Monthly Archives: November 2019

Vision

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A Sermon for 17 November 2019 – Commitment Sunday

A reading from Isaiah 65:17-25. Listen for God’s word to us.

“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD — and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!

 

I’m sure you are familiar with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. – That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness” (a portion of the Declaration of Independence, http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/). Some would say this is the want, will, and hopes of a people. The very reason many of you and your loved ones have served or now are serving through our nation’s armed forces.

I’m guessing you’ve heard at least portions of these words too – one’s spoken in our nation’s capital nearly sixty years ago: “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama . . . little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope” (a portion of Dr. M. L. King, Jr.’s 1963 I Have a Dream Speech, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-have-a-dream-speech-text_n_809993).

This is our hope. Too why some of you and your loved ones have served or now are serving through our nation’s armed forces. For the dream of the way we envision our life together to be.

The wisdom of Proverbs even reminds that where there is no prophesy – no vision – people perish (paraphrase of Proverbs 29:18).

God has a vision. A way for our life together to be. The hope of us who claim to be about God’s way. It’s what the Christ lived to show us. Died to assure us. Rose again in power to invite us to come follow. It’s a beautiful vision – tucked away in the third part of the prophesy called Isaiah. After all, at that point in the story of our faith ancestors, at least two if not three generations had perished in exile in Babylon. But once the conditions were right – a new empire rising to power in the Persians, the little clan of Judah was allowed to return. Back to the land in which they once toiled. Right back to the gates of Jerusalem, which had all but been destroyed. It was time to start again – for the little remnant that actually returned home. ‘Cuz some stayed in Babylon, you know. Others were buried there, the near-sixty years of exile being all they’d ever known.

If there would be any hope at all, God knew they needed a vision. Hope to hold them back home in a place haunted with their history, but barely recognizable to most. In biblical fashion, the LORD would tell the prophet: “Speak and say! Thus saith the LORD, the God of the heavens and the earth!” I am about to create anew! Can you see how powerful that promise would be? The reminder that, the former things are to be put out of your mind. No longer remembered, so that forward the people would continue to press! Jerusalem would be re-created – a joy! The people God’s delight. No more bitter tears, God declares. No more distress. Though harsh realities filled their days through the destruction of Jerusalem, the exile in Babylon, even in the harsh truth before them daily in their return. Through the prophet, God paints the beautiful picture of a time when infant mortality shall be gone. Life in longevity with centenarians, seniors living full, vivacious decades! Houses built by their very own hands – no one wandering in lands far from home, nowhere to lay their heads. Food shall be plentiful – kinda like those three never-ending pallets of food picked up recently from Trader Joe’s! Nourishment grown and consumed by grateful hands that are open to sharing the bounty of the land they sow and reap. You know how somedays it seems like we toil and trouble with nothing much to show? Well it won’t be like that any longer God says. Purpose for us all shall reign, with children free to grow to be who and what they want. Even predatory opposites shall live in peace, wolf and lamb feeding together. That’s reconciliation! True individual transformation which can lead to true communal restoration! For there will be no more hurt at the hands of one another. No more destruction on all the holy earth!

You know, that vision – God’s hope for how we all might be as we live and move and have our being among one another. God’s vision casts the direction in which we are to work – each day. Every one of us when we are apart and living our lives out in the world. And when we are together as a portion of the body of Christ. We serve God by serving others, according to God’s vision. We renew community with each other through caring relationships – for young and old and every age in between because of God’s vision. We seek to build partnerships in which we work together with others in order for the community of Hillwood-West Meade, West Nashville, and all the world to flourish. We renew community, deep relationship with one another and beyond the walls of this sanctuary so that God’s vision of how we are to be together is realized now – in our midst! In a song called “Lean In Toward the Light,” it’s described as practicing resurrection. A reminder that “every kindness large or slight shifts the balance toward the Light” (Carrie Newcomer, “Lean In Toward the Light” on The Beautiful Not Yet, 2016).

One biblical commentator writes beautiful words to show the practical way God’s vision is to be lived out among us daily. Mary Eleanor Johns writes, “We may not know how God means to transform the universe, but we can confess that we know it is in God’s power to do this. What remains possible for the single believer, the single congregation, is to do the work involved in such transformation by following the patterns of mercy that Christ has laid out for us.” Johns explains, “We are able to give one drink of cold water at a time. We are able to bring comfort to the poor and the wretched, one act of mercy or change at a time. One book given, one friendship claimed, one covenant of love, one can of beans, one moment of condemnation, one confession of God’s presence, . . . one moment in which another person is humanized rather than objectified, one challenge to the set order that maintains injustice, one declaration of the evil that is hiding in plain sight, one declaration that every person is a child of God: these acts accumulate within God’s grace” (Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4; Mary Eleanor Johns, p. 292). Wow! One act at a time! Johns’ concludes: “The church’s job is not to cloister itself proclaiming the resurrection just in the everlasting. The proclamation is for the resurrection of life in this world as well. . . . Think of the little things that can be done to show signs of God’s new creation” now! (Ibid., pp. 292, 294). Like through the ministry of this church in the past few weeks: one flower delivered for an at-risk teenage male to be able, in pride, to hand that flower to a teacher to express thanks. One conversation with a homebound neighbor who hasn’t talked to anybody else all week. One aspect of the property of this church repaired so that children have a place safely to play. And teens can come to feel what it’s like to be welcomed by adults like they will when that first group of students from Hillwood High School comes here to begin meeting weekly. And women and men seeking to heal from the hurts heaped on in childhood can grow and mourn and begin anew. And those grieving the loss of their loved ones through suicide can get support from each other. And that’s just part of what’s been taking place because of this church. I can’t begin to know what each one of you will do wherever you go this week – the small thing you will accomplish to keep on shifting the balance toward the Light. The one thing you will contribute according to God’s vision of the new heavens and the new earth. What I do know is that we must not give up. We cannot give in. For God has a vision. And it is through us that God’s vision comes to be in the world in which we live each day!

Keep on practicing resurrection, people of God. Live God’s vision today!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2019 (All rights reserved.)

 

Lost

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A Sermon for 3 November 2019 – All Saints Sunday

A reading from the gospel of Luke 19:1-10. Listen for God’s word to us.

“Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because Jesus was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So Zacchaeus hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!

 

Have you ever been lost? I don’t mean lost, as in you refuse to stop for directions lost while somewhere in like the middle of the tangle of roads that make up Hillwood and West Meade. But truly lost! So that you start to feel the panic deep down in the pit of your insides.

I remember the time when I was about four years old and my parents and my six-year-old sister and I had stopped at a huge mall in the big city on our way back home to the little village in which we lived. It was around Christmas. My parents were trying to make it a special afternoon for us to be able to see Santa Claus at a store similar to a Macy’s. It was one of those huge department stores in a mall we rarely visited. One minute my six-year-old sister was with us. The next minute, she was gone. My parents might tell you it was only for a little while, but to me it was a torturous lifetime. Long enough for mall security to be involved – which was way longer than I ever had been lost in the little grocery store back home, where I wandered off each week. As soon as mom and dad noticed my sister no longer was at our side, we started looking in the racks around us. This is the sister that always has been a bit of a rule-breaker, so it wasn’t unlike her to step outside the bounds. But to do so in the bustling mall of the big city where we knew nobody was absolutely terrifying! Images of my sister being lost went running through my little mind. With potentially horrible things happening to her. And the prospect that she may never return to us. Fear burned in my soul. At one point my parents left me with a store clerk in order to go find her. At another point they returned to me – without her – still. I remember when at last a man in a uniform, who looked to me to be a giant, came walking towards us – his huge brown hand dwarfing the tiny pale hand of my sister. Even though we weren’t a family that hugged a lot back then, when at last the man returned my sister to us; I threw my arms around her in relief! If you ever have been lost, perhaps you too know how absolutely horrifying it can be!

The InLighten film entitled “Lost and Found,” tells the story of a desperate young woman (https://inlightenstream.com/upcoming-films/#Xbu7XyVOmEc). Her beautiful chocolate face flashes on the screen as she tells that from an early age, she felt like she didn’t quite belong. She had been adopted into a family of other children in which she had the darkest skin. Her new parents did their best to raise her. But one impressionable night at a club, she saw someone pull out over $2,000 worth of cash. In awe she asked the girl where she got that kind of money. The next thing you know, the beautiful young woman turned her first trick. In the film she explains: “After that first man walked out of the room; in my mind, I was worthless. So, I didn’t deserve to have a normal life anymore” (Ibid.). Tearing up the woman says, “I didn’t deserve to have real love. I deserved what I was going to get” (Ibid.). If you ever have been lost like this, you too know just how terrible it feels!

After Hours Ministries is street outreach to women and men involved in prostitution. Associate Director Jen Cecil explains that “when you’ve been commodified, it completely tears down your self-worth. A lot of these women aren’t in it by self-choice,” she says (Ibid.). They do it to survive. They do it to avoid getting hurt by someone who has taken over control of their life. Cecil quotes a heavily debated statistic to claim that the average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is between the age of 12 and 14. Other sources claim the age is somewhere between 17 and 19. In 2015, one source records that “trafficking cases had been reported in over 85% of Tennessee counties including many rural areas” (https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5203042/amp). Cecil reminds: “These are your daughters. These are your sisters. These are your best friends. These are women created in the image of God, who God loves and pursues after” (Ibid.). They are lost. Needing to be found.

In the film, the teary young woman who ended up on that path goes on to tell that the daddy for whom she worked typically wouldn’t let her out of his sight. But one night she asked if she could go outside to smoke a cigarette. He told her to stay close to the door so he could keep an eye on her. The woman explains, suddenly “I saw this mini-van pull up. I remember thinking like: ‘Why are these people here?’ It’s a disgusting hotel. It was a family that got out and they had bibles.” Unable to hold back the tears at this point in the film, the sobbing woman says, “They handed me a bible and said, ‘We just want you to know Jesus loves you.’” The woman explains, “I remember thinking like: ‘you don’t understand. Jesus can’t love me anymore’” (Ibid.). Have you ever felt that kind of isolating shame? That kind of being totally lost?

That night, volunteers of After Hours Ministries prayed with the woman. They told her she was safe. They told her she was going to be okay. On film, light begins to creep back into the woman’s eyes as she remembers, “I had this redemption of thought,” that night. She says: I realized “God sought me out. Not because God wants something from me. But because God loves me” (Ibid.). As the film comes to a close, the voice of Jen Cecil pipes back in declaring, “A lot of times the women don’t believe that they are loved or that they are seen. I believe God desires for us to know that God is with us. And that we are loved. We are seen.” Cecil declares, “I have seen and I know the depths God has gone to for me. And that God will go there for you as well” (Ibid.).

It’s reported in the gospel of Luke – the gospel that especially likes to tell stories such as these – that one time, Jesus was passing through the city of Jericho. Jericho was a place responsible for receiving goods imported from the East (Connections, Yr. C., Vol. 3; 2019. Kenyatta R. Gilbert, p. 4580) which made it a place a tax collector could do quite well. A man lived there. One who was accustomed to climbing; for he had climbed the ranks in the world of taxing those around him until at last he earned the title of chief tax collector. For the Roman Empire, this man worked. Ensuring his fellow Jews paid the price in support of the ones who forcibly occupied their land. In the eyes of everyone, this man was lost – very lost. Though not as far off as those who can’t even see they are lost. Like those in the story who criticized that Jesus would dare spend time with ones such as Zacchaeus.

It would be easy to stay focused on people like Zacchaeus. People like the young woman in the film who found herself so lost. The point we are not to miss, however, is that we all are lost. In some ways. Maybe we’ve not been ensnared in the grip of the sex industry. Maybe we’ve not been caught up in exploiting others for the benefit of the empire. Maybe we’ve just known the depths of loss after a loved never returns. Maybe we just carry the pains from parents who hurt more than helped. Maybe we’ve just felt the sting of shame because of our gender or orientation or abilities or whatever so that we know exactly how it feels to want nothing more than to be seen by some One who will love us completely nonetheless.

Earlier in the gospel of Luke, these words are recorded – words assigned by the lectionary for All Saints’ Day every third year: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven . . . But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:20-31). The Beatitudes according to the gospel of Luke offer a helpful reminder that it is for the lost that God seeks. Not because being rich or full or full of laughter is any terrible thing. But because if we don’t know it yet: woe! We must! We all are lost – needing to be found. Once we know, salvation is ours! We get found by a God who is with us always. A God who sees and loves and seeks out the lost. For such a marvelous gift, let us give great thanks!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2019 (All rights reserved.)