Forsythia

      The forsythia out the back door of the church is bravely trying to bloom; it probably will be in full flower by Sunday.  But it is still a bit tentative today on Friday.

      Just a few adventurous or foolhardy (or just plain hardy) buds around Dundee, but we’re a bit higher in elevation than here.  There are beginning traces of yellow in Watkins Glen when I drove through, but Seneca Lake is a lot colder even than Cayuga, so it’s a bit behind.  But coming into Ithaca is reassuring these last couple of days.  On the warm hillsides and in the valley, forsythia and other flowers are beginning to bloom.  But coming up the hill to the church I’ve noticed that while forsythia are well established at the bottom of my commute, they get thinner as I drive up the elevation, not so many a third of the way up, not many at all at the top, until the parking lot shows more promise than actuality!

      Spring, like a lot of things, takes a while to make its way up the hill or south to north.
Easter’s new life takes a while to make its way through human life, with the bands of newness inching their way up the elevations.  This is true on the huge, cosmic level, for we just have to look at the news to see evil and death have not relinquished the earth.  But still the little blooms of Christianity and other religious perspectives keep popping up, sometimes like crocus through the snow or forsythia in the sleet.  It is true on the individual level when we and those we care about cope despite bad things happening and sickness and the reverses of life.  Forsythia is a pretty tough plant even though its blossoms are fragile.  And it is true on the congregational level.  The little flowerets of the future of this congregation are just starting to make their presence know as slightly swelling buds.  Clearly, there is a lot of work ahead for the Search Committee— Patricia, Monica, Ray, Tove, George, Cindy, Bob, and Elizabeth— who have just started meeting, but we can be absolutely sure that even if it seems perhaps too slowly, their work will blossom.  The long delay in spring’s arrival and the creeping progress of forsythia blooms up the heights give us a parable of waiting for the slow and steady progress to bust out in full bloom.  And anyone who is used to waiting for spring in Ithaca knows it will take longer than we want, but wow, how nice it is when it arrives.  So I’d like to remind you to be as patient with the process as you are with forsythia and tulips.  If we can tough out “Spring” 2014, FCC can handle any search process, right?

      Come join us Sunday as we commission our Search Committee and rejoice in the bright flowering of resurrection, of spring in our souls, and of our faith in the life to come!

                                                                                     In Christ,
                                                                                        
                                                                                               David            


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the New Testament      Acts 2: 14a, 22-32
      From the Epistles                  1 Peter 1:3-9
      From the Gospel                   John 20:19-31

Easter

      Some years it seems winter just will never let go.  Spring’s new life seems just out of reach for so long… Even for lifelong upstate New Yorkers like me, the last couple of months have been weirder weather than usual.  Tantalizingly warm at times, then followed by winter howling still.  Last week was really discouraging as we went from grand hopes of spring actually being here to windshields full of snow and ice again.  Winter seems determined to hang on.

      Some years it seems Easter’s new life is just out of reach for so many… bad things and death just never seem to let go… Even as we have been preparing for Easter and God’s triumph over death, death has snapped back with a vengeance.  And like the bizarre weather, there have been a lot of bizarre things that have gone wrong.  It has been really out of the ordinary.  (Although the ordinary wear and tear and sadness and sorrow and separations have continued unabated, too.)  Lost airplanes.  Sunken ferries.  Mudslides which still entomb a town’s worth of victims.  Shootings and school stabbings.  Earthquakes.  Wildfires.  Truck and bus accidents.  An avalanche on Everest.  This is just strange stuff, almost like evil and death are being intentional at catching us by surprise.  It makes it hard to arrange Easter lilies and talk to children about new life.  It takes more than a little faith in things as yet unseen to believe in resurrection this year.

      Theologians write about the church living in “the time in between,” the time between Christ’s divine victory over death but before we regular humans experience it fully for ourselves.  We know in our hearts and from the Bible that the strife is over, the battle won… but bad stuff still goes on.  People we love get sick or injured or die or have discouraging reverses in their lives.  Hospitals and funeral homes are still needed.  Death seems to hang on like winter, not really relinquishing our lives to spring and Easter.  Commentators liken this to the skirmishes that still occur after the decisive battle is won but victory has not been secured.  Death is defeated but not done making us miserable.  Some preachers like to phrase it as a time when death is defeated “already but not yet.”  Although it sounds better in the long Greek or German phrases theologians use for already vanquished but not gone yet, it feels to me like this extended not-quite-spring-no-matter-what-the-calendar-says is very much the meteorological parable to this spiritual state.

      But the way we cope with the inconclusiveness of the season and its mud is not a bad way to relativize sin’s and death’s persistence.  We put away the heavy winter coats and hang the lighter jackets at the front of the closet.  We rearrange the garage so the mower is in front of the snow blower.  We plant flowers.  We decide to “Think Spring.”  We “set our minds on it.”  We set our minds on Easter beyond Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  We set our minds on life instead of distress.  It is a super set of thinking positively (which is not being blind to the negative but consciously deciding that goodness trumps it).  Thinking spiritually is very powerful, even if some of the ways we implement it are kind of simple.  We dress our children in bright Easter clothing.  We buy pastel candy eggs.  We choose to interact with the good around us instead of being dragged down by the bad.  And sometimes that is a very conscious, very intentional, very determined, very against-all-evidence choice.  We decide to see the light instead of the shadow.  We decide to look for little flowers in the mud and not the mud.  We choose life.  We choose Alleluia.

      Come join us Sunday (whether at Lakeview at 6:30 or either service at 9 or 11) for the bright shining promise of resurrection, of spring in our souls, and faith in the life to come!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            


Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Epistles                 Acts 10:34-43
       From the Gospels                 John 20:1-18

Triumph, Tragedy, Triumph

      Something former associate pastor David Kaden mentioned last weekend when he was here for the Foote Lectures came to mind about our lessons for Palm Sunday.  He mentioned the gospel writer’s use of imagery drawn from the Greek and Roman world, one of which was the Triumph, the procession through Rome by the triumphant emperor or general, displaying the treasures and captives of a fallen nation.  Of course, other cultures had their victory parades, too, including Israel many times in the Hebrew Bible.  Important people arrive in processions.

       David reminded me of some of the richness those historical contexts add to the gospel narratives of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  Unlike the big official processions that take lots of planning, Jesus’ arrival the week before Passover was spontaneous and from the people, and rather humble at that.  People cut branches and threw laundry on the road to keep the dust down, not quite the strewing of flowers before the guest of honor, but a practical way of showing respect and affection.

       In the full-bore Roman triumph, the conqueror or emperor rode a chariot with four white horses.  Incidentally, those had not happened in Rome for several generations when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, but there were smaller occasions in different cities for celebrities of non-empire standing.  Victorious generals or magistrates and such would have processions in which they rode a white horse as the guest of honor.  Israel had a tradition of kingly entries back to Saul and David and Solomon, and the branches and cloaks would have been typical.  Some commentators make much of Jesus riding a donkey instead of a horse as a sort of subversion of the state procession, but some writers have noted processions when the guest of honor was on a donkey as a sign of self-conscious humility.  In Jesus’ case, we know it was actually humility.

      Luke is a good author and trying to use the literary and social conventions of not only Israel but of Rome to reinforce his theological point about Jesus’ being the savior of the world.  So I think he plays with the conceits of the triumphant entry to emphasize and reinterpret Christ through the events of that day.  He picks up on Israelite kings— including King David, reminding us of the whole Davidic Messiah thing— processing into the capital city and the imagery of palms in Psalm 118.   He sprinkles a couple of dashes of Roman lore on it for those in the wider ancient world.  But I like the way he has the “triumphant entry” happen before anything really happens!  The victory lap seems premature, and it will seem tragically misguided as arrest and crucifixion play out.  Yet Luke knows perfectly well that the triumph of Easter will prove it all very true and very powerful.  The real victory triumph— the victory over sin and evil and death— will be resurrection.  Christ’s resurrection.  Our resurrection.

      Come join us Sunday for palms and procession and pageantry (and pancakes) and faith in the life to come!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            


Texts For Sunday Worship:

    From the Epistles             Philippians 2:5-11
    From the Gospels            Luke 19:28-40

Set up

     This Sunday’s scripture lessons are a total set up.

      The Hebrew Scripture is Ezekiel’s noisy vision of the valley of dry bones rattling together.  The Gospel story is Jesus raising Lazarus from the tomb outside Bethany.  Both are pretty familiar to most of us, but they have added value this last Sunday of Lent 2014.

      Ezekiel is telling a totally dejected, defeated people of Israel that God is not done with them.  Even in their spiritually desiccated state in exile in the 580s B.C.E., Ezekiel’s vision told them, they were not done in yet.  They were still alive— parched, but still alive.  In fact, even if they weren’t, if they were as dry as them bones in the valley, God still could get them up and going again.  So bringing them out of exile wasn’t a trick for God.  It is time to trust that God has more of the story to go!

      John’s narrative of what happened in Bethany to Lazarus is a masterful piece of storytelling.  Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus, is desperately ill.  Instead of having the hero arrive just in the nick of time like most writers would, John has Jesus dawdle away a couple of precious days so he not only arrives after the nick of time, but days after.  So the audience knows that Lazarus is dead… really dead.  Not to put too fine a point on it, just in case the reader wasn’t paying attention, they remark that there will be a smell if they open the grave.  So it’s really clear Lazarus is dead.  By all reckoning, Jesus is too late to accomplish anything.  And, wonder of wonders, Jesus does reanimate his friend.  Nothing is impossible for Christ, for God, even coming back after death.

      So these two stories, appearing as they do just before Holy Week, are a total set up to remind us that revivification had happened before, so even as we get crowded down the apparently blind alley of Christ’s Passion, we have a glimmer of a thought that death is not the end.  Ezekiel and Lazarus are foreshadowing Jesus’ resurrection after death (and that bigger purpose is why John never really covers what might have happened to Lazarus afterwards; he’s a living plot device, if you will).  Even several days in the tomb or several hundred years in the desert sun are not going to prevent the God of life and love bringing new life beyond death.

      Way past the end of things, God is still at God’s life-giving work.  It’s hard not to recall Gracie Allen’s line, “never put a period where God puts a comma.”  So we can relax even as the gathering darkness of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday’s Crucifixion, and holy Saturday’s gloom makes it seem like the end.  We know that God does some of God’s best work after the end, and that can help us spiritually and personally get through the worst the world can throw at us.  The Bible sets us up for Easter.  In Ezekiel and Lazarus, we have sort of a trailer for Holy Week, a preview of resurrection.  There is a lot more story to go!  There is no period, just an everlasting comma.

      Come join us Sunday for an advance sample of resurrection.  But don’t just take my word for it… take David Kaden’s!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            

 
Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible        Ezekiel 37:1-14
      From the Gospels              John 11:1-45

Believing is seeing

    This Sunday we have another of the extensive readings from the Gospel of John about one of Jesus’ encounters with people on his travels, including religious authorities and scholars.  Sunday’s readings from John 9:1-41 are about a man born blind whom Jesus healed.
Clearly John means this to be an impressive healing, since someone blind since birth is a very difficult case; this is not about recovering sight but giving it where it never existed.  So Jesus is showing some pretty impressive skills on this one, raising him well above the typical wonder-working prophet.  In fact, creating vision in the man has resonance with God’s creation out of nothingness.  We, the readers, recognize that implication even if the participants don’t.

      Jesus then deftly deflects the objections of the religious powers-that-be and begins an extensive riff on spiritual blindness taking off from the physical blindness.  Not being able to recognize… or even see… how God is at work in the world is the worst sort of blindness to John, and Jesus is really, really sarcastic toward the leaders who are willfully blind to God’s new things.  Clearly, if one is unwilling to believe that God is breaking into human life in Jesus, you just can’t… or just won’t be able to grasp the good news.  In this case, you have to be willing to believe in order to see what’s in front of you.  Another problem with the authorities is how they get all upset over Jesus healing the man on the Sabbath, not imagining that their insistence on following the fixed, narrow rules might be blocking them from a new revelation of God’s ongoing grace.  They obsess over the details and don’t get the wider picture.

      In my usual search for connecting the weekly lessons to the ongoing overall life of the congregation, I’m intrigued at this context for electing the Search Committee this Sunday.  In fact, much of the Search Committee’s first work will be trying to discern, trying to see ahead to where God is going with this congregation.  If a Search Committee takes its task merely as finding a qualified applicant for a position description without also seeking to discern the overall direction and vision for a congregation, rooted in God’s call to that congregation, it will have, a least, poor eyesight, if not downright blindness to God’s light.  But it will take some time for our Search Committee to pull all the data from our congregational self-study into focus, to see God’s calling.  Firstly, give the Committee lots of time to do that work.  And to do it right!  Help them by working with them if they ask the congregation for more of your thoughts or want to bounce their developing ideas off you.  Be good partners in the process.  Secondly, don’t crowd them as they crystallize the vision.  Don’t be on their case like the Pharisees were on the man’s case!  When you are feeling impatient, take a deep breath and instead of asking what’s taking so long, pray for their vision and efforts.  Believe that when they figure out what they are seeing, they will help you see it too.

      And believe that somewhere, in due time, someone will see what the Search Committee sees about this church and will want to join you in your walk forward into God’s future.  Believing is seeing.

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            

Please attend the congregational meeting this Sunday after worship to elect our Search Committee.  And stay for the luncheon sponsored by the Women’s Ministry after that!

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Epistles              Ephesians 5:8-14
      From the Gospels             John 9:1-41

 

It was an hour, actually.

      On Saturday, March 26, 1949 at 10 pm, there was a radio broadcast sponsored by the major protestant denominations, called “One Great Hour,” to aid postwar recovery and rebuilding in Europe.  Notables like Gregory Peck and Ida Lupino and President Truman participated. The broadcast closed with a request that listeners attend their local church the following morning and make contributions.  It was the culmination of an idea by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 1946 when there was a goal of a million dollars for the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief.  On radio he challenged to raise “one million dollars in one hour.”  It worked.  American churchgoers responded.  They shared.

      As important as the money was, it was just as amazing that many major mainlines participated, and the united effort set the groundwork for much mission giving since.  A distinctive feature is that the relief work of the separate denominations is supported under the overall umbrella of One Great Hour of Sharing.  The ecumenical banner, theme, interpretation, and, well, “branding,” provide a unified invitation, despite denominations’ separate agencies delivering the aid.  Much of the coordination is with Church World Service, the relief, development, and refugee assistance arm of the National Council of the Churches.  OGHS works with the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Relief Fund and the Jewish Passover Appeal.

      As an example, the same campaign will nourish the UCC’s Neighbors in Need offering and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  Even more, when Superstorm Sandy hit NYC, NJ, and Long Island, both the UCC and PDA responded in partnership.  After the Sandy Hook school shooting, the UCC Churches called on PDA’s response teams who had expertise in community traumas because such assistance was not available through UCC in the area.  There are amazing stories of other inter-denominational relief response beyond the two I am most familiar with.  It is a far deeper and richer meaning for “sharing” than merely sharing offering money; it is sharing help and hope.

      Like many congregations, First Congregational has a deep and faithful history of sharing through OGHS, and I will simply remind you of the good works done through this offering over the years and encourage you to be generous yet again this year.

      I’m also going to suggest that you take an hour (see what I did there?!?) to explore http://onegreathourofsharing.org and http://www.ucc.org/oghs/ (of course, I love the background from onegreathourofsharing.org/the-history-of-one-great-hour-of-sharing/) and learn about all the ways people all over in difficult situations have been helped through OGHS.  And, obviously, I hope that inspires you share more generously in March to FCC’s offering.  Use the envelopes in the pews or mail it to the church office.  Sharing is incredibly powerful.  Share.

      Let’s have a great month of sharing!
                                                                                   
                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            



Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible         Exodus 17:1-7
      From the Epistles                 Romans 5:1-11
      From the Gospels                John 4:5-42

Moving on

      Nicodemus has the odd distinction of being most Christians’ favorite Pharisee.  We also like Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the burial tomb for Jesus, but in general we are not fond of Pharisees!  They come off kinda badly in the Gospels, but that may, in fact, be something of a sibling squabble.  The Jesus-followers and the Torah-followers were very similar in ethical teachings, and both had the theological underpinnings which could carry past the Roman’s destruction of the Temple.  Christianity (especially as further developed by Paul) and Pharisaical Judaism, from which most contemporary Judaism descended, are both “portable” religions.  Neither depends on a particular holy place, such as the Temple in Jerusalem, which, when it fell, pretty much ended the Sadducees, who no longer had the Holy of Holies.  If you had a scroll of Torah and a quorum, you could have a synagogue.  If you have the New Testament and two or three gathered together, you have a church.  We are both people of the book, trying to apply the holy writ to our daily lives.

      Incidentally, our first lesson this week is the story of Abraham responding to God’s summons to go to a new land, which connects us to the third great people of the book, Muslims, as the three “Abrahamic Faiths.”

      Because of the theological similarities, Nicodemus is well on his way to grasping Jesus’ point when he shows up that night, although he does seem a bit dense about the whole being born anew thing.  Honestly, if any of us had (before the events of Holy Week revealed the width of Jesus’ being) been trying to puzzle out the birth and rebirth imagery, we would be just as baffled.  But Nicodemus got the gist, that what Jesus was offering, what Jesus was calling people toward was a new reality, one somehow superimposed on what we normally experience, but not totally dissimilar.  But dissimilar enough to strip Nicodemus’ faith gears!  And Jesus is deep into simile territory here with birth and wind and all.  This is still a passage to get theologians and preachers all tangled up, even now, so I’m willing to allow Nicodemus a lot of slack as he grew into appreciating Jesus parabolic invitation.

      Jesus’ consistent point in his conversation with Nicodemus is that there is something else going on with faith above, beyond, through, in, because of, yet different from the ordinary, whether he uses the “born anew” phrase or the effects of the invisible wind or the sly dig that there is another way of knowing and thinking than Nicodemus’ beloved book-learning.  God’s Spirit may move within all those things, but it is not confined to familiar things.  It’s jarring.  But it is connected.  But it’s jarring.  It is under and through everything.  It’s always fresh.  It’s always moving.

      Lent is not about standing still.  It picks up on the forty years in the wilderness, which though not direct, was time of movement and growth and learning.  Lent leads up to Holy Week; it is a time of preparation and looking forward.  That’s a good spirit to be in as we gather a search committee and as we look forward to the next phases of First Congregational’s life.  The Spirit blows where it will.  Let’s move with it!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible      Genesis 12:1-4a
      From the Epistles               Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
      From the Gospels              John 3:1-17