Lenten Programs

Thursday, February 21:  Is Forgiveness Possible?

A special program led by Rev. Scott Summerville
Refreshments 7:00PM   Program 7:30 – 9:00 PM

On January 4 an article appeared in the New York Times describing the soul wrenching story of a young couple who became profoundly tangled in conflict. The young man ended up killing his fiancee. Both were nineteen years old at the time. The article describes the way that the parents of both these young people have responded to this crime and this tragedy. It is a profound exploration of the meaning and possibility of forgiveness. The evening Covenant Group reflected on this story, and it prompted a rich and intense conversation.

The group wishes to invite the wider congregation into this conversation, particularly since forgiveness lies at the heart of the Lenten drama.
Please join us for fellowship and conversation on the subject of forgiveness.

Sunday, February 24:   FOOD FOR WATER Luncheon (for the Dorcas Clinic hosted by the Youth Group)

The Youth group is hosting a luncheon to make a difference in their lives. The phenomenal event will be held on February 24, 2013. All of the funding will be consigned toward developing new water pumps within the Dorcas Clinic. We have already raised more than half of the funds needed. We have a vision of witnessing change to an abundant population of civilians living near (or far) from the clinic. We hope they can gain immediate access to the wellspring of Water. Donating to this worthy cause can make this dream into reality!

Joshua Buman, President, UMYF

Suggested donation: adults $10, children $3

Be an Angel!  $25 contribution

Be a Benefactor!  $50

Be a Patron!  $75

Tickets will be sold after worship, or call, email, or write to the church to make a donation or to order tickets.

The cost of the water pumping project is $3,750.  The youth have made a commitment to raise this amount, and so far we have raised almost $3,000 inluding the tickets we sold last Sunday.

Thank you for your past support.

Come, enjoy the lunch that we are going to cook.

___________________________

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you….”          John 15:9-17

___________________________

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

I have a confession to make – several confessions in fact.

First: I am intoxicated.

Second: I am in love with another woman.

And third – how shall I say this? – I have become a mother.

It is a total scandal.

When our son was a little tyke, one day he reached up and tugged at his mommy’s dress while she was distracted with something or other, and he said, “Mommy, I love you.”  Still distracted, she said to him, “That is nice Thomas; I love you too.”  To which he responded, “No, mommy, I mean I really love you.”  “Why thank you, Thomas,” she saqid, “I really love you too.”  To which he responded, “No, Mommy; I mean I really love you!!” This was not platonic love he was declaring! He was declaring his passionate desire for his mama! We deceive ourselves when we think little people are not capable of such large emotions.

To love can mean many things, but to be in love is to be possessed in the body, in the imagination; being in love is a condition of the flesh as much as it is a condition of the mind.  In this very moment such love possesses me. My skin craves the touch of her skin. My nose craves the scent of her. My arms long to hold her. My hands ache to caress her head and stroke her soft hair.

You may be amazed that my wife is able to sit here and listen to all of this so calmly.  No, we do not have one of those open marriages.  No sir, we do not go for that stuff.  But we have both fallen in love with this little woman, our granddaughter, and when infected with such love, you are intoxicated; it is pleasant, but achingly pleasant.  There is a constant longing in your whole being that is satisfied only when one is able to caress and hold the beloved.

It is a considerable coincidence that I have been absent from this pulpit in recent weeks tending to our daughter and granddaughter and that I should return to you on Mother’s Day.  Mary Ellen and I have been immersed in fatherhood and motherhood for several months.  We have been camped out in neonatal intensive care units and in a children’s hospital.  We have been surrounded by injured and ailing infants and children, lactating mothers, anxious fathers, and fearful grandparents.

Troubles and tragedies hurl people together in ways we never anticipate. Certainly that has been true with our family during these months. In the normal course of events, when your children live more than a thousand miles away, you hope that they will bear children, and that you will be able to visit them, spend a little time, and wish you could spend more. That is not the case in our situation. We have already spent more time with our grandchild and had more intimate contact with her than we would have had in ten years, had the circumstances been more normal.

That is why I say I have become a mother.  Some mothering instinct has been gradually aroused in me. I feel like a mother. You are going to ask me the test question –  I know you are – to determine the strength of my claim to be a mother:  “Do I change the diapers?”  That happens to be a personal question which I am not going to answer.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

I feel personally and as a family that in this time we have been saved by love.  We have passed through the valley of the shadow of despair and death; our hope and sanity have been tested; we have journeyed in the wilderness; love has preserved our sanity and our hope.

There is a Jewish tradition known as “reciting the Torah while standing on one foot.”  One of the greatest of the rabbis, one who lived not long before the time of Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, was challenged to recite the Torah while standing on one foot.  Rabbi Hillel said , “OK, sure,” and while standing on one foot declared, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.”

Jesus was given a similar challenge; a lawyer asked him, “Rabbi, what is the most important teaching of the torah?  (Matthew: 22:37-40)

He answered this way:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

The great rabbis took the complexities of religion and tradition and law and custom and distilled them into their essence – the essential quality of the relationship of human to human, and human to the divine: the quality of love. I have had a notion kicking around in my mind for some time now, similar to declaring the Torah while standing on one foot.  The thought is that, if I were asked to distill the message of Jesus into a phrase, I would say, “Talk is cheap.”

Talk is cheap.
And “love” is one of the least expensive words in the world.
It falls off the tongue so easily.
Love love love love love love love love love love.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

In these last months Mary Ellen I have witnessed, day in and day out, the most extraordinary scenes of love, scenes of devotion and sacrifice; we have seen so many young parents strained to the breaking point and persevering and giving and giving and giving of themselves for the lives of their children. We have also seen small armies of compassionate and caring hospital personnel surrounding these parents and children, going beyond the formal requirements of their jobs, saturating the work they do with the gift of love.

To “love as I have loved you,” is to live in caring and committed relationships with family and friend.  To “love as I have loved you” is to live in active solidarity with sisters and brothers who suffer. To “love as I have loved you” is to live in solidarity with the poor. To “love as I have loved you” is to live in solidarity with those who are denied their human rights.

In our family life and in our life as a congregation we can misuse this word, “love.”  We can pay homage to love as a concept and forget about it as a constant challenge and claim upon our lives. Talk is cheap. Love is just blah blah blah blah, unless it is expressed in action.

There is a certain thing I have seen in the hospitals that has touched me deeply. I have occasionally seen children who seemed forgotten, that is, days would go by and I would not see any visitor come to them. I would think, “How sad that someone does not care enough to be here for this poor child.”  But then, after a couple of days, people show up, and you learn that they live at a great distance, do not have a car, have other young children at home to care for, have jobs that they must keep in order to put bread on the family table and which do not give them time off, but with every scrap of time they have they take the buses, the trains, the subways; they make the long trek to the hospital, and when they arrive they bestow upon their child the most extraordinary pent-up love and tenderness.

Love as I have loved you.

When love is not just spoken but embodied in the flesh, lives are changed, lives are saved, and there is hope for this world.

Shalom.
Grace and peace to you.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

(Luke 24:30-31)

Yesterday Mary Ellen I traveled north to Saratoga Springs to attend a memorial service for Mel, an old family friend. He was indeed an old friend in that he was ninety-five years old, and he was an old friend as well in that he and his wife, Gracie, who died some years ago, were close friends of my parents for more than forty years.

Mel’s eldest son spoke in the service. He said that his father retained his mental acuity to the end of his life, although he did become forgetful toward the end. His son said that he imagines his father arriving at the pearly gates and saying to St. Peter, “Do I come here often?”

The sanctuary of the Methodist church in Saratoga is a modern one. Behind the pulpit there is an enormous screen built into the wall. For part of the service the organ played in the background while photographs were shown on that large screen – photographs spanning more that a century – his parents, childhood, courtship, marriage, children, career and retirement. Here and there among the photographs I saw the faces my father and my mother.

Of the two couples, Mel and Gracie, and my mother and father, only my mother remains alive. As we watched the slides with my mother beside us, I could sense all the deep emotions welling up in my mother reflected her face and eyes.

For many of us this day Mother’s Day is a day of remembering; perhaps remembering with a sigh and a tear – mothers and grandmothers, great grandmothers – it is a day in which we are acutely conscious of the generations and of the passage of time.

Naturally there is a lot of sentimentality that accompanies the celebration of Mother’s Day. Sometimes the sentimentality can obscure the deeper truth – the deeper truth that it is a profoundly challenging thing to bring another life into the world and to bear the responsibility for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the fragile mortal life of another human being, and to be the parent of that being for all the years to come, through all the changes of life – all the predictable changes of life – and all the unpredictable changes of life.

* *

There is an image today in the gospel lesson that is one of the most vivid, spiritually rich images in the entire Bible. It comes at that moment toward the end of the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and their strange encounter with Jesus. They walk along with him and talk with him; they are discouraged and weary; they persuade them to stop at the inn with them. There at the table with them he breaks the bread. As the bread is torn, their eyes are opened, and they recognize him. There is this moment of recognition connected to the tearing of bread, but at the very moment the bread is torn a strange thing happens:

“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight”

It is in the tearing of the bread, the breaking of the bread, that the disciples recognized the face of Christ. Then he is gone.

Is very common these days to hear people say things like:

“I am not religious, but I am spiritual.”

“I don’t believe in God, but I believe in the sacredness of life.”

“I don’t believe in the church, but I believe I find God in nature.”

It is a common modern experience for people to find glimpses of holiness, a flash of awareness of the divine presence, a whisper of God’s presence in music, or nature, or the face of a loved one. But many people feel they cannot package all these glimpses of the holy into a conventional creed. Or as a woman once said, “Sometimes it seems I only believe in God when I am nursing my baby.”

Our story today of Jesus mysteriously appearing and disappearing to the disciples on the Emmaus journey resonates with the modern experience of finding fleeting fragments of sacredness, of holiness – which slip away from us.

The way Jesus breaks the bread and disappears leaves us with a mystery. What is the point? Where did he go? What was it about the act of breaking the bread that makes the stranger known and then causes him to disappear? So many questions.

Certainly this story points us to the Eucharist, to the Lord’s Supper, to the Christian experience of communion with Christ in the sacrament. He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Going a step further: in the tearing of the bread, in the breaking of the loaf, is the sign of Christ’s suffering, so that the one was recognized is the one who has suffered.

One of the great poets wrote: “Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.” [WB Yeats] The greatest love is revealed where life is torn.

When I counsel couples in preparation for marriage, I ask them: “What is the most difficult thing you have had to go through together?” Of all the questions that I use in my interrogations, that question often provokes the deepest conversation. How will people deal with pain together? That is such a crucial question in terms of how they will grow together or grow apart over time.

This has been an extraordinary week – though it seems these days that every week that passes brings news of some extraordinary event. The death of Osama bin Laden touches upon something so deep in the collective psyche searchingly of this country, if not the world. The death of one who exalted in death. The death of one who led so many so willingly to their deaths. The death of one who so wantonly took the lives of thousands of others, and received the news of their deaths with a gentle smile. His death is in some ways a release, a relief, while at the same time it brings back powerfully the memories of the dreadful tearing apart of life and the tearing of the soul of the people – the tearing of our own souls.

Living a Christian life, or – I should say – trying to lead a Christian life, since I’m not sure that there is anyone who ever really does – trying to live a Christian life does not protect any of us from suffering or tragedy. It does not give any of us an easy explanation for our own hardships or the hardships of those we love or the tragic events of the world.

But the Christian life offers is a way of embracing the world eucharistically. That is, remembering the Christ who breaks the bread, and who is himself the broken bread, can change the way we relate to pain in our lives and in the lives of others.

By remembering the suffering one who breaks the bread,
we do not escape from pain;
we do not get a pass that takes us away from the troubles of life,
but we receive a greater capacity to enter into the troubles of life,
to enter into the pain of life,
and not to hide from it.

To live eucharistically is to live open to pain as part of life.
Living eucharistically enables each of us to be a better friend,
to be more present and engaged as a mate,
and to have more endurance and strength as a parent.

Living eucharistically enables one to be a compassionate presence in the world, rather than tuning out.

On the road to Emmaus there are two travelers. They are tired and discouraged, but they have each other – they are not alone. They meet a stranger, and they stop for the night to catch a bit of rest and some bread to eat. In the breaking of the bread they catch a glimpse of the holy one.

Even though it is a fleeting glimpse — even though he vanishes from their sight, their hope is restored They have the courage and faith to go on.

That is all we can ask each time we gather in the spirit of Christ: that we regain the courage and faith to go on.

So be it,
grace and peace to you.

Matthew 28:1-10

Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
____________________________________________

The Gospels describe the day of resurrection as a day of “great joy and fear.” That is an interesting combination: joy and fear.

At the end of this week in the newspapers there were two reports side-by-side. One was a report about people of Syria marching in the streets, defying orders not to gather, filled with such a passionate desire and hope for greater freedom, so sick of oppression and tyranny that they were willing to march unarmed even as the government promised to shoot them down and kept its promise.

The other report described a survey showing that the people of United States are now more discouraged than they have been in years. We all know the reasons why many of us may be feeling discouraged, but it was interesting to see these two reports side-by-side; one a story of audacious and reckless hope, the other a story of discouragement.

We gather today to celebrate and proclaim the power of life over death, the power of creation over destruction, the power of hope over despair. As we look around the world today, it is not clear which powers are winning. Creation or destruction? Freedom or tyranny? Life or death? We live at the edge of great and awesome changes in human history. We scarcely know what life will be like in 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 years. We look at the children among us and we wonder: what sort of world, what sort of earth will be their home?

We may feel that we have no part to play in the great drama of this earth; we may be anxious or discouraged. But here and now this Easter day we are reminded that each one of us is a part of that great drama of the earth, each has some gift to contribute, individually — and the church has in this age unique opportunities to contribute positively to the future of the world.

The United Methodist Church has set for itself four major priorities. Two of them are things that you would logically expect every church to want to do. One is to start new churches. That is an important thing, and of course every church wants more adherents and more congregations. It is natural that this would be an important goal of the church.

The church has also made one of its four highest priorities the training of large numbers of leaders of clergy and laity to better equip them and to lead ministries of service and witness. Leadership is the single critical ingredient in moving communities from dreams and ideas and talking to actually doing things. This is true of our congregation, and it is true of the global church. Success or failure in any mission depends upon having leaders who are motivated, committed, and equipped to lead.

Those are two of the four priorities.

The other two priorities set by the United Methodist Church are: ministry with the poor and a health initiative focusing on killer diseases, with an initial focus the eradication of malaria.

United Methodist Church could have chosen many things as its priorities, but we realize that we must focus our efforts in order to be effective. As Easter people, as people who proclaim the power of life over death, we have chosen life in a very direct way – by committing our energy and resources to overcoming those diseases that devastate the poor.

I read to you now from a declaration of our United Methodist Church:

We are the Church of the Poor and those in Ministry the Poor. Following Jesus’ example of servant leadership, those who enjoy greater privileges are called to walk humbly alongside those at society’s margins, listening to, learning from, and working in solidarity with them for the transformation of this world.
We are a denomination that has played a significant role in abolishing slavery and advocating for child labor laws, women’s suffrage and civil rights. Our prevailing message is that we have the hope, the people and the power to facilitate change.

[Methodism's Founder] John Wesley understood the deeply intertwined relationship between poverty and poor health….Unfortunately, many of the health issues of Wesley’s time are still a part of the 21st century landscape. Many people and communities throughout Africa, in particular, lack access to the basic rights of nutritious food, clean water, adequate shelter and essential medicines. At a point of great and historic opportunity, we are working with the United Nations Foundation and others to develop a partnership that will bring our existing health programs to a new level….
In the long term, the … campaign to conquer malaria will create a powerful foundation that will build a stronger and more broad-based community health infrastructure to help … in the fight against other diseases of poverty such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
___________________________

Our congregation has been and will continue to be involved in this effort in a variety of ways: directly through our work in northern Ghana in the creation and expansion of the Methodist Dorcas Clinic and through our financial gifts to the global church and other special projects like the Nothing but Nets campaign. This priority of our church is a direct and tangible commitment to life; it is an expression of our common commitment to put our chips on the table and place our bets on life. As each of us participates in small ways in this global project we commit ourselves to being part of a positive and hopeful future for generations to come.

Even so, each of continues to struggle individually with our own challenges and discouragements.

There is a young woman who recently received some national publicity who happens to be a member of a United Methodist Church in a town in Texas. The name of her church is Community of Hope United Methodist Church. “Community of Hope” – not a bad name for a church. The young woman, Tiffany Chartier, appears to be 30 years old or so from her photographs. When she was fifteen years old she learned that she had inherited a disease of the eye, retinitis pigmentosa, from her father. In her own words: “Retinitis pigmentosa is a degenerative hereditary eye disease that starts by loss of night vision and then slowly steals (like a thief) your peripheral vision so eventually what you see is like looking through a tiny, tiny straw. And eventually it will just all close.”

In light of her medical condition, she has chosen an unusual career. She is a professional photographer. She is already legally blind, without peripheral vision; the lens through which she sees the world grows smaller and smaller, but that does not seem to have slowed her down.At her church she directs a program for youth called CHAOS – an interesting name for a youth group – but in this case the letters stand for stand for: Challenge, Honor, Acceptance, Outreach and Serve. She uses her photography in a special way with young people: she invites them to list seven positive traits about themselves. These words are painted on a backdrop, and with these words of affirmation showing in the background she photographs each of the young people. Her photographer’s eye captures the essence of each of their personalities; the words in the background become a constant reminder to each of the youth of who they aspire to be. This she sees as one way of empowering young people. She calls them “affirmation photos.” She says: “Because I am going blind I give more freely of the talents God gave me,” she said. “And because I’m going blind I refuse to be stingy with joy.”

Her photographic ministry has taken other forms as well. She was approached by a couple; the husband had been diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer; the prognosis was poor. They wanted to have a set of photographs of themselves made especially for their grandchildren. They wanted their photographs to convey to their grandchildren the joy that they felt in life and in their love for them.

Hank, the guy with cancer who had his picture taken, said of this young photographer, “I think because her vision is narrowing, she focuses in on what is important.” As my elderly German landlady used to say, “Dat could be a soimen!” “She focuses in on what is important” – is that not what religion and spirituality are supposed to be all about – enabling us to focus in on what is truly important.

This young woman now has children of her own. Her oldest son has been diagnosed with the same disease she inherited from her father. She knows now how her father felt when he learned that his daughter had inherited the disease from him. She has experienced the sense of helplessness, anger and sadness that her father felt. But she says she is at peace; her life is filled with art and love, giving and creating. She has her own blog, on which she has written these words which may speak to your struggles:

My power is limited, if I have any at all. But my actions are powerful, for good or bad … my greatest weakness is acting as if I have more control than I do.
The bird doesn’t grab hold of the wind to fly, nor does the fish order the direction of the sea to swim. Both know what they can control and, therefore, are free to live fully in their powerlessness….
Indeed, we can each learn from the bird and fish. Both carry on knowing without question there is a power which exists greater than their own: Their life depends upon it. Why do we not think the same?

We must learn how to fly and swim in the moment. Yesterday’s patterns afford us the security of repetition but not the presence to know how to adjust to today’s climate. We must be fully responsive in the moment to wholly surrender to God and be free from our desire to control.
___________________________

That is a good word for this Easter, when so many people are feeling powerless and discouraged.

Each of us has some gift to offer to this world. Unless we exercise that gift, we will be spiritually stunted, and the world will be missing something. Each of us is a speck in the universe. Sometimes we will feel like an insignificant and powerless speck, swept by forces far beyond our control. Here and now, this Easter day, we are reminded that each one of us is a part of the great drama of the earth; each has some gift to contribute, individually — and collectively as a church we have unique opportunities to contribute positively to the future of the world.

So we borrow this wisdom from a young woman, wise beyond her years: “The bird doesn’t grab hold of the wind to fly, nor does the fish order the direction of the sea to swim. Both know what they can control and, therefore, are free to live fully in their powerlessness…..”

That is a good word for this Easter morning.

Hallelujah, Christ is risen!

When we were boys my daddy taught me and my three brothers how to paddle a canoe. He showed us how to hold the paddle, how to keep your arms straight while you stroke the paddle through the water, how to hold the paddle flat to the wind as you bring it forward, how to turn the paddle 90° back just before you dip it in the water again, and how to put your back into it so your arms don’t get tired. He taught us how to steer the canoe.

He taught us that the canoe was like a sail, so you always have to be very careful about the wind. He taught us that when the wind is blowing hard and the waves start coming up higher on the lake, you need to keep the point of the boat going straight into the wind. If you don’t go straight into the wind, if you don’t let the canoe split through the wind like a knife, the wind may catch you on the side of the canoe, and you may lose control get swamped or even overturned, which leaves you in a bit of a pickle if you are in the middle of a lake in a storm.

I have a Jewish friend who said to me, “You have a busy week coming up.” I imagine from his perspective he pictures all those things that Christians do this week: having extra worship services, the palm branches and the lilies, children looking for Easter eggs and candy, and singing the Hallelujah Chorus. It certainly can be a busy week. But beneath all those busy things, there is this journey that Jesus takes to Jerusalem; in this week we remember how he went directly into the wind.

His disciples urged him not to go to Jerusalem. Others warned him, even some of the Pharisees who were sometimes at odds with him, warned him that he was in danger. If he had asked his mother whether he should go to Jerusalem for the Passover, she would have told him not to go. The gospel says he set his face to go to Jerusalem – I like that phrase, “he set his face.”

It is so easy to avoid things that are hard. It is natural to want to bend with the wind, instead of going straight into it. He set his face to go to Jerusalem, and on this day we call Palm Sunday he arrived there, and so began his Passion, the journey to the cross.

From a reasonable perspective he did not have to make this journey. He could have had a good career in Galilee. He was known as Rabbi or teacher, and greatly respected for his wisdom. He had a reputation as a healer. He possessed extraordinary powers of touch – touch that could comfort and heal. He was a storyteller par excellence; he was a master of words. He was a man of the poor; the Gospels say that the poor heard him gladly. At the same time he was someone who could mix with people of every sort, the high and the low, the holy and the unholy, the clean and the unclean. He had a special relationship with people who were scorned, those who were regarded as outside of the bounds of polite society. In his encounters with them he took his message to its deepest point: his message of radical forgiving love. He related tenderly to children, and he did not discriminate in his treatment of women.

He was so many things, did so many things, encountered people in so many different states of life. His life was full – he did not need to take the road south from Galilee to Judea to the city of Jerusalem. He could have stayed home. That would have been the sensible thing to do. That would have been the safe thing to do.

But he called himself a prophet and saw for himself a prophet’s death. The prophets of Israel never did bow to the powerful; they spoke the word of truth and took the consequences.

So in this Holy Week, this big week for Christians, there are palms and lilies, and the Hallelujah Chorus, and there is an opportunity given to us to stop and to meditate on the cross.

I have been doing that a bit myself. I will share with you what has come so far from my meditations of this week on the cross:

As I meditated on the cross there first came to me an awareness of Jesus and the way he embodied compassion and love and generosity of soul, as I pondered his suffering, it brought to my mind the suffering of many gentle souls that I have known and now know. As I remember those people and the suffering that they are going through, while the same time remembering the cross, I found it clarifying. When I meditate on the cross in connection to individuals who are hurting, it helps to take the focus off of me and what it is I am supposed to say and what I am supposed to do; instead it helps to keep the focus on the one who is hurting. It helps me to stay with their pain, not to run away from it or deny it, not to try to find just the right thing to say. The cross can guide us to true compassion, which means to suffer with, (from the greek: com-pasko: to suffer with another person. )

I was very touched by the request which came from the member of our church who was hospitalized and recovering from cancer surgery this week — her request for us to pray for her roommate in the hospital. She had her own discomforts and was facing her own challenges, but she so freely took in the hurts of another being, instead of doing the sensible thing, which is to block out the pain of others and say, “I’ve got my own troubles … got troubles enough of my own.”

As I meditated on the cross there came to me another awareness: the awareness that we are all avoiding something. The decision to take the journey to the cross for Jesus was the ultimate decision to face down fear – instead of avoiding the things we fear. What am I avoiding? What is it I am scared to look at in my life, in my relationships, and my habits? “Let it slide,” “Don’t rock the boat”, “Don’t bring it up now,” “Deal with it tomorrow.” As I meditate on the cross I find it harder to avoid things.

Also, as I meditated on the cross there came to me a fresh awareness of my own body. We tend to separate physical and spiritual things, but the cross does not let us do that. The cross keeps us forever connected to the body. We live so much in our heads, wrapped up in our fears and fantasies and plans for the future. Sometimes we have to find ourselves in a hospital bed or under the surgeon’s knife to realize this constant truth: we are bodies; even our brains – the part of us that has these mysterious capacities to think and imagine –are made of cells; the brain is living tissue just like our bones.

Our bodies are sacred. Mary Ellen and I led a discussion this past week entitled Sacred Sex: Divine Love in Human Intimacy. Only two people showed up! When I mentioned to my office manager that the attendance was meager, she said “Why do you think that is?” I said, “Oh, I guess people are very busy.” She said, “I don’t think people want to talk with the ministers about sex.” ! That is not true, is it?

In any case, to meditate upon one who suffers on the cross is to come inescapably face-to-face with the fact that we are flesh and blood, embodied beings, male and female, full of all the aches and pains, pleasures, longings, desires, and fears that come from this fact that we are flesh.

As I meditated on the cross there came to me a deeper sense of what it means to live in solidarity with other human beings. Jesus’ decision to accept the cross was a decision that makes no sense in purely personal terms. It only makes sense as an act of love and solidarity with other human beings. Contemplating the cross can bring to us an illumination, a sudden awareness: “Oh, I thought life was all about me; that everything was all about me; I see there is another way – it seems a bit strange, but maybe I could get used to this idea that living a life that is all about me doesn’t really go anywhere, but a life that is about my solidarity with others – this strange idea is something that offers all sorts of possibilities to grow, to love, to give. Maybe life is not all about me, and in that awareness lies my liberation.

Finally, as I meditated on the cross this week there came to me the awareness that I wish the world was different than it is. I wish that humanity was not so skillful in devising ways of inflicting cruelty and suffering. On the cross a gentle and loving soul suffers. I wish that gentle loving souls did not suffer. I know it is a virtue to accept certain things, to embrace all of life, happiness and pain both. But there are things that cannot be embraced and should not be accepted. There is something about the cross that is not acceptable. This is not a comfortable thought. If we meditate on the cross and this brings us face-to-face with what we don’t like about this world, then maybe our meditation on the cross will move us to do what we can to change the world.

So our meditation on the cross leads us to deeper self-awareness and challenges us to action to confront and seek to change the conditions of our world, the injustices of our world.

Next Sunday some of us will be up your singing the Hallelujah Chorus. I look forward to being with you and being part of that chorus.

Between now and then I invite you to meditate upon the cross of Christ.

Grace and peace to you.

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
John 10:10

We are preparing for our Thanksgiving gatherings and holiday meals. Most of us will feel very full by the end of the week. Some of us will be too full; we will wish we had pushed back from the Thanksgiving table sooner than we did. At the same time we are reminded today that not everyone has the problem some us have of sometimes being too full. So along with the plans we are making for our personal Thanksgiving feasts we are offering gifts today for the Food Bank for Westchester.

Thanksgiving is a good time to ask the question: what does it mean to be full? What is a full life? What is this thing Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John: “abundant life?”

If a person dies who has lived a very long life, it is common for people to say, “She had a full life,” or “He had a full life.” Generally, people do not say that unless the deceased is at least eighty years old. In fact, these days eighty is not all that old, so you may have to live to be at least eighty-five or ninety years old before someone will say that you have, “led a full life.” Why is that if someone dies who is seventy years old, or sixty years old, or forty years old or twenty years old, we rarely say that they led a full life?

Maybe they did live a full life. Maybe the life of the forty year old was an abundant life. I have known people who have died young – way too young by my standards – but I would say of most of them that they lived a full life. They may not have lived long lives: but I remember them with a pang in my heart and the sigh in my breast – because their lives were so full.

For some people growing old brings serenity and acceptance. It is a wonderful thing when someone can say of himself or herself, “I have led a full life. I am satisfied with the drink I have taken from the cup of life. The wine was good.” Or if you are an old fashioned Methodist you can say:, “The grape juice was good!”

When the elders tell us that they have led a full life, they are not making a statistical report. They do not mean, “I have lived 30,000 days; that should be enough to satisfy anyone.” No, you could live forever and not live a full life. What these elders are telling us when they say they have lived a full life they are saying: “I have experienced a depth of life, a richness of life, and a quality of love that has filled me and satisfied a deep longing in my soul. I have endured and come to terms with my suffering and my grieving. I can pull my chair back from the table of life; for I have tasted life, and I am full.”

Yesterday I listened to a sermon by a young man who came very close to death four months ago, and I had an opportunity to talk with him privately as well. His name is Rev. Josh Noblick, the United Methodist clergyperson who became famous in July of this year when he and his partner were having a quite picnic in a public park in Atlanta. In the space of ten horrifying minutes his life was changed, as he and his partner savagely attacked by six young men who taunted them with anti-gay slurs. Then a gun was put to Josh’s head, a loaded gun.

At My Brother’s Keeper, the symposium on hate crimes yesterday at Grace Church in Manhatten, Josh was the preacher. Given what he and his partner went through, what he said from the pulpit was an extraordinary witness.

In a calm and gentle voice he spoke of the young men who attacked him as fellow human beings. He said that none of us should be judged by the worst thing we have ever done, and these young men should not be judged solely by their actions in that day. He also said that we need to examine the hatred that motivated these young attackers, and trace it back to try to understand where it came from. Where does a thirteen year old – the youngest assailant was thirteen – where does a thirteen year old learn to hate? Hateful attitudes and actions do not just happen.

These young men will have to bear the punishment for what they did, but all of us need to ponder why they did it. In his message Josh said that he realizes that he has a permanent relationship with the six young men who attacked him. He said that he will think of them every day of his life. And he realizes that they, in their jail cells, surely think of him and of what happened on that day and ponder it every day of their lives. Ironically Josh has had experience in his ministry counseling young criminal offenders, some of whom have done worse things than were done to him. Some actually pulled the trigger. Counseling offenders and being a victim of violent crime are two very different things.

Clearly Josh hopes that the lives of these young people can be redeemed somehow. Jesus said, “Bless those who persecute you.” That is what Josh has done. He hopes that their lives can yet be redeemed form hatred and violence. He realizes that he may even have a personal role in that.

When I spoke with Josh privately after the service he said that through his work with young offenders he knows something about gun violence, and he knows how easily the guns go off in the hands of pumped up nervous kids; as he put it, I realize that in some ways I should not be here.” As a victim of violence and hatred, Josh is making a powerful witness about the love of God, justice and forgiveness. He is a man whose life could be filled with rage and hatred right now, but it is not. It is filled with a humble sense of having narrowly escaped death and a desire to use his experience to serve God in works of education and reconciliation.

When Jesus talks about the fullness of life – when he promises abundant life – he is speaking of these very things: forgiveness, love, justice, reconciliation.

What is it that gives life fullness, abundance? Definitely a full life needs some material things. We have basic needs for safety and nourishment and shelter. The first petition in the Lord’s prayer is: “give us this day our daily bread.” We need bread. We can’t get sentimental about poverty. Poverty kills souls and bodies. But we in our culture have put material abundance in the center of our altar and worshiped it. Jesus said to seek your daily bread – yes – take care of ourselves and those who depend upon you, but do not worship bread, money, things.

The journey that some of us took to Africa this fall confronted us powerfully with the question of what it means to live a full, good, abundant life. It is easy to make quick judgments; it is easy for prosperous people to classify people who are materially poor as being “less fortunate than ourselves.”

When you look into the faces of the villagers, the farming people in the rural northern Ghana where we visited; you see their character, their endurance, their quiet strength, the openness of their hearts, and you are moved. You realize that they live every day with scarcity; they survive on so much less than we could survive on. You might say, “These poor people; they are ‘less fortunate than we are.’ ” Or you might reverse that and say: “These people in their poverty are richer than we are.”

I do not make either of those statements. We cannot measure the fullness of our lives by comparing ourselves to others. I cannot claim that these people are less fortunate then you or I. I cannot claim that my life is better than theirs or that they are “Less fortunate than we are.” I do think they have something to teach me. It is for them to judge whether I have something to offer to them.

You don’t arrive at the abundant life by living for eighty-five or ninety or or a hundred years. And of course there is no check that you can write large enough to buy the abundant life.

Christ has set a table for us, a feast.
It is the feast of mercy.
It is the feast of love.
It is the feast of compassion and justice.
And it is in this feast that we taste life, life abundant.

Shalom.

“I do not even judge myself….. It is the Lord who judges me.”
I Corinthians 4:3-4

For the past two years I have served on the board of ordained ministry of the United Methodist Church in our area. Twice a year we go off for three days of interviewing and evaluation of candidates for ministry. It is an intense, high pressure environment. The candidates are nervous, sometimes very nervous. They have been preparing for this interview in most cases for 10 years or so, some longer. In order to be ordained an elder in the United Methodist Church, they must satisfy two thirds of the members of the board that they have the gifts, the temperament, the knowledge, the desire, and the calling to serve as ordained clergy persons.

After two days of interviews the candidates go home and the sixty members of the board look around at one another, and say to one another, “I am glad that I am not being interviewed by the board of ordained ministry, because I don’t think I could pass.”

Some of you remember Rev. Clayton Miller, who was pastor of Asbury Church for sixteen years, from 1977 until 1993. Clayton told me that when he was just out of seminary and wanted to be ordained, more than in fifty years ago, he went to the annual conference session in Indiana, where he grew up; one of the district superintendents took him aside, asked him a couple questions, and told him to bring his robe the following night for the ordination service!

When I was ordained thrity-four years ago, the process was a bit more involved, but they still basically wanted to make sure that you were alive and breathing and knew which and of the Bible was the Old Testament and which was the New Testament. Now it is much more rigorous. Not only is the interviewing tougher; the work that most of these new pastors are asked to do is much tougher, too. Most of them will be sent to very challenging assignments with meager resources.

The candidates we saw came in all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and nationalities. They were born in Arkansas, Georgia, Long Island, Jamaica, Ghana, South Korea, Taiwan, and a half dozen other places. Some of them grew up in stable middle class families with strong church and family support; all that positive experience led them into ministry. Others came into ministry by the rough road: hardship, drug addiction; one is a wounded veteran; one of them had recently experienced the death of a child.

We dug deep into their lives; we probed their hearts and their minds. As we did we kept asking ourselves, “Who are we to judge these people? Can we measure up to the standards we are setting for them?” We had to keep reminding ourselves that we were NOT judging these people. We were not judging them. We were doing our humble best to evaluate their readiness for ordained ministry. It is natural for a candidate to feel that she or he is being judged; of course they would.

If the board decides to deny or postpone a candidate’s ordination, the candidate will receive the news by phone call. That phone call is typically a very painful thing, a very hard thing, for a candidate to receive, without feeling wounded and judged, even though wounding and judging is not at all the intention of the board.

As we were finishing our work and headed home, I said to one of the other members of the board, “This is so difficult. It is the hardest thing and the most exhausting thing I do in the whole year.” She agreed.
　
We have to evaluate other people all the time. We need to figure out who we can rely on, who we can trust, who has the knowledge to help us in various issues of life. We need to evaluate how our children are doing in school and how well the teacher is teaching. We need to evaluate those who lead us. Are they honest and fair and wise or are they something else entirely?

Evaluating other people and judging other people are two completely different things.

Imagine that you are standing beside a great river, the waters flowing by, slowly, powerfully. Imagine that this river is the message of the gospel – the message of Christ. Flowing in the deepest channel of that river, is this message:

“Judge not… Judge not one another… do not even judge yourself…”

This message is so far from our usual patterns of thought that we generally ignore it. We go right on judging others and judging ourselves, and assuming that there is no other way. If you have struggled in marriage, if you have been in a relationship where harsh judgments fly through the air like poison darts, can you imagine what it would be like, what it might feel like to be in an intimate relationship where you do not feel judged?

We live in a society that is supercharged with judging and condemning. We have people who make entire careers out of condemnation, scorn attack. The voices of condemnation are heard, and very often the voices of conversation and reconciliation are drowned out. What would it be like to be part of a society in which people were not constantly judging and condemning one another?

A phone call came to me yesterday from a woman who was seeking a home, not a home to live in, but a place of meeting, a room for a weekly Narcotics Anonymous chapter for women. The woman who called explained that there is a special need for women who are struggling with substance abuse to meet with other women who are also struggling, and that currently there is no such meeting available to women in Westchester County. I told her that I would meet with her next week and that I was quite sure that we would be able to find a place in our big old church where they could come together. She thanked me and told me she had to run; she needed to watch her grandchildren.

Maybe you didn’t know there are grannies out there who are substance abusers or recovered addicts. People with troubles come in all sizes and shapes and income levels and shoe sizes; some of them are teenagers – and some of them are grandparents. One of the reasons people are flocking to 12 step meetings and self-help groups is that they believe that when they go to those groups, they will be among people who will not judge them. They will be able to release the pent-up brokenness of their spirits; others will hear them and care for them. Others will challenge them, but will not judge them.

Most people do not assume that about churches. People who are struggling are often afraid that Christians will judge them; pastors and preachers and priests will judge them. People have good reason to be concerned; often Christians forget what is out there in that deep river, we forget the words that run through deepest channels of Jesus’ message – judge not and you will not be judged, condemn not and you will not be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven.

Judging others is so natural that most of us can barely wrap our heads around what it would mean to stop doing it. .Even if we could wrap our heads around the words Jesus spoke, “do not judge,” most of us still would not realize that it applies to us too, that is, it applies to us judging ourselves.

There are those who are merciful without measure to everyone in the world except themselves. They are understanding and forgiving of others; but they are brutal to themselves. The message of Christ is that, “It is not for you to judge your neighbor, and it is not even for you to judge yourself”

Let the word of God and the spirit of Christ challenge you and strengthen you to grow, to learn, to change. Let the word of God and the spirit of Christ challenge you where you need to be challenged. Challenge yourself, yes; improve yourself, yes, but you have no right to judge even yourself.

Let God challenge you and strengthen you to use your life and your gifts in new ways, and leave all judgment to the one who is merciful.

Grace and peace to you.