Dear friends,

The United Methodist Church and the New York Conference in particular have had a deep connection to the people of Haiti over many years. There are Haitian congregations in our annual conference, and numerous Volunteers in Mission teams have spent time in Haiti, befriending and working side-by-side with Hatians on a variety of projects serving this terribly impoverished and violence stricken nation.

The catastrophe that has struck the nation of Haiti today adds to the miseries of people who have already known much misery. I received a notice from United Methodist Communications, and I will keep you informed of the plans being made by our denomination and our annual conference to respond to this disaster.

Meanwhile, contributions may be made directly to the United Methodist Committee on Relief at their online site, and a special collection will be taken at our worship service this coming Sunday, January 17. Donations to the United Methodist Committee on Relief go 100% to direct relief.

Please keep our sisters and brothers in Haiti in your prayers, and please do all you can to suport the relief efforts.

Rev. Scott Summerville

Donate through the United Methodist Committee on Relief to help survivors of the Haiti Earthquake by clicking on the banner above. On the first page make sure to use the drop down to specify this gift be used specifically to the Haiti relief fund or for UMCOR’s general fund. You can choose to give the church credit for your contribution by clicking the check-box at the bottom of the contact information page. On the next page you can choose “New York – Metropolitan North” and Asbury Crestwood should show up when the page refreshes.

Matthew 2:1-12

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the magi secretly and ascertained from them what time the star appeared; and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” When they had heard the king they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

When Christians think about what it means to live a faithful life, a good life, naturally we think of the great commandment: “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And we think of how Jesus put together that great commandment with a second commandment of the Jewish law (torah): “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus took that core teaching of torah and added a radical dimension when he taught us that even our enemy is our neighbor – even our enemy is one we should love. How many of us have ever really absorbed that message?

To live in love – love for self, love for God, love for neighbor, love for enemy – this is the core of the Gospel; this is what being a disciple of Jesus Christ is fundamentally about. The first and most important dimension of Christian life is the dimension of love. But on this Epiphany Sunday, in these first days of a new year and a new decade, I declare to you that right up there among the most important qualities of a faithful life is this:

to live with all our senses tuned to the glory and wonder of creation,
to live with deep curiosity and fascination,
to be an explorer and a discoverer.

Most of you know that I have a personal tradition associated with Epiphany Sunday, the Sunday we tell the story of the Magi who followed the star to Bethlehem. In the days before Epiphany is celebrated I read all the stories I can get my hands on concerning the most significant discoveries of the previous year. I read all the top 10 lists: Scientific American, Discover Magazine, Biblical Archaeological Review, Time Magazine, and many more. I pick six or eight stories that particularly appeal to my imaginatio. In my Epiphany message I highlight those discoveries and the people who made them. I had intended to continue that tradition this year; in fact I read all the usual lists. I love to do it. The more you read of these discoveries in astronomy, physics, archaeology, genetics, biomechanics, human evolution, computer science – you can’t help feeling a sense of excitement and wonder at this amazing universe and at being part of this species, homo sapien, who have been given the gift of intellect and the gift of curiosity to be explorers, discovers in this fascinating universe.

But this year, rather than tell you of the discoveries that seemed particularly fascinating to me, I ask you to focus on your own discoveries. Certainly go read about the discoveries of others and be inspired by them – be inspired to be, yourself, an explorer. Have you ever discovered something? My brothers and I did.

The year was 1960. Our family was at Lake Chautauqua, where my mother’s annual family reunion was held. My uncle had a cottage on the lake. The kids would swim in the lake while the adults ate and talked. The lake bottom was muddy and full of weeds and mussels. We would dive down and grab the mussels out of the mud and bring them up and toss them into the canoe. We were pretending to be treasure hunters gathering treasure from a sunken ship. At one point my younger brother tossed what he thought was a mussel into the canoe, but it hit the canoe with a loud bang; it did not sound like the others had sounded. My older brother picked it up and rinsed off the mud, and realized he was holding in his hands a Native American tomahawk.

It was almost perfect. So smooth and beautifully shaped, rounded on all sides except where it came to a sharp edge. Our imaginations went wild. We imagined all the battles this tomahawk had been through. Later we brought this to a collector who was an expert in Native American artifacts. To our disappointment, he told us that this was not an implement of war; it was a hand tool for chopping. That’s why it is so beautifully smooth and symmetrical, so that it could be held comfortably in the hand for long periods of time for domestic work. This artifact has stayed in our family. Every time I take it up in my hand I remember the thrill we had as boys when we first discovered it in the mud at Lake Chautauqua.

One of the great gifts of parenthood is that as a mother or father you are participating in a daily drama of discovery. The parent discovers the world again through the eyes of the child, and as we interact with our child we constantly learn new things about ourselves. The most common illusion of adults is the illusion that we have seen it all. We may think we know all we will ever know or need to know. We may stop looking deeply into things. When our daughter was about three years old she was playing in the sandbox with her mother looking on, but her mother was distracted and had her mind on other things. Our daughter was doing what kids do, discovering and creating and constantly sharing her discoveries, “Mommy, look at this! Mommy, look at this! See how I made this!” Mommy was answering perfunctorily, “Yes, it’s beautiful… Yes, that’s wonderful.” Then our daughter said with all the sincerity and innocence of a child, “Mommy, how is it that grown-ups can see things without looking at them?”

How can one be a Christian and believe oneself to be a child of God living in a universe that is God’s creation, full of endless mystery and wonder – how can one be a child of God in such a universe and not be curious and amazed and want to take each day as an opportunity to see more, to experience more, to explore like the wandering magi explored when they followed the star?
Again, I declare to you that among the most important qualities of a faithful life is this:

to live with all our senses tuned to the glory and wonder of creation,
to live with deep curiosity and fascination,
to break through the illusion that we have seen it all –
no matter how much any of us has seen, we have barely scratched the surface of this mysterious creation. If the truth be told, none of us even really knows much about ourselves — there is a universe out there and there is a universe within each of us – and they are equally mysterious.

The first commandment of God is to love.
But maybe the most basic command of all is to be alive, consciously and enthusiastically alive.

A blessed new year to all of you, my fellow journeyers, my fellow explorers.

Shalom.

What is on your mind this morning? Dinner plans, chores, making your travel plans? What concerns you at this moment?

The weather?
Keeping peace in the family?
Getting over a cold?

What is it that fills your mind these days? What are worrying about, brooding over? What are your neurons working on these days?

One thing I’ve been thinking about quite a bit these days is Kohl’s Department Store. You see, they keep sending me notices promising me 15%, 20%, even 30% off my purchases. The problem is that there’s nothing that I really need. But I feel that I should be taking advantage of this opportunity.

Once upon a time, you went to the store because you needed something, and the store was a place you went to buy the things that you knew that you needed. That is no longer the case. A store is where you are enticed to go to figure out what you want. It’s not a matter of wanting something; instead you are simply wanting, constantly asking whether there is something you must need or would really like to have, even though you don’t know what it is. The store gets into our heads – teases our brain cells into thinking – “MUST GO TO KOHL’S! – must go to Kohls!” This is surely the triumph of marketing!

It would not matter much what sort of nonsense is floating around in our heads, except that we only have so many things we can think about, and we only have so much time, so it does matter that the things to which we devote our thoughts, our mental energy, be things that in fact are important and do matter.

When our children were little, they used to occasionally come out with the most astounding statements. Sometimes we wrote them down so we would not forget them. Eventually we made a book and had them draw pictures to go with the things they had said. We gave the book as a gift to grandma and grandpa.

There was the time our daughter was just learning to ride a two wheel bike. She was practicing on an asphalt parking lot, and on her first try she zoomed off and crashed. My heart stopped and I ran over to see if she was injured. Before I could get to her, she jumped up off the ground and said, “Tell me what a good job I did and I’ll do it better next time!” What a spirit! Sometimes we recall that scene in our family when someone needs encouragement: Just tell me what a good job I did and I’ll do better next time!

Then there was the time our son, at the age of five or so, declared, “When you close your eyes, your mind can hold things larger than itself.” In this Christmas week I invite you to hold something very large in your mind.

At our church’s family retreat last month we were invited to picture our galaxy – the Milky Way – a swirling cloud of billions of stars, whirling through space – in the center there are dense clusters of stars – and somewhere way out from the center, on one of those spiraling arms, there is a dot of light that is our sun – and around that sun the planets – and among the planets is this earth. We were invited to hold the earth in our minds – to behold the earth.

When Christ was born the angels announced peace on earth, and when the story of Jesus was told from the earliest times, the messengers spread the world that God, who made the earth, loves the earth, all the earth – the earth is wrapped in the love of God just as it is wrapped in a blanket of life-giving air and water.

It is possible for the human mind to hold large things. It is possible for the human heart to hold even larger things.

I saw some of the photographs from the Copenhagen climate conference this week. The agreements reached have disappointed many in the environmental movement; they fall short of what is needed. But I was moved by the image of the leaders of the world’s powers facing each other around a table, talking about earth. They were talking about our planet. They were bargaining and horse trading over who would do what. Even though they could not rise to heroic action, we have reached an extraordinary moment when the leaders of the great powers understand that they have a collective responsibility for something larger than their nation states. They have a collective responsibility for humanity’s home, this precious planet.

Go forth from here today – in this Christmas week, and treasure your days upon this planet. They are a gift. Focus your thoughts, your heart, and your actions on the larger things – things that matter.

Live in this world as a follower of Jesus. Carry this earth in your heart and mind, exercise your neurons on larger things; use your life for larger things, and use your heart to carry the love of God wherever you go on this earth.

Shalom
Salaam
Peace
Blessed Christmas

I Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

This is an interesting day, this first Sunday in the season of Advent. It still feels like Thanksgiving, but the calendar tells us we are in a new season. Before we head back to work and school and the quickening pace of December, we pause here in the quietness of this place. This seems a good day to step back and take stock of things. Last Sunday, Mary Thombs led us in a time of remembering and giving thanks. Those of us who were here each got a free pen – on the condition that we used for the first time to write on a colored leaf some expression of thanks, some expression of gratefulness.
The leaves were gathered and placed on branches to make a Thanksgiving tree. It comes as no surprise that again and again people give thanks for family and friends, followed by health. Human beings and especially human relationships are very complicated, yet in some ways we are simple creatures who want simple things.

I was visiting yesterday in the intensive care unit a large hospital. There must have been fifty different machines and monitors in the room. The patient was wired up like an astronaut heading off into space. There by his side was his daughter, gently stroking his head. No matter how many breakthroughs there are in medical science, nothing will ever take the place of the loving presence and the gentle hand and compassionate caress of one who loves us. We are made to love. We have a deeply built in need for love and relationships.

And we are all part of some family – even if we have moved a thousand miles away – our family lives inside us. That is how we are. We sometimes call the church a family, and even refer to one another as sisters and as brothers. Actually one of the nice things about church is that we are not a family. We are not all related to one another, and we do not have all the complications that come with those we are biologically related to. We are a family of faith, not a family by blood. Our lives are very different than the lives of the first small groups of Christians who gathered in the time of the apostles. Even so, we have a lot in common with them. The earliest Christians were drawn together to form churches because they found in Jesus and in the community of Jesus a place of accepting love.

We heard a reading today from the oldest piece of writing in the New Testament, Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica. This is the earliest letter of Paul that has survived, and it was written decades before any of our Gospels were written. It takes us right back into the earliest days of some of the first churches. Two things are quite striking about this letter: one is that Paul thinks the world is just about to end. He is surprised that it has not ended already, and he is quite sure that it’s going to end in the very near future, certainly in his generation.

Paul was wrong about that, but fortunately that is not the primary importance of this letter. You might say that this is the sweetest of Paul’s letters. It is written with great tenderness. It is a letter that overflows with love.

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

The letter tells us that the people of the church in Thessalonica were suffering, and that Paul himself was suffering. This was a letter from one who had known much pain to others who were in pain.
The church was suffering persecution. People were grieving, and fearful. It was a troubled time.
The letter was written at a particular moment to a particular group of people, but there is something timeless in the spirit of this letter. It has spoken to many generations of Christians, and still speaks to us now.

There is a special spot in the sanctuary where the bride and groom stand during the wedding ceremony. Thousands of couples have stood on this spot and declared their undying love for one another. Many of them — I hope most of them — have been bonded in love until parted by death, but many of them went their separate ways long before death. There are thousands of talk shows and magazines and movies and sermons and books devoted to love, but human beings are as tangled up in their passions as they ever were; we struggle to find enduring love; and relationships seem as fragile and difficult as ever.

It’s all over the news this weekend. A certain celebrity ran his car into a fire hydrant at 2 AM as he was driving away from his wife…. Thus a sordid story unfolds. Love drives people to extremes. Or as the country song says,
Love is a burning thing
and it makes a fiery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire…
(Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash)

Or as it says in the Bible:
“Love is strong as death,
jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.” (Song of Solomon 8:6)

You didn’t know there was stuff like that Bible, did you? And there’s more where that came from. There are things in the Bible that I am not be able to read aloud to you from the pulpit. You have to come to Bible study to hear the whole uncut version.

One of the standard questions I ask to engaged couples during premarital counseling is this: “Something like half of all marriages end in divorce; why do you think yours will not?” Of course, everyone has a good answer. The fabric of love, the way love flows from us and toward us, this is a key to human health and happiness. Love is a powerful force. It is not all sweet and sentimental. If you have a sentimental idea about love, that may be fine when the baby is sleeping through the night and everybody is happy and rested, but what about when the baby is not sleeping through the night and everybody is tired, and somebody at a very inconvenient time comes down with the flu? It’s when life is untidy, when life is messy, that love becomes deeper, more wonderful and more powerful – or love dies.

I wish there was a way that we could take engaged couples and fast-forward them into real life, life after the honeymoon, and see what happens to those warm fuzzy feelings they have for each other when life is unfair and difficult. Children are the joy of life in the flesh – but the child who held your hand so sweetly as a little kid might someday be the adult child who has been reckless and is in trouble and you are trying to decide whether it is an act of love to bail them out or whether it is a higher act of love not to rescue them.

Love is not always sweet and comforting. There are so many myths about love. In marriage, there is the myth that we grow closer to one another and sustain intense love by having long pleasant vacations together. I’ve got nothing against vacations, but it is closer to the truth to say that love grows and deepens and ripens as individuals learn to face challenges together, as they cope together with the unpredictability of life.

In family life there is the myth of the perfect family. Some people live with the myth that they have the perfect family. More often we live with the myth that other people have the perfect family. The myths we have about the ideal family make it more difficult to be honest and direct with our family members. I was not kidding when I said it’s a good thing that we are not a family – can you imagine how exhausted we would be if all of us were related to one another? It is not easy to be a family. If we could just accept that fact as a normal fact of life, maybe we could lower the pressure to be perfect and look for ways to strengthen our families without expecting them ever to be perfect. It is phoniness and pretense, pretending that all is well when it is not, that undermines relationships, marriages, and families over time. We have a responsibility to those we love to be truthful with them, and to ask that they be truthful with us. Simple honesty, being willing to talk when things are not easy to talk about: that is what we need.

It is our willingness to be honest with each other that protects our love from dying. Being honest with ourselves and with those we love is the best way to stay in love for the long haul. The letter that Paul wrote to Thessalonica is heartwarming to read even so many centuries later. You can feel the love Paul had for these people. You can sense the power of that love, the way the love of Christ in that community was sustaining people in their hardship and binding them together as a community in the face of violent persecution. That love we receive from sisters and brothers in Christ – the love we give sisters and brothers in Christ – this is a great gift. To be welcomed and accepted as you are into the community of Jesus Christ is sweet; it feeds the soul.

It is painful to see people use the Bible to deny people their rights and even to encourage hostility against others. Today in all the Catholic parishes of New Jersey a letter from the bishops of the state is being read the congregations. The letter urges people to ask their legislators to deny marriage equality to gay people. The Catholic bishops believe they are acting on the basis of natural law and biblical truth. I could not disagree more. The early church grew because it offered people a place of acceptance and love, and this message appealed especially to those who were least accepted by their society. I believe that the words of our congregation’s Welcoming Statement convey the deepest spirit of Christ and the scriptures:

Asbury United Methodist Church in Yonkers, New York, established in 1771, has long been a welcoming community. We strive to follow the example of Christ, grow in love and welcome into full fellowship persons of every race, gender, culture, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity, economic circumstance, age, physical and mental ability, family and marital status. We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth.

Each of us is hungry for love. We are made that way. And the heart of the gospel is this: that human beings find in Christ and in the people of Christ welcoming and accepting love:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? … And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

Grace and peace to you

And as Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?” And Jesus began to say to them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, `I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.

Mark 13:1-8
_______________________________

The world is coming to an end. That is a fact.

On our retreat last week we contemplated creation. We were asked to search for tiny objects that manifest the wonder of the earth. Someone brought back a very small clover, and with it an even smaller clover, and one smaller yet, then pointed out in a clump of dirt a tiny green speck that was the sprout of a clover coming into being.

We contemplated the vastness of creation: the sun and moon and stars. We watched a scientific animation showing the surface of the sun: massive, one million times the size of Earth, a furnace of nuclear fusion blasting energy throughout our solar system. We were reminded that all things that burn one day burn out. We were reminded that the sun is five billion years old and that it has another four or five billion to go. From the astronomer’s viewpoint that will be the coup de grace for planet Earth. No sun = no earth, unless we are struck by some comet or large asteroid before the sun burns itself out.

It is an awesome thing to contemplate the Earth and the Sun to know that nothing, not even Earth and Sun, last forever. Not even mighty galaxies with their billions of stars last forever. An awesome thing to contemplate.

In a mysterious passage in the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark Jesus seems to be talking with his disciples about the end of the world – I say “seems to be,” because this passage is not necessarily what it appears to be. I will come back to that thought in a bit later.

13:1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”

13:2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

13:3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately,

13:4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”

It would appear that Jesus was for-telling the destruction of Jerusalem , which for Jews would signal the end of time in history as we know it. At least some of the early disciples of Jesus believed that the world was going to end in their lifetime. Scholars are sharply divided over whether Jesus himself taught that the world was about to end. What is clear is that the world did not end at that time, and it is still here today.

For hundreds of years people have been saying that the world is coming to an end. Throughout my years in ministry, I have been told by any number of people that the world is coming to an end. This is usually declared with a resigned shake of the head, “Reverend, it’s pretty clear isn’t it, we are coming to the end of days? The way the world is; it’s got to be the end.”

It has come to my attention that there is a growing belief that the Earth as we know it will come to an end – not 5 billion years from now – rather, it will end 1,132 days from this day, precisely on December 21, 2012. This very precise prediction is based on the Bible, Nostradamus, and ancient Mayan calendars from South America. I heard a popular radio teacher just recently declare that the end of the world on December 21, 2012 is no longer just a possibility; it is an established certainty. There are hundreds of web sites dedicated to announcing the coming end of the world on 12/21/2012 . These offer everything from spiritual advice to assistance in stocking up on specially prepared foods that are guaranteed to have a shelf life of at least thirty years.

Because this is the USA, enterprising individuals realize that the end of the world may sound bad to most people, but it is ripe with commercial opportunities. They have even developed a slick marketing term for this emerging opportunity: “ 2012 mitigations.”

There are engineering and construction companies that will build a fortified home for you with all the necessary underground bunkers, air filtration systems, and other features to help you survive the dreadful events of that day in 2012. One such company, Hardened Structures Inc., describes itself as:

“A Professional Construction Program Management Firm specializing in… fortified homes, bomb shelters, bunkers, storm shelters and self-sustaining hardened facilities… We provide Client/Project specific designs addressing conventional weapons…. chemical, biological, radiological and explosive weapons, 2012 mitigations, Climate Change and any type of Apocalypse or World Ending Scenario.”

Nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, mass starvation, plagues; not to worry! For a price we will “mitigate” for you!

There are also individuals who have been appointed as God’s special ambassador to the world to interpret the unfolding of these events, or so their web sites tell us. Take Ronald Weinland, for instance. He has announced in all humility that he is nothing less than the one “sent by God as God’s final witness and God’s end-time prophet.” Mr. Wineland informs us that in 2012 we will see the whole world engulfed in war which “ will be the result of clashing religions and the governments they sway. Billions will die! The destruction of this time will far exceed the very worst times of all human history.”

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence that God is going to bring the world to an end exactly one month before the next presidential inauguration. You get the feeling that there are people out there who just can’t believe that God would allow the first Black president of the United States to complete his term of office.

My father taught his children never to ridicule the religious beliefs of any other person no matter how peculiar we find them to be. That was and is wise advice. But people who claim on the basis of Nostradamus or ancient Mayan carvings or the Bible to know how and precisely when the world will meet its end are charlatans pandering to fear and superstition in the name of religion and sometimes in the name of making a buck.

In the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark Jesus talks about the signs of the end of history as we know it. This is complicated and challenging section of the gospel. No one can claim to be absolutely certain as to how to interpret it, but there is an interesting theory that is held by most biblical scholars and historians. It goes something like this:

The Gospel of Mark was written some time after the year 70, following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the destruction and burning of the city of Jerusalem and the massacre of much of its population by the Roman army. The writer of the Gospel of Mark inserted into his gospel a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples as a way of making a commentary upon the horrifying events which had unfolded in his time. He had to be careful about how he phrased it so as not to invite violent persecution by the Roman state.

Think how horrified we were at the destruction of the World Trade Center. Imagine that the cities of New York and Washington DC had been destroyed entirely. Imagining that may give you some notion of the overwhelming catastrophe that fell upon the Jewish nation at the time Mark’s Gospel was being written. When Jerusalem was destroyed, the political and religious and symbolic heart of Judaism was destroyed. We should remember too the spiritual and historical center of the early Christian church was Jerusalem. The Jerusalem church was also destroyed. This truly was a moment of supreme terror.

There is not time here to go into detail – you will be glad to know! – but the point is that chapter 13 of the Gospel of Mark is not so much a prediction of things to come as it is a commentary upon a disaster that has already happened. It is an attempt to come to terms with a great terror.

Whenever human beings are deeply shaken, through events in our individual lives or through shattering events that affect millions of people, we have the sense that reality as we know it is coming apart at the seams. It is understandable that people may see in their own suffering or in the events of their own moment in history a sign that all of history and all of the Earth as we know it is coming to an end. But the Earth so far has survived all of these predictions, and humanity has survived its endless cascade of tragedies.

And as a theological matter we must ask ourselves, “Why would the God who created the world and called it good, the God who gave human beings the gifts of intellect and freedom, the God who calls us in Christ to nonviolence and reconciliation – why would such a God arbitrarily and violently destroy the Earth, destroy the beauty of earth, destroy humanity, or cause to suffer further this suffering world?”

The Scripture today speaks about reading the signs of the times. There are important signs that must be read by humanity in this moment in history. There are real dangers to humanity in this moment in history. We need to be asking ourselves, “What is God’s claim upon our lives in this time of momentous threat and challenge to humanity? Do we love God and God’s earth and God’s creatures and God’s people in such a way that our hearts are moved to act on behalf of these things we love, to honor and protect these things we love, and to accept change even if it is painful in order to protect that which we love?”

This is not a time to build bomb shelters and or to stock up on enough provisions to ride out the Apocalypse. This is a time to take stock of our own lives. How are we using our lives, how are we using our individual material and spiritual resources, and how are we using the Earth’s resources. It is a time for people of faith to make a fundamental decision and commitment. Are we going to live in this world and conduct our lives as though this is a throwaway world, a world for the human species to use and discard, a world where our comforts in the moment take precedence over the well-being of the Earth for generations to come?

Or shall we do all we can to honor the God of life, the Creator, and preserve and pass on this glorious wondrous Earth that it might sustain and inspire our descendants a million years from this day?

Grace and peace to you
in the name of the one God
who is our Creator
our Redeemer
and whose Spirit moves among us in this very moment.

Those of us who are studying the book of Genesis are having a grand old time. For me pondering the Bible is one of the great pleasures of life, and there is no more fascinating book in the Bible than the book of Genesis. It begins with the grandeur of creation, proceeds as something like a soap opera complete with violent family feuding, and ends with an extraordinary scene of reconciliation.

In the second chapter of Genesis, after God created all the creatures of the earth, God does a most interesting thing. Instead of giving all these creatures names, God brings them one by one to the human being, and waits to see what the human being calls them.

[19] So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the human to see what he would call them; and whatever the human being called every living creature, that was its name. [20] The human gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field.

This must have taken a very long time. By the way, that is the very first thing that human beings do in the Bible – the human names the creatures of the earth. There is something about names. We humans need to have names for things. And we need to have names for one another. We must name things in order to make sense of the world.

When we baptize a child, we ask: “What name is given to this child?” We baptize the child by name – by her or his name – and in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our name becomes a part of our being.

On this day that we call All Saints Sunday, we read a list of names. Each name is so much more than a name. Each name is a living link through memory and spirit and love to those we see no more. With the name comes a flood of memories. With each name comes gratefulness for the inexpressible gift of life, the inexpressible gift of each of their lives.

Death and separation and grief are so universal, yet every loss is unique and personal and each human grief is unique and personal. For me and for Mary Ellen the list of the Saints now includes both of our fathers and Mary Ellen’s mother. For us as a congregation, the names added to this list in the past year include old and dear friends, people who were living treasures among us – Carl and Muriel, Rowena, and Josephine ….. These losses we take into our souls with a sigh and a tear, and we accept the dying of these old friends as part of the rhythm of life and nature and human mortality. For us as a congregation, other names added to our list of the saints since the reading of it a year ago are far more difficult to accept. The death this past summer of two beautiful young men, two brothers, Chris and Chad, still breaks our hearts.

The reading of these names of the saints – our parents, our children, our wives and husbands, our sisters and brothers in Christ – touches upon the whole spectrum of our emotions. We stand in awe of so much life, so much loss, and so much love.

Usually these days when we hear people referred to as saints, it is because they have lived lives of extraordinary compassion and sacrifice, but that is not the way the word is used in the Bible. You don’t need a halo to be a saint. The biblical word for saints is hagios. In the early church the hagios were the ordinary people who were drawn to the message of Jesus. At first they came together in one another’s homes to share their food and share the communion wine and to share what they called their new life in Christ. Sometimes they argued, often they made mistakes; they held different opinions; none of them was perfect, but they were saints anyway.

When we name the saints today, we are not holding anybody up on a pedestal – there are no perfect people on our list – each one lived and struggled and achieved and failed. What they all have in common is that they were and are loved. They were and they are held in the bond of human love and in the love of God. That invisible mixture of human and divine love is what we call the communion of the saints.

That means that we, too, are saints. You do not need to be perfect to be a saint. And you do not need to die to be a saint – not in the Biblical sense of the word. We are all saints – mortal, fallible, flesh and blood, confused and struggling creatures – yet we are saints by the grace of God.

In the United Methodist Book of Discipline there is a section on what it means to belong to the body of Christ and to be joined in the communion of saints:

Each member is called upon to be a witness for Christ in the world, a light and leaven in society, and a reconciler in a culture of conflict. Each member is to identify with the agony and suffering of the world and to radiate and exemplify the Christ of hope. (par. 219, 2000 Discipline)

We are ordinary human creatures, finite and mortal, but we have a very high calling here. If we were immortal beings, we would have forever to mend our hurting relationships. We would have forever to offer love and to receive love. Would have forever to forgive and to seek forgiveness.

If we were immortal beings, we could identify with those who suffer discrimination and injustice, hunger and homelessness; we could care about our neighbor, but as far as doing anything we could wait another century or two or three.

But we are not immortal, and because life is short the call to faithful discipleship is always an urgent invitation. It is an invitation for today, not tomorrow. The issues confronting us – the issues confronting humanity – are at present so urgent that we do not have the luxury of procrastination.

Each of us may be little mortal specks in the vastness of the universe; but in the brief time given to each of us we are called to high purpose. Each of us is called to a high purpose. Nothing less is asked of us than this:

in the present time
to identify with the suffering of the world
and to radiate
and exemplify the Christ of hope.

As we name the saints and claim our place among the saints we are called to live the remainder of our lives with high purpose: to be a living sign of hope for one another and for the world.

Mark 10:46-52

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

When our son was three or four years old, one of his favorite books was entitled Blind Bartimaeus of Jericho. It was a child’s version of the story of Bartimaeus found in Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark. In the original story in the Gospel of Mark, Bartimaeus shouts out from the crowd,“Jesus, son of David have mercy on me!” For some reason the crowd is hostile to the poor guy. Mark reports that, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet.”

In the children’s version that we read to our son, the people in the crowd say to Bartimaeus, “Hush, blind fool!” Jesus, however, hears his appeal for help and restores his sight. Our son really liked those words, “Hush blind fool!” That was the part of the story that stuck in his mind. He would use that expression with his sister when she was annoying him, and one fateful day he tried using that expression when his mother asked him to do something he did not wish to do. “Hush blind fool!” That’s when he learned how much trouble you can get into just by quoting the Bible.

It is a great children’s story: a blind guy by the side of the road, lost in the crowd, told to be quiet – every child can identify with the little guy who is told to be quiet, because the bigger more important people have more important things to do. When Jesus pays attention to the little guy and calls him forward and talks to him, this is a very satisfying outcome from the child’s perspective.

This morning I suggest that we look at this story in its relationship to the story that came before it which I talked about last Sunday. If you missed church last Sunday, I am sure that you read my message online, however, just in case there are some slackers among us, let me refresh your memory:

Last week’s reading concerns two very important disciples of Jesus – James and John – two of the three first string disciples – you didn’t know there were first string disciples? There certainly were: James and John and Peter were the first string, the Big Three. In this story, James and John came to Jesus and tell him that there is something that they want. Jesus says to them, (Mark 10:36) “What is it you want me to do for you?” They explain that they want power and glory. Jesus tells them “You don’t get it – you don’t understand what you are asking for.” Then he gives them a lesson in humility and leadership: “I am among you as one who serves; the greatest among you must be your servant.” Very striking, isn’t it, that these two, two of the three most important disciples, missed the point so badly.

So here’s where the Bible gets interesting: in the next story in the Gospel of Mark – the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus, we have another person who wants something very badly – so much so that he is shouting at Jesus, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus said to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Ah! – remember – that is the question Jesus asked James and John.

In these back to back stories in the gospel of Mark Jesus asks exactly the same question: what do you want me to do for you? That is the question we focused on last week – what do you want? Jesus challenges us with that question – what do you want? – do you really know what you want, and what makes you think that if you get what you think you want you will not just want something else, so what it is that you really want? According to Jesus, James and John do not know what they want, but Bartimaeus does. We have just seen that the disciples were blind; they did not see, but now a blind man asks to see; he begs to see. “My teacher, let me see again,” and Jesus responds.

Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Did you notice that final detail? “…he followed him on the way – Bartimaeus became a disciple. The official disciples do not get it; they are blind. The one who is not a disciple, the one who has never heard Jesus speak until that moment; he is the one who gets it; he sees; he understands the message of his teacher, and he becomes a disciple. As Jesus goes from place to place he restores sight to the blind, and he challenges those who have sight to open their eyes. A bit odd isn’t it? Jesus teaches those who have sight to see. How is your eyesight?

At a wedding rehearsal this week there was a little boy, five years old. They say that happy healthy children should behave like puppies; like a frisky puppy. As we were waiting outside the restaurant before the rehearsal dinner, suddenly the little boy started to cry out, “O my God! O my God! O my God!” He was crouching down in the grass looking at something. Everyone came over to see what was going on. “O my God! O my God!” he kept saying. “What is it? What is it?” his father asked. “It’s a different kind of leaf,” he said, holding up a yellow leaf that had fallen from a nearby tree. It’s a different kind of leaf! Children make us aware of how little we really see. Children are constantly bringing us back to awareness of things that we see but do not see. They reawakened for us the wonder of the world to which we have become blind.

And what about those people in the crowd trying to silence Bartimaeus? They represent all those forces that tried to keep us from opening our eyes and seeing what is really before us. To a large extent we see what we are allowed to see.

From time to time I mention a woman named Virginia Satir, a teacher and a therapist who has distilled great wisdom into a few words. She argues that all of us are longing for freedom and authenticity, but we are surrounded by all kinds of forces that inhibit our freedom and encourage us to be fake. She has distilled the essence of what it means to be human and healthy and free into five affirmations, the Five Freedoms she calls them. They are:

The freedom to see and hear what is, instead of what should be, what was, or what will be.

The freedom to say what one feels and thinks, instead of what one should.

The freedom to feel what one feels, instead of what one ought.

The freedom to ask for what one wants, instead of always waiting for permission.

The freedom to take risks in one’s own behalf, instead of choosing to be only “secure” and not rocking the boat.

Notice that the very first freedom on her list is: the freedom to see and hear what is, instead of what should be, what was, or what will be. The crowd around Bartimaeus wants him to shut up. His neighbors are quite content for him to be blind and silent for the rest of his life. What happens to human beings when they are forced to close their eyes and close their mouths?

It means the quiet death of the soul. As a therapist Virginia Satir is very concerned with families, and these truths apply to families. Imagine the child of an abusive parent. The child can never be free; that child will live in oppression and probably depression, until such time as that child can find her or his voice and be able to see and hear and speak the truth.

Whether it is the family, the office, the church – in any relationship and in any community – there will always be pressure to conform and to suppress truth, and there will be the fear of rocking the boats, the fear of telling the truth. And there will always be the need for human beings to claim their freedom and to see and hear and speak what they truly see and hear.

It is remarkable that we have as a nation been at war for so many years and yet how little of that war we have actually seen, that is unless we have been there. For a long time the government decided that the American people should not even see the flag draped caskets returning from the battlefield. “Hush! Be quiet. Don’t look – there are things we do not want you to see. There are things we should not speak of.” So we have this paradox: bloody wars censored for the folks back home so as not to disturb us, and then we wonder why so many of the soldiers returning are so damaged psychologically as well as physically.

Jesus, acting by the power of God, gives sight to the blind. And just as often he tells those who can see that they are blind. What does Jesus want us to see? To see the stranger as neighbor. To see our own lives as honestly and clearly as we think we see the lives of others. What does Jesus want us to see? To see what our real values are – what we actually care about and live for and spend our time and money on, as opposed to what we profess to care about. What does Jesus want us to see? To see the sacredness of all things – the infinite in the infinitesimal – down to the smallest detail – “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered,” he says.

What does Jesus want us to see? To see the poor. To see hungry people even in our affluent county of Westchester. In one of his parables a rich man keeps tripping over the poor man at his door. The rich man with perfectly good eyes is blind. Jesus ermoasks us to recognize him, to see him, in the breaking of bread in his name and in the church’s attention to the poor: “This is my body given for you.” “Whatever you do unto the least of these my sisters and brothers you do unto me.”

Jesus asks us over and over again, “Now do you see?”

Shalom, Salaam, Grace and Peace to you.