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A CANDLE FOR HOPE

11/27/2022

Matthew 24:38-39a, 42

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away....Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come into your life.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in this new liturgical year -- and the theme for today is HOPE. This is such an important time for us – being that it lays the foundation for all that is to follow in the church year.

As most of us know by now, there are four weeks in Advent, each with its own theme – HOPE, PEACE, JOY, and LOVE. Because Advent is all about the coming of the Christ Child into our human world, it can begin to feel as if these are very important, weighty topics that belong in the Bible and the church and should only be spoken of with “church-y” words.

Well, yes, of course, they are important, and we do take them seriously, but they are supposed to tell us about God living and being and acting in our world – right here in the confusion and messy-ness of humankind, so occasionally they need to come out of the heavenly realms and interact with us here – just here.

That’s why I want to share something that a friend shared on-line this week. It’s just a story – actually, it’s a story about a story:

Somewhere in the 1930’s, in the depths of the Great Depression, a man named Bob May was at least one of the more fortunate ones in that he was employed when so many others were not. He worked for Montgomery Ward but even though he had a job most of his slight income went to pay for medical care for his wife, who was dying of cancer. While he worked and cared as best he could for his wife, he was also left to be the sole caregiver for his four-year old daughter.
Broke and exhausted and heartbroken as he was, he still wanted to give the best could to his little girl. He loved her so much that he somehow found it in him to want to give her Hope (even though he most likely didn’t really have much of that for himself at this time.)
So one evening as he was putting her to bed, when she asked for a story, having no money for story books for her, he made up a story about a small reindeer with a bright red nose, who most unexpectedly found himself working with Santa Claus. The child loved the story so she asked for it over and over again, and as he repeated it night after night he began embroidering it, adding a little here and a little there, and the story grew. Since there was no money for buying gifts, the man decided to make a hand-made book of “the story” for his daughter’s Christmas gift. He even shared it with a few of his co-workers.
Sadly, shortly before Christmas that year, the long-suffering wife and mother passed away from her illness. Truly alone now, except for his child and his work, May reluctantly attended his company’s Christmas party where he was urged by friends to share his story – which met with party-wide acclaim – so much so that Montgomery Ward bought the rights to the story, which enabled the man to pay off the huge debts that had piled up due to his wife’s illness.
Over the next six years Wards gave away more than six million copies of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to shoppers. It became so popular that major publishing houses were bidding for the publishing rights. It was a major public relations move by the store – and – in the most extraordinary part of this story – they returned the publishing rights to May at no charge.
In a handful of years, the bereft father became a millionaire. But there’s more – Mays’ brother-in-law was a budding songwriter who later set the story to music. The song was pitched to such big names as Bing Crosby but no was seemed interested until Gene Autry’s wife heard it and urged him to record it. The rest is history. The story of the plucky little reindeer who didn’t give up on hope has become an inseparable part of Christmas for children and families everywhere.

This is not a story from the Bible – Jesus and Mary and Joseph don’t appear in it anywhere (at least not by name). There are no choirs of angels (that we can see or hear), and yet it may be a perfect story for this first week in Advent. A perfect story to show us how Hope works in this world we live in today.

Somehow – in the midst of a worldwide financial depression – with the loss of someone as dear as a young child’s mother – when everything looks pretty darn hopeless – hope is still here. God is still here in our midst with a promise that God is always here with us – in grief, in worry, in failure, in fear – we can hold to hope because – somehow – God is always here right where we are.

Hope doesn’t come when we decide it should come. Like the people in our opening scripture, we must be ready all the time, because we never know when hope will show up – it just appears when God choses. So be ready. Hope can break into our lives when it’s least expected.

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THANKS AND A BLESSING

11/20/2022

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Revelation 7:12

“Amen!” they cried out.
“Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanks
and honor and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever!
Amen!”

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Well...technically it is Christ the King Sunday by most lectionaries. I don’t find royal imagery particularly helpful in my understanding of Jesus but I do, definitely, find gratitude to be both helpful and necessary ... so today is Thanksgiving Sunday.

Most of us find it fairly easy to come up with a list of things for which to offer our thanks to God. We share our gratitude each week along with our offerings, as part of our worship, and, even in troubled times I would guess that most of us could come up with a sizeable list of things to be grateful for. We live here in peace and plenty, in comfort and cleanliness. We go to bed at night without fear of bombs falling on our homes. We may not be rich, but we generally have enough for our needs.

We are a blessed people – and we acknowledge that our blessing is largely a matter of geography and luck – nothing that we deserve more than any other being on this planet. And we are duly grateful and we do give thanks and we do try to share our blessings with others.

We share food, we share clothing, we support various local agencies and help enable them in their various tasks to make things better for those in need. We do pretty well, I’d say – as individuals and as a church. Could we so better? Of course, but we do try to show our gratitude in concrete forms.

But – counting our blessings is not all that Thanksgiving is about. There are “blessings,” in the form of ‘things’, and there is “blessing” – a verb, an act of bestowing our wishes and prayers for goodness and favor and well-being for the person being blessed.

In the Old Testament especially, blessing often appears to involve a transference of something – something spiritual, a special sense that something important is taking place.

When the aging Isaac, for instance, intends to give his special father’s blessing to his eldest son, Esau, and that blessing is “high-jacked” by the conniving younger son, Jacob, along with his equally conniving mother Rebecca, the theft of this important blessing destroys the family. This blessing once given was irrevocable - it could not be taken back – this theft could not be made right.

In this particular story this is a “one-time-only” blessing, but other blessings are less restricted and can apparently be given at will. These are the blessings we offer each other – often casually, but other times quite seriously. These blessings are still in some way a recognition that someone is worthy of, or in need of a blessing. And this, I think, is the power we hold with a blessing.

When we offer a blessing, unless we are just mechanically voicing words we don’t really understand, we are forced to actually see the one being blessed – and our blessing becomes an acknowledgment that its recipient is worthy of such blessing – if only by virtue of God’s will for blessing for us all (which has nothing to do with our world's judgment of worth).

What if we were to practice blessing others? These blessings don’t have to be spoken out loud, even – just sincerely thinking about what we are doing, and meaning it -- truly intending that the power of God’s goodwill pass through us to whomever. This is pretty easy when we are thinking of blessing those we love - family and friends – or even the "deserving" poor. But what about strangers? Loud, undeserving, obnoxious strangers?

What about people who steal from us? Or do us violence? What about politicians advocating horrifying, dehumanizing, wicked public policies? Are these not the very people who most need a blessing? A healing? A turn to the right direction? Can we manage to bless them – not the annoying or outright evil things they are doing, but they themselves, the pieces of God’s creation that they are – because -- try as we might want to deny it, these, too, are God’s beloved children?

And here we end up back where we started – any blessing we have to give was first given to us – freely and open handedly – by God. And I don’t believe God blesses us without hoping we will share that blessing in our turn. We understand this more easily with “things” -- if we have plenty of food and warm clothing it is no hardship to pass some on to others -- but this also applies to any blessings of understanding or kindness or love that we may possess. If I have an open and welcoming heart, it is because God gave me that heart. That blesses me and so I can, in turn, offer the same blessing to others who need it. To all who need it.

Is a blessing from me really that big a deal? It is, in a couple of ways. First, in that I recognize the other person as a fellow child of God – whether I “like” them or not; and second, that seeing them, whether the person I see is whole or broken, I can honestly bless them. I can wish them wholeness and healing and hope and God’s active, on-going, life-giving role in their lives. That's when it's a big deal for me -- when I recognize the blessings is from God and my job is not judging, but simply to pass it on to the one who needs it.

I have a feeling there is much more power in our blessings than we might be comfortable with, and that’s why we toss the word around so casually. If that's so, get over it. Our job is to bless each other, so go out into the world and do so.

Truly see and truly bless God’s realm and all that dwells within it.

Bless this world -- and give thanks.

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HOW ARE WE DOING AS CHURCH?

11/13/2022

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Micah 6:8
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

John 4:24
“God is spirit, and those who belong to God must worship in spirit and truth.”

Unknown –
“We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by being the church.”

Next Sunday, according to the lectionary, will be Reign of Christ Sunday, but we will instead be following a Thanksgiving theme that week since the Sunday following Thanksgiving will be the first Sunday in Advent. (Yes. Advent, already, with Christmas right behind!)

That leaves today for me to ask a question that I’ve been tossing around in my mind for a while: “How are we doing as church?”

We all have an idea of what church is – and chances are good that your idea and mine are different in a lot of ways. We could probably spend a couple of months’ worth of Sundays just on this one question. Is church the building we meet in? Is church the songs we sing or the ritual actions we take? Is church the people who gather? The answer to all of these is yes and no.

Nowhere in the New Testament could I find a use of the word church to describe a building. The word is most often used to refer to the people of a specific area who made up the various gatherings.

Scripture, Old and New, is filled with instructions for how the people of God are supposed to be and act and do. Two of the readings we started with today are good examples: Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” and John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who belong to God must worship in spirit and truth.”

But these are only two out of dozens, if not hundreds of instructions found in scripture, telling us how to be people of God – or church. We still have to put them together for ourselves.

So – we are the church – for convenience sake we’ll go with that definition as it is expressed so well in the third reading --- this one from an unknown speaker/writer: “We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by being the church.”

This finally leads us back around to where I wanted to be in the first place: “How are we doing as church?” Any and all of us who come together and call ourselves part of the Church of the Open Door -- is what you find here what you are seeking? Are we doing what you think we should be doing?

Do we have an idea of what our calling is? Do we recognize what our needs are?

If you have been around here and listened to me speak for a while, you know that my messages often start out as a scribbled note on a scrap of paper. Well, last week I unearthed one of those scribbles that read “Church is a family -- not always perfect, but trustworthy.” And then there was a second part that didn’t seem to be part of the first but was still connected. This one read “small churches -- big ministry.”

That’s all it said. After mulling it over for a while, I managed to remember that it was Rev. LaTaunya Bynum, our Regional Minister, who had spoken those words. I ended up texting her to ask, “who and when,” and she reminded me that “Church is a family...” was from Rev. Marty Williams, and the “Small churches – Big ministry” is from Toni herself.

Those two short phrases brought me to do some serious thinking. Yes, church is a family -- the place and the people who we call “home”, and like a family, we, as church, are often far from perfect, but the church we form is ours and we can trust it.

I don’t know exactly where Rev. Bynum was going with her “small churches, big ministry” saying, but we certainly are a small church and for a small church, we have some good sized ministries, and instead of feeling guilty that we can’t do more, we have focused on an area we can manage, and we take it very seriously...and we help a lot of people (and ourselves, in the process.)

So thank you Marty and Toni. Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing them abroad. And thank you to the Spirit who brought them on a roundabout journey to a scrap of paper, and to finally reach us here and nudge us into serious consideration.

And so – one more time...“How are we doing as church?”

(I welcome your thoughts in response.)

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ALL SAINTS, ALL SOULS, EVERY BLESSED ONE

11/6/2022

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Colossians 1:9-12 (The Message)

Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits and a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works.....As you learn more and more of how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives -- strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy. We commend you to the One who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that is given to all the saints.

Last Monday was All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en, as we probably more commonly know it. The next day, Tuesday, Nov. 1st, was All Saints Day, followed on Wednesday by All Souls Day, Three different days but, in reality all three are part of a single observance. We are all aware that Halloween is about candy and kids and costumes, but unless we are very high church we may be a little hazy as to what the others are really all about.

In addition to the three “churchy” days mentioned we also have strong influences from the Celtic Samhain, and el Dia de los Muertos, from the Latino/Indio cultures.

But my purpose here today isn’t to give you a history lesson on these holydays. All of these, whether Christian or pagan, or some mixture of the two, are ways of remembering those who have gone on before us. They are all about the dead still being very much a part of us who are still living.

I spent the first half of my life in the Catholic church and Hallowe’en was fun, of course, especially when I was young, but I also always knew what All Saints and All Souls days were about. In the Catholic Church, "the faithful" refers to all baptized believers; "All Souls" reminds us of the “church penitent” – those waiting souls in purgatory – not quite in heaven yet, and "All Saints" commemorates the “church triumphant” – those whom the church has judged worthy to have bypassed purgatory – the saints in heaven. I don’t know what the current teaching might be, but I’d guess this is still somewhat close to the claims of any of the high-liturgy churches today.

Protestant churches, on the other hand, tend to follow Paul, who referred to all who had received the word of Christ as “God’s holy ones” or saints – living or dead -- usage Paul would have taken from the Old Testament references to God’s holy people.

This would be the way we most commonly use the word. And I like that we do because it removes us from any responsibility for being gate-keepers – picking and choosing who has “made it” to heaven and who is still stuck in some heavenly waiting-room.

This makes me think of one of my favorites quotes from Nadia Bolz-Weber, who reminds us,

Jesus descended to the dead as though to say to us “even here I will find you and not let go” because death has no sting – death is rendered meaningless to a God of resurrection. And lest we forget, it is a God of resurrection who we worship.

So we don’t even have to separate the living from those who have go on ahead of us, for by virtue of having been called to walk with Jesus, we are all saints – God’s beloved and chosen ones.

I don’t know if I have cleared up any of questions about our reason for celebrating Saints at this time of year or if I have only confused you more. I suspect the latter. Goodness knows it’s a confusing subject.

Jan Richardson, in her book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief, puts it in a way that speaks very clearly for me:

I am grateful that the sacred calendar provides these holy days to do what so many of us do throughout the year: to remember beloved ones who are no longer here but who somehow journey with us still.
In these days, as we both grieve and celebrate our beloved dead, may we know how they endure with us, holding our hearts and encompassing us with a fierce and stubborn love that persists across time and distance. May that love help light our way in the life that is continuing to unfold for us.

And now as we move into the season of thanksgiving for all our blessings, let us remember to keep the Saints of our lives right there at the top of our lists and give thanks for them – living or dead, physically present or not -- all together in God's love.

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A CANDLE FOR HOPE

THANKS AND A BLESSING

HOW ARE WE DOING AS CHURCH?

ALL SAINTS, ALL SOULS, EVERY BLESSED ONE

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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