Sermons

Fruits of Our Labors

Date: May 13, 2012
Title: “Fruits of Our Labors”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: John 15:9-17

There is an old preacher’s joke (perhaps you’ve heard it), that goes like this:
A preacher was giving the children’s sermon in worship one day, and started out by asking “What’s warm and brown and fuzzy?” Whereupon one precocious child answered, “I know the answer is probably Jesus, but it sounds all the world like a squirrel to me!”

The answer is probably Jesus, but it sounds more like a squirrel to me. How often it seems we fall into the temptation to make of Jesus little more than something warm and brown and fuzzy. We want Christ to be something as easy to imagine, pleasant to watch, and warm to hold as a squirrel… well, maybe a stuffed squirrel, or at least a tame one!

But the Gospel lesson today effectively reminds us that Jesus is not now, nor ever was, a simple sentimentalist. And it tells us in no uncertain terms that Christ’s love cannot be reduced to a Hallmark card or a few dozen roses. Because Jesus’ love is not a love which takes us just as we are and leaves us there. It is not a love which condones all that we do, nor accepts all that we do not do. Jesus’ love is a love which speaks truth to us and asks us to follow. Jesus’ love is a love which always involves action, and always requires a response.

A response like – for instance – housing homeless families with compassion and respect for the past 18 years. Eighteen years of not only offering safe temporary shelter, but also working to alleviate homelessness by providing the resources, the support, the encouragement, and the friendship needed to place one family at a time in stable housing. Eighteen years of working together as volunteers and as staff, offering Jesus’ kind of love to one another and to all those we have been honored to call our guests. Eighteen years of knowing that every night is an important night, and that the work of compassion does not end just because we may be tired of sleeping in the gym. This work cannot end just because we may be weary of bringing in supper, or just because we might be anxious about our own church budget.

Jesus says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love”. This is what our faith ultimately boils down to – love. Someone else put it this way:

“The bottom line is not what we believe (as if Christianity were about creeds). It is not even whether or not we believe in love. It is about actually loving.”

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus speaks of his commandments. And we wonder, “Where’s that list?” The truth is, you can look all through the New Testament and you will find Jesus giving only one single commandment – to love one another.

He says nothing at all about how we should “feel” in our relationship with him. But only volumes about how we are to act. Jesus seems much more interested in the fruits of our labors than in all of our best intentions. So that even after 18 years in the shelter business, we still have to ask ourselves two questions in the face of every decision, every choice, every plan, every vision we propose for our church. First, we have to ask “Is this rooted in love?” And then, equally important, “Will this bear fruit for the reign of God?”

Today, as you know, is Mother’s Day. And it is a day ripe for misunderstanding and missing each other. If we try to focus only upon the warm fuzzies of sentimental love, or try to look only at how we feel about our mothers (or for that matter, our children), we might misunderstand our love. And we might miss each other entirely.

Robert Fulghum shares these reflections about Mother’s Day:
“For 25 years of my life, the second Sunday in May was trouble. Being the minister of a church, I felt obliged in some way to address the subject of Mother’s Day. When it came to the second Sunday in May, the expectations were summarized in these words by one of the more outspoken women in the church: ‘I’m bringing my mother to church on Mother’s Day, Reverend. And you can talk about anything you like. But it had better include mother, and it had better be good.’

One memorable Sunday I said, for all those who had wonderful mothers or who were wonderful mothers or who thought motherhood in general was just wonderful…I would like to say wonderful. But – and then I gave sort of a mock quiz, asking some questions without asking for a show of hands:

1. How many of you find yourself uncomfortable around Mother’s Day?
2. How many of you don’t really like (or even hate) the mothering you’ve received?
3. How many of you don’t really like your children?
4. How many of you don’t really know your mother at all?
5. How many of you find Mother’s Day painful, involving thoughts of abortion, divorce, suicide, rejection, alcoholism, alienation, abuse, sorrow, or loss?

You see, it is not always a simple and straightforward thing, this day of
celebration. Because it is not always easy, choosing to love. And this is where our sentimentalizing – about moms or dads or kids or even about God – falls far short. We cannot expect love to just happen. Not in the church, not in society, not even in our families, will that necessarily occur. Because love in Jesus’ sense of the word implies a choice, it requires a response, and always involves action.

Henri Nouwen puts it this way: “The mystery of ministry (of what we do together as a church) is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.”

It is a mystery, and it is a wonder – that you and I together could bring our own imperfect and incomplete love and God can use us to share God’s unbounded and unconditional love with all the world.

So what, you might ask, became of Rev. Fulghum on that infamous second Sunday in May? He writes:

“A visiting lady, who had ‘sainted mother’ written all over her face, accosted me after the service. ‘Young man’, she said, ‘better men than you have gone straight to hell for suggesting less than what you said this morning!’”

Sometimes it seems that sentiment and truth are complete strangers to one another. As we lose ourselves inside our valiant attempts to hang onto our warm brown fuzzies, even at the risk of losing touch with that which we so desperately desire. Even at the risk of forgetting to notice the fruits of our labors, the proof of our love.

One Mother’s Day, about fourteen years ago, it was a lovely spring day, much like this one today. Sarah and Kate and I had been to Sunday School and also to church, and we had come home for lunch and presents (my personal favorite part of Mother’s Day!). I opened the gift form Sarah and then Kate suggested we needed to retire to the backyard for me to receive her gift.

There, five-year-old Kate had set up lawn chairs facing the swing set in the corner of the yard. Once I was comfortably seated, she rather dramatically told me that her Mother’s Day gift to me would an active one, as she performed various tricks on the swings. Ah, performance art!

I remember at the time laughing with Sarah about this gift. But I’ve got to tell you, after all these years, after all those Mother’s Days gone by, the gift I remember the most is the gift from that swing set. It is the gift from that child’s heart which understood, somehow, that it is the fruits of our labors that count.

It is the fruits of our labors – our actions – that defines our love. So the question for all of us today is this – what are you producing? And how will your fruits be shared? For the sake of Christ, and in response to his love. Amen.

Category Sermons |

Why Are You Weeping?

Date: April 8, 2012
Title: “Why Are You Weeping?”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: John 20:1-18

It seems that three people have died, and typically, they are standing at the gates of heaven, asking to come in. So St. Peter says to them – “It’s easy; all you have to do is have an interview with God and define Easter.”

The first one goes in and says, “Everyone knows that Easter is a great holiday. There’s usually a little bit of a nip in the air, families get together for a huge feast, often cooking up a turkey, and then after dinner they all sit around and watch football on television.” “Oh”, God says, “I’m sorry. You seem to be thinking of Thanksgiving; I’m afraid you can’t come in.”

The second person goes into the interview, laughing, and says, “Oh goodness! Everyone knows that Easter is a wonderful holiday, and that it happens in the summer when it is usually rather warm (unless of course you live in western Oregon, then it is usually raining). Families get together at the lake, have big barbeques, and then at night they shoot off fireworks.” Once again God sighs, and says, “I’m sorry. That is the 4th of July you’re thinking of; you can’t come in.”

So the third person comes to see God, saying “For heaven’s sake! Everyone knows that Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring equinox (which of course explains why it is a moveable feast). And it is that day when we remember the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was crucified, died, and was buried, and after three days he arose from the tomb….and if he sees his shadow, we’ll have six more weeks of winter!”

I hope that made you laugh a little, as it is one of my all time favorite theological jokes. So I hope it made you laugh – but also that it maybe made you think, just a little. To think about why it is we have gathered here today. To consider what it is we celebrate. And even more importantly – what difference Easter might make.

Undoubtedly, most of us could recite the “party line” about Easter. We could explain when it is celebrated and what it recalls. It would be no big thing to read the creed – Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, and in three days he arose from the tomb – but could we then go on to suggest what difference it makes for us?

“Why are you weeping?” the angels and Jesus himself ask Mary. And Mary might have easily replied, “Why aren’t you weeping?” Don’t you read the papers, watch the evening news, listen to NPR? If you are paying any attention at all to the state of the world, why aren’t you weeping?

When our hopes appear to have been unfounded, and our dreams are dashed to smithereens; when we are held hostage by technological tyranny, or limited by our own consumerism; when we are intimidated by the world’s violent responses to never ending violence; when we are buried alive in mountains of debt or lost within dark tombs of fear…what else is there to do, but to weep?

It is easy to understand Mary’s tears, for we have shed them, too. Expecting nothing, probably just heading out to spend a little time alone with her grief, Mary is thinking that the gig is up, that fear and hatred have won the day. And then – miraculously – peering through her tears, Mary recognizes Jesus. And discovers that God is still in the game, and that now, all the rules of the game have changed.

That is what resurrection means. Not just for Mary in that long-ago cemetery, but for us, in the midst of whatever graveyard we inhabit today. Resurrection means recognizing that God is still in the game; and that the rules of the game have forever changed. Bruce Epperly puts it this way: The pathway of resurrection sees angels in boulders and possibilities within limitations.

So it is good for us to ask each other this morning – “why are you weeping”? Why is it so difficult to see beyond the pain of our own Good Fridays? Why do we seem to want to hang onto the betrayals of our Maundy Thursdays? Why do we insist on lying, fallow, in the uncertainty of our Holy Saturdays? Perhaps it is because we have forgotten that it is not crucifixion which saves us… it is resurrection!

Like Peter in John’s Gospel, we are often in a big hurry to leave the tomb. We become impatient with the mystery, or immune to the wonder, and so we just go home. We hear others suggestions that things have changed, but we wonder. We read various interpretations of the story, and still we wonder. Some will take the Bible literally when reading that the stone’s been rolled away, while others will spend this Sunday simply rolling their eyes.

But for all of us – regardless of where we place ourselves along that theological continuum, there remains this one continuous Easter surprise – the staggering mystery of God’s abiding love for every one of us. For every one of us… for you, and even for me.

Someone else put it this way:

Surrendering to the truth and power of the resurrection means embracing the fact that there is no good excuse any more for letting those stones – whatever they might be…our addictions, our fears, our anger, our petty jealousies, our shame, our guilt – there is no good excuse for letting any of those stones get in the way of our living.

The stones have been rolled back. And now, all there is for us is to practice resurrection. Practicing resurrection means doing more than weeping. It means remembering daily that the stones have already been rolled away!

Perhaps Garrison Keillor is onto something when he writes:
Life is complicated and not for the timid. It is an experience that, when it’s done, it will take us awhile to get over it. We’ll look back on all the good things we surrendered in favor of deadly trash and wish we had returned and reclaimed them.

Every time we read a book about how to be more efficient, how to be happy, how to lose weight or gain money or grow old gracefully, we think “Well, I won’t make those mistakes; I won’t have to go through that.” But the truth is we will all have to go through that. And we will all make pretty much the same mistakes. Because life is not a vicarious experience where you get it figured out and then one day life just happens to you.

The same is true for Easter. Because resurrection is not a vicarious experience and it is not a spectator sport. We may get it figured out one day – or we may not ever really understand it. We may still be standing around, weeping, when one day Easter will happen to us. Because resurrection demands participation.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way:

No one on earth can say precisely what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning. But as it turned out, that did not matter, because the empty tomb was not the point.

Clearly, Jesus was not there. He had outgrown his tomb, which was too small a focus for resurrection. The risen one had people to see and things to do. (Just like us) The living one’s business was among the living.

Easter begins the moment the gardener says “Mary!” and she recognizes who it is. That is where the miracle happened, and where it goes on happening – not in the tomb, but in the encounter with the living Lord…where we find, to our great surprise, that we are not alone, and that we will never know where Christ might turn up next.

As we practice resurrection, the trick for us is the same as it was for Mary…
Don’t become so focused on the emptiness of the tomb that you forget to speak to the gardener.

Because Easter demands participation. Why are you weeping? Let us rejoice. And let us practice resurrection! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Reflections on Pathway of Palms

Date: April 1, 2012
Title: “Reflections on Pathway of Palms”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Mark 11:1-11

We had quite a parade today, didn’t we? And it was good to do something a little different today, to help us take note of this day of celebration. We are all so busy in our everyday lives, it is too easy to miss the moments of joy, to walk right on by and miss the wonder, the spontaneity, the possibility of celebration.

Gertrud Mueller, in her book, To Dance with God, tells the story of one afternoon when she was engrossed in a sewing project. Her daughter Annika was three years old at the time, and she amused herself playing with the scraps of fabric her mother discarded as she sewed.

At one point, Gertrud realized she hadn’t seen Annika for several minutes, so she went to find her daughter. There she was, in the back garden, sitting in the grass with a long pole, several strips of fabric and great big wads of scotch tape. “I’m making a banner”, Annika told her mother. “I’m making a banner for a procession…I need a procession, so that God will come down and dance with us.”

Perhaps the crowds in Jerusalem – and all of us – can relate to Annika’s intentions. Sometimes it feels as if we just need a procession. And it may not matter whether we have fabric scraps or palm branches, tambourines or balloons, brass bands or even just you and me. We want to put together the best parade possible. Because the truth is, God has already come down, to live and work, to walk and dance with each of one of us!

That is what Palm Sunday is all about, I think. It is about recognizing – claiming, even – the need we all have for the parade. It is about claiming the need we have and the vulnerability we face, when we admit to ourselves and to one another that we want God to come down and dance with us, because we need God to inhabit our everyday lives. Perhaps the crowd in Jerusalem was just trying to get God to come down and dance with them as they waved their branches and shouted their hosannas.

“Hosanna”… it is such a strange word. I wonder – when was the last time you used that word? Hosanna! Have you ever used it at work? Or how about when out to dinner with your friends? Hosanna! Have you ever had occasion to jump up in the midst of a family gathering, or in a public park, or even alone on a mountain top…and shout out “hosanna”?

Probably not. In fact, I am willing to guess that the last time you heard “hosanna”, much less used it, was about a year ago – on another Palm Sunday! It’s a strange word, and it is difficult to define. Scholars’ best guess is that it is a contraction of two Hebrew terms: yaw-shah, meaning to save or deliver; and naw, meaning to beseech or to pray.

So when the crowds begin shouting out “hosanna”, what they are really saying to Jesus is “we beseech you to deliver us”. The crowd is crying out, “save us, Jesus!” And I find myself wondering, “from what?”

Scott Black Johnston suggests it is a complicated thing to ask “What does God save us from?” In his words:

I am certain the Biblical witness supports me in this. Take, for example, our Palm Sunday text. Do you think the people lining the streets of Jerusalem were primarily concerned about ‘hell’ when they were shouting out to Jesus to save them?

If the Gospels hint at the crowd’s motivation, it was that the people wanted to be saved from the Romans. They wanted deliverance from an occupying army.

So when we wave our palms and boldly cry out “Hosanna!” – do we dare to imagine what we really want God to save us from? Do we dare to ask:

• God, save me from anger
• God, save me from cancer
• God, save me from debt
• God, save me from the strife in my family
• God, save me from boredom
• God, save me from an endless cycle of violence, or from depression, or from humiliation
• Save me from bitterness, or from arrogance, or from loneliness
• Save me from waking up at 3:00 am and wondering why I even exist

Taken from this angle, the parade all of a sudden goes beyond the superficial celebration. And we are not just marching from Collins Hall to the Sanctuary, but are traveling from the most vulnerable places inside of us, from the most honest and real parts of ourselves. And we are parading right past our ordinary lives into God’s extraordinary presence.

Hosanna! Save us, God. Take the broken places that tear us apart and make them whole. Jump into this life with us and free us to dance with you. Jan Richardson puts it this way:

The road that Jesus traveled to Jerusalem in order to make his entrance that we celebrate on Palm Sunday was not terribly long in terms of physical distance. Yet it was miles deep, marked by years of preparation and prayer, discernment and courage, as Jesus traveled further into the fullness of who he was meant to become.

So the question we might want to ask this morning is, what road are we taking as we gather to celebrate, to worship, and even to live? Again, in Richardson’s words:
What road do we travel to meet this Christ who comes toward us on that
ancient way of procession and pilgrimage? What journey do we need to
take, by inches and by miles, in order to welcome him?

For blessed is the One who comes to us by the way of love poured out
with abandon. Blessed is the One who walks toward us by the way of
grace that holds us fast. Blessed is the One who calls us to follow in the
way of blessing, in the path of joy.

Hosanna, indeed! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Pathway of Obedience

Date: March 25, 2012
Title: Pathway of Obedience
Preaching: Rev. Dr. Donna Pritchard
Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

“The days are surely coming, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” God is doing a new thing – or so says the prophecy of Jeremiah, about six centuries before Jesus. God is doing a new thing – or so we say, about 200 centuries after Jesus!

So how can something so old be called “new?” What is there for us in this vision of covenant which the world has not already seen or heard, judged and rejected? What could there possibly be for us in this day, that could excite us to our feet with shouts of hosanna and the recognition that here, at last, is something “new and improved”?

Perhaps we cannot answer that question for ourselves without first answering it for Jeremiah. Remember now, Jeremiah is preaching to the people of Israel at a time when everything has fallen apart all around them. His proclamation of a new covenant is given in the midst of agony – agony at the failure of the old covenant. That one now lies broken in the dust, where judgment and anger would certainly be justified if God considered only how far the people had drifted between the intention and the practice of their covenant relationship.

There is plenty of reason for God to be angry. And yet this morning what Jeremiah brings is a word of hope. He speaks of rescue and release, of restoration and return. Here, Jeremiah is done with the scolding of his last 29 chapters. Here, Jeremiah says that God will have compassion on the people, and that God is offering us a core experience, a core identity, which is based upon God’s forgiveness.

Biblical scholar Walter Bruegemann says of this passage, “Israel is now completely unburdened from the past,” because of a relationship in the present moment. And Martha Spong puts it this way when she writes:

“Oh, I suppose you could make the argument that God plans it that way all along, that God is unchanging in relationship to the people. But that is tirelessly stubborn. I prefer to make the claim that this God we worship is so clearly relational…”

God is so clearly relational with this offer of a core experience of forgiveness, and a core identity of covenant. I am reminded of an old song as I think of Jeremiah and his prophecy of hope. The song goes like this:

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. Blackbird fly, blackbird fly … into the light of the dark black night.”

As if to suggest that you and I can fly into the light which we know is still shining somewhere – even in the midst of our darkest night. As if to suggest that we can fly, even when it feels as if everything around us is falling apart. Or that we can fly, believing that God is still there to catch us, to meet us, or at least, to fly with us!

Now I know there is something deeply satisfying in the notion that God is the one who sets before us an external measure by which we must live. There are many who find satisfaction in placing an object law or set of ethical and cultural norms between themselves and God. There are plenty of folks who want to see God in terms of certain moral and behavioral expectations, so that whatever happens in our lives is understood as a consequence of having fulfilled, or failed to fulfill, the divine will. The problem with that kind of thinking is, what happens when I have done my level best to follow, to be faithful, to be obedient … and things still fall apart?

In our good days – in our clear-thinking moments – we are reminded of Jeremiah’s vision. And we see that our relationship with God is not in the nature of a tit-for-tat transaction – If you do this, then I will do that. Rather, God is as intimate to us as our innermost fantasy and our most deeply felt fears. And it is only really possible to know God as we come to know our own internal life – including that whisper of conscience, that childlike delight in all that is mysterious, that undying fascination with surprise.

And when we take Jeremiah seriously, we begin to see that Christian faithfulness – beginning with Christ himself – is not a matter of some sterile act of duty. Rather, it is an obedience of love. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day did their duty superbly. But Jesus laid down his life out of love. The Pathway of Obedience is ultimately a pathway of love.

Preparing for worship today, I ran across a great little commentary by a New Testament scholar, Dr. Karoline Lewis, who suggests:

“Here on this last Sunday in Lent, we best not kid ourselves. We can make every attempt to understand or argue or apologize for Jesus’ death on the cross; but if we take it for granted that it is about some sort of divine agreement or placation of our sins, we are sorely mistaken…

What Jesus wants us to know about his death on the cross is nothing else than what has to happen when you are human … What becomes human must die. What becomes incarnate, must realize its end.”

Jesus took the Pathway of Obedience in part because he knew that it was inevitable.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; if it dies, it bears much fruit.” To be transformed, to truly be changed, requires letting go and risking loss, whether we like it or not. We cannot become new people by trying to hang onto what is old. Adventure requires letting go of security, justice requires going beyond self-interest and risking change for the sake of others. And peace requires losing our grip on fear, and laying aside our addiction to anxiety.

Michael Coffey puts it this way:

“Either way you’re going to die: clutching your seed in your fist, Buried in your Sunday suit,
The lid sealed shut with a rubber gasket – watertight lifetime guarantee, Impermeable to the forces of nature.
And the darn thing (that seed in your fist) sprouts…
And its pale stem pushes through your dried fingers
And urges upward, straining for sunlight…
Until it bumps the steely casket lid and bends and arcs downward, Finally surrendering.

Either way you’re going to die:
You can open your hand and let loose the grain of love you bear. You can open your protected soul to life and death
And mystery in the breathable air
You can plant your seed in the welcoming earth and die to your fear And let something uncontrollable grow.

Either way you’re going to die: but if you let your seed go And die before you die, there will be wheat and flour enough To bake bread with wild holy yeast and feed the hungry world Which gives thanks for your small grain
To the One who made you to die for the fruit of love.”

So Jesus reminds us today – before Holy Week – that his death is not the end at all. Again, in Dr. Lewis’ words:

“It is no accident that Jesus helps us make sense of the resurrection before he helps us make sense of the cross. The whole order of things is mixed up … life is death and death is life. The cross is not the answer. It’s the question. It’s not the moment, but a moment in the entire Jesus event – his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. All of that is God so desperately wanting to be in relationship with us.”

God is so desperately wanting to be in relationship with us, that God is willing to write God’s self into our very hearts. And perhaps the only question remaining for us is – are we willing to meet God there? Are we willing to meet God here(within each of us), in order to walk the Pathway of Obedience, and understand it as a pathway of love? God is desperately wanting to be in relationship with us even now. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Pathway of Faith

Date: March 18, 2012
Title: Pathway of Faith
Preaching: Rev. Dr. Donna Pritchard
Scripture: Hebrews 11; John 3:14-21

Hebrews 11, which we read from this morning, keeps repeating the phrase “by faith”. The Bible is full of stories of amazing adventures, incredible accomplishments, and seemingly miraculous moments of grace, all made possible because somebody took the Pathway of Faith. Amazing things happen in the salvation story “by faith.” What about in your story? Or in mine?

John 3:16 is one of the best known, most loved verses in the New Testament. Cited by chapter and verse alone on road signs, on banners in bleachers; tattooed on every imaginable body part; and seen by many as a sort of “one-stop Gospel shop,” this verse is well known. And, I have to tell you – it is quite troublesome for me.

I find it a troublesome verse because too often it is lifted up as if it were some sort of magic, as if reciting this one formula would change anyone’s mind – much less their life. Too often it leads to the assumption that here, at last, we have Jesus laying out our territory for us, helping us to stake an exclusive claim to salvation. And I just don’t buy that.

Who’s in and who’s out? These are hardly the most pressing questions we encounter on the Pathway of Faith. Yet for some reason, these are the questions which keep coming up, the ones which plague us. It is as if humanity just cannot stand the notion of a truly open door. And so we keep producing a velvet rope at the entrance of faith’s pathway. We want God to act as some sort of supernatural bouncer, letting us into the party, assuring us of space on the dance floor, by limiting God’s grace or prescribing God’s love.

I find it ironic that even in the Gospel text today we find an open invitation – “God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it,” which quickly becomes more limited. And the velvet rope appears just a few verses on,”Those who believe in Christ are not condemned; those who do not believe are condemned already.”

Who’s in and who’s out? Apparently that was an issue for John’s Christian community. And some would suggest it remains an issue for ours.

You may recall last month, the hub-bub around Franklin Graham’s suggestion that President Obama would not make it past the bouncer on the way into heaven. Graham had suggested during a television interview that Obama’s Christianity wouldn’t meet the established criteria, that somehow his faith was not “real.”

And while he later apologized for those statements, Graham is hardly the only one running here and there with the velvet ropes, apparently on some self-imposed mission to protect Jesus’ Way. So how, then, are we to find our way onto the Pathway of Faith?

The New Testament itself seems to present contradictory notions. On the one hand, those who follow the theological reasoning of Paul suggest that salvation is a function only of God’s grace. On the other hand, the Gospels, James, and other writings argue that salvation is also a function of what one does – of how we live our lives.

It is as if the velvet rope keeps changing position. So it is no wonder that we stumble around the dark, trying to figure out where the Pathway of Faith begins, and where it leads.

Kenneth Leech – an Anglican priest and social activist – once commented that “The best preparation for a life of prayer is to become intensely human.” That may also be the best way for us to find the Pathway of Faith. It is to live authentically human lives, and to become intensely human in the way that Christ was human.

That is going to take a lot more than reciting some theological proposition, or memorizing some Gospel verse. It takes embracing a life-giving way of life. It means living honestly enough so that you have nothing to hide. Imagine that … imagine what it would be like to live your life as if you have nothing at all to hide!

Daniel Ladinsky has taken the poetry of Hafiz, a 14th-century Sufi mystic, and translated it into our world and times. He seems to be suggesting this kind of authentic humanity in this poem, entitled The Shield You Hold. The poem goes like this:

There is a shield you may still hold because of so many battles.
I guess another conflict could begin at any moment,
So maybe lugging it about could be of some use;
Or is it just an undermining habit?

Does not it get heavy, so much so that you sometimes carry it
On your head at noon?

And then no wonder, with your insecurities so intact…
About casting darkness as fears can shadows.

Even if the sun is out, if the SUN is out -
If God is really all around in the middle of a beautiful day or night.

Yes, how amazing that a small umbrella or an illusion,
Held over your head…or clung to…
Can hide the stupendous fact of Omniscient Light.

The illusions we cling to – the shields we take on to avoid living authentic, open and honest lives – that is what obscures the opening to the Pathway of Faith. That is what blinds us to the presence of Christ, and hides the “stupendous fact of Omniscient Light.”

But God loves the world enough – God loves us enough – to help us put down those shields.

The spotlight is on us now, my friends. And the question “Are you saved?” is really no question at all. Rather, we should be asking one another- and especially asking ourselves, “Are you really who you say you are?” Or, we should consider this question, “Are you the same person when you think nobody else is looking?” And when you are who you really are – is that authentically human? Or are you trying to be something else?

Mother Teresa is often quoted for her saying, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Someone else wrote this about her great love:

No revolution will come in time to alter this man’s life
Except the one surprise of being loved.
It is too late to talk of civil rights, Neo-Marxism, psychology…
He has only 12 more hours to live.
Forget about a cure for cancer, leprosy, or osteoporosis
Over this dead loss to society, you pour your precious ointment,
Washing the feet that will not walk tomorrow.

Mother Teresa, Mary Magdalene…your love is dangerous.
But if love cannot do it, then I see no future for the dying man or for me.
So blow the world to glory, crack the clock.
Let love be dangerous.

Let love be dangerous. And let life be honest. Because the Pathway of Faith awaits. Thanks be to God!

Category Sermons |

Pathway of Righteousness

Date: March 11, 2012
Title: Pathway of Righteousness
Preaching: Rev. Dr. Donna Pritchard
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

A friend of mine tells this story of his first Sunday in a new church. He was newly ordained, fresh out of seminary, and nervous, as he prepared to meet his congregation in worship for the very first time. He had checked and double-checked everything and believed that every detail was in place.

As the service began, he went to the pulpit to lead the call to worship. And wouldn’t you know it – the microphone would not work. He tried everything, but nothing would turn the microphone on. My friend began to panic and then said rather loudly, “Something is wrong with this microphone”. Whereupon the people responded, “And also with you!”

Something is wrong this morning. Something is wrong with Jesus in the Temple, clearing out the merchants and the money changers. Driving out those who were selling the cattle, the sheep, the doves – even the ones who were changing people’s money from Roman coins into Temple coins.

These folks were providing a service for people who had traveled a long way to comet to the temple. After all, travelers could hardly have packed the appropriate sacrificial animals in their luggage! And there was no such thing as a debit card for the temple tax. So they were providing a legitimate service there inside the Temple.

And obviously, something was wrong with Jesus that day. And just as obviously, something might be wrong with us today. Indeed, every time we let the worries of the world rob us of the peace of Christ, something is wrong with us. Every time we hang on for dear life to the very things we are called to give away, something is wrong with us. Every time we think of Jesus bold and angry in Jerusalem’s temple, and then imagine Jesus meek and mild in our own … something is wrong with us.

Jesus has been pushed far enough and he is asking us to join him this morning on the Pathway of Righteousness. It is a pathway which is full of disconcerting twists and turns. It is a pathway which requires careful attention and wary negotiation. It is a pathway which involves both of what St. Augustine called “hope’s two beautiful daughters … Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain that way.”

Anger at the way things are. Jesus cleansing the Temple is a stark warning against any and every false sense of security we may have when we consider the way things are – our self-satisfaction, or spiritual complacency in the face of ongoing political and economic injustice. Or our misplaced allegiances, or our religious presumption which fools us into thinking we do not need to travel the pathway of righteousness because we have already arrived at God’s destination.

There are plenty of reasons for us to be angry at the way things are, and I think it is time for us to make friends with that anger. New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan reminds us that:

“Jesus was not against the Temple as such, and he was not against the high priesthood as such. His anger was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism, against the religious leaders’ cooperation with Roman imperial control. Jesus’ way is against any capital city’s collusion between religion and imperial violence at any time and in any place.”

700 years before Jesus, the prophet Amos taught that if God has to choose between worship and justice, God will clearly choose justice every time. As if to suggest that God’s hope – and our pathway to righteousness – will always involve both anger and courage.

While it may not take very much for us to get angry at the way things are, it will surely take a fair amount of courage for us to change the status quo! It will take the kind of courage which allows us to enter – and to stay – on the pathway of righteousness with one another. To stay on that pathway where we not only acknowledge what is right. We also recognize what is wrong in the world, and even in ourselves.

We come to worship this morning distracted by many things. Some here are in real physical pain, suffering from illness. Others are consumed by grief, or confused by loneliness. Some of us are here, worried about our children, while others may fear their financial security might be slipping away. And some of us are just chomping at the bit to “get back out there” into lives so full of joy that we can hardly stand still for a few moments of reflection.

You may have heard it said that we here in the Pacific Northwest – especially in Oregon – are living in what researchers have dubbed the “None Zone.” Meaning that, when Oregonians are asked to name a religious affiliation, 63% say they are not affiliated with any church or religious institution. When asked if we are Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Hindu, Buddhist, or something else … 63% of us choose “none of the above,” compared to 41% for Americans as a whole.

Here in the “None Zone,” our neighbors and friends, our co-workers and compatriots are likely to tell us that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple – what we might call “occupying the Temple” – is spiritual theater of the highest order. And as Jesus turns over tables, he calls us to become both religious and spiritual. Jesus calls us to risk identifying with a religious group where our anger at the way things are can be yoked together with courage to change them to the way things could be in God’s realm. He calls us to be religious in our affiliation in order to be spiritual in our empowerment to see God’s presence not only here, but beyond these walls.

California’s Inyo County is home to the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Whitney. This Sierra Nevada peak is just five feet short of measuring 14,500 feet above sea level. Less than 100 miles to the southeast, and still in Inyo County, is Death Valley. This depression’s deepest point- near Badwater, California – lies some 282 feet below sea level, and it is the lowest point not just in the 48 contiguous states, but in the whole North American continent.

There are a few neighboring mountains from which, on a clear day, you can see both of these locations. Standing on one of those peaks, it is possible to see both the lowest and the highest points.

Kind of like when we are standing in the midst of Christian community, or standing in the presence of Christ. It is possible there, with that vantage point, to see both the highest and most hopeful possibilities of life – to see things the way they could be, in God’s realm. While at the same time, to glimpse the lowest and most heart-breaking realities of the way things currently are. No wonder we need both anger and courage. No wonder we need each other on the pathway of righteousness.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr lived through two World Wars, the Depression, the Holocaust, the Spanish Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the landing on the moon, the Cold War…and everything else that came between 1892 and 1971. Niebuhr was insistent that humanity’s problems do not stem from ignorance, or a lack of intelligence, but with something far more elemental than that. Niebuhr questioned political, moral, and intellectual idealism by pointing out what he called “the limits of knowledge and the necessity of faith.”

St. Paul seems to be suggesting the same thing when he writes:

“When it’s all said and done, the sum total of the human race’s intellectual achievements don’t even begin to stack up against the foolishness of God; and the combined force of all the world’s powers is puny in comparison to the weakness of God. Sisters and brothers, you don’t have to look any further than your own experience of God’s call to see the truth of this.”

God placed a call in your life – and in mine – regardless of our place in the power structure of this world … regardless of our educational levels, or our socio-economic status. Regardless of where we have been or who we claim to know. And who are we to say that our foolishness is not in some way a part of God’s own wisdom?

When we step onto the pathway of righteousness, where anger and courage live side by side and where hope becomes a reality, because Jesus is still turning over any table that gets in the way. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Pathways Into Life

Date: March 4, 2012
Title: Pathways Into Life
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M. L. Pritchard
Scripture: Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

Lent is one of the most difficult seasons of the year for the church. The others are simpler, neater, “nicer,” even. I mean, it is easy to appreciate Advent expectation, or Christmas jubilation. It’s easy to understand the Epiphany mission, the Easter resurrection. Even Pentecost, with the whole Holy Spirit thing is easier to take than these Lenten pathways!

Early on Ash Wednesday morning, I found myself in a restaurant, waiting for a friend I was meeting for breakfast, when I happened to overhear this conversation: three men were sitting in the booth next to me when a fourth man joined them. As he sat down, the others greeted him and then began to tease him, saying, “Hey! You’ve got a smudge over your eye!” And “What’s the matter – you get up too late to take a shower?” And “Don’t tell me you’ve been out working already this morning!”

Soon, though, the talk turned, and one of the men quietly said, “No, I know what that is … it’s the sign of the cross, the ashes on your forehead. I went home and washed mine off before coming down here to breakfast.”

When you think about it, isn’t that the problem with Lent? We all have to decide what we will do with the cross. We have to decide whether we will wash it off – wipe it away – or wear it, in more ways than one!

And Jesus only makes matters worse for us this morning, with all his talk about suffering and death. Jesus seems to be suggesting that we all need to figure out what to do with the cross, because there is no escaping it, if we want to follow him.

So we can understand Peter’s confusion this morning. We understand feeling that the cross is a rather risky proposition to embrace. And starting the Gospel lesson with verse 31 is a bit jarring, because we are beginning in the middle of a story. There was a woman in the first church I served who used to do that all the time. She would come up to me and tell me the most outrageous things, or share some deeply felt emotions. And I would not have a clue what she was talking about until I could squeeze in edgewise, “Polly, slow down … start at the beginning, please!”

Just like Polly, we might need to slow down, and start at the beginning. Because it helps to know what came before today’s text. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” And then he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter, characteristically, answers for all of them when he says, “You are the Christ, the Messiah!”

That is where we enter the action today, with Jesus explaining what it means for him to be the Christ, to be the Messiah. He says it means great suffering. And it means rejection. And it means death – his death. Before Jesus gets to the really good part, the Easter part of the story, Peter clearly has quit listening. Peter’s brain is screaming “NOOOOOOO!” Not Jesus, not the Messiah, not the Christ … how can suffering and death possibly be a part of the pathway into life?

I have to admit, when I go to the doctor, or the dentist, or the Department of Motor Vehicles – any place I am likely to have to wait awhile – I sometimes forget to bring along reading material, which places me at the mercy of whatever is in the waiting room. That is why I can say I have actually read “Popular Mechanics”, that is why I have perused “Field and Stream” (at least once or twice). Not too long ago, it was Readers’ Digest I picked up in the waiting room, where I found this little story. A woman writes:

When my sister-in-law Ginny cooks, she likes to substitute ingredients for those in the recipe. One time I gave her the recipe for a chicken and walnuts dish that her husband (my brother) likes, and she served it when I was there for dinner.

In place of walnuts, Ginny used raw peanuts. And for chicken, she substituted beef. In fact, every major ingredient had been replaced. “This is terrible!” my brother said after one bite. Ginny glared across the table at me and said, “Don’t blame me! It’s your sister’s recipe!”

In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus is offering us a recipe to find the pathway into life. It is really very simple and pretty straightforward. Love your life? Lose your life. Someone else put it this way, “If we try to save our lives in some self-centered way, we will surely lose our lives. We cannot preserve this life with prestige, possessions, addictions, or even with our perfectionism. That all backfires.”

So we need to listen then to the other half of the recipe … Lose your life for the sake of Christ’s Gospel, and then you will save your life. It is in losing our agenda, in giving up our illusions of control, and simplifying our desires, that we find our true identity and recognize the true purpose for our lives. It is not that nothing will be lost on the pathway into life. It is simply that something far more valuable and far more important will be gained.

Following Jesus leads us onto the Pathway into Life – but only when we resist the temptation to change the recipe for discipleship. G.K. Chesterton once said that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting …Christianity has been tried and found difficult, and then has been abandoned by most.

When I was the pastor of the United Methodist Church in Albany Oregon I got to know Randy Schutt, the pastor over at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. At that time Randy was probably in his mid to late 40s. He was a kind and very approachable man, who wore his hair about to the top of his shirt collar, sported a beard, and usually dressed fairly casually.

One Good Friday his church was worshipping in a truth-telling, whole-recipe kind of way, paying particular attention to the cross. Toward the end of the service, Randy sat in the front pew while worshippers were invited to come forward to light a candle and pray at the communion rail.

One young child had just finished lighting his candle when he turned, caught sight of Randy, with his beard, his long hair, his white preaching robe, his Birkenstock sandals. And he whispered to Randy, “Jesus! Sorry about the cross.”

That child may have been mistaken about an identity, but he was right on target with his apology. Sorry about the cross, Jesus. Sorry we are so reluctant to see it and to see you as you really are. Sorry we are so quick to want to change the recipe for discipleship, to spare ourselves the vulnerability we inevitably encounter when we choose to follow you, when we choose your pathway into life.

Mennonite pastor Weldon Nisly has been a member of several Christian Peacemaking Teams. He has gone to various war zones as one of many witnesses for peace. Just before Weldon left for Iraq, in the early days of that war, he wrote this to his congregation in Seattle:

Our greatest task in the face of an uncertain and dangerous world is at its deepest not a political task, but a spiritual and pastoral task. It is the task of reminding ourselves and one another that we can never take our vulnerability away. Not in this world. Not in our human condition. And in fact, our vulnerability is part of our greatest potential for creation a more just and liveable world.

Perhaps that is in part what Jesus is trying to tell us today when he invites us onto the Pathway into Life. It just may be that our very vulnerability itself is what saves us – when we lose our lives in God’s name; when we lose our lives in Christ’s mission; when we lose our lives in the Spirit’s power. Then it is that we save them, after all! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Pathways Into the Wilderness

Date: February 26, 2012
Title: “Pathways Into the Wilderness”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15

Here it is, the first Sunday in Lent, and we are being offered a pathway “into the wilderness”. The wilderness – it is that place where pretense fades away and honest vulnerability becomes possible. In the wilderness we are unable to keep up our public image of effortless perfection – that self-imposed expectation which so often plagues us, even in our quietest moments. In the wilderness we are free to confess the messy reality of our lives – like the truth of the often over-powering temptation to forget God’s promises and to focus all our energy solely on our fears.

The first Sunday in Lent, and all we’ve got is this pathway into wilderness? Well, don’t act so surprised. You know as well as I do that this is a pathway we have traveled many times before.

Indeed, we know the wilderness fairly well, because that is where we live much of our lives. We live in that space between certainty and doubt, in that time between hope and fear, in the experience between promises made and promises fulfilled. The wilderness is where we live much of our lives. So when Jesus travels down that pathway into wilderness, we are already there.

How quickly Mark’s Gospel moves us from anointing to testing, from the celebration of Jesus’ baptism to the temptation of Jesus’ soul! There is no fan club for Jesus, no adoring crowds follow him down this particular pathway. In the wilderness he finds only the wild beasts and the angels.

Dr Robert Price, professor of Biblical Criticism, points out to his students that Mark is the only gospel writer who gives his book a title. You remember how in the first verse of the first chapter Mark declares that his story is “the beginning of the good news”. In Price’s words, “This is such a hopeful title, especially in a time when so many pay daily that there is more good news to come – somehow, someday.”

If Mark’s story, and Jesus’ life, are just the “beginning” of the Gospel, then we have reason to believe in more than the wilderness where we live. If this is the beginning, then we can strain our eyes and crane our necks to see beyond it, to find the good news which is sure to follow.

When I first arrived at seminary we had a few days of orientation – the standard, getting-to-know-you, awkward kind of events that every class endures. There were campus tours and welcome speeches, chapel services and house-warming parties. But what I remember most is the picnic we had up in the mountains just west of Denver.

I happened to ride up there with four other students in a rather old, somewhat rickety car which belonged to a woman named Gail. All the way up the mountain Gail had to coax her car along. Pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, we still crawled along in the far right lane, and joked about getting out to push as even the semis went whizzing past us.

Finally, we got to the picnic. And we had a fine time. And then it was time to go back down the mountain, back down that steep grade with all its twists and turns and dangerous curves. And for all of us passengers, it felt as if Gail was still riding the accelerator when she should have been using the brake!

Fasters and faster we hurtled down the mountain, careening around curves, until finally one of our classmates (I think he was from Nebraska, or Kansas – some flat place), couldn’t take it any longer. And he cried out at the top of his lungs, “Stop the car! Let me out of here! God’s got great plans for me!”

And of course, we never let him live that down! But it is true, you know. God does have great plans for him. God has great plans for me. And God has great plans for you. And sometimes, life will feel as if we are careening down the mountainside, and we suspect we are not even in the driver’s seat.

Jesus’ life was like that. It was full of adversity and suffering and even defeat. He did not, in his lifetime, replace all the unjust earthly rulers. He did not manage to lift all the lowly and oppressed, to eliminate hunger or eradicate poverty, to wipe our racism or end violence and warfare, to take away all disease and cancel out all pain.

We still know all about needless deaths and unending violence. We still see the innocents suffering. We still recognize injustice in everything from politics to economics to the social community. We have only to open our eyes to see those who are hungry, to recognize those who live in fear, to notice those whose grieving is unceasing, or whose isolation is unbearable.

In the wilderness of our lives it is easy to see that God’s Reign has not yet arrived in its fullness. And it is easy to become jaded, to decide we will never move beyond the “beginning of the Gospel”. And yet, even in the wilderness there is beauty. Even in the wilderness there is peace. Even in the wilderness there is hope.

When I flew down to San Diego for Jurisdictional meetings in January, I happened to pick up the Alaska Airlines magazine, and my imagination was captured by an article about the bristlecone pines in California’s Inyo National Forest. According to the article:
“These pines are gnarled, stiff-needled denizens of incredibly harsh environments, and they can live more than 4,500 years. The oldest recorded living bristlecone is approaching 5000 years old… dating back farther than the Egyptian pyramids and already more than 2500 years old when Jesus took the pathway into the wilderness…
“In the kingdom of the pines, summer sun sears the hillsides and raises the temperature above 90 degrees. Clouds are distant rumors; rain almost a legend. Dust paints the air the hue of dry grass. In winter, temperatures plummet below zero; winds how; skiffs of snow scurry over bare ridges into protected gullies, leaving the ground as dry as it is in summer.
In this very harsh environment – this wilderness place – bristlecone pines have engineered a longevity strategy that confounds human expectations… the harsher the circumstances, the longer the pines seem to live…
It is an axiom of biology that plants must grow or die. At 10,000 feet in the White Mountains, a bristlecone will encounter, over the centuries, some brutal years of extreme drought or severe cold. How does it cope? The answer is astounding.
In an incredibly bad year, bristlecones meet the biological imperative to grow or else, by laying down an annual growth ring consisting of a single cell. Yes, one single cell in a whole year…”

Even in the wilderness there is beauty. And there is peace. And there is hope. Remember how Mark puts it, in his distinctively abbreviated style…The Spirit pushed Jesus out into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights, he was tested by Satan. Wild animals were his companions, and angels took care of him.

In Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, Max is terrorized by all manner of night-time fear. There are “wild animals” galore. There are things unknown and things too well known not to fear. “They roared their terrible roars, and gnashed their terrible teeth, and rolled their terrible eyes, and showed their terrible claws… Until Max said BE STILL!… and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things…”

Just like Max – just like Jesus – we are being given today a pathway into wilderness. And if we have the courage to take that path, if we have the faith to trust the journey through it, we will find in the wilderness the wild things. But also the angels. For God’s covenant still stands. And the rainbow arcs over the wildest of wilderness places, all those places where we are free to confess, and even to accept the messy reality of each of our lives. In the wilderness, there is beauty, there is peace, and there is hope. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

A Sacrament of Failure

Date: February 19, 2012
Title: “A Sacrament of Failure”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Mark 9:2-9

Transfiguration…what are we to make of this?! It is no wonder that the disciples were frightened! I would be frightened, too, Jonas’ robe – or Maribeth’s dress – or Don’s sport coat were to suddenly become an eye-popping, unearthly, dazzling white. I mean, Mardi Gras was last night!

And what would we make of a mystery such as transfiguration in the cold light of day? For that is what the transfiguration of Jesus is – it is a mystery. Or, as the New Testament would put it, it was a case of mysterion. That’s Greek for “mystery” and it means, That which is outside the range of unassisted natural understanding. Mysterion, the Biblical notion of mystery is something which can only be made known through Divine revelation, and that revelation can only be accomplished in a time and a manner chosen by God. Okay, so that fits when it comes to transfiguration.

But few of us here speak ancient conversational Greek. For one thing, it’s so hard to find a conversational partner for that these days! So, let’s try translating “mysterion”. In Latin, the word becomes sacramentum. And in English, of course, it is sacrament.

So you could say that the Transfiguration of Jesus is a sort of sacrament. It is something which is done by God. And it is done in God’s own way, in God’s own time. Peter understood the experience for what it was. He may not have understood it – it was a mystery, after all. And his response may have been a little too quick, a little too easy or superficial. But Peter saw in this event and in this moment a golden opportunity. Here was their chance to show the world who Jesus really was! This was a public relations plum, an advertising miracle! Surely this would shut their critics up, and would put a stop to all the scoffing and hooting and downright derision those first disciples received from neighbors and friends, even from their families.

Even if the vision did not last, Peter figured they could build a few booths up on that mountaintop. They could create monuments to this moment of success, and people would flock to that site. They would come hoping to recapture the experience, and a mega-movement might develop as the world recognized Jesus’ mission as an unqualified success.

So why doesn’t Jesus just go along with Peter’s plans? Probably because he understands the Transfiguration differently. Certainly, Jesus understands his own life and mission quite differently. Because he also seems to understand the notion of “success” in a very different way.

For Jesus “success” is as much a mystery as failure is a sacrament. Think about his own life and mission if you will. Instead of establishing a “Center for Jesus Teaching”, which could pull students and wisdom-seekers from all over the world, Jesus chooses to wander the countryside, rarely spending the night in the same town twice. Instead of organizing a hierarchy for training scores and scores of followers, or establishing some well-prescribed standards for training disciples, Jesus chooses twelve friends and provides them with “on the job” training. Instead of playing up his miraculous abilities, Jesus chooses to appear almost anonymously, as a plain-spoken rabbi and teacher.

And the reception he receives is hardly a standing ovation. As theologian Leonard Sweet put it, “There is really no such thing as ‘failure’ or ‘success’ for Jesus. He never worried about struggling up or slipping down any ladder, but only was concerned with lowering himself toward those in need and extending himself forward into God’s service.”

And the Transfiguration – this mysterious, sacramental moment – stands as a reminder of that. It stands as a “sacrament of failure”, in the ways the world might understand success and failure. Taken by the world’s measure, using our everyday calculations for who is winning and who is losing, this moment of mysterious sacrament is nothing less than a poignant reminder of failure. But taken by God’s measure, in God’s eyes and in God’s heart, Transfiguration is anything but a failure.

Because Jesus knew what was in store for him. He understood better than Peter or James or John – even better than you and I – what was waiting for him when he went back down the mountain. He knew what was waiting for him in Jerusalem – the adoring crowds who would later turn murderous, the Pharisees who were out to get him, a Roman governor too insecure in himself to resist an obvious injustice, an execution and a death of the harshest variety.

Jesus knew what was waiting for him. And the Transfiguration prepared him to face it all. Just as our own moments of mystery, our own “sacraments of failure” prepare us to face the consequences of faith. It’s not that we really fear crucifixion. But as James Taylor sings:
Old Herod’s always out there. He’s got your card on file. And it’s a lead-pipe cinch, if you give him an inch, old Herod’s gonna take a mile.

Again, in Sweet’s words,:
As people of faith, we must fight against the almost pathological desire and expectation that we will be liked by everyone. Somewhere we have imbibed the heady notion that if we sow love and compassion in our community, we will reap love and compassion, and perhaps even acclaim and recognition (success as the world understands it).
We need to remember that Jesus sowed love and compassion and he reaped death on a cross… There comes a time for us to shake the dust off our feet, commend our failures to God, and get on with our mission.

There comes a time for each of us – and for all of us together – when we accept the mystery of God’s revelation, however it comes to us. There comes a time when we receive the grace of transformation, whenever it happens in us. There comes a time when we leave the mountaintop experiences of faith, and head back into the valleys of life to face whatever our discipleship might bring.

A couple of weeks ago I told you a story about one of my mountaintop experiences – one of those God moments – when I was on a Volunteer in Mission trip to Bolivia. On that same trip, we took a little time to go visit Machu Picchu, high up in the mountains of Peru. Like most people, we took a train from Cusco to Machu Picchu. It is an amazing four-hour train ride in one of those cars where the seats face each other. They are so close together that your knees touch, so in that four hours you have a chance to get to know your traveling companions rather well.

Sharing my seat was a man from Brazil, who fortunately spoke very good English (since my Portugese is non-existent). We had a great conversation. I learned all about his family and his career, his vacation and his friends. And I told him about our mission team and the work we had done in Bolivia. I told him about many of our adventures, and even some of our misadventures. And then he commented to me, “I am very surprised to see you smiling and laughing about all this. Usually, Americans want to have everything function smoothly and efficiently and according to plans – just so.”

Now obviously that is not the mind-set of every American. But still, that remark made me wonder – how was it that we were able to become so flexible and understanding, even so patient with each other and with our adventures? Travel will do that for you if you are open to it. But even beyond the travel, beyond the difference in culture and language, climate and food and faith we encountered, our perspectives had changed. Because God had met us on the mountaintop. And then God had sent us back into the world with our expectations of “success” now transformed by mystery – by the sacrament of failure.

So this morning I suggest we consider the disciples’ mountaintop epiphany. And that we pay attention to the way the story ends. Or rather, the way it goes on and on. Verse 9 says it all…As they were coming down the mountain…

Here we are, the morning after our Mardi Gras party, coming down from the epiphany moment and preparing for Lent. I know it would be easier, maybe more fun to stay at the party, and to somehow find a shortcut to Easter. But we can’t get there without going through Lent. United Church of Christ preacher Mike Graves puts it this way:
If scholars are right, suggesting that the Transfiguration is a glimpse of things to come, then it is worth noting that Jesus’ words of explanation about it end in resurrection. He comes down from the mountain warning the disciples not to say anything about what happened there until he is raised from the dead. If the beginning of Lent is ashes, its end is resurrection.

If the beginning of sacrament is mystery, our failure might yet prove to be success. Our failure might yet prove to be success when we come down from the mountain believing that God is present in the darkness before the dawn. When we believe that God is present in the waiting and the uncertainty where fear and courage join hands, where conflict and caring link arms, and where the sun rises over barbed wire. Our success might be revealed in the midst of what we thought were failures, when we travel through every valley trusting in a with-us God. This God who sits down in our midst to share our humanity, to take us beyond safety into action, beyond security into vulnerability, beyond Lent to Easter, beyond failure to success. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Too Good To Be True?

Date: February 12, 2012
Title: “Too Good To Be True?”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

“It’s too good to be true”. How many times have we said that? “It’s too good to be true”. This can’t be all there is to healing, or wholeness of life. This is too simple, it’s too easy, for real transformation, or real restoration. There has to be more to salvation in the Biblical understanding of whole life, full life, redeemed life. It seems too good to be true!

Poor Naaman’s got a problem. He’s sick – everybody can see that much is true. And he’s tried every known cure, he’s gone to every doctor in his hometown, he’s listened to every self-help guru on television. He’s even ordered snake-oil off the internet! And nothing has worked.

So here he is, in desperation, visiting the prophet Elisah in some backwater town in Israel. Sure, it seems like crazy thing to do. His friends are shaking their heads and wagging their tongues, thinking “Old Naaman’s really gone round the bend on this one!” But why not give it a go? Nothing else has worked.

But still… it is too good to be true, what the prophet says. In fact, it’s so easy, such a simple prescription, that Naaman is outraged. Instead of performing some elaborate healing ritual, instead of offering up elaborate hand motions and mysterious liturgical wordings, Elisha merely tells Naaman to go and wash himself in the Jordan River.

This is worse than “Take two aspiring and call me in the morning”. Doesn’t this prophet know what a VIP is standing at his door? And how could such a simple thing as a bath bring about the kind of healing, and offer the kind of hope that Naaman so desperately needs?

Naaman’s got a problem, all right. And it has nothing at all to do with leprosy. Naaman is like the man in the old joke who is caught in a flood, nad goes up on his roof, where he prays to God to rescue him. Person after person comes by in the rowboat, offering to take the man to safety. “No thanks”, he says each time, “I know God is going to save me.”

Finally the flood rises over him and the man drowns. When he gets to heaven, he loudly complains, “I prayed and prayed, God, but you didn’t save me!” And God sighs a bit, then answers, “I sent four rowboats and you didn’t get into any of them.”

Naaman’s got a problem like the man in the flood. And maybe like me. You see, we also experience God’s grace and think, “This can’t be it… it’s too simple”. We imagine there must be something more to it than what we are offered, and so we wonder “Maybe I need to wait a little longer, pray a little harder, ask a little louder.” We think it is too good to be true!

And then we watch rowboat after rowboat drift on by without us. Leonard Sweet put it this way:

“We don’t claim the healings that do come to us. Instead, we set the evidentiary bar so high for a miracle of healing that a dozen miracles are given to us and we do not notice them at all. For us, a miracle has to be magic, full of special effects, before we pay any attention.”

But most of the miracles of God’s grace – the miracles which transform our thinking, or the miracles which heal our spirits, or the miracles which save our dignity and liberate our potential – most of these miracles are like the rowboats in the story. They come along regularly, sometimes even in response to our prayers. But as Sweet reminds us, “The trick is, you have to get into them to get the full effect.!”

One of the things I really like to practice is Improvisational Theater. It’s not that I am all that comfortable on stage. It is certainly not that I think I can give up my day job and make it as a “ham”. No, I like Improv precisely because it pushes me out of my own comfort zone, and it teaches me some valuable lessons about grace.

You see, in order to do well in Improv, you have to learn these lessons. First, you have to learn to be present in the present moment. You cannot be mutli-tasking – writing up your grocery list or nursing your grudge or rehashing your latest success or failure. You have to be completely present in the present moment.

Secondly, Improv requires that you learn to listen deeply. You have to practice the kind of listening which is focused and clear, in order to hear just what has been said, and nothing else.

Third, to succeed in Improv you have to learn to let go of your own agenda. It really doesn’t matter how I think the scene “should” unfold. It really doesn’t matter how much planning or posing I have done, or how much control I have imagined myself to have. I have to remember that I am not in the scene (or for that matter, in this life) all by myself, and that letting go of my own agenda is essential if I really want to play.

And finally, Improv teaches me to keep moving the story forward. There is nothing worse than stopping the story in its tracks, or letting it die an undignified death. There is movement in Improv just like there is movement in life – and the point is to keep it moving forward, or to get out of the way.

In Improvisational Theater – and in life – our path to success, or to healing or to wholeness may not be a straightforward one. It is not that God requires the twists and turns. It is not that God needs our contortions of impossible movements, or even the smoke and mirrors of illusion. But that we invariably do.

Anything as simple and straightforward as “God loves me, and Christ fills me, just as I am, without one plea” we think must be too good to be true! And so we hang onto our own agendas, we live or die by our own scripts and watch all those rowboats keep drifting right on by!

Even those closest to Jesus – his own disciples then and now – may understand Naaman better than we understand God. “Jesus”, we say, “Couldn’t you act a little more like a king? Couldn’t you perform the way we have scripted you to perform? What’s wrong with a little pomp and circumstance…aren’t you carrying this humility thing a little too far? You said yourself that God would send an army of angels to aid you and all you had to do was ask… why not ask?”

Yet Jesus understands that healing and wholeness of life is not about power and prestige as much as it is about truth. It is in John’s Gospel that Jesus tells his disciples how he is going to die and then goes on to reassure them, “You will know the Truth; and the Truth will set you free.”

As if to suggest that we will not be healed or made whole in this life by Christ the King, unless we are willing to first get into the boat with Christ the Truth. So Naaman’s journey of healing is a good example for all of us. Naaman’s story could be our story. For like him, we want to experience life’s fullest joys. We want to live in God’s deepest serenity. We want to be healed and made whole. And just like Naaman, we have to remain open to all God’s possibilities… whether they show up as rowboats or helicopters or whole flotillas of yachts. Or whether they show up just as you and me letting go of our agendas long enough to move God’s story forward.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once commented that “Full experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental.” Whereupon some one in the audience, undoubtedly thinking they were very clever, asked, “Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?” And the Rabbi wisely replied, “In order to be as accident-prone as possible!”

To be as accident-prone as possible. That is why we are here. That is why we continue to pray, to study, to learn, and to grow. Naaman almost blew it. He was ready to do anything in order to be healed. Ready for anything, except perhaps the letting go of his own agenda long enough to accept the simple thing God asked of him. And it took a servant suggesting “why not?” for Naaman to see the possibility right in front of his face.

We can be that servant for each other. We can be those servants for the world around us, today. Because we are in the process of becoming as “accident-prone” as possible. Hey! The waters are rising all around us. Don’t miss the boat! Amen.

Category Sermons |

The Most Important of All

Date: February 5, 2012
Title: “The Most Important of All”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 12:28-34

I was driving down Highway 26 recently when I saw a car with a very old bumper sticker on it. This was a sticker popular several years ago (you’ve probably seen one just like it), and it read “Honk if you love Jesus.” Another driver near me honked. Then, a little farther down the road, I happened to see another bumper sticker. This one read, “Tithe if you love Jesus. Any fool can honk!”

This experience reminded me of when I went to Bolivia as a part of a Volunteer in Mission Team. One day we took a trip high up into the mountains, above Cotani Alto, to visit a small mission hospital. It wasn’t much of a place; they didn’t have many supplies, and they only had one visiting nurse to care for people from several villages in a 20 mile radius.

As we were touring the place, we stopped to look in to one room, where there was a man, covered in running sores, emaciated and obviously very sick. There, by his bed, was a volunteer, spooning a thin porridge into this man’s mouth, and catching it with the spoon when it ran down his chin.

One of the people in our group didn’t really know what he was saying when involuntarily he commented, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars!” Whereupon the volunteer looked up from her labors and quietly remarked, “Neither would I.”

True love. It doesn’t come easy. It is not enough just to honk and say “I love Jesus.” It is not enough just to see pain’s face and then to turn away. It is not enough just to assume that everyone knows they are welcome here, no matter what. It is not enough.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it this way:

“People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people do give love like that – just dump it down on top of you, a useless, strong-scented burden. I don’t think love is something you give…

Rather, it is a force that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power which enables you to give strength and power, freedom and peace to others. It is not a result; it is a cause. Love is not a product; rather, it produces.”

True love is not a product – it produces. It is a force in you that enables you to give other things. When Jesus answers the scribe’s question about the commandments this morning, he sets in motion a re-forming, not only of faith, but also of love.

According to Jewish rabbinic tradition, there are 613 mozvot, or “commandments” in the five books of Moses. So which laws are weighty and essential? Which are peripheral and insignificant? It seems like a reasonable question to ask of Jesus. It is a reasonable question – and a logical one – to ask, if what we are after is a sense of our own priorities, our own direction, our own identity.

Dan Clendenin, in his commentary on the Mark text, points out:

“We all define ourselves, shape our identities and create our personas in any number of ways… Some define themselves by the intensity of their work, or the accumulation of their wealth. For others, sports, politics, the environment, sexual identity, ethnicity, or even their alma mater is what defines them the most.”

While these “identity markers” may help us to make sense of ourselves and our community, Clendenin reminds us that “They also have their down side. Sexual identity is a deeply human and powerful trait, but taken by itself as the only thing which defines us, and it becomes reductionistic. Likewise, ethnicity is a legitimate source of pride. But taken by itself, it can also be the source of toxic hatred and can even lead to genocide. Hard work is admirable, but we need to remember that life is far bigger than our work.”

So today we are celebrating “Reconciling Sunday” in this congregation. Today we lift up the courage and the witness of those who, 19 years ago, decided that First United Methodist Church of Portland, Oregon would refuse to put limits on God’s love, or on our sharing of that love. Today we rejoice in the diversity of this beloved community, and in all that we can accomplish when we come together here in God’s name.

But it is not enough just to pat ourselves on the back and decide we’ve made it. It is not enough just to rejoice and celebrate and decide we are done with the struggle, and that we can be content with ourselves just the way we are.

In Luke’s rendering of this Gospel story, Jesus not only answers the question of the most important commandment of all, he goes on to say “Do these, and you shall live.” (Luke 10:25-28). Do these (love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself), Jesus says. He doesn’t say “memorize these”, or “recite these”. Jesus does not say “teach these”, or “think about these every day”. Jesus says do these, and you will find life and you will know what it truly means to live.

What it truly means to live as a Reconciling congregation I believe is to understand love is that force which enables us to give strength and power, freedom and peace to one another. It is to understand that love is the force which keeps us always ready to make room for one more neighbor – whether that neighbor looks like us, or not; whether that neighbor acts like us or not; whether that neighbor sounds like us, thinks like us, worships like us, or lives like us… or not.

Do these and you shall live. That Jesus asks a lot of us, doesn’t he? He is asking us not only to call ourselves “reconciling”. He is asking us to practice reconciliation. Jesus is asking us to practice bringing people together in love, to practice accepting one another, to practice making our actions consistent with our beliefs, and our lives compatible with Christ’s prioritizing the most important of all commandments.

And here’s the thing – that work can never be fully complete. That job will never be completely done. But don’t worry. If God asks a lot of us, God offers us even more. You remember how the prophet Isaiah puts it…
“Even youths shall faint and be weary; even the young shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord… (they who trust in God’s grace and practice God’s love)…they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.”

True love – reconciling ministry – does not come easy. But it does come. For Jesus’ words You shall love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself…in the end, become less a command than a promise. These words become a promise that on the weary feet of faith, and with the fragile wings of hope, you and I will finally learn to love. And then we will know what it is to truly live. Thanks be to God! Amen.

A note about our closing hymn, In the Midst of New Dimensions:

This hymn was written by Rev. Julian Rush, a United Methodist minister who served churches in Dallas, Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs for 17 years, until he acknowledged his own identity as a gay man.

When he came out, the United Methodist church in Boulder decided he was no longer fit to be their minister, and stopped paying his salary. In 1981 Bishop Melvin Wheatley appointed Julian to St. Paul United Methodist Church in Denver. This was a small church, which already had a pastor and had very little money. But they decided to accept the appointment of Rev. Rush as a public gesture of support for the gay community, and as a statement about their commitment to social justice.

In 1984, St. Paul UMC became one of the first three churches in the nation to become a Reconciling Congregation, believing that all persons are children of God and are welcome in the church.

This hymn is Julian’s own record of the struggle to be honest and open, even in the face of rejection which came as a result of his integrity. Following the church’s inhospitable reaction to Julian, he wrote this loving and affirming hymn. What a powerful lesson for us all about what it means to love God – and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

(thanks to Paul Nickell for this brief hymn history)

Category Sermons |

Who’s Calling, Please?

Date: January 22, 2012
Title: Who’s Calling, Please?
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M. L. Pritchard
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-20; John 1:43-51

• Call waiting
• Caller ID
• Last call return (star 69) Continuous redial
• Voice messaging
• Call forwarding Selective call forwarding Call Trace
• Call rejection
• Speed dialing
• Priority calling
• 3-way calling

And the list goes on … these are just a few of the options available through our telephones today. It is quite a list … and may leave you wondering, “Whatever happened to plain old calling?”

Don’t get me wrong … I love my iphone … even when I find myself wondering if it is a good idea to have a phone that is smarter than me! And I love so many of my options …

I like being able to control what my phone sounds like when it rings (a marimba); I like the alter that sounds when I get a text message (it is called “Sherwood Forest” and sounds like a royal alert).

I like knowing who is calling and being able to choose whether to answer or wait for them to leave a message. I even like being able to silence my phone …or on very rare occasions, to turn it off altogether!

I like these options, and the illusion they create for me, as if somehow my phone will protect me from stress or worry, and its options will limit the disruptions or distractions of my life. It is as if being connected – wirelessly – means I will never again miss out on something good or exciting or true; as if being in control of my telephone means I can be in control of my life!

1But alas … all that is just an illusion. And sometimes, in the midst of the busiest day of the week, surrounded by noise and confusion – or perhaps, in the still, smallest hours of the night – God calls. And where are all my options then? Someone else reflected on the First Samuel story in this way:

“Long ago, even before the rotary phone, the boy Samuel faced this dilemma. Calls from God were rare. But as a child pledged to service in the temple of Yahweh at Shiloh, Samuel was called by name at all times of day and night.

On one particular night, the boy hears his name called and responds, “Hello? Yes? Here I am. What do you want?”

Now if you are Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with this nonsense. Now even the pretense of slumber is gone; it’s just you and your premonitions, a vague sense of doom hanging over you, and the Lord is silent as only the Lord can be silent.

‘Prophets wouldn’t know a vision anymore if it bit them in the behind. So what’s eating this kid? Indigestion? Fleas? Those worthless, carousing sons of yours? No, that boy is sharp…’

If you’re Samuel, you think it must be the old man calling you. But the temple lamp hasn’t even burned out yet, too early for him to be calling for the vessel. He says he didn’t call? What?!

You suspect his eyesight isn’t the only thing fading fast. And there it is again… your name is definitely being called. And again he denies calling you…But then tells you what to do if it happens again.”

In our day, the word of the Lord seems widespread and visions of would-be prophets abound. There is no limit to those who call us by name. So how will we distinguish God’s call?

Where do you suppose Samuel would have ended up – how would the story have gone – if there had been no Eli telling him to listen again for God? Likewise, where will you and I end up, and how will our story go, if we do not help each other to go back and listen again for God’s love?

How will our story go – where will we end up – if we do not remind each other, of the truth which Margaret Shepherd puts into these words:

Sometimes, your only available transportation is a leap of faith!

A leap of faith. That is what Eli tells Samuel to take. That is what Philip wants Nathanael to risk. And that is what God is still offering to each and every one of us. It is no coincidence that Jesus was not a solo act. Do you remember how his first course of active ministry is to begin gathering a community of disciples around him? First it is two of John the Baptist’s followers; then Simon Peter, and Philip, and now Nathanael.

And for each of these disciples there is someone else helping them to see the truth, to hear the call, and to take the leap of faith, to climb on board that only available transportation.

Jesus was not a solo performer. And neither are we. Who’s calling please?

We need each other to identify God’s voice in the midst of the myriad voices we will hear today. We need each other to know who is calling us and why and to help us take the leap when we answer

I think of Gilda Radner’s famous Saturday Night Live sketch as the telephone operator … back when the phone company was just that …’THE phone company’. Do you remember how she would answer “Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”

When Nathanael is challenged to let go of his snobbish prejudice against Nazareth and its potential (can anything good come out of Nazareth), and when Jesus engages him in a Christological discourse about Messianic identity and the possibilities of discipleship, none of this is happening in a vacuum. Rather, the story unfolds as Nathanael is learning to follow, learning how to take that “only available transportation”… the leap of faith.

Christology – understanding the nature of Christ – unfolds for all of us in the course of discipleship. It is as we follow, it is as we answer that we figure out “who is calling, please?”

Kathleen Norris in her book Amazing Grace writes about the role of community in Christology in this way:

“All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed the priesthood of all believers; all Christians are expected to use their lives to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them.

It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament… and it helps to remember Jesus’ statement later on in the Gospel of John … You did not choose me; I chose you.”

Norris goes on to recount this bit of her personal faith story:

“It was January, bitterly cold and windy, on the day I joined the church, and I found that the sub-zero chill perfectly matched my mood. As I walked to church, into the face of that wind, I was thoroughly depressed. I didn’t feel much like a Christian and I wondered if I was making a serious mistake.

Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders. One was a man I’d never liked much. I’ll call him Ed. He’d always seemed ill-tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small-mindedness that can make small town life such a trial.

Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled, ‘I’d like to welcome you to the body of Christ.’

The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine. Neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth. Like distant thunder, the words made me more alert, attuned to further disruptions in the atmosphere. What had I gotten myself into?

I was astonished to realize, as the service began, that while I may never like Ed very much, I had just been commanded to love him. My own small mind had just been jolted, and the world seemed larger, opened in a new way.”

Ed’s words have power because they are words of Christian community. They are words which say to all of us welcome, here you are joined with us, here we will help you to take the leap of faith, as together we figure out “who’s calling, please?” They are words which remind us that we are in this together – no matter where we come from – and that God is calling from the most unexpected of places, all the time.

When I was a kid, the label Made in Japan signified a cheap trinket that cost little and was worth even less. It was a common term of derision, a way of saying that something was likely not made well and would not last long. But … by the time I graduated from college, when my dad took me shopping for my first car, he insisted I buy Japanese, because that way he knew I’d have something reliable and not likely to cause me a lot of trouble.

Poor Nathanael … I wonder how often the guys reminded him of his first reaction to Philip’s invitation? I wonder how hard it was for him to shift so suddenly, thinking how can anything good or decent or true or exciting or long lasting possibly come from that little backwater town of Nazareth?

He might have missed out altogether, if it hadn’t been for his friends suggesting he “come and see.” We might miss out, too, unless we are willing to “come and see” … because the only available transportation is still that leap of faith. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

The Time Has Come!

Date: January 15, 2012
Title: “The Time Has Come!”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20

Note this Introduction to the Gospel Lesson informs this week’s sermon:
Here Mark writes that Jesus dares to announce the “Gospel of God”, in direct contrast to the Gospel of Caesar, or of the Roman empire. Mark is making the claim here that Jesus’ story is the real Gospel, the real good news.

But Mark does not leave it at that in this text. He goes on to give Jesus a basic “keynote” speech, with four specific messages: (1), the time is fulfilled; (2), the Kingdom of God is at hand; (3), repent; and (4), believe in this Gospel.

As you probably know, the New Testament was written in Greek. In it we find two different words for “time”. There is the word chronos – which means “chronological time”, the everyday kind of time. And then there is the word kairos – which means the “urgent, present moment, the time beyond time, God’s time.”

In the Gospels, Jesus always refers to that second kind of time – the kairos time, when God’s Kin-dom is fulfilled here on earth; when God is at the center of all life; and when we are filled with God’s love.

_____________________________________________________________________

When my oldest daughter was trying to decide where she would go to college, I encouraged her to think big, to look at all her options and then go where she felt called to go. We traveled all around the United States in her junior year of high school, visiting all kinds of universities until she finally settled on Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

The year she was to enter Mt. Holyoke her sister and I traveled with Sarah to the east coast. We came early so we could do a little sight seeing and have a bit of a family vacation since none of us had ever seen much of New England before.

The first morning of our trip, Sarah and I were up and ready to go, but Kate was having a hard time getting out of bed. We had taken a late flight in from Portland to Hartford, Connecticut, and Kate was getting increasingly grumpy with every attempt Sarah or I made to jolly her out of bed. Finally, in exasperation, she cried out, “It’s not so bad for the two of you – you have been here before, so you’re used to the time change!”

Of course we have yet to let her live that down! It seems that sometimes “time” is a relative term. And what I may understand to the time may not be at all what you understand or experience.

Let me take you back now to another time. It was the night of April 3, 1968, and there were tornado warnings and torrential rains were falling in Memphis, Tennessee that night. Because of the bad weather, only a handful of folks had turned out to support Martin Luther King, Jr in his call for the city’s sanitation workers to go out on strike. Just three weeks earlier, 14,000 people had come to hear King speak in the same place. Nonetheless, when Dr. King took the podium that night, he didn’t seem concerned about the size of the crowd. And he began by talking a little bit about timing.

King spoke about some of the close calls he had already endured, and then went on to say:

“When I got into Memphis, some began to say – given the talk about the threats against me – what might happen to me here? Well… I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.

Like anybody I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now; I just want to do God’s will… So I’m happy tonight! I’m not worried about anything! I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the coming of the Lord!”

We all know what happened next. At 6:01 the following evening, Dr. King was assassinated right there in Memphis. He was 39 years old.

Today, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. as a prophet, a social activist, a reformer, and a change agent. We also remember him as a disciple of Christ and a child of God, just like us. Dan Clenedenin, in his essay, “the Time Has Come” makes this observation:

“Part of King’s many-faceted genius was his recognition that chronos – mere “clock time” -ordinary time, if you will – the passage of days nad weeks and years… no matter how long or short, no matter how trivial or important… that kind of time is no match for kairos time – the unique and opportune moment of God’s visitation.”

I believe that is why King could say that longevity – the length of life – is not the first priority for his life, or for ours. Indeed, longevity alone can be a sad substitute for a decisive choice made at a critical moment, however short or long the time.

In the Gospel text we read this morning, Mark has Jesus lifting up the kairos moment when he says “the time has come… the Kingdom of God is near”. Jesus announces the good news of God by inviting Simon and his brother Andrew into ministry – into the recognition that the clock had ticked over from chronos into kairos time. Jesus tells them that they are at a critical juncture, that they have been offered a divine appointment. And that while we might yet yawn at chronos, forgetting what day of the week it is, we can hardly ignore kairos and its urgent call to a fundamental reorientation in each of our lives.

It always amazes me, to see the response of Simon, his brother Andrew, James and John. There is little evidence to suggest that any of these four were extraordinarily good or righteous men. There is no overtly obvious reason why Jesus chooses them as disciples.

Indeed, there is little to distinguish first four disciples from their neighbors and friends, except perhaps for their ability to let go. They had the ability to let go of preconceived notions, and agendas and lifelong expectations; the ability to let go of their preoccupation with the everyday – with the chronos time we all know so very well.

And in letting go, they had the ability to hear God calling, to recognize when the time has come to respond to that insistent whisper or that nagging suggestion that there is room in this life for something more. Someone else put it this way:

“Letting go can be said to be the essence of the spiritual life, the heart of spiritual practice. It is when we are no longer full of opinions and expectations that we are truly receptive; able to hear God’s voice crying in our wilderness, able to see God’s light shining in our darkness.”

If you were in a Roman Catholic church this morning, and looked at the front of your bulletin, just under today’s date, you might find these words…”Second Sunday in Ordinary Time”. Ordinary time … in the Catholic tradition, it is these weeks between Christmas and Lent, when there are no major feast days or festivals, when the glitter and glitz has died down and the celebrations have been put away for another year. This is “ordinary time”… or is it?

Going to get the baby out of the manger, we suddenly realize it is no longer a cute little baby we have on our hands. Now we have the full implications of the adult Jesus, asking us to take what love we received in Bethlehem and use it to make life-altering decisions. Because the time has come.

And isn’t that just the way it goes with God? As Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“Over and over, God’s call to us means pushing aside old boundaries, embracing outsiders, giving up the notion that there is not enough of us to go around. We may resist; we may even lose our tempers, but the call of God is insistent…

God’s calling keeps after us, keeps calling us by name, until finally we step over the lines we have drawn for ourselves and discover a whole new world on the other side.”

So what is it that will move us today from chronos to kairos? What is it that will create greatness in our midst? You may say, “I am no Martin Luther King, Jr”… and the world is so vast, its problems so huge. Injustice and racism are still so prevalent, even right here in Portland. And I am so small in comparison.

And yet, I ask you – whoever decides at an early age to become an icon of social justice, a prophet of world-class change, a martyr for love? I think when Simon, Andrew, James and John leave their nets to fish with Jesus, they have no idea just what God is inviting them into. They simply know the time has come to follow. Again, in Taylor’s words:

“The call of God is insistent, and whenever we limit who we will be to other people, or who we will let them be for us, God gets to work, rubbing out the lines we have drawn around ourselves, and calling us into the limitless country of God’s love.

We may well formulate new limits and draw new lines, but none of them last very long… Because once God has called us out there is no going back… God never calls us back behind our lines.”

Dr. King once commented that “Evil will not be driven out; it can only be crowded out…through the explosive power of something good.” When together we notice the atmospheric shift from chronos to kairos; when we hear God calling us to leave whatever nets contain our everyday, ordinary lives, we embrace the power of something good. Something good like God’s reign of justice and peace, or God’s promise of wholeness, or God’s presence of grace. And in so doing, we become a part of that which crowds out evil in favor of good.

It was an ordinary day just like any other when Rosa Lee Parks discovered a moment of God’s kairos – an opportunity she had to choose risk over regret, and urgency over complacency. In her autobiography she writes:

“I was not old then, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was only 42. And the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Sometimes the kairos moment is not all that different from a thousand moments of chronos before, when all of a sudden, we find ourselves too tired of giving into the status quo. We find ourselves too tired of giving in to our resignation that the world is not as it should be; too tired of giving in to hopelessness or despair; too tired of giving in to apathy or complacency. And all of a sudden, chronos becomes kairos just like that.

The time has come, my friends, to let go. Because you have nothing to lose but your life the way it has been. And let me tell you… there is lots more life where that came from! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Category Sermons |

Out of Chaos

Date: January 8, 2012
Title: Out of Chaos
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M. L. Pritchard

I am wondering this morning … just what do you suppose is the “best seat” in this house? If this were a theater, it would easy to answer that question. The “best seat in the house” would be close to the front, but not right on top of the orchestra. You wouldn’t want to sit in the very front row, where you had to look up and get a crick in your neck. You probably wouldn’t want to sit on center stage, either – unless of course you’re harboring a secret desire to perform!

But what about here? Is the best seat in the house the one way in the back, where you can be anonymous and nearly invisible? Or is it perhaps a seat on the aisle, in case you need to make a hasty exit – you know, the sermon gets too boring, or something like that. Or maybe, the best seat in this house is one smack dab in the middle, where you are surrounded by friends, where you feel the loving community all around you.

I’ve got to tell you, my friends – the truth is, you all are sitting in the “best seat in the house” today. In fact, we all are sitting there, all the time. Because the truth is, we are sitting in the lap of God! That is what Baptism is all about. It is an on-going invitation for us to find ourselves seated in the lap of God.

I believe it is time for us to recognize that truth, to recognize and understand that truth as Ralph Waldo Emerson puts in these words: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Within us – there, where we meet God and God meets the world through us. Within us – there, where the Spirit resides, calling us out of whatever chaos we inhabit, or experience, or even cause to happen.

What lies behind us – you know, in that old year, that musty long-ago, nearly forgotten 2011. And what lies before us – in this newly born year, this little upstart of 2012 – all that are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

How great it is that today’s Scriptures begin “in the beginning”, with the very act of creation itself. You remember how the story goes…out of chaos creation begins. It is out of chaos that God’s Spirit moves, and that God’s loving energy brings forth … pretty much everything.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am not always a great fan of chaos. It is unsettling f those of us who like to imagine we have control over our lives. It is uncomfortable for those of us who pretend to be in charge, even in some small way. And chaos … it’s just so uncontrollable, so unexpected, and let’s face it, downright messy.

But chaos is also so full of promise, when we remember that it was out of chaos that God created the universe. And it is out of chaos that we might unleash our own creative genius, even today.

You undoubtedly have heard of “chaos theory.” In recent years, Chaos Theory has had a lasting effect on science, leading many to believe that 20th century science will be known primarily for just these three theories: relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos.

Agents of chaos show up everywhere around the world, from the currents of the ocean to the flow of blood, from the branches of trees to the effects of air turbulence. But what exactly is Chaos Theory? Someone else put it this way: “The name comes from the fact that the systems this theory describes are apparently disordered. But Chaos Theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.”

Finding the underlying order in apparently random data … I like that image! That is something I can find comforting, encouraging, maybe even a little freeing, as it suggests that there might be more to my life, more to the world, more to this present moment and even more to the future than at first meets my eye. And it helps me to understand how I might join God in the ongoing dance of creating “out of chaos.”

The first true experimenter in Chaos Theory was actually a meteorologist by the name of Edward Lorenz. In 1961, he was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of 12 equations to model the weather, to theoretically predict what the weather might be.

One day, Lorenz wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in the middle of the sequence, instead of the beginning. He entered the number off his printout and left the computer to run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved in unexpected ways. Instead of the same pattern developed previously, it had diverged from the pattern, and ended up significantly different. It took Lorenz a while, but eventually he figured out what had happened.

The computer stored the numbers in the equations to six decimal places. To save paper, Lorenz only asked it to print out three decimal places. In the original sequence, the number was .506127 (pay attention, there may be a quiz later); and Lorenz had only typed the first three digits, .506.

By all conventional wisdom of the time, this should have worked. He should have gotten a sequence very close to the original one. Most scientists consider themselves lucky to get measurements with accuracy to three decimal places. Surely the fourth and fifth, impossible to measure using reasonable methods, cannot have a huge effect on the outcome of any experiment!

Yet Lorenz proved this wrong, with an effect which came to be known as the “butterfly effect,” the suggestion that the flapping of a single butterfly’s wings could produce a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere which over time could contribute to what the atmosphere actually does. So maybe there is some underlying pattern, some creative genius at work in the seemingly random experiences of chaos!

It is a sudden Gospel jump we make, from baby Jesus just two weeks ago, to the 30-year old standing in the River Jordan today. And Mark tells the story of Jesus’ baptism as if Jesus sees the crowd and just decides to get in line with all the other broken and damaged ones needing God’s grace just like us. Mark tells the story as if Jesus recognizes the chaos all around him and decides to make something of it, to find the underlying patterns of love and hope in the midst of the seemingly random experiences of human life. Perhaps we could the same.

You may have heard about Madonna Badger recently. She is an advertising executive in New York City. She is also a woman who knows first hand about chaos, for it was her two parents and her three daughters who perished together in a house fire on Christmas Eve. At her children’s memorial service this week, Madonna Badger reflected on chaos and creation in this way:

“People everywhere – including me – wonder ‘Why? Why did this happen, and why my children, and why my parents, and why now?’ But nothing will bring my babies back, or my parents, or the life I had … Here’s the one thing I know which is not a mystery: that there is no power greater on this Earth than love. And that is what is going to keep Lily and Sarah and Grace with us forever.

In all this, in all this incomprehensible loss and chaos, all I can hang onto is that love is everything. And God, as I choose to call my higher power, is love. So, God is love and God is everything.

I have been asked a million times, ‘How can you do this, how are you talking, how are you surviving?’ Because when I used to hear about people losing a child, or if a child got very, very sick, I would say, ‘I could never survive that. I could never live with that. I could never, ever, ever live through losing my babies.’

But here I am. Here are all of us. Because Lily and Sarah and Grace live in my heart now, as do my parents. I was a daughter and a mother, and I still intend to be both, so I can make my girls proud and carry them forward in love.”

This morning Jesus is inviting us to join him in a baptism of love. Jesus is inviting us to carry forward God’s love, which somehow brings order to the seemingly random chaos of the world. Because it is out of chaos that creation begins. And it is out of chaos that redemption is offered. And it is out of chaos that life is lived as love carries us all forward.

Karl Barth, famous and sometimes controversial Swiss theologian, was a great thinker, a prolific writer, and a sought-after professor at several leading European universities. On one occasion, Barth was confronted by a reporter who wanted him to give a brief summary of his twelve thick volumes on systematic theology.

Now Barth could have given that reporter an impressive intellectual reply. He could have offered a profound dissertation. He did not. Instead, he simply replied, summing up his deep, impressive theological works with these words: “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”

Out of chaos … it all begins. Amen.

Category Sermons |

What Did You Get for Christmas?

Date: December 25, 2011
Title: “What Did You Get for Christmas?”
Scripture: Psalm 98; John 1:1-14
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard

Christmas is a time for memories, it seems. It is a time when memories surface, whether we will them to or not, whether we want them to or not. So this week I’ve been remembering Christmases I’ve known – like the one when I was still in high school and my sisters and I surprised our parents with airplane tickets for them to take a trip to southern California. Or the one when my flight out of Denver was cancelled because of a blizzard, and I made it onto a plane to Salt Lake City just before the airport was closed for three days. Or the one when I was six years old and we got our first puppy from the pound.

Among all my memories of childhood Christmases is one which you may recall as well. It is the memory of meeting up with friends the day after the holiday, when invariably, the question would be asked, “What did you get for Christmas?”

I think that is a great question for all of us this morning, this Christmas morning…what did you get, what did I get for Christmas? Let’s see… you may remember a few Sundays ago when I shared my dismay that Christmas falls this year on a Sunday. You may recall how I said that my family always opens presents on Christmas morning.

So while it is really delightful to be here with you today (thank you for coming!), I just couldn’t quite give up that whole present-opening thing. So this morning we are going to open a few together, to see just what did we get for Christmas?

In the first box we find… goodness. We got goodness for Christmas! Not just the kind of goodness that puts us on Santa’s “nice” list. Not just the kind of goods that lets us live together as family and friends. Our first Christmas gift today is the gift of God’s goodness.

God’s goodness has more to do with faithfulness than with sentimentality. It is the kind of goodness which is expressed in unconditional love, the kind of goodness which keeps promises and builds trust. Nan Merrill, in her book Psalms for Praying paraphrases the 98th Psalm in this way:

O sing to the Beloved a new song, for Love has done marvelous things!
By the strength of your indwelling Presence,
We too, are called to do great things.

And South African President Nelson Mandela once commented that:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we
are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

God in Jesus Christ give us all the gift of goodness.

So what else did we get for Christmas? In the second box we find beauty. We got beauty for Christmas. Not just the kind of beauty we see in twinkling lights or festive bows. Not just the kind of beauty we recognize on the surface of people or places or things. Our second Christmas give today is the gift of God’s beauty.

God’s beauty is not hard to find. All you have to do is look around and it fairly jumps right out at you – especially here in this warm place, surrounded by loving people, uplifted by incredible music. It is not difficult to spot God’s beauty in the green of the trees, the brilliance of a starlit night, the wonder of the renewing earth.

And yet this Christmas gift of beauty goes even deeper than all of that. It is the beauty of creation. And the beauty of redemption. It is the beauty of birth, and the beauty of death, and the beauty of resurrection all rolled into one holy child.

I remember well the card I received from a friend when I was pregnant with my first child. On the front of the card was a picture of a delighted person exclaiming, “A baby?! Your life will never be the same!” And inside was a picture of a house, strewn with toys and blankets, bits of paper and pieces of clothing, with this caption, “And neither will your floors!”

It is true, isn’t it? A baby enters in and changes things in anyone’s life. A baby enters in and threatens the status quo. King Herod knew that. Sitting in Jerusalem with all the military clout of the Roman empire to back him up, Herod knew how dangerous babies can be.

And yet, this baby – dangerous as he is – is also all about beauty. The kind of beauty which changes things, maybe even everything. Because this baby also changes us, right along with them. Mary Oliver puts it this way in one of her poems:

As for life,
I’m humbled, I’m without words sufficient to say
How it has been hard as flint, and soft as a spring pond,
Both of these, over and over.

And long pale afternoons besides,
And so many mysteries
Beautiful as eggs in a nest, still unhatched

Though warm and watched over
By something I have never seen –
A tree angel, perhaps,
Or a ghost of holiness…

The gift of beauty… what could be better this Christmas?

But we have one more box to open. What else did we get for Christmas? In the third box we find Truth. Not just the kind of truth recognized in mathematics or science. Not just the kind of truth which is celebrated in literature or art. Not just the kind of truth which can be quantified, objectified, certified. This Christmas gift is the gift of God’s Truth.

God’s Truth is the kind of truth which brings us back to our essential selves. It is Truth with a capital “T”, which stretches beyond the wonder of the mind to encompass the imagination of the heart. It is the kind of truth which Dietrich Bonhoeffer sees when he describes Christmas with these words:

When God in Jesus Christ claims space in the world -
Even space in a stable
Because “there was no other place in the inn” -

God embraces the whole reality of the world
In this narrow space
And reveals its ultimate foundation.

Several years ago when I was serving our church in Silverton, we had the usual Christmas pageant, very similar to the one some of us enjoyed here last night. We had shepherds and sheep, angels, Mary and Joseph, even a donkey and a few wise men. But then we had an unexpected addition.

One of the 3 year old boys came to dress rehearsal and announced, “I’m going to be a fireman”. While I tried to explain to him that we didn’t have any firemen in this play, but that we had a number of great costumes for sheep or angels or shepherds, Luke simply looked at me and rather politely, but very firmly replied, “But I am going to be a fireman.” Exasperated, I looked around for help. And was rescued when a very wise woman knelt by that child and said, “We don’t have any firemen, but how about a fireman’s dog?”

Well, Luke thought that would be just fine, so his mother spent the afternoon sewing black spots onto one of the sheep’s outfits. And the Christmas Dalmatian stole the show. Partly because it was new and different. But largely because I think that “fireman’s dog” helped us all to remember that Christmas only happens when we are willing to believe in all of God’s truth, from the wonders of our minds to the imaginations of our hearts.

God is with us – right here, right now – just as we are in this very moment. And God will continue to be with us in the next moment, the next moment, and the next. That is the Truth with a capital “T” which is found in a manger and fulfilled in an empty tomb – for Jesus, and for us. Ted Loder sums it all up in his prayer for Christmas:

O God, at last I 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;
Truth – not falsehood followed however long.

The mystery is goodness, beauty, truth:
Because it is you who, above all, beyond all, keeps breakable promises…
And your grace is the greatest mystery of all. Amen.

Category Sermons |