Sermons Fall 2016
An Attitude of Grattitude
Rev. Michelle Webber
October 9, 2016
Luke 17:11-19
October 9, 2016
Luke 17:11-19
Much has happened in our world this week and I am preaching about gratitude. I want to acknowledge the difficulty and the importance of remaining grateful in the shadow of difficult times.
Today’s scripture tells us about ten lepers. There are many things in our world today for which leprosy could be a metaphor.
Misogyny, Xenophobia, Racism, Mental Illness, Poverty
There is also much to be grateful for. As a history major, one of my big a-has was that no matter the dominant world view of a period of history there is always a minority of people who see things differently who challenge and reform the weakness of the dominant world view. As a minister in the reformed tradition as a progressive Christian I am grateful for these alternate voices.
Last week we heard from the author of 2nd Timothy about faith and we pondered about the faith we have inherited and the faith we have learned from our own experience. This week we hear one of the many healing stories of Jesus. In that story is a line that is familiar from other healing stories, “Your faith has made you well.”
Here is the definition of faith as we explored it last week Faith is adhering to a set of practices, meant to bring us the gifts of God. Faith is the hope that, by acting in the ways Jesus teaches, we will catch a glimpse of Christ. Faith is the light and joy of a moment of connection with God, inspiring us to live with hope every day.
Let us filter today’s story through these definitions of faith.
Ten lepers are walking down the road when they encounter Jesus. We hear of lepers as being outcast and, indeed they were, but the fact that they were traveling 10 deep shows us how they made their own community.
Because they were unclean and, by law, could not come close to people who were ritually clean, they kept their distance. They greet him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” They call Jesus by name and ask him to have compassion. “Lepers were required to live outside the camp or city (Numbers 5:1-4; 12:10-15, etc.). [the] disease was regarded as an awful punishment from the Lord (2 Kings 5:7; 2 Chronicles 26:20). (see MIRIAM; GEHAZI; UZZIAH.) [It] "begins with specks on the eyelids and on the palms, gradually spreading over the body, bleaching the hair white wherever they appear, crusting the affected parts with white scales, and causing terrible sores and swellings. From the skin the disease eats inward to the bones, rotting the whole body piecemeal." "In Christ's day no leper could live in a walled town… wherever he was he was required to have his outer garment [torn] as a sign of deep grief, to go bareheaded, and to cover his beard with his mantle, as if in lamentation at his own virtual death. He had further to warn passers-by to keep away from him, by calling out, `Unclean! unclean!'”[1] For Jesus to even acknowledge their existence was to have compassion. The spiritual practices of Jesus’ day necessitate that lepers be withdrawn from society. And yet Jesus responds to them. Jesus teaches by example that we should be compassionate towards those from whom others recoil.
The only way for those with leprosy to be reconciled with the larger community, to be made ritually clean, would be to go to the priests, likely bringing an offering, and be declared clean. Only then could the previously leprous rejoin their families. Without touching them, but filled with compassion, Jesus says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
It is, in essence, the kind of compassion we show to people who walk in our front door looking for help. We refer them to resources which can help them. We can not do it all here by ourselves; we must rely on the network of charitable organizations in our community.
This is compassion as Jesus teaches us.
Once in a while someone comes in asking for help with a gas voucher or something else, but what they really need is human touch, a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear, someone to hold their hand and pray.
The lepers do as Jesus says, and go to the priests. I’m sure they are not expecting much. Perhaps they have been to the priests before, praying and bringing offerings, to no avail.
I hear the stories all the time. “I have called 211.” “I have tried Churches United.” “They don’t help the way you think they do.”
But, along the way the lepers notice their scales fall, their flesh heals, and they are returned to health. They are no longer lepers, but people who previously experienced leprosy. I have seen the ones who say “211 does not help,” show up at the communal funds distribution, getting help because they called 211. Sometimes they recognize me as the one who told them to call. And then their attitude changes. They become appreciative.
There was a man who showed up here in our garden one morning. With two dogs. He had been staying in an RV, but it ran out of gas and so he walked into town looking for help. There wasn’t anything I could do for him that day. I called around, looking for a shelter that would take him and his dogs, so he could have a roof over his head until he could find help. No luck. The next Wednesday I saw him at the Communal Fund distribution- Our Samaritan fund. I recognized him.
“Haven’t we met?” I said.
“I think so,” he says.
“You have two dogs.” and as soon as I said that he knew.
“You’re the pastor from that church with the garden? Thank you. Bless you.”
One of the 10 lepers, upon noticing his healing, runs back to Jesus. He praises him loudly and falls at his feet. He comes close to Christ. Faith is the light and joy of connection with God, inspiring us to live in hope. This is what happens with those who come through our doors looking for something else- something other than the gas vouchers we also give through our Samaritan fund.
We may or may not have something monetary to give, but we can give hospitality, welcome, compassion, and prayer. Some are open- like this one who turned back to Jesus. Jesus does not follow the spiritual practices of his day that teach that lepers are sick because they have sinned. He does not say, “Your sins are forgiven.” He shows compassion, which allows healing.
Notice, though, that the nine, while healed, are not “well.” The nine are made clean, ritually cleansed. They can go back to being in relationship with the spiritual practices of God through the temple. They are restored to the status quo, the way things are when we perform our rituals by rote and without feeling. I am sure there is joy in their reconciliation, but they are, perhaps, not changed on the inside. In AA such a person is called a “dry drunk,” meaning someone who is sober in that they are not drinking, but who is not working the program in a way that could bring about wholeness and healing on the inside.
The tenth, who returns in an attitude of gratitude, is made well, or whole. Jesus teaches that the difference between healing and wholeness is faith. And in this case, faith is expressed in praise and gratitude. Faith is the light and joy of connection with God,
inspiring us to live in hope. If this is the way Jesus teaches, to be inspired by our connection with him to live in hope, how can we live in hope today? Where do we find hope?
Following the teaching of today’s story, faith is the light and love that comes from connection with Christ, inspiring us to acts of praise and gratitude. When was the last time you were inspired to praise God in appreciation? What are you so grateful for in your life that it allows you to live in hope?
[1] http://biblehub.com/topical/l/leprosy.htm
Today’s scripture tells us about ten lepers. There are many things in our world today for which leprosy could be a metaphor.
Misogyny, Xenophobia, Racism, Mental Illness, Poverty
There is also much to be grateful for. As a history major, one of my big a-has was that no matter the dominant world view of a period of history there is always a minority of people who see things differently who challenge and reform the weakness of the dominant world view. As a minister in the reformed tradition as a progressive Christian I am grateful for these alternate voices.
Last week we heard from the author of 2nd Timothy about faith and we pondered about the faith we have inherited and the faith we have learned from our own experience. This week we hear one of the many healing stories of Jesus. In that story is a line that is familiar from other healing stories, “Your faith has made you well.”
Here is the definition of faith as we explored it last week Faith is adhering to a set of practices, meant to bring us the gifts of God. Faith is the hope that, by acting in the ways Jesus teaches, we will catch a glimpse of Christ. Faith is the light and joy of a moment of connection with God, inspiring us to live with hope every day.
Let us filter today’s story through these definitions of faith.
Ten lepers are walking down the road when they encounter Jesus. We hear of lepers as being outcast and, indeed they were, but the fact that they were traveling 10 deep shows us how they made their own community.
Because they were unclean and, by law, could not come close to people who were ritually clean, they kept their distance. They greet him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” They call Jesus by name and ask him to have compassion. “Lepers were required to live outside the camp or city (Numbers 5:1-4; 12:10-15, etc.). [the] disease was regarded as an awful punishment from the Lord (2 Kings 5:7; 2 Chronicles 26:20). (see MIRIAM; GEHAZI; UZZIAH.) [It] "begins with specks on the eyelids and on the palms, gradually spreading over the body, bleaching the hair white wherever they appear, crusting the affected parts with white scales, and causing terrible sores and swellings. From the skin the disease eats inward to the bones, rotting the whole body piecemeal." "In Christ's day no leper could live in a walled town… wherever he was he was required to have his outer garment [torn] as a sign of deep grief, to go bareheaded, and to cover his beard with his mantle, as if in lamentation at his own virtual death. He had further to warn passers-by to keep away from him, by calling out, `Unclean! unclean!'”[1] For Jesus to even acknowledge their existence was to have compassion. The spiritual practices of Jesus’ day necessitate that lepers be withdrawn from society. And yet Jesus responds to them. Jesus teaches by example that we should be compassionate towards those from whom others recoil.
The only way for those with leprosy to be reconciled with the larger community, to be made ritually clean, would be to go to the priests, likely bringing an offering, and be declared clean. Only then could the previously leprous rejoin their families. Without touching them, but filled with compassion, Jesus says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
It is, in essence, the kind of compassion we show to people who walk in our front door looking for help. We refer them to resources which can help them. We can not do it all here by ourselves; we must rely on the network of charitable organizations in our community.
This is compassion as Jesus teaches us.
Once in a while someone comes in asking for help with a gas voucher or something else, but what they really need is human touch, a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear, someone to hold their hand and pray.
The lepers do as Jesus says, and go to the priests. I’m sure they are not expecting much. Perhaps they have been to the priests before, praying and bringing offerings, to no avail.
I hear the stories all the time. “I have called 211.” “I have tried Churches United.” “They don’t help the way you think they do.”
But, along the way the lepers notice their scales fall, their flesh heals, and they are returned to health. They are no longer lepers, but people who previously experienced leprosy. I have seen the ones who say “211 does not help,” show up at the communal funds distribution, getting help because they called 211. Sometimes they recognize me as the one who told them to call. And then their attitude changes. They become appreciative.
There was a man who showed up here in our garden one morning. With two dogs. He had been staying in an RV, but it ran out of gas and so he walked into town looking for help. There wasn’t anything I could do for him that day. I called around, looking for a shelter that would take him and his dogs, so he could have a roof over his head until he could find help. No luck. The next Wednesday I saw him at the Communal Fund distribution- Our Samaritan fund. I recognized him.
“Haven’t we met?” I said.
“I think so,” he says.
“You have two dogs.” and as soon as I said that he knew.
“You’re the pastor from that church with the garden? Thank you. Bless you.”
One of the 10 lepers, upon noticing his healing, runs back to Jesus. He praises him loudly and falls at his feet. He comes close to Christ. Faith is the light and joy of connection with God, inspiring us to live in hope. This is what happens with those who come through our doors looking for something else- something other than the gas vouchers we also give through our Samaritan fund.
We may or may not have something monetary to give, but we can give hospitality, welcome, compassion, and prayer. Some are open- like this one who turned back to Jesus. Jesus does not follow the spiritual practices of his day that teach that lepers are sick because they have sinned. He does not say, “Your sins are forgiven.” He shows compassion, which allows healing.
Notice, though, that the nine, while healed, are not “well.” The nine are made clean, ritually cleansed. They can go back to being in relationship with the spiritual practices of God through the temple. They are restored to the status quo, the way things are when we perform our rituals by rote and without feeling. I am sure there is joy in their reconciliation, but they are, perhaps, not changed on the inside. In AA such a person is called a “dry drunk,” meaning someone who is sober in that they are not drinking, but who is not working the program in a way that could bring about wholeness and healing on the inside.
The tenth, who returns in an attitude of gratitude, is made well, or whole. Jesus teaches that the difference between healing and wholeness is faith. And in this case, faith is expressed in praise and gratitude. Faith is the light and joy of connection with God,
inspiring us to live in hope. If this is the way Jesus teaches, to be inspired by our connection with him to live in hope, how can we live in hope today? Where do we find hope?
Following the teaching of today’s story, faith is the light and love that comes from connection with Christ, inspiring us to acts of praise and gratitude. When was the last time you were inspired to praise God in appreciation? What are you so grateful for in your life that it allows you to live in hope?
[1] http://biblehub.com/topical/l/leprosy.htm
Faith: WHat is It?
Rev. Michelle Webber
October 2, 2016
October 2, 2016
2 Timothy 1:1-14
There is a charming children’s book that tells the story of the first animal sent by Heifer Project. An American soldier, Dan West, had served in Italy just after WWII. He saw first hand the devastating aftereffects of war, not the least of which was starvation. Dan West lived in a farming town. When he returned home, he shared in church, during their joys and concerns, trying to figure out a way he could send some of the food from local farms to Italy. Someone says, “Have Faith, Dan West.” Dan is trying to have faith, that’s why he is praying for an idea in church. The person just keeps responding “Have Faith, Dan West.” until it becomes a humorous or annoying part of the book.
Finally the church member says, “Faith, is my cow, take my cow named Faith.” And Faith became the first heifer sent through the Heifer Project. We talk about faith all the time. We read about faith as small as a mustard seed. Faith that can move mountains. Even in my adolescence I sang, “You gotta have faith.”
Today’s letter to Timothy named faith both as something that has been handed down from his mother and grandmother and as something that needs to be rekindled through rituals, like the laying on of hands, sustained through the power of love and of self-discipline.
But what is faith?
If faith were a cow, we could touch her, hear her, smell her. But faith is more like the wind. We know it when we experience it, but it is hard to put your finger on exactly what it is. A church member told me this week that sometimes when he sings hymns in church, standing with his family, he is transported back to being a kid, singing the same hymn in church standing with his family. For a moment he’ll stop singing because he is in the memory. And, even though his parents are no longer with us, it is not a sad memory, because it is not a loss. It is an affirmation that, through these traditions and practices we do together each Sunday, our loved ones who once did them with us are still here. This is faith, as described in Timothy’s letter, handed down from parent and grandparent.
I did not grow up in a church family. Though I have been a regular church attendee since I was a young child, my family never came with me. My church faith was handed down to me by my adopted aunties and uncles at church. By the family friends who faithfully brought me home from church. By my youth pastor and my confirmation mentor. But I did learn other faith from my parents and grandparents. I learned to treat all people as worthy of respect. I learned the value of a good debate. I learned to pay attention to the small things in God’s creation. If my family had a faith theme song, it would be Cleo Lane’s “Stop and Smell the Roses.” If we had a faith motto, it would be, “There’s always room for one more.” And these mirror the stories of Jesus that bring me to the faith still to this day. Like the story of the hemorrhaging woman, who touches Jesus’ hem and had his full attention for a moment, a moment when he paid attention to the person who would have been outcast from society, who we could describe as small. She was the rose Jesus stopped to smell, allowing her to feel as worthy of God’s love as a beautiful flower.
Faith is not adherence to a set of rules, it is more like an attitude, a practice, a connection to what has come before that dances in your soul with a hope for what can be in the future.
What is the faith that you were taught? What did you learn from your parents and grandparents?
[Thank you to those who shared your faith stories in church. Those reading on-line can share your faith stories below.]
In the second letter to Timothy, the person writing in Paul’s name, acknowledges that Timothy has a sincere faith, handed down to him by his mother and grandmother. Just like the faith we have acknowledged here today- the practices we have learned from our ancestors. But he also gives us a picture of faith as a dynamic living entity. Faith is not something given to us that remains static. While the practice of faith may look, from the outside, like performing a set of rituals that our ancestor performed before us, faith itself is not just doing the things gifted us by tradition.
Faith is alive in us. We must nurture and care for it. Like a sapling in the wind.
Timothy is reminded that the gift of faith was brought to him, not just by what was passed from his parents, but also by experiencing the spirit himself in the laying on of hands. The writer had a personal experience with Timothy, touching him with his own hands. I imagine there was a look of love in his eyes, a prayer on his lips, and his own experiences of conversion in his heart.
It recalls to me the times in my life when I have felt bathed in Christ’s love. I was 17 when I was baptized. I had been a committed Christian since I was very young. In the Baptist church of my childhood I accepted Jesus into my heart over and over. I did not expect baptism to be a big thing, but when my youth pastor said, “Today I get to baptize my friend,” and then touched my head with the water, I was enveloped with a feeling of lightness and joy. It was instant. This is the gift of faith that is within me from the laying on of hands.
This is the feeling that dances in my soul along with the faith I have inherited, the feeling of light and joy that enveloped me as I was baptized. I can touch it in my memory and also in my practice. In meditation and prayer, and when I look into the eyes of someone during a visit or a time of pastoral counseling, when I have the privilege of being invited in to the intimate moments and ponderings of life. And when I hold an infant, like I held Tilda today, and sprinkle water on her head, I am filled with light and connected to the moment of my own baptism, when faith was gifted to me in a way I could not have predicted, sparking this feeling I have come to identify as faith in the love of God. How do I know God loves me? Because I have felt it.
Next in the letter, we hear that God does not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. This spirit that enters us through the laying on of hands, gives us power and love and self-discipline, all things that need to be tended.
Let’s look at those things. The Greek word translated as “power” is related to the word for miracle. It is the power to produce mighty works. I have witnessed might works. Once I was meditating in a Sunday School class. We had done the exercise of feeling the energy released through our hands. Let’s do it now.
Take a deep breath and exhale fully. Place your hands together, not quite touching. Focus on the center of your palms. See if you can feel a cushion of energy, like a squishy ball of warmth between your hands. Try pulsing them lightly. When you feel it, pulse your hands a little further apart and see how big you can make that squishy ball of energy.
After we had done this for a bit, I asked people to go like this [put hand out to sides] and to feel the energy between their hands and the hands of the people sitting next to them. When the circuit of the circle was complete we all felt an intense heat build up between our hands. One participant got a little freaked out and broke the circle. The heat immediately left.
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but coming hand to hand with the spiritual power we each possess can be scary. Our culture is not very open about this type of power. Many of us could name experiences of miraculous power. Don’t worry I won’t ask you to, but rarely do we talk about it. I wonder sometimes if people question my sanity when I share about mystical experiences I have had. Did I really experience the light and love of God enter me when I was baptized? Or was that a systematic manifestation of my desires?
Here’s what I do know, I can avoid most of these mystical experiences if I remain closed in myself. I can hibernate on my couch, numbing my mind with television, or keep myself so busy I don’t have any down time and my sixth sense, this part of me empowered by my faith, will be very quiet.
And I can make these experiences more likely, more frequent. When I keep my life in balance, with plenty of down time, and I maintain a schedule of regular prayer and meditation, along with seeking God’s wisdom with other people in places like Bible Study and Youth Group, I can experience the type of power written about in the letter to Timothy.
The word translated as “love,” agape, in today’s text, refers to a community of love, like the love-feasts that served as the earliest Christian worship services. It describes not so much the love I felt in the moment I was baptized, this thing that happened inside of my soul, but it describes the transfer of love from my youth pastor to me, from me to Tilda and her whole cohort, to everyone in this room. Agape is the way we love in community. It is not romantic. It is the type of love Cornell West refers to when he says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” It is the kind of love shown when we take food to a family with a new baby or communion to someone who is not mobile enough to get to church. It can grow out of an individual faith experience, having been filled with God’s love, we are inspired to respond with this type of agape. But it can also come from the practice of agape.
You take someone communion and in the process you experience agape. This is the power of spiritual practices. They can be a faith-filled response to a faith-creating experience, or they can be a practice that makes a faith-creating experience more likely. There have been communion Sundays, visiting shut-ins, when I take communion three or four times. And each is meaningful. We end with the Lord’s prayer. Saying the Lord’s prayer with someone whose memory is gone to the point where it’s difficult to have a conversation, but who remembers every word of the prayer is powerful. And the word translated as “self-discipline,” means temperate or moderation. in the way that adhering to a moderate eating and exercise routine makes one of sound body, adhering to a spiritual routine will keep one in sound mind. Self-discipline, the keeping of spiritual practices, makes having a faith-creating experience more likely. By using spiritual practices, those handed down to us by our parents and grandparents, and those we learn from our own experience and contemporary wisdom, we are more likely to manifest the power and agape of faith.
So, what is faith?
Faith is adhering to a set of practices, meant to bring us the gifts of God. Faith is the hope that, by acting in the ways Jesus teaches, we will catch a glimpse of Christ. Faith is the light and joy of a moment of connection with God, inspiring us to live with hope every day.
What is faith to you?
There is a charming children’s book that tells the story of the first animal sent by Heifer Project. An American soldier, Dan West, had served in Italy just after WWII. He saw first hand the devastating aftereffects of war, not the least of which was starvation. Dan West lived in a farming town. When he returned home, he shared in church, during their joys and concerns, trying to figure out a way he could send some of the food from local farms to Italy. Someone says, “Have Faith, Dan West.” Dan is trying to have faith, that’s why he is praying for an idea in church. The person just keeps responding “Have Faith, Dan West.” until it becomes a humorous or annoying part of the book.
Finally the church member says, “Faith, is my cow, take my cow named Faith.” And Faith became the first heifer sent through the Heifer Project. We talk about faith all the time. We read about faith as small as a mustard seed. Faith that can move mountains. Even in my adolescence I sang, “You gotta have faith.”
Today’s letter to Timothy named faith both as something that has been handed down from his mother and grandmother and as something that needs to be rekindled through rituals, like the laying on of hands, sustained through the power of love and of self-discipline.
But what is faith?
If faith were a cow, we could touch her, hear her, smell her. But faith is more like the wind. We know it when we experience it, but it is hard to put your finger on exactly what it is. A church member told me this week that sometimes when he sings hymns in church, standing with his family, he is transported back to being a kid, singing the same hymn in church standing with his family. For a moment he’ll stop singing because he is in the memory. And, even though his parents are no longer with us, it is not a sad memory, because it is not a loss. It is an affirmation that, through these traditions and practices we do together each Sunday, our loved ones who once did them with us are still here. This is faith, as described in Timothy’s letter, handed down from parent and grandparent.
I did not grow up in a church family. Though I have been a regular church attendee since I was a young child, my family never came with me. My church faith was handed down to me by my adopted aunties and uncles at church. By the family friends who faithfully brought me home from church. By my youth pastor and my confirmation mentor. But I did learn other faith from my parents and grandparents. I learned to treat all people as worthy of respect. I learned the value of a good debate. I learned to pay attention to the small things in God’s creation. If my family had a faith theme song, it would be Cleo Lane’s “Stop and Smell the Roses.” If we had a faith motto, it would be, “There’s always room for one more.” And these mirror the stories of Jesus that bring me to the faith still to this day. Like the story of the hemorrhaging woman, who touches Jesus’ hem and had his full attention for a moment, a moment when he paid attention to the person who would have been outcast from society, who we could describe as small. She was the rose Jesus stopped to smell, allowing her to feel as worthy of God’s love as a beautiful flower.
Faith is not adherence to a set of rules, it is more like an attitude, a practice, a connection to what has come before that dances in your soul with a hope for what can be in the future.
What is the faith that you were taught? What did you learn from your parents and grandparents?
[Thank you to those who shared your faith stories in church. Those reading on-line can share your faith stories below.]
In the second letter to Timothy, the person writing in Paul’s name, acknowledges that Timothy has a sincere faith, handed down to him by his mother and grandmother. Just like the faith we have acknowledged here today- the practices we have learned from our ancestors. But he also gives us a picture of faith as a dynamic living entity. Faith is not something given to us that remains static. While the practice of faith may look, from the outside, like performing a set of rituals that our ancestor performed before us, faith itself is not just doing the things gifted us by tradition.
Faith is alive in us. We must nurture and care for it. Like a sapling in the wind.
Timothy is reminded that the gift of faith was brought to him, not just by what was passed from his parents, but also by experiencing the spirit himself in the laying on of hands. The writer had a personal experience with Timothy, touching him with his own hands. I imagine there was a look of love in his eyes, a prayer on his lips, and his own experiences of conversion in his heart.
It recalls to me the times in my life when I have felt bathed in Christ’s love. I was 17 when I was baptized. I had been a committed Christian since I was very young. In the Baptist church of my childhood I accepted Jesus into my heart over and over. I did not expect baptism to be a big thing, but when my youth pastor said, “Today I get to baptize my friend,” and then touched my head with the water, I was enveloped with a feeling of lightness and joy. It was instant. This is the gift of faith that is within me from the laying on of hands.
This is the feeling that dances in my soul along with the faith I have inherited, the feeling of light and joy that enveloped me as I was baptized. I can touch it in my memory and also in my practice. In meditation and prayer, and when I look into the eyes of someone during a visit or a time of pastoral counseling, when I have the privilege of being invited in to the intimate moments and ponderings of life. And when I hold an infant, like I held Tilda today, and sprinkle water on her head, I am filled with light and connected to the moment of my own baptism, when faith was gifted to me in a way I could not have predicted, sparking this feeling I have come to identify as faith in the love of God. How do I know God loves me? Because I have felt it.
Next in the letter, we hear that God does not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. This spirit that enters us through the laying on of hands, gives us power and love and self-discipline, all things that need to be tended.
Let’s look at those things. The Greek word translated as “power” is related to the word for miracle. It is the power to produce mighty works. I have witnessed might works. Once I was meditating in a Sunday School class. We had done the exercise of feeling the energy released through our hands. Let’s do it now.
Take a deep breath and exhale fully. Place your hands together, not quite touching. Focus on the center of your palms. See if you can feel a cushion of energy, like a squishy ball of warmth between your hands. Try pulsing them lightly. When you feel it, pulse your hands a little further apart and see how big you can make that squishy ball of energy.
After we had done this for a bit, I asked people to go like this [put hand out to sides] and to feel the energy between their hands and the hands of the people sitting next to them. When the circuit of the circle was complete we all felt an intense heat build up between our hands. One participant got a little freaked out and broke the circle. The heat immediately left.
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but coming hand to hand with the spiritual power we each possess can be scary. Our culture is not very open about this type of power. Many of us could name experiences of miraculous power. Don’t worry I won’t ask you to, but rarely do we talk about it. I wonder sometimes if people question my sanity when I share about mystical experiences I have had. Did I really experience the light and love of God enter me when I was baptized? Or was that a systematic manifestation of my desires?
Here’s what I do know, I can avoid most of these mystical experiences if I remain closed in myself. I can hibernate on my couch, numbing my mind with television, or keep myself so busy I don’t have any down time and my sixth sense, this part of me empowered by my faith, will be very quiet.
And I can make these experiences more likely, more frequent. When I keep my life in balance, with plenty of down time, and I maintain a schedule of regular prayer and meditation, along with seeking God’s wisdom with other people in places like Bible Study and Youth Group, I can experience the type of power written about in the letter to Timothy.
The word translated as “love,” agape, in today’s text, refers to a community of love, like the love-feasts that served as the earliest Christian worship services. It describes not so much the love I felt in the moment I was baptized, this thing that happened inside of my soul, but it describes the transfer of love from my youth pastor to me, from me to Tilda and her whole cohort, to everyone in this room. Agape is the way we love in community. It is not romantic. It is the type of love Cornell West refers to when he says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” It is the kind of love shown when we take food to a family with a new baby or communion to someone who is not mobile enough to get to church. It can grow out of an individual faith experience, having been filled with God’s love, we are inspired to respond with this type of agape. But it can also come from the practice of agape.
You take someone communion and in the process you experience agape. This is the power of spiritual practices. They can be a faith-filled response to a faith-creating experience, or they can be a practice that makes a faith-creating experience more likely. There have been communion Sundays, visiting shut-ins, when I take communion three or four times. And each is meaningful. We end with the Lord’s prayer. Saying the Lord’s prayer with someone whose memory is gone to the point where it’s difficult to have a conversation, but who remembers every word of the prayer is powerful. And the word translated as “self-discipline,” means temperate or moderation. in the way that adhering to a moderate eating and exercise routine makes one of sound body, adhering to a spiritual routine will keep one in sound mind. Self-discipline, the keeping of spiritual practices, makes having a faith-creating experience more likely. By using spiritual practices, those handed down to us by our parents and grandparents, and those we learn from our own experience and contemporary wisdom, we are more likely to manifest the power and agape of faith.
So, what is faith?
Faith is adhering to a set of practices, meant to bring us the gifts of God. Faith is the hope that, by acting in the ways Jesus teaches, we will catch a glimpse of Christ. Faith is the light and joy of a moment of connection with God, inspiring us to live with hope every day.
What is faith to you?
Confession of Sin: Assurance of Pardon
Rev. Michelle Webber
September 28, 2016
Romans 7:14-15
Matthew 5:22-24
September 28, 2016
Romans 7:14-15
Matthew 5:22-24
A couple weeks ago someone asked me why our church doesn’t use a prayer of confession. So I thought I’d take a day during our study of prayer to talk about the tradition of prayers of confession.
Some of the earliest Christian prayers that have been preserved for us are Prayers of Confession.
For example, this one from Augustine
Look upon us, O Lord,
and let all the darkness of our souls
vanish before the beams of thy brightness.
Fill us with holy love,
and open to us the treasures of thy wisdom.
All our desire is known unto thee,
therefore perfect what thou hast begun,
and what thy Spirit has awakened us to ask in prayer.
We seek thy face,
turn thy face unto us and show us thy glory.
Then shall our longing be satisfied,
and our peace shall be perfect.
(Augustine, 354 - 430)
Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/early_Christian_prayers.htm#ixzz4KzoXcYu6
And this one from Ambrose
O Lord, who hast mercy upon all, take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone,
and give me a heart of flesh,
a heart to love and adore thee,
a heart to delight in thee,
to follow and to enjoy thee,
for Christ's sake.
(Ambrose of Milan, c 339-97)
Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/early_Christian_prayers.htm#ixzz4Kzp2hcRh
You might notice that both of these prayers, while a confession of sin or darkness ultimately seek peace and delight. In the Christian tradition, confession of sin is always met with the assurance of pardon- the liturgical revelation that God has already forgiven. In many, if not most, Christian churches confessions of sin are still regularly used, though this is not as common in the United Church of Christ. The UCC church I was raised in used a Prayer of Confession, but none of the ones I have served as a minister have used one on a regular basis.
As you likely know, confession plays a much larger role in the practice of Catholic Christianity. There are special rituals around confession, which is considered a sacrament. After confessing there are rituals for the assurance of pardon, most commonly repetitions of prayers, such as Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s. In the historical period leading up to the protestant reformation priests would sell indulgences as a forgiveness of sins to parishioners confessed. This meant that you could confess your sin and then make a donation to the church for your assurance of pardon and even pay upfront for sins you had yet to commit. In this way wealthy people had access to spiritual assurances for the soul that poor people did not and the Catholic church amassed a lot of wealth- think St. Peter’s Basilica and the work of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel.[1] Criticism of the indulgence system was one of the big factors that sparked the Protestant Reformation. And may have been the straw the broke the camel’s back for Luther who published his 95 thesis after an indulgence sales man traveled through his town.[2]
While Catholics no longer sell indulgences, some protestant traditions have a complex relationship with the concept of confession. It can be seen as a Catholic practice and, in an effort to define us as not-catholic, it can be rejected. Martin Luther did not go so far as to do away with it entirely. While prayers of confession are absent from his earliest reformation writings, he always included the concept of the liberty of confession- the freedom to voluntarily confess without being required to do penance or pay indulgences.[3] In the congregational tradition confession was of a public nature. One who transgressed would stand before the congregation and make a public confession. Pardon was granted by the gathered body. As traditions form around individual charismatic leaders, such as Luther, and intentional communities hand down their beliefs to younger generations, as did the Pilgrims and Puritans who are spiritual ancestors, prayers of confession that were once voluntary and individual became codified into corporate prayers whose words became familiar, becoming tradition.
One of the earliest confession traditions in the congregational church was singing psalms, like Psalm 32, which we just read and sang responsively, that emphasized the concept of confession and forgiveness. I chose Psalm 32 because it highlights God’s action in making us up-right in heart. Forgiveness is guaranteed in our tradition, all we need do is seek it.
A current prayer of confession that can be found in the UCC Book of Worship is
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen
In the UCC there is always a choice of prayers offered. We come from varied traditions and live into the still speaking God in different ways. Here is another Prayer of Confession our Book of Worship also offers
Merciful God, we know that you love us and that you call us to fullness of life, but around us and within us we see brokenness of the world and of our ways. Our successes leave us empty; our progress does not satisfy. Our prosperous land is not the promised land of our longing. Forgive our willful neglect of our word, our insensitivity to the needs of others, and our failure to feed the spirit that is within us; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.
The first is very traditional, in fact I have found it used in some ELCA liturgies. [4] I resonate with the part that says “we have sinned against you…by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” It is, as our text from Romans states, the times in my life when I have failed to live up to my own expectations for myself and I do that which I do not want to do, or fail to do that which I know is best for me and the world, when I feel the burden of sin.
The second is more contemporary, pointing to the systems of our culture that fail to live into God’s love and the call to the fullness of life for all people. It speaks to the UCC traditions of corporate confession and social justice. How do we think and act in a broken world to bring about God’s love for all people and creation? We fail in many ways, doing that which we do not want to do, like support large oil companies and slave labor in the textile industry and systems of racism we have inherited.
I hope you begin to see the power of the prayer of confession. It is not to feel bad about ourselves. Prayers of confession in the church of my childhood- the one I went to before I found the UCC- included a sense of people as being innately sinful and unworthy. We were told that it is only through Christ that we are whole. This left my whole unchristian family unworthy of wholeness with God. And this hurt me deeply.
The power of the prayers of confession is that we do all make mistakes. We fail to express Christ’s love for us by not taking care of ourselves as if we are already worthy. We fail to express Christ’s love for creation by not acting only in ways that bring life and avoiding actions that hurt the ecosystem. We fail to express Christ’s love for others by plowing ahead in ways that check boxes off our to-do list, but don’t root out historical oppression or think lovingly about others.
I confess that I did this last week. I failed to care for myself and, in doing so, I did not leave enough space in my schedule or my spirit to see things from a pastoral perspective. In the process I hurt someone’s feelings. It has highlighted for me the ways in which many of us have had our feelings hurt recently, by what others have said or not said, by the tenor of the political climate in which we live, by the vestiges of historical oppression, by the short tempers of friends and family living stressful lives. And have struggled with moving beyond the hurt, healing the wounds, and figuring out ways of developing again a loving relationship. Because it is possible. We only need look at post-apartheid South Africa, which chose confession and reconciliation over retribution.
One can fail, communally and personally, fall flat on your face, and then get back up, brush your self off, and move forward. Future success is possible. In fact, it is a key piece of current business wisdom that success is not possible without failing first. It is possible to fail in a marriage and repair it and have a successful marriage in the future. I’ve been married 20 years. We have both fallen on our face once or twice in that time. It is possible to fail in friendships and repair them. It is possible to fail as a church and yet prosper again.
This is why, I think, the Prayer of Confession is always followed by the Assurance of Pardon. In our tradition, forgiveness is guaranteed. It is not that we fail because we are broken. We are healed because we are already forgiven.
When we know we are already forgiven by Christ, we can go to the ones we hurt and make our amends. As we read today in Matthew, the spirit of the law is not to do the ritual things that cleanse us, like the prayer of confession. The spirit of the law is to be reconciled to those we have hurt and those who have hurt us. Then come and make the ritual offering, say the prayer of confession with your whole heart, because, even though you have done things you wish you had not done, or you have skipped things you know you ought not skip, there is, like the moment in meditation when you return to your focus, always the opportunity, through Christ to begin anew, whole and fresh.
Be glad in God and rejoice, shout for joy, you up-right in heart. For Christ has already forgiven us. Amen.
[1] http://protestantreformationnhd.weebly.com/sale-of-indulgences.html 9-22-16
[2] http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-14/selling-forgiveness-how-money-sparked-protestant.html 9-22-16
[3] http://bookofconcord.org/exhortationConfession.php 9-22-16
[4] http://www.faithlutheranbagley.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/11-9-2014.pdf 9-22-16
Some of the earliest Christian prayers that have been preserved for us are Prayers of Confession.
For example, this one from Augustine
Look upon us, O Lord,
and let all the darkness of our souls
vanish before the beams of thy brightness.
Fill us with holy love,
and open to us the treasures of thy wisdom.
All our desire is known unto thee,
therefore perfect what thou hast begun,
and what thy Spirit has awakened us to ask in prayer.
We seek thy face,
turn thy face unto us and show us thy glory.
Then shall our longing be satisfied,
and our peace shall be perfect.
(Augustine, 354 - 430)
Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/early_Christian_prayers.htm#ixzz4KzoXcYu6
And this one from Ambrose
O Lord, who hast mercy upon all, take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone,
and give me a heart of flesh,
a heart to love and adore thee,
a heart to delight in thee,
to follow and to enjoy thee,
for Christ's sake.
(Ambrose of Milan, c 339-97)
Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/early_Christian_prayers.htm#ixzz4Kzp2hcRh
You might notice that both of these prayers, while a confession of sin or darkness ultimately seek peace and delight. In the Christian tradition, confession of sin is always met with the assurance of pardon- the liturgical revelation that God has already forgiven. In many, if not most, Christian churches confessions of sin are still regularly used, though this is not as common in the United Church of Christ. The UCC church I was raised in used a Prayer of Confession, but none of the ones I have served as a minister have used one on a regular basis.
As you likely know, confession plays a much larger role in the practice of Catholic Christianity. There are special rituals around confession, which is considered a sacrament. After confessing there are rituals for the assurance of pardon, most commonly repetitions of prayers, such as Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s. In the historical period leading up to the protestant reformation priests would sell indulgences as a forgiveness of sins to parishioners confessed. This meant that you could confess your sin and then make a donation to the church for your assurance of pardon and even pay upfront for sins you had yet to commit. In this way wealthy people had access to spiritual assurances for the soul that poor people did not and the Catholic church amassed a lot of wealth- think St. Peter’s Basilica and the work of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel.[1] Criticism of the indulgence system was one of the big factors that sparked the Protestant Reformation. And may have been the straw the broke the camel’s back for Luther who published his 95 thesis after an indulgence sales man traveled through his town.[2]
While Catholics no longer sell indulgences, some protestant traditions have a complex relationship with the concept of confession. It can be seen as a Catholic practice and, in an effort to define us as not-catholic, it can be rejected. Martin Luther did not go so far as to do away with it entirely. While prayers of confession are absent from his earliest reformation writings, he always included the concept of the liberty of confession- the freedom to voluntarily confess without being required to do penance or pay indulgences.[3] In the congregational tradition confession was of a public nature. One who transgressed would stand before the congregation and make a public confession. Pardon was granted by the gathered body. As traditions form around individual charismatic leaders, such as Luther, and intentional communities hand down their beliefs to younger generations, as did the Pilgrims and Puritans who are spiritual ancestors, prayers of confession that were once voluntary and individual became codified into corporate prayers whose words became familiar, becoming tradition.
One of the earliest confession traditions in the congregational church was singing psalms, like Psalm 32, which we just read and sang responsively, that emphasized the concept of confession and forgiveness. I chose Psalm 32 because it highlights God’s action in making us up-right in heart. Forgiveness is guaranteed in our tradition, all we need do is seek it.
A current prayer of confession that can be found in the UCC Book of Worship is
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen
In the UCC there is always a choice of prayers offered. We come from varied traditions and live into the still speaking God in different ways. Here is another Prayer of Confession our Book of Worship also offers
Merciful God, we know that you love us and that you call us to fullness of life, but around us and within us we see brokenness of the world and of our ways. Our successes leave us empty; our progress does not satisfy. Our prosperous land is not the promised land of our longing. Forgive our willful neglect of our word, our insensitivity to the needs of others, and our failure to feed the spirit that is within us; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.
The first is very traditional, in fact I have found it used in some ELCA liturgies. [4] I resonate with the part that says “we have sinned against you…by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” It is, as our text from Romans states, the times in my life when I have failed to live up to my own expectations for myself and I do that which I do not want to do, or fail to do that which I know is best for me and the world, when I feel the burden of sin.
The second is more contemporary, pointing to the systems of our culture that fail to live into God’s love and the call to the fullness of life for all people. It speaks to the UCC traditions of corporate confession and social justice. How do we think and act in a broken world to bring about God’s love for all people and creation? We fail in many ways, doing that which we do not want to do, like support large oil companies and slave labor in the textile industry and systems of racism we have inherited.
I hope you begin to see the power of the prayer of confession. It is not to feel bad about ourselves. Prayers of confession in the church of my childhood- the one I went to before I found the UCC- included a sense of people as being innately sinful and unworthy. We were told that it is only through Christ that we are whole. This left my whole unchristian family unworthy of wholeness with God. And this hurt me deeply.
The power of the prayers of confession is that we do all make mistakes. We fail to express Christ’s love for us by not taking care of ourselves as if we are already worthy. We fail to express Christ’s love for creation by not acting only in ways that bring life and avoiding actions that hurt the ecosystem. We fail to express Christ’s love for others by plowing ahead in ways that check boxes off our to-do list, but don’t root out historical oppression or think lovingly about others.
I confess that I did this last week. I failed to care for myself and, in doing so, I did not leave enough space in my schedule or my spirit to see things from a pastoral perspective. In the process I hurt someone’s feelings. It has highlighted for me the ways in which many of us have had our feelings hurt recently, by what others have said or not said, by the tenor of the political climate in which we live, by the vestiges of historical oppression, by the short tempers of friends and family living stressful lives. And have struggled with moving beyond the hurt, healing the wounds, and figuring out ways of developing again a loving relationship. Because it is possible. We only need look at post-apartheid South Africa, which chose confession and reconciliation over retribution.
One can fail, communally and personally, fall flat on your face, and then get back up, brush your self off, and move forward. Future success is possible. In fact, it is a key piece of current business wisdom that success is not possible without failing first. It is possible to fail in a marriage and repair it and have a successful marriage in the future. I’ve been married 20 years. We have both fallen on our face once or twice in that time. It is possible to fail in friendships and repair them. It is possible to fail as a church and yet prosper again.
This is why, I think, the Prayer of Confession is always followed by the Assurance of Pardon. In our tradition, forgiveness is guaranteed. It is not that we fail because we are broken. We are healed because we are already forgiven.
When we know we are already forgiven by Christ, we can go to the ones we hurt and make our amends. As we read today in Matthew, the spirit of the law is not to do the ritual things that cleanse us, like the prayer of confession. The spirit of the law is to be reconciled to those we have hurt and those who have hurt us. Then come and make the ritual offering, say the prayer of confession with your whole heart, because, even though you have done things you wish you had not done, or you have skipped things you know you ought not skip, there is, like the moment in meditation when you return to your focus, always the opportunity, through Christ to begin anew, whole and fresh.
Be glad in God and rejoice, shout for joy, you up-right in heart. For Christ has already forgiven us. Amen.
[1] http://protestantreformationnhd.weebly.com/sale-of-indulgences.html 9-22-16
[2] http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-14/selling-forgiveness-how-money-sparked-protestant.html 9-22-16
[3] http://bookofconcord.org/exhortationConfession.php 9-22-16
[4] http://www.faithlutheranbagley.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/11-9-2014.pdf 9-22-16
September 11, 2016 "Mercy"
Rev. Michelle Webber
Micah 6:8
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Micah 6:8
1 Timothy 1:12-17
My Systematic Theology professor in seminary, Fumitaka Matsuoka, was a Japanese Buddhist Christian. Theologically there is nothing mutually exclusive about Buddhism and Christianity. But culturally, there is much difference. I was resistant to studying systematic theology. I was a feminist from Berkeley with an undergraduate degree from the school of ethnic studies. Nothing about the thoughts of dead white men interested me. I am much less exclusionary in my thinking these days, but at the time I was not thrilled to be studying Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Barth…
My personal theology came from experience and from contemporary mystics like Betty J. Eadie, who describes her near death experience of being in Jesus’ presence like this,
“It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace and said over and over, “I’m home. I’m home. I’m finally home.” I felt his enormous spirit and knew that I had always been a part of him, that in reality I had never been away from him.” [Embraced by the Light, Page 41]
As an undergrad I taught note taking to English language learners. I figured that the best way to get through systematic theology was to take systematic notes. So the day we talked about the relationship of God to Jesus I was ready to bullet point the notes. Roman Numeral I: God. Bullet A- Augustine’s theology. B- Luther’s theology… etc. Instead Dr. Matsuoka read off three quotes. One by Abraham Lincoln. One by Carl Barth. And one by Harriet Tubman. Then he paused and asked, “What do these three have in common?”
Darn it, I thought. This did not fit into my systematic note taking, I madly tried to scribble down the three quotes, which he had read out loud, but we didn’t have in writing to reference, and compare them and try to figure out where he was going. I continued to try to figure out what he was trying to teach us much of the semester, I wanted to swallow and regurgitate his desired learning so I could get my A and get done with systematic theology and back to topics that more directly fed my faith. But that’s not what Dr. Matsuoka was trying to do. He was trying to help us encounter the faith of Augustine and Luther and Calvin….and Tubman and Lincoln and Hildegard…and to make us encounter our own faith.
Today I have set the task before me to teach about mercy. Here is where I have decided to start: I am going to read you three quotes and then I am going to ask you what they have in common.
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, 20th century
"Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there."
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, 21st century
"When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story."
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, 20th century
"You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside."[1]
What do they have in common?
And what do they have in common with our text from Timothy, which I will re-read from The Message translation, it is the one printed in our children’s bulletins.
12-14 I’m so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work. He went out on a limb, you know, in trusting me with this ministry. The only credentials I brought to it were invective and witch hunts and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing—didn’t know Who I was doing it against! Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus.
15-19 Here’s a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I’m proof—Public Sinner Number One—of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off—evidence of his endless patience—to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever.
All of us have times when we feel like Paul, inadequate, ignorant, and invective. Out of fear
or anger or pain or insecurity we can be contrary and difficult- or we can close off and turn away when things get hard. We are human. But then what do we do?
When I am at my worst, I hibernate on the couch and spin on endless repeat in my mind about how terrible I am, how many mistakes I have made.
Nadia Bolz-Weber says this about God’s grace when we beat ourselves up for being human:
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, 21st century
"Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace--like saying, 'Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you.' It's God saying, 'I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.'"
I am a God who makes all things new. I am, an ancient Hebrew name for God. A name Jesus claims for himself. I am, I was, I will be. This is mercy. This is grace, which incidentally is the same word translated as “kindness” in the NRSV translation of Micah 6:8.
The God of mercy makes all things new and it is our job to love mercy.
The God of mercy makes all things new and it is our job to love mercy.
Is this not what Betty Eadie described as coming home, as feeling Jesus’ ”enormous spirit” and knowing that she “had never been away from him?” [Embraced by the Light, Page 41] Even when we are beating ourselves up, even when we feel disengaged from our community, even when we are angry with a person or an institution or a situation, God loves us too much to let that define us. Jesus is right there with us.
Mercy, Grace, Kindness, is accepting that God loves you exactly as you are right now, flaws, warts, anger, judgment and all. There is no “I’m not worthy.” So what if you are struggling with your faith? So what if you are unsure how to be in community with others? The God of mercy makes all things new. It is our job to love mercy. This doesn’t just mean having mercy towards others. It doesn’t just mean doing the kind thing, or working on forgiveness for those who trespass. It is one of only a few things those of us at this week’s adult education class could agree on as a definition of our Christianity. Loving mercy also means showing up in God’s house, with God’s people, when we are sure that we don’t deserve it.
This is why Anne Lamott describes grace as startling electricity that takes you from isolation into community with others who are just as “startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are." None of us deserves to be here because being in God’s grace is not about being deserving. It is about mercy.
My favorite song of the summer, which I played in church a couple of weeks ago says,
Bring your brokenness, and I'll bring mine
'Cause love can heal what hurt divides
And mercy's waiting on the other side[2]
This mercy she describes, the thing that waits for us when we show up, even when we think we are too broken to deserve it, is the thing that Donald Miller and Oswald Chambers described as “the trueness of …story” and the amazement of “what God has done for you on the inside.”
I can remember the moment when I believed I was beautiful. Growing up my sister was the beautiful one. I was the silly, creative, smart one. But she was beautiful. I was about 17 or 18 and visiting a friend in another state. When he saw me at the airport, he began singing a song to me,
“As pretty as you are
You know you could've been a flower
If good looks were minutes
You know you could have been an hour[3]”
I’ve never looked at my reflection in the mirror the same way again. Part of me still sees what he saw. This is mercy. It healed the part of me that couldn’t see myself as beautiful because I didn’t compare to the beauty ideal of the world I grew up in. In a similar way, knowing that God loves us exactly as we are in this moment can heal the parts of us that can’t see ourselves as worthy because we don’t live up to the expectations we place on ourselves and the expectations our culture places on us.
And God’s mercy is so much more powerful than the gorgeous boy telling me I’m pretty. God sees our very core. God has known us since we were knit together in the womb. And there is nothing that can separate us from God. In fact, we have never been separated, only temporarily unable to perceive our own wholeness.
There is nothing we define as sin that can tear us from God. There is nothing we need to bring to the table, no law we need follow, to be worthy. God makes all things new, beyond our faults, shows us mercy. It is our job to love mercy.
But to love mercy, we have to perceive mercy. This fall the three UCC churches in Fargo Moorhead are undertaking a study on prayer. The first session will be this Thursday at First Congregational Fargo. Pastor Kevin is beginning a three week practicum on meditation, using insights from a book called, Taking Jesus Seriously: Buddhist Meditation for Christians.
You can look at the book at www.fmucc.weebly.com
This week I read this book. In chapter one I came across a description of what it is like to experience God’s mercy and an explanation of why it is so important to practice prayer. I will end with this passage from “Taking Jesus Seriously.”
“The minister of a non-denominational church read his story at one of our meetings.
He had abandoned the faith in his early teens because he was too intelligent to buy all the stuff passed on in the name of religion…
One summer, needing a job, he signed on at a religious camp…There my friend notes some counselors given to prayer and some responses out of the ordinary run of what happens to most humans. A healing maybe…
He faced God one evening…”Now or never, enter my life or forget it.” And the Divine Presence entered it. He was captured by a loving awareness.
His chest felt like it was splitting open. Tears poured. Emotions raged ending in a feeling of deep peace and pure joy. Everything changed…he will tell you God’s reign is everywhere, but people don’t see it.
…
That was one experience. As a pastor I have heard many [others]. The details vary…some see angels. Some simply have a feeling of transcendent peace and wholeness…I am certain that ft I asked [these people] if the reign of God is right here, in our presence, just an eye blink away, they would respond, ‘Yes.’
How do we blink so that we see it the way it is?
For all the stories Jesus never gave us a methodology, except to wait for the Spirit to make it clear. Watch and Pray.”
Watch and pray with us this fall.
Amen.
[1] http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_growing_in_gods_love?utm_campaign=ws_sep2_16&utm_medium=email&utm_source=unitedchurchofchrist All three quotes can be found in this weekly devotional
[2] https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tm6m2iormsohcbjje4ebifi365e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics
[3] http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ub40/thewayyoudothethingsyoudo.html
My personal theology came from experience and from contemporary mystics like Betty J. Eadie, who describes her near death experience of being in Jesus’ presence like this,
“It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace and said over and over, “I’m home. I’m home. I’m finally home.” I felt his enormous spirit and knew that I had always been a part of him, that in reality I had never been away from him.” [Embraced by the Light, Page 41]
As an undergrad I taught note taking to English language learners. I figured that the best way to get through systematic theology was to take systematic notes. So the day we talked about the relationship of God to Jesus I was ready to bullet point the notes. Roman Numeral I: God. Bullet A- Augustine’s theology. B- Luther’s theology… etc. Instead Dr. Matsuoka read off three quotes. One by Abraham Lincoln. One by Carl Barth. And one by Harriet Tubman. Then he paused and asked, “What do these three have in common?”
Darn it, I thought. This did not fit into my systematic note taking, I madly tried to scribble down the three quotes, which he had read out loud, but we didn’t have in writing to reference, and compare them and try to figure out where he was going. I continued to try to figure out what he was trying to teach us much of the semester, I wanted to swallow and regurgitate his desired learning so I could get my A and get done with systematic theology and back to topics that more directly fed my faith. But that’s not what Dr. Matsuoka was trying to do. He was trying to help us encounter the faith of Augustine and Luther and Calvin….and Tubman and Lincoln and Hildegard…and to make us encounter our own faith.
Today I have set the task before me to teach about mercy. Here is where I have decided to start: I am going to read you three quotes and then I am going to ask you what they have in common.
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, 20th century
"Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there."
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, 21st century
"When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story."
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, 20th century
"You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside."[1]
What do they have in common?
And what do they have in common with our text from Timothy, which I will re-read from The Message translation, it is the one printed in our children’s bulletins.
12-14 I’m so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work. He went out on a limb, you know, in trusting me with this ministry. The only credentials I brought to it were invective and witch hunts and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing—didn’t know Who I was doing it against! Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus.
15-19 Here’s a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I’m proof—Public Sinner Number One—of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off—evidence of his endless patience—to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever.
All of us have times when we feel like Paul, inadequate, ignorant, and invective. Out of fear
or anger or pain or insecurity we can be contrary and difficult- or we can close off and turn away when things get hard. We are human. But then what do we do?
When I am at my worst, I hibernate on the couch and spin on endless repeat in my mind about how terrible I am, how many mistakes I have made.
Nadia Bolz-Weber says this about God’s grace when we beat ourselves up for being human:
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, 21st century
"Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace--like saying, 'Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you.' It's God saying, 'I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.'"
I am a God who makes all things new. I am, an ancient Hebrew name for God. A name Jesus claims for himself. I am, I was, I will be. This is mercy. This is grace, which incidentally is the same word translated as “kindness” in the NRSV translation of Micah 6:8.
The God of mercy makes all things new and it is our job to love mercy.
The God of mercy makes all things new and it is our job to love mercy.
Is this not what Betty Eadie described as coming home, as feeling Jesus’ ”enormous spirit” and knowing that she “had never been away from him?” [Embraced by the Light, Page 41] Even when we are beating ourselves up, even when we feel disengaged from our community, even when we are angry with a person or an institution or a situation, God loves us too much to let that define us. Jesus is right there with us.
Mercy, Grace, Kindness, is accepting that God loves you exactly as you are right now, flaws, warts, anger, judgment and all. There is no “I’m not worthy.” So what if you are struggling with your faith? So what if you are unsure how to be in community with others? The God of mercy makes all things new. It is our job to love mercy. This doesn’t just mean having mercy towards others. It doesn’t just mean doing the kind thing, or working on forgiveness for those who trespass. It is one of only a few things those of us at this week’s adult education class could agree on as a definition of our Christianity. Loving mercy also means showing up in God’s house, with God’s people, when we are sure that we don’t deserve it.
This is why Anne Lamott describes grace as startling electricity that takes you from isolation into community with others who are just as “startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are." None of us deserves to be here because being in God’s grace is not about being deserving. It is about mercy.
My favorite song of the summer, which I played in church a couple of weeks ago says,
Bring your brokenness, and I'll bring mine
'Cause love can heal what hurt divides
And mercy's waiting on the other side[2]
This mercy she describes, the thing that waits for us when we show up, even when we think we are too broken to deserve it, is the thing that Donald Miller and Oswald Chambers described as “the trueness of …story” and the amazement of “what God has done for you on the inside.”
I can remember the moment when I believed I was beautiful. Growing up my sister was the beautiful one. I was the silly, creative, smart one. But she was beautiful. I was about 17 or 18 and visiting a friend in another state. When he saw me at the airport, he began singing a song to me,
“As pretty as you are
You know you could've been a flower
If good looks were minutes
You know you could have been an hour[3]”
I’ve never looked at my reflection in the mirror the same way again. Part of me still sees what he saw. This is mercy. It healed the part of me that couldn’t see myself as beautiful because I didn’t compare to the beauty ideal of the world I grew up in. In a similar way, knowing that God loves us exactly as we are in this moment can heal the parts of us that can’t see ourselves as worthy because we don’t live up to the expectations we place on ourselves and the expectations our culture places on us.
And God’s mercy is so much more powerful than the gorgeous boy telling me I’m pretty. God sees our very core. God has known us since we were knit together in the womb. And there is nothing that can separate us from God. In fact, we have never been separated, only temporarily unable to perceive our own wholeness.
There is nothing we define as sin that can tear us from God. There is nothing we need to bring to the table, no law we need follow, to be worthy. God makes all things new, beyond our faults, shows us mercy. It is our job to love mercy.
But to love mercy, we have to perceive mercy. This fall the three UCC churches in Fargo Moorhead are undertaking a study on prayer. The first session will be this Thursday at First Congregational Fargo. Pastor Kevin is beginning a three week practicum on meditation, using insights from a book called, Taking Jesus Seriously: Buddhist Meditation for Christians.
You can look at the book at www.fmucc.weebly.com
This week I read this book. In chapter one I came across a description of what it is like to experience God’s mercy and an explanation of why it is so important to practice prayer. I will end with this passage from “Taking Jesus Seriously.”
“The minister of a non-denominational church read his story at one of our meetings.
He had abandoned the faith in his early teens because he was too intelligent to buy all the stuff passed on in the name of religion…
One summer, needing a job, he signed on at a religious camp…There my friend notes some counselors given to prayer and some responses out of the ordinary run of what happens to most humans. A healing maybe…
He faced God one evening…”Now or never, enter my life or forget it.” And the Divine Presence entered it. He was captured by a loving awareness.
His chest felt like it was splitting open. Tears poured. Emotions raged ending in a feeling of deep peace and pure joy. Everything changed…he will tell you God’s reign is everywhere, but people don’t see it.
…
That was one experience. As a pastor I have heard many [others]. The details vary…some see angels. Some simply have a feeling of transcendent peace and wholeness…I am certain that ft I asked [these people] if the reign of God is right here, in our presence, just an eye blink away, they would respond, ‘Yes.’
How do we blink so that we see it the way it is?
For all the stories Jesus never gave us a methodology, except to wait for the Spirit to make it clear. Watch and Pray.”
Watch and pray with us this fall.
Amen.
[1] http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_growing_in_gods_love?utm_campaign=ws_sep2_16&utm_medium=email&utm_source=unitedchurchofchrist All three quotes can be found in this weekly devotional
[2] https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tm6m2iormsohcbjje4ebifi365e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics
[3] http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ub40/thewayyoudothethingsyoudo.html
September 4, 2016 "Useless to me"
Rev. Michelle Webber
Philemon 1-21
Philemon 1-21
I spent five years of my life working in the corporate world. I was a recruiter for a staffing agency. The first four years I worked in a retail office, meaning I sought out jobs for people in hundreds of different companies. The last year I worked with agencies to fill temporary jobs in one big company. While there were many aspects to the job,it was first and foremost about sales.
Whenever I met someone new I was interested in what they liked to do for work. If they worked somewhere that might hire temporary workers, I would try to make an appointment to see them at their workplace so I could meet the hiring manager. If they might be looking for work or between jobs I would find out about their experience and the kind of work they were seeking.
Sometimes this was exciting, when I could find a match for a job seeker or a company. I can remember conversations with my manager and sales trainings about how to convert a casual conversation into a sales lead.
And therein was what made me uncomfortable working as a recruiter. You already know I’m an introvert so having casual conversations with strangers is outside of my comfort zone. But it was more than that. Every conversation I had had an ulterior motive, me trying to uncover how they could be useful to my career. This is what I was trained to do. I commuted to work on the subway and my manager would ask me who I met that morning and where they worked. I went to church with a hiring manager for a big hospital. My manager wanted me to take her to lunch and talk about how we might become the preferred staffing agency for the hospital. The point was that every relationship was a business lead. Networking, they call it. And I believe in networking. But I was uncomfortable evaluating the relationships in my life based on how the person could be useful to me.
I have studied some about the practice of community organizing, networking with people to create real change in our community. It is something I believe in. But there is a difference between networking for business, networking to affect a desired outcome, and inspiring people to enact their dreams in the world. One is based on how people can be useful to your agenda- and the other- faith based community organizing, is about inspiring people to live out their faith in the world. It is not about people being useful to me- or to us, but about people being inspired to act on their own behalf.
This is what I think Paul means in his letter about Onesimus when he says “formerly he was useless to me, but now he is indeed useful.” The name Onesimus, is a common Greek name for a slave, meaning “Useful.” The name indicated that the person had no right to his or her own volition, just to be useful to others. In describing Onesimus as “useless,” Paul restructures his relationship to him in such a way that Onesimus is free to exert his own will. Only when Onesimus is spiritually and willfully free can he be useful to Paul, who is not seeking to advance himself, but to empower Onesimus to live out his new found faith in the world. In this way
the community can have him back, “no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.” It is particularly interesting to me- who turned away from the corporate world partly because I was uncomfortable treating everyone as useful to my personal gain and the profit of the company I worked for- that Paul is asking a church to accept Onesimus as a brother. It is so tempting for churches to look at each new visitor, each new member based on how they can be useful to us. Do you have experience with finances? We need a treasurer. Are you a teacher? We need Sunday School teachers. And while these both might be true, it is not the relationship Paul is calling us to have when we welcome new people into our community.
Paul is inviting us to greet each person as if they are useless to us- not to seek the ways they can help what is already going on in our lives and in our church, but to greet them as partners in our ministry, to seek out their own faith and their own inspiration. The difference is that if we look to people to find out ways that can be useful to our current needs, we miss the ways we might grow and change and be, ourselves inspired, by knowing someone knew.
Have you ever been witness to a big a-ha moment? It is a gift. On the mission trip, we were in the middle of a 2 day simulation of living in poverty and were playing a card game in which one person represented living in affluence and the other in poverty. So all the high cards were taken from one and given to the other, then they had to deal themselves a hand and compare. A light went on in one of the youth’s eyes about the factors that indicate poverty and the things that can lead to poverty. In her a-ha, the whole group went from thinking about those experiencing poverty as “them,” as “other,” to thinking about those experiencing poverty as “us,” anyone of us. What a gift to witness this big a-ha, this moment when someone was converted from feeling separate from a group of others, to viewing them as partners in this world. To me, this is a moment of conversion to the radically inclusivity I learned from Christ. I was changed just as much by the moment as the youth. Every interaction we have at church has this potential, to change us and help us see Christ more clearly, if we greet each other as true partners and not in the interest of how they can be useful to us.
It is likely the Onesimus being introduced in Paul’s letter was a slave and that, when he was a slave, Paul had no use for him. This would be because Paul related to people as brothers in Christ, not as slaves and master. Paul was concerned with your relationship to Jesus, not your relationship to authority.
It is when Onesimus becomes a follower of Jesus that Paul relates with him, not because he was or was not useful to Paul before, but because he is now useful to himself and has the agency to define his own relationships to God and the world. May it be for our members.
Tomorrow is labor day. Growing up in a proudly union family labor day was important to us. My dad would fly his American Flag from our porch, putting it out at sunrise and taking it down at sunset. May dad never worked on labor day. My grandfather was a life-long member of the industrial painters union. My Great Uncle, the one we called Uncle Hoo-Ha, was once fired from his teaching job for organizing a union. He also traveled around the state of CA setting up libraries for migrant farm workers.
Uncle Hoo-Ha was not interested in what the union would do for his career- otherwise he would not have put it on the line. He was not interested in how the migrant farm workers could be useful to him. He wanted to give the world a chance for each person to live according to their own desires, without having to always be useful to the needs and desires of others.
In 1965 a group of Philipino farm workers joined with a group of Mexican farm workers and called for a grape boycott. The boycott was meant to get growers to pay attention to inhumane working conditions in the grape fields. It took five years of coordinated effort of the two groups to be heard- to get the growers to see the workers as anything other than useful to their own needs, like commodities.
Their success did not fix all of the problems faced by migrant farm workers. Ceasar Chavez and Delores Juerta kept organizing for the health of farm workers. In 1973 the UCC synod shortened its duration and chartered a plane to California as a sign of solidarity with farm workers.
These stories are particularly poignant this labor day- not just because we read about Onesimus-
But because a law was just passed by CA lawmakers and is waiting on the Governer’s desk for a signature. The law creates, for the first time, overtime pay for farm workers. To this day farm workers are paid either by piece rate or by hour. Hourly rate for farmer workers in CA range between 6 and 8 dollars an hour.[1] To put this in perspective a living wage in CA is almost $13 an hour- in some part of CA it’s double that and the minimum wage for non-farm work is $9 an hour.
Piece rate is a particularly problematic way of being paid. It means your pay is the pay rate times how ever many boxes you pick. This means that if it’s 100 degrees outside you have to pick just as fast as if it’s 60 degrees. It means that if the plants produce half as much produce in this row than the next, you have to pick over twice the area to get the same pay.
The law that is waiting to be signed would require work in excess of 40 hours per week or more than 8 hours in one day be compensated as overtime work that is the hourly wage and a half or the piece rate and a half. This is significant because it would make CA the first state in the union to require overtime pay for farm labor.
This thing that Paul calls us to do- treating people as brothers and sisters networking with them so they are empowered to live out their personal faith to act on their own behalf and not just in ways that are useful to the systems already in place-it has real world implications. In our church it has the power to help us all grow in spirit, individually and as a community. In the world
it has the power to ensure that all people are treated as people and not as commodities.
May it be so.
[1] http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/low-wages/ 9-4-16
Whenever I met someone new I was interested in what they liked to do for work. If they worked somewhere that might hire temporary workers, I would try to make an appointment to see them at their workplace so I could meet the hiring manager. If they might be looking for work or between jobs I would find out about their experience and the kind of work they were seeking.
Sometimes this was exciting, when I could find a match for a job seeker or a company. I can remember conversations with my manager and sales trainings about how to convert a casual conversation into a sales lead.
And therein was what made me uncomfortable working as a recruiter. You already know I’m an introvert so having casual conversations with strangers is outside of my comfort zone. But it was more than that. Every conversation I had had an ulterior motive, me trying to uncover how they could be useful to my career. This is what I was trained to do. I commuted to work on the subway and my manager would ask me who I met that morning and where they worked. I went to church with a hiring manager for a big hospital. My manager wanted me to take her to lunch and talk about how we might become the preferred staffing agency for the hospital. The point was that every relationship was a business lead. Networking, they call it. And I believe in networking. But I was uncomfortable evaluating the relationships in my life based on how the person could be useful to me.
I have studied some about the practice of community organizing, networking with people to create real change in our community. It is something I believe in. But there is a difference between networking for business, networking to affect a desired outcome, and inspiring people to enact their dreams in the world. One is based on how people can be useful to your agenda- and the other- faith based community organizing, is about inspiring people to live out their faith in the world. It is not about people being useful to me- or to us, but about people being inspired to act on their own behalf.
This is what I think Paul means in his letter about Onesimus when he says “formerly he was useless to me, but now he is indeed useful.” The name Onesimus, is a common Greek name for a slave, meaning “Useful.” The name indicated that the person had no right to his or her own volition, just to be useful to others. In describing Onesimus as “useless,” Paul restructures his relationship to him in such a way that Onesimus is free to exert his own will. Only when Onesimus is spiritually and willfully free can he be useful to Paul, who is not seeking to advance himself, but to empower Onesimus to live out his new found faith in the world. In this way
the community can have him back, “no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.” It is particularly interesting to me- who turned away from the corporate world partly because I was uncomfortable treating everyone as useful to my personal gain and the profit of the company I worked for- that Paul is asking a church to accept Onesimus as a brother. It is so tempting for churches to look at each new visitor, each new member based on how they can be useful to us. Do you have experience with finances? We need a treasurer. Are you a teacher? We need Sunday School teachers. And while these both might be true, it is not the relationship Paul is calling us to have when we welcome new people into our community.
Paul is inviting us to greet each person as if they are useless to us- not to seek the ways they can help what is already going on in our lives and in our church, but to greet them as partners in our ministry, to seek out their own faith and their own inspiration. The difference is that if we look to people to find out ways that can be useful to our current needs, we miss the ways we might grow and change and be, ourselves inspired, by knowing someone knew.
Have you ever been witness to a big a-ha moment? It is a gift. On the mission trip, we were in the middle of a 2 day simulation of living in poverty and were playing a card game in which one person represented living in affluence and the other in poverty. So all the high cards were taken from one and given to the other, then they had to deal themselves a hand and compare. A light went on in one of the youth’s eyes about the factors that indicate poverty and the things that can lead to poverty. In her a-ha, the whole group went from thinking about those experiencing poverty as “them,” as “other,” to thinking about those experiencing poverty as “us,” anyone of us. What a gift to witness this big a-ha, this moment when someone was converted from feeling separate from a group of others, to viewing them as partners in this world. To me, this is a moment of conversion to the radically inclusivity I learned from Christ. I was changed just as much by the moment as the youth. Every interaction we have at church has this potential, to change us and help us see Christ more clearly, if we greet each other as true partners and not in the interest of how they can be useful to us.
It is likely the Onesimus being introduced in Paul’s letter was a slave and that, when he was a slave, Paul had no use for him. This would be because Paul related to people as brothers in Christ, not as slaves and master. Paul was concerned with your relationship to Jesus, not your relationship to authority.
It is when Onesimus becomes a follower of Jesus that Paul relates with him, not because he was or was not useful to Paul before, but because he is now useful to himself and has the agency to define his own relationships to God and the world. May it be for our members.
Tomorrow is labor day. Growing up in a proudly union family labor day was important to us. My dad would fly his American Flag from our porch, putting it out at sunrise and taking it down at sunset. May dad never worked on labor day. My grandfather was a life-long member of the industrial painters union. My Great Uncle, the one we called Uncle Hoo-Ha, was once fired from his teaching job for organizing a union. He also traveled around the state of CA setting up libraries for migrant farm workers.
Uncle Hoo-Ha was not interested in what the union would do for his career- otherwise he would not have put it on the line. He was not interested in how the migrant farm workers could be useful to him. He wanted to give the world a chance for each person to live according to their own desires, without having to always be useful to the needs and desires of others.
In 1965 a group of Philipino farm workers joined with a group of Mexican farm workers and called for a grape boycott. The boycott was meant to get growers to pay attention to inhumane working conditions in the grape fields. It took five years of coordinated effort of the two groups to be heard- to get the growers to see the workers as anything other than useful to their own needs, like commodities.
Their success did not fix all of the problems faced by migrant farm workers. Ceasar Chavez and Delores Juerta kept organizing for the health of farm workers. In 1973 the UCC synod shortened its duration and chartered a plane to California as a sign of solidarity with farm workers.
These stories are particularly poignant this labor day- not just because we read about Onesimus-
But because a law was just passed by CA lawmakers and is waiting on the Governer’s desk for a signature. The law creates, for the first time, overtime pay for farm workers. To this day farm workers are paid either by piece rate or by hour. Hourly rate for farmer workers in CA range between 6 and 8 dollars an hour.[1] To put this in perspective a living wage in CA is almost $13 an hour- in some part of CA it’s double that and the minimum wage for non-farm work is $9 an hour.
Piece rate is a particularly problematic way of being paid. It means your pay is the pay rate times how ever many boxes you pick. This means that if it’s 100 degrees outside you have to pick just as fast as if it’s 60 degrees. It means that if the plants produce half as much produce in this row than the next, you have to pick over twice the area to get the same pay.
The law that is waiting to be signed would require work in excess of 40 hours per week or more than 8 hours in one day be compensated as overtime work that is the hourly wage and a half or the piece rate and a half. This is significant because it would make CA the first state in the union to require overtime pay for farm labor.
This thing that Paul calls us to do- treating people as brothers and sisters networking with them so they are empowered to live out their personal faith to act on their own behalf and not just in ways that are useful to the systems already in place-it has real world implications. In our church it has the power to help us all grow in spirit, individually and as a community. In the world
it has the power to ensure that all people are treated as people and not as commodities.
May it be so.
[1] http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/low-wages/ 9-4-16