Sermon: "Jesus Wept"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

September 28, 2014

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16;  John 11:32-44

“Jesus Wept”

Jesus wept.

This line from John’s gospel is famously known as the shortest verse in the bible.  

(For centuries, when told to pick one verse from the Bible to memorize and recite in front of the congregation, savvy Sunday School children have chosen this verse…for obvious reasons).  

Jesus wept.

Two simple words that say so much - about grief, about anger and frustration, about the experience of being human, about the nature of this man whom we call Jesus - Lord – Savior - God.

When he lost his beloved friend Lazarus, Jesus wept.

When he felt the brunt of Mary and Martha’s anger because he had allowed their brother to die, Jesus wept.

When he saw the pain etched in the faces of the mourners surrounding Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus wept.

Grief. Anger. Empathy.

We’ve all wept in their presence.

And while the culmination of this story involves a divine intervention – with Lazarus resurrected and retuned to the living – the fact that it takes awhile to get there is where many of us find meaning in this gospel story.

What happens before the miracle – before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb - is where we find God intervening in our world in a very real and visible way.

This morning we heard the last 12 verses of the story of Lazarus, but the writer of John’s gospel takes 45 verses to tell the whole story.

In verse one, we’re told that Lazarus is sick.

In verse three, Mary and Martha send a messenger to inform Jesus.

In verse four, Jesus hears the news.

Yet it isn’t until verse thirty-eight that Jesus finally arrives at the tomb.

In between we encounter erroneous assumptions, unmet expectations, unacknowledged pain, and misplaced blame.

In other words, a typical family gathering for many of us.

Jesus receives Mary and Martha’s message, and two days go by before he tells his disciples that Lazarus is ill.

At that time he very cryptically tells them,

      “Let’s go to Judea for Lazarus has fallen asleep.”

To which the disciples reply, “Have you forgotten that they tried to stone you in Judea? Why on earth would we go back? To rouse a sleeping man?”

Finally, Jesus reveals that Lazarus is not sleeping, he is in fact dead, and they must travel back to Judea to witness his miraculous resurrection all made possible by the glory of God.

But while Jesus and his disciples argue over travel plans and get bogged down in semantics, back in Bethany, Mary and Martha are burying their brother.

The miracle they had prayed for did not happen.

Jesus did not come.

So they wrap their brother’s body in clean white sheets and anoint him with oils as their tears rain down and their chests heave under the weight of their sobs.

Four days later, when they finally see Jesus coming up the road they are not happy to see him.

We might imagine them running headlong into him, their fists pounding on his chest as they scream,  “Why! Why did you not come when we called?   

              If you had been here, Lord, our brother would not have died.”

How many of us have said the same in the face of loss?

“Why God? Why did you let this happen?”

When something in our life has gone horribly wrong we want the God we read about in the Bible to intervene and make things right.

The God that parted the Red Sea and brought forth water from a rock.

The God that appears in burning bushes and pillars of dust.

The God that heals the sick and raises the dead.

That’s the God we want by our side.  The God of miracles.

Not the God of platitudes.

Not the God who “needed another angel in heaven.”

Not the God who “closes one door and opens another.”

Not the God who “never gives us more than we can handle.”

When Mary and Martha meet Jesus on the road and cover him with tears of sadness and frustration they’re no longer looking for a miracle.

It’s too late for that.

They’re angry that their guaranteed connection to God – this prophet called Jesus, their beloved teacher and friend - has failed to come through in their hour of need.

As they pound on Jesus’ chest and then fall to their knees, we might imagine him taking hold of their flailing arms and pulling them into his embrace… holding them tightly and calming them as he asks them where they have laid their brother to rest.

In this case Jesus knew God had a plan, and everything was playing out according to that plan.

But when he saw Mary and Martha – with their unrestrained rage and pain, and their lack of awareness that he had the ability to set things right –

Jesus began to weep.

The tears flowed out of him just as they flow out of us.

Tears of sadness, frustration, and empathy.

This is the ball of entangled emotions that rises up from within us when we grieve.   

Anger, denial, depression, bargaining, guilt, blame –

These emotions spill out of us and our loved ones as we come together in the wake of a loss, and as each of us comes to terms with the loss in our own way and in our own time.

There is no avoiding it.

If we choose to love in life, we will experience grief.

Even Jesus, who supposedly knew that Lazarus would soon walk out of the tomb fully alive, succumbed to the pull of his humanity… and he wept.

This is the Easter story – the Christian story - seen through a human lens.

We believe resurrection is coming, we believe new life awaits us all in the end, we believe death is not a period, but a comma, marking the transition between one life and the next…

   ...and yet we still grieve, we still mourn what we have lost.

The culmination of this outpouring of emotion and many hours, months, years of grief work, is acceptance – a personal resurrection of sorts – where we walk out of the tomb, shake off our shroud, and gradually open our eyes to the light of day.

When Lazarus emerged from the tomb, Jesus said,

        “Unbind him and let him go.” 

In much the same way, our grief eventually loosens its grip on us and we feel freer in our ability to function and move about in the world.

This kind of resurrection is not instantaneous, it’s not miraculous, and it doesn’t involve God swooping down to part the expansive sea before us or raise our loved ones from the dead.

But it does involve God’s unyielding and unwavering presence in our lives.

God is in the fiery cloud and the burning bush.

But God is also in the tears of those who grieve with us,

in the arms of friends who embrace us, and in the quiet presence of those who simply sit with us, knowing that there are no magic words or pithy platitudes that can take the pain away.

If Jesus is God’s presence here on earth, it is telling that BEFORE he raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead - before he did anything - Jesus wept.

The GOOD NEWS of the Gospel is that no one stays in the tomb forever.

The GOOD NEWS is that while we’re in there we’re not alone.

God weeps with us.

Take a look around, at the faces and arms and bodies of those sitting next to you.

God has brought us together – with all our gifts and all our flaws.

God moves and acts through us.

We are the burning bush.

We are the pillar of fire.

We are the rock that brings forth water for the thirsty.

We are the hope of the resurrection -

living, breathing proof that love brings new life where it once was lost.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sermon: "Heaven and Hell"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

August 3, 2014 – Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 3:5-12; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

“Heaven and Hell”

Imagine that you fell asleep one night and God came to you in a dream.

Not an imagined encounter with God conjured up by your subconscious because you have some unresolved issue that you’re wrestling with, but a real encounter with the real God. 

The God who created you, and sustains you, and is the reason why you find yourself here on a Sunday morning.

What if God came to you in a dream and gave you the same offer that was presented to Solomon –  “Ask for whatever you want me to give you."

What is it that you would ask for?

Solomon asked for wisdom.     

Would we choose as wisely?

We’ve all seen enough movies and I Dream of Jeannie reruns to know that we should beware of supernatural beings granting wishes.

It rarely turns out well for the wish makers.

Inevitably they ask for great riches or great powers and once they get it everything goes downhill fast. There’s always some consequence or semantic loophole that they did not anticipate.

You may have heard the joke about the three men who are stranded on a desert island, when a bottle washes up on the shore.

When they uncork the bottle, a genie appears and offers three wishes, one for each of them. The first man wishes he were in Paris. The genie snaps his fingers, and the man suddenly finds himself sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower sipping champagne and eating caviar at an outdoor cafe.

The second man wishes that he were in Hollywood, and with a snap of the genie's fingers, he finds himself on a Southern California movie set, with a gorgeous actress on his arm.

The genie then turns to the third man, who was now alone on the island, and says, “You have the final wish, what will it be?  The man looked around and said, "I wish my friends were back."

Hopefully if we were given such a choice we would have the wisdom to know that sometimes what we wish for has unforeseen consequences.

The heaven we imagine sometimes turns out to be hell.

While the hell we do everything to avoid turns out to be heaven in disguise.

If God asked us what we desire above all else, we might say we want world peace.  But what if it took a devastating worldwide war to obtain it?

We might ask for untold riches, and then spend the rest of our lives living in fear of losing it.

We might ask for good health and a long life, and then find ourselves alone and grieving in our later years, because all of our family and friends have already gone.

What we imagine we want more than anything else in the world isn’t always what we expect it to be once we have it.

And sometimes the last thing that we would imagine that we want is just the thing we need to help us feel happy and whole.

Jesus’ disciples thought they knew what it was that they wanted when they imagined a world filled with God’s abundance.

When Jesus talked about this Kingdom of God – this heavenly existence that God was seeking to build right here on earth, they nodded their heads in understanding.

It would be a world where THEY would be on top for a change.

The powerful would fall, and the powerless would rise.

And their enemies would suffer just as they had.

This is the reign of God as they expected to see it.

But as we know, Jesus had a way of defying expectations.

We see it in this simple string of parables that Matthew recorded in his gospel -  the Kingdom parables, where Jesus tells us what this reign of God will be like.

Here he rattles off a rapid-fire succession of analogies that tell us that the Kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed or a pinch of leavening mixed in flour.

It’s like a treasure or a beautiful pearl.

We can almost imagine the mental gymnastics that his listeners have to do to keep up with what he’s saying, and make sense of it all.

To our modern ears the meaning of these parables is not that difficult to surmise.

The Kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a mighty tree.

The Kingdom is like a pinch of yeast that yields an abundance of dough.

The Kingdom is like a treasure found in a field or a single pearl that wills us to sell all that we have to obtain it.

In all these parables, the things that we dismiss as being small and insignificant are in reality bountiful and valuable.

The imagery WE see here is beautiful and poetic.

But Jesus’ first century listeners most likely were left scratching their heads.

Because a mustard seed does not grow into a tree, it grows into a low and unwieldy bush.  Once it takes root it’s likely to overtake anything in its path.

It’s a weed, and it’s the last thing that first century farmers would have planted in their fields or their gardens.

It would be like Jesus saying to us, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a field of dandelions. Once we see those things pop up we do everything we can to get rid of them.

Comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a pinch of yeast would caused the same puzzled reaction in Jesus’ Jewish listeners.  The leaven they used was not the same yeast that we use today.  They created leaven by setting aside a piece of leftover bread to spoil.

If it wasn’t left long enough it was useless as rising agent, but left too long and it could cause food poisoning. Which made using leaven a risky and sometime fatal undertaking.

In fact, the Hebrew scriptures often used "unleavened" as a metaphor for the Holy, and anything associated with leaven was thought to be unclean and corrupting.

So why did Jesus choose what would have been offensive and off putting imagery to describe this bountiful, beautiful, wonderful Kingdom of Heaven to his followers?

Perhaps because he saw it as way to shake up their expectations – to help them to see that often what they desire the least is actually what they need the most…and what they value the least is priceless in the eyes of God.

All of these parables are about finding something of value that is hidden in plain sight.

This Kingdom of Heaven, this reign of God that defies expectations, is found where we least expect to find it.

It’s in Keshia Thomas, the African American teenager who threw herself on top of a white supremacist protester in Michigan to keep him from being beaten by an angry mob.

It’s in the hundreds of faithful Muslims who formed human chains around churches in Egypt and Pakistan to protect Christian worshipers from extremist attacks.

It’s in the Seeds for Peace summer camp, a program that brings Israeli and Palestinian children together to breakdown the barriers of mistrust and hate.

It’s in the face of a frightened child from El Salvador who traveled for thousands of miles to escape the violence and gangs of his home country only to be met by a line of Americans brandishing guns and shouting racist rhetoric, because they fear that these children will take something that the they have no right to receive.

The Kingdom of God is found in unexpected places.

In the smallest, in the most vulnerable, in the most hated, in the most misunderstood.

This heavenly realm that we imagine God resides in stands in stark contrast to the hellish places where God actually lives.

But this is where the Kingdom takes root.

In the places that we tend to avoid or overlook.

Where a tiny little mustard seed grows into an unwieldy bush that spreads before anyone can contain it, and becomes a place for birds to nest.

Where a pinch of leavening that many consider to be too dangerous to ingest produces a bountiful amount of bread for those who hunger.

Where a simple little pearl is worth giving up all that we have to obtain it.

But in a world where so much of what we’re told to value has no true value at all, it’s hard for us to discern where our world ends and God’s Kingdom begins.

Perhaps this why Solomon chose to receive wisdom above all else.

Perhaps it is the only correct response to give when God asks what it is we would like to receive as a gift.

The wisdom to discern good from evil.

The wisdom to listen to what is in the hearts of others.

The wisdom to hold on to what has value and let go of what does not.

The challenge that Jesus offers is to keep looking for the Kingdom of God in unexpected places.

To help bring God’s realm into being by lifting it up wherever we see it.

And to wake each morning asking ourselves,

“Where will I find it today?”

Amen.

Sermon: "Ears to Hear"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

July 20, 2014 – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Intro to Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Today’s gospel passage is the Parable of the Sower.

This familiar story that Jesus shared with his followers tells the tale of a farmer who tosses out seeds in hope and discovers what happens when those seeds fall on various types of ground - on a beaten path, on rocky ground, on ground choked with thorns, and finally on good, fertile soil.

The second part of today’s passage contains an explanation of the parable that equates the seed with the word of God and names the good soil as those who hear God’s word and allow it to bear fruit in their heart.

We may wonder why Jesus, who often spoke in parables when he was in public, took the time to explain the meaning of this particular parable to the gathered crowd when most other times he did not.

Many scholars believe that the most likely reason is that the explanation of the parable offered here is not original to Jesus, but was added at a later date, either by the author of the Gospel of Matthew or by a later editor.

While the explanation offers a legitimate interpretation of the story, in some ways its presence undermines the very reason why Jesus spoke in parables.

The practical reason is that it was often dangerous for Jesus to speak in a direct manner in front of a crowd that could contain Roman or religious informants who were all too eager to report his counter cultural words to their superiors. So instead he sometimes couched his teachings in stories and parables in the hope that those who opened their hearts would hear the message underneath.

But the deeper reason why Jesus chose to teach through parables is found in the Parable of the Sower itself.

Jesus said, “Let anyone with ears listen.”

We all have the ability to hear God’s word – but what we hear and how we act on it can be different for each one of us, and can change depending on how open we are to hearing it and what distractions we have going on in our lives.

Sometimes we are fertile soil, sometimes we are choked by weeds, and sometimes all we have to offer is barren ground.

The meaning of Jesus’ parable may take a while to take root.

But God ensures that if just take the time to listen, the seed will grow when we’re ready.

“Ears to Hear”

Once upon a time, 4,845 years ago, before the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built and a thousand years before Abraham walked the earth, a tiny seed took flight on a cold mountain wind.

The seed flew through the air and tumbled along the stark, rocky ground, turning end over end before finally coming to rest in a jutting outcrop, some 10,000 feet up, on the sloping side of a mountain.

Wedged in-between the rocks, the tiny seed had little chance of taking root. The limestone soil below it was shallow and dry and devoid of most of the nutrients that a seedling would need to survive.

The wind at this elevation was relentless, precipitation was scarce, and the temperature hovered way below freezing for 11 months of the year.

Yet on that day, 4,845 years ago, this tiny seed defied the odds and took root.   

Somehow, someway, it found just enough moisture and just enough nourishment in that rocky soil to break itself open and send out a tiny shoot towards the sky.

That seedling grew into a mighty tree.

A bristlecone pine, to be exact, that today sits just below the tree line in the White Mountains of California, just over the Nevada border.

Scientists have named this particular tree Methuselah, after the longest living person in the Hebrew Bible - the grandfather of Noah who was said to have lived 969 years.

At 4,845 years, this knotted and gnarled pine named Methuselah is the oldest living organism on earth.

Robert Mohlenbrock, a professor of botany at Southern Illinois University, recalls the first time that he visited the Bristlecone Pine Forest in California to study the ancient tree.

Mohlenbrock wrote, "At the time I thought that any organism that lived longer than the norm had to have optimal conditions to survive.” 

For plants, that would mean moderate temperature, shelter from extreme weather, and plenty of moisture and nutrients.

“But,” Mohlenbrock continued, "when I stood in that bone-chilling wind looking at Methuselah, I knew I had been wrong."

Here was a tree that not only defied all odds in taking root, it had also withstood thousands of years of fierce winters, minimal rainfall, and more recently the encroachment of human beings.

Methuselah survived the California gold rush, the nuclear testing in the nearby Nevada desert, and the influx of curious scientists who in the 1950’s cut down and destroyed a neighboring bristlecone pine to examine it, only to discover that that tree, named Prometheus, was even older than Methuselah, having taken root over 5,000 years ago.

One might say the bristlecone pine was seemingly designed to thrive in harsh conditions.  It has a shallow but extensive root system that spreads underneath the tree seeking water wherever it falls.  The wood is very dense and resistant to invasion by insects, fungi, and other pests.  And where other species of trees suffer rot, bristlecone pines endure, even after death, standing solidly on their roots for many centuries to come.

Now, you may wonder why I chose to share this story of this odds-defying ancient tree when its existence seems to contradict Jesus’ lesson of the Parable of the Sower, the time-worn gospel story that teaches us that only seeds that land on rich fertile soil have a fighting chance to survive.

Of course the seed that Jesus speaks of is not the seed of a hearty bristlecone pine, but an everyday ordinary plant seed, which we are intended to see as an analogy for the word of God.  

For the word of God to take root in us, the parable tells us, we must offer ourselves up as willing and fertile soil, and nurture that seed to fruition.

But we may wonder if something about this analogy falls short.

While we can imagine an ordinary plant seed needing ideal conditions to take root, one would think that the word of God would not be as fragile and prone to failure as the parable implies.

After all, how prevalent would God’s word be, if it had to rely solely on the fickle and unforgiving soil of humanity to survive and flourish in this world?

So perhaps Jesus’ parable is not so much about the quality of the soil as it exists in us, as it is about the hardiness of the seed…..and the persistent and nurturing presence of the sower.

Think back to the time when you first heard the word of God.

Perhaps you were a small child and your parents read stories to you out of a family bible.

Perhaps you went to Sunday School where you drew pictures of Moses parting the read sea, made heavenly angels of out of construction paper and cotton balls, and you learned to equate the moral teachings of Jesus with the Golden Rule – to love your neighbor as yourself and do unto others, as you would have done unto you.

Perhaps you had limited or no exposure to religion as a child and you first encountered the word of God as a teenager or adult, and found it to be confusing, contradictory, or hopelessly outdated for our age.

Perhaps the way you hear the word of God is not limited to the sacred texts that we call scripture, and you also hear God speaking in other forms of literature, in music, in art, in nature, in the voices and actions of ordinary human beings who serve as vessels for God’s extraordinary Spirit in this world.

Regardless of how we encounter the word of God, we often hear it, interpret it, and act on it, in many different ways, as we move through our lives and integrate our experiences from the world around us.

The word of God is not stagnant, and neither are we.

As we change, and the circumstances of our lives change, the meaning that we find in these ancient texts changes, too.

The word of God that we hear as a 15-year-old struggling with peer pressure, parental expectations, and the excitement of having our whole lives ahead of us, may be quite different than the word we hear as a 65-year-old, when we’re immersed in thoughts of retirement, downsizing, and issues of health and mortality.

There may be times in our lives when we don’t hear God speaking to us at all – because we don’t have the time to listen, or we’re struggling to find meaning in religious beliefs and traditions that for us no longer ring true.

And there are still other times in our lives when we seek and find meaning in every experience and in every encounter. God is all around us, and we revel in the abundance of grace in our lives.

The beauty of God’s word is that has the ability to speak to us in many ways, over the course of our lives, and in the course of one day.

The spiritual practice known as lectio divina – or divine reading - involves a contemplative reading of a short passage from scripture. The same passage is read three or four times in a row, with the participants pausing between each reading to reflect on the word or the invitation that is heard each time.

Those who try lectio divina are often surprised at how a different word, phrase, or message will rise up for them each time they read the same text, and how even a familiar text can offer up a new insight or a new interpretation that they had never considered before.

The seed that God scatters among us is persistent.

Regardless of whether we self identify as barren soil, rocky ground, or prone to being overcome by weeds, the seed of God’s word lands on us regardless and often it will lie dormant until we’re ready for it to take root.

Brandon Stantan is a NY photojournalist who specializes in portraits of everyday people that he posts on his website titled, “Humans of New York.”

Stantan photographs people from all walks of life as he encounters them on the streets of NYC, and then asks them brief but personal questions:

“What is your happiest or saddest memory” - “What advice would you give to a large group of people?” - “Can you tell me about your work?”

The photographs alone are moving, but the answers that Stanten receives to his simple questions are often insightful and inspiring.

A few days ago he published a photo of a middle-aged African American man who was sitting next to a trashcan and wearing the orange uniform of a city street cleaner.  We don’t know what question Stanten asked the man, but the response the man gave is as follows:

In my heart of hearts, I wanted to do the right thing, but selling drugs was easy. Everyone was doing it. I mean, I'm not using that as an excuse, I made my own decisions. But I grew up around these Robin Hood figures who would sell drugs, then buy supplies for kids who were going back to school, or pay rent for an old woman who was about to get evicted. All my friends were doing it. It almost seemed fashionable. I never felt proud of it. I always thought I'd transition to a job with the Transit Authority, or a job like this-- something I'd feel good about, but instead I transitioned to jail. I did six years. When I got out, it was tempting to go back to the easy money, because everyone around me was still doing it, and I couldn't get a job. But luckily I found an agency that helps ex-cons, because there aren't many companies looking to give people a second chance. I've had this job for a few years now. You know what product I'm selling now? Myself. Everyone here in Times Square is my client. And I'm picking up all the trash so that they can have the full Times Square experience.

This is a modern day parable of a seed being tossed on rocky, thorn choked ground that had little hope of taking root.

And yet take root it did.

Just as it does every day in places that we least expect it and in ways that defy belief.

When we hear the parable of the sower we often get lost in the explanation that follows Jesus’ parable and place the focus on ourselves and the quality of the soil that we have to offer – and then we beat ourselves up if our soil is not good enough….and we can’t seem to pull ourselves out of the thorns that suffocate the seeds that God throws upon us.

But as with all of Jesus’ parables there are many ways to hear it.

What if we try shifting our focus off our own shortcomings and instead see the parable as a celebration of the extravagant nature of the sower – this God who tosses seeds with wild abandon knowing that some will land on rocky, unfertile ground, and some will land on ground so choked with weeds that it’s unlikely that anything will ever grow.

But God throws those seeds anyway.

Because you never know when one will take root and send a tiny shoot into the light and the rain and inspire others to grow as well.

As we circle back to where we started and consider the tenacity of the bristlecone pine tree, it may surprise you to hear that Methuselah is no longer the oldest living organism on earth.

In 2013, scientists examined another bristlecone pine not far from where Methuselah stands, and they were able to determine that this yet unnamed tree sprouted from a seed that took root in 3051 BC, making it 5,063 years old, 200 years older than Methuselah.

Perhaps, the unlikely occurrence of seeds taking root in unfertile soil is not as rare as we would think.

All those who have ears to hear, listen.

And thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sermon: "The Yoke's on You"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

July 6, 2014 – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 145:8-14; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“The Yoke’s on You”

Think about for a moment how you would complete the following sentence:

“Life is _________”

What word would you choose to fill in that blank?

Life is good?

Life is challenging?

Life is unpredictable?

Life is a burden?

How we fill in that blank may depend on our disposition – whether we choose to lift up the highs or the lows of our lives, but it may also be a reflection of what we’re experiencing in the moment, as there are times when we may gleefully say that life is good, or fun, or rewarding, and there plenty of other times when we would insist that life is hard, unforgiving, and downright exhausting.

Exhausting is the word I would choose this week.

But that’s to be expected after having spent 9 days on the Senior High mission trip with 26 teenagers and 10 adults living and working and driving to and from the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee.

I think it was around day four, when we all looked at each other and said,

“My God, it’s only Tuesday - we have five more days of this!”

At that point we had three teenagers who had thrown up during the night and were out of commission with a stomach bug, and panic was setting in over who would be next. 

Others in our group were complaining of sore throats, head colds, and dehydration.

We had several teens who were feeling home sick, and we had teens and adults who were anxious about health concerns of loved ones back home.

On top of all this, the work we were doing was hard.

Replacing roofs, rebuilding decks, crawling under trailer homes where only animals and insects dared to tread. All of it in the blazing hot sun and sudden downpours that are typical of late June in Tennessee.

Thrown into this mix were the challenges of our accommodations – sleeping bags and air mattresses on a church floor, sharing living space with two other youth groups from different parts of the country, and four outdoor showers for 70 people and only a small window of time each day to use them.

The trip also featured a travel night spent in what turned out to be a very sketchy motel in Virginia, a harrowing van ride on a narrow mountain road in a driving rainstorm, and the realization that on our work sites we were for the most part unskilled laborers being entrusted with technical construction projects, armed with only a written instruction manual and limited tools and materials.

For most of the trip it felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants.

Both on the work sites and at the church, teens and adults alike were functioning in crisis mode for a good chunk of the time.

It was exhausting.

And it was so, so worth it.

It’s often said that we go on these church mission trips to help the “less fortunate” among us - as if we’re knights-in-shining-armor swooping in to lift up those in need because God has blessed us with the means to do so.

But as anyone who has been on trip like this will tell you there are no “saviors” and “victims in need of saving” in this story.

We’re all just people reaching out to each other.

We may live in disparate circumstances and have different life experiences but we come together to learn from each other and do things for one another… because we feel this pull inside of us that we just can’t ignore - this pull that says we’re all God’s children, and we’re all deserving of love, and happiness, and a sense of security and comfort in our lives.

Mission trips are life-changing experiences for everyone involved.

As a group we helped five families in eastern Tennessee live more comfortably and securely in their homes, but we received just as much in return.   And I’m not talking about gratitude.

Some of the families we worked with did express gratitude with an outpouring of hospitality, cards, and letters.

But the other families were either absent or showed open discomfort with our presence, either out of embarrassment of their living situation, or because of the tiring task of playing host to an endless stream of strangers in their home, day after day for weeks on end.

Yes, it would be nice if everyone we served in life expressed gratitude for what they’ve been given, but as one of our teens so wisely said on our final night in TN – we weren’t down there fixing houses because of the thank you’s and warm hugs we would get in return…we were there to serve others because it was the right thing to do.

Because it was the loving thing to do.

And we do it regardless of what we expect to receive in return.

But the truth is, we did receive so much in return.

As a church group from Amherst, NH we may have had the means and the method to dedicate a week of our lives to helping five families in Appalachia, but our teens and our adults took back so much more than thank you letters and a set of new construction skills.

One of our freshmen girls learned that she had the capability and the strength cut metal rebar in the hot sun for hours, because she knew it would be used to hold up the underside of someone’s home.

One of our junior boys learned how to tape and mud drywall, and after he saw the home where he’d be working he very maturely admitted to feeling ashamed for complaining about the night we spent in a not-so-clean motel, when some families lived in much worse conditions every single day.

And one of our senior boys learned how to fix a roof, and he also learned just how much the younger teens look up to him as a leader and a role model, and that they see his quiet, reserved manor as a strength and something to be admired, and not something he should ever apologize for.

As always, our group itself was a source of comfort and strength for our teens.

They leaned on each other and they lifted each other up.

We had freshmen on their first trip away from home who rose to the challenge and discovered a sense of resiliency they didn’t know they had, and we had seniors on the brink of college, who felt loved and safe enough within our group to express their fears and vulnerability, and in doing so gave everyone else the permission to do the same.

This kind of communal support is something to be celebrated and cherished, at any age, and it’s a wonderful illustration of how all of our individual burdens are lessoned when we take them on as a community.

In our gospel text today, Jesus talks about easing our burdens and our weariness by bringing them to him, because his yoke is easy and light.

This yoke that he speaks of is the yoke that all Jewish rabbis offered their followers. The yoke, or mantel that was placed upon a student’s shoulders was unique to each rabbi, and it consisted of the rabbi’s teachings and his understanding of what it meant to live and follow the law as a person of God.

Jesus declared that his yoke was easy and light not because he didn’t believe in upholding the Jewish law or because his standards were much lower than other rabbis.

Jesus’ yoke is easy and light because it removes the burden that we’ve mistakenly placed upon ourselves and instead places it upon God.

This burden is the belief that says we have to earn God’s grace, love, and forgiveness. This burden causes us to feel apart from God if we fall short, and prods us to keep tabs on everyone else and where we rank in God’s favor in comparison.

This is the burden that Jesus says we can toss aside.

Because God’s grace and love are given unconditionally to all.

But what about the other burdens that we carry?

The burdens that we weigh us down because we’re imperfect beings living with other imperfect beings in an imperfect world?

This is where Jesus offers us the yoke of community.

This is a yoke that is not confining but freeing.

This is the yoke that tethers us to one another and makes the individual loads that we carry so much easier to bear.

Because we’re not built to carry all of our burdens on our own.

None of us is strong enough to do that.

But knowing that doesn’t stop us from trying.

How many of us keep our struggles to ourselves, because we fear that others will see us as weak or vulnerable?

How many of us fear that if we lean on others too much they’ll grow impatient with us and drift away?

None of us wants to be a burden on others.

So we carry our burdens in silence.

Jesus’ frustration with the generation of his time was that they too were hesitant to accept the light and easy yoke that he was offering.

It all sounded too good to be true.

John the Baptist had been rejected by the masses as being too “out there” to be taken seriously, with his “turn or burn” message and his austere ways that were extreme even for first century Palestine.

But Jesus seemed to take it too far in the opposite direction.

Rather than reject the fallen and the ostracized he befriended them.

He ate and drank with them.

Surely the burdens that these people carried were too great for God to overlook – addiction, prostitution, greed, laziness – these bottom dwellers were the black sheep of their families who took much more than they gave and tried the patience of the good hearted folks who attempted to reach out and help them.

Surely they didn’t deserve the attention of the man who claimed to be the Messiah who had come to save the people of God.

The people of God were worshiping in the Temple and working for a living -  not drinking the day away or begging for handouts in the street.

This fickle generation who scoffed at Jesus’ ability to judge who is worthy of God’s saving grace and who is not, is not much different than our own generation.

In Tennessee, when the adult leaders of all our work teams gathered each day to share stories about the families we were helping, it was all too easy to allow judgment to creep in.

We remarked on the cleanliness of their homes, the way they treated their children and their animals, the money they spent on cigarettes or alcohol or other extraneous items, the presence of a big screen TV or a cell phone in a run down trailer home (regardless of how old or outdated the technology seemed to be), and the lack of gratitude or warmth shown to those of us who had come so far to help. 

It was all up for judgment, as if any of us would fair much better if we allowed a group of random strangers to peek in our closets, listen in on our family squabbles, or question our need for financial aid for our children’s schooling or tax breaks for our businesses when we seem to have more than enough money to spend on cable TV and double mocha lattes.

Who gets to decide who is deserving of help with their burden and who is not?  

Not us, says Jesus.

This yoke that he speaks of ties us all to one another.

Our burden is lightened by our participation in community, and we in turn help lighten the burden of others, whether we’re aware of it or not.

On our trip to Tennessee, our teens and chaperones learned things that will stay with them for a lifetime, and every family we worked with made that possible simply by asking for help.

We are yoked to one another, whether we like it or not.

And as Jesus has tried to teach one generation after another, life is so much easier if stop trying to carry all of our burdens on our own, and stop arguing about who is worthy of having their burdens eased and who is not.

It may be a cliché to say, “Let go and let God handle it” but in this case that’s exactly what we need to do.

So I’d like to revise my response to the question I asked at the beginning of this sermon.

Life during our nine days in Tennessee was exhausting…..but it was also challenging, fulfilling, and good.

Because we had each other to lean on in our weariness, and our heavy burdens were made light in each other’s presence.

Because God was present with us….then, now, and always.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.