Just Shine

A story is told of a little girl who was seeing stained glass windows for the first time. It was the right time of day, so that jewels of colored light poured through the windows. Her grandfather was telling her her whose pictures were in the stained glass. “See, there is Peter, and Paul, and Matthew, and Mary. They are all saints.” “Oh, I get it,” she said. “A saint is someone who has light shining through them.” Indeed. In the New Testament Paul and Luke use the word “saints” (or we could translate “holy ones”) to describe all the followers of Jesus. Not just the perfect ones. So even you and I are saints. They seldom talk about one saint, singular, instead almost always a group of them, supporting one another. Jesus does not use the word saint, rather he uses follower, disciple. If we are followers of Jesus, God’s light shine through us.

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Video version: https://www.facebook.com/terry.lepage/videos/10217632643991923/

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

September 9, 2018

(Extra)Ordinary Service

Acts 9:36-42 Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

Today we heard a story about a woman who followed Jesus. Her name in Aramaic is Tabitha. In Greek, it is Dorcas. Both words mean “gazelle,” the graceful desert deer that can leap so high. Tabitha is the only woman who is listed by name in the bible as a disciple, a follower of Jesus. So how did she follow Jesus? Apparently she sewed clothes.

Sewing is so ordinary that you might not have thought of it as discipleship. People like me, who are good with words, have plenty of role models in the Bible. Prophets and preachers who share the Good News. But God’s children have physical needs too, and I know that many of you are more comfortable serving in that way. I know my Grandma Lucy was. Grandma Lucy got surplus parts from clothes factories, and sewed dozens of quilts with her friends; some were made all out of collars, some all out of sleeves, to donate to families in need. Those quilts weren’t works of art, but they were unique, and warm, and labors of love. Grandma Lucy also sewed a patchwork quilt for each of her grandchildren. I was old enough to help with mine, so I had pride of accomplishment, of making something warm and useful and pretty out of my old pajamas and sundresses. A lot of people besides Grandma Lucy serve God in ordinary ways like sewing. So I’m glad Tabitha made it into the bible.

I suspect there was a lot more to Tabitha than sewing. Her friends were weeping and showing off the tunics she had made. In those days there was no Macy’s or Target. All clothes were hand sewn, all cloth was hand spun and woven, all very labor intensive. Those without the money or the relatives to do that labor had only scraps to wear. Tabitha may literally have been clothing the naked. Imagine: a tunic made just for you: showing that someone cared enough about your dignity to invest hours and hours of their labor into making you presentable. Tabitha would treat you like the beloved child of God you are, so that the ordinary service of sewing became extraordinary.

And there’s more. I’m pretty sure Tabitha was the leader of her sewing circle. When she died, her friends were missing more than her flair with tunics. We can only guess at the ways that she inspired them and encouraged them. Maybe just by taking their work seriously. This ordinary skill that they discovered could be a service to God. Maybe Tabitha talked with them as they worked, about their lives and their faith. Maybe it was her laughter, or her quiet caring. Somehow, Tabitha showed forth the love of God with a needle and thread. Tabitha’s body is long gone from us now. But her spirit has lived on over the centuries in thousands of church sewing circles, often called Tabitha circles, or Dorcas circles, continuing to show forth the love of God through needle and thread.

The apostle Peter was a different kind of disciple. The story says that because Peter prayed, Tabitha came back to life. That skill is too extraordinary for me to believe. And on this particular day, that part of our story leaves me grumpy. So I want to leave Peter for today and skip to the book of Hebrews instead.

The book of Hebrews tells us we have a “ great cloud of witnesses,” people who came before us and were faithful in hard times. We can remember these people when we need encouragement. Though they died long ago, they are somehow still a part of us. Some of them are biblical characters of old, like Tabitha. Some are historical figures whose stories can inspire us, like Harriet Tubman, a personal favorite of mine. And some are people we have known personally, who did ordinary service, or extraordinary service, for us and with us. The longer we hang around, the more people in that cloud of witnesses we know personally. Ordinary people who have died and gone home to God. In the light of God’s love, we know how extraordinary they were. Now Bill and James have joined that cloud of witnesses.

I don’t know how life after death works. At seminary I heard process theologians arguing over it– that was entertaining. I just trust that God has a place for us. But I also suspect that certain church folks are not going to go marching in with the saints without stopping back regularly to encourage and support us here on earth. We are not alone.

So we can wash dishes with Brother Lawrence, and we can repair the church with Saint Francis, and we can discuss theological books with Harry Emerson Fosdick. And through it all is the Holy Spirit, who prays when we don’t have the words, and makes of our ordinary teaching and cleaning and singing and bookkeeping and cooking and letter writing and gardening something extraordinary. All we have to do is show up, and be willing to go with the flow of the Spirit, be part of something that is much bigger than us, that transcends time and space, the Spirit that gently sews the broken pieces of our lives and our community together.

I believe this, but it helps to be reminded. We need church. This idea of banding together to follow Jesus with other living people, to know each other personally and commit to supporting one another: it’s not in fashion. Churches, even the most fundamental ones, often struggle these days to get people to make commitments of time and money. At the same time people gobble up spiritual books and videos… The hunger for God is there. What can we as a community offer that a book can’t? Real lived examples of following Jesus. Complete with mistakes! Real interactive discussions. Although that means we’ve got to be together for more than this hour. Books are lousy listeners. Books give you so much advice. I’ve read so much great advice in books it would take me dozens of lifetimes to live it all. But I’ve never once had a book ask me, “So, how did that work out for you last week?” Nor have I ever had a book notice when I was feeling up or feeling down and ask me about it.

We as a church may not always live up to this high calling of supporting one another on the path of discipleship. Sometime people think the sewing is the whole point of the sewing circle, or that cleaning the church kitchen is tedium instead of privilege. Sometimes we get caught up in our own dramas and forget to let go and let God. After all, the church is full of people, and people are full of flaws. And if that’s all it’s got, we’re in trouble. But that is not all. It is full of people surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, opening themselves to God’s Spirit, so we can show forth the love and transforming power of God. When we are willing, God’s Spirit has room to act among us, and make us more than we could ever be alone.

A particular calling of this church is not sewing but hospitality. So in the spirit of Tabitha and all the people who love and serve in practical ways, let us remember that our ordinary hospitality makes a difference. When we bring snacks to share after worship, we are providing a excuse for people to make connections and share a little of themselves. Perhaps we even provide a meal that someone really needs. When we take time to introduce ourselves to someone new, or to warmly greet a person who is not yet a special friend, we are doing that work of hospitality, letting people know that it matters to us that they’re here. When we invite a church friend, old or new, to share a meal, we are, and making space to know and be known in the light of God’s love.

A lot of ordinary work is required to keep a church running. Depending on how we do that work though, it may not be so ordinary after all. If our intention is to help the sacred be known and love to be shared in this community, our acts of service will be extraordinary—devotion or meditation for us, and more often than we realize, a gift to someone else. Please don’t wait for someone to serve you. Take small opportunities to serve as those before us have done. Do it, knowing that God can use our ordinary acts to do extraordinary things, though we may never know the details. Do it in honor of people like Tabitha, and Bill, and James, and other faithful people who have served with an unexpected gift or a warm welcome, or a casserole, and have helped to make God real to someone in that small way

As we mark the passing of two generous and caring souls, one of whom was so dear to so many of you, one of whom we were just getting to know, it seemed appropriate to sing “For All the Saints” as our opening hymn. Saints are not perfect people, just people seeking to live in the light of God’s love. Their service might appear ordinary, but nothing is ordinary when we see it in the light of God’s love for us.

Let Your Light Shine

Our church is blessed to have a voice, in the form of our large backlit double-sided street sign on Imperial Highway. A friend in the community, who happens to be a professor of ethics, said that our sign functions like an ink blot test– his friends and neighbors see in it what they bring to it.

Christian ethics means different things to different people. Really different things. How do you make moral decisions? Is there a bright and powerful beacon in your life that invites you to life and wholeness and right relationship? I hope so, because I try to talk about that beacon every Sunday. Call it following Jesus, or seeking the Kingdom of God, or being filled with the Spirit. But make it your beacon and let it guide you into right action. And enjoy our street sign. Or your Christian faith may be all about fences instead of beacons: rules and creeds and proof texts; who’s inside the fence and who’s out, who belongs and who’s pure and who’s going to heaven, and who’s not. If you expect those kinds of fences in your religion, you may be in the wrong church right now. And our street sign will really annoy you.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

November 12, 2018

Ethics: Fences and Beacons

Mark 10:2-16 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

We actually need both fences and beacons. But Jesus was light on the fences and big into beacons. When he’s asked a question, he usually answers with another question, or a parable. Not a rule, not a law! He says, “Follow me!” Jesus isour beacon – he goes off doing amazing things (and sometimes rule-breaking things), and we try to follow him.

Fences are simpler than beacons. Identify the rule and follow it. You can stand inside the fence and say, “Look! I’m doing the right thing, I’m good with God. Mission accomplished.” God’s beacons are always a bit beyond us. When our eyes are on the beacon we often feel that gap between who we are and who God is inviting us to become. In fact, the closer we come to the holy, the more we can see our own flaws. That’s the bad news. The good new is: the closer we come to the holy, the more we see new possibilities for living well.

We can also discover that we have turned our backs on the beacon and we are in shadow, moving away from God. That’s the bad news. The good news is: no matter how far away we are from God’s beacon, we can always turn around and face it, and start moving toward it.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is asked, “where is the fence,” in this case about divorce. His reply condemning divorce is one of very few rules Jesus gives in the whole Gospel of Mark, and he seems to give it reluctantly. Was he sticking up for the safety and economic rights of women? Maybe Christians in Mark’s community thought they should divorce their non-Christian spouses. We don’t know the context. We do know that Jesus was shining a beacon of light on the sacred covenant of marriage. Take your marriage vows seriously; they’re meant to last. We also know that if we take our marriage seriously and it still fails, we will be forgiven. And then Jesus moves on and shines a beacon on us that is a little blinding: “Receive the Kingdom of God like little children,” he says. What does that even mean? Be humble? Be teachable? Get out of our own way? Climb into his lap? Whatever it means, it is surely a beacon and not a fence.

Ethics. Fence-based ethics are different from beacon-based ethics. I was talking to a same-gender-loving woman who was raised in a conservative Christian home. She was committed not to have sex before marriage. And thank God she can marry. She said, “The bible makes a convincing case about not having sex before marriage, right?” I said, “Let me get back to you on that.” So I looked it up on the internet: the seven verses used to forbid sex before marriage– easy. Some are sketchy, some might apply, none are from Jesus, and all are from a very different culture than our own. I realized I couldn’t proof text like that- grab verses out of context to make rules.

I do ethics differently. I point to the beacons of “love your neighbor as yourself” and “marriage as a sacred covenant” and then I try to figure out what they look like in the face of possible children outside of marriage (clearly not an issue for her), avoiding STDs, and how do you show respect and consideration to a person with whom you are being intimate and may want to just leave. That, against the good of marrying someone you know how to love well and know you can live with. Fences are easier than beacons.

Of course the first fence churches usually put up is: don’t question the leader. The leader speaks for God and therefore the leader is always right. I feel confident that nobody here believes that about me. Thank God. Leaders are human, and fallible. Question authority.

The Catholic Church has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. A small but persistent minority of priests around the world have abused way too many children. And their bishops covered it up, allowed them to repeat their crimes over and over again. These bishops were breaking no formal rules. But why would they need one? What about the simple shining beacon of: protect the lives entrusted to you— first do no harm? This is a long shadow over the institutional Catholic Church. This shadow is called: “protect privilege, and ignore the suffering of the powerless.” This shadow, in one form or another, is always with us if we have any power at all; we can only minimize it by searching all our actions in the light of God’s love for the last and the least.

A young friend of mine is part of a conservative Christian community. They have put up a bunch of fences for her; for some reason they mostly have to do with sex. She had already had sex before marriage, but as part of her marriage preparation through her church she had to stop, and live apart from her fiancé. Now she is married and she is not supposed to have male friends. There are reasons for these rules, but I wouldn’t submit to them. We do it differently here. So let’s do the work. How will our church teach the sanctity of the covenant of marriage? What shall we do to support it?

My friend got another fence from church: you know who you need to vote for in the 2016 presidential election, despite his obvious moral failings. Which, incidentally, was her church breaking a tax law. The goal was to appoint Supreme Court justices who could impose that church’s fences on all of us. We can faithfully disagree about the morality of abortion. The shadow I see here is “win at any price,” The beacons of environmental protection, human rights, the rule of law, are fading under that shadow of “win at any price.” We follow a savior who surely did not win at any price. He lost on purpose, for us, on a cross. To win human power struggles at any price is to abandon the beacon of God’s Kingdom.

Is there a beacon to be had in politics today? I believe there is. We have beautiful ideals in common. John McCain’s eulogies have allowed people to express them at length. And it’s painful to see how far away we are from those. But giving up on government is turning our backs on the precious beacon of those ideals and resigning ourselves to living in deep and destructive shadow. We may not get very far, but we need to be walking in the right direction. I do have one fence for myself here. I will educate myself about the whole ticket, even the water district, and vote the whole ticket, and invite my friends to do the same. Care to join me?

Do you talk about ethics with your friends, coworkers and relatives? I think we can go a little deeper than the slogans on our sign. So when somebody gives you a proof text, or says, “there’s no law against it,” you could explain that we look at ethics differently. Fences are easier than beacons, but beacons are more powerful. Let your light shine. We have ideals. We may never reach them, but in striving to live the gospel our hearts and minds are opened. In speaking our values, we challenge ourselves to live them. And in following the beacon who is Jesus Christ, we discover deep integrity, and abiding grace, and the transforming power of love. Amen.

Feet on the Ground

If you believe yourself worthless, a failure, Jesus wants to empower you. You are a child of God. You matter. You have eternal worth. If you have power, power to stay out of jail when you do something stupid, power to vote, power to write a check, to drive a car, to share a spare bedroom, to speak an encouraging word, Jesus invites you to spend that power to empower someone else. To give your advantage to somebody else so they have a chance.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

August 26, 2018

Feet on the Ground

Mark 10:32-45 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, 33saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; 34they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ talks a lot about status and power, but it’s all upside down. Follow Jesus, and give away your status. Enter into suffering voluntarily. Who does that? For those of us with privilege, that is a part of our call. We follow a man who was executed as a criminal. Publicly shamed. He could have gotten out of it, I’m sure. Instead he allowed himself to be crushed by the Powers that Be, to become powerless, and then he rose, to lift up the powerless.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus says among other things, “I was in prison, and you visited me.” Who’s visited a jail? You don’t need to say which side of the bars you were on. I have only visited a jail once. It was a soul-crushing experience: ugliness filled every room and everything that happened seemed designed to humiliate me, show me I didn’t matter. And I was just the visitor! The man I visited was fortunately a short-term resident of the Theo Lacy Jail in Orange. This man had a strong Christian faith, but only the steady support of his church friends, up to and including sharing their spare bedrooms with him for months, could convince him that he had any worth, and that he could make a life outside of jail. They did it for him because they saw Jesus in him, when he surely didn’t. “I was in prison, and you visited me.”

How many of us were taught to achieve, to be our best, to go for it? That’s a good thing, right? James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were taught to aim for success. They were following the new Messiah Jesus, the soon-to-be King, so they wanted to be top dogs in the new administration. Their power grab is embarrassing: didn’t they know Jesus better than that? Which is Mark’s way of telling us that we know better than to seek status like James and John. When Matthew tells this story, he has the Tiger Mom of James and John do the asking for them. But Mark’s gospel was written first. Mark wants us to know: if you do have power and status, be ready to give it away for the Gospel.

Let me tell you about a ladder. It’s a well-climbed ladder. I’ve spent some time on this ladder. I never got to the top. A couple of times I thought I got pretty high, but that ladder just keeps going up. And it’s a rickety, slippery ladder. Sometimes I slid down that ladder, my back end going bump, bump, bump, and I found myself in a very low place.

Are you familiar with this ladder? It is the ladder of worth, of status. If you are up high on that ladder, ah, you feel good. You are really somebody. Until you look up and notice: the ladder keeps going up. And sometimes the ladder tilts, or we trip, and bump, bump, bump, down the rungs we go. Less than. When we really take a dive and land down in the sub-basement rungs, we’re feeling worthless and ashamed.

What sends you up and down that ladder of worth? We each have our own list. Maybe your ladder is about having money or an important job. Maybe it’s about getting someone’s good opinion. So many reasons to send you climbing up the ladder. So many reasons to bruise your behind slipping down that ladder. It’s the same ladder, whatever your reason for climbing it. You could even climb this ladder because you are so in touch with God, so righteous, so filled with the Spirit. You are an ascended master. Then, you go through a spiritual dry patch and down you go. Bump, bump, bump.

Here’s a secret that some of you already know. We can step off that ladder, stop climbing. You can let go of judging yourself or anybody else. You can take your feet off those rickety slippery rungs and plant them firmly on God’s good earth. With both feet on the ground, humble, we can relax, We’ve got nowhere to climb, and nowhere to fall. We’re on God’s wide earth, with enough room for everybody. Nobody better than, nobody less than.

If you have spent a lot of time and energy climbing the ladder, this sounds ridiculous. Give away your hard-earned status? Yes, for something better. Authentic connection with God and with other people.

The ladder is a trick. We never were less than, not in God’s eyes. And we never needed to be better than. We need to belong, to learn, to contribute, to be accepted, and valued, and loved. And we can’t do that while we’re dangling from a ladder. Picture two people on a ladder trying to hug. It just doesn’t work. When we step off the ladder onto terra firma, then we can stand together. We can see each other, eye to eye. We can hug.

What about all those other people, still on the ladder judging us. Yes, they’re still judging us. That’s their business, not ours. We need to find people with their feet on the ground. People will support us, instead of judging us.

Following Jesus can’t happen on a ladder. So whenever you find yourself climbing that ladder, just step off. Put both feet on the ground, on God’s wide earth, where you can relax. You can be honest about yourself and not be shamed. You can love and be loved. You can learn, and make mistakes, and not be a mistake. You can be accepted and celebrated for being you, flaws and all. And you can befriend people whose faces you never would have seen, if you were busy climbing the ladder. Jesus is not an ascended master at the top of the ladder. Somehow Jesus is in each of us, waiting to be discovered. Amen.

Come Sunday

Worship doesn’t only happen on Sunday morning. It happens any time we put on an attitude of worship, of worth. If you can do that other times and places, more power to you. I like to worship in my garden, but I am alone there. It is sweet to come into this beautiful space at the appointed time and see your beautiful faces gathered, and be comforted by familiar words and songs, and challenged by a few new ones. It is a habit that feeds our souls.

Art: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/celebration-susan-brasch.html

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

August 19, 2018

Why We Worship

Psalm 98 : O sing to the LORD a new song,

for he has done marvelous things.

His right hand and his holy arm

have gotten him victory.

The LORD has made known his victory;

he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.

He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness

to the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen

the victory of our God.

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;

break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,

with the lyre and the sound of melody.

With trumpets and the sound of the horn

make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

the world and those who live in it.

Let the floods clap their hands;

let the hills sing together for joy

at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming

to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness,

and the peoples with equity.

I took my first transitional ministry training in 2003 at a Southern Baptist seminary in Dallas, Texas. I was the only woman there, not surprising since in 1984 the Southern Baptists had voted that woman should not be pastors. It was quite an experience. They were kind to me. I had much more in common with them than I expected, because Baptist church government is congregational. So as long as we talked about pastoring churches, and not politics or theology, we related. Many of them had not heard of the United Church of Christ. Over lunch one of the men asked me about the UCC, and I said, “It’s a pretty liberal church.” I didn’t think it would be helpful to explain exactly how liberal. Another fellow piped in, “Oh, liberal. You’ve got one of those praise bands with electric guitars and drums?” To him, liberal was a style of music. A lively discussion started about the church conflicts they’d seen over styles of music.

In most churches I know, music wars have calmed down by now, thank you God. Yet, many people have strong likes and dislikes about music. This is part of a paradox about coming together to worship; what works for you may or may not work for me, and yet we need to do it together, or it’s not Christian worship. Earbuds and fifty different channels is the way our culture has gone. But that defeats the purpose of worshipping together. So we take our different musical tastes, and life experiences, and moods, and expectations, and we all come together on Sunday morning. And sometimes it works! Worship together takes us places we could never go alone. And sometimes it doesn’t ring your bell, for whatever reason. In that case, all is not lost. There’s still fellowship time, which I honestly see as an important part of the our Sunday morning ritual.

Think of the visitor joining us on a Sunday morning, expecting... Who knows what they’re expecting. The worship of their childhood, or of their last church? That never quite works out, does it? Every church has its own personality and ways of worship. That is more true in the UCC than some other traditions, because we have no required prayers or readings.

Despite our freedom here, we have “liturgy-style” worship. We got it from the Congregationalists, and they got it from the Church of England, and they got it from the Roman Catholics... Tradition! Stand up, sit down, sing a song, read a prayer, scripture, sermon, more prayer, stand up, another song, benediction, and so on… The order varies, but having this long list of worship elements complicated enough it that needs its own program is a very ancient way of worship- Orthodox churches today are using liturgies from the 4th and 6^thcenturies, virtually unchanged. Liturgy-style worship relies on a mix of familiar rituals along with changeable parts to interpret the tradition for the world we live in. And newcomers might need an orientation, or at least some post-it-tape flags for their hymnal. That is the hard part of liturgy-style worship: knowing when to stand up or sit down, finding the song or prayer you’re supposed to be doing next.

The other main style of Christian worship is “camp meeting style.” Camp meetings were traveling Christian revivals that were held outdoors in tents in the 18^thand 19^thcenturies. They were great entertainment for people with pretty limited entertainment options. The point was to captivate people into becoming Christian (i.e. to save them from hell), or get them excited to renew their faith. Greg Laurie’s “Harvest” is in that style. Camp meeting worship is very simple: start with a bunch of music, where you may or may not be invited to sing along, move into a long passionate prayer, and finish with a come-to-Jesus sermon. Just these three things, no program or orientation required. Oh, and one more thing, at least in the original camp meeting, an altar call: people were called to come forward to repent or declare their desire to be Christian. They might be baptized on the spot. A seminary student came to that style of church and asked how long he was expected to preach. “Till the people get happy.” said the elders. How long might that be? “As long as it takes.” But seldom less than forty-five minutes, it turned out. This camp meeting style relies heavily on the power of an emotional experience to ignite faith, and honestly I am glad I’m not trying to whip up emotion like that every week. But I know some of you miss that powerful emotion.

Worship is an odd thing in this place and culture. Seeking spirituality not from Youtube videos or the self-help section of the bookstore, but together, in person, at the same time. How odd is it? From our national UCC staff I heard about a young man who was booking a wedding at a church. He got a tour around the sanctuary and said, “This is a beautiful room. What do you do in here?”

How would we explain our worship to him? Where else do grownups have sing-alongs? And why do we do these things? What does worship mean, what good is it? Now I know that some of you come out of habit. Some of you come to see your friends. And that’s OK. Why do your friends come? If the answer were only to see you, we would have a problem. There is more, but it’s hard to put into words, isn’t it?

We can get some clues from the word “worship.” It comes from the word “worth.” Worship shows what has worth to us: what we value, what matters. It’s worth gathering with our friends on Sunday and not just saying prayers by ourselves at home. It’s worth getting a religious tune-worm in your ear that you can hum the rest of the week. It’s worth sharing our concerns and our joys out loud in this sacred space. It’s worth reminding ourselves what really matters. It’s worth trying to get in touch with the sacred at a regular time and place, and also to get in touch with our own hearts.

God is worth rolling out of bed for on Sunday mornings, worth our attention, our offerings of song and prayer, and our celebration. I don’t think that God is some king on a throne. Honestly, that’s what a lot of traditional worship was modeled after: bowing before a king and telling him how great and glorious he was. I am quite sure God does not need our bowing and our praises. Instead it is we who need to look beyond the little dramas of our lives, and remember that there is something much larger than ourselves, something worth living for. We need power and wisdom and love bigger than our own. We need to remember the kind of God we claim, who is in and through us if we can notice it, always at work bringing healing and hope out of every dire situation, always guiding us into love and life. And so we worship.

The words we use for worship matter. You hear Trinitarian words here: but Father and Son are usually said “Creator and Christ.” You do hear words of praise, but we got the “holy ghost” out of it, if you’ll notice. The Lords’ Prayer is in really old-fashioned language, but when I’ve tried to update it, we lose that wonderful way almost everyone can say it together. I struggle with some of that traditional language of God as all-powerful, king and mighty warrior, as we find in today’s psalm for instance. I am grateful that here we have the freedom to craft new prayers, rephrase the psalms, change the words of liturgy to fit our understanding of the sacred. Traditional liturgy’s language of father and king and lord and ruler is familiar and dear to some people, but nontraditional language of mother flowing spirit and creative transformation, and more, better describes how many of us understand God. Inclusion and tolerance and diversity means, among other things, we can include and tolerate diverse language, and not all of it will work for each of us. The writer of our Psalm reading was getting mighty creative saying that floods clap their hands and hills sing for joy. And that works just fine for me. Creativity in worship is a great way of honoring God, don’t you think?

Worship does sometimes fall flat. That’s such a shame, because we need it. And it’s ironic too, that the Source of the universe, who makes floods clap and hills sing for joy, has intelligent creative creatures who can manage to make worship a drag. How do we do it?

Sometimes worship is not what you were expecting. You wanted to boogie, and ended up with the frozen chosen. Or you wanted quiet meditation and ended up with the shouting holy rollers. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In this case, there is a fix. Let go. Let go of our expectations of worship and remember that anyplace we seek the sacred, we can find it, if we come with open hearts and minds.

Sometimes the worship is not in our language. That may mean in Spanish or Latin or Samoan. More likely it is just church-talk, a bunch of words that only make sense to the insiders. Then the invitation is to go beyond the words, and find the music of the Spirit. It’s always there.

And this is not the mall, or the 14-screen movie-plex. We are all together in one worship, in part to support one another, so if a message one Sunday doesn’t ring your bell, you can pray… pray that it rings someone else’s. Those of you who are lucky enough to have gotten family members to join you at worship, you are doing something countercultural, and the experience is likely to mean more to some family members than others. But it gives your family a common experience to talk about, to talk about the sacred, and what matters to you. How precious.

The things we do are nice, and we attach meaning to them, but they are just the forms of worship, they are not the meaning. What is essential is what Jesus told the woman at the well in John’s gospel (Chapter 4), when she was asking which was the right mountain on which to worship. Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in Spirit and truth.” Spirit: we don’t control it, but we allow our hearts and minds to open to it. Truth: honesty, risking your whole self. That might mean admitting that you do not feel a connection in worship. And then you might hear why someone else does. Jesus is asking a lot of worshippers. It’s easy for newcomers to just see the forms, the words on the page, and miss the Spirit and truth behind them, especially if they can’t find the right page. Regulars too can lose track of Spirit and truth, and just go through the motions, and become overly attached to the forms because we forgot to look for the meaning, the Spirit and truth beyond the words and the forms.

Worship is not a spectator sport. We get out of it what we put in. That is both attitude and action. You might think that you just sit here, but you pray, and you sing, and you ponder the words, and perhaps even discuss them later, and it makes a difference. Thank you.

Wake-up Call

I recently lived for two years in Arlington Virginia, five miles from Washington DC. The Washington Metro stopped a half block from my apartment, so I managed pretty well without a car. Coming back from downtown DC, it was a straight shot on the orange line to the Ballston station, underground all the way. Only one time, the train burst out into bright sunshine. Where was I? “Arlington Cemetery,” said the station signs. I was on the wrong train. The blue line and the orange line follow the same route in DC till they split in Virginia. So I got off the blue train, went down one set of stairs and up the other, enjoyed the scenery waiting for the blue train going the opposite direction, back a couple of stops, up another set of stairs, and finally onto the orange line to go the right direction.

Having gotten on the wrong train once, you might thing I’d learn. But the only difference between the blue and orange trains is a small colored banner on one spot on the top of each car. I took the blue train by accident a lot in the two years I lived in Arlington. It got to be a joke with my husband. I’d text him. Delayed. Visiting Arlington Cemetery. Arlington Cemetery, that bright sunlight on a route that should be underground, was my wake-up call. Then I’d realize I was on the wrong train.

Getting off the wrong train was inconvenient, it was embarrassing, and it was a no-brainer. If only it were that clear and simple when we get off course in other parts of our lives. What kind of wake-up call do we need when we’re doing is not taking us where we want to go? God invites each of us into abundant and compassionate living, and we often miss the invitation. And then God creates another invitation, but it might be more inconvenient and embarrassing than the first. If we keep missing invitations, we might get a really dramatic wake-up call. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. But we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by not staying on the wrong train for longer than we need to.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

August 12, 2018

Wrong Train

Numbers 22:12-35. God said to Balaam, “You shall not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” So Balaam rose in the morning, and said to the officials of Balak, “Go to your own land, for the LORD has refused to let me go with you.” So the officials of Moab rose and went to Balak, and said, “Balaam refuses to come with us.”

Once again Balak sent officials, more numerous and more distinguished than these. They came to Balaam and said to him, “Thus says Balak son of Zippor: ‘Do not let anything hinder you from coming to me; for I will surely do you great honor, and whatever you say to me I will do; come, curse this people for me.’” But Balaam replied to the servants of Balak, “Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God, to do less or more. You remain here, as the others did, so that I may learn what more the LORD may say to me.”

During the night God came to Balaam and said to him, ‘If these men have come to summon you, then rise and go with them, but do only what I tell you.’ When morning came Balaam rose, saddled his donkey, and went with the Moabite chiefs.

But God was angry because Balaam was going, and as he came riding on his donkey, accompanied by his two servants, the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road to bar his way. When the donkey saw the angel standing in the road with his sword drawn, she turned off the road into the fields, and Balaam beat her to bring her back on to the road. The angel of the Lord then stood where the road ran through a hollow, with enclosed vineyards on either side. The donkey saw the angel and, squeezing herself against the wall, she crushed Balaam’s foot against it, and again he beat her. The angel of the Lord moved on farther and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn to either right or left. When the donkey saw the angel, she lay down under Balaam. At that Balaam lost his temper and beat the donkey with his staff.

The Lord then made the donkey speak, and she said to Balaam, ‘What have I done? This is the third time you have beaten me.’ Balaam answered, ‘You have been making a fool of me. If I had had a sword with me, I should have killed you on the spot.’ But the donkey answered, ‘Am I not still the donkey which you have ridden all your life? Have I ever taken such a liberty with you before?’ He said, ‘No.’ Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes: he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with his sword drawn, and he bowed down and prostrated himself. The angel said to him, ‘What do you mean by beating your donkey three times like this? I came out to bar your way, but you made straight for me, and three times your donkey saw me and turned aside. If she had not turned aside, I should by now have killed you, while sparing her.’ ‘I have done wrong,’ Balaam replied to the angel of the Lord. ‘I did not know that you stood confronting me in the road. But now, if my journey displeases you, I shall turn back.’ The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, ‘Go with the men; but say only what I tell you.’ So Balaam went on with Balak’s chiefs.

It’s so common for people to keep doing a thing that’s not working that psychologists and economists gave it a name: the sunk-cost fallacy. What I’m doing is not working. But I can’t quit after all the time or money or effort I’ve invested. I can’t stop now. Otherwise I’ll have to admit what I’ve been doing hasn’t worked, and I’ll have to figure out how to do something different. Sunk costs. It can take huge courage– trust– or sometimes desperation!– to change. But all of us get on the wrong train sometimes. It doesn’t matter how much you paid for the ticket or how long you’ve been riding if it isn’t going where you want to go. And I want to go where God leads, well, at least most of the time.

I love being in tune with the sacred. That can mean different things. Holding firm to beautiful values. Listening to your gut. Seeking God’s guidance; that still small voice. And none of us does these things perfectly. So be prepared for wake-up calls, and depending on how far you’ve been traveling on the wrong train, those wake-up calls may feel jarring. But don’t fall for the sunk-cost fallacy. If we’re on the wrong train, we can just admit it, turn around, and start heading in the right direction.

Which brings us to the tale of Balaam and his donkey. Or, as the King James Bible says it, Balaam’s ass. You’ve got to admit the King James version has a ring to it. The bible has two talking animals, and Balaam’s ass is the second one. In this little magical realism tale of a man who gets on the wrong train, it is his faithful donkey who gives a wake-up call, but not before Balaam makes an ass of himself.

Balaam is a high-priced consultant to the rich and famous. He is a renowned seer, prophet-for-hire, so in tune with God that he knows how to bless and curse whole tribes and nations, or so the story goes. Balaam is not a fraud– he really cares about honoring God. The king of Moab sends a delegation to hire Balaam. The job is to curse a pesky tribe of immigrants called Israel, who are making Moab nervous. Balaam does not just sign on the dotted line. First, he consults God, who is on the favorites list on his cell phone and always picks up. “Should I take the job?” And God’s answer is clear. “Don’t do it. I want to bless Israel, not curse them.” So Balaam turns down the job. (Should anyone ever curse anyone? I don’t think so, but apparently people thought differently in those days.)

And then Moab sends more powerful officials, dripping with silk and jewels, and carrying a big blank check. “Balaam, the King wants you and only you. Name your price. We won’t take no for an answer.” With big innocent eyes Balaam tells these fat cats, “Even if the king gave me his house stuffed with silver and gold, I would not be able to defy my God. But wait here. I’ll just double check and see what God says this time.” Balaam really wanted to get on the wrong train.

And God lets him. “You want to go so badly, Balaam, then go. But make sure you say only what I tell you to say.”

So off Balaam goes, on his poor innocent donkey. Then an angry angel with a sword blocks the road: that should be a wake-up call. Only Balaam, the great seer of his time, doesn’t see the angel. His donkey does, and balks. Twice the donkey sees an angry angel with a sword blocking the road, and balks. Twice Balaam, the great seer, sees nothing special, and beats the poor donkey for balking. Finally the angel blocks a spot between two walls so narrow the donkey can’t move. She’s stuck. So she just lies down. And when Balaam beats her again and yells at her, the donkey starts talking!

When the donkey starts talking, does Balaam say, “Wow, my donkey is talking, Something really strange is happening!” Nope. He just starts arguing with his donkey. In front of those rich officials from Moab, Balaam makes a King James donkey of himself.

But finally Balaam the great seer sees the angel, the sword, and the obvious: he’s on the wrong train. He bows down before the angel. ‘I have sinned!” He sinned when he knew the right thing to do, and had his heart set on doing something else. And he sinned when he was so preoccupied with his own paycheck and prestige that he couldn’t see what was in front of his own face. And he’s finally ready to repent. Here “sin” means doing what doesn’t work. Wrong train. And repent means: get off that train.

So Balaam says to the angel, “Oops, sorry, I’ll just turn around and go home now.” But God is getting creative. “No, keep going, but only say exactly what I tell you.” So Balaam did. He traveled hundreds of miles to Moab, hopefully treating his donkey with a little respect. When he finally arrived, despite the expectations of the king, he did say onlywhat God told him to say. Three times the king of Moab took Balaam to a mountain top and carried out bloody animal sacrifice. That was how they did it in those days. But Balaam didn’t. He waited for all the blood and drama to be finished, and just said, excuse me, I’ll just step aside and find out what God wants me to say now. Three times, on three different mountaintops, they did this. And three times Balaam delivered a flowery poetic blessing for Israel instead of a curse. One of those blessings is still recited in Jewish worship today. You can imagine how this went over with the King. Balaam never did get paid. But his reputation for “only saying what God told him to” was taken seriously after that.

God is creative. When we hop on the wrong train, sometimes God can use it for good. At the least, for our learning, if we are willing to learn. But first, we need that wake-up call.

The summer before I started seminary, I thought I had to leave the UCC, the United Church of Christ and join a Methodist church. You see, Methodist pastors get appointed to churches by their bishop. They avoid this challenging search and call process that you have started. As a Methodist I could have had job security. I can’t say God told me to become a Methodist. My best impression was that God was going along with my plan. But I kept hitting obstacles. I had been going to two services each Sunday, one at my home church, Irvine UCC, and one at whatever Methodist church I was visiting that week. I didn’t feel much attraction to any of them.

I had been praying for guidance on which church to join– which Methodistchurch to join. One weekend I had gotten a sense in prayer that I would know which church was the right one, and I had been comforted by that. So I went to Irvine UCC for the early service, and a Methodist church after that. The Methodist service was OK. But the Irvine worship was amazing. The guest speaker was Rev. Bill Johnson, the first openly gay minister in the UCC. He was so inspiring, he made me so proud to be in the UCC. And the music was gorgeous, … I was so moved by this awesome radiant Spirit-filled UCCchurch. You might have thought I would get the message at that point. But no. I was just really sad because I was going to have to leave this wonderful church.

God has put an unlikely source of guidance in my life: not a talking donkey but an agnostic husband. (Who does not appreciate the comparison.) As I told my story to Scott, he just smiled. He had already told me his opinion, and I hadn’t heard it. It took me about two more weeks to realize my prayer about which church to go to had been answered that morning. Was I ever embarrassed to tell my Irvine UCC friends that no, I was not leaving after all. I learned that I belong in the United Church of Christ.

We will keep getting on wrong trains. And God will keep trying to get through to us. Our job is to pay attention, stay humble, be teachable, at least eventually. And not get trapped by sunk costs. When we finally notice that wake-up call, just get off the train! We will keep getting on wrong trains, and God can be pretty creative at using our detours to bless us. God never expected us to be perfect. Just forgiven, and loved. Amen.

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Just Shine

Let Your Light Shine

Feet on the Ground

Come Sunday

Wake-up Call