Fruit that Lasts.

Sermon John 15:9-17 May 6, 2018 Easter 6B

Fruit that Lasts.

Last month was science fair month in many of the local schools. Charlie worked on a project about fruit. He wanted to know how long fruit lasts. More accurately he wanted to what lasted longer-whole fruit or cut up fruit.

How long fruits lasts is an important question if you pack your lunch for school or work. It is also an important question if you buy fruit from the store. Stocking up on tons of bananas when there is only one person in the house that eats bananas would not be wise if they all rot before they can be eaten.

It’s helpful to know how long fruit lasts and how long anything lasts.

Here in the gospel of John, Jesus is talking to his disciples and to a whole crowd of followers. He wants to give his final thoughts on how they should be living after he goes away.

When I hear Jesus talking to his disciples like this it reminds me of my dad. It reminds me of my grandfather. It reminds me of a teacher from long ago. It also reminds me of my pastor-who really wanted me to understand how to live out this amazing faith that gripped me and made me so in love with Jesus. He really wanted me to grasp what it meant to live in abiding love.

Have any of you ever thought on those words of Jesus-abide in my love?

It sounds a lot like something that happens when tow people marry.

It sounds a lot like this: marriage is not the culmination of love, but only the beginning.

Love remains and deepens, but its form changes. Or, more accurately, it renews itself in a different way. Less and less does it draw its waters from the old springs of romance, and you should not worry if over time these dimensions fade or are seen less frequently. More and more, love draws its replenishment from love itself: from the practice of conscious love, expressed in your mutual servanthood to one another. . . .

It will transform your lives and through its power in your own lives will reach out to touch the world. . . . But how to stay in touch with that power? At those times when stress mounts and romance seems far away, how do you practice that conscious love that will renew itself and renew your relationship? . . . CAC core faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault

Those words are beautiful and they are words to seek to live by.

But, if we always use these beautiful words of Jesus about abiding in his love as they relate to girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives, we might never get the idea that these words of abiding in his love about you and me and the church and everyone outside the church. 

Jesus says abide in my love because that’s the only way to be able to be consistent in love. It’s the only way to have the strength of love when we are angry and when we are crazy excited. Love in the way Jesus tells us here is not a feeling but an action. “Love seeks the well-being of others and is expressed in concrete efforts on their behalf. Thus love can be commanded.”

Love is not about us, but about the other.

It is about the surrender of our will.

It is about the giving in to God and the giving up of things that would be obstacles to another’s receipt of love.

Regardless of how we feel we move forward and show love towards another.

That’s why Jesus can say to us that our joy may be complete. The unity of the love of Christ within us makes it possible to move our way into new relationships, to strengthen old ones and sustain the ones we have now-all these leads to joy made complete.

Love is shown in ways of doing that are not always noticed as love when it comes to teaching responsibility, or saying no, or using time out. Love comes in ways that are difficult when we walk with someone through disease, illness or loss. Love is really challenging when those we love go a different way from what had hoped for them.

Henri Nouwen writes, “If we wait for a feeling of love before loving, we may never learn to love well…Mostly we know what the loving thing to do is. When we ‘do love’, even if others are not able to respond with love, we will discover that our feelings catch up with our acts.’ Joy complete!

Jesus reminds these amazing followers that they are his friends. It is so important to have friends. Jesus also reminds them that he is the one who chose them. It is so terrific when we discover someone who wants to be our friend. We have the choice to receive the gift of their friendship or turn on our heels and walk away. We have the extreme gift of the power of God’s love in us to choose friendships as he chose us-undergirded with genuine love.

How often have we gone out of our way to seek new friendship or sustain the current ones?

Are we tired?

Are we too busy?

Are we just exhausted from even the idea of one more task, esp. talking to someone?

And yet, Jesus points out that it is through his initiative that these friendships exist.

Perhaps that is our main lesson about fruit that lasts.

Perhaps, we are reminded again through the words of Jesus to abide with him and seek out others to share his love. 

Yes, that’s it. 

Abide in Jesus, 

do love, 

seek friends, 

and so our joy is complete.

The science experiment shows us how fruit lasts. 

Thank you, Charlie. 

Cut up fruit doesn’t last. 

Whole fruit such as bananas and strawberries last longest when they are kept in the bunch or on the vine. 

And mostly, we know it lasts best when it is shared. Amen.

Dramatic Crops!

Sermon Mark 4:1-10; 14-20 April 22, 2018 Earth Day Dramatic Reading of the Sower and the Seed.

Dramatic Crops!

Please take a moment and thank the youth choir for bringing the Word of God to you through dramatic interpretation.

One thing that has always surprised me when I’ve read or listened to this parable from Jesus, is how entertaining it is. It is dramatic. It is understandable. It is always intriguing.

I’ve recently been wondering about the predicament the seed faces as it lands on a variety of soils, rocks, and harsh conditions. Perhaps, the variety of conditions that seed falls to are about the variety of circumstances all humans encounter in their journey of faith.  

Jesus is telling the listeners of this parable about the ways the Good News of God is received. Think about your faith journey for a moment. Is it possible to relate to each of these ‘soil’ situations?

I can guess that those wonderful seeds of good news have fallen on the path, the rocks, among the weeds and on fertile soil in the measure of one day of my life.

Jesus said the seed fallen on the path has no chance because evil snatched it up.

There are times when we hear God’s Word but it goes in one ear and out the other. We would rather get caught up in gossip, or name calling, than obey the voice of good news. We would rather steal joy from someone else by acting out or screaming or cursing or losing control of the faith God has put in us-in those moments-evil has snatched us up as a bird snatches seed from the path.  

No matter how mercy filled the Good News of God is as it comes to us, we are unable to open up to it, and we miss the blessing God has for us. Living in integrity that means so much to us has been stolen so quickly.

Betraying behavior, bullying, and dishonesty don’t just seep into our lives it enters so quickly we are almost unaware that who we are as a child of God in those moments is about to be stolen away. Evil has acted and we are taken by surprise.

Jesus said the seed that fell on rocky soil hears God’s Word is filled with joy but then shrivels under pressure.

There are times when we are filled with the joy and wonder and delight of the good news of God. But, disaster strikes us. Illness comes upon us. Friends die. Tornadoes destroy homes. We fail exams. We lose our jobs. We don’t have enough money. Divorce happens. School shootings happen. Factories shut down. Car accidents happen. It as if the bad things are beating down anything that could be good news and all the joy of God is shriveled up in us and we cannot find a way to respond with our faith.

It can be so hard to when we seek to share joy and all around us is dismal moments. These, I believe are the most challenging times. The troubles of the world and of our lives would crush our faith if we allow them to. We know however, the wonder and joy of the continuous presence of God is strong and powerful within us to create the resilience to endure and overcome. Faith expressing itself through love brings us through. The only thing that counts is faith working through love. Galatians 5:6

The seeds falling among the thorns is probably the easiest of our moments to recognize. The times our ambition took the front seat pushing aside any good will, or grace in relationships. When our desire for success caused us to drop our lifelong friends in order to be with the cool crowd. Even in retirement we can let the thorns take hold of our faith. We can become so obsessed with our earnings and our financial outcomes that we lose sight of the power of God to sustain us through all times. We find ourselves choked of any joy of good news of God because we miser our time and talents for fear of losing them. Yet. Jesus is the one who has offered us incredible promises of talents in abundance as long as we use them.

Finally, the seed that falls among fertile soil can only grow and be fruitful. When our lives are filled with the presence of God. When every breath we take is aware of the beautiful, the noble, and the sacred, we learn happiness and discover creativity and joy.

Do we take time to be aware of what surrounds us each day? Do we have time for any of these in the seconds of our days? 

How will you honor the Creation and the earth we have around  us? Take ten seconds, I’ll watch the time.

Go, with good news and scatter the seeds everywhere. Amen.

Resources: NIB Mark. 

Light of Love

Sermon Luke 1:26-38 December 24, 2017 Advent 4

Light of Love

Last Sunday we spent our worship experience focused on the story of the birth of Jesus through the Christmas program. The children and the choir shared the news words and music. Our hope was renewed as we witnessed our children participating in the promise of God. It was truly a light of joy.

Today on the fourth Sunday of Advent we spend time reflecting on the words of Mary as she encounters the angel Gabriel. I find myself pondering on the moment of discovery for Mary.

What is it like for us in those moments of surprise?

When the unexpected comes to us?

When the derailment of our plans and our dreams occurs, what is our response?

When we are left vulnerable to our family’s opinions, cultural expectations, and the views of the world, how do we react?

Are we aware of the presence of holiness when it appears?

There is quite a lot for us to ponder on this fourth Sunday of Advent.

God does enter into ordinary lives in ordinary ways. The angel called Mary highly favored. There was nothing in Mary’s life that would have been considered as something to be highly favored. She was poor. She lived in a town that people said nothing good comes from Nazareth. She was engaged to be married to a carpenter not a statesman or a wealthy, famous person.

God does enter into a real place in time and space. 

God breaks from heaven and begins dwelling among us in the most vulnerable way. 

Life and death hang in the balance for many a mother and child. 

Pregnancy and child birth are still to this day challenging. To conceive for some is without a thought and for others a time of great disappointment, despair, and grief. 

There are so many women who have suffered in silence as one pregnancy after another is lost and the hoped for infant returns to heaven. 

Women in childbirth are still at risk even with the best doctors and equipment available. There were safer ways for God to come to us to be among us than through this risky means.

And yet, in a little town, in a little house, with a young girl, we witness something new, something that changes our lives forever.

Mary heard the words of the angel and knew that God had come to her. Holiness had invaded her space. Holiness had come.

She asked the angel Gabriel, “How can this be?” We don’t have the opportunity for tone or inflection so we have to guess. We wonder if she is afraid, or if she was incensed, or confused, or just pondering the logic of what the angel is telling her. 

She talks with the messenger of God! She is not a silent bystander. She gets involved with the work of God within her. She becomes a partner with God in this process of redemption.

 Her response to the angel is so amazing. “May it be as you say, here am I the servant of the Lord,” is not a passive resignation for God or anyone else to do what they want with us. But, it is a response of commitment and participation with the work of God in this world.

Imagine if we too heard the word of God through the angels who visit us. Imagine if we too took a stand with God and said, “May it be as you say, here am I”.

Mary as we read further in Scripture sang a song which we now call the Magnificat. 

It was a song of liberation, a song of reversals, a song of resistance and even rebellion. 

Mary took her role as the mother of God in strength and in resilience. 

She had the resolve to follow through with whatever was to come. She had the ability to stand with a task that was contrary to the current culture. She stood firm in her faith as she faced the possibility of death. She stood firm in her faith when her son grew and took the risk of death upon himself. She stood firm in her faith as she sat at the foot of the cross and watched her son die. She stood firm in her faith even as she was cared for by others in her old age.

It is so hard for us as people of faith to figure out what God is calling us to do. 

We agonize over the call God has placed on us. We wonder if we are really doing what God has asked us to do. We agonize wondering if God really loves us. Are we worthy?

 Are we doing the right thing?

And then once again the story of Mary reminds us that God has not abandoned us. 

God chose to enter the human race by means of the human race. 

God’s creation so destroyed and distorted by acts of violence upon the earth, the creatures and each other could have been destroyed in the same breath by which it was created. But, somehow God looked upon everything there and burst forth in love. 

The Light of Love chose to push through all the depravity, sin, corruption, and discord to wash it all pure again beginning with waters of the womb. Our being drawn to the Light of Love is a rebirth in the same way.

God has sent angel messengers to us to announce that we too have received the power of God through his son born to us today. Let us say yes, let it be as you say, here am I your servant. Amen. 

A Place for Joseph

Sermon Matthew 1:18-25 December 11, 2016 Advent 3A

A Place for Joseph

Often life gets in the way of our perfect dreams.

We hope for order.

We seek peace.

We yearn for love.

We desire joy.

We want a place to call our own.

We want a place that offers us opportunity.

We want a place that provides us space for our perfect dreams to come true.

More often than not our place is found in the unexpected.

Our dreams are met through imperfection.

When we think about Joseph,

the one engaged to Mary,

we wonder what place he had in the story of Jesus our Savior.

Where does he fit into the narrative of Emmanuel, God with us?

We struggle to answer the question of who he is.

When we talk to our children about him as we put the nativity pieces together, we stumble over our words, “He’s, umm, he’s uhh, well, he’s Jesus’ earthly dad.” “He is the one who raised Jesus and taught him all he needed growing up.”

But, there is more to Joseph than this.

There is much more to tell about him as we listen to the words from the gospel of Matthew. Joseph is probably the one in the nativity who is given the least attention. He is the one who we rarely talk about as we go through Advent and Christmas.

And he is the one who does not have much place in our conversations about faith and life and salvation.

Joseph, we read, is a righteous man from the house of David.

He knows his family story and his family name and has lived his life accordingly. He is an upstanding citizen known in the community and is a fine carpenter. He is engaged to a beautiful young woman named Mary. He is a man of faith. He has been raised in the faith, gone to school to learn the Word of God, publicly professed his adherence to the Law of God and has lived a righteous life.

His life has followed the ‘proper order’ and it appears he has a future where his perfect dreams will come true.

And yet, as we learn from scripture the life of Joseph and his perfect dreams, becomes anything less than perfect. There is a huge cloud of trouble that descends on this sweet couple.

Thanks to the artists of old we have a painted picture of perfection in our minds of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Yet, the birth of Jesus was anything but idyllic.

As a matter of fact, Jesus was born into a family that was subject to scandal, gossip and disgrace.

This couple found themselves torn and in turmoil.

Joseph was caught in a crisis!

The relationship of Joseph and Mary was at stake.

His fiancé was with child and he was not the father!

All honor, faith, and righteousness disappeared in the announcement of this impending birth.

Every dream Joseph had was immediately dashed.

Joseph was caught in the midst of a very messy family drama (and we all know what that’s like) and there appeared to be only one way to handle this mess.

Being a righteous and honorable man Joseph realized he only had two choices according to his faith. -He could break the engagement, dismiss Mary and send her away in quiet disgrace.  -Or he could also implement the Law and have her publicly accused of wrong doing and have her stoned to death.

Either way, his choices were honorable, and righteously just. It was crucial for the sake of the family and the a descendant of David to follow the rules, to maintain his place in his family and society.

We still live like that today. (And that’s a good thing) We still want to maintain honor and dignity and follow the rules. We want to live lives of integrity and maintain our places in society and our families.

Yet, we know that life is messy.

Families are anything but perfect.

There is always drama, turmoil and crises.

I find it reassuring that our Savior was born in real life, flesh and blood circumstances. Jesus was born into real and honest family relationship crises.

Can you imagine what the parents of Mary and Joseph were saying?

What I appreciate most about our Father God is that he loved us so much that becoming one of us meant becoming part of the mess! God came into the midst of real life drama, suffering, scandal, gossip, and relationship struggle.

Joseph makes a choice of his place in this salvation story of God by hearing the word of the angel and doing the unthinkable.

Before Jesus turned the tables and the world upside down,

Joseph turns the tables of what doing right is all about.

His actions were the beginning of an upside down world of grace!

Caught in the tension of the Law and the command from God, Joseph moves from doing what is right to doing the right thing.

Sometimes grace is counter to justice.

Sometimes grace is contrary to righteous rules.

Sometimes grace is converse to accepted traditions.

Sometimes grace is clashing the proper order.

And all the time grace breaks through the messy,

the crises,

the tension,

the expectations,

the perfections,

and dumps out love,

pours out compassion, interrupts the norm, offers the unexpected, gathers the lost, unites the lonely, brings together the broken, and lifts up the outcast.

Joseph makes the intentional choice of love to be a husband and a father despite all the oppositions around him. Without this most unusual offering of Joseph, the holy family might not have been as we know it today. Perhaps the words we hear from Jesus about love and grace were first heard while he sat on the knee of his earthly father Joseph.

As we look at our nativities we can look at the place for Joseph as one of great love and grace. May we be as willing in our place to hear the words of the angels and allow God to enter into our messes. May we be willing to be the ones who offer grace all the time. Amen.

Celebration!

Sermon 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Psalm 16:5-11 August 2, 2015 Ordinary time

Celebration!

We say on the Sundays when we share the Lord’s Supper that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Have you ever wondered what celebrate means? We’re here this Sunday ready to gather at this Lord’s Table as we do once a month and so I wonder again, ‘How can we celebrate little pieces of bread and a small taste of juice?’

What does the word mean and how in the world do we do that?

I believe celebration begins with joy.

1.  Chara which is the Greek which means: joy, gladness
1. the joy received from you
2. the cause or occasion of joy
1. of persons who are one's joy

(While in Greece this summer I realized all my seminary training of Baby Bible Greek wasn’t a match for modern Greek. I had no clue what people were saying and when I thought I understood something said or read I was way off. I kept hearing people saying, ‘Kaliméra’ as they greeted one another and I thought they were talking about squid (calamari) not, ‘good morning.’ Kalos in Greek means good and imera is day. Good morning, good day, is the greeting people share with each other.)

Joy is something that God wants us to experience through God’s love for us.

Joy is a song of confidence, a song of wonder and a song of assurance.

Listen again to the words of the psalmist in Psalm 16, “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot…I keep the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved, Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body rests secure…in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures forever more.” The psalmist reflects on the story of his life and chooses to praise God for all of his life. He rejoices because of his confidence in God’s presence and because he recognizes God’s presence he rejoices.  

When we enter into God’s courts and into worship we enter with praise. We enter to come to worship God and offer ourselves to God for this one hour a week. In his ‘Wishful Thinking’ book Frederick Buechner says, “To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it.

One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done-run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on.

The other way is to do things for him that you need to do-sing songs for him,

create beautiful things for him,

give things up for him,

tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart,

in general rejoice in him

and make a fool of yourself for him

the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”

While we sing and pray and do foolish things for God something happens to us.

We become open to the power of the Spirit to change us,

to fill us

and to move our hearts

into new directions.

Our hearts get that feeling of joy inside,

a deep sense of confidence that in all things God will be with us

and somehow that is enough.

I have just returned from a month of extraordinary joy.

A dream of visiting the country of Greece has finally been realized.

Taking time to be fully engaged with the one God gave me in marriage and to be foolish together with the things we love to do as sailors reminded me again of what it means to give oneself over to another.

That is what God wants from us!

God wants us to be fully engaged with the life God has given us.

God wants us to be fully wrapped up in the grace poured out upon us through the love of Jesus Christ.

It is a love so powerful that it has turned the world upside down and will continue to do so. Crazy love is one way to look at our relationship with God. And that is something to celebrate!

·         

      And when we gather for the Lord’s Supper it is in the spirit of joy, the spirit of that crazy love for God and that foolishness of the cross of God’s love for us that we partake.

·         Our taking part in the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation.

It is an announcement.

It is a declaration.

We tell the story of Christ and it is no longer a story of two thousand years ago it is a story of today.

It is our story of God’s love for us today that we carry into tomorrow.

Those little pieces of bread that we break off the loaf or are already cut for us into nice bite size shapes are our remembering.

Christ said his body is given for us.

Our bodies are members of Christ.

In the Lord’s Supper we receive our identity

as belonging to Christ and to one another.

In this identity we live our lives, we live our stories.

We can live our stories in a way of infectious zeal,

in way of sound confidence,

in a way of incredible joy,

in a way of serious testimony,

in a way of crazy celebration.

Friends everything about us is a living testimony,

let us begin today and celebrate the new life offered to us in Jesus Christ through the gift of grace as we receive the bread and the cup.

To God be the glory.

Amen.

Benediction Romans 15:13 (NIV)
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the 

Christ is Risen Indeed!

Sermon Mark 16:1-8 April 5, 2015 EASTER!

Christ is Risen Indeed!

Some of us like surprises; the moment that catches us off guard and fills our hearts with unexpected joy! Moments like final four basketball shots that take our breath away. Or gifts that come to us from a loved one fully out of the blue. We generally love surprises.

Today, this day-Easter Sunday is our greatest surprise!

It is the moment that no one thought God would or could win.

Today is the day when God is exalted.

God’s glory reigns over the world.

Today we not only remember God brought life and light back into a world that prefers the darkness, but we LIVE in the Light of Life who God raised up from the depths of death.

Today, as I shared with the children-the empty egg is our big surprise-the tomb is empty and we all say loud and clear-Christ is Alive!

Yet, today’s resurrection story told in Mark’s gospel-which the experts say end at verse 8-tells us about the women.

The women were filled with terror and amazement! How’s that possible?

 Imagine if we had been the women to first arrive at the tomb.

What would our reaction have been? How would we have responded to the surprise of finding the stone rolled away and the tomb empty?

How would we have heard the news of the man sitting inside-the guy sitting on the bench, just next to the empty grave cloths!?-Would we have even heard his words? Or would we have been so obsessed with the fact that the body of our Lord was gone?

Imagine our anxiety over the facts before us. They’d be so high we wouldn’t have heard a word this guy on the bench was trying to say to us. Perhaps we would have been so caught up with the facts that we were unable to see the miracle?

It is valuable to know that an empty tomb can fill us with both terror and amazement.

For in the terror of surprise our fears are recognized-

                                            life is not the same-death and the tomb no longer have the

                                                                          same hold on us as we have always understood.

And in the terror of thought of what should be or could be -God takes the fear and transforms it.

Today, there is a new way.

In our weakness and in our failures God has carved out a path for us that leads us to see him.

In a world that continues to thrive in darkness, a world that seeks to lay claim through the death of the innocent, we are filled with the surprise of terror that people can do that to one another.

And so we peer into the tomb of a missing Savior and

cry out where are you!

We cry out why are you not here where we expect you to be?

We cry out in our own despairs of loss and grief and seek him where he is not to be found.

AND then-we finally hear the words of the angel as we listen again. Yes, the guy sitting at the end of the bench is now clearly seen as an angel of God-we can not only hear his words-but we listen-we listen.

We hear the words of the promise of Jesus as he was with the disciples in the last days. We hear them again as an echo in our minds…I am with you always to the end of the age.

And the surprise of amazement hits us, they are no longer words; but the reality of God with us-we, by the power of God, have our Lord with and within us!

It is true!

And we like the women follow through, we don’t keep silent anymore we run and tell the others as we have been told to do.

We run, not out of fear, but out of wonder and amazement.

We run with joy in our hearts and clear conviction and the power in our feet seems to come from a place of energy we had not known existed.

It is a real and exhilarating feeling inside our bones that resurrects us from all our doubts and all our wonderings. We have been brought into the Light of new Life now and forever!

For we, like the disciples have been along the way with Jesus. We have encountered Jesus in the stories as he met Peter and Nicodemus, the blind man and the women and we have been with him as he was before Pilate. We have journeyed a long way with our Lord. We have sat at Table with him and asked the question, “Is it I?” And today we hear Jesus say to us, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, continue in my love…I have said these things to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.” We are moved as we hear him call us friends! The amazement of all of who Jesus was and is and shall be are now with us and part of who we are. We turn to each other and see Christ!

We too have been raised up to new life.

Can we believe it?

Yes, we can!

Christ is Alive!

Let us rejoice and sing. Today is the festival of Thanksgiving!

Today is the renewal of the great surprise,

                                       the wonder of God,

                                          the joy of salvation,

                                                    the Light of Life is upon us and we will go out with joy!

                                                                                                                                     Alleluia! Amen!