Tag Archives: unity

Who’s There?

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World Communion Sunday

18th Sunday After Pentecost/A • October 4, 2020

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor • © 2020 All Rights Reserved

Psalm 19 • Philippians 3:4-14 

You’re in the house; you hear a noise. You listen: silence, broken by the question, “Who’s there?” That’s common at our house. It’s two stories, three with the basement. If someone comes in and you’re upstairs, if someone is doing laundry in the basement, and you didn’t know anyone else was home, you call out, “Who’s there?” 

That question is a fundamental one, isn’t it? We’re social creatures; we may like some time to ourselves but we all want eventually to know someone else is there, that we’re with someone else. So we fling out this question to the universe, to creation: “Who’s there?”

“The heavens are telling the glory of God,” Psalm 19 declares, “the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge.” This is the great poetic imagining of creation’s conversation. The subject is the glory of God; the audience is everyone listening. Are you listening? Who’s there?, we ask and creation flings back this answer: “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” Listen up. 

Surely we don’t listen to this conversation nearly enough. In worship, in work, we focus on ourselves: what are we going to do, what should we do. But listen to God’s Word closely and there are an amazing amount of words that have nothing to do with us, they are about creation itself. Genesis begins with light and dark, land and sea, and only at the end comes to human beings, almost as an afterthought. When God decides to start over, the means is a flood, a literal undoing of the ordering of the waters from which creation proceeded and human beings are saved so they can save the animal kingdom. When God intervenes in history in the Hebrew scriptures, again and again it’s through great natural, creation centered events: a reversal of waters that lets the people of God escape their oppressors, a drought that brings forward a prophet. Who’s there?—the heavens are telling the glory of God and all we have to do is listen to hear the answer.

“Who’s there?” We’re social creatures, we need each other, so we create communities.  

when Sociologist Margeret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. She reversed the question back to her students. They offered examples of when humans formed tools like shovels, fish hooks, cookware, and grinding stones.

She listened patiently and then said, “These were important advancements, but they do not speak to civilization, our ability to live together in authentic community.”

She went on to say that she considered the first signs of civilization in an ancient culture to be a femur (thighbone) that had broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal world if you break your leg, you die. You can’t run from danger. You can’t find food. You can’t access water. You become the prey. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed suggests that someone has taken the time to stay with the fallen one, has bound and treated the wound, has carried that person to safety, and has cared for that person during recovery.

Healing someone through difficulty is the beginning of a civilized culture. It means someone was there, someone helped.

Healing communities is one answer; another is teams. By teams, I mean all those groups who identify together. I’m from Michigan and the two most important teams among Michigan colleges are Michigan State, whose team colors are green and white, and the University of Michigan, blue and gold. Years ago, Jacquelyn bought me a lovely winter coat. It was warm, had lots of pockets, fit perfectly but there was just one thing: it was blue with gold accents. I went to Michigan State. I can’t wear blue and gold. Of course, I did wear it for years; we were in Connecticut, it was safe, no one knew about the teams. But sure enough, when we moved to Michigan, as soon as it got cold and I put on my winter coat, someone asked me what I was doing wearing blue and gold. Wrong team, wrong colors. I had to wear something else.

Paul is telling us his team in this part of the Philippians. His terms may be just as obscure as green and white, blue and gold, to someone out of Michigan but the people there would have understood him. Listen to what he says.

  1. circumcised on the eighth day, – he had a bris,
    the signature ritual of inclusion for Jewish men
  2. a member of the people of Israel – this is his nationality
  3. of the tribe of Benjamin – this is his tribe, like saying he’s a New Yorker. Benjamin is one of the two tribes that formed the Jewish nation.
  4. a Hebrew born of Hebrews – he’s not a convert, he’s second generation
  5. as to the law, a Pharisee – this is a religious tribe within Judaism,
    it’s like saying he’s an evangelical 
  6. as to zeal, a persecutor of the church – Paul started out as a district attorney, prosecuting Christians
  7. as to righteousness under the law, blameless – no sins on his permanent record

Seven signs to draw his identity. Paul is speaking to a church that divided into tribes. Some follow one person, some another. Possibly some grew up Jewish; some grew up Gentile. Some are Greek, some are from other places.  

He’s giving his resume, his tribe. Haven’t we all done this? “Where are you from?” “I went to school at Harvard”, “We’ve been going to this church over 50 years”, and so on and so on. Paul is a remarkable man. It’s an amazing list, really, someone everyone would respect and admire.

So his next statement is shocking: 

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

Wow: all rubbish, his pedigree, his upbringing, he degrees, his accomplishments, his membership and position in the religious world. It’s all something to throw away.—t’s all rubbish.

Now we’re met on World Communion Sunday, a celebration that began as a reaction to Christian tribalism. For centuries, Christians divided up over all kinds of issues: power, liturgy, what kind of instruments to use in worship, what kind of clothing clergy should wear, whether there should be clergy, what kind of furniture to have in the church, who could be a church member, race, gender, who people love. You name it, Christians have divided over it. Most of this has nothing to do with Jesus Christ; most of it makes as much difference as whether your hat is green and white or blue and gold. This is the testimony of the Bible: it’s rubbish. What’s important is being found in Christ, living from the mind of Christ, loving in the name of Christ. That’s what Paul means by “gaining Christ”. He means making Christ more important than all the rubbish, more important than your tribe, more important even than you.

We haven’t always done that. Fred Craddock talks about his first church, a little church in a rural area. When a highway was built nearby, a trailer park sprung up for the workers and their families. He was a young minister and I guess he didn’t understand about tribes because he suggested to his deacons that they should do something to invite those people. After he pushed on the issue, the church met to discuss it. They voted on it, they voted to require that anyone own property in the county before they became a member of the church. Craddock moved on. Many years later, after he retired, he was in the area and he went looking for that church. He found it and the parking lot was full, there was a neon sign and a crowd of people. The church had closed long before; it was a barbecue restaurant. I guess the owners didn’t care who bought from them, what tribe they belonged to.

Communion reminds us of this one fact: Jesus Christ loved so much he suffered betrayal and crucifixion to inspire love in others. He didn’t care about their tribe; he didn’t care about their hat color. He didn’t care what kind of furniture they used; he didn’t care whether they had a degree or not or whether they were Jews or Gentiles or men or women. He just cared for them. When we receive communion, we’re trading our hats for his cross. “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” Paul says. Can we say it with him? Can we live it with him?

There’s nothing wrong with being part of a tribe. I’m a Congregationalist; I love our traditions, our history, our way of worship. But it’s not Christ. It’s like my hat. Do you have a favorite hat? I do—or I should say, I did. Last summer was sailing one day, I looked up as the wind gusted and my hat flew off my head, into Curtis Bay. I tried to do hat overboard but no luck; it was gone. I was a little sad for a moment but then—it’s just a hat. And the wind was fine and the water was beautiful. The heavens were telling the glory of God. That’s what was important: hearing that, feeling it.  

Who’s there? You are—I am—Christ is. Together we are meant to be that healing community that Jesus preached and Mead mentioned,. Today is World Communion Sunday. Today we listen to the world saying, “Who’s there?” Today we forget our tribes, today we remember our furniture and our differences are rubbish next to the surpassing value of being found in Jesus Christ. Today we lift him up, his cross, his life, his invitation to us to live in the community of the kingdom of God where when we ask, “Who’s there?” He answers: I am. 

Amen.

What’s On Your Mind?

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor • © 2020 All Rights Reserved

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost/A • September 27, 2020

Philippians 2:1-13

What’s on your mind? Without being able to go around and ask each person, I have to guess and my guess this morning is that health is on the mind of many. This week our country passed the 200,000 deaths mark from the pandemic. The upcoming election is on the mind of many, I’m sure, and so this the sadness of the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg whose life lightened and liberated so many. Maybe individual things are on your mind: something hurts or you’re worried about catching Covid-19 or there’s a nagging problem in your life.

Asking, “What’s on your mind?”, is a little like going up to the attic isn’t it? At least at our house, the attic is full of stuff we didn’t know what to do with, so we stuck it up there. Go up to the attic and you quickly get overwhelmed by different things; I usually just end up going back downstairs. Come downstairs with me and let’s ask another question: what’s on the Apostle Paul’s mind and how can it help us?

What’s on Paul’s mind, when he writes to the Philippian Christians, is the future of the church  They’re going through a tough time. The local authorities have been persecuting them; Paul himself has been beaten by the police and jailed. So have some of the others. What makes it even worse is that their church is divided between two groups. What’s on Paul’s mind is division and conflict; doesn’t that sound familiar? That’s on the minds of a lot of us as well.

He starts out with one of the longest sentences in the whole New Testament and it’s hard to get it all when it’s read once. He asks four questions: if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any incentive of love, if there is any participation in the Spirit, if there is any affection and sympathy. Notice how these link love and spiritual life: encouragement in Christ is connected to love, participation in the Spirit is linked to affection and sympathy. Love is the mission. Sometimes we get so involved with what we are doing that we forget what we are trying to do. When I go out, I have to find my keys, find my wallet, find my glasses, find my mask. It’s easy in all that to forget I was going out on an errand. In church life, we sometimes get so involved with the details, we forget the mission is God’s love expressed through us. 

Paul doesn’t want anyone to forget what they are trying to do, the mission they’re on. Spiritual life is a rhythm of feeling and acting. He goes on to make this point by embodying these things with a ringing call to action: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit but in humility count others better than yourself.” [Philippians 2:3] Spiritual life for a Christian always has a “Do” attached to it, it’s always a motivation that leads to action.  

But we can only act from what’s on our mind. So he comes back to that explicitly: “Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus” [Philippians 2:5] What Paul is saying is that we are meant to live from the mind of Christ. 

What’s on your mind? What’s on the mind of Christ? What’s on your mind when you think with the mind of Christ? He’s already given us a suggestion about this and now he makes it explicit by quoting what many believe was a Christian hymn:

Christ Jesus, Though he was in the form of God,
Did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped
But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant
Being born in the likeness of humanity
And being found in human form
He humbled himself
And became obedient unto death
Even death on a cross

Philippians 2:5-8

This is the mind of Christ: instead of grasping for greatness, helping with humility, healing with humility. To think with the mind of Christ means to live in a hopeful humility.

This is hard, isn’t it? Because what’s on our mind is often little details. Fred Craddock, one of the most widely known preachers of my lifetime, was baptized in a Baptist church, where you don’t just get a couple drops of water, you get completely dunked. He says,

When I was baptized, I was fourteen years old. I know the minister was saying a lot of wonderful things about being buried with Christ and all —I’m sure he was; he was a good minister. But I was just thinking, Do I hold the handkerchief? Does he hold the handkerchief? Uh, I wonder if it’s cold…and I bet it’s deep too.

Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, p. 30

So here we are, hearing about the mind of Christ—but wondering if it’s going to be cold or deep or what they have to eat at coffee hour and when the preacher will be done.

“Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” That’s the mind of Christ, that’s not how we think. We grasp for more. We think if we just had the resources, which is to say enough power, we could do a lot of good. A friend of mine, one of the most genuinely loving and Christian men I’ve ever known, used to be in charge of helping churches and ministers find each other. He’s a bedrock Congregationalist. He really believes the best way to be a church is by having all the members involved and voting on important things. One day he got so frustrated with the petty, dumb things churches do in the search and call process, he yelled, “I want to be a bishop!”

I know that feeling, I’ve had it. Sometimes, I let myself have a little daydream about starting up a church, a church where there are no Boards or committees, where I can just do everything right because I know what’s right better than they do. The church of Jim: what do you think? Oh, wait: I’m a minister of the church of Christ. Any time one of us stops trying to run things and listens to all the others, we have the mind of Christ.

In the church of Christ, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a church member, it matters whether you have the mind of Christ and the mind of Christ always thinks about others first. I used to be the pastor of a church that had a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Sunday every year. We also had Sunday dinners once a month; we rotated with some other churches on where they were held. One year it was our turn to host on Thanksgiving Sunday. After a little arguing and fussing, we decided to go ahead and do it and just make more than usual. This was a church like this one, where we endlessly agonized about not having enough people. 

So the day came, the whole building smelled like turkey dinner and after worship we all went down to eat. A lot of our homeless and hungry guests came, so instead of the 30 or so church folks, we had over 200. It was a crowd and bless their hearts, our church folks thought with the mind of Christ and let those people go first. That meant the last church folks, a group of long time members, senior ladies, didn’t get any turkey. I found out and you know I didn’t much have the mind of Christ, I had the minister mind that thinks, “I’m going to be in trouble over this.” So I went to over to see them, and they were so much better than me. One of them said, “Well, we didn’t get any turkey but thank God there was plenty of potatoes.” She was thanking God for potatoes when I was worried about power. I think she had the mind of Christ.

In the church of Christ, it doesn’t matter how powerful and important you are, it matters whether you can get down off your high horse and welcome a child. Years ago, it became a fad to have children’s sermons in church, mostly little object lessons. I wasn’t very good at it. But the church wanted something, so I started doing my version, which was to get down on the carpet with some kids and just ask, “Did anything special happen this week?” One Sunday I was going to be away and the church got a minister to preach who had a reputation for great children’s sermons. After I got back, he called me. He said he’d done what he usually does, gathered the children in the front pew but when he started the lesson, the kids interrupted. One said, “This isn’t how you do children’s time, you’re supposed to get down on the floor and ask us what happened this week.” He said he’d thought about that ever since, and wished he’d done that. And he asked me to thank the kids for preaching to him. 

Are you thinking with the mind of Christ? Are you putting others first? There is so much division in our country right now and it’s seeping over into churches. A friend of mine, another minister, who is an ardent liberal was afraid her politics was seeping into her preaching. So she decided to go back to a tradition and pray for the President every Sunday. The first Sunday, during the pastoral prayer, she said, “Let us pray for our President, Donald J. Trump.” She got two calls that week: one complaining that she had prayed for President Trump at all, one complaining because they were a Trump supporters and they thought she was being praying for him as an anti-Trump message. I guess they were thinking with their political minds.

What’s on your mind? What are you thinking? Paul was thinking about division in that church in Philippi and his solution was simple: division comes when we let our own minds take charge; unity comes from thinking with the mind of Christ. That’s still true today. 

Are you thinking with the mind of Christ? A couple weeks ago, we read a parable about a guy who received forgiveness and lost it when he didn’t practice forgiveness. I said then that forgiveness was the way to deal with our past, to stop letting our past be a burden. Last week, we read a parable about some workers who grumbled and didn’t get to laugh when they got paid and I said then that gratitude was the way to deal with our present, finding something to appreciate and thank God for in each day. Now we have this letter from Paul to Christians just like us, people with a lot on their mind and he wants to help them face the future. How do you face the future as follower of Christ? You think with the mind of Christ, you live from the mind of Christ, you act from the mind of Christ. 

What’s on your mind? “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…” God is at work in us, God is at work in you and me. We may not know it; we may not see it. Earlier, I mentioned the story of Fred Craddock’s baptism and what was on his mind while it took place. But you know, that fourteen year old boy grew up to be a man who inspired thousands, who helped so many find the forgiving, grateful spirit Christ invites us to share. He did it because he learned to think with the mind of Christ. What will we do when we let the mind of Christ control us?

Amen.