to follow Jesus?  But maybe that reluctance has been a mistake.  Some church experts believe that the decline of our mainline churches is due, at least in part, by our well-intentioned but fatally flawed attempts to make the Christian life as easy as possible; to not ask too much of people.  And yet, don’t you know from your own life that what you sacrifice for, you value more. And the people who heard Jesus that day – who had left their homes and families in order to find the Kingdom of God – knew the value of that sacrifice. 
 
And here’s some more good news, and some more challenging news.  First the good news: we shouldn’t read this passage as an ultimatum about God’s love for us.  Jesus isn’t saying that if we don’t pick up our crosses and follow, then God won’t love us. God always loves us – and always, always will. There isn’t anything you have even do to make God stop loving you.  So, this is not about love.  This is about discipleship.  And so here’s the challenging bit: claiming Christian faith and being a disciple may not be exactly the same thing.  I can love Jesus, but draw the line at sacrificing too much.  And to be completely honest with you, there have been great stretches of my life that I have been perfectly content to have warm, fuzzy feelings for Jesus, but not really be a disciple.
 
This world has plenty of folks who know that Jesus loves them.  But it has far fewer people willing to incarnate that love.  It’s wonderful to sit in this room and feel God’s love, but it’s much better still to buy tools for someone in the developing world or supplies for a Bahamian family or two or ten by not going out to eat this week, by not buying those new sneakers, by not saving quite as much so that others can rebuild their shattered lives. It’s wonderful to feel loved and welcomed in this room.  But it’s better still for this church to be a bold place of wide welcome for those so often not welcomed, even if some folks in town think we’ve gone too far.  It’s wonderful to exult in the change of the seasons.  But it’s better still to stand in solidarity with God’s creation, to write letters and march in the streets and sound the alarm about creation’s ever-accelerating destruction.  
 
This beautiful but broken world has plenty of people who admire Jesus.  But what it really needs is disciples.
 
 

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