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Author: Tim

Senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ. Ordained in May, 1983. Called to First Congregational UCC in August, 1994. Retired July 1, 2018.
Teach the “King”

Teach the “King”

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Birds, streams and wetlands, Nigerian immigrants, Palestinians, people counting on Social Security, civilians exposed to landmines … all facing a much more perilous future because of actions taken by the present US administration in just the last few days … and, “the best is yet to come.”

With nation and media fixated on impeachment, one executive fiat after another is quietly rolled out, rolling back years and even decades of hard-won protections for vulnerable people and a vulnerable earth.

Teach the king to judge with your righteousness, O God …
He rescues the poor who call to him,
     and those who are needy and neglected.
He has pity on the weak and poor;
     he saves the lives of those in need.
He rescues them from oppression and violence;
     their lives are precious to him. (Psalm 72:1, 12-14)
Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

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One of the joys of my newly retired life is singing with the Bagaduce Chorale, a seventy-voice regional chorale ensemble that meets weekly in Blue Hill for rehearsals and performs three concerts each year in December, April, and July. Below is a playlist of songs from our most recent concert, a Christmas Concert performed three times on the weekend before Christmas. This recording comes from our last performance at St. Savior’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor. I sing a solo in the third song, “Angelus Ad Virginem.”

Let Them Be! — Part 2

Let Them Be! — Part 2

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I am grateful to Shirley Duncanson who, in a comment on my original post, provided links to news articles by CNN, Slate, and the Washington Post that give broader context to the situation with the Cottage Grove campus of Grove United Methodist Church as well as a link to a letter sent by Grove’s lead pastor, Dan Wetterstrom, to the people of both congregations of the yoked church. You may read his full letter here.

I am grateful for the greater clarity provided by the letter and by the in depth reporting, nevertheless, my primary objection remains. For the sake of a church that may come to be, Methodist officials are prepared to sacrifice a church that is. The “re-launch” of the Cottage Grove congregation will mean closing the church as it is and starting over. Current members will — eventually — be welcome to worship at the “new” church, but “Wetterstrom did say that the current members who simply want to attend worship at Cottage Grove are encouraged to wait 15 to 18 months to return.”

Why encouraged to stay away for up to eighteen months? Surely because the Methodist leadership wants to allow time to ensure that a “new” culture takes root in the church, and that the existing culture — patterns of worship, congregational leadership, social interaction — are erased. Because in their view, this culture has failed. Wetterstrom again …

The town of Cottage Grove is not a dwindling rural outpost. It is a fast-developing suburb of the Twin Cities, expected to grow in population by more than 20 percent in the next 20 years. By definition, a church in a setting like that is failing if it is not attracting any of its new neighbors.

Is failing. Cottage Grove is failing because it is not adding more people. William Willimon, a United Methodist bishop and well-known author and speaker, is cited by the Slate article …

Willimon, who has made his own similar decisions to close and relaunch struggling churches, said that accusations of age discrimination paint the church’s last remaining members as victims. But he views younger people in the community as victims, too, because they do not have a church that meets their needs. Meanwhile, he said, the United Methodist Church has effectively been subsidizing a small weekly gathering of friends.

It is hard to say otherwise than that the decision is a matter of numbers: bodies and money. The church as it is is failing because it is not attracting greater numbers and it is not “paying its own way.” Now I do understand the desire to renew and grow the church and I do appreciate the mission of the church “to make disciples of Jesus Christ” too among the many newer residents of Cottage Grove not presently served by the church. But I question the way this “re-launch” is being handled.

Current members of Cottage Grove are being invited to serve on a transition team, but they were not permitted prior consultation or vote in the decision itself. And they are being asked to stay away for eighteen months! Jim Baker, the church founder and still member of the church says …

It was a bolt from the blue, handed down from on high and very shocking to the current members. The congregation was eager and totally open to a new approach, and particularly to [the idea of] a new minister [being] appointed or to start[ing] a renewal process. But they really wanted to be included in that.

He continues …

If the policy is to go into these ‘dying’ congregations and clean them out to make way for new blood, that’s really not very kind, and I think it’s counterproductive.

“Dying” merits the quotation marks, because though the present Cottage Grove congregation is small and elderly, it is very much alive. In Baker’s words, it is “tightknit, loving, and committed.” Yes, there may come a day when it must close its doors, but in the meantime, the church is being church.

In my opinion, this is the crux of the issue: What is church? Is the church an idea, an ideal, an imagined notion of what a church in Cottage Grove “should” look like? Or is the church not an idea or an ideal, but the people, the people who are there, the people who gather week by week, worshipping God and serving each other and praying for the world? The measure of a church is not growth, but faithfulness, and my faith tells me that God honors and rewards faithfulness, that God is blessing and will bless the folks of the Cottage Grove church as it is.

And the leadership of the United Methodist Church would do well to acknowledge and honor that faithfulness, too, not so easily terminating and disregarding this faithful and beloved community, but supporting them and encouraging them and working with them to be the church God is calling them — and us — to be. Disciples will be made, not by remodeling worship spaces and updating liturgies, but by faithfulness itself in action.

For God’s Sake, Let Them Be!

For God’s Sake, Let Them Be!

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It’s hard for me to be charitable about this …

Struggling Minnesota Church Asks Older Members to Go Away

For the sake of a church that may or may not come to be, Methodist officials are prepared to sacrifice a church that is. Because? Because growth is good. Because bigger is better. Because numbers matter. “Cottage Grove is growing quickly and the church should be growing with it.”

“Should.” “Should” implies judgment. “Should” implies that if Grove United Methodist Church is not growing it has failed.

So many questions beg to be asked! What does growth mean? More people? More money? Or growing in faithfulness? Growing in love? Growing in understanding of who God is and what it means to love God?

What does church mean and what is church for? Does the church exist to aggrandize itself? Is growth, numerical growth, an end in itself, the proper mission of the church? Or does the church exist to love God and love neighbor and serve the world?

Grove United Methodist Church has not failed! The church has a regular and steady attendance of twenty-five: twenty-five men and women and children created in the image of God, twenty-five children and women and men that matter, twenty-five women and children and men that are growing in faith and in faithfulness.

For seven years, church members have been preaching week by week because Methodist officials will no longer pay for a minister. They are doing ministry — not merely an “audience” but active participants, grappling themselves with the meaning of following Jesus and leading themselves in offering God thanksgiving and praise.

And they love each other. Jon Knapp, who along with his wife Stella, are the youngest church members and only family bringing children to church says: “This church is very kind to us and our children.” Stella says that if the church “re-start” comes to fruition, if the current older members are asked to stay away while the church makes it its sole aim to attract a younger crowd, “I wouldn’t come here anymore.” Because the people she loves, the people who love her, would be gone. Because it wouldn’t be church anymore.

And because it will have failed its purpose. “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world,” the apostle Paul urged the Roman church of his day. But that is exactly what the Methodist leadership in Minneapolis has done. They have adopted the standards of this world, this economy, this culture. They have bought into the lie that bigger always means better, that institutions that are not expanding are failing, that if the population of Cottage Grove is growing, then, for God’s sake, we have to keep up.

For God’s sake — I mean this quite literally — for God’s sake, leave God’s church be! Let them be the church: loving God, loving each other, serving the world. Let them reflect not some data driven idea of what the “successful” church “should” look like, but the kind of church God intends, the church made up of the two or three, or ten or twenty-five whoevers that gather in Jesus’ name.

Jesus is there with them. He said he would be. And it just may be that when those old folks are asked to leave, Jesus may leave with them!

Chosen

Chosen

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I was invited to lead worship again this morning at the Deer Isle/Sunset Congregational Church as their pastor is out of state until Thursday. This was my sermon for this second Sunday of Christmas …

So, how many of you ever listen to EDM?  How many of you even know what EDM is?  EDM is electronic dance music, a musical genre characterized by strong rhythms, lavish electronic orchestrations, ethereal vocals, and cosmic themes.  I first heard of EDM about a year or so ago when I discovered an artist whose music I instantly liked by the name of Laura Brehm.

Laura Brehm does some beautiful singer-songwriter stuff of her own, but also regularly puts out EDM recordings in collaboration with other artists.  Just this week, I was listening again to a song she released about ten months ago with Anna Yvette and a German dance music composer and producer who goes by the name, The Fat Rat.  The song is entitled, “Chosen,” and these are the lyrics …

Greetings chosen
I’ve been waiting here for you
Since the beginning of this universe
You know the world is fading
There’s a secret power hidden in your soul
Don’t be afraid to use it
‘Cause you’re the one

You’re the one
You’re the chosen one

There are voices in your head
Saying that you’re a failure, misfit
You’re not good enough but you know
That’s not true
There is a secret power hidden in your soul
Don’t be afraid to use it
‘Cause you’re the one

You’re the one
You’re the chosen one

See what I mean about cosmic themes?

I’ve been waiting here for you
Since the beginning of this universe

The song taps into an enduring and powerful motif in our human story: the chosen one, the “reluctant hero,” the one born into a particular time and a particular place to fulfill a very particular and world-changing purpose, the one chosen but reluctant and hesitant, feeling not good enough, feeling unworthy, unready, not up to the task.

The reluctant hero must learn to accept and embrace their calling and commit themselves to a purpose much bigger than themselves.  Think of Luke Skywalker or Katniss Everdeen or young Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone.

Or think of Moses.  “I am nobody.  How can I go to the king and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  Moses was right, at partly right, because the reluctant hero is no hero at all, but simply one chosen, one chosen to fulfill a timely and vital role, not so much hero as servant, serving the plans and purposes of something far beyond themselves, or of Someone far greater than themselves.

We are waiting for such a hero, for such a servant, a chosen one who will not be too afraid to use the power planted in them to rescue this fading world.  This new year, 2020, is an election year in the United States.  Did you know that?  To be honest, I think that’s what so many of us are looking for, for one who will emerge from the crowd of career politicians and self-important candidates to claim the mantle of the one chosen for this time, one who will lead us out of our malaise and divisiveness, one who will help us reclaim our identity as a people united by higher principles and our destiny as a harbor of liberty and justice for all.

But you will not find such a candidate.  Even though some may have been anointed by their followers as the chosen one, it is simply not true.  I know that for a fact, because I know who the chosen one is.  I know who the one is we have been waiting for, the one born into this time and this place with a cosmic purpose.  It’s you.  You’re the one.  You’re the chosen one.

Or, I should say, we are.  We are the ones we have been waiting for.  We are the chosen ones: “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us.”  Do you need to hear that again?  “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us!”

How does that make you feel?  Reluctant, hesitant, not ready, not worthy?  But think of what it means!  To be chosen!  By God!  From the very beginning!  It means our lives have meaning … for this time.  Our lives have purpose … for this time.  We are called to serve God’s purpose … in this time.  We are chosen.

Being chosen means being blessed.  “In our union with Christ, God has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing.”  It’s right there on our banner: “Enjoy this life.”  We can enjoy this life because we are blessed.  Regardless of the course of our lives, regardless of any hardship or trouble or loss, we may have joy in this life because we have the blessing of being chosen by God to belong, to belong to him, to be made God’s own children in union with Christ, and “there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from God’s love which is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

But we are blessed to be a blessing.  We are chosen to fulfill a purpose, God’s own purpose.  And that’s all about the rest of our banner: protect the environment, care for the poor, forgive often, reject racism, fight for the powerless, share earthly and spiritual resources, embrace diversity, love God.   Be the church!

You see, being chosen isn’t a matter of being pulled aside from the rest of humanity to be given some seat of honor, some special status.  Being chosen is a matter of being given a task, of being offered the role of a servant.  We are chosen by God in this time and in this place … to be the church!

You’re the one.  You’re the chosen one.  There is a secret power hidden in your soul.  Don’t be afraid to use it.

Paul declares: “God made known to us the secret plan God had already decided to complete by means of Christ.”  Our secret is knowing God’s secret.  And what is God’s secret plan?  God’s secret plan is “to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head.”

But why is it a secret?  Because no one would guess it.  So much of human history, so much of our own history, is about pulling things down and tearing things apart, about getting ahead of them, about protecting ourselves from them, about overcoming, about defeating, about separating the good from the bad, friend from enemy, mine from yours.  Who would guess that God’s plan is not about any victory of God’s people over their enemies, not about separating sheep from goats, but about bringing sheep and goats together, about bringing all creation together? 

This is what we are chosen for.  In union with Christ, we are chosen for this time and in this place to play our part in Christ’s task of bringing all creation together.  Every time we share what we have, every time we care for a neighbor, every time we forgive our enemies and pray for our enemies and love our enemies, every time we embrace a stranger, every time we do whatever we can to heal the earth’s wounds and nurture its health, every time we refuse to divide people into us and them, we fulfill our calling.

But every time we divide the world into us and them, every time we judge and condemn, every time we are care-less with what we have and with our earthly home, every time we refuse to share not only what we have but also who we are, we betray our calling, we work in direct opposition to God’s purpose which is to bring all creation together.

Sometimes I wonder …  If we just read our Bibles, if we just listened carefully: “God has chosen us to be his in union with Christ … and has made known to us his plan to bring all creation together.”  If we just listened …  Would we still be so divided: evangelicals from progressives, conservatives from liberals, evangelicals divided among themselves, Methodists divided among themselves?  Would we still argue about what it is that matters most?  Just listen!  Jesus already told us what matters most.  Jesus already told us the key to bringing all creation together: “Love God with all your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbor, just as you love yourself.”

It’s that clear.  It’s that simple.  And when we try to make it more complicated, when we are divided even among ourselves, we fail our calling, we fail to be the church.

You’re the one.  You’re the chosen one.  You know the world is fading, but there’s a secret power hidden in your soul.  Don’t be afraid to use it, ’cause you’re the one.  You are chosen by God for times like these.  Embrace your calling!  Be the church!  We are the ones we have been waiting for!

Mary and Joseph, Herod the Nut, and you

Mary and Joseph, Herod the Nut, and you

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Sermon preached this morning, December 29, at the Deer Isle/Sunset Congregational Church, UCC, a reworking of a sermon first preached nine years ago in Waterloo …

Oh God, help me.  I see her as mine only, and I’m not what she thinks …

That’s Joseph, praying to God about his relationship with Mary, in a play written by William Gibson.  Almost ten years ago, the church I pastored in Waterloo, Iowa, staged Gibson’s Christmas play, titled “The Butterfingers Angel.”  You may know of Gibson as the author of another play, “The Miracle Worker,” based on the life of Helen Keller.  In “Butterfingers Angel,” Joseph prays …

Oh God, help me.  I see her as mine only, and I’m not what she thinks, I’m not strong, only you know what a weakling you made me, envious of men and frightened of women and not good, only you know how evil, and even the love she counts on is more of my self than of her.  God, help me to be what she thinks I am.

Now you won’t find that prayer in the Bible, but this is Joseph as Gibson imagines him.  Actually, Gibson’s imagination goes into overdrive in this play.  Its full title is “The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, & The Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree.”  That’s a mouthful!  And, yes, in the play you will find Joseph and exactly twelve Christmas carols and a pear tree and a nutty, crazy Herod … and Mary.  This is what Mary prays when she hears from the angel that she is going to have a baby …

Oh God, let him be healthy and happy, I don’t care if he’s all that special or even a girl, just let me deserve this baby!  … Did I say that? 

This is a different sort of Christmas play with a different sort of Mary and Joseph, a Mary and Joseph unsure of themselves, full of longing and doubt, needy, needy of love, but afraid of love, too, wanting to do the right thing, or at least wanting to want to do the right thing, but unsure of themselves, still stumbling and imperfect in their attempts to do the right thing, still hesitant and imperfect in their attempts to show love.  In other words, a Mary and Joseph like you and like me.

That’s what I so much enjoyed as I watched this play nine years ago — Mary and Joseph are like us!  Is this what they were really like?  Who knows?  The Bible gives us little detail about their personal lives because it’s not their story.  But they have to be like us, don’t they?  In some way, Mary and Joseph have to be like us.

Retellings of the Christmas story that portray Mary and Joseph as larger than life, solemn and sure and saintly, really do us a disservice, because then they are larger than life, because then the blessings that came to them could never come to us, and the parts they played in the unfolding of the drama of salvation could never be played by the likes of us.

The Joseph and Mary of “Butterfingers Angel” are not the real Joseph and Mary, but they are real, and in that respect this is a faithful retelling of the story, because Joseph and Mary were real.  In the face of what they could not fully understand, in the face of an uncertain and unpredictable future, in the face of their own weaknesses and doubts and human frailty, they said “Yes” to God, and so provided a place for Jesus.  They provided a place for Jesus to be among us.

And we can, too.  When we say, “Yes” to God, we are like Mary, we are like Joseph, providing a place for Jesus to be among us, to be among us here in the midst of our lives as they are: broken and beautiful, stumbling and imperfect, filled with doubt and with hope.

There is another element in “Butterfingers Angel” that is rather unusual for a Christmas play.  In the midst of the drollery and the banter, the silliness and the light-heartedness, there is an ever present undercurrent of evil — evil, in and around and about, taking different forms, looking out from different faces, but always there, always lurking, always with a stake in the events that unfold.

How many times have you seen a Herod figure in a nativity scene?  But Herod belongs there!  Herod is part of the story!

When we tell the story, we tend to focus on singing angels and happy shepherds and adoring wise men.  But remember, Luke includes shepherds in his story because they were poor, and Matthew includes visitors from the east in his story because they were from the east, because they were foreigners, Gentiles, outsiders.  Our Bible purposefully tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a way that reminds us that Jesus comes for the sake of the poor and for the sake of the stranger.  Jesus comes for the sake of the poor and for the sake of the outsider.  Jesus comes for them.

And angels?  What are we to make of singing angels?  Not much.  Not too much.  Angels are simply messengers, bearers of God’s good news.

But Herod was there, too, and evil was there, too, a part of Jesus’ story from the beginning.  From the beginning there was resistance to Jesus’ purpose, from the beginning there was opposition to the good news he came to bring, from the beginning there was a determination to sabotage everything he came to accomplish, from the beginning and for the duration of Jesus’ life.

You’ll find this hostility in Jewish kings and Roman procurators, in conservative Pharisees and liberal Sadducees, in rich folks who cannot let go of what they have and fearful folks who cannot let go of what they’ve always believed or always been led to believe.

You’ll find it in Herod.  But the evil is bigger than Herod and all the rest.  Herod is victim as well as villain, pushed and pulled and used by powers far beyond his own.

Paul put it this way in one of his letters: “We are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age.”  We are not up against Herod, but up against the cosmic powers that work through Herod.

Now, to be clear, I am not talking here about demons or about Satan.  I am talking about the powerful forces that surround us and seduce us and insinuate themselves into us, hardening our hearts and twisting our minds, powerful forces that push us and pull us and bring us and those near to us to grief.

I am talking about greed and envy and pride, anger and apathy and untamed desire.

I am talking about suspicion and prejudice and narcissism and disdain.

I am talking about lovelessness and carelessness and corruption and deceit.

I am talking about … sin.

Sin has a powerful hold on us, on all of humanity, and, from the beginning, sin saw Jesus as a threat to its power, so sin did its best to get him out of the way.  Sin hounded Jesus all his life — defying him, tempting him, trying to trap him, attacking him, grieving him — and, in the end, sin had its way with him.  In the end, sin succeeded in getting Jesus out of the way.  Didn’t it?

Or is there more story to tell?

But here, at the story’s beginning, it is good to remember Herod.  Otherwise, we might be tempted to think of Jesus’ birth and his life as a beautiful and wonderful gesture from God that somehow went wrong, that somehow didn’t work out the way God intended.  But, from the beginning, Jesus came to stare down and stand up to the cosmic powers of this dark age.  From the beginning, Jesus came to challenge the forces that hold us in their tight grasp.

From the beginning, Jesus came to set us free!  Joseph was told to name him “Jesus,” because “he will save his people from their sins.”  Because he will set us free from our bondage to hatred and greed and lust for power.  Because he will set us free from our subservience to fear and pride and self-preservation.  We are enslaved, we are in chains, we are lost, lost in the darkness of our own aimlessness and sin, but Jesus comes to lead us out of darkness.

Gibson’s play ends with Herod and his soldiers combing the streets of Bethlehem, searching out all the infant boys to put them to death.  Oh, the horror!  But it is an equal horror that innocent men and women and children still must forfeit their lives as the price to keep powerful people in power.

Jesus escaped the slaughter then because Joseph and Mary took him and fled to Egypt.  Matthew seizes on this detail, reminding us: “This was done to make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet, ‘I called my Son out of Egypt.’”

The prophet Matthew cites was Hosea, Hosea remembering the Lord calling Israel out of Egypt as a beloved child.  Because the Lord heard the cries of the people of Israel and saw their suffering, because the Lord loved them, the Lord called them out of Egypt, making them his own and setting them free from their slavery, setting them free for a life lived in communion with him.

Matthew wants us to know that Jesus was called out of Egypt, too, because God is bringing his people out of Egypt again, because Jesus is like a new Moses, faithfully serving God by leading his people, all God’s people, all people, out of slavery, setting us free from the powerful forces that push us and pull us and destroy life, setting us free for a life lived in communion with God, a life of love, a life of peace, a life of shalom.

This is the Christmas story and this is its meaning for us.  We provide a place for Jesus to come among us, to come among us in the midst of our humanness, in the midst of our uncertainty and frailty and brokenness, to come among us to heal us, to fight for us, to break sin’s hold on us, to make us new, to make of us a new people of God, a people formed by love not fear, by generosity not greed, by faith not despair, a people no more divided by class or gender or race or position, a people no more clinging to idols of money or social status or military might, but a people clinging to God, a people in love with God, a people who bring God delight and a people to whom God brings joy.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!  Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth …

Peace on earth to all those with whom God is pleased.  Peace on earth to all those whom God loves.  Peace to you.

Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

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The Bagaduce Chorale, a seventy-five voice regional choir of which I am a member, presented a Christmas concert this past weekend. We performed Friday night and Saturday afternoon at First Congregational Church in Blue Hill and Sunday afternoon at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor. Here is the program …