Monthly Archives: November 2024

Give Thanks for the Appetizers

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Thanksgiving Sunday • November 24, 2024

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33 

It was the year nothing went right. May was in college in Georgia; she decided to go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. So Jacquelyn and I were on our own. Then, a friend of ours named Tara was going through a difficult time, so we invited her to come visit. I volunteered to cook, so the women could visit. Now Tara and Jacquelyn both love Victorian home and our town was full of them, so on Thanksgiving Day itself I set about cooking the meal I’d planned while they took off for a walk around our town. 

The real challenge of a dinner like this is getting everything to come out on time. I’d researched the traditional dishes and put a turkey breast in to brine the night before. I patted it dry, rubbed it with oil and spices and put it in to roast, setting the timer according to the directions in Betty Crocker. I chopped and mixed and spiced the various side dishes and got them going. I had everything timed and thought I was doing fine. I was doing the “blast turkey with high heat then turn down” method, so after a half hour, I intended to turn the oven down; instead I turned it off; mistake number one. I didn’t realize what I’d done and thought we were on course. The kitchen mess was mounting when the women returned, talking about how hungry they were and that the house smelled great. They started to pick up bits to eat in the kitchen, I shooed them out, sternly ordering just like my grandmother used to do, “No snacking! You’ll spoil your dinner!” I checked the turkey; not done. They complained about being hungry; I snarled back, “No snacking!”  We waited; I checked the turkey again and it clearly wasn’t cooking. I finally figured out what had happened—along with the fact that we were a solid hour or more from being having dinner ready. Meanwhile, the rolls had burned beyond redemption. Mistake number two. 

It’s a scary thing to tell two hungry women dinner is delayed. I frantically looked around, saw a baguette, sliced it up, spread it with some garlic and tomato sauce and bits of onion, put it on a plate and took it to the women, announcing as if I had planned it all along, “This is the appetizers.” I was so frustrated, angry at myself for my mistakes, feeling like nothing was going right when I heard from the other room the song the choir sang last week: “Give Thanks with a grateful heart.” Except the words were different; instead of,  “Give thanks with a grateful heart”, they were singing, “Give thanks for the appetizers.” We all laughed. The turkey eventually finished. I dropped it on the floor taking it out of the oven, it didn’t matter; we were still laughing about the song. We still do. 

Our Thanksgiving celebration is like the Susquehanna, a river with many sources. Some are harvest festivals, which both the English and the Native Americans celebrated. Some of the streams are legends: no one called the people at Plymouth ‘Pilgrims” for almost 200 years. So there was never a “Pilgrim Thanksgiving”. And we have no record they ate turkey at all on that day; most of the meat was venison, much of the meal was fish and seafood. There is the long history of Thanksgiving celebration in the Biblical record, the New Testament commands to give thanks and most of all the deepest current, which is the power of giving thanks to transform us.

Where shall we dive in? Let’s start with the message we read earlier from the prophet Joel. We don’t know much about him or his time. One thing that’s clear: he preached his Word in the midst and aftermath of a time of fear and desperation. Hordes of locusts had eaten crops and people were afraid. It’s fear Joel addresses here, fear that robs hope, fear that paralyzes. To this fear he says, 

Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.

O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for God has given the early rain for your vindication, God has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. [Joel 2:21-23]

He begins with the ground of faith, the history of God’s blessing, and follows the rhythm of creation from land to animals to the trees that bear fruit and the vines that give wine. Only then does he come to us: the children of Zion. God’s first and foremost blessing is creation itself; God’s creation is the ground of hope. “Do not fear…be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!” The answer to fear isn’t redoubled effort, it isn’t what we do at all; it is a Thanksgiving that remembers and appreciates what God has done and invites us to hope in what God will do. The final movement of this song is faith: “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other.” [Joel 2:27]

Jesus is also addressing fear in the passage we read earlier because our fears make us worry. 

31Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
[Matthew 6:31-33]

Matthew has wrapped this saying into a summary we call the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t know the exact setting but it’s not hard to guess. Jesus is on the road with his disciples. There must have been times they wondered where the next meal would come from, how they would raise the funds they needed for the ministry, for their own needs. Just like Joel, Jesus calls them to remember God’s creative blessing. He asks them to look around at the lilies, at the birds;
he invites them to put God at the center and give thanks. Thanksgiving is the real cure for fear. Thanksgiving is the doorway to hope.

We’re living in a fearful moment. The locusts of our fear of terrorism and different people are trying to eat up our hope. It’s a story that sells ads, so the media is urging them on; it’s a story that gets attention, so some people who want to lead are telling us the solution is to get rid of the locusts. Last week, I quoted Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, and it’s line, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It is especially important that we remember and take to heart the lessons we heard today. Our hope is there; our worry can only be satisfied by the peace of remembering God’s providence and power.

In this moment, in this week, it’s good to remember the Thanksgiving story. It is so overlain with legend and lore that it’s hard to remember the real details. This is the Thanksgiving story. A group of refugees who wanted to worship in the Reformed way, like us, fled persecution in their native land. They went to Holland, where they formed a little cultural enclave. But they don’t really fit in; their religion is different, stricter, their values are different also. So they returned to England and contracted to found a colony in Virginia. Half of the people going weren’t part of the original religious group; they were called ‘strangers’. After a terrible yoyage, they go off course and end up in Cape Cod in November. A measles epidemic had decimated the native population; these new settlers survive by stealing corn from caches those vanished natives left behind. They settle in a protected bay and name it after their departure city: Plymouth. They have a hard time fitting in but some of the native people, the Wampanoag, in the area help them out, teach them how to get along, and they adjust, they adapt. Almost half of the original 102 settlers die the first winter. But eventually they learn to grow corn and other things, they learn to eat the local seafood, clams, lobster and so on. They learn to hunt. 

A year or so later, things are going well. They decide to take a few days off and plan a feast. They invite their neighbors who take one look at the food and decide to supplement it with local meats. Later, the whole experience is romanticized and becomes a kind of living legend. The refugees are now called the Pilgrims. They go on to found churches and communities; they create a culture of congregational democracy that trains people to live in hope, believing God is present and they have a purpose. We are meant to be that people. We are their children. Let us like them, like faithful people in every time, from Joel to Jesus to Plymouth to York, give thanks, the thanks that remembers the Lord our God is in our midst.

Sometimes things succeed; sometimes they fail. The Thanksgiving dinner where nothing went right? It’s remembered by all of us as a wonderful, special one. Somehow, the song—give thanks for the appetizers—the act of giving thanks even when hungry, the choice to see the gift and goodness rather than focus on the failure and fear it transformed the moment. It can transform any moment; it can transform us. Give thanks—this week, always. Give thanks for the appetizers; give thanks to the Lord above. Give thanks and see if it doesn’t grow into a harvest of grace.

Amen.

All Fall Down

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

26th Sunday After Pentecost/B • November 17,2024

Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8

Ring around the Rosie, Pocket full of Posies

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

Did you sing this when you were a kid? It’s an old, old folk song. It makes me think of happy children dancing in a circle and giggling when they fall down. Some historians today believe it may have originated during the dark tide of the bubonic plague. The “rosie” are the marks of the  plague, the ashes are the thousands of corpses burned. Some estimates are that about half the people in Europe, 50 million, died in a period of seven years. Whole villages were depopulated and it took Europe over a hundred years to begin to recover. I know this is a dark way to start a sermon, but today our gospel reading asks us to look at what happens when things fall down.

The poet William Butler Yeats asked this question in a piece called “Second Coming”. The opening stanza reads, 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

What happens when things fall apart? Why does God let things fall apart?

Surely the place to begin is with our central prayer, which begins, “Our Father”. Hosea compares God’s love to a mother’s love. Now every parent knows there is a fundamental dilemma in raising a child: there is what’s right, what protects the child, yet there’s a need to give that child the freedom to grow and make mistakes and learn from them. I’ve seen this in my own parenting. When my older kids were young, we lived in a little village in northern Michigan. The kids could go off on their own and mostly did. I didn’t worry too much. Then there was the day I got a call: Jason is lying down in the middle of Route 22. Now our village had lots of tourists in the summer, so we all looked forward to the time in the fall when they left and things were quiet. My son and two of his friends decided to celebrate this moment by lying down in the middle of the main street through town. It was just one of those dumb boy things. Of course, there was a long discussion about why we never, ever lay down in the street, a discussion that began with, “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!”. As I recall, his response was essentially, “Well, we didn’t think of that.” As far as I know, he never did again. Should I have kept him home?

Throughout the story of God’s people, there are dumb, lying in the street moments. When Israel decides it wants a king, for example, we hear in 1 Samuel 8 about all the terrible things a king will do. Nevertheless, Israel insists on a king and God, sighing I imagine, gives them one. Much of the rest of the Hebrew scripture is devoted to the terrible things that result. By Jesus’ time, Palestine is a Roman protectorate, with a puppet king. Jerusalem is a big city up on its mountain. Over the previous century, the temple has been rebuilt into a huge structure. The rebuilding began in 20 BC and took about 40 years; it was still going on when Jesus and his disciples were there. Now these are guys from the rural north and I can imagine their reaction to seeing this temple. Mark says, “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” [Mark 13:1} It makes me think of the first time my mom took me to New York City and I saw the Empire State Building. Maybe you’ve had the same experience: going to the big city, seeing the big buildings.

The temple was meant to be a lighthouse of God’s love and justice, but it had become instead a headquarters for the rich to oppress the poor. We see that weaving through the sayings of Jesus over and over again. So when the disciples are marveling at the towers and the stones, Jesus replies that it’s all going to fall down. In reply to their comment, he says, “13:2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” [Mark 13:2] He goes on to say there are going to be terrible wars and conflicts. Everything is going to fall apart. Then he goes on to say something else: all of this destruction is not the end—it’s birth pangs, it’s the beginning of something new.  

What does Jesus finally say we should do when these things happen, when things fall apart? Keep awake. Stay alert. That message comes through parables, that message is explicit in this story. The verses we read this morning are part of a larger section which includes predictions of persecutions and concludes with a parable about the need for watchfulness. The final word: “Keep awake” [Mark 13:37b]

What this means is first, staying alert, watching for new ways to share God’s Word, looking for ways to invite others into Christ’s church. . I don’t know what your experience here was when the COVID 19 Pandemic forced closing of churches. I know that where I was, we didn’t handle it well. We hadn’t kept up with the technology to share our services with over the internet, we didn’t have active social media accounts, we didn’t have the capability to stream anything. The technology was there; others used it for various purposes, but we were a very traditional church. It reminds me of an incident in a Massachusetts church in the late 1700s. Then, the new technology was Franklin stoves: heat right there during worship. I remember reading the minutes of Annual Meetings at a church in Chelmsford, MA, where year after year this was brought up, year after year voted down until finally it passed, at which point a Deacon who had opposed it said that he was sure God would find a warm place in hell for people who needed heat in church.

In Albany, we were much the same about steaming and online ministry for a long time. We missed the boat. We weren’t alert to the possibilities; I think we often still aren’t. We miss the chance to invite others, share with others. Some of you know that I post my sermons online weekly. What you may not know is that every week on average those sermons are viewed about 30 times. That’s close to double the people who hear them here in this lovely place. What would it mean if we made a larger commitment to a digital ministry, to reaching out? We don’t know.

Keeping awake means keeping hope alive. Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Invention of Wings, tells two parallel stories. One is a biography of the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Abigail. Raised in the early 19th century in the slave supported culture of Charleston, South Carolina, they became leading advocates of the abolition of slavery and later of full equality for women. The other story is fictional but just as important; it’s the story of Handful, an enslaved girl given to Sarah Grimké at an early age, who grows up with a mother determined to seek freedom. For more than 20 years, she and her mother pursue various strategies until finally she escapes north, to Pensylvania and freedom. Along the way, she and her mother are beaten, worked, defiled but they never give up hope. We honor our history here in many ways yet how often do we talk about our hope? Shouldn’t we be as focused on where we are going as where we’ve been? No one would walk a path facing backwards; we know enough not to do that. But do we know enough to turn around and look forward to where God wants us to go as a church?

Keeping awake means keeping connection. We often miss how encouraging our presence here is to each other. I’ve been here just about six months; already I can look around and see when someone is missing. I’m sure you can do it much better. Over the years, I’ve heard more excuses for why someone doesn’t go to church than I can count. They mostly come down to, “I didn’t want to go.” We seldom think: maybe I should go because someone else needs me there. One of the best things about this church is the way we honor connections. I never visit someone in the hospital or a nursing home that they don’t have cards sent from other members. I never visit without hearing how important those cards and our prayers are to them. I know in my own experience how much it lightened me when I was sick and received those cards.

 Keeping alert, keeping focused on the future, keeping connection, these are all ways of keeping awake. They are the way Jesus tells us to respond when things fall apart. He says these are birth pangs. Now, I think it’s a bit dicey for a man to talk about birthing. There are some things I’m totally clueless about: why someone gets up one day and decides to change her hair color, how to put on eyeliner, how to clean so it satisfies Jacquelyn. Birthing is one of those things. So this week, I’ve been asking friends who’ve had babies about their experience. I got some truly answers, but the best of all was close to home. When I asked Jacquelyn, she told me about birthing May, how there was a young woman in the next room screaming, how it was busy in the ward. I asked her if it hurt and she said, well, yes of course but you don’t remember the hurt, you remember the delight.

I think that says what Jesus hopes. Yes, things do fall apart; yes, things are going to fall apart. Don’t get attached to what looks impressive and big in this world. It’s going to fall because only God endure forever. Yet when things do fall apart, remember: it’s not the end, it’s birth pangs. Keep awake—alert, connected, focused on the future—and know that beyond what’s ending, beyond the birth pangs, there is the delight of God’s presence waiting.

Amen.

Sing Along

by
Listen to the sermon preached here

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

25th Sunday After Pentecost/B • November 10, 2024

1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 16, Mark 12:38-44

We often envy what the others have, don’t we? I always wished I was taller and had a cool preacher voice. But most of all, I envy people who can sing and do it on key. I love hearing the choir; I love my daughter May’s voice, she sings on key, something I have never consistently managed. It’s not my gift. I used to record sermons on cassette tapes and play them later, to critique and improve. But I frequently forgot to turn off my microphone during hymns. So there would be my voice, and just my voice, tunelessly singing some hymn everyone else can sing just fine. It always made my family laugh.

Since I can’t sing well, I sing along. You know what I mean? I just kind of sing the words quietly, under everyone else who’s singing so beautifully. I add a little volume and enthusiasm. But I like to sing along. When I sing along, even though my voice isn’t as sweet or tuned or wonderful as others, I’m part of the group, I’m part of the praise. That’s what I believe today’s scripture reading is about. Now when we read the gospel lesson for today, commonly called the widow’s mite, I’m guessing that it may not have been new to you. It’s a common text for Stewardship Sundays and appeals to give to the church. Well, I hope you do give generously to this church. But I don’t think this text has much to do with that. I think it has to do with singing along. 

If we pull back from the specific story of the widow, we find Jesus has been going to the temple and arguing with representatives of various powerful groups. The temple isn’t much like our church buildings; it’s more like a farmers’ market with a chapel at one end. People are there buying and selling animals for sacrifices, they’re changing money because you can’t use Roman currency for temple offerings. It’s a noisy place and if you’ve ever been to a farm with animals, you can imagine what it smells like. It’s also a place where people meet. Some of them are doing business deals, some are meeting friends. In one area, there’s a place to put in temple offerings, just like we have offering plates at both ends of the worship area here. We walk past those plates and quietly put offerings in, but the temple treasury is a public place and the offerings aren’t little envelopes they are coins or sacks of coins and animals. The nice thing about this arrangement is that everyone can see how generous you’re being, how much you love God, calibrated by how much you put in the offering 

Jesus is watching, and he points out what everyone knows. Many of the people bringing offerings are well-to-do, he says dressed in long robes, the equivalent today would be expensive suits. They’re mostly scribes, what we would call lawyers and accountants. They’re rich people working to get ahead and they envy each other, try to make a big impression, try to get one more step up the ladder of respect and honor. And some of them do it by what he calls “devouring widow’s houses.” In this place and time, women have no property rights. When a husband dies, his widow doesn’t get his house. Scribes often help the man’s brother or sons take it over, usually getting a piece of the value for themselves, leaving the widow impoverished and homeless. Why do the scribes do it? Because they live their lives out of envy, always trying to get richer, get more honors, get more important in their world. Somewhere along the way, they have become like the lady in the Led Zeppelin song who is buying a stairway to heaven. Their offerings have become a transaction: see, God, I’ve bought my ticket to righteousness.

Their envy makes them devour widow’s houses and God hates this. God has a particular fondness for widows. There are over 100 places in scripture where God mentions widows for special concern. In Deuteronomy, justice for widows is central to God.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, [Deuteronomy 10:17]

So it’s not an accident that Jesus is lifting up a woman who is a widow. In his words, in this moment, for this moment, he is demonstrating what he has said, that the last shall be first. Because Jesus sees to the heart of what’s going on here. This woman is going all out. Here she is in all her vulnerability, yet she’s giving everything, thanking God every day. This isn’t about stewardship, this isn’t about giving to the church or the temple at all really. It’s about how we come to God: buying God’s love, or just letting it flow over us? Because we can never deserve that love; we can only accept it and share it.

This text makes me uncomfortable. I’d like to be on the side of the widow but honestly, I look more like the scribes. I know there is a part of me that likes having a title, there is a part that likes sitting at the head table, there is a part that wants to look successful in my career. I know that part of me likes the whole winners and losers game and when I play, I want to win. But God keeps throwing pitches at me even though I don’t always catch them. This is one. It asks whether I’m buying a stairway to heaven or just thankful to be here, thanking God that I know what love is, that God loves me.

The other story we read today asks the same question but it takes us right into the heart of the decision. Elijah is a prophet in Israel at a time when the king has become faithless. He wants to be like other kings, he wants to become more powerful. To do that takes powerful, rich friends and he has to make it pay off for them, so justice has become a thing of the past there. When justice dries up, so does the land, the Bible says. There is a drought; people are starving. Elijah has announced this but he’s hungry too. So he shows up at this widow’s door, dirty, hungry, probably a little stinky. Here’s the amazing thing: she’s a Gentile. She isn’t even Jewish. Geography is theology in the Bible so it’s important to pay attention to the fact that he’s in Zarepheth, outside Israel. A woman is gathering sticks to make a fire and he asks for some bread; she tells him she was just going to make one last meal with all she has for her and her son before they starve. He says what angels say: “Don’t be afraid”, and then he tells her the flour and oil will be enough. 

Now she has a decision, doesn’t she? What would you do? Would you share your last bit with a hungry stranger? Well, let me tell you a story about a Christmas party, the best Christmas party I’ve ever been to. A number of years ago, we had a play at the church where I was the pastor.. It was a big success, people were feeling good, and afterward a man chatted with me for a while. He carefully explained he didn’t go to church; I think he was stunned when I said that was fine. He stayed for a long time, and when he got ready to go, he said, “Preacher, I want to do something good here but you’ll know better than me what to do,” and handed me a $100 bill. I guess I could have put it in the offering, I could have given it to the benevolences but what I did was to give it to a single mom in our church who was struggling. I told her  to use it however she wanted, maybe get some presents for her kids.

A few weeks later, she begged me to come over to her house after the Christmas Eve service. Now after Christmas Eve, I’m always exhausted, I’m anxious to get home to my own family. But I couldn’t say no, so off I went. She lived in a little apartment in a part of town where you made sure to lock your car. I don’t know what I expected, but when I got up the stairs to her place, I was amazed. It was full of people, there were bowls of chili and chips and food and kids, and presents and wrapping paper and happy people. She’d been homeless until recently; now she had a place and she’d taken the $100 and invited a bunch of people who lived in their cars and so on to come over for a feast.What I remember most is sitting on the couch, with her little girl on my lap, endlessly stroking my tie, and asking me why I wore it; she wasn’t used to men in ties. It wasn’t what I would have done with the money; it’s what God would do. It’s what God does.

A widow who gives out of her poverty, who believes her poverty is an abundance because it gives her the means to thank God. A widow who takes a chance on the word of a prophet from another country that God will somehow provide for her and her son and him as well. These are the pictures God’s Word is giving us of what God wants; these are the people God sets up as examples. 

Those guys fussing about their status and giving big sums to the temple, buying influence with the king? They’re going to lose it all. About 30 years after this moment, the temple is going to be pulled down during a war with Rome. Jerusalem is going to be destroyed. All that’s left of it is a bit of a wall today. The Psalm we read in the Call to Worship has it exactly right: 

Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.

When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,

who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; [Psalm 16:4-6]

If we focus just on today, we miss this. Only God’s way endures and it endures forever.

It’s easy to follow the way of the world in our spiritual life and church life. So thank God we have these examples: women who believed enough to live in thankful faithfulness. The headlines in the news are for today; tomorrow they’ll be something else. God’s love is forever. Which one will we live from? Which one will we demonstrate? 

Believing in God’s blessing, God’s abundance, God’s goodness is like a song. Remember how the Psalm started? “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.” That’s the song these widows are singing and we’re invited to sing along. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a great singer like the people in our choir or a little tuneless like me. Sing along. It doesn’t matter whether you feel like you’re winning or losing today; sing along because ultimately God always wins. It doesn’t matter whether you’re feeling full or worried like the Gentile widow; sing along because the song itself is a blessing meant to be shared. 

Amen.

Saints Without Haloes

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

All Saints’ Day • November 3, 2024

Isaiah 25:6-9, Matthew 25:31-40

For 11 years, I was the pastor of the United Congregational church, whose meeting house is one of those big, ornate buildings, with stained-glass windows and dark woodwork everywhere. One year, we held a special Good Friday service with the Roman Catholic diocese. We walked behind a cross and the Catholic Bishop preached in our pulpit. So we had a lot of Catholics there for the first time. One comment I heard afterward always stuck with me “It’s a pretty church and the people are nice but oh my God! They don’t have any statues at all! I don’t know how you have a church without any saints!” For Reformed people like us, it’s a pretty fancy place, but for this woman, brought up in the lush environment of Italian Catholic churches, it was plain and soul-less and more importantly, saintless. I imagine she’d say the same about this meeting house. Personally, I love its simple lines, the way the light floods in from the windows, how it sits embraced by the trees. But there are no statues of saints.

Of course, there are reasons we don’t have statues. The practice of venerating saints was a cash cow for the Medieval Catholic Church, and it had gotten out of hand; buying and selling religious relics including bits and pieces of the bodies of saints was a big business in 1500 AD. When the Reformers, including our own fathers and mothers in the faith, were cleaning out the closet of church practices, they wrinkled their nose over the whole business and tossed it in the trash box. So does it even make sense to have All Saints’ Day in a Reformed Church?

Maybe it helps if we understand just what the word saint means. It comes from the same root that gives us all the words like elect and election; just like we choose a candidate for office and give them a job. We elect them; we choose them. Saint is the English translation of the Greek word for ‘elect’. The original idea was that God chooses people here, right here, in this world, in this community, for a purpose;  They are elected, chosen, and the word for ‘elect’ is translated as ‘saint’. Everyone chosen by God is a saint. 

We’ve just come through Halloween, celebrated in our country by putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else. One year, one of my churches held a memorable Halloween party. Our hall was full, there were a hundred kids and their parents, most of them working hard at looking like someone they aren’t. We had a half dozen Spidermen, at least two Wizard of Oz Dorothies; we had Megatron and Bumble Bee, we had a nice selection of princesses, Barbie, and enough witches for a coven. Superman and Supergirl both attended. We had zombies and clowns; we had costumes whose identity wasn’t entirely clear but seemed assembled just to be different. It’s fun to pretend to be someone else for a while; it’s fun to get out of yourself and into a costume.

What wasn’t obvious is that we also had a lot of saints present. They were saints without halos, of course, but saints nevertheless. It took pretty much everyone from our church to host the party, and we were all tired at the end. But we were there doing God’s work. You see, the Halloween party wasn’t just a good time; it was also a day when we demonstrated  free grace, showing off how we believe God cares without price, without purchase. One of the parents said to me, “I think we’re supposed to pay for all of this somewhere, but I didn’t see where.” I said, “No, it’s free; just a good time.” I was taking pictures and printing them. He asked how much the picture would cost; I said, “Nothing, it’s free”—and when he asked how much for another one of the whole family I said again, “It’s free.” It puzzled him, it really puzzled him; God grace always does, free grace always stuns us when we encounter a little of it; we’re used to paying our own way. 

We have lots of visions of life with God but many of them look like the one we heard from Isaiah this morning. 

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  …Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces

Life with God looks like a party, in other words: a great, wonderful time of praise and joy and good things we all enjoy that God gives for free.The woman who said we didn’t have saints in our churches was wrong; we do have saints, but they are saints without halos. What is a saint? A saint is someone fulfilling God’s purpose. It isn’t hard to understand that purpose. When Jesus was asked what God wanted, he replied with the ancient teaching from Deuteronomy, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength” and added, “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is our purpose; this is our mission. It’s a good thing for us to remember it, it’s a good thing for us to celebrate it. For the purpose of a church is to help us dress up in the costume of a saint, in the life of a saint. What I mean is, to learn to live like this, to live like this every day. When you do this, when I do, then we are saints. That’s right: Saint Linda, Saint Diane, Saint Sigmund, Saint fill in your own name.

We don’t have statues; we do have memories. In a few moments, we celebrate the memory of our friends who passed on this year, completing their mission. But celebrating all saints includes all the saints who are here. And it also includes some people we don’t always think about: al the ones who aren’t here yet. So today, right now, I thank God for all those saints who have gone home to God, for all of you saints who are here and for the ones I haven’t met yet. May God’s blessing flow

Amen. 

Suffering Love

by

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

22nd Sunday After Pentecost • October 20, 2024

Isaiah 53:4-12, Mark 10:35-45

The city of Barcelona in Spain sits on a coastal plain in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It’s been occupied by people since the Stone Age, and it’s been a port since before the time of Christ. In all those centuries, sailors have been able to find Barcelona by sighting the tall mountain of Montserrat that behind it, just as the Appalachian Mountains rise west of us. A cathedral sits up there now but long before the cathedral, the caves were homes. It’s easy for me to imagine a sailor seeking harbor, sighting Montserrat hours and hours before seeing Barcelona itself, knowing they have a definite destination, knowing where they are going. I get the same feeling every time I come here to Locust Grove. There’s the long drive down the highway, a few miles down Mount Joy street, the left turn we sometimes miss and then the tall steeple of this meeting house. It calls me, and I always smile seeing it. I know where I’m going; I know there will be all of you, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, I know what we are doing together. Today’s reading from Mark is a steeple, it’s a mountain, it’s a signpost to tell us where we are going following Jesus. Do you see the mountain? Do you see the signal? Are you ready to come along?

If we glance backward in the story, we remember Jesus’ encounter with the rich man, a man Jesus instantly loved, yet one whose faith would not carry him beyond the safety of his riches to follow. What riches do is promise is comfort and safety. Riches insulate you from suffering; they did then, they do now. I wonder how sad it made Jesus when he failed; I wonder how he felt comparing the man’s rejection to his own mission. Just after that, just before what we read this morning, Jesus again shares his view of the mountain he is climbing, the way he is walking.

He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, 33saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; 34they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’ [Mark 10:31b-34]

Nothing safe there; nothing comfortable. 

The disciples don’t get it. It’s striking if you look at the whole story. This is the third time Jesus has told them about where he’s going. The first time, Peter rebukes him, the same word used about Jesus casting out demons; Peter means to cast out this idea of suffering. The second time, the disciples don’t understand and are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. This third time they seem too concerned about themselves to really take it in. Just before this, after Jesus says that riches and the comfort and safety they create make it hard to be saved, Peter says, “What about us?” And here we have James and John asking to be his right-hand men when he comes into power. It’s clear what they have in mind: Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, work some major miracles, defeat the Romans and the Herodians and presto become king. Pow! Zowie! Super Jesus to the rescue! All kings need helpers; they want the top slots. It turns out the other disciples do too, they get mad about James and John putting in their bid first. They all want to be rich and powerful. They all think that’s what success means. Don’t we?

Most Christians have never truly embraced Jesus as a suffering servant any more than the first disciples did. Jacquelyn and I spent the last week in Spain and Spain is littered with cathedrals. We go to them because that’s where the art is and much of the art depicts Jesus suffering: Jesus being scourged, Jesus crucified, Jesus on the cross. We call them “dead Jesi” I once counted 12 in one room in a museum. But most of them are in churches dripping with gold and rich, ornate fixtures. Jesus suffers; the church does not.

It’s easy to just appreciate the art and roll our ideas at the implied theology, to see it as the high tide mark of Medieval Catholicism but contemporary Christianity here in America is often no better. So many today have swapped the passion and suffering of Jesus for Christian Nationalism, a sort of self-made church which replaces the cross with an American flag. Like James and John, we’d like to be powerful. We’d prefer taking up a weapon to offering the other cheek.

Jesus has nothing to do with Christian Nationalism. Instead, he points us back to Isaiah and the image of a servant. He says explicitly, “…whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. [Mark 10:44]” and he uses the word suffer to describe his mission. Just like us, ancient people thought success meant avoiding suffering, so the words of Isaiah must have shocked them. What kind of Messiah, what kind of king is crushed? What kind of Messiah, what kind of king is oppressed and afflicted? Just like us, when we think of suffering, their first impulse is to turn away; the second is to blame someone, often the person who suffers. The whole Book of Job is devoted to the problem of suffering and the answer proposed by Job’s friends is that it must be his fault.

But Jesus has a different understanding of suffering. He sees it not as an invitation to blame but as an occasion inviting response. The Gospel of Luke has a story not in the others in which Jesus is explicitly asked who is to blame for suffering and he replies that the problem is not who to blame but how to act; there he tells a parable in which the challenge of suffering is to repent and to bear good fruit. Now, Paul says in Galatians, 

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. [Galatians 5:22f]

Jesus describes his own suffering as a ransom. In his time, ransom was a word often used about a process for reclaiming someone from slavery. The fruit of the mission of Jesus is not political, it is instead a transformation of our lives so that they are changed and become about loving others. It is literally an inspiration: that is to say, an implanting of the Spirit of God into our hearts. We see that inspiration when we bear the fruit of the Spirit.

We see this on the large canvas of some lives in a way that transforms our community. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Writing about his own life and struggle against the slavery of racism, said, 

My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. … I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive. [Christian Century 77 April 1960 pg. 510]

King refused to let his suffering bind him; he refused to seek safety from suffering. On the last night of his life, speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, where the whole legal establishment of the city was against them and there were threats on his life, he said,

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

[delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee]

In that terrible moment when that shot rang out, I know that the shooter was the slave, enslaved by the hatred of racism and the man he shot, that man of God, was a free man following Christ. Like Jesus, he knew the occasion of suffering; and like Jesus, he knew it as an opportunity to set God’s people free, to be a ransom for many, to live out inspiration.

 Well, it’s always dangerous to talk about a heroic, well known person. Because it’s easy to listen and cheer him on and think, what a hero he was. But we are not all heroes. We are not all great men and women. We are simply here, getting through this day and the next. We’re not wondering how to change the world, we’re wondering what’s for dinner tonight and did I take my pills. But we encounter suffering as well. Someone dies and we grieve. We think we’re doing fine and fall or suddenly the doctor gets that look, and we hear terrible news. What about us? I admire Dr. King, but what about the rest of us? 

So I want to tell you about another person who is a hero but perhaps only to me. Her name was Mattie and I knew her when I was first in the ministry. I thought of her as an old woman and you know, she was probably younger than I am now. Our frame of reference changes, doesn’t it? Shortly after I was called to her church as the pastor, she became very ill and went into the hospital. She was in a lot of pain at times, but she always managed to smile when I walked in the door. One day I went to see her and got to meet several of her family; after a little bit, she kicked them out and said, “I need to talk to the Reverend privately.” So they left, she had me close the door and then, she said, “Reverend, I’m going to die.” Now, I’d encountered people who were dead but that was my first one who announced it ahead of time. Then she told me she needed me to do something that was hard: this woman who is lying in a hospital bed, telling me she’s dying, she’s telling me it will be hard. And then she asked me to lie. “My family can’t admit I’m going and it will upset them and they’ll start fighting if you tell them I’m dying, so I need you to pretend you don’t know.” I was young then: 28, and I had pretty rigid principles and they didn’t include lying. But Mattie was so worried about her family that I agreed. I didn’t get it then, to be honest but I do now. There she was, laying in what a month or so later turned out to be her death bed, but she wasn’t fearing anything, she was just worried about her family, she was just loving her family.

We can spend our lives trying to avoid any suffering, looking down on those who do suffer, discussing why it’s their fault. Jesus summons us to another way, the way of love, the way of servanthood, the way of suffering love. Power and riches are no part of the mission of Jesus; they are no part of our mission. His mission is to transform us, to ransom us from the slavery of the world and to light our lives with the light of the spirit. And he asks today, as he asked then, “Are ye able?” May we become a blessing by saying yes, Lord, yes, I am able.

Amen.