When We Sing, We Pray Twice! 10/27/19 (Reformation)

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

When We Sing, We Pray Twice!

Oct. 27, 2019   Reformation Sunday - Celebrating Congregational Singing

            The phrase I used for the title here is attributed to St. Augustine, from back in the 4th century - that’s the 300’s!!!  - whose writings about Christianity have survived and been kept.  Even though the music of that era sounds pretty different to our modern ears, evidently it spoke to their hearts and emotions like our music does to ours.  Good words can move us on a deep level, too, and not just on the linear and logical level - they can stir us up and capture our feelings.  Joined with music, which has its own appeal to a different part of our human nature, the result can be powerful.  People seem to remember music in a different part of the brain, and even the words set to that music can endure brain damage and some dementia. Music, with its beats and rhythms, stirs us as human creatures, kind of like we might say heart level instead of head level?  Or right brain instead of left brain?  So St. Augustine realized that singing a prayer prayed on two levels at once.  Or worships at two levels at the same time. 

            I know that certain tunes can bring up whole memories, and bring tears from that time, too.  Other tunes can make my arms want to lift in praise.  Some tunes make us want to march joyfully, some make us know the bad guys are creeping up…. or that true love is blossoming. When the right music is found for the right words, it connects parts of us together in ways that we haven’t done - and speaks deeply to our souls.  Music comes from the whole person, and we bring our whole selves to God that way. 

            Evidently in the earliest churches, based on the worship at Jewish synagogues, people sang together in, as the Bible puts it, “songs, hymns and spiritual songs.” I don’t know what they sounded like.  Music that got written down was often just sung by an appointed cantor, or was learned by the monks who sang the Psalms to various tones.  Of course people have always made music with instruments and voices, I just am not sure how much people who attended worship sang together before the Reformation.   Martin Luther was  a German priest whose hopes for reforming what he saw as poor practices in the church he served, ended up excommunicated from the Roman church; and attracting the attention of other church folks, they started their own branch of Christian practice.  One of the sayings he’s known for is, “Why should the devil have all the good music?”  He wrote Christian words to the tunes of bar songs so folks could sing them with vigor. The Reformation is credited with reinventing and revitalizing congregational singing.

Its obvious that the sounds and styles of music changed over the decades and centuries.  So we really shouldn’t be surprised that even in recent years church music continues to change with the various influences of musical styles.  After all, the hymns we might call traditional and think of as suitable church music, were once a new style to earlier people,m and probably looked at askance and questioned if it belonged in church at all.  Music is just a medium, a powerful medium of course; and any style of music can carry the words and experience of faithful people.   When I was a teenager, churches were aghast at rock ‘n roll, and at the way Elvis had brought the sounds of black gospel music into white people’s repertoire.  Now a lot of the Christian music I sang at Christian coffee houses to the accompaniment of 12-string guitarists, is in our hymnals and sung by those like me who are now in their 60s. My parents and my church wondered if it was right to sing about God to rock beats and if guitars should be in church.   In seminary, I read books advising about “the Worship Wars,”  when congregations were fighting and splitting over “contemporary music.” 

That’s a lose-lose situation for a congregation….   Any music can become the carrier of the faith message, and resisting the newer sounds only alienates the coming generations.  I know those of us who are older still love the sounds from our own youth, the sounds we associate with warm memories and experiences of faith back then.  And we know the melodies better.  Its counter-productive, however, to expect the younger generations to groove to what we did.  We can’t freeze time, and we can’t freeze music.  God and the gospel are new every moment, always current.  If we’re smart and forward looking, we will embrace the music that calls and speaks to the upcoming leaders and members as well as the music that still speaks to us.  Musicians are continuously writing new expressions of Christian faith and life.  New hymnals and songbooks from our denominations  seek out good new music to include in the new hymnals being published.  

I mean, even as a child I realized the words to the church songs we sang on Sundays weren’t written in the way people spoke today.  I learned them anyway, and could listen well-enough to get what they were expressing.  I have many fond memories of those songs, even while I was interested in the guitar songs of the coffee house that sounded more like me.  I’ve ended up liking almost any style of music as long as its well-written.  I do miss a congregation that could sing parts, where I could sing my alto and hear tenors, basses and sopranos in the various pews around me.  And I do miss the vigor of the congregational singing back then.  Presbytery meetings, now, and conferences - that’s where I hear that sound again.  When I have an opportunity to sing in a congregation nowadays, people sing more quietly and privately.  It feels different.  Maybe we look more towards the professionals than we used to, I don’t know.  People certainly don’t sing on front porches and around pianos like we used to.  I miss that.  So I enjoy the singing at VBS, and the way the newer styles of music are being used, and the kids jump in. 

This morning we’re going to sing a variety of music, and our choir is seated up front here to help lead us.  I encourage us to sing out, enjoy the music, listen to the words, be a part of the congregational singing. And appreciate the praise that is sent to God on our voices.  AMEN.

Don't Lose Heart, Friend 10/20/19 (Pentecost 19C)

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Don’t Lose Heart, Friend  - Keep On Keepin’ On

Oct 20, 2019   Pentecost 19C    Luke 18:1-8

            One of my favorite folk singers is a western Virginian by the name of John McCutcheon -  I’ve been a fan from way back.  Like many folk singers, he often tells stories between songs in his concerts.  I‘ve borrowed one my his favorite lines about storytelling:  “You know, storytellers always tell the truth…  (audience titters a bit)...then in a wry voice, “Just not always factual.” That is kinda the way stories work, isn’t it? Aesop's fables using animals to reveal human behaviors; mythology telling us truths about living that are usually peopled with made up folks. 

            Jesus is a story-teller, too.  We call Jesus’ stories ‘parables.’  There have been different ways of working with these parables through the ages of Christianity.  Quite a ways back,  it was fashionable to look at them as allegories; that is, where there is a one-to-one correspondence, like The Judge represents X, the widow represents Y, her lawsuit represents Z, and so on, and all about the Christian life.  On through a few decades, a scholar named Jeremias started a school of thought that looked at parables as having only one main point, and you either got it or you didn’t.  More recently, parables have been seen as multi-layered, with a recognition that our interpretations may differ because of where and how we have lived, ie our cultures, and our life events.  The most recent method of looking at parables have seen them as terse political commentary on the culture of Jesus’ day, which makes for interesting reading for social commentary on today.  To be sure, while cultures have come and gone since Jesus’ time, the things people get up to really haven’t changed a whole lot, so if we can hear Jesus’ critique on his culture, we can apply it pretty easily to the world we know. I’ve recently read a book called Short Stories of Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine, who, as a Jew herself, adds a unique understanding of 1st century life for Jerusalem and surrounds, plus a good knowledge of Greek and Aramaic.  Those details of life and translation often add depth, too. 

Today’s parable seems to have been taken a certain way for many years, based mostly on the sentence Luke adds at the very beginning, that its supposed to tell us to pray always and not lose heart.  I’ve had trouble with this interpretation since early in my own career.  Let’s look at the story’s details.

The story opens with the main character, a widow.  We may remember from Sunday School that widows (and orphans) are often poor and powerless persons in that century and culture.  Without a husband, brother, father or son to take care of them and their lives, they are virtually invisible in a patriarchal-based culture.  Widows and orphans are basically family-less, and sometimes called “the least of these” in Scripture in both Old and New Testaments.  If you know the musical Les Mis - the word ‘Miserable’ is the word for the ‘least of these,’ the ‘wretched of the earth,’ as one of the songs from Les Mis translates into English.  Widows and orphans are among the powerless, those who are the bottom of the chain, those marginal and almost invisible persons on the underside of human cultures, and they rarely get justice.  So this widow is our protagonist.  People who heard Jesus tell this story would understand that.   

The next character introduced is the judge who ‘neither feared God nor had respect for people.’  He also is a recognizable character - in it for what he could get, buying into the culture that overlooked those of the lower classes, and not caring about their welfare.  “Let them eat cake,” (which is a kind of coal, not a dessert), may describe his attitude.  And it actually sounds like he didn’t even respect ANYone.  He’s been called “The Unjust Judge” in other translations. Its not that he is overwhelmed by the size of the problems of the poor and doesn’t know where to start - its that he likes things the way they benefit himself, and frankly doesn’t care about anything else.

The problem of the parable is that the widow keeps coming to this judge in court, to get justice for some issue that involves her rights. She wants wrong corrected, and right to prevail.  And the judge really doesn’t care, doesn’t see the problem, and wishes it would all go away.  Eventually, the story tells us, he reasons like this - “I neither fear God nor have respect for people,” he says to himself, “but this widow’s persistence is making me look bad.  I’m tired of her and her problem, and she’s giving me a black eye.”  ‘Black eye’ is what Levine says this Greek word really means - I think its a way of saying he’s being damaged in his own status, not looking good to others.  SO…. he grants her the justice she seeks so persistently. 

Now the interpretation I’ve heard all my life says that we ought to be as persistent as that widow, and keep praying day and night, until God answers.  What bothers me about this interpretation is that I hear the story teaching precisely the opposite!  That God is NOT like that unjust judge, but rather cares deeply about us.  The unjust judge is the opposite of what God is like, as revealed by Jesus.  The unjust judge is the foil, the antithesis of God’s response to us, which is caring and loving.  God hears our prayers, God cares for our situations!  God isn’t unconcerned; we don’t have to pound on God’s door to get attention to our situations; we don’t have to wear God out with our own heart’s pain until God finally pays attention and does something just to shut us up!  That is not what God is like!

Sometimes, we might feel that it takes forever for something we’ve prayed about to break open and be addressed.  Here’s my take on this - I think God hears and cares immediately, and that it often takes God a lot of steps before things are addressed.  Maybe WE have to grow; maybe another person has to come to a realization - maybe that person is incapable of acting how we wish they’d act, and we have to come to grips with that ourselves.  Who knows what is going on while we think God is ignoring us?  I believe that God is already working.  I’ve also thought about how God’s idea of ‘immediate’ isn’t like ours -  I mean, the view of our faith on material creation as a work of God is described in the book of Beginnings, Genesis,  as a “day.” It actually took billions of years and lots of steps, our science now knows.  God doesn’t seem to be in the same sense of linear time that we know. 

Well, that’s how I’ve looked at this parable, and its been helpful to me in thinking about issues of justice, like how many years it has taken for the status and treatment of African Americans to be seen as an issue for all of us in our country.  All kinds of bigotry held it back; all kinds of cultural assumptions had to be confronted.  The system here in America worked well for white people - we had little initiative to change it.  It took a long time, and much work and writing to make us take this issue seriously.  It took leaders being raised up and even murdered to bring us to the conviction that this was wrong.  God was working – and it took a long time.

Its now been 60 years since the Presbyterian church began ordaining women to the ministry, and it took more than 25 years of work and advocacy before that positive vote!  THEN the local churches had to see this wasn’t just a theoretical thing, and hire us, which was another long time.  Lots of things have to be addressed before an initial vision of justice becomes reality. 

In preparing for this sermon, I was challenged to see yet another way to view this parable, a new way for me.  I call it the “quit seeing yourself as the good guy, and picture yourself as the bad guy” way of interpretation.  So, what if we’re the unjust judge??? What if the widow’s perspective is the perspective of GOD? Its GOD who is angry at injustices in the world, and GOD who keeps urging us and urging us to do justice for those who are more powerless, and suffering at the injustices of the societies of the world.  Like the unjust judge, we humans take SO LONG to finally see things as God sees them.  In this take on the parable, God identifies with people like that widow - the humble, the powerless, and those who are wronged by the way cultures function.  It not US who long for justice, but God, who has to keep at us and keep at us, gradually enlarging our hearts and our compassion until we care as God already does. 

Play with THAT in your mind for a while!  Its quite a shift in perception, and I think there’s something in it that speaks to what Jesus reveals about God in the rest of his ministry and teaching. Its also the message of all the Old Testament prophets, one after the other - cultures and nations are judged by God based on how the least among them is treated.   Keeping the ways and commandments of God is intricately tied up with the way a community treats the least among them. 

We can look at the examples I made earlier - that it was and is God who awakens consciences and consciousness of people to the injustice going on in our practices  - for example, of enslaving people and misusing our  power over people’s lives in a way that angers God, who cared and cares for ALL people.  God had to work persistently against the way our culture thought of people of color, and what we white folks of the dominant class thought was okay to do.  God even had to open our eyes to seeing how we church folks had misused Scripture to try and prove our bias. 

And that it was God who finally broke through the bad teachings and assumptions about women that, again, we church people had tried to prove through misusing Scriptures.  And the whole culture that accepted a view of women as lesser -0 those things take time to shift.

We could go on - the state of New York required all employers THIS YEAR to institute training to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.  All employers had to accomplish this by Oct 9.   Churches were not exempt - we here at Jamesville Community Church did it, too. 

We could add other current issues of our culture - and any issue we talk about probably has Christ-followers with various points of view as to what faithfulness and justice look like.  Knowing that, we could look at the refugee crisis at our southern border, which many Christ-followers are perceiving as a justice issue as well as a humane issue, and seeing that Scripture calls for us to care for the suffering and treat all people honorably. There is also the ongoing responses to in church and culture to those who are born with a different sexual identity. Even our two contributing denominations here at our church - the United Methodist and the Presbyterians - there have been opposing votes on the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ persons.

  

What I’ve noticed in my own spiritual life is that ever since my heart became more sensitive to injustice, mainly from what I‘ve seen as a clergywoman, my sensitivity to mistreatment and injustice to ANY group of people has increased.  There was a time when none of these issues were on my radar screen, and how things were was unquestioned. 

This morning, I hope looking at this powerful though short story of Jesus, raises up some meaty material for our own talks with God in prayer.  Shortly after the benediction today, as we gather in the Fellowship Hall, we’ll look at the last 100  or so years of our own congregation’s history, and think of how things have changed over the years, and what generations before us faced as faithful believers.  The larger, capital-C Church, in seeking to be faithful, has sought God’s will through wars, economic development and depressions - yet has kept on.  Its our leg of the race now, we’re carrying the torch or the baton, and we celebrate the faithfulness of God through the centuries before and centuries to come.  AMEN.

The WAY of Awareness and Thanksgiving 10/13/19 (Pentecost 18C)

THE WAY OF AWARENESS AND THANKSGIVING

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Oct 13   Pentecost 18C      Luke 17:11-19

            At the retreat/conference that I attended last week, a presenter asked us if we remembered what the early believers in Jesus as the Christ of God were called, before they were called “Christians.”  I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but it popped back into my mind  - the first believers were called “Followers of The Way.”  “The Way,” of course, was the way of Jesus,

 the path of life that Jesus taught, the way of walking in the realm of God, the practices of Jesus’ disciples who lived as he taught.  A Way, a path, a walk, a pattern of life choices that were distinct.  Jesus actually called himself “The Way” - the way one lives for God, the patterns of thought that guide our choices, the path we walk by the light of Scripture, the world view of faith out of which we live and act.  Being a Christian is NOT just a set of beliefs we have to get right!

            So I often use the phrase “Christ-followers” in place of the word “Christian,” for that reason. The other reason is that the word ‘Christian’ has come to mean so many weird things in the media….linked to behaviors and attitudes that to me are actually NOT Christ-like, in fact the opposite of the very love and welcome of God to all people. I am saddened to be characterized or stereotyped in the minds of folks who meet me by my association of what the word “Christian” has come to mean.  I wish the term “Christian” carried associations with humility, justice, love, welcome, respect, honor, and forgiveness.  I wouldn’t mind being identified as one of those.

            See, living in trust of what Jesus taught is what faith is; pondering the insights of Christ is what faith is; seeking to live according to what Jesus modeled is what faith is.  Faith is a lifestyle based on knowing God and God’s word.  Faith is NOT a set of things one says one “believes” while acting, well, however.  Faith is NOT being able to quote a few verses and just be a nice person.  Faith is a living relationship, and a path to follow - a “Way” of being and living. 

            Gratitude, thankfulness, giving thanks, gratefulness to God - these are important aspects of the path of following Christ.  As I pondered on this story of the 10 healed guys and the 1 who returned in gratitude, I realized that this has to be about more than just good manners - Jesus didn’t need to be Dear Abby and tell us to write thank you notes for presents. I searched for and thought about deeper levels he was communicating in this story, because Jesus’ stories were always more than just what’s on the surface. 

 The first thing I notice is that the guy who stops, turns around and returns to express gratitude is, of all things, a Samaritan.  We’ve seen the unexpected Samaritan be the good guy in the story before, in the parable of the Man Who fell Among Thieves - remember that one?  The religious guys pass by this beaten-up man on the road, ignoring him perhaps, or not wanting to get involved because they’re so busy in their religious work.  Who is the true neighbor to the man left for dead?  Its that blasted, no-good, half-caste Samaritan.  Perhaps because he’s discriminated against in his region, he has learned compassion, he has learned to take time and care of those who are hurting.  Perhaps, even though he’s not in the “In” group, religiously, he has developed a deeper spirituality of care for other mistreated folks.  In any case, the Samaritan is the surprise good guy in that parable, and in this one, too.  Its a Samaritan who is the only one of the healed folks who returns to give thanks.  Again, the challenge is for those of us who think we religious folks have dibs on right behaviors towards other people. 

The second thing I notice is that all 10 guys are so overjoyed at being healed that they run, RUN, to see their families and friends again.  They are overjoyed to be healed, bursting with joy.  Maybe there’s one grumbler who thinks he was entitled and just getting what he deserved, finally!!!  But in my way of looking at it, they’re all so glad and excited to be returning to life that they take off!  I bet most of them are grateful, and when things settle down again, they’ll realize it.  What makes one of them, the Samaritan, stop and come back sooner for giving thanks, before running back home?

I wonder if, perhaps, he had already developed, in his own faith life, the ability to see God’s gifts around him.  I wonder if, perhaps, his disease has already sensitized him into an awareness of God’s love and grace supporting him.  I wonder if he has already cultivated the awareness of God’s sustaining presence as a practice of faith.  So that giving thanks is already a habit of the way he lives his faith, even in his illness, his affliction.  So when he is healed of the dreaded disease of leprosy, even in his wildest joy he quickly remembers his gratitude, his indebtedness to God.  Its already a practice, a habit, a path, a way he lives.

 See, when we aren’t thankful, either we’re not paying attention or something’s going on in our soul that needs to be looked at.  Awareness, paying attention, giving thanks in all things - this is part of the path of following Christ.  When we follow Jesus, we live our lives in the midst of the gifts of God, surrounded by the gifts of God - are we not aware of that?  Its easy to overlook all the gifts of God that surround us, to take them for granted, to not be aware.  Are we, for example, aware of the air that surrounds us, that we breathe a zillion times a day?  Not usually - unless something is going wrong with our air, like pollution or smoke, or lung troubles. Then we’re very aware of air, because of its lack.  Air and breathing is connected to the word ‘inspire’ and ‘inspiration’ – we are created, in our faith teaching, of earthy dust and the breath, the air, the inspiration, of the Divine.  The air we rarely notice is actually pretty theological!

There’s a pretty tree at the entrance to the Baptist church just down the street, and I’ve been watching it turn a beautiful color this fall.  I notice its color - but am I aware of how that tree functions as a part of my environment, filtering the air and producing the oxygen I need?         Am I aware of the way my body takes in that air automatically, without my direction?  How my lungs fill with it and how it goes out carried in my blood, making it bright red, flooding my brain so it can think?  Our bodies are miracles of cooperation and balanced functioning, our various systems acting below our consciousness. Our very life depends on such minute processes functioning correctly, and a positive interaction with our outer environment.  Our sciences and medicines are learning more and more of the smallest functions and parts, and actually how to help fix many things that can happen to us. These gifts, and more, surround us at every moment, and when we become aware of them, we give thanks to God who makes and sustains it all. 

Awareness leads us to gratitude.  The way our Christian tradition has developed doesn’t emphasize the development of awareness the way other traditions around the world have.  I think of Buddhist mindfulness, for example, and the awareness of the body and the mind’s intentions that it teaches more explicitly than we have.  In our own tradition there is a comparative path, I think, of remembrance.  Throughout Judaism, people of God are urged to remember what God has done, remember that God has been faithful, remember the great deeds of the past - tell them to our children, speak of them in our houses - - and know that this God is also here and continues to work on our behalf, continues to desire our growth, our freedom, our shalom - wellness, peace.  That this is the God we worship - remember.  

That’s rather like awareness, to me.  When we teach that God created the world, what is that but an awareness that God is responsible for all this, and sustains it, gives it life?  When we teach that God created humans from the dust of the earth and then breathed into us God’s very breath, what is that teaching but an awareness of our connection both to the elements of earth and to the Divine?  God who is Life itself, gives this life to us? Is that not the ultimate awareness of who we are and whose we are?   

If this awareness of God around us, in us, above us, beneath us - is this not a thankfulness to God, from whom all things arise?  In whom all that is has its being?  Who is our beginning and our end? 

And if that is our practice, our faith, our Way - we will be like that Samaritan who remembers quickly to give thanks for the special joys.  Its interesting that in the last line of the story, Jesus says that this man’s faith has made him well.  He’s already healed - and even those who didn't immediately give thanks were healed, too.  But now this one is also made WELL. That’s the last step - awareness, gratitude - and that makes us well.  WELL - despite whatever else is going on, we are WELL. What a promise that is!  Wellness is more than healing, and we can even be made well if we’re not healed - if we walk in the path of gratitude. If we walk in the assurance and remembrance of God who makes all things well.  AMEN.

God's Realm is our Ultimate Allegiance 9/8/19 (Pentecost 12C)

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser       

God’s Realm is our Ultimate Allegiance

 Sept 8, 2019     Pentecost 12C   Luke 14: 25-33

  

Are there distinctive things about being a Christian?

A friend who’s a professor at VA Wesleyan College, Rev Craig Wansink, tells a story about being in Palestine studying, and taking a taxi to tour around.  His taxi driver was pointing out all the important Muslim sites, and eventually Craig asked, “What about a Christian site?” The taxi driver thought a moment, and then, to Craig’s surprise, the taxi driver took him to a bar.  Craig was confused - why was a bar a Christian site?  Because good Muslims couldn’t drink alcohol. So there were only Christians at the bar.

That’s not the kind of distinctively Christian thing we might want….

  Are Christians just the rest of the people who don’t identify as Jewish, Muslim, Ba’hai, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindu, Neo-Pagan or Wiccan? Or spiritual but not religious?  Or those who check the box “none of the above”? Does just giving gifts at Christmas and eating chocolate eggs at Easter make us Christians? Has being a Christian has gotten tangled up with being a nice person and a good American in our day? 

What is it that makes a Christian a Christian?  Isn’t there something that shows our commitment to follow Christ in our actions and life decisions?

The passage we are considering this morning starts off with Jesus saying one of his out-of-the-box and rather shocking things, as he seems to do.  Its a technique called hyperbolic language, that is, he uses hyperbole, over-the-top or extreme words to make a point. We do it all the time - “If my mom finds out I did that, she will just KILL me!”  That’s hyperbole.  Mom will not really, literally kill her child, although she may well be really angry.   “He’s as skinny as a rail!”  That’s hyperbole - no human gets that skinny.  “Woah, your purse weighs a TON!” That’s hyperbole - although purses can get pretty heavy, its nowhere near a ton. “You live on your phone 24/7 !  Well, that might be too close for comfort….

One time says Jesus says that rich people getting to heaven is harder than a camel going through the little teeny eye of a sewing needle. Yeah - we get it, that is hard to picture!  But then he says, “With God all things are possible.”  Another time, Jesus asks people, “If your child asked for some bread, would you give him a rock? How about a scorpion?”  Duh, no, Jesus!  We love our children.  Jesus says, “Well, God loves you, too!”  Another time Jesus tells people that if their eyes cause them to sin, like envying or lusting, it’s better to pluck that eye out and go to heaven with just one eye… and the same with your hand, he says - cut it off so it doesn’t keep you out of heaven.  This is not a literal command; he’s emphasizing what we may need to let go of in order to walk in the realm of God, that living in the realm of God is vital. 

This morning’s passage says: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  Is this Jesus telling us to hate our parents and siblings?  A new preacher in a facebook group was asking how we other preacher’s took this verse, especially how to use it in a children’s sermon.  Once again, Jesus is using hyperbole, extreme words, comparing our love of God to our love of even our loved ones.  We have to admit that it grabs our attention this way - he could have just said, “I must be your ultimate allegiance,” like my sermon title. 

Jesus is comparing our devotion to God with our devotion to anything else - anything else - possessions, family, time, money, career, fame, whatever….   Our dedication to God, our devotion to God, our loyalty to God will surpass everything else. God wants to be #1 in the life of believers.  Take up this cross, he says, and follow me.  Count the cost of following me.

It seems to me that making God #1 is pretty close to impossible - except as we grow closer to God and grow in faith, it perhaps becomes more possible.  The demands of career, or family, or making a living - these are important to our lives.  Jesus isn’t saying they aren’t important, nor that these obligations and necessities won’t take time and attention.  Jesus IS saying that when they come in conflict with our faith, we’re going to have a tough decision to make.  So count the cost, Jesus says.  Faith means that God is the most vital to the source of Life.  

We understand the way some things are more of a priority than others.  We understand having to prioritize in what gets done in our work day. Lives are busy, and we simply can’t do everything.  We ask ourselves that question everyday: What’s more important -  that pastry or my blood sugar?  What’s more important - my weekend or my kid’s travel soccer game?  What’s more important - extra $$ in retirement savings for my old age, or a gym membership for my health now?

There’s going to be some decisions as a Christ-follower that come out differently from what others decide.  Our faith is going to ask us to be honest in our finances, to think of the others in business, and to give time in our already packed schedules to prayer and worship. The compassion God has shown us and which grows in our hearts might get us in a sticky situation when the folks around us are mocking somebody, or using racist language. Speaking out against what the group is doing is hard.  The Holy Spirit is going to make us look at poor people with caring, which might not be the dominant view of those around us.  Sometimes we’re going to want to lie ourselves out of a mess, but faith tells us to admit the truth.  I turned down a drink one time at a party and was teased and called Miss Goody 2 Shoes, because people getting wasted want everyone else to get wasted with them, and don’t like it if you are different.  I heard my kids telling their friends one time, “Mom doesn’t let people use ‘gay’ as a bad word in her car.”  No one wants to be seen as different in their teens, so blame it on Mom - that’s fine. 

Practicing the values that Jesus taught, the attitudes that Jesus taught - it can make us face difficult choices.   “So count the cost,” Jesus says, of being my disciples. This is a CHALLENGING  set of verses, a DEMANDING view or being Jesus’ disciple.  Jesus is asking us, just how important am I in your life? 

Many church folks assume that accepting a version of being a nice person and a good American is also being a Christian.  People in the Klan think they’re Christian because they are white, no matter how they hate.  Some folks in our country think it doesn’t matter what you do otherwise, just so long as you want prayer in school and are against abortion - litmus tests for being a Christian, in their point of view.  Some of my clergywomen colleagues have been told that they’re headed for hell for claiming God called them preach. When I was a teenager, a good Christian didn’t listen to rock ‘n roll or, if male, have long hair.  And this was the Woodstock era!

What do those things have to do with being a disciple of Christ?  Another of Jesus’ good and pithy sayings was about people who strain out gnats but swallow camels.  Hey, guys, work on living the bigger issues of faith instead of arguing over the minutiae. 

So what makes our life a Christ-centered one?   In many ways, it’s up to us to read scripture, wrestle with Scripture, ask the Spirit of God to let the Scriptures read our hearts and show us the truth of our lives.  Christianity doesn’t have a simplified list of behaviors that say Christian, not Christian. There’s a lot in the Bible, and most of that has to be pondered, because some of what we read is due to the 1st century setting of those first believers, and things going on in their culture.  So the Bible takes some understanding.  It’s difficult to make lists of universal rules because Christianity is first of all a relationship with God, through Jesus the Christ.  Christianity is personal, its relational, and its something we continue to grow into more and more.  Its a revelation, a growing revelation of who God is and what God desires.  Jesus’ way of wording things is meant to draw us in, make us wrestle, make us talk to God about it - not just give a dry list. See how that works? 

This morning, hear the invited from Jesus to ponder what is distinctive about being a disciple of Christ, a follower of Christ - and ask ourselves if we are living into it more day by day.  May these wrestlings be fruitful in growing our relationships with God.  AMEN.

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

      Table Manners  (God’s)          

9/1/19     Pentecost    Luke 14:7-14

            I like it that Jesus did a lot of teaching around meals and tables, and drew many illustrations about the realm of God about meals and tables.  I like it because, of course, I like to be around tables and meals myself.  I like to gather around tables for meals with people - church people, neighborhood people, people at conferences and any other people - because that’s where I get to know them.  I find out whether they’re uptight and really don’t want to be there, unable to relax; or I find out that they are gracious and comfortable; or they may show up as rude and opinionated; or pleasant and fun.  Mostly we begin to know one another better; and what I like the most, we start to share stories. 

            My favorite cartoon strip is Calvin and Hobbes, which we have now only on the internet and if we bought books.  That cartoonist, Bill Waterson, always hit the nail on the head, didn’t he?  I googled “Calvin & Hobbes at the dinner table” and it brought up hundreds to strips of Calvin throwing wild fits over what looked like green slop on a plate, or sculpting it into something, or pretending to be a dinosaur, or grossing out Susie at school lunches.  My favorite is the one where his dad tells him that the alien food will turn him into a mutant, and he digs in. 

            My own kids picked up the idea of alien food, and I heard no end of that while they were younger.  If I got angry about it, the table was tense.  I learned to just say something like, “Well, we were out of good stuff so I used cat food.”  That usually quieted things down. 

           

            Today’s text from Luke is another table and meal story about and from Jesus.  It starts out sounding like 1st Century Ann Landers, with Jesus giving sage advice about a culture where honor and place were important ways of respecting those with honor, or perhaps money....  Important people sat at the head tables - we do that too, the honoree of a meal being up front, the bride and groom having a special table maybe with the wedding party.  It was more a daily thing in Jesus’ era - assuming you were special enough to be at the head table, it would be devastating to be asked to move for someone else.  Much better to be found by the host and “promoted,” demonstrating your higher honor.  Okay, that’s pretty obvious. 

            Jesus uses this commentary about honor, or pride, or perhaps hubris, to go more deeply into the concept of humility.  Not a false humility that is always saying, “Who, poor little me? No, I don’t play well enough to get the solo part,” when everyone knows you’re the best violinist in the school and you always get 1’s at the contests.  And Jesus isn’t talking about performance anyway - he’s talking basic human worth.  And in God’s eyes, each of us is equally worthy and equally unworthy at the same time. 

We’re equally worthy because the image of God is built into each of our creation; because God deemed it suitable to redeem each of us through sending Christ Jesus. God desires that each person in the world know God as best they can, and live in the realm of God even now on earth.  Not just Americans, not just light-skinned people, not just middle class people, not just one political party or another, not just educated people, not just articulate and well-spoken people, not just people who bathe daily and have straight teeth - God means everybody.  The children picking through garbage in sprawling cities, darker-skinned women wearing head covers, people in government housing,  homeless people under bridges, wealthy people, people who are illiterate and who smell bad, immigrants and refugees, criminals as well as victims.  God is totally indiscriminate in who God wants to find capital-L-Life and restoration.

We are equally unworthy because no one could ever earn God’s care based on our own deeds, or what illustrious family name we bear, or what position we hold in our country.  There’s nothing really for us to judge ourselves better than another as far as God’s concerned. We are unique individuals, born by chance into the situation we are in, each of us are gifted in certain ways, and each of us need, NEED, to recognize God, be restored and renewed by the Holy Spirit, and begin the journey of  the disciple. “Take on my yoke,” Jesus said, “and learn of me.” Let me lead you, school you, guide you, teach you.  And actually you will find that my yoke is easy and my burden light.  For I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 

So there’s no reason to think of ourselves as better or more important than any other.  Or to see any other person as less worthy of welcome than another person.  At one church I served, we gained several members of a family who were, say, not middle class, and not able to give large amounts even if they tithed.  They loved God and worked diligently for our church, although some of the more wealthy folks didn’t know how to talk to them.  At a meeting one night, I was urged to find us some new members who could help more with the budget!  I got angry - and also sad - at the obvious discrimination going on, and called them on it.  God’s church is not a country club, nor a homogeneous group of self-selected people who are alike.  God’s church is the company of believers, all worthy as well as unworthy, all seeking to know and serve God, all on the journey to show God’s realm to the world and carry God’s message of love and care, and the promise of salvation of the world.  Poorer people are not less valuable than richer people.  People NOT like “us” are no less valuable than people LIKE “us.”  In the church, Jesus says, there is no us and them - we are all “US.”

Since this is a communion Sunday and we are gathered around THIS table, Jesus’ words are especially meaningful. As we partake in this taste of the fruits and grains of the earth, we acknowledge the abundance of food and nourishment here in God’s world, and give thanks.  Eating of the world’s store is a sacred gift, without which our species would die.  At the same time, we acknowledge that God sustains us in spiritual ways as well, nourishing our souls on what Jesus calls the Living Bread of heaven.  Communion recognizes the special and complex creations that we are, both made of the dust of the earth while also quickened by the breath of God; and that we are set in a community of others, social and communal creatures, who are as vitally important as ourselves.   This is God’s design.

As we share the bread and cup here, we are aware that we are sharing with each other, all the same.  Usually the servers and the pastor go last, to show that we’re not any more special than  anyone else.  In one church I served, the servers and the Pastor went first, which felt weird to me until they explained that in their training, the pastor and leaders led into sacrifice and service for the world. Both ways were showing the great egalitarian table of God.

And also as we share this cup and bread, we recognize that we are sharing with Christ-followers in other churches in our community - people in other denominations. We are sharing with believers all over Syracuse, and all over New York.  We are sharing with Christ’s disciples in other states, and actually in other countries.  Our sisters and brothers in this family of God may be in countries where they are being persecuted, or have to meet secretly.  Some of them are in places where wars are going on.  Some of them are soldiers in various armies.  Some of them are perhaps imprisoned. Some are starving.  Some have no roof over their church.  Some of them have fled abusive families.  Some of them are trying to enter our country’s borders, and perhaps some are working to keep them out.  Some want to be included and some are uncomfortable with including them.

Yet we are announcing our oneness, our unity, by the very partaking in this same sacrament.  I admit that we haven’t worked out our oneness and unity very well on the larger scale.  We understand unity better when folks are more like us; however, we are actually one with all persons despite our differences.  We are all God’s, because this is God’s table.  God is the host and God is the inviter - we are simply among those invited. There’s no place for pride here. There’s only place for love, and welcome, and support, and sharing. 

God’s vision for people is all-encompassing.  It challenges our more limited vision to expand and grow.  That may feel uncomfortable, even as we come to this table to partake.  Yet we partake with all anyway, know it or not, like it or not, comfortable or uncomfortable. 

May God’s vision inspire us to rethink, to ponder, to reconsider the implications of coming to this table; and may God’s Spirit lead us in showing our oneness and love to the world.  AMEN.

God Will Lead Us Along the Way (Pentecost 11 C)

GOD WILL LEAD US ALONG THE WAY

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Aug 25, 2019   Pentecost 11C    Ex.13:17-22           

A pastor back in Norfolk  told me about a phone call he’d received from a fairly new member at his church, JIM, a younger man who didn’t have a church background.  So Jim called this pastor and said he was at the religious bookstore and wondering which Bible to buy - he was confused by all the different kinds. So my pastor friend is thinking about the various translations of the  Bible available, because there are quite a few. Usually in seminary we use the NRSV, the New Revised Standard version, as its considered the most accurate translation, and from the most recently available scholarship. Another popular translation is the NIV, the New International Version, and I have friends who like the way the CEV, or Contemporary English Version, phrases things.  Another newer one is called The Message, which is the work of Eugene Peterson, a remarkable pastor whose books have been well-received, and whose death last year was deeply mourned. Its quite up to date in its word choices and idioms. So my pastor friend starts on all this explanation about translations from the old languages and such, and Jim stops him - “What are you talking about?  I was just wondering if I should get, like the blue jean cover, the one with spiritual helps for men, the one with study helps, the one with red letters or what.” My pastor friend cracked up and they figured something out.  

See, marketers have invaded the world of Bibles and added layers of attractions on the world of various Bible translations, and the result can be confusing to folks who are rather new to Bible reading.  Meanwhile, while attempting to help the Bible be more readable to today’s people, others of us know that translation is not a simple thing, and that the translator's own prejudices and assumptions do affect their word choices, and this affects what people read and think and quote.   

On the other hand, I’m glad Jim, who was a friend of mine also, wanted to read the Bible for himself and learn more about the world of the Scripture.  Its a sad truth that although the Bible is the best-selling book year after year, Bible literacy in our times is quite low. People aren’t growing up in Sunday School in the numbers they used to. My niece went to worship with her grandmother, my mom, and went up for the children’s time where they heard a story about Abraham.  Afterwards, she said to my mom, “Grammy, I never heard that story about Abraham Lincoln before.” She had no idea of the Abraham in the Bible, the patriarch of Judaism. Another illustration, one of my favorites, comes from the early part of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones is meeting with the G-men who comes to recruit him, and he’s explaining the Ark of the Covenant.  The G-men look blank, so Indy says, “Didn’t you guys go to Sunday School?” 

Biblical allusions are all over literature - it used to be assumed that readers would know what you were talking about if you mentioned making bricks without straw, for example; or something being a Damascus road moment. Those are just a couple I’ve come across recently when I’ve been thinking about all this.  Oh, and a book I was reading the other night had someone say they were sent “empty away”, like the wording in Mary’s Magnificat, where we’d be more likely to say “we went away without anything.” Even if folks weren’t really devoted church-goers, they knew the Bible at least as literature that educated people would recognize. The pillars of cloud and the pillars of fire would have been well-recognized as the way God guided the wandering Hebrew people in their 40 years in the desert.  We can’t assume these are recognized anymore.  

Familiar readers of the Bible would also realize that although  the stories in the Bible are based in common human experiences, they are also metaphorical for religious and human experiences we may have now, too.  For example, many of us have had times when we felt we were wandering and feeling lost, or in a desert-like time of dryness in our lives; we may long for signs as clear as pillars of fire or cloud.  We know about the courage it takes to leave a place that’s known, even if it has been harmful to us - and how difficult it is to build a new life and sense of identity. Themes of movies about a good son and a “bad” son come out all the time, like the story of the prodigal.   

There’s a meme going around (PICTURE IN PHONE) where God is talking to a Biblical writer about allegory….  “Of COURSE they’ll know its not literal,” Moses says...Yeah, that one….

So many of the stories of the Hebrew people, wandering in search of that vision of the future called the Land of Promise, can be taken not just as history, but also as prototypes or archetypes of the human quest. Look at the larger story here - What’s going on? The patriarch Jacab, aka Israel, and his extended family go to Egypt as refugees during a long and hard famine, where his son Joseph, though thought to be dead, has risen to prominence by storing up food ahead of time. Joseph is well-loved by the current Pharoah, and his family is welcomed and given choice land to live in.  So the tribe grows and grows, and eventually, as time passes, a couple Pharoah’s down the line don’t remember Joseph and the famine time, and only see the large number of Israelites as a potential enemy from within, so enslaves them. There are lots of stories about how they were treated badly, and cried out to God. God prepares the deliverer Moses and brings plagues on Egypt until the Pharaoh is broken, and says Moses can lead the Israelites to another land. There are more signs and wonders, and then the people who have seen the deliverance of God first hand are being led by Moses and these pillars of cloud and fire, another clear sign of God’s presence and care for them.  

Listening to the section we read today, we hear a summary paragraph about  people leaving a place of hardship, overwork, mistreatment and enslavement to others’ wills, and setting out on a journey towards a place of fulfillment and blessing, in which God guides them.   We’re told that God took them a bit out of the way at first, to avoid a face-to-face conflict that might end things before they started. And we’re told they took their identity, history and tradition with them, ie the bones of their founder.  There’s a lot of chapters about this journey, as the group of formerly enslaved people forge a new identity. Its neither an easy journey nor an instant journey - they live daily trusting God’s promise of what’s to come and their trust in the goodness of God towards them, even when the way is rough. 

This journey is an  archetypal journey of faith, hope, deliverance, and trust; a metaphor for the human quest for that place of fullness and security, where we can stand in both our history and our strong future, secure in faith and with the hand of the Divine blessing us.  Its a story of transition, of finding ourselves, defining ourselves and walking in trust of that spirit of life, God, which draws us.  

This is the story that the African American people, who were brought here as slaves, chose as an inspiration for their journey to freedom.  In fact, the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship to land on our country’s shores was just this week, with ceremonies of both lament and apology occuring in towns.  “Let my people go,” Moses’ words to the Pharaoh who had forgotten Joseph, was the longing of their hearts, too. This Scriptural story is a potent story of setting out towards a time and a life of promise.  

It can also be a personal inspiration for us as individuals, when we bravely chose a new path for ourselves, and set out from the known into a journey to find ourselves and our own promise.  Setting off to a new school, leaving what we knew behind; setting off for college, leaving the sheltering years at our home; changing career in mid-life because of a longing for something that wasn’t being met; finding ourselves alone after a long marriage and having to figure out who we are now.  I’ve read that retirement is often as stressful as any other changes in life, despite what we’ve been told about our “golden years.” None of these are quick or easy journeys, but filled with twists and turns and doubts and struggles. 

Our transition time here at Jamesville Community Church can be such a journey, although of course we’re not fleeing mistreatment and slavery like the Hebrew people did.  We can still look at ourselves and our church as being on this journey between time before and time ahead, this interim and transitional time.  We can see in this scriptural story that God was a part of things from the start, and with the people in their present and in their future.   I believe that is true for us as well - that God was there at the start of the changing, that God knows where we are going, and that God is with us every step along the way.  God is with us in our grief and in our hope; God is with us in the yin and yang of darkness and light (ie night and day). There is no time when Jamesville Community Church has been, is or will be, out of God’s hands.

Like the journey of the Israelites, we can look at our journey as a time of discovery, of defining ourselves as a people of God with a history and a future.  We can learn to live more and more in faith and hope in God as we walk each day, whatever it brings. Its a time when God can speak to our hearts and imaginations of the possibilities in our future as individual persons and as a congregation, with all its ins and outs, with all its hopes and despairs, with all the steps and missteps. Its a time we trust ourselves to the care and oversight of the One who loves us and desires good for us, individually and communally.  

I spoke earlier of the lack of biblical literacy in our civilization ss well as in our churches.  And even some of those who can tell the details still don’t get the idea of religious language as inner experiences, but fight over literal details while missing the whole point. This is a big concern of mine, my friends.  This collection of writings that has come down through the centuries of faithful people who both loved these texts and wrestled with them, who both loved God and struggled to live that love in the world - this is Christianity’s holy book, our faith’s book of the truth of living in God’s world, the truth of seeking and being sought by God.  While its no substitute for the actual spiritual life of journeying with God, this book IS the record of the experiences passed down by those gone before us. Our forebears in faith have walked this path before us - we’re not the first people to seek God, or be sought by God. There is much wisdom for us in here, wisdom that can save the world.   

So its crucial that we read it, know it, wrestle with it, hear it deep into our souls. Not just in a trite Bible-thumping way, not just in sound-bytes taken totally out of their context, not as a weapon to divide and cast out, not to proof-text our enculturated hatreds and fears - - But to hear its total message of hope for humanity, of God’s seeking to restore the world and be known by all.  The invitation to live in wholeness and peace calls from here towards the Land of Promise; the invitation of the One who created it all and called it good.  

If we feel this longing inside our soul, I urge us to take it seriously - it is the Holy Spirit of God calling, seeking to reveal Godself to us.  Its not just a preacher thing or a “religious career” thing - it is truly the journey to capital-L Life itself. And its a call to everyone. I would love to teach more about our Scriptures to those hungry for it, and talk together about our journeys, even while we corporately work towards calling a new pastor.  Let me know your thoughts, okay? AMEN.