Worship
Author: First Church Published: October 7th, 2012
World Communion Sunday
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Sermon: Room at the Table, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Unity in the Body of Christ
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: First Church Published: October 2nd, 2012
Date: September 30, 2012
Title: “Holy Interruptions”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
It seems a fellow from the city was driving out in the country one fine Sunday afternoon – probably a lot like this one – when he notices a rather unusual sight alongside the road. He sees a farmer, standing just off the roadway, holding a pig up to an apple tree, and patiently waiting while the pig eats an apple or two.
The man is so intrigued by this that he turns his car around, comes back and stops to watch. Pretty soon, he sees the farmer put the first pig down, pick up another one, and hold it up to eat apples off the apple tree. A few minutes go by and – sure enough – the farmer settles that pig back on the grass and picks up a third, holds it up to the tree and lets it eat.
Finally, the man watching can take it no more. Curiosity gets the better of him, so he gets out of his car, goes over to the farmer and says, “Excuse me, but wouldn’t it save a lot of time, if you just shook the apple tree so that the apples fell off, and then let the pigs eat them off the ground?” Whereupon the farmer looks at the man rather incredulously and replies, “Time? What’s time to a pig?!”
It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess. What is time to a pig? Nothing, I suppose. It is all a matter of perspective, when you are asking the questions and when you are answering them. It is all a matter of perspective, when you are busy preparing the meal, and when you are sitting at Jesus’ feet. It is all a matter of perspective.
Now I wonder – how many of you heard the Scripture story this morning, and thought to yourself, “Poor Martha”? Be honest – how many of you would really rather have Jesus say something like, “Mary, why don’t you go help Martha for a little while. We can talk during dinner.” Or better yet, what if the Gospel writer put these words into Jesus’ mouth: “Martha, I’m so sorry! What was I thinking? Why don’t we all go into the kitchen and work together to get dinner on the table?”
But no…instead, what we get from Luke is a perspective which speaks to some of us all the time, many of us much of the time, and all of us some of the time, when Jesus says, “You are worried and distracted by many things.” Because we all have something of Martha in us, something which causes us to limit our perspective, and leaves us chasing after the “many things” which make up our lives but which may not belong in the center of them. I mean, really – who really cares if there are dirty dishes in the sink, leftover from breakfast? Will the world really end if a few leaves are left unraked, or even a whole big pile of them are littering your lawn? Is your worry about “appearances”, (what my friend Kate would call you “impression management”) going to change on whit what others really think of you? And if it doesn’t, who cares what they think in the end anyway?
Frederick Buechner puts it this way, when he writes:
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…So goes the old spiritual. And of course, nobody does know the trouble any of us have seen – the hurt and the sadness, the bad mistakes and crippling losses, the immobilizing guilt, the overwhelming grief. Nobody knows that like we know it.
But we know something else, too. We know that we have survived. We have made it to this day. To remember anyone’s life is to remember the countless times when we might have given up, or gone under – when humanly speaking we might have gotten lost beyond the power of anyone to find us. But we didn’t. We have not given up.”
This morning it is easy to see the world from Martha’s perspective. Because we also have many things demanding our attention. We are a little bit like that dog in the movie “Up”, who was fitted with a collar which allows him to speak out loud the thoughts running through his head. Repeatedly that dog is in the middle of some very important strategizing, or is telling the most important details of his story, when he stops in mid-thought, pivots, changes his focus and yells out “Squirrel!” And you just know that he is gone off, that his attention has been captured and his focus has been totally consumed by the passing squirrel.
You see, Martha’s problem – and ours, as it turns out – is not so much the “many things” in her life. Jesus does not say that Martha should stop caring about the many things. But he is concerned that she should not become “anxious” about them to the point of being distracted from the main thing.
Someone else put it this way:
“The key issue in this Gospel episode can be pretty much translated directly into our lives today. The key to the spiritual tragedy that lies behind the scenes of a busy and hectic world is not so much the “You are worried…” part of the equation. It is the words “You are distracted by many things.”
In our distraction we allow a thousand things to take on the weight of urgency. And it is this tyranny of urgency which causes us time and again to lose our focus, to stop, change direction, and zero in on that which is fleeting, or temporary, or peripheral to a full and grounded life. It is the tyranny of urgency which keeps us from noticing the holy. Even the holy interruptions – those moments when the “many things” make way for the “main thing”.
Jesus was a master at recognizing the holy interruptions in his life. I think of the countless healing stories, or teaching moments, when Jesus hears the intrusive cries of those clamoring for his attention, and somehow manages to let go of his own agenda, to abandon his own schedule, to forget about the many things in favor of the main thing. I don’t know about you, but in my life, there are many days when taking the time to see what is going on around me, or broadening my perspective even a little bit seem like too great a task. And on those days surprises, favors, or demands are anything but welcome. But what a miracle it is, when I am able to let go of my own agenda, and pay attention to that broader perspective just long enough to recognize a holy interruption when it occurs.
A holy interruption is an opportunity to take the Gospel seriously. It is a chance to sort out the “main thing” from the “many things”. It is a chance to sit at Jesus’ feet, to be enveloped by God’s love, to be guided by the Spirit. And to remember – again in Buechner’s words:
“Weak as we think we are, there is a strength within us. Foolish as we might appear to be, there is a wisdom within us. Frightened and fickle as we might become, there is a love within each and every one of us.
It is that love which helps us to broaden our perspective, and keeps us focused on the main thing amongst the many things. Eric Butterworth tells this story of one valiant woman who understood the value of “holy interruptions”, and kept the perspective of the main thing in the midst of the many:
It seems a college professor had his sociology class go into the Baltimore slums to get case histories of 200 young boys. They were asked to write an evaluation of each boy’s future. In every case the students came back saying, in one way or another, “He hasn’t got a chance.” There was just too much stacked against these boys.
Twenty-five years later, another sociology professor came across the earlier study. She had her students follow up on the project to see what had actually happened to those boys. Amazingly, they were able to find almost all of the original 200, contacting 180 of them. Of those 180, they were surprised to find that 176 of them had achieved more than ordinary success as lawyers, doctors, and businessmen.
The professor was astounded and decided to pursue the matter further, contacting each of these men to ask, “How do you account for your success?” In every case, the reply came, “There was this one teacher…”
The teacher was still alive, so the professor sought her out and asked what magic formula she had used to pull these boys out of the slums and give them a chance. The teacher’s eyes sparkled and she said, “It’s really very simple. I loved them. I paid attention to them, no matter how busy, or scared, or discouraged, or disheartened or tired I was. I just loved them, that’s all.”
My friends, God is just loving us. And asking us to do the same for others. It’s really very simple, for there are plenty of holy interruptions every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Category Rev. Donna Pritchard |
Author: First Church Published: September 30th, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
Sermon: Holy Interruptions, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Recognizing holiness in the midst of everyday
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Andante (Symphonie # 2), Louis Vierne (1870 – 1937); Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Vast Ocean of Light, Jonathon Dove; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: The Engulfed Cathedral, Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918); Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Postlude: Scherzo (Symphonie # 6), Charles Marie Widor (1844 – 1937)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: web manager Published: September 23rd, 2012
Date: September 23, 2012
Title: Enough Persistence
Preaching: Rev. Jeremy Smith
Scripture: Mark 8:22-26
While sitting this past week at the Shovel and Rake picnic, one of the guys told me a story. One day, an elderly woman stood on a busy street corner, purse clutched tight, giving a little gasp with every car that drove by, hesitant to cross because there was no traffic signal. She must not have been from Portland as most Portlandians will only cross at a crosswalk when there are no cars for two miles in all four directions and the walk sign has been on for 30 seconds.
As she waited, a gentleman came up beside her and asked, “May I cross over with you?” The woman was relieved, she thanked him, he extended his arm and she took it. They started to cross. But the path they took was anything but safe. The couple walked in a zig-zag pattern across the street, subarus screeching to a halt, horns blaring, streetcars cruising inches from them, naked bicyclists riding much too close.
When they finally got to the other side, the woman was overcome with anger. She turned to the man and said “You almost got us killed! You walk like you’re blind!” The man replied, “I am blind. That’s why I asked if I could cross with you.”
Well if you’ve ever been to shovel and rake you know that that is the standard quality of their jokes, so don’t groan too loudly, you’ll hurt Terry Connell’s feelings.
Today’s scripture of another blind man seems like a miracle story. It is of a man being receiving his sight back. Is this a miracle? Maybe not today. Advances in science have made this healing possible for thousands of people the past few decades.
I read about a woman named Rose Crawford who had been blind for 50 years and underwent eye surgery recently. As the doctor lifted the bandages from her eyes after her recovery in an Ontario, Canada hospital, she wept for joy when for the first time in 50 years she saw a dazzling and beautiful world of form and color. The tragic thing about the story, however, is that the last 20 years of her blindness had been unnecessary. They had developed this surgery 20 years before and she just didn’t know that the techniques had been developed. Her doctor was quoted as saying, “She just figured there was nothing that could be done about her condition. Had she otherwise, much of her life could have been very different.”
Had no one told her? Had her doctors not told her about the advances in eye surgery? Not a neighbor or single one of her friends? Had she given up hope in the first years of her life and it wasn’t until much later in life that she found the secret hope had been there 20 years earlier? For this woman, healing was possible but the persistent chase after the healing had been abandoned.
Today’s sermon is entitled “enough persistence.” This sermon series of last week, this week, and next week addresses the question “what is enough?” What does it mean to have enough of something? In our society that demands more and more and gives us less and less, what effect could we have on ourselves and society and our church if we have enough of something. And today’s topic is persistence.
Like Rose Crawford who gave up her hope for vision, the church of Jesus Christ also at times does not seek the goal with the proper amount of persistence. In this scripture passage today, there are three ways that Jesus acts differently than we expect, three ways that Jesus challenges our conceptions, and in these three ways, Christ pushes against complacency and plants the seed of a boundary-pushing spirit in our great northwestern church.
First, Persistence has to do with crossing the line in the sand. In Jesus’s time, most blind men were brought into the villages to panhandle at the gates or at the synagogue’s entrances. They believed that the maximum exposure to the most people would get them the right amount of alms to make it through their day. But when the blind man was brought to Jesus, Jesus took him outside of the village. This doesn’t happen elsewhere in the stories about Jesus. Jesus healed in front of hundreds, dramatic healings of sick people or raisings of the dead…but here Jesus took the man beyond the village walls and healed him in relative privacy.
The blind man had staked out his post and believed that all he needed was in that circle. Likewise, when we suffer from an ailment or have a trauma in our past, we limit the extent of what we are capable of. Or the other side, when we reach great success and make a name for ourselves, we often rest on our laurels. Both are challenged by Christ in this passage: when we limit where we place our hope, we miss out on the opportunities just beyond.
My first church that I served as a pastor, a suburb of Boston called Winthrop, was established in 1630. Some time after that, a shipload of settles landed on American soil. The first year they established a town site. The next year they elected a town government. The third year the town government planned to blaze a trail and build a road five-miles westward into the wilderness. In the fourth year the people tried to run their elected officials out of town because they thought it was a waste of effort to build a five-mile road westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway? Here were people who had the vision to see 600 miles across an ocean and travel 66 days overcoming great obstacles to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to see even five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision. What have we lost by ignoring that pioneering spirit today?
Second, Persistence has to do with doing something today so that others can do something more tomorrow. In the passage, Jesus seems to make a mistake. He heals the person twice. He spits in the man’s eyes, places his hands on them and heals the man first and, as the front cover of the bulletin reads, the blind man could only see “men that look like trees walking.” Everything was fuzzy. Jesus then seems to perfect his healing powers on the man the second time and he is fully healed. It is obvious that Jesus’ powers of healing were not overwhelmed or ineffective, but Jesus did take two tries for a reason. And I believe one of those reasons was to remind us that what we hope for sometimes takes stages to become a reality.
Any technology nerd out there would tell you that progress comes in stages. The iPhone 5 just came out, the fifth most perfect phone. It’s running the sixth version of its most perfect software. And there’s Microsoft Windows 7, which is the 7th version of its perfect software. Any consumer with a clue knows that progress comes in stages and in other industries, sometimes at great cost. On January 27th, 1967, the first space shuttle Apollo 1 blew up in space, killing three astronauts in a heartbeat, and NASA could have given up, but they grieved their lost heroes, solved the problem and ten months later, the unmanned Apollo 4 was a success. Eleven months after that, the Apollo 7 crew successfully completed Apollo 1′s original mission. On Christmas Eve of that same year of 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the moon, and on July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong actually set foot on the moon. And by Apollo 13, they got Tom Hanks in space. Or someone that looked like Tom Hanks.
We often think we have a pioneering spirit. But how many good ideas have gone into committees where they are tinkered with and perfected and when they finally emerge, their timely opportunity has passed. Perhaps being bold is allowing imperfect ideas to move forward, perfecting them as they go along, releasing new versions of our bold ideas. This takes both courage of our leadership, and grace from our congregation and community as they also lift up new things in prayer and support. And we have both in deep supply here at First Church.
My final comment is this: Persistence has to do with recognizing you are in a different place than before. When Jesus healed the blind man fully, he said to him “do not go into the village.” While we know this is a continuation of Mark’s insistence that no one knows about Jesus’ divinity, it’s also telling because Jesus just tells the man to go home, skipping the village entirely. The Blind man was taken from the village to be changed and he could never go back. Maybe he needed to go home to figure out how to be his new self, and re-visit once the village had changed enough to accept the new formerly blind man.
For us today, we persist in our efforts because we believe, regardless of the timing. I’ve been reading through the biography of Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple computers, who died last year. Apple is the first/second most valuable company in the world depending on the week and much has been attributed to Steve Jobs’ design culture and the pursuit of perfection. But it misses the point that Microsoft computers dominated the market for the first 25 years of Apple’s existence, and it took Apple 34 years to pass Microsoft in value of their company. What really happened is not that Microsoft or Apple had the right philosophy, but that they had the right philosophy to match the market at the right time. Apple eventually beat Microsoft not because Apple or Microsoft changed, but because the market changed. Jobs had to wait until the world caught up to his vision, and he lived to see that vision realized.
As United Methodists, we may not have the perfectionist genius of Steve Jobs, but we do have tools that are sufficient to preach the Good News the world around us. United Methodists hold reason, tradition, scripture, and experience as the keys to tell the Good News in ways that are appropriate to the world around us, in ways that move us through stages of discovery, and in ways that push us beyond the lines in the sand. Our tools are persistent and relevant. And these four keys are called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, usually understood as a square as a , but I find it more accurately described as a funnel, a tornado that as we walk through the keys (reason-tradition-scripture-experience), and each time we look at the issue we are in a different place with a new vantage point. In short, the United Methodist Method is that we are brought out from where we know to be changed.
It is in our history as a church and as a nation to have a pioneering spirit. To believe in something more than is in front of us. Some of us may wonder how we lost our own sense of this spirit in our personal, professional, and spiritual lives. Maybe we have advanced in age and lost abilities we once cherished; but in Christ we are called to leave our old villages and bring our remaining talents to a new one that needs us exactly as we are. Maybe we have recently moved or recently began attending church anew; in Christ, we have a first stage of healing and rejuvenation, and are invited to persist in our vision until we’ve received the next. Maybe our hearts ache and our hands itch and our gut clenches with a new sense of ourselves that doesn’t fit in with our friends and family around us; In Christ, we do not have to wait to be accepted but already are given a grace before we were aware and are empowered to live boldly into our new sense of ourselves.
The pioneering spirit is a persistent spirit, that is true. It’s a spirit that says we are on the road but not there yet. Throughout Scripture we see this common theme of already being on a path but not yet arriving at the destination. Jesus healed a blind man, but the first stage left the man “already but not yet” healed. The Apostle Paul believed that the end of the world when the kingdom would come in its fullest was “already began but not yet completed.” The author of Revelation dreamed of a world where the kingdom had come to spark an imagination with us that we are in the “already but not yet.” Today Olympians and young maestros of music, some of which undoubtedly are in our own choir, were recognized before they were fully developed “already, but not yet.” My own life these days of expecting a child is the very definition of “already but not yet.”
In our church, we are already but not yet. We may have become reconciling and affirming to all people as a church, but there’s a thousand churches beyond our borders that could be mentored and supported on their path too. We are already but not yet. We have a shelter already that helps families each and every night, and a mentoring program on the way, but we have not yet solved the problem of homelessness in Portland. We have a strategic plan, affirmed with no dissenting votes two weeks ago, and we are already on that path towards the three-year goals but we are not there yet until every person in our community participates in some way.
The whole of the Christian life is the already-but-not-yet. And we will never see the end until we find the right amount of persistence and sensibility to reach it, guided by the Holy Spirit. And even if we find the pioneering spirit again in the areas of our lives that need it, we may realize the unfortunate truth that pioneers leave their home base, leave their place of comfort, to commit to something beyond themselves.
My hope is that we also persist beyond discomfort, beyond falling short, to seek a vision that matches and moves forward our community to the already-but-not-yet. May Jesus Christ also spit on our eyes so we too may see Christ more clearly all around us, and encourage us to bold action in his name.
Glory be to God, Amen.
Category Rev. Jeremy Smith |
Author: First Church Published: September 23rd, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Mark 8:22-26
Sermon: Enough Persistence, Rev. Jeremy Smith preaching
Focus: Not giving up on God or ourselves
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Improvisation, Robert Hebble; Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Praise His Holy Name, Keith Hampton; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Aria, Eugene Bozza; Ross Miller, flute
- Postlude: Allegro (Concerto # 4), G. F. Handel
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: web manager Published: September 16th, 2012
Date: September 16, 2012
Title: “Run To Win!”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 9:19-27
In his autobiography, preacher Will Campbell tells this story, which I think the apostle Paul might appreciate this morning:
Early on in his ministry, Campbell – a Southern Baptist – met an older colleague whom he described as “I suppose, the most profane man I ever met.” The elder preacher had a number of habits not usually associated with Southern Baptists, let alone their preachers. He smoked a pipe, he disliked teenagers, he drank wine, and he swore a lot. One day, Campbell asked him why he had become a Baptist preacher [undoubtedly thinking, "why not foist this joker off on the United Methodists?"] Campbell says there was a long and somewhat awkward silence. Then, “Finally”, Campbell recalls, “He looked me straight in the eye and answered my question…’Cause I was called, you — fool!”
Who could fathom it? Here was a man who broke nearly every stereotype of “minister”. Here was someone who had little or none of the usual preoccupations with appearances for his role. Here was someone who – sometimes rather roughly, often rather crudely – said what he thought and lived as he believed. And God chose to use him, anyway!
There is a mystery and a wonder here, and it is found not only in God’s inscrutable calling. It is also found in this man’s response. He answers the question with a good deal of passion, incredulous that the question has even been asked. He answers it as if the answer is obvious – because I was called, you fool! As if to say, there is no accounting for God’s grace. It comes to us in unexpected ways, at surprising times, even through the most unlikely people. And it flows through us in much the same way.
William C. Martin puts it this way for all of us who are engaged in any kind of ministry:
Do not forget that you serve a Mystery that neither you nor your father’s father, nor your mother’s mother began. And the laughter and the tears that accompany your labor are not born of your cleverness – or your holiness – but are reflections of the Mystery of God in the still waters of the eternal lake by the moonlight. The God you serve is like an eternal lake whose waters are always calm and clear like glass, reflecting truth to all who gaze upon them. A million million reflections and the lake remains the same. It is not your job to stir the waters… but to show the way to the lakeside.
Perhaps this is what Paul is getting at when he writes:
Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people – religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized – whomever.
Paul’s ministry was proof of his understanding that no outsiders could ever be cast out far enough to make Jesus shun them – not lepers, or prostitutes, not culture enemies or Roman collaborators, not the poor or disenfranchised, not women, or children, not you, not me. And if we were to ask Paul “Why this ministry?”, he would surely answer with the same kind of passion and the same kind of fervor as Campbell’s colleague. Just a few verses earlier in the same letter, Paul says, If I preache the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! It wasn’t much of a choice facing Paul – the way he saw it, it was either preach or be damned. Not much of a choice.
Sharon Blezzard offers this reflection on God’s gracious call, and our often hesitant response:
One of the important lessons we learn from the Gospel is that choosing to love, choosing relationship, and choosing to do the right thing is not always the easy way, but it is God’s way of living life. We may not even want to consider taking this risk. After all, life is sure a lot warmer and cozier when we cosset ourselves within safe walls and impenetrable dogma. Religion, like football, is a lot easier when it’s a spectator sport enjoyed from a cushy seat in a climate-controlled environment.
But if we want to be followers of Christ, then we really have no option. We are already a part of healing the world. We take the risk before us to put ourselves and our faith out there. As Paul reminds us, we are in this discipleship business to do our very best – to show up, put out, and give our all in the process.
It reminds me of Carls Jr.’s latest advertising campaign. Perhaps you have seen their television spots. Each one begins with some kind of outlandish behavior, usually involving supermodels and really unhealthy fast food. And then they are followed by this tag line (and this is the part that I like) – Eat like you mean it.
Eat like you mean it – be bold! Don’t apologize for your passion, don’t downsize your enthusiasm, don’t give up on your own potential. What if that were to become our mantra here at First Church? Now obviously we don’t really need to “eat like we mean it”, so much as we do need to “love like we mean it”, or “believe like we mean it/ trust like we mean it/ learn, or grow, laugh or live like we mean it!”
For me, at least, this is what our Strategic Plan – overwhelmingly adopted last Sunday and now available on our website – is all about. It is about this congregation’s decision to live like we mean it, to be unapologetically, enthusiastically involved in the life of the world around us because of the life of Christ within us. Woody Allen once quipped that “80% of success is just showing up.” And Paul says he does what he does because of the Gospel, saying “I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”
To show up for God and for the world is to be “in on” the Gospel. It is to participate in God’s expectations for us and for our future. Did you know, that God has expectations for us? And that God’s imagination can only be limited by our fears? We all talk a great deal about expectations – mine, yours, the church’s, the world’s. But how often do we consider God’s expectations for our future? And if we did, would we be more able to “live like we mean it”?
Maya Angelou writes:
One of my earliest memories of my grandmother is a glimpse of a tall, cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible. That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Grandma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, “I will step out on the Word of God.”
The Depression, which was difficult for everyone, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often. She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular, and the world in general, “I will step out on the Word of God. I will step out on the Word of God.” Immediately, I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head.
In my 20s in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented. Until one day when my voice teacher asked me to read to him from “Lessons in Truth”, a section which ended with these words, “God loves me.” I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, “Read it again.” I pointedly opened the book and sarcastically read, “God loves me.” He said, “Again.”
After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me – ME. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything…
Again, Paul says, Consider the way that athletes run. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. He goes on to say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got.”
Giving it everything we’ve got – living like we mean it – even on those days when the only available transportation is a leap of faith. That is what we are called to do, because God loves you – YOU! – and that pretty much sums it up and frees us up. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Category Rev. Donna Pritchard |
Author: First Church Published: September 16th, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 9:19-27
Sermon: Run to Win!, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Cheerleading for mission
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Fugue, Thomas Adams (1857 – 1918); Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Jerusalem, William Blake, circa 1804; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Harvest Cantata, C. M. von Weber; Deborah Benke, soloist
- Postlude: Festival Toccata, Percy Fletcher (1879 – 1932)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: Rev. Donna Published: September 9th, 2012
Date: September 9, 2012
Title: “Jumping the Fence”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Philippians 4:4-9
I was reminded this week of an old “Peanuts” cartoon. In it, Lucy asks Charlie Brown, “Did you ever know anyone who was really happy?” Before he can answer, Snoopy comes dancing onto the scene, head flung back, ears streaming in the wind, a silly grin on his dog face. And in the last frame, Lucy asks again, “Did you ever know anyone who was really happy…and was still in his right mind?”
We might want to ask that question of Paul this morning, based on the Scripture we read from Philippians. In it, Paul is writing from prison. He has lost everything, including his freedom. He is isolated from his closest friends. And he has no idea whether he is about to live or to die. He doesn’t have a clue what his future will hold. By anyone’s standards – for anyone in their right mind – Paul should be at the very least distressed, if not downright despondent. And yet, the entire letter to the Philippians is full of joy.
How can this be? My friend Jim Harnish, who serves on the General Commission on the General Conference with me, pondered this question of joy in the midst of great distress. He writes:
It seems that one of Paul’s favorite words is the Greek word ‘hilarotes’, from which we get the word ‘hilarity’…which literally means ‘laughter from the heart’. So when Paul talks about joy, he does not mean the trivial, shallow, or mean-spirited stuff we often call humor today. Rather, Paul means bone-deep, exuberant laughter which comes up out of the depths of a person’s soul… joy which flows from the center of our being, from the depth of our hearts.
This past Christmas Ralph Bolliger shared with me a letter written by one of his college friends, in which the friend remarked that “Christian hope is not dependent upon hopeful circumstances.” I think the same is true for Christian joy. It is not limited to nor defined solely by joyous circumstances. It is like the poet who reminds us…
Listen!
Listen with the night falling, we are saying thank you.
Back from a series of hospitals, back from a mugging,
After funerals we are saying thank you.
After news of the dead, whether or not we knew them
We are saying thank you.
In a culture up to its chin in shame,
With nobody listening we are saying thank you.
We are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is.
Listen! Christian joy is not limited to nor dependent upon joyous circumstances. And the apostle Paul tells us, “Rejoice! Rejoice in the Lord always!” Be anxious in nothing, prayerful in everything, and thankful in anything. The progress here is plain to see. The peace which is promised is not necessarily tied to the joyous moments of our lives, because our joy is not limited to nor dependent upon our circumstances.
Eugene Peterson paraphrases this Philippians passage in this way:
Celebrate God every day. I mean, revel in God! Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let your petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down… It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
It reminds me of the advice given to would-be equestrians, just learning how to jump on horseback. They say it’s easy – you just take your heart, throw it over the fence, and then jump after it! My friends, the truth is that none of us knows exactly what our future holds. We may not be like Paul, sitting in prison, totally at the mercy of the emperor. But even so, we cannot know exactly what this day will bring, much less tomorrow or the day after that.
And once again, Paul may help us to know how we will jump whatever fence is in our path. Just a few verses before the ones we read today, Paul says:
Friends, don’t get me wrong. By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this. But I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning me onward. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
Again, in Harnish’s words:
That sounds great when Paul says it. But you know, it’s tough to let go of the past, particularly when it is a happy past, and it’s hard to let go of a comfortable, secure present to reach for some unknown future. That is tougher than it sounds.
Because beginnings are always tricky things. Whether it’s a new school year, or a new church year. Whether it’s a new job, or a new neighborhood, a new friendship or a new romance, or even a new strategic priority for ministry and mission…beginnings are always tricky things. It is not easy to let go of what we already know – or even what we think we know – in favor of what God is calling us into. And we will only be able to jump over that fence if we let Christ displace the worry at the center of our lives. Again, hear Paul’s words, so reminiscent of Jesus’ own instruction, “Don’t worry about anything.”
Do you imagine that Noah, on the 39th day of the flood, went up on the deck of the Ark to thank God for the fresh rain falling on his face? Do we do that in about the middle of March in Portland? I think not. But it doesn’t matter. Because being thankful is not so much a casting call for Pollyanna. It is not so much about being relentlessly cheery, as it is about believing that the grace of God is present when we can see it – and when we just have to trust it.
We have to trust it enough to sever the strings by which we try to manipulate or control the forces of the world. We have to trust that grace enough to receive our lives in this moment the way we want to receive any gift – with open hands and wide open hearts.
G.K. Chesterton once remarked that “Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.” We might do well to lighten up a bit ourselves, to allow that peace of God to surpass our understanding, and to receive, embrace and imbibe that deep, deep peace which comes from knowing that God really does love you and accept you right now, just the way you are.
Summing it all up, Paul says…
You’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse… Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work YOU into God’s most excellent harmonies…
And we will on our way, galloping right up to the fence, and sailing right on over it. Trusting for today, but also for tomorrow and the day after that. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Category Rev. Donna Pritchard |
Author: First Church Published: September 9th, 2012
Welcome Home Sunday
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Philippians 3:10-14
Sermon: Jumping the Fence, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Embracing Strategic Vision; Rally Day/Rah! Rah!
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Praise the Lord With Drums and Cymbals, Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877 – 1939); Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Psalm 150, Cesar Franck; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Shine On Me, Arr. Rollo Dilworth; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Postlude: On The Trail from The Grand Canyon Suite, Ferde Grofé (1892 – 1972)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: Rev. Donna Published: September 2nd, 2012
Date: September 2, 2012
Title: “Labor Intensives”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 2:4-19
The author of Ecclesiastes – known as “The Preacher” – is taking a pretty cynical view of work (and of pretty much everything else) in the passage we read this morning. And we may find ourselves echoing his oft-repeated refrain, Vanity, all is vanity… if we are not careful. Because it is easy to become cynical. It is easy to point out the incredible depth and breadth of that “tragic gap” we considered last week – the distance between the way things are now and the way we know they could be, or the way God wants them to become.
But this is a holiday weekend, a time for celebration, not for cynicism. It is the day before Labor Day – the only holiday brought to you by the working people of this nation, the same people who brought us the weekend itself.
For those of you who like history, the first Labor Day was celebrated Tuesday, September 5, 1882 in New York City, organized by that city’s Central Labor Union. It was such a great event that it was repeated again the next year, and by 1885, the idea of a Labor Day celebration had spread to most of the industrialized cities in the country. On June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September a legal holiday, Labor Day.
Labor Day… a day to honor those who labor. Which, when you think about it, includes all of us. Whether we are retired or not, whether we are working at a job or working to find a job, whether we are a student or an apprentice, a crafts-person or a professional person, all of us labor. And we are all called to work that makes a difference, because we are called to the work of God in this world. I am reminded of a story about a construction worker building a brand new church:
The priest came by to talk with him, saying, “I just learned that you have a brother who is a bishop.” “That I do,” replied the worker. “And you are a bricklayer,” mused the priest. “It sure is a funny world. Things aren’t divided equally in life, are they?” “No, they are not,” agreed the worker, as he slapped the mortar along a line of bricks. “My poor brother couldn’t do this to save his life!”
We are all called! We are called to be certain kinds of people in this world, to understand that our “labor intensives” hold within them the possibility of grace – depending upon how we engage ourselves in them.
I’ll never forget the fellow who pumped gas at the mini-mart in Silverton when I lived there. If ever there was a job you might consider boring, repetitive, meaningless – this was it. He didn’t do anything other than pump the gas – other people worked the cash registers inside. He didn’t even get to wear a nice uniform, or participate in any great corporate identity. There was no big oil company behind him, no extensive work crew to share the load. Just this one guy, day in and day out, pumping gas.
And while I couldn’t tell you his name if my life depended upon it, I will never forget this man. Because he did his job with a smile, sometimes a song or a dance even…and always with a measure of grace. I asked him once “why the smile – the song – the dance?” I wondered how he did it? And he replied, “It’s simple, really. Because God is here, I have to be here too…and what better reason is there to dance?”
David Whyte, in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea, lifts up work as a pilgrimage to our identity. And in it he points out that many of us exist in a state of exhaustion. Bone-weary and soul somnolent, we wonder how we will ever catch up. But Whyte suggests that “the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest…the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”
It is being totally present to whatever work, in whatever moment we find ourselves. It is giving ourselves wholly in our labor and our leisure, in our living and our loving, and so being able to shout not just “Thank God it’s Friday!”, but even “Thank God it’s Monday!” If we believe that God is with us at any moment, then God must be with us in them all.
Dallas Willard, in his article, “How to be a Disciple”, puts it this way:
If we restrict our discipleship to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of God’s Realm in our lives.
There are no “ordinary” days. And even Mondays can become a cause for celebration. Quite apart from the discouragement of Ecclesiastes, I think of all those other Biblical witnesses pointing to the many reasons we have to celebrate, beginning with the story of creation itself. Genesis tells it in perfect step-by-step progression – from chaos to order, from darkness to light, to heavens and earth and sea and sky and every living creature. After every step, with each progression, we are told that God saw that it was good. God saw – God help us if we cannot see – that it is good.
A few years ago Donald Keough, then CEO of Coca-Cola, gave the commencement address at Emory University in Atlanta. Among other things he said:
I have an architect friend who says, “I can take the newest building, built by the finest builders anywhere in the world…and if you give me a camera and the ability to focus various lenses, I can make that building look like it’s about to fall down. How? I simply find five or six minor imperfections and then I focus on them and I convince you that the entire structure is about to topple.”
His point is obvious but he makes it well:
Be wary of those who want to focus the camera forever on the warts and blemishes and shortcomings of your existence. If you allow that kind of focus on your life you will often be disappointed, frequently be fearful, and generally be miserable.
It takes no CEO of a major corporation, no poet of our time, no theologian, no Preacher from the Bible to tell us that we – all of us – have our share of warts and blemishes and shortcomings in our lives. Some are the result of our own poor choices, the disappointments of our own construction. While others are wounds that come from circumstance or chance, the often mysterious brokenness of human life. Whatever their origin, the trick is not to try desperately to “understand” our pain, so much as it is to remember that our wounds are not the totality of our identity. And that our brokenness is never the end of our story.
Even the Preacher’s “vanity of vanities” later in the book of Ecclesiastes becomes a word of praise. And I like the way that Ted Loder puts it in this prayer:
O God, at last we discern, even in this dark glass of finitude,
That the deeper mystery is goodness, not evil in all its demonic poses
Or all its grinding banalities.
The deeper mystery is beauty, not nagging ugliness
Trust, not falsehood followed however long.
The mystery is goodness, beauty, truth…
Come close, old holy adversary in all trusting,
That we may trust that this urge in us to go on and on and on is holy
Because you are the pull of it, yours the hard to hear, hard to resist summons
To go on…
Beyond defeat, discouragement, despair,
Beyond even goodness, beauty and truth…
To go on until we are found by the life we long and love and each moment live toward…
A holy life with you, God.
Because it is you, above all, beyond all, who keeps breakable promises
And it is your grace which is the very deepest mystery of all.
For you saw, and you see still… that is good. Very good, indeed. Amen.
Category Rev. Donna Pritchard |
Author: First Church Published: September 2nd, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Sermon: Labor Intensives, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Finding meaning beyond work and in work
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Supplication, Richard Purvis (1912-1994); Chris Nordwall, guest organist
- Anthem: The Morning Trumpet, arr. Michael Richardson; The First Church Quartet
- Offertory: Melody in Mauve, Richard Purvis
- Postlude: Praise the Lord With Drums & Cymbals, Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1939)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: Rev. Donna Published: August 26th, 2012
Date: August 26, 2012
Title: “To Whom Can We Go?”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: John 6:60-69
It was 5:30 yesterday morning when I pulled up in front of Portland International Airport and said farewell to my daughter Kate – who presumably got on a plane an hour later bound for Los Angeles, where she presumably got on another plane, to Mexico City, where she presumably took a taxicab from the airport to the bus station, where she presumably got on the midnight bus for a six to eight hour ride to Oaxaca City…where she will study and work until her return to PDX at 11:30 pm December 23rd, a half hour before Christmas Eve!
I say “presumably” because I won’t hear from Kate until sometime later (hopefully today), when she has a chance to buy an international calling card and find a telephone. And so I pray, as any parent prays, for the safety of my child. And I think about all those Mexican mothers sending their 20-year old children in this direction – many without benefit of either airplane or bus, many who will not be able to call home for many weeks, even months, and some who will never be able to call home where they are lost in the desert.
So I pray, and I think about other mothers, and about how wimpy I am in compared to them. And I think about faith.
Friday night Kate was of course still packing at 10:30 when she had a little bit of a meltdown, perhaps partially brought on by my reading her airplane itinerary and noticing that she would be flying out of Portland at 6:40 am, not at the 11:00 hour she was planning! (Apparently the plane from Los Angeles leaves at 11:00 am, and she had not noticed the Portland time.) In any event, through her tears, Kate told me that she was afraid. This would be her first big adventure, all on her own, and she was worried that she was not yet up to it.
I tried reassuring her by reminding her of her own intelligence and competence. And then I asked her to remember – to dredge up beneath the emotion of the moment – her excitement about this experience. I reminded Kate that even before she had chosen her college, she was looking forward to this semester of study abroad. Whereupon Kate replied, “What could I have been thinking? Clearly, I was not imagining this moment, this time of leaving here but not yet arriving there!”
Those early Christians could easily understand Kate’s quandary. They might even have said to themselves, “What were we thinking? Clearly, we never imagined this moment – these hard teachings – this time of leaving who we were, but not yet having arrived at who we are to become!” And perhaps your own soul stirs a little in recognition. Someone else captured the feeling in this little bit of prose:
Do you also wish to go away
He asked and stunned us like electricity
And we whispered under our breath…
“Yes, we would like an easier path…clear cut through the oak forest,
Something that made sense at least”
Or better, we wish you would go away
Jesus, you keep complicating and confusing us
And messing us up so we can’t think straight
If only we could have not known you and
Heard your words that burn in us now
And never felt your spirit wormhole its way through us
Right on into the infinite “yes”
But then again, before you was only the deafening finite “no”
And the deathtrap of our anxious breathless days…
So no, we don’t want to go away.
We don’t want to go away. We just need to be reminded how much we have looked forward to this life of faith, how much we yearn for God-with-us, how much we long for Christ, in all the complications and confusions and anxiety of this moment, leaving who we have been, and not yet arriving at who we are to become.
Alyce McKenzie suggests:
The question arises that if we are no longer going about with Jesus, then where would we be going? If we are not on a journey in which we are nourished by God so that we may nourish others, then what are we doing?
Peter realizes that while Jesus’ message and Jesus’ Way is not easy, it’s all he’s got. So when Jesus asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”, a “yes, but” is implied in Peter’s plaintive response, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life…you are the Holy One of God.”
It is like saying – Jesus, your journey has become our journey. We have thrown in our lot with you, Jesus. Your love has captured our hearts and your truth has secured our imagination. So however difficult your message – however counter to our culture, however challenging to our egos, however downright different from our past understandings – you have the words of eternal life. We know you are a Holy One of God. So where else would we stay? To whom could we possibly go?
We have left what we knew before, and we have not yet arrived at our destination. So we live in the tension of the inbetween, whether we are traveling to a new place, or embracing a new idea. Whether we are setting a new direction, or creating a new family, a new job, a new ministry, a new possibility – sometimes all we can do is to hang onto our excitement, and remember the words of eternal life, the Holy One of God.
Parker Palmer puts it this way:
We live in a tragic gap – a gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be. It is a gap that has never been and never will be closed…We must learn to stand in the tragic gap, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility.
He goes on to say:
I harbor no illusions about how hard it is to live that way. Though I aspire to be one of those life-giving people who keeps a grip on both reality and hope, I often find the tension too hard to hold, so I let go of one pole and collapse into the other.
Sometimes I resign myself to things as they are, sinking into a life of cynical disengagement. Sometimes I embrace a dreamy idealism, living a life of cheerful irresponsibility that floats above the fray. Deep within me there is an instinct even more primitive than “fight or flight”, and I do not think it is mine alone. As a species, we are profoundly impatient with tensions of any sort, and we want to resolve every one of them as quickly as we can.
I think Palmer is right. We are an impatient bunch. And because of that we all too often settle for things as they are, or we imagine things as they are not. We fall into the trap of letting go of the tension, and we either live those isolated lives in blissful irresponsibility, or we become disengaged cynics, deciding that nothing ever really changes, anyway. We say no political candidate, no convention in Florida or anywhere else is going to make a difference. No community priority will create change, no organizational innovation will take us from where we are now to where we want to be. We’ve tried those things before, and we’ve been disappointed to find we still are in that tragic gap, so why not just give up? Yes, Jesus, we just might leave after all.
But just imagine for a moment what might happen if you and I together – each in our own way, in our own lives, in our hearts – could find the courage to stay in the gap, holding the tension between reality and possibility. You see, I think this is what happens every time we answer Jesus’ query by saying, “To whom could we go?” It happens every time we choose to stay connected to Christ, grounded in God, and supported by this community. It happens every time we remember and reclaim our enthusiasm, excitement and anticipation for the life of faith, and when we help each other through those moments of “no longer the same… not yet different, no longer here, not yet there.”
Let us harbor no illusions. It will not be easy. But standing in that tragic gap, and trusting the journey with Jesus – will be amazing. And we will be blessed. Thanks be to God! Or should I say, “Gracias a Dios!” Amen.
Category Rev. Donna Pritchard |
Author: First Church Published: August 26th, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: John 6:60-64, 66-69
Sermon: To Whom Can we Go?, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Celebrating past tradition/G’s faithfulness
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Trio, Gustav Merkel; Chris Nordwall, guest organist
- Anthem: Rejoice, the Lord Is King!, John Ness Beck; The Summer Choir, Erick Lichte, conducting
- Offertory: Dedication Prayer (Bist du Bei mir), Anna Magdalena Bach; Wendy Steele, soloist and Erick Lichte, cello
- Postlude: Concerto I, J. S. Bach
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: First Church Published: August 19th, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Luke 10:1-17
Sermon: A Song for the Road, Rev. Dick Storment preaching
Focus: Finding Joy and learning in our discipleship
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Prelude, Fugue, and Chaconne in C, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637 – 1707); Michael Koller, guest organist
- Anthem: Lazarus, Robert Tanner; The Summer Choir, Erick Lichte, conducting
- Offertory: Draw Thou My Soul, Janet Sanborn/Lucy Larcom; Ashley Lichte, soloist
- Postlude: Toccata and Fugue in d, J. S, Bach (1685 – 1750)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Category Sunday Morning |
Author: Rev. Jeremy Smith Published: August 12th, 2012
Date: August 12, 2012
Title: “Building for the Kingdom”
Preaching: Rev. Jeremy Smith
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:9-16
When I was 18, I was on a mission trip to Asheville, North Carolina. Our job was to help renovate and repair people’s homes who couldn’t afford the repairs. I was working on the roof re-shingling it, tearing off the old shingles with these miniature shovels so that we could tar and replace them with better shingles. And I got a little enthusiastic and I knocked a shovel off the roof and it smashed a clay pot on the owner’s front porch. The owner started yelling at me and telling me what-for and where to go and what kind of handbasket would take me there. And though I felt ashamed for my clumsiness, I also felt that we were doing several thousand dollars worth of work for her house, why was she so mad about a $40 broken pot? My small act of building the kingdom of God felt a little bit smaller.
10 years after that I would be standing outside of my first church in Boston looking at the broken back door of the church, a white metal door hanging off its hinges. My church shared its space with a Brazilian congregation who worshipped in their native Portuguese language. Now Brazilian culture has a more flexible understanding of property and our stuff got borrowed or broken but it was more or less OK. But there I was with the broken door, talking with the Brazilian pastor, trying to explain in English and in gestures whose fault I just knew it had to be. He kept on waving his hands and was unable to communicate with me. I was angry with him with disrespecting the church building. And about the time I was done shaking my head and hand, his lay leader’s pickup pulled up with a white metal door in the back. The lay leader translated for the pastor that they had discovered it broken, and the lay leader got up at 5am to drive to a place 2 hours away that had a ready door and hinge, and drove back in time to replace on his own time. If I hadn’t come in early that morning, it is doubtful that I would have even noticed. My small role in building the kingdom felt just a little bit smaller.
I share these stories today because you have stories like this too. Stories when you tried to build the kingdom and felt it wasn’t that effective. Stories when you were trying to do the best you could and serve others, only to have it blow up in your face. Stories of when you felt ashamed for falling short and feeling ineffective.
I thought serving others in the Christian life was like the movie Pay It Forward or those Liberty Mutual commercials where every good action led to another good action and you could immediately see the change in others. It was immediately infectious and had to be for a 30 second ad or a 90 minute movie. In both of my stories, clearly that sort of immediate effect of our work is not often our experience.
I think for us today, we have a disconnect. Followers of Christ are often called kingdom-builders, builders of the kingdom of God, but at times we meet discouragement, frustration, and cannot see how our actions mean anything. Your ministers praise you for your faithfulness but you are discouraged that your neighbor won’t come to church with you. People say you are an inspiration but you can’t seem to get through to your own children the importance of discipleship. People say you seek justice and yet justice to your eyes has not been fulfilled. What we call ourselves as Christians, followers of Christ, kingdom-builders, kin-dom creators, doesn’t seem to match with what we perceive we are producing. We believe we are building the kingdom with our every action and are discouraged when our contributions seemingly go nowhere.
That’s the bad news. Thankfully this has happened before. It has happened to the Church found in the Scriptures today. The text for today is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians as they sought to make sense of their church. At first reading, Paul seems to put a heavy burden on us. He says that God has placed a foundation, and we build on it, and then God will set it on fire to see if we built it correctly. It sounds like a parent testing a sand castle with a power washer, or the strength of a house of cards with a leaf-blower. Surely nothing we do will stand in the face of the other saints of God. Surely Mother Theresa’s building is stronger than mine, surely the saints of this church, their building will be stronger than mine.
But friends what interests me in this passage is not the spectacle of burning up our accomplishments but the matter of time. In our world of fast judgments, knee-jerk decisions, reality shows that instantly judge a person’s singing ability by the press of a buzzer, we are used to judging things as they happen. And yet the passage says that the judgment is from God not each other not even ourselves. Are we judged from day to day, instantly assessing our efforts, or is the judgment withheld until a future date? Only God has the long-term viewpoint, the birds-eye view that takes everything into account.
Hear the Good News! Perhaps we are using the wrong terms. Perhaps We do not build the kingdom of God: we build for the kingdom.
When you read the scripture text, it doesn’t seem to say that it’s a bad thing that our efforts are set aflame. We put all our lives on the foundation, the parts of our lives that are flammable and the parts that are inflammable. Richard, are those both mean the same thing. But we put all of ourselves on the altar, and when we are judged in God’s time, we will see what has survived and thrived. The scripture frames it helpfully for us that we do not build the kingdom of God. We build for the kingdom.
Let me use an example I first heard made by the Anglican Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright and apply it to our church today. In reading through our history, our congregation at one time met in a new building on Taylor Street, finished in 1870. It was reportedly the “first brick church building of substantial size in Oregon.”
Imagine with me the people working then. There’s the architect, designer, surely an opinionated committee (they were Methodists after all) but there was also a brickmaker who was someone who probably didn’t know how to read or write, was undoubtedly poor, but someone had showed him how to work with clay, straw, and molds. They put him in front of the vacant lot on Taylor street and said we need a couple thousand bricks. Get to work.
The brickmaker will start making the bricks on his moulding table, and the best ones with a team of people could make about 4000 bricks per day. People may say “these bricks are for that new church building on Taylor street” but he doesn’t need to know. All he needed to do was complete the task before him, shape the clay into the mouldings and submit the work as accomplished. He wouldn’t even lay the bricks in the church building, just make them and move on to the next project.
The brickmaker is building for the church. He is not building the church. Someone else will take what he is doing and put it into the eventual structure. Someone else knows what is going on. But his piece matters and his part is necessary. What he has done, when it is finished, it will be enhanced immensely by everything else around it. The bricks are not the building but it certainly is part of the building. The piece matters.
When Paul finishes his letter to the Corinthians, the same letter that we read today, he says this in 1 Cor 15:58 “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
In God, your labor is not in vain. What you do in the present isn’t wasted. The efforts you make small or large, easy or difficult, are building for the kingdom. Later when the kingdom comes in its fullness, we will see exactly how our actions now fit within the reign of God. The hay and the chaff will be burned away and the gold and silver will be revealed. That which has messed it up will be burned away so that that which is better can be revealed.
We may or may not see the first fruits of our work. But we excel in our work in front of us in faith that God will put it all back together.
Throughout history, Christians have been building for the kingdom even in times where it seemed so unlikely. In the 2nd-3rd centuries, before the Empire of Constantine, if a plague struck a town and people were dying, what would normally happen is that the people with means would move to the hills to their winter homes in Southern California and get away from the ghettoes. But the Christians would stay and care for not just only their own but anyone. People would get better or they would die. Christians would often get the plague too and they would often die. And when the plague was over the people would come back to the town and say “why did you do this?” “Well, because of this guy named Jesus.” And town by town, Christianity grew because of the small acts of charity and justice that seemed tiny in the face of the plague. They took on a massive project and emerged stronger than before.
We know from our history that when our church was on Taylor Street in the 1870s, it grew its fastest when its outreach was disproportionate to its worshipping congregation. As the newspaper article wrote at the time “when a hive is filled, the bees cease to work.” So they built a 600 seat sanctuary for their 120 member congregation. They held extensive education and outreach projects. And they grew like wildfire.
History proves that the church grows when it bites off more than it can chew. When our church leaves our bite marks on whatever mercy or justice issue that someone needs to take on. When it builds for the kingdom rather than seeking to build the kingdom. As Rev. Donna said last week, when we can’t do everything but we can do something.
We are now weeks away from committing to our strategic plan for the next three years. The Strategic Plan has been a prayer-filled yearlong process involving fifty elected leaders and many other passionate laity in our congregation. We will present it at Listening Posts before worship next week and after worship the following week, with the final approval taking place on Homecoming Sunday September 9th. For many people, I know, they are looking at the Strategic Plan as the way to build the kingdom and this church up.
But like the Scripture passage reminds us, our expectations need to be turned on their heads. The Plan is not the building of the kingdom. It is the building for the building. It is the push behind the wave that will surely sweep up across Portland and our surrounding areas. It is the mould that our clay, sweat, tears and straw can be laid in, hopeful that they will all add up to be larger than the sum of their parts.
I am inspired this morning by the words of Dr. Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale. He urged in his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace that churches should “concentrate less on [legislating] social arrangements, and more on fostering the kind of social agents capable of creating…just, truthful and peaceful societies.” We are in error if we believe we can place our human-made strategy on the altar and expect it to survive a purifying fire. But in prayerfully committing ourselves to being active participants during the next three years, I am confident that we will birth a church anew that is intent on shaping a climate in which social action will thrive, where love becomes an attitude that seeps into all our actions, where reconciling means all are welcome, where missions means awareness of the worldwide impact of the United Methodist Church, where education means the development of critical thinkers, where you may have three ministers but all are active in ministry, where it’s not enough that our doors are open here at First Church but we want all the churches to have open doors, hearts, and minds throughout the world.
When you leave today, take a hand and touch a brick on the wall. Say a prayer in your heart that no matter what, that you’ll keep building for the kingdom in your varied ways. And as we do that, I hope you feel strangely uplifted, knowing that the burden is not ours alone to bear. The Kingdom is God’s gift, a new creation, unmerited grace given to us. But, as part of that grace already poured out in Jesus Christ and by the Spirit, we are building FOR the kingdom.
What labors you do in God’s name are not in vain,
Because of the resurrection.
Because of the love of God.
Because of the mission to which all are called.
Glory be to God. Amen.
Category Rev. Jeremy Smith |
