Prophetic Patriotism

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Pastor

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost/C • July 6, 2025

Matthew 5:13-16

Most of know the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Less well known is the story of the Arbella and its cargo of 200 Puritans, who landed in Massachusetts Bay nine years later. Yet it was their colony that shaped Massachusetts, eventually incorporating the settlement at Plymouth.  Imagine for a moment that you were the leader of this group. What would you want to say? How would you inspire them? What would you tell them about the purpose of this great and dangerous voyage? John Winthrop was the leader and Winthrop chose to speak to them about charity. More than anything else, Winthrop today is remembered for a sermon in which he said the founding of the new colony had as its purpose to be a city set on a hill, giving light to all and that the method would be to show by their lives the true meaning and fulfillment of Christian love. Winthrop’s ideal wasn’t just spiritual; he is explicit about the need to give to the poor and to make sure each had what was needed. Infused in his sermon is a principle that would come to underlay the  foundation of Reformed churches like this one and, ultimately, the American Way: that there is a fundamental dignity, a fundamental promise, and a fundamental right inherent to each person; that each person represents a gift of God and it is the responsibility of the whole community and especially the church to allow that gift to unfold and serve God’s purpose.

More than a century later, this philosophy—this theology—was firmly planted in New England and flourished throughout the 13 colonies. When Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, two sons of that very Massachusetts colony Winthrop had founded, set out with Thomas Jefferson to define the principles of the new nation in the Declaration of Independence, they went back to this founding principle, that all are created equal, all have a human dignity under God, a purpose and a claim on the freedom needed to live out their purpose. This weekend, we celebrate that moment when our fathers and mothers looked out and said such things and we must ask, as the historic source of this faith, how can we renew it, how can we live it, how can we make it again a light for all. We talk about patriotism, especially at this time of year. But real patriotism is prophetic: it isn’t blue, or red, it’s the vision God gave at the beginning.

Christians often miss the fact that Jesus did not invent a new ethic or preach a different way of life. Instead, he summoned those he met, those who heard him, to remember and renew the living light of God’s word that they had heard from scripture all their lives. He himself said that he didn’t come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. In this, he was doing what prophets do: seeking the vibrant core of God’s Spirit and making it live again. Of course, many of his contemporaries couldn’t see this. We heard his frustration in the story from Matthew today. Jewish children, like our own, made the rituals of their parents into games. We do weddings; children play with Wedding Barbie. We cook; children work in imaginary kitchens. We dress for success; children love to dress up. But what to do with someone who won’t play? 

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’…

Jesus has summoned all who hear him but they refuse to play. They cannot remember the original vision; they cannot see the original hope. The “wise and intelligent” are the worst of all; they are too busy compromising to see the goodness of God. Only those who can come as children receive his gift: the peace that makes it possible to lay down burdens and find rest for the soul, the rest that will allow them to fulfill their purpose in God.

It’s a cautionary tale for us. This weekend we celebrated Independence Day. But in the midst of our red, white and blue feeling, have we reached back to touch the bright vision with which our nation began? It is a vision that believes all have gifts and its genius was always that we offered a place to express those gifts, to make a life by doing the work of expressing those gifts. Where other societies chose to make right birth a qualification, we made hard work the important factor. Where other societies were built like a pyramid with some kind of aristocracy at the top, we said from the beginning, from Winthrop on, that everyone, rich or poor, had a responsibility for everyone. Where other societies glorified a gifted few, we claimed a fundamental dignity for all. This is not simply a political issue; it was, it is, always, a religious, spiritual issue. For the real task of churches is first to lift up a prophetic patriotism. That is, a patriotism that remembers we are founded on a vision of God’s purpose in our community. We do that most effectively when we demonstrate what such a community looks like.

This is what prophets do. Over and over, from Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal, to Amos describing God measuring Israel like a builder with a plumb line, to Isaiah and Jeremiah down through the centuries, all the prophets call God’s people back to the vision with which they began. Reformed churches began by rejecting the pyramid of privilege that was the accepted way in all of Europe when they began. They got rid of bishops; they began the system of voting we still use. Why do we vote in our church? Our congregational meeting is a testimony that every person has a voice, and God speaks through our united voices. One day, we will have a new pastor suggested. The suggestion will come from a Search Committee elected, not a bishop. One day a new pastor will be elected in the same way: by your voice, sharing what you believe the Spirit is saying, not by someone from another place, another church.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson from our history and make it our vision for the future. In the fifth or sixth century, a monk named Dubhan led a group to Hooks Head, a remote corner of Ireland, and built a monastery. Soon the monks noticed that the bodies of sailors were washing up on their pristine beach: they had perished when their ships hit the rocky coastline. The monks decided to set up a beacon and operated it for the next thousand years. No one knows how many ships were guided by that light. No one knows how many captains, lost in fog, anxiously searching  saw that light and avoided the rocks. God knows, and thank God for the work of those monks. Thank God for all those who give us light to see our way in all of life.

This is just another concrete expression of Winthrop’s summons to be a city set on a hill, a light to all. So the question we ought to be asking is what lighthouses do we need to be building on the corners of our property? We know there are dark and dangerous currents in our culture; how can we provide guidance to those caught in them? We know there are rocks on which lives shatter; how can we be ready to rescue the endangered? 

This place is a fine and peaceful place, a meetinghouse with a tradition, an oasis of worship. But if we huddle here within its walls, we can never fulfill its purpose. Jesus has come dancing; we are summoned and if we don’t know the steps, it’s time to learn. We must look to his example and learn his steps. When we do, we will certainly see that he did not stay inside but spent his life on the way, seeking the lost, healing the hurt, restoring the ability of those who had thought they were dead to live again. To dance this way, to live this way, we will inevitably have to leave this place and go out, as a light goes out, into the darkness, to show the way, to offer the love of God.

Amen.

Are You Ready?

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Third Sunday After Pentecost/Year C • June 29, 2025

Luke 9:51-62

The last couple of weeks have seen a lot of packing at our house. May went to Texas to see friends and family; that required planning outfits for going out to dinner, hanging out, visiting in a nursing home and riding on the airplane. This week, Jacquelyn went to work. She takes one suitcase for three days. It has to hold a spare uniform, some clothes for overnights, a battery of electrical hair implements and a bunch of charging cables. She takes a second bag that’s filled with food; airport food isn’t healthy, and it’s expensive. So, three days of breakfast and dinner and snacks along the way. May was gone for five days; Jacquelyn for three. The packing took as long as the trips. I mention all this because today’s reading from Luke is all about travel. It’s a turning point in the gospel. Jesus is going to Jerusalem, and I wonder what he packed. Did he pack anything? Did the disciples carry his baggage? Was there baggage? Surely they had water; another story pictures the disciples eating along the way when they walked through a field of grain, so I’m guessing someone forgot the snacks. Whether they packed or not, this section marks a new moment in the gospel: Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, to the cross, to glory.

Some important things have happened just before this. Jesus has been healing and teaching and exorcizing up in Galilee. Now Luke tells us that Herod Antipas, the Roman appointed ruler of Galilee, had begun to notice Jesus. He’s wondering if Jesus is actually John the Baptist come back; John, whom he had executed, resurrected. He’s wondering if Jesus might be Elijah returned or yet again, a prophet like Elijah. The whole question of who is Jesus forms the basis for this section. 

Two other events lie close in the background. One is Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 men and many women and children.. The other is Jesus asking his disciples who they think he is. Like Herod, they also suggest Elijah or a prophet, but Peter acclaims him: “You are God’s Messiah”. Christ is the Greek word that translates Messiah. “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”, is what Mark tells us he said. Now, the text tells us, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. It’s not an idle choice; Luke says it is “when the days drew near for him to be taken up.”; the ascension we marked a month ago is clearly on the horizon. Before that, we’ll have the passion, the cross, and the resurrection. Jesus is on the way.

Now if you want to get to Ohio or Michigan, you have to go through Pittsburgh; or take a long detour; we all know that. If you want to get from Galilee to Jerusalem, you have to go through Samaria unless you go on a roundabout route to avoid it. Honestly? That roundabout route is how most Jews like Jesus would go. It’s how other gospels imagine Jesus making this journey. But Luke imagine his as a direct walk, about 90 miles, right through the heart of Samaria. Why is this important? Because Samaria is a taboo place to Jews. Almost 900 years before, King Omri had separated this area from Judah. About 600 years before Jesus, the Assyrians conquered this area, deported most of the people, and replaced them with people from other places. An alternate temple was built in Samaria; they had their own version of Torah, the books of Moses, and their own liturgy for worship. It was all foreign to Jews. Think how different other Christian churches are from us. I remember years ago at an interfaith service, meeting in what was for Congregationalists a fairly ornate meeting house like this one, with stained glass, dark wood. The comment of some Roman Catholics: “Wow, they don’t have any statues at all.”

Jesus is on the way and his way is going to take him through Samaria. Just as Jews didn’t think much of Samaritans, Samaritans didn’t think much of Jews. So t isn’t surprising that when Jesus sends ahead to find a place to stay, the villages along the way tell him “Not here!” Maybe you’ve been in this situation. You’re tired, it’s the end of a day of travel, but what you didn’t know is that there’s a convention in town; all the hotels are full. You try one, then another, only to be told no. You drive by “No Vacancy” signs. It’s frustrating. In this case, there’s a reason no one will receive them: just as Jews hated Samaritans, Samaritans hate Jews. They know Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and they’re not about to help him. The disciples are offended. ”Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Jesus rebukes them; it’s the same language used for getting rid of demons.

Then as they go along, perhaps out of Samaritan territory, they have these three encounters on the road. The first one is a guy who is so enthused he offers to follow Jesus wherever he goes. The second one, Jesus calls: “Follow me”. And the third one also offers to follow him—after taking care of his family. Now, I don’t know about you. But these three encounters have always bothered me. They seem so extreme. The first guy is told that Jesus has no home. Maybe Jesus is still thinking about the experience in Samaria; maybe he’s heard Herod’s police are looking for him back in Galilee. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” he says. Apparently, it’s enough to stop the guy; his surface enthusiasm doesn’t include having nowhere to lay your head. 

But it’s the second one that really makes me squirm. I’ve spent a lot of time with members of families where someone was recently lost. I’ve seen the way that grief and preparations for a funeral absorb people. So when I hear, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father,” I hear it in that context. Where’s the problem, Jesus? It seems reasonable; it seems kind, after all, this guy is just doing what the culture tells him is his duty. I had two brothers. One was in sales, one is a lawyer, I’m a minister; all of us talk for a living. Yet when my mother died, no one had to tell me that I was the one who would organize her funeral, I was the one who would speak for the family. It was my job, and I flew to Florida and did it. I took a Sunday off from my job as a pastor to do it. Am I any different from this guy Jesus rejects? The last one is perhaps the most surprising of the three. He says he will follow Jesus, but he wants a moment to tell his family. Jesus says no thanks.

How should we understand these encounters? What should they mean to us? To understand them, we have to go back to the context and the beginning. This whole section revolves around Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and to the cross. As one writer said, 

This passage in Luke is not simply Jesus strolling through the countryside looking to create disciples. This is Jesus marching toward the center of Roman civic and Jewish religious authority where he knows that his proclamation of the Kingdom will lead him to execution. [https://modernmetanoia.org/2019/06/17/proper-8c-what-would-jesus-do/]

So this is not a normal trip; this is not a vacation. He’s on his way to lay down his life for everyone. What these three encounters have in common is that the people in them are behaving normally, as if the regular rules of life apply. In Jesus, the kingdom of God is present, and the kingdom is not normal, it is not every day, it is a challenge to all the rules that govern our daily lives.

That’s what these people don’t understand. One is worried about the past: his father waiting for a funeral. One is worried about the future: he wants to let his family know where he’s going and when he’ll be home. The first one is worried about his present: where will they stay tonight? Just like us, they’re getting through the day the way they always do. What they don’t understand is that this is not a normal day, this is not a normal time. They want to follow Jesus without leaving their regular lives. They want to follow Jesus without changing anything.

Doesn’t that pretty much describe all of us? There’s even a hymn, a church song, one of my favorites honestly, that says, “I want Jesus to walk with me.” Think about the message of that: I want Jesus to go my way. But the call of Christ is not that he will walk with us; it is that we will walk with him. Does that mean we can’t do things like bury family members or let them know where we’re going? That’s not the point here: the point is that we hear and respond to the call of Christ when it comes to us. And in Christ, Paul says, as we’ll hear next week, there is a new creation. We are made new and called to act in new ways. 

It’s easy to measure those ways. We heard Paul’s explanation of what that new life looks like.

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
[Galatians 5:22-25]

This is the measure for our church; this is the measure for us. These are the things that show the Spirit present when we demonstrate them.

Are you ready to live this way? Are we ready as a church? Today, Christians are often known for what they are against. What are we for? What light are we shining to help people find their way in the world’s darkness? How can we demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit God has given us? The time is now and the need for these gifts is urgent. When Jesus comes, there is no excuse; there is no delay. The call of Christ is now. Over and over again in parables, he urges on those who follow him the importance of being ready. Are you ready? May we be ready when he comes to us. Amen.

A Generous Pour

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Trinity Sunday/C • June 15, 2025

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8 * Romans 5:1-5 * John 16:12-15

I grew up with two brothers. When my father was about to yell at one of us, he’d preface it by standing straight, hands on his hips and asking loudly, “What do you think you’re doing?” I hated that question, and I swore I’d never do it. Yet when I became a stepfather, I still remember the first time I stood over one of the kids, hands on my hips, and loudly asked, “What do you think you’re doing?” My father was inside me, and he’d taken over. We all have these people from other relationships inside us. It’s not just people we’re close to, either. I grew up in New Jersey in the heyday of the New York Yankees, when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were stars. Baseball was what boys did in New Jersey in those days, but I was really, really bad at it. When I see a ball coming at me, my first instinct is to get out of the way, not catch it. So I was kind of an outcast and to this day, when Jacquelyn and May want to go to a baseball game, something they love, they really prefer to leave me behind, because the voices of those boys telling me how awful I am are still there. Now just as we have these different persons inside us, God has persons inside, so we speak of a “three in one” God. The name for this is the trinity; today is Trinity Sunday and I want to invite you to think about God with me and about how that all fits together.

I want to start with the Holy Spirit. This morning we read from proverbs about Wisdom raising her voice. Sometimes when we think of the Holy Spirit, we miss the whole scripture witness about the nature of the Spirit. I was chatting with someone last week, and they mentioned that when they think of the Holy Spirit, it’s like Caspar the Ghost. That’s easy to see: after all, many of us grew up with Caspar cartoons and Caspar is a friendly sort of ghost. Many of us are old enough to remember when liturgies and prayers often referred to the Spirit as the Holy Ghost. But the Biblical witness about the Spirit isn’t a ghost, it’s more like a wind. In fact, Hebrew uses the same word, ‘ruach’, for ‘breath’, ‘wind’ and Spirit. Greek is the same way: it uses the word ‘pneuma’, which gives us all kinds of words related to something wind or breath related. So the first thing to think about with the Holy Spirit is that it is invisibly animating. We don’t see the wind, but we feel it, we don’t see the wind, but we see its effect, we don’t see the wind, but we know it’s there.

The second thing we see the Spirit doing in Scripture is announcing. The Spirit comes in dreams sometimes, sometimes in visions. The Spirit acts as a messenger between God and our lives. Jesus mentions this in the piece we read from the Gospel of John. He says that he has more to say and that. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. [16:13 ]” This is why the most important moment in prayer is not when we speak but when we listen for the Spirit to speak in our hearts. 

So animating, announcing and there’s a third thing the Spirit does: appreciating. The reading from Proverbs has this wonderful image. It asks us to imagine God busily creating: the mountains are being shaped, the heavens established, beaches carved out and Spirit…

… I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. [Proverbs 8:30f]

I like to think of this as being like a parent, building a sand castle on the beach with a child who runs back and forth, brings buckets of water, maybe stumbles in the sand but delights in what’s built, what’s done together.

So inside God is this person of the Holy Spirit, animating, announcing, appreciating. But there’s another aspect of God we might call the architect. Traditionally, we’ve talked about God the Father and that’s a fine description except it’s gendered and God is not particularly male in scripture. Sometimes male language is used, sometimes female. It’s when we paint God in our image that gender slips in. This aspect of God reminds me of when I worked on a survey crew, laying out roads. In the suburbs of Detroit, there’s a whole group of homes to this day that sit where they sit because someone I never saw laid out a blueprint and along with others I helped turn that blueprint into home lots for building houses. That’s how I think of this part of God: an architected, creating the plan. I may not see the whole plan, I may only see a little part, but I trust that the plan is there, and my job is to follow it as closely as possible.

That brings us to the son: Jesus Christ. The son functions in this trinity of divine by presenting it in a human form. Want to know what God looks like?—look at Jesus. Want to know what God wants?—listen to Jesus. Want an invitation to make your life in God?—Jesus is all invitation. In Jesus, also, we see the pattern God intends for all of us: submission to God’s will, God’s intention. There’s great joy in living with God, but there are painful passages, too. It’s God who sends Jesus to the wilderness; sometimes that’s where we find ourselves. And the cross is the ultimate example of submitting your life even to death.

Now for some, the Trinity is helpful; for some it’s not. It wasn’t for me, in fact, the Trinity is the reason I’m not a Methodist. When I was 12 and in Confirmation, my family went to a Methodist church. The pastor taught the class and when he got to the Trinity, I said something like, “That makes no sense.” He responded by telling me it was a mystery; I told him he just didn’t understand it. Later, someone called my mother and explained it would be better if I didn’t come back to confirmation. We moved not long after that and after a bit of searching found a Congregational church where they cared more about the gospel of God’s love than the Trinity, and they were happy to have me. So if the Trinity isn’t helpful to you, that’s fine; leave it on the shelf, there are lots of other ways of thinking about God.

But what’s most helpful about the Trinity isn’t the details, it’s the relationships. What we should get from thinking about God as three in one is that God is all about relationships. God comes to us not as just one idea, one thought, one picture but as a loving, intimate community. Spirit, Son, Father. How we see God makes a difference; there are so many people who can’t cross the threshold of a church because they only see an angry, glowering face. It’s up to us to show them how God comes to us in many ways. The important part may not be the particulars of each one as much as that they are a divine community of love. 

That’s in the scripture we read today, too. Remember the reading from Romans? It’s part of a much longer section in Paul’s letter to the new Christians in Rome. He doesn’t know them yet, but he’s heard about them. He knows they are struggling; Rome is a tough city and there are occasional persecutions of Christians. There are arguments between Christians also about what they have to do to be part of the Christian family. Paul cuts right to the heart: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We live in a difficult time as well, so that ought to speak to us. I don’t know about you, but reading about all the conflicts all over the world and right here in our own country, I could use a little peace. I could use a lot of peace. 

So first: through this community of God, we are offered peace with God. More than that, out of the abundance of God’s love, we’re being filled. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”, he says. Wow. What a wonderful image: our hearts like a glass, with God pouring love, not just a little, not just enough but a generous pour. Now I wanted to share something about the Trinity today because it’s the day for it, but the most important point isn’t just how we think about God; it’s that God is trying to pour love into our hearts, today, tomorrow, every day. So much that it overflows; so much we can share it. Isn’t that our hope as a church? That the love poured into us, into you, into me, into all of us together will overflow here and lift our whole community.

Amen.

All Fall Down

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

26th Sunday After Pentecost/B • November 17,2024

Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8

Ring around the Rosie, Pocket full of Posies

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

Did you sing this when you were a kid? It’s an old, old folk song. It makes me think of happy children dancing in a circle and giggling when they fall down. Some historians today believe it may have originated during the dark tide of the bubonic plague. The “rosie” are the marks of the  plague, the ashes are the thousands of corpses burned. Some estimates are that about half the people in Europe, 50 million, died in a period of seven years. Whole villages were depopulated and it took Europe over a hundred years to begin to recover. I know this is a dark way to start a sermon, but today our gospel reading asks us to look at what happens when things fall down.

The poet William Butler Yeats asked this question in a piece called “Second Coming”. The opening stanza reads, 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

What happens when things fall apart? Why does God let things fall apart?

Surely the place to begin is with our central prayer, which begins, “Our Father”. Hosea compares God’s love to a mother’s love. Now every parent knows there is a fundamental dilemma in raising a child: there is what’s right, what protects the child, yet there’s a need to give that child the freedom to grow and make mistakes and learn from them. I’ve seen this in my own parenting. When my older kids were young, we lived in a little village in northern Michigan. The kids could go off on their own and mostly did. I didn’t worry too much. Then there was the day I got a call: Jason is lying down in the middle of Route 22. Now our village had lots of tourists in the summer, so we all looked forward to the time in the fall when they left and things were quiet. My son and two of his friends decided to celebrate this moment by lying down in the middle of the main street through town. It was just one of those dumb boy things. Of course, there was a long discussion about why we never, ever lay down in the street, a discussion that began with, “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!”. As I recall, his response was essentially, “Well, we didn’t think of that.” As far as I know, he never did again. Should I have kept him home?

Throughout the story of God’s people, there are dumb, lying in the street moments. When Israel decides it wants a king, for example, we hear in 1 Samuel 8 about all the terrible things a king will do. Nevertheless, Israel insists on a king and God, sighing I imagine, gives them one. Much of the rest of the Hebrew scripture is devoted to the terrible things that result. By Jesus’ time, Palestine is a Roman protectorate, with a puppet king. Jerusalem is a big city up on its mountain. Over the previous century, the temple has been rebuilt into a huge structure. The rebuilding began in 20 BC and took about 40 years; it was still going on when Jesus and his disciples were there. Now these are guys from the rural north and I can imagine their reaction to seeing this temple. Mark says, “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” [Mark 13:1} It makes me think of the first time my mom took me to New York City and I saw the Empire State Building. Maybe you’ve had the same experience: going to the big city, seeing the big buildings.

The temple was meant to be a lighthouse of God’s love and justice, but it had become instead a headquarters for the rich to oppress the poor. We see that weaving through the sayings of Jesus over and over again. So when the disciples are marveling at the towers and the stones, Jesus replies that it’s all going to fall down. In reply to their comment, he says, “13:2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” [Mark 13:2] He goes on to say there are going to be terrible wars and conflicts. Everything is going to fall apart. Then he goes on to say something else: all of this destruction is not the end—it’s birth pangs, it’s the beginning of something new.  

What does Jesus finally say we should do when these things happen, when things fall apart? Keep awake. Stay alert. That message comes through parables, that message is explicit in this story. The verses we read this morning are part of a larger section which includes predictions of persecutions and concludes with a parable about the need for watchfulness. The final word: “Keep awake” [Mark 13:37b]

What this means is first, staying alert, watching for new ways to share God’s Word, looking for ways to invite others into Christ’s church. . I don’t know what your experience here was when the COVID 19 Pandemic forced closing of churches. I know that where I was, we didn’t handle it well. We hadn’t kept up with the technology to share our services with over the internet, we didn’t have active social media accounts, we didn’t have the capability to stream anything. The technology was there; others used it for various purposes, but we were a very traditional church. It reminds me of an incident in a Massachusetts church in the late 1700s. Then, the new technology was Franklin stoves: heat right there during worship. I remember reading the minutes of Annual Meetings at a church in Chelmsford, MA, where year after year this was brought up, year after year voted down until finally it passed, at which point a Deacon who had opposed it said that he was sure God would find a warm place in hell for people who needed heat in church.

In Albany, we were much the same about steaming and online ministry for a long time. We missed the boat. We weren’t alert to the possibilities; I think we often still aren’t. We miss the chance to invite others, share with others. Some of you know that I post my sermons online weekly. What you may not know is that every week on average those sermons are viewed about 30 times. That’s close to double the people who hear them here in this lovely place. What would it mean if we made a larger commitment to a digital ministry, to reaching out? We don’t know.

Keeping awake means keeping hope alive. Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Invention of Wings, tells two parallel stories. One is a biography of the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Abigail. Raised in the early 19th century in the slave supported culture of Charleston, South Carolina, they became leading advocates of the abolition of slavery and later of full equality for women. The other story is fictional but just as important; it’s the story of Handful, an enslaved girl given to Sarah Grimké at an early age, who grows up with a mother determined to seek freedom. For more than 20 years, she and her mother pursue various strategies until finally she escapes north, to Pensylvania and freedom. Along the way, she and her mother are beaten, worked, defiled but they never give up hope. We honor our history here in many ways yet how often do we talk about our hope? Shouldn’t we be as focused on where we are going as where we’ve been? No one would walk a path facing backwards; we know enough not to do that. But do we know enough to turn around and look forward to where God wants us to go as a church?

Keeping awake means keeping connection. We often miss how encouraging our presence here is to each other. I’ve been here just about six months; already I can look around and see when someone is missing. I’m sure you can do it much better. Over the years, I’ve heard more excuses for why someone doesn’t go to church than I can count. They mostly come down to, “I didn’t want to go.” We seldom think: maybe I should go because someone else needs me there. One of the best things about this church is the way we honor connections. I never visit someone in the hospital or a nursing home that they don’t have cards sent from other members. I never visit without hearing how important those cards and our prayers are to them. I know in my own experience how much it lightened me when I was sick and received those cards.

 Keeping alert, keeping focused on the future, keeping connection, these are all ways of keeping awake. They are the way Jesus tells us to respond when things fall apart. He says these are birth pangs. Now, I think it’s a bit dicey for a man to talk about birthing. There are some things I’m totally clueless about: why someone gets up one day and decides to change her hair color, how to put on eyeliner, how to clean so it satisfies Jacquelyn. Birthing is one of those things. So this week, I’ve been asking friends who’ve had babies about their experience. I got some truly answers, but the best of all was close to home. When I asked Jacquelyn, she told me about birthing May, how there was a young woman in the next room screaming, how it was busy in the ward. I asked her if it hurt and she said, well, yes of course but you don’t remember the hurt, you remember the delight.

I think that says what Jesus hopes. Yes, things do fall apart; yes, things are going to fall apart. Don’t get attached to what looks impressive and big in this world. It’s going to fall because only God endure forever. Yet when things do fall apart, remember: it’s not the end, it’s birth pangs. Keep awake—alert, connected, focused on the future—and know that beyond what’s ending, beyond the birth pangs, there is the delight of God’s presence waiting.

Amen.

There Is Love

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

World Communion Sunday • 20th Sunday After Pentecost • October 6, 2024

Genesis 2:18-24Mark 10:2-16

I’d just moved to Boston to go to seminary, and I was excited and nervous. This was long before Starbucks and coffee house culture; we just had diners. So I went in one and asked for a coffee. The man said, “You want dat regulah?” Not wanting to look like I didn’t know what I was doing, I said, “Sure.” He gave me a cup of coffee with cream in it. I always drink my coffee black; so I said, “Oh I didn’t want cream,” and asked him to replace it with a black coffee. He said, “You asked foh regulah.” What I learned is that while black coffee is how it comes regularly in Michigan, in Boston, “regular coffee” is coffee with cream in it. Since then, I’ve had to deal with lots of similar misunderstandings. In Spain once, I thought I ordered olives—“olivdes”—but ended up with snails. England is especially hard because they use the same words for different things. We all know what a biscuit is, right? Except that in England it’s a cookie. Never order biscuits and gravy in England. I mention these differences because this morning in our gospel reading you heard the word ‘divorce’. Some of us are divorced; others have walked with friends or family through divorces. So when you heard that word, you probably thought you knew what it meant. But just like biscuits, just like olivdes, just like regular coffee, we need to be careful and not apply our own ideas to what Jesus is saying. Instead, let’s look at what this means for his time and his way so that we can hear what he’s really saying.

Let’s begin by remembering where we are in Mark’s story of Jesus. At his baptism, he heard a voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Just before this, he’s taken two disciples up a mountain and again, a heavenly voice has said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Twice already he has told his disciples that he’s going to be handed over to the authorities, killed, and will rise again after three days. They are now on the way to Jerusalem, where this will be fulfilled. Along the way, there are a series of confrontations where he’s asked to debate tricky questions of religious law. That’s what’s happening here. This is a political question: the most famous divorce there was when King Herod divorced his wife to marry his sister-in-law. It was preaching against this that got John the Baptist executed.

When we think of marriage and divorce, we think of two people dating, falling in love, having a ceremony that celebrates their unique commitment to a relationship of intimacy with each other. We know this hope doesn’t always blossom. Sometimes there are choices, sometimes there is abuse, sometimes it becomes clear to one or both that this relationship cannot continue. So we provide for either person to ask for a divorce, and we have a whole legal framework that tries to equitably divide up property and responsibilities for children. But Jewish custom was different in Jesus time. Marriage was less about intimacy than about a contract, called a ketubah. The ketubah specified a bride price and provided a property settlement. After the ketubah was signed, there was often a period of being engaged, up to seven years. Then a formal marriage ceremony would be held. Women could not ask for a divorce; only a man could initiate a divorce by filing what is called a get. Women and children were often abandoned after a divorce. There was no requirement for child support or property division. This is what’s being discussed here.

The Pharisees in the passage set out the law of Moses regarding divorce; it’s what I’ve just described. A man files a get, the divorce is finalized. All is according to the law of Moses. Perhaps Moses realized not all marriages work and provided an out. But that bit of grace has become a law. Jesus goes to the core of the matter. He wants to go behind Moses’ law and back to the original intention of God. He says that Moses wrote this law because of the hardness of hearts of people and reminds them of God’s hope at creation. 

We miss some of the significance of the story of creation in Genesis because of translation issues. What happens there is that God takes some mud from a creek, forms a human shaped doll, just as Jewish children did. These dolls were called adamanh; we translate this as a name, Adam, and use gendered language to make Adam male. But this isn’t a male, isn’t Adam, it’s an adamah.Then God breathes life into the adamah. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for Spirit and breath is the same. So the adamah becomes a living being by God sharing spirit/breath. 

God says it isn’t good for the adamah to be alone and tries out all kinds of creatures as partners, but it’s only when God takes some of the substance of the adamah and makes another being that the adamah recognizes a true partner. The word is ‘aged’, which means helper but has the sense of equal. Sometimes God is described as our aged, our helper. It’s only when the two are together that they are described as man and woman, actually as husband and wife. The story concludes, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” This part always make middle school confirmation classes giggle, but it’s really a sign of intimacy.

Sometimes this happens and it’s amazing and wonderful. We also know sometimes it doesn’t. This is true of much of life. God hopes we will live in covenants that express justice and loving kindness, that we will provide for everyone to live out the fulfillment of their gifts as children of God. We know that doesn’t happen as well. When we think of marriages breaking down, we often think of adultery, but it’s just as common for marriages to break down because the couple are not helpers to each other, not partners. So we provide in our common life, legal ways to say, “Look, I need out of this marriage. I need a divorce.” We provide a legal process for this. But what about the spiritual process?

Jesus has an answer for that as well. First, he refuses to endorse the abandonment of the vulnerable, of wives and children. Second, he picks up a child. We’ve seen him lift a child before; here he touches them, often a sign of healing. He says, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” What he seems to be signaling is that when adults have wandered off God’s path, the solution is to go back to being a child. He speaks in other places about being born from above; he invites us to become a new person. This is the key to moving beyond divorce: to reflect and repent, to see that if you have not lived up to God’s intention, you need to change and start again, like a child. The solution isn’t law: the solution is grace.. 

This text has been turned into law in a way that often hurts people. Jesus heals; Jesus hopes. He lifts up God’s hope that we will live in equal, intimate partnerships, in just covenants, and when we don’t, he summons us to repent and become like children. This is a hope meant for all people. Today is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that finally recognized the right of LBGTQ people to publicly celebrate marriages partnerships. We should be proud the United Church of Christ has been and continues to be a leader in accepting and affirming this hope for all people. 

I come to this text as a person who has been divorced and remarried. I know what it means to take a hard look at yourself, to realize you need to change. There is a song that says, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Sometimes what we should sing is, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of change, standing in the need of forgiveness, standing in the need of grace.

Jesus preaches this; Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love among us. And God’s hope is that just as we received the spirit at our creation, we will share it. We will heal and hope and in those partnerships, in our communities, there will be love.

In a few moments, we’re going to share together communion, the great memorial of grace. When we say, “This is his body, broken for you,” it reminds us that we are also broken. When we say, “This cup is the new covenant in his blood,” it reminds us that Jesus offers not law, but love. Peter, Paul and Mary sing a song about marriage and love. One of the verses says,

Oh the marriage of you here has caused him to remain
For whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name
There is love. there is love.

Amen. 

Action This Day

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

18th Sunday After Pentecost/B • September 22, 2024

Mark 9:30-37

Early in World War II, when the British army had been flung off the continent of Europe, defeated in the Far East and thrown back in the Mediterranean, it seemed to many that the best the nation could do against fascist powers in Germany and Italy and Japan was to retreat to its island fortress and lick its wounds, hoping for a negotiated peace. But Winston Churchill thundered publicly that they would never surrender. When he was given memos from his military staff about their inability to make progress, he had a habit of writing on the memos in his own bold handwriting, “Action this day!” Churchill knew that defeat was not simply surrender, it is also the conviction that nothing can be done. He never stopped insisting that things be done and if not all of them worked, so be it. Action this day!—nevertheless. Action this day—every day. Today’s reading from Mark is an action plan for disciples.

To see the story we read in Mark in context, we need to go back a bit. Once again the lectionary has skipped an important event. This time, it’s the transfiguration. Because Transfiguration has its own appointed Sunday, the lectionary assumes you already heard this story this year, sometimes last winter, just before Lent. To refresh, Jesus takes two disciples up a mountain with him and while they are there, they see Moses and Elijah appear and Jesus transfigured. What does ‘transfigure’ mean? Does it happen to you? It means here that he glows, and his clothing is suddenly bright white. Now this is a time before washing machines or bleach, so white clothes are startling. Jewish scripture is divided into three sections, Torah, Prophets, Writings; Elijah represents the prophets, Moses represents Torah. On the mountain, we read that “…a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ [Mark 9:7] Just as the signs of healing and exorcism point to Jesus as the Son of God, just as the blessing at his baptism did, once again, the disciples are being taught about the identity of Jesus. Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?”, that he is the Christ is being confirmed.

Now, I love a good story and I live with someone who loves them even more. I imagine if this happened today, there would be selfies and tweets and postings on Facebook. But when they come down from the mountain, Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone and amazingly they don’t. Instead, they encounter a crowd and get distracted. There’s a boy who is possessed; I’m guessing he is nine. Nine-year-old boys sometimes seem possessed; if you raised one, you know exactly what I mean. In any case, the surprising fact about this one is that the disciples have tried and failed to heal him. But Jesus takes him by the hand, heals him, and when the disciples ask later what they did wrong, simply says that the boy needed prayer.

That brings us up to the section we read today. Along the way, as they go through Galilee, Jesus again predicts his coming passion.

…he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ [Mark 9:31]

But just like the first time, the disciples don’t understand. It’s hard to know whether they don’t get it or they just don’t want to believe it. Mark says they were afraid to ask him. It’s uncomfortable; we don’t like talking about it either. Think how many more people show up for Easter than Good Friday services. 

But at the end of the day, it’s Jesus asking the questions. “What were you discussing?” It was customary for disciples to walk behind the master, so perhaps he’d heard them arguing and like a parent ignoring squalling kids, he ignored it; maybe he just didn’t know. They tell him they were arguing about which one of them was the Number One Disciple—who was the greatest. This is so wild, it’s funny. Jesus tells them he’s going to be killed; they argue about their rank. He’s pointing, for the second time, to the end; they are assuming things are going to go on and get better. Jesus is going to be King!—they want to be his ministers, his subordinates, and they want to figure out right now who is first, who is third, who is eleventh. 

So Jesus does what he often does: he tells them the truth, and then he illustrates it. 

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them. “”Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” [Mark 9:35ff]

Jesus is saying this in a social world that is very different from ours That culture had no middle class; it had rich, powerful people, slaves and people who were only a little better than slaves called peasants. Within the upper class, honor was very important and established by associating with other rich people, doing favors, and insulting those who were lower on the social status level. To say be a servant is to go against all of this: it overthrows every idea of the way to live they know. 

Then Jesus caps it by welcoming a child. Now as soon as I said ‘child’ I know you were thinking of little kids. Maybe you remember your own kids, maybe you’re thinking of grandkids. But child has a much bigger meaning in Jesus’ time. The word we translate ‘child’ is also used of slaves. And the people we call children are not beloved cute kids, they are seen as mostly worthless until they are old enough to work. Children aren’t respected, children are the least on the social scale. At another place where a child gets to Jesus, in fact, the disciples intervene because it’s not right for a child to be next to their leader. But Jesus embraces the child there as well as here.

In these two verses you have a capsule of the history of Christian churches. On the one hand, we are endlessly concerned about rank and priority. Some churches have different clergy ranks. I used to have a friend I teased because while my title is “Reverend”, his was “Most Reverend.” I asked him if there was an intermediate step of “More Reverend” I could get. We like hierarchies; we like to know our place among them. That’s what the disciples are doing. It’s Jesus, only Jesus, who is standing there saying, “Whoever wants to be first should be last.” It’s Jesus, only Jesus, who is saying no to all our hierarchies. 

Sometimes we listen to him. In the 1700s as England industrialized, some Christians were concerned about the children working in the new factories. They set up Sunday Schools where kids were taught reading and writing and also religion. The first one in England started in 1751. Richard Raikes was rich man who became a leader in the movement, and he helped bring it to America where it flourished. By 1785, 250,000 English children were attending Sunday Schools. As public schools took over the task of teaching basic skills, Sunday Schools became more focused on their religious mission. So sometimes we do what Jesus says; sometimes we do what we think best. How do we choose between the two? How do we stay on the way following Jesus? 

We stay on the way with Jesus when we listen to him. So I read this story of disciples who are scared by what Jesus has said; I read this story of disciples who don’t understand. And I know that I am one of them: I don’t understand either. I don’t understand suffering; I don’t understand a savior who goes to a cross. It’s too much; it makes no earthly sense. Of course, that is the point: it doesn’t make earthly sense. As Paul says, the wisdom of this world has been found wanting. He means me, he means my wisdom. Instead, I can only have faith in the wisdom of God. In that faith, when I look at this story, I see that Jesus has given us an action plan. He is going to Jerusalem to be handed over and killed—what should I do? What should we do? Simple: welcome children. 

That’s it: that’s his plan for us. That’s how we can know we are connecting to him because when we welcome children, we welcome him. When we welcome children, we are following him. Welcoming a child is welcoming the least among us. Young people, certainly, but also all those others who are seen as small. Finally, as we’ll see next week, children is what he calls us. And that is what we are: God’s beloved children. You are that child he is embracing. I am. All he asks is that we act like it: action this day! Action to embrace the least; action to make the love of God present in a concrete way. Action this day: action every day.

Amen.

Fear and Trembling

Listen to the Sermon Preached Here

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

16th Sunday After Pentecost • September 8, 2024

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is on vacation. Mark says he went up to Tyre, a big coastal town north of Israel, outside its borders. He enters a house and wants some privacy: “…[he] didn’t want anyone to know he was there.” [Mark 7:24b] You know how this works. You go to the shore, maybe Ocean City or Wildwood, rent an Airbnb, just want to be anonymous, kick back, rest up. After all, just before this he’s had a tough time. He got rejected in his hometown and couldn’t do anything there. His mentor and friend, John the Baptist, has been executed. He keeps having arguments with better educated clergy. Maybe his disciples have gotten annoying, the way family sometimes can. So off he goes.

A Woman Comes to Jesus

But when he gets there, it turns out he’s too well known to hide out. Some Canaanite woman, a Gentile, throws herself at his feet when he’s out looking for breakfast. Honestly, I’ve never had a woman throw herself at my feet, so I’m not sure quite what that’s like, but I have certainly been accosted when I’m getting away. It’s a little professional secret that clergy mostly learn early on never, ever, to admit they are clergy when traveling. Years ago when I was young and on a long flight and a woman next to me asked what I did. I proudly said I’m a minister. She spent the rest of the flight telling me why she didn’t go to church and how she didn’t believe in God. I really just wanted to nap, not talk theology. So I’m guessing that’s how Jesus felt. He’s off duty; maybe healing people is exhausting. He’s on a mission, after all, to reclaim Israel for God, to bring all Jews back to a purer, more passionate faith but these people aren’t his problem, they’re Gentiles.

Still, there’s this woman at his feet; no way around her. She’s begging for his attention, his compassion. Her daughter is possessed; she’s desperate. All parents know this feeling, that special, relentless, desperation when your child is sick and no one seems able to help. Jesus might be on vacation, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She looks ridiculous, lying there in the street, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. He’s a man; she’s a woman, he’s a Jew, she’s a Gentile, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She lives in a culture that tells women to be quiet in public, never to talk to a strange man, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter.

Dogs!

I think Jesus must have tried to get around her but couldn’t, so he says something conventional, tries to get out of the situation. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” [Mark 7:27] Now we think of dogs as fun and cute, and we love them. But dogs in this time and place are dirty, mangy, they live outside in villages, they eat garbage and smell like it. ‘Dog’ is an insult; it’s like one of the many ethnic slurs we all know, no need for me to quote them.‘Dogs’ is what Jews call Gentiles and they typically ignore them. Jesus grew up as a Jew; Jesus is steeped in the culture, he’s human and like all humans, his culture has captured him. So he replies like a Jewish man to this Gentile woman. I’m sure he thought that would be the end of it. A little brusque language, a little insult, done, she’ll go away and leave him alone.

But she doesn’t; she only cares about her daughter, she doesn’t care about the insult. She turns it around: “Even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she says. There’s a little play on words there: she’s turned his insult from an image of the mangy alley dogs to a puppy playing in the home. It’s a good argument and it works. “For saying that, you may go,” he says, and assures her that her daughter is healed. She gets up , goes home and wow! Her daughter is fine, her daughter is back.

This isn’t a very nice picture of Jesus, is it? It isn’t gentle Jesus meek and mild; it isn’t the good shepherd, carrying the lost sheep home on his shoulder. It isn’t the love your neighbor guy we all expect. There are endless articles and commentary and sermons explains this away, trying to give us back the nice Jesus we think we know. Even the Gospel of Matthew, about 20 years after Mark, cleans the story up and makes it about her faith, not the argument. But I want the real Jesus, not the pretty picture someone else painted; I want to know the real Jesus, so I want to know what’s going on here. And what seems to be going on is that Jesus changed his mind. 

Is Jesus Changing?

“Wait, Jesus changed his mind? Isn’t he perfect?” I imagine someone wondering this. We believe Jesus is fully human and isn’t being fully human sometimes being wrong? Jesus thought of his mission as being for the Jews, for God’s people. I think Mark is giving us a peek into the moment when Jesus changes his mind and realizes God’s plan is bigger, more wonderful, than he had realized. We’re getting a look at a moment when Jesus realizes everyone is welcome at his table, everyone is included, everyone is a child of God. Everyone includes a Gentile woman with a sick daughter. She isn’t a dog, she isn’t just a woman, she isn’t just a Gentile, she’s a child of God, just like him, and God loves her, just like him. 

It isn’t easy to admit you’re wrong and change. May and I like to argue, Jacquelyn likes everything peaceful. So when we became a family, Jacquelyn introduced a rule that we call the dance. It works like this: if you argue a point, and you are proven wrong, you have to turn around to the left three times and say, “I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong”, and then to the right three times and say, “You were right, you were right, you were right.” By the end everyone is laughing; peace is restored. We remember that how much we love each other is more important than being right. 

What I love about Jesus in this passage is that he was wrong and could change. Mark makes it clear; it’s what the woman says that changes his mind. The passage asks us too: can we change? Can we listen to our history and our values and change our minds, change our hearts? I think this is something all too rare today. We all moan about the dark divisiveness of our politics, but isn’t it precisely because we don’t listen that we are divided? I wish we could make our politicians abide by the dance rule. I’d love to see some of those guys, instead of defending the indefensible, simply turn and turn and turn and say I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. 

Acting on the New Reality

The rest of this passage makes it clear Jesus is acting on this new understanding. It says he goes by way of Sidon to the Deacpolis. This makes no sense; it’s like saying I went from Harrisburg to York by way of Philadelphia. But geography is theology in the Bible. What Mark seems to want us to know is that Jesus works among Gentiles as well as Jews. The Decapolis is a largely Jewish area. When Jesus arrives, we’re told that some friends brought a man who was deaf and stammered for healing. He takes the man aside and heals him in an astonishingly intimate way, touching his ears, telling them to be opened, wetting his finger on his own tongue, touching the man’s tongue. “Be opened!”, is the command: Ephphatha!

We’re starting a new year of programs and worship here, in a new time. Don’t we need to hear Jesus saying Ephphatha to us? There are some great things here that come from our values. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that this church is really great at appreciating. I love that we applaud the music; I love the positive energy of how people seem to appreciate each other here. How can we carry that forward? And what do we need to leave behind? 

Fear and Trembling to Joy

When Paul writes to a new Christian church in northern Greece, in the letter to the Philippians, he tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. I think what he means is for them to discover that everything they think needs to be tested, evaluated, considered. I think he means they need to listen to Jesus, not just their own common sense. I think he knows that isn’t easy because it’s scary to change. I think he means to assure them that God is with them in the process. 

The same is true here. At the end of this story, Jesus is on his way home. Along the way, he heals a man who is deaf. Isn’t this all of us? Aren’t we sometimes deaf when God is practically shouting at us? It’s a fulfillment of what Isaiah said: 

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. …then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.[ Isaiah 35:4-7a]

Jesus goes on from here with a new understanding. He knows change is difficult; he knows we we have fearful hearts. Yet he says, over and over, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” May we hear him; may we follow him, no matter how it changes us. May we learn the love of God so that our fear and trembling turns into songs of joy.

Amen

And Also Many Cattle

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

14th Sunday After Pentecost/Year B • August 25, 2024

Jonah 4

Imagine something with me. It’s morning, a still, cool day like today, on the edge of fall. It’s quiet, no breeze, no sound. The sun is shining and you’re out for a walk through a little woods. You come to a pond and sit on a big rock that was there before this was Pennsylvania. On an impulse, you reach down and pick up a little stone, throw it out as far as you can into the pond, where it makes a splash and a little wave. The circle of the wave moves out, slowly, the only disturbance on the pond. Outward and outward, as far as you can see.

Now come back and let’s talk about Jonah and this funny last chapter. Last Sunday, we left things in a fine state. Jonah heard God’s call, repented, went to Ninevah preached the greatest one sentence sermon of all time judging from the reaction. Everyone in Ninevah repented—changed!—stopped doing evil. God repented too: decided not to destroy them. It seems like that’s a place to ring down the curtain, doesn’t it? Time to celebrate. But we have this last little bit and it may be the most important part of all. 

Jonah’s Story

Jonah knows God has repented and it makes him mad. Isn’t it annoying when you tell someone they’re going to be in trouble and then they somehow wiggle out? Jonah has had a hard time getting to this point, he had three days in the belly of the fish, he had the whole business of finding out after that he still had to go to Ninevah, he had the trip to Ninevah. He had looked forward to seeing the whole city destroyed. It’s what they deserved. Now, that’s gone; God has repented. Jonah knows God and suspected this might happen; he thought God just might change his mind and make the whole trip useless. So he’s pouting. Do you know what I mean by pouting?  He’s mad, but instead of letting it out, he gets dramatic. “…now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” [Jonah 4:3] It’s a hot day, that dry heat that is just unrelenting and God is trying to coax Jonah back like a mother pacifying a child. So God makes a tree grow up just to give him some shade and Jonah sits under it in a little shack he’s built.

Jonah Pouts

But the next day, right at dawn, a worm starts to chew on the tree; God sent it, like God sent the fish and the tree. There’s a scorching east wind that gets under the shelter. “The sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint.” [Jonah 4:7f] Once again, Jonah is angry and once again he pouts: “It would be better for me to die than to live”, he says. Do you know this feeling—the desperate sense that you just can’t take anymore? We speak of “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”, a proverb that picks up the experience we all have when just one small thing is too much to bear. When my son Jason was 12 or so and couldn’t have something he wanted, he would say, “I’m having a bad life.” This line was always delivered after great sighs; usually it was spoken in response to one of those parental inquiries, “What’s wrong Jason?”—“I’m having a bad life.” Jonah is having a bad life.

We have a bad life too, at times, so it’s important to see how God responds. First, God asks whether Jonah’s anger is appropriate: “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”, God asks, and Jonah of course says, “I do…I’m angry enough to die.” This is God’s response: you didn’t grow this vine, you didn’t tend it, you didn’t do anything for it; the vine grew up overnight and now it’s gone. But here you are angry because I decided to save Ninevah’s 120,000 people. I love God’s description of these people: they can’t tell their right hand from their left. And many cattle too, God says. Now the word that we translate ‘cattle’ really means all the animals there. Stunning isn’t it? For a month we’ve been reading and thinking about this city, about its destruction and salvation, did you ever think about the cattle? Here’s Almighty God, not fooled at all by the repentance of the city, knowing there is trouble ahead—they don’t know their right from their left, they’re children morally!—and God still has time to care about the cattle. God cares about the dogs, the goats, the little creatures e don’t even see most days. God’s circle of care is bigger than we ever thought.

Whom do you care about? Who does God care about? Is your list looking more like God’s? That seems to be the heart of the story of Jonah. Remember what we said at the beginning? This story uses an ancient time as its setting, but it was written down for God’s people when they were feeling smug and distinct. They’d come back from exile and pushed out all the foreigners. What a scandalous story in that context: a good religious man does all the bad things and the bad Gentiles do all the good things. And God cares for them all, teaches them all, saves them all. It’s scandalous: it will never work. But it does. God is there, in the process of each day, stretching people, teaching, growing the circle of care.

Growing Our Circle of Care

I’ve had to grow my circle. Almost 30 years ago, when my kids, Jason and Amy were almost grown, I moved far from them. It was hard and I started making a daily practice of sitting in the church’s sanctuary and praying for both of them. I’d take a few minutes to picture them, think about what they were going through, and ask God to work in their day. After a while, Jacquelyn and I were married and I became a parent to May, so the prayer time had to grow to include them. Amy got married to Nick: now I had six to pray for each day. Jason married Jenelle, Amy and Nick had Maggie, the list kept getting longer. By then I’d added onto it whoever was sick in the church. Then I went to a conference and someone suggested praying for all the members of your church daily: reading their names from a list. Amy and Nick had Andrew and later Bridget. Jason and Jenelle had Jude and Jonah. The list just kept getting longer. I added parents: my mother, Jacquelyn’s mother and father. There’s no end and that’s what God let me discover: I can’t draw a little line and say, “These are it, the rest don’t belong.” The list was like the circle in the pond: it just kept growing and now it’s grown to include all of you.  

It’s not easy to grow your circle. It means thinking of what people want and need who aren’t like you. Sometimes we fail. For a few years, I attended a Presbyterian church in Milwaukee. A group of Hmong people had settled nearby after being refugees and they wanted to be part of the church. They liked their new church so much that the Hmong women made a banner to hang on the pulpit. Hmong banners are beautiful, full of intricate tiny stitches that make vibrant patterns and the cloth is dyed with saffron, so they are bright orange. The pastor hung the banner one Sunday. But the session met soon after and declared that since orange isn’t a liturgical color, the banner would have to come down. 

The people on the session, their version of a the consistory, weren’t bad people. They were faithful Christians, they loved their church. They had been brought up seeing green, red, white, blue and purple banners, the liturgical colors. That saffron colored banner with its bright orange? They just couldn’t stretch enough to take it in. Maybe they repented eentually; I moved away shortly after the banner controversy. Honestly? I don’t think God cared about liturgical colors. I think God loved that banner. I think God likes a rainbow of colors, after all that’s the sign God chose for a covenant after the flood. I wonder what would have happened if they had stretched their circle, seen that the banner was a glorious fabric of devotion, woven those folks into the heart of that church. 

God Is Shaping Us

God is shaping us, shaping our history, expanding the circle. To be the people of God is to consciously choose to be a part of this process. It means to understand we are not here on our own and our choices are not ours alone to make. We have a purpose, the same purpose we had from the beginning. At our creation, Genesis says God placed us in a garden and told us to keep each other company and take care of the garden. That’s still our purpose and God wants to stretch us to fit it. Of course we don’t always succeed. But look at the story of Jonah:  the only one who succeeds there is God. Jonah runs away and ends up back where he started. It doesn’t matter that we don’t always succeed; God has given us repentance as a tool so we can come back, come home, remember our purpose and start over. Wouldn’t today be a good day to begin? It takes some stretching: remember, there are all those cattle, all those people, all of creation. God means to stretch us out until we finally know our right from our left, until we know the big love of God is big enough for all, big enough even for each one.

I started with a pond. Genesis says God stilled the waters at creation: God is everywhere in the pond. And God drops us in, and the effect of what we do spreads like the waves farther and farther, far beyond what we know. We may never know how much a kind word, a prayer for someone, an invitation matters. There are all those people God cares about and means us to Care for. And then of course: also many cattle.

Amen.

The Deep End

Exploring With Jonah – Part 2

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Pastor ©2024

12th Sunday After Pentecost/B • August 11, 2024

Jonah 2:1-10

When I was seven or eight, our family belonged to the Hopewell Country Club, and we spent summer days at the pool. Everyone had a little rubbery circle worn on your wrist or, if you were cool, around your ankle. The band’s color defined what part of the pool you could use. But like all kids, we saw boundaries more as a challenge than a limit. So sometimes, we’d slip under the ropes and floats that marked our zone. There would be a few moments of stolen fun but inevitably your mother would yell, “Get out of the deep end! Get out of the deep end!” What my mother knew was that I needed to be near a wall. The deep end of the pool was a mysterious zone where danger lurked. Even later when I had passed the swimming tests and taken a diving class, the deep end always gave me a little shiver. 

Jonah in the Deep End

Life has deep ends. Sometimes there are boundaries and markers that warn of our approach to the deep end; sometimes we find ourselves in the deep end with no warning at all. Have you been to the deep end? Today’s reading is about Jonah in the depths, in the deep end. , but it is as much about what to do when you are in the deep end. Last week, we read how God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, a great and evil city and how Jonah ran away from God. He took a boat for a foreign shore, but God hurled a wind that threatened the boat and the sailors hurled Jonah into the water. There, drowning, he was swallowed by a big fish. That’s where we left him last week, in the belly of the fish. 

He says,

You cast me into the deep,
   into the heart of the seas,
   and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
   passed over me.
Then I said, “I am driven away
   from your sight;
how shall I look again
   upon your holy temple?”
The waters closed in over me;
   the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped around my head
   at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
   whose bars closed upon me for ever;”
[Jonah 2:3-6a]

The deep end of life is the place where you feel yourself far from God’s care, distant from God’s presence, distant from God’s call. 

The Deep End

We arrive at the deep end in various ways. Sometimes an event overwhelms us and we feel God has deserted us. We go to the doctor and suddenly hear awful words that change the afternoon; a friend or a family member dies or is killed, and we cannot see the sense or find comfort, and we rage at God and feel deserted. 

Other times, the deep end is a place we have gone on our own. Our society has a pervasive amount of information about dangers. We know how dangerous heroin and cocaine are. We know how dangerous smoking is. We could list hundreds of other things we know are bad for us. We see glittering commercials about casinos; we hear next to nothing about the toll of those addicted to gambling whose desperation becomes a deep end that destroys. Every year, every day, people voluntarily take the first steps into the deep end. Once there, they discover it is a one way journey that not only destroys them physically but often spiritually as well. The deep end is the place where we cannot feel God’s presence, where we feel alone and desperate. 

Have you been to this place? The fish gets all the attention when we remember this story: we like happy endings and the fish is the happy ending. But before that there is real terror here. There is real fear. People in recovery from alcoholism or other addictions often speak of hitting bottom. Jonah speaks of “the pit”: it’s the same place. Many experiences have a pit. A woman said, “I think I hit rock bottom about 3 weeks after my husband left, and now I’m slowly swimming back up. But I’m a wounded swimmer.” 

Jonah is a wounded swimmer when the fish swallows him. Most of us are wounded as well at one time or another. So Jonah’s experience is ours. We have been to the pit: we have been to the deep end. But there is hope in the deep end. Joseph Hart, writing about the impact of trauma and crisis, notes,

When an accident or disaster strikes, to say nothing of a deliberate act like torture, the old ways in which we saw the world no longer make sense. We ask, “How could this happen?” and “Where was God?” And by slowly struggling to answer such questions, we develop a new and deeper understanding. We grow.

Hart goes on to describe a doctor who had built a successful practice and earned many honors. At 62, he suffered a heart attack followed by a stroke. He lost the ability to drive or practice and he lost his purpose. Eventually he had to be hospitalized under a suicide watch. But with his purpose gone, he found a spiritual core and rediscovered his religious faith. Eventually he found a new purpose and new meaning in life.

Jonah Finds a Purpose

This is what happens to Jonah. Jonah finds purpose when he responds to God’s call. He starts up when he starts back, back to God, back to God’s hope for him. 

7 As my life was ebbing away,
   I remembered the Lord;
and my prayer came to you,
   into your holy temple.
8 Those who worship vain idols
   forsake their true loyalty. [Jonah 2:7f]

Here is the key to purpose and to a way back from the deep end: to rediscover God’s hope for your life, to hear God’s call to you, to put God’s purpose at the center of your own life and make that purpose the guide to every day. 

We often try to fight the deep on our own. We avoid admitting we’re in the deep end. “I can handle it,” we say. We try to cope, moving faster and faster until we can’t see where we are from the frantic spin. Surely in the midst of the storm Jonah swam like crazy, but the answer wasn’t to swim harder, it was to go where God wanted him to go. Swimming harder won’t help if you’re going in the wrong direction. 

Every Sunday we pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Temptation is an experience when we are seduced into believing we are enough, we can set our own course, live from our own purpose. That path leads to the deep end. One of the reasons for a church is to help us avoid the deep end if we can. But the good news, the truly great news, is that even in the deep end, even when we think we are lost forever to the love of God, we are not. God is waiting, even in the deep end to hear us, to lead us, to rescue us. What Jonah learns in the deep end is that God has heard him. And knowing that God has heard him, he finally is ready to live from God’s call. 

Are You In the Deep End?

Have you been to the deep end? Are you there now? There are many who are. I said last week and I say again, this is a church in transition. Saying that brings to mind the pastoral search, but it’s not just about a new pastor. It’s also about sharpening and sharing our understanding of God’s call and purpose for this church. Surely part of that call is to help people come back from the deep end. After all, the church is meant to be a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for the saved. 

We left Jonah last week in the deep end, in the belly of the great fish. Today we heard him say, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”  [Jonah 2:9b] The fish leaves him on the shore, but he’s not the same Jonah that left. When we have been to the deep end and learned that indeed, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord”, neither are we, neither is anyone. What do you imagine Jonah thought there, wet, sea weed tangled around him, maybe bruised from his landing? I wonder if he remembered God’s call? I wonder if he was just happy to be alive? He’s back where he started; no progress made at all. But perhaps God has made some progress, for Jonah is not tv he same person he was when he ran away. We’ll leave him there on the beach today, and come back next week. 

God’s Call

We need a week to think about our call as well. Sometimes when we imagine a calling, we think it’s big and important, and we know that we are neither. But God’s call comes into our lives in many ways. Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” May what you do this week indeed be full of great love.

Amen.

Leftovers

A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ

by Rev. James Eaton ©2024

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost/B • July 28, 2024

John 6:1-21

This text includes two stories: Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people and Jesus walking to his disciples across the water. Because of the constraints of time, I’ve chosen to deal only with the first story in this sermon.

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.
– The Jewish prayer over bread, also used by Muslims.

Give us today our daily bread.
– The Lord’s Prayer

Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat
– Table grace at Michigan State Youth camp

Every culture has a way to say thank you at the beginning of a meal. In our home, May and I usually cook, but it’s Jacquelyn who offers the prayer: “Heavenly Father, thank you for this food and the person who prepared it.” We say grace because we know, deep down, we are not of ourselves enough: we need to be sustained, every day, by our daily bread.

Bread is interesting stuff. Sometime about 14,000 years ago, someone somewhere figured out that if you ground up grains, mixed them with water, and put them near a fire, the grains turned into something good to eat. Later, they discovered if you added something bubbly like beer, which we know is over 5,000 years old, the result was even better. Ever since, bread has been the common food of common people, and it weaves in and out of the whole Bible story. 

What to Do When 5,000 Show Up?

At the beginning of the story we read in John, Jesus has gone off to a mountain to meet with his disciples in private. Remember that geography is theology in the Bible: “The mountain” is frequently where God encounters prophets, from Moses at Mt. Sinai to Jesus later when he is transfigured. Mark says withdrew to let his disciples rest. John just says they went off by themselves and Jesus sat down. Sitting down is the position from which a rabbi teaches, so perhaps that’s what Jesus had in mind. Clearly, it’s a private party. But five thousand men show up – and their wives, significant others and children. What to do?

What amazes me about this story every time I go back to it is that it is so like us. I’ve been sitting with church committees for almost 50 years and every time a crisis occurs, the first thing that happens is someone talks about the cost. Philip does it here: “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t be enough.” Two hundred denarii is about eight months wages for most people. It’s an astounding sum. What’s the next thing we do, once we figure out we don’t have the money for the project? Don’t we look around to see what we do have? Andrew: here is a boy with five loaves and two dried fish. I’ve always wondered about this boy: it doesn’t say he offered his lunch, it doesn’t say he volunteered to share. These aren’t big loaves; the average lunch for a peasant is three barley loaves. Barley loaves are coarse and not as tasty as wheat bread; it’s what poor people eat. 

It’s easy to rush over the details that come next, but we shouldn’t. Jesus tells everyone to sit down; the Greek word here actually means “to recline”. That’s significant because poor people in this time ate standing up but rich people at feasts recline at table. He’s asking them to eat like they’re at a rich, wonderful banquet. Then Jesus gives thanks. “Blessed art thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” He starts distributing the bread and the fish, and it turns out there is more than enough for everyone.  If you grew up in a church where they’re comfortable with the supernatural, this is miraculous. If you grew up where preachers like to make things more natural, maybe you’ve heard that everyone just shared the lunches they’d brought—as if that wouldn’t be a miracle as well. It doesn’t matter which road you take, they both get to this place: there is this miraculous abundance in God’s care. 

What God Does

This is what God does. At creation, God makes a world with everything we need and then says to people, “Take care of it.” Eat whatever you want, God tells them, except from the tree of the experience of good and evil. In the wilderness, when God’s people are hungry and whining, they discover manna, a bread like substance that occurs naturally. God feeds people twice at the request of Elisha, once with leftovers. No wonder every religion, every culture, has a way of saying thanks: at it’s foundation, what we need to survive is all gift.

We say grace, but what if we really gave thanks? What if we gave thanks for each part of the meal – main dish, potatoes, vegetables—hopefully dessert! Someone raised that chicken, someone plucked it, packed it, put it out for us to buy. Someone grew the vegetables which needed rain and sun and earth. What if we gave thanks for those as well. It would take a long time to say that much thanks. Even just the bread would take a while if we thought of all the ingredients – water, yeast, oil, flour. The wheat alone contains miraculous abundance. Annie Dillard writes,

So far as I know, only one real experiment as ever been performed, but when they get down to the root hairs, I boggle completely. In those same four months the rye plant created 14 billion root hairs, and those little strands placed end-to-end just about wouldn’t quit. In a single cubic inch of soil, the length of the root hairs totaled 6,000 miles. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, pp. 166-67)

Jesus gives thanks—and there is miraculous abundance. My favorite part of this story is that there are leftovers. Remember where we started? We can’t afford it, there isn’t enough, we just have a little bit—now the disciples are scurrying about with baskets taking up the leftovers.

Some people want to seize Jesus—don’t let him get away, they cry. They wanted to make him King by force. Isn’t this like us too? We want to own Jesus, we want to make him our king, we want him to heal us, feed us, just us, not the others. But he slips away; he always does when we try to take charge of him. The only way to stay with Jesus is to stop making him ours and let ourselves belong to him. At the end of this story, he’s back where he started, up on a mountain.

Leftovers

The disciples have a new problem: taking up the leftovers. The text calls them “fragments”, the same word used by early Christians for the bread used in communion. What did they do with all those leftovers? Did they make bread pudding? Did they hand them out the next day? John doesn’t tell us, he moves on to Jesus using the image of bread for himself: “I am the bread of life”, he later says. 

And the boy, how did the boy react? Someone packed him a nice lunch: five loaves is a lot for a peasant boy and a couple of sardines to go along. I bet he looked forward to that lunch; boys get hungry and here he had everything he needed to be full, possibly something that didn’t happen every day. Going hungry isn’t something you forget. My dad grew up on a farm in Michigan and remembered going hungry. We always had enough to eat in the home where I grew up, but dad insisted that every dinner had to include a plate of bread, even though we seldom ate it. Did the boy give up his lunch voluntarily? Was he disappointed? John doesn’t say. But John does say everyone had as much as they wanted. So we know that at the end, the boy was full: he had enough.

This is what God wants: for us to feel the fullness and thanksgiving is both the method and the appropriate response. Fullness is not an amount but an attitude, a spiritual state Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist in Vienna in 1942 when he was sent with his family to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Two years later he was sent to Auschwitz, where his family was murdered. Even there, he said thanks. He says in one place,

The most ghastly moment of the twenty-four hours of camp life was the awakening…We then began the tussle with our wet shoes, into Which we could scarcely force our feet, which were sore and swollen… One morning I heard someone, whom I knew to be brave and dignified, cry like a child because he finally had to go to the snowy marching grounds in his bare feet, as his shoes were too shrunken for him to wear. In those ghastly minutes, I found a little bit of comfort: a small piece of bread which I drew out of my pocket and munched with absorbed delight

Even in the heart of darkness, even in the midst of evil, God intends our fullness. The writer of Ephesians prays, “…that you may be  filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God

How Wonderful to Be Full

This story is one of the few told in all four gospels. I think it’s told because it helps us understand who we are. We are the people who pick up the leftovers of God’s grace and give them out so that need everyone will have what they need. We are the people who pick up the leftovers of God’s grace and share them out as fragments that can fill someone with the full measure of God. It’s what we do every time we open the clothing closet; it’s what we do through Neighbors in Need and countless other missions. It’s what we do every time we welcome someone; it’s what we do every time we share communion. We take up the leftovers of the bread of life, share them out, so that all can indeed, like the boy, like the disciples, like the crowd, have what they need. We share them out as God’s blessing. 

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.

How wonderful to be full. May you be full today.

Amen.