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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC In my filing cabinet there is a folder called
“Mystic: What now?” It is not a
recent folder. In fact, it is one I
had started after my last candidating sermon here in Mystic.
It was when I was back in Berkeley.
All the focus and energy of candidating had evaporated.
Now I was focused on preparing for the car trip across country and
basically waiting for my work here to begin. In “Mystic: What now?”, I collected several
letters, some paper clippings, a Mystic map (one of those that have all the
little buildings on them), and all manner of useful things that members of the
search committee had sent to me in preparation for my arrival.
One letter had this to say, on the bottom of the third page: Take care of
yourself. Try to balance—enough
sleep, exercise, good food, work and fun. May
God bless you and keep you in his care. A second letter was equally caring but had the only
other member of my small household in mind: Romeo, my aging yellow lab.
One member of the search committee had heard that Romeo didn’t like to
go up and down stairs. So she suggested Knox NutraJoint as a dietary supplement
because it had done wonders for her own older lab. So when I finally arrived here four years ago, I came
equipped with the good advice from the search committee, but, more importantly,
with the impression that in this congregation people care for each other and
that you care for your pastors and their families.
I believe that even more today than I did back then.
There is more that makes this congregation
special—whether it is our commitment to greet in worship those whose names we
don’t know yet with the same genuine welcome we offer to those we have known
for years; or our bold and far-reaching commitment to youth; or the tremendous
energy directed towards mission, where we offer our time and our resources to a
host of organizations and efforts in the community that meet people’s needs. Doretta has helped the church unite when she came,
and, more than that, she has helped the church articulate its vision and set it
in motion. Pat has led us and is
still leading us in an intentional interim year that allows us to look into the
future with a clear sense of who we are and with a willingness to discern how we
can most effectively do the work of God in the church at this time and place.
I owe gratitude to both. When a church is at a crossroads like we are now, it
is an appropriate time to ask why we are the church and how we want to go about
being disciples of Christ together. The
two scriptures that the lectionary puts in front of us this morning engage us in
those two questions. Isaiah speaks of God’s promise in a bold way; in
fact, in a way that seems to ridicule how we perceive the way the world works.
It takes money, if you really want to make a difference, we might say,
and Isaiah says “You that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” It even says to buy
here, not just to get things for free, as a gift, but to buy without
money—clearly, an oxymoron. Quite
obviously, this is a prophet speaking, for this is a description of a world that
reaches beyond life as we know it. Around
Mystic, it still takes money to buy things.
Depending on what it is, like gas and houses, it takes more money today
than it did yesterday, and it will take more tomorrow than it does today. Beyond life as we know it, stretching our sense of
what is reasonable and tangible—that is what God’s promise is about.
Of course, Isaiah’s startling prophesy about buying without money is
not the only way in which our faith reaches further than we, if we were left to
our own devices, might be willing to go. ·
The lion
shall lie with the lamb? Not if we
can help it. We put at least one of
the two behind bars. No wonder we
call it the peace that surpasses all understanding. ·
Giving is
better than receiving? That may be
a more common notion, but most of us experience that through a faith community
or through faith education before we learn it anywhere else. ·
Blessed
are the meek, for they will inherit the earth?
That certainly goes against our experience, for as far as money and power
goes, those who appear to inherit the earth today seem to have a rather
mind-boggling lack of meekness. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my
ways your ways, says the Lord,” says Isaiah.
Frankly, the same is true for God’s grace. God is the one who offers abundant forgiveness, in a divine
act of justice that isn’t measured according to our sense of justice, not
measured according to our shortcomings and failures, but is measured according
to God’s grace. God’s grace
doesn’t make sense either, just like the other things I have mentioned before.
For God’s grace to be within the grasp of our understanding, it would
have to be much diminished. That is exactly why we are the church.
When our individual struggles with our demons—our fears and
insecurities, our shame and guilt, our neuroses and addictions, our moments of
emptiness and loneliness—when those struggles have us at our wit’s end, when
we don’t know any further, then there is the invitation to surrender to the
grace and love of God. When watching the news in the world—this week the
news from London—leaves us at our wit’s end, then we surrender to the hope
that can only come from God. My
friend, Karsten, and I used to take walks at midnight after we had studied for
exams, We walked each other to our
respective homes and, sometimes, we walked back and forth a couple more times
because we had more to talk about. During
one of those walks, he said to me, “I am waiting for God to lose God’s
patience with us. There must be a
limit to how much God can forgive.” But
then scripture tells us that God’s faithfulness knows no end.
God will not lose God’s patience.
That is God’s gift in Jesus Christ, upon which the church is founded. When we approach the end of this life, or mourn the
passing of others, as we have done so much this week, we surrender ultimately to
the assurance that God’s plan for us reaches beyond life as we know it.
That is why we are the church. Let’s have a word on how we can be the church.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the sower.
Some of the seeds fall on the path, and the birds pick them. Some fall on
rocky ground. They can’t grow
roots and, so, whatever plant there may be, it withers in the heat of the sun.
Some fall amidst the thorns and have no place and no light to grow.
Some, finally, fall on fertile soil, and grow and produce seeds manifold.
The seeds come from God and so does the miracle that makes the wheat grow
from the seed. The sower has control over when to do the sowing and where
and how. The gardeners among you
will appreciate that. Note that
this is not a parable about good and bad seeds.
The seeds are all alike; they all come from God. As the church, our ministry comes from God, for it is
God’s word that we proclaim and act upon.
If what we do builds up the faith community and helps people on their
faith journey, that, too, comes from God because it is God’s Spirit at work.
Yet, we have choices as to how we do ministry, how we communicate, how we
use our resources, how we structure ourselves, and how we engage the gifts and
talents of all that are gathered. Look
around you. Rather than burning out
the gifts and talents of just a select few, we have choices as to how to do the
work of God as the church in the most effective way. To me, the parable in Matthew’s Gospel is the
charge to the church to always be willing to learn, and to be willing to change
when that appears to be the faithful thing to do.
This is not an arbitrary change. This
is not change for the sake of change. Instead, it means knowing who we are and where we are at, and
asking what is the logical next step. The
all-committee meeting night that will begin in August, and the conversations we
have had about size-transition are such faithful changes.
Let us always be a church willing to learn!
I pledge to be a pastor always willing to learn, as well.
It is one of the core values of all of Protestantism rooted in the
reformation, that the church, in order to be faithful, has to always reform
itself. This of course means also that if you want to write
me letters of advice after this candidating sermon, like the letters I received
last time, I will read them gratefully and with care. Finally, let me say a word about our denomination.
I believe that any congregation is much better off if it exists in
covenant with a denomination rather than standing alone.
For one, the Gospel call to take the word of God and proclaim it and act
on it, and the Gospel call to help those in need is not limited to one’s
community but extends to the end of the earth.
Our mission dollars help respond to needs around the world because we are
a part of a denomination that can reach out worldwide. I know that many of us value our autonomy as a
congregation highly. So do I.
The good news is we are in the right denomination because the United
Church of Christ is the one mainline denomination that not only tolerates the
autonomy of each congregation but prides itself with a polity and structure that
gives the power to the people in the pews. When I decided that I would be a pastor in the United
States rather than in Germany, I chose the United Church of Christ deliberately.
It is the one church that has tremendous roots in history, and a
tremendous willingness to honestly debate the questions that society puts in
front of us today. For that, I
respect our UCC. But I am equally
committed that it is the members of the congregation who decide when and in what
ways we follow the leadership of the UCC. Neither
the pastors nor the denomination will impose that on us. After the search committee called me and asked me to
be the candidate for Senior Pastor at our church, one of the things I felt most
strongly, besides excitement and relief and just a bit of terror, was a
permission to belong. It made me
realize how much I would love to do faithful ministry with you and in your midst
for a long time to come. I give God thanks and ask God’s grace for our
church. Amen. |