Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down....

It’s an odd tradition isn’t it?

To walk about with a darkened smear

in the center of our forehead

visible to all eyes but our own.

It’s supposed to remind us of our mortality,

our finiteness,

because most of us tend to tuck death away

in hospital rooms,

funeral parlors, and the back alley recesses of our minds.

But while we may be reminded in the moment,

when the cool sticky smudge is traced above our brow,

it doesn’t take long for us to forget once again.

Until an inadvertent brush of a misplaced lock of hair,

or a glimpse in a restroom mirror

reminds us that something is different;

that something is where nothing usually is.

When I was young it was harder to forget.

We’d slowly rise from our pews

and line up behind each other,

tugging nervously at our school uniforms

and craning our necks to see what was happening up ahead.

The man we called Father was bigger then.

Taller, wider, casting a shadow that kept us safe

and confined.

One by one we stepped before him

and felt the touch of his thumb upon our head.

It was foreign for me

to feel this touch.

Priest. Male. Authority. God.

It was humbling,

as it reminded me of everything I was not,

and I could not return to my seat

fast enough.

But a reminder of the touch was left behind.

For the rest of the day

we’d point and giggle,

our eyes darting from one face to the next,

noticing which marks were darker

and which were more grey than black,

noticing that some took the shape of an obvious cross,

and others were simply an indistinguishable blur.

The reminder stayed with us throughout the day,

through recess and Social Studies,

through afterschool play and homework,

through dinner and TV time,

Until our mothers wiped it off

with soapy water and kisses just before bed.

But now,

I barely have a chance to feel its presence.

Rushing to an evening service,

the transition to the darkened, quiet sanctuary

from the world outside

is jarring.

The rituals, the music, the liturgy,
the lining up to receive the burned palms 
from a celebration a year in the past,

all carry so much more meaning for me now.

Remember, from dust you have come,

and to dust you shall return.

The words sink in

as I hear them repeated

over and over again.

You are mortal.

You are finite.

You are made of the same 

ordinary substance

that God used to create the world.

And yet you are so much more.

You have been graced

with the ability to rise from the ashes,

and be reborn

into something new.

Now I am the one

doing the repeating.

Slipping my thumb into the oiled ash

and marking those who line up before me.

A cross for one.

A circle for another.

But the words remain the same.

Remember, from dust you have come,

and to dust you shall return.

As I too receive the mark

I begin to wonder what it looks like.

Is it light, or is it dark?

Does it say to the world,

“This person is unique

because she bears the mark of Christ!”

or does it say to the world,

“This person needs to be reminded

of her own limitedness.”

Do I look as odd,

as branded,

as out of sorts,

as the rest of the faces

gathered around me in the pews?

As I exit into the cool night air

the silence closes in on me.

And I begin to forget, again.

At home I go about my nightly routine

and take my one and only glimpse of the mark

just before I wash it off

and retire to bed.

Lent is a season

of reflection and remembrance.

Forty plus days of looking inward,

and moving outward,

as we become intentional

about acknowledging our connection to God,

to each other,

and to this world

that was created from dust,

and to dust it shall return.

I sometimes wish

I could bear to wear that mark

for more than a few hours,

for more than a day.

That I had the faith,

and the discipline, and the courage,

to receive the mark

every day

for the 40 plus days of Lent.

To awake each day

and forget that it’s there.

Until I rub the sleep from my eyes

and look down at my fingertips,

and see the darkened residue

of oil and ash

that marks me

as a beloved child

of God. 

Sermon: Cliff Diving With Jesus

Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst

February 3, 2013

1 Cor. 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-44

“Cliff Diving With Jesus”

Love causes us to do crazy things.
If you’ve ever been in love, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s as if we become a very different person.
Our willingness to try new things, travel to unfamiliar places, and act courageously out of character increases tenfold, and is driven by our desire to connect with and be with the one that we love.
Love causes us to step outside of our comfort zones and to take risks that we normally would not take if we were not bolstered by its presence.

Now some of you may be recalling the time you colored your hair in high school because the boy you liked preferred blondes, or the time you fell on your face 100 times while learning to ice skate because you had a crush on a girl who worked at the local rink, or the time you drove 300 miles in one night to visit a college girlfriend or boyfriend after getting a phone message that says, “I miss you” or “I wish you were here.”
But it’s not just romantic love that causes us to do crazy things.
Love in all of its forms, as it turns out, has the power to influence, and transform us, in amazing ways.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who worked in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. Between July and December of 1944 he set up housing for thousands of Hungarian Jews and issued them “protective passports” which identified them as Swedish subjects and prevented their deportation. Wallenberg rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest, and declared them to be protected by diplomatic immunity. On the building’s front doors he placed signs that read “The Swedish Library” and “The Swedish Research Institute” and he hung oversize Swedish flags on the front to bolster the deception. The buildings housed almost 10,000 refugees. All together Wallenberg saved an estimated 100,000 lives during the Holocaust. 
After the war, Wallenberg was captured by the Soviets and imprisoned, which is where he died in 1947.
We might say that Wallenberg was driven by an overwhelming sense of compassion and a true desire for justice.
But as we know, at the root of such compassion and justice seeking, is love.
It’s our love of God, and our love for each other, that drives us to take such extraordinary risks in this world.

The passage we heard this morning from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is a beautiful ode to the power of love, but it also pushes us to live up to the high, high standard that being purveyors and recipients of that love sets before us.

As we noted earlier, we’re used to hearing this text from first Corinthians in the context of weddings.
Love is patient, love is kind….
As we gaze into the eyes of our beloved it all seems so easy, so doable.
Even those of us who know the challenges of maintaining marital love over time can’t help but get caught up in the moment, as the happy couple exchanges their vows and promises to love each other til death do they part. We believe it can happen. If not for us, then at least it will for them.
But when we remove the overlay of romantic love and drop this text into the context of Christian community, as Paul intended, the challenge of true love seems much more difficult, if not impossible to live up to.


The church in Corinth was in trouble.
It appeared to be thriving but once Paul looked beneath the façade he saw that it was coming apart at the seams.
To all outward appearances this was a faithful and active congregation whose people were blessed with many spiritual gifts, but in reality they were lauding those gifts over each other and going through the motions of faith to advance their own standing within the church.
They were motivated not by love but by their own desire for recognition and power.

In his letter, Paul held up a mirror and named the ways in which the church in Corinth had been perceiving and projecting a distorted image of love.

I wonder if we hear these words from first Corinthians 13 differently once we realize that this is not a poetic ode to romantic love, but rather a letter of reprimand pointing out the ways in which the people of Corinth have failed to love truly and faithfully.
We can feel Paul’s frustration and anger in his words:

If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We might wonder how these words were received in Corinth when Paul’s letter was read aloud to the congregation as they gathered for worship.
I can imagine that many of them were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, as they listened. Paul was accusing their faith filled and spiritually gifted community of being shallow and petty and having little understanding of what it meant to be a loving community of God.

I’m wondering how likely it is that the congregation collectively took Paul’s words to heart and immediately pledged to change their ways.
It’s probably more likely that a good portion of them began to call for a new leader to emerge from within their ranks, as Paul had clearly lost touch with who they were as a congregation.

Paul founded the church in Corinth, but he pastored it from a far, visiting on occasion, but primarily writing letters to chastise them when they drifted too far astray. Perhaps Paul knew from experience that the people of Corinth would have run him out of town if he stuck around too long.

But Paul was in good company in this regard.
As our text from the gospel of Luke tells us, Jesus was run out of town after reprimanding a congregation in his home city for the very same failing that Paul had seen in the people of Corinth.
They weren’t being as courageous or as expansive or as radically generous as they should be or could be with their love.

When Jesus stood up in his home synagogue to read from the sacred text from the prophet Isaiah we might imagine his friends and family beaming with pride. This was Joseph’s son.
A carpenter by trade who had been declared as the Messiah by John the Baptist. Reports of his teaching and preaching had spread throughout the countryside and now here he was, about to deliver his first scripture interpretation, his first sermon, in his home congregation.

Jesus stood up and read the familiar words of Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

After reading these words, Luke tells us that Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down, with all eyes fixed upon him.

He then said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Yes, this was Jesus having the audacity to claim that he was the one who had been sent by the Lord to do all these amazing things for the poor, the blind, and the oppressed, but that’s not what caused all eyes to be upon him, or caused him to be chased out of the synagogue only a few moments later.

The people were starting to believe that he might be the Messiah, so they likely weren’t angry or perplexed that he was making this claim.
It’s more likely that they were angry and perplexed because Jesus didn’t read the text from Isaiah in its entirety. 
In fact he abruptly stopped in the middle of a sentence and left out what was for them the most vital part of the scripture.
The part where Isaiah says, “He has sent me to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Jesus left off the part about God avenging Israel’s suffering and providing for his chosen people of Zion.

This is the day of vengeance the people were waiting for. Receiving their freedom was only the first part of their redemption, watching their enemies get what was coming to them was what would make it all worth while.

The people in that Galilean synagogue most likely knew the text of Isaiah by heart so it’s natural that they would question why Jesus chose to end his reading as he did. Was it intentional? What message was he trying to send?

To get ourselves inside the minds of the people in that synagogue, we might imagine someone standing up before a crowd of modern day Americans and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and leaving out the phrase, “One Nation, under God.”

Although the “under God” portion wasn’t added until 1954, most of us have become so accustomed to hearing it this way that we would notice if it were left out.
And it’s likely that some might question why it was left out and what message the one reciting it was trying to send, about their faith, and their loyalty to the nation.

Which is exactly what the people in that Galilean synagogue did with Jesus. Especially when Jesus raised their suspicions even further by peppering his sermon with scriptures that suggested that those outside the circle of God's grace, the Gentiles, were meant to receive God's favor and attention as well.
Jesus now had two strikes against him.
What kind of Messiah shows up and announces "the day of the Lord's favor" without also bringing "the day of vengeance" that was promised so long ago?
What kind of Messiah would take the grace and favor that was meant for just a few and make the claim that it was meant for all?

We may now understand how the people in the synagogue went from praising Jesus to threatening to throw him off a cliff.
We can imagine that the people of the church in Corinth thought about throwing Paul off a cliff as well. 
All because they so desperately wanted their people to broaden their understanding of love. They wanted their people to imagine God in a much bigger and much more inclusive way.

We know what happened to Paul. He was arrested and ended up dying in prison.
And we know what ultimately happened to Jesus. Somehow he slipped away from the angry mob on the edge of that cliff in Galilee, but they eventually caught up with him. And he was nailed to a cross and left to die because he dared to imagine a love that was meant to be freeing for all.

Love causes us to do crazy and courageous things.

Love is what causes some people to lay their lives on the line, to risk arrest, beatings, loss of freedom, loss of livelihood, loss of respect, loss of life, because of a principle, a belief, an inner knowing that they must DO SOMETHING to stop an injustice or an act of fear or hatred.

Love is what drove Raoul Wallenberg to risk his freedom and his life to save so many during WWII, even though each passport that he signed and each person that he stowed away brought him one step closer to being caught.

Love is what drove Rosa Parks to look a white man in the face and say, “No, I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not moving to the back of the bus. I’m staying right where I am and you’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.”

Love is what drove an anonymous man carrying a shopping bag in each hand to step in front of moving tanks in Tiananmen Square. Love is what caused him to step out of his routine life and into the center of a battle between freedom and oppression.

Love is what drives any one of us to step out of our comfort zone – To invite a homeless person to stay in our spare bedroom, to volunteer to visit a prisoner who has no family, to stand up to a bully in a middle school hallway.

Love is what strengthens us when we feel backed up to the edge of cliff and we’re fearful that those who oppose our generosity of hospitality just might throw us off into the abyss.
Love is what gives us the courage to teeter on that edge, and to take a leap of faith on our own accord, as we break our hearts wide open and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

      Love is patient; Love is kind;      
        Love bears all things, believes all things, 
                hopes all things, endures all things.     
                 Love never ends.

                         Thanks be to God.

Sermon: "Rise and Shine!"

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Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

January 13, 2013

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“Rise and Shine!”

Have you ever stood on an ocean beach in the summertime, and let your toes sink into the wet sand at the edge of the shoreline?

As the waves roll in sending water rushing past your shins, you can often feel the sand shifting beneath the soles of your feet.

It’s a strange sensation that makes it seem as if you’re moving along with the waves, being pulled first out to sea and then back towards the shoreline.

Yet each time the water rushes in and recedes you find that you haven’t moved at all.  It can feel disconcerting, but it’s also comforting to know that while the sand and water shifts and flows all around you, you remain safely planted on solid ground.

Growing up on Long Island, I remember standing on the shoreline of Jones Beach one day at the age of 5 or 6, and experiencing that alternating feeling of fear and exhilaration as the waves pushed and pulled at me as I waded into the water.

I never let the water get higher than my waist, and my older brother Brian was with me that day, so I knew I was safe.

But then suddenly, as a wave rolled in I felt myself being lifted up and tossed out to sea. One second I was looking up at the blue sky and in the next I was looking at 4 feet of water over my head, as I tumbled and rolled and struggled in vain to keep from sinking even further below.

I didn’t know how to swim and I had no idea how to hold my breath under water.

But then just as suddenly, I felt arms wrapped around me, and I looked up and saw my brother Brian pulling me to safety.

Brian was my hero that day, until I found out years later that he was the one who picked me up and threw me in the deeper water in the first place.

In reality, I was probably submerged for less than 10 seconds and only a few feet from the shoreline, but that incident instilled in me a life-long fear of being under water.  

So when I hear about “believer baptisms” practiced by Baptists and other traditions that call for older children and adults to profess their faith and be fully immersed in water, I thank God that my parents were Catholic and had me baptized when I was 4 weeks old.

On this first Sunday after Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus,

and in doing so we’re called to remember our own baptisms as well.

Martin Luther, the great leader of the Protestant Reformation, passionately reminded the Christians of his time to "Remember your baptism!"

Of course, many of us were baptized as babies or as young children and can't "remember" the details of our baptisms. But Luther pushes us to focus on something bigger than our historical memory of the day we were baptized.

This is about more than recalling what if felt like to be dressed in a white gown or suit and to then be handed over to a stranger and have water dribbled or poured over our head.

Even if we were old enough to remember the day of our baptisms, or have experienced a full immersion baptism as an adult, it’s not the physical sensations of the water against our skin or the emotional exhilaration of becoming a part of the community of Christ that we’re called to remember.

In his catechism, Luther wrote, "A truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism once begun and ever to be continued."

Luther calls us to remember our baptism, each and every day -

To remember who we are, and whose we are.

To remember that we belong to God, and as Children of God and followers of Christ, we are beloved.

Even in an age when we spend so much time talking about "self-esteem" and our almost narcissistic desire to feel special, don't we all still long to hear that we are beloved?

We need to hear it, and we need to remember it, every day, as we go about doing the difficult work that God calls us to do in this world.

After Jesus was baptized, and he rose up from the river Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon him and a voice came from heaven proclaiming:

 "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We might imagine that Jesus needed to hear those words, right there and right then, as he knew that this was the founding moment of his ministry.

John the Baptist had announced him to the world.

Declaring him as being more powerful than he, and able to baptize not just with water but also with fire and the Holy Spirit.

That’s quite a job description to have to live up to.

From then on Jesus would no longer be just the son of Joseph the carpenter.

He would no longer be an anonymous man living in an anonymous town who got up everyday and worked and prayed just like everybody else.

Theologians and scholars alike disagree on whether Jesus knew from birth what God had planned for him, or if he discovered it along with everyone else on the day of his baptism.

But just as many of us do, I wonder if Jesus ever doubted his ability to live up to such grandiose expectations.

In our call to worship Jesus as our Lord and Savior we sometimes forget about his human side.  

There was that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus got down on his knees and pleaded with God to take this cup from him, the cup of suffering from which he was destined to drink.

In that pivotal moment, I wonder if Jesus doubted his ability to fulfill the promise of his baptism, as he struggled to be the beloved Son, whom God was calling him to be.

I wonder if that same doubt arose years before when he stepped into the Jordan River and he allowed John the Baptist to push him wholly beneath the water.

We might wonder what was running through Jesus’ mind in that disorientating moment when the water went over his head.

When the sights and sounds of the crowd gathered above became muffled, and the Baptist's hands beneath his back grew shaky under the weight of the Promise of God that he held in his arms.

Might Jesus have hesitated to come back up, knowing what was awaiting him when he rose out of the water?

How encouraging it must have been for him, when he finally emerged from the Jordan wiping the water from his eyes, to hear the voice of God saying,

"You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

If only we could hear that voice, as we rise to meet the challenges of our day.

Because we have many challenges.

As Christians we’re called to do grandiose things such as love our enemies, to forgive those who persecute us, to release our fear of those who are different from us in any way, and to not worry about the future and trust that God will provide for us all in abundance.

We struggle with this calling not just on communal scale, when it comes to issues of inclusivity and social justice, but we also struggle with it on a personal scale, and in many ways this is the harder challenge that we face.

What are you struggling with right now?

Are you struggling to forgive someone?

Are you struggling to forgive yourself?

Are you anxious because someone you love is going through a difficult time?

Are you fearful that the bad thing that you’re worried might happen, will happen?

Are you fearful that the good thing that you want to happen, won’t happen?

Are you frustrated because you can’t seem to move someone, or help them to understand what you know in your heart of hearts to be true, because they in their heart of hearts believe the opposite to be true?

Are you angry because something was taken from you, or withheld from you?

Are you sorrowful because you lost something or someone who was precious to you?

Are you longing for that one thing, that one person, that one job, that one financial windfall that will change your life for the better and make getting out of bed in the morning that much easier, and much more joyful?

We carry all of these longings, fears, anxieties, frustrations, and sorrows before God.

And we declare our inadequacy in the face of God’s unconditional love.

Who are we to be called beloved?

Who are we to claim that in us God is well pleased?

Some of us are barely holding it together.

And others of us are staying on track but still feel like we could be doing more, and should be doing more - to help our neighbor, to improve our communities, to hone ourselves into kinder, more compassionate and more productive people of God.

We’re carrying a lot of weight on our shoulders.

But perhaps we might feel that weight lighten when we listen again to the words of Isaiah that Greg read for us earlier:

The Lord said, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

the rivers shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

How many of us long to hear these words?

How many of us long to hear that we are loved just as we are?

We make a lot of promises at our baptism, or we have promises made for us that we confirm once we come of age.

We acknowledge that we have entered into communion with all Christians through Christ, and have been accepted into the care of the church.

We acknowledge our acceptance of God’s forgiving grace.

And we promise to continue to grow in our faith and in our ability to live a full Christian life.

Many of us don’t recall our own baptisms or even our confirmations, so we may not have a conscious memory of having accepted these terms of our baptism.

Which is why Luther calls us to remember our baptism again and again.

To remember what it is we signed on to do and be as members of the body of Christ.

But also to remember those words that God spoke to Jesus at his Baptism.

Because those words ring true for us as well.

"You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We need this shoring up, this encouragement, this reinforcement of our belovedness….because the task we have set before us as baptized Christians is not an easy one.

Changing ourselves and thus changing the world to better reflect God’s compassion, love, and grace, is a very difficult thing to do.

But we must also remember that we are not Jesus.

We are not rising up out of the baptismal waters with the weight of the world’s redemption upon our shoulders.

We’re not agreeing to serve as the head of a movement that has as its goal to raise up the powerless, and to pull down the powerful.

We’re not choosing to stand before the authorities with our palms up and our arms wide open in ready acceptance, in response to extreme persecution, unyielding physical abuse, and our impending execution.

Jesus is God’s beloved son, and the message he received from God on the day of his baptism was meant for him. Because he needed to hear that he was loved immensely, and that regardless of the doubts and worries and fears that he might have carried within his human heart, God was well pleased with him.

That message of unconditional love and acceptance is also something that we need to hear as we follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

As we remember our baptism, on this day, and every day, let us also remember that despite the daunting task that lies before us as beloved Children of God, our baptism into the body of Christ anchors us on solid ground.

It anchors us in tradition, in community, in faith.

As we stand on the shoreline with the changing waters of the world rushing past our feet, we may feel like we’re being pulled in and out with the waves, and that the shifting sand beneath our feet may topple us over at any moment, but once we recognize and accept that God loves us, just as we are, and that we are called to do the same with each other, we no longer have a reason to fear being pulled out to sea.

For even as we pass through the waters, God is with us.

And we will rise up from the depths, just as Jesus did,

And shine as beloved children of God, just as we are called, and were created, to be.

Amen.