What Would Jesus Tweet?

Proverbs 17.1-12

Matthew 13, selected verses

What Would Jesus Tweet?

Fourth Sunday in Lent

            Gail Doktor and I were talking about the classes she is taking this semester, and she mentioned she is taking a class in Systematic Theology at The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge – probably because the Episcopalians do systematic theology better than Harvard’s Unitarians.  Systematics is the field that integrates the major traditional doctrines of the church:  the nature of God, the trinity, sin and atonement, revelation and reconciliation, in a historical and comprehensive manner.  Noting the depth and breadth of such a class, Gail both lamented and genuinely wondered how it could even be possible to squeeze two thousand plus years of theology, history and doctrine into one class in one semester.  I mentioned to her she doesn’t have to actually master it all in one semester – she has a whole vocation in front of her when she will be wrestling with those topics.   And it reminded me that one of the many reasons I so appreciate Second Church’s relationship with our seminarians is because it helps me connect their preparation for ministry with my own, and our conversation last week brought to mind my own experience with systematic theology.

            In the late 1970’s German theologian Helmut Theilicke produced his three volume systematic, The Evangelical Faith.  And one of the things I will always remember is when Debbie and I went out to our first church in northern Michigan, we didn’t have a television, and there was no morning newspaper, so I decided to read Theilicke’s theology from start to finish – the perfect accompaniment to those dark, snowy mornings on the Upper Peninsula!   And some of you will remember back in 2009, on the occasion of the 500^th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, I took a week of study at Princeton to research and reread Calvin’s four volume systematic, The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Then, a few years ago, I was finally able to save enough money to go out and purchase Karl Barth’s fourteen volume systematic theology which he called, Church Dogmatics.  And no, I haven’t read the whole thing.  Yet. But you can see Gail’s dilemma – how do you distill centuries of thought and thousands of pages of deep theological reflection into one class in one semester?  I guess if anyone can do it, the Episcopalians can.

            But it’s ironic, don’t you think, that so many words have been written, not to mention trees sacrificed, in the attempt to unwrap and unravel what we find in this comparatively brief work of sixty-six chapters.  And so much of it is predicated, not on all sixty-six chapters, but on just four, the gospels that tell the story of the brief ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, basically over a three-year span.  Surely there has to be a simpler way of going about it.

            I’ve shared with some of you before that I have a friendly running debate with our Northeast Area Minister, The Rev. Wendy Vander Hart, about the church’s use of social media.  If you were here the Sunday Wendy preached a couple years ago you likely caught a whiff of it.  It is Wendy’s conviction that the church should be able to get its message across in a Twitter tweet – that is, to proclaim what is essential in one hundred and forty alpha-numeric characters.  If you can’t boil it down to that, Wendy says, then it probably is not worth saying.  But I would ask the question why the church should agree to let the gospel be boiled down to an arbitrary number of characters defined by Twitter’s limited ability to transmit a message?  Is it really necessary, or even desirable, to dumb down our message in order to tailor it to fit one specific social media platform?

            But then I turn to the building blocks on top of which all systematic theology is built – the words of Jesus.  And even though they do not persuade me to agree with Wendy – completely anyway – Jesus’ way with words suggests that Wendy does have a point.  This morning’s readings from Matthew 13 are just a small sample of the way that Jesus taught, but it is a representative sample. More often than not, Jesus employed brief, memorable epigrammatic lessons couched in short phrases that were easily understood and repeated by his followers.  For example, George read, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened,” which is exactly one hundred characters long, (87 in Greek).  So does it tweet?  Yes, it does.  Do we understand Jesus’ point?  Of course we do – it is simple and elegant.  Here’s another:  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”  125 characters:  another tweet.  “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”  126 characters.  “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.”  Ah, here’s one that is too long at 162 characters... and 183 in Greek!  “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”  131 characters.  Maybe Wendy Vander Hart is on to something.

            Jesus’ way of speaking in brief, memorable lessons is reminiscent of the Proverbs.  I asked Gail to read from Proverbs 17 today because they are random, mostly unrelated individual maxims that are nonetheless as memorable as they are succinct.  “Better is a dry morsel with quiet, than a house full of feasting with strife.”  We know what this means without having to wrestle very long with it, and I’d guess that most of us would agree.  “Those who mock the poor insult their Maker.”  Shades of the minimum wage debate we mentioned last week!  And here is one that, once heard, we don’t soon forget:  “Better to meet a she-bear robbed of its cubs than to confront a fool immersed in folly.”  You can say that again!  Brief epigrams, each one vivid, all of them potent – a wonderful and time-tested teaching tool.  And every one of them well within Twitter’s 140 character maximum.

            Jesus knew as well as anyone how to teach an effective and enduring lesson with a minimum of words.  In fact, in so many instances he used words simply as a means to draw pictures that would stay fixed in our minds.  For example, when I say the prodigal son, or the Good Samaritan, or the sheep & the goats, these are brief phrases that conjure up a story considerably longer than 140 characters, and not just the details of the stories themselves, but also the deeper meaning behind them.  We probably each have our own mental image of the father spying the returning prodigal in the distance, and running out to meet him; and of the Samaritan going out of his way to help his enemy the Jew who had essentially just been mugged; and of those faithful people who feed the hungry and visit the sick and advocate for the prisoner, welcomed into God’s waiting and loving arms.

            And so powerful are these phrases and stories that many of them have escaped the bounds of scripture alone and are ingrained in the vernacular.  Charles Dickens’ tale of Great Expectations, of Pip, and Estelle and Miss Havisham, is essentially the story of the prodigal son transported to Victorian England.  The act of a good Samaritan is what turns Jean Valjean’s heart from venal to valorous in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.  And the parable of the last judgment, of ministering to strangers even to one’s own detriment is a theme that Albert Camus employs not only in The Stranger, but in The Plague as well.  And the reasons these themes continue to resonate, not just among people of faith, but among humanity at large, is in part because Jesus’ stories are easily remembered by virtue of their brevity, which I think contributes to their universality.

             So what would Jesus tweet?  Quite a lot, it would appear.  But at the end of the day, I’m still not convinced it is in the church’s best interest to try to confine our message to the length of a tweet.  In fact I think there are two completely opposite reasons for this.  One is that Jesus’ words, as brief as they are, constitute the building blocks for who you and I are as people of faith.  Each lesson, every proverb or easily recalled one-liner, becomes layered upon the previous one in order to create a portrait of what it looks like to serve God and God’s children in our world.  We don’t require a fourteen volume systematic theology in order to live lives of faith and service, but consciously or not you and I continue to bear witness to the multiple stories and experiences, not only of people in biblical times, but of also of all those who have come before us.  Yet the exact opposite is also true, that it is possible to bear witness to the love and generosity of God with no words at all.  As St Francis may or may not have said, “Preach the gospel at all times – and when necessary, use words.”  When a single act of kindness or compassion or simple humanity is witnessed, it often speaks more eloquently than the most articulate sermon – and that’s a good thing.  And it is also something no tweet can ever do:  reveal the love of God in Jesus Christ – with no words at all.

            Remind me to tell that to Wendy next time I see her.

            Let us pray.

Songs of Justice and Peace

Amos 5.21-24

Micah 6.6-8

Luke 1.46b-55

Songs of Justice and Peace

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

            Having spent the better part of this week scouring the many obituaries and wonderful tributes and testimonials to Pete Seeger, I could not help but notice a rather glaring omission.  It was Thursday night, May 25, 1995, when Pete performed at White Hall on the campus of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.  Pete’s brother John was, and remains, an active member of a Congregational church a few miles north of Danbury, and Pete had agreed to perform a benefit concert for the church, which was in the process of purchasing and installing a new organ.  As part of the concert, the church’s choir gathered on stage and sang as Pete’s backup vocals, though if you’ve ever seen a Pete Seeger concert, you’ll know that one of his trademarks is that he likes to get everyone singing, so to sing backup with Pete is as much to take the lead as it is to sing behind him.  Now this particular performance was the only time in his ninety-four years that Pete ever got to sing with that church’s minister – me – and yet for all those many obituaries and wonderful tributes and testimonials to him in the past week, somehow this seminal and formative moment in Pete’s musical history was overlooked.  Consider it rectified.

            Pete had great faith in the power of music and song to transform individuals and society alike.  Here’s an excerpt from an introduction he wrote to a book of popular music:

“Take a lung full of air and push it out with some kind of song – it’s an act of survival, whether you’re singing in a shower, a car, a bar, in a chorus, at a birthday party, at a church, or wherever.  Try it – you’ll live longer.  Of course, it’s harder to find songs all folks want to sing together, but that’s alright.  Little by little, we’re learning to like each other’s songs and getting less enthusiastic about killing each other... and (maybe) industrialized, polluted, TV-addicted people will learn to sing again.  Hooray!”

            That final “Hooray” is typical Pete.  His music was always imbued with enthusiasm for the song itself, and it was almost always influenced by the passion and politics of the world in which he – and we - live.  This is one way we can remember Pete as a prophet – not only did much of his music offer a critique of society, whether it is the anti-war “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Little Boxes,” a song that warns about cultural homogenization, or the pro-union “If I Had a Hammer” – not only did his music offer a critique of society like many of the Old Testament prophets, but like many of those prophets he couched his prophecy in song.

            The scripture passages Gail and Jack read for us this morning are all words of prophecy, and they are all couched in song – technically, we would call them hymns.  If we were to look up those passages in our Bibles, we would see they are scanned out as poetry, which for the Hebrews would mean they could be sung as much as spoken.  And each one is a powerful indictment of injustice and oppression, and each one sets out to draw a picture of justice and peace.  Take the scathing opening words of Amos’ prophecy, who spares no feeling and takes no prisoners:  “I hate, I despise your festivals, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.”  Amos, by the way, is speaking to the religious establishment, who care more for their customs and traditions than they do the well-being of the people around them; “Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.  But, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  Our opening hymn this morning, Pete’s “If I Had a Hammer,” is one of those that is so old and familiar, that we forget it too was considered a scathing indictment of injustice, composed in the 1940s as a song in support of the labor movement.  On the basis of that song, Pete’s folk group, The Weavers, was blacklisted by the FBI, and at a concert in Peekskill NY, Pete and Paul Robeson, and a handful of other performers, were ambushed and beaten up by a mob who thought they were all a bunch of communists because of the music they sang.

            Amos and Micah were ostracized by both the religious and political establishment because of their message of justice and righteousness; Pete was censured by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

            But Pete was more bemused by things like this than anything else.  There was a great story to that point in one of his obituaries this week.  Pete was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955.  He and the Weavers had been blacklisted because of their supposed communist sympathies, and held in contempt of Congress in the late 1950s.  It was difficult for any of them to perform, and no concert manager would give them a venue.  Pete testified before the HUAC, saying, “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.  I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.”  But instead of answering the Committee’s questions, Pete offered to sing the songs that had been listed by those congressmen in their subpoena; the committee declined to hear them, and cited him for contempt.  By refusing even to hear them, the HUAC tacitly admitted the power of song to convict and transform.

            The passage from Luke we heard this morning is a familiar one, one we are used to hearing at Christmas time, Mary’s song of praise on learning she was expectant with God’s messiah.  And when we hear it every December, we hear in it a song of peace and of hope.  But maybe it bears hearing in other seasons of the year, because it is also a hymn of revolution and insurrection, a vision of turning the political and religious status quo on their heads.  “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; God has brought down the powerful from their thrones; [God has] lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things; [God has] sent the rich away empty.”  The elevation of the poor and outcast and the condemnation of the rich and powerful are as radical as anything Pete ever sang, but somehow we miss the fact that Mary’s rejection of the way things are constitute the very foundation of Jesus’ ministry.

            The biblical notions of justice and righteousness echo through the centuries and millennia, and their timelessness is evident in the words attributed to Solomon three thousand years ago that still resonate today.  The question is, do we remember the words because Solomon wrote them, or do we remember them because Pete Seeger put them to music? 

“To everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:  a time to be born and a time to die; a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate, a time for was and a time for peace:  Turn, turn, turn.”

Again:  do we remember the words because Solomon wrote them, or do we remember them because Pete Seeger put them to music?

            The hymns of Micah and Amos, and the writers of the psalms, and Solomon and Mary and all the biblical song-writers whose words have endured throughout the years; we might say we can still find their living souls in the life of their poetry.  Pete Seeger  recognized the power of music – not just his own, but everybody’s – to endure far beyond the mortality of a human lifetime.  Here’s a bit of a song he wrote in the late 1950’s titled, “To My Old Brown Earth:”

“To my old brown earth and to my old blue sky, I’ll now give these last few molecules of “I.”

And you who sing, and you who stand nearby, I do charge you not to cry.

Guard well our human chain, watch well you keep it strong, as long as sun will shine.

And this our home, keep pure and sweet and green, for now I’m yours and you are also mine.”

            Let us pray.

Wordplay

            For a few years while I was in college, my hometown buddies and I had a Thanksgiving weekend tradition of getting together that Friday afternoon for a football game.  We played wherever we could find some open space:  the high school track, the golf course, somebody’s back yard.  A couple of us were decent athletes, though most of us were more like me, and the games results were usually more the fruit of luck than skill.  Case in point:  I remember one play where my friend Alan – and actually, three of us in our group of friends were named Alan – Alan went out for a long pass that somehow wound up getting stuck in a tree.  And while we stood there wondering how to score that one, Alan – the receiver – grabbed one of the lower branches and started shaking it violently until the ball fell out of the tree, and into his arms, whereupon he ran into the end zone for a touchdown.  “You can’t do that,” we told him, “the ball got stuck in the tree.”  Alan smiled and replied, “Hey, doesn’t it say the Bible, ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves?’”
            Well now, on this morning, even our second graders, who now have Bibles of their own, will be able to tell you that, no, “The Lord helps those who help themselves” is not a Bible verse.  Nor are certain other cherished phrases that we tend to associate with the scriptures, like, “To thine own self be true,” “God works in mysterious ways,” and – my mother’s personal favorite - “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  Today is World Communion Sunday, a day when Christian communities around the world come together around the table and celebrate the fact that though we are many, and though we are different, we are all one in Jesus Christ.  But it is also true that as Congregationalists, we are heirs of the Reformed tradition, and while the Lord’s Supper is important, it is the Word that is central to our worship life together, even on World Communion Sunday.  So today we celebrate both Word and Sacrament, with the sharing of the table and the presentation of Bibles to our young people.
            And as a way of doing this, I’ve chosen a passage from Luke that brings both to life.  Barb read for us a section of Luke’s gospel that we’ve listened to so often that we may not actually have heard what Luke wrote.  In a way it’s like the Lord’s Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance, something we know so well that we don’t really pay close attention to what the words are actually saying.  Did anybody notice something a little unusual in Jesus’ words at the table in Luke’s Last Supper?    “And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves…’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them… And likewise the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’”  Luke has Jesus passing the cup around, not once, but twice – both before and after the bread.  How many times have we heard these words from Luke, and how many times have we noticed the two cups?  Did Jesus really pass the cup around twice, or is Luke trying to tell us something through repetition?
            I’ve found myself thinking this week about my early experiences in each of the three churches I’ve served, probably because I’ve also been thinking about Angie starting in her new church next week.  One of the things she and I talked about before she left is that every church has its unanticipated obstacles, little land mines that you don’t find out about until you get there.  In my first church it was the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.  The issue was not what I said about the election campaign, but rather – and you can be forgiven for not believing this – it was that I didn’t say anything at all about it.  Some of the elders expected me to come out and endorse the challenger, and because I didn’t, I was somehow suspect.  In my second church, the unanticipated landmine was an overly saccharine portrait of Jesus that was donated by a church family in memory of a recently departed relative.  And it wasn’t the portrait itself so much as where they wanted to put it – right up here smack in the front center of the chancel.  And even to politely refuse their idea was in their mind to disrespect the memory of the dearly departed.  And yes, when I arrived in Beverly eleven years ago I found myself unexpectedly drawn into a turf war going on in the kitchen, an experience that made me so cautious about the territory that to this day I still don’t know how to run the dishwasher.  The church is an oftentimes curious animal – we can differ about the humanity of Jesus, or the presence of God, or the unity of the church, but don’t you dare take liberties with the kitchen!
            In the early days of the church it actually was the humanity of Jesus and the presence of God that was the not-so-hidden minefield which threatened the church’s unity, hence our two cups this morning.  You might remember last month when Kate Pinkham preached, she alluded to some of the differences that divided the church back in its earliest days, and one of the biggest differences had to do with the nature of Jesus:  was Jesus fully, 100% a human being, or was he a divine being come to earth in order to bring salvation to humanity?   There were strong opinions on both sides of the question, so strong that, one or two generations after Luke wrote, certain biblical scribes decided that Luke’s original account of the last supper was an insufficient depiction of Jesus’ humanity – like my silence about the election was an insufficient endorsement of Reagan - and so took the liberty of adding about a sentence and a half to make the matter crystal clear.  Luke’s original telling ended in the middle of verse 19, “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them.”  Period.   But some later readers didn’t think this showed Jesus at his most fully human, so they added language which referred specifically to Jesus’ body and his blood.  The revised version then goes on after the words “he broke it and gave it to them,” and has Jesus say, “This is my body which is given for you… and likewise the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup…is the new covenant in my blood.”  For later generations, the last supper is not complete without mentioning that Jesus had a real body that could be broken and that he bled real blood, which meant of course he was fully, 100% a human being.  And, inadvertently, the addition resulted in Jesus’ passing the cup around the table, not once, but twice, once before the bread and once after.
            Of course, this is only something we notice if we open our Bibles and actually read them.  And this is one of the reasons Heather and I decided to give Bibles to our young people now, at the beginning of the church school year, instead of the way we have done it in the past, giving them out at the end.  The Bible is not a reward for a certain level of achievement, or for good Sunday School attendance, or anything else – it is the opportunity to read for ourselves that wonderful, ongoing story of faith which is not just about the people in these pages, but about you and me, and where we see ourselves in these stories.  This morning we saw a good intersection of Word and Sacrament, how the words that were written can influence the flavor of what we enjoy at the table, like some fresh-cut parsley can bring new life to a soup or a sauce.  As Gail read for us from Isaiah, “the grass [may] wither, and the flower [may] fade, but the word of God will stand forever.”  We put that word into our children’s hands so that they, and we, may discover that freshness for ourselves.  But it will only happen if we open our Bibles to see what they have to say to us; after all, as it is written somewhere, The Lord helps those who help themselves!
            Let us pray.

Our Community, Our World

          The questions started coming in the middle of the summer, as people began looking at their fall calendars:  “Did you know that Sunday One falls on September 11 this year?  Are we going to do Sunday One on September 11?”  And the answer, obviously, is Yes to both:  I realized the two dates would coincide as far back as last year, when Sunday One fell on the 12th, and it really makes the most sense to start church school the Sunday after Labor Day, rather than, say the Sunday before, or the one after.  Still, I completely understand the feelings behind the question:  these are two very different occasions, one of which, to borrow Franklin Roosevelt’s apt phrase, marks a day of infamy, and the other a day of celebration and new beginnings.  How do we afford each the honor and appropriate attitude it deserves?
            Now if this were the only coincidence of ideas, I could probably handle it.  But I was also reminded of the fact that today marks the beginning of the third year of our Church Vision, when we said we would focus our emphasis on mission and outreach, on ways of engaging more deeply in our community and our world.  Then my friends on the Pru Board asked me to include a few words about the coming Capital Campaign which will honor our history and provide for our legacy.  Others think now is the time to begin talking about ways of celebrating Second Church’s 300th anniversary which is less than two years away.  And if all this weren’t enough, today we find ourselves in the midst of multiple transitions as we bid Godspeed to Angie in two weeks and welcome Barb and Judy to our staff.  All of these were suggested to me as the appropriate theme for this morning’s sermon.  It’s like one of those Steven Soderbergh movies – the director who made “Traffic” and the new film “Contagion,” -  Soderbergh’s movies look like seven different movies all going on at once until you finally begin to understand first, that they are all intertwined, and then later, how.
           But the most appropriate starting point for any sermon worth its salt is the Bible, and the passage that first came to mind earlier this week as I considered the confluence of Sunday One with September 11 was the familiar one from I Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.  Now you are the body of Christ, and, individually, members of it.”  It’s a verse that speaks well to both observances this morning.  You and I have lots to celebrate together today, including seeing all our young people, seeing all of you, being together in the loving presence of God this morning, sharing the community of faith and fellowship, looking forward to a cookout and a picnic, and plans for a great year together ahead of us.  When one of us has something to celebrate, we all celebrate together.  Yet we are also mindful of the suffering in our world, the deep mourning that the remembrance of that gorgeous Tuesday morning exactly ten years ago brings, shattered as it was by nearly inconceivable destruction and death.  And as a community and as a world, as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, we all suffered together.
            But I think Paul’s words to the church at Rome are better suited for today, because love is stronger than death and good is stronger than evil:  “Let love be genuine,” he wrote, “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love each other with mutual affection; outdo each other in showing honor.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.”  These are the things that make us a community, whether we are talking about this church community, or the world community.  One of the remarkable goods that came out of September 11, 2001, was that for a while at least, the world was united, and perhaps more to the point, the world understood that it was united.  Our nation, so badly scarred, enjoyed the empathy and goodwill of nearly the entire family of nations.  More than one world leader said in those days, “We are all New Yorkers; we are all Americans.”  We were one world community.   Human nature being what it is, those sentiments did not last forever, and the world’s nations soon turned back to their own agendas and self-interest.  But even when we are not paying attention to it, or when it is difficult to see clearly, even when most visible evidence indicates otherwise, we are still a world community.  Regardless of whether we share the same goals, or whether we agree with each other, regardless of who happens to be at war with whom, or where peace might be found, we remain citizens of the same world, inhabitants of the same planet, children of the One God.
            I shared this story with you ten years ago, but today is a good day to share it again.  The first Saturday after September 11 I performed a wedding on Nantucket.  Debbie and I caught one of the first planes flying again on Friday, which meant we would be able to get back to Beverly in time for Sunday morning worship.  The bride was Jewish and the groom was Christian.  And the significance of their union on that weekend, of all weekends, was not lost on anyone.  For in spite of the fact that the nineteen hijackers believed their religion called them to death and destruction, there in that small chapel on that warm Saturday afternoon, surrounded by families with considerably different history and experience, two young people of different faiths said by their union that, No, faith does not call us to death and division, but rather to love and to unity and to wholeness.  I remember chatting with the father of the bride before the ceremony began.  He was a proud man and a faithful one, and he observed to me, “These two young people – they are teaching us something here today that the world could learn a lesson from.”  Our young people are able to teach us something that the world could learn a lesson from.
            This is one of the reasons that it is actually quite fitting that Sunday One falls on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.  Because it is from our children that our world has something to learn.  I can remember during our Open and Affirming discussions that the young people of our church, my daughter Blythe among them, wondered what the big deal was.  Our children already understood that you treat everybody the same, that you don’t single out any class of person and tell them they aren’t as good as someone else.  For them, it was a non-issue because they couldn’t imagine their friends or their world any other way.  Our young people are able to teach us something that the world could learn a lesson from.  And in a little while, at the end of our Service of Remembrance and Hope, our children will return to our midst because they are our future, and there is still something we can learn from them.
            The Psalm that Barb Schreur read this morning is the same lesson we heard on that first Sunday after September 11 – and if you want to see more of that morning’s reflection, you can find it on Second Church’s Facebook page.  So on a day that we remember changed the way we understand our world, as well as in the days following torrential rains, a tropical storm and even an earthquake, the words of Psalm 46 – especially verses one through three, which I am actually going to read as verses three to one - sound as fresh as this morning’s headlines:  “[For] though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its water roar and foam, though the very mountains tremble with its tumult, we will not be afraid, for God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble.”

            Let us pray.

The Muscular Ampersand

And so earlier this week, I was updating my database of sermons and scriptures and hymns from the past six months, and I noticed a pattern emerging in my sermon titles, and I’m wondering if you noticed it as well: January 16, “Sticks & Stones;” January 23, “Aprons & Bibs;” March 27, “Wisdom & Innocence;” April 10, “The Forest & The Trees;” later that same day, at Leanne Sterio Walt’s installation, “The Yoke & The Mantle;” June 26, “Caprice & Covenant.” And it wasn’t just my sermons which displayed the affliction: on February 27 Angie preached on “Revolutions & Wildflowers,” and on April 3, “Solitude & Solidarity.” And to top it all off, on January 30 the whole congregation got into the act when we voted to become “Open & Affirming.” The word “and,” or more specifically, its diagrammatic symbol, the ampersand, has gotten quite a robust workout here at Second Church in the past six months. And I realized that perhaps someone was trying to tell me something, and it occurred to me that, of all my sermon topics over the past thirty two years, I have never preached on the most commonly used word in the Bible, and it is high time I did!

The UCC has lately been fond of punctuation; our denomination has adopted the comma as a symbol, quoting Gracie Allen’s memorable words, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma;” God is still speaking. But as much mileage as we have gotten out of the comma, I do believe the ampersand is stronger and more muscular - partly because it has gotten such a good workout lately, and partly because it is a more powerful conjunction. For example, when we use the word “Lord” in church, we naturally think of Jesus, and when we talk about Simon, we think of the chief of apostles. And this morning you are going to help me demonstrate the power of the ampersand. I’m going to give you a word, and you are going to give me its partner. Let’s think of some famous pairs joined by the ampersand, starting in the world of entertainment: for example, when I say Abbott &, you say, Costello. How about Laurel & (Hardy)? Good! Ginger Rodgers & (Fred Astaire). George Burns & (Gracie Allen). How about some famous musical pairs: Rodgers & (Hammerstein) – Lennon & (McCartney) – Simon & (Garfunkel) – see, the ampersand made you think of someone besides Simon Peter! How about the family dinner table – what is every kid’s favorite meal? Macaroni & (cheese). Or possibly spaghetti & (meatballs). And for lunch? Peanut butter & (jelly). One more stop, the world of retailing. We can shop at Sears & (Roebuck), or Abercrombie & (Fitch), or Lord & (Taylor) – and the ampersand made you think about somebody besides Jesus when I said “Lord” from the pulpit. That little ampersand must be a pretty powerful symbol if it can keep you from thinking of Simon Peter and the Lord Jesus in the course of a single paragraph.

And, for all its ubiquity, can be a powerful little word. In fact it is a key word in the gospel of Mark, though contemporary translations won’t necessarily reveal it. In fact, Mark uses the word and so many times most translators look for alternatives just to relieve the repetition. You may have noticed that every sentence of today’s New Testament lesson begins with the word, and: “And when the sixth hour had come...” “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out...” “And some of the bystanders... said...” “And [some]one ran, filling a sponge...” “And Jesus uttered a loud cry...” “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two...” “And when the centurion... saw he breathed his last...” Mark begins every sentence of this brief passage with the word, And. We will see why in a moment. But in what is generally the better translation, the New Revised Standard Version, the editors try to mix things up a little: “When it was noon...” “At three o’clock...” “When some of the bystanders... said...” “Then Jesus gave a loud cry...” Clearly somebody – perhaps an English teacher - decided there were too many ands, so added some variety. But believe it or not, and is one of the key words in Mark’s gospel: he uses it 507 times in his 666 verses. Five of every six verses has the word and. In spite of its brevity and ubiquity, and can be a muscular conjunction.

Consider three sentences. First, “Ruth and Alan are doing the readings today.” This is the weakest and. You could exchange the order of our names and the sentence would mean the same thing. “Alan and Ruth are doing the readings” means the same thing as “Ruth and Alan are doing the readings.” Then there is the stronger and: “Ruth returned to her seat and Alan started to preach.” Here you can’t just exchange the names and get the same sense, but it falls short of cause and effect; Ruth’s returning to her seat did not cause Alan to start preaching. But then there is the muscular and: “Alan finally finished his sermon and Ruth shouted, ‘Hallelujah, it’s about time!’” In this sentence the word and signals cause and effect. Right? The end of Alan’s sermon caused Ruth to shout “Hallelujah!” And is no longer a weak, benign conjunction, but a powerful, causative one.

Much of the time when Mark uses the word and it is in one of the former senses, as a simple conjunction joining ideas. This is especially true in the earlier chapters of his gospel. But soon after his story of the transfiguration, after Jesus appeared on the mountaintop with Moses and Elijah, Mark changes the way he uses the word. It becomes less a way of connecting ideas, and more a verbal tool for creating a sense of urgency, of crisis, of one event crashing into and shaping the next one. It is Mark’s way of saying to the reader, Time to sit up and pay attention, because something really important is happening here. This is what we heard taking place in chapter 15: “And when the sixth hour had come... and at the ninth hour... and one of the bystanders said... and somebody ran and got a sponge full of vinegar... and Jesus cried out... and the curtain of the temple was torn in two... and the centurion said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” It is like the climax of a Beethoven symphony, or the final battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, or the final scene of Romeo & Juliet. This is the strongest use of the word and, in its most robust causative manifestation - this is the muscular ampersand.

And it is not just a grammatical curiosity, as Ruth’s reading from Ecclesiastes revealed to us. I mentioned earlier how the UCC has adopted the comma as one of its symbols, but I personally think that in doing so our denomination has forgotten its history. The United Church of Christ is the product of four historic ancestors, the Congregational Church, the Christian Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the German Reformed Church. In 1931 the former two denominations merged to create the Congregational & Christian Church, and three years later, in 1934, the latter two denominations merged to create the Evangelical & Reformed Church. And then in 1957 the Congregational & Christian Church merged with the Evangelical & Reformed Church to create the United Church of Christ. You might say the UCC has ampersands in our very bloodstream. Four faith traditions have become one.

There is strength in numbers, and this is the point of Ecclesiastes 4: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other, but woe to anyone who falls alone and has not another to lift them up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though and enemy might prevail against one who is alone, two will quickly withstand.” And then comes the kicker: “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” In other words, every time you add another person to the equation, you become stronger. I will often use this lesson in marriage ceremonies which involve blended families, because even though two are becoming one, this scripture celebrates the importance of any children from a previous marriage. Every time you add another person to the relationship, the relationship becomes stronger.

This is why our Second Church welcome is an extravagant one. It is why we say that “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you have a church home here.” Every single person, every individual in this church family, is necessary, and we still have brothers and sisters who haven’t come through these doors yet who will someday be equal partners in the work and worship of our ministry. No addition to this faith family is a weak and, just another name to add to the rolls so that our roster of members becomes longer and longer. Each person who comes into this family of faith is a robust & muscular addition, brings unique gifts and ideas, and is as important a member as any other. Our fifty and sixty year members and the person who may be visiting for the first time today each brings a distinctive contribution to the character of Second Church.

It is because of the importance of this little three letter word that God keeps adding to the great cloud of witnesses. And it is why today’s sermon will likely be the only one I ever preach that begins and ends with the word, and.

[Hallelujah! It’s about time!]

Let us pray.

Vision Test

Is anyone else quietly relieved that the stock markets are closed on Saturday and Sunday? I think I’ve come down with a mild case of vertigo this week from watching stocks rise and fall like one of those corkscrew roller coasters at Six Flags, the kind that not only climbs and drops, but flips you around and around and turns you upside down and empties your pockets – an apt analogy – before you come to the end of it and wonder what in the world just happened to you. Down 600 points on Monday, up 400 on Tuesday, down 500 on Wednesday, up 400 on Thursday, and up another 100 on Friday. Yet for all of that frenetic activity, the market as a whole is only down 175 points since it all began. And I’ve noticed that everyone has an pet theory: it’s because the President is not providing stronger leadership; it’s because the House Republicans decided to play chicken with the debt ceiling; it’s because Italy and Spain are in danger of following Greece into default; it’s because the Fed is keeping interest rates so low; it is because we, the consumer, are not spending enough and it is because we the consumer are not saving enough. In other words, don’t even try to figure it out, because it is probably a combination of these and a host of other factors I don’t understand. But I did appreciate the words of a news commentator the other night who tried to put it into perspective. I’m a huge fan of NECN news; it’s the only local news I watch, and the station’s financial analyst Jennifer Lane offered some solace the other night. She said, basically, to ignore the short-term. She had been getting letters and phone calls and emails from panicked investors asking what should they buy and what should they sell, and her response was basically, if you have fluctuation fluster, get out of your chair, turn off the TV and go outside for a walk. For while the daily gyrations of the stock market are not meaningless or inconsequential, it is always best to take the long view. If the market falls today, it will rise again; if it soars today, it will come back down to earth. Pause, take a deep breath, don’t panic over yesterday or tomorrow, but look toward the horizon and know that better days are coming. Or as Jesus said in a different context, “Let the troubles of the day be sufficient to themselves.” Take the long view.

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord...” We heard John Knott read these words of Jeremiah, not once, not twice, but three different times in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord... when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch... The days are surely coming, says the Lord... when it shall no longer be said, As the Lord lives... The days are surely coming, says the Lord... when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” The days are surely coming, says the Lord, but they are not yet. There lies the tension. We don’t know what the days that are coming will bring, which is often the source of anxiety. But we do know that the days that are coming, come from the Lord.

At the time these words were written, Israel was in exile. Entire communities were uprooted from Israel and Judah and forcibly marched to Babylon and Assyria, where they lived as refugees. It would be as if the entire population of Beverly and Salem were compelled to gather whatever belongings we could fit in our cars and forced to settle in Woonsocket, or maybe Central Falls. It was like that for three generations, and in the early days of the exile, Jeremiah, against all empirical evidence, tried to reassure them and comfort them, saying that things may look difficult and unsettling for now, but better days are coming: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord...” Like NECN’s Jennifer Lane, Jeremiah advised taking the long view: don’t panic because of what yesterday looked like or what tomorrow might bring, Jeremiah counseled, but look toward the horizon, look toward the God of hope, and keep God’s faithful vision before you, because better days are coming. Jeremiah brought Israel a vision, and in doing so he brought them hope.

As a church, God also bring us vision and hope. You and I are coming into our third year of the Vision we adopted two years ago, and I think that every now and then it is helpful to take stock of where we have been and where God is leading us. The focus of our first year was Extravagant Welcome, this past year was Congregational Life, and this coming year we will turn our focus to Mission and Outreach, but as we look back, we recognize that while we intended to focus on one aspect each year, all three have been in fact intertwined, since none of them really stands alone. Our weekly study groups have used Unbinding the Gospel and Living the Questions as ways of deepening our own faith and learning new ways of articulating that faith among others. We’ve hired Judy Levy as our new Assistant Administrator for Electronic Communications, and Judy is currently redesigning our church web site, which will be up and running next month, and we will be seeing other communications upgrades, both among our congregation and out in the community as well. We decided to make it crystal clear that Second Church welcomes all God’s children into our church family, and became an Open and Affirming Congregation. We have deepened our relationship with God in our Faith Empowering Group, and with each other with a variety of lay ministry projects. We sent a mission team to Washington DC, we gave Dane Street Beach a good spring cleaning, we became involved with Recovery High School, and we strengthened our relationship with already established mission partners, from Beverly Bootstraps to the Casa San Jose. And, miracle of miracles, there are even signs that God is beginning to reveal to us that elusive holy grail of congregationalism, namely new and creative ways of governance and organization. Because God brought to us our church vision, our eyes have been lifted from the day to day, which is to say, where we are today - to help us look toward the horizon, which is where we are being led; God gave us a vision of who we are as a congregation, and who we can still become.

Three weeks ago, you and I got a letter in the mail which brought news that can best be described as bittersweet: the good news is that the Federated Church of Cotuit, on Cape Cod, is getting a wonderful new minister in the fall. The bittersweet side of it is that their wonderful new minister is our wonderful current Associate Minister, who has served our congregation for almost exactly six years. We are excited for you Angie, at the same time we will be sorry to see you go. The time for farewells and testimonials is not quite yet, since you’ll still be among us through the end of September. But it is time to begin considering God’s vision for us, vis-à-vis pastoral ministry, and what that will bring. At a time like this I am reminded of words of the seemingly immortal Susan Shelmerdine, who has said to us both on more than one occasion: “Ministers come, and ministers go, but I’m still here!” Susan may as well have been talking about the church as about herself. But even though ministers come and ministers go and the church is still here, it is often the shape of ministry that changes, and it is God’s vision and desire that draw the contours of that shape. Both our church staff, and some of our church leadership, our board chairs and moderator, have begun conversations about the transition ahead of us, and the Board of Deacons as well as the congregation as a whole will be determining what our next steps will be. As we do so, I think we would do well to pay attention to the words of Jeremiah, who counsels us, even as we attend to the passing of days, to keep our vision fixed on the horizon as well: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with you... it will not be like the covenant which I made with your ancestors... I will write my words upon your hearts, and I will be your God, and you will be my people, and you shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, and I will forgive your transgression, and remember you always.”

While our vision is looking to the days ahead, there is one more ship on the horizon that is sailing our way, and that is the celebration of Second Church’s 300th anniversary. In 1713, the Colonial Council in Boston granted a charter to the Parish of Salem and Beverly; in 1714 the original church was built, portions of which still stand in the viewing cupboard against the cemetery wall; and in 1715 The Rev. John Chipman was called to be our minister, and served for 60 years. This means that, in two years, we will have three years of celebration ahead of us, and plans are already underway to celebrate our heritage and to provide for our future.

The story Angie read from Acts this morning is a story of multiple visions. God spoke to Ananias in a vision, and sent him to a man named Saul. Saul, who was temporarily blind, had a vision in which someone named Ananias would come to him. And when Ananias reached Saul, he placed his hands upon him and Saul’s vision was restored, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Saul’s name was changed to Paul, and Paul became, even more than Peter, the spiritual and theological architect of the Christian church. All because Saul, and Ananias, and many who came before them and many who have come after them, saw God’s vision before them. In the days before us, as we continue to live into our Vision, to lean into our transition, and to look toward our tercentennial, may we be as receptive to the vision God has for us, as Jeremiah and Ananias and Saul were to the one God had for them.

Let us pray.

Yes, We Have No Zucchini

In the waning years of the nineteenth century, Guiseppe and Guiditta Vumbacca emigrated from a small village in Calabria to the promise of a better life in America. Once they passed through Ellis Island, where an immigration officer who didn’t understand Italian chopped the final vowel off the family name so that Vumbacca became Vumback, they moved to central Connecticut and resumed the only life they knew: they started a farm. And because a farm needs farmhands, they produced ten children, the eldest of whom, Thomas, was my maternal grandfather. Tom had mixed feelings about growing up on a farm: it was his job every morning before school to go out and milk the cows, and at the end of the day, he had to grab a chicken, wring its neck and pluck the feathers for that night’s dinner. Which explains why, as an adult, he never drank milk and never ate chicken again.

But Tom Vumback loved his vegetable garden. And it is probably because of this that ever since I was little, I always had a vegetable garden too. I can remember lazy summer afternoons helping my grandfather in his garden with easy chores: planting beans, picking tomatoes, hoeing around the eggplant. And when we were finished he would set up two chairs, light his cigar, hand me a bottle of root beer, and we would sit and talk and just listen to his garden grow.

I also worked in my dad’s garden when I was young, but unlike my grandfather, my dad actually made me work. I had to turn the garden over by hand each spring, shovel the chicken manure he had delivered... have you ever worked with chicken manure? Dad insisted it was superior to cow manure, and it certainly was in the department of aromatic pungency... its ordure is forever tattooed on my olfactory. I also had to weed my Dad’s garden, and thanks to the chickens, there were weeds aplenty. I had to stake the tomatoes, pick the beans and keep the zucchini under control. But still, I remember Dad’s gardens fondly, and it is the reason why, in my adult life, I have still always had a vegetable garden. I dug one in our back yard at our first house in Calumet, Michigan, I dug one in the back yard of our parsonage in Bridgewater, Connecticut and I dug one in back of our garage on Conant St.

And it has always been an Italian garden. I’ve planted tomatoes, pole beans, zucchini, several varieties of peppers, eggplant, and onions; my herb garden has oregano, basil, parsley, chives and dill. It’s great to be able to just go out in the back yard and pick what you need when making dinner, because let’s face it - if all of a sudden you’re just jonesing for some dill, and the stores are closed – it’s so nice to just walk out the back door and pick it fresh.

But I’ve come to notice something a little different about my Beverly garden: it only grows what it wants to grow. When I first started it ten years ago, I tried planting what I’ve always planted, with decidedly mixed results. My eggplant was disappointing. The peppers bore fruit, but to paraphrase the apostle Paul, that fruit did not abide. Tomatoes grow great, and I’m sure that’s thanks as much to Jake as it is to anyone. Most herbs grow pretty well, though the basil only grows so big and then stops. My garden loves to pump out the beans – I have three different varieties this year. But oddly enough, one thing that will not grow in my garden is zucchini. Zucchini! Everyone can grow zucchini! You can throw a couple seeds out the church window and have enough zucchini to feed a small nation. But zucchini just will not grow in my garden. I get lots of squash flowers: they grow into bright yellow trumpets that mock me in the morning – but no fruit, no zucchini. So after years of stubborn planting, forming the little hills just so, making sure there is fresh soil and, yes, manure each year, fertilizing as it grew, I’ve given up. And in doing so, I finally learned an important lesson about gardening. You’ve got to listen to your garden. You’ve got to listen to your garden.

Suzanne Munore read us one of those biblical stories that we hear so often, and think we know so well, that the point of it usually gets lost. “Listen!” Jesus said, “A sower went out to sow...” And what do we usually call this parable Jesus tells? The parable of the sower and the seeds, right? But the parable is not about the sower, and it is not about the seed. Listen:

“Some seed fell on the path, and the birds ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it sprang up quickly, and when the sun rose, it was scorched. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns chocked it. And other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.”

Jesus’ parable is about soil – about the different kinds of soils in which the seed is planted. The sower in each instance remains the same: it’s safe to say that the sower is either God or Jesus, and we get that. Likewise the seed in each instance remains the same: it is the gospel, the good news, the message of redemption that Jesus brings. The only thing that varies in the parable is the soil, the medium into which the seed is introduced. And that soil, folks, is us. It’s not about how good a sower God is, or how fruitful the word-seed is, it’s about us and how receptive we are to God’s speaking to us. The UCC likes to say, “God is still speaking;” the parable Suzanne read asks us, “Are we still listening? Can we hear what God is saying to us?” Are we the well worn path, the place that everybody walks right on by and doesn’t notice that God is trying to say something to us? Are we the rocky ground, have we hardened our shells so that even if we hear God speaking to us, we are too sophisticated to think we need to do anything about what God is saying? Are we the thicket of thorns, where there is already so much going on in our lives that there isn’t room for God to grow in us? Or are we the rich soil, filled with the nutrients and open to the sunlight that wants to stream into us and help us grow and mature into the fruitful people God knows we can be?

Notice that Jesus begins and ends this parable with the same word, “Listen.” And you know, as it turns out, I was not listening to my garden. I was planting what I wanted to harvest, and darn it I was going to keep planting zucchini year after year until those flowers finally produced fruit. But all along, my garden was trying to tell me what would actually grow there, it was giving me beans and tomatoes and onions and such, yet I kept insisting on planting what my garden was trying to tell me would not grow. It is a parable about the soil, and in this instance at least, the sower wasn’t listening to the soil at all.

The same thing sometimes happens to a church. Some things will grow, and some things will not, and we need to listen to the garden before we start planting seeds indiscriminately. I think this is something our Vision process did for us; it taught us to listen to each other, learning what kinds of things would make for fertile soil and fruitful growth, instead of just latching on to the latest church growth strategies and assuming that what works for another church would work for us. The Right Reverend Kirk Smith is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, and six or so months ago he wrote a great reflection on the things that really make a difference in healthy, vital churches; here is some of what he said:

Be genuine. Do not under any circumstances try to be trendy or hip, unless you are already intrinsically trendy or hip. If you are a group of ninety year olds who like crocheting and Beethoven, by God be proud of it.

Actually read the Bible. Start with Genesis, it’s pretty cool, and don’t worry, it’s OK to skip the boring parts.

Start worrying about extreme poverty, violence against women, racism and consumerism.

Stop worrying about getting young people into the church. Stop worrying about marketing strategies. Take a deep breath. If there is a God, that God is not going to die even if there are no more Christians at all. Don’t forget, it’s not all about you; it’s all about God.

Figure out who is suffering in your community. Go be with them. Learn how to sit with people who are dying.

Listen to God, listen to Wisdom, listen to Love, more than you speak your opinions.

These are the kinds of general things that prepare the soil, if you will, that will make the conditions ripe for growing. How often though the church is tempted to go out and buy the magic beans that promise to grow the stalk that reaches into the clouds. “Let’s get a Christian rock band; let’s replace the entire front of the church with a projection screen; let’s meet on Saturday nights instead of Sunday morning.” These are things that might work for some, but I think what Smith is saying is that there are some things that are appropriate for the church as a whole, and there are some things that are appropriate only for particular churches. Listen to your garden; it will reveal what it needs to grow.

This is the lesson of Revelation. I was a little reluctant to choose a reading from Revelation so soon after the rapture failed to materialize, since so much of that conversation grew out of a gross misappropriation of the last book of the Bible. But now that the Bruins have won the Stanley Cup, the rapture can come any time it wants, and we are free to understand that this morning’s New Testament lesson is actually a key to understanding both the book of Revelation, and to what we are saying about the church this morning. Revelation is a letter, a general letter written by John, addressed to seven churches in Asia Minor. Chapter 1 and chapters 4-22 are written to everyone in all the churches. They are words of warning and words of encouragement to those churches; they are not a prediction of the future, but rather a word of guidance to the present church of John’s day. Words, as I said, meant for everyone. Chapters 2 and 3, however, contain words of advice addressed specifically and individually to each of the seven local churches that John names in the first chapter. There is a specific message for the church in Ephesus, there is a specific message for the church in Smyrna, there is a specific message for the church in Pergamum, and so on for the churches in Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea – because each individual church also needed to hear something different. John’s words in Revelation are not one-size-fits all: what works in Ephesus may not work in Philadelphia. Rather, John understood what each church needed to hear, and so he provided it, first to each, then to all.

Listen to your garden. Understand what the soil will bear. Don’t try to plant zucchini in a tomato garden, even if all your neighbors have such an abundant crop of zucchini that they are giving it away to friends and strangers alike. Heck, do them a favor and take some off their hands! When we listened to our garden here at Second Church, we discovered the fruit it would bear. We became an Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ. We are sending a mission team to Washington, D.C. in July. We have just hired an Assistant for Electronic Communication. We are exploring more creative models of church organization. We are expanding our local mission, and we heard last week about one of our newest partnerships, with Recovery High School. This is just some of the fruit of our Vision. What works for us may or may not work for others, and what works for others may or may not work for us. But if we listen to our gardens, and understand that growth is more about the soil – about us - than about what gets planted in it, then the harvest will be a rich one, and God will be known, and this, God’s garden, will be blessed.

Let us pray.