The Risk of Relationship

I just finished addressing the Christmas cards, an annual ritual of the Advent season in our home.  Each year I wonder whether this will be the last year that I spend the time pouring over a list of names and addresses that I have maintained meticulously throughout the year.  It takes lots of energy to maintain that list and to hold all those people in my heart.  Our list has names of family members and friends--both near and far--who have been with us over many years.  Though we seldom see them, yet these are people who have shaped our spirits.  I cherish the memories as I address each envelope and sign each card.  A prayer ascends as the ink is applied and dries.  I remember the relationship in a profound way.  I am anchored anew in great gratitude and love.

But, it also occurs to me as I write each address that this holy time summons me to build enduring relationships for today.  Advent invites a new risk--the risk of relationship.  When God came into Bethlehem's manger, an amazing risk was involved.  Jesus was born a stranger in our midst.  He didn't know a soul, yet came to save every soul, every life and every creature, all of creation.  God risked a relationship of love. The Gospel prologue puts it this way, "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God."  My Jesus lives and dies with arms outstretched, reaching up, extending out for embrace--for relationship.

My prayer tonight is that someone somewhere will discover in me the outstretched arms of the Christ and know that his, her, our lives are not intended to be lived in loneliness and isolation.  It's not really about the card, but the care--the openness to reach out, to be vulnerable, and to stay connected.  The risk of relationship . . . I have seen it modeled well in a little baby, the Holy Child of Bethlehem.  It is revealed in the God who always finds a way to be with us, to embrace us, and love us to new life.

Our God, come!  Please come . . . soon!

 

Ah, Advent!

The period from September through November has not been easy.  The speed at which things have appeared and disappeared on my desk and in my schedule has been disorienting.  Maybe my age is catching up, mortality is settling in.  As I write today, I remember Abe, an outspoken church leader with a big, generous heart.  He said once after Sunday morning worship, "Reverend, if you ever lose your mind, we're all in trouble."  I took that as a compliment in 1993.  Truth be told, I probably did lose my mind back in those days of parish ministry and still am in the process of losing (and finding) it again in this crazy thing called conference ministry.  I also recall a service of installation in one of our churches early in my ministry in New Hampshire.  It was during the reception following the service that a short, elderly woman peered up at me over her the rim of her teacup to ask, "Now, who are you and why are you here?"  Such is life as a Conference Minister in the Untied Church of Christ:  Who am I?  Why am I here?

All this is prologue to Advent.  Ah, Advent, the beginning of something wonderfully new.  The old is passing away; God's newness is near.  There is more to come than what I have previously experienced.  The lost things are secure and will eventually be found.  All will be revealed for what it really is.  God is coming to judge and to save, to set things right, and to bless the world with hope. 

Yesterday, as I worshipped with the Congregational Church of Hooksett, I saw a single  purple candle that was lit in the Advent wreath.  It was designated, "The Candle of Hope."  Somehow the flickering flame brought home for me the gift of hope.  Amid gray and cloudy days in my soul--and the soul of our nation--there is hope.  God is coming!  God is coming!  God is coming!

Help me, O Coming One, to bask in this Advent time, to allow it to challenge and to change me in profound ways.   Prepare me to receive your eternal life.  Move me to be a child of your grace.  Grant your church space to reflect, to lay down all our preconceived notions and opinions as we listen long for your Word.  Keep us alert and awake,  so that we may be surprised and rejoice at your appearing .  O God, come!  Amen.

A Dwelling Place for God

This summer I was invited to preach at the Lee Church Congregational, a congregation of the United Church of Christ in the New Hampshire Conference.  That was a very special day, as we met in the church's fellowship hall for worship.  We worshipped in that space because something new was happening in Lee: the sanctuary was being renovated.  The fellowship hall was a bright, inviting space for the Sunday morning service.  A different kind work--a labor of great love and deep devotion--was happening in the regular worship space.

Following worship, I was taken on a tour of the sanctuary.  It had been stripped back to the studs.  The attic was exposed.  It was amazing to perceive the old in the midst of the new that was emerging.  Other hearts had sensed the stirring of God's Spirit.  Other hands had generously given.  Other bodies had labored long to make that sanctuary a reality.  And now, in our own time, Pastor Gail Kindberg and the congregation that is Lee Church Congregational are joining that work in a very special, even sacred way.  They are building for the future, building in faith, hope, and love on the foundational work of those who have gone before.  Theirs is an act of devotion and love.  They will leave a beautiful worship space for the generations that will come to call this sanctuary home.  A refrain in a recent article by the Pastor rings with joyful gratitude, "We are richly blessed."

As I write today, I note that the congregation will move into the renovated sanctuary for a first service on October 27.  If you seek a sanctuary and a community of Christ's people, where God's Spirit stirs hearts and minds, where resurrection hope is real--here's one!  The New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ is also "richly blessed" by the loving devotion of our local churches and the courage and compassion with which they serve God in our time.

A text springs to mind in the midst of my gratitude: 

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him, the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.  (Ephesians 2:219-22, NRSV)

 

An End of Summer Reflection

I have learned that summer is short in New England.  The growing season passes swiftly.  The heat of summer, though perhaps intense for a time, is short-lived.  In recent days, the mornings have been cool.  The days are getting noticeably shorter.  An ending is coming.

A text from Jeremiah, caught my eye last night.  This is one of the readings in the lectionary for September 22, 2013, which is the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Cycle C).   I am scheduled to preach in one of our churches that morning, but I will likely not bring this text into the pulpit with me.  Even so, I know it will be lodged in the depths of my heart.

Here's the text that speaks to my spiritual depths in these waning days of summer:

My joy is gone, grief is upon me,

     my heart is sick.

Hark, the cry of my poor people

     from far and wide in the land:

"Is the LORD not in Zion?

     Is her King not in her?"

("Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?")

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

     and we are not saved."

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,

     I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

     Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of my poor people

     not been restored?

O that my head were a spring of water,

     and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night

     for the slain of my poor people!

--Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, NRSV

This is not a cheery, carefree kind of text!  It is so heavy, so gloomy, so deeply down.  Yet, this text is where I dwell in these days.  Even in the light of  a new day, I relish this text.  The subtext is a dose of stark reality:  "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."  There is unfinished business, and the season for salvation appears to have come and gone. We missed it.  It is over.  We are not saved.  We are not healed, as we had so fervently hoped.  Many hearts still ache and break.  A river of tears wells up and flows out like a fountain.    We are a long way from the New Jerusalem where we hear the voice, announcing, that God is in the midst of her, that tears and death and mourning and pain and death all over.  No more!  In God's good time it will be so; but for now, all is still not well with God's world: 

Syria poses a deadly, international dilemma.  How then shall shall the world respond? 

Medicaid expansion is freighted with paralyzing political posturing and rhetorical talking points, while the poor people are silenced, pushed aside, left to fend for themselves, . . . left to die.

The changes in the earth's climate are accepted as inevitable and natural when human influence is clearly involved.  We are complicit in the crisis.  Our actions and attitudes have consequences that will affect our generation and those yet to come.

The gathering in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the historic March on Washington, which  happened fifty years ago this very week, reminds us that we have such a long, long road to walk for equality and freedom for all God's children in this land. Is there still a dream today or have we succumbed anew to the sin of a segregated society?

I know Jeremiah well; we are kindred souls.  He gets to the heart of things.  The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.  His words sound disturbing and depressing, but they move us toward a wider horizon, toward the horizon of hope, toward an empty tomb and a Holy City and amazing joy.

Is the Lord not in the Zion?  Is the Sovereign not in the city?  So, is there a balm in Gilead?  Is there hope to counter the weighty despair that underlies this holy text?  Answers do not spring forth quickly; but imploring questions abound.  And, in these piercing questions is where I find hope.  When people of faith are driven back to their questions and find their voice to ask them--this is a movement toward hope.  Questions become pleas and prayers for those who refuse to give up on God's promise.  Questions name the reality.  They give us pause and move us to listen for deeper responses.  Questions are expressions of faithful people, struggling to find their footing when all appears lost.  Indeed, I am grateful for the witness of every Jeremiah, who is moved to pray in questions in the midst of disappointment and despair.  It is there, near the bottom--near the end of summer--that hope is born.

O God, who joins us in our tears, our sadness, and our death: When easy answers elude and fail to satisfy our deepest longings, grant us courage to ask you the hard questions.  Grant us such faith that we may trust through the sorrows and the silences of life.  As this summer season ends, reassure us with the hope of restoration and resurrection.  In this ending, in your good time, let life sprout and spring forth.  Is there still a balm in Gilead?  Do you not care that we are languishing and perishing?  Will your poor people be remembered and healed?  See us through, O God.  Yes, see us through.

Engaging Faith

This morning we were in worship led by a colleague in the Missouri-Mid South Conference of the United Church of Christ.  Dale has been one of those memorable mentors in my ministry. He has been an influential figure in my life, a brother in Christ, who has served with great joy and a dash of holy irreverence in every setting where he has been called.  Dale has persevered as a pastor and teacher; ministry is clearly his calling.  He stays long--but never too long.  His life continues to be led by a joyful, even playful Spirit.  He connects with his congregants.

This morning's worship was a contemporary service.  It was powerful.  (I usually prefer "traditional" worship to "contemporary" worship.)  Today was different.  The whole service was about faith, grounded in scriptures from Hebrews 11:1-16 and Luke 12:32-47.  Dale reminded us of the Question 80 in the Evangelical Catechism:  What is faith?   The response:  "Faith is complete trust in God and willing acceptance of [God's] grace in Jesus Christ."  I memorized that answer in my youth, but now I am not convinced: Complete trust in God?  My trust is often fractured and scattered.  It is a long way from "complete."  When I think of complete trust in God, I hear Jesus cry out in victory in the midst of his dying, "It is finished!" (John 19:30)   I admire that kind of courage and confidence; I aspire to it.  My prayer includes a confession that my trust in God is incomplete and far from finished.  But God continues to be engaged and committed to love even through suffering and death.  That's complete faith!

Here, though, is what I took away this morning as I listened for the Spirit to speak through my friend Dale:  Faith is the resilience to remain engaged even when we are not sure where the journey may lead.  Faith is God's determination to stay engaged with us even when we are easily distracted and even oblivious to God's claim on our lives.  Faith is in our decision to stay connected with those we love and those we have not yet learned to love.  Faith is the joyful commitment to stay, even when we feel like giving up and running away toward the mirage of an  easier, carefree life.

Tonight I am basking in the glow of today's worship and continuing to reflect about what all this might mean in my own ministry.  It will soon be seven years since I began as the Conference Minister of the New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ.  The days have been full, often stretching my spirit in ways that I could not have imagined when I began.   The years have gone so quickly.   Sure, there has been some personal sacrifice in this service; but mostly, there has been receptivity, satisfaction, and deep joy.  It is my calling.  God's Spirit has seen me through and will still see me through--of this I am convinced.  Faith is the predisposition to care enough to remain engaged, listening to the Spirit and loving those for whom Christ died and rose again.  I trust this to be so, and it is.

Great is your faithfulness, O God! 
     Great is your love and mercy! 
          Great is your call to life! 

Thank you for the gift of a Sabbath day and for your servant Dale.  May his ministry continue to be a source of strength and joy for so many of us.  May we be found faithful now, in the end, and always.  May it be so!  Amen.

"No More of This!"

Christopher Harris
by sculptor Rudolph Torrini

On June 7, 1991, in a section of the City of St. Louis that had once been my home, a gun fight between two men broke out in a drug deal that went terribly wrong.  Christopher Harris, a nine-year-old African American boy was used as a human shield.  Christopher was shot in the back and died as a result of the violence.  The tragedy prompted some in the St. Louis community to surrender their guns.  A bronze cast statue of Christopher, dedicated six years after the killing, is filled with the melted parts of handguns.  It is a memorial to all the children lost in violence and as a symbol of healing.  The statue stands as part of the SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center on South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis.

Trayvon Martin
February 5, 1995-February 26, 2012

On February 26, 2012, another African American youth, a seventeen-year-old high school student named Trayvon Martin was killed in gun violence in Sanford, Florida.  George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator was charged with murder in Martin's death and was eventually acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on July 13, 2013.  That verdict has prompted an outcry from many who believe that justice was not served by this case.  Racial profiling is rooted in prejudice that threatens the very foundations of our society.  The tragic rush to violence diminishes us all.

I wonder today about how it will all end . . . What is the antidote to our deadly disease of violence?  Where is the monument that will help us remember, grieve, and heal after the tragic death of Trayvon Martin?  What sense might be made of this?  What difference will I make?  What will we do now? 

Today, I hear Jesus say, "No more of this!"  In Luke 22:49ff., when Jesus' followers tried to resist his arrest with violence, Jesus rejected their action with a stern rebuke.  "No more of this!" was his response to the injury they inflicted on the high priest's slave.  When the threat against him was great, when his death was drawing near, Jesus responded to bring healing to a slave's ear.

Yes, today, I hear Jesus say, "No more of this!" to the endless arguing by advocates for gun ownership without any restrictions.  Our real security is never in the idolatrous weaponry that we would use to defend ourselves.  "No more of this!"

"No more of this!" echoes down to those who would be self-proclaimed vigilantes for justice.  Tin-star, stand-your-ground laws will not make our society safer.  Ultimately, our true security is not in our own right or our own might to defend our selves.  "No more of this!"

"No more of this!" is Jesus' warning to all who would divide us by teaching doctrines of fear and separation.  Our security is not in huddling in closed circles but in growing in our understanding of and love for others no matter what their race or creed or nationality or sexual orientation--or whether we deem them to be friend or foe.  "No more of this!" 

I hear our Jesus crying out, "No more of this!" to the deaths of children and youth in our own streets.  The violence in St. Louis, Aurora and Newtown, and  Sanford must stop.  Now!  "No more of this!"

O God, in your suffering may we find our true security.  Lift the cross of your Son, Jesus, as a symbol of hope and healing amid all the injurious words and deeds that we inflict on others.  May it remind us that none of us is truly innocent, but that all of us are enmeshed in the way of violence and death.  Help us to remember, to grieve the deaths, and to cherish the lives of those who have been victims of violence in your world.  Make us agents of your reconciling love, your justice, and your peace.  Amen.

 

And Nothing Will Hurt You

It was great to be in Gorham, leading worship and meeting with the pastoral search committee this morning.  Last year, when the congregation celebrated its 150th Anniversary, the chosen theme was Honor the Past . . . Build the Future.  I sense that this church is living into a new future.  Of the 41 folks in worship on this holiday weekend (it looked like more to me), six were guests who came to visit.  The Spirit is stirring in Gorham.  A future is being built.  It is good.

As I was preaching, a tiny text within the text caught my attention as it had not done before.  It is part of Jesus' response to the ministry of the seventy apostles that he commissioned and sent out to be his advance teams.  Here it is: "See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you."  And nothing will hurt you.  I take this to be a powerful promise.

Of course, there are things that might cause us trouble--like scorpions and snakes, biting criticism and intense conflict, boredom or restlessness of spirit, chronic or incurable diseases, grief and loss, and death itself.  Jesus does not say that snakes won't strike or that scorpions won't sting.  But his promise feels stronger to me than anything we can experience or imagine:  And nothing will hurt you.

In some respects, this reminds me of the way that Paul taunts death itself in I Corinthians 15. 

 

"Death has been swallowed up in victory."

 

"Where, O Death is your victory?

   Where, O Death is your sting."

 

 

There are still lots of things that may unsettle me and cause trouble.  Something sometime will kill me; but I hold fast to the word I heard in the midst of other words today:  "And nothing will hurt you."  Here is the source of my courage and my comfort. 

 

 

O Lord Christ, when I am tempted to fear, grant me such faith that in life and in death I may trust your presence and your promise.  You inscribe my name on your heart.  You fit me for eternal life.  You bless me with empowering assurance--no matter what comes--it will be well.  I hear you say, "And nothing will hurt you."  I take your word to heart.  You are my hope.  Alleluia.  Amen.