{"id":1523,"date":"2024-09-01T20:51:49","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T00:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1523"},"modified":"2024-09-01T20:52:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T00:52:11","slug":"leaping-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2024\/09\/01\/leaping-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaping Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor \u00a9 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">15<sup>th<\/sup> Sunday After Pentecost\/B \u2022 September 1, 2024 (Labor Day)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=592227856\">Song of Solomon 2:8-13<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=592227883\">Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listen to the sermon here<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"blob:https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/1324091b-23e8-440a-b30c-8d0ea7ef6acd\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">God Loves Holidays<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Holidays have a special place in God\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cJubilee Year\u201d, God\u2019s command that debts be canceled every seven years. Also, it\u2019s extended in the seven great festivals of God\u2019s 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\u2019s people out of slavery in Egypt; at Tabernacles, God\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s more of a metaphor, a way of saying \u201cLook, this is what being with God is like: it\u2019s like being in love.\u201d The section we read today imagines a girl watching her boyfriend approach. He\u2019s 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, \u201c\u2026the time of singing has come\u2026\u201d 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: \u201cIt\u2019s like the first time you were in love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Turning Passion Into Routine<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before I go into the house of the Lord with praise and thanksgiving, I lift up mine eyes unto the town clock\u2026to see if I am late. It is not etiquette to be late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s pews Jesus wouldn\u2019t care but other people would. Paying money makes it yours to sit in\u2026. 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\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Hudson, O Ye Jigs and Tulips, p. 6f]<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have made worship something that proceeds in an orderly, careful manner and rarely offends people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is at the heart of what we read this morning from the Gospel of Mark. Jewish religion revolved at Jesus\u2019 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\u2019s covenant but over time, they became a burden for many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this chapter of Mark, the issue is handwashing. Now, we\u2019ve 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\u2019t so much about germs and cleanliness as about being pure before God. Many Jewish rituals involved symbolic washing with water. We\u2019ve taken one over, and we call it baptism. This handwashing is a kind of every day, every time you eat, baptism. It\u2019s not even actually washing your hands; it\u2019s enough to pour a little water over your fist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A group of Pharisees have come to see Jesus. This isn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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 \u201ctradition of the elders\u201d which is to say the customs of how God is worshiped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus\u2019 response is pointed. He says they\u2019re just paying lip service to God. They quote the tradition of the elders; he says that they are \u201c\u2026teaching human precepts as doctrines.\u201d And then he goes on to list all kinds of bad things summed up by the phrase \u201cevil intentions\u201d. What he seems to be talking about is what Buddhists call desire. In our culture, we almost equate sin with sexual immorality so it\u2019s interesting that in Jesus\u2019 list of theft, murder, avarice, envy, slander and pride all occupy equal places. What keeps us from God isn\u2019t whether we perform some ritual or another, it\u2019s that we do it for ourselves rather than as a way to watch for God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Meaning of Worship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For that\u2019s what worship is really meant to be: watching for God, hoping God will appear, hoping we will feel God\u2019s presence. It\u2019s not guaranteed, and it doesn\u2019t always happen. We\u2019ve all sat through boring church services; I know I\u2019ve conducted my share. Part of the problem is that we want to be comfortable. And we\u2019re most comfortable when we know what\u2019s going on, when we know what to do. Like Virginia said, there is etiquette and every church has its set of customs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re in transition here. We know where we\u2019ve 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\u2019m 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, \u201cNo, we\u2019re not going.\u201d? 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, \u201cthe cloud of witnesses\u201d and we should honor those witnesses. Our congregation is not just those here today, it\u2019s that cloud of witnesses whose gift to us is this church.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there\u2019s another crowd we should honor and remember too and that\u2019s all those who aren\u2019t 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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s 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\u2019s presence. So today, close with a quote from Anne Sexton\u2019s poem, \u201cWelcome, Morning\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So while I think of it,<br \/>let me paint a thank-you on my palm<br \/>for this God, this laughter of the morning,<br \/>lest it go unspoken.<br \/><br \/>The Joy that isn&#8217;t shared, I&#8217;ve heard,<br \/>dies young.\u201d\u00a0\u2015 Anne Sexton<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor \u00a9 2024 15th Sunday After Pentecost\/B \u2022 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,146,108,3,130],"tags":[9,131,358,5,357],"class_list":["post-1523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-mark","category-scripture","category-sermon","category-year-b","tag-joy","tag-mark","tag-passion","tag-sermon","tag-songofsolomon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}