Song of the Day
The Story of the Pew
The most common question the Church Educators at The Old North Church are asked is, “what is the deal with the little boxes?’ The most common response is, “well these are box pews and each box was owned by a family. Old North was a closed congregation until 1912 and to worship here you had to own a pew.” It is at this point that most people have an outraged response. “Well that is not very Christian” they might say or “where did the people who could not afford to pay to go to Church?” All good questions but it firsts requires us to stop thinking like a 21st Century person and think like a person from the 18th century. All of history compels us to think as if we were in the particular period we are studying.
It is always good to remember that when one speaks of any topic of history, it needs to be separated from the present way society thinks about things. Religion was much different in the 17th and 18th century compared to today, and the thought process is very different.
Before the 13th century, the church did not have seats except for maybe the King and other dignitaries. The great church of Europe was built without fixed seating. If seats were required, they would be moved to the church and after the service would be removed again. Starting in the 13th century, backless stone benches began to appear in churches first along the walls and then more and more in the nave of the church.
The Protestant Reformation shifted the focus of the service from the altar of the church to the pulpit and placed more of an emphasis on the sermon. With this change came a desire to sit, perhaps the services became longer, but wooden benches started to replace the stone one during the 14th century and by the 15th century they were very common in churches.
Initially, congregants would have installed their bench at their expense then the church came to the realization that it could make money off the sale of the benches. Churches were, and are, in constant need of funds to maintain the buildings so the sales of pews would have assisted in that endeavor. As proof of ownership a pew deed was given by the church and in some instances recorded at the county deed office as an actual real estate transaction.
General seating in churches was not something that was widely available. Pew owners would be towards the front of the church while those without a pew would be situated in the back of the church. I often joke that today that would have to be reversed since no one wants to sit down front.
As the benches were not fixed to the floor at this time, the owners started to lock them in boxes so the benches would not be stolen or used by someone else if they were not in church on a particular Sunday, and this led to what can be seen at Old North today the Box Pew.
Widely used in Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian churches, the practice started to fall out of favor around the middle of the 20th century. At Old North, the practiced ceased with the 1912 renovation although the box pews remain for historical purposes.
To those who might scoff at the idea of selling seats or the box pew system all I can say is historically speaking the practice of selling the Pew has been around much longer than the present system.
Counting the Cost
Very often in our day to day lives, we want to know what the cost of something is. We go to the supermarket or some other store to buy something, and we are interested in what it is going to cost us. Everything in life has some cost associated with it and what the Scripture is telling us today is that discipleship requires us something.
One of the greatest theologians of the 20th century was Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1937 he wrote a book titled The Cost of Discipleship. The Germany of 1937 that Bonhoeffer was writing about had become secularized and was spinning out of control. Now just a point of clarification here, not all secularization is bad and the church of the 21st century needs to learn to live in this new reality much as it did for Bonhoeffer. The time that Bonhoeffer was writing was the dawn of the Second World War.
The aim of his little book was to call people back to a sense of what it means to be Christian in what is considered to be the modern world. He is suggesting that there is a cost associated with being a follower of Jesus Christ, and in some cases that cost is our very lives. For some, like Bonhoeffer it is their physical life, but for the vast majority of us, it is our spiritual life. I have said this before, and will undoubtedly say it again, to be a follower of Jesus Christ we must change the way we think and act and view the world. We must have a Christian worldview.
The words we heard today were spoken by Jesus while he was on the road to Jerusalem. He knew that he was on his way to the cross, but the people with him thought he was on his way to rule an empire. He spoke to them in vivid terms so there would be no misunderstanding, but like most of the Scriptures, he was not speaking literally. He was telling them that the one who follows him would not be on their way to worldly power and glory, but that they must be ready for loyalty which would call them to sacrifice the dearest things in life in exchange for a suffering which would be like the agony of a person on the cross.
Wait, Jesus is saying that we will have to suffer to be his followers? Will we have to turn our backs on worldly power and possessions? Yes, that is faithful what he is telling us. He is telling us that to be a faithful follower of his we must be willing to sacrifice the things that are the dearest to us and that no love in life can compare to the love we must bear to him.
So we are faced with this question this morning and each and every day. Is it possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple?
Let’s turn for a moment back to Bonhoeffer. He writes about what he calls “cheap grace.” Cheap grace is, “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
Sadly the church of his time had fallen into the trap of cheap grace. People wanted religion, but they wanted it on their terms. They wanted to dictate to the church what they will believe, and they will dictate to the church the discipline they are willing to follow. We see much of the same thing happening today. Some have watered the faith down so much that there is not much of what the Apostles taught. There are more than 40,000 Christian denominations today. That boggles my mind. We have taken the basic message of grace and reconciliation and love and turned it on its head. We have taken something so straightforward and made it complicated. By watering down the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we have cheapened it, and in that it has lost all of its meaning.
Faith comes from obedience to something that is outside of us something that exists in spite of everything we do to try and make it go away. We cannot have it both ways; we cannot do what we want to do but still call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ. To be a follower requires obedience to Jesus and His Gospel. And this obliges us to work at it every day.
When Jesus called His Apostles, they had to leave their possessions and their lives to follow Him. We see Peter, the future leader of the Apostles, leaving his fishing nets to go and follow Jesus. Matthew, the tax collector, left his coin box at the gate and followed Jesus. These are concrete examples of how the lives of the followers of Jesus need to change if they are going to be authentic followers.
In the story of the man who comes to Jesus and asks to follow Him but he has to go and bury his father, who has just died, first. Jesus says to him, “let the dead bury the dead.” He tells the rich young man to go and sell everything that he has and follow Him. Lives need to be transformed if we are to be authentic followers of Jesus.
In sharp contrast to “cheap grace” or what I like to call the easy way, Bonhoeffer advocates for “Costly Grace.”
“Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” ”
Faith comes with obedience and obedience comes with faith. It was not easy for the Apostles to leave all they had behind, and Jesus is not even asking us to do that, He is asking us to think and act in a certain way, to conform our lives to a certain way, and that way is His way the example he left for all of us.
Our world is not much different today than it was in Bonhoeffer’s day. Organized religion has done a terrible job, and for that, we are paying the price. When the leaders go off on a tangent and seem to be more interested in legislation than a transformation of lives, there is a real problem. When the concern is more for the institution of the Church then for people who are the church there is a real problem. When the shepherds forget their job is to protect their sheep and to lay down their lives for them, it is no wonder we see less and less people in the church. If I require you to be an authentic follower of Jesus, then I need to be a genuine follower of Jesus. Otherwise, I should just shut up!
Obedience to not an easy thing for us. We are not designed for it if you will. We have been given free will, but that freedom comes at a cost. We have the ability to choose the narrow way, the way filled with rocks and crooked paths, the way where the bushes grow over the route and where sometimes we cannot see the road in front of us, the way of Christ, or the wide open, easy way, the way of the smooth way with plenty of pit stops, the way of the world. Jesus never promised His followers that life would be easy. Jesus told us, explicitly told us, that we would be persecuted.
In the 15th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, Jesus tells His followers, “If the world hates you, you know it hated me before it hated you.” This fallen world we live in hates everything that Christ stands for and will do everything to destroy it. Evil and hatred exist, but we bring love and compassion to the world, Christ, and His Church, are all about love, that is the simple message of Gospel.
Church let me say this as plain as I can, if the world is hating you for being a Christian then you are doing it right! If you are standing up at a time when people are yelling at you to sit down, you are doing it right. If you feel like you are the lone voice crying in the wilderness, you are doing it right. If you post the love of Jesus Christ for all of the humanity on Facebook and your friends and family unfriend you, you are doing it right!
“Costly Grace” is the call of all of us, me and you, the call to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles and the footsteps of Christ.
But what it is not is a throwing off of whatever we have. Jesus is not calling all of us to sell all we have and give it to the poor. He is not calling all of us to live in a monastery or something like that. No, these are not bad things, things are not bad, it is how we use them, and they use us that is bad. We have been given the capacity to think and to discern those thoughts and beliefs and then we have to choose which way we are to go. There is a cost associated with being a follower and that cost is not being a slave to our passions. The cost is not doing it our way but doing it God’s way. The cost is conforming our lives to what God wants and how God wants us to act. And yes, that requires work, it requires listening, and it compels us to recommit our lives each and every day.
Those who liked in the early days of the church write about how we need to get our passions under control. Anger is a passion. We have all been angry, some of us may be angry right now because I keep going on and on… But anger is a passion, and it can lead us to do some pretty nasty things. Psychologists will tell us that the passions are irrational, all of the passions and we should not make decisions from a passionate point of view. When we are angry, we are not thinking straight, and we might say or do something that is harmful to ourselves or another person.
But is anger always bad? No, anger used in the right way can lead to change. It is all in how we use the passions. Do they control us or do we control them? We should be angry that our faith has been co-opted by some and twisted around, so it is hard to even find the words of Jesus in there. We should be mad that our faith is being used to hurt people and to marginalize people when it should be a faith filled with love and acceptance. Church if you are not angry about this then we are not doing it right.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to obedience to the Gospel of Christ. We are called to obedience to His church, not just the parts we like, but to the whole program. We cannot have a foot in both the church and the world we need to make a choice between the easy way of cheap grace or the difficult way of Costly Grace.
Let us decide right this minute that we will endeavor to be obedient to What Christ is calling us too. Let us decide at this moment that we will endeavor to follow the path of Costly Grace and not that of Cheap Grace. And let is decide, right now, that we will begin anew the process of transformation of our lives. If we are to truly be disciples, true followers of Christ, then the transformation has to begin with us. We need to turn our anger into love, our hatred into love, our fear into love there is no other way.
There was a man from Russia who came to Alaska in the early part of the last century. He came as a missionary to the local population and is an example to me of how to bring the love of Christ to those we minister to. He is known as Herman of Alaska, and he summed up our lives as followers of Christ this with these words, “From this day forth, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and strive to do His holy will.”
Let us make that our prayer this morning and every morning. Amen.
Church Goers Desire a Quality Sermon
I am not sure how much time each week I spend on sermon preparation. Since moving to the new position at Bethany Congregational Church in Quincy last fall I do not preach every week. I share the pulpit with the Senior Pastor, so I usually preach one maybe two Sundays a month. Regardless of how often I preach my sermon preparation is about the same.
I am a Lectionary preacher and use the Revised Common Lectionary. The Lectionary provides me at least four pericopes to choose from usually on a theme. Sometimes determining that theme is a challenge but most of the time it is evident. In my congregation, we use one of those Scriptures and usually read a Psalm responsively.
I begin the week by looking at the Lectionary text and begin to circle in on the one I want. This process usually happens rather quickly as the Church office needs my sermon title and Scripture passage on Monday to make the newspaper deadline. So I look at the Scripture passages and then peak at the various commentaries and come up with a working title. Sometimes the title that is published has nothing to do with the final product a week later.
I am a manuscript preacher, so I make notes, pray, and think about the sermon all during the week. I might hear something in the news or come across something on a blog that I throw into the sermon. I rise early on Sunday morning and put the manuscript together; this takes about an hour. Although I have a manuscript very often, I stray from the written text just a little.
So why am I writing this about sermon preparation? Recently the Pew Research Forum released the results of a survey, “Choosing a New Church or House of Worship.” The study shows that what most Protestants are looking for when seeking a new church is the quality of the sermon and a warm welcome when they visit.
I used to think because that is what I was led to believe by the “Mega Church” pastors that we needed to have flashy lights and a rock band to bring people in. I also felt that I needed to throw off the robe and wear jeans a T-shirt to preach. But apparently, if you cannot preach, none of that matters!
There is no doubt that the sermon is the largest part of the service. I have not done the math but I would say a third of the service, for the most part, is the sermon. Our service lasts about an hour, a little longer on a communion Sunday, and of that time I preach twenty to twenty-five minutes. If there is someone better at math than me, please let me know. But with that much of the service devoted to preaching it better be good!
The survey also shows that 85% of people decide after their first visit if they are going to return to the Church or not. It appears that environmental factors such as air conditioning don’t play into the decision rather the warmth of the welcome. I like to call this the user experience, and it begins before they even come through the door.
59% of seekers under 30, our target audience, use online resources to help them find a church. What they find online will determine if they walk through your door. What does your web presence look like? Is it old and run down? Are the pictures out of date or are there any pictures? Is the church address clearly able to be found, you would be surprised how many church websites don’t have the church address listed. Do you have a “What We Believe” section? All of these items are important and need to be tended too. What about social media, do you have a Facebook or Twitter presence? Again, these are important.
The bottom line for me is we can have the brand new building with state of the art lighting, sound, and music. We can have the best programming in the world and Sunday School classes for every age, but if they never come through the door, or never return all of that is just a waste.
Off to spend some time in sermon preparation.
Thanks to Professor John Fea for pointing me towards the study.
The Grand Army of the Republic in Massachusetts, Part 1, The First Encampment
On September 25, 1866, three veterans, representing the Soldiers and Sailors Union of Massachusetts, traveled to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and were inducted into the newly formed Grand Army of the Republic. General Charles Devens Jr., Major Austin S. Cushman, and Chaplain Alonzo Quint were given the ritual and rules governing the new organization and set off back to Massachusetts to bring together the veterans of the Civil War.
It was agreed upon that General Devens would become the provisional commander until ten posts could be formed. He would not serve long as it was decided that Major Cushman would take on the responsibility to organize what would become the Department of Massachusetts.
First Grand Commander
Upon their return to Massachusetts, Major Cushman organized Post # 1 in the City of New Bedford with a charter date of October 4, 1866. The Charter was issued by National Commander in Chief Stephen Augustus Hurlburt of Illinois. However, a new charter was issued on October 14, 1866, so it could be signed by the new Provisional Department Commander, Austin Cushman.
Over the next several months’ posts were organized all across the Commonwealth and by General Order No. 3 a call went out to hold a Department Encampment on May 7, 1867, at Mechanics Hall on Williams Street in the City of New Bedford. Mechanics Hall was being used by Post #1 as their meeting place at the time.
When the meeting was gaveled in on May 7th at 7 pm, ten of the eleven posts had sent delegates to the meeting. Post #2 from Nantucket was the only post not to be in attendance.
As the first order of business the Provisional Commander, Austin Cushman, put for the purposes and objectives of the new order.
- The preservation of those kind and fraternal feelings which have long bound together the soldiers and sailors who have stood together in many battles, sieges, engagements, and marches.
- To demonstrate the strength of these ties by works of kindness and material aid to those who need assistance.
- To provide as far as it may be possible for the support, care and education of the orphans of soldiers or sailors, and for the maintenance of the widows of soldiers and sailors.
- To render protection and assistance to disabled soldiers or sailors, whether disabled by wounds, disease, old age or misfortune.
- To establish and defend the rights of the soldiers and sailors lately in the service of the United States, with a view to secure a proper appreciation and recognition of their services and the acknowledgment of their just claims upon the community.
- To maintain unswerving allegiance to the United States of America, based upon a paramount respect for and fidelity to the National Constitution and laws, and manifesting itself by discountenancing whatever may tend to weaken loyalty, incite to insurrection, treason or rebellion, or in any manner impair the efficiency and permanency of our free institutions; also to serve as the defenders of universal liberty, equal rights and justice to all men.
After Commander Cushman’s presentation, he called upon Chaplain Alonzo Quit to deliver an address to those assembled. At the close of the
Chaplain’s speech, Commander Cushman dismissed the assembled guests so the business of the day could be accomplished.
A nominating committee was formed, and the following candidates were put forward:
Grand Commander ~ Austin S. Cushman, Post #1 New Bedford
Sr. Vice Grand Commander ~ A. A. Goodell, Post #10 Worcester
Jr. Vice Grand Commander ~ B.A. Bridges, Post #6 Holliston
Assistant Adjutant-General ~ J.T. Lurvey, Post #4 Melrose
Assistant Quartermaster-General ~ Henry A. Hallgreen, Post #7 Boston
Council of Administration:
Alonzo H. Quint, Post #1 New Bedford
S.F. Keyes, Post #7 Boston
Robert Crossman, 2nd, Post #3 Taunton
J.G.B. Adams, Post #5 Lynn
G.H. Long, Post #11 Charlestown
According to the “Early History of the Grand Army of the Republic in Massachusetts,” Commander Cushman “announced that he accepted the office of Grand Commander, to which he had been elected, and thanked the delegates for the trust and confidence thus reposed in him. He pledged himself to do all in his power to promote the growth of the Order, promote harmony and extend the usefulness of the organization.”
After extracts from the rules and regulations prescribing the duties of the several officers of the Department, it was resolved that the headquarters of the department should be in Boston.
With no further business to come before the Department the encampment was closed with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.
The Registration of Churches in Massachusetts
The church that I am presently serving, Bethany Congregational Church, is opening a preschool this year, and part of the licensing process with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is assembling a variety of documents to include the incorporation of the church. In Massachusetts, churches are considered corporations and therefore must register with the Secretary of the Commonwealth Corporations Division.
The church was established in 1639 as a branch of the Puritan church in Boston. The church existed as such until 1750 when a split became evident, and what is now the First Parish Church, Unitarian was formed. It was not until 1832 when the Evangelical Society of Quincy was formed which would eventually become the current Bethany Congregational Church.
We searched the current records as well as the archives of the church, and the only document we could find was the original covenant that was signed by the founding members in 1832. There was no corporate paperwork anywhere that we could find. A quick search of the corporation’s database at the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s website turned up a reference to the church being organized and pointed to the Acts and Resolves passed by the General Court of Massachusetts of 1887.
During the precolonial and colonial period in Massachusetts, churches were charted by royal decree and then by an act of the Royal Governor. The Charter issued in 1639 passed to the Unitarians with the vote to change their theology. When the new church was organized in 1832, there was no mechanism for a charter from the state, so there was no corporation. The Acts and Resolves of 1887 changed all of that.
Chapter 404 Section 1: Any church now existing or that may be hereafter organized in this Commonwealth, may be incorporated according to the provisions of this act.
Chapter 404 Section 5 stated that all churches shall be incorporated in like manner to other corporations in the Commonwealth and have the same rights and responsibilities.
The result was that we had no articles of incorporation other than the original covenant of 1832 and the bylaws of the Church.
Thankfully we were able to obtain a statement from the Secretary of the Commonwealth stating that we were, in fact, a corporation and thus able to file the appropriate paperwork with the Department of Education.
I find it interesting that before 1887 the General Court of Massachusetts granted permission to organize churches in the Commonwealth. Apparently, from what I learned from the Secretary of State’s Office, there were so many churches being organized and it was taking up valuable legislative time, so it was decided by the Acts and Resolves of 1887, to transfer that responsibility to the Secretary of State.
Healing Hands
I would like to start with a little story this morning. As many of you know, I am involved in disaster relief work. In the past, the Church has deployed me to various locations after some disaster has struck. I have been to Newtown, Connecticut, and Blacksburg, Virginia after the tragic school shootings ripped through both communities. But the most impactful deployment I have been on was to New Orleans. Actually, we were deployed to Baton Rouge after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
First, let me clear something up, I do not believe, nor does Scripture hold, that God sends storms to wipe people off the face of the earth. God made a covenant with Noah and a covenant with all of the humanity when he sent his Son Jesus Christ for us. God is the God of love and compassion, and no God I worship does this.
I bring up the deployment to Louisiana as it is green in our minds with the recent devastation that has befallen that state. I arrived in Baton Rouge shortly after the winds stopped blowing. When I left, I had no idea where I was staying when I got there. All I knew was I had a rental car, so if needed I could sleep in that I guess.
We are usually deployed in teams of three or four people with various skills and we coordinate our activities with and through the local church. On this particular deployment, we worked very closely with Catholic Charities. Another thing you quickly learn after something like a hurricane happens is that all of this nonsense about who is and who is not a Christian simply fall away in the trash heap they belong in. All of the stupidity that divides denominations does not seem to matter when you are all pulling people out of the water and plucking them off rooftops.
So we set out on our work making sure supplies arrived at where they needed to get to aid the people they intended to aid. This was not an easy task, as you can imagine, truckloads of supplies and people were arriving in record numbers, and it all needed to go somewhere. The group I worked with was tasked with putting all of the pieces together.
Shortly after our work began, a man came into the area we were working out of and asked if there was any way we could help support the shelter that had been established at a local church right around the corner from where we were. We quickly drove over there to find the church filled to overflowing capacity with people who had walked from New Orleans and were now living in the shelter. They had no food and water was quickly running out. We did what we could for them on the spot and arranged for others to take over. While there we heard about another group of people that was hold up at the airport.
So we worked out the network of people and ended up at the state command center to gather info about whom and how many where there and what we could do to bring them, aide. We were told no one was there, that everyone had been evacuated from the airport. We were told this by local, state, and federal officials that were, in fact, true. But the people we had spoken with had just been there and saw all of the people.
A decision was made to attempt to get to the airport and see for ourselves. We made arrangements with the folks running the shelter at Louisiana State University for buses and security. Keep in mind the military had taken over control of the streets in New Orleans, and it was not a safe place to be. We needed a permit to enter the city from State, and Federal health officials and since they denied anyone was there, they were not going to give us the necessary permit.
We thought all hope was lost, and our mission was going to be a failure. We thought if we just went they would let us in. Then I saw, sitting on a desk nearby, a permit. Doing what needed to be done I “borrowed” the permit and we quickly exited the building. That night we set off on our journey.
If you have ever been to New Orleans or any large city for that matter, you will understand when I saw how creepy it is to have no one on the roads leading into our out of the city, but that is what it was like. Various checkpoints were set up along the path. We stopped at each one secure in the knowledge that the “borrowed” permit had been reported, and we were all going to get locked up.
We came to the final checkpoint, this one was military, and they were not at all impressed either with my collar or the permit from the Louisiana Health Office. The soldier, just doing his job, was told no one could get into the city no matter who they were or what permit they had with them. We had come this far we were not going to let this get in the way.
As I mentioned, we had security from LSU with us. These were not the mall cop types there were fully armed and kitted out in riot gear police and the one guy, assigned to protect me, not sure why I needed individual protection but I was glad he was there on several occasions, went toe to toe with the military and I thought for sure we were going to jail. After a few tense moments of “negotiation,” we were allowed to pass.
The next part of this story needs to come with one of those TV disclaimers about what you are about to see, but I need you to understand, as best as I can tell it, what we experienced so the story will make sense.
We arrived at the airport and were directed around to the back of the terminal building; this is where the luggage comes in off of the planes that have arrived. We were escorted into, what we had been told was an empty building, to find it filled, and then some, with people. The first thing we saw was a pile of bodies stacked like cord wood, right inside the door. We next encountered a doctor who ran up to me, I was wearing the clerical collar, so I was easy to identify as clergy, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes and was shouting “tell me I did the right thing.”
It seems this doctor was the one who had to decide who got to live and who had to die. They were running out of supplies, and with the denial of the government, they were not getting more. I will never forget the look in this poor soul’s eyes, I cannot remember what I said to him, but after a few moments he calmed down and was able to take us around.
All services had broken down, and basic human functions were just that, basic. The rest of the team set off on a needs assessment; this is basically what we do when we first arrive to determine what needs to be done and make a priority list and start to move services into the area. I was taken, with the doctor, and my ever-watchful security detail, to another part of the airport. I was taken into what is called the black ward. This is the place where people are taken who are not expected to survive, the place they go to die and where they are made as comfortable as possible.
I talked with the staff and thanked them for everything they had done, and we prayed together. They asked me to pray for each person; there were sixty-five men and women in cots around the room. I knelt beside each person, prayed with them, and anointed them. Just as an aside I was harshly criticized for doing this as the prayer I read was technically the “last rights” and those prayers are only for people of the church I used to belong too. Anyway, went to the room and prayer with each one. I can still see those faces in my mind’s eye as clear as if it were yesterday.
I left there, and we had determined to take as many with us as the busses would hold. We worked with the medical personnel to decide who needed to go. First, we loaded the buses, and we left. We brought them back to the shelter at LSU, and they were treated and found a place to sleep that night. The next day we had the task of trying to convince the government that there were, in fact, people there. We knew they knew this because the medical folks at the airport were all military.
Why do I tell you this story? Because it fits in with the scripture passage, we heard this morning.
A woman who had been crippled for eighteen years approached Jesus and asked him to heal her. He did just that, and he was criticized by the authorities for doing so. You see he healed this poor woman on the Sabbath, and you know rules are rules. This is not, nor will it be the last time, that Jesus was criticized for healing on the Sabbath.
Jesus answered them, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”
I did what I had to do, the security guy did what he had to do, the doctor did what he had to do, and Jesus did what he had to do, take care of the people right in front of him regardless of the law, the consequences, or the worthiness of the person.
You see our job is to help people no matter what. Our job is not to judge if they are worthy or if they deserve our help. Our job is not to call them sinners and scream at them, our job to bring them healing of whatever it is that ails them and in the end, our job is to simply love them.
Did the people lying on the floor that I prayed with an anointed know I was there? I do not know most of them were not even conscious. Did it help the medical staff, knowing I had prayed with them, I believe it did and it made their job a little easier. I mentioned I was criticized for doing what I did and I would do it again.
What Jesus is saying to us this morning is that we have to do what we have to do regardless of the consequences when it comes to helping people. This is what loving your neighbor means.
Faith: Against the Odds
On the 8th of July 1741, the Reverend Jonathan Edwards stepped into the pulpit of a church in Enfield Connecticut and delivered his most famous sermons, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I say famous because this sermon, of all of his countless others, has been studied and dissected, and misunderstood since the first day it had been preached.
Edwards, who happens to be my 6th cousin, was one of the great preachers from a time in our American history known as the Great Awakening, or perhaps I should say the 1st Great Awakening. It is always difficult to pinpoint the exact start of movements such as this but historians usually use the period of the 1730’s, and 40’s so before the American Revolution. In fact, many historians credit the Awakening for the Revolution.
The awakening began in the south and moved up the coast by various preachers and came to New England with the preaching of Rev. Edwards in his church in Northampton. Edwards preached this sermon there first and then was asked by the pastor of the Church in Enfield to come and preach to his congregation. It seems they had been unmoved by the awakening thus far, and the pastor was determined that his flock would be changed.
If you have never read the sermon I would suggest that you do, however, it is filled with imagery that may sound foreign to us, but the result is the same. The entire idea behind the awakening, as any revival, is to call people back to piety and a sense of who they are as Christians. Edwards used the image of Hell and the final judgment of individuals as a way to bring them back. It has been reported that people shouted “how can I be saved” during the sermon. So moved were they that a monument has been erected in Enfield on the site of the sermon.
Historians of American religious history disagree on how man awakenings have taken place in America since that time some say three some say four, but they usually follow some period of upheavals in America like a war or some such. From these times people do become more religious if you will, but they tend not to last long as we go back, slowly but surely, to the way we were. But we keep going on, and we keep trying.
The great religious writer Phyllis Tickle writes about, what she calls, the 500-year rummage sale of the church. Like the awakenings, these are historical periods of time, difficult to pinpoint, when the church takes a long hard look at itself and a sense of revision or dare I say reformation, comes to the church. We are approaching the 500th anniversary of the last one, the Great Reformation of Martin Luther, so the feeling is we are in another period of rummaging around.
These are times of change in the Church and can be refreshing. Just a Luther brought a much-needed reform the church cannot stay the same, just as we cannot remain the same, as things change around us. And for many this will be a test of our faith.
In the Scripture lesson today, we hear of a time when other people’s faith was tested and a reminded that we are to hold fast to that faith, and we were told of what faith can and will do. Faith is what gave the Israelites the strength and will to cross the Red Sea when it seemed that all hope was lost, and it was a lack of faith that made it impossible for the Egyptians to follow them. It was faith that brought down the walls of Jericho after they had been circled seven times.
In 1992 I made my fist, of what would be many trips, to Romania. I went there as part of a group of missionaries who had been asked by the Evangelical Church in Romania to come and help them establish seminaries and training facilities for social workers and others who would help to rebuild their country. Romania is an amazing place and a place that I call my spiritual home for many reasons.
I had the opportunity to meet with many faithful Christians in Romania and saw the devastation that occurred when the Church got too close to the government. Each person I encountered I asked them the same question, how did you do it? How did you survive, not only as a Christian but as human beings in what has been described as one of the most brutal dictatorships the world has even seen?
Their answer was always the same, whether they were Evangelical or Orthodox, Christian or Jew the answer was their faith is what saw them through. Even though the institutional church had sold its soul to the government, faith is what brought them through. Faith is what brought them through the persecution that we do not even understand in this country. Oh sure we claim we are persecuted as Christians in this country, but we simply have no idea what that even means.
In preparing this sermon today, I looked up the word faith in the dictionary. There are two definitions; one is that faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. For a Christian, that means we have full faith and confidence in God and in His Son Jesus Christ. The other definition is a belief in something unseen or something that we cannot prove. I believe that these go together.
As Christians, we are to have this complete faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Not in me, not in Rev. Bill, not in the Church and certainly not in the government. We have our faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot prove anything about it, but we believe it, that’s faith. We have talked, in previous sermons, about how God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness with manna, and he continues to give us His manna through his word. Can I prove any of it? I studied it, and continue to study as has Rev. Bill, and I cannot point to anything and say there it is, that’s faith. But I can point to what faith is.
Faith requires some things from us besides this complete trust and confidence. Faith compels us to love, to serve, to forgive, to care, to welcome, to feed, to clothe, to a house, to visit and all of other things that Jesus left us as an enduring example. You have heard me say this before it is not enough to profess with our lips that we are followers of Jesus we have to confess it with our actions! What we do is far more important than what we say, as individuals, as a Church community, and as a nation. I want you to notice one thing about all of those things that we are commanded to do, they are all verbs, action words.
Our Christian faith requires each of us to look at each other and see nothing more than a child of God created in his image and likeness. We can no longer look at others as their color or their religion or the supposed sin for as Paul says in his Letter to the Galatians “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Our faith should be conservative because we conserve a faith that for 2,000 plus years has stood for equality, justice and mercy. But our faith should also be liberal because for 2,000 plus years our faith has stood to liberate spiritual captives from their blindness and lead them to a liberating Christ that will free them from their sins. A Christ that welcomes all with open arms and desires that we all come to love him and one another. This is what faith is, and this is what faith does.
In 1741 Jonathan Edwards pointed out to those listening to him that hell was just around the corner. Now we can debate what that means and trust me when I say theologians of all stripes continue this discussion, but what he is saying is the time is at hand. We are no longer on the verge of an awakening we are in one, and I see the Church coming alive again and finding her voice and shouting at the top of her lungs for those who have no voice. I see the Church marching together for those who cannot march. And I see the Church, at long last advocating for those things that Jesus has commanded us to advocate for, love, mercy, justice, equality, and all the rest.
Dear ones, the time, is now and we, all of us here, are the chosen ones. We have been called by God and given a mission. We can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch it is time to get in the game! This is what faith means and this is what faith requires. Action!
Seek First the Kingdom of God
In the book “The Pine Tree” by Rose Dobbs, there is a story about a pine tree that is lonely and sad because it is the only tree around with long needles instead of green leaves. It wishes to be important and noticed among the other trees in the forest. Thinking it costs nothing to wish, the pine tree wishes for gold leaves. And lo, the next morning his branches are full of shining gold leaves. However, they do not last long. A poor peddler comes along and thinking he has been blessed with the discovery of a treasure; he picks every single one of the leaves. The pine tree is devastated wishing that he had beautiful but less valuable leaves he envisions himself with glittering glass leaves. Which is what he has when he wakes in the morning. And do they shine in the sun! But near evening a storm comes up. The wind blows, and soon the pretty glass leaves are broken on the ground. Shivering in the cold wind the pine tree wishes for plentiful, lush green leaves like his neighbor trees. And in the morning he is full of such leaves….until a goat comes along and eats them all. “Oh, my!” exclaims the tree. “I wish I just had my plain old needles back. I should never have wished to be more important than the other trees in the forest! ” And by next morning his needles have returned. The birds are asking to build nests in his branches because they can be hidden by his needles. And the little pine tree welcomes them vowing to be happy and useful with all that he is. And we could add, all that God created him to be!
“Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” Luke 12:15
According to the dictionary, Covetousness means: feeling or showing a very strong desire for something that you do not have and especially for something that belongs to someone else. It has the additional meaning of being marked by inordinate desire for wealth or possessions or for another’s possessions as well as having a craving for possessions. The man in the story was suffering for covetousness for sure but what about us? Have we ever been guilty of this?
It was common for the people of the time of Jesus to bring their disputes to trusted rabbis for a decision. As we see in this story today, Jesus refused to get involved in people’s disputes about money, but he uses the opportunity to enlighten his Apostles on what their attitude towards material possessions should be. He has something to say to not only those who have an abundance of possessions but also to those who have few.
To those who were listening that had an abundance of possessions he told them the parable of the rich fool. We just heard this story. In the story, the man has been blessed with more crops than he can possibly store in the barns and other builds that he has. His solution is to pull down those barns and build bigger ones. He builds the bigger barns and stores all he has and feels pretty good about what he was able to accomplish. Then an angel comes and tells him that this night he is going to die. All that work was for nothing.
Two things stand out in this story. He never saw beyond himself. This parable, unlike the others that Jesus uses, is full of the words, I, me, my and mine. These are called aggressive pronouns. The rich fool in the story was aggressively self-centered. When this man had an excess of goods, the one thing that never entered his mind was to share them with others. His whole attitude was the reverse of Christianity. Rather than denying himself he aggressively affirmed himself; rather than finding his happiness in giving he tried to conserve it by keeping.
John Wesley’s rule of life was to save all he could and give all he could. When he was at Oxford University, he had an income of thirty pounds a year. He lived on twenty-eight, and he gave away two. When his income increased over the years to sixty, then ninety and then finally to one hundred and twenty, he still lived on twenty-eight, and he gave away the rest. The Romans had a saying that money was like sea-water; the more a man drank, the thirstier he became. As long as our desire is that of the rich fool, our desire will always be to get more – and that is the reverse of Christianity.
The second point is that he never saw beyond this present world. All his plans were based on his life here in this world. The one who never remembers that there is another world is destined some day for the grimmest of grim shocks. We spend far too much time storing up things in our existing barns and not worrying at all about what comes next.
But Jesus also has something to say to those who have few possessions. The one thought that Jesus forbids in this passage is an anxious thought or worry. Jesus does not want us to live a shiftless, wild life. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable in our life. What Jesus said was do your best and leave the rest to God. This takes great faith. Just like the prayer discussion we had last week, not worrying about the future takes enormous faith.
Jesus said, “seek first the kingdom of God.” We pray in the Lord’s prayer that God’s kingdom was a place on earth where his will is as perfectly done as it is in heaven. So what Jesus is saying here is that our lives need to bend, not to our will, but to obeying God’s will and that we need to rest easy and be content with that will for our lives.
So many people work for things and heap up things that by their very nature will not last. Rust and mold will get to them, and they spoil. Just like last time when we spoke about the manna that God provided to those in the wilderness. They were only to gather what they needed if the gathered more it spoiled.
Work for things that will last forever, things that you will not leave behind when you leave this earth, but the things that you can take with you.
If we clothe our souls in the garments of honor and purity and goodness, nothing on earth can take that away from us. If we seek the treasures of heaven, our hearts will be fixed in heaven; but if we seek the treasures of earth, our hearts will be tied to this earth – and one day we will have to say goodbye to them for as the Spanish proverb says: there are no pockets in a shroud.”
Separation of Church and Politics
In the final season of the NBC drama West Wing, it is the time for a presidential election. Senator Arnold Vinick, played by Alan Alda is running for the Republican nomination. His faith becomes an issue in the campaign, and he makes an innocent statement about church that lands him in some hot water. After a meeting in the Oval Office with President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, the two men are sitting in the White House kitchen eating ice cream out of rather large containers. They are discussing faith and Vinick asks whatever happened to the separation of church and state. Bartlet replies that it is just fine but the separation of church and politics, well that is a different issue all together.
Much has been made about the faith of the candidates running for President of the United States. Much has also been made of the faith of the present occupant of the Oval Office, but I shall leave that for the moment. Faith is a very private thing, but when it becomes an issue in a campaign, I guess the people have a right to know. My faith teaches me that it is our actions and not our words that determine our faith. In other words, how do we act and are we acting in a manner that brings shame and disgrace to our faith or are we acting in a way that brings glory to God?
The United States of America is a complicated place; it always has and it always will. Sure we were a nation founded on the Judeo-Christian principles, but we were not founded as a Christian, or any other religion, nation. One of the freedoms we hold dear is the right to free exercise of our religion and that the government will not interfere with that. With that said, I am not sure how anyone could aspire to the high office of president and not be a person of faith, no matter what that faith is. I also feel it is important to know what influences our leaders.
Kristin Du Mez, of the Religion and Politics Blog, has written a piece about the faith of Hilary Clinton. She makes the case that Secretary Clinton has held her faith in private and did not wear it on her sleeve. As a common rule Democrats do not court the Evangelical vote, so the need always to talk about one’s religion does not usually come into play.
Here are few words from that piece:
Although Clinton has confessed a certain reticence when it comes to “advertising” her faith, and a preference for “walking the walk” rather than risk trivializing “what has been an extraordinary sense of support and possibility” throughout her life, she has consistently testified to her Methodist faith over the course of her long career in politics.
Skeptics may be surprised to learn that Clinton taught Sunday school and delivered guest sermons on Methodism as first lady of Arkansas, and that she devoted an entire chapter of her first book, It Takes a Village, to the importance of faith. They may not know that in her memoir Hard Choices, she credits the Wesleyan mantra, “Do all the good you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” with prompting her to enter electoral politics, and later to leave the Senate and accept President-Elect Obama’s invitation to become secretary of state. In short, Clinton depicts her entire career in public service as a means of putting her faith into action.
Read the rest here
Living your faith in public is fine, but it better sync up with what it means to be the faith you profess.