The Covenant

by

The Covenant

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday in Lent/C • March 16, 2025

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

“After these things…” That’s how our reading from Genesis began this morning. It flew by, so I want to lift it up to make sure we don’t miss it. “After these things…” In a sense, all these readings occur “after these things”. Paul’s letter to the Philippians comes after he’s been their pastor and friend; now he’s under arrest in another city, sitting in jail. The gospel reading comes after Jesus has been teaching and healing and most of it occurs after some Pharisees warn him the Herod wants to have him killed; it’s startling when you get a death threat. The story we read in Genesis occurs after a war. Abram’s nephew, Lot, had been captured; Abram successfully led his version of Seal Team 6 to rescue him. It’s also long after Abram has felt God’s call, left his home, spent some time in Egypt and now is prospering as a leader of a tribe of herders. It’s also after Abram has felt God failed him.

“After these things…” describes our gathering as well. We’ve all lived years and years before we got here, and we’ve all had a week of doing whatever we did. Yet here we are gathered again. What did you hope when you came today? What I hope every Sunday when we gather is that we will encounter God here; that God’s Spirit will move in your hearts and mine, so that after these things, we are ready for another week, another month, another time. So today, come with me as we listen to the story of the covenant God made with Abram, the foundation of all God’s promises.

“After these things…” let’s go back and remember some of these things. Genesis starts out in what scholars call mythic time. Myth doesn’t mean it isn’t true; it means that our regular world rules don’t apply. So we have stories of creation, we have stories of how everything began, people live incredibly long lives, there’s a flood that wipes out everything except Noah and his family and God promises never to wipe out the world again. After all these things, God begins to work in history and the person God begins with is Abram. Abram is called, just like we are called, and Abram’s call is to go forth. When he does, God says, he will have unlimited generation and land and God’s presence. 

So Abram does go forth, along with his wife, Sarai, and his family. They start out in Ur, a real city, once located on the Euphrates river, in what is now southern Iraq. They end up in Egypt and later leave. Now they’re in the Kidron valley, near where Jerusalem sits today. He’s fought a battle and won; the king of the area has come offering peace. It’s been years since that original call and Abram has done well, but there is no child, no baby representing God’s fulfillment of the original promise. “After these things” is where we pick up the story.

Personally, I can’t escape the feeling that at the beginning of this section, God is gloating: “Don’t be afraid, Abram, I’m your shield…”, God says. Maybe Abram is still recovering from the shock of battle, the surprise and relief of victory. But he’s sharp enough to ask difficult questions. So he asks God, “What about the promise of a child?” He points out that God promised this and Sarai isn’t getting younger; if there’s no child, someone in his household is going to inherit everything. God’s answer is: “Come outside!—Look at creation, look at the stars!—that’s how many descendants you’ll have!” Psalm 19 says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” [Psalm 19:1f] Abram’s been given a glimpse of the glory of God.

Abram believes God. “The Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness”, the text says. It’s such a short, simple sentence. Righteousness means right relationship, having the right heart in the moment, having the right relationship. Abram doesn’t do anything: it’s all free gift, all God’s initiative. There’s no transaction here, no pay for service. Abram doesn’t give God anything; he simply believes God. All of our reformed theology is built on this moment, this example. We believe that our relationship with God depends not on what we do, but on whom we believe. Abram believes God—God calls him righteous. What’s true for Abram is true for us, as well.  God doesn’t 

Abram also questions God about the promise of land and that’s where we learn about the covenant. Covenants are intentional promises. It’s confusing in the text: all this stuff about animals cut in half is foreign to us. When we make contracts, we often go to a lawyer’s office or a conference room, someone sits and hands us a bunch of papers to sign. But when kings in the ancient world were making treaties or promises, the question in the background was always, “Who’s going to enforce it?” So we know that ceremonies similar to this one were held at times. The point is to call down on the person making the covenant a curse if it’s not performed. What we see is that Abram prepares the covenant and guards it, but at the moment, he’s asleep. God freely makes a covenant, sealing the promise given years before. 

This is the beginning of God’s work with people that leads to us. It’s a foundation for everything that comes later. Later, Abram’s descendants will multiply. They will go into slavery in Egypt, but God will hear their cries and save them, send them on an exodus out of there and into the land promised here. Later, Abram’s descendants will demand a king and the king will do what kings do: oppress them and involve them in wars. Later, prophets will come reminding them of this covenant and still later Jesus will come. And when he’s told Herod wants to kill him, he will smile because he knows this covenant; he knows that he’s acting after these things. And he will weep over Jerusalem instead, and its history of violence and refusal to listen to God. Why is he weeping? Because of the failure to fulfill the third part of God’s promise to Abram, the part not mentioned here: to make Abram a means of spreading blessing through the whole world. What did God want? Jesus says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” [Luke 13:34b]

This covenant is what is renewed in Jesus Christ. Every time we share communion, we remember his words, how he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” The covenant includes us and invites us. It is God’s promos of presence and care throughout all times, throughout our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren. But a covenant is two-sided: God is one, we are the other. Every day asks whether we are living from this covenant or from the world’s seductive promise that we can be enough in ourselves, that we can earn righteousness and safety. Every day asks which road we will choose, whether to believe God’s care for all or to choose to divide people into categories and see some as less and ourselves as more. 

There is a famous Native American story that depicts this choice. This is the story.

An old Cherokee Indian chief was teaching his grandson about life.

He said, “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a fight between two wolves.

The Dark one is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The Light Wolf is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you grandson…and inside of every other person on the face of this earth.”

The grandson ponders this for a moment and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee smiled and simply said, “The one you feed”.
[https://www.michelleweimer.com/blog/two-wolves]

Every day asks: which wolf are you feeding? Every day asks: are you living in God’s covenant? Every day, every one of us, answers. 

The story of the covenant began, “After these things…” Isn’t that where we all live?—after many, many things. But we also live before things and these ask: what will you choose? Which wolf will you feed? What road will you walk? This season of Lent is meant to remind us of our call and our covenant so that wherever we have been, wherever we go, we may walk the way of Christ, following him, believing God, seeking God’s reign in our lives and our world.

Amen

Remember Who You Are

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

First Sunday in Lent – Year C • March 9, 2025

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 • Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 • Luke 4:1-13

I’m Nobody

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too? 

Then there’s a pair of us! 

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog – 

To tell one’s name – the livelong June

To an admiring bog

–Emily Dickinson

Who are you? For most of us, the first attempt to answer that comes shortly after we’re born, when our mothers gave us a name. My first name was for my parents’ best friend at the time, a trumpet player. We haven’t seen him since about 1959. I got my last name from my dad, as most of us do. Later on I got other names: Pastor, Reverend, Parent, Husband, and so on. Who are you? It’s an important question because who we are can determine who we become.

It’s so important that all cultures have a set of signs and signals to tell people about our identity. When we are married, most of us exchange rings.We have bumper stickers that shout political and social messages. We have hats, we have clothing, we have endless ways of saying to the whole world, “This is who I am.”

That’s the point of the section we read in Deuteronomy this morning. God’s people have been welded together by the difficulty of the Exodus, of years in the wilderness. But what happens when that’s over and things ease up? What happens in the promised land? So we have this message: when you get there, when you are living in the land of milk and honey, when things are going right, remember who you are. Go take the first fruits of your success, and give it away and say this. 

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. [Deuteronomy 26:5-9]

It’s stunning, isn’t it? “Ok, great, you had a good year in the fields and the olives came in just like you hoped but don’t get proud: remember who you are, you’re just an Aramean, an undocumented alien, and everything you’ve made is the God’s gift. Remember who you are.”

This is what scripture is meant to do: remind us of who we are because we have a tendency to forget. We get busy with what we’re doing, step back and see that we’ve done a good job and think, “Wow! I did that!” There’s nothing wrong with a sense of accomplishment, but we can forget in the midst of it, how we got there. A. J. Jacobs set out to thank everyone involved in providing his morning coffee.

Consider this: The coffee beans are driven to my local café in a van (I had to thank the driver). But he couldn’t do his job without the road (thanks to the pavers). And the road would be dangerous without the yellow lines (thanks to the folks who made the paint). We’re talking a boatload of people (which reminds me, the ship designers too). [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-thanked-thousand-people-cup-coffee-here-what-learned-a-j-jacobs/]

My dad became a production engineer and later a lawyer; he held patents, he bought the first automated production system for cars for General Motors. He seldom talked about his life but when he did, he always began, “I came from a dirt farm”. That’s me: whatever I become, I come from dirt farmers in Michigan, it just happens that now I’m a pastor in Pennsylvania. Thanks be to God!

Scripture reminds us we are God’s and whatever we do, we do with the gifts of God. That’s the core of the story of Jesus’ temptation that we read today. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell a story of Jesus in the wilderness before he began his ministry. They tell us about his baptism, which we read in January. There, the tradition is that God spoke to him directly, saying “You are my beloved Son.” All suggest that immediately after this, he was in the wilderness, hungry, perhaps scared, and there he was tempted. 

Whenever this part is told in movies, all the focus is on the special effects: the scary wilderness, the details of the temptations. But the real point is that there, in the wilderness, Jesus is doing what we can all do: using scripture to remember who he is. He’s hungry and anyone who’s ever been starving can tell you that just the first whiff of food is almost overpowering. So the devil offers that, according to Luke. Jesus replies with a quotation from Deuteronomy: “It is written, “’One does not live by bread alone.’” The devil offers him enormous power and influence; he replies, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” And finally, the devil offers absolute assurance of God’s presence and power: step off a pinnacle, and see if God really protects you. He simply says, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’”. He’s being tested—he replies, don’t do exactly what you’re doing, devil! These answers are all scripture; these are all from our Bible.

Aren’t these the same temptations we all face?  We think we can take care of ourselves; Jesus could have fed himself. We strive for power and influence; Jesus could have ruled. We want to be certain of God instead of having faith. These temptations run through all of life, in our lives, as they did at this moment for Jesus. They come for us, as they did for him, in the wilderness places, in the places with no signs, in the places where we aren’t sure of our direction. Using our gifts only for ourselves, power and pride, tempting God: haven’t we all felt these temptations, faced them in our own wildernesses?

So it’s important to listen to this story because Jesus is showing us how to respond to temptation and the way he responds is by going back to God’s Word. There’s a reason we read scripture every Sunday, and the reason is that in that Word, we are reminded of who we are: children of God. This is God’s Word over and over. To Moses, God says, “I have heard the cry of my people.” To the prophets, God says, “How can I give you up, O Israel?” And now in Jesus Christ, God says, “You are my beloved children.” Jesus is in the wilderness but he remembers who he is because he remembers his call, he remembers God’s Word.

Who are you? Emily Dickinson was a very quiet poet and perhaps she felt she was nobody. You are not nobody: you are God’s child. Remember who you are! In this season of Lent, throughout these weeks, I want to think about that with you and what it can mean for us. I”m going to suggest a Lenten discipline: take your bulletin home, look up the scriptures we read today, read them over again, and then take a moment to ask God to show you how these words can come alive in your life. You are not nobody: you are a child of God. We are not nobodies: we are children of God. Let’s act like it. 

Amen.

The Facts of Life

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany/C • February 16, 2025

Jeremiah 17:5-10 * Luke 6:17-26

We shall not, We shall not be moved,
We shall not, We shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water,
we shall not be moved.

This song is so resonant for me. Mavis Staples is a gospel and R&B singer who sings a version of this song and tells a story with it. When she was young, she was one of those brave young people who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham. She talks about going with a group to a café in the still segregated city, sitting down, hungry, waiting for the server. The server told them to leave and called the police. Can you imagine being a black kid in Birmingham, hearing police sirens, knowing the long history of violence against black people there by police? Can you imagine how scared they were? What do you do when you’re scared? What these people did was to sing this song: “We shall not, we shall not, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree, that’s planted by the water, we shall not be moved.” What they did was simple: they turned at that moment of fear to faith in God. They trusted God and their faith and the faith of others moved an entire nation that summer. The song was a prayer, and they ran to God in that prayer. Where do you run when you’re afraid? 

Jeremiah was a prophet in a troubled time. God’s people were being led by kings who ignored God’s way. They believed God would always rescue them from powerful foreign armies. Jeremiah said no: that their faithlessness would lead to disaster. Just like the kids in Birmingham, he goes to a familiar form to make his point. In his time, a kind of preaching called Wisdom was well known. Wisdom preaching often sets out two different ways, one is faithless, one is faithful. That’s what Jeremiah is doing in the portion we read this morning. Those who trust in mortals, he says, are trusting the wrong thing. He compares them to a familiar scene: shrubs in the desert who get blown away because they aren’t rooted deeply. It must have been a common sight; it is today out west in Montana, in some parts of Texas and New Mexico. Whole bushes can be seen tumbling.

But those who put their faith in God, Jeremiah says, are like tough trees who put down deep roots. Anyone who’s ever tried to remove a tree knows what he means. Cut down the trunk, and you’re not even halfway done. You’re left with a stump and under it perhaps a dozen big, thick taproots that lead to hundreds of smaller roots. Some of them go deep; some go horizontally. Removing them is a long, tough job. Trees planted by water are sustained by underground streams and stand up even in drought. They are sure, they are certain. They are something to cling to when the wind blows, when fear comes. Jeremiah announces this choice not as a set of options, not as possibilities but simply as facts, the facts of spiritual life. Put your faith in human things, and you’ll become like a tumbleweed; put your faith in God and you have something sure to hold on to even in tough times. It’s the meaning in the song: “We shall not be moved, just like a tree that’s planted by the water.”

Jesus is also announcing facts of spiritual life. Matthew also has a version of this story; some scholars believe this version in Luke is the oldest, the closest to Jesus’ original words. He’s in a level place and Luke tells us that people from all over have come to him. Tyre and Sidon are up north, outside the country; it’s like saying, “People from Toronto”. People from all over Judea are there; those are locals. And there are the urban folks from Jerusalem. They press close and try to touch him. Today, they’d be trying to get selfies with him. But here in this place what they want is healing and exorcism. This is the three-fold ministry we read about over and over in Jesus’ life: teaching, healing, freeing people from demons. Just before this reading, he has named a group of 12 disciples; now he gathers them close, and he teaches them the facts of spiritual life. 

I imagine they were surprised, don’t you? Blessing isn’t something anyone thinks of for the poor, the hungry, those weeping in grief. Blessing isn’t something anyone thinks of for those who are ostracized, who are excluded, who are hated. Matthew took this teaching and softens it by adding “in spirit” to poor; He makes the hunger about righteousness. But I wonder if the scholars aren’t right; nothing is soft in the teaching of Jesus. That’s why people get mad. So let’s take him on his own terms, how is it possible to see blessing in these conditions?

Annie Dillard is a writer who has a wonderful thought about what she calls, “a healthy poverty”. She says,

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason, I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions.

After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But — and this is the point — who gets excited by a mere penny?

It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. [https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2312]

Just like Jesus, we live in a culture that has put enormous stress on wealth and connected it to power. But where does faith in wealth lead? We’ve seen so many times from the Great Depression in the 1930s to the Housing Bust of the 2000s to know that faith in wealth makes us tumbleweeds. A healthy poverty is to focus on what we need, not what we want; on what is enough, not always more.

There is a blessing sometimes found in hunger, too. When I was young and in seminary, I managed for the one and only time in my life to buy a new car, a Ford Pinto in that weird, fluorescent blue. I had the car two days and then, pulling away from a curb, someone plowed into it and crushed the driver side. The car operated, but the door didn’t, so I had to crawl into the driver seat from the right. I had insurance, but I didn’t have the money for the deductible. So I stopped having lunch for a summer to save that up. It was hard, but eventually I got there and fixed the car. Some years later, my dad and I were talking about hard times; he was a depression kid who had lots of stories. I told him my story. Now, my dad had a rule he had announced for years when I was young: once you get married, and you’re on your own, don’t come back looking for help. I’d taken him at his word. When I told the story, he was upset. “I would never have had you go hungry,” he said; “Why didn’t you tell me?” I reminded him about his rule and I saw something I recognize now, as a father myself, and mumbled, “I never meant you to go hungry.” That moment changed our relationship. My father was one of those guys whose first adult experience was as a soldier in World War II; he was focused on work, he frequently told us the family was like the army, mom was the sergeant, he was the officer. But after that moment, he began to be more interested in my life, less directive; less about rules, more about caring. That summer of hunger turned out to be a blessing because it drew us together.

No one seeks poverty, no one seeks hunger, no one seeks grief, yet there are moments that can come from these occasions that do bless our lives. A penny isn’t much. It’s so little that they are going away, but as Annie Dillard says, if finding a penny will make your day, you are in for a lot of good days because the world is strewn with pennies. There’s a depression era song, “Pennies from heaven”. The song says,

Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven
Don’t you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven?
You’ll find your fortune’s fallin’ all over the town
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down

The facts of spiritual life are that God has sprinkled life with blessings—if we are looking for them. Looking for them means trusting God, not human institutions and persons. Looking for blessings means being alive to God in every occasion. If we live this way, the light of God’s presence becomes clearer and clearer. And we become indeed, like trees planted by the water, strong and secure, growing in God’s way. Amen.

Here I Am

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany/Year C • February 9, 2025

Isaiah 6:1-8 * 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 * Luke 5:1-11

My favorite place in Spain is a little fishing village named Cambrils. Now, all fishing villages have a common layout, so imagine this scene being like that. There are the houses and churches and plazas to gather and then closer to the water various shops and cafés. In a working village, there would be the smell of seaweed and rotting fish from the bits and pieces that fall off. You know what the shore smells like. Then there is a road, an open area, just in from the sea itself. Then there are the docks and the boats. There are gulls wheeling in the air over it the road and the docks, diving occasionally to find some speck of food. And then, of course, endlessly moving, always changing, there is the water. Jesus has gone to a fishing village to teach and heal and exorcize demons. Just like the story we read last week, people gather to hear him and marvel at his teaching. What they don’t know is that something incredible is about to happen. Did you see it? 

Today we’ve read three stories of how people just like us came to be called by God. There’s Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel. We think he was a priest in the temple, and he tells this fearful story of monstrous looking seraphim and a brazier from which a coal is plucked to touch his lips and purify his speaking. Wow: at my ordination a bunch of ministers, some of them so old they could barely get up after they knelt, laid their hands on me while a prayer was offered—I’m glad I didn’t have Isaiah’s initiation. Yet there is the same interplay, the same Lord asking, “Who will go?” And one person, Isaiah in this story, me at that ordination, saying “Here am I, send me.”

The portion of First Corinthians is also a call story, although it may not seem so at first glance. Paul has been dealing with the divisions in that congregation, divisions caused in part by others coming and perhaps teaching them something different from what they’d heard from Paul. So he quotes to them the bedrock of Christian faith. Scholars tell us that this looks like something already familiar, like the lords’ prayer. If that’s true, clearly it settled down early, because this letter was probably written about 20 years after Jesus. 

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. [1 Corinthians 15:3-8]

The striking thing about this is that it mixes things we hear other places, like the appearance of the resurrected Christ to Cephas, another name for Peter and then to the twelve. But it also mentions 500 brothers and sisters and James; we don’t hear about those appearances anywhere else. At the same time, he doesn’t seem to know about the appearance to Mary Magdalene that John mentions. He says at the end, “Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.” [1 Cor 15:11] So he’s reminding them of their call in Christ.

That brings us back to Luke and the fishing village. Can you see it? Can you smell it? There’s a crowd and frankly? Not all of them showered this morning. There are fishing guys working on nets. Most of a fisherman’s time is actually spent cleaning and mending nets, not fishing. In Spain, that work was often done by women but here it seems to be Peter and Andrew and James and John and presumably others doing it. And there’s Jesus. He’s not new in town. The gospels tell this story a bit differently but in Luke’s version, he’s been there long enough to have gone to Peter’s house, where he miraculously heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Her response to this miracle is to get up and serve dinner. It’s an interesting side note that the Greek word used for this—diakonis—gives us the word ‘Deacon’. Peter’s mother-in-law was the first Deacon. The crowd is doing what crowds do, pressing in to hear and get closer. There’s no sound system, just voice, and the thing about a fishing village is that it has an edge: step back too far, and you’re in the water. I imagine Peter’s boat being side tied to the dock, and Jesus asks to use that as a pulpit; Peter shrugs and says sure, so they get in, Jesus sits down, which is the position rabbi’s used for teaching, and he talks to the crowd. None of the gospels tell us what he said.

Then there is this remarkable moment. He turns to Peter and says, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Peter replies the way churches always reply when Jesus tells us to do something: “We already tried that, and it didn’t work.” It makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, Peter and the others have been fishing these waters for a long time and most recently all night. I bet Peter grew up fishing; some people just take to it when they are small. My son did. And this is corporate fishing, it’s not a rod and reel and a worm; you have to get ready, load bait, arrange the nets, get set. Peter and his crew are exhausted, they’re ready to finish fixing the nets and go home and get some sleep. But here’s this guy who may know a lot about the Torah but knows nothing about fishing calmly telling them to go fish. They know better; there just aren’t any fish right there, right then. 

I’ve seen this play out in churches. Some new member is all excited about their new faith and new church, they get on a board and start suggesting things. The long time members quietly tell them, “We tried that ten years ago, and it was a failure” or “We can’t afford that” or “That’s not how we do it here.” Thank God that this time, Peter and the others shrug and decide to go along with the new preacher. So they set out, let down the nets and there’s a miracle: the nets fill up. Can you imagine what that would look like? Silvery, slippery fish jumping all over, the nets bulging, weighing down the boat. These are open boats, pull the side down far enough and they’ll sink. The first time we took our sailboat out on our own, I forgot to detach something from the engine shaft. The result was that when I went below as we were starting back, there was water already up over the floor boards. I’ve been sailing since I was 12 and in my whole life, that was one of the scariest moments. So I get what they are feeling. “This is too much!” No wonder Peter says, “Go away from me Lord!” I wanted a big catch, but this is too big; I didn’t want a miracle, I just wanted to get by.

They make it back to shore, apparently. We never hear what happened to all the fish; hopefully someone took care of them cleaned them sold them. Jesus just laughs; he tells them not to worry about it all because they’re going to become fishers of men. Now if you grew up with that line like I did, you probably think this is where this turns into a sermon telling you to out and evangelize, get people to come to church with you. That would be a fine thing to do, but I don’t think that’s the message here. “Fishers of men” has a particular meaning in the Bible. In Jeremiah (16:16) it’s a description of God sending people to find evildoers and idolaters; in Amos 4:2, it’s connected to being conquered and exiled because of the sins of the people and Ezekiel has a similar message. Becoming fishers of men isn’t evangelism; it’s confronting injustice. It’s proclaiming the year of favor for the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to captives. 

Peter hears this call and responds first with repentance, then with obedience. He’s already called Jesus Lord; now he puts that word into action. He’s gotten a glimpse of the miraculous abundance Jesus reveals. We call it eternal life sometimes; in the gospels it’s a miraculous catch of fish, it’s feeding thousands of people from a few donations. What is it here?

The musical Rent is about a group of Bohemian young people in New York in the plague years of AIDS. It begins with a song about abundance: “525, 600 minutes”, the minutes in a year. Stunning, isn’t it? Isn’t that a miraculous catch, to have 525, 600 minutes laid out this year waiting for us to fill them? Each of these stories offers us a perspective on God’s call to someone, each is a question: who will go? Isaiah says “here am I”; Paul says, remember that Christ is risen. Peter says, go away from me Lord, but he follows Jesus, leaves the boat and the fish and his mother-in-law and presumably his wife and family behind. There are still 482,400 minutes left in this year. How will you fill them with your call? Oh, there’s one other line from Rent I want to share: it’s a refrain at the end: no day but today. When is God calling you? No day but today.

Amen. 

Body Talk

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Third Sunday After Epiphany – Year C • January 26, 2025

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a * Luke 4:14-21

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. [Genesis 2:4b-7]

That’s how the New Revised Version translates the story of our beginning. But it’s a bad translation. The word that’s being translated ‘man’ isn’t gender-specific. It would be better to say, “the Lord God formed a human being” from the dust of the ground. The word that’s being used in Hebrew is ‘Adamah’, and we take it for granted that’s the same as our ‘Adam”, a male name. 

But adamah is also the name of dolls made by children in early times. We’ve always made dolls; Jacquelyn has one that’s well over a hundred years old and one of our Christmas traditions, stretching back over 40 years, is that I give my oldest daughter a Barbie. So we know what Genesis is describing here. Like a child, God goes out, scoops up some dirt, and forms a doll, an adamah. And then God shares some of the ruach, the Hebrew for spirit, also the word for breath, into the doll, and the adamah, the doll, becomes a living being. Right from the start, we are made as a union of Spirit and Body. The other creation story in Genesis 1, adds the detail that in this we are an image of God. 

I mention this because bodies are front and center in the lesson from First Corinthians today. What Paul tells us ultimately is that Christ is doing the same creative thing God did in Genesis except now the body which receives the spirit is us, the church. Paul is ultimately going to say, “ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” [1 Corinthians 12:27] So we have to talk about bodies to understand who we are meant to be and become. It’s an especially important image for the Corinthian Christians. Last Sunday I introduced Corinth but because of the weather not many were here, so let me take a moment to remind you of what I said then.

Corinth is a relatively new city, founded about a century before Paul’s time, that sits on a narrow isthmus. It’s a seaport and a meeting place for many cultures. It’s a blue collar place; the original settlers were mostly retired soldiers. It’s a place where some get rich and there are slaves and foreigners. Corinth’s main deity is the goddess Aphrodite, in Roman terms, Venus, and her temple is a brothel: the worship of Aphrodite involves temple prostitutes. About ten years before Paul’s time, one of the emperors deported the Jews from Rome and it seems some settled in Corinth. Some of the members of this new church Paul founded in Corinth were among them. The church is only a few years old but it’s become divided because some of the members are speaking in tongues and claiming they are more spiritual than others. Paul is writing to them to help solve their divisions.

He starts with the image of a body, perhaps because bodies are so important in Corinth, perhaps because it’s something we all know. We live in bodies, and we all know some of the things that flow from that. Every culture has its image of beautiful bodies, and we measure how we match or don’t match that standard; it influences how we are in the world. My daughter May is 5’2”; the other day she remarked she was short but it was ok because she’s a girl and that it was harder for a guy to be short. I know that in my heart of hearts, I always wished I was taller and had that deep preacher voice people love, but that’s not the body I got. Our bodies age and I suspect most of us here today remember being stronger; many of us can list aches and pains we have these days. 

From this commonality of bodies, Paul says we have an equality that also extends to the spiritual. 

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. [1 Corinthians 12:12f]

Jews and Greeks, slave and free: these are the most fundamental social distinctions among the Corinthian Christians. We make the same kind of distinctions, don’t we? We don’t have slaves but we come from different circumstances. We know without being told that some are long time members and some are new. Paul says these distinctions mean nothing compared to the unity of being one body.

We find the same equality in the gospel. Luke invites us to imagine Jesus preaching his first sermon in his home synagogue. I’ve spent my whole life as a preacher and I can tell you that there is nothing more terrifying than preaching to a congregation of people who watched you grow up. After my first sermon in my home church, someone said to my mother, “You must be very proud.” She said: “Well, it’s hard to listen to someone preach when you remember changing his diapers.” I suspect there are people there who remember changing Jesus’ diapers, who remember him as a kid, who maybe remember some dumb thing he did when he was younger. But there he is, getting up at the synagogue, going to the lectern, reading the scripture for the day.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. [Luke 4:18-20]

The good news is for the poor; the mission of Jesus is to release prisoners, to open the eyes of the blind, to set free the oppressed. In Christ there is no east or west, one of our hymns says: in him n Christ there is no east or west, but one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.

Paul goes on to illustrate how this works: all of us are members of one body, he says, and we all have functions. All the talents are needed, just as our body needs all its different functions. Maybe you’re a great accountant: we need that. Maybe you’re a great singer: we need that. Maybe you’re a great listener: we need that. Maybe you’re great at empathy, we need that. Every thing we can do is needed and equally needed. Just like our body needs all its parts functioning, we need all the talents of every single person sharing in the mission of Christ here. 

We know what it means to come to worship, for example. But before we come to worship, there are lots of people involved. Sometime back around the beginning of January, I looked at the scriptures for today and the hymnal and suggested hymns; Cara Beth approved them and made sure there would be music for the pianist. Linda printed the bulletin. Some folks in the past had the goodness and foresight to create this meeting house and we all share in paying for it and paying to make sure there’s heat and light. We take those things for granted, but people just like us worshiped by candlelight without heat for hundreds of years. This morning, someone came and turned on the lights and the sound system. Thanks to the work of scholars over many years, I could share a deeper insight into the texts this morning.

We are not alone in Christ; we are part of a greater body, animated by the Holy Spirit, just as Paul says: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” [1 Corinthians 12;27] And Christ doesn’t change: Christ’s mission remains the same: releasing captives, helping people see their way, lifting the poor. This past week, we celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose life became animated by this cause. He asked simply for us to recognize the dignity of people of color. He reminded us that Christ calls us to a unity that recognizes the fundamental dignity of all people because we are all children of the one God, all united as human beings with bodies, filled with Spirit, made in the image of God. God gives us everything we need, just as the song says: everything we need to do Christ’s work here. When we do that work of unifying people, caring for all, then indeed we are the body of Christ.

Amen.

The music is Folk Inspiring | Good Times by Alex-Productions
|https://youtu.be/r9-fLbcxiEM
Music promoted by https://onsound.eu/

Good Gifts

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2025

Second Sunday After Epiphany/Year C • January 19, 2025

1 Corinthians 12:1-11 • John 2:1-11

This is a time of year when a lot of us plan to go somewhere else, usually somewhere warmer.   For the next couple of Sundays, I’d like to invite you to come with me to Corinth, in Greece, and listen to Paul as he writes to a new church there. I can’t promise the trip will do anything about the temperatures, but I believe he can help us understand more clearly what God hopes for us. What we call ‘First Corinthians’ is a letter written to a group of Christians in one of the very first churches. They’ve run into some problems; they are arguing and fighting, and their former pastor is writing to help them sort things out. He starts out thanking God for them and noting that they’ve been given every spiritual gift they need. Then he gets right to the problems: he’s heard there are divisions. The rest of the letter is guidance on dealing with division, and it’s worth listening to even when we aren’t divided; it’s like the signs on a hiking trail to help us stay on the path. Christians called Christ’s path “the way” and, thinking about Christian life as a journey rather than something we did once when we got confirmed is helpful.

One of the things dividing the Corinthians is spiritual gifts. We’re a pretty calm group when we’re here; the Corinthian church is a lot rowdier. In another place, he talks about their potlucks and notes that some people get drunk at them. We haven’t had one of the socials here in a while, but I don’t remember anyone getting drunk when we had them. One of their issues is that they’ve made spiritual gifts into a hierarchy and for them the top one is what we call speaking in tongues. Ecstatic speech happens in many religious traditions and in Corinth some seem to think it’s the most important gift of all and that it makes those who do this more important than others. And that’s the real problem: creating a hierarchy, valuing some more than others. 

To really understand this, we need to understand something about Corinth. Greece has two main parts, separated by an isthmus about four miles wide and that’s where Corinth is located. Sailing around the lower part of Greece was long and difficult, full of dangerous shoals. In fact, they built a sort of trolley system that allowed ships to be put on a little cart and moved by oxen and rigging across the land. So from very ancient times, Corinth was a crossroads of trade. This trade made Corinth rich. So rich that about 150 years before Christ, the Corinthians stood up to the Romans. But they were defeated, and the city was destroyed. It sat there desolate for many years, then about 40 years before Jesus, Julius Caesar had the city rebuilt as a place to settle retired soldiers. Once again, it became a center for shipping and a place where it was easy to get rich. It’s a place where riches are important for status as well as buying things. So you have people used to living within a hierarchy who are treating God’s gifts like worldly status.

But that’s not the reason for God giving spiritual gifts. Paul’s testimony is clear: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” [12:7] He also tells us the most important gift of all, to say “Jesus is Lord”. This is the fundamental Christian statement of faith: that Jesus is Lord in our lives. Today, it’s conventional to say that. If you went around saying it at the grocery store, people would think you were just a little strange but no one would get mad. What do we get mad about? One thing today is politics. Go around a public place proclaiming your allegiance to one party or another, and you’re bound to make someone angry. Now in the first century, to say, “Jesus is Lord”, is a political statement as well as a religious one. The title “Lord” is applied only to the Roman Emperor. So you’re saying that you have switched your allegiance from the Emperor to this other person, this Jesus.  

Paul is saying here first, be clear who you are serving: Jesus is Lord. That’s the most important point. Now that who you serve is clear, consider the spiritual gifts not as reasons for boasting but as gifts as given for a reason. The reason is building up the community. In another letter, Paul describes the fruit of these spiritual gifts.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. [Galatians 5:22f]

Paul goes on to list some spiritual gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophecy, what he calls “working power deeds”, and finally speaking in tongues. But as he lists these, he notes an equality in them: “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” [1 Corinthians 12:11] Paul wants the Corinthians to see the equality in these gifts and since they are gifts, that there is no reason to boast about having one of them in your life.

Next week we’ll hear more about how Paul suggests we should see this working but for today, what I want to say is that it’s a good time to think about the gifts of the Spirit here. We aren’t divided like the Corinthian church but are we fully expressing the gifts of the Spirit here? What gifts do you have that could more fully be expressed here. We’re a small church, and it’s easy to assume we can’t do a lot. But what Paul is saying is that God has put everything we need here to do what God wants. We’re about to enter a new season of ministry here. A new pastor will be installed and take over the task of guiding this church. What are your hopes for that time? What could this church do to express “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity” in new ways here? What gifts has the Spirit given you, intending that they be shared in this community?

We need all of them. Whatever gift I have for preaching only goes so far; it won’t get the light bulbs changed. We’re lucky to have some great musicians, but they can’t oversee getting the chair lift put in. All the gifts the Spirit gives are needed; all of them are meant to work together to produce the fruit of the Spirit here, right here, right now.

You can see this working. One gift that’s broadly distributed here is appreciation. This church is better at appreciation than most. I love that every Sunday, the musicians are applauded. I’ve been gratified by the kind comments of so many of you. Psychologists tell us that appreciation and saying, “Thank you!” Is one of the hallmarks of great marriages and friendships. Now out in the wider world, we’re told that there is a widespread loneliness. People are desperate to find connection. How can we take that gift of appreciation that is so wonderfully expressed here out to the world with us?

I’ve put an inventory sheet at the front and back of the sanctuary, where you pick up bulletins. It’s designed to help you identify your gifts. Maybe you’re aware of these now; maybe it takes some prayer and reflection. I invite you to take the inventory and use it to help you think about your gifts this week. And then, to think about how you can nurture those gifts in this church, for this church and for its wider community.

Today, we also read about the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned a lot of water into wonderful wine. John says this is the first powerful work Jesus did, and that it’s a sign of God’s power in the world, working through him. What he does is to take people who believe they’ve run out of something essential and show them that in him there is an abundance that seems miraculous. It’s the same way here. We may feel like a small church, we may feel like the issues we confront are daunting, but in saying “Jesus is Lord” and living out that creed, we discover there is an abundance of the Spirit able to sustain us and accomplish God’s hope for us and for this church. 

There’s a children’s song we sang in one of my churches that makes this point in a simple way. It goes, “God gives us not just food, not just water, but everything we need, not just candy, not just broccoli, but everything we need…not just Jim, not just Linda but everything we need”… and so on. We used to invite people to make up new verses: one I remember was “not just pickles, not just olives” but everything we need. The chorus says, “So praise God, praise God, sing, praise for God is wonderful.” It’s the only song that ever made me give thanks for broccoli. And like most children’s songs, it is exactly right: thank god for not just pickles, not just olives, but everything we need, every spiritual gift, all of which are given here, all of which are given to share, all of which are meant to do the work of God here, in this place. 

Amen.

All Washed Up

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ, York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2025

Baptism of the Lord Sunday/C • January 12, 2025

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“How have I ever deserved such love?” A woman asks this question near the end of a movie called The Danish Girl and I wonder if it is Jesus’ question at his baptism.

 I imagine it as a hot day; this is desert country after all. The stories about John tell us there were crowds but what’s a crowd? Twenty people? A couple hundred? Thousands? We don’t know. John is a striking figure, a charismatic man filled with the Spirit of God, who speaks a fierce message, calling people to repentance. He’s on the shore of the Jordan River. This is the river that had to be crossed centuries before by God’s people to enter the promised land. This is the water that had to be waded, this is the stream that stood between them and the fulfillment in history of God’s love and covenant. Is there a line to be baptized? Did Jesus stand behind others as one after another they came to John, talked to John, heard him pray and then felt him forcefully plunge them into the water, let the water cover them like someone drowning, and then lift them up, wet, wondering what comes next, clean, ready for the next chapter? Now Jesus comes; now he looks at John, now their eyes make a private space only they understand. Now John is taking Jesus in his arms, as he has with all the others, now Jesus is plunged into the water, there is perhaps that instant of fear so instinctive when we are underwater, now he is lifted up and heaven opens, Jesus hears what we all want to hear, “You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This is baptism.

Baptism is rare here and in church life, we’ve become fussy about the rituals that surround it. We have considerable evidence for baptism, both of children and adults, in the early church. The Didache, a collection of sayings and teachings probably written about the same time as the New Testament says this about baptism.

Concerning baptism, you should baptize this way: After first explaining all things, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in flowing water. But if you have no running water, baptize in other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, then in warm. If you have very little, pour water three times on the head in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Before the baptism, both the baptizer and the candidate for baptism, plus any others who can, should fast. The candidate should fast for one or two days beforehand.

This is great news if you’re one of those people who think details aren’t important; bad news if you’re a ritual maker. What it says is that the form of applying the water, the part that most interests us, doesn’t really matter. Use running water—if you’ve got it. Use a few drops if that’s all you’ve got. 

But if the details don’t matter, what does? The clues are in the scripture we read this morning and they have nothing to do with measuring out water. Isaiah says, 

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. [Isaiah 43:1-7]

This word is addressed to people who feel themselves lost. Every day the news shows us pictures of refugees from Gaza and other places. Israel had become refugees and this is God saying, “You’re not forgotten: you’re still mine.” There’s a reason every baptism begins with a question: “What name is given this child?” We name a person at baptism in a way that honors them uniquely but also connects them with a family, a heritage. Whose are you? You are God’s own child, regardless of your age. Baptism is a reminder we’re not on our own; we belong and we belong to someone, to God. In the visible church, here, we are meant to be the emblem of that belonging. Baptism is first, then belonging.

But it’s also a response to fear. Swimming is taught to children these days and we forget that for most of history and still today in many places, people fear water. Water is dangerous. Once my son was teasing me about not playing sports; he talked about having the courage to go out on the soccer field, knowing he might get bruised. I pointed out that I sailed and commented, “Every year, some sailors die when they drown.” It was a poor joke yet it had a truth: water is dangerous. Baptism began as a way of making sacred what we feared. In John Irving’s novel, The World According to Garp, a family retreats to a home on the ocean shore in New Hampshire. There’s a beach and the children are warned about an undertow that can suck them down. Misunderstanding, the way children do, they call it “the undertoad”. I know about the undertoad. Once, long ago, I was on a beach in New Jersey, swimming while my parents watched a few yards away. The undertow—the undertoad!—caught me, swirled me around and I’ve never forgotten the fear of that moment. “When you pass the waters,” God says, “I will be with you”. When the undertoad grabs you, you will still be God’s.

But it’s not all water; baptism is more than being washed up and set down fresh and fancy. Acts tells the story of an early church mission. Someone has gone up to Samaria and baptized some folks there. They didn’t ask the Consistory, they didn’t follow the ritual, they just went ahead and did it. But somehow, the baptism wasn’t effective and the disciples know this because there has been no evidence of the Holy Spirit among these folks. We don’t know what this means; we only have this little testimony. Yet clearly the early church knew that baptism wasn’t simply a human act of applying water; it had a deeper, transforming significance. Today, baptism has become about the water; God meant it to be about the Spirit, the breath, the wind that blows through life. In the beginning, Genesis says, the Spirit of God blew on the face of the waters and it’s from this ordering that creation follows. Baptism is meant to be a sign of a deeper spiritual blowing in us that causes us to live out the gentle, loving, forgiving way of Jesus. No amount of water can do that; it takes the Holy Spirit. Our task as baptized Christians is to nurture the presence and experience of that Spirit in those who come here, those God sends.

The final clue I want to call attention to this morning is simple and direct. At the end of the account of Jesus’ baptism, it says, “heaven opened”. We live in a world caught up in the details of earthly life: what to wear, eat, how to get through the day. What we miss if we forget our baptism is that heaven is open; God is calling. The question with which I began, “How have I deserved such love?” has a simple answer: you don’t, you can’t. We don’t deserve love: it is pure gift, the gift of the God to whom we belong, whose children we are. If we believe we are indeed, God’s people, if God has given us the Spirit to bind us and energize us in living out love, if we know heaven is open to us, then indeed, we are loved in a way beyond deserving. You are my beloved, God says to Jesus: you are my beloved, God says to you.

The movie I mentioned earlier, The Danish Girl, is a fictionalized account of a real person, a man named Einar Wegener, married to Gerda, who discovered within himself a female identity he named Lili. It was a time and place with little understanding about such things the word ‘Transgender’ hadn’t even been invented and as Lili emerged and his life became living as Lili, as Einar receded and this woman became fully alive, he faced the conflict of being a woman living in a man’s body. At first treating this as a problem to be solved, Lili and Gerda struggled to find a way forward. Ultimately, Lili became the first person known to have undergone a series of operations to remake the body to match the identity as a woman. What’s clear from the real history, not as clear in the movie, is that there were years during which Lili faced the conflict of hiding her real self, living in shame, keeping the secret. Finally, near the end of the moveie, Lili sees how loved she is, asks the question with which I began, “How have I deserved such love?”, and answers it in the only way it can be answered. “Last night I had the most beautiful dream…I dreamed I was a baby in my mother’s arms…and she looked down at me…and called me Lili.”

The dream is being called by your true name: known in your true self. And loved. Like the mother in the dream, like our father in heaven, God is calling out to us, loving us, loving us beyond anything we can or ever will deserve. In the moment we see this, in the moment we know this, heaven does indeed open. And that is baptism. 

Amen.

Rise, Shine, Give God Your Glory

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2025

Epiphany Sunday • January 5, 2025

Matthew 2:1-12

Rise, shine, give god your glory. I can’t help hearing the old camp song when I say this; do you know it? Rise, shine, give God your glory. Today is Epiphany Sunday here, one day before the actual day, January 6. Sometimes it’s called Three Kings Day and in the rest of the Christian world, it’s when gifts are given and the promise of Christmas celebrated. ‘Epiphany’ is a Greek word meaning manifestation. I said that once and after the service someone said: great, you explained one word I didn’t understand with another I don’t get. It means seeing suddenly some flash of God’s presence. It’s as if the whole world is lit up, it’s like a dark night split by the instant flash of lightning. Epiphany is God’s light shining into the world and as John said, as we read in our call to worship, the darkness has not overcome it.

I grew up with the Three Kings: did you? My grandmother had a small nativity scene, little wooden figures like the ones we have here but much smaller. Every year we’d set it out on a low end table. When she wasn’t around, my brother and I would take the figures down and play with them. I liked making sailboats out of a pointy board and a dowel mast; Joseph and the shepherds became crew. Mary and the baby were passengers; the animals came on board too, like the ark. But the kings on their camels weren’t meant for shipboard life; they galloped on the shore. Originally they were joined by a chain, but that got broken and so did one of the camel’s legs. We saw them as toys and didn’t understand when my grandmother got angry at us for playing with them. That’s what the Three Kings are for many of us today: the last toys of Christmas. No other Christmas characters have had so many stories made up about them; no others are so richly embellished with fantasies and made up things nowhere in the Bible. Today, I want to put away the toys, stop playing with the figures, and see how this story in Matthew can help us rise, shine and give God the glory.

Who are the these three? They are Magi. The word gets translated “Wise Men”—although the text says nothing about gender—or ‘Kings’—although the Greek text doesn’t call them kings. In the area that’s now Iraq and Iran, schools of magicians and astrologers and dream interpreters existed for hundreds of years. They were called Magi, from the same root word that gives us ‘magic’. We have such people. They are the talking heads on TV, who guess about the future, they are the therapists who help you look forward, they are the people who magically make Alexa work for you. They aren’t kings, and sadly even the camels that were so much fun in the crèche aren’t in the story. There is  something else to understand about the Magi: they are rich Gentiles.

We’re all Gentiles, so we often miss how important this is. Yet in that time and place, no more fundamental distinction existed. So it’s surprising to see them here in this Jewish story. Matthew gives us a long, detailed genealogy of Jesus, connecting him with Abraham, detailing how he is descended from King David. He makes sure we know Jesus is as Jewish as he can be. Then he tells us about Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy, and how it takes an angel visit to get the two together. Not a word from Mary but isn’t that just like a patriarchal culture to tell us about a birth by telling how hard it is for the father without mentioning the mom? After the story we read today, we hear about Herod’s slaughter of young male children which is so like Pharaoh in the time of Moses. When Herod dies, the whole family goes home to Nazareth, and we pass to John the Baptist. These are all good Jewish stories and yet here, right here, smack in the middle, is this strange story of these rich Gentiles, the Magi.

They know what they are doing; they’ve seen a star, read the ancient Jewish prophecies, risen up from their daily lives and gone on a long journey. Now they’re near the end; they go to the Jewish king, supposing he will know what’s happening. Yet Herod and his advisors don’t have a clue. Bethlehem is about five miles away but the Magi, who have come over a thousand miles, know more than Herod. They are the emblem of what the Apostle Paul will later call a mystery; that, “…the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” [Ephesians 3:6] No more fundamental distinctions exist in that time than Gentile and Jew, rich and poor. But here is God breaking boundaries, bringing rich Gentiles to poor Jewish peasants. 

Why do they go? To give gifts. The one part of the créche Magi that is in Matthew’s Gospel is the gifts. A lot of stories have been made up about the gifts, but the truth is these gifts are the working tools of Magi. Incense is burned when mysterious things are done; myrrh is used for magical tattoos. And gold always comes in handy. The other thing in the real story which often isn’t in the créche is a star. To all who had to navigate before GPS and maps, stars were a real gift. Since ancient times, humans have used the stars to mark a path. Matthew tells us the Magi saw a star, and it leads them to Mary, Joseph and Jesus; they give their gifts and then a dream tells them to go home a different way. No names, no genders, no kings; instead, a story of the gift of a star, the gifts to the child, the gift of direction. This is a story about gifts.

Gifts aren’t always easy. Sometimes we don’t recognize them. One father told this story about a special gift.

I was cleaning my 6 year old son’s room, and doing my annual purge of crap he’s managed to hoard. I have this big pile of stuff to throw out in the living room, when he comes in, pulls some stupid paper butterfly out of the trash pile and tells me I can’t throw this away because it was a present.

He goes to a lot of birthday parties and gets a lot of goodie bags with this sort of thing, so I tell him it’s junk and it’s going in the trash. Besides, it’s all bent up and I tell him…that if he values things he should take care of them.

He leaves, and some 5 minutes later he returns, visibly distraught (he’s clearly been thinking hard about this). He says “It was a present…for you.”

“For father’s day.”

I swear at that moment I heard every angel in heaven slow clapping.

What is a gift? Is it the stupid paper butterfly or is the butterfly a pedestal for the time and care given to make a connection with someone? We make up stories about these gifts when the truth is staring us in the face: God has given a gift of presence—the Magi rise up from their homes, go following the shining light of that gift before they even know where they’re going. And they give God not just gifts but their witness of God’s glory. Rise, shine, give God your glory.

Isn’t this what we mean to do every Sunday during the offering? Passing around plates is not an effective way to raise money. Someone has to hunt through her purse; someone else pulls out his wallet and considers which bill to give. I know personally, it’s the one check I write all month, all our bills are handled electronically. Sometimes I forget on my way out the door and then there’s in the plate. Some churches have numbered pews and the reason is that once upon a time the church raised money by renting out the pews. Anyone who knows about fundraising today would tell us to use email and a web service that does subscriptions, so our offering is automatically deducted from our bank accounts just like Netflix. No, we don’t do the offering because it’s efficient, we do it to act out this mysterious thing: giving gifts.

Christmas is not about toys and the real Magi are not toys. They are an emblem and a guide to how we should react to God’s gift of presence in the world. That gift is for all people, and it’s fitting that here in this story, in the midst of these Jewish stories, it’s Gentiles, not local leaders who recognize the gift and respond by bringing their own gifts. Rise, shine, give God your glory, indeed. That’s what they are doing: giving gifts that may be strange to us but are their stock-in-trade, giving what they use, giving what they have, giving who they are. For them the “Joy to the World” about which we sing has become real. And, as one writer said, 

…when joy to the world becomes real, it breaks chains, topples hierarchies, knocks over our carefully laid out game and says: Start over, start new, start now. This is the message of the story of the [Magi], this is the message of Christmas; joy to the world, the savior reigns. 

Rise, shine, give God your glory. Isn’t your glory the gifts God has given you? Isn’t that what we are meant to be as a church?—people who give themselves, give their gifts, imitating God’s gift giving in Jesus Christ. When we do this, when we rise up and become part of that great giving, then indeed God’s presence shines, then we give God glory. And then, how wonderfully, then indeed: Joy to the world. 

Amen.

The Unsung Carol

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

First Sunday in Christmas • December 29, 2024

John 1:1-14

Christmas continues today. We left here Christmas Eve in darkness lit by candles that symbolized celebration of God’s embrace by coming to us in the person of an infant. It was Christmas Eve, though; Christmas came later. But where did it begin? When did you hear the first Christmas carol this year? When did you see the first decorations? We decorated here right after Thanksgiving and entered the season of Advent, anticipating Christmas coming. 

Christmas Begins

Where does Christmas begin in the Bible? I suppose some would say when Mary and Joseph begin the journey to Bethlehem. Luke suggests it begins with Gabriel telling Zechariah he would have a son, who would become John the Baptist. But hundreds of years before this, Isaiah had said, 

For a child has been born for us,
   a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
   and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace [Isaiah 9:6]

Mary connects the beginning to Abraham and Sarah: “[God] has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever” [Luke 1:54f] Matthew seems to agree; he begins the story of Jesus by showing how he is connected to Abraham in a long genealogy.

But it’s the Gospel of John that has the longest view. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1] and goes on with some of the most abstract language in all the gospels. Many years ago when I was in seminary, when I was a lot smarter or thought I was, I could quote this part of John in Greek from memory. But just being able to quote something doesn’t mean we know it. We have a little dog named Ellie. When she was a puppy, we put a push button bell by the door to the backyard. The theory was that when Ellie needed to potty, she would go step on the button that rings the bell, and we’d let her out. And she learned to ring the bell. She didn’t do it the way we intended to, however; she just rings it whenever she wants to go chase squirrels. But what’s kind of funny to see is that Ellie thinks the bell operates the door. So if she rings it, and we don’t let her out, she just rings it again—and again and again and again. Bible memories can be like that: we recite them over and over but if we don’t know the meaning, nothing happens.

In the Beginning

So let’s break this down a and see if we can figure out what it means. Let’s start with “the beginning”. What is that? What is your beginning? Perhaps you have a “first memory”, usually from when you’re about three or four. But that’s not your beginning. We might say your beginning was when you were born, or when you were conceived. Sometimes there are stories about these. My family legend is that I was born while my dad took his final exams in college. Of course, the Bible begins with creation: in the beginning God created, Genesis 1:1 says.  “What happened before that?” I remember asking a Sunday School teacher once; she told me not to ask such questions, but the truth is she didn’t know and neither do I. There is no before when there is no time and in Genesis the first thing God does is to create day and night, that is to say, time itself. So John is saying, that in the beginning—when there was no before—the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The Word: what is that? We know something about words. If you’re a parent, maybe you remember the first word your child spoke. Is there anymore eagerly awaited sound than that first “Mama” or “Dada”? Just like Ellie learned to ring the bell to get us to open the back door, babies learn to make a sound we call a word to summon us. That word defines relationships: “Mom” also means “Feed me! Change me! Cuddle me!” It’s the first step to controlling the world. Now, I have to do something I hate doing; I have to teach you something about Greek, the language in which the whole New Testament is written and the language in which many early Christians read the Old Testament too. In Greek, what we translate, “Word” is ‘Logos’. Logos means more than just words, it stands for the whole business of putting things in order.

Putting Things In Order

We know something about putting things in order. Jacquelyn and I share a big walk in closet. I’m messy, and the closet has gotten chaotic over the last month or so. Shoes all over the floor, summer and fall and winter clothes mixed, luggage out of place. So this week when she had some time off, Jacquelyn took on the job of organizing the closet and she succeeded brilliantly. Now you walk in there, the shoes are on racks, matched, my shirts are grouped by color and they all face the same way. I have to say, until Jacquelyn brought her sense of closet order to my life, I’d never thought about whether the shirts were grouped or faced the same way but there they are. Genesis describes creation the same way: God puts things away, night gets separated from day, land from water, plants, animals, everything right down to you and I. And the term for this in Greek is Logos, and it’s translation for us is Word. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” means putting things in order.

Now we all live with orders for things, places for them. Some of us do better than others but we do as well as we can. In our house, one cooks, another cleans up. The pots and pans go in one cabinet, the bowls go in another. There is a time for work, a time for sleep. There are other orders too. There is the way that atoms and molecules are bound and structured, the way that heavenly bodies and gravity keep the solar system spinning, the way that chemicals bond and become blood and move the oxygen and nutrients we all need around our bodies. I have no idea how this all works, honestly. I almost flunked chemistry. But I know there is an order to it all, and because of that order, we live and without that order our lives would be impossible. 

God is in the Order

So what John is saying is that right from the beginning, “in the beginning”, God was in the ordering of everything, that just like Jacquelyn matching up the shoes, God is in the order of the very tiniest and the greatest things. 

But what does this have to do with Christmas? Remember what he goes on to say: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.[John 1:14] Christmas is this order, this Word, becoming a child, a person, one of us, living among us. Think what Jesus does: he heals people, which is to say he sets them right, he casts our demons, he sets people back in order, he offers glimpses of how things should be in his teaching. How should we treat one another? “Love one another as I have loved you,” he says. He embodies the love of God which is the Word of God, the order of God and that is the glory John means when he says, “We have seen his glory.” Christmas is the Word becoming flesh.

The Real Christmas

This is the real Christmas carol and it’s often unsung. It’s easy to miss the real Christmas for the wrapping and bows. The real Christmas is God putting us right, ordering us, reminding us to live as children of God, seeing the image of God in others. It’s easy to go through life like Ellie, ringing a bell without knowing how the door really opens. Christmas means to teach us to open the door to love in our lives. It means living that love every day.

Christmas continues today—if that love lives in our hearts, if that light, shines in us. The most important question for our church isn’t “How can we keep going?”; it’s how can we shine the light of Christmas here? What do you think? What can we do together, to make sure it’s clear that Christmas continues with us? 

Amen.

Leaping Love

by

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

Fourth Sunday in Advent/C • December 22, 2024

Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39-55

Ever since Thanksgiving, and even before in some cases, in stores, in media, in daily life, we’ve been bombarded with Christmas. Our culture encourages a season of frenzied spending and parties, of decorations we buy and hang to show the Christmas Spirit. But where is that Spirit? Our Lectionary, the guide to scriptures we hear each Sunday, has taken a different tack. This whole Advent season, we’ve been asked to look not to Bethlehem, not to the stable but to other events. We began with the end: Jesus coming in power, and the heartfelt command to be alert, to watch and listen for Jesus appearance. The last two Sundays we heard about John the Baptist whose testimony is that one more powerful is coming. Finally, today, the last Sunday in Advent, we hear this story on the eve of Jesus’ birth.

A Strange Story

It’s a strange story, isn’t it? Luke doesn’t begin his gospel with Jesus; he begins with the parents of John, his father, Zechariah. Zechariah is a priest and during a service in the temple, the angel Gabriel appears and tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son. Zechariah doesn’t believe him because Elizabeth is too old. So Gabriel tells him he will be mute until his son is born. Never mess with an angel! So today we don’t hear from Zechariah; we hear from Elizabeth. She is, indeed, pregnant; she’s had her own inspiration, and now she’s about to bear a child who will be known later as John the Baptist. There’s no statue for Elizabeth in nativity scenes but let’s pretend there is and set her aside for a moment while we talk about the other person in this story: Mary. 

Now if you were Roman Catholic, you’d have heard all about Mary. But what you would have heard is about Mary characterized as the mother of Jesus, not this Mary, not this young unmarried woman. There are endless theological debates about Mary in which the word ‘virgin’ figures prominently. Most of those debates are in Greek and none of them tell us about the reality of someone we would call a girl. Most Biblical scholars suggest Mary would have been about 14. That’s very young in our culture; it was common in hers. What is shocking is that she is pregnant without being married. Girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were often shamed, sometimes stoned.

Mary’s Story

So we have this story that becomes stranger the more we listen to it. Mary has had her own angelic visitation; you’ll have to come back another time to hear that. Already engaged to Joseph, the angel tells her she will become pregnant with one who will become king, one who will reign in David’s line. She’s from Nazareth, up in the north; now she’s made the hundred-mile journey to Judah, to see someone who may be an aunt or a cousin, Elizabeth. These are two pregnant women who have no business being pregnant: one is too old, one is too young. There are no men in the conversation; this is women’s business. And at the moment they meet, something happens only a woman would understand: the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps.

This is the second time in the last few weeks when I feel totally unable to speak to a Biblical story. What does a man know about a baby in the womb moving? Nothing, not a thing. So I did what I did last time, I asked Jacquelyn about it. She said, “Well, May didn’t move around much; mostly she hiccuped.” I tried to imagine what that would be like, having someone hiccup inside you. It sounds awful. I mean, what do you do? You can’t feed them sugar, you can’t scare them, you can’t do anything but just wait, I guess. The one time she remembered May moving sharply was at a baseball game when some unthinking guy holding a beer, didn’t see her belly, tried to go past her and accidentally punched her belly. “May punched back,” she said. So, a word of caution; May isn’t here often, but if she is, don’t punch her, she punches back.

The reading goes on with two songs of praise, one from each woman. But I want to come back to this meeting. Luke—who, like me, is a guy, and therefore really doesn’t know anything about babies leaping in a womb—is the only place that tells this story. But we do have a story in Matthew about the same general time. Matthew tells us, 

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.
Matt. 1:18f

Joseph is usually described as a carpenter but the word translated ‘carpenter’ actually isn’t about someone who does what we think of as carpentry. It’s a person who makes tools out of wood: Joseph is a toolmaker.

Looking for Safety

So this is the story when we put it together. An angel visits a young girl, Mary, tells her she’s going to become pregnant. She’s already engaged; maybe she’s in love in that can’t stop thinking about him crushy way 14-year-old girls have. The Holy Spirit overwhelms her; she’s pregnant. Joseph knows the baby isn’t his. Honestly? Nazareth is a small place, if you know anything about small towns, you know they don’t keep secrets well. Joseph is planning to end the engagement; while he thinks about this, Mary leaves town, goes to visit her cousin or aunt Elizabeth. It’s a long way to go, a hundred miles, perhaps. Remember that the main way you get places in that time is you walk. What makes a young, pregnant girl walk a hundred miles? I can only think of one thing: she’s scared, and she’s looking for a safe place.

That’s what she finds with Elizabeth; that’s what that leaping baby in Elizabeth’s womb means. Maybe Mary still doesn’t quite believe the angel sent to her; maybe she’s already felt too many stares and heard too many questions. Maybe she’s figured out what’s going on with Joseph. But when she meets Elizabeth, when Elizabeth tells her own story, when Elizabeth’s baby leaps recognizing the special significance of Mary’s baby, she’s already safe. 

So we have these two stories of praise from two women who aren’t supposed to be having babies but are, who aren’t the sort of people we think of as especially blessed, but are. The rabbis who teach the history of God’s grace in Israel are all male but here it’s two women who say in the most profound way possible that God’s love is still active, still present, still making things happen in the world. 

Elizabeth speaks of the Mary’s baby as a fulfillment of the angelic message. Mary says, 

[God] has come to the aid his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. [Luke 1:54f]

She also connects this aid to God’s special love for the poor, the weak, the powerless. Leaping love is for all, but it begins with loving those who need it most.

What about us?

What about us? What does this kind of love that leaps when Jesus is near mean in our lives? There is a big temptation here for me as a preacher. I want to suggest some specific thing to do.
I want to endorse some mission. I want to tell a story of some other church, some other time, some other people who leapt at a chance to express God’s love and helped someone or some people feel safer, fed them so they were less hungry, cared for them in a way that transformed their lives. 

But those are other people, other times, other places. So I’m going to simply leave the story here with you. Mary went to Elizabeth, seeking safety, and found it. When did you feel safe? How did that feel? When have you helped someone feel safe? When can you do it again? How can we do it together as a church? We have this sign: “A small church with a big message”. Isn’t that the message?—that here, you are safe in the arms of love, God’s love. In Reformed Churches, we don’t use the word ‘sanctuary’ much. But perhaps we should. Because that’s what this place is meant to be: a sanctuary of safety, where all are reminded we are children of God together. If you want to feel that leaping love, you don’t have to be pregnant with a child: we are all pregnant with possibility. May we turn that possibility into the reality of helping people find safety here.

Amen.