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"King of the Raft" sermon by Pastor Kinsey, 12/29/13

12/29/2013

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Readings for December 29, 2013 | First Sunday of Christmas (A)
  • Isaiah 63:7-9 
  • Psalm 148 
  • Hebrews 2:10-18  
  • Matthew 2:13-23

King of the Raft, by Rev Fred Kinsey
As a teenager, we used to play King of the Raft at our lake cottage, with my Texas cousins.  You know, last one standing on the raft wins.  It was all in fun, but my cousin Mark had a distinct advantage.  Not only was he two years older than me, but he was about twice my size.  He, was always the king.  Me and my younger brother Dave tried to dethrone him.  We knew neither of us could do it alone, and even together it was near impossible.  So when our friend Bobby Anderson came over, then we had a fighting chance.  And still, sometimes all four of us ended up in the water, with no one king!

Jesus, the new born king, had his own conflicts.  He came as the Prince of Peace, into Herod’s world.  And born of Mary and Joseph, he came to bring salvation, which was the meaning of his name.  And to fulfill the prophet Isaiah’s words, that he would be called Emmanuel, or “God is with us.” 

But apparently, no one clued the Wise Men in on the story.  They roll into Jerusalem from the east and, none too subtly, knock on King Herod’s door, asking, where is the new-born king, King Herod?!  Nothing wakes up a king as fast as news that there is a rival!  And nothing snaps him to attention to defend his particular raft quicker than hearing others were circling like sharks to try and take his place!  You do not ask the king, “where’s the king?”  If you do, he will throw you off the raft so fast your head will spin, and your nose will fill with water! 

So when the wise men show up, Herod thinks fast, and plays along with them, hoping to use this information, and the wise men, to his advantage.  ‘When you locate this child’ says Herod, ‘let me know where he hangs out so I can bring my greetings as well.’  But the wise men changed their plans, after being warned in a dream what Herod’s intentions were, and left for their own country by another road.  So, as Matthew says, Herod feels mocked, and tricked, by the wise men, and his anger burns hot. 

Meanwhile, Joseph is having dreams with divine warnings too, and, as instructed, he gathers up the holy family and takes them, all the way down to Egypt.  Herod is so jealous, and so threatened, that he orders all the male babies under two years old in Bethlehem to be killed, in a desperate attempt to eliminate his rival.  Ironically, the God With Us Christ-Child, is now far away in a foreign land!

Do you remember that story about how Moses was saved as a child, that other leader when God’s people needed salvation and someone to be with them?  King Pharaoh became so afraid of how the Israelite slaves were multiplying in Egypt, that – like Herod – he decreed that all the new-born males should be killed, and only the females would live.  So to save the new-born Moses, his sister Miriam puts him in a little ark-like basket and floats him on the Nile River.  While all the other boys drowned in the river, Moses was saved.  And when Moses came of age, he understood that God had saved him to lead his people, through the Red Sea and out of Egypt to the Promised Land. 

Jesus comes up out of Egypt to lead his people too.  After Herod dies, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph and told him the coast was clear. And Joseph, the child and his mother, come back to live in Nazareth. 

The good news is, Jesus was saved.  But the horrible outcome is that many innocent children are not.  As Episcopal Scholar Angela Bauer-Levesque has said, “I don’t hear the good news in the story of discriminate killing found in the gospel lesson this week – where one is saved at the expense of the many (my italics). The silence of the bystanders reminds me of so many of us today. I hope we learn to speak up and to stop looking in the wrong places for the good news for LGBT and other marginalized people.”

This is an insight that I don’t think I’ve heard before.  Usually we hear how Jesus, the one, died for the many.  But as Bauer-Levesque says, in this gospel reading, Jesus, the one, is saved at the expense of the many!  This raises troubling questions about evil in the world and the goodness of God.  And what about the saving power of Jesus? 

It still holds true, that God was able to guide and direct the innocent new-born Jesus, and keep him from destruction, even from the clever and dangerous Herod.  But it is different than the final revelation in Jesus, the unveiling of God’s truth in the cross, that Jesus, the innocent victim, the crucified king, the righteous one, dies for us all, showing how all innocent victims, all the marginalized, as Bauer-Levesque says, are too often scape-goated, and made to pay the price.  “At Jesus' birth, it is King Herod who seeks to destroy Jesus. At his crucifixion,” says Pastor Brian Stoffregen, “other Jewish and Roman authorities seek to destroy Jesus. So, in both cases, they are unsuccessful. Jesus is taken away for a time, and then he is brought back.”

Much like Moses, Jesus will be called to gather followers from the people of faith – 12 disciples, and countless apostles, who then are organized by Jesus to go to every town and village in Israel-Palestine to lift up the lowly, to heal the sick, and bring good news to the poor. 

Jesus by himself, just like us by ourselves, is not able to inaugurate the realm of God on earth.  He would be a great man, and well known prophet, even by himself.  But he wouldn’t be a Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, anointed to pass on his spirit to the church, without the people of God. 

As Lutheran teacher Fred Craddock says, “This event is told in the manner of an antiestablishment story, a peasant-versus-king story, a story protesting abuses by the powerful against the powerless.”  Jesus is more than a political king, of course.  But, we are more than just individual believers.  We are a collective of praying believers who, in following Jesus, wade deeply into the waters of baptism, and come out newly anointed, to be the church.  Having been saved, we are now joined to Jesus’ mission to the marginalized.  We don’t throw people off the raft into the water, but we willingly immerse ourselves in the cleansing waters of new life.

As the many, we join with all those who would organize and speak up for the marginalized, on behalf of the one.  The healing power of Jesus and the realm of God, is us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, who stand up against the Herod’s of this world, as when they slaughter the children in wars like in Syria, or abandon them here in underfunded neighborhoods of our own city.

The Herod’s, who play king of the Raft, will not be brought down by one or two, but only by the witness of the many who act together as the Children of God, the followers of Jesus, both tender and vulnerable, but strong and confident enough to bear the life of this infant savior.  Jesus went to the cross to show us that there is another way, than the ways of Herod, in this world.  Let us rise up from the waters of baptism, to be that healing and saving presence for our neighbors. 
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"All Wrapped Up" Sermon by Pastor Kinsey + Christmas Eve 2013

12/26/2013

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Readings for Nativity of Our Lord | Christmas Eve
  • Isaiah 9:2-7 
  • Psalm 96  
  • Titus 2:11-14  
  • Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)

All Wrapped Up, by Pastor Fred Kinsey
“Wrapped in swaddling clothes,” that’s the phrase I learned growing up.  Mary wrapped her first born son in swaddling clothes.  Now we say, “wrapped in bands of cloth,” which is a more accurate translation, but much less poetic, don’t you think?  Jesus, Mary’s gift by way of the Holy Spirit, is wrapped in the traditional human birth clothes of the time, and laid in a lowly manger.

I’ve always liked this mixture of sacred and secular, mystery and merriment that is Christmas time.  The Christmas Eve service, intertwined with presents under the tree and various eggnog concoctions with family and friends you haven’t seen, for far too long.  Searching for the true meaning of Christmas each year, amidst a flurry of activity we always plan to avoid.  God in human form.

And so, the beauty of Luke’s Christmas story is a mixture of a wonderfully surprising gift, given to an unsuspecting world, born suddenly, on the road, in a lowly back-room of a no-vacancy inn, while shepherds are blinded by heavenly light being visited by an army of joyful angels. 

The places are real, Nazareth in Galilee, and Bethlehem, the House of Bread, in Judea.  And the religious-political contrasts loom large.  Syria, wrestling with Rome over Israel’s bondage as a client state, and Emperor Augustus, the ruler and restorer of a new age of Peace through a power politics of take-no-prisoners, who’s totally unaware of Jesus, the nascent Prince of Peace, all tightly wrapped in bands of cloth by his unwed teenage mother, and his soon to be absent father, Joseph.  Heaven bends to earth; earth lifts to heaven.

Last week, my partner Kim came rushing home breathless from the office, after I told her that the gifts she had ordered for her family in Rhode Island had just arrived off the UPS truck.  ‘Can you help me wrap these,’ she said, throwing off her coat and looking for the wrapping paper and scissors?  ‘If you help, we can still get them to the post office before closing time,’ she exclaimed!  ‘It’s our last chance to get ‘em there on time.’  ‘Sure,’ I said.  But I was thinking how unfair it was that she hadn’t considered the important thing I might be doing – though in reality, it was only an email that, could easily wait.  Still, wrapping presents furiously in an effort to make the deadline, I had to use all my might to keep my cursing well hidden under my breath.  I knew, as I wrapped, that this should be more fun, if I could just get in the Christmas spirit.  But I had a hard time unwrapping myself from my own self-importance.

A pastor friend told me about this new Christmas gift, “Elf on a Shelf”.  Actually, it’s been around for a half dozen years or more.  So apparently, the Elf on a Shelf – which has sold more than 2M book and toy presents – sits quietly on your shelf all day… watching, observing, making mental notes on everything you do, and then at night, flies back to the North Pole to report to Santa on ‘who’s been naughty and who’s been nice!’  I’m sure it’s a perfectly cute children’s gift, but when I first heard about it, to me, it just sounded creepy!  Someone watches everything you do in your home and reports back to the higher-ups!?  Call me Edward Snowden, but isn’t this a bit intrusive?  What if he caught me swearing under my breath wrapping those presents with Kim?  The tattle-tale Elf seems to leave little room for redemption and making a new start.  There are other times that aren’t nearly so stressful, but Elf on the Shelf only visits during December. 

The present that is Jesus, the Christchild born and wrapped into our world this night, is that we learn God is not a distant far away God, like an aloof or judgmental parent.  But God enters the fray we’re in, living here in the material world.  We can almost smell the animals and hay Jesus was born into, see the blood and struggle of the birth, feel the shocking poverty of the rustic shepherds. 

Jesus, the bread of life, born in Bethlehem, the city of bread, is tangible to us, tasty and fulfilling at Communion’s thanksgiving meal. 

Jesus, God’s Son, grows in stature as a full human being, initiating and incarnating God’s holy life-giving mission.  And so, he celebrates with all, gathering rich and poor, meek and powerful, LGBT and straight, black, brown and white, around the banqueting table.  He comes to heal our inequities, and restore God’s justice and peace. 

Christmas is the celebration of this incarnational intertwining of earth and heaven, sacred and secular, Christmas cookies and Christmas Communion bread.  We love each of them.  With Jesus, redeemer of the world, the difference between them has become blurred, as one infuses the other.  As Pastor Michael Lindvall has said, “the problem, is not so much that [living in a material world] we like [material] stuff too much; rather it’s that we don’t like it enough!”  I know that sounds funny he goes on to say, but how often do we throw things away instead of repairing, restoring or repurposing them?  “The real soul danger [for us] is not in liking things too much, but in not cherishing and caring for what we have been given already.  God has gifted us with this world and called it good, very good.  And into that world, God sent Jesus “to claim it, bless it and transform it.”  (The Christian Century, 7/13/10) 

Christmas is definitely the most wonderful time of the year.  And gift-giving – well, it just refuses to die.  Sometimes we get carried away and overspend or forget what gift-giving is all about.  And we need to re-learn the surprise of the divine in the ordinary. 

Jesus is our “wrapped” present.  Wrapped tightly in bands of cloth, his swaddling clothes, is our loving liberation.  And so we wrap our presents – thoughtfully, or in a holiday rush.  But the present Jesus brings, is not based on if we’ve been “naughty or nice.”  Jesus is not an Elf on a Shelf.  God sends Jesus to us when we are still in sin, and when the world has already been lured into following the power-politics of false leaders.  And God points to a little new-born child wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger, with grubby shepherds the only witnesses, his first believers.  And God says: Despite our grubbiness, and our flaws and failures, I give you this Messiah, this Reconciler, the Savior and Prince of Peace.  Jesus, Mary’s gift by way of the Holy Spirit, is wrapped in the traditional human birth clothes of the time, that we may unwrap ourselves from our own self-importance, and re-wrap our lives in the incarnate gift born among us.

It is this divine act of love and forgiveness in human form, by which our lives are transformed, and we are filled with a power we have never known elsewhere.  This is the bread of life.  This is the Bread of heaven.  How can we keep from singing, and how can we keep from celebrating?!
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The Fourth Sunday in Advent (A)   Pastor John Roberts

12/25/2013

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Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

Because of a Dream

There were 28 generations between Joseph and his illustrious ancestor, King David. 
But when a family can trace its lineage back to someone like David, it is certainly a topic
brought up in conversations at family reunions. 
Since he was a little boy, Joseph had known that he was a descendant of David and Solomon
and all the early kings of his people. 
It was the kind of thing little boys dreamed about in their dreams. 
Joseph had probably been a dreamer all his life. 
It may have been why he was such a good carpenter; creative people tend to be dreamers. 
The whole village of Nazareth knew Joseph by his carpentry;
so famous a carpenter was he that his son would later be called, son of the carpenter.

Now he was in a particularly difficult situation. 
A celebrated and well-known craftsman of the community, Joseph had to decide what to do
about a very serious problem. 
He had been engaged to the young girl, Mary for a while.
As was the tradition in Jewish culture, the engagement was binding; but the couple would not live together; certainly not have sex with one another until they were married. 
But just today word had come from Mary’s house-hold that she was pregnant. 
Joseph had to decide what to do. 
The Jewish law gave him the right not only to divorce her but he had the right to publicly shame her and her
family by announcing the shame to the whole village. 
He decided that would be too much. 
He would break the engagement without exposing her and then get on with his life with someone else at a future date.

Mind made up; Joseph went to sleep.  And he dreamed. 
Joseph had had some pretty unusual dreams during his lifetime but this one was the
strangest and yet the clearest one he had ever had. 
An angel of God appeared to him in this dream and said,
“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the child conceived in her…..
is from the Holy Spirit. 
She will bear a son, and you are to name him Yeshua,
for he will save his people from their sins.” 

The prophet Joel told his people that, when the Spirit of the Lord came to them,
their young ones would have visions and their old ones would have dreams. 
Joseph had had lots of visions. 
He envisioned a happy, stable life in Nazareth where he would be known for his master craftsmanship. 
Perhaps the whole of Galilee would come to him for his carpentry. 
And perhaps he would have a son or two who would keep the family business going. 
He had visions.  And he had dreams also. 
But up until now, his dreams were always vague and drowsy. This dream was different. 
This dream was so clear to him that, when he woke up in the morning, it was the only thing he could think about. 
He knew, somehow without any doubt, that this was what he had to do. 
He had to go through with the marriage. 
He had to name her son Jesus. 
It was not just a dream but a command from God. 
The Spirit of the Lord had come to him; he just knew it!  
So he did exactly what he had been told to do in the dream. 

The next story in Matthew’s Gospel is about the visit of the Magi. 
It is only from Luke’s Gospel that we hear how it was that Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth
down to Bethlehem. 
Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus’ birth and the story-telling shepherds and the chorus of angels. 
It is interesting that what Matthew seems to focus on in his story of the birth of the Messiah is his
Name, or rather his Names.

Meshiach– Messiah – the anointed one, the promised one.
Ben-David- Son of David – someone to claim the Davidic throne.
Yeshua– Jesus – Savior
And finally, Emmanuel – God-with-us.

In fact, all the other readings for this Fourth Sunday in Advent pick up on those names.  
The prophet Isaiah tells Joseph’s ancestor, Ahaz that this king’s problems will be
solved when a young woman bears a son named Immanuel. 
Before that child can decide between good and evil, the two foreign kings
Ahaz is worried about will no longer cause him dread. 
In Paul’s introduction to the letter to the Roman church, he recalls Jesus as the descendant of David
and the Lord of life by the spirit of holiness through his Resurrection.

Jesus, Savior; anointed Son of David; is finally Emmanuel, God-with-us. 
Joseph had never before even allowed himself to envision such a son; the very being of God born in his sight. 
What would follow? 
What kind of responsibilities would he have towards this Son of God, this Immanuel. 
How could he raise a child who was also his God? 
I think that the reason Matthew gives us this account of Jesus’ birth is because he wants us to ask
those same questions of ourselves.

Sometimes we have visions of what life should be like for us. 
We make plans.  We do our best to carry out those plans so that our visions can come true. 
We acknowledge the obstacles of life and either conquer them or find a way to accept them. 
And late in life, we examine what we have done with our lives and smile or laugh at those things that we like to remember;
or we choose to forget those things that hurt or we allow them to hurt us over and over again. 
But what about our dreams?

It is in the realm of dreams that the Spirit of God influences our lives. 
For, you see, God comes to us as one unknown; a breath unseen, unheard.
God comes to us to dwell with us; to be a part of our very being. 
It is in the deepest part of our own existence that God influences our lives. 
God comes in the stillness of the night; in the movement of water’s waves and the fall of snowflakes. 
As we receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion, God is with us
in the cells of our flesh and the pulses of the blood which flow from our hearts. 
God is with us as we take ourselves to lonely places and stare up at twinkling stars. 
God comes to us in the beauty of visual arts and music and dance. 
And God is with us every time we fall in love or are loved by another. 
Every time we are inspired, we are en-Spirited. 
Every time we know something is true and sound and cannot change, God is with us.  
 
This is how Joseph was able to take his beloved Mary on that long journey to Bethlehem. 
This is how Joseph was able to receive the gazing shepherds and the worshipping magi. 
This is how Joseph was able to hurry his family to safety in Egypt out of King Herod’s rage. 
This is how Joseph could become a husband to a God-bearer and a father to the Son of God. 
All he had to do was believe in his dreams; have faith that God was with him; and love his family
with his whole heart.

This is how we can meet the hardest times of life. 
Like Joseph, we believe the unbelievable; have faith in our God-with-us; and love the family God places around us.

God comes to us as one unknown;
as though within a shriveled seed sown in darkness; a pulse of being stirs.   
God comes to us and dwells with us now and forever. 
Just listen.  Just look.  Just believe.   Just love.


Amen.


 
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The Second Sunday in Advent (A)

12/8/2013

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Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7,18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

Hope, Faith and Love - Pastor John Roberts

It really is a wilderness, even today – that wilderness of Judea. 
Picture something like hills bearing lots of rock and just a little vegetation;
here and there a small tree or bush, a weed or a flower. 
The rocky wilderness slops gently and gradually toward the East and the Jordan River –
not a grand and majestic river; just a consistent and winding river flowing from the mountains of the Golan Heights
to the Dead Sea. 
Gathered there in the Judean wilderness are Jews from one side of the river and non-Jews from the other side;
and among them, Pharisees and Sadducees from Jerusalem. 
They are gathered there to listen to the latest prophet, John, whose message always ends with baptism. 
Matthew identifies John as the one Isaiah said would prepare for the coming of the Messiah. 
But John’s own message was of repentance. 
That’s what these baptisms were all about.

Jews had to join with non-Jews in this baptism of repentance. 
Don’t depend on your ancestry, your status as children of Abraham, he told the pious. 
God is able to make children out of the stones of this wilderness.  
Jew and non-Jew alike had to make the effort to change their lives; turn away from sin and selfishness; reach out to
the poor and needy; live for the sake of the kingdom of heaven which is very near. 
So near that John can say with confidence that there is one coming soon who will baptize not as a ritual to show repentance;
but a baptism with the Holy Spirit. 
John’s baptism was to show that you had made an effort to change. 
The Messiah’s baptism would show how God would change you.  
When the Kingdom of Heaven comes, the direction of action changes the world!

3,000 years had gone by since God told Abraham that his descendants would change the world. 
“I will bless you and you will be a blessing,” God told Abraham. 
It was not always easy to believe that about the people who, over generations would be called Hebrews, Israelites or Jews. 
There were certainly good times: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s line expanded to be hundreds of thousands
by the time they were liberated from Egypt. 
David and Solomon built a great empire. 
But soon there was division, the annihilation of half that empire and the exile of the other half. 
And even the short period of self-rule under the Macabees (of Hannukah fame) was just a memory
to those who were listening to John in that Judean wilderness. 
The promise of a Messiah had always been just that; a promise, and nothing more.  
 
Yes, the rabbis still taught the stories of the Messiah but they were fanciful tales of shoots growing from stumps
and branches growing from roots. 
Fantasy tales of wolves living with lambs and leopards lying down with kids;
calves and lions being led around by a little child; kings riding into towns on donkeys; children playing over snakepits. 
These were only tales, stories, myths, fantasies which could never be fulfilled. 
 
But now John was telling the people to believe again.  Not just to hope, but to believe! 
The one coming after me; coming soon will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
In Isaiah’s words, “The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord…….He will not judge by what he sees or hears,
he will judge the poor and the meek with righteousness, equity and faithfulness. 
And he will separate the chaff of society who will be burned away by the breath of his lips. 
In other words, everything will change. Hope!, therefore, because your hope will soon be turned to belief.  
 
It is a hard thing to hope.  We all have life experiences that bear that out. 
It is hard to believe that new growth can start from the stump of a tree cut down to its roots. 
Pastor Barbara Lundblad of New York City writes:

“Manhattan is a mighty rock.  Such rock does not give in easily. 
(Recently) I watched as huge jackhammers crashed down on the rock making barely a dent,
until cracks finally appeared on the surface. 
This same rock runs through the park near our church – rocks that make a mockery of jackhammers. 
Yet, I have seen something else along the path: a tiny seedling pushing out into the sunlight. 
A tender shoot no bigger than my finger had broken through the rock without a jackhammer. 
There are, I know, scientific explanations why such a thing is possible,
  yet each time I saw it, that stubborn shoot appeared to me a miracle.”


It was a hard thing for those Jewish people gathered with John in the wilderness to hope for a Messiah
who would change life as the prophets had foretold. 
It was a hard thing for the Jewish people who had lived through Kristallnacht and Concentration Camps to believe
that life could change. 
It was a hard thing for Nelson Mandela to hope for a free, democratic, equal and non-racial South Africa for 27 years
while he was in prison. 
But when hope turns to faith, life does change.
Not only were the concentration camps of WWII liberated but, in the meantime, righteous Christians, like little shoots of growth, kept some Jews safe in their own homes; risking their own freedom. 
Nelson Mandela was not only freed from prison, the black people of South Africa sang their protest songs and
like little shoots of growth, those songs spread around the world. 
And the world responded to the cruelties of Aparthied by shaming the ruling government of South Africa.  
 
Miracles were born from those tragic worlds. 
Jews who had lived in concentration camps began a new Jewish state in modern Israel.  And a new South Africa was born. 
What amazes me most about that new country was that the black majority of South Africa chose
not to take revenge upon those who had kept them under foot but chose to forgive and reconcile instead. 
The Truth and Reconciliation process became a light to lighten the whole world. 
Did you know that South Africa was the first nation in the world whose constitution gives equal rights to LGBTQ people?  
 
There is still reason not to hope. 
Nations still murder their own as in Syria. 
Nations still occupy majority populations as in Palestine. 
And the rich few in our own country still take away hope from the poor majority. 
But Advent teaches us that we must HOPE! And that hope must lead us to believe that
the leading of a little child can make what seems like fantasy into a new world.

How can this be?  How can this happen. 
St. Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 13, “Now abide these three: faith, hope and love. 
And the greatest of these is love.”  What is love but God alone. 
It is God who makes the difference in all of our lives. 
We can have hope; we can believe because the God of love changes life. 
The God of love makes little shoots of life grow out of stumps we long considered dead.
little shoots that grow enough to roll away stones from rockhewn graves. 
Little shoots of new life that comfort us when we sorrow; turn us around when we are tempted to only look at the past;
nudge us forward when it seems just too hard.

Once more the words of Barbara Lundblad:

“O come, green shoot of Jesse, free
your people from despair and apathy;
forge justice for the poor and meek,
grant safety for the young ones and the weak. 
Rejoice, rejoice!  Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.


Amen. 
    


 
      
  


 
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December 1, 2013 + Our Town, Our Hope

12/1/2013

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Readings for First Sunday in Advent (C)
December 1, 2013
  • Isaiah 2:1-5 
  • Psalm 122 
  • Romans 13:11-14 
  • Matthew 24:36-44

Our Town, Our Hope - Sermon by Pastor Fred Kinsey
In Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, a woman named Emily who dies in Act II, asks the stage manager narrating the play in Act III, if she can return for a brief visit with her family.  Reluctantly, he grants her the wish, advising her to choose the least important day in her life—which “will be important enough,” he says.  So she chooses to return on her 12th birthday.  But her hopes are dashed when she finds her father obsessed with his business problems, and her mother preoccupied with kitchen duties.  Though no one can see or hear Emily, she cries out, “Oh Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.  Mama, 14 years have gone by. I’m dead!”  Unable to rouse her parents, Emily breaks down sobbing.  “We don’t have time to look at one another. . . . Goodbye, world!  . . . Goodbye, Mama and Papa. . . . Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you!  Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?”

If only we could be that aware.  That, in the moment.  If only we could see today from the perspective of tomorrow, 14 years, or 140 years, down the line!  Maybe we’d give thanks more often.  Maybe we’d be better able to appreciate just how wonderful the earth, God gave us, is! 

Jesus invites us to look into the future, God’s future, which already impacts us today, right now, by asking us to, keep awake, be ready.  Even in the midst of our busy lives, celebrating special family occasions like birthdays or Thanksgiving, or just the usual every day routine, at work, surfing the net, or downloading a Podcast on our IPhone – whether 12 years old, of 92 years old.  Be ready! 

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for much.  Family and friends, a church full of faithful people, a diverse and talented community to live and work in.  Many of you expressed similar thanksgivings in our Thanksgiving book in the prayer area. 

Today we begin the New Year in the church with the season of Advent.  Four weeks of waiting, hope, peace and joy.  Four weeks of preparing for the Messiah, God’s anointed one, to come.  Four weeks to remember to appreciate and give thanks for Our Town, our lives.  In order to get us in that frame of mind, the first Sunday in Advent is always about the arrival of the Eschaton, the end times.  We know it from the biblical stories of the Prophets, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den.  From the hope of the Son of man’s coming in Jesus, and the 2nd Coming of the Messiah, to renew the face of the earth.  And we seem to be drowning in its images again in these days.  Apocalyptic movies and TV are filled with crumbling and burning cities, Zombies, wars, and rumors of war, all around, mirroring the world we live in.  In response, our country seems to think, being ready means, buying more guns, and investing in our military. 

As a country, it’s alarming that our national treasure, to the tune of a trillion dollars or more a year, has been squandered on the maintenance of a war state, and the eternal upgrading of “homeland security.”  Our country has launched the first set of cyber wars in history, against Iran’s nuclear program, …and has a 78% market share of the world arms trade; our military expenditures are greater than the next 13 nations combined; and we continue to build military bases across the globe. [November 25, 2013 by TomDispatch.com Scared to Death in the USA: My Safety ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Security, by Tom Engelhardt]

In the 1st chapter of Isaiah, the chapter before our First Reading, the prophet graphically lays out what he has seen: violence and bribery, unfaithfulness and desolation, a trampling on the poor. There are brief interruptions as God calls for repentance and offers glimpses of hope, but they are drowned out by these pictures of violence and rebellion.

Then Chapter 2 opens, our reading, as though Isaiah is starting all over again.  Isaiah, overcome by the Spirit, has a vision, and needs to share!  Even now in the midst of deception and treachery, Isaiah sees “the days to come.”  People of every nation will stream to Mt. Zion – the mythic city of Jerusalem – including those who were enemies of Israel.  God shall arbitrate for many peoples. The people will be transformed by this teaching.  And, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” [parts from, Barbara Lundblad, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1896]

In 1997, a gigantic crane in Washington D.C. lowered a four-ton sculpture to its permanent cement base in Judiciary Square.  Few things are more complicated than trying to erect a new monument in the heart of the nation’s Capital, and one commission after another must approve each project.  What made this particular installation remarkable was the biblical symbolism of the sculpture’s design.  Titled “Guns into Plowshares,” artist Esther Augsburger and her son, worked for two and a half years as they molded 3,000 handguns that had been surrendered by local residents, to form a 16-foot-high steel plow blade, an interpretation of, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, they shall not learn war anymore.” (parts from, Peter W. Marty, The Christian Century)

There’s a shadow of pessimism, that can’t help asking if this really makes a difference?  Will the criminals, the warring nations, be transformed by a statue, even one built on such a famous prophetic vision, from Isaiah? 

Here in Chicago, reporter Rob Wilderboer found a compelling story about the gun buy-back program in Chicago.  The policy of the Chicago Police Department is to destroy the guns, so they can’t be resold or stolen.  But the question for Wilderboer was, why not sell them to licensed firearms dealers, for the Department to make a profit?  Wilderboer, a reporter that I love to listen to on Chicago Public Radio, found out the Department is forfeiting about $2 million every year.  But, is it just about money, vs. what he called, “ideological and emotional,” reasons?

As City of Chicago residents know, it's not at all clear that a new chunk of money for the City to play with, would lead to better well-being for Chicago residents!  And, Chicago's victims of gun violence haven't been terrorized with the abstraction of guns.  They've been terrorized with specific guns.  So, for many, there is a powerful emotional reason for those guns to be destroyed.  Better yet, following Isaiah’s vision, and also the current practice in the Cleveland Police Department, why not melt them down into steel, and transform these instruments of death into useful, life-giving tools, or, artwork?  “Of course, if we took every confiscated gun in Chicago and beat it into a plowshare for use on one of our urban farms,” says Steve Thorngate, “we'd probably create a glut in the rather niche-y plowshare market.  What a ridiculous, emotionally motivated, but powerful witness that would be.” [The Christian Century, Does it make sense to destroy guns? Oct 23, 2013 by Steve Thorngate]

So where does our hope lie then?  Is God’s future real, despite present realities?  Can we give thanks with honest and true hearts, now, at this time?  I realize, trusting the preacher under your employ, is a bit suspect when it comes to this.  So let me convince you in the words of another, who, as you will see, doesn’t even have good reason to give thanks, or to have hope.  But here’s what he wrote on Thanksgiving: “I am blessed everyday here. There are many reasons to give thanks.  I am blessed with the best friends and family and lawyers, people who care about me.  I am blessed by our Creator with good health, food, and clothing, a place to sleep.  I am blessed, even with the strange creations of our Creator – with all creatures like, stray dogs, cats, wild birds and bees...and here...very big mosquitoes....not sure about the blessing in them however!

The author, Don Siegelman, has completed the 1st year in his 6.5 year sentence, in federal prison, in a highly tainted case.  Some call him a “political prisoner,” and wrongly imprisoned.  The former Governor of Alabama – he went from advocate of the underdog, poor, and disadvantaged, to prison – a political grudge that may only be remedied by Presidential Pardon.  And yet, his letter concludes: “I am blessed and thankful for you, the work that you've done, the contributions you have made, the letters you've written, and for the dream you've kept alive of going back to my family, and back to work, to change things for the better for others.  The blessing is having a hope and dream, Siegelman says. Thank you for giving me that hope.”  [letter at, http://mad.ly/100644?pact=18595236214&fe=1 free-don.org]

Our hope is in the surprising, and wonderful, coming of the Messiah, the Son of man, into our world, more fully, and more powerfully, trusting in that day, when we shall not learn war any more.  Let us be ready!  In Christ, we have been freed, already, today!  Let us, stay awake, “every, every minute,” for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.   
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