The Union Church In Waban

To mark the beginning of the forty-day season of Lent there will be an Ash Wednesday service at 7:00 pm on Wednesday evening, February 22. The labyrinth will be set up in the side chapel and will remain there throughout Lent as a place for prayer and quiet mediation.

The Sunday School observes “Shrove Tuesday” on Sunday  with a pancake breakfast.  Kids should bring their cooking enthusiasm and their appetites.  All kids will gather together for the event in the Vestry following the Time for Children.

The More Than Words Book Drive continues. Donations may be left in the boxes in the side chapel.

Follow the Nicaragua trip on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Church-In-Waban/140438821719  and on the blog http://ucw-nicaragua.blogspot.com/.

Stacy is traveling in Nicaragua as well and returns February 28. For pastoral needs, contact Deacon of the Month, Wanda Getchell (617-529-5001).

Prayer Group meets Monday mornings at 7:30 in the side chapel. While Stacy is in Nicaragua, Sandra DaDalt will lead on February 20, and Heidi Ward on February 27.

Bible Study will not meet on February 19, but will resume on February 26  and will be led on that day by Heidi Ward.

Can you help out in Sunday School on March 4?  One volunteer is needed to assist Kathy with a One Room Church School on this day.  No preparation is required.  Just show up and assist.  Let Kathy know if you can help.

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February 12, 2012

“If you choose” by Rev. Stacy Swain

Psalm 30
Mark 1:40-45

It is early in Jesus’ ministry but already he is causing quite a sensation.  He is creating quite a stir.  People are streaming in from the surrounding villages to see Jesus, some full of expectation, others full of skepticism.  Some come with a bone deep need to be touched and healed, so painful is their alienation; but most come to take in the “show.”

New Testament scholar, Fred Craddock says that the crowd that surges around Jesus at this early stage of Jesus’ ministry is more of an audience than a congregation, more of a collection of the curious to be entertained than to disciples ready to participate in the mission of Jesus’ ministry.[1]

And then as if on cue, a leper shows up. This leper is nameless, for this man’s identity has been erased by his illness.  Leprosy is who he is. This bacterial skin disease that progresses slowly moving through the central nervous system and the skin tissue, twisting and distorting the body and face until, in its most extreme case, the person becomes unrecognizable.  People in ancient times were terrified of leprosy not just for the physical suffering it caused, but because leprosy was also seen as an outward manifestation of a spiritual disease, the spreading corruption of sin.[2]

I am reminded of how people with AIDS were seen in the early eighties.  I was working at the Pine Street Inn, one of Boston’s largest shelters at the time when the first diagnoses of AIDS was made in the homeless community.  We saw this sore covered, emaciated and twisted frame of the man and saw AIDS. And it scared us.  I remember how we feared him.  Not just the other homeless men and women staying at the shelter but us staff as well.  I will never forget the image of him sitting by himself in the overly crowded lobby eating a plate of scrambled eggs at a table where no one else dared to sit.

We have come a long way in our understanding of HIV and for the most part our society has become more embracing of people with the disease — but not entirely.   And I wonder who else are the lepers of today?  Are they the depressed, the addicted, the poor, the homeless – those who we define not for who they are but for the condition they suffer.  Or maybe they are the ones tucked out of sight at the Waban Health and Rehabilitation Center?  I wonder.

But in the reading today, it is the leper, the one branded as “a corpse haunting the edges of the community he could no longer enter”[3] comes to Jesus and says “If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40).

Now, what happens next is really interesting and unexpected, but is also easily lost in the translation of the text that we have.  Our translation says that Jesus was “moved with pity,” but a textual note tells us that other ancient texts use the word anger, not pity here.  “Jesus was moved with anger.”

Throughout Jesus ministry he will encounter people in need and will be moved with compassion, but this is clearly not such an encounter.  Here the leper’s statement “If you choose, you can make me clean” engenders not compassion but anger. Why?  And then after Jesus does heal the man, the text says he sternly warned him and sent him away.  These phrases, scholarship tells us, are more like ones Jesus uses when speaking to demons not newly healed converts.

What is going on here?

Well one thing, I hear in this encounter is a set up.  Jesus is being set up, tempted to perform, to demonstrate his power.  For the words of the leper are strikingly similar to those Satan spoke to Jesus just a few weeks ago during Jesus’ time of temptation in the wilderness.

Satan tempts by trying to get Jesus to prove himself, to use the grace that God has given him as a proof of his own power and importance.  “Show us how great you really are Jesus by doing these remarkable things, like turning this stone into bread. “ “If you really are the Son of God it will be easy for you.  Come on let’s see it,” this is the temptation the Satan speaks.

Have you ever felt the whisper of this tempter in you as well?  Have you ever found yourself wanting and perhaps even needing, for so great is your suffering, to put Jesus to the test? Have you found yourself asking Jesus to prove that he is who we hope he will be?  As if to say, “If you are the Son of God, than take this suffering from me.”  Is there something in us that demands that our experience of Jesus be the testing ground for the authenticity of who he really is, a proofing ground for his Holy power?

I know this is a very fine line, because God does want to hear what is on our hearts.  In just a few minutes we will offer up heart-felt prayers for ourselves and others that is good.  But it is crucial to remember that the starting place of prayer is an honest offering up of what is on our hearts.  Prayer is not a challenge to God to prove to us something of God’s self or will.  A heart-felt prayer for healing is very different than a testing prayer that says, “if you are really a good and loving God then heal me or this person.”

So, faced with this temptation that Jesus walked away from in the wilderness, why does he engage it now? Why does he heal this leper?

I think it is because there is not just a temptation there but a human being -  a human being that is suffering not just from physical pain but also from and perhaps even more troubling to Jesus, is his social isolation and alienation.  Here is a human being, a child of God who others have deemed unclean and therefore cast out from community.

And so Jesus says “I do choose.  Be made clean.”  It was not really a choice after all, for the choice had already been made.   It had been made in the beginning when the breath of God moved across the face of the deep and all that is was called into being, and blessed as good. And it was already made again when on that night the word became flesh and Jesus was born in that manger.

The crowd may be spectators to miracle, the significance they do not understand, the leper so angry and hurting for all he has suffered that he tempts Jesus, but all of that really does not matters.

What matters in this messy mix, is that Jesus is not distracted, sidelined or discouraged from who God has asked him of him.  He is to be about helping people, as individuals and as community, to come to wholeness, and even more than that to undo the boundaries that keep some out in order to protect and maintain those that are on the inside.

For no doubt about it, individual lives are transformed by Jesus but I believe that what is at the heart of Jesus’ Messianic mission, at the heart of his life, death and resurrection is the transformation, the re- forming of how we are to be with each other and with God.  Jesus is about corporate (as in all of us together) regeneration, not just personal healing.

For this reason, after Jesus heals the man Jesus sends him to the priests –  for the priests were the ones who were charged with guarding the boundaries of community.   With the swirl of chaos that living in Roman occupation brought,  the priests were the ones that were charged to interpret and apply the holiness codes from the sacred texts of Leviticus that informed and governed the way that people were to live in order to keep chaos at bay and in order to preserve the sanctity of the people’s encounter with the holy.  It was the holiness codes that stipulated that one with leprosy was to be put out for the chaos of his physical and spiritual condition was a threat to the balance and sanctity of the community.[4]

We think of holiness codes as so outdated.  Something interesting and to be thoughtfully considered, but surely not something that informs our lives now.

But I wonder.  I wonder if this fear of chaos does not influence us still.  For how comfortable are we with our own and each other’s suffering?  Isn’t it hard it is to share our pain with each other?  I wonder if there is still some of that residual thinking that somehow suffering it is a sign that we are flawed in some way. That there is something wrong with us.  That we are unclean.

And so, to protect ourselves from the fear of being judged or excluded in some way, we keep silent.  And in our silence we alienate ourselves all the more.  And on the other side, how many of may know that another is hurting but we really don’t want to go there.  For their pain scares us.  We don’t really know what to say or what to do.  And maybe we even have the sense that if we let ourselves get too close, their suffering will infect or contaminate us somehow.   And so we keep our distance.  Perhaps, a part of us thinks it really would be best if that person ate their scrambled eggs over there, at that table alone?

You know we read these ancient texts and after two thousand odd years of trying to live into the example of Jesus together, perhaps we have learned a thing or two, but in many ways the temptations and dangers remain.

It is easy to gather around Jesus because we think that maybe something spectacular will happen.  Maybe all that these texts are saying is true and we show up because we may catch a glimpse of it for ourselves. And this is not the worst thing in the world really, God can work with this.

But what if we showed up not as spectators to miracles but because we were convinced that through God’s grace we could become miracles ourselves?  What if we sat down at that table with the one who sat alone?  What if we were the means through which those who felt isolated because of their pain and suffering where welcomed back into community? What if we were not audiences to what God is doing but a congregation (a coming together of people) through which God is enacting healing and wholeness and the reformation of God’s blessed creation?  What would that feel like? What would that feel like?

Well,  it may be like twenty or so of us traveling to Nicaragua so that we may give of ourselves and receive from others so that the boundaries of “us” and “them” may be blurred and we may discover our God given purpose for us all.

It may look like the face of Bret, as tears streamed down his face on Friday at the Waban Health and rehabilitation Center all of  us shared in the bread and the cup, the communion of the love of God.

It may look like the meeting I had with you this week where we took time to think about how we can do what we want to do while at the same time making sure that our needs do not come at the expense of others.

I am so inspired and moved by you.  For you seek not to be spectators but participants.  Not an audience but a congregation, committed to engaging in the transformation not just of us alone, but of us together. This is why Jesus came.  This is why he walk among us still,  AMEN.

The More Than Words Book Drive continues.

Donations may be left in the boxes in the side chapel.

Xenia Barahona from The Center for Global Education will speak to us about Nicaragua Sunday on the stage.  Join the Nica travelers for this informative event.

The Nicaragua trip departs on February 17th. Follow their journey on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Church-In-Waban/140438821719 and on their blog http://ucw-nicaragua.blogspot.com/.

 Stacy will be traveling to Nicaragua as well and will be gone from February 17 to February 28.  For pastoral needs, contact Deacon of the Month, Wanda Getchell.

 If anyone has any used or new baseball gloves they would like to donate for the youth of Nicargua, please contact David Spertner.

 Youth Group meets this Sunday from4:00-5:30 p.m.  We will use our bake sale money to go shopping for supplies for the trip to Nicaragua.  Kids need to come with a permission slip for the shopping trip. If you have a large capacity vehicle you can lend Kathy for this shopping excursion, please let her know.

Prayer Group meets Monday mornings at7:30 in the side chapel. While Stacy is in Nicaragua, Sandra DaDalt will lead on February 20, and Heidi Ward on February 27.

The Mission and CE Committees are looking for a group of adults and kids to deliver Valentine gifts to the residents of the Waban Health Center at their Valentine party on Valentine’s Day afternoon, Tuesday, February 14. We will be taking soaps (made by our kids) and paperwhites (planted by our kids).  If you can go, let Kathy Malone know.

Bible Study will not meet on February 19, but will resume on February 26

 and will be led on that day by Heidi Ward.

One time helpers are needed for the Sunday School on February 26 and March 4.  We have one room church schools on these days.  No preparation is necessary.  Just show up and assist.  Let Kathy know if you can help.

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Reflection, February 5, 2012

Mark 1: 29-39

“Making Grace Visible” by Rev. Stacy Swain

I love words.  I really do.  I delight in a well turned phrase and appreciative thoughtful, articulate, speech.  I remember what a joy it was to listen to one of my professors in seminary who spoke with such crystalline clarity that hearing his words was akin to gazing at a Vermeer painting.

Words wash over us here each Sunday morning as we read and pray and preach together.  And maybe, once in a while there is a well turned phrase that gives us pause or if we are lucky maybe even a moment of crystalline clarity.

But words have limits.  They can take us just so far.  We can talk about grace and forgiveness, and love, but grace, forgiveness and love will remain an abstraction for us until what is spoken is experienced.  Until we feel grace and forgiveness, and love for ourselves, until these words becomes embodied — in our flesh and blood experience.

Words can go just so far. That’s why, God gave us Jesus.  Jesus — the word made flesh.   Jesus, because people needed not just to hear about God but people needed to experience the sacred holiness of God for themselves.  Jesus – because people did not just need to hear about grace and forgiveness and love; they needed to feel the hand of grace, and forgiveness and love upon them lifting them up and being changed by that touch.

In the passage from the Gospel of Mark we see this happening.  Jesus has been in the synagogue teaching and I am sure he spoke beautifully – I am sure there were many well turned phrase, and many many moments crystalline clarity.

But words can go just so far.   So Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters the home of Simon and after hearing that Simon’s mother in law is in bed with a fever, he goes over to her and without saying a word, he takes her by the hand and lifts her up.

It is said, that the church, all of us together in this place and all of us across the world together are the body of Christ.  As church, we are to embody Jesus in this time.  Certainly we are to speak and teach of what we know. But if we are the body of Christ in the world, we are also to go to the bedside of the one with fever and take her by the hand and lift her up.  In the way we look upon each other, in the way we touch each other, in the way we walk through the world with each other, we are to make God’s grace visible, something seen and experienced.

But can we be the body of Christ, embodying grace, forgiveness and love, if we have not ourselves experienced grace, forgiveness and love for ourselves?  How can we be Jesus in the world if we have not experienced him?

Thankfully, like that bumper sticker so succinctly puts it, “Grace Happens.”  Grace happens all around us all the time, sweeping us up in moments of unexpected joy.  Ordinary moments that open out into encounters with something extraordinary.  You can name these moments can’t you?  Moments in our live together in this place, moments of your lives out in the world?  It happened to me yesterday when I was visiting a dear friend who had just had a knee replacement.  We were chatting in her hospital room when all at once the room was filled with such an extraordinary presence of love and care that I could feel it physically washing over us both, healing her wounded body and calming my concern.  I am sure that what we experienced was the touch of the sacred upon us, lifting us up.

And thankfully, we have these sacraments of baptism and communion.  In them a window to the divine is thrown open, the Holy Spirit rushes down upon us.  The hand of Jesus is on us and we are lifted up again, raised into life in Christ, fortified again as his body in the word.

Did you feel it just now?    When the water streamed from Graham’s forehead, could you feel that blessing flowing over you as well?  I know many of you came in here world weary but as you turned to welcome Graham as I brought him to you and as Suzie’s voice soared over us, did you see how your faces glowed?  Did you see it in the face of the one across from you how beautiful it was? Did you see in that face grace, and blessing and love?  Did you see it?  Did you feel it?

And in a few moments we sit gather at the communion table with Jesus.  We will take the bread that is broken for us and the wine that is poured out for us into our bodies, and as we do so the forgiveness and love of God will enter us again, Jesus will be become again part of who we are and in doing so we will be changed into and fortified as the body of Christ, again.

Here as the church, the body of Christ in the world, we do not just talk about grace, and forgiveness and love, we live it. We live it for Graham, we live it for each other and we live it for the one who is with fever, the one with pain, the one who is lonely, the one who is hungry, the one out in the world right now experiencing violence and hopelessness.  We are the Body of Christ in the world.   Thanks be to God, for a faith that is embodied.  AMEN.

Council meets Sunday at 11:30 after worship.

The More Than Words Book Drive continues.
Donations may be left in the boxes in the side chapel.

Xenia Barahona from The Center for Global Education will speak to us about Nicaragua on Sunday, February 12 at 11:30 a.m. on the stage.
Join the Nica travelers for this informative event.

Bible study is reading through the Book of Luke and meets each Sunday morning
from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. in Stacy’s study.

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet on Monday, February 6 at 7:30 a.m.

The Mission and CE Committees are looking for a group of adults and kids to deliver Valentine gifts to the residents of the Waban Health Center at their Valentine party on Valentine’s Day afternoon, Tuesday, February 14. We will be taking soaps (made by our kids) and paperwhites (planted by our kids). If you can go, let Kathy Malone know.

The Nicaragua trip departs on February 17. Follow the journey on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-Church-In-Waban/140438821719

and on the blog http://ucw-nicaragua.blogspot.com/.

Stacy will be traveling to Nicaragua as well and will be gone from February 17 to February 28.
For pastoral needs, contact Deacon of the Month, Wanda Getchell.

One time helpers are needed for the Sunday School on February 26 and March 4. We have one room church schools on these days. No preparation is necessary. Just show up and assist. Let Kathy know if you can help.

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Sermon, January 29, 2012

“What am I doing here!?” offered by Rev. Stacy Swain

1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

You know it’s really rather astonishing that week after week you come into this place.

You greet each other with a warm embrace, or words of care.  There is often laughter; sometimes tears and, if we are lucky, there is even a baby’s cry.

Some of you are here early, while others pile through those doors, long after the processional hymn has faded.  You come in tucking in shirts and wiping breakfast from faces and yet in you come.

You slide into well worn pews, whispering cues to your kids, underlining with your finger where we are in the bulletin or in the hymn so they can join in.

Others of you settle back yawning off a week’s fatigue of running too fast and having too little.

And as the peace of this place settles around you, a few of you nod off for a moment or longer, catching up on some much needed sleep.

In you come.  Week after week.

It’s astonishing.  Here we are in this post modern world, and yet are engaged in a millennia-old practice of worship.  Here we are with a QR code in our bulletin and yet are contemplating what it is to have Galilean dust on our sandals.

What are we doing?

Let us listen to what the Gospel of Mark has to say.

But first let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the mediations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer, Amen

It is the Sabbath.  The work of the week is over.  As the last light fades, and the candles are lit, the people gather to study Torah.

An itinerant teacher named Jesus is in town so the people ask if he’d be willing to open scripture for them. And he does.  Though it is the same scroll that is reverently unrolled every week, it sounds somehow different when Jesus reads it.  And when he looks up and begins to teach, the people feel as if their hearts are aflame in their breasts.  They are astonished. “Listen to how he speaks.” They say.  “It is with an authority that we have not heard before.   (Luke 1:22)  What is this kind of authority?”

The question of the source of Jesus’ authority will swirl around Jesus throughout his ministry and ultimately it will be what gets him killed.

But, while everyone else may wonder at this authority that Jesus has, Jesus himself does not.  Jesus is perfectly clear that his authority comes   not because he knows better, or because he is smarter or more important.   And even through crowds are beginning to follow him and reports of him are reaching every place in the region, he is also perfectly clear that this authority of his is not conferred upon him by those that follow him.

Jesus knows that what the people find so compelling has nothing really to do with him at all, but has everything to do with the God who called him beloved as the waters of the Jordan streamed from his face.  For what the people find so compelling is that through him they are see something of God.  When they hear his words, as their heart burns within them, they are reawakening to Eden.  They feel  God’s primordial blessing upon them and they sit up a bit straighter, they lean in a bit closer, they listen a bit more deeply because there is a blessing being spoken that they remember, and long for and are experiencing again.

And then when Jesus words are hanging there in the candlelit air and the people are wondering about how these words speak to their lives right there in the midst of Roman occupation, and poverty, and fear, and hurt, there is a commotion in the back of the synagogue.  Everyone turns around as someone from the back shouts out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth.”

The people turn to Jesus with the question the unclean spirit in their mouths as well.  “What does any of this have to do with us?” “How is anything of this going to change anything?”  “When I leave this place, I will still owe more than I can pay.  When I leave this place, I will be as fearful for my future as when I came in. What does all this talk have to do with anything?”  And though there was one man in the back with the unclean spirit upon him, Jesus looked out over all of them and sees the burden of demons upon them all.

And with a heart wide open, he walked over to that man in the back who dared to speak his pain and said “Be silent, come out of him!”   And looking deep into the man’s eyes I hear Jesus saying,  “You are a beloved child of God.  With you God is well pleased.”  In that candlelit moment, I am certain that more than one unclean spirit fled into the darkness.

Isn’t that is why we come?  Isn’t that is why we let the coffee get cold on the counter and leave the dog still begging for her morning walk?   Jesus isn’t just a compelling teacher. His words are not just interesting.  No, they are, he is, life changing.  We come here each Sunday, like those of old to open the scriptures and to learn from them about what God is doing in the world and how we are to be a part of it.  But we also come here with demons on our backs. There is something that has a grip on us, that is keeping us out of Eden.  Something that is doing all it can to keep us from living into the wholeness God envisions for us.

Don’t be ashamed of that.  It does not mean you have failed or are less than or somehow screwed up.  It is simply a part of what it is to be a part of the human condition.  What is so radically, counter cultural and incredibly freeing about church is that here we do not have to pretend that we do not need anyone or anything.

We get to come into this place and say. Yes, I have the demon of fear upon me.  Yes, I have the demon of shame upon me.  Yes, I have the demon of bitterness and anger and hate upon me.  We get to come into this place not just with ourselves but all that is upon us.

So what came with you today?  What clings to your back?  Is it fear for your future?  Is it frustration at how self centered and demanding our adolescent children can be?  Is it anger and frustration at an aging body that keeps you from living the life you want?   Is it outrage at the unfairness of a life drowning in difficulty?  Is it enslavement to an addiction of one kind or another?  Is it a buried rage at a wrong that cannot be righted?  Is there a sadness that cannot be spoken?  A shame that cannot be faced?  What is it for you this day?  What is it that you need to be freed from so that you too can taste Eden?

The book group this month has been reading a remarkable book entitled Unbroken.  It is a true story written by Laura Hillenbrand, the author of “Sea Biscuit”, Louie Zamperini, an Olympic athlete who joins the air force in WWII.  It is the story of how Louis’ plane is shot down over the Pacific and of how he survive 47 days on a life raft.  It is the story of how He is picked up by the Japanese and taken first to secrete interrogation camps and then to POW camp.  The book is a powerful testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit and it is a disturbing exploration of what we do to each other — of how violence, deprivation and abuse can strip degrade and dehumanize us.   It is a story of the human condition of how we put demons on each other’s backs.  It speaks not to just then, but the now I hear in reports from Doctors without Borders that speaks of torture occurring right now, right now, in Libyan detention centers.

Louie survives his tormenters.  His POW camp is liberated by allied forces, but nightmares haunt him.  He begins drinking too much and is overcome by bouts of uncontrollable rage. He is clearly not of his right mind. His spirit is unclean. He is in the hands of a demon.

Until one night, when he wandered into a tent rival in LA. Billy Graham was up front telling the crowd about Jesus but all Louis felt was anger and rage.  Like that man in the synagogue so long ago, Louis stand up ready to bolt, screaming in his heart “What have you to do with any of what I have experienced of the pain that I feel.” But in that moment, Louis finally feels all of his rage and pain, the unclean spirit that was choking the life out of him leave.  He was free.   Never again does Louis have nightmares of his tormenter. Never again does he drown his rage in drink.

Hillenbrand writes of Louie’s reflections as he thinks back on that night:  “When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.  He was not the worthless, broken, forsaken man that the Bird (his chief tormentor) had striven to make of him.  In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and hopelessness had fallen away.  He believed he was a new creation and for that he wept.”[1]

But being reclaimed by God, being made free of the unclean spirit that has its grip on us is not the only reason why we stumble into this sanctuary every Sunday. There is more.

A couple of weeks ago, one of you told of how your teenaged daughter raked you over the coals when soon after getting to church she discovered that no other of her young friends had made it that morning.  Completely put out, she demanded “What am I doing here?!”  As if to say, what is the point of me being here if my friends are not!

We come into this place week after week not only because we have a need to be liberated us from that which diminishes us, but also because we know that life lived in its fullest is life lived together.  Let me repeat that,  life lived in its fullest is life lived together.

H. Richard Niebuhr, the 20^th century theologian writes compellingly of this need to respond to each other in his book The Responsible Self.[2]  Niebuhr claims that the ethos or way of living that enables us to be most fully alive is not that of striving to achieve some goal, or of following some prescribed rules for living. The ethos that enables us to be most fully alive is living a responsive life.   Listening and responding to the words and actions of those around us and having them listen and respond to our words and actions that is what we do, who we are.

But what the key is that we listen and respond not out of our own authority based on self interest, but out the kind of authority Jesus lived, out of God love. When we do that for and with each other, a new way of being in the world and with each other is born.  A new creation unfolds.  Eden is again.

Jesus is doing this all the time.  Starting here in the synagogue.  Jesus calls the unclean spirit out of the man not to demonstrate his own power, but in order that this once sidelined man can step into the embrace of the community.  Jesus will go through his entire ministry doing this. He will heal the hemorrhaging woman calling her daughter, reinstating her back into her community. He will redefine belonging not based on whose household you were born into but as a shared kinship as brothers and sisters, as children of God.

This is at the heart of Paul’s teaching to the community in Corinth that Stu read for us today.  A dispute has arisen about eating meat.  Not just any meat though.  Corinth was a cosmopolitan town where many people from any religions lived.  The town was full of shrines and temples to a pantheon of gods.  It was the custom to sacrifice animals. Some of the meat after sacrifice  sold in the market place.  So those followers of Jesus argues that it surely can do no harm to eat this eat since they know that there is no other god but God.  None of this other god worship or temple meat has any meaning and therefore cannot be of harm.

Paul says yes that is true, but if there are some in your community who are new converts. Who are shaky in their faith, who may be confused by seeing you eat meat sacrificed to other gods, then why would you do it? Don’t gloat in knowing you are right.  Love of your fellow Christian is more important than whether you do or do not eat meat.

Knowing you are right just puffs up, he says. But it is love that builds up.  And we are in the business of building up. That is also why we come.

One final thought.  Did you know we have a facebook page?  We study Scripture that is more than two thousand years old but also we a have an online presence that ought to be always new and changing. But when I sit down in front of my computer to update our status, I always pause.  I know the whole point of updating our status is convey to others all that is happening here and to invite them to be a part of it.  But I always end up wanting to type the same thing “experiencing God’s love and learning to love each other in the same way.”  Or perhaps “Growing in love of God and of each other.”  And then “ Yep, still at it, we are growing in love.”

Not too catchy I know, but it is true.  Whether our youth are raising over $500 dollars in a bake sale for Nicaragua; or whether the women in the church are gathered for good soup and heart-felt conversation; or whether the stewardship committee is thinking deeply about how best to manage our investments, our status is about loving God and loving each other.  It is a message as old as the Galilean dust on our sandals and as new as the deliverance that is ours this today.  Thanks be to this loving and timeless God of ours and thanks be to this community through which we come to experience that love.  AMEN

“Greed or Grace?” by Rev. Stacy Swain

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Mark 1:14-

Jonah, the “reluctant prophet” who God has to call two times before he begrudgingly does what God asks of him.

Jonah, the rebellious prophet who when he first hears God’s call to Nineveh goes in the exact opposite direction, jumping on a boat and fleeing for Spain.

Jonah, who gets himself tossed overboard to calm a tremendous storm, who is swallowed by a whale, who ends up spending three days in the belly of that whale before being vomited out onto dry land.

Jonah, who finally goes off to Nineveh to deliver God’s message but is so bitter about having to do so that afterwards he marches off in a huff to a bluff outside the city, to pout and fume.

Jonah, who gets so angry when God makes a bush to spring up to give him shade only then to be devoured by a worm the next day, that he rants “why not just kill me now!”

This book of Jonah seems like it ought to be prophetic after all it is set in the Bible in right next to the greats as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and Amos.  And his call seems authentic for it begins with the prophetic announcement “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah.”

But with all the odd and rather comical twists and turns of this narrative, one has to wonder what the prophetic message of the book really is.  Is its prophetic message the words that Jonah reluctantly speaks to the people of Nineveh?  The words that were read to us today? Or is there more going on here? [1]

Before we dive into that question.  Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

             Jonah is often referred to as the reluctant prophet as if reluctance is that which distinguishes him from all the other prophets of the Bible. But in fact, reluctance is not atypical for prophets.  When a human being hears the word of God telling him or her to go out and say something bold, something that often runs against the grain of the status quo, the dominant culture, the prevailing myth of the time, reluctance — if not outright protestation — is most often how the “would be” prophet responds.

We have a tendency these days, especially in my profession, to glamorize or romanticize the prophets.  If someone says “O, he has a prophetic voice,” or that “she has a prophetic ministry,” we all sit up a bit straighter and nod knowingly (trying to hide just a shade of envy perhaps) for who wouldn’t want to have the hand of God upon them, who wouldn’t want to have the words of God in one’s own mouth?

Who wouldn’t?  Well a true prophet of course.  The role of a prophet is a hard and dangerous one.  The prophet is called when there is a rift in the relationship between God and the people.  The role of the prophet is to mediate between God and God’s people when things are not going well.

Remember Moses, the great prophet of the Exodus, when he goes up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and then comes back down only to find that the “stiff necked people” have turned from their faith in God to bow down to a golden calf, an idol of their own making.  Remember how angry God gets and how God threatens to destroy them all?  But then Moses steps into the breach, into the broken relationship between God and God’s people and talks God down from destruction.  Moses asks God to remember God’s love for the people, to forgive them — and God does.

Or do you remember, how the prophet Micah speaks truth to power, chastising the wealthy and privileged for their excesses, naming the injustice of an economic system that privileges and protects the prosperity of a few while consigning the rest to poverty and branding them as less than and not deserving.

Standing in the breach and speaking God’s vision is difficult and dangerous work.  Not something taken on lightly.  Remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Archbishop Oscar Romero.

But as high as the cost is of doing the job of a prophet, not doing it is even higher.   For salvation is at stake.   The deliverance of a people hangs in the balance.  Deliverance from misguided, unjust, sinful ways of being in the world that rob them and others from experiencing the full, glorious humanity that God has entrusted to them and envisions for all is at hand.

What a responsibility.  No wonder Moses, when standing face to face with the burning bush and hearing the message that God asked him to speak to the great and powerful Pharaoh, was reluctant.  He stammers “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  Or Isaiah, when the word of the Lord comes to  him and he is to speak to Jerusalem of how they have strayed from equity and justice of God’s vision, Isaiah protests “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!”

So it is not the reluctance of a prophet that distinguishes Jonah.  Reluctance is a natural response when faced with one’s own limitations and the enormity of the task at hand.

What distinguishes Jonah is that his reluctant stems not because he fears he is not capable of what is being asked of him or even because he fears for his own safety, after all Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian empire, arch enemies of the Hebrew people; but because he thinks that the people to whom God has asked him to speak do not deserve it.  For Jonah, it is not he who is lacking; it is the people of Nineveh.  The scripture tells us that Jonah flees from God when God first asks him to deliver the message because Jonah knows that God is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah4:2).  Given what Jonah knows of God, Jonah fears that God may very well extend God’s grace to the Ninevites; that God may well deliver them into new life and in Jonah’s mind that would be just about the worst thing possible.  In fact, Jonah would rather die than deliver the life changing message that God wants Jonah to speak.

That is why Jonah runs away to sea.  That is why Jonah pouts on the hillside.  That is why Jonah rants, “Just kill me now God.”

The prophetic message of the book lies not in the words that Jonah speaks but in the person and actions of Jonah himself.  The book in its entirety is a carefully crafted farce or parody that uses hyperbole to bring into relief the tight fisted, greedy, self serving mind of Jonah that he himself is blind to. The book of Jonah is a prophetic utterance warning of the choice we have to make between greed and grace.

For grace is happening all around.  The sea and sailors, the whale and worm, the very lowest of low, the people of Nineveh and even the animals are all aware of it. They are all participants in this flood of grace of forgiveness and second chances and new beginnings.  And then there is Jonah, so entrenched in his world view that he is missing out on it all.  What was it about Jonah? Exclusive and self centered, he thinks he knows better than God. That he knows what should and should not be. The only one that looses out in this story is Jonah.  His refusal, his inability to engage grace ultimately leaves him sidelined.

The book of Jonah, it is believe was written in the post exilic time when the Hebrew people were struggling to make sense of what just happened to them.  When they were prying their fingers open to release their understanding of God as just their own tribal God concerned with only their well being to a wider and wilder understanding of God as moving in the world in ways they could not understand but that ultimately they were called not just to trust but to participate in.  This tension between wanting to hold onto God for ourselves and the expansiveness of God’s grace is reflected in beautiful and lyrical passages that pepper the prophetic literature about the Hebrew people being the ones through whom all the nations will come to know God.  Listen to these words that speak the vision of reconciliation.

It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the LORD
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,

The grace of God is not just for one people but for all.

And so the book of Jonah is a powerful indictment of our tendency toward self absorption.  Our own tendency to clutch onto our way of seeing things.  Our own sense of entitlement.  Our own tendency to determine who we think is worthy and who is not.

So I wonder what the book of Jonah in its prophetic indictment of greed and exclusivity in the face of grace, may help us to see about ourselves or about the social, economic and political landscape of our time?  Do we think there are some outside of God’s grace? Some who are undeserving and better left out?

If Jonah is a teaching of warning, the gospel passage today is a teaching of inspiration. While Jonah focuses on himself the Disciples are being draw into the time that has come.    “Follow me,” Jesus says, and they do.  When God calls we are to trust that what God asks of us is what is needed not only for ourselves but for the greater good.  The time is now.  We are no longer waiting.  “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Good News.” The God of love and forgiveness, of second chances and new beginnings is at work in the world.  The seas and the whale, the bush and the worm, even the rulers and animals of Nineveh see it, participate in it, rejoice in it.  Will we?  Let us be informed and warned by the book of Jonah.  Let us never hold too tightly what we believe is ours.  Let our hands and hearts be open so that like Simon and Andrew, James and John we may be led into the future God envisions.  Amen

Bible study is reading through the book of Luke and meets each Sunday morning from 8:00to9:00 a.m.in Stacy’s study. 

 The Youth Group Bake Sale takes place Sunday from 9:30-11:30 a.m.outside Starbucks.  Stop by for a goodie. The Youth will use the money raised to buy school supplies for next month’s mission trip to Nicaragua.

 Ice Cream Party This year our Noah’s Ark and Faithful Friends classes have been working on skills that build community.  To celebrate having filled their marble jars
of good behavior, they will have an ice cream party at the end of class on Sunday.
 

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet on Monday, January 23 at 7:30 a.m.

 The NICA Committee will meet Sunday after worship.

 Youth Group Ski Trip January 27-29. Ski at Stratton Mountain. Stay at Buz and Karen’s condo in Bondville, VT.  RSVP to Kathy.

Book Group The next meeting is Tuesday, January 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Reception Room.  We are reading Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.

Guest Speaker on Nicaragua

 Please join the Nicaraguan travelers on the stage on Sunday, January 29 at 11:30  as we hear from Xenia Barahona from the Center for Global Education.   Xenia will speak to us about the history of Nicaragua and the current social, political and economic landscape of the country. Xenia was born and raised in Nicaragua, where her family lives, and came to Boston six years ago where she now resides with her husband.  Throughout her life she has worked in cross-cultural education, bringing awareness around issues of social justice.  She is passionate about experiential education as a tool for personal and societal transformation. Xenia has worked organizing and leading short-term travel seminars to Central America with organizations such as The Council of Protestants Churches in Nicaragua (CEPAD), the Center for Global Education/Augsburg College,  and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).  Currently she works as a medical interpreter at Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston.  She has a B.A. in Translation from the Central American University in Managua and a M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University.

  Bring your curiosity and questions! This will be an interesting and informative discussion.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Heidi Ward

“Being Called”

Second Epiphany 2012-1 Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51

I was in the sixth grade the first time I really understood the idea of what it meant to be “called”.  It was my first year of middle school full of all of the things a first year in middle school is often ripe with:  anxiety, a new wing of the building, my first locker, a particularly unfortunate haircut…you get the drift.

After months of struggling through my adolescent angst, I read a flier about auditions for the upcoming school musical.  I had always loved to sing, and had been in the school chorus for as long as I could remember.  But I had never auditioned for a musical.  I couldn’t get up in front of all of those people and perform by myself!

Well, as mothers often do, mine begged to differ.  Insisting it was an excellent idea, she cheered me along the road to try outs.  After a couple of brush-ups with a voice coach, and as much confidence as I could muster, I went to the auditions.

I have to say that it wasn’t the awful experience I feared it would be.  I sang my solo, I sat down in my chair, no one laughed, and I am here today to tell you that I landed a part in the chorus.  But landing the part wasn’t the pinnacle of that experience for me.

It was watching with rapt attention over the coming months as the woman who became my drama director turned our band of middle and high school misfits into a cast fit for the professional stage.  She cheered, coached, and drove us to bring our absolute best to the stage every time.  She polished and molded each of us into individual performers richer than we knew we could be.

I remember asking her about halfway through rehearsals, how do you do it?  How do you make everything work so well?  She responded simply, it is what I was called to do.  While it would be a few years before I could truly appreciate what that meant, I was struck by the idea of being “called” to a profession.

Scripture is rich with examples of people answering God’s call.  In this week’s text, we hear the story of God’s call to Samuel.  This story is written in a time when the people of Israel were longing for leadership, for a king.   While it later chronicles Israel’s monarchy, we begin this text with the story of a prophet, Samuel.  He is a most unlikely messenger, a young, adolescent boy.

The story of Samuel’s call by God is one of words and hearing.  Unlike Kings that came after him, Samuel did not have an ornate palace to try and prove his call from God.  Moreover, he did not even want to be a King!  He had only ears to listen and a mouth to share God’s message.  And although he did not want to be a King, this prophet did become a king-maker.  He set moral authority in Israel that lay the groundwork for rulers to come.  Surely Israel would not have been the same without him.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. day.    The day we have set aside to honor his legacy of justice, peace, service, and faithfulness.  I am sure that many of you know pieces of his story.  Frank shared some with us during children’s time this morning.  Dr. King’s March on Washington and “I Have a Dream” speech are defining pieces of our lives and culture today.

There is however a piece of his story that hits close to home which some of you may not know.  In 1951, Dr. King came to Boston University to pursue a Doctorate in Systematic Theology.  It was at Boston University that he first met Coretta Scott King who later became his wife and partner in life, ministry, and the pursuit of justice.

As Boston’s Baptist community grew riveted with King’s preaching and dynamic style, his reputation grew.  A former roommate recalls that friends and visitors came to their Dorchester apartment from far and wide.  They would join in the conversations about civil rights.   Memoirs on King’s life talk about how he reveled in this time.  Never before had he been in a place where he had felt so free and equal.  The possibilities seemed endless.  It was during this time at Boston University that Dr. King’s first reflections on how to end segregation and ease racial tensions in the South began in earnest.

And it was in these reflections that he came to realize that he could not stay in this northern “safe haven” he had developed.  His passion for justice and equality for all was calling him back to his home in the deep South.   There was much work to be done, and they needed a person of his gifts, skill and talent.  He said, here I am, Lord, send me.  And God did.

And so in 1953, he went home.  He married Coretta, and in the coming years came the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, the foundation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Now, I am certain that staying in Boston was probably pretty appealing to Dr. King.  There was a safety and security, a level of comfort in his life here.  He could have easily pastored a church, preached a good word on Sunday mornings, and left the hard fought battles of the civil rights movement to someone else.  But instead, he took a risk.  He said no to the comfortable and familiar, and yes to God.

And so did the people who became part of his movement.  Like Samuel, this preacher’s kid from Atlanta, Georgia was an unlikely messenger who bravely listened and answered God’s call.  And like Samuel, he was a leader in his own right, setting the tone for our nation through his rich oratory and community organizing.  Surely we would not be the same without him.

I am reminded of Dr. King as I reflect on this week’s text from the Gospel of John as well.  Jesus travels to Galilee where he finds Philip.  He asks Philip to become a disciple.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I can only imagine Philip’s emotions were running high.  He has been asked by the messiah to follow him!  And of course, he runs to find his friend Nathaniel to share in this news.

Upon finding Nathaniel, he tells him that he has found the one about whom Moses and the Prophets have written.  He has found Jesus of Nazareth!  Nathaniel replies:  Can anything good come from Nazareth?  You see, Nathaniel has heard of Nazareth’s reputation.  A reputation that it was a place of depravity, and well, certainly not somewhere a MESSIAH should come from.  How on earth could God be sending a messenger from a place like that?

Yet, I found myself exclaiming out loud as I read the text:  OF COURSE something good can come from Nazareth.  Because God has a long history of choosing messengers from the most unlikely places to bring us the things we need to hear most.

I wonder how many of you have experienced something like Samuel, or Dr. King?  You have felt the unmistakable tug of God’s call, pulling your life in a new and perhaps unseen direction.  Maybe at first you resisted, pushing aside the tug on your heart or encouraging words of others to pursue a new vocation, or project?  Maybe you stood alone in a room having a strongly worded conversation with God about how God MUST mean someone other than you.  Because you are just not equipped to do this thing that you are being called to do.

This week’s scriptures challenge us to listen to God’s call in our lives.  To hear the places where we are being called out of our comfort zones, to speak truth to power, to work for justice for the oppressed, to make a change in our own lives even if we are not sure where the road is leading.  For God’s call did not stop with Samuel, or Dr. King.  God is still speaking to us today, calling us to share God’s very heart with bold audacity into a world that so desperately needs it.

I’m sure that Dr. King did not always see the road ahead of him with clarity.  But he moved forward knowing that this is who he was called to be.  I’m sure there were nights that my drama director sat in our auditorium at 8 PM, watching us run the same scene for the 10^th time, wondering if she could keep going.  But she did, secure in the knowledge that this was where God called her to be.  I’m sure that there were moments that Samuel was sure that God must have meant someone else, but could not escape the tug on his heart that this was God’s call.

Be bold brothers and sisters.  Do not be afraid.  What is it that is tugging on your hearts this morning?  However unlikely a messenger, or ill-equipped you may think that you are, know this:  God does not call the equipped.  God equips the called.  Stand strong in the arms of this community, for we will be here to cheer you on.   Beloved ones, we cannot always see the road ahead, but if we step out in faith, God will not leave us alone.

In a few moments, I will invite you to stand for our responsive hymn: Here I Am Lord.  And as we sing, I encourage you to throw open the doors of your hearts.  Listen for God’s voice calling to you this morning.  And then sing with all of your conviction:  I will go, Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart.   For in the words of Dr. King:  Faith is taking the first step, even when we cannot see the whole staircase.  May we have the courage to take the first step.  Amen.

A gathering to celebrate the life of Eliot Hill will be held at the Union Church on Saturday, January 21 at 11:00 a.m.  A copy of the obituary that appeared in the Newton Tab is copied below.

Eliot W. Hill

Newton Highlands. Eliot W. Hill died suddenly at home

on December 9, 2011. He was 53 years old, the beloved

son of Geraldine Hill Elion and the late Walter D. Hill.

He is survived by a sister Alexis D. Hill of Westboro, and

a brother Theodore G. Hill of Brooklyn NY, and several

cousins, nieces, and nephews.

Eliot graduated from Newton South High School and received

a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Massa-

chusetts at Amherst. He did advanced studies at the University

of Arizona at Tucson, and the University of Wisconsin.

He worked in the building trades in Arizona and Oregon,

returning to Newton in 2007. He was an avid outdoorsman

and supporter of the ecology movement.

A memorial gathering will be held on January 21st, 2012, at

11 am at the Union Church in Waban.

In lieu of flowers, please support your preferred animal welfare

organization.