Sermon: "Thirst"

Scripture Intro – John 4:5-42

Today’s gospel reading is the story of Jesus and the woman at the well.

The key thing to know about this story is that it takes place in Samaria. 

Samaria is the territory that lies between Judea and Galilee. Jesus and his disciples would need to pass through Samaria or go around it every time they traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem. The reason they might consider taking the long way around is because Jews and Samaritans were not on friendly terms.

The Samaritans were a mix of decedents from the original Northern Kingdom tribes and foreign colonists from Babylonia. When the Jews returned from exile and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem in Judea, the Samaritan 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.

Into this setting walks Jesus and the woman from Samaria.

It’s worth noting that she stands in stark contrast to the story of Nicodemus that we heard last week.   

Nicodemus is a Jew. She is a Samaritan.

He is a man. She is a woman.

He is righteous moral leader. She has a questionable past and is an outcast.

Nicodemus visited Jesus at midnight

Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at noon.

Possibly because when the sun is high overhead it is much harder to hide in the shadows…and this encounter was one that Jesus wanted everyone to see.

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

March 23, 2014

Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42

“Thirst”

At daybreak on April 26, 2003, 27-year-old adventurist Aron Ralston set off on a solo hike into the remote canyonlands of Utah. It was meant to be a fast day hike, one that he had done many times before, so he carried only a limited amount of food and water, and he didn’t feel it was necessary to tell anyone where he was going.

You can probably guess where this story is heading.

Just after noon, Ralston met two young women who walked with him for a while. When he told them how far he intended to hike and where, they were skeptical that he would finish before dark. When they reached a fork in the trail they urged him to hike out with them, but he insisted on going it alone and completing the hike he had set out to do.

At 2:40 in the afternoon, Ralston lowered himself into a narrow slot canyon, which is essentially a crevice in the ground, where the walls are so close together you can touch both sides without straightening your arms, and the canyon floor is so far down the sky is reduced to a narrow band of blue and white above.

As he shimmied down into the narrow opening, navigating around the fallen rocks that had wedged themselves between the canyon walls, Ralston inadvertently dislodged an 800-pound boulder. He fell, landing on his feet on the canyon floor below…but the boulder came tumbling down after him, trapping and pinning his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall.

Aron Ralston spent six long tortuous days at the bottom of that canyon, desperately trying to wrench his arm free of the rock that held him in place.

I will spare you the gory details of how he eventually broke free.

You can read about it in the book that Ralston wrote about his experience, which he titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” or you can watch the movie version of his story, starring actor James Franco, which was renamed, 127 hours.

One hundred and twenty seven hours is how long Aaron Ralston managed to survive in that narrow desert canyon without food, and more importantly, without water.

We often hear that the human body can function for weeks without food, but without water, we will die in 3 to 5 days.

The survival time is reduced even further if we’re exposed to heat, cold, and the elements, like Aron Ralston was in the Utah desert.

Over the course of six days, Ralston felt his skin shrivel, his blood pressure drop, and his organs deteriorate as he lost 4 to 5 pounds per day.

But what he remembers most about the experience is his unrelenting thirst. In his book, he writes:

For all the physical signs of my body’s dire need for hydration, nothing, nothing compares to the anguish of my thirst: unshakable…unquenchable….insuppressible…inextinguishable. I find myself wishing to get this all over with simply to bring relief to the thirst.

Ralston survived for six long days by rationing the two sips of water he had left in his bottle and recycling the water that trickled out of his body.

Again, I will spare you the unpleasant details about how he did that.

While he was trapped, with his mind and his body straining to function, Ralston did what many of us would have done. He came to terms with the fact that he was going to die.  He thought of what he might say to his family and friends if he had one last chance to tell them how much he appreciated and loved them, he looked back over his life and felt regret for all the selfish and stupid things he had done, and he promised himself that if by some miraculous chance he made it through this experience alive, he would be a better person, and no longer believe that he had to go it alone in the world.

The combined predicament of feeling trapped and decimated by thirst, is one that would bring most of us to our knees.

When we can’t move or escape from a situation that is slowly killing us, when our lips and throat are cracking from lack of life giving moisture, when our head is pounding as our blood desperately tries to force itself through our veins…..there’s not much that we can do except resign ourselves to our fate and wait to die, or wait for someone to save us, because we no longer have the strength to save ourselves.

The woman Jesus encountered at the well was in a similar predicament.  

She was thirsty, and she was trapped, and she was desperate for someone to save her.

As a Samaritan woman with five marriages under her belt she was trapped by her social and religious standing, her gender, and her reputation.

We don’t know if she has been divorced 5 times, widowed 5 times, or if the relationship she was currently in was actually what the Jews would call a “Levirate Marriage” – one where the brother of her deceased husband is obliged to take her in out of duty and pity.

What we do know is that she came to the well at noon, in the heat of the day and hours after all of the other women would have come and gone,

most likely because drawing water in the morning with the rest of her community brought on judgmental stares and hurtful comments, and it was just not worth the effort.

She would endure her thirst.

It was easier than enduring disdain.

When the woman approached the well and saw Jesus sitting there, I imagine that she hesitated just for a moment.

She knew he was not a Samaritan, perhaps because she had heard that a group of Jewish men had arrived in town, but she didn’t know him so there was a good chance that he had no knowledge of her….and thus she would just be some anonymous woman who just happened to be late drawing her family’s water for the day.

So she swallowed her fear and brought her empty jar to the well.

When Jesus spoke to her, he must have startled her.

Men rarely spoke to women at the well.

Not because it was taboo for men and women to speak to each other, but to do so at the well was seen as a sign of marital interest and intended courtship.

Talking to a woman at a well in first century Palestine was the modern day equivalent of approaching a woman in a bar and asking if you could buy her a drink.   

Only in this instance, it is Jesus who asks for a drink.

The woman responded with confusion, as expected.

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

In her mind this was wrong on so many levels.

He was a man, he was not a Samaritan, and he was asking her to provide something to him that she had access to but he did not.

She could see that he had no bucket to quench his own thirst.

Which made it all the more strange when he started talking about giving living water to her.

She asked him, “What is this living water, that you speak of?” And how do you get it when you have no bucket?”

But Jesus was not talking about giving her a literal drink of water that would quench her physical thirst.

We know that.

He was talking about the eternal, life giving love and grace of God.

The love and grace that sustains us and redeems us and is offered freely and unconditionally to us all, regardless of the circumstances of our lives.

This is the living water that the Samaritan woman was thirsting for.

She was desperate to drink from this cup of acceptance and love.

And this is the cup that Jesus offered to her.

He looked her in the eye and said, ‘I know who you are – I know you’ve had 5 husbands. I know you are living with a man who is not your husband. And I know that as a Samaritan you believe that God is to be worshiped on this mountain and not in Jerusalem as the Jews believe…but in the end, none of that will matter. The living water that will flow through God’s Kingdom is offered to you, right here, right now.’

What Jesus doesn’t say to the woman is that to receive this water she must first ask for forgiveness….for being a Samaritan, for having a questionable past.

And Jesus doesn’t offer her forgiveness.

He never says, “Go, and sin no more.”

Because the living, eternally sustaining love and grace that he’s offering to her is not contingent upon her ability to be perfect and sinless.

How many of us have been thirsting to hear this message in our lives?

Many of us grew up in religious traditions where we were taught that we’re unworthy.

Unworthy of forgiveness, unworthy of receiving the graciousness of God’s gifts, unworthy of being in God’s presence unless we’ve first knelt down with our heads hung in shame, and confessed that we are inherently defective, and will always be deserving of God’s judgment and wrath.

This story of the woman at the well is for anyone who has ever been told, “You’re not good enough to be welcomed into the Kingdom of God.”

“You’re not good enough to be in the presence of Christ.”

What Jesus shows us here is that this nameless woman at the well has just as much right to be in his presence as the respected and righteous Nicodemus.

Compared to Nicodemus, she’s a nobody.

An outsider among outsiders. History didn’t even see fit to record her name.

But Jesus speaks to her and trusts her to carry his message back to her city, and he spends two days in her city talking to other Samaritans because they too are nobodies and nobodies matter.

That is the good news that Jesus has to offer the woman on that day, and it’s the good news he has to offer to us as well.

In the bright light of the noonday sun, Jesus and the Samaritan woman looked at each other and fully saw who and what the other was.

She looked at Jesus and saw a prophet – the Messiah – a man who knew her past and loved her anyway.

And Jesus looked at her and saw a human being, a woman trapped by her thirst and her pain yet she was still willing to leave her precious water jar behind and return to her people to tell them the “good news” –

because this time she carried with her news of living water…water that would quench their thirst for eternity.

I particularly like the ending of this story because it says, “Many Samaritans believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” 

This woman who came to the well alone at noon because she was shamed by her past was now welcomed into her community, and she was believed.

We don’t know if it was because people began to see her in a different light or if it was because she had let go of her own feelings of shame and unworthiness that led her to believe that she had no choice but to go it alone.

Aron Ralston walked into the Utah canyonlands believing that he was meant to go it alone. All he did was disappoint people, and let them down, and do one stupid thing after another to the point where it was just easier to keep people at a distance, rather than deal with trying to repair what gets broken over and over again.

In the final scene of the movie 127 hours, Ralston drags himself out of the canyon, having freed himself from the boulder that trapped him.

He’s bleeding, severely dehydrated, and on the brink of death.

Off in the distance he sees three people, a couple with their young boy, who just happened to be taking a walk in this remote canyon on that day.

Ralstan falls to his knees and cries out weakly, “I need help. Someone, please help me.” 

And without hesitation, all three turn in unison and run towards this fellow human being in need.

Aaron Ralston is the first one to say that he survived his ordeal not because he found an inner reserve of strength to save himself. He says he survived because of love. In his darkest hour, he saw the faces of his family and friends all gathered together around him, and he longed to see them again. He writes, “God is love, and love is what kept me alive and that love is what got me out of there.”

God has a habit of drawing us out when we’re trapped by our pain.

Sauntering up to us in the light of day and saying, “I know who you are.”

You are a beloved child of God.

You are loved even when others say you are unlovable.

You have value even when you say you are worthless.

And you are an indispensible member of this community, even when they say they don’t need you, and you say don’t need them.

Love and grace is the living water that sustains us.

And as we allow that water to flow in us, and through us,

May we see to it that no one ever goes thirsty again.

Amen. 

Sermon: "Choose Life, Choose Love"

Scripture Intro

Matthew 5:21-37

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount occupies three full chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. It is the longest piece of teaching from Jesus in the New Testament.

In February, during this season of Epiphany, we hear snippets from the Sermon on the Mount over the course of four Sundays.

Two weeks ago we heard the beautiful and familiar words of the Beatitudes.

Last week we heard the inspiring and timeless teachings that encourage us to be the salt of the earth and to not hide our light under a bushel.

This week we get to a much more difficult part of Jesus’ sermon.

This is the part of the sermon where Jesus takes the Ten Commandments and ratchets them up a notch. This is where he says it’s not enough to refrain from committing murder or bearing false witness, because simply having anger or deceit in our heart is an affront to God as well.

This is where Jesus talks about relationship issues that we wrestle with in our time – like adultery and divorce – and speaks out against them in what we might call very unforgiving and un-Jesus-like terms.

In other words, this is the part of the Sermon on the Mount that we may prefer to skip over or dismiss as a relic of an ancient time.

Taken at face value this is a very difficult passage to listen to.

But if we know anything about scripture, and Jesus, we know that taking either one out of their context, and out of their time, opens up the possibility for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

So as we listen to this passage from the Sermon on the Mount, and hear words that may stir up painful emotions in our own hearts, I encourage you to pay attention to the call to change behind the words. Keep in mind that Jesus’ focus was always on healing relationships.  And here, once again, he urges us to choose life by choosing love.

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst UCC, NH

February 16, 2014

Deuteronomy 30:15-20;  Mathew 5:21-37

“Choose Life, Choose Love”

Before we get to unpacking this difficult passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount I want to tell you a Valentine’s Day story.

It’s not a story about romantic love but it is a story about choosing love.

Which is what Jesus’ sermon is all about.

So let’s start there.

Let’s start with what it means to choose love.

This is a story shared by Dr. Josh Misner, an author and professor who writes an online blog called Mindful Dad. Misner is the father of two children and on a recent plane trip from Chicago to their home in Washington state he and his children had an experience that will sound frustratingly familiar to many of us. Yet the outcome may surprise us all.

Misner shared his story in the form of a letter, which he titled:

To the Ticket Agent at the Delta Counter.

Here is Dr. Misner’s story:*

In Chicago, we watched the snow fall on the tarmac.

Our flight was delayed.

But I refused to let it bother me, as I was intentionally trying to demonstrate patience to both my teenage daughter and 6-year-old son on our trip home.  This was remarkably hard to do, considering that, in the last three days, I had only four hours of sleep.

We finally took off but 30 minutes before landing panic set in.

The flight attendant announced that we would arrive at 11:00.

Looking at the boarding pass for my connecting flight, I realized it was scheduled to take off at 11:02.

We had two minutes.

Knowing there was no way I would de-plane in time from the back row with two children in tow, I gave up and prepared for the worst.

But to my surprise, the flight attendant, overhearing me discuss with the kids that we would miss our connection, announced to the rest of the passengers to remain seated when we landed and allow us to leave the plane first.

Two minutes. It was going to be close.

When we landed the sound of seat belts unlatching broke the silence.

The flight attendant announced one more time for everyone to remain seated and let us off first. But the ding from the seat belt light going off might as well have been a starting pistol. As soon as we stood up so did everyone else.

The other passengers ignored the attendant's instructions and spilled into the aisle, taking their time to gather bags, put on coats and perform other menial tasks. We were the last ones off the plane.

I was enraged at seeing this outpouring of selfishness.

With my determination to make the connection growing by the millisecond, the three of us sprinted as soon as we were out of the gate.

Well, as fast as a 6-year-old’s legs can sprint.

Reaching the terminal my hope dissipated when I saw that the jetway door was closed and the gate was empty. Two minutes.

We missed our flight because of the two minutes we lost because of the selfishness of others. My outrage turned into an outright grown-man-tantrum.

I spotted a ticket agent at the desk in front of our gate and shouted in his direction. He ignored me so I shouted again, “Excuse me, can you help us?” He responded, "Sorry, I can't help you right now," as he turned his back and walked away from the gate.

This was the last straw. My temper boiled over and I lost it, shouting a string of curse words and angry accusations at the retreating agent.

That's when I looked down.

There was my 6-year-old, looking up at me.

He was looking at me because he had never encountered a situation like this before in his young life. The problem was, I was giving him a precedent.

My childish tirade presented him with a solution to his future conflicts when dealing with difficult situations and difficult people.

I tried to regain my composure, and found a self-service kiosk and booked us on another flight, leaving four hours later. This gave me time to ponder how I was going to reconcile what I had just instilled in my children.

I needed redemption, and it had to be something they would remember.

Roughly 30 minutes before boarding our new flight I spotted the original ticket agent, who was working the desk at our gate…and I chose to do something daring.

I took my son's hand and said, "Come with me. I need you to watch and listen."  He got up, held my hand, and walked with me to the desk.

My heart was pounding out of my chest.

When it was our turn, the agent looked up at me and asked, "Can I help you?"

I said, "Sir, I don't know if you recognize me, but about three hours ago, I did something inappropriate. I cursed at you because you didn't help us find a new flight after we missed our connection, and that wasn't right.

I took my frustration out on you and set a poor example for my children.

I want to apologize to you and ask your forgiveness."

He looked stunned, and after a long period of silence, he said,

"I don't know what to say.  I do remember you. I was trying to locate a medical kit for a woman over at the next gate, and I was in a hurry. I wanted to help you, but I was rushing to help someone else. I'm sorry."

Now I was even more ashamed of my actions. I responded, "You have nothing to apologize for. I was in the wrong, and I need to ask forgiveness to show my son that the way I behaved was not right."

Again, in disbelief, he said. "It's OK. I forgive you, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your apology. Trust me, we get yelled at a lot in this job and no one ever apologizes. You just made my day, and I thank you for that."

I looked down at my son, who was still gripping my hand tightly.

He was staring up at me again, with the beginnings of a smile.

I smiled back at him, tears brimming in my eyes, and said, "That, my son, is doing the right thing. Always do the right thing, no matter what."

Dr. Misnar’s story is a modern day tale of someone who has come to understand the value of letting go of the anger in one’s heart and making amends to those who may have been hurt by that anger.

This is what Jesus was referring to when he said, “Leave your gift before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift to God.”

Coming before God and asking for forgiveness for the many ways that we fail one another is important.

But it’s just as important to take a step towards healing by actively letting go of the anger, resentment, and pain that we carry from those failings, and by doing what we can to repair the relationships that are strained as a result.

Relationships are very important to God.

The passage we heard today from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount focused on just a few of the ways that we might heal strained relationships, and prevent them from becoming strained in the first place.

In his sermon, Jesus took the clear violations of God’s law that would have been familiar to his Jewish brothers and sisters – murder, adultery, bearing false witness -  and he broadened them to include the smaller actions that get us there…starting with what we carry in our heart.

It’s not enough just to refrain from murder. We should also treat each other with respect and not speak hateful words in anger.

It is not enough to refrain from swearing falsely when under oath.

We should speak and act truthfully at all times so there’s no need for oaths in the first place.

It is not enough to refrain from committing adultery.

We should also not allow lust to linger in our heart, because it objectifies the person we desire, and devalues the person we’ve committed ourselves too.

Jesus’ teaching here is that we don’t need to go to the extreme of breaking a commandment to cause damage to ourselves and our relationships with others.

What starts out as a small anger, a tiny deception, or a burgeoning desire in our heart has the power to propel us headlong into dangerous territory. 

And before we know it, we’ve said something or done something that has caused pain to another, and to ourselves.

Which is why Jesus said that honoring God’s Commandments isn’t enough.

Allowing anger, desire, or deception to take root in our hearts leaves little room for anything else to grow.

And like weeds left unchecked, they can choke the life right out of us.

This is a good time to remind ourselves that honoring God’s commandments and seeking redemption and reconciliation when we fail is not for God’s benefit.  God does not require our obedience in exchange for love and grace.

God offers us love and grace unconditionally and will continue to do so no matter how many times we trip up and land flat on our face.

Honoring God’s commandments and seeking redemption and reconciliation is for our benefit.

Because living in this world is much easier for us all when we choose love, compassion, and openness in our relationships with one another.

Choosing love results in a better life for us all.

So if Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is about choosing life by choosing love, what do we do with his statements about divorce?

Even in his time, Jesus had to know that some relationships are more damaging than life giving, and that sometimes choosing life involves letting go of what is killing us.  

I believe that Jesus did know this.

Thou shalt not divorce is NOT one of the Ten Commandments.

In fact, divorce was a legal way to dissolve a marriage according to Jewish law. It is here where scholars disagree about Jesus’ motive for expressing a restrictive view of divorce.

Some say that his intention was to protect women and children.

In his time, only men had the power to file for divorce and in some Jewish sects they could do so for the flimsiest of reasons - because the man had grown tired of his wife, or had his eye on another.

Thus Jesus was speaking out against a legal practice that treated human beings as if they were disposable and victimized those who were already the most vulnerable in society.

Other scholars disagree, saying that this is an inaccurate representation of first century Judaism. These scholars point out that women in Jesus’ time owned property, had marriage contracts that made divorce costly to their husbands, and were not as vulnerable as we often make them out to be.

Perhaps Jesus spoke out against divorce because he truly did believe in the sanctity of marriage, and that what God joined together should only be separated in the most extreme cases. Such as when the marriage is deemed unlawful or when one partner is unfaithful to another.

But as we know, there are many ways that partners in a marriage can be unfaithful to one another -  physically, emotionally, by not honoring the vow to be a loving and compassionate presence to one another in all ways.

When we place Jesus’ words about divorce in their time we realize that regardless of the situation he was addressing when he spoke, his underlying motive was to promote healing by urging us to choose love.

Sometimes choosing love involves working together to heal the damage in our relationships.

And sometimes choosing love, choosing life, involves walking away from each other, because healing cannot happen otherwise.

In many ways, Jesus offered 1st century responses to 1st century problems, but he also offered ageless solutions to human problems.

On this Valentines Day weekend, I invite you to celebrate the relationships in your life that are most important to you. Think about what makes these relationships healthy and whole and sustaining to you, and take a moment to thank God for the gifts that they bring.

I also invite to you call to mind the relationships in your life that have suffered damage. Don’t dwell on who is to blame or who has been hurt more, but rather spend some time holding that relationship in prayer. Offer it up to God and ask for help, and think about what action you might take to move that relationship towards greater healing.

Reconciliation is not always possible in our relationships, but redemption is. We redeem ourselves whenever we choose love and seek healing in our hearts.

We can’t change the heart of another, we don’t have that kind of power,

but we can change what we cultivate in our own hearts.

And as Dr. Misner learned from his 6-year-old son, when we choose love we give others permission to do the same.

You have heard it said that God rejects us in our brokenness,

But I say to you that it is our brokenness that invites God into our hearts to make us whole.

May we do the same for one another…..always.

Amen. 

*Thank you to Dr. Josh Misner for granting me permission to share his story. I’ve adapted his story for use in this sermon, sometimes sharing his own words and sometimes paraphrasing. You can find the story in its entirety on Dr. Misner’s blog here: http://www.mindful-dad.org/2014/02/to-ticket-agent-at-delta-counter.html

Sermon: "Hearing Voices"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

January 19. 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11; John 1:29-42

“Hearing Voices”

On Monday afternoon I was sitting in my office and I was surprised to hear birds singing outside my window. You may recall that it was 53 degrees on Monday – it was a beautiful sunny day and I couldn’t resist the urge to throw the window wide open and revel in the spring like feel of this January day. As I sat there looking out at the melting snow and feeling the cool air on my face, I couldn’t help but hear the voice of my late father in my head, sharing the wise words I heard him speak many times before:

“What are you doing with the window open in January?

We’re not paying to heat the outside! Were you raised in a barn?”

It is amazing how we carry these voices in our heads.

These voices from our past that seep into our present and our future.

The voices of our mothers and fathers.

Of beloved teachers and mentors,

The voices of caring friends and other influential people in our lives.

These are the voices, the tapes we play in our head that dispense wisdom and advice, that urge us to be kind and careful, and tell us to put on a sweater so we don’t catch a cold.

These are also the voices that lift us up, urge us on, and soothe our tired spirits when we feel lost or beaten.

Sometimes hearing these familiar and encouraging voices in our heads is the extra push we need to accomplish a difficult task or to get us through a painful time in our lives.  

And sometimes hearing those voices is not comforting at all, because we’re afraid we won’t live up to the expectations that they have set before us.

Last week we heard the story of the baptism of Christ. 

Where John the Baptist pushed Jesus’ head under the water and as Jesus came up for air the voice of God rang down from heaven, saying,

"This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

We have to wonder if hearing the voice of God in that moment was comforting or unsettling for Jesus and John.

For John, it signaled that the time of his ministry and his popularity had come to an end.

He had done what God had intended for him to do.

Jesus would be the revered one from then on.

We may wonder if the sound of God’s voice left John feeling joyous, envious, or relieved.

For Jesus, hearing the voice of God meant that the time of his ministry had only just begun.

After 30 years of living in obscurity he would soon have his every word and action examined, questioned, misinterpreted, and misunderstood.

He could no longer go home and resume his quiet life as a carpenter’s son.

He had taken the first step on the long and difficult road that would lead to his death.

We may wonder if Jesus found this voice from heaven to be comforting, startling, or terrifying.

For Jesus, the voices did not stop there.

As he stepped onto the banks of the Jordan River, before his hair even had a chance to dry, John the Baptist gave voice to even more expectations.  

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

“I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God”

After John’s proclamation, John’s disciples ran after Jesus, calling him Rabbi, Teacher, the Messiah, the anointed one. 

We may imagine that these are the voices that Jesus carried with him throughout his ministry.

These voices that may have both comforted and unsettled him.

The human voices that named him as savior and messiah,

And the divine voice that named him as beloved, pleasing, and son.

We carry similar voices of encouragement and expectation in our heads, replaying those moments when we felt lifted up in confidence or pushed beyond our comfort level.

I wonder if Jesus replayed that moment by the Jordan River over and over again as well, whenever he felt uncertain or was in need of encouragement.

When he was facing a hungry crowd of 5000.

When he was looking into the eyes of a woman who was begging to be healed.

When he was saw the hammer being raised to pound his flesh onto the cross.

In these moments, did he hear the voice of God in his head saying,

“You are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased.”

Did he hear the voice of John the Baptist calling him the Lamb of God, the one who was destined to sacrifice himself to heal our broken world?

Did he hear the voice of the disciples calling him Rabbi and teacher,

and did he find comfort in the fact that he had taught them what they needed to know, and they were ready to continue on their own?

Some would say it’s not theologically sound to transfer our human emotional experiences onto Jesus.

Even if he was both fully human and divine, it may seem diminishing to imagine him experiencing doubt, or fear, or despair.

But we know all too well that the tapes we play in our heads both instigate and feed on all of these emotions and then some, and it is comforting to know that God, through Jesus, has experienced what it’s like to live with a chorus of voices in one’s head.

We may cherish the wisdom and guidance imparted to us by a beloved parent or mentor, but we often carry the voices of our tormentors as well.

The voices of those who tore us down rather than build us up.

The voices of ridicule, belittlement, and shame.

The voices of our past that say, “You’re not smart enough, you’re not good enough, you’re unworthy of love.”

The voices of our present that say: “You’re unqualified. You’re too old. You’re a bad husband, a bad mother, a bad son or daughter.”

The voices of our culture that say: “You’re not thin enough. You’re not good looking enough. You need more money, more power, more possessions to be worthy of respect and love.”

As faith communities, we hear these voices, too.

The voices that keep us from taking risks and walking as the body of Christ in the world.

The voices that say, “It’s too hard, it will take too much time, we don’t have the energy, we don’t the resources, we don’t have enough to go around.”

Psalm 40 urges us to send a different voice in to the world.

The psalmist cries out to God in despair and God responds by drawing him up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog.

The psalmist writes:  “…and the Lord set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth.”

From our own experience we understand that it’s not the literal hand of God that lifts us out of the miry bog and sets us on solid ground, but rather it is God working through human beings just like ourselves.

People who serve to counteract the negative voices we carry in our heads with voices of compassion, grace, and love.

People who act as conduits for the voice of God.

I’d like to share a story that is familiar to those of who participating in our Small Group Ministry program.  The theme of this month’s Small Group discussions is ‘Hope’, and the group reading was taken from Heidi Neumark’s book, Breathing Space.

Neumark is a Lutheran pastor who was called to serve a church in the South Bronx during the 1980’s, when this NYC borough was one of the most impoverished and drug infested areas in our country. Neumark was young, newly ordained, and her congregation had only 20 people and no children. But she had hope in the restoration of her church and the people she was called to serve.

Over the course of several years the church grew to be a thriving spiritual home for hundreds of adults, teens, and children in the community, especially for those who once had no hope that their lives could be different.

Rev. Neumark writes about a time when a consultant was called in to help identify potential leaders in the congregation. His advice was to look for people who already exhibited leadership skills in their family, community, and work environments. In response, Rev. Nuemark writes: 

I couldn’t help but think about the many people I had met who did not readily fit into any of those categories, people whose battered lives left them disconnected from family and neighbors, work and community. People who were depressed. People who were addicted. People who were too sick and tired to do much of anything. What about them?

It made sense that such persons clearly are not in a position to lead anything, but it left me deeply troubled because basically it dismissed a whole group of adults as beyond hope for the foreseeable future.

Neumark goes on to tell the story of Burnice – a woman who would sporadically stumble into church drunk and high and who couldn’t be depended on for anything, yet one day she would become a women’s group leader, a Sunday school teacher, the president of the church council, and a community organizer who got the drug dealers banished from her neighborhood.

Neumark writes:

If I, as a pastoral leader, had looked at Burnice and thought, she’s a crack addict and she’s a mess, and left it at that, then the church and community might have missed out on a great leader.

Some future pillars of the church arrive in ruins.

Neumark admits that a transformation like this doesn’t always happen:

Every addict doesn’t beat his addiction, everyone who has been beaten down will not rise up, at least not on this earth, but we never know who will. Our job is to lift up the possibility, the hope, that everyone will eventually be lifted out of the bog, and find footing on solid ground.

Too often, people who feel hopeless and powerless have voices playing in their heads that reinforce those feelings.

You’re not good enough. You’re messed up. You’re not worthy of healing.

Our role as Christians and as a faith community is to replace those negative and fearful voices with loving and compassion ones.

To use our voices as conduits for God.

To speak and act out of love rather than fear.

To lift up rather than tear down.  

To dream and plan and serve as if we live in a world of abundance,

rather than holding tight to what we have as if we live in a world of scarcity.

To actually believe that amazing things can happen when we take a risk and let God lead the way, rather than the voices in our heads that urge us to be cautious and frugal.

Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

We may wonder what this even means when we live in a world that is still so obviously broken.

We may question how Jesus’ life and death served to counteract the fear, violence, and injustice that exists all around us.

The good news of the gospel is that God does not expect us to change our world, or ourselves, all on our own.

We’re called to sing a new song, and Jesus is the one who teaches us how to sing it.

We’re called to hear a new voice, and God is the one providing it.

You are my child. You are beloved. And in you I am well pleased.

Might we cast our sins onto this Lamb of God – might we lay our brokenness at his feet and say please take this, we don’t know how to fix it on our own.

And might we trust that even in difficult times, God is with us, and will set our feet upon the rock and make our footsteps firm.

Go. Go and sing…sing a new song.

And create the world anew.

Amen.