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JUSTICE, KINDNESS, HUMILITY

1/29/2017

Micah 6:6-8

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?

Matthew 5:3-12a
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Your reward is great is heaven.

This is going to be a somewhat short message because I want us to have some discussion time as part of the sermon. You know I rarely use more than one scripture reading per Sunday because we don’t have all that much time to discuss more than one, but this week these two readings go together so well that it is almost a necessity to discuss them both together.

I’ve probably talked over the years about our first reading, from Micah, as much as any other scripture because the last line alone encapsulates so well the message we seem to need to hear again and again:

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?

And it isn’t just me. This is one of the most quoted lines ever. For instance, 40 years ago this month, President Jimmy Carter used it in his inaugural address.

Micah is one of the Minor Prophets. The book is very short, only seven chapters, but contains some remarkably pithy lines besides today’s, such as the familiar one about beating our swords into plowshares. Even the Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” takes its first line from Micah.

Micah preached in the 2nd half of the eighth century BCE.

The Book of Matthew, with the version of the Beatitudes we just read was, as we discovered this past summer, written down somewhere around 80 to 90 AD. That makes it a span of roughly 800 years between these two readings. The Hebrew world went through many changes in those 800 years and yet these two scriptures can so readily be preached together today. Some messages never change … because some messages are true, now and forever, and the call for justice for all people has been the heart of God’s call to us from the very beginning.

I think my favorite part of Micah may come in chapter three (I recommend you read it) where he foretells the doom to come upon Jerusalem because of the people’s many injustices and he rebukes its rulers who give judgment for a bribe, its priests who teach for a price, and its prophets who give oracles for money. The book of Micah is one long diatribe that prophesies bad things coming because the people have settled for form and comfort over justice.

800 years later, after exile, multiple wars, invasion and occupation by a foreign force, Jesus, with the beatitudes, takes his culture’s comfortable assumptions and again turns them completely upside down, still calling the people to justice. Because, as Victor Hugo wrote in the 19th century, "Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just." (That’s one of the quotes on today’s handout.)

And that leads me back to the discussion part of today. I think we have an extremely interesting collection of quotes here and I’d like to hear your thoughts on them and on the two readings. What does all this tell us about ourselves if we are going to claim ourselves as followers of Jesus? Or even just as “good people”?

NOTES:
(Beside the two readings and the Victor Hugo quote included above, here are a couple of the other quotes we discussed...)

Marcus Aurelius, 2nd century
"Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one."

Henry James, 19th century
"Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind."

Victor Hugo, 19th century
"Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just."

The Talmud
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Act justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

Kurt Vonnegut, 20th century
"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

Thanks to the UCC site S.A.M.U.E.L. for the great thought-provoking quotes!

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ANSWERING WHEN CALLED

1/22/2017

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Matthew 4:12-13a, 17-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake ….. from that time, Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake--for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

In the earliest years of Christianity, as best we can piece together from what was written down, people gathered somewhat randomly, just from a need to share their feelings about the incredible things they had learned from and about Jesus. They were excited and wanted to hear more and so they came together to talk and tell their Jesus-stories.

But in any kind of spontaneous gatherings there will always be those who can’t stand the loose nature of such things and will begin trying to impose “order” onto the proceedings because we must have rules or we might do it “wrong.” And so the informal gatherings developed into a set liturgy, and with a set liturgy came a caste of leaders to “perform” the liturgy and the people gradually became the “congregation” whose role was simply to sit, keep quiet and listen.

With small variations this has remained the pattern for Christians down through the centuries. We came to church to “find” Jesus by sitting quietly and listening to someone else talk about God. We might sing a hymn or two or recite a canned prayer but this has pretty much been it until fairly recently (and still is in many, many mainline churches, I believe.) Somehow, “following Jesus” came to equal dressing up nicely and going to church for one hour each week. Somehow we came to the point where sitting in that church pew proved that we had found Jesus and were, therefore, good people.

But I wish someone would tell me how and where we ever got the idea the Jesus is the one who is lost and has to be found? And when we decided that the only place to find Jesus is in church (on the theory, I guess that God lives there)?

In today’s reading it is clear that Simon and Andrew, James and John were not in Temple or even the local synagogue when they met Jesus. They were at work, just like millions of people every day all over the world. And they weren’t looking for Jesus. And it was Jesus who found them.

As far as the story tells us, not only were they not looking for Jesus, we don’t even know if they knew who Jesus was. What we know is that Jesus found them and called them to come walk with him. And they left their nets and followed him. Because he found them where they were and called them to something different. And that something different changed their lives forever. They didn’t just go back to work. They became new people.

That’s how it works. I’m pretty sure that even if we think that we are setting out to find Jesus it is because Jesus has already called to us first.

People all over the world have heard that call and answered it in so many different ways. Many, I suspect, have been called but turned away in fear and pretended not to hear.

Writer Kathryn Matthews, writing on the UCC lectionary site, asks these questions about being found by Jesus – and I suggest they are very important questions that we might spend some time with:

What is in our hearts when we encounter a call from God, individually and communally?
What's on our minds--what are we focused on?
What do we hunger for, when we stop to think about the big picture of our lives?
How does this kind of story (Jesus calling the first disciples) work today, in our lives and in the life of the church?

These are tremendously important questions for us to ask ourselves … and come up with some answers, as well. Being called by Jesus is, after all, not the end-point of our believer’s journey – it is the starting point. And most of us here have been followers of Jesus for a long time, but have we ever really thought about why and how?

Matthews has one more question that we need to look at honestly: How willing, she asks, are we to have our lives turned upside down by the experience of having Jesus call us to follow?

Think about it.

One additional note -- We decided we love the following quote:

(Tyler Edwards, Zombie Church: Breathing Life Back Into the Body of Christ )
"The problem that we are facing in the church today is that we have so many Christians who have made a decision to believe in Jesus but not a commitment to follow Him. We have people who are planning to, meaning to, trying to, wanting to, going to, we just don't have people who are doing it."

What do you think?

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BEING LIGHT

1/15/2017

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Isaiah 60:1‑3, 19-21a

Arise, shine;
   for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord
   has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
    and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
    and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
    and kings to the brightness of your dawn…..

The sun shall no longer be
    your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
    give light to you by night;
but the Lord will be your everlasting light,
    and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down,
    or your moon withdraw itself;
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
    and your days of mourning shall be ended.
Your people shall all be righteous;
    they shall possess the land forever.
They are the shoot that I planted, the work of my hands.

Last week, had we been here to hear it, we would have heard the readings for Epiphany. That word, epiphany, means manifestation. In churchy terms, this refers specifically to the time between Christmas and Lent, based on the story of the showing or manifesting of Jesus to the Gentiles in the persons of the Three Wise Men. Although Epiphany begins with those three foreigners, the theme that runs all throughout the season is Light: “Arise, shine out, for your light has come.”

I’ve told most of you all this before but it never hurts to have a refresher. There were at least three Isaiah’s. Our reading today is from the third Isaiah. First and Second Isaiah’s were written before and during the Babylonian exile. The parts written by our Isaiah today, Third Isaiah, were written during the restoration – the time when the Israelites were actually returning home again after the exile. Third Isaiah is filled with promises that God was even then in the process of re-establishing the people of Israel as a nation once again living in righteousness. It sounds good in the writings, but in reality it wasn’t all that smooth and easy. Their captors had set the Israelites free and allowed them to return home – but the people themselves could not seem to live in peace with each other.

At the time of the exile, most had been carried off to Babylon, but others had been left behind in Israel (to serve their invading conquerors) and so, never left home. Among those who went into the exile, some assimilated into the Babylonian culture, while others held fast to their Hebrew heritage. Now, all these different groups were more or less thrown back into Israel together, two generations later, and – rather than greeting each other with joy – there was jealousy and back-biting as each group claimed its own moral superiority.

The ones who had never left Israel believed they were the real Hebrews – while the Jews from the exile who had fought hard and suffered to hold fast to their Hebrew heritage saw themselves as the true salvation of the faith. Both of these groups hated the third group -- those who had actually assimilated into the Babylonian culture -- and no one trusted anyone else. There was fighting and back-stabbing -- all at a time we would expect there to be rejoicing and thanks-giving to God.

So even though the long-awaited restoration had already begun, things were not going well. The people were home, they have been restored – sort of – but they are still fighting. They’re home - but neighbor can’t stand to pray with neighbor. After having their hopes raised by the return home, they are still in darkness and they long for the light of God’s radiance to lift that darkness and lead them once again toward a life of integrity and wholeness.

This sounds a lot like where we are today, right? We are a divided, angry nation where, in some cases, neighbor can’t bear to talk with neighbor and some of us have started to suspect that people we thought we knew are really from another planet. It feels as if we are all stumbling around in the dark.

But, in spite of the darkness, this is what Third Isaiah promises: things are going to be good again – God’s light is shining on Israel again – but in order to see these marvels, the people must do one thing first – they have to lift up their eyes and look around. God is doing the rest, but they have to do this little bit – they have to at least look around for their salvation – and believe it is there to be found.

The people of Isaiah’s day were looking for something. So were the magi. And so are we – and all of us have to lift up our eyes and look around us.

Do we? Do we look around us – seeking – expecting -- to find Christ? Do we expect to find goodness in others? Or anywhere?

We have waited for the Light of the World – this is what we’ve been looking for – all throughout Advent, and all through our lives – and for those of us who call ourselves Christians, this Light is to be found through the love and teachings of Jesus. But Jesus has this annoying thing he does. He promises to be with us in every problem we face…..but he also expects us to be part of the answer.

Do we want light in the world? Then we can go out and be light. There’s a lot of dark out there these days, and seems as if a whole lot of people are busy hoarding their wattage all to themselves. All the more reason for the rest of us to go out and shine even brighter. If we want light, then let us be light – light in the dark corners, light for the darkest hearts. Open our eyes, look around, and if we aren’t seeing light, then I guess that means it’s our turn to be light. That is one reason we share “moments of grace” here each week – to remind ourselves and each other that small kindnesses do exist – they’re all around us. It is still possible to do good. But we have to open our eyes to see them.

Another dictionary meaning for that word, manifestation, is: an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something abstract or theoretical. Love and Light are always going to remain purely theoretical until we do them, become them. And it can be simple or complicated, as we choose. Feed the hungry, care for the lost and abandoned, smile at a stranger, stand up against injustice, march, look at each other with kindness for pete’s sake – light wears many faces. There is one to fit each of us. And the love of God will shine right there with us.

Rise up, people of goodness – rise up, and shine. The world needs us. The world needs our little lights

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THINKING ABOUT TIME

1/1/2017

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Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Today is New Year’s Day. Last night at midnight we passed out of 2016 and into 2017. Today is a New Beginning – a Fresh Start – a Blank Slate. Today is our chance to begin all over again.

And yet when we stop to look at it logically we know that nothing has changed – there is no magical fresh start just because a clock has ticked over one second from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00. We really do understand that there is no dividing line between moments and years. But …

There is something so compelling for us in the idea of a fresh start, another chance to get it right, to figure it all out, to do better this time.

Time is a human construct. It’s a protective device, a psychological wall we build to hide ourselves from the immensity of existence that is so huge, while we remain so small. We speak and act as if time moves in a straight line from the Past, through the Present, to the Future, and yet, truly, there is and has always been, and will ever be, only NOW.

The past is only a memory at best – and most times it is a flawed memory that we have edited internally to make it more palatable to ourselves. The Past can’t be touched, it can’t be changed. It is done and over. And the Future doesn’t exist either. We never will reach the Future because as soon as we reach it, it becomes NOW. All we have – all we ever will have is right now – this moment.

I like to read articles and books on physics. The problem is that I never really studied physics beyond a very basic level so I don’t really have the vocabulary to understand half of what I’m reading, but I love the way physicists’ minds work – so I read them occasionally. Julian Barbour is a British theoretical physicist and author, and he once put it this way: "If you try to get your hands on time, it's always slipping through your fingers. People are sure time is there, but they can't get hold of it. My feeling is that they can't get hold of it because it isn't there at all."

Or as my friend, songwriter Dave Hamilton puts it, “I’m losing my mind, thinking about time.”

So – today is, in the secular world at least, a day to celebrate something that isn’t even real … and yet the whole idea of a fresh start is built into our faith so deeply that it is a visceral part of who we have become.

In theological terms we call it forgiveness, we call it redemption, we call it being born again.

I’ve mentioned many times over the years that the Hebrew Scriptures part of the Bible recounts the revolving cycle of times that the Hebrew people lived in a way faithful to God’s law, then got cocky and careless, then blew it entirely and lost everything through the agency of invading nations … and then were redeemed as God forgave them and gave them one more chance. Over and over again, God gave them “one more chance.”

Last week, as my husband and I were driving home from a day in San Francisco, we were talking about our sermons for today and where we thought we would be going with them. I asked him what he thought was the driving force behind our seemingly urgent need to have “new beginning” points, such as New Year’s Eve/Day, in our culture. His response, similar to my own, was something like “We like new beginnings because we are always aware that we have gotten things so wrong so far.”

And I think that need to try to get it right lies deeply at the heart of our faith. We welcome a chance to try again, to make things better, to get it right this time, and Jesus offers us that chance. Jesus’ sojourn among us was all about convincing us that we have the right and the ability to be set free from the past, to be reborn, to start anew. Right from the beginning, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah to announce that he has been anointed by God to

“… bring good news to the poor.
... to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

All these things offer release from the past and a brand new beginning. So, what is it that you would like to put behind you? I'm not asking for a response right now. It's just a question to take home with you and ponder a bit. Some things we might like to change are completely beyond our control -- a loved one dies, a serious illness hits -- but among those things we can control - what could we do better? How could we change? What would you do with a fresh start? It is, after all, never too late for a fresh start. Never too late to be “born again.”

In a commentary on the passage from Luke that I just quoted, Fred Craddock used almost the same language we began with today. He points out that after quoting Isaiah, the very first word spoken by Jesus as he began his public ministry was “Today.” Craddock then goes on to say: “Throughout Luke, ‘today’ is never allowed to become ‘yesterday’ or slip into some vague ‘someday’. In Luke, every astonishing thing Jesus announces happens ‘today’.”

Jesus’ work is always “today” -- “now.” New Year’s celebrations and anniversaries can be fun, but our faith insists that we really don’t need to wait for some magical calendar moment to start again with a clean slate. In Christ we believe that every moment is “today” – the “today” when Jesus offers us a new beginning, a clean slate, a fresh start. “Today” is the day Jesus offered the people of Nazareth a fresh start, and “today” is the day we are gathered here, right now. And the offer is the same for us as it was for the Nazarean townfolk. When we gather at the table in a moment it will be to share the same ‘now’ and the same meal Jesus shared 2000 years ago.

Love and forgiveness and new beginnings are always Now. Thanks be to God.

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JUSTICE, KINDNESS, HUMILITY

ANSWERING WHEN CALLED

BEING LIGHT

THINKING ABOUT TIME

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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