10/13/2022 0 Comments Inessential Worker"Any idiot can find God on a mountaintop--the real challenge is finding God in the company of others as annoying as me." -Lillian Daniel
I just came back from a three mile walk in the June countryside of Vermont. Little theophanies were everywhere: a barrage of all shades of sun-spackled green, fragrance wafting from fields of wildflowers, crickets chirping their morning song. I didn’t see any people at all, only signs of their virtue: hybrid cars parked in driveways, signs proclaiming that “black lives matter,” and swings hung from trees for children. God is easy to find without people mucking up the landscape. As I walked, I thought about how it was far too easy to shut down the church I serve one day in March; to empty out the human bodies and seal it like a tomb. The church leaders and I sat in the windowless basement chapel, six feet apart on plastic chairs we didn’t normally use, having sprayed them with Lysol. The fabric chairs (we’d put them in storage) could be riddled, we thought, with the COVID 19 virus. We could be, too. We looked at the evidence and closed our church building, “effective immediately.” Effective immediately: no more in-person meetings like this one. Effective immediately: no more hugs to remedy the epidemic of skin hunger. Effective immediately: no more open-mouthed belting of old time-y hymns to drown out the hissing organ cipher. Effectively immediately: no more potlucks of foods and people that never would have found their way to the same plastic tables without a matchmaker God. I cried, a little embarrassed at my attachment to the old forms. This will be fine as long as we are back in the church by Holy Week, I said. One of my church’s lay leaders --an unflappable, 30-something high school history teacher, mama of three young boys--looked stricken at our decision. Jesus ran to the sick, she whispered to me. We had done the right thing, it seemed, but there was nothing right about it. We had (blessedly, faithfully) learned, during the cold Civil War our country and community were fighting, that it was harder to hate people up close. Now we were being sent home to our bubbles and bunkers to rage at screens with their mocking blue light. We were sent home, where our only experience of each other would be the carefully filtered lives we were willing to put on Instagram. We would see each other only from behind masks, distanced six feet apart in grocery stores and doctor’s offices. Effective immediately. My church is a purple congregation in a red town in a blue state where Trump won the election in 2016. The aftermath of that election threatened to tear our congregation apart, so we had been toiling away in the thorny ideological battlefields of our small town for four years. My congregation was determined to work on the project of unity, that, as far as we could tell, the rest of the country had abandoned. We didn’t shy away from the hard conversations about values and virtue as polite New Englanders often do. We can do hard things, we said. As the country’s lines were drawn, and the sides were defined and policed for purity, we insisted on nuance and complexity. Derision, division and contempt were weapons used to talk about things that matter, and we chose a language of Love instead: a small town Pentecost. While the whole country turned shrill in its declarations and debates, we practiced listening for understanding. In an era of sinful dehumanization, we heard our call from God as a clarion one: rehumanization. The work we were doing depended on us being up close: talks over coffee, reading kindness in each other’s faces, laying our hands on one another’s shoulders and backs in blessings of babies and confirmands. We used our hands to bless so often that we were convinced they had a direct connection to the heart of God. After years of trying to win over hearts for Love in the midst of those who staked their truth claims in shifting ideological sands with bumper stickers and flags, we closed our church building. Effective immediately. Jesus ran to the sick, that parishioner said, the day our ambitious project died. And I couldn’t get her words out of my head. I was trained as a chaplain back in 2011 at Mass General Hospital in Boston, which is literally the best hospital in the world if you read US News and World Report. The doctors on the neuro floors where I visited patients were the world’s leading experts in every rare disease science has defined, and so I had no business being in those rooms at all. I was the least useful person in the hospital; a chaplain intern. Whenever a surgeon came and interrupted my feeble prayers at the bedside, you could feel the whole room exhale as if God had finally just walked in. Holding a hand or rubbing a foot or simply sitting beside a bed, praying, was all I had then, and it is still all I have. I am ordained in Jesus’ name, pastor and friend to a congregation of 400 souls, but I have no magic words to ease suffering. The healing I offer comes only from the courage to show up; a ministry of presence. During the global pandemic, I offered what I could, which was a ministry of absence. I was given a microphone and a camera to broadcast the liturgy (the work of the people). Call or text or message or Facetime or email or Zoom me, I said. My phone barely rang. For once I had time to concentrate on my teenager’s love life, my eleven-year-old’s TikTok videos, my seven-year-old’s drawings. I procrastinated writing my sermon until Saturday, without knowing why I even bothered at all. I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, the worship band playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Meanwhile, my congregants fearfully ordered groceries sent to their doorsteps, re-wrote their wills, and ached to hug their grandchildren. People died and funerals were scheduled “TBA.” We vowed to be physically distant, not socially distant. We met on Zoom, Brady Bunch grids of 2-D people who weren’t capable of eye contact. We connected with stilted prayer hands emojis in comment sections. We were determined to carve out the kindest part of the internet and claim it for Jesus. It wasn’t enough; to search for God there. It is a delusion that we can be fully human in virtual space. Religious community needs and feeds bodies. Jesus ran to the sick, my congregant had said. Those words haunted me every day for a year and four months. The Bible begins in a garden but it ends in a city. The divine mystery is revealed in the hospital room; the soup kitchen; the crush of bodies on the subway train; the hairdresser’s chair; the loud barroom with the sticky floors; the choir; the crackhouse; the church. God is present in human bodies: tabernacles made good and holy enough to be resurrected from the dead. As the months went on, we hunkered down with only our nuclear families and the small circles of friends deemed touchable because they lived in walled off homes with meticulous cleaning and shunning habits. We wore flags for our team on our faces, covering our mouth and nose, or raised them up on our truck beds: “Keep America Great.” It is discomfiting the ease with which I grew accustomed to this new normal; how quickly the faces and voices that made up my daily life became out of sight, out of mind. Uninterrupted by the vastness of human need, I grew more familiar with my own. When I answered the call to ministry in 2009, I dedicated my entire life to being necessary in other people’s lives. I had given up a lot for this call: a marriage, my kid’s softball games, and my comfortable anonymity. It was all worth it, I told myself, to gather people of all ages and walks of life in a room to sing, to pray and to celebrate the sacraments together. I was needed there. This practice that I found requisite to human thriving was deemed non-essential the day we were sent home. In fact, it was considered uniquely dangerous. Suddenly, I was on the outside looking into people’s lives, instead of a central figure in them. My presence wasn’t needed as an intercessor between people and God. It never had been. I am not just an inessential worker. I am inessential even for the survival of my husband and children. If I died, they’d go on living. Of course they would; I’d want them to. (Though I’d haunt the woman who slept in a bed with my husband like Bruma Sarah). I am a small thing in the endlessness of time. I am not needed for the world to still spin on its axis. Still, I felt the sting of friends and colleagues who seemed to shrug me off like an unnecessary pastime. So I closed my circle tight around me, too, like a mean girl in middle school: cocktails with the neighbors outside on summer nights, hugging and kissing only the family I made. (We still managed to get a raging case of headlice. There is only so much you can do to avoid contagion when you live, beautifully and terribly connected, on the earth.) It was noble to shut each other out, we told ourselves. We whittled down our worlds to make them as small as we were. We needed our surroundings to be disease-free and manageable, which is to say devoid of most people. In the careful auditions for the roles we still needed other people to play, most didn’t make the cut. On social media--all sound and fury signifying nothing--our neighbors became heartless pestilence. We shamed the unwashed and unmasked masses with scolding Facebook posts, fought over our children’s schools and the presidential election in the comment sections, and watched our faith in humanity and God slip away. Meanwhile, I knew those left behind the day the world shut down; who took no refuge in shrill posturing on Twitter. Like the boy who isn’t found in the game of hide and seek before the recess bell rings, alone, watching the other players walk inside together, shutting the door behind them. Like the girl in the circle of musical chairs when the music shuts abruptly off, left without a chair. Jesus ran to the sick, but I didn’t. I knew their stories only from afar. I had gone to tell a widow that her husband died in a plane crash at our small airport the day before we closed down, approaching her front porch with the state policeman and the town’s chief of police like the three horsemen of the apocalypse. Unable to gather her family and friends for a funeral, she planted a tree in her yard by herself in honor of her green-thumbed beloved. I knew the teenager whose body was riddled with slim, hidden scars. She called 911 when her parents were too frightened to take her suffering seriously, and waited with icy patience for the ambulance in her driveway to take her to the emergency room. I knew the widower who grieved for his wife in the prison of his house. His adult children treated him like a child incapable of having a conversation deeper than what-did-you-have-for-breakfast. I knew the never-married woman abandoned by her family of origin decades ago. Her years of hard labor in yoga classes, meditation circles, and tedious business meetings of like-minded political organizations didn’t pay off with a ticket into anyone’s pandemic pod. I don’t know how much longer I want to live. I am no one’s emergency contact, she said, her eyes pleading. I knew the dementia-stricken patriarch with seven children locked into his nursing home, no visitors allowed. He had to be told every morning why his children and grandchildren didn’t come, the grim news delivered again and again by a nurse clad in a space suit made of personal protective equipment. He died of a broken heart, his adult children relieved when he was transferred to hospice because they could hold his hand while he took his last morphine-eased breaths. We lost a piece of our humanity this year, his daughter told me. We are going to have to contend with this for the rest of our lives. I know people who swear they found God this year, too, alone in the miles of woods in their backyards; on untouched beaches with glistening sands; sweating away on their newly purchased Peloton bikes; on the tops of New Hampshire’s white mountains while skiing with their school-aged children; relieved to be left with an empty calendar devoid of social obligations, a home office that required only business on top, pajamas on bottom. I know how they feel. Finally, we knew something about sabbath. We didn’t need the four walls of the church; we had access to the grandeur of God outside. Trying to find God on my computer screen was a fruitless endeavor that left me staring into the abyss of my own face, but I could see God all around me in the canopy of trees; the vastness of the ocean; the children of my womb that I am biologically programmed to see the blessedness in. It’s easy to encounter God when you’ve kept your closest contacts close, and your spaces wide open and vast. But I want to find God where God is harder to find. Jesus took only his three best friends, Peter, James and John, to the top of a mountain to show them what God looked like. This is my Son, the Beloved, a voice boomed from the clouds, the whole mountain bathed in light along with Jesus, transfigured. Divinity had never been more obvious. They would build their home there, the friends decided, where God was easy to see. But, Jesus made them change their plans and follow him down the mountain: to the throngs of people below, begging him to heal them. Jesus ran to the sick. Lord, give me the courage to do the same.
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2/14/2021 0 Comments Listen to himby Rev. Robin Bartlett
I bet you thought today was just an ordinary Valentine’s Day, but in the Christian Church, today is Transfiguration Sunday. Happy Transfiguration Sunday, all you lovebirds! Most Christians probably don’t even realize that this is a “thing”…that this Transfiguration story gets told every year on the Sunday before Lent in Christian churches across America. No one at Walmart even wishes you a “Happy Transfiguration Sunday.” I call it the War on Transfiguration. The Transfiguration takes place on a mountain, as so many of the most miraculous, God-soaked events in the Bible do. Patti Griffin wrote the song Kate just sang. She wrote "Up to the Mountain" for Dr. Martin Luther King, based on the prescient "Mountaintop speech” he gave right before he died, recalling the words of the prophet Moses. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” King told an overflowing crowd in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3rd, 1968, where the city’s sanitation workers were striking. “But it really doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” Make no mistake about this: Dr. King was not the vaunted hero he is now. Listening to him meant asking for trouble. Listening to Dr. King meant crossing boundaries. Following him was dangerous. He was, in fact, one of the most hated men in America the year that he died, with a 75% disapproval rating in polls. Less than 24 hours after giving the mountaintop speech, Dr. King was assassinated. When I’m tired and despairing about the world as it is, I play this song. I imagine singing it to Dr. King. I imagine Dr. King singing it to Moses. I imagine Jesus singing it to God: the Father he called “Daddy.” “Sometimes I just lay down, no more can I do. But then I go on again, because you asked me to.” Here’s what we know from the biblical prophets, from Dr. King, from Jesus: We will get to the Promised Land. It may not be in our lifetimes. But we keep going on again, because God asks us to. We hear his sweet voice, come and then go, telling us softly God loves us so. There’s a reason God is often speaking to people on the tops of mountains. Sometimes like the disciples, we need to be up high to see. We need a revelatory experience to appreciate who God is. We need to see a vision of the Realm of God; the Kingdom of Heaven; the promised land. We need to know both who to listen to and what God’s voice sounds like. We need to be reminded that though it may be dangerous to follow Love’s voice, it is the only way. In our scripture from Mark, Jesus wanted his friends to get a glimpse of the promised land. So he asked three of his friends, Peter, James and John to follow him up to the top of a mountain to pray. These three disciples have been following Jesus around for quite awhile, and he’s given them lots of detailed instructions about what they are supposed to do to manifest God’s love in the world. Right before their mountaintop moment, in fact, Jesus told them that anyone who wants to save their lives will deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. Perhaps he took them up there because he really needed God’s help to drive that message home. As he was praying, a grand supernatural event occurs, and Jesus’ appearance changes. He is bathed in a warm, white light, and he is transfigured—before them. Suddenly, Elijah and Moses appear in the clouds. Peter, James and John had been about to fall asleep, but luckily they stayed awake for this moment. They were terrified and amazed. God’s voice booms out “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” “Listen to him?” They think. “Sounds easy enough.” “It is good to be here,” they say to Jesus. “We like hanging out with you like this, chillin’ out with Moses and Elijah and God.” They say, “let us make three places for each of you to live, and we’ll just hang out here on this mountain forever, listening to you.” I’m sure it was good to be there—far above the hot mess down below. Up there, Peter, James and John could just worship their Lord. They could listen to his stories, sing some Christian rock, put up their Jesus hands and sway: “my God is an awesome God”….feeling blissful and above it all FOREVER. As long as they didn’t have to go back down the mountain where it was people-y. As long as they didn’t have to get their hands dirty, or talk to folks they disagreed with, or touch people that grossed them out, or otherwise risk their lives or change their firmly-held beliefs, or lose their 401Ks. Unfortunately for them, Jesus made them leave. It turns out that “listening to him” didn’t mean gathering up his words like golden nuggets and using them later out of context as a weapon against other people. Listening to him didn’t mean worshipping him on a mountaintop and shutting out the rest of the world. Listening to him meant following him down the mountain the next day. Listening to him meant listening to the fathers who are begging, “heal my son.” Listening to Jesus meant casting out the demons that threaten to swallow up a faithless and perverse generation. Make no mistake about this: Jesus was not the vaunted hero he is now. Listening to Jesus meant asking for trouble. Listening to Jesus meant following him. Following Jesus was dangerous. He was one of the most hated men in Jerusalem just a few weeks after his transfiguration with a near 100% disapproval rating, and he was assassinated. Being a Christian right now in the United States of America is easy. But listening to Jesus and following?…that’s harder than ever. That’s more dangerous than ever. It’s much easier to listen to all the wrong voices instead. I watched the entire impeachment trial this week, and at this point I owe Jesus an apology. I haven’t watched that much TV news in twenty years. I watched everyone from Cuomo to Maddow to Hannity to Candace Owens, and was reminded why I don’t watch TV news. There is an episode of the Simpsons in which Homer goes to anger management because he’s a Rage-o-holic. “I’m Homer Simpson, he says. And I’m addicted to Rage-a-hol.” We are a culture addicted to outrage-a-hol. Moral outrage has become our modus operandi. Despite what you may believe, liberals and conservatives: outrage addiction doesn’t know a political party, an ideology, or a religion. It is equal opportunity. For every liberal snowflake member of the PC police, I can show you a person who is outraged about the generic holiday greeting they received at Walmart. News media outlets capitalize on our outrage by using click bait catered to our particular tribal instincts and triggers. They do this to titillate us into buying what they are selling, and we fall for it, every time. Political or moral outrage effects our brains like a drug. We can’t get enough of it. The perpetuation and spread of outrage has overridden things like fact-checking, truth, debate, humor and reasonable conversation with people who disagree with us. And we have seen it becomes violent and even deadly far too often. That’s what happens when we stop listening to Jesus. Of the many disgusting images and audio clips I listened to from the insurrection, what really stuck with me were these voices: 1)the desperate and unheeded cries for help from the Capitol police officers calling dispatch, and 2) the people who said, over and over again, “I came here and did this because my president asked me to.” You don’t get to hold a flag with a cross on it if the voice you are following leads you to beat a police officer with it. That’s what happens when we stop listening to Jesus. His voice calls not for violence, but for healing. Not for division, but for unity. Not for chaos, but for justice. Not for lies, but for truth. His voice is in the unheeded cries for help; not in the voice of one man obsessed with his own power. If the voices we listen to are only interested in triggering our moral outrage, they are not God’s. If the voices we listen to are advocating for violence, they are not the voice of God. If the voices we listen to are not interested in healing, or casting our demons, they are not God’s. If the voices we listen to are not leading us along the Way of Love, they are not God’s. If the voices we listen to are not interested in our well-being, our flourishing, the earth’s healing, or peace, they are not God’s. If the voices we listen to are not calling us, our neighbors and everyone we can’t stand “Beloved,” they are not God’s voice. We have not been listening to Jesus. Sometimes we need to be up high to see the promise land. Sometimes we need to hear what God’s voice sounds like again. Sometimes we need a mountaintop moment to remember who we are: beloved children of the same God. Don Wilson, who we laid to rest yesterday, had us sing one of his favorite hymns, the Summons: (Kate sings) Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don't know and never be the same? Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you and you in me? Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name? Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same? Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare? Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me? Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name? Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same? Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen, and admit to what I mean in you and you in me? Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me? Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name. Let me turn and follow you and never be the same. In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show. Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me. We talk a lot in this church about what it means to create the kingdom of heaven on earth. Well, heaven is just like that. Heaven is listening for the voice of Jesus summoning us to fearlessly turn and follow, to love and grow, to leave ourselves behind, to care for cruel and kind, to set the prisoners free, to reshape the world around us, and never be the same again. Heaven is seeing the humanity in others, even if they don’t see yours’. Heaven is looking around and seeing not scarcity, but abundance. Heaven is looking in our neighbor’s bowl only to make sure they have enough, and fighting like hell for them if they don’t. Heaven replaces our addiction to outrage with an insatiable desire to love wastefully and extravagantly, the way God loves us. It is never too late to listen to Jesus. It is never too late to follow him on the Way of Revolutionary Love. Amen. 1/24/2021 0 Comments god changed his mind READING FROM THE HEBREW BIBLE (Jonah 3:1-5, 10)
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. SERMON “God Changed His Mind” Since the insurrection on the Capitol, I have been trying to make sense of Q-anon and its currently broken-hearted adherents. I admit that I dismissed it at first months ago, finding it confounding that so many people would believe in a conspiracy theory that involved aliens and global cabals of cannibalistic celebrities and politicians who drink the blood of children; who believe that JFK Jr. is still alive, who decode the numerology in every image and message that crosses their social media feeds. But nothing human is foreign to me. A stranger is a piece of me I do not yet know. So, I have been listening to podcasts and reading commentaries and listening to people I know who believe all or part of Q-anon. I suggest you do, too. Q-anon provides so many what my religion provides me: something transcendent to believe in, meaning, and belonging. It is powerful and dangerous, like all religions have the potential to be. This is especially true for those who got carried away with it. Check in on your friends and family who are suffering now because the Q prophesies didn’t come true. Many are enduring a crisis of meaning. They have lost jobs and businesses and friends and family. These folks need love, not shame. Empathy, not shame. Accountability for those who committed violent crime in Q’s name, yes…but not shame. We worship a savior who FORGIVES and reconciles us to God. Shame is the tool of the oppressor, and it always has been. It is not a tool of social justice. And though it has long been used as such, shame is not a tool of real Christianity. The Truth, capital T, is the only real tool of Christianity, and that is found in the Gospel; the GOOD news. God’s wasteful, extravagant love is showered over all of humankind. The Truth is not found on Fox News or CNN. It is found in the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. One thing we have been constantly reminded of during these past few years is that most people don’t really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they already believe is the truth. People say that America is a Christian nation. That’s not what I see at all. Left and Right are the actual religions people follow and what passes for the “news” one consumes are the new sacred texts. In fact, there was a study that came out recently from Pew research that suggested people pick their churches based on their political ideology, and not their religious beliefs. Politics is an increasingly orthodox religion. We conform to the narcissistic governing whims of one man, or we are deemed a “Republican in Name Only.” We adhere without divergence to the current established doctrine of the Left or we are “canceled.” The reason I was baptized a Christian as an adult is that I no longer want to be part of a religion one can be so easily cast out of. I believe in grace, not purity. Love, not doctrine. Truth, not lies. When we stray from the Truth, we are ALWAYS invited back into the family of God. Not by means of cheap grace, but through an accountability process that includes repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation to Love. And that grace is available to all, whether we like it or not. Judging other people worthy or unworthy of it is far above our paygrade. Jonah learned that the hard way. It is hard to fully understand the text we read from the Hebrew Bible’s book of Jonah today unless we understand the story of prophet Jonah himself. First we need to know that Nineveh will become the capital of the Assyrian Empire 17 years after this text was written. The book of Jonah does not describe exactly what Nineveh has done to be perceived as wicked before God. We are supposed to already know that Nineveh is somehow, as Cory Driver says, “representing the wicked, bloodthirsty power of empire that would bring a particularly savage and cruel end to the kingdom of Israel…. “ Which is, in fact, Jonah’s own kingdom. Jonah is the reluctant Israelite who was called to warn his enemies in Nineveh of God’s impending wrath, that would destroy the whole city. Cory Driver says “In other words, Jonah is an Israelite nationalist prophet whose career is based upon prophesying national greatness for an unrepentant country.” Jonah has a God-given duty to warn a city full of the sinful, bloodthirsty people he hates that they would be “destroyed in forty more days.” He takes no glee in this admonishment. Not because Jonah takes pity on the city of Nineveh, but because he suspects God will. He already knows that God is a “God of grace, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, ready to relent from punishing.” He knew that if Nineveh humbly repented, God might forgive them and reconcile them to Love. Jonah doesn’t want God to forgive the Ninevites. He wants them destroyed. Jonah deemed his enemies unworthy of God’s grace so he could justify violence and destruction against them. Psychologist David Smith, in his book “Less than Human,” says that “dehumanization starts with creating an “enemy image.” Our default mode as social creatures is caretaking of other human beings. In order to justify hate and harm, we have to create a less than human category for our enemies. As we begin to see each other as subhuman, it becomes harder and harder to listen to those we perceive to be outside of our species. Dehumanization starts with words and images. When we hear people being compared to animals, or infestations, or savages, or illegals from s-hole countries, or pigs, or Cheetos, it is easy to feel no empathy for them at all. Brene Brown says, “There is a line. It is etched from dignity. That line is dehumanization. It comes from the left and the right. When we engage in that rhetoric, we degrade our own humanity.” If we cast people out of humanity altogether, we are able to justify all manner of violence against them. In fact, violence is seen as righteous. Once we see people as subhuman enemies, or morally dangerous, the conflict between two sides has been framed as a fight between good and evil. The goals become zero sum…we must secure our own victory or claim defeat. The only way to win the good vs. evil game is to punish and destroy the opponent. We can no longer communicate, or practice empathy with one another. Jonah was unable to empathize or communicate with those he saw as evil. He flees his duty to warn the Ninevites of their impending doom, trying to escape God on a boat to Tarshish. He rushes down to Joppa and takes passage in a ship that will carry him in the opposite direction from the city. But it turns out there’s no running from God. There is a gigantic storm so big the people on the boat know that it can only be the result of God’s divine rage. Jonah confesses to his shipmates that it is his presence on the ship that is causing the storm. At his request, he is thrown overboard. The storm subsides, and Jonah ends up in the belly of a big fish. He is in that smelly dark place for three days and nights before he is vomited out on dry land. After he emerges from the belly of the fish is where we meet up with him in today’s reading. God comes to him a second time and tells him again to “arise and go to Nineveh.” Properly terrified by God’s punishment, Jonah finally prophesies against the city. He warns the people of Nineveh that they will perish in forty days. Just as Jonah fears, this warning causes the King, all the inhabitants and even the animals to wear sackcloth and ashes—a unified sign of repentance and acknowledgment of their sin. They turned from their evil ways, the text says. The people of Nineveh are held accountable for their destruction, and they respond by repenting of their violence; their nationalism; their oppression; their supremacy—by demonstrating a change of heart before God. So God changes his mind, the text says…and forgives. The rest of the story comes later on in the book. Jonah does not forgive. In fact, he becomes angry, and sits outside the city waiting for its destruction. A plant springs up overnight to shield him from the heat, but a worm destroys it, increasing Jonah’s bitterness. Jonah pleads with God to just kill him and get it over with. “I am angry enough to die,” he says. God speaks: “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left?” God forgives, “because we humans know not what we do.” And God saves the city of Nineveh from the calamity God intended to inflict upon it. We are never beyond repair; or outside of God’s care and mercy. We may have dehumanized one another, but to God our name is still “Beloved.” It is never too late to turn back. Jonah, dismayed, is left wrestling with the question, “why do good things happen to bad people?” Perhaps Jonah needed a heart change just as much as the oppressive regime of the Assyrian empire. Our scripture ends not with fake news, but with Good News. God’s grace and steadfast love are available to all if we are ready to repent of the sinful ways of division and destruction. We are all children of the same loving God. Democrats and Republicans, MAGAs and antifas, black, brown, white, rich, poor, gay, bi, straight, male, female and gender non-conforming, documented, undocumented, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Christian, atheist, North American, South American, Asian, Australian, European, African, Middle Eastern, sinner, saint. If you are angry enough at your enemies to die, you may have been listening to false prophets instead of the still, small voice of God. Judging others worthy or unworthy of grace is far above our paygrade. Even a warring nation will be sent messages from God as a warning shot before it is destroyed. Even societies built on violence are able to change God’s mind and heart if they respond with repentance when they are held accountable for their sins. Our work is re-humanization…before it is too late for us, too. In the words of 22 year old Youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman: And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true, that even as we grieved, we grew, that even as we hurt, we hoped, that even as we tired, we tried, that we'll forever be tied together, victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we're to live up to our own time, then victory won't lie in the blade. But in all the bridges we've made, that is the promise to glade, the hill we climb. If only we dare. It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it's the past we step into and how we repair it….. ….. But one thing is certain, If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy, and change our children's birthright. 11/2/2020 0 Comments BlessedA favorite hashtag on social media is #blessed. We use it mostly when we are bragging about our possessions, our expensive vacations and our happy families all spiffed up for the social media persona we carefully filter.
So I love that on All Saints Sunday, we always read the Beatitudes to remind us what “blessed” means to Jesus. It’s a far from instagram-able picture. “The Beatitudes”—the scripture we read this morning from the Gospel according to Luke-- means in Latin a condition or statement of blessedness. We read Jesus’ Beatitudes on all Saints day every year because Saints are just imperfect people who did their human best to live in the spirit of this blessedness. Sometimes we read the Beatitudes from Matthew, famously called the “Sermon on the Mount.” Today we read the “Beatitudes” from Luke, which is referred to as the “Sermon on the Plain.” This is a sermon that after a night of praying, Jesus delivers to his disciples at a “level place.” The Sermon on the Mount” and the “Sermon on the Plain,” though they both contain a similar list of those who are blessed by God, have some differences. One difference is that the sermon on the plain has a whole lot of woe. Jesus says woe to those who are rich, full of food, powerful and laughing. I picture the villain in Austin Powers….Dr. Evil with his cohort of villainous friends after he says, “Gentleman, in exactly five days we will be one hundred billion dollars richer.” And then they laugh maniacally, holding their bellies. But by Jesus’ standards, that “woe” is reserved for pretty much all of us in the richest nation in the world. WOE unto all of US, he is saying. In the Greek, “woe” doesn’t mean we are all Dr. Evils, or that we are all cursed or damned. It means, “yikes,” or “watch out.” Don’t get too comfortable. If you are comfortable, start paying attention to those for whom your heart breaks. Jesus gets pretty specific about who his heart breaks for, and calls them blessed. They are the people who receive his attention during his ministry: the poor, the hungry, the crying, the ostracized, the hated and outcast. In the sermon on the plain, he highlights the clash between the woeful world as it is, and the world as God dreams it to be. The woeful world says, the more stuff you have, the happier you’ll be. Jesus says: “Blessed are you whose wallet is empty.” The woeful world says, “happiness means nothing bad ever happens to you.” Jesus says “Blessed are you who know what it’s like to mourn the death of a husband, a wife, a relationship, a child, because you will love other people with a profound and real love exactly when they need it. You will laugh again.” The woeful world says, “You have to be strong and powerful and well thought of.” Jesus says “Blessed are you who are afraid and unsure and are willing to admit it--for your humility is your strength.” The woeful world says, “Seek revenge. Take to twitter in retaliation. Return anger for anger. Hurt those who hurt you,” And Jesus says, “Blessed are you who do unto all others as you would have done unto you.” The woeful world says, “Win every fight. Show no mercy. Arm yourself with an arsenal of weapons so that you may protect you and yours,” And Jesus says “Blessed are you who love your enemies, who show mercy, who turn the other cheek.” The woeful world says, “Be nice to everyone so that no one will think badly of you. Don’t talk about religion or politics in polite company and keep your voice down,” And Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you because you rise up in Love’s name.” Jesus makes God’s blessing particular and real. All lives matter to God, but in the beatitudes, Jesus declares that the oppressed, hated, poor, persecuted and pushed down matter more. He calls them blessed. I ran into a guy on the common last Sunday who said, “aren’t you the church that feeds all the people? I don’t go to church anymore, but I wanted to say thanks for being real Christians.” Becoming saints means concentrating on those who are hungry. Speaking of the saints, Pastor Zach and his family moved to Sterling last Saturday! It’s so great! His house is beautiful out there on Kendall Hill. We visited this week. They are all settled in and cozy just in time for the first snow. The weekend that they first visited Sterling, Zach’s eight year old, Tiana, saw a sign on the side of the road on the way to Meadowbrook Orchards that said “Black Lives Matter.” She turned to her dad all lit up and said, “Dad! Black lives matter here!” It made her feel immediately welcomed; like she could live here.“Eight year olds are so literal,” Zach said. So is Jesus, who blesses Tiana. That sign is on the way from church to her house now, so she gets to see it every day as a reminder. I am so grateful. I don’t think that the person who plunked that sign in their yard has any idea how much of an impact it would have on an actual human being, but whoever you are, thank you. The first night Zach was here, he texted and asked us where to get pizza delivery, and I gave him the name of a local place. The pizza delivery car that pulled into his driveway had a bumper sticker said, “Make liberals cry again,” and we were texting back and forth laughing about it. “Welcome to Sterling,” I said. “It’s a mixed bag.” The next day, a political rally next to our worship service at the library made sure that our confirmands had to pause occasionally in their beautiful faith statements over the honking of passing cars and screaming during our church service on the common. And then while we prayed, a rolling rally paraded through, flags waving, trucks honking, for several minutes. For a long time, the participants made sure that only God and the people watching us on-line could hear our prayers. Many in our congregation were angry and attempted to shush them. One person waved joyfully. Some were shocked and uncomfortable, probably wondering what I would do. Many wept openly, including my children and Zach’s children, and the adults trying to comfort them. Suddenly, the bumper sticker from the night before that Zach and I were joking about seemed less amusing. The division in this country stood in stark contrast to our worship of God who UNITES us in one shared origin, and one shared destiny—LOVE. I hope our confirmands heard the message of the song we sang to try and wait out and drown out the blasting of the horns: “there’s a river flowing in my soul, and it’s telling me that I’m somebody. There’s a river flowing in my soul.” I hope the children and youth heard the message from their church: that they are somebody to God. Beloved, I am aware that this is an anxious week for all of us. Our Christian faith is being tested by the divisive and dehumanizing political climate in America, and the election is Tuesday. I see signs all around town that say “Vote for God and country.” There’s one right across from my house. I’m not sure what they mean, so I have been praying about it. I have talked to more than one person who wrote in Jesus Christ in the 2016 presidential election. Maybe that’s what they mean. I wish I could vote for Jesus, too. People often ask pastors what it means to be a Christian in a voting booth. Many pastors risk their 501c3 status to tell you which politicians to vote for. I don’t have a perfect answer for you for how to vote for God and country…I only have an answer for me. In grade school, I was taught that my country was ONE NATION, UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL. To me, voting for country means voting for liberty and justice for all. We are only human and incapable of being perfect citizens. But if we hate half the country, we are not patriots. The God I worship calls the poor BLESSED. The God I worship says the hungry will be filled, and the full will go hungry. The God I worship doesn’t just say “all lives matter,” but gets specific about WHO’s LIVES matter. To me, voting for God means voting for those who lift up the poor, who welcome the stranger, who set the captives free. We are only human, and incapable of being perfect Christians. I also know this: if we hate half of the country, we are incapable of loving God. Here’s what I also know: After we vote, no matter who we voted for or why, we will come back together around this table of blessing, where both the rich and the poor are fed and called beloved. We worship a God who tells us to LOVE our enemies, to BLESS those who curse us. Who demands that we give ourselves away. We worship a God who says that we shall DO UNTO OTHERS as we would have done unto ourselves. It doesn’t matter who we voted for…we will pray for each other, and build a world worthy of our children’s promise. Regardless of what happens this week, remember first and foremost that you are children of the living God. An election doesn’t change that. You are known and named beloved. Our number one job as humans on this earth is to love God by loving our neighbor as ourself. Remember that in the voting booth, and more importantly, remember that in the weeks and months and years that follow. Get to the task of re-humanizing one another. It is our calling. Small Kindnesses by Danusha Lameris I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.” Amen. 1/12/2020 0 Comments Dimly litI had a tough Sunday last week. I don’t really know why.
I was freaking out about all the small things that happen before the service starts…the things I usually take in stride. Christmas vacation had just ended, and I hadn’t been back in the office yet. In what must have been some sort of conspiracy by Apple to ruin my life: my ipad had been left at the church and the battery had died, my phone ran out of juice, and then my computer’s battery died, too. I was printing things out 5 minutes before the church service, and I was fiddling with the sound system to get it to work, and the soloist called out sick. We couldn’t manage to figure out when to stop singing “Bring me a higher love” by Steve Winwood. Would we just fade to nothing the way all studio albums ended songs in the eighties? Or will we just keep repeating the chorus with gusto until 11:00? I said to Megan right before we came out, “everything just seems completely unmanageable to me this morning.” I was near tears. I forgot to pray. They say that the preacher preaches what she most needs to hear. I was preaching that day that small things have all the power: like God’s word made flesh in a baby…God’s word made flesh in all of us. But I didn’t believe my own words. (Lord help my unbelief.) Sometimes it just hits me that my job is ludicrous: to climb up here in this big old pulpit and pretend like I know what God would say about war and climate change and the sinful division in this country, and any number of other things like hell or heaven. I am only human. A very small thing. A tiny speck in God’s infinity. All it takes is my apple products failing and a lack of coffee, and I am lost at sea. Psychologists say that the United States is experiencing “collective trauma” as a nation, meaning that wars, rumors of wars, fear of climate devastation, fake news, unprecedented division and unpredictable leadership is taking its toll on our collective psyche. If you’ve experienced trauma, you know that it is easy to become obsessed with the struggle for your own survival. It is common to “circle the wagons,” to concentrate only on me, my family, and my people at the cost of the other. We are, after all, built for survival. We are built to keep ourselves safe at all costs. We are built for fight or flight. This wagon circling can happen on a small scale, like in a family after a divorce. It can also happen on a large scale, like the United States going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Hurt people hurt people. I want us to think about collective trauma through the eyes of the prophet Isaiah this morning. I want to imagine we are Jews in the time of Babylonian exile and captivity following the siege of Jerusalem in the ancient kingdom of Judah in 605 BCE. Imagine for a moment that you live in a city that is besieged by a three month battle so large it destroys everything you love and hold dear. All of the cultural markers—like the statue of Paul Revere and the historic gold dome of the Massachusetts state house, and the make way for ducklings statues in the public garden—are in ruins. All of the world class universities like Harvard and MIT, the art museums, the theaters, the schools, and the First Church in Sterling are burned to the ground. Imagine that the Mayor or the Selectmen, and the Governor, and your religious leader are killed in the battle, and not only is your city destroyed, you don’t know who to follow anymore. There is no one left to preach a word of hope, or to bring people together to rebuild. Your business is destroyed, and everything you worked for. Most of your friends and your family are dead, and you watched the bomb blasts that killed them. Imagine in the midst of this chaos, you have to gather up your lone surviving family members and children and what belongings you can quickly grab, and move to a place where the customs and language are foreign, your religion isn’t practiced, you are separated from your family, and you are forced to live in captivity. I imagine that it might feel as though God himself has abandoned you. In addition to grieving all that you have lost, I imagine you might have many of the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder:
You are hopeless, alone, terrified. You can’t concentrate or connect with others meaningfully except to lash out in anger. The rest of the time, you are numb. This state you are in delights the rulers of nations. They know that a traumatized populace is one that doesn’t realize how much power they have. They know that a traumatized populace is bound to turn against one another instead of the people who subjugate them. They know that a traumatized populace is one that won’t rise up. This is when God enters the story to show us our worth. In our scripture, the prophet Isaiah introduces us to the suffering servant. He is not depicted as a great warrior, or a strong and powerful conquerer. He is compared instead to a bruised reed; a dimly burning wick. But the servant will not be broken or quenched, for he is to establish justice on the earth. He is to be a light for all nations. Not in spite of his suffering, but because of it. He is connected to all the suffering in the world because he suffers. Instead of circling the wagons, he knows he is claimed by God, so the whole world and everything in it is his. Despite his banged up heart, his traumatized brain, and his imprisoned body, God has called him to be light for the world. He is capable of opening the eyes of those who do not see. He is to bring the prisoners out from the dungeon, because he is still a prisoner himself. Leonard Cohen sings “Ring out the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in.” That’s how God works. God takes vulnerable, traumatized people and uses them as light for the world. We are bruised, not broken. Dimly lit, not quenched. We are extravagantly loved by a God whose love for us knows no bounds, and so we can love others. Ross Gay says that “in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper (in traffic). This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.” Don’t let the rulers of nations tell you that your default mode is war, or division, or separation, or alienation. That is the lie of those who try to traumatize you into submission. Get thee behind me, Satan! You may feel small, scared, numb, angry and powerless, but you are God’s beloved. Your default mode is caretaking. Loved people love people. Last Sunday was hard because I was was a bruised reed; a dimly burning wick. But when it was time to come back down and serve Jesus’ holy remembrance meal, I remembered once again what we are all here for, which has nothing at all to do with me. I looked you each in the eye, and I said your names, “This is the bread of life, broken for you.” I placed bread into your outstretched hands. And Joel sang: At this table, everyone is welcome At this table, everyone is seen At this table, everybody matters No one falls between At this table, you can say whatever At this table, you can speak your mind At this table, everything's forgiven There's enough for everyone So come as you are Remember that the door is always open Yes, come as you are The perfect gift that you can bring is your heart So, come, come as you are At this table, there will be no judgement At this table, mercy has a seat At this table, we're all sons and daughters There's no place I'd rather be There’s no place I’d rather be than with God’s banged up but unbeatable, bruised but unbreakable, dimly lit, but unquenchable people. You are God’s son, God’s daughter, the Beloved. In YOU God is well pleased. And so you will be light for all nations. The perfect gift that you can bring is your heart. Amen. 8/25/2019 0 Comments Repairers of the BreachA sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett
delivered on August 25, 2019 before a three month sabbatical at the First Church in Sterling, MA God is abounding in steadfast love. Bless God’s holy name. I know many of you are mourning Jim Harper’s passing today. Still at the grave we make our song, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. This poem is called ”The Lanyard," by Billy Collins. The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room bouncing from typewriter to piano from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, I found myself in the 'L' section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one more suddenly into the past. A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. A gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. Or wear one, if that's what you did with them. But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. 'Here are thousands of meals' she said, 'and here is clothing and a good education.' 'And here is your lanyard,' I replied, 'which I made with a little help from a counselor.' 'Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.' she whispered. 'And here,' I said, 'is the lanyard I made at camp.' 'And here,' I wish to say to her now, 'is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.’ This poem reminds me of our covenant with God Isaiah alludes to. The covenant goes like this: God gives us life. God promises us water in parched places. God promises nourishment and freedom; a breathing body and a beating heart. God promises us steadfast love, most of all. We cannot return the gift. In fact, we are only human and it feels that we have hardly anything to offer in return. Our gift is just to do our human best to love God and neighbor. These small acts seem to pale in comparison to what we’ve been given. Plus, we mostly won’t succeed since we are only human and doing the best that we can. And yet God somehow makes us sure that it’s all enough to make us even. Covenant is a word many thousands of years old, which lies deep at the center of the spiritual and political heritage of the western world. It means, “An agreement freely made between different but equal partners and God to respect each other and work together for the common good.” God says through the prophet Isaiah that we must keep our promises to each other so that we can become light in a dark place. We are to stop fighting, speaking evil, pointing fingers, and instead offer our food to the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted. God says if we can do that, we will become repairers of the breach. Breach has a very interesting usage in the English language when it comes to our relationship with God. Here is a list of synonyms for “breach” taken from the dictionary: break, gap, opening, rupture, split, alienation, schism. The first definition of breach is particularly important when it comes to the church: “the breaking of, or failure to observe a law or contract or standard.” The second definition of breach is: “a breaking of relations; an estrangement; a quarrel; a broken state.” Our work is the work of repair; to help heal all that has been broken. What is broken right now? Shout it out. Where do you see a breach? What needs repair? These are hot mess times. Our country is as divided as it has ever been while the world literally burns. We have separated ourselves from each other and from God. We have demonized and dehumanized those who are not like us. And so we know we must become repairers of the breach. We have no other choice. We must become practitioners of revolutionary love. We know that if this revolution is going to come, we need to arm ourselves. Not with weapons, but with a mix of humility, bravery and kindness that is foreign to the current political climate. Here at First Church, we know we do not belong to a political party, or a government. We belong to each other, and we belong to God. This place of memory and hope is a training ground for covenant mending and tending. You have healed, again and again, all that is broken in me. And I know that is true of so many others. You are repairers of the breach. We do this especially well in times of joy and sorrow. Jim Harper went home to live with God on Monday, and his funeral service is today at one. The Harper family hopes to have their church family in attendance. This church’s outpouring of love and affection for Jim was palpable in the hundreds of prayers, messages, and cards you sent. Jim was nothing short of a hero who saved thousands of lives over the course of his 72 years. He was our tender toddler tender here at First Church for close to twenty years. He took that job more seriously than his professor and veterinarian jobs. And just as seriously as his paramedic job. He was a repairer of the breach. School starts on Tuesday, and we blessed the backpacks of our students and teachers so that they might learn to build a world worthy of our children’s promise. They are repairers of the breach. And yesterday, I married off Don and Jan Patten’s daughter Sarah Patten to her wonderful new husband Nick Wilder in Harrisville, NH. What they promised to one another in the vows they wrote themselves could be our church’s covenant (except the kissing part). They promised one another: to stand by your side in moments of joy and sorrow -- through the highest peaks and the lowest pits. to encourage you to pursue your dreams -- celebrating you in your successes and supporting you in your challenges. to remain hopeful for a better world, and to remind you of your own hope when you forget. to stay silly, never take ourselves too seriously, and always dance around the house with you. to strive for a life full of joy, laughter, and adventure - and to permeate that spirit to those around us. to remember that you are human and to try to practice patience, empathy, and forgiveness when your bad day gets the best of you. to keep our home a place of respite, tell you that I love you, and always give you a kiss goodnight. to give you my attention, love, hugs, homemade meals, and strong coffee without seeking a return. to honor and create traditions with family and always make time for friends. “I promise all of these things,” they said, “and I promise to come back to these vows when I need reminding, I make these promises to you today, and for the rest of my days.” They are repairers of the breach. When I was at the Patten wedding, I met someone who lives in Sterling and is on the search committee for another congregational church in the area where he has been a long time member. He told us that my name comes up in every meeting they have about what they are looking for in a new minister. They want someone, he said, who can help them to revitalize and grow; and reach out into the community, like in our Eat Pray Learn and Community lunch programs. He was especially interested in pub theology. I said, “I suspect you don’t need a minister like me, but to become a church like mine.” I asked him, “How good are you at having hard conversations? About theology and ideology; about stuff that matters in this time and in this place?” He said, “oh, that’s the one thing people don’t want according to our surveys. No politics from the pulpit.” “Yeah, that’s hard.” The motto at my church is “we can do hard things.” I said, “We love one another BECAUSE of our ideological and theological differences, not in spite of them. Listening to understand one another has brought us closer to God, whom we know to be Love.” Our congregation has been gathering since it’s federation in 1947 in the sincere belief that we need not think alike to love alike. We can do hard things like change. We can do hard things like engage each other in taboo topics such as comprehensive sex education, money and politics. We have made extravagant welcome a priority and we live it out in the world. We became open and affirming to the LGBTQ community in 2017, which was a statement not so much about who WE Are, but about who we know God to be: Love. We have grown as a result of our moral courage, not our programs,” I said. And sure, we have grown in numbers over the past five years, welcoming 160 new members, many of whom are families with young children. Our young adult Facebook group has 80 people in it. Our Facebook page has 1500 followers. Our giving has grown exponentially. We have 500 people on the First Church “members and friends” list. But mostly, I said, we have grown in depth because we are not afraid. We are repairers of the breach. My seminary professor, Dr. Wesley Wildman, once said to us that "If your concept of love serves only to reinforce your own political ideologies in your church then you might as well go bowling." This is the Good News of the Gospel, the SCANDAL of the Gospel: is that we must continually choose to expand our concept of Love until it is as wasteful, extravagant, and as God-sized as we can make it. We must flex our heart muscles not only to include the least, the last, the lost, but also to include whomever we are currently referring to as “snowflake” or “deplorable” instead of God’s name for all of us, which is “Beloved.” We must love one another without stopping to inquire whether or not we are worthy. That’s why this Church is rising up as it has over the course of its 275 year history to offer our meager gifts in return to an extravagantly loving God, and succeeding. We know the Church is made for such a time as this: rising up to build bridges, not walls; to give us a new heart for each other and the world; to LEAD a MOVEMENT of REVOLUTIONARY LOVE. We are repairers of the breach. I don’t know if he was convinced. He looked pretty skeptical. This is my last sermon before my three month sabbatical, a meager offering in response to your extravagant love and care of you have given to your tired and increasingly more middle aged pastor over the past five years. You have set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light You have taught me to walk and swim in this ministry and I in turn presented you with a lanyard. 'Here are thousands of meals' you said, 'and here is clothing and a good education.' 'And here is your lanyard,' I replied, 'which I made with a little help from a counselor.' I just want you to give you this one last lanyard before I leave: I love you. I bless you, and I will miss you. I will rejoice when I return to you on December 1st. And I thank you. Thank you for accepting my meager gifts in response to your life giving love for me and for my family. Thank you for toiling in the vineyards with me to create heaven on earth. Thank you for giving me this time away. Thank you for the hope you give me for a broken world made whole again. Amen. A Sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett
delivered on the Sterling Town Common, Sterling, MA August 18, 2019 Tell me, Mary Oliver asks, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Jesus answers: “Do not be afraid. Treasure it. Pay attention. And give it all away.” I know it says in the bulletin that my sermon title is “Tidying Up”, and that’s because I have been wanting to preach on Marie Kondo. the queen of giving things away. She’s the organizing guru and best selling author who has a show called “Tidying Up.” Inspired by her Shinto religious practice, she is the reason why Goodwill has stopped taking your clothes: she has encouraged all of America to ask themselves if each of their possessions “spark joy”, and if not, to gently thank them for their service, and throw them out. It’s not our possessions that “spark joy”, after all. Our treasure lies somewhere else, where no thief can get at it, and no moth can destroy. But things quickly changed since we’ve last met in the life of our church, and I’m going to leave Marie Kondo’s wisdom for another week. I’ve decided to call my sermon, simply, “how to pay attention.” There’s a lot happening in our passage from Luke today. He starts by saying that it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, which we understand to be here on this earth…already here, but not yet here. He goes on to say that we should sell all our possessions and give them away. And then he talks about being dressed for action and having our lamps lit…to be alert because God is coming back like a thief in the night. You might not know what one has to do with the other. Luke kind of jumps from one thing to the next, without real clarity on why they are all smushed together in one paragraph. But this week, it all came together for me: We have been given the gift of creation by a God who delights in giving it to us. Our task in the small amount of time we have on earth is to treasure that gift by giving ourselves away. Life is fleeting and precious and we don’t know when it will end. So pay attention. Do not be afraid. I got a dog yesterday, as Pastor Megan told you. Her name is Holly. She is a rescue, a three year old hound dog, white with brown spots and silky brown ears. She loves humans, belly rubs and lying around all day. In other words, we are soul mates. When I first told Doug Davis last week that I was doing this thing he said, “Wow. Good luck with that.” It was over text, but I read it as sarcasm. He is a pillar of our church, one of the owners of Davis Farmland and the world’s best animal person, and he knows that I am really not. I mean, I like animals, but I don’t have any idea what to do with them since they don’t talk to me. So I’m just like, “oh, a goat. Hi goat” when I’m at Davis Farmland with my kids. Ironically, though I’m not what one would call an “animal person”, it has become my signature move to bring as many animals as possible into the First Church in Sterling whenever there is occasion for it. Though I didn’t have any myself until today, I am a sucker for watching my people love their animals. So I bless all of your pets every October, we have goats at the Christmas pageant. I even made Doug bring a donkey named Fiona into the sanctuary on Palm Sunday against his better judgment. When I asked Doug to bring Peanut the Camel for our Christmas pageant last year, he told me I had gone too far and to stop exploiting my pastoral authority by asking him for ridiculous things. Anyway, I put Doug Davis down as a reference with the rescue, and they gave me a dog. So he must have lied and told them he has no reservations. I sent Megan a sweet sleeping picture of my dog Holly last night over text, and she wrote back, “I think she will teach you whatever you’ve been needing to learn on your sabbatical.” Mary Oliver of blessed memory writes: I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Megan knows that unlike Mary Oliver, I don’t know how to pay attention, to be idle and blessed, or to stroll through the fields. I am notoriously bad at such endeavors. As soon as I arrive at the beginning of something, like a vacation, or a relationship, my first feeling is the deep sadness and fear that it will end. I spend much of my time calculating how many days or hours I have left doing a thing that I love, or being with people I love. So my first thought when I saw our new dog’s beautiful face staring up at me was: “I love you. How long will you live?” After all, our Holly will die at last, and too soon. I am about to spend thousands of dollars on my kids’ first tragedy. And mine. I love her already. I already feel like a dog person. I have no idea what to do with her when I get home, but I cannot wait to bury my face in her head again. Megan’s right, Holly has a lot to teach me about paying attention. Frankly, when I’m not paying attention, I’m paying for THINGS. The treasure you and I keep in bank accounts, locked safes and 401Ks so often reflects kind of a futile and somewhat depressing hoarding of resources for no good reason. We can’t, after all, take it with us, and we know darn well that money has never bought any one of us happiness. Thankfully, God promises us a different kind of treasure. God’s treasure comes in the form of loving what will die at last and too soon. God’s treasure comes in the form of people we love and people we are called to love. God’s treasure comes in the form of grace—unearned gifts like forgiveness and the temporary health of our bodies, and the good, green earth we lie down on. Our only response to these gifts, our scriptures say, is to stay alert, and give everything we have away. Our beloved long time congregant and friend Jim Harper has always known this. We’ve been sitting vigil by his bedside this week, storing up treasures in the stories people tell. Jim spent his life paying attention, and giving himself away. He is a saver of lives: A life-long lover of animals and a veterinarian, Jim saved so many animals’ lives. He also helped them die peacefully, and with dignity. His family marvels in the fact that he put down all of the family’s animal companions himself when it was their time to leave this world, too; a final act of deep and abiding love for them. Jim saved countless human lives as well, and trained other people to save countless more. Jim was a devoted and tireless EMT in Sterling literally in his spare time, and trained perhaps the entire EMT force, refusing to take a paycheck for the thousands of on call hours he worked. He saved our lives. At church, he has worked with our babies and toddlers in our kinderwatch every Sunday morning for close to 20 years. He sits in his favorite rocking chair every Sunday, and simply delights in the creation God has the pleasure of giving to us in the form of our youngest children. He gives his money away lavishly, with no need for thanks: to the church, to causes he supports, to the deacons fund in anonymous envelopes full of cash. He even sponsors several children from those “save the children” commercials in the ‘80s and still sends them all money monthly. Jim gives his love away lavishly: adopting his wife’s first child from her first marriage when he was a toddler, and raised him as his own, in addition to the beautiful child they had together. And then Jim opened his heart and home again to adopt and raised two children out of foster care with that same abundant love, as well. Jim did not hoard his treasures, he gave them away. His whole life, he gave away. I have been with the Harpers for the past few days as our beloved Jim lays dying. Last Sunday, he was here at church with us, giving us the gift of his heart in our conversation on guns. On Tuesday, he had another stroke, his fourth. As the EMTs he trained himself transported them to the hospital, he told them what to do and what they were doing wrong. And then he began to give away his life, and fast. He was in the ICU for three days and yesterday he was transferred to Rose Monahan hospice. Today, we pray that his transition home to live with God is as gentle and large as Jim is. My time with Jim’s wife, the other Robin, has been precious this week. She is a woman of valor who does not want to let him go, but has the strength to just the same. He has given her so much that she knows she can’t live without him. She also knows she has to let him go. This, too, is a gift: this last loving act of living out her marriage vows by respecting his wishes to die with dignity; to tell him that it is OK to go, even though it’s not OK at all. Even as Jim slowly ran out of all his speech, two days ago, he could still say, every time the doctors asked him: “Who is this lovely woman? “That is Robin, my wife, as opposed to Robin, my minister.” Who is that man sitting over there? “That is Dr. Carl M. Harper, my son.” Jim couldn’t smile because his left side no longer worked, but he could still beam with pride. “Over there: that’s where my treasure is. That’s where my heart is also.” Everything dies, and far too soon. Pay attention. Give it all away. Do not be afraid. Beloved, the kingdom God happily gives us does not look like a King’s or a megalomaniacal politician’s or a Wall Street Executive’s, or a Football Star’s version of a kingdom. It doesn’t have golden thrones and limousines and waving throngs of adoring public begging to kiss golden rings. God’s kingdom does not look like several boats and vacation homes and beautiful cars with leather seats and designer clothes and stock options, although that’s the lie we are taught by consumerism. The kingdom it is God’s good pleasure to give us looks just like this. A group of rag-tag, perfectly imperfect, lovable and sometimes hard to love people gathered together from all different walks of life, gathered around a table where the food never runs out. We make purses for ourselves that do not wear out, that thieves cannot steal--when we simply pay attention. When we fall down in the grass. When we give everything we have to Love. When we are asked “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" May we know how to answer. May we be the people God finds alert in the kingdom. May we be the people who know how to be idle and blessed. May we be the people who can beam with pride because our treasure and our hearts are not in what we have kept to ourselves, but the love we’ve shared with others… …so even as we go down to the grave we make our song “alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Do not be afraid, little flock. Life is fleeting and precious. Pay attention, and give it all away. Amen. 8/11/2019 0 Comments He Sees All HumankindA sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett
preached on the Sterling Town Common, Sterling, MA on August 11, 2019 We all know that nothing brings out the vicious political divide in America quite like the words “thoughts and prayers” right now. That phrase has come to be associated with performative sympathy coupled with inaction. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough!” is the rallying cry we all have become accustomed to in the macabre mass shooting script we know by heart. I don’t know about you, but I admit that sometimes I just feel resigned to living in a world in which evil is allowed it's own tools of rage. And so as a small town pastor, sometimes I feel that all I have are thoughts and prayers, and the knowledge that they aren't enough. And I cry “how long, O Lord?” And God asks me the same question. I came home from my four week vacation on the day of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. It was a harsh re-introduction to Facebook, which I hadn’t read in 5 weeks. My feed looked like yours’ that day: heartbreak, thoughts and prayers, anger and fury, calls to “do something,” lots of talking past each other and fighting over the 2nd amendment while the bodies were still warm. And I was so relieved and heartened to be back in church last Sunday, just hours later. Seeing all of your faces helped me to remember that we can do hard things because we have each other. Not just in the virtual space of political posturing, virtue signaling, and bluster, but in real time. And then on Sunday afternoon, a townsperson from Sterling who is not associated with this church wrote a Facebook status on her page and in our First Church Facebook group criticizing me and all of the religious leaders and churches for not doing enough to end racism in the town of Sterling, and being silent about mass shootings and gun violence in the United States. I know a bunch of you saw this before she took it down. On her page she said something like, “the deafening silence coming from our ‘religious gurus’ in the town of Sterling in the wake of El Paso is disgusting. Praying about racism isn’t doing anything to stop it. Tax exempt status must be nice.” And on our page, she said something like, “What are you people DOING to stop white supremacist gun violence besides praying, exactly?” And I got awfully defensive. “As one of the ‘religious gurus in your town’ I want you to know that I was not silent on El Paso today,” I said. “I preached on both racism and gun violence. Here’s video proof.” “Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” she said. “I agree,” I said. And I listed the other things we have done as a church: vigils, protests, sign-making parties, Keep the Faith articles in the Telegram and Gazette, educational events at Eat Pray Learn like conversations on race, and on the impact of gun violence in our community. She didn’t back down or apologize. After criticizing me and the church’s lack of action some more, she had a specific assignment for me. “Come to the black lives matter conversation in Cambridge next week with me, and the counter-protest at the Nazi rally in Boston on August 30th. Walk your talk.” I told her that I was busy that day and suggested that a better way to partner with religious communities in our town would be to get to know us better before making specific demands of us. She de-friended me on Facebook. But she still didn’t give up. She called me on the phone the next morning, and then the day after that to demand that we show up in Boston on August 30th. “Every community needs to show up and walk the talk. The religious communities in Sterling need to stop praying about racism and do something.” she said. The speech of prophets is sometimes harsh and unskillful, but it is not wrong. So you can imagine how quickly the self-righteous defense of my religious leadership was quieted when I read the lectionary texts from this week. In them, God’s Word spoke through the mouth of Isaiah: “Your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS ARE NOT ENOUGH! God says. “Leaders of Sodom ... People of Gomorrah! Listen!” Isaiah begins. Admittedly, that’s when some of us tune out. After all, you and I aren’t the leaders of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah was burned to ash by God for the sins of the people who resided there in ancient times and ancient lands, long long ago. Many of us know that story well. It is a story about two angels disguised as travelers who arrive at the gates of Sodom. Lot, who is a relative newcomer to the town as well, does what he imagines God would demand of him. He takes the strangers in and he feeds them a glorious feast. He insists they spend the night in his house. In other words, he provides them with lavish welcome and hospitality. When the rest of the men of Sodom hear about the uninvited guests in their town, they storm Lot’s house. They demand that the guests are turned over to the men so that they can gang rape them. Far too often, when we hear about Sodom and Gomorrah from some preachers, we are led to believe that God burns the city with fire because of the sexual sin of its inhabitants. In fact, we are often led to believe that homosexuality was the sin of the Sodomites. In fact, the real sin was the failure to lavishly welcome and love the strangers in their midst without inquiring as to whether or not they were worthy. The real sin of Sodom was the attack on those deemed “other” using common tools of war: rape and terror. Rather than welcoming traveling sojourners into their home, the men of Sodom desired to exert their power over them. The sin of Sodom was radical inhospitality. The sin of Sodom was failing to recognize the stranger as a piece of ourselves we did not yet know. The Bible itself expressly describes the sin of Sodom elsewhere as the failure to extravagantly welcome travelers in our midst. According to the prophet Ezekiel, the real “guilt” of the Sodomites was the fact that, although they had “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease,” they “did not aid the poor and needy” and were “haughty” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). The Letter to the Hebrews warns Christians by alluding to the true sin of the Sodomites as inhospitality: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). The sin of Sodom was a terror attack on migrants. So when Isaiah says, “People of Sodom and Gomorrah, listen!” God’s voice is saying: “Americans! Yes, you! LISTEN. The blood is crying out from the ground from El Paso and Dayton and Orlando and Charleston, and Pittsburgh and everywhere terror is inflicted as a tool of war against the stranger, You are your brother’s keeper! Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Beloved, I know that you, like I am, are paralyzed by the enormity of the world’s grief. Henri Nouwen says that your faithfulness to small tasks is the most healing response to the illnesses of our time. Our psalmist reminds us that you and I are not helpless because we are not hopeless. God’s steadfast Love—God’s chesed, will not leave us. Our soul waits on the Lord. God is our hope and our shield. And the psalmist says that God looks down from heaven, and sees ALL of humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth-- he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. Rich and poor, black and white, old and young, European and Asian, African, North, South, Central American, straight and gay, male, female, trans and cis, disabled and temporarily able bodied… God sees us. God sees the migrants fleeing, knowing that no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark, as Warsan Shire says. God sees those children in border detention centers, crying for their mamas and trying to keep warm under a blanket made of foil, under the fluorescent lights of a warehouse. God sees the MAGA hat wearers in the flyover states and the Bernie Bros at the hipster coffee houses in Brooklyn. God sees the trans kids forced to live a lie and the teenage girls starving themselves so they can disappear. God sees the homeless drug addict who lives on the street and the wealthy white collar alcoholic who lives in an endless stream of business travel. God sees the pious Muslim facing Mecca to pray five times a day and the mega-church attender raising up their hands in praise as the rock band sings of the Lord’s salvation on Sunday morning. God sees us. God sees you and God sees me. And God has fashioned ALL of our hearts. No matter what our political persuasion or our thoughts on the second amendment, God fashioned each one of your hearts. And I know your hearts cannot endure another shooting. Not one more. God fashioned our hearts to break. And our broken hearts will teach us more about what we are called to DO next. Trust your broken, God-fashioned hearts to do the next right thing. After church, we’ll share thoughts and prayers in room two so that we can discern together what we might do. Small things with great love, informed by our God fashioned hearts. I want to close with this poem by Danusha Lameris: SMALL KINDNESSES I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.” Let your steadfast love, O God, be upon us, even as we hope in you. Amen. A Sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett
preached on August 3, 2019 at the First Church in Sterling, MA Jesus’ parables don’t always remind me of George Carlin routines, but when they do, I should definitely tell you about it, right? George Carlin has this famous routine in which he comes out onto the stage and says: I would have been out here a little bit sooner... ...but they gave me the wrong dressing room... ...and I couldn't find any place to put my stuff. And I don't know how you are... ...but I need a place to put my stuff. So, that's what I've been doing back there... ...just trying to find a place for my stuff. You know how important that is, that's the whole... ...that's the whole meaning of life, isn't it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. That's all your house is... ...your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff... ...you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. That's all your house is, it's a pile of stuff... ...with a cover on it. You see that when you take off in an airplane and you look down... ...and you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. Everybody's got their own pile of stuff. And when you leave your stuff, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They don't bother with that stuff you're saving. Ain't nobody interested in your fourth grade arithmetic papers. They're looking for the good stuff. That's all your house is, it's a place to keep your stuff... ...while you go out and get more stuff. Now, sometimes, sometimes you gotta move... ...you gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff. You've gotta move all your stuff... ...and maybe put some of your stuff in storage. Imagine that, there's a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff. Enough about your stuff, let's talk about other people's stuff. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house... ...you never quite feel 100 percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the place... ...and what awful stuff it is. Where did they get this stuff? …… Now, now, sometimes you go on vacation... ...you gotta bring some of your stuff with you. You can't bring all your stuff, just the stuff you really like... ...the stuff that fits you well that month. Let's say you're gonna go to Honolulu... ...you're gonna go all the way to Honolulu you gotta... ...take two big bags of stuff... ...plus your carry on stuff, plus the stuff in your pockets. You get all the way to Honolulu and you get in your hotel room... ...and you start to put away your stuff... ...that's the first thing you do in a hotel room... ...is put away your stuff. Now I'll put some stuff in here, put some stuff down there... ...here's another place some stuff here... ...I'll put some stuff over there. You put your stuff over there, I'm putting my stuff over here. Here's another place for some stuff. Hey, we got more places than we've got stuff. We're gonna have to buy more stuff. And you put all your stuff away, and you know that you're... ...thousands of miles from home, and you don't quite feel at ease, but you know that you must be okay because you do have some of your stuff with you. And you relax in Honolulu on that basis. That's when your friend from Maui calls and says "Hey... ...why don't you come over to Maui for the weekend... ...spend a couple of nights over here?" Oh, God no. Now what stuff do you bring? Right, you've gotta bring an even smaller version of your stuff... ...just enough stuff for a weekend on Maui. And you get over, and you are really spread out now... ...you've got stuff all over the world. You've got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu... ...stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets... ...supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain. But you get over to your friend's house in Maui... ...and they give you a little place to sleep... ...and there's a little window ledge... ...or some kind of a small shelf... ...and there's not much room on it but it's okay... ...'cause you don't have much stuff now. And you put what stuff you do have up there... ...you put your imported French toenail clippers... ...your odor eaters with the 45 day guarantee... ...your cinnamon flavored dental floss… ...and your Afrin 12 hour decongestant nasal spray. And you know you're a long way from home... ...you know that you must be okay because you do have... ...your Afrin 12 hour decongestant nasal spray. And you relax in Maui on that basis. He goes on, but he gets a little too PG13 for church, so I’ll end there. “That’s the whole meaning of life,” George Carlin says, “trying to find a place for my stuff.” “One’s life does not exist in an abundance of possessions,” Jesus says. In our scripture from today, Jesus does his own stand up routine about “stuff.” He tells a parable about a rich land owner who desires simply to build larger structures to fit his hard earned possessions in. For that, God calls him a fool. Now, one could argue that the rich man is a wise and responsible person, and not a fool at all. He’s doing well for himself. He’s worked hard, and has produced a lot of stuff presumably through succeeding in business. It makes sense that he’s gonna need a bigger barn to put it all in. That’s all a house is: a pile of your stuff with a cover on it. So he decides to knock down his current small barns and build ones large enough to store all of his grain and goods in. With that, he can save for his future so he’ll be able to enjoy his retirement, and live off the fruits of his labor for the rest of his life. Perhaps most Americans would pat this smart capitalist on the back and say that he earned his life of leisure. The problem is, the rich farmer appears only to live for himself. He decides to build a home with a four car garage big enough to fit all of his luxury automobiles and boats, and a yard big enough for his swimming pool and his tennis courts. And he tells his soul, “you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry. Go on as many European vacations as you want and splurge on the good wine.” Now, I don’t think that Jesus demands we live joyless, sensible and sober lives. We all know that Jesus likes to relax, eat, drink and be merry with friends himself. We can think of plenty of instances in the Bible in which Jesus is found partying and drinking good wine. But the farmer doesn’t choose to thank God for this abundance, or give the extra to the workers who helped him get where he is, much less to people who are starving and homeless. He has way more than he could ever even use, but he doesn’t ask how he can share it, or what God might require of him. He just decides to hoard it all in a bigger barn. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you!” God says. “The things that you’ve prepared…whose will they be?” A wise person said that people were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used. Love demands more of us. We are not put on this earth to amass money and power. We are not here to keep the dieting and beauty industry in business. We are not here to buy every new version of the iPhone. We are not here to acquire more land and real estate than we could ever use. We are put here by God’s grace to embody revolutionary Love. I don’t have anything particularly new to say about the latest mass shootings yesterday and early this morning that you haven’t already heard me say about the hundreds of mass shootings that have happened in this country in the five years I’ve been preaching in this pulpit. Since Sandy Hook, there have been 2,189 mass shootings, to be in exact. Today, 20 people are dead, and 40 are injured in El Paso because of a white supremacist motivated by hate and radicalized in the bowels of the internet, who drove 10 hours to El Paso to kill Mexicans and Mexican Americans. As of one am, nine are dead and 16 are injured in Dayton, Ohio. We don’t yet know the motive of that terrorist. Every couple of months, I have to decide whether to preach on a mass shooting motivated by dehumanizing political rhetoric and the accompanying objectification and demonization of groups of human beings amid a culture saturated with guns and gun worship. A disgusting and macabre tradition. I’m sick of it. I’m physically sick of it. Our response as a country is always to amass more weaponry. To build bigger sheds for our guns. And I want to shout “Fools! This very night our lives are being demanded of us. One’s life does not exist in an abundance of firearms.” When we love our stuff more than we heed the call Love demands on our lives…when we make things into an idol…we are prone to see other people as competition for wealth that we believe to be rightfully ours. When we turn people into objects…when we refer to fellow God-imaged human beings as “animals” or “illegals” or “infestations”…when we suggest that Americans need to be protected from hordes of dark skinned intruders…when we fan the flames of fear and hatred….evil manifests, violence flourishes, and death is the result. It is the death of all humanity. When will we wake up and realize that our true security lies in God, each other and the earth, to whom we belong? Jesus weeps over our sin-sick nation. This very night, our lives are being demanded of us. God is demanding that we be rich towards God. That we embody revolutionary LOVE. When we fight racism and ethnocentrism and Christian nationalism in ALL its forms—especially where it manifests itself in our own hearts, this is the spark of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we gather to strengthen our souls on Sunday morning despite our fear and apathy and exhaustion because we know we are better together, we co-creqte the training ground for the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we open our doors to those who have been cast out of the Church, this is the beginning of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we love each person exactly as they are once they get here, this is the ETHIC of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we seek to unite with people of all faiths and no faith in shared service to our communities, THIS is the enactment of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we offer comprehensive, inclusive and body-positive sexuality education to an entire community of middle schoolers, this is the embodiment of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we welcome the undocumented or documented immigrant, the refugee, the asylum-seeker, THIS is the ESSENCE of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we look for solutions across the ideological divide to end white supremacist and other terrorist violence, this is the WORK of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we create green transformation in an effort to plant seeds of HOPE in the midst of climate change, this is the manifestation of the LOVE REVOLUTION. When we share our excess wealth with those who do not have enough, this is the fulfillment of the LOVE REVOLUTION. Beloved, Love is demanding our lives this very night. Stop worrying about the things you’re going to gather, or keep, or hide, or hoard, or bring with you. Stuff won’t keep you safe. Don’t build a bigger barn, bust the doors open on the barns you already have and share what’s inside. You will feel far less alone. Let the treasure we store up on earth be beautiful, shimmering, brave acts of revolutionary love. Amen. 6/23/2019 0 Comments Idle HandsA sermon by Rev. Robin Bartlett
preached on the Sterling Town Common, Sterling, MA June 23, 2019 God has no other hands but ours’, so we need to put them to good use. And sometimes we need to just admire them. Isaac asked me to paint his fingernails purple the other day, so I did. Now he just stares at them multiple times a day, admiring those delicate bones just above the knuckles, delicate as bird’s wings. That’s a God pause—taking time just to admire the beauty of creation. Today I anointed the called to care team’s hands for ministry. Most often there won’t be much they can say or do to alleviate the suffering they encounter. Their job will simply be to hold a hand in silence. So those hands I anointed this morning are precious gifts of grace capable of great healing when there are no words. Hands are some of the best things God has ever done. God made your hands delicate and still strong, capable of kneading dough, holding a heavy head at the end of a terrible day, or scratching a hard to reach place. God made hands that can type letters to the editor, hold a steering wheel, grasp and lift barbells, lay pipe. God made hands that can paint, play the piano, hold a baby, chop wood and vegetables, hammer a nail, sew needle point, perform heart surgery, and pet a cat’s warm fur. God made hands capable of touching, of caressing, of holding, of healing. Look at your hands for a moment. These hands need to rest. These hands need to stop texting on a tiny bright screen, and hold the chubby hand of a toddler on the rail trail. These hands need to stop typing emails and start digging deep into the dark earth, making things grow. These hands need to stop scrubbing toilets and floors and start lazily skimming the surface of the water as you read a trashy novel on a float somewhere. These hands need rest. I used to hate going to my family’s lake house on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. We piled into the way back of my father’s Ford station wagon to go there a few times a summer, often with my cousins. It was a beautiful place—two cabins right on the lake in a cove not far from Alton Bay and Mount Major. There was a dock for boats and a rock to swim to, and a large lawn that some people might have parties and barbecues on. We had a canoe and a row boat, never a speed boat. A true Yankee, my Grandfather built both cabins himself with his own two hands, and continued to work on them for the rest of his life. After my Grandfather died, my Grammy owned it. Grammy was a rather cross old farmer from Ludlow, Vermont, and like my grandfather, she had no idea how to relax or have fun. And so when we went to the lake as kids (the way I remember it anyway), we spent the entire time doing chores. We scrubbed vegetables and shucked corn. We did endless dishes in the sink. We washed windows and scraped paint. We bailed out the row boat and raked. If we ran out of things to do, Grammy would tell us kids to pick up sticks in the yard. I couldn’t imagine why sticks needed to be picked up from their natural habitat, so I found this activity to be confounding busy work. I didn’t see “Grammy’s lake” as a vacation when we went there, but a job. I don’t relate much to my Grandmother’s work ethic. My house is dirty, I haven’t washed a window since I was a kid, my garden is full of weeds, I still can’t make a pie crust without getting angry, I have never changed a tire or worked a farm tilling fields. My hands are as soft as a baby’s bottom. And yet, I have a confession to make on the eve of my five week vacation and study leave. I have been over-functioning in this ministry to the point that I have failed at times to invite your engagement. I’ve been working long hours, saying yes to too much, doing too much on my own, losing a ton of sleep, eating less than healthfully, and all but ignoring my family. I have been depressed, cranky and resentful at times. I have occasionally lost sight of who I am and whose I am. And I have had interventions by congregants, and colleagues and family members and friends saying: Try exercise. Make sure you take your days off. Do yoga. Enlist help. Shut down your computer and bring your kids on a hike. Take a vacation. And I give all kinds of excuses why I can’t. I am the only person who can do this thing. If I give it to someone else, they won’t do it right. The world cannot function unless I am posting something inspirational on Facebook five times a day, I’m sure of it. Sure, I can book meetings and visits and softball games and kids’ concerts back to back and still write a board report and a sermon and a funeral today. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Does this sound familiar? It is pure hubris. And that’s why stopping is one of the ten commandments. “Idle hands are the devil’s toolbox.” That’s what my grandmother used to say. In other words, if you’re not working with those hands, you’re getting yourself into trouble. But God says that working hands that never lay idle are the devil’s tool box. In addition to such crucial commandments as not killing or stealing, God declares all humans must have a day of rest to live healthy and moral lives. Sabbath, or shabbat means, quite simply, “ceasing.” Stop. Rest. Recharge. Keep the sabbath holy, God demands. On that day no one in your household may do any work. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. God doesn’t insist we rest because God is some kind of self-care guru. God doesn’t insist we rest because God wants us to sip margaritas on a beach in Mexico, or get purple mani-pedis. God insists we rest so we remember an important truth: the world is perfectly capable of going on without you in it. Nothing hinges on you. Rev. Walter Brueggemann wrote a book titled Sabbath as Resistance, and he says: Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms… That divine rest on the seventh day of creation has made clear (a) that God is not a workaholic, (b) that God is not anxious about the full functioning of creation, and (c) that the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work. If the world can go on while God rests, it can certainly keep going while you do. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you are necessary to the work of creation on your own. TAKE TIME OFF. Lay your hands down. My friend Claire came across these gems from Rev. Donna Schaper who charges us with these Sabbath practices, whether we are taking a day off, or a vacation, or a sabbatical: Lose the guilt early. Rest is a gift from God. When you don’t rest, you more than risk idolatrous behavior. You get too tired to think, much less act. Find out if you really know how to do nothing. You may not…. Imagine yourself an escapee from the prison of the dominant narrative: “You are what you do.” “If you don’t do it, no one else will.” “Hard work is the route to justice.” Imagine another narrative: “I lift heavy things lightly.” “The Spirit thinks I am precious.” “I am here to enjoy Spirit.” “I am here to relax.” Bask in the renewable energy of a large narrative. You are a creature. You are not in charge of the universe. You are enough. You are all right. You are the child of a kind parent. You don’t run on power supplied at a cost by a utility company. You are not an extractive resource, like oil. Like solar and wind, you are a renewing resource. There is energy enough for you – and it is free. And finally, Rev. Schaper advises: Don’t worry about whether you can maintain any of these habits when you are back at your job. Don’t think much about the end time. Treasure the now time. Work is work; play is play. Sabbath is Sabbath. There are six other days in the week, also divine. Hands were some of the best things God had ever done. I want to invite you into a space of quiet and peace, to ground yourself by noticing your contact with chair and and the ground, by sitting straight, by becoming aware of your breathing. Look at your idle hands. They've been through a lot, those hands...they have strengths, scars, beauty...I invite you to remember that it is your hands that do the work of love in the world. These hands may hold another's hands. These hands may sign cards of consolation and congratulation. These hands may patiently teach, quilt works of beauty or write words urging peace. These hands may bathe children, feed elders, nurse the ill, work the earth, organize communities. These hands clasp in prayer, open in release, grasp in solidarity, clench in righteous anger. These hands need rest. These hands need holding. These hands need to remember that they aren’t the only hands. These hands are God's hands, your hands, our hands; a great mystery of flesh and intention, a great potential of embodied love. Amen. |
AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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