The Gospel
Originally Preached 11.27.11 in Redding,CT
Proverbs 14:29-31; James 1:19-21 I’m going to start my sermon with a story about the day I fell in love with this congregation. It was a Friday evening last summer. I sat at one of those round tables in Fellowship Hall with the delightful people on the search committee. There was a lot of laughter, there was a lot of camaraderie, there was a lot of God. I haven’t felt that at home at any church since I was in high school. So there I was, late on a Friday night, driving back to Boston on route 90 East. It was about midnight, so I was expecting to easily glide back home without a hitch, which was GREAT because I was TIRED. It was midnight, and I only had 15 miles to go, and all I wanted to do was to flop down on my bed and pass out. And that’s when that string of red tail-lights lit up in front of me. You know what, I’m talking about. You can see it 10 cars in front of you. One after another, after another light up all in a row. And out of nowhere, your speedometer drops from 70 to 20 to 5 to 0. Don’t you just hate it? Midnight on Friday! So close to home you can feel it! So tired you would do anything to roll out of the car onto your bed. And the traffic stops dead in its tracks. I was tired and my tired turned into annoyed, and my annoyed turned into frustrated and my frustrated turned into anger. I was ANGRY. Now I can’t be the only one in here who experiences this type of traffic rage. Anyone else? Who’s with me? I’m sure you’ve been there. At least I know I wasn’t the only angry one because when I looked over at the car next to me, I saw a young woman shouting.....and when I say she was shouting, I mean she was SHOUTING. I couldn’t hear her through the closed windows, but her entire body was screaming anger and her mouth was forming a slew of profanities and she was slapping her steering wheel as if hitting it hard enough would magically make all the cars disappear. But there we sat.....waiting.......angry.....helpless......isolated. This is a story about anger. Now there are many ways to deal with anger. Some people sit and quietly stew, some people direct their anger at steering wheels..........But Do you know what Jesus did, our moral exemplar, our Prince of Peace......Do you know what Jesus did when he got Angry?......................He grabbed a bullwhip and beat the heck out of some moneylenders until they fled the Temple, but that’s a story for another day. The point is this, When even Jesus exhibits a certain emotion, it helps us know that it’s okay to feel anger sometimes. But we can’t let anger be our first response. We see it throughout the Bible, “Be slow to anger.” Even in our readings for today, be slow to anger. It doesn’t say, never be angry. But be slllllllllooooooow to anger. The problem is that anger can be a powerful emotion. The problem is that anger can be an easy first reaction. Anger is a powerful thing and it takes over quickly. In these days of economic hardship, it seems like anger is everywhere. Anger is in our politics, on our TVs, it’s out on the street, carrying signs in every major city in the US right now. Have you heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement? It’s a movement, a series of ongoing protests because people are angry at the way the poor have been mistreated. People are angry at the unjust system that corrupts our political process and increases the economic divide, and bankrupts our country financially and morally. And they should be angry. That’s exactly the issue that got Jesus worked up enough to grab a whip. But when large crowds get together carrying signs, anger can be a dangerously powerful thing. When large angry crowds get together they tend to shout things like “Crucify him!” Anger is a dangerous thing. I wonder if Scott felt anger. As he walked into the church, I wonder if Scott felt anger. As he walked through the protestors who were carrying signs of hate and blame and bigotry, signs that read “God hates you, Scott Anderson” ....... “You’re going to hell, Scott Anderson.” When Jesus was angry, he grabbed a bull whip. These days people make signs, and sometimes signs can do more damage than any bullwhip could ever do. As he walked through the crowd of hurtful signs, I wonder if Scott felt anger. This was his ordination day after all. This was supposed to be one of the most joyful occasions in his ministerial career. And yet here they were, about a month ago, even his fellow Presbyterians, standing outside his church in Madison, WI, shouting hateful words, angry words, because Scott was about to be the first openly gay minister ordained in the Presbyterian church. I wonder if Scott felt anger. Hear now the words of Proverbs and James: Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly. Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor God. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Over and over and over again in the Bible we see it written, “You must understand this, my beloved....be slow to anger.” It can be so easy to let anger be our first reaction. Amen? Anger even feels good sometimes, Amen? But when we are quick to anger, all of a sudden, anger controls you. Because anger only thinks of anger, and anger begets anger, begets more anger, and pretty soon anger has consumed your whole life. And the way we live our personal life resonates throughout all of Creation, and pretty soon, our world is ruled by anger. You can hear it in the TV pundits who would rather scream about “class warfare” rather than discuss significant proposed legislation. You can hear it in the TV preacher who blames our latest natural disasters on same sex marriage. It is shaping our nation. It is strangling our world. The protestors stayed throughout Scott’s ordination service. They carried their signs throughout the service. They shouted out hate, throughout the service. They could not be ignored. So naturally every person who spoke in the service, made mention of the protestors. They could have spoken in anger. But they refused to let anger rule their church. Here’s what they did. They didn’t pick up a whip and beat the Westboro protestors, although I’m sure they would have liked to. Instead, They prayed. They prayed for the well-being of the protestors, they prayed for themselves, for the healing of the Church, for the healing of the world, for the beautiful ministry of Scott Anderson. They prayed. And the anger melted away. And God filled their hearts with compassion. They prayed, and everything within them, and the whole Church around them changed forever. Often when we pray, we pray because we want God to hear our words and grant us our wish. We pray because we hope it affects the people we pray for. We pray because we want the impossible to happen. But more importantly, we pray because prayers change the person praying. We pray because prayer changes us. We pray because it takes away all of that anger, and puts compassion and love and empathy in its place. Whether or not our prayers work some sort of magic on the people we pray for, our prayers work miracles on ourselves. We pray because praying changes everything within us and around us for the better. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly. And so, in the midst of all of this anger on Wall Street, in the midst of people carrying sarcastic signs, in the midst of people angry about the inequities of this world, a group of young seminarians gathered together calling themselves “the Protest Chaplains.” They pour hot tea on chilly evenings, they pass out hundreds of granola bars a day both to protestors and cops, they hold nightly vespers and communion services open to all, and they pray. They pray with anyone and everyone, They pray with people who need a brief moment of sanctuary, with people who have lost everything, with people who have never had any exposure to religion before. They remind people that Jesus may have chased the moneylenders out with a bullwhip, but he also sat with them, and broke bread with them, and prayed with them. Amidst chants of “This is what democracy looks like,” The Protest Chaplains chant “This is what Christianity looks like.” Amidst signs that say “I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one,” the Protest Chaplains carry signs that say “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” Amidst anger, and pain, and suffering, The Protest Chaplains pray. They prayed, and everything within them and everything about the protest around them and everything about the world around them changed forever. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly. Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor God. Anger begets anger, begets anger. Anger thinks of nothing else but anger. And we completely forget those who are suffering around us. Our anger makes us forget the suffering of the poor and needy and lonely. Our anger insults our Maker. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, quick to prayer, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. I was fifteen miles from home. On route 90. And it was midnight. In watching the ridiculous display of anger from my neighbor, I started to realize the ridiculousness of my own anger. And having moved passed my self-centered frustrations, I started to put two-and-two together. It was midnight on a Friday. And there was only one thing that could cause the traffic to stop dead so suddenly. The traffic started moving past a faded, forest green sedan, flipped upside down, with all of its windows blown out. My anger melted into sorrow and empathy, compassion and love. I have to be honest here: I may be a minister, but I am not a praying man. Praying is the most difficult thing for me to do in my own spiritual life. But I am trying. And when I come across moments like this, moments when I don’t know what else to do. Moments where I don’t want anger to be my first response anymore, there is nothing I would rather be doing than praying. So, I said a little prayer for the driver who was whisked away by blasting sirens, and for the people who work 12-hour shifts at the hospital on a Friday night, and for the people on the scene, who worked so quickly to keep that highway safe, so that after only a five-minute delay, I was back on the road, headed for bed. It was awkward. It was informal. It was not the kind of poetic prayer you hear from Dean on a Sunday morning. But it was a prayer. When I reacted with anger, I was alone. I thought I was the one in need of God’s assistance. I was isolated by a wall of anger and all I could see was the inconveniences in my own life. Because all anger thinks about is anger, and anger begets anger, begets anger. When I reacted in prayer, my heart opened up to the suffering around me. When I prayed, I realized I was surrounded by blessings and a whole world of people in need. When I prayed I realized that this was not a time for anger, but a time for compassion, and love, and empathy. When I prayed, everything within me and everything around me changed for the better. It’s all the same, whether you’re in the car, the Church, or Wall Street. If we are quick to anger in the car, we will be quick to anger in our legislature. If we are quick to anger in our church, we will be quick to anger in our global problem-solving. What we do in the minor everyday details of our lives amplifies throughout the Universe. Amen? That’s what Church is for. This is where we practice being slow to anger, by being quick to prayer. We are a diverse community in a tight space. It’s easy to crash into each other. It’s easy to get angry at each other. It’s easy to be quick to anger. That’s what Church is for. This is where we practice being slow to anger, by being quick to prayer. So let’s start changing the world here. Let’s start changing the world now. Let’s start with me. In this, my first full sermon as your Associate Minister, I can already tell you I will make mistakes. I know this because I have already made mistakes. So I ask you to be slow to anger and quick to prayer. When I forget your name, forgive me. When I schedule an event at an inconvenient time, forgive me. When I misspeak and say something offensive, forgive me. Forgive me, and pray for me, because I will be praying for you. And in praying for each other, everything within us and the whole of Creation around us will change forever. When you see those red break lights lighting up, when you discuss politics and the economy, when someone is screaming hateful words at you, when you feel that familiar tug of anger...... Don’t grab the whip. Make a sign. Make a healing sign, a sign of God’s love, a sign of prayer, a sign that says “slow to anger, quick to prayer.” And when you’re done praying, and when you feel that anger melting away, and when you feel everything within you changing, there is only one word that will do............and that word is Amen. Amen, Amen, Amen......And the whole church said........
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Exodus 20:12
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. James 1:17-18 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfilment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Luke 13:20-21 And again he said, ‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’ Luke 15:8-10 ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ Sermon: HONOR THY MOTHER Our scripture today says this: “Honor your father and your mother.” It’s a pretty simple, straight forward statement. Some days it may be easier than others. It’s a little easier to honor mom and dad when they make you delicious pancakes or grilled cheese sandwiches. Right? It’s a little harder to honor mom and dad when they give you lengthy stern lectures about the cleanliness of your room or when they start dancing in front of all your friends. My dad does this dance he calls “the pony.” It’s something. Anyway, that’s another story. Today, I wanted to honor my parents by telling you all about how they helped me understand God. First is my father, John W Davidson. I can still picture him sitting at the foot of my bed. I can still see the 101 Dalmations red comforter on the bed. I can still see the way he has to duck a little bit to avoid the metal bars on the bunk bed above us. I can still picture him explaining fractions to me, and that I was 5 and a quarter years old, and that half was a big deal when you’re 5 and a quarter. I also remember him sitting there, teaching me a new line every night. First night, he taught me, “Our Father, who art in Heaven...” the next night, he taught me, “hallowed be thy name.” And that was our nightly bed time ritual. He would sit there night after night and teach me line after line of the Lord’s prayer. And that’s kind of how I think of God. A patient, loving father, sitting at the foot of my bed, on my 101 Dalmatians red comforter, teaching me all the right words to say. God is like a father, teaching us all the right words to say. Raise your hand if you’re a father. Give them a hand. Fathers, the work you do is hard, it is honorable, it is holy. Amen? God is like a Father, teaching us all the right words to say. Then there’s my mother, Eleanor K. Davidson. Everyone called her Kay. She was from rural Mississippi, and she used to call us “Y’all Kids.” When she married my father, she had the straightest hair that could be, so long it went all the way down her backside, right down to her hips. But I never got to see that hair, because when I was 2 years old my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don’t remember being told about it. I was so young, her cancer was just always a part of who I was. My older sisters just recently told me that our parents flew us out to St. Louis to our grandmother’s house to tell us about her diagnosis. Apparently, that was where she received her first treatment, in St. Louis. Back then, chemotherapy was still in experimental stages. I don’t remember much about it, but I know it was nasty. I know it does more damage to your body than the actual cancer itself. I know it made her so fragile she had to wear a neck brace. I know it made her lose all of that gorgeous hair. She used to wear these colorful, floral pattern scarves on her head. I would tie those same scarves around my neck and use them as super hero capes. She made it 5 years more with the chemo. She died when I was 7 years old. She had this dream she would be there for my high school graduation. She had this fear that she would die too early and I wouldn’t be able to remember her because I was so young. That’s why she went through chemo, that’s why she went through so much torture, to make sure she was around a little longer, to make sure I had a chance to get to know her a little better. And that’s kind of how I think of God. God is like a mother who put herself through hell so that I could know just a little bit more about her, and yet still I can never fully know her. Doesn’t that sound like God? Doesn’t that sound like the crucifixion? God put herself through torture and death so that we could know just a little bit more about her, and yet still we can never fully know her. God is like a mother who sacrificed everything just to have a little more time with us. Raise your hand if you’re a mother. Give them a hand. Mothers, the work you do is hard, it is honorable, it is holy. Amen? God is like a Mother who sacrificed everything just to have a little more time with us. 3 years later, at the age of 10, I found myself in a tuxedo, standing at the front of the chapel at Manhattenville College. It’s a beautiful spot, right Mark? It is a beautiful spot for a wedding. That’s where my dad married Barbara Quinn Davidson, my step-mom. Barbara made me eat lima beans. It was terrible. I would sit at the dinner table for 2 hours refusing to eat them, but she always got them down. Barbara isn’t just a step-mother. Barbara is my mother. She took me in as her own son. She forced me to eat vegetables like a mother, and she dried my tears like a mother. From the start, she worked hard to make sure we all felt like one solid family, all seven of us. For example, my parents didn’t take a honeymoon; we took a family-moon. It’s not a wedding anniversary; it’s a family-versary. Barbara is my mother. And that’s kind of how I think about God. We say that Jesus is God’s only begotten son, and yet, God takes us all in as her own beloved children. God adopts us, and works hard to make sure we all feel like one solid family. God is like a step-mother, who really feels like a mother. Raise your hand if you are a Step-mother or an Adopted mother. Give them a hand. Mothers, the work you do is hard, it is honorable, it is holy. Amen? God is like a step-mother, who really feels like a mother. Honor your father AND your mother. That’s what the scripture says. That’s one of the 10 Commandments. That’s top 10 on the long list of thousands of rules. Honor your Mother. That’s on the same list as Thou Shalt Not Steal. That is given the same amount of importance as Thou Shalt Not Kill. HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER. And that’s exactly what the Bible does. When the Bible talks about God, when the Bible honors God, it honors God as both Father AND Mother. Look at our passage from the book of James today. James says: “Every generous act of giving...is from above....from the Father of Lights...he gave us birth.” In the same sentence, James calls God Father AND talks about God giving us birth. In the same sentence James calls God Father AND says God acts like a Mother. We’re more used to the Father imagery, so sometimes we overlook the more subtle mother imagery. Other times the mother imagery can make us feel a little uncomfortable because we are so used to Father God. But it’s there all over the Bible. God even talks about herself as a mother. At various points, God calls herself a mother bear, a mother eagle, a nursing mother, a pregnant mother, the list goes on and on and on. The Bible is filled with tons of female imagery for God. For whatever reason, we tend to skip over those parts of the Bible. For instance, look at our liturgy. Everyone say the word “Liturgy.” Liturgy is the set words we say and the set movements we make in our worship service: the Call to Worship, the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria Patri....That’s the liturgy. Our Church has a beautiful Liturgy, Amen? There’s something about the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria Patri that moves me to the core. Doesn’t it? There’s something about our liturgy that makes me feel like I’ve returned home every Sunday. Doesn’t it? This is how liturgy; it works in two ways: Liturgy says a lot about what we already believe, AND liturgy transforms our faith into new ways of believing. Everyone say “Liturgy.” Liturgy says a lot about what we already believe, AND liturgy transforms our faith into new ways of believing. If you look at our Liturgy, if you count it up in the bulletin, together we say that God is male 9 times every Sunday. Every week. 9 times. That’s at least 468 times every year that we proclaim together that God is male. Now, throughout the year you may have caught me praying to Mothering God or Womb of Life. I wanted to make sure we talked about why I’ve been using those phrases. Because every year in our set liturgy we say that God is male 468 times, and in our liturgy, we say God is female exactly 0 times. 468 to 0. That sounds like a pretty one-sided game to me. If that were the score at a basketball game, you’d probably leave at half-time, right? And some people do leave church at half-time for that very reason. For some people Father God just doesn’t do it for them. And it’s not about score-keeping. It’s not about making sure we have a one-to-one ratio. It’s about making sure we draw upon all the richness and beauty of our tradition. It’s about making sure our liturgy reflects what we actually believe and what our God wants for us to believe. I want to enrich our worship together in that way. I want to make sure EVERY person here has a chance to connect to God through our liturgy, whether you’re a mother, father, son, daughter, or none of the above. That’s how Jesus talked about God. Jesus made sure everyone had a moment to say, “huh, God is just like me.” Jesus said, hey woman, remember the other day when you lost your coin, God is just like you. God is like a woman searching for a lost coin. Jesus said, hey woman, remember when you made bread this morning. God is just like you. God is like a woman kneading yeast into a loaf of bread. Hey Father, remember how you’re a father, God is just like you. God is like a Father, a loving parent. When we pray each week to our Father, all the Fathers in the audience get a chance to subconsciously think, “huh, God is just like me.” I want all the mothers in the room to have that same moment. Mothers, the work you do as Mothers is hard, and honorable, and holy. You deserve more than one day a year. Amen? I’m preaching this sermon today, because when I pray to Mothering God during the pastoral prayer, I want you to know where I am coming from. I don’t use this image of God as Mother because it’s PC. I don’t use this image of God because it sounds nice. This image of God as mother comes from a deeply spiritual life experience with my own mothers. This image of God as mother comes from our hymnal. This image of God as mother comes from our scripture. This image of God as mother comes from God herself. I use Mother God, not to make anyone uncomfortable. I use Mother God because I want to enrich our worship together. I use Mother God because I want to take advantage of every part of our tradition. I use Mother God because language is a limited thing to describe an unlimited God, so we need to draw on all the symbols and all the words available. But it shouldn’t just be me. I shouldn’t be the only one up here using these words. This is a conversation we should be having together. This is something we should be integrating into our Liturgy. Everyone say “Liturgy.” Liturgy should reflect what we already believe, AND liturgy should expand our faith vocabulary. Not just for our own sake, but for our children’s sake. Because I didn’t know I could honor my mother in this way until my church growing up decided to change the words to the Doxology to be gender-inclusive. Instead of “Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” we sang, “Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost.” I hated it when they changed the Doxology, but over time it helped me to know God more fully. I hated it when they changed the Doxology because I loved the Doxology, but if they hadn’t, I would never have been able to think of God as a mother who sacrificed everything just to have a little more time with us. This is a conversation we need to have together. It’s not about answering the question: “What is the gender of God?” It’s about expanding, enriching, and transforming the way we talk about God. It’s about making our beautiful liturgy even more beautiful and moving than it already is. It’s about making sure every person who comes into church has a chance to connect with God. Because for some people–people who had abusive fathers, people who didn’t have fathers, people who were burned by churches that took Father God a little too literally–for some people “Father God,” doesn’t connect. For some people “Father God” isn’t the kind of Loving God we preach here. For some people, if the score is 468 to 0, then they’re leaving church before half time is over. I want to make sure they know we are not a 468 to 0 kind of church. I want to make sure this is a place where EVERYONE can connect to God. This is my hope for this church. My hope is that we’ll take this next year to have this conversation. My hope is that we’ll take this next year, not to talk about “What is the gender of God?” but to talk about how we believe in God, and how the language we use in our liturgy both reflects those beliefs AND transforms those beliefs. We can have this conversation in a variety of ways. We can try a few of the different seasonal Doxologies that are already written out in our hymnal. We can have second hours, and coffee hour conversations. We can have Bible Studies. For instance, did you know there is a book in the Bible almost entirely devoted to talking about God as the female embodiment of Wisdom? Isn’t that fascinating? Let’s take some time this year to talk about that. Then we’ll check in. Maybe next Mother’s Day. See how we’re doing. I don’t have any secret agenda here. I am putting it all out of the table. I think our liturgy should be more gender inclusive. But that desire to take the next step can’t just come from me, it has to come from the church. What that next step looks like is a conversation we have to have together. It may be uncomfortable at times. It may be unfamiliar at times. But I promise you it will be spiritually fulfilling. I promise you it will be Biblically-based. I promise you it will make us more like the church God meant for us to be, like a woman kneading yeast into dough, like a woman finding a lost coin, like a church reclaiming traditions long-forgotten. Let’s start now. Let’s honor our Father AND our Mother now by singing, “Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth.” Take it away Mark. Matthew 20:1-16
Psalm 145: 8-14 I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for welcoming me in so warmly today. It’s good to be here in Camden, ME. Amen? Amen. I was here at the beginning of August as well. The first night I was here I felt this quiet call to be out on the water. So I took a kayak out here in the bay. As the setting sun was setting, it was illuminating the Camden Hills like a halo. The breeze was blowing just enough so that you could feel it in your soul, but not too much so that the water was as calm as could be. I thought to myself, This is a kind of peacefulness that you can only find in two places: Camden, ME and HEAVEN. I sat there in the kayak, with the birds flying way overhead, and I prayed, Dear God, let heaven be just like this. Amen? I remember when my parents first moved here, I remember my father raving about Camden’s perfection. With the enthusiasm of a man plagued by decades of Boston and New York City traffic he explained to me, “THERE’S THIS FIVE-WAY INTERSECTION RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN! AND THERE ISN’T A SINGLE STOP SIGN! EVERYONE IS POLITE AND JUST LETS EACH OTHER GO! THERE AREN’T ANY STOP SIGNS AND SOMEHOW IT JUST WORKS!!!! IT’S LIKE HEAVEN!!!!!” It’s like Heaven, he said. And he wasn’t far off. These are two very common images of what Heaven is like: A glorious place of such peaceful beauty that it draws you in. A place where there are plenty of 5-way intersections with no need for any stop signs, because everyone helps each other out, and somehow It all just works. We see this type of image of Heaven all throughout our culture and our Bible. Look at the psalm we read earlier... “They shall speak of the GLORY of your kingdom, and tell of your power...and the GLORIOUS SPLENDOR of your kingdom.” With all that emphasis on the GLORIOUS SPLENDOR of God’s kingdom, I imagine myself right back on the water, staring at the glowing Camden Hills. Glorious. Peaceful. Somehow It just works. Dear God, let heaven be just like this..... ....Like a quiet sunset......like a 5-way intersection....like a landowner hiring day-laborers....... Quiet sunset....Ok, I got that one. 5-way intersection.....I guess that makes sense too. Landowner hiring day laborers......? That last one doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Heaven is like a landowner hiring day-laborers? That doesn’t quite call to mind the GLORIOUS kingdom of the Psalm. That doesn’t quite remind me of the peaceful sunset over Camden Hills. That’s not even a place, it’s an action. But that’s what the passage from Matthew says: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.....” It might have made more sense if Jesus had said, “Heaven is like a beautiful vineyard....” That’s something I could understand. I bet you can imagine that vineyard. If you’ve been to the vineyard in Linconville, you may not have to try so hard. Can you imagine the splendor of that vineyard in Ancient Israel? Can you see the rolling hills and the setting sun and the rows of grapes? Can you see all of the men and women working the fields? It’s glorious. It’s peaceful. But in this story, the vineyard is not heaven. Heaven is like this......... The landowner goes out early in the morning. He’s in need of workers, and frankly, with the tax codes as they are since the Romans took over the government, it’s a whole lot easier to just pay someone under the table. Am I right? So he goes out and he picks up some day laborers to work his vineyard. He’s an honest man, so he offers a more than fair wage for their full-day of work. And as the story goes, this landowner went out again mid-morning, and again at noon, and again at 3, and again at 5. He’s got all the laborers he needs, but he goes out from the vineyard anyway. He leaves his glorious oasis, his heavenly home, he goes out and he sees these men still standing in line, waiting for work, left behind. He doesn’t need more workers. But their idleness piques the landowner’s curiosity. He can’t understand why or how they would have fallen through the cracks of this economic system. So he asks them, “Why are you still standing here idle?” “Why are you standing here idle?” “Why are you standing here idle?” We ask this question over and over, of our politicians, of our churches, of each other. “Why are you standing here idle?” We ask each other all the time, but its usually more of a rhetorical question. It’s more of an expression of frustration: “WHY AREN’T YOU DOING ANYTHING?!” What if we actually asked someone standing idle on the streets? What if we actually listened for their answer? What do you think the response might be? Why are you standing here idle? Imagine my friend Diego’s response. Diego might say, I am standing here idle because no one will hire me. I am standing here because I left Mexico with a legitimate passport and a legitimate work visa and a job offer on a farm in an exotic land called Maine. But when I got there, my boss took away my passport and my visa for “safe keeping,” but what he meant was safekeeping from me. He stole my passport so that I couldn’t leave! He didn’t pay me for 6 months. He didn’t give me any food. He made me sleep in a shack. He made me sit in the back of a full pick up truck to get to the fields. When the truck crashed one day, and the rest of my friends died in the crash, and both my arms were broken, I couldn’t take it any longer. So I ran, but I had nowhere to run, and I had no documents to get work and no money to get home. I am a LEGAL immigrant, but I stand here idle because I am undocumented and no one will hire me. Imagine Jason’s response. Jason might say, I am standing here because I wore a turban to work. I am standing here because I grew up in Boston, and I have a thick Boston accent, so I used to fit in. Then I converted to Sikhism. As my religion would have me do, I started wearing a long beard and a turban. I am standing here because I am different. I am standing here because my bosses mocked me and fired me. I am standing here because I practice my religion and no one will hire me. Imagine Jody’s response. Jody might say, I am standing here because I am in love with my partner of 15 years, and the school where I work found out. I am a woman in love with a woman and I am proud of our daughter, and I am proud of our family together, and somehow that threatens them, somehow they think that puts their children in danger, so they fired me. I am standing here because I love my wife and no one will hire me. So the Landowner looked at all of the day laborers. The Landowner looked at Jody and Jason and Diego and you and me. He didn’t need any more workers, but he had now seen their need. He could not turn and leave them there idle like everyone else had. He had seen their unjust rejections. He had seen the way the system had left these able workers to stand idle in the streets, and he said, “Come to my vineyard. I will pay you what is right.” And this is Heaven. It’s not a place we go; it’s a thing we do; it’s a verb; it’s a labor of love. The scripture doesn’t say “Heaven is like a beautiful vineyard.” The scripture says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out and hired some laborers, and then kept going out to hire more and more and more....” Heaven is the process of leaving this, your sanctuary, leaving your vineyard, leaving the glorious splendor of your heavenly bliss, in order to see all of the people left behind by this unjust system. Heaven is inquiring about their need, and then inviting them into your sanctuary. The vineyard isn’t heaven until the end of the day, when every worker is paid, and every worker is reminded that they are all valued equally in the eyes of God; that they are all loved equally in the eyes of God. Heaven isn’t a place; it’s an everyday action. It’s not something we have to wait for at the end of our lives; it’s something we can get a glimpse of every single day. It’s something we can CREATE every single day in our daily actions. Because you may not know Jody, or Jason, or Diego, but I bet you know someone like them, and I bet you’ve read about them in the newspaper. Diego lives just up Route 1 in Maine, and Jason lives right down the street in Camden, and Jody sits in the pew right next to you. So if you want to know what Heaven’s like, all you have to do is leave your vineyard, and look, and ask, and act. THIS is what calls me to ministry. I have met Diego. I have met Jason. I have met Jody. And I have seen the world that rejects them over and over and over again. I have seen the world that says they’re not good enough. I have seen the world that leaves them standing idle and alone out on the street. And I have read the scripture. I have heard the Word of God in this scripture. It’s a Word that says, Heaven is like a landowner who goes out over and over and over again. It’s a Word that says no one gets left behind. It’s a Word that says everyone gets paid equally, because God values each and every person no matter who they are and no matter where they are on life’s journey. It’s a Word that says, sometimes you’re the landowner helping out and sometimes you’re the day laborer in need of love, and that’s okay. It’s a Word that says the cost doesn’t matter, God will give you what is right, because we are at a 5-way intersection and somehow it just works. Dear God, let Heaven be just like this. Amen? Amen. So, why are you standing here idle all day? Scaffolding Faith
I don’t know if you’ve heard the news yet, but It’s official....We officially have the best scaffolding in all of Boston. At least according to the Boston Courant we do. As they put it, “If there were awards for scaffolding, Old South Church would take top honors.” Scaffolding may seem like an unusual minor detail for a newspaper to take note of. But I think scaffolding says everything about a church’s beliefs. And I’ll tell you why...... Last week I returned with 14 other Old Southers from a Mission trip in New Orleans. We were working with a non-profit called the St. Bernard project. They help restore houses for people without the financial, familial, or physical support needed to rebuild their own house in the St. Bernard Parish, which was the ONLY neighborhood that was declared 100% unlivable after the floods. That means that every single house, 27,000 homes in the St. Bernard Parish were drowned in up to 20 feet of flood water for a total of 4 weeks. That’s water as high as the balconies in the Sanctuary! Even after 6 years, there are still roughly 33,000 people without homes just in the St Bernard Parish. So the 15 of us did what we could to put in a full hard week of work on one family’s house. After a week of sweating bullets.... after a week of mentally and physically demanding construction.....after a week of being so far away from our apartments and houses here in Boston, I can’t imagine returning to a better church home. I love that when I return from a week of restoring a house, I come back to the scaffolding of this sanctuary. It is so fitting that as we go out into the world to refurbish houses, we are also working right here to refurbish our own house of worship. as I’m sure all 15 members of the recent mission trip can tell you, you cannot change the world without changing yourself at the same time. Here is the story of how I was refurbished in New Orleans....... I have always been a corner-cutter. I always did just enough school work to coast into a decent grade, but never anymore. If I could hand in my first draft as the final copy, that was good enough for me. I am in no way, shape, or form a detail kind of guy. When we arrived at our work-site in New Orleans, the home of the Jones family, we learned that we would be putting the final touches on their house. This is a rare treat. I have been on numerous mission trips, and I have NEVER had the joy of seeing a project completed. While an unprecedented joy for sure, this final-touches type of work presented a particular challenge to my corner-cutting sensibility. In fact, final touches is the work that you do to cover up all the other corners that were cut before. So after two full frustrating days of meticulous measuring and floor laying, two full days of lining up each piece just right......I was done. I was ready to move onto the next task. And all that was left was a tiny little half-inch piece of flooring. In that moment there was nothing more important to me than finishing the floor and moving on, and nothing was going to slow me down. Which is why I was overjoyed when somehow, I managed to cut that last piece perfectly; and let me tell you, making a piece of flooring that small, with all those impossibly straight diagonal lines, and in that kind of New Orleans heat, is not an easy task. But I was sure it was the perfect size. Until...... I actually tried the piece. It was the right size alright, but I had cut the wrong end of the flooring. You see, there are these little connector pieces at the end of each bit of flooring, and I had completely cut off the connector piece by mistake. And I knew that this last piece wouldn’t connect. And I knew it would look terrible. And I knew that it would probably mess up the entire floor in the Jones’ bedroom.....BUT......it would be so much quicker to just cut a few corners (literally) and apply a little brute force to squeeze this last piece in. Just as I took out my exacto knife, Just as I was about to hack away at the floor, the angelic yet stern voice of our site supervisor Bridget shouted over my shoulder, “What do you think you’re doing?” I stammered. I stuttered. I was caught red-handed. She asked rhetorically, “Would you cut that corner in your grandmother’s house?” I looked at her with all earnestness and with an undying love for my grandmother Sara Woodyard Davidson, and answered whole-heartedly, “Yes. Most definitely, Yes. I would definitely cut this corner if I were building my grandmother’s house.” At night our group would take time to write our daily reflections in these worship books. On the front cover was a snippet from the Biblical passage from Ezra that Marilyn just read. And every night I thought about this passage from Ezra, “This work is being done diligently and prospers in their hands.....We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding this house....” We are the servants of God and we are rebuilding this house. I thought about the Israelites who had spent several generations living in exile, refugees in a strange land. When they finally got back to Jerusalem, they were ready to be settled in back home. But Jerusalem didn’t quite feel like home to them because there was one major piece missing. The Temple, the physical representation of their belief, the stabilizing center of their wandering faith, the Temple was completely destroyed. Without the Temple, without their house of worship, they were lost and wandering in their own land. They had returned to Jerusalem alright, but they were still waiting to return home. So they started rebuilding. It was not an easy process. There were bureaucratic nightmares, 15 year-long delays, and angry neighbors trying to put a stop to the rebuilding. But they never gave up, and they never took the easy way out. That’s why in our scripture for today, even the angry neighbors trying to stop the Israelites had to write a report admiring their rebuilding efforts, much like the report that appeared in the Boston Courant about our own scaffolding: “If there were awards for rebuilding Ancient Temples, the Israelites would take top honors. This work is being done diligently in the name of their God.” And here was the Jones Family. Like the Israelites, the Jones Family had spent several years living in exile, refugees in a strange land. When they finally got back to New Orleans, they were ready to be settled in back home. But without that solid structure of a house they were lost and wandering in their own land. They commuted from Mississippi for a time. Most nights they lived in a shack in their back yard in the shadow of that empty, broken shell of a house. They had returned to New Orleans alright, but they were still waiting to return home. That’s when the St. Bernard Project entered the picture, and that’s when the Old South Missionaries made their pilgrimage down south. And that’s where I was, with the exacto-knife in my hand, and that half-inch piece of flooring missing the connecting edge. In that moment, I imagined the Israelites coming back to an unfinished house of worship and not feeling like it was much of a home at all. I imagined how delicately they set each little stone in place. As I imagined the Israelites coming home to the unfinished work of their sacred temple, I also imagined myself coming home to the unfinished work of the Old South Sanctuary. I imagined the Consigli workers, up on that treacherously high scaffolding, and I imagined them holding each piece of stained glass with the same tenderness that the Israelites used for the temple in Jerusalem. I imagined the Jones family returning to their house with that unfinished piece of floorboard that piece I had left undone.... imperfect.... incomplete.......not feeling like it was much of a home at all. “Help bring them home.” I heard that phrase over and over from our site supervisors like the refrain of their favorite song. “Help Bring Them Home.” Not “bring them back to a place that some volunteers half-heartedly threw together,” but “Bring Them Home.” And that was our mission. We could have easily thrown together a messy shack for the Jones Family, but that wouldn’t have been much of a home, that wouldn’t have been a suitable sanctuary for these refugees, that wouldn’t have been much of a mission at all. That would have been a self-congratulatory tourist visit. There’s something about the rebuilding work on the house that reflects in the souls of the people doing the rebuilding and in the souls of the people who live there. If there is one thing incomplete, if there is one thing left broken, like a half-inch of floorboard, it would be like the Jones Family themselves hadn’t fully been healed from their 6 years in exile. It would be like I had left myself broken and incomplete. We weren’t there to just rebuild a house, but to rebuild a home....to rebuild a community, To heal the wounds of the people who lived there, to build scaffolding around our own wounded faith. That is how I came to understand what Bridget meant when she asked me if I would cut the same corners in my Grandmother’s house. She meant to say to me, “Jack Davidson, you better treat every centimeter of this house with the same loving respect that you would demand of the construction workers restoring Old South Church.” So I put down my exacto-knife, and I took out my measuring tape and did it all over again. As I drew those impossibly straight diagonal lines, and as I turned on that power saw outside in the blazing sun, a new calm settled over my heart. The old anxiety had left me. The hurried rush had left me. As I snapped that half-inch of flooring in place, I heard these words...the words of Ezra, echoing in my head, “We are servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding this house...” That’s what Mission Trips are all about. That’s what this scaffolding is all about. It’s not a temporary nuisance; it’s a theological reminder. It’s a reminder that along with God we are always under construction. It’s a reminder that Beautiful Sanctuaries and Beautiful Homes and Beautiful Faith all take a lot of work, a lot of work on very small, seemingly insignificant details. If you leave one small pin out of the scaffolding, then the whole thing comes falling down. But if you take care of every minor detail, it’s totally worth it. All of the extra care and work is totally worth it. It’s worth it because it changes the way you see the entire world. It’s worth it because you learn to appreciate every corner of your own apartment, and every little carved flower in this church, and every minor little detail of God’s creation. It’s worth it every Christmas when this Sanctuary is illuminated by 1,000 little candle flames. It’s worth it when you can stand in front of the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem, and you can feel the detailed love of a wall that has stood through centuries of attacks. It’s worth it when you see the pictures that were posted last Monday of the Jones family, with their huge smiles, and their perfectly lined up floor, and the sign posted on the front of the house that reads: “Welcome Home!” That is a scaffolding kind a faith. A faith that is at home, but is never too settled. A faith that is always self-improving, but always outward looking. A faith that is grounded, but ever-evolving. A faith that treats every person and every place with the same care you would use to rebuild your own house of worship. “We are servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding this house.” |
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