Redeeming Laughter

Psalm 126

Redeeming Laughter

Christmas Eve 2016

I have a friend who, every Advent, posts really, really bad Christmas jokes on her Facebook page, jokes so punny and bad they would make Bob Lague proud.  Here are a few examples, and tell me if you don’t agree:

How much did Santa pay for his sleigh?  (Nothing – it was on the house.)

What do you call a singing elf?  (A wrapper.)

What kind of hat does a snowman wear?  (An ice cap.)

What did the Gingerbread man pull over his bed?  (A cookie sheet.)

When are old Christmas trees like clumsy knitters?  (When they drop their needles.)

See what I mean?  Some of them are so bad they actually make you laugh.

Psalm 126 is a psalm about holy laughter.  “When God restored the fortunes of the people, we were like those who dream.  Our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy.  Then it was said throughout the world, ‘The Lord has done great things for them!’  The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”  The Lord has done great things for us:  “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all the people – to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  This is a time filled with joy, with good news, and with holy laughter.

Tonight of course, we are also mindful of those things that work against gladness and laughter and joy.  We are mindful of the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey; we are mindful of the terrorist attack in Berlin; we are mindful that our LGBT brothers and sisters still face obstacles to full equality and inclusion; we are mindful of the friends and neighbors we have lost to the epidemic of addiction; we are mindful that for many people, these are stressful days and uncertain times.  And none of this is easily wished away, not even on this holy night.  But because of this night, we are confident that the One who is born to bring joy and peace, justice and redemption, compassion and healing, not just to us but to all creation, makes us better people and our world a better place.

Through this season of Advent here at Second Church we have been reading through and talking about Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Christmas Carol.  I’m guessing nearly everyone here has either read it or seen one of the many movie or television versions of the story.  Tonight we come to the very last chapter:   after Ebenezer Scrooge has been visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet-to-Come, he awakens Christmas morning with a new sense of himself:  “I am as light as a feather,” said Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath.  “I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy, I am as giddy as a drunken man.  A merry Christmas to everybody!  A happy New Year to all the world.”  In the fifth and final stave, or stanza, Ebenezer Scrooge is a changed man.  And the most palpable sign of the change in him is laughter.  As Dickens puts it, Scrooge let out a laugh that, “for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh, the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.”  And he literally laughs his way through to the end of the book.  He laughs as he sends the poulterer’s prize turkey to the Cratchit family.  He laughs as he goes to Christmas dinner at his nephew Fred’s house, accepting an invitation he had earlier spurned with a trademark “Humbug!”  He even laughed at the laughter of others who had never seen Scrooge act quite this way before.  And the following day, he laughed when, in response to Bob Cratchit’s being late for work the day after Christmas, he doubled his salary.  “His own heart laughed,” Dickens writes, “and that was quite enough for him.”

There are many lessons to be drawn from Dickens’ classic story, and the one we take away from this last chapter is that Scrooge’s laughter is a signal of his redemption.  Scrooge is a changed man, and we see it and we hear it in his laugh.

Actor Peter Ustinov once said that “Laughter is the most civilized music in the world.”  There is a lot of music associated with Jesus’ birth, and I don’t just mean the Christmas carols you and I sing every year.  There are also four different Christmas carols in Luke’s gospel, and it is important that each song includes the message of salvation and redemption.  When Mary learned she had conceived and would be having a baby, she sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”  When her cousin Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah named his son John, who would grow to be John the Baptist, Zechariah sang “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for God has looked favorably on us and redeemed us.”  When Simeon saw the infant Jesus brought to the temple for his dedication, he sang, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.”  And of course, on that first Christmas night the angelic chorus sang to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and good will.”  There was a lot of singing and music surrounding the events at the manger.  And if laughter is the most civilized music in the world, what could be more musical than the laughter of a little baby.  We’ve all heard babies giggle and coo and laugh – and it’s magical, it is like no other laughter in the world.  Among all the other sounds that first Christmas night, the sounds of livestock and of a woman in labor, I imagine that both the cries and the laughter of an infant were among them.  And in that moment, in that laughter, was the promise of the redemption of the world.

We all know what it means to call someone a Scrooge.  The name is synonymous with parsimony, penny-pinching and skinflintery.  As Bob Cratchits’ wife puts it, to be a Scrooge is to be “odious, stingy, hard and unfeeling.”  But this is not how the story ends.  The story ends with a Scrooge who is generous, lavish, charitable, and most of all, filled with the kind of great-hearted laughter that signifies his own redemption.  This is the Ebenezer Scrooge who remains standing at the end of the tale.  While there is scarcely a trace of religion to Dickens’ story, this is how it concludes:  “[I]t was always said of [Scrooge], that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if anyone alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, Every One!”

Let us pray.

Christmas Presence

Isaiah 35.1-10

Luke 1.46-55

Christmas Presence

(God Bless Us Every One!- III)

Third Sunday of Advent

When I was seven or eight years old, there were times that I was so excited about Christmas that I couldn’t get to sleep.  So instead I would tiptoe down the hallway in the wee hours of the morning past my parents’ bedroom, turn the television on very softly, and watch whatever happened to be on – and since those were there was only a handful of stations, and since it was usually around 2 or 3 a.m., this meant whatever happened to be on were mainly old movies – which is how I was first introduced to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  I remember it vividly - it was the 1951 version that featured Alistair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, and it became the standard by which I measured all other versions of the story.  There was one earlier version, in 1938, with Leo G Carroll as Marley’s ghost and a young June Lockhart as one of the Cratchit girls.  Others came later:  There were two animated versions, one in 1962 starring Mr Magoo and the voice of Jim Backus, and one in 2001 with the voices of Nicholas Cage and Kate Winslet; and at least two other live-action versions that I know of, the 2009 one with Jim Carrey not only playing the role of Scrooge but also all the ghosts but Marley’s; and the 1984 version with George C Scott as Scrooge, the version we’re going to be showing this Saturday night right here in the sanctuary.  Now, I’ll admit it is probably because I saw them both before the Froggatt house had a color television, but it is the two earliest versions that I tend to prefer; I guess Victorian London just seems more authentic in black and white.

Our two scripture lessons this morning are twins, of a sort, and I think you could hear that when we read them.  Both passages are songs of redemption:  “The wilderness and the dry land will be glad,” Isaiah proclaimed, “the desert will rejoice and blossom… the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”  It describes a time when God will lift up the weary and heal infirmity.  In a similar way, Mary’s song, the Magnificat, draws a like picture:  “[God’s] mercy is for those who revere God from generation to generation… [God] has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things.”  In Mary’s song, which could also be called her prophecy, the one who is about to be born will be a champion of the poor and outcast, will lift up the weary and will heal the infirm.

In certain theological circles, both these passages reflect what has sometimes been called God’s preferential option for the poor.  As Catholic canon law puts it, “The Christian faithful are obliged to promote social justice, and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor.”  When I was in seminary, Latin American Liberation Theology leaned heavily in this direction.  But I confess, I was more than a little surprised to find the same sentiment in Dickens’ Christmas Carol as we have been reading through it this Advent.  As the Spirit of Christmas Present leads Ebenezer Scrooge through the streets and homes of London on Christmas Day, and they are jostled by people coming and going to and from church and on to their Christmas dinners, the Spirit invisibly sprinkled what Dickens called a kind of incense on the passers-by and on their dinners from the tip of the torch he carried.  As Dickens tells it,

“There emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners…  The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him at a baker’s doorway, and taking the off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinner from his torch.  And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly.  For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day.  And so it was!  God love it, so it was! “Is there – is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.  “There is [the Spirit replied], my own.”  “Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.  “To any kindly given,” the Spirit said, “To a poor one most.”  “Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.  “Because it needs it most.”

It appears that the Spirit of Christmas Present also possesses a preferential option for the poor:  imagine, finding Liberation Theology in a nineteenth century novel!  Now to be sure, Charles Dickens was not a particularly religious man; in fact on more than one occasion he expressed his contempt and disdain for visible religiosity, particularly of the evangelical and Roman Catholic varieties.  Dickens was more prone to Unitarianism, and for a while attended Anglican services.  But his was really a civil religion, and this is what comes through most in his Christmas Carol.  Scrooge reflects Dickens’ conviction that salvation comes from an authentic encounter with the self, and is achieved through loving one’s neighbor, and offering a cup of water to one who is in need.  As Steven Rost wrote in Christianity Today, “The New Testament teaches that such acts are the result of spiritual conversion; for Dickens they were the means.”  To Rost’s citation of the New Testament, I would add that the same can be said of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah included.

But what really begins Scrooge’s transformation in this third chapter of the story is not the Spirit’s encounter with the poor, but rather Scrooge’s encounter with himself as seen through the eyes of two families at Christmas dinner – the Cratchit family, and that of his nephew Fred, whose invitation to join them Scrooge spurned with his characteristic “Humbug!”

At the first, Bob Cratchit raises a Christmas toast to his employer – over his wife’s strenuous objection.  Lifting his cup, Cratchit says, 

“I give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”  “The Founder of the Feast!” cried Mrs. Cratchit; “I wish I had him here.  I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it!”  “My dear,” said Bob, “the children!  Christmas Day!”  “It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks to the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge.  You know he is Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do…  I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s, not for his.  Long life to him!  A merry Christmas and a happy new year.  He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt.”  

And they all drank a toast to Mr. Scrooge.

The scene at Scrooge’s nephew’s home is a similar one.  The conversation turned to how Scrooge had been invited there for Christmas dinner, but rudely declined.  Fred’s sisters have little good to say about their uncle, but Fred, a good humored young man, refused to defame him.  “He’s a comical old fellow,” Fred said, 

“that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be… [But] I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried.  Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always.  Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence?  He don’t lose much of a dinner… I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.  He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it – I defy him – if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year and saying ‘Uncle Scrooge, how are you?’”

These two scenes which unfolded in the presence of Scrooge and the Spirit constitute a kind of turning point in the story.  While they had every reason to find fault with Scrooge, as the women of the families did, both Fred and Bob Cratchit found something positive to say about the man.  And as if to punctuate this, Fred finally convinces his sisters and household to toast the man:  “He has given us plenty merriment I am sure, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.  Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’”  “Well, Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.  “A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is… Uncle Scrooge!”  And then Dickens reports, “Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time.”

If those people most adversely affected by his penny-pinching and meagerness can find something good to say about Ebenezer Scrooge and find something good in him, odious, stingy, hard and unfeeling as he may have been, there is the beginning of Scrooge’s redemption, such as it is.  And turning of his own heart to the needs of the poor are the means of getting there.

Turning our hearts to the needs of the poor – both Isaiah and Mary use this kind of language as a way of preparing to receive the promised one of God.  “Strengthen the hands of the weak,” Isaiah said, “make firm the feeble knees.”  Mary sang, “God brings the powerful down from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; God fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty.”  God’s clear preferential option for the poor.  If we are still looking for ways to make this Advent season meaningful, this is a very good place to begin.

Let us pray.

Opening Lines

Isaiah 2.1-5

Matthew 24.36-44

Opening Lines

(God Bless Us Every One – I)

First Sunday of Advent

Let’s have a little literary fun this morning to start the season.  I’m going to give you the opening line to a well-known piece of literature, and ask you to tell me the title of the work.

“Call me Ishmael.”  (Moby Dick)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  (A Tale of Two Cities)

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  (The Bible)

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84 days now without

  taking a fish.”  (The Old Man and the Sea)

“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.”  (1984)

Sometimes an exercise like this is easier when it is done with poetry.  Let’s do a few poems, shall we?

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of

forgotten lore /while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping,

rapping at my chamber door.”  (The Raven)

“Whose woods these are, I think I know / His house is in the village though –” 

(Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)

“Sing in me, O Muse, of the cunning hero, the wanderer, blown off course time and again after he plundered

    Troy’s sacred heights.”  (The Odyssey)

“Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me / the Carriage held but just Ourselves /

And immortality.”  (Because I Could Not Stop for Death)

“Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon

a table.”  (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”  (Sonnet 116)

It is very often the case that the opening lines at the very beginning of a work foreshadow and even shape the theme of entire piece, whether it is poetry or prose.  And so as you and I stand at the very beginning of Advent, with Thanksgiving’s leftovers likely still chilling in the fridge and the entire expanse of the season of waiting and anticipation spread before us, what are the opening lines for us this Advent that will foreshadow and perhaps shape the entire season for us?

During Advent, Tara and I are taking our cue from another well-known piece of literature in order to examine Advent’s meaning for us.  Our opening lines are these:  

“Marley was dead, to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.  Scrooge signed it.  And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.  Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

And these are the opening lines to...?   Of course, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  The first lines are memorable ones, partly because they are so dark, and partly because we know the story so well we know we will not remain in darkness throughout – although, this being Dickens, it isn’t until we come nearly to the very end that of the story that we are allowed to glimpse the light.  So the dark tone in the opening lines really permeate the work in its near-entirety.

Now to be fair, it isn’t just Dickens who opens this season with notes of foreboding and darkness and yes, even death.  This morning’s lesson from Matthew paints a similarly dark and foreboding picture.  Where so much of the world, in its anticipation of that certain holiday come December 25 is all candy and confection and merriment and light, the church contrariwise begins in a dark place, with but one solitary candle to pierce the darkness of Advent and near mid-winter.  Matthew writes,

“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.  Then two will be in the field – one will be taken and one will be left.  Two will be grinding meal together - one will be taken and one will be left.  Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day the Lord is coming.”  

I guarantee you will not find these verses on the inside of any Hallmark Christmas card.  And it isn’t just that Matthew is having a bad day either.  Every first Sunday in Advent the church’s prescribed scripture lessons, or lectionary readings, have a similar theme.  The parallel reading from Mark’s gospel includes these verses:  “But in those days, after the suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”  And Luke’s lesson for the start of Advent tells us “There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…”  It’s funny – most of the time folks in the church can be heard complaining that Christmas comes too soon, but after reading a few passages like these, we might be persuaded that it cannot come soon enough!

But perhaps there is the lesson in this:  before we can welcome the light, it is necessary to walk for little while in darkness.  It is not for nothing that Isaiah reminds us, in one of the passages most closely related to the birth of the messiah, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light - those who have lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.”

Early on in A Christmas Carol, a lonely soul, a poor shivering caroler stands outside the door of Scrooge and Marley – Scrooge being too stingy even to remove his dead partner’s name from the office door – singing the carol that will end our service this morning, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”  As Dickens tells us, the caroler, “…gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol:  but at the first sound of, ‘God bless you, merry gentlemen!  May nothing you dismay!’ Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.”

Sometimes it is necessary to walk for a little while in the cold, dank frost before we can know the light that will bring warmth and life to the world.

When I think of the cold and the frost I think of those people who have come together at Standing Rock in an attempt to preserve the sacred ground of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, bearing the bitter cold, soaked by water cannons in the freezing night.  I wonder what the good people of North Beverly would do if an energy company began to plow up the cemetery out there to plant a pipeline?  In a kind of parallel to Matthew’s dark prophecy, the Sioux also are inheritors of a dark legend, which tells of a giant, winding black snake that would one day rise and slither into the sacred lands to destroy the earth.  You can understand why the arrival of an oil pipeline might remind them of this ancient prophecy / giant winding black snake.  For the Sioux nation at Standing Rock, these are indeed cold dark days, both literally and metaphorically – which helps explain why people from around the country, including more than a few from our own United Church of Christ, have chosen to join them, bringing food and medicine and supplies and perhaps more than all this, a sense of respect and dignity for what the Sioux believe to be holy.

It was, of course, the ghost of Jacob Marley who came to warn old Ebenezer that, if he continued his life of avarice and the pursuit of profit at all costs – including the ruination of lives such as Bob Cratchit’s and Tiny Tim’s – then he himself was also doomed to ruin.  But it did not have to be like that; change was possible, though not guaranteed to be easy.  In fact Scrooge was required to come to grips with his past, his present and his future if there was to be any hope for him.

The season of Advent is only a few hours old this morning, and Christmas is still fully four weeks away – exactly four weeks from today.  Where are the places you and I need to walk together in order to be ready to greet the light of the world that is born to all people everywhere?  Where are the hungry, the cold, the frightened, the threatened, with whom we might stand, or whom we might feed and bring warmth, encouragement and hope?  And is there any resentment, any bitterness, any barrier to generosity within ourselves that might keep us from doing so?  If so, that’s all right – we have an entire season to walk through whatever dark places exist for us and come into the light.  The light itself is slow in coming.  One candle this week, two the next and so on – it isn’t much, but at the end it brings us to the brightness of a star that will reveal to us not just God with us, but also our own better selves.

But for now, it is enough to stand in a place that is illuminated only faintly.  The entire story is still waiting to be spread out before us.  Marley’s midnight visit to Scrooge is only a foreshadowing, a hint of both Scrooges- and Christmases-yet-to-come.  For him and for us, it is the start of a journey, the opening lines that both anticipate and shape the story of our own Advent preparation.  How will that story unfold?  For every person and for every Advent the story will be different, but what is certain beyond all doubt, is that it begins today.

Let us pray.

Lost Luggage

Luke 4.1-15

Mark 6.4-13

Lost Luggage

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

So, Jesus, let me get this straight:  you want your disciples to go out in the world and do your work, to heal the ailing, welcome the stranger and declare the gospel, and your specific instructions amount to this:  we can’t bring any food with us, we can’t carry any money, no change of clothes, not even a hotel reservation.  Would anybody here undertake a journey like this?  I’m not at all certain I would, and I have a little bit of experience in this kind of thing.  It was right around this time last year, on the cusp of our trip to Greece, that I will admit to having lost a few nights’ sleep when I learned the Greek currency crisis was about to close every bank in the country, on the very day of our arrival, for an indeterminate amount of time, which turned out to be nearly three weeks.  So I can’t begin to imagine what my state of mind would have been if someone had told me that not only would I not have access to cash, but that I couldn’t take any food or any clothing except for what I wore when I left.  Yet essentially, these are Jesus’ instructions to the disciples when he sent them out into the countryside to minister.  “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”  And yet guess what?  The disciples were successful – the disciples were successful:  “They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”  Perhaps it is possible to do God’s work in the world without carrying a lot of baggage.

Dana Ciolli is a childhood friend of my daughter Clare, and was returning from a conference last month in the Virgin Islands when she found herself sitting in the Miami airport, waiting for her connecting flight home to Hartford.  She was flying American Airlines, and had downloaded an app to her phone that let her track her luggage on the trip.  So just to be sure that her bags were on the same track as she was, she opened the app as she sat in the departures lounge, just in time to watch her suitcase taking off for Trinidad and Tobago.  Immediately she went to the closest airline rep and told her what was going on only be given the Zen-like reply, “The app lets us know when mistakes happen; it does not fix them!”  No wonder people try to stuff all their things in a carry-on!

Now, a close look at our text this morning shows there were some good, practical reasons why Jesus sent his disciples out for mission and ministry with so few provisions.  For example, they were told not to bring a bag for the journey because that was something that common street preachers, who were prevalent in those days, often carried with them, begging for money in return for their message.  They were like street performers - they’d put their beggars’ bag out, and stand there and preach, like a busker in Harvard Square.  So Jesus said, don’t bring a bag – that’s not who we are.  He also directed them to bring not to bring any food or a second tunic, which would have been for warmth at nighttime, because Jesus expected them to be reliant on the hospitality of others.  And they didn’t need money because this was to be a missionary journey, not a shopping trip.  Like I said, just underneath the surface of the story lie some good practical reasons to deliver the gospel message practically empty-handed.

But the practical reasons only touch the surface level of the story.  With just a little more imagination we might discover some other, equally sensible explanations for these unusual travel instructions.  For example, taking a lesson from Clare’s friend Dana, you can’t lose your luggage if you don’t bring any, right?  That’s why a lot of travelers put their valuables – jewelry, prescriptions, money and passports – in their carry-ons; the only person responsible for your carry-on is you.  As somebody once said, “Don’t take any more than you need, and you won’t miss what you don’t have.”  But Jesus’ direction to the disciples also suggests that they really aren’t traveling very far.  Yes, they required a place to stay – “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.”  But most of their work was done in nearby villages, where they could expect to receive hospitality – a welcome, a meal, a roof over their heads.  These were villages and neighborhoods they knew, that were part of their own wider community.  Perhaps the implication here is that some of the most successful work of discipleship can be done not very far from home.  Who are our neighbors?  Who is our community?  These places are where some of the disciples’ most fruitful work was accomplished.

And of course the whole metaphor of excess baggage is at work here as well.  What are the things we carry around with us that we know deep down inside we would be better off without?  Worry and anxiety?  Possessions and prestige?    The weight of the past or the familiarity of the status quo?  What are the things that prevent us from being our best selves, that tempt us to settle for second-best?  What baggage do we carry that keeps us from being true disciples of Jesus Christ?  The things Jesus asked the disciples to forego are worrisome, are they not?  Go out there without food or money or enough layers to stay warm against the chill of night?  Are you serious, Jesus?

This morning after church you and I are going to begin the most exciting and the most possibility- and opportunity-laden chapter of our Crossroads/New Beginnings conversations.  We have already assessed our church’s past and we have taken the measure of our present; this morning we are going to begin both to dream and to design the shape of our future and the continuing ministry of Second Church.  We too are about to embark on a journey not all that different from the one the disciples undertook in Mark’s gospel.  Who are our neighbors?  Who is our community?  And if these are the places where some of the disciples’ most fruitful work was accomplished, then what is the Christ-centered mission and ministry we might undertake that will reveal God’s good news and good deeds within this community of faith, and convey them into the community around us?

And to put it in the context of this morning’s gospel story, what is the luggage, or baggage, we need to take on this journey, and what do we need to let go?  If the disciples’ experience is illustrative, then we need to be prepared to travel lightly.  There are likely to be some things we think we need, because we have always carried them with us before, but these may be the very things that slow us down or prevent us from being fully engaged in God’s mission.  For the disciples, it was food and money and an extra layer – an insurance layer – of clothes.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if the disciples thought to themselves, “That’s crazy talk!  How can we be the church and engage in effective mission without food and money and an extra layer of comfort?”  But here’s the clue:  they were successful – they were successful – precisely because they left behind the things they thought they needed to carry with them.

Our other gospel today is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  He too went out into a place set apart without food, without any visible means of support, and came into deep communion with God, when temptation intervened.  What is telling about this encounter is the form the temptations took.  The tempter made Jesus three offers:  he could have food in abundance, he could have kingdoms and wealth, and he could have command of the angels.  But Jesus reminded the tempter that in each instance there was always one thing better:  living by the word is better than living by bread alone; honoring God is greater than the honor and adulation of kingdoms and their glory; and trusting God is superior to commanding all the legions of heaven.  We might say that in each case Jesus was tempted to settle for penultimate glory, for what is only second-best.  But settling for second best was never an option for Jesus, and his insistence on focusing on the realm and righteousness of God led to this conclusion:  “[He] was filled with the power of the Spirit, [he] returned to Galilee… word about him spread through all the surrounding country, [and] he began to teach in the synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

Easy answers will always be tempting.  Quick fixes will always be tempting.  Low-hanging fruit will always be tempting.  Second-best solutions and penultimate proposals will always prove tempting.  But we know from experience, and we know from the disciples’ success in their own ministry, that maintaining our focus on the realm and righteousness of God, and on God’s mission for our church, will lead us, not into temptation, but into the next chapter of life and vitality for Second Congregational Church.  As Tara likes to say, May it be so, dear Lord – may this ever and always be so.

Let us pray.

God is Not the Answer

Genesis 18.9-15

John 20.24-29

God is Not the Answer

Second Sunday of Easter 

When it comes to this morning’s story about doubting Thomas, well, just call me a doubting Thomas.  That is, I don’t believe the story really happened the way John says it did.  The gist of it, as we just heard, is that Thomas, who was not with the other disciples when they saw the risen Jesus, doubted their story.  And actually, the word “doubt” never appears in this story, or for that matter anywhere else in John’s gospel – the word that is used here is “unbelieving,” or “disbelief.”  So Thomas did not believe that the others had actually seen Jesus, and said the only way he could believe it was if he actually saw and touched Jesus’ crucifixion wounds for himself.  This is the first part of my problem – in every other story about the risen Jesus, he was so transformed by the resurrection that he was unrecognizable.  Luke tells not one, but two different stories of Jesus talking with his disciples after the resurrection, and in both stories the disciples didn’t have any idea who he was, until they sat down at the end of the day to eat, and, as Luke put it, “Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  And John himself tells us that the person who was the closest to Jesus, the one who knew him best, Mary Magdalene, not only didn’t recognize him, but mistook him for a gardener.  Don’t you think that if Jesus still bore the scars of the crucifixion, Mary and the disciples might have noticed?

But the main reason I take the story of Thomas with a grain of salt is that nearly every other witness to the risen Jesus is based on faith, and not on observable, perceptible evidence like flesh and blood.  “Faith is the … conviction of things not seen,” Hebrews insists, and as Jesus himself said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”  In other words, prima facie evidence, to me is exactly the opposite of what faith, at least biblical faith, is all about.  A story about Jesus providing physical, incontrovertible evidence of his resurrection simply does not square with the rest of the biblical story.  The evidence of Jesus’ resurrection is not the kind that would stand up in a court of law – it is based on belief – the inclination of the mind and heart - rather than something you can perceive with the senses.  This is why I don’t buy the story of Thomas sticking his fingers in Jesus’ wounds – it just doesn’t square with anything else in the Bible.  According to our New Testament lesson, Thomas’ doubt was completely swept away by Jesus’ physical presence; but a faith that does not admit at least elements of doubt, is a faith that is not really being honest with itself.

There was an opinion piece in last Saturday’s New York Times that offered an intriguing twist on the subject of the relationship between doubt and faith – it was actually about the relationship between doubt and unfaith, if we can call it that.  William Irvin, professor of philosophy at King’s College, wrote, “Any honest atheist must admit that he has his doubts, that occasionally he thinks he might be wrong, that there could be a God after all!”  Imagine:  an atheist whose doubt actually leaves room for faith.  It is a neat corollary to the kind of faith that leaves room for doubt.

Ronald Knox, a Monsignor in the Anglican Church in the mid-twentieth century, also wrote detective novels and dabbled in doggerel; Knox once wrote this little ditty of a prayer in the form of a limerick:

“O God, for as much as without thee,

We are not enabled to doubt thee,

Help us all by thy grace

To convince the whole race

It knows nothing whatever about thee.”

I don’t think we necessarily have to agree with the last line, that, “the whole race knows nothing whatever about thee,” but the first couplet still entices:  “Without thee we are not enabled to doubt thee.”  Most people don’t consider doubt, especially doubt about God, to be a God-given characteristic.  But I believe it is, and I believe it is essential.  Inasmuch as the human body contains microorganisms or antibodies that in greater abundance would prove toxic, yet at just the right level actually keep other more serious toxins at bay, so the admission that we don’t know everything that there is to know about God and exactly what it means to be faithful can serve to make ours a stronger faith that it otherwise might be.  I would be willing to wager that everyone in this room has room in our faith for doubt, for uncertainty, for an ambivalent confidence that everything we think we ought to believe about God is actually true – including the story about Thomas this morning.  And this is a good thing; doubt is healthy. Questions are good, and the kind of faith that believes it has all the answers, in my mind, borders on the disingenuous.  Where there is no doubt, there is no self-awareness, no self-actualization, and in the end, even a compromised faith.

In 2013 author Kamel Daoud wrote a book titled The Meursault Investigation as a kind of semi-sequel to Albert Camus’ The Stranger.  The book’s protagonist, the brother of Muersault’s murder victim in the first book, has an interesting take on the notion of God: it is his opinion that “God is a question, not an answer.”  God is a question, not an answer.  I like this.  I like this because it often seems we spend so much of life looking for answers, right?  And once we have the answer – or at least once we think we have the answer – what usually happens?  We stop asking the question and go on to something else.  However, if God is not the answer, but rather the question, then the question is the place where you and I live, and we have permission to keep asking, to keep wondering, to nurture a healthy and constructive wonder.  And while it may sometimes be an uncomfortable place to inhabit, it is the question that keeps us seeking, that keeps us growing, that keeps us sharp.  You all have been asking lots and lots of questions in the whole Crossroads process, good questions, constructive questions, critical questions - and that’s wonderful – it means we are moving forward as a congregation.  Because what would happen if we believed we finally found the answer?  What would happen if suddenly we all came to a nice, neat, satisfying conclusion together and said to ourselves, “Whew!  I’m glad that’s finally done!”  What would happen?  We would stop asking questions, we would stop moving forward, and we would grow stale.  And the best part of living in the question is that we don’t always have to know the answer – we are free to admit, “I don’t know,” or, “We’re still figuring it out,” or “I still need to work on that, to pray about it, to try it on for size.”   It’s OK to live with uncertainty – it’s OK to live with doubt – it’s OK to live with wonder – it’s OK to admit there are answers out there we haven’t discovered yet.  It’s OK never to see the wounded hands and feet, but wonder just how the resurrected Jesus can continue to live in our lives, in our church, in our world.  Woody Allen made a wry joke, I think it was in the movie, “Annie Hall.”  He said a relationship is like a shark – it has to keep moving forward in order to stay vital and alive.  And then he said to Annie about their relationship, “I think what we have here is a dead shark.”  Something similar can be said about the church. We have to keep moving forward in order to remain vital and alive.  The minute we stop moving forward – the minute we believe we have found the answer – that’s when we have a dead shark on our hands.  And it is a faithful, lively, critical doubt – living in the question – that propels us forward.  This is why I think it’s helpful to think of God as the question and not the answer – because the question is the place we live and grow and strengthen both our faith and our witness.

Sarah doubted.  Sarah did not believe she could or would ever have a child at her advanced age, and when God suggested she would, she simply laughed.  And that laugh – laughter which gave birth to Isaac – showed that Sarah took God seriously.  Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich writes the “The element of uncertainty in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted.  And the element in faith which accepts this is courage… In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character.”  To live in the question is courageous, dynamic and bold.  This is the kind of church we want to be.

Let us pray.

Easter

Job 19.23-27

I Corinthians 15.20-26

Present Perfect

Easter Day 2016

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

About once a week, my eighty-eight year old father will get into his car – even though his legs are a bit wobbly, he is an excellent driver – to make the drive from Old Lyme, Connecticut to Meriden, the city where I was born – to have a conversation with my mother.  He’ll talk to her about how his week’s been, some of the things he’s done around the house, maybe describe his daily constitutional through the park at the mouth of the Connecticut River, and he’ll tell her how much he misses her.  The trip from Old Lyme to Meriden’s Walnut Grove cemetery and back is between seventy and eighty miles, depending on the route he chooses to take – Dad is fond of the back roads, they’re the same back roads he used to bicycle as a young teen seventy-five years ago – and he’ll spend about thirty or forty minutes with her before he gets back in his car for the ride home.  For me, the ride to Walnut Grove is about a hundred fifty miles each way, and it’s a trip I’m going to make not long after we leave church today.   In the spirit of Easter, I can’t think of a better day to spend some time with my mom and remember that death does not and cannot keep us apart, but rather in many senses it brings us closer together.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

However - if you’ve ever stood with me at a graveside service I’ve conducted, you’ve heard me talk about visiting loved ones after burial – the phrase we usually use is “paying our respects.”  We can do this in a lot of different places: we can pay our respects right out there, at Walnut Grove, or wherever the final resting place might be, but we don’t need to visit a cemetery to pay our respects.  You may find yourself looking out the kitchen window at the birds building their nests in spring; you might hear a familiar song on the radio; you may be reminded of a certain phrase, or a story; or you may find yourself saying or doing something exactly the way your mom or your dad or your spouse or your good friend did while they were still alive.  And if you’ve stood with me at graveside you’ve heard me say that these too are the appropriate times and the places to pay our respects; and in those moments we stop and offer a small prayer of thanksgiving to God for the life we knew and loved.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

I hope you read the final entry from our Lenten devotional this morning.  Technically speaking of course, Lent was over yesterday, but I’m glad that the UCC’s Stillspeaking Writer’s Group decided to extend it to Easter Day, because Matt Fitzgerald’s essay is outstanding.  It begins, “Mary Magdalene stumbled through the dawn until “Christ is risen” destroyed her faith in the grave.  Mary heard it first, early in the morning.  Death had been defeated.  Not just Christ’s but, because of his, hers as well.”  She stumbled through the dawn until “Christ is risen” destroyed her faith in the grave.  What would it be like if our faith in the grave were destroyed?  What would we be like if we decided that death is not something to be afraid of, but rather just another fact of life?   “Death had been defeated;” Matt wrote, “[and] not just Christ’s but hers as well.”  And not just hers, but yours as well.  And not just yours, but mine as well.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

Let me add quickly that I don’t mean to diminish death by any means.  The recent bombings in Brussels, in Ankara, in Mogadishu, in Istanbul, in Jakarta, in Paris and other cities around the world are horrific, and we pray this morning not only for those who were closest to the victims, but we are also bold to say and to pray enough!  As Jim Antal, Minister and President of the UCC’s Massachusetts Conference wrote in his blog this week, 

“We know that this week of tension will be resolved when the power of universal love is fully revealed.  But first there will be misunderstanding, stumbling, sacrifice, sorrow and grief…  And in a mystery beyond our understanding, as Holy Week unfolds, let us join our hearts with the victims… with the suffering refugees… with peace-loving people from every faith tradition, and with the least of these among us.”

As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

This is a curious use of grammar, isn’t it:  Christ is risen; rather archaic, actually.  Today we would be more likely to say, “Christ has risen,” or “Christ rose,” or as the creeds put it, “Christ was raised.”  But no, Christ is risen, the present perfect tense, a present verb with a past participle.  I still remember my seventh grade English teacher Mrs. Nadile, a true grammarian if ever there were one, telling us about the present perfect tense:  it indicates something that happened once in the past whose effects are still ongoing in the present.  Usually it takes the helping verb “to have” instead of “to be,” but in this instance it makes perfect sense:  Christ is risen:  something that happened once, 2000 years in the past, whose effects are still being felt today; and not just being felt, but shaping the way that our world is ordered as well as the way that you and I live today, how we make our choices, how we prioritize our time, how we apply our talent, and yes, how we invest our treasure.  Both grammatically and theologically, Christ is risen states an eternal truth that not only did he rise once all those years ago, but he remains risen to this day, and that risenness inflects and impacts you and me and everyone and everything in creation.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

We know the effect the risen Jesus had on Mary Magdalene.  She received the news with a combination of fear and joy, which is why the first words out of the angel’s mouth were, “Don’t be afraid.”  Jesus said the same thing when Mary first saw him:  “Don’t be afraid.”  And her fear slowly melted into gladness as she brought the good news to the disciples.  We know the effect the risen Jesus had on Mary; what effect does he have on us?  If the good news of Easter, He is risen, is based on something that happened in the distant past whose ripples are still being felt today, those ripples don’t just occur over the course of history in general, but like Mary Magdalene and the disciples they have a direct impact on you and me in particular centuries after the fact.  What does the risen Christ change in you?  Has it eased your fears, like Mary?  Has it emboldened you to do good things, big good things?  Has it opened up your sense of generosity?  Has it awakened you to the abundance of life, the blessing of life?  Has it destroyed your faith in the grave?  Has it slowed you down, as you take a fresh opportunity to appreciate your surroundings, your family, your neighbors, your friends, and not just the people around you, but the trees, the skies, the sea?  And I make a point of using the word “you” instead of “we” because I can’t answer that question for you; you can only answer it for yourself.  For myself, I can say the risen Christ has reminded me there is no reason to be anxious about death.  The end of this life is not the end of eternity, it’s only a step along the way.  Because he is risen, death does not have the last word anymore; “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”  And this is why I’m going to have a conversation with my mom later on today.  Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ has rendered the past determinative, the future guaranteed, and the present perfect.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed.

Alleluia and Amen.  

Let us pray.