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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.

Signs and wonders

Signs and wonders

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Sermon preached May 12 at the Deer Isle/Sunset Congregational Church, UCC …

Oh, my!  That’s what I said to myself when I saw that this was the lectionary text for this Sunday.  Oh, my!

Peter said, “Get up,” to the dead woman … and she did.

Oh, my!  What are we going to do with this?

There are two rather easy things to do with this, two things that a lot of us do with this.  For some Christians, this story and others like it are proof positive that we too should have, and actually do have, the power to work miracles if we would only use it.  The only reason, they suggest, that we do not see more miracles ourselves is that we do not ask.  Whatever we ask, whatever we command, in Jesus’ name, shall be done.  If we had enough faith, we too could heal the sick and raise the dead.

If we had enough faith.  If I had enough faith.

So does that mean that if I pray for my sick friend and she only gets worse, or if I pray for God to heal my dying neighbor and then he dies, does that mean that I didn’t have enough faith?  That I didn’t pray in the right way?  That I am somehow spiritually deficient?

No!  Absolutely not!  That’s the problem with this all too simplistic reading of the story.  It puts the focus on me — my adequacy, my strength, my spiritual acumen — instead of on God, on God’s goodness and God’s grace.  It becomes more about manipulating God to do what I want than about trusting myself and those I love to God’s powerful love and God’s gracious intent.

And the tragedy is, rather than bringing comfort to a grieving spouse or child or friend, putting this unrealistic expectation onto them only adds guilt and shame on top of the unbearable pain that is already there.  Now not only is the one they love dying, but it is somehow their own fault because if they had enough faith, they could save them.

People get sick and people die, not because either they or we failed, not because either they or we lacked faith, but because it is a fact of our existence.  God is not cruelly waiting and watching to see if we will say the right words in the right way with enough belief, but instead God is sharing our grief, bearing our pain, coming to where we are, coming to be with us in the valley of the shadow of death.

The second all too easy response to this story is simply to dismiss it altogether as an elaboration, an embellishment, a fable told to bolster the apostles’ reputations.  It just didn’t happen, because it can’t happen.

It can’t?  The God in whom I put my trust and my hope raised Jesus Christ from death!  The God in whom I put my trust and my hope spoke the worlds into existence and gave me life!  All that we are and all we have and all that we will be is gift, God’s gift.  Would you want to put your faith in a God incapable of bringing life out of death, a God incapable of bringing anything to life, a God powerless to do or change anything?

No, it’s not about magic or spiritual prestidigitation, but it is about miracle, about the miracle of life that is and life that will be, the miracle that there is life at all, that there is a world at all, the miracle that you and I are here today living and breathing, capable of knowing and loving each other, capable of knowing and loving the God who made us, capable of living in this world with purpose and with faithfulness and with hope.

No, I don’t like either of these two easy answers.  But what if, rather than rushing to judge this story with our own preconceived assumptions and biases, we let the story speak for itself?  What is its meaning, its purpose, in its own context?  Why is it included as part of the gospel record?

The story of raising Dorcas is intended to be a sign, a sign that Peter’s message about Jesus — Jesus the healer, Jesus our resurrected savior — is real.  It is a sign that what Peter is saying and doing comes from God, just as what Jesus said and did came from God.

You may know that Acts is actually part II of a longer book.  Part I is the gospel of Luke.  Part I, Luke’s gospel, tells Jesus’ story, the story of the one sent by God to “proclaim good news to the poor” and to announce “that the time has come for God to save his people.”  Luke’s Jesus tells stories of God seeking out lost ones, ones overlooked and discounted by everybody else, and Luke’s Jesus himself seeks out such ones, welcoming them and healing them and saving them.

Part II of the book, Acts, tells the stories of Jesus’ followers as they continue his mission of welcoming and healing and forgiving and saving.  Jesus is still alive, still at work, in them.

The story in Acts of Peter raising Dorcas echoes the story in Luke of Jesus raising the son of a widow.  When people saw Jesus raise the widow’s son, they exclaimed: “A great prophet has appeared among us!  God has come to save his people!”  The miracle is a sign, a sign to them that God has come near, a sign that God is on the move.  In the same way, raising Dorcas is a sign, not just to those who witnessed it, but to the readers of Acts and now also to us, a sign that God has come near, that God is still on the move in and among us.

But it’s more than that.  Raising Dorcas is not just about Peter, not just a sign that God is with him.  It’s about Dorcas, a sign that her life matters.  Her life, this life, matters.  The ministry of Peter and the other apostles, just like the ministry of Jesus, reveals God’s investment in our lives as they, in we human beings as we are, made in God’s image, but also made of earth, of dust, of ground.

This life matters!  This body matters!  Why else would Jesus give sight to blind people or heal lame people or feed hungry people?  Just to show off?  It’s about bringing life, fullness of life, to all God’s creatures, to all God’s dear ones.  God desires shalom for us, for all of us: wholeness of life, fullness of life, goodness of life, here and now.

Peter is a sign of what God is up to, but so is Dorcas.  Dorcas is a sign!  Dorcas is a wonder!  “She spent all her time doing good and helping the poor.”  She was busy, all the time, doing God’s work, making shalom, loving widows by clothing their bodies, making the lives of people at risk better.  She didn’t urge them to wait and pray for the life to come; she did all she could to make their lives better here and now.

Peter saw that.  He saw the widows’ grief, saw the shirts and coats Dorcas had made for them, and he felt pity, pity for their loss of the one who cared for them, just as Jesus felt pity for the widow who lost her sole means of support when her son died.  Raising Dorcas is a sign that her life and her ministry matter to God.  Raising Dorcas is a sign that the lives of the widows who depended on her matter to God.  And raising Dorcas is a sign that the power of resurrection is at work here and now among us.

The power of resurrection is at work.  Do you see it?  Resurrection is not some guarantee of a future life some day somewhere else.  Resurrection is a sign of God’s investment in this life, here and now, of God working to heal, redeem, reconcile, lift up, make right, make better, bring life here and now.

I don’t get excited about heaven.  I get excited about resurrection, about believing that God can bring dead things to life, that God can bring the dead things in me to life, that God can bring to life the dead things in this world — people and nations divided against each other, people without food, people without purpose, people without love.

This is our hope: that one day God will make all things new.  And this is our hope, too: that that work has already begun.

Dorcas was a sign, a sign of the power of resurrection at work, and my mother was a sign.  I am remembering my mother on this Mother’s Day.  She died not quite a year ago, on May 21, in Iowa.  Last July, we held a memorial service at St. Francis by the Sea Episcopal Church in Blue Hill, her church, and afterwards my sister and brother and I along with members of our families spread her ashes on Blue Hill Bay just as we had my father’s ashes seventeen years before.

My mother was a wonder.  She didn’t make clothes, she made music.  For many years, she served as a church choir director.  I sang for her, in a high school youth choir, and later as a young adult.

She was a competent, well-trained musician, but for her, and for us because of her, music was about passion, about connecting both singers and congregation to the meaning and emotion of the music.  Music was a means of proclaiming the gospel and a means of embodying the gospel, embodying (quite literally expressing with our bodies!) the joy and hope and wonder of the gospel.  We sang for her, not just with our voices, but with our whole selves, because we understood from her that we were not singing for her, but for God.

My mother was a wonder and a sign.  She was raised in a very conservative Christian and Missionary Alliance church, taught a faith focussed mostly on don’t’s: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t gamble, don’t dance, don’t go to movies, don’t play cards … you get the drift!  She married my father, himself raised in a family of non-church-goers, but whose faith in Jesus was birthed through the campus ministry of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship while he was an undergraduate at Michigan State University.  During their life together, they were members of a whole variety of churches — Presbyterian and Baptist, independent and Congregational, finally settling down in the Episcopal Church.

They moved from what would be commonly labeled an “evangelical” expression of faith to a more “progressive” expression of faith, but labels do not tell their story, cannot tell their story.  Their faith didn’t change, rather it grew.  They never abandoned the fire of their first love, the evangelical fire of love for God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength,.  They simply came to understand in new ways, deeper ways, wider ways, the implications of that love and of God’s call to love their neighbors as God loves their neighbors, all of them, each of them.  Faith for my mother and my father was always about righteousness and justice and love, but as their faith grew, it became more and more and more about grace.

Mom was raised a Nixon/Goldwater Republican, but her faith and what she saw through the eyes of her faith changed her.  She saw prejudice and discrimination and white privilege.  She saw abuse of power and disregard for the “other” and disregard for the earth and she became a civil rights activist and an environmental activist and a strong defender of her lesbian daughter.

My mother was a wonder and a sign, a sign that the power of resurrection is at work among us, changing our minds, changing our hearts, bringing to life the dead things in us, leading us from a life of “don’t’s” to a life of “do’s,” calling us into a life that brings life, a life not of judgment, but of blessing.

Dorcas was a wonder.  My mother was a wonder.  And you are a wonder.

You are!  You are a wonder — God’s breath, God’s spirit, is manifested in you as in no other.  You are a wonder and you are called to be a sign, a sign that the power of resurrection is at work among us.  Your words can heal.  Your touch can heal.  Your service can heal.  You are called to sing and to dance, to love and to serve, to feed and to clothe, to make justice and to make peace, and by all of it to show that God is near, that God is up to something, that God is still in the business of bringing things, bringing people, to life …