Category Archives: Scripture

Still I Rise

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor • © 2025

Easter Sunday Year C • April 20, 2025

Luke 24:1-12

Christmas begins with lights. On Christmas Eve, we gather here to look for the Lord, to celebrate his coming. The last thing we do is to light the candles. It’s a wonderful moment: celebrating the one who came as the light of the world, we pass the light, candle to handle, one to another until the whole room sparkles and we sing. But Easter begins in darkness. The last thing we do on Maundy Thursday is to extinguish the candles, remembering the darkness to come on Good Friday. So we come to Easter from the darkness.

Like a stage cleared in the final act of a play, John tells us the crowds have cleared out, first shouting, “Hosanna” for Jesus come as king, later demanding, “Crucify him!” when the Romans and the city authorities arrest him and put him on trial as a terrorist. Peter denies him in the courtyard of the jail. Killed on a cross in the gathering shadows of sunset that marks the beginning of the sabbath, his followers fade away. Finally, it’s left to a sympathetic rich man to provide for his burial and the body is stashed in a cave tomb, too late for preparation before shabbat, which starts as darkness begins and night takes over. Only now, in the darkness of the dawn, does anyone, a few women, venture to the tomb. They buy spices to prepare the body, to make the final arrangements and give some dignity to the dead. They are going to the grave and they’re worried that the stone closing it off will be too much to roll away; they’re worried they won’t be able to get in to where Jesus lies dead in the darkness. It’s early: John says, “while it was still dark” [John 20:1b]

The burial caves of Jerusalem are on a cliff wall. Imagine walking along the a cliff, as the darkness turns into dawn, slowly, carefully negotiating the turns in the path, watching just the steps ahead, not the whole path, unable to see around the next turn. Carefully, quietly, the women walk the path, stumbling here or there, clutching each other to keep from falling, arms full of the precious spices. They know a large stone blocks the entrance to the tomb and they are already trying to think of a way to move it. You see how like us they are? They have a problem: they’ve brought the things they will need to do their job and they are discussing how to deal with the biggest obstacle of all. Isn’t that what we do?

Now they come around the last curve. Are they still talking about the stone or has the nearness of the grave silenced them? Now they look toward the grave, discovering the problem they worried so much about isn’t there: the stone is moved. Who moved it? How did they do it? The women don’t know or seem to care. The grave is open; they walk slowly toward it, silent now I’m sure, they come to the entrance and, they enter the cave and suddenly the darkness lightens and in the light there is a person sitting, dressed in white, shining with it. They’re afraid: who wouldn’t be, they came to deal with a dead man, not a live angel. 

He says what angels always say: “Don’t be afraid.” He shows them where Jesus had lain, they see the grave clothes they had intended to anoint with their spices which won’t be needed after all. And he tells them what to do. The women run. Of course they run: wouldn’t you? “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”, one account says. What about you? What about me? What are we to make of this story? 

Most importantly, that Easter is not only for Easter Sunday. The gospel of Mark starts, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” All that follows, all the stories of Jesus’ ministry and teaching, the story of the cross, this story of Easter is prelude, just a beginning. The good news is that it’s not the end. In the failure of the worldly events, there is a space made by faith. In the vulnerability of the cross and the tomb, there is an empty place and God works in that wilderness, God is present in that wilderness, raising Jesus. The Pharisees cannot understand him, the Romans cannot kill him, his own followers cannot follow him but God’s grace is so powerful it can overcome all of them. Go home, the angel says: go back to Galilee. He’s not gone, he’s still here: “there you will see him.” Easter is a summons to see.

Maya Angelou is a poet who has seen in the long history of oppression of black people a reason for hope, an image of resurrection. She says, in part, 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise. [Maya Angelou, Still I Rise]

There he is: rising in the sweep of history, bending history to the love of God, the justice of God a little bit every day. See him there: see his power there. See his resurrection there. To the violence of the Empire, of all empires, he says: “Still I rise.” 

But it’s not only in the big things that Jesus can be seen. Terry Marquardt wrote about grieving for her grandmother and remembered,

My aunt was with my grandmother during the last nights of her life, when the pain in her spine was so horrible that she hadn’t slept for two days, and the medication had stopped working, and she was beginning to lose hope. It was too much to lay down, so the two of them were sitting in the living room at 2:00 in the morning when my aunt had an idea.

“Mom, let’s have a party.”

“How could I possibly do that,” my grandmother said, motioning to her stiff body, kept awake by the sensation that it was being ground into dust.

“Let’s try,” my aunt said.

And she started to sing.

My aunt sang the Mennonite hymns my grandmother had taught her, songs from my grandmother’s childhood in a Mennonite farming community in northeastern Canada, songs that were sung in the fields, at their dinner tables, to greet the dawn, to end their day, on the way to church. My aunt and my grandmother sang all night long, until there was no pain, until my grandmother’s nurse woke up and tiptoed into the room. “I’ve never heard such beautiful music,” she cried.

View at Medium.com

In that moment, in those songs, her grandmother was rising, and they were rising with her.

We thought the problem was how to give Jesus a decent burial, how to roll the stone away. But it turns out that the stone we worried about is already rolled away; Jesus is gone ahead. The empty tomb is God’s message to the Emperor, to the soldiers, to the world, to the followers who have scattered that in the midst of death, still I rise. This is God saying, in the midst of betrayal, whether Judas and his double crossing kiss or Peter in his fearful denial, still I rise. This is God saying to the torturers and the prison guards and the judges and the crucifiers just following orders, still I rise. This is God saying that even when I feel abandoned on a cross and cry out asking why I’m forsaken, still I rise. This is God saying, even from a tomb closed up tight, still I rise.

This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. It starts with fearful followers running away. In the days that followed, every one of them had to decide what to do about the news that he had risen; every one had to decide how to live when the tomb was empty and despite the plain sense of his death, there was this amazing experience where it was clear that he was saying, “Still I rise”.  Every one of them had to decide whether to keep running or to rise with him, to look for him, follow him, to Galilee.

Where is Galilee? It’s where they came from, where they started. Jesus is going back to the beginning and starting over: that’s where they will see him. Their lives are about to start over because these lives are lived beyond the fear of death. The great question about the Christian movement of the first century is what powered it, what allowed it to change history. The answer is the people Jesus changed; the answer is the people who saw him rise and took his resurrection as the pattern for their own lives. Jesus was risen and they said with him, still I rise.

It’s the same with us. We are prepared to go to the grave; we are good at raising the money to buy spices, we can discuss how to move the stone. But are we ready to leave the grave and go to Galilee? Can we take Easter home, can we take it wherever we go? Still I rise, he says: despite what we thought, he calls us, invites us, forgives us, commands us. Come see me: come follow me. 

He’s gone ahead and when we see that, we’re ready to take the next step, to let go of our fears, accept his forgiveness and follow him. Easter isn’t a day, it’s an invitation: come see me. The gospels tell us how he appeared over and over to people, and his message is always the same: love one another, see me, follow me, because still, I rise: even when you don’t believe it, even when you don’t understand it, still I rise. Peter denied him but it’s Peter he calls back to tend his sheep. Mary ran in fear but it’s Mary who first meets him on the way. Thomas won’t believe him but it’s Thomas who feels his wounds. To the powerful who prey on the poor, his presence says: still I rise. To the hopeless who cannot find the way out of darkness, he says, “I am the light of the world”—still I rise. To us, to all of us, who come here, wondering, he says: still I rise. Come follow me. Come: because on your way, on your journey, you will see me: for still I rise. 

Amen

Good Gifts

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday After Epiphany/Year C • January 19, 2025

1 Corinthians 12:1-11 • John 2:1-11

This is a time of year when a lot of us plan to go somewhere else, usually somewhere warmer.   For the next couple of Sundays, I’d like to invite you to come with me to Corinth, in Greece, and listen to Paul as he writes to a new church there. I can’t promise the trip will do anything about the temperatures, but I believe he can help us understand more clearly what God hopes for us. What we call ‘First Corinthians’ is a letter written to a group of Christians in one of the very first churches. They’ve run into some problems; they are arguing and fighting, and their former pastor is writing to help them sort things out. He starts out thanking God for them and noting that they’ve been given every spiritual gift they need. Then he gets right to the problems: he’s heard there are divisions. The rest of the letter is guidance on dealing with division, and it’s worth listening to even when we aren’t divided; it’s like the signs on a hiking trail to help us stay on the path. Christians called Christ’s path “the way” and, thinking about Christian life as a journey rather than something we did once when we got confirmed is helpful.

One of the things dividing the Corinthians is spiritual gifts. We’re a pretty calm group when we’re here; the Corinthian church is a lot rowdier. In another place, he talks about their potlucks and notes that some people get drunk at them. We haven’t had one of the socials here in a while, but I don’t remember anyone getting drunk when we had them. One of their issues is that they’ve made spiritual gifts into a hierarchy and for them the top one is what we call speaking in tongues. Ecstatic speech happens in many religious traditions and in Corinth some seem to think it’s the most important gift of all and that it makes those who do this more important than others. And that’s the real problem: creating a hierarchy, valuing some more than others. 

To really understand this, we need to understand something about Corinth. Greece has two main parts, separated by an isthmus about four miles wide and that’s where Corinth is located. Sailing around the lower part of Greece was long and difficult, full of dangerous shoals. In fact, they built a sort of trolley system that allowed ships to be put on a little cart and moved by oxen and rigging across the land. So from very ancient times, Corinth was a crossroads of trade. This trade made Corinth rich. So rich that about 150 years before Christ, the Corinthians stood up to the Romans. But they were defeated, and the city was destroyed. It sat there desolate for many years, then about 40 years before Jesus, Julius Caesar had the city rebuilt as a place to settle retired soldiers. Once again, it became a center for shipping and a place where it was easy to get rich. It’s a place where riches are important for status as well as buying things. So you have people used to living within a hierarchy who are treating God’s gifts like worldly status.

But that’s not the reason for God giving spiritual gifts. Paul’s testimony is clear: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” [12:7] He also tells us the most important gift of all, to say “Jesus is Lord”. This is the fundamental Christian statement of faith: that Jesus is Lord in our lives. Today, it’s conventional to say that. If you went around saying it at the grocery store, people would think you were just a little strange but no one would get mad. What do we get mad about? One thing today is politics. Go around a public place proclaiming your allegiance to one party or another, and you’re bound to make someone angry. Now in the first century, to say, “Jesus is Lord”, is a political statement as well as a religious one. The title “Lord” is applied only to the Roman Emperor. So you’re saying that you have switched your allegiance from the Emperor to this other person, this Jesus.  

Paul is saying here first, be clear who you are serving: Jesus is Lord. That’s the most important point. Now that who you serve is clear, consider the spiritual gifts not as reasons for boasting but as gifts as given for a reason. The reason is building up the community. In another letter, Paul describes the fruit of these spiritual gifts.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. [Galatians 5:22f]

Paul goes on to list some spiritual gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophecy, what he calls “working power deeds”, and finally speaking in tongues. But as he lists these, he notes an equality in them: “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” [1 Corinthians 12:11] Paul wants the Corinthians to see the equality in these gifts and since they are gifts, that there is no reason to boast about having one of them in your life.

Next week we’ll hear more about how Paul suggests we should see this working but for today, what I want to say is that it’s a good time to think about the gifts of the Spirit here. We aren’t divided like the Corinthian church but are we fully expressing the gifts of the Spirit here? What gifts do you have that could more fully be expressed here. We’re a small church, and it’s easy to assume we can’t do a lot. But what Paul is saying is that God has put everything we need here to do what God wants. We’re about to enter a new season of ministry here. A new pastor will be installed and take over the task of guiding this church. What are your hopes for that time? What could this church do to express “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity” in new ways here? What gifts has the Spirit given you, intending that they be shared in this community?

We need all of them. Whatever gift I have for preaching only goes so far; it won’t get the light bulbs changed. We’re lucky to have some great musicians, but they can’t oversee getting the chair lift put in. All the gifts the Spirit gives are needed; all of them are meant to work together to produce the fruit of the Spirit here, right here, right now.

You can see this working. One gift that’s broadly distributed here is appreciation. This church is better at appreciation than most. I love that every Sunday, the musicians are applauded. I’ve been gratified by the kind comments of so many of you. Psychologists tell us that appreciation and saying, “Thank you!” Is one of the hallmarks of great marriages and friendships. Now out in the wider world, we’re told that there is a widespread loneliness. People are desperate to find connection. How can we take that gift of appreciation that is so wonderfully expressed here out to the world with us?

I’ve put an inventory sheet at the front and back of the sanctuary, where you pick up bulletins. It’s designed to help you identify your gifts. Maybe you’re aware of these now; maybe it takes some prayer and reflection. I invite you to take the inventory and use it to help you think about your gifts this week. And then, to think about how you can nurture those gifts in this church, for this church and for its wider community.

Today, we also read about the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned a lot of water into wonderful wine. John says this is the first powerful work Jesus did, and that it’s a sign of God’s power in the world, working through him. What he does is to take people who believe they’ve run out of something essential and show them that in him there is an abundance that seems miraculous. It’s the same way here. We may feel like a small church, we may feel like the issues we confront are daunting, but in saying “Jesus is Lord” and living out that creed, we discover there is an abundance of the Spirit able to sustain us and accomplish God’s hope for us and for this church. 

There’s a children’s song we sang in one of my churches that makes this point in a simple way. It goes, “God gives us not just food, not just water, but everything we need, not just candy, not just broccoli, but everything we need…not just Jim, not just Linda but everything we need”… and so on. We used to invite people to make up new verses: one I remember was “not just pickles, not just olives” but everything we need. The chorus says, “So praise God, praise God, sing, praise for God is wonderful.” It’s the only song that ever made me give thanks for broccoli. And like most children’s songs, it is exactly right: thank god for not just pickles, not just olives, but everything we need, every spiritual gift, all of which are given here, all of which are given to share, all of which are meant to do the work of God here, in this place. 

Amen.

Rise, Shine, Give God Your Glory

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2025

Epiphany Sunday • January 5, 2025

Matthew 2:1-12

Rise, shine, give god your glory. I can’t help hearing the old camp song when I say this; do you know it? Rise, shine, give God your glory. Today is Epiphany Sunday here, one day before the actual day, January 6. Sometimes it’s called Three Kings Day and in the rest of the Christian world, it’s when gifts are given and the promise of Christmas celebrated. ‘Epiphany’ is a Greek word meaning manifestation. I said that once and after the service someone said: great, you explained one word I didn’t understand with another I don’t get. It means seeing suddenly some flash of God’s presence. It’s as if the whole world is lit up, it’s like a dark night split by the instant flash of lightning. Epiphany is God’s light shining into the world and as John said, as we read in our call to worship, the darkness has not overcome it.

I grew up with the Three Kings: did you? My grandmother had a small nativity scene, little wooden figures like the ones we have here but much smaller. Every year we’d set it out on a low end table. When she wasn’t around, my brother and I would take the figures down and play with them. I liked making sailboats out of a pointy board and a dowel mast; Joseph and the shepherds became crew. Mary and the baby were passengers; the animals came on board too, like the ark. But the kings on their camels weren’t meant for shipboard life; they galloped on the shore. Originally they were joined by a chain, but that got broken and so did one of the camel’s legs. We saw them as toys and didn’t understand when my grandmother got angry at us for playing with them. That’s what the Three Kings are for many of us today: the last toys of Christmas. No other Christmas characters have had so many stories made up about them; no others are so richly embellished with fantasies and made up things nowhere in the Bible. Today, I want to put away the toys, stop playing with the figures, and see how this story in Matthew can help us rise, shine and give God the glory.

Who are the these three? They are Magi. The word gets translated “Wise Men”—although the text says nothing about gender—or ‘Kings’—although the Greek text doesn’t call them kings. In the area that’s now Iraq and Iran, schools of magicians and astrologers and dream interpreters existed for hundreds of years. They were called Magi, from the same root word that gives us ‘magic’. We have such people. They are the talking heads on TV, who guess about the future, they are the therapists who help you look forward, they are the people who magically make Alexa work for you. They aren’t kings, and sadly even the camels that were so much fun in the crèche aren’t in the story. There is  something else to understand about the Magi: they are rich Gentiles.

We’re all Gentiles, so we often miss how important this is. Yet in that time and place, no more fundamental distinction existed. So it’s surprising to see them here in this Jewish story. Matthew gives us a long, detailed genealogy of Jesus, connecting him with Abraham, detailing how he is descended from King David. He makes sure we know Jesus is as Jewish as he can be. Then he tells us about Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy, and how it takes an angel visit to get the two together. Not a word from Mary but isn’t that just like a patriarchal culture to tell us about a birth by telling how hard it is for the father without mentioning the mom? After the story we read today, we hear about Herod’s slaughter of young male children which is so like Pharaoh in the time of Moses. When Herod dies, the whole family goes home to Nazareth, and we pass to John the Baptist. These are all good Jewish stories and yet here, right here, smack in the middle, is this strange story of these rich Gentiles, the Magi.

They know what they are doing; they’ve seen a star, read the ancient Jewish prophecies, risen up from their daily lives and gone on a long journey. Now they’re near the end; they go to the Jewish king, supposing he will know what’s happening. Yet Herod and his advisors don’t have a clue. Bethlehem is about five miles away but the Magi, who have come over a thousand miles, know more than Herod. They are the emblem of what the Apostle Paul will later call a mystery; that, “…the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” [Ephesians 3:6] No more fundamental distinctions exist in that time than Gentile and Jew, rich and poor. But here is God breaking boundaries, bringing rich Gentiles to poor Jewish peasants. 

Why do they go? To give gifts. The one part of the créche Magi that is in Matthew’s Gospel is the gifts. A lot of stories have been made up about the gifts, but the truth is these gifts are the working tools of Magi. Incense is burned when mysterious things are done; myrrh is used for magical tattoos. And gold always comes in handy. The other thing in the real story which often isn’t in the créche is a star. To all who had to navigate before GPS and maps, stars were a real gift. Since ancient times, humans have used the stars to mark a path. Matthew tells us the Magi saw a star, and it leads them to Mary, Joseph and Jesus; they give their gifts and then a dream tells them to go home a different way. No names, no genders, no kings; instead, a story of the gift of a star, the gifts to the child, the gift of direction. This is a story about gifts.

Gifts aren’t always easy. Sometimes we don’t recognize them. One father told this story about a special gift.

I was cleaning my 6 year old son’s room, and doing my annual purge of crap he’s managed to hoard. I have this big pile of stuff to throw out in the living room, when he comes in, pulls some stupid paper butterfly out of the trash pile and tells me I can’t throw this away because it was a present.

He goes to a lot of birthday parties and gets a lot of goodie bags with this sort of thing, so I tell him it’s junk and it’s going in the trash. Besides, it’s all bent up and I tell him…that if he values things he should take care of them.

He leaves, and some 5 minutes later he returns, visibly distraught (he’s clearly been thinking hard about this). He says “It was a present…for you.”

“For father’s day.”

I swear at that moment I heard every angel in heaven slow clapping.

What is a gift? Is it the stupid paper butterfly or is the butterfly a pedestal for the time and care given to make a connection with someone? We make up stories about these gifts when the truth is staring us in the face: God has given a gift of presence—the Magi rise up from their homes, go following the shining light of that gift before they even know where they’re going. And they give God not just gifts but their witness of God’s glory. Rise, shine, give God your glory.

Isn’t this what we mean to do every Sunday during the offering? Passing around plates is not an effective way to raise money. Someone has to hunt through her purse; someone else pulls out his wallet and considers which bill to give. I know personally, it’s the one check I write all month, all our bills are handled electronically. Sometimes I forget on my way out the door and then there’s in the plate. Some churches have numbered pews and the reason is that once upon a time the church raised money by renting out the pews. Anyone who knows about fundraising today would tell us to use email and a web service that does subscriptions, so our offering is automatically deducted from our bank accounts just like Netflix. No, we don’t do the offering because it’s efficient, we do it to act out this mysterious thing: giving gifts.

Christmas is not about toys and the real Magi are not toys. They are an emblem and a guide to how we should react to God’s gift of presence in the world. That gift is for all people, and it’s fitting that here in this story, in the midst of these Jewish stories, it’s Gentiles, not local leaders who recognize the gift and respond by bringing their own gifts. Rise, shine, give God your glory, indeed. That’s what they are doing: giving gifts that may be strange to us but are their stock-in-trade, giving what they use, giving what they have, giving who they are. For them the “Joy to the World” about which we sing has become real. And, as one writer said, 

…when joy to the world becomes real, it breaks chains, topples hierarchies, knocks over our carefully laid out game and says: Start over, start new, start now. This is the message of the story of the [Magi], this is the message of Christmas; joy to the world, the savior reigns. 

Rise, shine, give God your glory. Isn’t your glory the gifts God has given you? Isn’t that what we are meant to be as a church?—people who give themselves, give their gifts, imitating God’s gift giving in Jesus Christ. When we do this, when we rise up and become part of that great giving, then indeed God’s presence shines, then we give God glory. And then, how wonderfully, then indeed: Joy to the world. 

Amen.

The Unsung Carol

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

First Sunday in Christmas • December 29, 2024

John 1:1-14

Christmas continues today. We left here Christmas Eve in darkness lit by candles that symbolized celebration of God’s embrace by coming to us in the person of an infant. It was Christmas Eve, though; Christmas came later. But where did it begin? When did you hear the first Christmas carol this year? When did you see the first decorations? We decorated here right after Thanksgiving and entered the season of Advent, anticipating Christmas coming. 

Christmas Begins

Where does Christmas begin in the Bible? I suppose some would say when Mary and Joseph begin the journey to Bethlehem. Luke suggests it begins with Gabriel telling Zechariah he would have a son, who would become John the Baptist. But hundreds of years before this, Isaiah had said, 

For a child has been born for us,
   a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
   and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace [Isaiah 9:6]

Mary connects the beginning to Abraham and Sarah: “[God] has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever” [Luke 1:54f] Matthew seems to agree; he begins the story of Jesus by showing how he is connected to Abraham in a long genealogy.

But it’s the Gospel of John that has the longest view. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1] and goes on with some of the most abstract language in all the gospels. Many years ago when I was in seminary, when I was a lot smarter or thought I was, I could quote this part of John in Greek from memory. But just being able to quote something doesn’t mean we know it. We have a little dog named Ellie. When she was a puppy, we put a push button bell by the door to the backyard. The theory was that when Ellie needed to potty, she would go step on the button that rings the bell, and we’d let her out. And she learned to ring the bell. She didn’t do it the way we intended to, however; she just rings it whenever she wants to go chase squirrels. But what’s kind of funny to see is that Ellie thinks the bell operates the door. So if she rings it, and we don’t let her out, she just rings it again—and again and again and again. Bible memories can be like that: we recite them over and over but if we don’t know the meaning, nothing happens.

In the Beginning

So let’s break this down a and see if we can figure out what it means. Let’s start with “the beginning”. What is that? What is your beginning? Perhaps you have a “first memory”, usually from when you’re about three or four. But that’s not your beginning. We might say your beginning was when you were born, or when you were conceived. Sometimes there are stories about these. My family legend is that I was born while my dad took his final exams in college. Of course, the Bible begins with creation: in the beginning God created, Genesis 1:1 says.  “What happened before that?” I remember asking a Sunday School teacher once; she told me not to ask such questions, but the truth is she didn’t know and neither do I. There is no before when there is no time and in Genesis the first thing God does is to create day and night, that is to say, time itself. So John is saying, that in the beginning—when there was no before—the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The Word: what is that? We know something about words. If you’re a parent, maybe you remember the first word your child spoke. Is there anymore eagerly awaited sound than that first “Mama” or “Dada”? Just like Ellie learned to ring the bell to get us to open the back door, babies learn to make a sound we call a word to summon us. That word defines relationships: “Mom” also means “Feed me! Change me! Cuddle me!” It’s the first step to controlling the world. Now, I have to do something I hate doing; I have to teach you something about Greek, the language in which the whole New Testament is written and the language in which many early Christians read the Old Testament too. In Greek, what we translate, “Word” is ‘Logos’. Logos means more than just words, it stands for the whole business of putting things in order.

Putting Things In Order

We know something about putting things in order. Jacquelyn and I share a big walk in closet. I’m messy, and the closet has gotten chaotic over the last month or so. Shoes all over the floor, summer and fall and winter clothes mixed, luggage out of place. So this week when she had some time off, Jacquelyn took on the job of organizing the closet and she succeeded brilliantly. Now you walk in there, the shoes are on racks, matched, my shirts are grouped by color and they all face the same way. I have to say, until Jacquelyn brought her sense of closet order to my life, I’d never thought about whether the shirts were grouped or faced the same way but there they are. Genesis describes creation the same way: God puts things away, night gets separated from day, land from water, plants, animals, everything right down to you and I. And the term for this in Greek is Logos, and it’s translation for us is Word. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” means putting things in order.

Now we all live with orders for things, places for them. Some of us do better than others but we do as well as we can. In our house, one cooks, another cleans up. The pots and pans go in one cabinet, the bowls go in another. There is a time for work, a time for sleep. There are other orders too. There is the way that atoms and molecules are bound and structured, the way that heavenly bodies and gravity keep the solar system spinning, the way that chemicals bond and become blood and move the oxygen and nutrients we all need around our bodies. I have no idea how this all works, honestly. I almost flunked chemistry. But I know there is an order to it all, and because of that order, we live and without that order our lives would be impossible. 

God is in the Order

So what John is saying is that right from the beginning, “in the beginning”, God was in the ordering of everything, that just like Jacquelyn matching up the shoes, God is in the order of the very tiniest and the greatest things. 

But what does this have to do with Christmas? Remember what he goes on to say: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.[John 1:14] Christmas is this order, this Word, becoming a child, a person, one of us, living among us. Think what Jesus does: he heals people, which is to say he sets them right, he casts our demons, he sets people back in order, he offers glimpses of how things should be in his teaching. How should we treat one another? “Love one another as I have loved you,” he says. He embodies the love of God which is the Word of God, the order of God and that is the glory John means when he says, “We have seen his glory.” Christmas is the Word becoming flesh.

The Real Christmas

This is the real Christmas carol and it’s often unsung. It’s easy to miss the real Christmas for the wrapping and bows. The real Christmas is God putting us right, ordering us, reminding us to live as children of God, seeing the image of God in others. It’s easy to go through life like Ellie, ringing a bell without knowing how the door really opens. Christmas means to teach us to open the door to love in our lives. It means living that love every day.

Christmas continues today—if that love lives in our hearts, if that light, shines in us. The most important question for our church isn’t “How can we keep going?”; it’s how can we shine the light of Christmas here? What do you think? What can we do together, to make sure it’s clear that Christmas continues with us? 

Amen.

Give Thanks for the Appetizers

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Thanksgiving Sunday • November 24, 2024

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33 

It was the year nothing went right. May was in college in Georgia; she decided to go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. So Jacquelyn and I were on our own. Then, a friend of ours named Tara was going through a difficult time, so we invited her to come visit. I volunteered to cook, so the women could visit. Now Tara and Jacquelyn both love Victorian home and our town was full of them, so on Thanksgiving Day itself I set about cooking the meal I’d planned while they took off for a walk around our town. 

The real challenge of a dinner like this is getting everything to come out on time. I’d researched the traditional dishes and put a turkey breast in to brine the night before. I patted it dry, rubbed it with oil and spices and put it in to roast, setting the timer according to the directions in Betty Crocker. I chopped and mixed and spiced the various side dishes and got them going. I had everything timed and thought I was doing fine. I was doing the “blast turkey with high heat then turn down” method, so after a half hour, I intended to turn the oven down; instead I turned it off; mistake number one. I didn’t realize what I’d done and thought we were on course. The kitchen mess was mounting when the women returned, talking about how hungry they were and that the house smelled great. They started to pick up bits to eat in the kitchen, I shooed them out, sternly ordering just like my grandmother used to do, “No snacking! You’ll spoil your dinner!” I checked the turkey; not done. They complained about being hungry; I snarled back, “No snacking!”  We waited; I checked the turkey again and it clearly wasn’t cooking. I finally figured out what had happened—along with the fact that we were a solid hour or more from being having dinner ready. Meanwhile, the rolls had burned beyond redemption. Mistake number two. 

It’s a scary thing to tell two hungry women dinner is delayed. I frantically looked around, saw a baguette, sliced it up, spread it with some garlic and tomato sauce and bits of onion, put it on a plate and took it to the women, announcing as if I had planned it all along, “This is the appetizers.” I was so frustrated, angry at myself for my mistakes, feeling like nothing was going right when I heard from the other room the song the choir sang last week: “Give Thanks with a grateful heart.” Except the words were different; instead of,  “Give thanks with a grateful heart”, they were singing, “Give thanks for the appetizers.” We all laughed. The turkey eventually finished. I dropped it on the floor taking it out of the oven, it didn’t matter; we were still laughing about the song. We still do. 

Our Thanksgiving celebration is like the Susquehanna, a river with many sources. Some are harvest festivals, which both the English and the Native Americans celebrated. Some of the streams are legends: no one called the people at Plymouth ‘Pilgrims” for almost 200 years. So there was never a “Pilgrim Thanksgiving”. And we have no record they ate turkey at all on that day; most of the meat was venison, much of the meal was fish and seafood. There is the long history of Thanksgiving celebration in the Biblical record, the New Testament commands to give thanks and most of all the deepest current, which is the power of giving thanks to transform us.

Where shall we dive in? Let’s start with the message we read earlier from the prophet Joel. We don’t know much about him or his time. One thing that’s clear: he preached his Word in the midst and aftermath of a time of fear and desperation. Hordes of locusts had eaten crops and people were afraid. It’s fear Joel addresses here, fear that robs hope, fear that paralyzes. To this fear he says, 

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for God has given the early rain for your vindication, God has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. [Joel 2:21-23]

He begins with the ground of faith, the history of God’s blessing, and follows the rhythm of creation from land to animals to the trees that bear fruit and the vines that give wine. Only then does he come to us: the children of Zion. God’s first and foremost blessing is creation itself; God’s creation is the ground of hope. “Do not fear…be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!” The answer to fear isn’t redoubled effort, it isn’t what we do at all; it is a Thanksgiving that remembers and appreciates what God has done and invites us to hope in what God will do. The final movement of this song is faith: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other.” [Joel 2:27]

Jesus is also addressing fear in the passage we read earlier because our fears make us worry. 

31Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
[Matthew 6:31-33]

Matthew has wrapped this saying into a summary we call the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t know the exact setting but it’s not hard to guess. Jesus is on the road with his disciples. There must have been times they wondered where the next meal would come from, how they would raise the funds they needed for the ministry, for their own needs. Just like Joel, Jesus calls them to remember God’s creative blessing. He asks them to look around at the lilies, at the birds;
he invites them to put God at the center and give thanks. Thanksgiving is the real cure for fear. Thanksgiving is the doorway to hope.

We’re living in a fearful moment. The locusts of our fear of terrorism and different people are trying to eat up our hope. It’s a story that sells ads, so the media is urging them on; it’s a story that gets attention, so some people who want to lead are telling us the solution is to get rid of the locusts. Last week, I quoted Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, and it’s line, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It is especially important that we remember and take to heart the lessons we heard today. Our hope is there; our worry can only be satisfied by the peace of remembering God’s providence and power.

In this moment, in this week, it’s good to remember the Thanksgiving story. It is so overlain with legend and lore that it’s hard to remember the real details. This is the Thanksgiving story. A group of refugees who wanted to worship in the Reformed way, like us, fled persecution in their native land. They went to Holland, where they formed a little cultural enclave. But they don’t really fit in; their religion is different, stricter, their values are different also. So they returned to England and contracted to found a colony in Virginia. Half of the people going weren’t part of the original religious group; they were called ‘strangers’. After a terrible yoyage, they go off course and end up in Cape Cod in November. A measles epidemic had decimated the native population; these new settlers survive by stealing corn from caches those vanished natives left behind. They settle in a protected bay and name it after their departure city: Plymouth. They have a hard time fitting in but some of the native people, the Wampanoag, in the area help them out, teach them how to get along, and they adjust, they adapt. Almost half of the original 102 settlers die the first winter. But eventually they learn to grow corn and other things, they learn to eat the local seafood, clams, lobster and so on. They learn to hunt. 

A year or so later, things are going well. They decide to take a few days off and plan a feast. They invite their neighbors who take one look at the food and decide to supplement it with local meats. Later, the whole experience is romanticized and becomes a kind of living legend. The refugees are now called the Pilgrims. They go on to found churches and communities; they create a culture of congregational democracy that trains people to live in hope, believing God is present and they have a purpose. We are meant to be that people. We are their children. Let us like them, like faithful people in every time, from Joel to Jesus to Plymouth to York, give thanks, the thanks that remembers the Lord our God is in our midst.

Sometimes things succeed; sometimes they fail. The Thanksgiving dinner where nothing went right? It’s remembered by all of us as a wonderful, special one. Somehow, the song—give thanks for the appetizers—the act of giving thanks even when hungry, the choice to see the gift and goodness rather than focus on the failure and fear it transformed the moment. It can transform any moment; it can transform us. Give thanks—this week, always. Give thanks for the appetizers; give thanks to the Lord above. Give thanks and see if it doesn’t grow into a harvest of grace.

Amen.

All Fall Down

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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

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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 2:18-24 • Mark 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

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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

by

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

Leaping Love

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

15th Sunday After Pentecost/B • September 1, 2024 (Labor Day)

Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Listen to the sermon here

Happy Labor Day! You probably already have ways to celebrate this holiday but do you know its history? At the end of the 1800s, American labor conditions were grim and there was a rising tide of anger at the injustice. In 1894, that anger found expression in a march on September 5, 1882, by 10,000 workers through New York City who took the day off and marched to show their strength. Soon the custom spread and by 1894, Labor Day became a federal holiday. But that only affected federal workers; it took decades for the unions to win the right to the holiday in other industries. So today, along with barbecues and family gatherings, we ought also to remember that this holiday has its roots in the longing for justice of all people.

God Loves Holidays

Holidays have a special place in God’s plan. Literally in the beginning, at creation, God rests and that creates the sabbath, in Hebrew, Shabbat. In Exodus 23:9-12, God commands rest on the seventh day, not only for God’s people but also for undocumented people living among them, for slaves, even for animals. That theme of seven is extended in what is called the “Jubilee Year”, God’s command that debts be canceled every seven years. Also, it’s extended in the seven great festivals of God’s people: Passover, First Fruits, Pentecost, Day of Trumpets or Rosh Hashanah, Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur and Tabernacles. Every one of these festivals has a set of customs that make it special. At Passover, we are encouraged to remember God saving God’s people out of slavery in Egypt; at Tabernacles, God’s people are told to build a booth with a roof open to the sky and to spend time there, remembering the greatness of God in creation. Every one of these festivals is meant to bring us to a passionate appreciation of the presence of God.

We see that passion in the reading today from the Song of Solomon. The song is a love story and a lot of preachers over the years make it into an allegory of Israel and God. But I think it’s more of a metaphor, a way of saying “Look, this is what being with God is like: it’s like being in love.” The section we read today imagines a girl watching her boyfriend approach. He’s leaping over things to get to her; nothing is going to stand in his way. And when he gets there, he begs her to come away, because, he says, “…the time of singing has come…” The whole Song of Solomon is a duet, and in other parts we hear of his passionate love for her. Why is it like to love God? The Song tells us: “It’s like the first time you were in love.”

Turning Passion Into Routine

The trouble is we have an immense ability to turn this feeling into something routine and boring. In 1904, Virginia Cary Hudson wrote was 10 and wrote this view of church. 

Before I go into the house of the Lord with praise and thanksgiving, I lift up mine eyes unto the town clock…to see if I am late. It is not etiquette to be late.

Do not hop, skip, jump or slide in the church vestibule. Tip. Tip all the way to your seat. Be sure and do not sit in other people’s pews Jesus wouldn’t care but other people would. Paying money makes it yours to sit in…. Never punch people in church, or giggle or cross your legs. Crossing your legs is as bad as scratching or walking pin front of people or chewing gum…

[Hudson, O Ye Jigs and Tulips, p. 6f]

We have made worship something that proceeds in an orderly, careful manner and rarely offends people.

This is at the heart of what we read this morning from the Gospel of Mark. Jewish religion revolved at Jesus’ time revolved around a set of practices that governed the most basic bits of life like eating and drinking. The rules were meant to remind you that God was involved in every moment, the rules were meant to keep you looking up to God every day. There were rules for Shabbat, there were rules for food, there were rules for everything. The rules began as practices that helped people keep God’s covenant but over time, they became a burden for many.

In this chapter of Mark, the issue is handwashing. Now, we’ve all come through the pandemic, we all had those lessons, those endless lessons, on how important washing your hands is, how to do it, how long to do it. But this washing isn’t so much about germs and cleanliness as about being pure before God. Many Jewish rituals involved symbolic washing with water. We’ve taken one over, and we call it baptism. This handwashing is a kind of every day, every time you eat, baptism. It’s not even actually washing your hands; it’s enough to pour a little water over your fist.

A group of Pharisees have come to see Jesus. This isn’t the first time; you might remember earlier this summer a group of Pharisees argued with him because his disciples were eating on the sabbath. The Pharisees are often looked down on by Christians, but the truth is, they were trying to bring people back to a daily faithful observance of God’s covenant. But here are these followers of Jesus, eating without doing the ritual handwashing. They should be setting a good example, right? So Jesus: what about this? What about the “tradition of the elders” which is to say the customs of how God is worshiped.

Jesus’ response is pointed. He says they’re just paying lip service to God. They quote the tradition of the elders; he says that they are “…teaching human precepts as doctrines.” And then he goes on to list all kinds of bad things summed up by the phrase “evil intentions”. What he seems to be talking about is what Buddhists call desire. In our culture, we almost equate sin with sexual immorality so it’s interesting that in Jesus’ list of theft, murder, avarice, envy, slander and pride all occupy equal places. What keeps us from God isn’t whether we perform some ritual or another, it’s that we do it for ourselves rather than as a way to watch for God.

The Meaning of Worship

For that’s what worship is really meant to be: watching for God, hoping God will appear, hoping we will feel God’s presence. It’s not guaranteed, and it doesn’t always happen. We’ve all sat through boring church services; I know I’ve conducted my share. Part of the problem is that we want to be comfortable. And we’re most comfortable when we know what’s going on, when we know what to do. Like Virginia said, there is etiquette and every church has its set of customs. 

We’re in transition here. We know where we’ve been. I love the story of the day people of this congregation left the little wood church just a few yards from here, carrying books, and I’m sure other things, marching into this building, ready to carry on. They were making a transition and have been hard for some. The pews were different, the walls were different, the place was different. What if they had said, “No, we’re not going.”? We have a great history as a church and that march symbolizes it all, that carrying things forward to a new place and a new time. Hebrews calls those in our past, “the cloud of witnesses” and we should honor those witnesses. Our congregation is not just those here today, it’s that cloud of witnesses whose gift to us is this church. 

But there’s another crowd we should honor and remember too and that’s all those who aren’t here yet: the future congregation of this church. What will they look like? Who will they be? What will they need? We are a church in transition but in reality, all churches are in transition and always have been. Forty years or so after the days Mark is writing about, the church faced its first great conflict precisely over rituals that had to do with eating and whether all Christians would keep kosher. Surely this story is here in Mark because it helped them see how to go forward. 

I started with Labor Day for a reason. Labor Day honors workers: all those who produce everything we need, everything we use. What is our work as followers of Jesus? What is our work as God’s people? What is our work as members of this church? Surely it is to share the love of God; surely it is to refuse to let our desire for comfort get in the way of sharing the joy of God’s presence. So today, close with a quote from Anne Sexton’s poem, “Welcome, Morning”.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.” ― Anne Sexton

Amen