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THE LONG COURAGE

3/26/2023

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NIV, abridged)
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take my trouble from me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, for when I am weak, then I am strong in Christ.

This reading is not the one I had intended for today nor will what I have to share today be the message I had originally planned.

Two separate events came together to spur this change. The first was actually this past Wednesday’s reading in my daily readings booklet, “Running from Empty,” from the StillSpeaking Writers Group. This particular entry was written by Mary Luti, retired seminary professor and UCC pastor.

She opened her meditation by stating, “Often the work of justice seems like repeatedly pushing the same boulder up the same hill,” (referring to the myth of Sisyphus who had offended one of the gods and was punished by having to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it slide back down just before it reached the top – over and over again.)

She ended her piece with a quote from John Shea, who is another of my favorite writer/poets. Mary Luti and John Shea in one reading about social justice and how we struggle with achieving it – how could I pass it by?

The 2nd thing that lead to today’s subject matter is still on-going, and growing uglier each day that passes. It began in early March, in Placer County, centered around Loomis Basin UCC church and ultimately, its pastor, Rev. Casey Martinez-Tinnin. Rev. Casey is, among other things, the founder of a popular LGBTQ+ support group, The Landing Spot, for young people and their parents in Placer County.

In the past the young people in the group have planned and run successful fund-raisers to pay for summer camp and this year they planned another event, but this year they included the dreaded word “Drag,” so of course the people who claim to “speak for” everyone (including Jesus, apparently) had to rise up and protest and the whole thing has grown now to include threats of physical violence against Rev. Casey who is being labeled a “groomer” and pedophile, and his family, and neighbors. Proud Boys are involved, as is Project Veritas, the notorious fake video folks who create and disseminate deliberately misleading videos. It’s a mess. Even the Roseville School Board is involved.

I grew up in Placer County. It was a good place to be in those long ago years, but I find myself not remotely surprised that this is the response of a certain segment of the population there these days. I could preach about how angry I am at all of this, which I am, but instead I’m going back to the message from Mary Luti and John Shea, and finally with words from Pastor Casey himself.

Remember Luti’s opening statement I quoted earlier? “Often the work of justice seems like repeatedly pushing the same boulder up the same hill”? A little further on she continues with another often used line: The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, but, this time she adds, Every gain is fragile and reversible ... Evil won’t yield to us politely just because we’re right and good. There are limits to our power and virtue.

We are not going to single-handedly change the world, and recognizing this sometimes painful fact is not “giving in” or just accepting defeat as some would like to think. Luti calls this recognition the “foundation” for a Ministry that is truly God’s. Unless we can honestly embrace our human weakness, we’ll start believing that we are intended to be the heroes and if we don’t win, then everyone is going to lose – neatly leaving God out of the whole arrangement.

Remember God? The one who is quoted in our opening scripture as saying to St. Paul when he begged for relief from the ‘thorn in his side’, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

We truly do try to give our best to do God’s work in the world. Most of us, most of the time, we truly do, but it’s easy for us to get disappointed and discouraged unless we see sudden and immediate signs of love and healing in the world. ”But when you really know that you can’t win, you really start believing the Love can.”

And this is where Rev. Casey’s response comes in:

I am asking you not to respond with anger, but with love compassion, and kindness.
I am asking you to take an active role in making our community a better place for us all. I hope this letter convicts you to act. I love this community and I love my church I am proud of the work we have done to save the lives of queer youth in Placer County. But this is now bigger than just me, The Landing Spot, and Loomis UCC. This is for the safety and well-being of entire communities everywhere.

He then goes on to list things we can do. If you are interested in learning more, you can go to LoomisUCC.org.

The struggle for social justice and acceptance is far from over, in Placer County, and in hearts and locations all around us, everywhere. One day this will be an ugly memory, but we’ve a long way to go ‘till then. Speak out, speak up, and continue to demand justice. If we remain silent, then evil wins by default. Speak out God's truth and let it be heard, and may we not let anger lead us, but instead, allow God’s love to show us our way. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

My message here is titled “The Long Courage,” which is taken from John Shea’s poem, A Prayer for the Long Haul:

“Give me broken Lord, the long courage for compromised truths, small justices, partial peaces. Keep my soul in my teeth, hold me in hope, and teach me to fight the way farmers with hoes defeat armies and rolled up manuscripts survive wars”.

Give us the courage to fight the long battles, the one’s we know we probably can’t win on our own, but keep us out there doing our small parts, knowing you are with us always and we are with you. Give us the long courage.

Amen.

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ONCE YOU WERE IN DARKNESS

3/19/2023

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Ephesians 5:8-14

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Find out what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness except to expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible and coming out of the darkness can then become light itself.

Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper!
Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.”

The reading we just heard is the New Testament reading for this Sunday and it comes from the Letter to the Ephesians ..... maybe. This is one of the disputed letters, long attributed to Paul but now widely believed to not actually be from Paul himself, but rather, someone writing in his name.

There are a lot of small things that just don’t quite add up to Paul -- syntax, subject matter – even the fact that it seems to have been written as a circulating letter – one meant for several churches, with the reference “to Ephesus” being adding in later and not as part of the original address and greeting.

There are several odd passages here, but the one we are focusing on here today, the piece I just read, is not one of them. Instead, it is a perfectly logical description of the early Christian belief that Jesus, dying and living for us, has changed things forever.

“Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.” The NRSV, the New King James, and the NIV, all use this strange sentence structure in their translations, indicating that we were darkness, not just that we lived in darkness. The Living Bible phrases it this way: “Once your heart was full of darkness, now it is full of light from the Lord.” And The Message, of course, says it in its own unique way: “You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain.”

Have you ever felt that you are darkness, or filled with darkness, or just plain lost in the darkness? Any of these?

I seriously doubt that any of us have gone through our lives thus far without at some time, at some point, feeling in the dark. Feeling like we’ve temporarily lost our way and we’re wandering in the gloom – not sure where we’re going or where we’ve been. It may have been a light fog or it may have felt like total blackout.

But the point in this scripture, as well as many others, is that the Lord is the one who guides our way, even in that darkness – the one who brings light to our lives by being the light in our lives. “Live as children of light,” we are told, “for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”

Just as the darkness can take many forms, so the light can be in our lives in many ways. Jesus is that light that comes from God and is meant by God to fill our lives – living as children of the light. As children of light we are called to live lives that are, to the best of our abilities, filled with all that is good and right and true.

Now, that may sound too simplistic; maybe it sounds like it’s harder to do than to say. Maybe – but maybe not. God does not set lines in the sky – goals we must reach in perfection. God does not count our failures. We try to follow the way of Jesus. Period. And if we try to live with goodness and truth and all that we know is right then we will be light. I believe it truly is that simple. Jesus is our light and if we follow his way then we too will walk in the light.

And I suspect, there will be Joy there, as well.

Thanks be to God.

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SOWING SEEDS, REAPING GRACE. pt.2

3/12/2023

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Matthew 13:1-9
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Today is the Third Sunday in Lent, and today I am doing something I think I’ve only done maybe two or three times in the twenty-plus years I’ve been preaching here.

I’d been cruising through some old files, reminding myself of the ways we’ve changed and the kinds of things we did in the first years of the pandemic shut-down – back in the days when our church doors were closed, with no gathering all together on Sunday morning. Church leaders everywhere were thrown into crash courses in Zoom and YouTube – working hard to find ways to keep sharing Jesus’ message – ways to be church in this strange new world we found ourselves in.

While browsing, one of my sermons from 2020 struck me – not because of my sermonizing skills, but because of the scripture message and it’s application to my thoughts on how we change and adapt as needed. This message from three years ago began like this:

I read a story recently about a man who bought a new house. (I wish I could remember where I read this.) He really loved the house except for a stand of bamboo next to the driveway. He was determined to get rid of that bamboo, so he hacked it down, then dug deep to remove every root he could find. Then he poured herbicide on it and finally, covered it with cement... and three years later went out one morning to find one small shoot of bamboo growing up through the cement. That life was not to be denied. It would sprout and grow where it willed.

And I thought about how our messages had been thrown onto some strange soil in recent years – some of the messages and the methods may have not lasted well, but we’re still here. Back in church now, and spreading our message in a variety of new ways... Here’s the rest of that older sermon:

“The reading for today is the story usually titled the “Parable of the Sower.” I read a message by Nadia Bolz-Weber based on this same reading. In her message, she says that she believes we, most of us, think of this reading as being about the “Judgmental Soil.” You know, the rocky ground, the dry ground, the weedy ground — all this bad ground that rejects the good seed. We end up so focused on the ground that we forget all about the seed.

And then she looked at the story from another angle and reminds us that in this “thorny and rocky and good world, God still is sowing a life-giving Word. Just wantonly and indiscriminately scattering it everywhere like God doesn't understand our rules.” I love this line.

I preached a few years ago on “The Prodigal Son” and suggested then that story should be called instead, “The Extravagant Father.” Perhaps by the same train of thought, today’s story should be referred to as “The Extravagant Sower.”

A good farmer would surely prepare soil before planting and then sow the seed only where the soil was cleared and ready for it. Why waste good seed where you can be fairly sure it won’t grow? Where’s the return for the farmer? And yet, our Extravagant Sower appears to cast the seed everywhere — openly, freely — letting it grow (if it will) where it lands. Just as if, as Bolz-Weber said, God doesn’t understand our rules. God just indiscriminately throws the Word out anywhere, throws love all around the place, and beauty into places none of us may ever see.

Some of the most beautiful green and growing things I have ever come across were found in little rocky nooks, far up in the high mountains, at a distance from the beaten trails, where few ever go. Some of the most beautiful music ever composed came from musicians who struggled in obscurity. Brilliant strides have been made in science and in medicine by thinkers raised in impoverished and restricted surroundings.

Our God is an extravagant God. One who throws out love and grace in all the expected places — and, in the most un-expected places as well. Perhaps our task is to not become so embroiled in fighting the weeds in our cherished gardens that we miss the Morning-Glories thriving on the other side of the fence. Don’t forget to look around you. Don’t miss the flash of flaming red on a hummingbird’s throat or the trilling call of the tiny brown house finch. Don’t miss the love offered by someone you might think isn’t worthy of your friendship. Don’t miss the grace all around you just because it’s popping up where you least expect it.

And don’t miss out on daily contact with God because you think God only speaks in a church. God speaks—loudly, softly, publicly, privately—everywhere, and anywhere, and all the time. Just keep throwing those seeds of love and grace around – freely and generously.

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When Your High Priest is the Son of God

3/5/2023

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Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:1-4

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.....

Every high priest selected to represent men and women before God and offer sacrifices for their sins should be able to deal gently with their failings, since he knows what it’s like from his own experience. No one elects himself to this honored position, he’s called to it by God.

Today is the second Sunday in Lent, and this is not the lectionary choice for today But for any of you who are reading our Lent Devotional this year this reading will sound somewhat familiar because two of our daily readings came from this same bit of scripture in one week.

That doesn’t happen very often, but there they are – one last Tuesday, written by Quinn Caldwell, and the other written by Mary Luti, for Saturday.

The fact that these two are my absolute favorites out of the many excellent writers who contribute to these devotionals may have influenced my initial interest, but it is also interesting that from such a short reading both writers found something different to write about. They are similar, but still different.

That’s probably because the Letter to the Hebrews is an interesting book. For ages it was considered to have been written by Paul, but most scholars today think it was more likely to be someone who knew all Paul’s works and agreed with them – but someone who was themselves highly educated and wrote with a different, smoother syntax than Paul. There is still a fairly large group who suggest it may have been written by Priscilla – the female half of a missionary couple who traveled with Paul.

Whoever wrote it, Hebrews was likely written to Jews who may have been beginning to doubt that Jesus truly was the long-awaited messiah since they were expecting a militant king, but this letter reminds those waverers that the messiah was also prophesied to be a priest, and this is the resurrected Jesus’ primary calling – to be our High Priest – the mediator between God and humankind.

A mediator is an intermediary or go-between. One who works between two people or factions at odds with each other and seeks to bring them together. And Jesus, as our High Priest, listens to God with love, and speaks for us with love and compassion.

This has always been the role of the priest – to stand between God and the people. Whether on a mountain-side or in a jungle, in a temple or a cathedral, the role of the priest has always been to stand before God and bring God’s words to the people and in turn, to bring the people’s prayers and needs and present them to God for help and healing.

Whether we are using mediator in a legal setting or in a religious one the very use of the mediator suggests that we have two factions who are unreconciled, unable to speak directly to one another and be heard.

Unfortunately, this is an image I think many of us have been given about our relationship with God, that we are doomed to be opposing factions. Either God is seen as only interested in rules, one who doesn’t really understand our fears and needs or we humans are just disobedient children, not interested or willing to listen to any of those rules. We’ve even been taught to accept that we are so wicked that Jesus was forced to die for us.

I don’t like this image ..... and I don’t believe it, not for a moment. How can the God who brought us into being ever look at us with anything but love and understanding? How can the Jesus who lived among us and experienced life as one of us not understand our strengths and weaknesses?

I do not believe that I cannot speak directly with God or listen for what God is telling me. But, I’m entirely willing to admit that my listening isn’t always perfect -- surprise! Many times I have benefitted from hearing what others have heard that I have missed.

I am not remotely claiming that I can do it all on my own, just “me and God”, because I believe, seriously, that God speaks to us through other people – always. And I believe in the prayers I know others have prayed with and for me. I’ve always liked it when I’ve known my friend Cheryl is praying for me because I think God hears her prayers better than mine ‘cause she’s a nicer person.

I’m not sure God needs help understanding us, but I am sure we usually need all the help we can get in understanding God.

And if we do need an advocate, a mediator between God and us, I’m so very grateful the one we have is Jesus – one who loves the lost and hurting, the grieving and the hungry – the one who loves us unconditionally.

The person who spoke the Beatitudes is always the one I want on my side. With a God who loves us and a mediator who loves us and stands for us, we are truly in good hands.

I hope I can always try my best to stand for others as Jesus stands for us.

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THE LONG COURAGE

ONCE YOU WERE IN DARKNESS

SOWING SEEDS, REAPING GRACE. pt.2

When Your High Priest is the Son of God

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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