Passing the Mantle

We use the phrase “passing the mantle” to describe transitions in leadership quite frequently.  Coach So-and-so inherits the mantle of the university football program.  Sue passes the mantle of the department to Joe.  Things like that.  But seriously, when was the last time you talked about mantles in regular conversation?  And what is a mantle anyway??

Well, Sunday we meet the prototypical instance of passing the mantle: when the prophet Elisha picks up the cloak of his mentor, Elijah, and becomes himself the prime prophet of God in Israel.  Elisha literally picks up the mantle.

But the thing about mantles (the heavy cloak or vesture, not the thing above the fireplace or on your camp lantern) is that the transfer is not really about the cloak but about the person who has worn it and the one who begins to wear it.  And much more depends on the people than the sign of office.

Sure, sometimes the next person is just not up to the quality of the first person, which can be a big disappointment.  But more often the next person is different from the mentor, which can be confusing or disorienting or simply causing a new way of doing things.  A coach and his or her successor may have radically different ways of running the team or of training, but have the same win-loss stats.  Since

Steve Jobs died, Apple watchers have been writing endlessly that Tim Cook, the new CEO, “is no Steve Jobs,” but the company continues to make and sell a lot of products and make money.  Sure, there are differences in management, but the overall corporation continues.

There probably a bunch of Israelites complaining that “Elisha is no Elijah,” but God kept speaking to Israel, even if Elisha had a markedly different way of doing prophecy.  The overall faith continues!

Furthermore, those differences in management and prophetic leadership might just be part of God’s overall plan!  Moses was prophet provocateur; his subordinate, Joshua, when he took over the leadership of Israel upon entry into the promised land proved a powerful general and manager of the settling of the land.  If Moses was the instigator, Joshua was the consolidator.  Likewise, in our turn, we have pastors who possess different gifts and skills, so when a congregation “passes the mantle onto” the next pastor it should expect differences in organizational approach even if the overall mission of the church continues.  Part of the interim self-study is to understand the leadership here over time and to become clearer on what is the best sort of pastoral leadership for the future.

Come Sunday to hear how God transferring the mantle of Elijah to Elisha tells us something about change and continuity— both— at First Congregational.

                                                                                       In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                               David

Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Hebrew Bible      2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
From the Gospels             Luke 9:51-62

God Speaks to Elijah

    The morning scripture at the recent Annual Meeting of the New York Conference of the UCC was from I Kings 19, the familiar story of God passing by the prophet Elijah.  And God was not in the earthquake, fire, or storm but in the sound of sheer silence (NRSV) or the more familiar “still small voice of calm.”

    A couple of things struck me as we reflected as a conference on the passage which are quick thoughts of somewhat less than a full sermon’s length!

    The first was that the voice of God interviewing Elijah (who was hiding out in a cave from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel for calling judgment down on them) asks a couple of times, “Elijah, what are you doing here?”  Rolling different inflections around in my head, I imagined it with God’s voice an exasperated, “What are you doing here?” as in why are you cowering a cave when you could be out doing something somewhere else?  Come on, get it together, Elijah!  There are lots of times when we just wuss out.  The other way I heard it was “What are you doing here?”  It’s not just why are you hanging out here, as opposed to some other place, like Jerusalem instead of a hole in a rock out in the wilderness.  The way I heard it was as a genuine question, nearly a challenge: what are you doing, here, in Ithaca NY?  You are in a specific place with specific needs and specific resources and specific challenges in the community… so what are you doing about it, right here, right where you live?  Instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, Mr. Prophet, what are you going to do?  Instead of sitting there, FCC Ithaca, what are you going to do here? Here.  Where God planted you.

    The last idea that nudged me was that all of this conversation and the vision of God passing by not in earthquake, fire, or wind but in the sheer silence took place at the entrance to the cave.  The entrance.  At the entrance where Elijah’s inner life met the whole wide world.  And sitting in the conference space, I was struck that in a profound way, Elijah was being invited to leave the darkness in which he was hiding and enter the world where God was still working and still speaking.  It was not the entrance to the cave, but the entrance to the world.  And it is “out in the world” where God is making both the commotion and the deepest truth the human heart can experience in the sheer power of God’s ever-present silence.

    Come Sunday to hear how God speaks to Elijah… but listen how he speaks to you.


                                                                                       In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                               David

Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Hebrew Bible     I Kings 19:1-4, 8-15a
From the Epistles             Galatians 3:23-29
From the Gospels             Luke 8:26-39

Forgiveness and Grace

Jesus is having dinner at Cornell President Skorton’s house, and in slips a woman in fashionably ripped jeans, black boots, preternaturally black hair, a Jack Daniels tank top, visible red bra straps, a nose ring, a few brightly inked tattoos, and a bunch of silver jewelry.  She kneels down, splashes some Chanel “J’Adore” on Jesus’ feet and sobs while she washes his feet and dries them with her hair.  The other, invited guests, in their Brooks Brothers suits and dresses, shift uncomfortably.  Jesus starts talking about forgiveness and grace and gratitude.  When he looks up from the woman, he looks up past the guests in that room, and looks at us.

By the way, except for the brand on the shirt, that description is pretty close to the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a prolific, powerful writer and preacher at dozens of youth events each year and a Lutheran pastor.  She goes by @sarcasticlutheran (you should follow her).  She spent a lot of her life being uncomfortable in church because she made conventional churchgoers uncomfortable.  Mercifully, she found a church that accepted her for who she was… really… and she found her voice and her vocation.   A congregation saw the real her— beaten up by life, needing help, finding forgiveness so she could let herself off her own hook, sharing that forgiveness with others.

That Gospel story for this Sunday confronts us with our need for forgiveness and grace and invites us to feel forgiveness for ourselves and to celebrate when others experience it, not to evaluate others as more worthy or less worthy.  Worthiness turns out not to be about us.  It has everything to do with God.  By definition, grace comes to us as a free, unmerited, unexplainable gift from God in Christ. Yay!

Some of the crowd mutters about “if only Jesus knew what sort of woman this was…”  What they didn’t grasp was that Jesus actually knew exactly what kind of woman she was… and exactly what kind of people every one of them were!  And the biggest problem? That he didn’t care! He was ok with the woman, with Simon, with everyone there, with all of us.  He accepts people as they are, whole or broken, staid or notorious, visibly damaged or internally damaged, tired, lost, seeking forgiveness, feeling forgiveness.  Even more, he asks us to accept other people as those he loves.  And even even more, he asks us to accept ourselves as loved by him.

Come Sunday to hear how Jesus speaks to the woman in Luke 7… but listen how he speaks to you.

                                                                                                            In Christ,
                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                David

Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Epistles        Galatians 2:15-21
From the Gospels       Luke 7:36-8:3

Time to celebrate!

Every year we mark the end of our church school program year with a special Sunday dedicated to celebrating the young people of our church, the programs we share all year and the people who make them special and make them happen.  In the past, we’ve had musicals, skits, songs, special musicians, guest preachers, decorations, gifts given and food to celebrate.  Though the means of celebrating have varied from year to year, the message and purpose stays the same: Our church values kids and Christian education, and we are pretty happy with how well it goes each year, so much so that we want to devote a whole worship service each year to show it!

This year we have some great things planned for Children and Youth Ministries Celebration Sunday!  The children have two special songs that they have been learning that they would like to sing for everyone.  The Youth Congo Band will be playing throughout the service as well as a special violin solo by Sophie BosworthViscuso and a special song played on the chimes by a group of children and youth.  We’ll sing well loved hymns. One of our Senior High students, Alexander Babiak will be our guest preacher.

What’s a celebration without special food??  After worship we will head downstairs for coffee, lemonade and the youth work trip strawberry shortcake fundraiser.

The children are very excited to share their music with you!  We look forward to worshiping together.

                                                                          In Faith,
                                                                          Stacy and Diane
                                                                          Children and Youth Ministries

Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Psalms         Psalm 92
From the Gospels        Luke 13:1-21