Today I declare...

This is a sermon that I preached at our Community Thanksgiving Service on November 24, 2013. This Thanksgiving Reflection is based upon Deuteronomy 26:1-11 and John 6:25-35: 

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” This is the opening sentence of the formal declaration of President Lincoln as written by his Secretary of State, William Seward in October 1863. Such became our American tradition -- to set aside the last Thursday in November as “a day of Thanksgiving and praise” for the bounty that God has blessed us with today.

My experience this summer has probably not been much different than your experience this summer. This has been a good year for gardens, fields, farmers, and harvest. Throughout the summer and the fall, I’ve been blessed with tomatoes, blueberries, peppers, pears, potatoes, and apples. The farmers in my area, tell me that the harvest has been good, record harvest from wheat to beans. “As the year draws to its close, we have been blessed with fruitful fields and healthful skies…” Our words have spoken about the wonder and beauty of a fruitful year, but how have these blessings translated into meaningful actions? What will our actions declare today? By what action will we declare the goodness of God who has blessed us with our ‘fruitful fields and healthful skies’? By what action will we return our thanks to God? Will we see our blessings and share our bounty? What will our actions declare today – this week?

The Hebrew Scriptures provide us with an insight into an ancient culture that did not write a Thanksgiving Proclamation or set aside the last Thursday in November to be a day of “Thanksgiving and praise”. For this culture, the declaration was not an excuse to invite family and friends to come and eat their fill of Turkey and then spend the afternoon watching the football games. More than a day off, the Hebrew people declared that the land, the fruit of their fields, and the gift of bounty did not belong to them, but was a gift to the people by God’s hand of grace. “When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess…you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the Land that the Lord your God is giving you and you shall declare…” Deuteronomy 26:1-3.

Through their long and tedious journey through the wilderness, a tribal people once enslaved to Egypt are set free from the chains of slavery and through the miraculous power and grace of an omnipotent God they were blessed with a “land flowing with milk and honey” and they would declare their complete dependence upon God’s grace and bounty by remembering their story:  “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; he brought us into this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” Deuteronomy 26:5b-9.  This they would declare on their day of praise and thanksgiving.

Their day of thanksgiving and praise remembered not only their bountiful blessings, but also their faith story – the reason they “live and move and have their being…” What do our actions on Thanksgiving declare? Has Thanksgiving for us become a convenient excuse to eat more in one meal than thousands, perhaps millions of people throughout the world eat in weeks, perhaps months. Is our Thanksgiving a good time to invite the folks over for beer, pretzels, and football? What do our actions declare? As Jesus says to the disciples after John’s version of “the feeding of the 5000”, “…You are not looking for me because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” John 6:26. In other words, do we know that God has blessed us with the food that fills our hungry stomachs or have we become so detached from our Creator that we’ve forgotten who we are and to whom we owe our gratitude for ‘fruitful fields and healthful skies?”

On this Sunday before this blessed holiday, we have the foundation and the time to remember who has given us our bounty. As miraculous as the ‘feeding story’ that the four gospels agree is an important event in one’s understanding of Jesus Christ, the miracle is our invitation to declare our story, our identity, and our complete dependence upon God’s grace. Jesus reminds us, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” John 6:32-33. This is our story to declare – this is the story of Thanksgiving – this is the living bread that endures for eternal life. This is the bread of life. May we proclaim with the disciples, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Amen.

Successful Musings

In America it is not hard to find community leaders, politicians, preachers and teachers who talk about or give any number of speeches on the American dream as the land of opportunity and that anyone can be successful if you are willing to work hard. In America, we believe in fairness at the starting line, but once the starting pistol roars, indicating the start of the race, the rules change because we are a nation that believe that the winner takes all. Only in America do we reward so generously the winner and punish so severely the losers.  In America we define success in black and white – you can win or you can lose. In America success is deserved and failure is also deserved. In the Medieval times there were two categories of people in this society – the fortunate and the unfortunate. The fortunate were often defined by privilege, family titles, military prowess, or royalty. Everyone else – the serfs, the peasants, or the slaves were the unfortunate. As society moved away from the family farms and into the cities, they became laborers and worked long hours for low wages and were still losers – unfortunates. 

In an age when our identity is inextricably bound with our chosen vocation and how well we do something, there is a tremendous amount of anxiety in living in today’s world, especially in the United States. There was a time when our identity was not bound to our jobs or chosen vocation. How often don’t we get asked the question, “what do you do?” If we are engineers or lawyers, we don’t hesitate to let people know how successful we are. How many times haven’t I heard people respond to the question, “what do you do?” with eyes cast down and the simply say, “I’m 'just' an electrician or a plumber” How many garbage men and women are quick to brag about their job or the delivery person, proudly proclaims, I deliver things. Probably not too many. Why? Because in America these aren’t vocations that successful people pursue.  Some sociologist might call this division of vocation, “job snobbery”. 

 "We are living in a time when our character is not dependent upon who we are, but by what we do."

This has not always been the case. The question, ‘what do you do?’ is a modern question – a question that could only come to a society and culture where higher education and further training were accessible to the ordinary person. Three hundred years ago, what you did didn’t matter because what did matter was where you came from and who is your family? What tribe are you a part or what village to hail from? These were the questions of identity. Success depended upon the reputation of your family and the tribe to which you belonged. In today’s society, what is printed on our business card and what is deep inside of our very being are not always consistent one with the other. We are living in a time when our character is not dependent upon who we are, but by what we do. There is a profound sadness in the world and there are a lot of people who are longing for respect, dignity, and to be understood. By rewarding the successful and snubbing the losers, we are creating a culture that is not a land of freedom, opportunity, and liberty, but a caste society of the privileged and the successful and the losers and the unfortunates. 

As a Christian, I cannot say that I am comfortable with this.  The burning question for me is what should be the response of our religious communities to something as offensive to our Creator God as the American notion of “winners take all” and “losers” deserve what they get? Is this the world God had in mind when in a dramatic and powerful way, Creator God separated the light from the darkness, the water from the land, and breathed living breath into the beauty that surrounds us? In my judgment, the scriptures, especially the Christian scriptures, I am reminded that for all intents a purpose, Jesus was by no means successful by the standards of the modern world. Jesus was crucified among criminals. What could be more ‘unfortunate’ than this? As I see it, the success for Jesus was and continues to be an invitation to live one’s life free of the fear of failing. Even as Jesus hung, dying, on the cross he did not see himself or his ministry as a failure. The world may have seen it this way, but Jesus did not. In the seventies, a time when our young people and the media were flirting with secular humanism, there was a poster that read and I still remember it, “God doesn’t make junk.” When God breathed life into our very being, God did not see a loser and neither did he see one people more privileged than another. All were equal. In God’s world, there are no fortunate or unfortunates, there are only people who are loved equally by God. In God’s world, we know the successful people by the ones who, like Jesus, are known by how well they have loved.   

Thoughts on Reformation Sunday

All Saints Church, Wittenberg, Germany

It’s Reformation Sunday today and I’m thinking about the church. Recently, I heard this simple statement, “a living body is continually repairing, healing its brokenness.” I am currently serving as an intentional interim in a mid-size rural congregation. In interim ministry this statement brings an element of hope and possibility. For twenty-five years, I’ve served as a settled pastor in various congregations and this statement poses both a challenge and a threat for the congregations who have become comfortable with their pastor, one another, and with their way of doing ministry. On this Reformation Sunday, it seems appropriate to reflect upon the church, both in times of change and times when our life together is static and predictable. 

In the United States, Reformation Sunday comes in the fall of the year – on the cusp – of winter when flues, colds and other illnesses seem to be more prevalent to the healthy and active. Flues and colds are an infection that compromises the immune system and creates stress for our bodies and our minds. We know that in time, the flu symptoms will disappear and we’ll be better again. This is an example of how the “living body repairs and heals its brokenness.” Our bodies are amazing. As long as we have breath, our bodies will continue to repair its brokenness. 

Consider a rock. A rock is lifeless and for centuries can remain static and unchanging. A rock changes and eventually diminishes when it comes in contact with wind, sand, or water. When the winds blow and water crashes against the rock, its only response is to chisel away to nothing more than the sand and grit that will one day blow against another rock, breaking it apart and becoming unrecognizable in the course of time. Rocks, unlike living bodies, react to the elements by crumbling to nothingness. It may take a very long time, but it will not repair itself. Instead it disappears. A living body continues to repair itself, but a lifeless body decays and soon disappears like a rock that does nothing to change its course.

Martin Luther's 95 Theses

On this day, the Protestant churches remember Martin Luther’s actions that evolved into a movement and changed the course of history. The Reformation was a historical and real event that happened long ago, but as I see it, it is also a metaphor for a viable and living church today. Reformation Sunday reminds us that every day is an opportunity to fix our brokenness and respond to change in positive ways. This day reminds the Church Universal and our own churches that we can respond to change in two ways. We can respond to change like a lifeless rock, allowing the winds of change to compromise its integrity and chisel away God’s message of Shalom. This is one way – we can allow change to act upon us or we can respond to change like a living body – continually meeting change as an opportunity to strengthen our life together. Just as a living body is continually repairing and healing its brokenness, Reformation day is an invitation to do the same today.

Re-forming, re-shaping, and renewing is the message of the day. Whether we are traveling through an uncertain time – an in-between time, we can approach the change and transition with the spirit of Martin Luther believing that such is the time to re-imagine life together. The living body is continually looking at new ways of being the Church. In the same way,  a church or a congregation that has become comfortable with their life together will not dream dreams or see visions and like the rock sitting alone in the desert will one day find they are not what they once were and the winds of time and change will define for them a life that  no longer has  meaning.  

On Getting Lost in the Bible

It’s probably happened to you before. You move to a new area and you’re trying to learn your way around your new community or perhaps you've recently passed your driving test and received your license and you’re noticing different ways to get around your town for the first time. As you are learning how to get around your community you know that there have been times that you've gotten lost. If you have a map in your car, you may consult the map, you notice street names, highway names or some identifiable route or road and you find it on your map and you are able to see where you are and where you would like to go. Perhaps you turn the GPS on in your telephone and wait for it to find you and begin giving directions, helping you find your way out of a state of being lost. Sometimes we stop and get directions or more than likely we keep traveling, hoping you’ll recognize a building, a fence-line, a familiar street name or another landmark such as trees, lakes or ponds.

Once again, I found myself in places I didn't think I was planning to go. Once again I call upon map skills or check my watch to see the time of day and looking for the sun so I can find the direction I need to be heading. I review routes with Google maps; check with folks for the landmarks that I should look for or what side of the road the house is on. I program my GPS and I am off and sometimes I get to the place I am going with minimal trouble and other times even my GPS cannot find where I am going and I am among the lost. The thing about learning any new community is that we are never really lost, we’re just exploring new ways to get around, but until we start our drive and set out on our journey, we’ll never learn the way and even if we get lost, we can add another route to the same destination at another time.

Getting lost is not always comfortable. The bigger the city, the more wooded the area or the more traffic there is, we find that in our state of being lost becomes less desirable.  Regardless, it is a part of learning and becoming so familiar with your area that when an unexpected detour comes along, you’ll know another way to get around. Getting lost on the way to someone’s house is the way we learn. We don’t fail just because we got lost along the way. No, that is how we learn. Just as we can expect to get lost when learning a community, I would like to suggest that we need to get lost in the Bible. With anxious souls and gloved hands we've gingerly and fearfully handle our sacred scriptures and in doing so, we've created an idol out of bound paper and have added to the illiteracy of scripture. Instead of getting lost in the Bible we've allowed others to interpret the scripture for us and have corporately lamented that we really don’t know anything about our Bible. Like someone who has lived all their life in the same house, they take the same route to the grocery store that their parents took when they were young. When we become too satisfied with the familiar, we rob ourselves of the newness and the beauty of another way.

When we take the same route through the Bible that has been interpreted to us by someone else for all of our lives and when we leave the Bible reading and interpretation to someone else, we relegate the scripture to a painful death of ignorance and irrelevance. The scripture is so much more than the accumulated knowledge of pastors, theologians, teachers, and scholars. What makes the scripture meaningful is not what others may say about the scripture, but what we may discover when we allow ourselves to question, to doubt, to explore, to experience, or to study. If the Bible falls on the ground you will not have to answer to God’s judgment. If you write in your Bibles or even throw old warn Bible away, you will not go to Hell.

 The scriptures are words,poetry  thoughts, stories, songs, and accounts of thousands of years of history, but the pages between the leather covers is not the ending of God’s creative work among humanity. God continues to use each one of us to bring new life to God’s amazing work among us. God’s words are not bound by the covers of the book, but continue to be written in the lives and examples of faithful men and women who dare to get lost in the Bible. It is when we get lost in the scripture that we are able to discover “new wine in old wine-skins” or discover living water that quenches our thirst and gives us the desire and the curiosity to keep exploring without judgment or retribution. The only truth in the Holy Scripture is what is meaningful to you and what empowers you to set out on a journey to make the scripture relevant to you. Getting lost in the Bible is the first step in finding your way through this life. So, don’t worry, just get lost in the Bible and the Holy Spirit will reveal to you what you need to know.