Searching for Hope
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Searching for Hope
Rev. Michelle Webber
December 2, 2018
Hope is a force in the world. It is the break of the sun over the horizon after a dark night. It is the sounds of birdsong returning in the spring. It is ringing the bell when you finish chemo. One step back into relationship after a conflict. Hope is the light that shines in the darkness that no darkness can overcome. This week I have been searching for hope.
I think hope is a choice.
We can either find despair or we can find hope. One of my mentors in Ministry, Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle, taught me that what we pay attention to grows. If we spend all of our attention on the things that make us despair, we grow despair, but if we seek out and attend to hope, we grow hope. This advent season we are trying to ignite hope, to light the light of hope that no darkness can overcome. We begin by choosing to search for hope.
You can search for hope from a place of despair or fatigue or disbelief or confusion. All you need is to believe that it is possible that hopeful things might happen. This is not a position of certainty, but of possibility. Hope means choosing to look for good in the world.
I am curating an advent calendar of hope in the form of Facebook posts. Today’s post is a link to an article I found on the website, Lifehack. I was searching for concrete ways we can become more hopeful. I did not expect much from the article on Lifehack. I had been to Psychology Today and other more scientific sources and found some things, but I never expected the best article to come from Lifehack. That’s the thing about hope. It can be found in the most unexpected places. You have to have your eyes open and your ears open all the time.
The author of the piece is Maria Hill, the webmaster for HSP, Health Services Providers. Again, not the person one would expect to be a fount of wisdom on the topic of hope. She is in charge of the website of a company whose job is to produce software that helps health providers bill and receive payment. This does not sound like a hope-filled role in the world. Who here would think about medical billing and think, “now there’s a place where we can find hope!”
In her opening paragraph, Hill describes hope as “a necessity…our emotional engine, the basis for engaging with life.” Clearly there is more to this woman than coding a website. In fact she is also an artist and a spiritual coach, specializing in intuition, Reiki, and the Hawaiian healing art of Ho’oponopono. She has an MBA and a BFA. She is both a webmaster employed by a company that is involved in medical billing and a spiritual healer and she has a lot to say about hope. This actually gives me hope.
She tells us that hope means possibility and is deeply connected with our joy in existing. Hope is what makes life worth living. So when we read in our scripture this week, “The days are surely coming,” we are reading exactly what Hill defines as hope. There are a lot of passages in Jeremiah that are dark and full of despair, but the days are surely coming. Jeremiah is all about the possibility of redemption
and light and abundance and peace. It is a narrative of hope.
Hill points out that hope has to be real. It cannot be faked. The original hearers of Jeremiah’s prophecy had previous stories of God’s relationship with Israel to look to for evidence that good days were actually coming. Every dark era in their history had been followed by a time of light. God flooded the land, but Noah’s family prospered. Abram and Sarai were childless, but their fates reversed and they became the parents of a nation. Joseph and his brothers had been exiled into Egypt by jealousy and famine, but God protected them
and eventually sent Moses to lead their descendants back to the Promised Land.
As Christians we read Jeremiah and hear the foreshadowing of Jesus, whose life healed the rift caused by successive breaks in the covenant between God and Israel. We hear in the prophesy of Jeremiah, a prophesy written to a defeated people, the truth of what is to come in their future, our past. And in advent we celebrate that Christ has resurrected, even as we prepare for Jesus’ birth. We are a both-and people. We wait for the light to break forth in the world, all the while knowing that there is nothing that can extinguish the light that has already come. So we do this theological dance. We live in the light of the risen Christ, resting in the comfort of the story of Jesus’ life that teaches us there is always hope. Even the things we find the most absolute, like death, cannot conquer the love of Christ. And we also live in a time of turmoil and division.
Jeremiah was speaking to a community in exile. The NRSV titled chapter 29 “Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon.” They have been defeated in war and carried away as war tribute, the king and queen, the religious leaders, the skilled artisans, all have been taken. he letter instructs them to build a life in Babylon, but not to lose hope that they will come back to Jerusalem.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. … call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord.”
They were in the worst of times: defeated, exiled. And God calls upon them to live their best lives in this worst place and to hold onto hope that their glory will be restored.
Jeremiah gives them some concrete ways of doing this. Call upon God. Pray to God. We are to beckon God’s hope into our lives. What hope would you call into your life? Search for God and you will find God, Jeremiah says. Seek God in your heart and God will be found. God wants to be found, wants to offer hope, but we have to choose it, ask for it, search for it.
I was working with the confirmation class this week, writing a confirmation covenant. They read through some covenants in the bible and the church covenant, then they expressed their understanding of the kind of covenant that confirmation implies. They get that our relationship with God is reciprocal. “God trusts us,” they said, “to come to our own belief, our own understanding of faith.” They committed to searching for what God is speaking to them in a reciprocal relationship. Just like Jeremiah’s prophesy, we have to choose it. We have to reach out to God and then God is right there, ready to reach back to us.
Likewise, Hill points out, hope grows through interdependence. People who are connected together by family, culture, environment, or places like church, are more hopeful than those whose connections have been disrupted. So God telling the exiled Israelites to hold onto hope is asking them to maintain their connections to one another, even as they are separated from everything they know.
We can seek hope in the cycles of God’s creation, as Jesus teaches in Luke 21:30-31
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near; So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”
And we can also seek hope in our interactions in community. The diaconate decided this year to try a new thing, a left over potluck the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It is a Sunday when many of us are out of town so there are fewer in church. And asking people to bring leftovers is not glamorous. I mean, who wants to present as a gift a half-eaten pie? And yet, three people have expressed to me how much they loved the left-over potluck. There was a certain intimacy and hopefulness in looking at the table with a little salad and three kinds of stuffing and, yes, half-eaten pies. When we make these connections, offering not our best dishes, but the things we happen to have lying around we reinforce the kind of interdependence that Hill points to as being hope-building.
Hill says that hope
“does not fall for false optimism or empty promises. Living hopefully simply means taking care of your contribution and supporting the positive evolution of human life. It’s motto is “Progress, not perfection.”
Hope is grounded in present reality. It does not sugarcoat. It thinks enough of our creativity to present us with real problems to solve not phony problems of overindulgence, status and social climbing – real problems like quality of life, the development of human potential, the well-being of our environment and all human living systems.”
This is the good news about hope and it mirrors the good news we find in Jeremiah’s prophesy. “The days are surely coming,” Jeremiah proclaims. “The days are surely coming.”
This does not shy away from the reality in which the Israelites were living, as conquered, exiled people, a reality that is worse than where we currently sit. But it reminds the hearers of the promises of their covenant with God, it points them to dream of a future when they are re-established in their land and can rest in a time of peace.
This week in bible study I asked people what they dare to believe is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary. One answer was world peace. Some of us were not sure this is possible, after all humans do not have such a good track record living in peace, but our faith brings a different component.
As people of faith we honestly believe there is a force greater than humans at work in the universe, a force we call God. And this belief is part of the reality upon which we base our hope. It is not false optimism, but built on real stories of miracles, the miracles of light breaking into times of darkness.
Few would argue that we exist in a time when darkness threatens to overtake us. Our politics are factional. Our environment is in trouble. Our economic system makes life harder and harder for more citizens. Our institutions, built in times when our culture and economy were quite different, need new models of funding and functioning. Even our church feels the anxiety of living beyond the efficacy of our funding model.
But “the days are surely coming,” this prophesy does not promise that our lives will always be easy. Indeed, following in the footsteps of the messiah killed for his message is not easy. The prophesy promises that no matter how impossible things seem, hope is always possible. Good and right and justice and peace are always possible, when we walk in the ways of Jesus, who calls us to feed his sheep, to heal and restore and redeem.
We don’t have to be living in the times when the lion lays down with the lamb, when there are enough rooms in God’s house for all people, and the table is always over flowing to believe that such a time is possible. When we search for hope,knowing that good things are possible, we find it.
This advent season our theme is “Light the HOPE.” You know the phrase, be the change you want to see in the world? We are going to light the hope we want to experience in the world.
The first step, small as it may seem, is to believe that hope is possible. Have you seen the “I believe” kitsch available for purchase this season? Typically it refers to Santa Claus. Sometimes it refers to Jesus. I invite it to see it as referring to hope, to believe that it is possible to be a people, a place, an inspiration of hope in this season.
One of the planners of our annual Transgender Day of Remembrance memorial service shared with me that because we end each service by sharing stories of hope and lighting candles of hope, she searches for places of hope all year long. Something will happen and she will “put a pin” in the experience so she can come back to it and reflect on it and choose which hopeful experience she will share at the memorial service. I invite you to do what she does. This week, as you go about your normal activities, search for hope. Collect people, places, experiences that help you believe that hope for the future is warranted.
Our bible study class talked about places in our world where redemption is needed. We identified two. One was the environment and the other was the factional nature of the world, the fact that we do not see humanity as a unified whole. I’m sure there are more.
Be on the lookout for hope that our environment can be redeemed. Be on the lookout for hope that humanity can be unified.
I’ll give you one example. Last year religious leaders from many traditions, including the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, and Ayatollah Sayyid Fadhell Al-Milani, the U.K.s most senior Shia Muslim Cleric, started the “Make Friends” initiative, calling on people of faith to make friends with people of other faiths. “One of the wonderful things about spending time with people completely unlike you,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the U.K.’s former chief rabbi, “is you discover how much you have in common. The same fears, the same hopes, the same concerns.”[1]
I once sat on an interfaith panel with an Imam from North Africa who said he loved doing that because in North Africa he could not have sat at a table with a Christian Minister and a Jewish Rabbi. It just wasn’t done. What this group of 22 religious leaders did is a place of hope, it shows that humanity can be redeemed from factionalism.
Next week, there will be an opportunity for you to share, verbally or in writing, where you have found hope this week. So go searching. Amen.
[1] https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/07/05/world-faith-leaders-deliver-a-rare-joint-statement/
Searching for Hope
Rev. Michelle Webber
December 2, 2018
Hope is a force in the world. It is the break of the sun over the horizon after a dark night. It is the sounds of birdsong returning in the spring. It is ringing the bell when you finish chemo. One step back into relationship after a conflict. Hope is the light that shines in the darkness that no darkness can overcome. This week I have been searching for hope.
I think hope is a choice.
We can either find despair or we can find hope. One of my mentors in Ministry, Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle, taught me that what we pay attention to grows. If we spend all of our attention on the things that make us despair, we grow despair, but if we seek out and attend to hope, we grow hope. This advent season we are trying to ignite hope, to light the light of hope that no darkness can overcome. We begin by choosing to search for hope.
You can search for hope from a place of despair or fatigue or disbelief or confusion. All you need is to believe that it is possible that hopeful things might happen. This is not a position of certainty, but of possibility. Hope means choosing to look for good in the world.
I am curating an advent calendar of hope in the form of Facebook posts. Today’s post is a link to an article I found on the website, Lifehack. I was searching for concrete ways we can become more hopeful. I did not expect much from the article on Lifehack. I had been to Psychology Today and other more scientific sources and found some things, but I never expected the best article to come from Lifehack. That’s the thing about hope. It can be found in the most unexpected places. You have to have your eyes open and your ears open all the time.
The author of the piece is Maria Hill, the webmaster for HSP, Health Services Providers. Again, not the person one would expect to be a fount of wisdom on the topic of hope. She is in charge of the website of a company whose job is to produce software that helps health providers bill and receive payment. This does not sound like a hope-filled role in the world. Who here would think about medical billing and think, “now there’s a place where we can find hope!”
In her opening paragraph, Hill describes hope as “a necessity…our emotional engine, the basis for engaging with life.” Clearly there is more to this woman than coding a website. In fact she is also an artist and a spiritual coach, specializing in intuition, Reiki, and the Hawaiian healing art of Ho’oponopono. She has an MBA and a BFA. She is both a webmaster employed by a company that is involved in medical billing and a spiritual healer and she has a lot to say about hope. This actually gives me hope.
She tells us that hope means possibility and is deeply connected with our joy in existing. Hope is what makes life worth living. So when we read in our scripture this week, “The days are surely coming,” we are reading exactly what Hill defines as hope. There are a lot of passages in Jeremiah that are dark and full of despair, but the days are surely coming. Jeremiah is all about the possibility of redemption
and light and abundance and peace. It is a narrative of hope.
Hill points out that hope has to be real. It cannot be faked. The original hearers of Jeremiah’s prophecy had previous stories of God’s relationship with Israel to look to for evidence that good days were actually coming. Every dark era in their history had been followed by a time of light. God flooded the land, but Noah’s family prospered. Abram and Sarai were childless, but their fates reversed and they became the parents of a nation. Joseph and his brothers had been exiled into Egypt by jealousy and famine, but God protected them
and eventually sent Moses to lead their descendants back to the Promised Land.
As Christians we read Jeremiah and hear the foreshadowing of Jesus, whose life healed the rift caused by successive breaks in the covenant between God and Israel. We hear in the prophesy of Jeremiah, a prophesy written to a defeated people, the truth of what is to come in their future, our past. And in advent we celebrate that Christ has resurrected, even as we prepare for Jesus’ birth. We are a both-and people. We wait for the light to break forth in the world, all the while knowing that there is nothing that can extinguish the light that has already come. So we do this theological dance. We live in the light of the risen Christ, resting in the comfort of the story of Jesus’ life that teaches us there is always hope. Even the things we find the most absolute, like death, cannot conquer the love of Christ. And we also live in a time of turmoil and division.
Jeremiah was speaking to a community in exile. The NRSV titled chapter 29 “Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon.” They have been defeated in war and carried away as war tribute, the king and queen, the religious leaders, the skilled artisans, all have been taken. he letter instructs them to build a life in Babylon, but not to lose hope that they will come back to Jerusalem.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. … call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord.”
They were in the worst of times: defeated, exiled. And God calls upon them to live their best lives in this worst place and to hold onto hope that their glory will be restored.
Jeremiah gives them some concrete ways of doing this. Call upon God. Pray to God. We are to beckon God’s hope into our lives. What hope would you call into your life? Search for God and you will find God, Jeremiah says. Seek God in your heart and God will be found. God wants to be found, wants to offer hope, but we have to choose it, ask for it, search for it.
I was working with the confirmation class this week, writing a confirmation covenant. They read through some covenants in the bible and the church covenant, then they expressed their understanding of the kind of covenant that confirmation implies. They get that our relationship with God is reciprocal. “God trusts us,” they said, “to come to our own belief, our own understanding of faith.” They committed to searching for what God is speaking to them in a reciprocal relationship. Just like Jeremiah’s prophesy, we have to choose it. We have to reach out to God and then God is right there, ready to reach back to us.
Likewise, Hill points out, hope grows through interdependence. People who are connected together by family, culture, environment, or places like church, are more hopeful than those whose connections have been disrupted. So God telling the exiled Israelites to hold onto hope is asking them to maintain their connections to one another, even as they are separated from everything they know.
We can seek hope in the cycles of God’s creation, as Jesus teaches in Luke 21:30-31
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near; So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”
And we can also seek hope in our interactions in community. The diaconate decided this year to try a new thing, a left over potluck the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It is a Sunday when many of us are out of town so there are fewer in church. And asking people to bring leftovers is not glamorous. I mean, who wants to present as a gift a half-eaten pie? And yet, three people have expressed to me how much they loved the left-over potluck. There was a certain intimacy and hopefulness in looking at the table with a little salad and three kinds of stuffing and, yes, half-eaten pies. When we make these connections, offering not our best dishes, but the things we happen to have lying around we reinforce the kind of interdependence that Hill points to as being hope-building.
Hill says that hope
“does not fall for false optimism or empty promises. Living hopefully simply means taking care of your contribution and supporting the positive evolution of human life. It’s motto is “Progress, not perfection.”
Hope is grounded in present reality. It does not sugarcoat. It thinks enough of our creativity to present us with real problems to solve not phony problems of overindulgence, status and social climbing – real problems like quality of life, the development of human potential, the well-being of our environment and all human living systems.”
This is the good news about hope and it mirrors the good news we find in Jeremiah’s prophesy. “The days are surely coming,” Jeremiah proclaims. “The days are surely coming.”
This does not shy away from the reality in which the Israelites were living, as conquered, exiled people, a reality that is worse than where we currently sit. But it reminds the hearers of the promises of their covenant with God, it points them to dream of a future when they are re-established in their land and can rest in a time of peace.
This week in bible study I asked people what they dare to believe is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary. One answer was world peace. Some of us were not sure this is possible, after all humans do not have such a good track record living in peace, but our faith brings a different component.
As people of faith we honestly believe there is a force greater than humans at work in the universe, a force we call God. And this belief is part of the reality upon which we base our hope. It is not false optimism, but built on real stories of miracles, the miracles of light breaking into times of darkness.
Few would argue that we exist in a time when darkness threatens to overtake us. Our politics are factional. Our environment is in trouble. Our economic system makes life harder and harder for more citizens. Our institutions, built in times when our culture and economy were quite different, need new models of funding and functioning. Even our church feels the anxiety of living beyond the efficacy of our funding model.
But “the days are surely coming,” this prophesy does not promise that our lives will always be easy. Indeed, following in the footsteps of the messiah killed for his message is not easy. The prophesy promises that no matter how impossible things seem, hope is always possible. Good and right and justice and peace are always possible, when we walk in the ways of Jesus, who calls us to feed his sheep, to heal and restore and redeem.
We don’t have to be living in the times when the lion lays down with the lamb, when there are enough rooms in God’s house for all people, and the table is always over flowing to believe that such a time is possible. When we search for hope,knowing that good things are possible, we find it.
This advent season our theme is “Light the HOPE.” You know the phrase, be the change you want to see in the world? We are going to light the hope we want to experience in the world.
The first step, small as it may seem, is to believe that hope is possible. Have you seen the “I believe” kitsch available for purchase this season? Typically it refers to Santa Claus. Sometimes it refers to Jesus. I invite it to see it as referring to hope, to believe that it is possible to be a people, a place, an inspiration of hope in this season.
One of the planners of our annual Transgender Day of Remembrance memorial service shared with me that because we end each service by sharing stories of hope and lighting candles of hope, she searches for places of hope all year long. Something will happen and she will “put a pin” in the experience so she can come back to it and reflect on it and choose which hopeful experience she will share at the memorial service. I invite you to do what she does. This week, as you go about your normal activities, search for hope. Collect people, places, experiences that help you believe that hope for the future is warranted.
Our bible study class talked about places in our world where redemption is needed. We identified two. One was the environment and the other was the factional nature of the world, the fact that we do not see humanity as a unified whole. I’m sure there are more.
Be on the lookout for hope that our environment can be redeemed. Be on the lookout for hope that humanity can be unified.
I’ll give you one example. Last year religious leaders from many traditions, including the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, and Ayatollah Sayyid Fadhell Al-Milani, the U.K.s most senior Shia Muslim Cleric, started the “Make Friends” initiative, calling on people of faith to make friends with people of other faiths. “One of the wonderful things about spending time with people completely unlike you,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the U.K.’s former chief rabbi, “is you discover how much you have in common. The same fears, the same hopes, the same concerns.”[1]
I once sat on an interfaith panel with an Imam from North Africa who said he loved doing that because in North Africa he could not have sat at a table with a Christian Minister and a Jewish Rabbi. It just wasn’t done. What this group of 22 religious leaders did is a place of hope, it shows that humanity can be redeemed from factionalism.
Next week, there will be an opportunity for you to share, verbally or in writing, where you have found hope this week. So go searching. Amen.
[1] https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/07/05/world-faith-leaders-deliver-a-rare-joint-statement/
Love with All We've Got
Mark 12:28-34
Love with all We’ve Got
Rev. Michelle Webber
November 04, 2018
Jesus led a teaching session with parables, including the parable of the wicked tenants. (Mark 12:1b-12)
“A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4 And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. 5 Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this scripture:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;[a]
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
12 When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.”
It is a cautionary tale told to the chief priests and the scribes in the temple in Jerusalem. They were not giving what ought to be given to God, even though they were following all of the laws. The scripture tells us that when they realized the story was about them, they wanted to arrest Jesus, but were afraid.
So they send some Pharisees to ask him questions, to try to make him say something to incriminate himself publically so they could arrest him and protect their positions. The Pharisees ask about paying taxes. Jesus says “Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s.” He was not tricked by their question.
So they send Sadducees to him to ask him about resurrection. “If a woman is married to a man who dies and she then marries his brother…when the resurrection comes who will be her husband?” This is so obviously a trick question because the Sadducee’s didn’t even believe in resurrection. So Jesus tells them the semantics of their questions are wrong. Again, not tricked.
And then comes the question, which is our text today and the central text of the 3 Great Loves campaign in the United Church of Christ. “Which commandment is the first of all?” It is a scribe, returned to try to do what the Pharisees and the Sadducees had been unable to do, to trick Jesus into saying something publicly to incriminate himself so they could arrest him and protect their power.
Jesus answers the question with the prime scripture, the number one tenant of the Jewish religion, known as the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;”
“It is the oldest fixed daily prayer in Judaism, recited morning and night since ancient times.”[1]
[Reprinted here from jewfaq.org]
Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
[The second line, which Jesus omits, is]
Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.
[And then it continues, as Jesus did]
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
[The standard prayer goes on…]
And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.
And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them
when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.
And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates
[Jesus omits these further lines, but they are surely implied.]
This was a commandment that was to be remembered everywhere by everyone, elders and children alike. Jesus expands it. He takes it beyond the tribal identity of God’s chosen people, saying, and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. In 2016 when the United Church of Christ did the survey that helped them create the 3 great loves campaign, this was the scripture that most respondents said exemplified their understanding of Jesus, the call to love.
In the gospel of mark it’s a show stopper. After his answer to this question, not only does the skeptical scribe agree with him, no one dares ask him any more questions. He has stopped the devious intention to arrest him with these words of love. As followers of Jesus, these are our two greatest commandments, to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our minds and all our souls and all our strengths. And to love ourselves and our neighbors this same way,everything we do is to be an expression of love.
Today is stewardship Sunday, when we consecrate our commitment to support the church for another year. We place into the offering plate a symbol of our love for God and God’s ministry through this church and then we pray over it, asking God to grow love in our hearts
and in our community through the gifts we give to the church. We are to give with our whole self, out of our strengths and our vulnerabilities, out of the love we already experience, and the love we know is possible, out of our connection to this place and the connections we hope to create. May we all give from love.
Today we also celebrate the love we have for our children. Our pledge is part of this, of ensuring this church is here in the future so our children have a spiritual home. Our love of children is also connected to the Shema- what is so central to our faith that we want to teach it to our children? What do we write upon on hearts, and on our bare arms and between our eyes? What is on the doorposts of our homes so that every time our children exit or enter they are reminded of it?
Today is also a celebration of All Saints Day, the day we remember those we have loved who have passed on. And, as if we needed one more thing to hold today, it is the Sunday before election day. Let us face all of these special moments with a heart full of love. Let us imagine that each action we take this week, our pledge to the church, our relationships with children, our remembrance of those who have passed, the votes we have cast or will cast, are taken in love, inspired by love, guided by love, that they are expressions of the love
we are called to express to God with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our minds and all of our strengths. Let us be motivated by love in all that we do. In this way today is not a day of too many things to hold at once, but a day on which the love that we hold, love for God, love for self, and love for neighbor shoots into the world as if through a prism, the single ray of love, splitting into expressions of love for the ministry of God through this church, love for our children, love for our family and friends who have passed, and love for our country and our world through our vote.
May we be rays of love and peace this week in everything we do.
[1] http://www.jewfaq.org/shemaref.htm
Love with all We’ve Got
Rev. Michelle Webber
November 04, 2018
Jesus led a teaching session with parables, including the parable of the wicked tenants. (Mark 12:1b-12)
“A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4 And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. 5 Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this scripture:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;[a]
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
12 When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.”
It is a cautionary tale told to the chief priests and the scribes in the temple in Jerusalem. They were not giving what ought to be given to God, even though they were following all of the laws. The scripture tells us that when they realized the story was about them, they wanted to arrest Jesus, but were afraid.
So they send some Pharisees to ask him questions, to try to make him say something to incriminate himself publically so they could arrest him and protect their positions. The Pharisees ask about paying taxes. Jesus says “Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s.” He was not tricked by their question.
So they send Sadducees to him to ask him about resurrection. “If a woman is married to a man who dies and she then marries his brother…when the resurrection comes who will be her husband?” This is so obviously a trick question because the Sadducee’s didn’t even believe in resurrection. So Jesus tells them the semantics of their questions are wrong. Again, not tricked.
And then comes the question, which is our text today and the central text of the 3 Great Loves campaign in the United Church of Christ. “Which commandment is the first of all?” It is a scribe, returned to try to do what the Pharisees and the Sadducees had been unable to do, to trick Jesus into saying something publicly to incriminate himself so they could arrest him and protect their power.
Jesus answers the question with the prime scripture, the number one tenant of the Jewish religion, known as the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;”
“It is the oldest fixed daily prayer in Judaism, recited morning and night since ancient times.”[1]
[Reprinted here from jewfaq.org]
Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
[The second line, which Jesus omits, is]
Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.
[And then it continues, as Jesus did]
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
[The standard prayer goes on…]
And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart.
And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them
when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.
And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates
[Jesus omits these further lines, but they are surely implied.]
This was a commandment that was to be remembered everywhere by everyone, elders and children alike. Jesus expands it. He takes it beyond the tribal identity of God’s chosen people, saying, and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. In 2016 when the United Church of Christ did the survey that helped them create the 3 great loves campaign, this was the scripture that most respondents said exemplified their understanding of Jesus, the call to love.
In the gospel of mark it’s a show stopper. After his answer to this question, not only does the skeptical scribe agree with him, no one dares ask him any more questions. He has stopped the devious intention to arrest him with these words of love. As followers of Jesus, these are our two greatest commandments, to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our minds and all our souls and all our strengths. And to love ourselves and our neighbors this same way,everything we do is to be an expression of love.
Today is stewardship Sunday, when we consecrate our commitment to support the church for another year. We place into the offering plate a symbol of our love for God and God’s ministry through this church and then we pray over it, asking God to grow love in our hearts
and in our community through the gifts we give to the church. We are to give with our whole self, out of our strengths and our vulnerabilities, out of the love we already experience, and the love we know is possible, out of our connection to this place and the connections we hope to create. May we all give from love.
Today we also celebrate the love we have for our children. Our pledge is part of this, of ensuring this church is here in the future so our children have a spiritual home. Our love of children is also connected to the Shema- what is so central to our faith that we want to teach it to our children? What do we write upon on hearts, and on our bare arms and between our eyes? What is on the doorposts of our homes so that every time our children exit or enter they are reminded of it?
Today is also a celebration of All Saints Day, the day we remember those we have loved who have passed on. And, as if we needed one more thing to hold today, it is the Sunday before election day. Let us face all of these special moments with a heart full of love. Let us imagine that each action we take this week, our pledge to the church, our relationships with children, our remembrance of those who have passed, the votes we have cast or will cast, are taken in love, inspired by love, guided by love, that they are expressions of the love
we are called to express to God with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our minds and all of our strengths. Let us be motivated by love in all that we do. In this way today is not a day of too many things to hold at once, but a day on which the love that we hold, love for God, love for self, and love for neighbor shoots into the world as if through a prism, the single ray of love, splitting into expressions of love for the ministry of God through this church, love for our children, love for our family and friends who have passed, and love for our country and our world through our vote.
May we be rays of love and peace this week in everything we do.
[1] http://www.jewfaq.org/shemaref.htm
Family Reunion
Family Reunion
Rev. Michelle Webber
September 9th, 2018
Genesis 1:26-28
Romans 12:3-8
Rev. Michelle Webber
September 9th, 2018
Genesis 1:26-28
Romans 12:3-8
6 years ago I had the privilege of attending a family reunion on the farm in Norway where my Great-Grandfather, Oscar Tollehaug, was raised. While we were there I preached in a worship service attended by the 80 members of my extended family who attended the reunion. When my Great-Grandfather was 17, his brother, who had emigrated to the United States and become a Lutheran Minister in Minnesota, preached in the same pulpit while he was home visiting his family. My Great-Grandfather left with his brother that very trip and never returned to Norway.
The whole reunion was special to me. We stayed on the farm. We ate Rommegrot that my mom’s 3rd cousin spent all day making.
We climbed the mountain across the lake from the farm so we could look down on it from above. We hiked from the winter farm to the summer farm and relished the hot tomato soup that awaited us there. We received sheep skins from sheep raised on the farm, decorated by Astrid, who lived on the farm. They had the year and both our Norwegian name and the date stamped on them. At the big dinner we had one of my mom’s generation stood up and then called up his daughter, my mom, and my mom’s first cousin, Susan. He explained that he had the same relationship with all three of them and asked if anyone could guess what it was. Turns out his parent’s cousins married each other so his daughter was also his 3rd cousin. My mom and Susan were his third cousins.
It was on this trip that I finally memorized the difference between second cousins and first cousins once removed. The first, second, third has to do with the order of grandparent you have in common. If it’s your parent’s parent, you’re first cousins. If it’s your great-grand parent, you’re second cousins. If it’s your great-great grandparent, you’re third cousins. Your parent’s first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. You do not have a grandparent in common, but a generation removed. Susan and my mom have grandparents in common, so they are first cousins. Susan’s grandparents are my great-grandparents so we are first cousins, once-removed. These are important distinctions when you gather 80 people who represent seven generations of one family. We even updated the family tree. It took up a huge wall and everyone added children and grandchildren, birth dates, death dates, marriages,
until we had seven complete generations.
My kid turned 9 when we were there and my fourth cousin made her a chocolate birthday cake. She blew out the candles and we all shared. My family farm is outside a small town called Fagerness and a local reporter took a photo of alI of us and my kid’s name was in the paper because it was her birthday.
I have a whole new respect for family reunions.
On Wednesday I led the memorial service for Phyllis Litherland. Memorial services often serve as family reunions. People gather and share their best memories. There is crying and laughing. Sometimes there are second and third cousins. And you see the interconnecting circles in someone’s life.
I had a great time in Norway connecting with my genetic family. It was somehow healing to spend time on the land after which my family is named and to share stories with people descended from the same great-great grandparents. But they are not my only family.
I have always had a church family that is separate from my family of origin. Many people have a family of choice. At memorials these families overlap. Phyllis had her genetic family and her PEO family, both local and state, and her Dairy Queen family and her Moorhead civic family.
If we take our circles wide enough, we find ourselves back to Genesis, back to the fact that all of humanity are cousins. Have any of you done ancestry.com or some such genetic test? I have thousands of third or fourth cousins that I match with on ancestry.com. Thousands. Many of them in Nova Scotia. If I ever visit Nova Scotia, every person I meet will have me asking, “Are we cousins?”.
What if we looked at each other like this, that everyone we meet is a cousin?
What if when we look into a stranger’s eyes we see what God saw looking into the eyes of the first humans? God looked into the eyes of the first humans described in Genesis, male and female, and said, “Indeed, they are very good.”
By the time Jesus came into the world, people had forgotten that we are all cousins. We had sorted ourselves into cultural, religious, and ethnic groups. We had created hierarchical systems that gave privilege to people based on wealth and might and gender. And we used religion as one tool to substantiate the divisions.
As a gospel-centered church we look to the example of Jesus’ life and ministry as told in the gospels to figure out how to be in the world. The sermon I gave in the chapel, where my family had been worshipping for seven generations, was a review of scriptures about family. In one story Jesus denies a visit with his mother and siblings, calling everyone around him, his family. At the end of his life, as his mother stands at the foot of the cross with his most beloved disciple, his genetic family and his chosen family become one. “Mother, here is your son. Son, here is your mother.” Jesus’ ministry is one that highlights the unity of all people, that makes us all family.
As the early church struggled with what it meant to be Christian after Jesus’ death and after the fall of the temple, one of the metaphors that comes up as meaningful for them is the church as one body and each person as a part of that body. Romans
encourages us to look at the gifts that each person brings and to see that together we are something bigger than the sum of our parts.
In terms of church family, we can look at the legacy of those who built the church to its current configuration. To people like Marilyn White who was a welcoming force for many of our longtime members, and whose will it was to start the Open & Affirming process. I see her legacy in the ways that Dawn Lexvold and Diane Nelson give tirelessly to the church. One of my first memories of this church was Dawn’s extravagant welcome as I walked into the Bar Potluck during my candidating weekend. We can look to people like Barb Schramm who grew up in this church and who remembers us as always welcoming people with smiles. We can look to the Wohlwend family whose legacy will continue into the future as a result of a memorial bequest. I overheard a conversation at Phyllis’ memorial service in which someone told Ginny McLarnan that she was the best Sunday School Teacher. “Whenever I hear stories about the region or about the bible, it’s your voice I hear,” she said. These are one leg of the stool on which our Church Family sits, our link to the church family of the past.
We can also look to our newest visitors and members. We are blessed to have new people come through our doors and new people join our church. They bring with them gifts we may not have known we need. When we look into their eyes and see God’s eyes looking back at us, we welcome them not just to fit into what is already here, but we welcome them with a spirit open to changing
as a result of the wisdom they bring with them. These are a leg of the stool on which our Church Family sits.
We can look, too, on the generations we are rearing, not just as the future, but as the present of the church. It is no understatement to say that I have learned more from our church children than I could ever teach them. They are a leg of the stool that supports our Church Family.
We all come to church from different perspectives and with different gifts and in different ways. If you are the descendant of members of this church, or here for the first time, I hope you feel like family. If you come to faith from your head and feel most at home dealing with numbers and budgets and by-laws, I hope you feel affirmed in your head space. If you come to faith from your heart and feel most at home dealing with people and ideas and prayers, I hope you feel affirmed in your heart space. If you come to faith in your body and feel most comfortable doing things and expressing spirit through movement and action, I hope you feel affirmed in your body space.
Romans calls us to show up at church exactly as we are and to use our best gifts in following the example Jesus set. I encourage this lesson when talking to our Sunday School teachers about how they might follow the kid’s or their own excitement in their lessons. I encourage this lesson with our choir when talking to Jason about including music that makes him and the choir excited. I encourage this lesson with the nominating committee when I ask them to talk to be people about their passions and their excitement before talking to them about boards and committees.
These things I talk about today- about feeling like a family and about bringing our whole selves to church and celebrating the selves people bring, they’re not easy.
Our families of origin can be fraught with all kinds of dysfunction that leave us bruised or ill-equipped to engage in healthy family dynamics. Our world, especially those who call ourselves Christian, have a pretty bad track record when it comes to accepting the whole self.
These difficulties began in the early church when they adopted the separation of spirit and body, defining the spirit as good and the body as bad. They began when we were ousted from the synagogues as “not Jewish” and chose to define “the jews” as bad and Christians as good. They began when Christians were violently persecuted and decided to try to fit into the patriarchal Roman culture as much as possible, thus tempering the egalitarian nature of Jesus’ ministry. And these difficulties have continued throughout Christian history as we have constantly redefined who is a good Christian and who is not. This has caused split after split in the church. And it continues today as we look at church through the eyes of consumers, shopping around until we find one that offers the right features for us, instead of engaging in the church family as a family and not a product to be exchanged when it doesn’t fit perfectly.
While we were in Norway for the family reunion, I had this bittersweet realization. My husband is an Easter European Jew. His grandparents were not born in the United States. They were from Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. While I was relishing in the knowledge that the trail I walked from the winter farm to the summer farm was the same trail my great-grandfather walked, that the sheep whose hide sits in my living room was a descendant of the sheep my great-grandfather tended as a child, that these 80 people
shared this history with me and had a connected to this place, I knew the same trip was not possible for my husband.
My mother-in-law inherited letters from her aunt written by their family in Europe. Before the 1940s there are lots of letters. If we spoke Yiddish we could reconstruct a family tree through these letters. After WW2 there is only 1 letter; one cousin writing to say “I can’t find anyone from our family. Have you heard from anyone?” My husband’s 3rd cousins, my child’s 4th cousins, never existed. There is no place in the world where he might have 1,000’s of cousins, unless we are all cousins.
When we separate and divide ourselves into cultural, religious, and ethnic groups, when we create hierarchical systems that give privilege to people based on wealth and might and gender, and sexual orientation, when we use religion as one tool to substantiate the divisions, we deny so much of the story of God as passed onto us from the bible.
Genesis says “We created them in our image…and, indeed it was very good.” We need to preserve this goodness. These first humans did not demonstrate their goodness. They did not prove their worthiness. God simply looked at them and saw their innate goodness, Let us look on each other and seek goodness.
Goodness is different than perfection.
We are not to seek perfection. Each of us, Romans reminds us, has gifts for the good of the community. This means each of us also has places that are not our gifts. There is no shame in this. When we look upon people and call out their deficits we diminish them.
When we look upon people and call out their gifts, we make the whole community better.
In God’s eyes we are all family and we are all worthy of love. Thank you for being my family today. Thank you for bringing your whole-self to this community. Together, we are so much more than the sum of our parts. We are very good and we are family. Amen.
The whole reunion was special to me. We stayed on the farm. We ate Rommegrot that my mom’s 3rd cousin spent all day making.
We climbed the mountain across the lake from the farm so we could look down on it from above. We hiked from the winter farm to the summer farm and relished the hot tomato soup that awaited us there. We received sheep skins from sheep raised on the farm, decorated by Astrid, who lived on the farm. They had the year and both our Norwegian name and the date stamped on them. At the big dinner we had one of my mom’s generation stood up and then called up his daughter, my mom, and my mom’s first cousin, Susan. He explained that he had the same relationship with all three of them and asked if anyone could guess what it was. Turns out his parent’s cousins married each other so his daughter was also his 3rd cousin. My mom and Susan were his third cousins.
It was on this trip that I finally memorized the difference between second cousins and first cousins once removed. The first, second, third has to do with the order of grandparent you have in common. If it’s your parent’s parent, you’re first cousins. If it’s your great-grand parent, you’re second cousins. If it’s your great-great grandparent, you’re third cousins. Your parent’s first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. You do not have a grandparent in common, but a generation removed. Susan and my mom have grandparents in common, so they are first cousins. Susan’s grandparents are my great-grandparents so we are first cousins, once-removed. These are important distinctions when you gather 80 people who represent seven generations of one family. We even updated the family tree. It took up a huge wall and everyone added children and grandchildren, birth dates, death dates, marriages,
until we had seven complete generations.
My kid turned 9 when we were there and my fourth cousin made her a chocolate birthday cake. She blew out the candles and we all shared. My family farm is outside a small town called Fagerness and a local reporter took a photo of alI of us and my kid’s name was in the paper because it was her birthday.
I have a whole new respect for family reunions.
On Wednesday I led the memorial service for Phyllis Litherland. Memorial services often serve as family reunions. People gather and share their best memories. There is crying and laughing. Sometimes there are second and third cousins. And you see the interconnecting circles in someone’s life.
I had a great time in Norway connecting with my genetic family. It was somehow healing to spend time on the land after which my family is named and to share stories with people descended from the same great-great grandparents. But they are not my only family.
I have always had a church family that is separate from my family of origin. Many people have a family of choice. At memorials these families overlap. Phyllis had her genetic family and her PEO family, both local and state, and her Dairy Queen family and her Moorhead civic family.
If we take our circles wide enough, we find ourselves back to Genesis, back to the fact that all of humanity are cousins. Have any of you done ancestry.com or some such genetic test? I have thousands of third or fourth cousins that I match with on ancestry.com. Thousands. Many of them in Nova Scotia. If I ever visit Nova Scotia, every person I meet will have me asking, “Are we cousins?”.
What if we looked at each other like this, that everyone we meet is a cousin?
What if when we look into a stranger’s eyes we see what God saw looking into the eyes of the first humans? God looked into the eyes of the first humans described in Genesis, male and female, and said, “Indeed, they are very good.”
By the time Jesus came into the world, people had forgotten that we are all cousins. We had sorted ourselves into cultural, religious, and ethnic groups. We had created hierarchical systems that gave privilege to people based on wealth and might and gender. And we used religion as one tool to substantiate the divisions.
As a gospel-centered church we look to the example of Jesus’ life and ministry as told in the gospels to figure out how to be in the world. The sermon I gave in the chapel, where my family had been worshipping for seven generations, was a review of scriptures about family. In one story Jesus denies a visit with his mother and siblings, calling everyone around him, his family. At the end of his life, as his mother stands at the foot of the cross with his most beloved disciple, his genetic family and his chosen family become one. “Mother, here is your son. Son, here is your mother.” Jesus’ ministry is one that highlights the unity of all people, that makes us all family.
As the early church struggled with what it meant to be Christian after Jesus’ death and after the fall of the temple, one of the metaphors that comes up as meaningful for them is the church as one body and each person as a part of that body. Romans
encourages us to look at the gifts that each person brings and to see that together we are something bigger than the sum of our parts.
In terms of church family, we can look at the legacy of those who built the church to its current configuration. To people like Marilyn White who was a welcoming force for many of our longtime members, and whose will it was to start the Open & Affirming process. I see her legacy in the ways that Dawn Lexvold and Diane Nelson give tirelessly to the church. One of my first memories of this church was Dawn’s extravagant welcome as I walked into the Bar Potluck during my candidating weekend. We can look to people like Barb Schramm who grew up in this church and who remembers us as always welcoming people with smiles. We can look to the Wohlwend family whose legacy will continue into the future as a result of a memorial bequest. I overheard a conversation at Phyllis’ memorial service in which someone told Ginny McLarnan that she was the best Sunday School Teacher. “Whenever I hear stories about the region or about the bible, it’s your voice I hear,” she said. These are one leg of the stool on which our Church Family sits, our link to the church family of the past.
We can also look to our newest visitors and members. We are blessed to have new people come through our doors and new people join our church. They bring with them gifts we may not have known we need. When we look into their eyes and see God’s eyes looking back at us, we welcome them not just to fit into what is already here, but we welcome them with a spirit open to changing
as a result of the wisdom they bring with them. These are a leg of the stool on which our Church Family sits.
We can look, too, on the generations we are rearing, not just as the future, but as the present of the church. It is no understatement to say that I have learned more from our church children than I could ever teach them. They are a leg of the stool that supports our Church Family.
We all come to church from different perspectives and with different gifts and in different ways. If you are the descendant of members of this church, or here for the first time, I hope you feel like family. If you come to faith from your head and feel most at home dealing with numbers and budgets and by-laws, I hope you feel affirmed in your head space. If you come to faith from your heart and feel most at home dealing with people and ideas and prayers, I hope you feel affirmed in your heart space. If you come to faith in your body and feel most comfortable doing things and expressing spirit through movement and action, I hope you feel affirmed in your body space.
Romans calls us to show up at church exactly as we are and to use our best gifts in following the example Jesus set. I encourage this lesson when talking to our Sunday School teachers about how they might follow the kid’s or their own excitement in their lessons. I encourage this lesson with our choir when talking to Jason about including music that makes him and the choir excited. I encourage this lesson with the nominating committee when I ask them to talk to be people about their passions and their excitement before talking to them about boards and committees.
These things I talk about today- about feeling like a family and about bringing our whole selves to church and celebrating the selves people bring, they’re not easy.
Our families of origin can be fraught with all kinds of dysfunction that leave us bruised or ill-equipped to engage in healthy family dynamics. Our world, especially those who call ourselves Christian, have a pretty bad track record when it comes to accepting the whole self.
These difficulties began in the early church when they adopted the separation of spirit and body, defining the spirit as good and the body as bad. They began when we were ousted from the synagogues as “not Jewish” and chose to define “the jews” as bad and Christians as good. They began when Christians were violently persecuted and decided to try to fit into the patriarchal Roman culture as much as possible, thus tempering the egalitarian nature of Jesus’ ministry. And these difficulties have continued throughout Christian history as we have constantly redefined who is a good Christian and who is not. This has caused split after split in the church. And it continues today as we look at church through the eyes of consumers, shopping around until we find one that offers the right features for us, instead of engaging in the church family as a family and not a product to be exchanged when it doesn’t fit perfectly.
While we were in Norway for the family reunion, I had this bittersweet realization. My husband is an Easter European Jew. His grandparents were not born in the United States. They were from Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. While I was relishing in the knowledge that the trail I walked from the winter farm to the summer farm was the same trail my great-grandfather walked, that the sheep whose hide sits in my living room was a descendant of the sheep my great-grandfather tended as a child, that these 80 people
shared this history with me and had a connected to this place, I knew the same trip was not possible for my husband.
My mother-in-law inherited letters from her aunt written by their family in Europe. Before the 1940s there are lots of letters. If we spoke Yiddish we could reconstruct a family tree through these letters. After WW2 there is only 1 letter; one cousin writing to say “I can’t find anyone from our family. Have you heard from anyone?” My husband’s 3rd cousins, my child’s 4th cousins, never existed. There is no place in the world where he might have 1,000’s of cousins, unless we are all cousins.
When we separate and divide ourselves into cultural, religious, and ethnic groups, when we create hierarchical systems that give privilege to people based on wealth and might and gender, and sexual orientation, when we use religion as one tool to substantiate the divisions, we deny so much of the story of God as passed onto us from the bible.
Genesis says “We created them in our image…and, indeed it was very good.” We need to preserve this goodness. These first humans did not demonstrate their goodness. They did not prove their worthiness. God simply looked at them and saw their innate goodness, Let us look on each other and seek goodness.
Goodness is different than perfection.
We are not to seek perfection. Each of us, Romans reminds us, has gifts for the good of the community. This means each of us also has places that are not our gifts. There is no shame in this. When we look upon people and call out their deficits we diminish them.
When we look upon people and call out their gifts, we make the whole community better.
In God’s eyes we are all family and we are all worthy of love. Thank you for being my family today. Thank you for bringing your whole-self to this community. Together, we are so much more than the sum of our parts. We are very good and we are family. Amen.
Grace
Grace
Rev. Michelle Webber
July 22nd, 2018
Last week I admitted to some fears I have. I think a lot of us live in fear right now. I have spent a lot of this week thinking about what the healthiest spiritual response to fear is.
It started on Monday when I decided to watch a movie I had paused the night before when my kid required my attention. It is a movie called “Goodbye Christopher Robin.” I have long been a huge fan of the Winnie-the-pooh (WTP) series so it had been on my watch list since it came out. I thought I’d watch it while I had my breakfast and then continue it after dinner that night.
I thought it would be a charming, good-hearted story about a boy and his father. While it is a story about a boy and his father and parts can be described as charming, it is about a father with PTSD who doesn’t often bother with his son, but becomes inspired, after spending a brief time as the son’s sole caregiver, to make up a good-hearted, charming story about a boy and his toys. As the story takes off, heartening a nation depressed by WW1, instead of re-investing in the boy, the father lets the PR machine use the boy. Once he realized the effect this is having on the boy, he sends the boy away to boarding school.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the movie.
All the boy wants is his father’s attention. The magic of the WTP stories is the love and attention paid to Christopher Robin through his toys. But the more joy and heart the stories bring to the country, the sadder is the actual boy.
Now, the father could have returned to spending time with the boy, refilled his creative well with the very thing that sparked it to begin with, but instead he sends the boy to boarding school. I suppose this was normal for England at the time.
The movie ruptured the magic of the Winnie-the-pooh stories for me. I’ve been to New York to see the stuffed animals where they are on display. I own all of the books, and the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet. I have a collection of memorabilia. As a teenager I painted my room to match the classic WTP book ends I had. As a child I had a stuffed WTP that went everywhere with me.
WTP has been my life-long friend.
But to think that it’s publishing was partly to blame for the neglect of a child. For me, this is like discovering the American Dream only exists on the backs of whole groups of people oppressed so others could climb. Heart breaking and fear inducing.
Then, in the movie, came WW2. Christopher Robin, or Billy Moon as his parents called him at home, is old enough to be drafted into the army. This, of course, is his parent’s worst nightmare. His father was emotionally crippled by his PTSD (or shell shock as they called it at the time) from WWI. Luckily, Christopher Robin fails his medical exam. But he begs his father to use his influence as a famous writer to get him into the army anyway. And he does.
The unthinkable happens. The father gets a telegram that the boy is missing and presumed dead.
Now, I am a student of WWII. I read biography after biography of people who lived in occupied Europe. I have some pretty gruesome pictures in my mind thinking about what “missing and presumed dead” might mean.
And I am in shock.
I had this picture, based on the Winnie-the-pooh books, of a quaint, idyllic pastoral existence for Christopher Robin, doted on by his father who tells him stories about his toys to his child-like delight. And now that picture is gone, replaced by story of neglect and fear and war.
In the end, the boy comes home. He was not dead, just missing. And he thanks his father for the WTP books. He recalls how soldiers sang songs from the book to keep hope alive. And he thanks his father for giving heart back to the world after the War to End All Wars, for giving his comrades hope to hold onto at a time in their lives when it seemed hope was lost.
The fear I felt watching this movie, was because of the gap between the child-like idealism inspired in my imagination by the WTP stories and the real world. Did A.A. Milne want his son to have the kind of loved, attention-rich childhood represented in WTP? Of course, but he was a soldier with PTSD.
There is this one scene where young Billy tackles his dad and his dad has a flash back and is suddenly fighting in the war. Billy goes still and stiff and just keeps saying “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Playing with his son was a trigger for Milne.
And it is so easy for me to connect with it because it speaks a reality that has been mine my entire adult life. I grew up on the American Dream, spoon fed it from infancy. My father was a union man who supported his family with his union job. Put his two kids through college even. Life was supposed to be financially easier for me than for him. If I got a college education I would not have the financial worries of my working class family. This is the dream I was fed. And it’s just not true. American wages have remained stagnant as the cost of living has skyrocketed, and a college education does not guarantee a living wage. While our country has had unprecedented corporate profits, those gains have been solidified into the hands of the wealthiest of people. Never before in American history have so few controlled so much.
I could live in this fear, caused by the gap between our dream for the world and the world the way it actually is. I think a lot of our country is living in this fear.
But I have something not everyone has. I have faith. And I believe in grace.
Ephesians says that by Grace we have been saved.
Grace fills in the gap between what we imagine is possible and what is actually happening. I imagined this idyllic life for Christopher Robin, and so too did his father, but the truth was different. God comes into that difference, that gap, and fills it in with Grace. And in this way Christopher Robin can see the power of his father’s words and forgive him for the gap. Grace fills in the gap between how I thought the world was with the American Dream and how it actually is so that I can set about the work of making reality come closer to the dream.
This is true on smaller scales, as well. Grace steps into the gap between who we strive to be as a community of Christ and who we actually are in any given moment. As a congregation we strive to live as one community. To recognize the full humanity of all individuals. To not seek to erase our God-given diversity, but to celebrate it and to seek justice as we journey together in faith toward greater understanding and mutual respect. We are guided by the teaching of Jesus, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), as we seek to embody the words “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” We do our best to intentionally welcome, celebrate, stand with, and affirm all individuals including, but not limited to, those of every ability, age, class, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender identity and expression, or sexual orientation into full fellowship and participation in the life of the church. Acknowledging our human imperfections, we strive, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to become more like Jesus in our love and support of one another. We seek to oppose and overcome any injustice, oppression, or prejudice that continue in our society, our communities, our church, and ourselves. [First Congregational UCC Welcome Statement Revised 2018]
This is our dream for our church family. Sometimes we are spot on, but this statement is also aspirational. Our dream for Christian community relies on grace to fill the gap between the dream and where we are at any given moment. So when we stumble, fall back on Grace. When we make mistakes, let us rest in grace instead of shame. When someone in our church family offends us, let us respond in grace instead of pain. Let us assume the best we can about each other here so this can be a place a refuge, but also of experimentation for overcoming the history of prejudice we inherit.
If we live as if grace is real, as if equality is how God intends the world, we can forgive the small ways we transgress, and organize ourselves to be a force in the world to respond to the big ways the world falls short of God’s dream.
So what is the best spiritual response to fear?
I fear the individuals who make up our church are so hurt by the history of oppression in our country or so blind to our own privilege that creating a unified community of love is impossible, but I hope that our hearts are big enough and grace is real enough for us to see the gap and do the work needed to cross it. I commit to doing the things that will help us see the gap, rest in grace, and cross it together.
I fear that our political system is so broken by years of gerrymandering, concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the elite, and entrenched apathy that we will never have a true representative democracy again, but I hope that we will be awake enough to the ways things are actually working, and connected enough to grace, to engage each other in the political processes
that still give power to the people, and give us the will to fight the ways the democratic ideal has been adulterated. I commit to taking the actions I can take to make a better future possible.
In response to fear, we can hope. Hope is a powerful tool. Last week I went to the Canadian Human Rights Museum. They have an exhibit about Nelson Mandela. One of the items is a letter he wrote when he was offered parole. He refused it because he had more hope than he had need of freedom. In the letter he expresses the lament that release from prison was not freedom while apartheid still existed. He had hope that his suffering would call enough attention to the injustice that allowed it to overthrow the system. Hope is a powerful tool.
In response to fear, we can rest in grace. If we are too afraid to make a mistake to reach across the gap, the gap is never crossed. In this way the culture of racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia continue. But if we are willing to act a little foolish, to admit our ignorance, to do the best we know how to live into the church we dream of being, knowing we are not perfect and likely ignorant of the ways in which we are not perfect, we can cross the gap. If we are willing to allow others to act a little foolish and forgive their ignorance in light of their hearts being in the right place, we can rest in grace and the gap can be crossed.
Hope and, grace.
These, I think, are the best spiritual response to fear, but both are powerful only in actions.
Hope is not just “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” (Emily Dickinson) Hope is an action verb and grace is its constant companion. Hope is the push you need to go from “someone should say something about this” to writing letters and holding signs. Grace is the motivation to stand toe to toe with the lone counter protestor, discuss what is in our hearts, and demand that we treat each other with love. Hope is the step between criticizing our current political system and registering to vote, voting, and communicating regularly with our elected officials. And to work towards the same voting access for everyone.
Grace is the ability to see those elected officials, and their supporters, as complicated humans with strengths and weaknesses and hearts we can connect with, no matter their political party and ours. Hope is the ability to dream God’s dream for the world, to see it, really see it and believe it is possible to get there through our own actions and interactions.
Grace is the ability to function in a world that has not yet met those dreams, to not be stopped in our tracks by the ways we have not yet met that dream.
In the face of fear, hope.
In the face of fear, grace.
One of my colleagues posted in our pastor chat group this week: “How are you all keeping hope? Usually I have no problem, but lately it has become so hard.” My answer? “Jesus.” Someone said, “Say more.”
Friends, our world is no farther from God’s dream for the world now than it was in Jesus’ time. And Jesus managed to bring a message of hope and grace and our ability to wield real spiritual power in the face of seemingly overwhelming political and economic power.
Jesus is the head of our church. What more hope do we need?
Rev. Michelle Webber
July 22nd, 2018
Last week I admitted to some fears I have. I think a lot of us live in fear right now. I have spent a lot of this week thinking about what the healthiest spiritual response to fear is.
It started on Monday when I decided to watch a movie I had paused the night before when my kid required my attention. It is a movie called “Goodbye Christopher Robin.” I have long been a huge fan of the Winnie-the-pooh (WTP) series so it had been on my watch list since it came out. I thought I’d watch it while I had my breakfast and then continue it after dinner that night.
I thought it would be a charming, good-hearted story about a boy and his father. While it is a story about a boy and his father and parts can be described as charming, it is about a father with PTSD who doesn’t often bother with his son, but becomes inspired, after spending a brief time as the son’s sole caregiver, to make up a good-hearted, charming story about a boy and his toys. As the story takes off, heartening a nation depressed by WW1, instead of re-investing in the boy, the father lets the PR machine use the boy. Once he realized the effect this is having on the boy, he sends the boy away to boarding school.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the movie.
All the boy wants is his father’s attention. The magic of the WTP stories is the love and attention paid to Christopher Robin through his toys. But the more joy and heart the stories bring to the country, the sadder is the actual boy.
Now, the father could have returned to spending time with the boy, refilled his creative well with the very thing that sparked it to begin with, but instead he sends the boy to boarding school. I suppose this was normal for England at the time.
The movie ruptured the magic of the Winnie-the-pooh stories for me. I’ve been to New York to see the stuffed animals where they are on display. I own all of the books, and the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet. I have a collection of memorabilia. As a teenager I painted my room to match the classic WTP book ends I had. As a child I had a stuffed WTP that went everywhere with me.
WTP has been my life-long friend.
But to think that it’s publishing was partly to blame for the neglect of a child. For me, this is like discovering the American Dream only exists on the backs of whole groups of people oppressed so others could climb. Heart breaking and fear inducing.
Then, in the movie, came WW2. Christopher Robin, or Billy Moon as his parents called him at home, is old enough to be drafted into the army. This, of course, is his parent’s worst nightmare. His father was emotionally crippled by his PTSD (or shell shock as they called it at the time) from WWI. Luckily, Christopher Robin fails his medical exam. But he begs his father to use his influence as a famous writer to get him into the army anyway. And he does.
The unthinkable happens. The father gets a telegram that the boy is missing and presumed dead.
Now, I am a student of WWII. I read biography after biography of people who lived in occupied Europe. I have some pretty gruesome pictures in my mind thinking about what “missing and presumed dead” might mean.
And I am in shock.
I had this picture, based on the Winnie-the-pooh books, of a quaint, idyllic pastoral existence for Christopher Robin, doted on by his father who tells him stories about his toys to his child-like delight. And now that picture is gone, replaced by story of neglect and fear and war.
In the end, the boy comes home. He was not dead, just missing. And he thanks his father for the WTP books. He recalls how soldiers sang songs from the book to keep hope alive. And he thanks his father for giving heart back to the world after the War to End All Wars, for giving his comrades hope to hold onto at a time in their lives when it seemed hope was lost.
The fear I felt watching this movie, was because of the gap between the child-like idealism inspired in my imagination by the WTP stories and the real world. Did A.A. Milne want his son to have the kind of loved, attention-rich childhood represented in WTP? Of course, but he was a soldier with PTSD.
There is this one scene where young Billy tackles his dad and his dad has a flash back and is suddenly fighting in the war. Billy goes still and stiff and just keeps saying “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Playing with his son was a trigger for Milne.
And it is so easy for me to connect with it because it speaks a reality that has been mine my entire adult life. I grew up on the American Dream, spoon fed it from infancy. My father was a union man who supported his family with his union job. Put his two kids through college even. Life was supposed to be financially easier for me than for him. If I got a college education I would not have the financial worries of my working class family. This is the dream I was fed. And it’s just not true. American wages have remained stagnant as the cost of living has skyrocketed, and a college education does not guarantee a living wage. While our country has had unprecedented corporate profits, those gains have been solidified into the hands of the wealthiest of people. Never before in American history have so few controlled so much.
I could live in this fear, caused by the gap between our dream for the world and the world the way it actually is. I think a lot of our country is living in this fear.
But I have something not everyone has. I have faith. And I believe in grace.
Ephesians says that by Grace we have been saved.
Grace fills in the gap between what we imagine is possible and what is actually happening. I imagined this idyllic life for Christopher Robin, and so too did his father, but the truth was different. God comes into that difference, that gap, and fills it in with Grace. And in this way Christopher Robin can see the power of his father’s words and forgive him for the gap. Grace fills in the gap between how I thought the world was with the American Dream and how it actually is so that I can set about the work of making reality come closer to the dream.
This is true on smaller scales, as well. Grace steps into the gap between who we strive to be as a community of Christ and who we actually are in any given moment. As a congregation we strive to live as one community. To recognize the full humanity of all individuals. To not seek to erase our God-given diversity, but to celebrate it and to seek justice as we journey together in faith toward greater understanding and mutual respect. We are guided by the teaching of Jesus, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), as we seek to embody the words “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” We do our best to intentionally welcome, celebrate, stand with, and affirm all individuals including, but not limited to, those of every ability, age, class, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender identity and expression, or sexual orientation into full fellowship and participation in the life of the church. Acknowledging our human imperfections, we strive, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to become more like Jesus in our love and support of one another. We seek to oppose and overcome any injustice, oppression, or prejudice that continue in our society, our communities, our church, and ourselves. [First Congregational UCC Welcome Statement Revised 2018]
This is our dream for our church family. Sometimes we are spot on, but this statement is also aspirational. Our dream for Christian community relies on grace to fill the gap between the dream and where we are at any given moment. So when we stumble, fall back on Grace. When we make mistakes, let us rest in grace instead of shame. When someone in our church family offends us, let us respond in grace instead of pain. Let us assume the best we can about each other here so this can be a place a refuge, but also of experimentation for overcoming the history of prejudice we inherit.
If we live as if grace is real, as if equality is how God intends the world, we can forgive the small ways we transgress, and organize ourselves to be a force in the world to respond to the big ways the world falls short of God’s dream.
So what is the best spiritual response to fear?
I fear the individuals who make up our church are so hurt by the history of oppression in our country or so blind to our own privilege that creating a unified community of love is impossible, but I hope that our hearts are big enough and grace is real enough for us to see the gap and do the work needed to cross it. I commit to doing the things that will help us see the gap, rest in grace, and cross it together.
I fear that our political system is so broken by years of gerrymandering, concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the elite, and entrenched apathy that we will never have a true representative democracy again, but I hope that we will be awake enough to the ways things are actually working, and connected enough to grace, to engage each other in the political processes
that still give power to the people, and give us the will to fight the ways the democratic ideal has been adulterated. I commit to taking the actions I can take to make a better future possible.
In response to fear, we can hope. Hope is a powerful tool. Last week I went to the Canadian Human Rights Museum. They have an exhibit about Nelson Mandela. One of the items is a letter he wrote when he was offered parole. He refused it because he had more hope than he had need of freedom. In the letter he expresses the lament that release from prison was not freedom while apartheid still existed. He had hope that his suffering would call enough attention to the injustice that allowed it to overthrow the system. Hope is a powerful tool.
In response to fear, we can rest in grace. If we are too afraid to make a mistake to reach across the gap, the gap is never crossed. In this way the culture of racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia continue. But if we are willing to act a little foolish, to admit our ignorance, to do the best we know how to live into the church we dream of being, knowing we are not perfect and likely ignorant of the ways in which we are not perfect, we can cross the gap. If we are willing to allow others to act a little foolish and forgive their ignorance in light of their hearts being in the right place, we can rest in grace and the gap can be crossed.
Hope and, grace.
These, I think, are the best spiritual response to fear, but both are powerful only in actions.
Hope is not just “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” (Emily Dickinson) Hope is an action verb and grace is its constant companion. Hope is the push you need to go from “someone should say something about this” to writing letters and holding signs. Grace is the motivation to stand toe to toe with the lone counter protestor, discuss what is in our hearts, and demand that we treat each other with love. Hope is the step between criticizing our current political system and registering to vote, voting, and communicating regularly with our elected officials. And to work towards the same voting access for everyone.
Grace is the ability to see those elected officials, and their supporters, as complicated humans with strengths and weaknesses and hearts we can connect with, no matter their political party and ours. Hope is the ability to dream God’s dream for the world, to see it, really see it and believe it is possible to get there through our own actions and interactions.
Grace is the ability to function in a world that has not yet met those dreams, to not be stopped in our tracks by the ways we have not yet met that dream.
In the face of fear, hope.
In the face of fear, grace.
One of my colleagues posted in our pastor chat group this week: “How are you all keeping hope? Usually I have no problem, but lately it has become so hard.” My answer? “Jesus.” Someone said, “Say more.”
Friends, our world is no farther from God’s dream for the world now than it was in Jesus’ time. And Jesus managed to bring a message of hope and grace and our ability to wield real spiritual power in the face of seemingly overwhelming political and economic power.
Jesus is the head of our church. What more hope do we need?
The Stone the Builders Rejected
1 Samuel 1534-16:13
Mark 4:26-34
Rev. Michelle Webber
First Congregational UCC Moorhead
June 17, 2018
One of the speakers at the Festival of Homiletics was Rev. Grace Imathiu, a UMC minister, who was raised in Kenya. Pastor Grace talked about how when we tell stories we have to choose our details. In telling one story we necessarily move some characters to the margins because we are telling the story of a different character. The bible is rife with these marginal characters and today’s story is no exception.
Our story about Samuel continues as God decides to cast aside King Saul, the precedent protagonist in the story, because he was not doing what God wanted him to do. Some authors will tell you this happens when writing. You start out to tell a certain story and the one that comes out is a different story. So, unhappy with the protagonist King Saul, God sends Samuel to bless a new person God will make a king. In the best story telling format, this new king is not crowned right away. We have to wait through the dramatic saga of his life before he is crowned.
Remember that Samuel was born at a time when God’s voice was not often heard. It was rare. But Samuel heard the voice of God
and people grew to trust him. So Samuel brings the anointing oil and goes to visit Jesse, as God has instructed. You know Jesse, the stump whose shoot will produce Jesus generation after this story? Well, until this point Jesse is a bit player pushed to the margins. He is not even of the same lineage (tribe) as Saul. God is refocusing the story onto the marginal characters who have been going on about their lives in the background.
Saul was the first King of Israel. Originally only God was revered as monarch of the 12 tribes, but this put them at a disadvantage with other tribes, because of a lack of centralized leadership. If we have to wait for a prophet to commune with God, Or a judge to decide what is lawful we act much slower than those whose kings give directives. And so Israel became a monarchy and God interpreted this as infidelity. When things went well, they praised the king. He was a great king. The best king ever. When things went poorly, they blamed the king. They worshiped the king, who used power for his personal gain, taking away from the worship of Yahweh.
God turns from King Saul and sends Samuel to go to Jesse and ask to see his sons. Samuel is no fool. He says to God, “Dude, if I go to submit an offering at Jesse’s altar and anoint one of his sons, Saul will be after me. He will kill me.” Saul wasn’t exactly known for his mercy. And loyalty expected above all else.
God replies, “don’t worry about Saul. He’s not in my favor any longer. Just go do the sacrifice. Invite Jesse and I’ll tell you the rest as we go along.” Samuel must have really trusted God because that doesn’t sound like much of a reassurance. But still, with this reassurance, off Samuel goes to Jesse.
He makes an offering on the behalf of Jesse and his sons, who come to witness it. One by one Jesse’s sons come before Samuel, and Samuel is ready to anoint the one God directs to show that God’s power will come upon him. As we would expect in a hierarchical patriarchy, the sons come in birth order. First Eliab, the oldest, biggest, strongest of Jesse’s sons. And Samuel thinks, “Of course this is the one! If Jesse’s lineage is to produce a King, it must be the eldest, who inherits his father’s birth rite and who is strongest. Clearly he will be the figure head of the great almighty Yahweh. But God tells Samuel to let Eliab pass. God does not judge on appearance, on the size of the next king, or the physical prowess, but on what is in his heart. So big, strong, eldest Eliab is allowed to pass by. Then comes Abinadab, then Shammah, on down the line, seven sons of Jesse pass before Samuel and God’s only response is, “Nope, not this one either.” Remember, God was looking into their hearts, trying to find a ruler who would be faithful.
Finally Samuel says, “Ok Jesse. What gives? You must have another son.” Jesse is taken a back. All of his good sons are here. The ones everyone would look to for leadership. They are brawny and strong. They are successful in business. They do good deals.
They obey their father and live according to the letter of the laws. The only one left is the scrawny littlest one, David, who is out with the sheep. David is weak and small. Jesse says, “There’s David, but…David? He is only good for tending the sheep.” Samuel replies, “Well, I better see this David. We will all stand here until he comes.”
Remember David is out with the sheep, following the sheep. Perhaps he is in the fold, if it is night, but if it is day he is out wandering from good grass to good grass. So they send someone to fetch David, someone who can be trusted with the sheep while David is away. And he has to find David and send him back. This might have taken hours. In the meantime, the rest of them stand there, waiting.
Imagine the annoyance of the seven brothers, called before the prophet Samuel, expecting a blessing, but instead made to stand and wait on the youngest.
David comes in, likely quite confused. His cheeks are ruddy, perhaps from being in the elements with the sheep, perhaps from running in from the fields. He is what we would call the picture of health, a sun-kissed glow and bright eyes. But he is so young, so small.
God says to Samuel, “This is the one!” Samuel pours the oil on his head, anointing him, and the story shifts from King Saul to little David.
The Lord comes upon David mightily from that day forward. We know that is not the end of the story of David. In fact it is years before he is king. His story is a saga. He becomes renowned for his musical gifts and for the fact that he had God’s favor.
As it comes to pass Saul becomes tormented with fits. One of his advisors calls for David to come to court to play the lyre for Saul to calm him when he is having fits. Saul comes to rely on David, making him not just court musician, but also his armor-bearer. And it is in this capacity that David slays Goliath.
In time Saul feels the shift, the fact that God’s story is being told with David in the lead, instead of himself and he seeks to kill David. This happens when people in power seek mainly to continue their power. Any threat to their authority is met with anger and actions that root out opposition, seeking to discredit or remove it.
I could recount for you all the intrigue and the battles of David’s life, as he evades Saul’s attempt to regain control of God’s favor. There is the love story between David and Jesse’s son Jonathon, who is constantly putting off his father’s attempts on David’s life.
And the love story between David and Jesse’s daughter Michal, given in marriage to David so that he would promise to go fight the Phillistines, and hopefully die doing so. David gets around. It’s not just Jonathan and Michal, but later Nabal’s wife Abigail and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.
God’s leaders are seldom perfect. They come with their own flaws and make their own mistakes, but as long as they remain faithful to God, they have God’s power.
We know how this story ends because David becomes not just the protagonist of today’s story, but the pinnacle of Israel. He will be king and rule over the united kingdom, the first king to rule all twelve tribes simultaneously. David is the glory days. And forever more Israel will look back and dream of a day when a Messiah will come to restore them to the glory days of King David.
This is what God does, takes those on the margins, uses their innate skills to bring the spirit into the world, despite their human shortcomings. The one thing God asks is that we not seek power for power’s sake, but serve God.
David was a scrawny kid good only for tending sheep, but the Lord came upon him and made him king. He was not a perfect man. He was not a perfect king. In the Hebrew Scriptures perfection is not a requirement to be receive God’s blessing, but faithfulness is.
Remaining true at least, but not only to the letter of the law, remaining true to the spirit of the law and not putting anything else before love of God, not money, not power, not safety.
Both the Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus ask us to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and all of our minds and all of our souls. King Saul’s downfall was that he loved power more. What do you love more than God?
Ours is an interesting time in history. Our forefathers “brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”[1] They imbued the new nation with a new concept, the separation of church and state. They had seen the ways that power distorts religion, how religion can be used to reinforce and wield power and they wanted to protect their religion from the power of politics. What an interesting week this has been in light of this founding ideal.
Like the character God in 1 Samuel, our founding fathers were seeking the right balance between ruling a nation, protecting the people of the nation, and serving God, as they understood God, faithfully. One of the main messages of the festival of homiletics was that we must preach politics, that to avoid political discourse in sermons is to argue that God, that the teachings of Jesus, have nothing to offer to our current political climate. But there is a fine line.
During the last presidential election I was careful to talk about political discourse and not political candidates. I want us, as a country, to do the things Brene Brown calls us to in her book “Braving the Wilderness,” to speak truth to bullshit, but be civil. I want us to do what the character God calls us to in 1 Samuel, to exert our earthly power, but to do so in a way that keeps love of God at the center of our lives.
I want each of us not to make politics part of our religion, but to bring our faith into every aspect of our lives. The question, “What would Jesus do?” ought to apply as much to our political views and actions as to our interpersonal relationships. This week our sacred text was used as a political tool to justify unimaginable cruelty.
In light of the fact that, in my lifetime, my parent’s lifetime, there has been a shift of worldview from modern to postmodern.
It is amazing to me how wise our forefathers were in warning what might become of our democratic experiment.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Benjamin Franklin
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” James Madison
“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Thomas Jefferson
While these were not perfect men, they saw many perils that might befall our nation, perils which seem to be coming to pass. We live in a time when dissent is less tolerated, where loyalty is rewarded before faithfulness, where laws are more complicated, when money rules politics. It is in times like these when the voices in the margins must speak the loudest. Our faith voice must meet the voice of those who use our texts for evil.
I have watched with amazement he resurgence of the Poor People’s Campaign, begun under Martin Luther King. Apparently communities have been organizing for two years before its launch. Every week since its relaunch I have read stories of United Church of Christ ministers and congregations putting themselves on the line to be the voice of those on the margins. Their mission is to “challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality.”[2] Nothing they are protesting is new. What is new is that those who have belonged to the group historically in the center of our country the supposed protagonists, people who look like me, are increasingly finding themselves pushed to the margins.
We all know the statistics about the 1%. This is not just a sound bite, but the result of a country who has not seen those on the margins as children of God, as people under the law, as deserving of the same protections and liberties as the protagonists of our national stories. We hear this in the words of the great, but flawed, men who wrote our constitution, all “men” are created equal. And we know they were not talking about all men, but only white men with money. They routinely ripped black babies from their mothers, and native children from their families.
I have recently been watching the Handmaid’s Tale. One of the things that has struck me about it is that race seems to have ceased to be a dividing line. In this story white women are enslaved alongside women of color. It points to a sad historical fact. Yes, there are always dissenters, and in the middle of them has always been the congregational church and the United Church of Christ, but the majority of privileged people do not use their power to protect others when they see themselves as the protagonist of the story.
It is imperative that we listen to the voices on the margin,that we refocus the story onto those who have been left out of the narrative.
One of the tenants of the shift beyond the modernist worldview is a refocusing on who the protagonist of the story is. In a modernist worldview history was told from the voice of the victor. When my favorite professor wanted to study African History in the universities of American and Europe, he was told there was no such history. He had to take anthropology. In the post-modern worldview we listen to the voices from the margin. This is what Pastor Grace was talking about when she told us that to tell a story
you must push some characters to the margin.
She serves a church in a mostly white community, in fact they had laws until embarrassingly recently that prevented a person of color from spending a night in their town limits. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there, he had to leave town before sundown and stay in a hotel in a neighboring city. She was sitting in a panel discussion about diversity and someone said to her, “Diversity is new here.” And she just had to find out if that was really true, if there had been stories pushed to the margins to tell the story of the all-white community. Indeed she found in the first census to mention the town, one free black woman of means.
Pastor Grace sought the stories of the marginalized like searching for a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. And when she found it, it grew. She found the story of an African-American college professor who came as a guest lecturer to the local college and stayed overnight with the minister of the church she served, a huge risk on his part. The story of her church changed from her being the only, the new, to her being a part of a history of black skinned people who lived in that town, and changed from her being the first black skinned person to sleep in their parsonage to her living in a house that was the physical reminder of the church’s history of acknowledging humanity when the laws of the town denied it.
So much changes when we change the protagonist of the story.
In very real ways this is what Jesus did to the religion he was born into; he changed the protagonist of the story.
It is what the reformers did when they broke from the Catholic church; they changed the protagonist of the story.
It is what our founding fathers did when they proclaimed their independence from England; they changed the protagonist of the story.
Jesus refocused religious life from the law to the heart; from right adherence to right relationship.
The reformers refocused religious practice from the priests to all believers; from adoration of to participation with.
The writers of our constitution refocused power from the monarch to the people.
So much changes when we change the protagonist of the story.
It should be no surprise to us, then, that change is coming to our country in the voices of our children.
We heard at the Minnesota Conference annual meeting a fifteen minute presentation by three of our conference youth who went to the March for our Lives in DC. As a conference we sent 14 youth to the march. They told us it was life changing. They said they had the courage to go because they knew the church has their back. That’s us, empowering them to be the protagonists of our story. They told us what it was like to return from the march to a pro-gun community in a small town in Minnesota when word got out they had been to the march. They told us what it felt like to feel strong in their numbers. They told us they can’t wait to be old enough to vote. They told us they are the protagonists, not only of the future, but of the present. Let us listen to their story. They can change so much.
This week we had 18,300 people cast ballots in Cass county’s election, out of a total of 135,000 eligible voters.[3] Additionally the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Ohio could purge voter roles of anyone who did not vote in the last presidential election
and does not respond to a letter mailed to them.[4]
If this were to apply to Cass county, the roughly 63,000 eligible voters[5] who did not cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election would be mailed a single letter and if they did not respond, they would no longer be eligible to vote unless they re-register in time. They could show up to the polls and be turned away. They could loose their agency as protagonists in our national story.
In the United Church of Christ we have set our faith in democracy. We believe that when we listen to the collective voices of a congregation the spirit of God can be heard. The United States is built not just on representational democracy, but on dissent. The key note speaker at our Minnesota Conference annual meeting was Ben Guess, president of the ACLU in Ohio. He told us that the ACLU has sued every sitting president for the past 100 years.
Thomas Jefferson said “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable in certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.” Wendell Berry tells us how to do it when he says, “Protest that endures… is moved by hope far more modest than that of public success: namely the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” He is calling us to use our faith, the love we have from and for God that is in all of our heart, and all of our mind and all of our soul, to keep alive the hope of a better world.
So many have looked at what is happening at our southern border and said “We are better than this.” That statement can only be made if white Americans are the protagonists. When we look at the stories of people of color in the United States, what is being done to asylum seeking immigrant families is who we have been. Think of how we treated slave families. Think of what we have done to Native families.
The power of the story of Jesus is that it is a story of transformation, a story of hope. Let us not speak from our faith against the evil we see in the world because it is new evil and not who we have been, but in hopes that we can be better.
Let us honor all of those we have deemed unworthy to do anything, but tend the sheep, or clean our houses, or pick our produce, by listening to their stories and vowing to act in ways that will make the future more just than the past. Let us see them as the protagonists of the American story, and let our hearts be filled the hope we find in the story of Jesus that transformation is possible.
[1] Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
[2] https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/
[3] https://www.westfargopioneer.com/news/government-and-politics/4459290-18300-votes-cast-cass-county-turnout-more-last-non-presidential
[4] https://therealnews.com/stories/supreme-court-allows-ohio-to-scrub-the-voter-roll
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/north-dakota
Mark 4:26-34
Rev. Michelle Webber
First Congregational UCC Moorhead
June 17, 2018
One of the speakers at the Festival of Homiletics was Rev. Grace Imathiu, a UMC minister, who was raised in Kenya. Pastor Grace talked about how when we tell stories we have to choose our details. In telling one story we necessarily move some characters to the margins because we are telling the story of a different character. The bible is rife with these marginal characters and today’s story is no exception.
Our story about Samuel continues as God decides to cast aside King Saul, the precedent protagonist in the story, because he was not doing what God wanted him to do. Some authors will tell you this happens when writing. You start out to tell a certain story and the one that comes out is a different story. So, unhappy with the protagonist King Saul, God sends Samuel to bless a new person God will make a king. In the best story telling format, this new king is not crowned right away. We have to wait through the dramatic saga of his life before he is crowned.
Remember that Samuel was born at a time when God’s voice was not often heard. It was rare. But Samuel heard the voice of God
and people grew to trust him. So Samuel brings the anointing oil and goes to visit Jesse, as God has instructed. You know Jesse, the stump whose shoot will produce Jesus generation after this story? Well, until this point Jesse is a bit player pushed to the margins. He is not even of the same lineage (tribe) as Saul. God is refocusing the story onto the marginal characters who have been going on about their lives in the background.
Saul was the first King of Israel. Originally only God was revered as monarch of the 12 tribes, but this put them at a disadvantage with other tribes, because of a lack of centralized leadership. If we have to wait for a prophet to commune with God, Or a judge to decide what is lawful we act much slower than those whose kings give directives. And so Israel became a monarchy and God interpreted this as infidelity. When things went well, they praised the king. He was a great king. The best king ever. When things went poorly, they blamed the king. They worshiped the king, who used power for his personal gain, taking away from the worship of Yahweh.
God turns from King Saul and sends Samuel to go to Jesse and ask to see his sons. Samuel is no fool. He says to God, “Dude, if I go to submit an offering at Jesse’s altar and anoint one of his sons, Saul will be after me. He will kill me.” Saul wasn’t exactly known for his mercy. And loyalty expected above all else.
God replies, “don’t worry about Saul. He’s not in my favor any longer. Just go do the sacrifice. Invite Jesse and I’ll tell you the rest as we go along.” Samuel must have really trusted God because that doesn’t sound like much of a reassurance. But still, with this reassurance, off Samuel goes to Jesse.
He makes an offering on the behalf of Jesse and his sons, who come to witness it. One by one Jesse’s sons come before Samuel, and Samuel is ready to anoint the one God directs to show that God’s power will come upon him. As we would expect in a hierarchical patriarchy, the sons come in birth order. First Eliab, the oldest, biggest, strongest of Jesse’s sons. And Samuel thinks, “Of course this is the one! If Jesse’s lineage is to produce a King, it must be the eldest, who inherits his father’s birth rite and who is strongest. Clearly he will be the figure head of the great almighty Yahweh. But God tells Samuel to let Eliab pass. God does not judge on appearance, on the size of the next king, or the physical prowess, but on what is in his heart. So big, strong, eldest Eliab is allowed to pass by. Then comes Abinadab, then Shammah, on down the line, seven sons of Jesse pass before Samuel and God’s only response is, “Nope, not this one either.” Remember, God was looking into their hearts, trying to find a ruler who would be faithful.
Finally Samuel says, “Ok Jesse. What gives? You must have another son.” Jesse is taken a back. All of his good sons are here. The ones everyone would look to for leadership. They are brawny and strong. They are successful in business. They do good deals.
They obey their father and live according to the letter of the laws. The only one left is the scrawny littlest one, David, who is out with the sheep. David is weak and small. Jesse says, “There’s David, but…David? He is only good for tending the sheep.” Samuel replies, “Well, I better see this David. We will all stand here until he comes.”
Remember David is out with the sheep, following the sheep. Perhaps he is in the fold, if it is night, but if it is day he is out wandering from good grass to good grass. So they send someone to fetch David, someone who can be trusted with the sheep while David is away. And he has to find David and send him back. This might have taken hours. In the meantime, the rest of them stand there, waiting.
Imagine the annoyance of the seven brothers, called before the prophet Samuel, expecting a blessing, but instead made to stand and wait on the youngest.
David comes in, likely quite confused. His cheeks are ruddy, perhaps from being in the elements with the sheep, perhaps from running in from the fields. He is what we would call the picture of health, a sun-kissed glow and bright eyes. But he is so young, so small.
God says to Samuel, “This is the one!” Samuel pours the oil on his head, anointing him, and the story shifts from King Saul to little David.
The Lord comes upon David mightily from that day forward. We know that is not the end of the story of David. In fact it is years before he is king. His story is a saga. He becomes renowned for his musical gifts and for the fact that he had God’s favor.
As it comes to pass Saul becomes tormented with fits. One of his advisors calls for David to come to court to play the lyre for Saul to calm him when he is having fits. Saul comes to rely on David, making him not just court musician, but also his armor-bearer. And it is in this capacity that David slays Goliath.
In time Saul feels the shift, the fact that God’s story is being told with David in the lead, instead of himself and he seeks to kill David. This happens when people in power seek mainly to continue their power. Any threat to their authority is met with anger and actions that root out opposition, seeking to discredit or remove it.
I could recount for you all the intrigue and the battles of David’s life, as he evades Saul’s attempt to regain control of God’s favor. There is the love story between David and Jesse’s son Jonathon, who is constantly putting off his father’s attempts on David’s life.
And the love story between David and Jesse’s daughter Michal, given in marriage to David so that he would promise to go fight the Phillistines, and hopefully die doing so. David gets around. It’s not just Jonathan and Michal, but later Nabal’s wife Abigail and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.
God’s leaders are seldom perfect. They come with their own flaws and make their own mistakes, but as long as they remain faithful to God, they have God’s power.
We know how this story ends because David becomes not just the protagonist of today’s story, but the pinnacle of Israel. He will be king and rule over the united kingdom, the first king to rule all twelve tribes simultaneously. David is the glory days. And forever more Israel will look back and dream of a day when a Messiah will come to restore them to the glory days of King David.
This is what God does, takes those on the margins, uses their innate skills to bring the spirit into the world, despite their human shortcomings. The one thing God asks is that we not seek power for power’s sake, but serve God.
David was a scrawny kid good only for tending sheep, but the Lord came upon him and made him king. He was not a perfect man. He was not a perfect king. In the Hebrew Scriptures perfection is not a requirement to be receive God’s blessing, but faithfulness is.
Remaining true at least, but not only to the letter of the law, remaining true to the spirit of the law and not putting anything else before love of God, not money, not power, not safety.
Both the Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus ask us to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and all of our minds and all of our souls. King Saul’s downfall was that he loved power more. What do you love more than God?
Ours is an interesting time in history. Our forefathers “brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”[1] They imbued the new nation with a new concept, the separation of church and state. They had seen the ways that power distorts religion, how religion can be used to reinforce and wield power and they wanted to protect their religion from the power of politics. What an interesting week this has been in light of this founding ideal.
Like the character God in 1 Samuel, our founding fathers were seeking the right balance between ruling a nation, protecting the people of the nation, and serving God, as they understood God, faithfully. One of the main messages of the festival of homiletics was that we must preach politics, that to avoid political discourse in sermons is to argue that God, that the teachings of Jesus, have nothing to offer to our current political climate. But there is a fine line.
During the last presidential election I was careful to talk about political discourse and not political candidates. I want us, as a country, to do the things Brene Brown calls us to in her book “Braving the Wilderness,” to speak truth to bullshit, but be civil. I want us to do what the character God calls us to in 1 Samuel, to exert our earthly power, but to do so in a way that keeps love of God at the center of our lives.
I want each of us not to make politics part of our religion, but to bring our faith into every aspect of our lives. The question, “What would Jesus do?” ought to apply as much to our political views and actions as to our interpersonal relationships. This week our sacred text was used as a political tool to justify unimaginable cruelty.
In light of the fact that, in my lifetime, my parent’s lifetime, there has been a shift of worldview from modern to postmodern.
It is amazing to me how wise our forefathers were in warning what might become of our democratic experiment.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Benjamin Franklin
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” James Madison
“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Thomas Jefferson
While these were not perfect men, they saw many perils that might befall our nation, perils which seem to be coming to pass. We live in a time when dissent is less tolerated, where loyalty is rewarded before faithfulness, where laws are more complicated, when money rules politics. It is in times like these when the voices in the margins must speak the loudest. Our faith voice must meet the voice of those who use our texts for evil.
I have watched with amazement he resurgence of the Poor People’s Campaign, begun under Martin Luther King. Apparently communities have been organizing for two years before its launch. Every week since its relaunch I have read stories of United Church of Christ ministers and congregations putting themselves on the line to be the voice of those on the margins. Their mission is to “challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality.”[2] Nothing they are protesting is new. What is new is that those who have belonged to the group historically in the center of our country the supposed protagonists, people who look like me, are increasingly finding themselves pushed to the margins.
We all know the statistics about the 1%. This is not just a sound bite, but the result of a country who has not seen those on the margins as children of God, as people under the law, as deserving of the same protections and liberties as the protagonists of our national stories. We hear this in the words of the great, but flawed, men who wrote our constitution, all “men” are created equal. And we know they were not talking about all men, but only white men with money. They routinely ripped black babies from their mothers, and native children from their families.
I have recently been watching the Handmaid’s Tale. One of the things that has struck me about it is that race seems to have ceased to be a dividing line. In this story white women are enslaved alongside women of color. It points to a sad historical fact. Yes, there are always dissenters, and in the middle of them has always been the congregational church and the United Church of Christ, but the majority of privileged people do not use their power to protect others when they see themselves as the protagonist of the story.
It is imperative that we listen to the voices on the margin,that we refocus the story onto those who have been left out of the narrative.
One of the tenants of the shift beyond the modernist worldview is a refocusing on who the protagonist of the story is. In a modernist worldview history was told from the voice of the victor. When my favorite professor wanted to study African History in the universities of American and Europe, he was told there was no such history. He had to take anthropology. In the post-modern worldview we listen to the voices from the margin. This is what Pastor Grace was talking about when she told us that to tell a story
you must push some characters to the margin.
She serves a church in a mostly white community, in fact they had laws until embarrassingly recently that prevented a person of color from spending a night in their town limits. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there, he had to leave town before sundown and stay in a hotel in a neighboring city. She was sitting in a panel discussion about diversity and someone said to her, “Diversity is new here.” And she just had to find out if that was really true, if there had been stories pushed to the margins to tell the story of the all-white community. Indeed she found in the first census to mention the town, one free black woman of means.
Pastor Grace sought the stories of the marginalized like searching for a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. And when she found it, it grew. She found the story of an African-American college professor who came as a guest lecturer to the local college and stayed overnight with the minister of the church she served, a huge risk on his part. The story of her church changed from her being the only, the new, to her being a part of a history of black skinned people who lived in that town, and changed from her being the first black skinned person to sleep in their parsonage to her living in a house that was the physical reminder of the church’s history of acknowledging humanity when the laws of the town denied it.
So much changes when we change the protagonist of the story.
In very real ways this is what Jesus did to the religion he was born into; he changed the protagonist of the story.
It is what the reformers did when they broke from the Catholic church; they changed the protagonist of the story.
It is what our founding fathers did when they proclaimed their independence from England; they changed the protagonist of the story.
Jesus refocused religious life from the law to the heart; from right adherence to right relationship.
The reformers refocused religious practice from the priests to all believers; from adoration of to participation with.
The writers of our constitution refocused power from the monarch to the people.
So much changes when we change the protagonist of the story.
It should be no surprise to us, then, that change is coming to our country in the voices of our children.
We heard at the Minnesota Conference annual meeting a fifteen minute presentation by three of our conference youth who went to the March for our Lives in DC. As a conference we sent 14 youth to the march. They told us it was life changing. They said they had the courage to go because they knew the church has their back. That’s us, empowering them to be the protagonists of our story. They told us what it was like to return from the march to a pro-gun community in a small town in Minnesota when word got out they had been to the march. They told us what it felt like to feel strong in their numbers. They told us they can’t wait to be old enough to vote. They told us they are the protagonists, not only of the future, but of the present. Let us listen to their story. They can change so much.
This week we had 18,300 people cast ballots in Cass county’s election, out of a total of 135,000 eligible voters.[3] Additionally the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Ohio could purge voter roles of anyone who did not vote in the last presidential election
and does not respond to a letter mailed to them.[4]
If this were to apply to Cass county, the roughly 63,000 eligible voters[5] who did not cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election would be mailed a single letter and if they did not respond, they would no longer be eligible to vote unless they re-register in time. They could show up to the polls and be turned away. They could loose their agency as protagonists in our national story.
In the United Church of Christ we have set our faith in democracy. We believe that when we listen to the collective voices of a congregation the spirit of God can be heard. The United States is built not just on representational democracy, but on dissent. The key note speaker at our Minnesota Conference annual meeting was Ben Guess, president of the ACLU in Ohio. He told us that the ACLU has sued every sitting president for the past 100 years.
Thomas Jefferson said “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable in certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.” Wendell Berry tells us how to do it when he says, “Protest that endures… is moved by hope far more modest than that of public success: namely the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” He is calling us to use our faith, the love we have from and for God that is in all of our heart, and all of our mind and all of our soul, to keep alive the hope of a better world.
So many have looked at what is happening at our southern border and said “We are better than this.” That statement can only be made if white Americans are the protagonists. When we look at the stories of people of color in the United States, what is being done to asylum seeking immigrant families is who we have been. Think of how we treated slave families. Think of what we have done to Native families.
The power of the story of Jesus is that it is a story of transformation, a story of hope. Let us not speak from our faith against the evil we see in the world because it is new evil and not who we have been, but in hopes that we can be better.
Let us honor all of those we have deemed unworthy to do anything, but tend the sheep, or clean our houses, or pick our produce, by listening to their stories and vowing to act in ways that will make the future more just than the past. Let us see them as the protagonists of the American story, and let our hearts be filled the hope we find in the story of Jesus that transformation is possible.
[1] Abraham Lincoln The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
[2] https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/
[3] https://www.westfargopioneer.com/news/government-and-politics/4459290-18300-votes-cast-cass-county-turnout-more-last-non-presidential
[4] https://therealnews.com/stories/supreme-court-allows-ohio-to-scrub-the-voter-roll
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/north-dakota