Greetings

Hello, all –  No sermon to post this week, as we had a guest preacher — who I was not expecting! Back in July I had invited the Associate Conference Minister for Small Church Development of the Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ (yes, all of that is his title… also known as ACMSCDMCUCC) to preach and talk to us about small churches in Maine (even though we are too big to be one of the churches he works with — churches under 50 members) — and he had accepted the invitation to speak to us, but declined the preaching part. Then, when the time came, he forgot and wrote a sermon… I didn’t think the congregation wanted to hear two sermons, so I have saved mine — and when those scriptures come around again, on the first Sunday of Advent in three years, perhaps you’ll all hear or read it then…

“Strive First for the Kingdom of God”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
Joel 2:21-27; Matthew 6:25-33

Many years ago, when I was 25 and saw the world through the eyes of a young, idealistic person, the idea of, “Strive first for the Kingdom of God” – or, as the King James translation has it – in the words over our altar – “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God” – was my guide, in a very simple and straightforward way. I’m not saying that actually living it out was easy or straightforward, but naming what I thought it meant was. An example that I cherish of this determinedly simple focus on God’s wishes for my life – my first husband and I spent the winter of 1977 in Wisconsin, where his family lived. In March, we went to Canada, crossing the border at Sault Ste. Marie, which on the Canadian side is a huge industrial town. We were headed for a Christian/Buddhist commune in Ontario, with the idea that we might “be meant by God” to live there. The Canadian customs official, casting a practiced eye on a big old car filled with baggage, a cat, a dog, and two hippies decided that we should talk with someone higher up than he about our plans, and so we were escorted into an impressive office, with a wonderful panoramic view of factory smokestacks and busy docks. That official, behind his big shiny desk, with the massed weight of modern civilization steaming away just over his shoulder, wanted to know how long we intended to stay in Canada – “That depends on what God wants us to do. We might be moving here,” I said. He looked at me with the expression of a man who thought he had heard everything – but had just heard something new — and said, “Lady, you can’t move to Canada just because God wants you to!”

Now, border officials undoubtedly see and hear a lot in the course of their jobs – but I like to think that that story has given that official as much amusement over the years as it has given me. (Even at the time I could see the humor in it!) Of course, to him it may not have even been funny – just one more whacky person wanting to enter his country. But it is funny to me – not because the idea of seeking God’s will as a guide is funny, but because my way of doing it at that time was so mechanistic – put in an idea, out pops a decision from God, sort of like a vending machine. My ability to detect what I thought God was telling me depended on how I interpreted data from my surroundings – in other words, the same way that most people make any decision – only I was assuming that what was coming through to me was direct communication from God, rather than from my own mind.

To be fair to my naïve younger self, I was not unique in thinking this way – it wasn’t my individual ego’s deluded idea that I could know the mind of God. The church that my husband and I attended that winter in Wisconsin taught that “discernment” – the ability to perceive and explain to others the working of God in the world—was a gift that individual Christians should work to develop in themselves – even while explaining that God would bestow this gift in varying degrees on different people, so some folks would never be good at discerning and would need always to be told by other Christians, ones with authority, what to do. These ideas are actually central to the practice of a certain strand of Christianity – perhaps to the practice of a certain strand in all religions –1) that the Divine Being has a will, a purpose simple enough minute by minute for a human to understand in detail – 2) that the Divine Being has opinions about every little aspect of human life, and that knowing those opinions and abiding by them is the best way to be faithful – 3) that listening to and obeying designated religious authorities is the most reliable way to know what the opinions of the Divine Being are. Woven into those religious ideas are ideas central to much of human culture – 1) that there is Right and there is Wrong, obvious and clear in every situation – 2) that knowing what is right and what is wrong is an attainable goal for human beings – 3) that listening to and obeying designated authorities is the most reliable way to know what is right and what is wrong.

Speaking as a designated religious authority – that way of living is not actually a good way to live! Disregarding the ambiguity of life, denying it, reducing life’s complexity to systems of pre-digested questions and answers, pigeonholing people, dismissing variety, affirming obedience as the highest good – that is actually not a good way to live! It doesn’t work well in a religious context, giving us the groundwork for all kinds of self-righteous, judgmental behavior at best, and horrible abuses of power at worst – theologically justified violence, and clergy sexual abuse of children, to name two examples that come from a religious culture of unquestioning obedience to authority. It doesn’t work well in a secular context either, insisting that the world’s complex issues are matters that can be solved by someone’s authoritative decree.

One of my wise professor/mentors at BTS suggested to me that instead of trying to figure out and obey God’s will, it might be easier to think of trying to figure out and respond to God’s purpose. You could say that that is just semantics, but I think there is a real difference between those two modes of being in relationship with God. Obeying God’s will is much easier, in a sense – someone else is in charge and we have the choice of obeying or rebelling. We may feel obliged to do things we don’t want to do, but we can feel virtuous when we do them, and perhaps superior to those whom we deem as disobedient. But if our only image of God is as all powerful boss and we choose to rebel against what we have been told are God’s commands, or find ourselves unable to live up to them, then the only relationship with God that is possible for us is a negative one. We resent God, we feel guilty, we blame God, we feel angry at God ….

But — responding to God’s purpose – what does that summon up for you? I think it would be easy for us to find common ground quite quickly as to what we think God’s purpose is – loving connection – with each other, with the natural world, with other folks in other places, whom we don’t even know but whose well-being we care about – sharing of one another’s burdens, both the burdens of sorrow, and the burdens of joy – for joy can be hard to manage on one’s own just as sorrow can be. Sharing of one another’s goods, so that no one is in want. Treating others as we want to be treated. Most of all, God’s purpose is that we know we are connected with God – who is known in all those connections I just mentioned. As Christians, our God is the God of the Incarnation –God known not in the abstract by intellectual assent, but in the physical, fleshly realm – God who shows us by the sacrament of Presence — not presents, but Presence – that we are not alone, and that this physical realm we inhabit is full of God. The world is our sacrament – a physical reminder of God. To respond to that deep knowledge that we are not alone, that we are always loved, no matter what is happening – that God companions us through everything – to respond to that is far more wonderful a way to live than mere obedience could ever be.

“Strive first for the kingdom of God…” – does not mean that there are two paths, a kingdom path and a not-kingdom path; two places – God’s kingdom and not-God’s kingdom; an order to our tasks – kingdom tasks first, then not-kingdom tasks. It means – one path, one place, one order of priorities – the here and now, the living moment. Strive to see God’s Kingdom, God’s activity, God’s purpose, God’s being, in everything you do! In every circumstance in which you find yourself. In all times and places. Because if that is what you are looking for, then that is what you will find. God everywhere, in all things. God like a giant computer making infinitely fast and complex responses, constantly, so that the loving purpose is always at the top of the list, never buried under what has become outdated. God like an autonomic nervous system response, so that we don’t have to decide to breathe harder when we work, blink our eyes faster when they tear, or shiver when we are cold. God in the world. Amen.

“The New and Living Way”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

As with our Bible passages last week, it is important that we listen very carefully to the words from the Letter to the Hebrews which we have heard this morning. Hebrews speaks of Jesus in a way that excludes the possibility that there could be any way to learn about God, or worship God, or be united with God, except as a Christian. Both Hebrews and Mark speak in a way that implies a cosmic end to the present time of the hearers. Those are not by any means the only way that these scriptures have been heard, or can be heard. But they are very common ways to hear them, and we may have heard them only in these ways, so much so that we have actually stopped listening – because, frankly, how relevant are either of those interpretations to us here, today? We would no longer say, in a church like this one, that the only people who will ever know God are those who know God through the revelation of Jesus. We would no longer say, in a church like this one, that time is about to come to an end.

But then what will we say about these scriptures? At the same time that we would no longer affirm that being Christian is the only way to be faithful to God, or that the “End Times” are upon us, we don’t want to assume that there is nothing here for us except those understandings – we don’t want to experience these scriptures as yet one more part of the Bible to explain away or avoid altogether!

The Letter to the Hebrews, not actually a letter, but a sermon, and written for the early Christian community, not to a group of Jews, is, in essence, an attempt to show how Jesus, the Christ, God’s Messenger, is the fulfillment of all that has been promised by God, all that was hoped for and believed in, for centuries of Judaism; and in that effort, to convince an uncertain new community of believers that they are on the right track with their new religion. Jesus the Christ, the author of Hebrews says, completes and brings to the fullest expression imaginable the Jewish religion’s centuries-old system of sacrifice in the Temple. The author of the Letter quotes from the Hebrew scriptures – remember, there were no Christian ones yet – and uses imagery from Jewish religious practice, in order to reach into the experience and understanding of people who, Gentile or Jewish, were familiar with Jewish tradition. The author seeks both to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of all the hopes and promises laid out in Judaism, BUT, at the same time, to show that Jesus and the new religion of Christianity are superior to anything in Judaism.

We live in a world in which Judaism and Christianity are separate expressions of faith; it can be very hard think ourselves into the time to when Jesus was seen by many as the long hoped for Messiah of Judaism. When the Gospels describe, as they often do, Jesus coming into a town and going to the local synagogue in order to address the people, we don’t really hear the significance of that. We’ve been taught to feel that there could only have been hostility between Jews and early Christians – that Jesus had so many run-ins with the Pharisees because they were part of a really corrupt and bad religious tradition. Legalistic, burdensome Judaism! But, in actuality, Jesus and the Pharisees had much in common – they were serious religious teachers, with the best interests of their people at heart. Some of them were corrupt, to be sure – just as many a Christian priest or minister has proved to be. As Jesus says in our passage from Mark – “Many will come in my name… and lead you astray.”

The synagogues of the ancient world were places where non-Jews were welcome to come and listen and learn. They were centers of religious life, and many Gentiles were drawn to Judaism, even if they weren’t ready to become Jewish. They were called “God-fearers” – “fear” in the way the bible uses that word, to mean “reverence and awe”—folks who felt reverence for the One God of Judaism, who admired the ethical system and the beauty of the Jewish scriptures, as well as wanting to worship one god instead of many. Paul’s letters make clear that he also did much of his teaching in the local synagogues. As late as the mid-third century, a Christian teacher named Origen complained about people who went to synagogue on Saturday to hear the scriptures read and taught, and then came to church to hear them again on Sunday! While we may have been taught to think of a clean break early on between Judaism and Christianity, the actual situation was far more gradual — and painful, as families and communities were divided by new religious understandings.

The Letter to the Hebrews says, “[E]very priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.” The audience, as they heard those words, would easily summon up images of worship at the Temple in Jerusalem — where animals were sacrificed in religious rituals, as they were in pagan religions, too. Blood shed to take away sins – and Jesus’ blood shed as a continuation of that system – as the ultimate sacrifice to God. That theological viewpoint has led Christians down a very deluded way – the entire point of Jesus’ life becomes his death. Not his teachings, not his example, not his exhortation or his pleading with us to love God and one another, to love our neighbors and our enemies — not his revelation of God’s love, not his partnership of us in life – but ancient primeval spilling of blood, to please God. Taking it to an extreme, Christians have said — if Jesus’ sacrifice is the only thing that could make God pleased with human beings, could take away our sins, and if Jesus has already accomplished that, then what need is there for me to live differently? If the whole point of Jesus’ life was to make a blood sacrifice in death for my sins, then I may as well do whatever I like, because Jesus has already paid the price for me.

The Letter also says, in essence, that before Jesus’ death, there was no forgiveness, no relationship with God possible. That theological viewpoint destroys in one stroke the very religion which nurtured Jesus; Judaism. That is actually the intention of the Letter, of much early Christian writing, as the young Christian church seeks to separate itself from its Jewish context – to supersede, to replace Judaism. To attract converts by telling them that their present religion is no good, has nothing whatsoever to offer. That theological viewpoint overlooks the fact that Jesus’ faith was nourished by the Hebrew scriptures, which he knew well – the promises of God celebrated in the psalms, the justice and mercy and generosity of God celebrated by the prophets, the faithfulness of God all through the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Jacob and Rachel, Esther and Ruth. That theological viewpoint overlooks that fact so thoroughly, and has been so pervasive in church teaching and preaching that it took many years, through Seminary and beyond, for me to really GET that Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew. That the scriptures he knew and quoted and taught from were the Hebrew Scriptures, not the New Testament. Downplaying, making invisible the Judaism of Jesus has made possible terrible things in the life of the world – Jesus is ours, and you killed him, the Christian church has said to Judaism. Not – the Roman Empire killed him – but you, the Jews. The slaughter of Jewish men, women and children, has been encouraged, even demanded, by the leaders of the Christian church. By the Emperors and the popes of Rome, by Protestant clerics and queens.

We cannot allow ourselves to affirm the illusions of our forbears – that God loves the world in one way only – through one revelation only. That there is only one way in which to be faithful to God. We must affirm that God loves the world so much that God is reaching out to us all the time, in every way possible – and that that is the truth behind our sentence from Hebrews, “And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.” — not a Christian triumphalist truth, but a human, existential truth – to sin is the human condition. Nothing, no sacrificial act by any priest, is going to take away human sinfulness. Now, before you start feeling judged and threatened, hear this – to sin means to be like an archer who, try as he or she might, can’t hit the bull’s eye on the target – is always a little off. Makes a mistake. It DOES NOT mean to be evil, it does not mean to be morally corrupt, to be intrinsically bad. It means to make mistakes. To be human is to try and try to live up to our high standards for ourselves, and to not quite make it.

To sin is to miss the mark. To try and try to hit the target, but to miss the mark. We humans are always going to be prone to doing things we regret, hurtful things, selfish things, even evil things — doing things, thinking thoughts, that separate us from God. No sacrifice made by any priest will take that away. But, the great truth that we who are Christian know through Jesus – it doesn’t matter. God’s love encompasses us just exactly as we are. As the Letter goes on, it quotes from the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah speaking on behalf of God – “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,” 17he also adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

We enter the sanctuary of God’s love by the new and living way which Jesus opens for us – as the author of Hebrews has it, the way that he opened for us “through the curtain (that is, through his flesh.)” By shouldering his humanity, just as we must shoulder ours – we will not get to be perfect, we will not get to be immortal, we will not be in control. But we are loved, beyond our wildest dreams, beyond anything we could imagine. We are loved exactly as we are! The new and living way is a way of love, of hope, of sharing, of encouragement. We are not looking for the end of time, as the early Christians were – we do not see “the Day” approaching – yet we all know that our days are numbered, that our lives are uncertain – and that while we are here, we have the chance to count our blessings, to find something for which to be grateful, to support one another through sorrows and losses, to laugh and to work and to look at the stars. Amen.

“Managing What Belongs to Another”

(note: In my intro to the scriptures, I told folks that according to scholar Brain Stoffregen, the English translation of Mark 12:41 leaves off a crucial word — “how” — the verse in the original says that Jesus watched HOW the crowd put money into the treasury.)

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
1 Kings 17:8-16; Mark 12:38-44

This morning we have heard two stories about two poor widows. Stories we know well, especially the one from Mark, which is also told by Luke. As with all the Bible stories we know well, it is important that we ask ourselves what these familiar stories actually have to say to us – because, frankly, the Bible is such a subversive document that our tendency is often going to be to edit and rearrange its stories in our own minds, in order to avoid them.

These are stories about giving, for sure. But what are they telling us that we can apply to our own lives, to our own giving? If the point of our story from the Hebrew Scriptures is – “Be so obedient to God that you can give up everything you possess;” and if the point of our story from Mark’s Gospel is – “Worship God so much that you can give up everything you possess.” — and these are traditional understandings of the points made by these scriptures — then these stories are not relevant to us. And we will avoid them. They give us nice moral adrenaline shots – moral adrenaline in the sense that they cause strong reactions in us — guilt and defensiveness about not giving up everything for God; rebellion and resentment about it even being implied that we should; self-congratulation that we can listen calmly to ourselves being taken to task by the stern demands of the bible – nice moral adrenaline, but not calls to action. Not calls to a deeper walk with God. And, frankly, we don’t really need to come to church merely to have strong feelings. We need to come to church to change ourselves and the world! That’s what Jesus is always talking about – changing ourselves and the world.

The fact is that, unless some unforeseen cataclysm comes, we can never be as poor as the people in these stories, and so we can never give in the ways that they do. We can never know what it is to prepare a meal for ourselves and our child from the last handful of meal and the last drop of oil ANYWHERE around – a meal to eat as our last act before our death from starvation. We can never know what it is to carry our whole living in our hands, let alone put it into the collection plate. Even if we have very limited incomes, we are wealthy far beyond the wildest dreams of the people who came out to hear Elijah or Jesus preach and teach and feed and heal. No matter how poor we are, we benefit from the infrastructure that the global economy and our own nation’s wealth has created – roads, telephone and electric lines, good sewage disposal, clean water, the internet, all kinds of discoveries in technology and medicine. Laws governing taxes, sales, property ownership. A postal service. Interstate highways. The simple fact that we can read — and write, and add numbers — is a luxury. There certainly are desperately poor and vulnerable people in our communities – but very few who are completely out of the safety net. What we know of the kind of desperation that the people in these stories have, we know from TV pictures of Gaza or Darfur or Bangladesh. Places and circumstances to which we send money, for which we pray, and which are utterly unlike the places and the circumstances in which we live.

But does that mean that there is nothing for us in these texts? That they are artifacts from such a different world that they are useless to us? That our best choice is to water them down so that they describe some palatable way of giving? I don’t believe that for a minute, and I bet you don’t either. I think the key for us is in that “how” which Brian Stoffregen tells us is left off in the English translation – how do we give? — what is our attitude when we give? Not just on the simple level of – Do we give grudgingly or wholeheartedly? — but on the more complex level of — Do we give trustingly and happily? Do we believe that everything we have is God’s anyway, and that we are just managing it for the span of our lifetimes? Or do we think we OWN it? Stoffregen says, “It is significant that [the widow] had two [emphasis added] lepta. She could have put one in the treasury and kept the other for herself — thus giving 50% to the church. It is a mistaken stewardship concept that 10% of our income belongs to God. 100% of our income belongs to God and God has given it to us to manage as best we can. That’s what stewardship means — managing what belongs to another.” [http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark12x38.htm]

I think it would be impossible for me to get up here on a Sunday morning and tell you that you should give to this church until it hurts – give not from your abundance but from what you cannot spare. That is just not realistic. So, what is the point of holding that up as a model? All that will do is either alienate you or bore you – me up here scolding, spouting empty words. And the fact is that I am not giving until it hurts me – I am as generous as I think I can afford to be. And I am able to be generous at all because of your generosity to me as your pastor – so it would be very odd indeed for me to say to you – “Give until it hurts!…. and now let’s talk about my ‘package’ for 2010…”

There is also the question as to whether giving to the church is the best way to give to God – once there would have been no question of that. But once churches were also the only real source of charity to those in need – who our Bible tells us are the ones whom God wishes us most of all to serve. Now there are many, many ways to help the needy – and you could question whether keeping a lumbering big church building going, or providing for paid ministry is the best use of your money. The church is so imperfect!

Stewardship – “managing what belongs to another.” We don’t own our church – well, technically, we do, because that is how the United Church of Christ is set up — we own the buildings, they don’t belong to the denomination. But, the buildings are here for us because of the hard work and dedication of our ancestors, and they will be here for our great-grandchildren, we hope, because of our hard work and dedication. Our church belongs to the community. Our church belongs to history. Our church belongs to the spirit of the living God.

“Managing what belongs to another.” That is really a way of talking about the whole of our lives. We don’t own our health. We don’t own our faculties. We don’t own our loved ones. We don’t own the air, the daylight, the aquifers, the weather, the geology. We don’t really own anything, except a bunch of material stuff that breaks and rusts and chips and gets lost and wears out. At the same time that we don’t own anything, we have all we need, at least potentially. It is true that because some people hoard or steal or clutch or grab or feel entitled or what have you, there are often situations where there is not enough to go around – not because there is genuinely not enough, but because what there is, isn’t shared. But the good God-given world in which we live has plenty for all.

Our present-day culture urges us to believe otherwise. There is not enough to go around, and you’d better make sure you get yours first! Your neighbors will be unreliable in a pinch. Don’t trust anyone. Look out for number one. You have a right to whatever you can buy. You earned it by your hard work! That makes you a better person than one of those slugs who can’t make ends meet. How do we work on modifying the illusions that our culture thrusts upon us? Some of the laboratories we once had are gone. We don’t pasture our cows on a common field anymore. We don’t husk each other’s corn, work together to bring in wood for the winter. We don’t raise one another’s barns or houses. If we don’t like the school or the teacher our child has, we can go elsewhere. So our church is one of the few places left where we can learn by experience how to work together with our neighbors, and where we can learn by experience that there is plenty to go around. Our church is one of the few places where we give ourselves over to the discipline of service to the future of people we will never meet, who are not related to us. Our church is one of the few places where we can get on with the business of commitment to imperfection – here we have the joy of surrendering to the messy ambiguity of fully revealed humanity as it reveals the unambiguous and bountiful love of God.

So, what can we take from these two stories as we think about stewardship? First of all, no matter how much we each have of material wealth, what God gives to us every minute of every day is vastly more plentiful and rewarding. The rain, the dawn, the gold of autumn leaves, the sound of a seagull, the baby laughing with delight, the insight of an elder. On the most profound metaphorical level it is true that the jar of meal, the jug of oil, will never be emptied. There is always, always more love, more light. “Do not be afraid; make a little cake, share it with your neighbor.” Trust God, trust the future, trust your fellow residents of Planet Earth.

Second, think about how and why you give to the church, so that your giving will truly be part of your life in God – not an obligation about which you worry, but an exercise in letting go – let the riches of this moment pass through your hands as an exercise in understanding that that is how life is – it passes through your hands. And that is the way of this good God-given world.

These stories are not only about giving. If we open ourselves up to them, we see that they are also about receiving. I think that if people really knew what goes on in our church, they would be lining up to come inside! They would be climbing in through the windows! Standing room only! One of the few places where abundance reigns supreme! One of the few places where we celebrate and revel in mystery, where we specialize in awe! Where we study the only discipline I know of that will change the world – love of enemies as well as of neighbors. And most of all, one of the few places where we discover joy not in what we get to choose, but in what chooses us. The Holy Spirit of the living God. Amen.