Sermon: "Neighbors and Fences"

Intro to Luke 10:25-37

In the paragraph just previous to Jesus’ telling of the Good Samaritan parable, we hear of the disciples’ travels to the land of Samaria.

We’re told that the Samaritans rejected Jesus, and the disciples immediate reaction was to want to rain fire down upon them and destroy them.

Quite a strong reaction we might think, until we consider the history that existed between the Samaritans and the Jews.

Historically, Samaritans were the remnants of Israel's northern tribes that remained after Israel fell to Assyria.

These remaining Israelites eventually intermarried with the Assyrians, "diluting" their Jewishness.  Samaritans hence- forth were viewed as a "mixed race," impure in blood and soul. When the Jews returned from exile and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans objected, because they believed God now resided in their territory on the top of Mount Gerizim.

Because there could be only one true place to worship God, and the Jews and the Samaritans disagreed on where that was, the two groups reviled each other and built up numerous cultural walls to keep from interacting with one another.

Hostility between the two groups came to a violent climax in 109 B.C. when the Judean king destroyed the Samaritans' temple.

There’s little wonder that Jesus' messengers were faced with stony rejection at the Samaritan village.

And little wonder that the tale of the Good Samaritan that appears in Luke’s gospel was considered one of the most radical stories of it’s time.

Who is our neighbor?

Our neighbor is the one whom we fear and distrust the most,

and the one we are commanded to love as much as we love ourselves. 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

July 10, 2016 – Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 10:25-37

“Neighbors and Fences”

The house I grew up in on Long Island was a Levittown style cape, one of the many that sprung up in post-World II suburbia.

Each of the tiny box-like homes was identical and set on a postage stamp sized lot that measured 50 x 100 feet.

There was just enough room between each house for a narrow driveway and a strip of grass. 

For this reason, most of the homes in our neighborhood either had no fence or had only a short wooden fence that was more decorative than functional.

Except for our house.

We had a chain link fence that ran the length of one side of the house,

and a row of tall hedges that ran the length of the other side.

Growing up I assumed that this was my parent’s attempt to keep their ten children contained in one space, especially when we were young and prone to wandering.

It’s only when I was older that I learned that the chain link fence was owned and installed by our neighbor on the left, and the row of hedges was owned and installed by our neighbor on the right. 

Apparently our neighbors were more concerned about keeping us out of their yards then my parents were about keeping us in our own yard.

But I also learned that my father helped install the chain link fence put up by our neighbor on the left, and he dutifully trimmed the hedges put up by our neighbor on the right - never once complaining that the hedges were actually planted on our side of the property line.

Good fences make good neighbors.

So says the well-known proverb made famous by poet Robert Frost.

In Frost’s poem – Mending Wall - he and his neighbor walk the length of the stone fence set between their properties, repairing it as they did every spring. The two men worked together, picking up toppled stones and filling in the gaps caused by the frost heaves of winter and the wanton destruction of passing hunters.

But while Frost goes through the motions of mending the fence with his neighbor, year after year, he does so while shaking his head at the futility of their efforts.  Frost writes:

Here there are no cows.

We do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Frost’s neighbor repeats this mantra, and repairs the wall,

year after year, just as his father did before him.

While Frost laments the unnecessary division it places between them.

But even Frost admits that there are times when fences between neighbors make good sense.

When trying to contain livestock – or children – or mark the boundary between planting fields, so you know where your corn ends and your neighbor’s begins.

Truthfully, not all neighbors make it easy to be neighborly –

with or without a fence.

I’m sure many of us could share tales of nightmare neighbors who play their music too loud, let their animals run loose, use their property as a junkyard, or install an outdoor fire pit forcing their down-wind neighbors to stay inside with the windows closed, all spring, summer, and fall.  

When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves, surely he wasn’t talking about these neighbors. 

“Who is my neighbor?”

This question that the lawyer asks of Jesus is one that we human beings have been asking since we drew our first breath as a species in this world.

Whom should I trust? Whom should I fear?

Whom should I share resources with to survive?

Whom should I withhold resources from out of necessity?

Who is worthy of my love and compassion?

Who is deserving of my hatred and suspicion?

This is the question the lawyer asks of Jesus.

If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, surely our neighbor doesn’t include everyone.

“Surely it does,” was Jesus’ response.

To emphasize his point Jesus told his followers a story that had one of their most hated enemies playing the role of the hero.

Nowadays we bestow the title of “Good Samaritan” upon hospitals and those who stop to help strangers in need.

But for Jesus’ Jewish followers the only “good” thing about a Samaritan was that they largely stayed in their own land and knew better than to wander where they did not belong.

Yet in Jesus’ story the Samaritan is the only one who behaves like a true neighbor – he is the only one who shows mercy - to someone who has been robbed and stripped of his clothing and is not easily identifiable as friend or foe.

Here Jesus throws in an added twist - the hated Samaritan is not the only one who qualifies as a neighbor in this story.

The hapless victim who was left to die in the ditch is a neighbor as well.

Now, we may look at this parable and say, “Of course the stranger in the ditch is worthy of our compassion” – but when we look at the story in its historical context our response may not be so black and white.

The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was not a safe place to be, at any time of day, but especially at dusk.  

It was known to harbor roving bands of robbers, rapists, and other questionable characters up to no good.

Knowing this, we may be more forgiving of the Priest and the Levite who crossed over to the other side and hurried on their way.  

Robbers were known to pose as decoys – pretending to be strangers in need - to lure unsuspecting travelers off the beaten path and into harms way.

Who could blame the two Holy Men for playing it safe in such a bad neighborhood?

How many of us would stop to help a stranded motorist after dark in the South Bronx, in South Chicago, or in even in South Boston?

And the man who was robbed and thrown into the ditch?

We may wonder if he is deserving of some blame for his predicament.

Just as we question the innocence of certain victims today.

What was he doing in that neighborhood at that time of day?

He was likely up to no good himself.

The attack could have been gang related, or drug related, and if we dig a little deeper we may find that the “victim” has a rapsheet of criminal offenses that makes him even less deserving of our sympathy, empathy, or compassion.

If our train of thought has ever gone in this direction we too may feel the sting of Jesus’ words.

When we ask, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus’ answer may not be one we want to hear.

Our neighbor is Alton Stirling and Philando Castile and the countless other men and women of color who have died in police shootings under questionable circumstances.

Our neighbor is Michael Smith, Lorne Aherns, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, Brent Thompson, and the countless other police officers killed in the line of duty while attempting to keep the peace amidst anger and distrust.

Our neighbors are the forty-nine gay, lesbian, and transgendered people murdered at a Hispanic dance club in Orlando by a gunman who claimed his religion made him do it.

Our neighbors are the two hundred and ninety two people, mostly Shiite Muslims, many of them children, who died when terrorists detonated a truck bomb at a market in Baghdad during the holiest week of the Islamic year.  

We may want to remove the labels, to say that these are stories of people killing people out of their own fear, and that we shouldn’t get caught up on the defining characteristics – black, white, gay, straight, Muslim, Christian, Police, civilian – because the reality is that all lives matter and all should be equally mourned.

This is true.

Yet there’s a reason why Jesus told his Jewish followers a story about a Good Samaritan.

Because he knew the label “Samaritan” would provoke them and challenge them to shift their perspective.

Because even though their religion taught them that all lives matter, the truth was that Samaritan lives mattered less to them.

Samaritan’s were just too different – in their culture, their dress, their language, their beliefs – for the average Judean to feel attune to their stories, their experiences, their pain, their capacity for love and mercy.  

We may wonder why God made us this way.

We may wonder why God gathered up the dust and breathed life into us, 

creating us as male and female, gay and straight, able bodied and challenged,

giving us dark skin, and pale skin, and every shade in between,

giving us the capacity to develop different ideologies and religious beliefs, along with the audacity to stubbornly insist that we alone hold the truth.

We may wonder why God created so many differences in us that we can’t help but look out at the world and build fences around us based on gender, race, nationality, religion, wealth, politics, and a hundred other qualifiers that we find to divide us.

But what if the fences are not meant to divide us?

What if the fences are there to help us to come together? 

As human beings we’re natural pattern seekers, and sorting the world into discernible boxes helps us to bring order to what would otherwise appear to be chaos.

It’s helpful for us to know where the boundaries are. 

To understand that our shared human experience doesn’t mean we all have the same experience.

To learn that to be male, black, Christian, or gay, means we experience the world differently than someone who is female, white, Muslim, or straight.

Because of how we were raised, how we’ve been treated by others - and how we perceive ourselves - as someone who has or lacks power, privilege, or opportunity.

The story of the Good Samaritan acknowledges the reality of this world -  that we’re not all the same.

We’re neighbors in the sense that we’re all human,

we’re all equal in the eyes of God,

and we’re all equally deserving of love, compassion, and mercy –

but we’re not all the same. 

And perhaps that’s the point of God’s wondrous creation.

God created us to tell the human story in a hundred million different ways.

And God gave us ears and hearts that are tuned to listen to those stories and learn from them, and to not dismiss or refute the stories of others because they are different from our own.

Robert Frost wrote:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

A good fence allows us to lean over to our neighbor and listen.

It’s not so tall that we shield our neighbor from our view,

And not so impermeable that nothing ever grows between us.

Jesus asked, 

“Who do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"  

The lawyer replied, "The one who showed him mercy." 

And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."    

Amen.  

Sermon: "That Sinful Woman"

Luke 7:36-8:3

Scripture Intro:

This is Luke’s telling of the story of the woman who anoints Jesus with oil.

This is a story that appears in all four gospels but in very different ways.

In Luke’s version, early on in Jesus’ ministry, a nameless, sinful woman invites herself into Simon the Pharisees house, where Jesus is sitting at a table enjoying a meal.

She then proceeds to bathe Jesus’ feet in ointment and dry them with her hair.

Simon’ reaction is to pass judgment upon Jesus, saying if he were a true prophet he would know this woman’s reputation and not let her come anywhere near him.

In comparison, in Mark and in Matthew’s gospel the encounter with the woman takes place in Bethany two days before the Last Supper at the home of a different Simon, Simon the Leper.

Here the unnamed woman pours nard, a burial ointment, over the head of Jesus, anticipating his death. In this version, it is the disciples who are angry because this woman has wasted the expensive perfume. We are told nothing of her character but Jesus praises her and reminds us that what she has done will be remembered.

Finally, in John’s gospel the encounter takes place six days before Jesus death, also in Bethany, but this time in the home of Lazarus, the man whom Jesus brought back to life. Here we’re told it is Lazarus’ sister, Mary, who anoints the feet of Jesus with the expensive nard and wipes his feet with her hair, while Judas – showing his true character - is the one who takes offense at her waste.

For all four Gospel writers, this is a story about faith, about hospitality, about extravagant love given freely –

But for Luke it also a story about forgiveness.

He alone describes the woman as being sinful.

He alone has Jesus tell the woman that her faith has saved her.

And in the middle of his story he has Jesus tell a parable about forgiveness and gratitude.

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, NH, UCC

June 12, 2016 – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 32; Luke 7:36-8:3

“That Sinful Woman”

There’s an old story that many of you may have heard before about a minister who stood up in the pulpit and said to his congregation:

"Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying, and to help you prepare for and understand the sermon, I want you all to read Mark 17."

The following Sunday, the minister stood up to deliver his sermon, but first he asked for a show of hands.

He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17.

Every hand went up.

The minister smiled and said,

"That’s odd, because Mark has only 16 chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying."

This is as much a statement about Biblical literacy as it is about our failure to recognize that we all are predisposed to sin.

Now, if you just cringed when I said that last part, don’t worry.

Many of us have a visceral reaction when we hear the word “sin.”   

It’s not a word that sits well with us, in any context.

Depending on the religious tradition in which we were raised the word “sin” can carry a slew of baggage.

Whether we grew up being forever reminded that we are by nature “sinful” creatures and are unworthy of God’s love and mercy –

or if we equate the word “sin” and all the judgment attached to it with those other Christians – the ones who focus only on sin – overcoming it,

being saved from it, and making it their job to point out when others have fallen into it.

In our more progressive churches we tend to avoid the word like the plague.

Because we recognize that it can stir up a lot of negative emotions and poke at the spiritual wounds that we may carry.

To get around this, we ministers have become masters at coming up with euphemisms for the word sin.

We call them transgressions, wrong-doings, short-comings, or brokenness.

Even in the Lord’s Prayer, where many say, “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” we instead use the word “debts” or “trespasses.”  

Translation semantics aside, we much prefer to be reminded of our debts or our trespasses than our sins.

It’s always interesting to hear the Lord’s Prayer recited at weddings or in a room full of worshipers who come from varying traditions, where we’re treated to a disjointed chorus of “sins” “debts” and “trespasses” ringing out at the same time…                                                 

It’s amazing how many will then switch midstream to whatever word they heard the person next to them say (“forgive us our debt-passes”) out of fear that they’re saying it wrong.

What’s odd is that we’re so resistant to taking on the label of “sinner,”

when according to the most basic definition of the word, sin is a turning away from God’s will, and none of us is “all knowing” enough to get it right every time.

Not one of us is perfect.

Even if we can claim that we’ve never committed a “major” sin -  

we’ve all strayed from the path of perfection in some way.

We’re all guilty of being envious, wrathful, greedy, gluttonous, lustful, prideful, and slothful at any given time in our lives.  

(Those of us who binge watch TV shows on Netflix are guilty of the latter)

One of my favorite quotes about sin is from Presbyterian minister, Eugene Peterson, who said:

“Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. As if that weren’t bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.”

We all have shortcomings, weaknesses, and “growing edges.”

We all find it much easier to follow our own will, than to try to discern God’s will every waking moment of the day.

Especially when multiple paths and interests come into play –

and it’s not always clear where God’s will is leading us.

Perhaps our fear of the word sin –

and our fear of labeling ourselves as sinners –

is what’s behind the drive and the delight we feel in labeling others as sinful. 

If it weren’t such a nasty thing to be, then we’d find no joy or satisfaction in pointing out when others have earned the badge of “sinner” in our eyes.

Which brings us to the sinful woman.

The woman who appears in all four gospels but only in Luke’s are we told that she is worthy of the label of “sinner.”

We aren’t told what sin she has committed.

Or how or why her status as a “sinner” is any different from every other imperfect person in the room, excluding Jesus of course.

But we can guess.

Biblical scholars tell us that in Jesus’ time it would have been scandalous for a woman to touch the feet of a man she was not married to  –

or appear in public with her hair uncovered –

or enter a house uninvited and unaccompanied by her husband, father, brother, or another male relative.

Given Simon’s reaction, along with this, we might assume that this is a woman of loose morals – one who doesn’t do what is expected of her - likely a prostitute, an adulterer, or a temptress who uses her body to gain the attention of men.

The “sinful woman” as a character designation appears in our gospel stories about as often as the character of the unnamed “rich man” or “rich fool.”

There’s the woman in this story who anoints Jesus’ feet –

sometimes unnamed, sometimes identified as Mary of Bethany;

there’s the Samaritan woman with five husbands who meets Jesus at the well;

the hemorrhaging woman who touches Jesus’ cloak in the market;

the unnamed woman about to be stoned for adultery – and then there’s Mary Magdalene, whom we’re told had seven demons –or troubles- cast out of her.

Unfortunately, because most of us have only a fragmented knowledge of the Bible, all of these different women often get conflated in our minds and in our popular culture.

To the point where Mary Magdalene is often misidentified as a prostitute,

or as the adulterous woman Jesus saved from stoning,

or as the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair.

We can place some of the blame on Pope Gregory who back in the year 591 gave a sermon that erroneously conflated Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene and named her as the repentant prostitute who washed Jesus’ feet.

Poor Mary has since had to endure almost 1500 years of being saddled with a bad reputation.  In art, literature, even the popular movies of today, Mary Magdalene is often depicted as a woman of ill repute.

This despite the Catholic Church having since admitted the error that was made.

In fact just this past Friday, Pope Francis announced that Mary Magdalene will now have her own Feast Day on the liturgical calendar – July 22 – and be honored as the apostle that she is.

The truth is, the Bible never identifies Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, neither does it say the “sinful” woman who washes Jesus’ feet is guilty of the same.

So we have to wonder - why is it that whenever a sinful woman is mentioned in the bible we assume it’s a sexual transgression she’s guilty of?

Prostitution. Adultery. Being flirtatious or seductive around men.  

Why is it that we never assume she cheated on her taxes, or stole her neighbor’s sheep, or coveted her sister’s home, land, or wealth? 

Is it because we assume only men have the means and the freedom to commit the wider variety of sins mentioned in all ten of the commandments?  

But then again, we rarely see men in the Bible being stoned for adultery or being shamed for having a child out of wedlock or being labeled as a man of ill repute because he uncovered his hair or touched a woman in public, or traveled unaccompanied by a female relative.

Sadly, the assumptions we make about women in the Bible reflect the assumptions we make about women in general – across all times and all cultures and all religions.

The role women play in a story is often solely a reflection of how they are viewed by men – as loving companions or property to be protected,

as seductive tempters or objects to be used,

as sullied sinners who don’t know their place or worse, have the power to bring good men down with them.  

The story that has filled our newsfeeds this past week about the Stanford woman who was dragged unconscious behind a dumpster and raped by a male student is frightening evidence that our branding of the “sinful woman” is as much a part of our culture as it was in Biblical times.

This is a man who despite his conviction by a jury was sentenced to only 6 months in jail because the judge saw no reason to ruin his life over one youthful transgression.  

Because she was drunk. And she was at a party with men she didn’t know.

And she should have known not to put herself in that situation.

She’s responsible for her sin -  and his.

How many women have heard this before?

“You shouldn’t have let him touch you – why didn’t you fight back?”

“You shouldn’t have made him mad – you know he gets violent when he drinks.”

“You should just leave him – I don’t know why you keep forgiving him and taking him back.”  

This passage from Luke is about forgiveness, and it is framed in such a way that we’re meant to see that the greater the sin, the greater the gratitude we should show after being forgiven.

When Simon claims that Jesus has sullied his own status as a prophet because he allowed a woman with such a poor reputation to touch him,

Jesus pauses and tells the parable of the two debtors.

Both debtors are unable to pay and both debts are forgiven.

However one owes twice as much at the other.

It is the one who has the greatest debt who shows the most love in return for being forgiven.

Simon of course is blind to his own sins - his own debt that needs to be forgiven.

His failure to offer hospitality to his guest – by greeting him with a kiss, offering him water for his feet, and anointing him with oil.

His failure to see Jesus for who he is and recognize that he has the power to forgive.

His failure to see that this woman – for all her many sins – had shown greater faith in God’s all encompassing love by doing all the things she did for Jesus in public that a woman should not be doing – and risking it all – to weep in the presence of the one who had the power to forgive her and love her and heal her.

Jesus was in a sense saying, “I don’t care what she’s done, or what you say she’s done, the fact that she’s here, showing such great love and faith – that’s all that matters.”

It is amazing how Jesus is always popping up in the lives of these sinful women.

It’s amazing how he just lets them wash his feet, and touch his cloak, and fill their buckets with living water, and walk away without a stone being tossed.

It’s amazing how often he has sent them off saying,

“Go in peace, your faith has made you well.”

We’re all sinners.

Because we’re all human.

And we’re all in need of healing.

As much as we try to quantify and measure sin,

and point out the sins of others while ignoring our own,

to do so is to deny our humanity – to deny that God gave us free will –

the freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to learn, the freedom to grow.

I’m convinced that it’s not the sinning, or the shaming, or the punishing that God cares about – We may be obsessed with that, but God is not.

It’s the learning and the growing that God cares about.

It’s like watching a child learn that greater things come from love than hate.

God keeps nudging us in that direction,

knowing that it will take us a lifetime of missteps to get there.

The forgiveness part is God’s way of acknowledging that we’re headed in the right direction.

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

 

Sermon: "Gospel Lite"

 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

May 29, 2016 – Second Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 1:1-12

“Gospel Lite”

In September 2012, a small piece of ancient papyrus made headlines around the world when it was suggested that it might be from a lost gospel containing the words of Jesus.

The badly damaged fragment is about the size of a credit card and it contains eight incomplete verses written in Coptic – an ancient Egyptian language that we find in our earliest surviving copies of the books of the New Testament.

The snippets of writing on the fragment include the following phrases:

“My mother gave me life…”

“Mary is worthy of it…”

“She is able to be my disciple…”

But the fragment of text that attracted the world’s attention was this one:
“Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...”

Before the world’s leading biblical scholars had a chance to fully examine and authenticate the scrap of papyrus, a battle erupted in the media and in the midst of the faithful.

Was this proof that Jesus was married?

Was this a gospel that had been intentionally destroyed to cover up the fact that Jesus had a wife?

Is it possible that this is a fragment of a parable, or that Jesus was quoting someone else, or that the rest of the text actually read, “My wife, if I had one…”?

Beneath all the speculation was the fear that we had somehow got it wrong.

Or worse - that we’d been intentionally misled for thousands of years.

Could it be possible that Jesus had a whole other side to his life that we knew nothing about?

And for those fervently arguing that the fragment was NOT authentic and therefore NOT true, what is it they feared would be lost if Jesus did have a wife?

Would it make him too human, and less God-like in our eyes?

Would it elevate the role that women played in Jesus’ life and ministry?

(Would it mean that for thousands of years celibate priests had been modeling their lives on a standard that not even Jesus held to himself?)

When the experts weighed in, it was determined that the papyrus used in the fragment dated to the middle ages – not proof in itself that it wasn’t a copy of an ancient gospel – but the ink, handwriting, grammar, and style were all deemed nearly identical to a known modern forgery of the Gospel of John.

Therefore, most scholars believe it is likely that the Jesus Wife fragment is a forgery as well.  But not all of them are convinced.

There is something alluring to the idea that there are gospels out there that are just waiting to be found.   

Gospels that may expand or contradict what we know from the four gospels we have in our New Testament – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In the late 1990’s, headlines were buzzing about the discovery of a Gospel of Judas.

The 31-page codex was originally found in a cavern in Egypt in 1970.

For several years it was traded among antiquities dealers and then it disappeared.

In 1999 it was rediscovered, believe it or not, in a safe deposit box at a bank in Hicksville, Long Island.

(Literally a mile up the road from where I was living at the time).

The manuscript had disintegrated into a 1000 pieces and 13 pages were missing.

Once scholars reassembled and translated the text they discovered a gospel that told a much different story than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

This gospel portrayed Judas as the only disciple to truly understand who Jesus was, and it proposed that Judas’ alleged act of betrayal was in reality an act of obedience, as Jesus himself had asked Judas to play that pivotal role and set the events of his death and resurrection in motion.

Many of the “lost” gospels that we’ve discovered over the years – the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Judas – were written a hundred years or more after Jesus’ death, and while they were left out of the New Testament because they contained unorthodox theologies, they are authentic in that they reflect the prevailing beliefs of particular segments of the Christian community during their time.

The four gospels we have in the New Testament were themselves written 40 to 70 years after Jesus’ death, to four different communities, by four different authors who each had their own interpretation of Jesus’ words, actions and presence in this world.

But all of these gospels share a common thread – they tell the story of how the good news of God’s unconditional love played out in our world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The word gospel means “good news” and the Good News of Jesus Christ is found in the belief that God did and is doing something extraordinary in our world.

God became one of us – or moved through one of us – to show us the potential we have to be good to one another.  

To show us that each and every one of us has value – and is worthy of grace and redemption, no matter how broken we appear to be.

To show us that power and strength and resilience are just as easily found in the battered and belittled as in the exalted and elevated.

To show us that we’re all connected to each other and to all of Creation – and when we focus only on our own wants and needs we all suffer in the end.

The good news is that the world we live in can be changed for the better –

in small ways and in tremendous ways – 

when we work together, with God, and help build the Kingdom that Jesus longed to see.

The Gospel of Jesus encompasses all of this.

But while this all sounds wonderful and hopeful the truth is that the gospel encompasses a lot of annoyingly hard stuff as well.

The “love thy neighbor and thy enemy” stuff.

The “give to God and to the greater good before you give to yourselves” stuff.

The “welcome the stranger, the immigrant, and the refugee, even if you are suspicious of them” stuff.

The “beat your weapons into ploughshares and turn the other cheek even when you feel justified to retaliate” stuff.

The gospel is about hard, hard choices that do not come to us naturally.

So it’s no wonder that we have selective hearing when we encounter it.

We prefer a gospel that talks about peace and love without demanding that we change anything about ourselves to achieve it.

We prefer a gospel that talks about joy and hope without dwelling on the things that cause us to feel joyless or hopeless.

We prefer a gospel that soothes and comforts because we have enough things in our lives that cause us to feel anxious and discomforted.

And just so you know, when I say “we” I include myself as well.

With all the tragedies that I see unfolding in our world and the tragedies that I see unfolding in all of our lives – the illnesses, the injuries, the deaths, the addictions - the last thing I want to do is open the gospel reading for Sunday and find Jesus with a stick in his hand poking and prodding all the sore spots and urging us to do more to change ourselves and change our world.

I do think we’re all in need of a “Gospel Lite” every now and then.

A gospel that goes down easy and makes us feel good about ourselves.

One that tastes great and is less filling.

But a steady diet of Gospel Lite is not what Jesus intended for us to live on.

He didn’t risk his life, and give his life, so we could show up on Sunday morning and hear a 10-minute sermon that sends us away with one or two nuggets that help us to feel better about ourselves and lead a happier life.

The Gospel is not a Cosmo or GQ article.

As much as we may need it to be at times.

Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, because he was concerned that they were being taken in by a false gospel – one that limited entrance into the church of Christ rather than expanded it.

We can find examples of false gospels in our own time as well:

“The Prosperity Gospel” – the belief that God will reward us with riches and material goods if we live a faithful life – and send a check for $39.95 to the televangelist of our choice to be added to his prayer list.

“The Gospel of Sin Management” – the belief that getting saved and getting into heaven is all about controlling our personal behavior and getting ourselves right with God, and has little to do with serving others in the world.

And the aforementioned “Gospel Lite” – the belief that we have enough angst and anxiety in our busy lives and the church should be a place where we come to be soothed and refreshed rather than challenged and changed.

The reality is, Jesus was a master at challenging and soothing.

His gospel was designed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

He told stories about Good Samaritans who stopped to help when most walked on by,

and rich fools who built bigger and bigger barns to store all their wealth,

and laborers who earned the same pay regardless of how many hours they worked.

He told his disciples to travel without money or food, to walk two miles when ordered to walk one, to pray for those who persecuted them, to forgive seventy times seventy.

Jesus did not preach a Gospel Lite.

The gospel he preached more often than not fell on his listeners with the weight of a ton of bricks.  

But while those he offended plotted how they might go about getting rid of him, the people who longed to hear his message flocked to hear him speak.

As do we.

Because even though he’s always poking and prodding us to be better,

he does so while painting us a picture of what the world would look like if we were better –

if we were more compassionate, more loving, more merciful towards one another.

When we discover gospels that tell us that Jesus had a wife or that Judas was not such a bad guy after all it’s natural for us to react with curiosity and wonder. 

These discoveries are often deemed controversial and provocative because in a culture that thrives on novelty and mystery we revel in finding what may have been previously unknown or intentionally hidden, especially when it comes to upending long held religious beliefs.

In comparison, the gospels we have in our Bible may seem too familiar, staid, static, dare I say, boring.

But in reality, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are teeming with controversial teachings and provocative stories.

Stories that decry inequities in wealth, power, and resources.

Stories denouncing xenophobia, racism, and religious intolerance.

Stories that plead with us to lean towards mercy, compassion, and love, rather than be pulled towards judgment, retaliation, and fear.

This is the gospel that Jesus gave us.

We may choose not to see it or hear it - because it makes the prospect of being a follower of Christ pretty daunting.  

And if we’re wrapped up in our own pain, our own struggle, our own grief, then we may feel too overwhelmed to take on anybody elses.

But we don’t need to turn to Gospel Lite to find comfort.

We’ll find plenty of comfort in the full blown gospel, as it is.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

But as always Jesus preaches this gospel with a warning:

But woe to those who are rich, those who are full, those who are laughing, for you will be poor, you will be hungry, you will mourn and weep.

The sad news is that this world is unfair, unbalanced, and unjust.

The Good News is...in the Gospel, Jesus has given us the tools to change it.

The Good News is...God is with us through it all.    

Thanks be to God.

 

Sermon: "Looking for Lydia"

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

May 1, 2016 – Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:9-15

“Looking for Lydia”

Nearly 400 years ago, a shipload of hearty souls set sail on a journey into uncharted waters across a great ocean - because they had a vision of establishing a new home and a new faith community in a new world.

The people landed on the northeastern coast of the new world, and despite the arduous conditions it took them only a year to clear land for their homes and build their church.

In their second year the people established a town government.

In their third year the town government set forth plans to build a road that would run five miles westward into the wilderness.

And in the fourth year, the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into the wilderness.

Why would anyone need to go there?

The moral of this apocryphal story is that a people who once had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there, had in just a few years lost the ability to see even five miles down a wilderness road.

In the stories of the early church, we hear about others who had visions of building a new faith community and a new world.

Last Sunday we heard about Peter’s vision where God declared all foods to be clean, opening the church to Gentiles who did not observe Jewish dietary laws.

We also heard about John’s apocalyptic vision from the book of Revelation – where he saw God doing away with this world and creating a new earth in its place, where suffering and death will be no more.

And today we heard about Paul’s visions – when a blinding light forced him to his knees on the road to Damascus and he heard the voice of the risen Christ pleading with him to change his heart - and years later, when yet another vision sent him westward with Christ’s message, and into the path of Lydia and the first European converts.

Each of these visions brought clarity to the individuals who experienced them, and helped shape the church as we know it today.

We’re all capable of having visions but most of ours are not as dramatic as these.

When we’re faced with a dilemma,

or feel trapped in a situation that we can’t escape,

or find ourselves wrestling with our inner angels and demons that continuously pull us in one direction and then another….

it often takes a vision to help us to find some clarity.

That sudden “ah-ha” moment when we see a solution to our problem,

or find a way out of our predicament,

or decide once and for all that we’re going to choose one path over another.

Whether we believe these moments of clarity emanate from God or from our own subconscious, we can’t deny the power of the experience –

the power of the moment where the scales fall away from our eyes and we wake up and say, “This is what I need to do.”

Paul had a vision that sent him to Macedonia.

In the opposite direction of where he’d been trying to go.

As we heard in our scripture intro, the vision Paul had was God’s third attempt to get him turned around in the right direction.

When Paul tried to travel within the familiar territory of Asia Minor he was blocked twice, first by the Holy Spirit and then by the spirit of Jesus himself.

We’re not told how these divine spirits impeded Paul’s progress.

Paul and his traveling companions may have encountered bad weather,

or a road blocked by fallen rocks or bandits,

or a ship that sailed off before they arrived or denied them passage for some reason.

The Spirit moves in mysterious ways,

but the Spirit attempts to move us through ordinary ways as well.

Regardless of how it played out, it was obvious that going west to Greece was not part of Paul’s vision for the newly forming church.

Maybe he planned on getting there eventually but for now it was not on his itinerary.

Perhaps he thought the closer he moved towards Rome the more resistance he would face from government authorities, and the less open people might be to embracing the teachings of a middle-eastern Jewish Messiah.

At this point, Paul was nearly 14 years into his missionary journeys.

The wide-eyed openness to the Spirit that he’d experienced on the road to Damascus had been replaced by the strategic plan of the “mission” - and the day to day tasks of establishing and sustaining multiple Christian communities.

Like our New World settlers, Paul’s vision began to shift from the distant shores to the road just in front of him.

He was already starting to accumulate letters from the churches he and his followers had founded – letters complaining about unfaithful members,

dwindling attendance as false prophets drew people away,

and infighting between members as they argued over whose gifts were more valuable, who deserved a more prominent seat at the table,

and who was not contributing their fair share to the common pool to fund the church’s mission.      (I'm sure none of this sounds familiar)

Paul may have looked to his immediate east in the hope that he’d find fertile ground for new Christian communities, and new energy, new resources, and new converts and leaders to help grow the church.

But little did Paul know, that Lydia was the one he was looking for.

After being thwarted twice, Paul heeds the Spirit’s call and heads west.

In Philippi, he stops by the riverside to tell the women gathered there about the God he loves and the community he’s building, and Lydia is there to listen.

She’s buying what he’s selling, because her heart has already been opened to God.

As a pagan, she has only a passing familiarity with the stories of Abraham and Moses and the new prophet, Jesus, but she is eager to hear more.

She asks to be baptized – to become a member of Christ’s community.

She invites Paul and his fellow travelers into her home – providing a space for them to worship and experience fellowship.

As the head of her household and as a business woman with the means to support herself, she likely gave generously to Paul’s mission and the new church they would build in Philippi.

Lydia is the poster child for the “church growth” movement.

She’s faith-full, passionate, and generous.

She hears one sermon by Paul and she’s ready to sign the membership book, fill out a pledge card, and join the Fellowship Committee, the Trustees and the Diaconate.

What church today wouldn’t love to have Lydia?

But what we should take note of is that Lydia didn’t come to Paul.

Paul came to Lydia.

He met her where she was.

On the bank of the river in Philippi.

As a seeker who was unfamiliar with church language and church ways.

As one who was longing to hear the message of God’s unconditional love, and who longed to be part of a community that expressed that love in the world.

Paul could have easily stayed in Asia Minor working with the churches he’d already established, and fretting over how to pay the bills and how to keep the flock from wandering, but he left that for others to do.

Instead he broadened his vision, and traveled into uncharted waters.

In the church today we often talk about our vision.

Our vision of our mission in the world.

Our vision of the future of the church in general and our church in particular.

Our vision of who and what it is God is calling us to be.

In our plan to restructure our church governance here in Amherst,

we were intentional about including a standing group of people who will be charged with discerning and overseeing the vision of our gathered body.

The hope is that this aptly named “Vision” group will keep us on course and focused – so all that we do as faith community – from worship to fellowship to outreach to caring for our building – is congruent with our larger goal of serving God to the best of our abilities, now and in the future.

We may still embrace the vision our churches once had of packed pews on Sunday morning and overflowing Sunday School classes,

even if this image is slowly fading into the distance in the rearview mirror,

but despite our changing culture, and the changing church,

the larger vision of serving God in the world remains.

As long as we have people living on the streets,

children going to bed hungry at night,

refugees fleeing violence and oppression,

youth being thrown out of their homes because they’re gay or transgender.

As long as we have religious extremists who kill in the name of God,

and politicians who talk more about building walls than building bridges,

the need for us to be the church in the world remains as strong as ever.

Our vision is to be a channel for God’s love, compassion, and grace.

Like the New World settlers, and the apostle Paul long before them,

we’re called to broaden our vision beyond what we see right in front of us.

To not focus on the empty pews in our sanctuaries and instead shift our view to the needs of those in our wider communities and those who reside on distant shores.

We may be looking for Lydia.

So we can bring her the love of God and add her passion and energy to our own.

But if we want to find her – and I fully believe that we will –

We need to follow where the Spirit leads - and meet her where she is.

Thanks be to God and Amen.