Tag Archives: Grace

There Is Love

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

World Communion Sunday • 20th Sunday After Pentecost • October 6, 2024

Genesis 2:18-24 • Mark 10:2-16

I’d just moved to Boston to go to seminary, and I was excited and nervous. This was long before Starbucks and coffee house culture; we just had diners. So I went in one and asked for a coffee. The man said, “You want dat regulah?” Not wanting to look like I didn’t know what I was doing, I said, “Sure.” He gave me a cup of coffee with cream in it. I always drink my coffee black; so I said, “Oh I didn’t want cream,” and asked him to replace it with a black coffee. He said, “You asked foh regulah.” What I learned is that while black coffee is how it comes regularly in Michigan, in Boston, “regular coffee” is coffee with cream in it. Since then, I’ve had to deal with lots of similar misunderstandings. In Spain once, I thought I ordered olives—“olivdes”—but ended up with snails. England is especially hard because they use the same words for different things. We all know what a biscuit is, right? Except that in England it’s a cookie. Never order biscuits and gravy in England. I mention these differences because this morning in our gospel reading you heard the word ‘divorce’. Some of us are divorced; others have walked with friends or family through divorces. So when you heard that word, you probably thought you knew what it meant. But just like biscuits, just like olivdes, just like regular coffee, we need to be careful and not apply our own ideas to what Jesus is saying. Instead, let’s look at what this means for his time and his way so that we can hear what he’s really saying.

Let’s begin by remembering where we are in Mark’s story of Jesus. At his baptism, he heard a voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Just before this, he’s taken two disciples up a mountain and again, a heavenly voice has said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Twice already he has told his disciples that he’s going to be handed over to the authorities, killed, and will rise again after three days. They are now on the way to Jerusalem, where this will be fulfilled. Along the way, there are a series of confrontations where he’s asked to debate tricky questions of religious law. That’s what’s happening here. This is a political question: the most famous divorce there was when King Herod divorced his wife to marry his sister-in-law. It was preaching against this that got John the Baptist executed.

When we think of marriage and divorce, we think of two people dating, falling in love, having a ceremony that celebrates their unique commitment to a relationship of intimacy with each other. We know this hope doesn’t always blossom. Sometimes there are choices, sometimes there is abuse, sometimes it becomes clear to one or both that this relationship cannot continue. So we provide for either person to ask for a divorce, and we have a whole legal framework that tries to equitably divide up property and responsibilities for children. But Jewish custom was different in Jesus time. Marriage was less about intimacy than about a contract, called a ketubah. The ketubah specified a bride price and provided a property settlement. After the ketubah was signed, there was often a period of being engaged, up to seven years. Then a formal marriage ceremony would be held. Women could not ask for a divorce; only a man could initiate a divorce by filing what is called a get. Women and children were often abandoned after a divorce. There was no requirement for child support or property division. This is what’s being discussed here.

The Pharisees in the passage set out the law of Moses regarding divorce; it’s what I’ve just described. A man files a get, the divorce is finalized. All is according to the law of Moses. Perhaps Moses realized not all marriages work and provided an out. But that bit of grace has become a law. Jesus goes to the core of the matter. He wants to go behind Moses’ law and back to the original intention of God. He says that Moses wrote this law because of the hardness of hearts of people and reminds them of God’s hope at creation. 

We miss some of the significance of the story of creation in Genesis because of translation issues. What happens there is that God takes some mud from a creek, forms a human shaped doll, just as Jewish children did. These dolls were called adamanh; we translate this as a name, Adam, and use gendered language to make Adam male. But this isn’t a male, isn’t Adam, it’s an adamah.Then God breathes life into the adamah. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for Spirit and breath is the same. So the adamah becomes a living being by God sharing spirit/breath. 

God says it isn’t good for the adamah to be alone and tries out all kinds of creatures as partners, but it’s only when God takes some of the substance of the adamah and makes another being that the adamah recognizes a true partner. The word is ‘aged’, which means helper but has the sense of equal. Sometimes God is described as our aged, our helper. It’s only when the two are together that they are described as man and woman, actually as husband and wife. The story concludes, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” This part always make middle school confirmation classes giggle, but it’s really a sign of intimacy.

Sometimes this happens and it’s amazing and wonderful. We also know sometimes it doesn’t. This is true of much of life. God hopes we will live in covenants that express justice and loving kindness, that we will provide for everyone to live out the fulfillment of their gifts as children of God. We know that doesn’t happen as well. When we think of marriages breaking down, we often think of adultery, but it’s just as common for marriages to break down because the couple are not helpers to each other, not partners. So we provide in our common life, legal ways to say, “Look, I need out of this marriage. I need a divorce.” We provide a legal process for this. But what about the spiritual process?

Jesus has an answer for that as well. First, he refuses to endorse the abandonment of the vulnerable, of wives and children. Second, he picks up a child. We’ve seen him lift a child before; here he touches them, often a sign of healing. He says, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” What he seems to be signaling is that when adults have wandered off God’s path, the solution is to go back to being a child. He speaks in other places about being born from above; he invites us to become a new person. This is the key to moving beyond divorce: to reflect and repent, to see that if you have not lived up to God’s intention, you need to change and start again, like a child. The solution isn’t law: the solution is grace.. 

This text has been turned into law in a way that often hurts people. Jesus heals; Jesus hopes. He lifts up God’s hope that we will live in equal, intimate partnerships, in just covenants, and when we don’t, he summons us to repent and become like children. This is a hope meant for all people. Today is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that finally recognized the right of LBGTQ people to publicly celebrate marriages partnerships. We should be proud the United Church of Christ has been and continues to be a leader in accepting and affirming this hope for all people. 

I come to this text as a person who has been divorced and remarried. I know what it means to take a hard look at yourself, to realize you need to change. There is a song that says, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Sometimes what we should sing is, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of change, standing in the need of forgiveness, standing in the need of grace.

Jesus preaches this; Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love among us. And God’s hope is that just as we received the spirit at our creation, we will share it. We will heal and hope and in those partnerships, in our communities, there will be love.

In a few moments, we’re going to share together communion, the great memorial of grace. When we say, “This is his body, broken for you,” it reminds us that we are also broken. When we say, “This cup is the new covenant in his blood,” it reminds us that Jesus offers not law, but love. Peter, Paul and Mary sing a song about marriage and love. One of the verses says,

Oh the marriage of you here has caused him to remain
For whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name
There is love. there is love.

Amen. 

Fear and Trembling

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Listen to the Sermon Preached Here

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

16th Sunday After Pentecost • September 8, 2024

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is on vacation. Mark says he went up to Tyre, a big coastal town north of Israel, outside its borders. He enters a house and wants some privacy: “…[he] didn’t want anyone to know he was there.” [Mark 7:24b] You know how this works. You go to the shore, maybe Ocean City or Wildwood, rent an Airbnb, just want to be anonymous, kick back, rest up. After all, just before this he’s had a tough time. He got rejected in his hometown and couldn’t do anything there. His mentor and friend, John the Baptist, has been executed. He keeps having arguments with better educated clergy. Maybe his disciples have gotten annoying, the way family sometimes can. So off he goes.

A Woman Comes to Jesus

But when he gets there, it turns out he’s too well known to hide out. Some Canaanite woman, a Gentile, throws herself at his feet when he’s out looking for breakfast. Honestly, I’ve never had a woman throw herself at my feet, so I’m not sure quite what that’s like, but I have certainly been accosted when I’m getting away. It’s a little professional secret that clergy mostly learn early on never, ever, to admit they are clergy when traveling. Years ago when I was young and on a long flight and a woman next to me asked what I did. I proudly said I’m a minister. She spent the rest of the flight telling me why she didn’t go to church and how she didn’t believe in God. I really just wanted to nap, not talk theology. So I’m guessing that’s how Jesus felt. He’s off duty; maybe healing people is exhausting. He’s on a mission, after all, to reclaim Israel for God, to bring all Jews back to a purer, more passionate faith but these people aren’t his problem, they’re Gentiles.

Still, there’s this woman at his feet; no way around her. She’s begging for his attention, his compassion. Her daughter is possessed; she’s desperate. All parents know this feeling, that special, relentless, desperation when your child is sick and no one seems able to help. Jesus might be on vacation, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She looks ridiculous, lying there in the street, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. He’s a man; she’s a woman, he’s a Jew, she’s a Gentile, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She lives in a culture that tells women to be quiet in public, never to talk to a strange man, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter.

Dogs!

I think Jesus must have tried to get around her but couldn’t, so he says something conventional, tries to get out of the situation. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” [Mark 7:27] Now we think of dogs as fun and cute, and we love them. But dogs in this time and place are dirty, mangy, they live outside in villages, they eat garbage and smell like it. ‘Dog’ is an insult; it’s like one of the many ethnic slurs we all know, no need for me to quote them.‘Dogs’ is what Jews call Gentiles and they typically ignore them. Jesus grew up as a Jew; Jesus is steeped in the culture, he’s human and like all humans, his culture has captured him. So he replies like a Jewish man to this Gentile woman. I’m sure he thought that would be the end of it. A little brusque language, a little insult, done, she’ll go away and leave him alone.

But she doesn’t; she only cares about her daughter, she doesn’t care about the insult. She turns it around: “Even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she says. There’s a little play on words there: she’s turned his insult from an image of the mangy alley dogs to a puppy playing in the home. It’s a good argument and it works. “For saying that, you may go,” he says, and assures her that her daughter is healed. She gets up , goes home and wow! Her daughter is fine, her daughter is back.

This isn’t a very nice picture of Jesus, is it? It isn’t gentle Jesus meek and mild; it isn’t the good shepherd, carrying the lost sheep home on his shoulder. It isn’t the love your neighbor guy we all expect. There are endless articles and commentary and sermons explains this away, trying to give us back the nice Jesus we think we know. Even the Gospel of Matthew, about 20 years after Mark, cleans the story up and makes it about her faith, not the argument. But I want the real Jesus, not the pretty picture someone else painted; I want to know the real Jesus, so I want to know what’s going on here. And what seems to be going on is that Jesus changed his mind. 

Is Jesus Changing?

“Wait, Jesus changed his mind? Isn’t he perfect?” I imagine someone wondering this. We believe Jesus is fully human and isn’t being fully human sometimes being wrong? Jesus thought of his mission as being for the Jews, for God’s people. I think Mark is giving us a peek into the moment when Jesus changes his mind and realizes God’s plan is bigger, more wonderful, than he had realized. We’re getting a look at a moment when Jesus realizes everyone is welcome at his table, everyone is included, everyone is a child of God. Everyone includes a Gentile woman with a sick daughter. She isn’t a dog, she isn’t just a woman, she isn’t just a Gentile, she’s a child of God, just like him, and God loves her, just like him. 

It isn’t easy to admit you’re wrong and change. May and I like to argue, Jacquelyn likes everything peaceful. So when we became a family, Jacquelyn introduced a rule that we call the dance. It works like this: if you argue a point, and you are proven wrong, you have to turn around to the left three times and say, “I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong”, and then to the right three times and say, “You were right, you were right, you were right.” By the end everyone is laughing; peace is restored. We remember that how much we love each other is more important than being right. 

What I love about Jesus in this passage is that he was wrong and could change. Mark makes it clear; it’s what the woman says that changes his mind. The passage asks us too: can we change? Can we listen to our history and our values and change our minds, change our hearts? I think this is something all too rare today. We all moan about the dark divisiveness of our politics, but isn’t it precisely because we don’t listen that we are divided? I wish we could make our politicians abide by the dance rule. I’d love to see some of those guys, instead of defending the indefensible, simply turn and turn and turn and say I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. 

Acting on the New Reality

The rest of this passage makes it clear Jesus is acting on this new understanding. It says he goes by way of Sidon to the Deacpolis. This makes no sense; it’s like saying I went from Harrisburg to York by way of Philadelphia. But geography is theology in the Bible. What Mark seems to want us to know is that Jesus works among Gentiles as well as Jews. The Decapolis is a largely Jewish area. When Jesus arrives, we’re told that some friends brought a man who was deaf and stammered for healing. He takes the man aside and heals him in an astonishingly intimate way, touching his ears, telling them to be opened, wetting his finger on his own tongue, touching the man’s tongue. “Be opened!”, is the command: Ephphatha!

We’re starting a new year of programs and worship here, in a new time. Don’t we need to hear Jesus saying Ephphatha to us? There are some great things here that come from our values. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that this church is really great at appreciating. I love that we applaud the music; I love the positive energy of how people seem to appreciate each other here. How can we carry that forward? And what do we need to leave behind? 

Fear and Trembling to Joy

When Paul writes to a new Christian church in northern Greece, in the letter to the Philippians, he tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. I think what he means is for them to discover that everything they think needs to be tested, evaluated, considered. I think he means they need to listen to Jesus, not just their own common sense. I think he knows that isn’t easy because it’s scary to change. I think he means to assure them that God is with them in the process. 

The same is true here. At the end of this story, Jesus is on his way home. Along the way, he heals a man who is deaf. Isn’t this all of us? Aren’t we sometimes deaf when God is practically shouting at us? It’s a fulfillment of what Isaiah said: 

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. …then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.[ Isaiah 35:4-7a]

Jesus goes on from here with a new understanding. He knows change is difficult; he knows we we have fearful hearts. Yet he says, over and over, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” May we hear him; may we follow him, no matter how it changes us. May we learn the love of God so that our fear and trembling turns into songs of joy.

Amen

Go!

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

13th Sunday After Pentecost/B • August 18, 2024

Jonah 3

Today’s reading from Jonah is every preacher’s fantasy. We’ve seen Jonah hear God’s call, run away, be hurled into the sea, rescued by God’s hand. He’s changed by the experience. He learns, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord,” and when he’s left on the shore, God again calls him in just the same way to go to Nineveh and announce its destruction. 

The text tells us Nineveh was a great city that would take three days to walk across. Imagine Jonah coming into Nineveh, tired, thirsty after a long trip. He’s determined to finally do what God called him to do. He walks a third of the way into the great city and says, “‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ It’s a one sentence sermon. It doesn’t have an engaging introduction doesn’t have three points, it, it doesn’t have a focus on what the preacher hopes will happen. Just: “…he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” What do you think he imagined would happen? 

Repent!

What actually happens according to the story is amazing. What happens is that everyone takes him seriously; everyone repents! The king makes repentance a legal duty. I’ve been preaching over 50 years, and I’ve never had a reaction like this. I’ve had people walk out, leave the church, get mad; I’ve had people tell me something I said inspired them or that it was a good sermon, I’ve even had people applaud. Never once in all that time did the whole place rise up and say, “Wow!! Jim is right! We need to change our ways right now!” What is going on here?

The key is the reaction to the sermon: repentance. Notice Jonah doesn’t preach repentance; he never says, “God’s going to destroy the city unless you repent.” He just says God’s going to knock it all down. But the response of the people is immediate. The outward signs of repentance are fasting and wearing plain clothes; the text calls it sack cloth. When the King hears about Jonah, he changes his clothes and fasts along with everyone else.

No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. [Jonah 3:7bf]

Look how complete this is: not just the king, not just the nobility, not just the peasants, even the animals are going to repent. This is funny, isn’t it? We have a little dog named Ellie. She’s a good dog but once in a while she gets something she shouldn’t have. She likes paper towels; when she gets one, she runs away and hides, she knows she’s being bad. When you get it back, she looks up and is sincerely repentant.

‘Repent’ isn’t a word we commonly use except in cartoons about silly street preachers. What does it mean? At its heart, repentance means two things. One is recognizing you’re wrong; the other is changing your direction. Most of us have had this experience. Maybe you’re driving somewhere you’ve never been; you have directions, but it just doesn’t feel right. Eventually, you admit you’re wrong and stop and ask for directions, you turn and go the right way. The last time this happened to me, I was on the way here. I stopped at the Starbucks over off Market Street shortly after I started here; I knew Locust Grove Road went all the way there. I was feeling good about finding my way in this new place, turned left off Market, right on Locust Grove Road to that place where it splits, and happily followed the yellow line off to the left. Iit took me a few minutes to figure out I’d made a wrong turn, stop, go back and get on the right road.

Three Repentances

This story is all about repentance; it’s all about change. Remember where we started?—with Jonah running away. God said, “Go to Nineveh”. But he didn’t; he went to Joppa and got on a ship for Spain, the opposite way. It takes a great, life-threatening crisis to get Jonah to turn around; it takes being in the belly of the fish for three days to get Jonah to repent.

Now we come to a second story of repentance by the community of Nineveh. The text imagines people hearing the threat of destruction and immediately repenting. Wow! Furthermore, the King gives us the reason: “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’ [Jonah 3:9] Just like Jonah, the impetus for change comes from a crisis that threatens their very lives. What’s going on here?

Jonah is pictured as a prophet from about the 700’s up in the north, in the kingdom of Israel. That was a time when Israel’s society had left the justice envisioned by God’s covenant and traded it for systems that produced a few rich people and many poor people. They had left faithful observance of God’s covenant and there are several prophets in the Bible who denounce this. They prophesy a coming judgement but unlike the Ninevites, no one does anything about it. Ultimately, Israel is conquered by people whose capital is Ninevah. What seems to be in the background here is a comedy with a serious thought: look, those awful Gentiles over in Ninevah repented but God’s own people did not.

Why don’t people repent? Why don’t we change? Of course there are institutional reasons: some people benefit and they don’t want to give that benefit up. But I think also the familiar, the customary, gives us a sense of comfort. We like things as they are. Change can feel threatening. One of my churches wanted, so they said, to grow. They called me as their pastor for that precise purpose. Yet one Sunday after church when I was new, one of the ladies in the church took me aside and said, “We hope you will get new people in the church but we hope you will get our sort of people.” I knew what she meant: don’t change anything. 

There’s a third repentance, a third change in Jonah’s story, although we don’t always see it that way. Remember Jonah’s whole message was “Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed”. But at the very end of this part of the story we have this amazing result: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it”. [Jonah 3:10] God changes God’s mind! Is this a little bait and switch? “I’ll threaten them but if they behave, it’s all good.” As someone who grew up hearing, “Wait ’til your father gets home” as the ultimate threat, this surprises me.

A Lesson from Dad

Yet, I also remember one of my dad’s most effective lessons. I was 16, it was winter, and I had the car and had been explicitly told to do whatever errand I was sent on and not to go anywhere else because it was snowing. But I had a girlfriend. I had the car. So stopped at her house. When I left, the wheels spun, the car shifted, and I hit a sign with the back. Not enough to hurt anyone; too much damage to go unnoticed. It was my first accident and it scared me. 

My mother was furious when I got home; my dad was out. I was shaken up, and I went to bed, but not to sleep. I knew I was in serious trouble. I heard the door when my dad came home, felt the time when I knew my mother was telling him, heard him come upstairs. I knew I was in for it. The door opened, and I laid there and in a moment, my father, this stern man who had always been the ultimate threat, quietly said, “Your mother told me about the car. Are you ok?” I blubbered and said yes. He nodded and then he said, “That’s all that matters. Get some sleep.”, and closed the door. That moment of grace and care did more to change me, make me a more careful driver, than any punishment could have done.

Jonah’s story climaxes with three stories of repentance, three stories of change. Jonah has changed his view of God. He knows now that his own judgement is not enough. He’s answered God’s call. The people of Nineveh, facing a crisis, find the courage to change. Even the king sits in sackcloth, hoping God will repent. And God, whose children these are, whose beloved children, is so pleased, the disaster is averted. God repents. The forty days come and go; the disaster never occurs. Perhaps when our fears don’t happen, there is a lesson to be learned as well.

Years after the comment about bringing in “our sort of people”, that church did begin to grow. It wasn’t easy and it took changes, changes that weren’t always comfortable. But I remember smiling one day, looking at the back of the church, where that same lady was happily chatting with one of the new members, a woman who came to us in desperate straits, whom the church embraced, who had become, like the lady, a deacon, a sister in Christ in the covenant of that church.

Following Jesus

Change is hard. Repentance is hard. But what does Jesus say? At the beginning of his ministry, the very start, Mark tells us, “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ Repentance—change—is the gateway to the gospel. And isn’t our call, all of us, to share that good news, that God’s love, embodied in Jesus Christ, has changed us? Amen

Leftovers

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ

by Rev. James Eaton ©2024

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost/B • July 28, 2024

John 6:1-21

This text includes two stories: Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people and Jesus walking to his disciples across the water. Because of the constraints of time, I’ve chosen to deal only with the first story in this sermon.

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.
– The Jewish prayer over bread, also used by Muslims.

Give us today our daily bread.
– The Lord’s Prayer

Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat
– Table grace at Michigan State Youth camp

Every culture has a way to say thank you at the beginning of a meal. In our home, May and I usually cook, but it’s Jacquelyn who offers the prayer: “Heavenly Father, thank you for this food and the person who prepared it.” We say grace because we know, deep down, we are not of ourselves enough: we need to be sustained, every day, by our daily bread.

Bread is interesting stuff. Sometime about 14,000 years ago, someone somewhere figured out that if you ground up grains, mixed them with water, and put them near a fire, the grains turned into something good to eat. Later, they discovered if you added something bubbly like beer, which we know is over 5,000 years old, the result was even better. Ever since, bread has been the common food of common people, and it weaves in and out of the whole Bible story. 

What to Do When 5,000 Show Up?

At the beginning of the story we read in John, Jesus has gone off to a mountain to meet with his disciples in private. Remember that geography is theology in the Bible: “The mountain” is frequently where God encounters prophets, from Moses at Mt. Sinai to Jesus later when he is transfigured. Mark says withdrew to let his disciples rest. John just says they went off by themselves and Jesus sat down. Sitting down is the position from which a rabbi teaches, so perhaps that’s what Jesus had in mind. Clearly, it’s a private party. But five thousand men show up – and their wives, significant others and children. What to do?

What amazes me about this story every time I go back to it is that it is so like us. I’ve been sitting with church committees for almost 50 years and every time a crisis occurs, the first thing that happens is someone talks about the cost. Philip does it here: “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t be enough.” Two hundred denarii is about eight months wages for most people. It’s an astounding sum. What’s the next thing we do, once we figure out we don’t have the money for the project? Don’t we look around to see what we do have? Andrew: here is a boy with five loaves and two dried fish. I’ve always wondered about this boy: it doesn’t say he offered his lunch, it doesn’t say he volunteered to share. These aren’t big loaves; the average lunch for a peasant is three barley loaves. Barley loaves are coarse and not as tasty as wheat bread; it’s what poor people eat. 

It’s easy to rush over the details that come next, but we shouldn’t. Jesus tells everyone to sit down; the Greek word here actually means “to recline”. That’s significant because poor people in this time ate standing up but rich people at feasts recline at table. He’s asking them to eat like they’re at a rich, wonderful banquet. Then Jesus gives thanks. “Blessed art thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” He starts distributing the bread and the fish, and it turns out there is more than enough for everyone.  If you grew up in a church where they’re comfortable with the supernatural, this is miraculous. If you grew up where preachers like to make things more natural, maybe you’ve heard that everyone just shared the lunches they’d brought—as if that wouldn’t be a miracle as well. It doesn’t matter which road you take, they both get to this place: there is this miraculous abundance in God’s care. 

What God Does

This is what God does. At creation, God makes a world with everything we need and then says to people, “Take care of it.” Eat whatever you want, God tells them, except from the tree of the experience of good and evil. In the wilderness, when God’s people are hungry and whining, they discover manna, a bread like substance that occurs naturally. God feeds people twice at the request of Elisha, once with leftovers. No wonder every religion, every culture, has a way of saying thanks: at it’s foundation, what we need to survive is all gift.

We say grace, but what if we really gave thanks? What if we gave thanks for each part of the meal – main dish, potatoes, vegetables—hopefully dessert! Someone raised that chicken, someone plucked it, packed it, put it out for us to buy. Someone grew the vegetables which needed rain and sun and earth. What if we gave thanks for those as well. It would take a long time to say that much thanks. Even just the bread would take a while if we thought of all the ingredients – water, yeast, oil, flour. The wheat alone contains miraculous abundance. Annie Dillard writes,

So far as I know, only one real experiment as ever been performed, but when they get down to the root hairs, I boggle completely. In those same four months the rye plant created 14 billion root hairs, and those little strands placed end-to-end just about wouldn’t quit. In a single cubic inch of soil, the length of the root hairs totaled 6,000 miles. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, pp. 166-67)

Jesus gives thanks—and there is miraculous abundance. My favorite part of this story is that there are leftovers. Remember where we started? We can’t afford it, there isn’t enough, we just have a little bit—now the disciples are scurrying about with baskets taking up the leftovers.

Some people want to seize Jesus—don’t let him get away, they cry. They wanted to make him King by force. Isn’t this like us too? We want to own Jesus, we want to make him our king, we want him to heal us, feed us, just us, not the others. But he slips away; he always does when we try to take charge of him. The only way to stay with Jesus is to stop making him ours and let ourselves belong to him. At the end of this story, he’s back where he started, up on a mountain.

Leftovers

The disciples have a new problem: taking up the leftovers. The text calls them “fragments”, the same word used by early Christians for the bread used in communion. What did they do with all those leftovers? Did they make bread pudding? Did they hand them out the next day? John doesn’t tell us, he moves on to Jesus using the image of bread for himself: “I am the bread of life”, he later says. 

And the boy, how did the boy react? Someone packed him a nice lunch: five loaves is a lot for a peasant boy and a couple of sardines to go along. I bet he looked forward to that lunch; boys get hungry and here he had everything he needed to be full, possibly something that didn’t happen every day. Going hungry isn’t something you forget. My dad grew up on a farm in Michigan and remembered going hungry. We always had enough to eat in the home where I grew up, but dad insisted that every dinner had to include a plate of bread, even though we seldom ate it. Did the boy give up his lunch voluntarily? Was he disappointed? John doesn’t say. But John does say everyone had as much as they wanted. So we know that at the end, the boy was full: he had enough.

This is what God wants: for us to feel the fullness and thanksgiving is both the method and the appropriate response. Fullness is not an amount but an attitude, a spiritual state Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist in Vienna in 1942 when he was sent with his family to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Two years later he was sent to Auschwitz, where his family was murdered. Even there, he said thanks. He says in one place,

The most ghastly moment of the twenty-four hours of camp life was the awakening…We then began the tussle with our wet shoes, into Which we could scarcely force our feet, which were sore and swollen… One morning I heard someone, whom I knew to be brave and dignified, cry like a child because he finally had to go to the snowy marching grounds in his bare feet, as his shoes were too shrunken for him to wear. In those ghastly minutes, I found a little bit of comfort: a small piece of bread which I drew out of my pocket and munched with absorbed delight

Even in the heart of darkness, even in the midst of evil, God intends our fullness. The writer of Ephesians prays, “…that you may be  filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God

How Wonderful to Be Full

This story is one of the few told in all four gospels. I think it’s told because it helps us understand who we are. We are the people who pick up the leftovers of God’s grace and give them out so that need everyone will have what they need. We are the people who pick up the leftovers of God’s grace and share them out as fragments that can fill someone with the full measure of God. It’s what we do every time we open the clothing closet; it’s what we do through Neighbors in Need and countless other missions. It’s what we do every time we welcome someone; it’s what we do every time we share communion. We take up the leftovers of the bread of life, share them out, so that all can indeed, like the boy, like the disciples, like the crowd, have what they need. We share them out as God’s blessing. 

Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.

How wonderful to be full. May you be full today.

Amen.

Everyone Welcome

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost/B • July 21, 2024

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Listen to the Sermon Here

What is the last project you finished? Maybe it was something small, like cleaning the house or mowing the lawn. Maybe it was big: moving or retiring after a long career It’s what’s going on at the beginning of today’s reading in Mark. Two weeks ago, we read how Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs to heal, and now they’ve just returned. Imagine how tired they are; think how excited they are. “We did it!,” they must have said and felt. Jesus tells them to come tell him everything, somewhere they won’t be interrupted. It doesn’t work: everyone barges in on them.

Jesus Had Compassion

Can you visualize this? Jesus and his friends get in a boat again. The sail goes up, they trim it, but the wind is against them. That’s called a lee shore, a lee is the side away from the wind. It’s hard to tack out from a lee shore, they aren’t making much progress. The crowds see them and run along the shore, following them. Later, we find out that they don’t get where they are going, they certainly don’t get the private celebration intended. Jesus looks at the people running on the shore, the ones pointing at them, the ones carrying sick people hoping for his touch and the text says, “He had compassion on them.” We’ve felt this too, haven’t we? The other night a friend told a story about a cat that used their backyard as a home base all summer. Then it got cold. One day he saw the cat, half frozen, brought it inside, warmed it, fed it. He had compassion. Thirteen years later, the cat still lives with them. Jesus has compassion. So they land the boat, and he turns to the crowd.

Jesus had compassion. He says that the people are like sheep without a shepherd. Now that’s a phrase with a long history in scripture. When Moses is near finishing his time leading God’s people, he prays,

“May the LORD , the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community 17 to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.” [Numbers 27:16]

God appoints Joshua to carry on the leadership. ‘Jesus’ is the Greek form of the Hebrew word Joshua. 

Shepherd is the main Jewish image for a good leader. Ezekiel and Zechariah both use the image of a shepherd to judge the leaders of their day. And you heard Jeremiah use the same image in his prophecy. Bad kings are called bad shepherds. Remember last week when we read about Herod Antipas who executed John? Clearly Mark wants us to compare Herod and Jesus as shepherds. Our lectionary has left out the feeding of the 5,000 which is the next thing in Mark; you’ll hear about that in John’s version next Sunday. Jesus has compassion on these strangers, this crowd. Did you notice he doesn’t sort them out into groups? He doesn’t ask who is with him, who is against him, he doesn’t ask who is Jewish, who is Gentile, he doesn’t measure who deserves compassion. He has compassion on all of them. When they come ashore, the text says, people recognized him and began to bring the sick so they might be healed.

Jesus Heals Everyone

Now healing has a context for us that’s different from what it means here. We have in mind someone sick or injured who gets treatment and is cured. But here we have a Greek word with a much more expansive meaning. It means more than restoring health. It’s the same word that is used for being saved; it’s the same word that’s used for being cured or helped. It really means being restored to peaceful wholeness. Jesus restores people to a peaceful wholeness that lets them take up relationships and give their gifts as God intended. That’s what Jesus does; that’s what he sends his followers to do.

We see it in Paul’s ministry. He says in Ephesians, 

Remember that at one time you gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” –a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands–remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. [Ephesians 1:11-13]

Paul is trying to heal divisions in the church at Ephesus. There, those who grew up as Jews and those who grew up at Gentiles are fighting, and he wants them to heal their division. The specifics don’t matter. We could substitute any set of divisions. We could talk about black and white people, progressives and evangelicals, Republicans and Democrats. Wherever we look, there are divisions that leave us in separate camps, railing about the other people.

Following Jesus Means Healing

We are meant to be people who heal divisions. Jesus looks at the crowds and has compassion; so should we. But what does that look like? It looks like Harriet Tubman. As a young, enslaved woman she was abused and injured, but her injury led her to have visions. She made an arduous, frightening escape to Pennsylvania in 1849. For many, that might have been enough. But Tubman wasn’t satisfied; she had compassion on her family, so she returned, despite the risk of being re-enslaved; she led her family to freedom. Then she went back for others, over and over again. For ten years, she risked her life freeing people. She fought in the Civil War and afterward retired to a city in New York where she opened her home to the elderly and destitute. This is healing; this is following Jesus. Tubman became a shepherd and she shepherded person after person to freedom and peace.

It’s good to remember a saint like Harriet Tubman. But most of us aren’t called to that sort of heroism. In our day-to-day lives, there are moments when we get to decide whether we want to offer a helping hand, a healing gesture. These gestures often feel trivial to us, but sometimes have the power to change the course of someone’s life.

This kind of transformative experience happened to Bill Price when he was 15 years old.

It was the fall of 1972, and Price was attending a reunion for a summer program he’d taken part in a few months before. He remembers standing outside at the end of the day, catching up with friends. Eventually, everyone said their goodbyes — leaving Price standing by himself.

“And sometimes when you’re alone, it’s OK,” Price said. “Sometimes when you’re alone, you feel bereft and abandoned. And that’s the way I felt then.”

Nearby, another group of teenagers stood laughing and talking.

“I found myself wishing so much to be a part of that group,” Price remembered.

One of the people in the group was a person named Wendy Westman. She and Price had only met in passing at the summer program a few months earlier. As Price stood there, feeling increasingly lonely, Westman turned around and asked him if he’d like to join her group.

“My life was transformed in that moment,” Price said.

Westman reaching out sparked a realization in Price: He could offer that same kindness to anyone, at any time.

“It’s so easy to see someone who seems left out and alone and notice them, say hello to them, be kind to them,” Price explained. “And my realization was [that] that is a gift that we can all give.”

Price went on to become a psychiatrist. A primary part of his job is being kind to his patients, listening to them and being attentive to their needs. Price attributes his understanding of the importance of kindness to that moment when he was 15 years old.

“To the extent that I’m a good person in my life today, it’s probably due to Wendy Westman inviting me to join her group,” he said.

[https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1176122566/kindness-good-news-caring]

Think how that moment of healing his loneliness led to so many others being healed

We Are the Fringe of His Cloak

We all know what it means to live in the midst of an epidemic. We all remember the way COVID-19 changed our lives. Sociologists tell us that today there is an epidemic of loneliness. There’s no vaccine and it doesn’t require masks; in fact, it requires unmasking, sharing ourselves, sharing God’s love. Harriet Tubman risked her life because of that love to heal and help slaves to become the free people God intended. Wendy Westman didn’t risk her life, she never was in danger of anything more than being rejected. But her gesture helped and healed.

Every day, in the news, on Facebook and other social media, in conversation, we’re invited to participate in division, to talk about the Others, to point fingers or buy into some new conspiracy theory about what They have done. But every day also: we’re invited by Christ to walk a different path, to heal, to look at others, all others with compassion. To remember that regardless of how important our divisions seem, God’s love doesn’t recognize them. Because in God’s love, there is just one embrace: everyone welcome. At the end of this reading in Mark, it says, “…wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.” [Mark 6:56] We are the fringe of his cloak; we are meant to be the place where divisions and lives are healed.

Amen.

The music in the audio version of the sermon is called “Savfk – The Travelling Symphony” and is under a Creative Commons (BY 4.0) license.

Touched

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

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Sixth Sunday After Pentecost/B • June 30, 2024

Mark 5:21-43

We’ve just heard two stories about healings, and it’s tempting to just say, “Oh, that’s great, everything worked out.” But to really understand these stories, we’ve got to dig a little deeper and understand something about what’s called ritual purity in Jesus’ time. Let me explain it with a a story I heard this week about growing up in Appalachia on a farm. Sunday mornings, the storyteller and his four brothers all had a bath before church. Now keeping four boys clean while you wash the fifth had to be a chore, and his mother’s solution was to have all have them one by one as they got clean go sit on the couch. Ritual purity rules had to do with getting and staying clean in a way that made physical things an emblem of spiritual ones. These stories we read from Mark have a background we may not be aware of but would’ve been immediately obvious to any of the early Christians, all of whom were Jews. These aren’t just stories about healing—they’re also pictures of how Jesus dealt with those ritual purity rules. Those rules excluded many, many people. So let’s see how Jesus deals with these rules and these people and see what we can learn about how our lives as well.

Last week talked about Jesus crossing over to the gentile side of the Lake Galilee and this week we find him back on the Jewish side. For whatever reason, the lectionary has left out the story this year about what happened over there, but what happened is that he was casting out demons. 

Now he’s back and as he comes into town, there’s a crowd of people. Someone comes up, falls on their knees and begs Jesus to come to Jairus’ house, a leader in the synagogue. His daughter is ill, and Jesus is a well-known healer. So, Jesus and his disciples are pushing through the crowd when suddenly he stops. Have you ever done this, stopped in a crowd that’s moving? There must’ve been a bunch of them bumping into him. He turns to Peter and John and James and Andrew and says someone touched me. I think they must have rolled their eyes: they say, 5″You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?'”

But this wasn’t just someone bumping into him. A woman who has had a hemorrhage, we’re told, for 12 years has touched his clothing. Can you imagine her? Can you feel her desperation.? Surely she had been to healers; surely she had tried everything. If it was today, she would have gone on the web, searched for a cure. There’s another underlying piece here, too. In this time, her hemorrhage made her ritually unsure. Anyone who touched her, especially a man, would become impure as well. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t just ask Jesus. Can you see her in the crowd? I think of her as an older woman, determined, brave. Now she’s moving through the crowd, now she’s closer to this Jesus, now she reaches out her hand and touches his cloak. And the story says she is healed. Imagine her shock; imagine her surprise. 

Then Jesus wheels around. “Someone touched me.” Was she afraid? Would he take it back, could he take it back? You know, in my family, when someone said that someone had done something, especially if it was my mom or dad, my brothers and I always had one response: “It wasn’t me!” The crowd seems to be doing that: they pull back, leaving her alone, on her knees. What do you think? The story says she was fell down before him in fear and trembling. But he doesn’t take it back; he tells her to go be healed. Perhaps you heard this and thought, “What? I thought she was already healed!” The healing he means is actually like a hospital discharge; it’s a certification that she’s now pure again, it’s the gateway back to her friends and family. There’s detail here you might have mixed. So far in this story, the woman is nameless; she’s just a woman with a disease. But when Jesus talks to her, he calls her daughter. Instead of her making him impure, he’s made her pure again, part of the family. This is what Jesus does. This is what Jesus’ touch does. It heals and brings us into the family. 

Touch is a switchy thing, isn’t it? My dad was a snuggler when I was little. Those were the days of one TV in the house. He’d lie on the floor in front of it, my brother and I on either side. But when I grew up, we had a hard time touching. I didn’t see him often and when I did, we didn’t know what to do. Shaking hands didn’t seem to be enough; hugging was not in our playbook. My mother used to laugh at us, she said we were like two bears, trying not to get too close. Of course, we’ve all been through the COVID pandemic when touch was dangerous. We didn’t worry before that. In most of my pastorates, I went to the back after the benediction and everyone shook my hand. Suddenly, we couldn’t do that. Suddenly, I couldn’t touch someone in a hospital bed. We learned the fist bump. Our family says grace before dinner; we used to hold hands, but now we don’t quite know what to do: some nights it’s holding on, some nights it’s bumps.

This story goes on to Jairus’ house. People tell Jesus not to bother; the girl is too far gone, but when he gets there, he touches her and tells her to get up. This is important: touching a corpse will definitely make you impure under the rules. But Jesus never hesitates; he says that she’s sleeping and goes right on. 

Think of what that home must have been like: people weeping, people trying to hold it together, people at the end of their rope. The text says there was a commotion. There would have been food; someone always brings food. No one wants to eat, but the food is there. Jesus goes to the girl, never hesitates, touches her, and says, “Talitha cumi.” That’s an Aramaic phrase; Aramaic was the common spoken language of the time. It’s often translated, “Little girl, get up”, but that doesn’t really convey the meaning. ‘Talitha’ is a term of endearment; ‘cumi’ means get up or come on. So it’s more like saying, “Come on, sweetie”. And she does; he says, “Give her something to eat,” which might have been to show she wasn’t a ghost. Personally? I think he just thought she needed a snack. It’s also a way of saying, “You’re back to being part of the family.”

This is what Jesus does: he touches people and brings them back to life in their community. He never seems to worry about ritual purity; he never seems to pay attention to the rules of ritual purity. What seems to happen is that instead of the impurity flowing to Jesus, his purity, his love, makes people pure and heals them. The gospels have at least nine stories of healing and several summary statements where he heals everyone brought to him. All have in common Jesus touching someone and healing them. Most of the time, he sends them back to families, to communities, to their lives. It isn’t just about physical touch, either; there are people he touches by casting out their demons, people he touches with parables, people he touches by feeding them.

Now, this is a time for this church to think about its mission in the next chapter. Where do we want to go? What do we want to see happen? Every church I’ve ever served generally said, “We want to grow” but that’s not what Jesus does. Over and over in Mark, the big crowd is in the way; sometimes it’s hostile. The crowd is not the goal. What Jesus does is touch people and give them back heir lives. So if we’re going to walk with Jesus, if we’re going to live as disciples of Jesus, we’re going to have to figure out how to touch people like Jesus did, with the love of God, the love that heals souls.

I took a class on being an Interim Pastor a while back. One of the things the teacher said is that pastors are supposed to provide answers, but interim pastors are supposed to ask questions. So today, I want to leave you with some questions. How can this church touch people with the love and grace of Jesus Christ? How can we make sure our traditions aren’t barriers for others? How can we, like Jesus, leave people sure they are spotless before God, ready to share their God given gifts in loving ways?

Amen.

The Lord Has Need of It

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A Sermon by Rev. James Eaton © 2021

Palm Sunday • March 28, 2021

Mark 11:1-11

Hear the sermon preached

Today is Palm Sunday, an annual celebration with so many memories. In other times, I’ve spent hours planning dramatic worship services. I’ve helped churches gather to parade down the aisle, bought and handed out hundreds of palm leaves. I’ve encouraged people to wave them, throw them, brought clothes in to simulate the things thrown on the donkey Jesus rode. I’ve never actually brought a donkey into a sanctuary but I’ve discussed it and once I even got close to having one ready to go. So today seems a little quiet. But this morning I hope we can look at the meaning and not just the props. Often Palm Sunday seems to be about cheering and greenery. What does Palm Sunday have to do with Jesus? What does it have to do with us?

Image the scene. Jerusalem sits on top of a small mountain with winding paths up the slopes, so it’s the kind of walk that makes you breathe harder. Jerusalem’s walls were crowned with the glittering gold of the temple pinnacle and the white marble temple walls glittered in the hot, bright Near Eastern sun. It’s almost Passover and pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean world are gathering in this sacred place, returning to the City of David to remember their heritage. The city is packed to capacity and religious fervor rises. That fervor often led to riots, spurts of rebellion and the inevitable violent Roman reaction with blood running in the streets.

On this day, the stream of pilgrims walking up the paths is pushed aside by a parade. But it’s not the one we envision with a palm parade. A contingent of Roman soldiers is marching to Jerusalem to enforce the Roman law. They are there to proclaim Emperor Tiberius as the Son of God. For about fifty years, the Romans had seen their leaders as divinities affirmed by their power. Power meant the ability to kill people. Get in the way of Rome, violate Roman law, fail to pay your taxes, and the Roman answer was violence. From Persia to Spain, Roman law was built on the threat of Roman swords, Roman slavery, Roman crucifixion.

Now, up the western slopes of Mt. Zion, the Roman soldiers wind their way with a Roman officer mounted on a big horse and Roman standards held high. It was meant to show off the power of Rome.

Knowing this is going on, knowing this is the main event, we can turn to the other side of the city where there is also a procession. This one is small, this one is unruly, it has no standards and its leader is ridiculous. The Son of Man, a translation of a phrase that means the representative person, the humble person, is coming to Jerusalem on a donkey. Can you imagine it? Can you see it?

I’ve never ridden a donkey, have you? I went online and found directions there for riding a donkey. It says adults are too big for donkeys; so I imagine Jesus with his feet hanging down, dragging along the path. Donkeys have a slow, plodding walk; this procession isn’t going anywhere fast.

Behind Jesus, perhaps around Jesus, are the people who have followed him from Galilee. What were Jesus’ people like? One writer said,,

Jesus came into Jerusalem dragging the world in behind him. He’d spent most of his ministry with what the Pharisees regarded as all the wrong people in all the wrong places. He’d befriended women of dubious reputations, touched lepers, dined with tax collectors, done favors for despised Roman soldiers, held up Samaritans as heroes even as he turned Pharisees into villains. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, he had all of these folks in tow.

[http://yardley.cs.calvin.edu/hoezee/2000/mark11PalmSun.html]

It’s a strange group and here they are, slowly walking with Jesus, walking behind the Son of Man on a donkey. On the other side of town, the Roman general is riding a horse, sitting comfortably and grandly up there, with ranks of perfectly disciplined soldiers. Here is Jesus with on a ridiculous donkey with a milling mob of people.

Now that we have the picture in mind, we come back to the story Mark tells and immediately once again to this donkey. What is it about the donkey that’s so important? Jesus makes a point of giving instructions about it. There’s endless argument: does he know what will happen or has he planned it? Does he know the donkey owner? Has it been previously rented by some advance disciple? What is the deal with the donkey?

The donkey is a reminder of the hope of God’s covenant. The prophet Zechariah had said,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
[Zechariah 9:9]

There is Jesus, just as the prophet had said: this teacher comes as the Son of Man, so powerful he can look powerless. The Roman general needs his horse to look important; Jesus IS important. The hope he embodies is also in the testimony of Zechariah,

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
   and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
   and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
   and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
   I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
   today I declare that I will restore to you double.
[Zechariah 9:10-12]

The symbols of worldly power, the arrogance of calling a man Son of God, is marching on the other side of Jerusalem with the Romans. But here comes the Son of Man, riding on a silly donkey; he can afford to be silly—for God is riding with him. The armies of Rome are marching on the other side of Jerusalem, ordered ranks, swords showing. Nervous rulers always need military parades.

But here comes the Son of Man and his followers are all kinds of people: men, women, gentiles, Jews, sinners and they are together shouting, “Hosanna!” “Hosannah!” They are what Zechariah described as the prisoners of hope and they have been released; their cry of joy echoes from the hills. The Son of Man comes on a donkey: the Spirit of the Lord renews the covenant, the new covenant that invites us all.

This is where we come to the second meaning of the donkey: the donkey is a decision. Remember what Jesus says,

Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ 

Mark 11:2-3

Someone owns that donkey. Someone pays for that donkey, pays to keep it, pays to stable it, someone uses that donkey for work and getting places. Think of it as your car; think of it as yours.

Now some strangers who have a strange accent come and start up your donkey. They have an accent; definitely not from here. Perhaps you saw them when you heard that young prophet from Galilee and you vaguely remember them. When you ask what they’re doing, they say, “The Lord has need of it.” What would you do?

That’s the heart of this story: it all flows from this moment, this decision. “The Lord has need of it.” The challenge of Palm Sunday is this: whatever you have, the Lord has need of it. Like a  quilter assembling bits and pieces into a beautiful tapestry, Jesus takes the hurts and hopes of these people he has dragged with him to Jerusalem and makes them a covenant community, a caring community in the new covenant in his blood.

So now we come to our Palm Sunday and like the donkey’s owner, we also are told the Lord has need of what we have: what will we do?

Are you grieving? the Lord has need of it; those who grieve shall be comforted, he says. So bring our grief—his hope is for you, shown to the world in you.
bring him your grief

Are you joyful? Can you see the Lord in your life, blessing you, showing you the beauty of creation, helping you to feel God close and present? The Lord has need of it:
bring him your joy; 

Are you guilty? the Lord has need of it: he’s bringing a new covenant, where forgiveness is the gate to go into glory. The Lord has need of it:
bring him your guilt.

Are you doubtful? The Lord has need of your doubts: bring them to him. He never asked anyone to go beyond where their faith would take them. The Lord has need of it:
bring your doubts.

Are you hungry? the Lord has need of your hunger, because hungry people are ready to be fed. He’s already fed thousands and he means to nourish us as well, with the bread of life. The Lord has need of it:
bring him your hunger

This one man, whose donkey the Lord needed, became the doorway to a procession we remember down the ages. No one but historians remembers the Roman soldiers. This donkey the Lord needed is remembered when the general and his horse are just a footnote.

The Lord has need of it: someone heard, someone said yes, and the donkey became a platform from which the Son of Man proclaimed the fulfillment of God’s covenant had come to Jerusalem. Every day time, the Lord says about us, about our lives, our whole selves, the good parts and the bad, the hurts and the hopes, that the Lord has need of it. When we give him the reins, the same thing happens. The cries of Hosanna are heard; the procession goes forward. And the words of the psalmist come true: the king of glory comes in.

Amen.

Take Off the Devil Suit

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by Rev. James Eaton © 2021

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany/B • January 31, 2021

Mark 1:21-28

One day when I lived on 29th Street in Milwaukee, the Devil came to my house. He was a garish shade of red, had horns, a tail and carried a pitchfork and stood about four feet high.

I was sitting in the living room when the Devil came out of my son Jason’s room with a wild look and I knew we were in for trouble. A few minutes later, after some now forgotten bad behavior, a bit of parental yelling, and some tears I exorcised the devil, who returned to the bedroom. Minutes later Jason emerged and we were reconciled and agreed no more devil—at least for the moment.

It’s a true story: Jason had a devil costume for Halloween one year and for a while when he was going to be bad, he would put on the suit first. We learned to recognize the devil and the impending behavior and deal with it—partly by telling him to go back and take off the devil suit. Eventually, he outgrew the suit. I can only wish we all had outgrown bad behavior; obviously, we haven’t. The past few weeks have brought scenes of violence in our nation’s capital and a member of Congress threatening to kill other leaders. I’m sure you could add to this list. We cannot escape the men—and women—in the devil suit. How can we get them to take it off?

The story we read in Mark is amazingly appropriate. Last week we heard how Jesus created a community of disciples. His invitation to follow him is so authoritative that the text tells us they immediately left what they were doing and followed him. Now they have come to Capernaum, the home of those disciples. Jesus enters a synagogue on the sabbath, a sanctuary of worship but also a place of conversation where the whole community meets to gossip, greet, trade, and connect.

Jesus sits in the seat of the preacher; someone, perhaps he himself, reads a portion of Torah and Jesus begins to speak. The text says that he spoke as one with authority and not like the scribes, that is, the regular teachers. Now the usual method of preaching there was to discuss what Moses meant or what another prophet said. But the congregation recognizes something unique in Jesus: his words, his teaching, he himself, have an amazing authority. “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes,” the text says.

Just as a great guitar player, can make our hearts vibrate simply by running his fingers over a few strings, the words of Jesus move the hearts of the people there so that they are astounded, amazed. This sense of being astounded is not necessarily positive; it doesn’t mean they applauded. Preaching can make people angry. We all have a set of boundaries that make us feel safe. Like a fence at the edge of a precipice, like a barrier in front of a danger, boundaries keep us secure in a dangerous world. Anything that forces us beyond the boundaries destabilizes us, it threatens, and we react.

Years ago in Connecticut when the issue of full inclusion of gay folks was being fiercely debated in churches, I attended a clergy meeting where people on both sides spoke. Afterwards, we were feeling pretty good; the meeting had been mostly civil and no one had left in anger. There we were, a group of overweight middle-aged straight men sitting at a table in a church hall. One by one each was asked to say something about the meeting and when it was my time, I said that really, this topic had very little to do with our lives. Then I said, “But you know, here we are with pastries, and we’re all overweight. Maybe we should be discussing the sin of overeating.” That’s when the meeting got angry and a few moments later one of the guys said he wasn’t going to sit for this and left. “They were astounded.”

At least one person in Capernaum cries out and disrupts the moment. There is a man there with what the text calls “an unclean spirit”. Perhaps he stands up, there is a disruption. “Have you come to destroy us?” the demons in him ask. And then he says what some must have been thinking: “We know who you are, the Holy One of God.” What happens when the unworthy, the unclean, washes up like the ocean against the rock of God’s holiness? What happens when the demonic runs into the holy?

Notice how the text carefully distinguishes between the man himself and the unclean spirit: he is not a bad man, he is a man controlled by something unclean. “Unclean” means unfit for worship, unfit to come before God. Jewish religion carefully distinguished between the clean or pure and the unclean, between what was fit for God and what was not. The text tells us nothing about the man himself. Like Jason in the devil suit, he has been put into something other than himself. One writer likens this to addiction and points out that addiction is not the person: it is the cage with which the person lives. Like a devil suit, the cage of the unclean spirit is separate from the person, controlling but not the same as that person.

Now there are all kinds of cages. I confess that in the past, I often compared this cage, this unclean spirit, to mental illness with its hallucinations and altered sense of reality. I realize now I wanted to keep my own boundaries intact. I wasn’t mentally ill so thinking about it that way meant it wasn’t me. But what I see now is that there are all kinds of cages, big and small, and some of them enclose me as well. And when the cage is threatened, we all ask the question the unclean spirit asks: “Have you come to destroy us?”

This fear is, I believe, behind the anger that fuels so much of our national life. Cages are being broken. We are living through an enormous cultural transformation.What happens when the cage is broken and the person is released? We know that when Jesus walks in, demons walk out. The solution to our cages lies in the connection Jesus calls love: a compassion that refuses to let boundaries stand between us and invites us to see each other as equal children of God.

I mentioned addiction earlier as an example of a cage that controls a person. Today we are facing a terrible epidemic of addiction-fueled not only by drugs but by our misconception about the nature of addiction. So often we have forgotten Jesus’ distinction between the cage and the person so we see addicts as bad people who should simply start acting better. The truth is that addiction is only partly about chemical dependence. Those who are finding the most success at treating addiction have learned to treat it as a disease, not a moral failure, and to make human connection part of the solution. The problem isn’t the person; the problem is the cage.

In the same way, there are larger cultural cages. One of them is the fear of people who come from other places. Almost all of us have immigrants in our background. But we’ve forgotten that and today’s immigrants often have different colored skin. How do we solve the anger that comes from breaking this cage? Perhaps we do it by simple connection.

Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina, is a 300 member congregation that is one of 32 congregations housing people who are at risk of deportation. After studying and meeting about the issue last July, the church voted in September, 89-5, to invite an undocumented person to their meeting house. Eliseo Jimenez and his family came to stay in the church’s youth activity room. The church organized volunteers and worked with five other congregations, including a synagogue. Now we might think this would be a terrible burden and a drain on the church. In fact, one of the volunteer hosts says, the church has found renewed energy. “I’m really proud we’re doing this,” one of the members said.

At the center of this story in Mark today is this: “What have you to do with us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” It’s a question for all of us who say we are the body of Christ.

In a culture of cages, what has Jesus to do with all those caged? Isn’t it to invite them out of the cage; isn’t it to say, “Take off the devil suit” and come out? Isn’t it to see the child of God in each person and invite that child out? That’s what Jesus does: “Be silent and come out of him,” Jesus says. At the end of the story, the crowd is amazed. And indeed, whenever, wherever, we as the Jesus people, invite the child of God caged up, imprisoned, out to play—it’s still amazing. This is our calling in Christ: to invite the caged out, to invite everyone in, into the community of Christ, into the circle of those who recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, children of God. For when we recognize others in this way, we find we ourselves are also recognized in that circle.

Amen.

What Are You Wearing?

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany NY

By Rev. James Eaton, Pastor * © 2020 All Rights Reserved

19th Sunday After Pentecost * October 11, 2020

Philippians 4:1–9 • Matthew 22:1–14

“Saturday I have to take Lucy for her rabbi shot.” It was a simple text from Jacquelyn; most of you know Lucy is our little seven pound endlessly barking dog. What you may not know is that our best friends in Albany beyond the church are our neighbors who are Orthodox Jews. So we hear a bit about rabbis and we’re very conscious about Saturday being their sabbath. But why would Lucy need a shot to protect against a rabbi? I looked at the text again and then it hit me: the demonic spell checker had hit again and converted ‘rabies’ to ‘rabbi’. I laughed, I laughed and laughed again. The spell checker failed but in failing made me laugh. We are a society frantic to succeed; what if going forward means failing? 

Wrong Shirt, Wrong Time

Today’s gospel reading contains two parables. One is about a great banquet; that occurs in a slightly different form in the Gospel of Luke as well. The other is this strange, last part about the a guest at a wedding who gets thrown out, all the way out, into the outer darkness, because they wore the wrong thing. I guess we all wear the wrong thing sometimes. One day, I put on a nice shirt with pink stripes only to have Jacquelyn take one look, make the face, the one that says,  “Oh no!” and inform me that it was a spring shirt. I didn’t know shirts had seasons. So I had to find one what went with fall for reasons I didn’t understand and put that on.

This unfortunate guest has made the same mistake: he’s mistaken the time. Clothing rules are really about showing respect, a way of acting by wearing. When my daughter Amy was married, I did what ministers do: I wore a suit. Jacquelyn had many things to navigate: what was the mother of the bride wearing? what were the bridesmaids wearing? Would it be hot or cold? Did it call for heels? Coming up with the right outfit wasn’t as much about style as about showing respect to her new stepdaughter and the rest of the family.

The issue here isn’t style, it’s whether we are responding to God’s call in Christ. Clothing is a symbol for who you are and who you are following. Paul knows this. In a culture where the symbol of power was the armored Roman soldier, he says to Christians, “…be strong in the Lord and in God’s mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. [Ephesians 2:10f]” The guest with the wrong garment failed to grasp the moment; he failed to honor the king. The punishment is to be left out of the kingdom, for the kingdom is the place of light; the outer darkness mentioned is its opposite. 

Are You Ready for the King?

So the critical issue here is this: are you ready for the king? The best way to understand this story is to look at the context. If we look a little farther back, we find that Jesus tells a series of three parables about people who miss out on the kingdom. We read one two weeks ago: a man tells two sons to go work in the vineyard; one replies, “I go!” but doesn’t, one replies, “I will not,” but goes. “Which did the will of the father?,” Jesus asks. 

The second is also about a vineyard. A householder plants a vineyard and then lets it out to tenants. At harvest, the tenants beat his servants and kill one. He sends more servants; same result. Finally, he sends his son; they cast him out of the vineyard and kill him. What will the owner do when he comes? The answer is obvious and the disaster that befalls the tenants comes from their failure to remember the vineyard doesn’t belong to them. 

Finally, we have the parable of the great supper, in this version is a marriage feast. Once again, this is a story where someone loses out because they don’t grasp the moment. That’s a common thread in these stories. The son who doesn’t go into the vineyard, the vineyard workers who kill the owner’s son, the guests who don’t come to the feast are images of people who should have known better and didn’t. They are images about Israel’s spiritual life; the vineyard is an ancient image for God’s people. The stories take place in a setting of conflict with religious leaders and just before the parable of the great supper, we read that the Pharisees and Chief Priests knew he was speaking about them and are plotting to arrest Jesus.

The structure of this parable is simple. A king invites several subjects to a wedding feast; each refuses, giving as a reason some concern of his own. In response, the king wipes out the things they thought were important and, left with an empty banquet hall, invites strangers instead. The feast goes on but those first invited aren’t present. They weren’t ready for the king and their failure destroys them. 

Two stories of failure; two stories of rejection: that’s a lot for a Sunday morning! What is Jesus saying? What can we learn about following him from these failures? Perhaps the most important thing is the urgency of now.

The Urgent Now

A wedding is a unique moment. That’s what the invited guests miss. “…they made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business,” [Matthew 22:5] They missed this most important part of the invitation: “Everything is ready.” 

From the beginning, Jesus has been saying the same thing. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus begins to work when John is arrested and he begins to preach with this simple message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God heaven is at hand.” [Matthew 4:17] He lifts up the tradition of God’s people; he talks about the future of God’s people. But he begins with the urgent now: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”—right here, right now.

“Now is the time,” was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s favorite phrase. The gospels’s give us two patterns of calls to discipleship. The first is the call of Peter and Andrew. In their case, the signature is the immediate response: “He said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately they left their nets and followed him.’” The same pattern is repeated with John and James. They’re mending nets, working with their father when Jesus comes to them and Matthew tells us, “Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” [Matthew 4:20–22] But later, when a scribe offers to follow him, he’s discouraged when Jesus tells him that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another follower who wants to wait to begin following him while he buries his father is told to leave the dead to bury their own dead.

“Now is the time.” The great irony in the story is the violence. Those invited were concerned about their farms and businesses; the king destroys them both. What they thought was so important is gone. What now? What will they do now? 

This is a parable for this moment. How often were we told that we lived in the most advanced country in the world? When the pandemic first began, it was easy for many to believe the promises of leaders that we had nothing to worry about. After all, we had resources, we had the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, why worry, why wear a mask or close a business or stay home? We missed the urgency of the moment and just as in this story, disaster has resulted.

“Now is the time.” Jesus preaches the urgency of now: the kingdom is at hand. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not yesterday, it’s right now, right here. What are we going to do? 

Living from the Mind of Christ Now

That’s the question each day: what are we going to do now? what are we going to do today? It’s certainly the question Paul presses on the church in Philippi. In the part we read this morning, he gets personal. 

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life

Philippians 4:1–3

The church is divided; these two women lead factions. You know how strong feelings must be running for it to threaten the life of the church. It’s easy to love your enemy as long as your enemy is abstract; when it’s that annoying Syntyche, when it’s that awful Euodia, it’s harder, isn’t it? I’ve always thought there was great insight in Jesus’ command to love your neighbor. The world is easy to love; a neighbor, someone close by is harder.

So we’re back to what we talked about two weeks ago, also from this letter to the Philippians: have this mind among yourselves that was the mind of Christ. Except now it’s focused, now it’s harder because now it’s now. Now is the time: now is the time we’re called to live from the mind of Christ. We’ve talked about how humility can lead us to this; Paul says, 

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Now he offers a standard:

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

It’s hard to fight a church fight when you are thinking about things that are honorable, just, pure, commendable. It’s hard to rant in your head about someone and think about what is pleasing, worth of praise and so on. Everyone who hikes learns to watch for trail markers; everyone who drives watches the signs. These are signs of the mind of Christ and if they aren’t part of your journey, it’s time to stop now, and do exactly what Jesus said: repent—for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom is right here, right now, and if you aren’t living from the mind of Christ, you’re wearing the wrong outfit. 

What Are You Wearing?

This is finally the message of these parables: following Christ is a series of moments, not a one time commitment that needs no follow up. Now is the time—each day, each moment, each interaction. Now is the time to put on Christ; now is the moment to live from the mind of Christ. Today is the day we’re invited to the kingdom. What are you wearing?

Amen.

Serious Laughter and the Evil Eye

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost/A • September 20, 2020

Matthew 20:1-17

I want to begin this morning with something I read that expresses where I am, where I think so many of us are today.

I watch the news some nights, and I listen to reports about COVID…I also watch our beautiful western states burn. I watch Black lives and blue lives being taken unjustly. I watch fear-mongering and listen to … brazen lies.

It’s all so…heartbreaking.

Cameron Trible, ‘Piloting Faith”, email on September 16, 2020

Here’s my question: in these days of heartbreak, how do we find joy? How do we respond to whatever the day brings? Every day is a basket of occasions; every day has threats and opportunities and invitations to praise. Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers is about a day when some grumbled, and some laughed. Can we join the laughter?

Let’s start with the end and work back to the beginning. Imagine these workers going home; what do you think the conversations were like? Think of the last first. All day long these sat around the dusty corner where day laborers gather. They talked, hoped, gradually gave up. They saw friends get work but they never did. Then, at the last moment, at the moment when they were hopeless and just avoiding home where there wouldn’t be anything to eat, this amazing chance. Five o’clock!—and a guy comes looking for help picking grapes. Who cares what he was offering to pay? Something is better than nothing, anything is better than nothing. So off they went to the vineyard, hoping for just a little, maybe some gleaned grapes. Imagine their surprise, imagine their “it can’t be true” joy when they walk to the pay table and the manager hands them a whole drachma, a day’s wage. I wonder if their eyes widened, I wonder if one by one they slunk away, thinking the guy must have made a mistake, wanting to get away before he figured it out. Think of them grinning as they walk in the door at home and someone looks up, eyes questioning. Think of the grin as they hold out a whole drachma, enough to pay for dinner and breakfast tomorrow both. Imagine the hug and the laughter, the serious laughter.

Now think of the first hired. Tired, hot, dirty after a long day in the fields. Farm work started then as it does not at dawn. They were smart to get down to the corner early, and their smarts was rewarded. A full day’s work but more importantly a full day’s pay, just as agreed. I wonder if they felt a little smug, seeing others who didn’t get to work until noon or later, knowing they wouldn’t get full pay. So imagine their anger, their grumbling, when—impossible!—the manger starts handing out drachmas to everyone. “How was your day?”, their families ask, and the answer is grumbling about the unfairness of the vineyard owner and the pay tossed on the table. Which home do you want to live in? Can we choose?

Go back to the beginning. It’s September; well, I know it’s September here but in this story it’s September too: that’s the grape harvest. You know what September is like? One bright, warm sunny day immediately followed by thrashing rains and cold temperatures. Harvest is a crisis because grapes all get ripe at once, the vineyard is ready now, and if you wait, even a day or two can mean you missed the moment. So this vineyard owners goes out at daybreak to hire some day laborers. Every farming community has a corner where these guys hang out. He finds a group, he contracts to hire them for a day’s wage, a denarius, paid as a drachma, a standard coin. So they go to work. Imagine the owner working with them, correcting some of them, helping and realizing it’s not going to be enough, there aren’t enough of them. So at noon he goes and hires more. The same thing happens. He’s getting more frantic so he goes at mid-afternoon, hires more and as the evening starts still more. These others don’t have a contract, he just tells them to trust him, he’ll pay what’s fair. They know they aren’t working a whole day, they’re glad to at least get a few hours.

At the end of the day, the owner’s tired but he’s happy; the grapes are picked, the vineyard is harvested and he makes a decision. He tells his manager to pay everyone, and to start with the last hired first. This is really the central point of this parable and it’s why Matthew, the only one to tell this story, has it here. It’s connected to the spiritual facts Jesus preaches, that God doesn’t play by our rules and that the last are going to be first. So the laborers line up, just as ordered. And the manager starts paying them: one drachma for you, one drachma for you, one drachma for you.

It doesn’t take long for them to figure out what’s going on. I wonder what the guys at the end of the line, the ones hired first, who worked all day, thought as they saw these others get paid. Day laborers lived day to day and a day’s pay meant just that, they got through the day, they had enough to eat for the day. One day for you, one day for you, one day for you, on and on the pay goes until the first hired, the ones who had a contract finally get to the head of the line. Did they assume they would get more? Wouldn’t that be fair? What do you think? They worked all day, they bore the heat of the day; on the other hand, they agreed to work for—one drachma, one day’s pay. And that is exactly what they get.