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Scripture Philemon
1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To our beloved coworker Philemon, 2 to our sister Apphia, to our fellow soldier Archippus, and to the church in your house: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I thank my God always when I mention you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that the partnership of your faith may become effective as you comprehend all the good that we share in Christ. 7 I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother. 8 For this reason, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, 9 yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. 10 I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. 12 I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. 13 I wanted to keep him with me so that he might minister to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel, 14 but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. 15 Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for the long term, 16 no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 17 So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me. 19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. 20 Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask. 22 One thing more: prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you. 23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, 24 and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Leader: A Word of God that is still speaking, People: Thanks be to God. Sermon OK, so this letter probably for many of us gets filed under those miscellaneous letters at the back of the New Testament that you have to look up in your Bible’s Table of Contents because if you’re just flipping through the book to find it, chances are you’ll miss it altogether. This is a personal letter from Paul to Philemon - where many of Paul’s letters are addressed to churches, this one in particular is written to an individual. Paul writes it while in prison - and scholars note that during this particular time he was imprisoned - because Paul gets thrown in prison a lot - this time, he’s not literally in a prison cell, bound in chains, begging guards for scraps of paper and pens to write his missives on - he’s probably under house arrest, meaning he can’t skip town - and he’s relying on friends sent to him by area churches to help keep him company, run his errands and do his food shopping during his house arrest. Paul is writing to Philemon about Onesimus - we don’t really know why or how Onesimus came to be in Paul’s company -- perhaps Philemon had sent him to be with Paul, perhaps Onesimus was a runaway slave who had absconded with funds or other property of Philemon’s who made his way to Paul to have Paul plead on his behalf for freedom - the story really isn’t clear as to the circumstances that brought these two men together. What we do know, however, is that there is a great love and affection and respect that Paul and Philemon share (I mean, the language in verses 4 - 7 is Paul laying it on a little thick, but the foundation is there). We know of the strong bond that developed between Paul and Onesimus, where Paul considers the relationship like that of parent and child in the faith, and we know that Onesiums had become useful to Paul (the word translated actually means “useful” or “beneficial.”) Paul realizes that Onesimus is still in some way indebted to Philemon - perhaps estranged - and so in this letter, he appeals to him out of love to take Onesimus back and welcome him as a beloved brother in the Lord. Now, as much as we might like for Paul to launch from here into a treatise on the evils of slavery, he doesn’t do that. There have been all kinds of arguments about why he doesn’t do this - he’s a product of his time, promoting the abolismhent of slavery would have been too radical for these early followers of the Way and the might of the Roman empire would have squashed them, any number of reasons. Yet in this instance, Paul makes the appeal, based on an ethic of love over law, for Philemon to do the right thing and welcome Onesimus back in freedom, bound together by Christ. Paul knows this is a difficult ask. In the Roman empire, to accept a runaway or delinquent slave back without payment or punishment or consequence was unheard of. To do so and accept him as a “beloved brother” -- Paul is asking Philemon to lay down a whole lot - his social standing, reputation, his buy in to the whole system of enslaving human beings -- and yet Paul still asks it for the sake of Christ. Paul knows and has seen the transforming love of God at work in Philemon’s life, and how Philemon has nurtured others in that same transforming love of God. Paul doesn’t demand or compel. He doesn’t say, “this is what Jesus would want you to do.” Paul does, however, know that this ask has a cost - that Philemon has to give up a lot to welcome his slave back…not as a slave, but as an equal in Christ. I love the line in verse 12 - “I am sending him, who is my very heart, back to you.” And what I love about that line is not just the fondness that Paul has for Onesimus, clear as that may be. I feel the vulnerability of Paul expressing his care and concern for a person who may or may not be accepted into the full community by Philemon. Paul’s relationship with Onesimus was not based on his identity as a slave - Paul saw the whole person, and invites Philemon to do likewise. What would it mean for us to encounter others in the same way - as whole people, siblings in Christ? What if we saw each person coming into worship, coming into Ladies Aid, coming into Bible Study - as someone beloved - God’s own heart - sent to us? And what might we have to lay down in order to make that happen? This is the beauty - and the challenge - of life in community around Christ, of life in the church. Everything about us - our cultural norms, our wants and needs and expectations, our egos and agendas - are always weighed against the love of God made known in Jesus - and Jesus - while he may from time to time call out individuals, he’s always thinking about how our responsibility to one another gets played out in community…and it gets played out in ways that are completely upside down, right? The last shall be first. Power made perfect in weakness. The outcast is the insider. The measure of a community is always taken by how well the least among them are treated. Which often times means - it’s a measure of how easily the powerful lay aside their wants, their goals, their expectations, their comforts…for the sake of the lowest and the least…and how well a community understands that church isn’t about getting your religious fill for an hour on a Sunday, but about living out a responsibility that we have in Christ to each other that lasts beyond the conclusion of a weekly service - because each of us - each of us - carries God’s own heart with us - and we receive each person as a gift from God sent to teach and mold and shape and transform us. Philemon had to make a choice as to how to receive Onesimus. We don’t really know what happened. He could have rejected Paul’s appeal to receive him like a brother - or he could have let God’s spirit move in his heart to lay aside his privilege and social reputation and accept Onesimus as an equal. Tradition suggests the latter - especially as some streams of Christianity place this same Onesimus as eventually the bishop of Ephesus - but we don’t know this for certain. But we always have that choice too - about how to receive others around us. We get to decide to how to welcome each person we meet - those who society deems useless, those who get on our nerves, those who may not care for or be fed by the traditions that nurtured us, those who have sat in the same pew for 70 years, those want to dance in the aisle during hymns, those whose hands or bodies can’t stay still for an hour, those who speak other languages, who vote for other political candidates, who otherwise may disturb our perfect image of Christian community - all through whom God calls us to lay something within us down to see…and to serve…the beloved child of God before you. Because in Christ - we are bound together as family - and we stand up for and journey with each person so no one is alone. Our next hymn is the servant song - it’s number 2222 in the black hymnals. As we stand and sing together this morning, I invite you to make it your prayer this day - that you might imagine someone - or someones - that God has placed on your heart - and may this be a prayer of laying aside your own needs for the sake of serving others who need to know that grace and love surround them in this community built around Christ. Let us stand and sing together.
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Scripture Acts 20:7-12
Acts 20:7-12 (First Nations Version) It was the first day of the week, when we gather to eat our sacred meal together. Small Man (Paul) was doing the talking because he planned to leave the next day. He was long-winded and kept talking until the middle of the night. There were many torches burning in the upper room of the house where we had all gathered. As Small Man (Paul) spoke on and on, a young man named Greatly Blessed (Eutychus), who was sitting on the window ledge, began to sink into a deep sleep. When the sleep overcame him, he fell from the third-floor window and was found dead. Small Man (Paul) went down, bent over the young man, and put his arms around him. “Do not fear!” he said to all. “His life has returned to him.” Small Man (Paul) went back to the upper room, ate the ceremonial meal with them, and continued speaking until sunrise. He then went on his way, and with glad hearts they took the young man home alive! Leader: A Word of God that is still speaking, People: Thanks be to God. Sermon Let this story be a warning to any of you who are tempted to fall asleep during a preacher’s sermon! Just kidding. I have to admit, I don’t remember reading this story before. I must have at some point in my life. However, it’s not a story you are going to explore in worship if your congregation follows the appointed scriptures for the 3 year lectionary cycle. In fact, the last 7 chapters of the Book of Acts aren’t anywhere to be found in the lectionary. We’ll save that mystery for another day though. Here we have a short little story where a teenager, whose name Eutychus means “Fortunate” or “Greatly Blessed” falls asleep because Paul couldn’t manage to preach and teach a short message. Imagine the setting - it’s the middle of the night, many torches were blazing in that 3rd story room - presumably the air in the room is a bit hazy and smoky as a result. I can picture Eutychus sitting on the window ledge - no doubt it was a great place for some fresh air, a place to look out and daydream a bit (because that’s what I’d be doing), but it was so late and Paul just kept talking and talking, and there’s a point that no matter what you try to do to stay awake - your body just falls asleep. I can remember that happening to me in a couple college lectures - you know where your head starts drooping before you jerk yourself awake, your eyelids despite being one of the smallest parts of your body just feel like the heaviest part to keep open - and before you know it, you’re asleep. In Eutychus’s case, however, sleeping on the ledge of a 3rd story window is a bit precarious. He falls out and crashes to the ground, dead. And so here we have, in the words of Rev. Roger Wosely, “Eutychus – the first young victim of organized religion.” He continues to say, as if speaking to this young man directly, “No your story wasn’t about the dangers of falling asleep during worship, and it wasn’t about the dangers of preaching sermons that are too long. Your story isn’t about cardiopulmonary or mouth to mouth resuscitation. Your story is about Paul rushing down to you, throwing himself upon you with no concern for dignity, and then lifting you up declaring “He’s alive! His life is in him!” Your story is about God’s ability to heal and restore whatever the Church might kill!” Because let’s face it and be honest - the Church - big C church…and many little “c” churches - the Church hasn’t always lived up to the ideal that many of us hold out. And maybe the person, or people, who are really asleep here - metaphorically sleeping, of course - is not Eutychus, but others in the room, who are so caught up in what’s going on right in front of them that they don’t see what’s happening on the edges? Or….don’t even really see what’s going on with the other people in the space because they are so fixated on something else? Sarah Are, who created the word art accompanying this piece that’s available for coloring, asks this in her artist statement: “How many people are falling away from church, and when they do, are we kneeling in the street with them when things get hard? Are we carrying them back into the house to feed them and celebrate their life? Are we acknowledging how hard religion can be? Are we changing our traditions so that people with different mental and physical needs can connect to God?” It doesn’t take much to realize that the Church has a bad rap these days - the victims of abuse, the failure of congregations to be inclusive, political manipulation - it’s no wonder that there are so many people deconstructing their faith out of evangelical circles. However, before we are too quick to point the finger and name this as an issue that theologically conservative churches face, you can find the same issues present with churches that profess to be welcoming and fail to be actually such, congregations that talk a good game about serving their neighbors but are disconnected from the issues facing the most vulnerable in their community, churches that say they want to change and thrive but are unable to do the hard work necessary to connect authentically with those they claim to serve. So many people are falling…are running…are turning away from…what they might find in “organized religion” - many rightfully so…many also because those inside a sanctuary’s four walls don’t realize the depth of the disconnect. It’s easy to pinpoint it on the youth - they like different music, they challenge authority, they get bored, there are activities on Sundays - there are any number of excuses. The truth of the matter is harder to swallow - and challenges us to reflect on how willing we - as a church - are to actually wade into the messiness of people’s lives to form genuine relationships that are transformational -- not primarily for them…but transformational for us - and lead us to change and find new ways to be. Or do we hold on to heritage and the good old days that no one else but us remember? Rev. Sarah Are goes on to ask, “When members get divorced, do we ignore it, or do we kneel in the street and cry with them? When our young people come out, do we celebrate them, or do we leave them sitting on the window sill alone, hoping they’ll find God without us? When young adults say they can make a bigger impact in this world working for a non-profit rather than going to church, do we invite them to preach, or do we lull them to sleep, hoping they’ll remain quiet?” What the story of Eutychus - Greatly Blessed - reminds me is that our job as the church isn’t to sit on the sidelines - thinking that we have to have everything just so before we act, thinking that we have to have it all together, thinking that because we say all the right things, that we are what we say - it’s to see where people are actually hurting, where the church can help bring folks back to life - can help bring meaning, purpose, safety, healing, peace - even for just a moment. There are people who are suffering under the weight of trauma, addiction, and betrayal, who are falling and don’t have any safety net. It is those folks who are falling, who are on the edges, who help us stay awake to the mission of Jesus Christ, who help us run out and either catch them…or help bring them back to life. Later today at our council meeting some of the questions we’ll be discussing during our time together are: “Where does our community need love right now? What anxieties or worries or fears present in our community?” These are the places where we as a church have the opportunity to encounter those who are falling….maybe, even to be honest about the places where we, who sit within these walls, are falling under the weight of the loads that we carry. I don’t have many answers here; what I do know is that I have a heart for Eutychus - for those who the church as it is isn’t reaching - not for lack of trying, but for lack of seeing. For lack of understanding. For lack of connection and relationship. For lack of valuing people over structures. May this story of Eutychus’ valuable life remind us that people do fall, and when they do, we as a church are called to either catch them or fall with them. Amen. Scripture Jonah 3:1 - 4:11
Jonah 3:1 - 4-11 (New Revised Standard Version) 3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it. 4 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. 6 The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?” Leader: A Word of God that is still speaking, People: Thanks be to God. Sermon Ah, Jonah. Another Sunday School favorite. It’s a wonderfully dramatic tale, full of twists and turns. God’s got a message for Nineveh that Jonah is entrusted with, but Jonah flees in the opposite direction to Tarshish. En route, the biggest storm you’ve ever seen comes upon the sea, and the crew scrambles frantically, tossing cargo overboard and praying to their gods for deliverance. Jonah, in the meantime, is down below deck taking a nap. The captain wakes him up and suggests that he start praying too but they all figure out that Jonah is actually the problem. Even then, the sailors try to bring the ship back to land to avoid acting on Jonah’s suggestion, which was to pick him up and toss him into the sea. The storm keeps getting worse, so the sailors take up Jonah’s request, throw him in, and the sea calms down. Up comes a big fish to swallow Jonah whole, where he spends three days in its belly, and to be honest, prays this prayer brimming with piety so false that the fish vomits him back upon the shore. That is the backstory to where our scripture passage picks up this morning where God tries a second time to get Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s message. One important thing to understand about this book is that, first of all, it’s satire. Jonah, son of Amittai, a prophet who did live and prophesy in the northern kingdom of Israel around 750 BCE, probably did not go to Nineveh - the capital of the Assyrian empire. There was most likely no fish sent to devour our prophet. This dramatic turnaround where the entire city repented, right down to putting sackcloth on the animals, most likely didn’t happen. Secondly, this book of the Hebrew Bible was most likely written in the sixth or fifth century BCE as the Israelites were wrestling with questions of identity and how to relate to their neighbors. The story appears to be set before the Assyrian empire actually destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel. So again, we have a fictional, satirical story looking back at an earlier period in Israel’s history to explore issues the Jewish people were facing in their own time. One major theme is the relationship between Jews and Gentiles - insiders and outsiders - particularly when those outsiders were once their oppressors - as well as the relationship between the God of Israel and those outsider nations. One of the things I love about this story is how Jonah interacts with God throughout - how God gives him a task and he runs in the opposite direction, how petulant and angry Jonah gets at God - because those are things I can really relate to - I’m sure none of y’all have problems like that. The thing Jonah gets upset about isn’t the storm that nearly took out an entire cargo ship, it wasn’t being swallowed up and violently regurgitated three days later - I mean, those are things that I might get a bit upset about and at least complain to God about, even if I didn’t believe God was the one who caused those things to happen. No, what gets Jonah really mad was that God changed the plans upon seeing the repentant Ninevites. Jonah’s half-hearted message “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown” - a message that didn’t even include God in it - that he preached as he walked around for a day in a city that was exaggerated to be as large as a three day’s walk, inspired such a change of heart in the people (and animals) that God relented and decided not to destroy them. And in response, Jonah’s like “I knew it! This is why I didn’t want this job in the first place! I knew you were a compassionate God, a forgiving God, a God that is slow-to-anger and abounding in steadfast love, and that given half a chance you’d call off the fireworks. I’d rather die!” And so Jonah builds himself a cozy place above the capital of Israel’s greatest enemy to see if God just might change plans again and decide to destroy the city in the way Jonah thinks it so richly deserves. Sometimes I think it’s hard for us to picture why Jonah would be angry in this situation - after all, shouldn’t he be glad that his prophetic word changed hearts and minds? Shouldn’t he feel like it was a job well-done, that God acted in a way consistent with what he knew about God to be true? Shouldn’t there be some satisfaction that the Ninevites demonstrated repentance before God? What I think sometimes we miss in the story is that Nineveh was the capital of Israel’s greatest enemy at the time, Assyria. The Assyrian empire ended up conquering the northern kingdom of Israel - and while we talk a lot about the later Babylonian exile, the Assyrian occupation took its own toll on the Hebrew people…took its own captives that were never permitted to return home in the same way the descendents of the Babylonian exiles were. Of course Jonah would want to see Nineveh destroyed to remove a threat to his people. And if we’re honest with ourselves, don’t we sometimes operate the same way? Don’t we take secret (or perhaps not-so-secret) delight in the downfall of our enemies? Aren’t we pleased when those we name as “evildoers” get what we think they deserve? Isn’t there some satisfaction when calamity befalls them beyond the natural consequences of their actions and that we can feel resentful or aggravated when grace or mercy is shown? We don’t like to admit it, but it’s sometimes true. Enfleshed, in the commentary on this passage, poses a series of ethical questions that we might wrestle with as we think about the dynamics at play in our story: “If Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was destroyed would their empire fall and the violence, destruction, and war come to an end? Would Israel then be safe? Are the lives of those repenting in Nineveh worth more to God than those who would suffer and be killed under the Assyrian empire? If the repentance of Nineveh is genuine, is it even enough to turn the whole of Assyria around?” I would also add - “If the author of this book and their contemporaries understood the destruction of Israel and Judah as God’s judgment, how could God spare others - outsiders even - whose offenses, in their eyes, were far more serious?” And then there’s the question God asks Jonah - “is it right for you to be angry?” No easy answers to those questions. Truth be told, the book of Jonah doesn’t let us off the hook very easily. After all, one might substitute the American empire for that of Assyria if we were thinking about a global context and the thousands of voices that have cried out in anger to God at the lack of justice, at the violence and harm our country has enacted and enabled within - and outside of - our borders, and at the systems that have irreparably harmed and exploited so many on our planet. And shouldn’t God save us, too, when we cry out for deliverance? Because aren’t we, too, someone else's enemies? And isn’t that an uncomfortable truth that we don’t much like to admit? This is the difficult thing about grace. It’s really great when we’re on the receiving end - when we experience God as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. It’s much, much harder to see that play out with those we’d otherwise consider unworthy…consider our enemies. In a world that is becoming increasingly more divided - politically and socio-economically, in a culture where fear-mongering, finger pointing, judgment, cancelling, lying, trolling, keyboard crusades have become the norm, it’s hard not to be swept along by the tide and be devoured by what we take in. Nadia Bolz-Weber reflects this on Jonah with some brutal honesty: she writes, “That’s what’s hard about reading Jonah - I have to look at how maybe I too need my enemies to stay my enemies, since it’s hard to know who I am if I don't know who I’m against…Reading Jonah, I am confronted with how uncomfortable it is for God to show love and mercy to those I do not believe deserve it. Part of me really doesn't want to have empathy for those who have [messed] up, for those who have abused their position, for those who have done harm. But empathy is not exoneration. So we can fight for justice – we can call a thing what it is and name the harm done by the powerful while also holding the horrible truth that God is super hard to manage, since God loves you and (sorry about this, but…) God also loves your enemies. God is kind of the worst like that.” The story ends with Jonah still sitting up on the cliff, watching the city. God tends Jonah with a bush, offering shade, before also sending a worm to destroy it and a scorching wind brutal enough so that Jonah reiterates his request for death. God tries to expand Jonah’s horizons - tries to get him to see why grace and mercy for the Ninevites is a better option than death and destruction. We don’t know if it changed Jonah’s mind or changed Jonah’s heart. What we do know is that grace gets the final word. In the midst of all the questions - all the ethical dilemmas - all the emotions and anger - God meets it all with grace. At the end, we are left to wrestle with the goodness of God that shocks us to the very core with what it asks of us - that we, too, are called to embody that same grace to all, no matter how deserving - or undeserving - we think they are of that grace. It’s a goodness, that Debie Thomas writes, that asks us why we so often prefer vindication to rehabilitation. Why we crave punishment for the lost and broken, instead of healing and hope. Why we happily grab every second chance God gives us, even as we deny second chances to others. Why we nurse envy and bitterness in our hearts, refusing to see the complexity God sees in the faces of those who wish us harm.” And the promise of the gospel is - God is who God is - merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. It’s for us - for our enemies too. It’s for all of us in our righteous and not-so-righteous indignation, in our petty Facebook fights, in our woundedness and addictions, in our bargaining with God and in our ultimatums, in our running the opposite direction and in our being so fed up we’d rather wash our hands of it all. In all our humanness, God meets us, and grace wins. God’s lavish and scandalous grace is the final word. It’s a joy and a challenge and that’s what we’re left with at the end of the book of Jonah - both the beauty of a God who redeems and the responsibility of undertaking the work within ourselves where we, too, can be joyful and willing bearers and vessels of that grace in the midst of a bruised and broken world - even when that journey takes us to the heart of enemy territory. May our paths this week lead us to deeper wells of God’s grace for ourselves - for our enemies - and for this world that God loves so much. Amen. *Hymn Your Love, O God (UMH 120)
You leave us free to seek you or reject you, You give us room to answer “yes” or “no.” Your love, O God, is broad like beach and meadow, Wide as the wind, and our eternal home.
We seek in freedom space and scope for dreaming, And look for ground where trees and plants can grow. Your love, O God, is broad like beach and meadow, Wide as the wind, and our eternal home.
Fear is the bricks and mortar of our prison, Our pride of self, the priscon coat we wear. Your love, O God, is broad like beach and meadow, Wide as the wind, and our eternal home.
Take us as far as your compassion wanders Among the children of the human race. Your love, O God, is broad like beach and meadow, Wide as the wind, and our eternal home. Chebeague Community Church Sunday, August 28, 2022 John 9:1-34
Take Another Look Open our eyes, O God, open our eyes to see and recognize your word as it calls us into life, life abundant, life in your son, the living Word. Amen “Father, Mother, I can see!” The first words I ever spoke in church, or at least from the front, up here, the chancel of a church. I was eleven or twelve years old and playing the role of this young man we just read about in our Sunday School Play as part of the morning service. And these five words were my lines, my only lines, “Father, Mother, I can see!” I have remembered those lines quite well, as you have just seen, some 76 years now, and counting. But what if it was ALL about seeing? What if Jesus came to teach us how to see, to reveal to us a whole new perspective, a new dimension of reality, a dimension he called “The Kingdom of God”? He said, after all, right here in this passage – verse 5 – “I am the light of the world” He literally restored sight to a multitude of blind beggars as he traveled the highways and byways. “In him WAS light…” we are told at the outset, the very beginning of John’s gospel, “… and that light was the life of all.” So maybe it was… maybe it still is all about seeing. Seeing this world, for one thing. Last May, in an inspired moment, I pressed a few zinnia seeds deep into the soil all around the edges of my veggie garden up there at the East End. They got watered and fertilized along with the lettuce, peas and beans and finally they blossomed, surrounding, framing the entire raised beds with a band of radiant color. And then the feast began: butterflies and bumble bees – monarchs, fritillaries, spicebush swallowtails, solitary bees too, even the occasional humming bird – a bunch of buzzing, flapping, scrambling nectar seekers. Mhairi and I sit in the afternoon sun and watch them with fascinated delight; their sheer elegance, their industry, their floating, flitting grace. The pollinators going about their business of keeping the planet alive, keeping you and me well fed. Or take our kitchen counter, plagued this summer by sporadic sieges of ants. And as I swat them aside, curse their stubborn persistence, I recall that we are busy up there scouring the universe, blasting off mission after mission, probe after probe, hunting for the tiniest trace, the merest glimpse of life, of life in any form. The miracle, the preciousness, the rareness, yes, the sacredness of life. It was William Blake who wrote: To See a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand and Eternity in an Hour. Father, Mother, I can see!... I can see this world in all its glory. Perhaps the second thing Jesus came to teach us to see is to see each other, to look at the person next to us in the pew, on the ferry, waving to us from behind the wheel, on the evening news, and to recognize a sister or a brother. We are one flesh, after all. And that’s not just poetry, philosophy talking. Science has told us the same thing. Do you recall, some years ago now, the DNA folk, the geneticists announcing they had finally traced us all back to one common ancestor? Yes the Blacks and the Whites, the Jews and the Gentiles, even the Scots and the Irish. We are one flesh, all related, all with places reserved around that vast Thanksgiving table, Labor Day cook-out, family meal of God. There is a tale told of the shepherds around Bethlehem many centuries ago, how they loved to sit debating in the long night watches out on the Judaean hills. One night, toward dawn, their guide, an older shepherd, posed them a probing question. "How can we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?" "Could it be..." one of the young ones blurted eagerly, "could it be… might we know the night is ended when we can look out to the flock and distinguish between the sheepdog and the sheep?" "That is a good answer," said the Teacher; "but not the answer I would give." After a long silence another raised his voice, "Perhaps we know daylight has begun when we can look at the trees around us and distinguish the olive leaf from the fig." Again the Teacher shook his head. "A fine answer, indeed, but not the one I seek." At last they begged their teacher to share the answer he had in mind. He looked at each of them intently for a moment and then he said: “When you look into the eyes of a fellow human being and see a sister or a brother you know that it is morning. If you cannot see a sister or a brother you will know that it is still night.” Father, Mother I can see… I can see family, I can see where I belong. And thirdly now let me suggest that Jesus came to teach us how to see God… to show us how to see God. The search, after all, goes back at least as far as we do, back to those massive hunks of rock, those monoliths set in circles on the hill tops, all the way back to those images in wood or stone or clay buried with care alongside our long forgotten ancestors. We have built soaring temples, written entire libraries of holy books, devised all kinds of elaborate ceremonies, rituals, prayers. And then Jesus comes along and simply declares, “Open your eyes folks, open your eyes and look around.” “God is love…” The scriptures themselves tell us, “Where love is… “ Saint John writes, “… wherever love is, there is God, right there is where you will find the deity you seek.” And there is what it’s really all about, the whole thing really, what we’re here for, built for, designed to do, created to be. It’s not all that difficult. It’s as obvious as a new-born infant reaching out its arms to be held. As the years have hurried by me, now approaching – not just the three score and ten allotted in Psalm 90 but four score and ten and maybe more – in these even more senior, frailer years I have been surprised, and delighted by the outpouring of assistance I receive almost daily. Struggling down the dock with heavy bags or boxes, pausing before a flight of steps or stairs, a slippery walkway, people, sometimes friends and neighbors but often complete strangers step forward to offer help. They reach out and say, “Let me assist you, carry your bag, hold that door, take your arm, fetch a cup of coffee.” Small gestures to be sure – nothing spectacular or world shaking – but glimpses, if we will only see them, snatches, momentary revelations of a deeper, far vaster, far more basic human instinct, acts of love. We speak of love and think of splendid movie moments, the background music swelling, someone perhaps kneeling, pledging, even giving his or her life for someone else. But its these little, daily moments, really – in a world where atrocities, what Robert Burns called, “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Seem to overflow the daily news – a mother serving a meal, a father teaching a child to ride a bike, a sister or a brother holding hands in a scary place, that’s what makes the world go round. That’s what makes the world go round. Just like those busy, graceful – grace full – pollinators they keep us going, keep the whole thing going, keep us all alive. And there, yes right there, wherever love is at work, is at its ancient, ever-new labor of love, building bridges, taking hands, opening up new possibilities for cooperation, for sharing, for being together, working together, living together, right there you will see God at work. Right there we will find our God. Father, Mother, I can see! A new vision, a fresh and living, hope filled look at this world, at one another, and even at our God. Maybe there is more to this, all of this, than meets the eye. Let us pray: Be Thou our vision, Lord. Grant to each one of us a new perspective on life, on this world, on each other, and on you. That we may live in the light, the radiant light and grace of your presence. Amen |
AuthorPastor Melissa Yosua-Davis has been serving the community of Chebeague and its church since July 2015. She currently lives on the island with her husband and five year old son and 2 year old daughter, along with their yellow lab. Read here recent sermon excerpts, thoughts on life and faith, and current announcements for the church community. She also blogs at Going on to Perfection. Archives
December 2022
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