A sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ

Second Sunday in Lent/A • March 5, 2023

Genesis 12:1-4a • Psalm 121 •John 3:1-17 

The internet has discovered I’m retired. Every day, I get offers of how to make money in retirement, how to travel in retirement, how to deal with the stress of retirement. The best advice I’ve gotten is to try something new. I’ve decided to take up sewing. It might not seem like a predictable choice but it sounds better than driving for Uber and considering the cost of boat cushions, it would save me a lot of money to be able to make new ones myself. So I asked around among some friends who sew, looking for advice. The best advice of all was someone who said, “You’re going to make a lot of mistakes at first. Don’t worry. The thing about sewing is, you can always rip it out and start over.” I like that idea: starting over. Have you ever had to start over? 

Starting over is just what God is doing in the passage we read from Genesis. In the beginning, God created and the purpose was a mutually blessing community of appreciation. Everything was good; you’ve read it, you’ve heard this, God creates and it is good. But then human pride slips in and things go wrong and it ends up in violence and a complete mess. In just a few generations, we’re told, “…the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. [Gen 6:6]. So God starts over, gives Noah directions on how to build a boat, wipes the slate clean, sets a rainbow to mark the occasion. You’d think this time it would go better but it doesn’t. Years pass, people grow up, settle down, forget to give thanks and their pride gets working again, until they decide they can reach heaven on their own. They build a tower at Babel and it’s not good, not good at all. God scatters them and they end up speaking different languages. It’s a mess.

So God is starting over with Abram and, although she isn’t mentioned here, his wife Sarai. If you’re counting, this is the third time. God still has the same design, a community of mutual blessing and appreciation. It just hasn’t worked out. Creating wasn’t enough; the rainbow covenant wasn’t enough. So God decides to start out with just one couple, make them a family, and grow from there. 

The first thing God says is, “Go!” Now, if you’re like me, when someone says, “Go!”, I immediately ask, “Where to?” We have one of those cars now with a screen that displays a map. But to make it work right, you have to put in a place; the car wants to know where we’re going. The car wants a destination and it’s nice to know where to. Most weeks I drive Jacquelyn to the airport in Baltimore. I know how to get there, but I still put in the destination because it’s comforting to know how close to our destination we’re getting. But listen to what God says to Abram: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” [Gen 12:1a] This isn’t a destination that will work with the GPS. The GPS wants an address, a particular place, not just “somewhere” 

Notice also how God goes out of the way to emphasize the going. There’s a three-fold description of what going means: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.” These are all the things that make life normal and comfortable for Abram. We all like the familiar. Look where you’re sitting; I bet you sat there the last time you were here. I sit over there about four rows back because it’s close to the front without being right in front and it’s easy to get in and out. Some Sundays I think, “Well, let’s sit over there by Bob,” but you know somehow I don’t. It’s not my place. 

It’s hard to leave the familiar isn’t it? Have you had to do that? When we moved to Harrisburg two years ago, we came from a home Jacquelyn had made a beacon of warmth and welcome, with great neighbors, a coffee shop I loved and a job I really liked. It was during the pandemic, so we couldn’t visit here much and get comfortable. We bought a house we saw mostly on phone video. We didn’t know anyone. We found the Wegmans out in Mechanicsburg somehow and for a while that was the only grocery store we knew about. Now Abram is being told Go from everything you’ve ever known, your country, your family, the house where you grew up and he never gets to ask, “Where to?”

If you’re like me, you’ve heard someone talk about how great Abram is because he has the faith to answer God’s call. But the more I thought about this passage this week, the more it occurred to me that it isn’t about Abram and his response—that comes later—it’s all about God and what God is doing. What God is doing is starting over to create that mutually blessing place creation was meant to be. Listen to what God says:

I will make of you a great nation, and
I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse;
and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

[Gen 12:2-3]

It’s all about what God is doing. It’s all blessing; even the part about cursing is really a kind of protection. It’s all “I” statements, it’s all promise, it’s all about God’s care and that care is for everyone: “…in you all the families the earth will be blessed.” This isn’t about Abram; this is about what God is doing for all of us, everyone, the whole world. 

Now, that’s great, hat’s wonderful, that’s something to celebrate. Except: it starts with that “Go”. And that’s hard for us, isn’t it? We like the familiar; we like what we know. I was the pastor of a church in New England for many years. The meeting house was built in 1848, it sat 300 on the main floor and still had the wrap around balcony called galleries; lots of space for the 25 of us who worshipped there. The pews were numbered because in the old days, people rented their pew. The galleries were originally for servants and children and poor people. They weren’t safe to go up in, but we kept them. We had a lot of furniture from the Victorian era and sometimes I liked to move it around, create a different space. One of the members would sneer about this with the ultimate New England condemnation: “This is change for the sake of change.” We still use that phrase in our family, it became our private joke. Jacquelyn likes to redecorate; I like things the way they are. Once in a while she improves something and I’ve been known to say, “This is just change for the sake of change.”

The problem is that God doesn’t deal in permanent places. The whole Bible story is about journeys, from Adam and Eve leaving the garden to Abram and Sarai leaving their home to Moses leading God’s people on the Exodus. God is constantly, restlessly, trying to move us toward the fulfillment of that vision of mutual blessing with which creation began. But we like where we are, we like what we know, we like what’s familiar.  

That’s the problem in the Gospel reading. Nicodemus is a settled man, a prominent man, a teacher of Israel. He’s courageous enough to come at night to Jesus, trying to figure out what Jesus is up to. But he can’t quite let go of what he thinks he knows, what’s familiar. So Jesus says, “You have to be born from above.” Now, we’ve translated that into “being born again”; we’ve made it about what we do, some phrase we say. That’s not what the text says. What Jesus seems to have in mind isn’t some action but starting over. And the purpose of that starting over? “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” [John 3:17] That’s not the verse that gets put on signs but that’s the real purpose here, the same purpose God has had from the beginning.

We’re all concerned about the future of churches today. I heard this week that in 2019, the last year for which numbers are available, about 4,500 churches closed. That’s before the pandemic with all its terrible effects. I’m convinced that a part of the reason is that we’ve become so comfortable, we’ve forgotten who we are meant to be, people who are starting over to realize God’s vision of justice and love in a community of mutual blessing and appreciation. We like our familiar places and we’ve made those our destination instead of embracing like, Abram, an unknown future whose hope isn’t its familiarity but God’s promise. We’ve learned to depend on our traditions instead of listening to Psalm 121. There, the psalmist looks to the hills, but says, “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” [Psalm 121:2] 

My mother in law, Marylyn Welling, has gone home to God. When she was with us, she had a little saying we all teased her about. Whenever she went somewhere, on arrival, she would announce, as if in surprise, “Well, we’re here.” We will have found the right path, we will be following Jesus, we will be God’s people when we can embrace a journey to share God’s blessing and feel that in those changes, in those challenges, we’re here. We will get somewhere when the answer to the question, “Where to?” Is, “God knows.”

Amen

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

by Rev. James Eaton, © 2023

Epiphany Sunday • January 8, 2023

Isaiah 60:1-6 • Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14 • Ephesians 3:1-12 • 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, two days after the actual day, January 6. Sometimes it’s called Three Kings day and in the rest of the 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; 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 event 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. 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 here is Herod and his advisors without 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 peasants. 

Why are they here? To give gifts. The one part of the creche Magi that is in the story are 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 creche 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. The story 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 6y.o. 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.

¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/4bpzmj/tifu_by_cleaning_my_sons_room/

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 nothing to put in the plate. All our pews are numbered and the reason is that once upon a time the church raised money less by passing a plate for a collection but more efficiently by renting our 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 sages, this is the message of Christmas; joy to the world, the savior reigns. 

Diana Butler Yeats

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

by Rev. James Eaton

October 15,2022

Harry loved stories. So let’s hear a story. Jesus told this one, it’s in the Gospel of Mark.

The Sermon of Harry’s Life

I wanted to read this scripture today not because I intend to preach a sermon but because I want to reflect on the sermon Harry preached with his life, a life that has so profoundly shaped my own. Because you have gathered here, many at some expense and traveling far, I know your life has also been affected by the sermon of Harry’s life. Usually we start with scripture and work toward the sermon; today we have the sermon, the life; what Word informs it? The Bible frequently uses images of growing to describe God’s purpose flowing in us. From Genesis, where we are told our purpose is to tend the garden of creation to Paul where we are encouraged to bear the fruits of the Spirit, it’s one lesson after another in agriculture. When I thought of how to speak about the sermon of Harry’s life, this parable surfaced because it combines the elements I see, I hear, I remember and will carry forward.

Someone sows a field. Jesus has already described the wild, hopeful sowing he means: seed scattered without plan, only hope. Isn’t that just like Harry? Never counting the cost of the moments he shared. As a young minister, he worked with youth. But with Harry, it wasn’t work, it was a constant, encouraging, loving attention. I remember how our youth group would simply drop in at the Clark’s home, never wondering whether we’d be welcome—we always were. I remember riding my bike to Pine Hill Church, dropping in on him in the office, long talks where I always had his full attention. At 15 it never occurs to you that maybe the man was busy and I was interrupting. Harry never suggested he was. 

Later, he scattered seeds even more widely. He brought people together in seminars in Boston, in England, he endlessly encouraged ministers  working to knit churches and clergy together. He never stopped sowing; he never stopped hoping. It cost him time and effort; we say ‘spiritual’ as if it’s an ethereal thing, but it’s actually time spent, effort expended, waiting for a crop to grow. It takes a lot of effort to organize a canoe trip, take a group along up the wilderness, give them the space and time for growth to happen.

All these things are seeds he scattered, just like the man in the story. What does the sower do next? He waits. Jesus says: “…sleep and rise night and day…” This is a thing about Harry it took me years and years to appreciate, his stubborn, patient hope. Harry never gave up; I know he never gave up on me. He waited for me to grow, he waited for all of us to grow, always insisting quietly, always pressing gently, so that we would become better people. If there are indeed better angels in our nature, they were angels apparent to Harry that he hoped we would make evident in our lives. He always seemed to see the gift in a person and encourage that gift . He didn’t tell you how to do it; he listened while you struggled and figured it out.

It isn’t that he wasn’t practical; he was. When I came to him, telling him I planned to become a minister, I had visions of leading a church the way he did, standing the pulpit, preaching. Harry’s response was, “Well, ok, why don’t you type up the bulletin.” Later in life, when he was busy helping with McFadden Farm, the NA sent out a letter asking how they could help retired ministers and suggesting some churchy things. Harry wrote back: “If you want to help me, do something about the price of hay! It’s outrageous!” 

Stubborn Patience

The deep spiritual genius of this man is that he was more stubbornly patient than anyone I’ve ever known. Think of the story: the man waits—he sleeps and rises. How hard is it to wait? Harry waited. Patient, hopeful, always available to listen. In 60 years of friendship, he never said, “Hey, I’m busy today, I’ll talk to you another time.” He waited, he listened. The parable says: God gives the growth. Church and clergy are always talking about purpose statements and action plans and programs, things we do. Harry waited for God to grow us.

I know it wasn’t easy. I remember when he worked at the NA, he got so frustrated one day about ministers and churches trying and failing to find each other that he yelled, “I want to be a bishop!” That’s as close to swearing as a Congregationalist gets. But if he got impatient, as we all do, he did something many of us fail to do: he waited anyway. He waited for God to give the growth, he believed what we all say, “God is good” but for him, faith was action, faith was lived. Harry’s pulpit wasn’t just in a church; it was as much a table after breakfast with coffee, as much sitting with a beer on the deck, overlooking the creek, listening, encouraging, with that smile when you finally offered the right answer.  

Harry knew what took me years to learn from him: that God’s love is inexorable, inescapable, like a river cutting a channel, flowing of itself. One of our friends, Cliff Shutjer, once said, “I never met a fad I didn’t love.” Most of us are like that: we have an idea of what to plan, what to do, we want to make something happen. But look at the farmer in the story: he waits for God. Look at Harry: he waited for God. We often measure accomplishment in medals and plaques; Harry certainly earned many of those. But he measured in relationships, friendships, with Dick Buchman, with too many to name. He set us an example in his love and devotion to Nora and the family; he invited us to see God’s love flowing without being fussy about the words and theology.  

 Somewhere up in Fond Du Lac county, the rain and dew gather into a stream that becomes the Milwaukee River. South it flows, around rocks, past bends it has carved over centuries, gathering water from West Bend and later Cedar Creek, past the deck Harry loved, until it becomes a broad stream, a river powerful and determined. Past farms, past the riverwalk, it flows into the heart of the city and then out into Lake Michigan, moving on through Huron and Erie and Ontario, it flows out the St. Lawrence and reaches the great oceans of the world. 

In just the same way, Harry’s heart flowed out in streams that washed and nurtured all of us, joining with Nora and later Terry and Laury and Amy, still later with me, with Roc and Dane, with Theresa and Kivi, with Bill Trump and Rob Fredrickson and Beth Bingham and too many others to name. His heart became a part of our hearts and now that same stream joins the ocean of God’s love, both its source and its destination. Harry loved canoeing and I think he’d understand this, how drops and streams and rivers form and flow, join together, roll on and on.     I think it would make him smile.

So today, this day, and days to come, remember that smile and the way his love flows through us, how it touches others. We are not alone; we are part of a great stream that flows that joins us together. That is his gift: joining all of us in love, flowing that love outward until it finally is one. That is the harvest and if we would for ourselves have delayed it, the harvest has come: now we go on to share its gift, the gift of this great life, knowing our own lives have been shaped by him, and that he has indeed done what every minister hopes: moved us closer by his love to the great love of God.

Amen.

Obituary

The Rev. Dr. Harry Wilbur Clark died at home on October 5, 2022. Born in East Chicago, IN, on December 24, 1927. He found his love, friend and companion for over 71 years, Eleanora (“Nora”) while attending Indiana University. He found calling in Christian ministry early and was ordained in 1955. Harry earned a BA at Indiana University, an MDiv at Colgate Rochester seminary and an MA in Theatre Arts at Wayne State University. He received honorary doctorates from Olivet College and Piedmont College. His love of theater was deep and he wrote and directed may chancel dramas. Harry served in a pastoral role in four churches and for ten years as the Associate Executive Secretary of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. In that role, he became a mentor and inspiration to uncountable ministers. 

He leaves a legacy of love and grace that has profoundly inspired many. He is survived by his wife, Eleanora Clark, daughters Terry Clark Bauman, Laury Clark, Amy Clark, son-in-law Rick Bauman, grandson Dane Bauman, grand daughter-in-law Theresa and great grand daughter Kivi, grandson Roc Bauman. He leaves a legacy of love and grace that has profoundly inspired and uplifted many. 

A funeral service will be held at the Ozaukee Congregational Church, 1142 Lakefield Road, Grafton, WI, on Saturday, October 15, at 11:00 AM. Memorial contributions Because of Harry’s love for music and his appreciation for the church’s outreach, donations  may be made to Ozaukee Congregational Church in support of its music program and benevolence fund.

A Sermon by The Rev. James E. Eaton ©2021

Ascension Sunday • May 16, 2021

Acts 1:1-11

I suppose every parent acquires little verbal exclamations that really mean, “You’re about to be in trouble”. My father’s was to stand, hands on his hips, and thunder, “What do you think you’re doing?” This worked on me for 14 years and on my middle brother for 10 years but when my youngest brother was four and my father delivered his line, “What do you think you’re doing?””, David replied sweetly, “I have no idea” and walk away scot free. When I think about the scene from Acts we read today, I can’t help thinking of my father standing over us with that line, “What do you think you’re doing?”, because when I imagine the scene and I think of the disciples standing there, staring into the sky, where Jesus has gone, I visualize the heavenly visitor saying loudly, “What do you think you’re doing”—”Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?”. I can’t help wondering if a similar heavenly visitor wouldn’t say the same to us: why are you standing around? what do you think you’re doing?

What do you think you’re doing? Most churches have a great diversity of people. Some have worshipped there all of long lives; some are newly beginning to worship. Some have come from other churches, some have never been involved in a church.  How many of us know what we’re doing when we come to church? 

All the gospels agree there was a moment when the disciples had to face life without Jesus present in an earthly body. Imagine what church life would be like if this were not so: suppose you had Jesus Christ leading the church instead of a minister. He would never go to the dry cleaner because his clothes  would always shine. He wouldn’t need health care, because he would be self- healing. He would be infinitely patient, endlessly forgiving, always understanding. You wouldn’t have to wonder whether he had the right idea because he’s Jesus Christ—who are you to argue? You wouldn’t have to wonder if he got the Bible right because what is the Bible but what he says? But of course that’s not what church life is and church life has never been that. All the accounts agree that a few weeks after his resurrection, Jesus left, and when he left, there was a period when his followers didn’t know what to do.

Luke sets the scene just outside Jerusalem. Perhaps the disciples are impatient; maybe they are just curious. One of the disciples asks, “Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” This is as big as their vision is: all they expect is for Jesus to be a super hero, a super David, a new Judas Maccabeus, the leader who threw out the descendants of Alexander the Great. All they want is for him to overthrow the Romans, get rid of the Herodians, set himself up as king and them as his assistants and run a nice new kingdom. “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel, Lord?” They are getting impatient. They’ve asked before and he’s told them: not yet. Not now: we’re on the way to Jerusalem. That made sense. In fact, they get to Jerusalem and you remember what happens: everyone parades into town. Surely the disciples were thinking, “This is good, this is good, this is going to work, he’s going to do it now”. But it doesn’t work and the next thing you know he’s hanging on a cross, they’re running for their lives, and wondering no doubt, “What happened to restoring the Kingdom?” But then he is resurrected; well, for someone who has come back from death, restoring a Kingdom would be small beans. 

But he doesn’t do anything about the Kingdom. What does he do? Well, he eats with people. He has a fish dinner, he holds a breakfast. He shows up when the disciples are gathered for dinner. But he doesn’t get to work, he does not restore the Kingdom. The Romans are still in charge, the Herodians are still collecting taxes, nothing has changed. Naturally, the disciples are a little concerned: “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?”. You can hear their impatience. This is what Jesus says: “None of your business—it is not for you to know the times or the seasons.” The disciples have this little vision in mind, restoring the Kingdom, but what Jesus tells them is don’t worry about that, you’re going to be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, to the ends of the earth. 

Now let’s review who these people are: small businessmen, fishermen, farmers, who have never been out of town before until he brought them to Jerusalem. They’ve never been anywhere but he’s talking about sending them to the ends of the earth. In 1971, I worked in a church in northern Idaho and there was an old woman who had never been out of the county. Ninety miles south, where Idaho gets wide, there’s a beautiful resort area with a lake called Coueur d’Alene. One day I visited this woman and she wanted to hear about the rest of the world. She said, “have you ever been to Coueur d’Alene?” I said “Sure”—to me, Coueur d’Alene was a backwater. But to her it was the ends of the earth. In New England, the ends of the earth is Los Angeles. But if you live in Los Angeles, the east coast is the ends of the earth. The ends of the earth is where you haven’t been and it’s hard to imagine going.

Jesus tells the disciples, first, I’m going to make you a witness. And I’m going to send you to Jerusalem—that’s scary to begin with!—and secondly to Judea, back home, third to Samaria, to a bad neighborhood that scares you and finally to the ends of the earth, to some place you never thought of going. And that is exactly what happens. Every one of these men whose story we know ends up at the ends of the earth. Take Peter; he’s a fisherman. Fisherman know tides and currents and depths and where to find fish in one place. They know that one place deeply and well, they know how to find what’s hidden in one place. I’m willing to bet Peter had never been off that one body of water before Jesus came along. Peter ends up in Rome, the biggest city of his day, hundreds of miles away from home, among Gentiles. Nothing would have predicted he would go to Rome. Why do you think Peter ended up there? Because Jesus sent him as a witness.

This is what we are intended to do, be a witness. It’s simple and it consists of two parts: seeing and reporting, seeing and reporting. It means going out and looking for where God is working and reporting what you’ve seen. It means looking where God is loving and sharing that, looking for where God’s grace is active and telling someone about it. That is what we are doing when we are the people Christ intended.

Now we could spend days talking about how to do it. But the first and most important way is quietly, simply, with your own life. In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, two seniors cut class and go to Chicago. Ferris Bueller is a kid who decides to show his best friend a good day. So he takes him to the Chicago Art Institute, to a fancy restaurant, to a baseball game and to a parade. At the end of this ideal day, Ferris says to his friend, “What did you see?” and the friend replies, “Nothing good.” Ferris lists off one by one the great things they have seen. It is not whether there is something to see, it quickly becomes evident, but whether you choose to see its goodness. There is no lack of sights; there is occasionally a lack of vision. 

Once when Jacquelyn was visiting North Carolina, she found a beautiful small town park. The grass was green, there were flowers and benches; it was like a picture from the North Carolina Board of Tourism. Tired from walking, she could easily imagine just sitting down on the little bench and resting. Then she saw the sign: “No Loitering”. No Loitering in the park—we’ve all laughed about that sign since; after all, isn’t that the whole point of a park? You go there to loiter; you go there to slow down, stop, appreciate. Drive by appreciation doesn’t really work; you have to loiter, wait before wonder kicks in. A park where you can’t loiter? It’s like a pool where you can’t swim, ice cream you can’t lick or a church where you can’t find God.

Let’s not be a park with a no loitering sign or a church that forgot how good the God we’ve seen is. Right from the beginning, from the moment Jesus left this stage, his followers have been faced with two choices: stand around gazing into heaven waiting for him to come backs or look around and see the world here, see the people around, and go tell them about God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s grace. Tell them by living like it’s true. Tell them by showing them it is possible. Tell them by continuing to make this church the body of Christ, moved at his command, healing and teaching his way. That’s being a witness, and that’s just what Jesus told us to do. Who knows where it may lead?

Amen.

A Sermon by Rev. James Eaton © 2021

Mothers Day • May 9, 2021

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus — for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us–one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”
So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”
And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

One day a few years ago Jacquelyn and I toured the Alhambra, an enormous Medieval complex of palaces, gardens and fortresses overlooking the city of Granada. It was the last hold out of Muslim rulers in Spain, and its swirling walls decorated with plaster calligraphy, its pools of water, and mountain views were exhilarating.

After three hours of walking in such beauty, we were tired and hungry. We bought sandwiches and found a bench in some shade. Drawn by the same shade, two young couples sat across from us. Soon a small cat came over and clearly sniffed Jacquelyn’s sandwich; she was having tuna, and the cat wanted some, so it did what always works with Jacquelyn, sat in front of her and quietly looked hungry and sad and hopeful.

We all laughed at the cat and began to talk. One of the women was obviously pregnant. We asked when she was due; she said August and I smiled and said August babies—of which I’m one—were extraordinary people. As we talked, she mentioned how scared she was about being a mother. I said being a parent was the most fun I’d ever had; Jacquelyn added comments on how wonderful it had been, having May, bringing her up. It turned out the other woman was pregnant too, and soon we were all laughing. Of course, Jacquelyn went from just dropping crumbs for the cat to breaking pieces off to feed the feline. With lunch over, we said goodbye to our friends and the cat and wandered off. I’d like to think we not only made the cat’s day but gave those two couples a bit of hope, another brighter voice than all the scary rational ones. I’d like to think we passed on a little of the love we’ve found parenting together.

Today is Mothers Day in the United States. In the past, that often meant exalting on one day out of the whole year the role of women who have children. Often we left out those who didn’t. Today I want to make it clear that as we mention this day, we honor with it those women, mothers, grandmothers and others who care for children they didn’t have to cherish and raise but do so with the same generous love. We honor as well women who have never had children but also share their care and love in so many ways, who pass on love to people who began as strangers.

Long ago, the church remembered there was a time, a moment, when the direct, immediate presence of Jesus walking and talking with his friends ceased, when he returned to the Father so that his followers could, like fledging birds, learn to live out the love he had taught on their own.

One of my favorite stories ois the moment when Jesus’ followers meet to Jesus organize  a way forward on their own. How are we going to continue? That’s a question all organizations ask. These early Christians don’t have the tools we have. Roberts Rules of Order won’t be written for centuries; there is no church constitution. They can’t even settle this question the way we settle such matters now by asking, “What did we do last year?” because this is the first year, the first time. But they understand this single important thing: they are there to continue the work of Jesus and that means continuing to create and recreate the community of Jesus. So they pick a couple of good candidates, people they’ve known, who’ve been active and nominate them and then they pray and cast lots; Matthias becomes the new disciple.

In the whole book of Acts of the Apostles, I do not know a more important moment. For in that moment, these people, who so often fumbled and misunderstood Jesus, begin to move forward in his spirit. In this moment, they begin to do what he told them, to ready themselves for continuing the ministry of Jesus on their own. The Romans thought they could kill the movement by killing Jesus; the religious leaders thought they could kill the spirit by killing the preacher. But God’s love and life were so strong that instead he overcomes death and his resurrection inspires these followers to continue to create communities of care just as he did, communities that will spread throughout the world. The light of love is shining in this moment and being passed like candle light, from one to another. We sometimes get so concerned about daily challenges we forget this is the most important challenge of all: how we can pass on the light of love each day.

That’s the point when Jesus prays about the future. He says about the disciples he about to release into the world like a dandelion releasing its seeds,

They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

John 17:16-19

That’s us: that’s who we are meant to be, people sent into the world who have seen how much difference a moment of grace, a cherishing love, a boundary breaking invitation can make.

That’s the spirit in which Mothers Day originated. It began not as a day to give your mother a card but out of the boundary breaking work of bridging the gap between former Union and Confederate soldiers and families. It began in West Virginia, a state that began through the breaking of ties that inspired the war against the Union . The restoration of peace left broken bodies and broken communities. Anna Jarvis, its originator, worked to promote peace and her daughter worked to lift up and honor that work.

There are so many stories like this. We often feel powerless but the truth is we have the power to act, as the disciples acted, and when we do amazing things happen. Let me give you one more souvenir from Spain. We always visit Cathedrals and one that stood out to me honors St. John de Dios. It stood out because it is a soaring basilica perhaps four stories high at the front, all in figures of gold and for one euro you can turn the lights on and startle everyone there. It stood out because I’m a Congregationalist who loves the spare, plain beauty of our meeting houses which are almost undecorated. In that church, decoration assaults you at every turn and it includes that odd medieval Catholic obsession with relics of saints; hey have various skeletons in glass boxes.

All of it was over the top but it did make me look up St. John of God, the inspiration for the place. What I found was much more amazing than the gold and the skeletons. John was a poor Portuguese boy who did what boys from poor boys often do today: he enlisted in the military. He did well as a soldier, survived and went on to have a variety of experiences. At midlife, he had an experience of inspiration and began to help sick and needy people. Others joined him; the work expanded. Eventually a whole order was funded which operates hospitals around the world.

“The lot fell on Matthias,” Acts says; one person, one moment. Hundreds of years later, it fell on a former soldier and now we have hospitals.

Hike up in the mountains, the Adirondacks, the Catskills, anywhere will do and if you watch a stream flowing downhill you can see it is irresistible. Blocks a path, it finds another; when a tree falls in the middle, it divides around it. It doesn’t look like much, often, just a little stream but nothing will stop that stream flowing to the river to the sea and joining the ocean. That’s how it is with God’s love. It’s flowing all the time, touching someone here, there. Like a worker at a counter, calling, “Next, please?” it moves from person to person.

A few years ago the Henry Street Settlement got a 6.2 million dollar donation. The Settlement started in 1893 when Lillian Ward settled in a slum in New York City among what today we would call undocumented immigrants. That’s another term for many of our grandparents, mine among them. Henry Street has far too many accomplishments to list but an important one today is supporting young people going to college. A lot more will be able to go because of this huge donation. Now you might think that in New York, with so many very rich people who live in rich towers, a donation would come from one of them. But it didn’t. It came from Sylvia Bloom, a 96 year old woman who retired after a 67 year career as a secretary. She never had a child; thanks to her gift, hundreds of children will be nurtured and grow up in new ways. So today I want to lift up, I want to honor Sylvia Bloom. This Mothers Day, I honor a woman who birthed a blessing, whose care will 

“Next, please?” Matthias starts out as the first disciple to continue the work. Others follow. Still, the Spirit is calling: next, please? No one knows what blessings make a difference. But like the stream running down the mountain, no one can stop that stream of blessing. We are invited to make our lives part of the stream, part of the blessing, to live as the next ones to light the candle of love.

Amen.

A Sermon by Rev. James Eaton `© 2021

Fifth Sunday in Easter/B • May 2, 2021

Acts 16:16-34

“Well, we’re here”. My late mother in law Marilyn said this more or less every time she arrived somewhere. It could be driving here all the way from Texas; it could be down the street to a restaurant. “Well, we’re here”. It’s become a tag line in our family. Drive home, finish the long drive back from Baltimore, chances are someone will say, “Well, we’re here”. It’s a touchstone. We got through that last little bit safely; we’re ready for the next part. 

I wonder what Paul and Silas said when they landed in jail. I wonder what I would say.  They’re not strangers to conflict. In fact, their journey has been full of arguments, often with their own folks. John Mark, who legend says later wrote the Gospel of Mark, started out with them but they couldn’t all get along so he left. The mother church back in Jerusalem doesn’t think much of what they’re doing, converting Gentiles. The synagogue authorities where they preach think they are annoying. Now they’ve gotten in trouble with the law and trouble with the law is serious in the Roman world.  

Life in ancient cities was mostly lived outside in the hustle and bustle of the market place. Think of the mall at Christmas time or a crowded farmers market. The market is full of scents: hot olive oil, garlic and good things cooking, animals and all those people, always all those people. There are people selling cloth and pottery and jewelry. These sellers aren’t like the ones at our mall. Even today in the markets of that world, sales begin with someone grabbing your arm, talking to you, “Look, have you ever seen anything so fine? Here, touch, feel, really I’ve been waiting for someone who could really appreciate this, I can see you are a collector, a connoisseur. It’s a shame to let it go, I only offer it because I think you’ll appreciate it, here, just 22 drachmas.” There are no price tags; everything is barter. It takes some getting used to but it’s a required part of the sale. 

One night when Jacquelyn and I were in Italy for dinner, I failed to argue over the bill. Arguing over the bill is a standard part of  dinner in Italy, in fact routinely the maitre’d offers a glass of grappa, which smells like kerosene and tastes like moonshine, while the bill is discussed. I barely knew enough Italian to order the meal, let alone argue about it and anyway food in Italy is cheap, so I was happy. We’d been out to a fancy dinner, the bill was about 30 bucks, which translated into about 50,000 lire. No problem. But the waiter saw a problem: I wasn’t arguing, I was just shuffling through my billboard sized Italian currency, looking for a 50,000 lire note. So he began to argue on my behalf. The maitre’d said something back and within moments they were off and running, the Italian was flowing hot and fast, we were ready to go, so I put down an extra bill for the tip, said goodbye and we left as they continued. 

That’s how I imagine that marketplace: full of talk, full of bartering. Among all the people, there are entertainers. One of the best gambits for earning money has always been predicting the future. It’s still in use today. Every newspaper has a horoscope column. Miss an editorial and no one notices; miss the daily horoscope and the paper gets lots of calls. Go to a Chinese restaurant and they give you a little cookie with your fortune inside. We may not take these seriously; but we read them. 

This story starts with a girl who has a gift for telling people’s futures. Like most workers, she’s a slave. She’s just strange enough to get people to believe she has a special gift. Today we’d diagnose her; in that time, they just say, “She has a spirit”. Every day Paul and his friends are in the marketplace, preaching, and every day she is there, heckling them, yelling at them, making noise, disrupting whatever crowd they gather. All preachers hate that. Most of us tolerate babies talking back but we really expect the rest of you to behave and shut up. But she won’t shut up. One day, Paul gets so annoyed, he turns and snaps of an exorcism. It works; she shuts up. But of course her owner is now angry: who wants a silent prophetess? So he gets Paul and Silas arrested for theft of services. They end up before a magistrate and as the song says, no money to go their bail, so now they’re in prison. What did they say? What did they think?

I’m sure they were scared; I’m sure they were frightened. But there is a great mystery here: what is it that allows some of us to do things that risk everything for a gain only dimly perceived, a gain not to ourselves but the whole world? Nothing in the world compelled Paul, a successful lawyer, to leave his practice and go off to preach. Nothing in the world compelled Paul to stand up to the church in Jerusalem. Nothing in the world compelled Paul to free that girl that day. But Paul is not living from the things in this world. He has seen a bigger place: he has had a greater vision. I don’t know a better description than the one we read today in the book of Revelations. It’s the end of time, it’s the end of the world and the Lord God is present. This is God’s introduction: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” 

It’s like being lost and suddenly having someone point out your exact location on a map. Paul knows where he is, he is sure. He is in the hands of God. It’s that simple. Nothing can change that any more than saying the sky is falling changes the day. It is the basic reality. First and last: God is present, persistent. In that crowd around Paul there must have been people who had seen that slave girl abused for a long time. In that crowd there must have been people who’d seen her owner beat her, heard her cries.. There must have been people who wanted to say something, do something, but they didn’t, they were scared, or embarrassed or they just didn’t want to get involved. There must have been people there that day who were horrified when Paul was arrested, who shuddered at the idea of what would happen. There must have been people who wanted to help. But they didn’t. Paul and Silas are led off to jail, beaten and left in pain in the darkness. 

Now here’s the interesting part to me. That night there is an earthquake. The jail doors spring open. Wow! Imagine the luck! Freedom is just a step away. Even an atheist might thank God at such a moment. The jailer doesn’t have any doubt what’s going to happen. Roman law holds him responsible with his life for these prisoners; he will take their place if they escape. He cries out that he’s lost but in the echoing silence after the earthquake, the only sound is Paul’s voice, calling back, don’t worry, we’re still here. Still here: can you imagine? They could have made a run for it, gotten clean free in the confusion. But there they are, there they stay. You see, Paul is not in jail: he’s in the hands of God. He always was and ever since his heart was opened to God, he has known it. So wherever he goes, whatever he does, it’s with God. We’re here, he calls out. We’re here.

Where are you? Where are you going? John Newton is the author of a favorite song, Amazing Grace. Newton was a sailor who worked his way up through the brutal British naval life of the 1700’s. Sometime around 1744 he went to sea on a slave ship, transporting slaves from Sierra Leone to the slave camps of the Caribbean. He worked his way up to be master of the vessel. One night during a violent storm, his heart opened and he experienced the love of God. He wrote in his journal that he had experienced a great deliverance, that when all seemed lost, and he was sure the ship would sink, he had called out, ‘Lord have mercy on us’, and believed that God indeed had mercy on him.” He continued in the slave trade but he began to treat the slaves more humanely. Finally he couldn’t face the suffering he helped cause and left the sea altogether. He became a Methodist preacher and a voice in the early British anti-slavery movement. 

The history of the movement against slavery is full of such people. Pete Seeger told of going down to Alabama in 1964 where children had dogs set on them and people just like the ones who put Paul and Silas in jail bombed churches just like this one. He said,  “I guess no one who hasn’t actually faced those police men can  know exactly how much bravery it takes to be cheerful in the face of all kinds of things. Then he shared a song: Ain’t a scared of your jail cuz I want my freedom.

What courage made those children sing? What purpose made Newton give up his success? What faith made Paul stay in that cell? It isn’t a formula or a creed, it was knowing they are in the hands of God every day, everywhere. To live in that faith is to live alert to the possibilities of each day, convinced that God is accomplishing a great and wonderful purpose in your life. To live in that faith is to be able to face whatever circumstance, whatever event, with an openness and a joy. It is to say indeed, as Marilyn does, “Well, we’re here,” and see that God is here also, always here. 

So we are not alone and we are not without purpose. God is our beginning and end: we are in the middle and nothing in the world can come between us and the love of God.

Amen

A Sermon by The Rev. James Eaton © 2021

Third Sunday in Easter/B • April 18, 2021

Acts 3:12-19• Psalm 4 • 1 John 3:1-7 • Luke 24:36b-48

It’s Easter: the third Sunday. The church life I grew up in had one  Easter Sunday and there were beautiful flowers and special anthems. But the liturgical year has Easter as a season, not a day, spilling over like a caramel sundae into seven Sundays. Celebrating Easter season lets us hear more stories of people encountering the risen Lord. Their stories help us tell our stories. What’s your story?

We heard one of those stories this morning. Two people encounter Jesus near Emmaus, a few miles outside Jerusalem. Christian life always begins with the real person of Jesus. Christian life is real human life, not a fantasy. Today I want to see if we can learn something about living that real life by bringing together two pieces of scripture and a real life story.

Here’s the real life story. Anne LaMott is speaking.

There is a coastal town of about 1,500 people [near San Francisco], where one of my first memories took place, of splashing with my parents and older brother in warm water that had pooled and warmed after the tide had receded. We used to go to the town fairly often for seafood dinners. It was artsy, hidden away, with gulls and pelicans overhead. We would have picnics there with friends and lots of wine, and elderberry hunts in the fall….There are sheltered beaches, tiled in shells and beach glass; and boats and fishermen, shaded lanes and towering trees; and a few overpriced places to eat (“Would you like a croissant? . . . That will be one hundred dollars”). Many of the townspeople go back generations; others came in the sixties…The colors there—of the water, the rushes, the impossibly rich vegetation—drive people to ecstasy and madness.
In 1995, there was a huge and devastating fire on the long, majestic ridge that runs for miles out to the bay. Four older teenage boys from the town had camped at Mount Vision overnight, illegally, had built a campfire, buried it under dirt when they left in the morning, and caused a fire that destroyed 12,000 acres of wilderness area and nearly fifty homes.”
Helicopters saved the town with water from the bay; the water was dropped on the pine forest between the town and the burning ridge. But the loss of wildlife was unimaginable: birds, deer, coyote, bobcats, mountain lions, beavers. It was as if a bomb had fallen.
The four teenage boys who had accidentally started the fire turned themselves in early on, with their parents beside them.

Imagine you live in this town. Imagine you lived other places, and then found this beautiful, wonderful place and moved there, and then one day it’s gone, the beauty is completely destroyed. Thank God you and the cat got out but now you have to rebuild and rebuilding is hard. You find out four boys caused it all. They didn’t quite put out a campfire. They did take precautions but the precautions weren’t enough. Your home is changed, your life is shattered, because four boys made a mistake putting out a campfire. What would you want done?

I’ll leave that question hanging and come back to it later. Time to move on now, move with me. Listen to this from the epistle this morning: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.”[1 John 3:1] What comes to mind when you think of children? For me it’s smiles and noise. One week I was walking through a parking lot and there was a Japanese woman with a little girl, maybe two or so, and the little girl was singing so beautifully, right there, in public. I had to stop and listen. On the whole, we love children in our culture. So it sounds warm and fuzzy to hear that we are children of God. 

But that’s not really the meaning of this verse. When this was written, there was a different approach to children. They weren’t valued in the same way; they weren’t treated in the same way. In our culture, when a child is expected, there may be some worries but there is usually a great deal of joy as well. There is hope for a healthy, happy baby. 

But listen to this letter from the first century. It was discovered on the west bank of the Nile about 120 miles south of Cairo in an excavated garbage dump. The worker Hilarion writes to his wife, Alis, addressed in Egyptian fashion as sister, on 18 June in the year 1 BCE. Alis is expecting. 

Hilarion to his sister Alis many greetings, likewise to my lady Berous [his mother-in-law?] and to Apollonarion [their first and male child]. Know that we are even yet in Alexandria. Do not worry if they all come back and I remain in Alexandria. I urge and entreat you, be concerned about the child and I should receive my wages soon, I will send them up to you. If by chance you bear a son, if it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, cast it out [to die].

John Crossan, Jesus

In the same voice that a spouse might send directions for what to do about a garage door that doesn’t work, the fate of a child, a baby, is dictated. New born babies were commonly killed, often by exposing them. A child’s future wasn’t secured until it was received officially by the father. To be a child was to be nothing, life dependent totally on the pleasure of a more powerful person. This is why Jesus’ statement that we need to become like children to enter the Kingdom of God is a problem for those who hear it: it’s a summons to a radical shift in power, an invitation to powerlessness.

So this statement, that we should be called children of God, is both problem and solution. On the one hand, it proposes that we are going to begin without any of the things that give us a platform in life. Our social standing, our insurance, our history, our accomplishments; none count if we become children. To be a child is to be stripped of everything, even a claim to life itself, entirely dependent on someone more powerful. To say we are children of God is to put God in the place of that parent who accepts us and guarantees life. So then truly, God is our surety.

The signature act of taking care of a child is feeding them. An infant is entirely dependent on being nursed; a baby has to have foods prepared and fed to them and it’s a messy process. Most of us try letting them do it on their own at some point, often with hilarious results. So when Jesus, who is in the full glory of the resurrection, allows someone to feed him, he is becoming child like. He is showing us how it’s done: freely choosing to come to them not in overwhelming power but without power, without glory, as a person with the same needs every person has. That’s a second meaning of feeding Jesus in the resurrection: the rejection of power in relationships so that love flourishes, so that mutual care becomes the connection. 

Mutual care, genuine love, are about our choices going forward. But what about the past? Jesus’ solution to the past is forgiveness. The mission the risen Lord gives his followers is to go forgive sins.

… he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,  and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Luke 24:25ff

The same thing is true in the appearance we heard about on Easter from the gospel of John: “If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven.” [John 20:21] Jesus gives the spirit precisely to empower forgiveness. Jesus called his disciples to forgiveness during his life. They consistently try to put a boundary on this forgiveness; he consistently rejects their attempts. “Love your neighbor”, he says; who is my neighbor, they ask. “how many times must I forgive? they ask; he multiplies their generous estimate to make forgiveness infinite.

This is not how we usually deal with the past or with sins or wrong doing. We deal with it by separating. If someone offends us, we stop talking to them; we unfriend them on Facebook. As a community, we put them in jail. The United States has a higher proportion of our population in prison today than any other modern society. We punish people for doing bad things but mostly we get rid of them, we get them out of our lives.

What does Jesus hope? That we will understand we can only come to the resurrection reality by giving up everything that makes us powerful, becoming like children with no burden of past injuries, past hurts. The name for such people is saints. ‘Saint’ means simply the elect of God, that is: God’s children. Congregationalists used the word to refer to all covenant members of the church. That’s right: you are saints, we are saints.

But what kind of saints? We come to this reality through forgiveness. That begins with learning ourselves to say, “I’m sorry,” to put ourselves in the place where we can receive forgiveness. We are saints but not spiritual superstars; we are meant to be sorry saints, saints who know how to say, “I’m sorry,” and who forgive when someone says that to them. It begins with a process similar to what Buddhists call mindfulness; that is, paying attention to  this moment right now. Begin with realizing no one hurt you right now; perhaps no one hurt you today. If we begin right there, with today, with now, the process can spread. When it spreads, we are ready to deal with the results of yesterday. If it spreads we will deal with the past in forgiveness.

It’s time to come back to the story of the burned out community and the four boys. Remember them? Here’s how the story ends.

There is one action all grateful and grieving communities take: holding a picnic where speeches are given, tears shed, sighs heaved, everyone overeats, and all that sneaky extra breath helps people start to breathe deeply again. A picnic was held to honor the firefighters. The whole town turned out. The president of the board of firefighters gave a speech, but at the end, he digressed from what you might have expected him to say.
He talked about how in ancient times, people who did damage to a town were sent to live outside its walls, beyond the pale, or boundary, beyond community, beyond inclusion and protection. He mentioned the four young men who had started the Mount Vision fire, and that he had heard that their families were thinking of moving away. He thought the town should make it clear to the families that they should “stay, that they were wanted, that they were needed.
There was sustained applause. People whose houses had burned down came up to the speaker to say they agreed with this plan. The town wanted these young men inside the pale, inside the ring of protection…“So what seems to me to be happening is that this community, which has just fought so stubbornly to save itself from a holocaust, has turned, almost without missing a beat, to try to save the future of four young men. 

We know what Easter looks like. But Easter is a season: it isn’t just flowers, it’s also planting a promise that can grow into new life. We’ve been through a difficult season and we need now most of all to remember to enact Easter every day. We are meant to be the people who forgive, we are meant to be the people who know each person is a child of God—and act like it. Every voyage starts with goodbye; Easter invites us to say goodbye to past hurts, past hostilities and look for ways to embrace each child of God.

One day Jacquelyn and I drove up to Lake George before the season there; most places were closed. The lake was frozen except for a strip of water about five yards wide around the edge. It wasn’t the warm, beautiful resort it is in the summer. But I knew this, that the lake was going to unfreeze, it was going to be blue and beautiful and people were going to sail on it and go for cruises and fish and swim and remember what a great job God does with creation.

The same is true of human hearts. They freeze up. But that’s not how God made them. God made us to live together in love. Jesus came to teach us that we should feed each other and forgive each other and love each other. Then like a child blowing a dandelion gone to seed, he blew us into the world to show the world it can be done. Every time we forgive, every time we see our saint hood as an occasion to say, :I’m sorry,: trusting God will forgive, the edge of ice shrinks and the world becomes just a little more full of resurrection.

Amen.