Preached at First Church in Sterling, MA
By Rev. Robin Bartlett
on the occasion of Piper Shea Hager's dedication
October 30, 2016
Sermons are better heard than read. Hear this sermon (and musical meditation) here.

READING FROM THE HEBREW BIBLE (Genesis 1: 1-5)
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
 
3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
 
READING FROM THE GOSPEL (John 1: 1-5)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
 
MUSICAL MEDITATION        “In the Beginning” by Stephen Schwartz,
                                                                 Sung by Beth Armstrong (my momma), who was there at my beginning).
                                                                                               
SERMON                                           “In the Beginning”
 
Please won’t you pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts together find their way into the heart of God this morning. Amen.
 
We all have a story of beginning.
 
A story of birth, and re-birth; a story of creation.
 
How does yours’ start?
 
In the beginning the world was new and there was light. I didn’t know the darkness yet. In the beginning, I didn’t know what it felt like to break a bone, or break a heart, or what it feels like when everything breaks.
 
In the beginning, the forest, the beach, the farm was my playground. I could talk to the animals. My mind was an imaginative adventure. The world opened itself up to me.
 
In the beginning, I was handed a diploma. I didn’t know what was going to happen yet, but I couldn’t wait.
 
In the beginning, we were so in love.
 
In the beginning, the minister said, “I now pronounce you married.”
 
In the beginning, the doctor said, “It’s a girl.”
 
We so often want to go back to “When life was simpler,” “When America was great,” “When I was a child…”, “Before I knew what I know now”, “When the kids were babies,” “Before I got this spare tire around the middle, and worry about my taxes and my pension and meaninglessness took over…”
 
We so often want to return to the beginning. So much of our lives as adults is a yearning for what we did once, what we used to be able to do, or what we wish we could have done. We forget that every moment in our lives is the beginning.
 
In the beginning, I admitted to someone that I needed help and felt immediately relieved.
 
In the beginning, the ink was fresh on the divorce papers, and I felt dangerously free.
 
In the beginning, I was laid off.
 
In the beginning, I chose to pour the contents of the bottle down the sink and go to a meeting.
 
In the beginning, I didn’t accept the diagnosis.
 
In the beginning, I had to figure out how to live without her.
 
Every moment of our lives is the beginning.
 
This morning we heard two famous scripture texts about the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
 
What’s notable about these stories is simply that God is there before the beginning. God is the beginning. God creates. God speaks Love into the world in the form of Jesus. The rest is up to us. It’s in our hands.
 
Of all the gifts we have received
One is most precious and most terrible
The will of each of us is free
It's in our hands
 
And if one day we hear a voice
If he should speak again, our silent father
All he will tell us is the choice
Is in our hands
 
Our hands can choose to drop the knife
Our hearts can choose to stop the hating
For every moment of our life
Is the beginning...
(From "In the Beginning", Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, Children of Eden) 

This moment in our lives is a special kind of beginning for our church, because each moment a child is born is a chance for us to choose to build a world worthy of her promise. Each moment a child is born is a chance for us to restore our world, so green and glad. There is no journey gone too far we cannot stop and change direction. No doom is written in the stars.
 
Piper Shea Hager was born in August, and her life is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, reminding us that the darkness cannot overcome it.
 
When babies are baptized and dedicated in this church, I ask the parents to write a letter in which they tell their children why they have chosen this ceremony, this faith, this church, for them. I ask them to write their wishes for their children. I do this for all of us to hear, because these parents’ wishes for their children become our responsibility. I am going to read you excerpts from Rachael and Matt’s letters to Piper, which are sacred scripture because they tell the story of her beginning. The rest of her life is in our hands.
 
From Rachael Hager:
 
My dear Piper,
 
I can still hardly believe that you’re finally here. Your dad and I have wanted you for such a long time—long before we had even met one another—and the reality of you is even more amazing than anything we could have imagined….
 
….My biggest wish for you is that all of these little personality traits you’re developing help you turn into a happy person. When I say “happy person,” I don’t mean the fleeting kind of happiness that comes from doing something you enjoy, like going on vacation or celebrating your birthday. I mean the real, true, lasting kind of happy that stems from being a good person who is comfortable with who she is—the kind of happy you are when you are comfortable in your own skin because you know you’re doing your best.  You become a truly happy person when you do your best at a job you find fulfilling, when you surround yourself with good people who create positive vibes around you and support you, when you do healthy things that make you happy, when you take care of yourself and those around you. I want you to be happy because you do your best at a job you care about, because you do your best loving your family, because you do your best to treat everyone and everything around you with respect. That’s where real happiness comes from, baby girl. You don’t have to get everything right. You don’t have to be perfect all the time (even though right now we totally think you are.) You just need to be kind—to your family, friends, colleagues, everyone you meet, the world you live in—and especially yourself. That, my love, will lead to your real happiness. It can be tough to get there sometimes, but that brings me to why we are having you dedicated.
 
It’s much easier to be kind to yourself and everyone around you if you have good examples of what creates real happiness. You need role models! In addition to me and Daddy and your family, the people here can give you that. For me, that’s what this is about. This church is the first one that made me feel both that I was welcome and that it was okay for me to believe what made sense to me. That’s what I want for you, too. I want you to feel supported by a community that, in addition to modeling kindness, allows you to feel safe in exploring what you believe while also exposing you to the possibilities, because that’s a big part of being truly happy, too—being comfortable knowing what you believe.
 
We’re so very grateful for you, my beautiful girl. Keep growing, keep exploring, and know that we will keep loving you every step of the way.

Love, Mom
 
From Matt Hager, whose beginning was entrusted to this church as well:
 
There is something special about knowing this building will watch over you, thinking about the memories of generations hidden in the timbers of its frame. This is the building where I went to preschool, and made friendships I carry to this day. I climbed these stairs, playing hide and seek during coffee hour, and got rug burn on this carpet (keep your mouth off it, please). This building holds the stage where I learned what a community can do when it puts its mind to a common cause. I don’t really want to share all the teenage years with you just yet, but you *may very well find yourself on the roof of the parish hall, plotting to drop snow on your youth group leader’s head. This is where I stood when I was confirmed, and where I went on to mentor others, and taught them to worship with the acts of their hands, and the influence of their words. I put a lot of hard work into this building over the years, manual labor that filled my spirit, made me feel part of something bigger. This building saw me to the adult I am now; but really it wasn't the building that brought me to adulthood.
 
These people here surrounding you, they brought me to adulthood. There are some different faces, yes, but it is the same spirit running through them. It's the same care, and compassion, and acceptance, and reverence for all that is bigger than us here. I have all the faith, that they will do you just as much justice as it has done me. Your mother and aunts and uncles and grandparents and I all love you very much, but we can't do it all on our own.
 
But this spirit running through this room, this village, will raise you with us.

What I want for you is to be full - full of the satisfaction of giving selflessly, full of the camaraderie from working side by side, full with the peace derived from your individual relationship with the spirit. May you never empty.

Love, Dad
 
Beloved: every moment in our lives is the beginning. Be kind. Keep exploring. Keep growing. May you never be empty.
 
Amen.

Preached on Sunday, October 23, 2016
by Reverend Robin Bartlett
at First Church in Sterling, MA
​Sermons are supposed to be heard, not read. Listen here.
 
“A new heart I will give you,” our reading from Ezekiel says, “a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
 
We are in constant need for God to reach into our chests, pull out our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. I think that’s why we come together in religious community:
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
Oh you all. This week. What a week. You and I have been watching this presidential election unfold and we know that this whole nation needs a new heart right now; re-started by love.
 
If the church isn’t providing an antidote to all that rancor, we’re not doing our job. You and  I have watched as our collective American heart has turned to stone. You and I have watched it on television. You and I have read it in the paper. You and I have seen it on our social media feed. You and I have heard it in our friends’ and family’s words dripping with sarcasm and despair and fear.
 
Most of all, you and I have felt it in our own hearts—a dream for our country dying. We need God to reach into our chests, pull out our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. We need God to repair what has been broken, to hold us gently and whisper in our ears: “Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
 
The truth is, we may live in an earthly kingdom ruled by an American political dynasty, but this is God’s world. We don’t worship humans, we worship God. We don’t worship flawed presidential candidates, we worship the God of perfect Love. We need earthly reminders of the signs and foretastes of the reign of God. This is why we come to this place, over and over again, every week.
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
My seminary professor, Dr. Wesley Wildman, said to us once that "If your concept of love serves only to re-enforce your own political ideologies in your church then you might as well go bowling."
 
We need to expand our concept of Love to include not only the least, the last, the lost, but the Republican, the Democrat, the conservative Evangelical, the Muslim, the Jew, the gun-enthusiast, the gun control enthusiast, the undocumented immigrant, the white working class, the Clinton supporter, the Trump-supporter, or whomever we are currently calling “nasty woman” or “deplorable” instead of God’s name for all of us, which is “Beloved.”
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
Studies show that when people are under stress conditions: like the anxiety of losing wealth or status, like illness, like worry over the decline of the middle class, like poverty, like fear of terrorism or war—people are less likely to love the stranger. In other words, when you and I are in the wilderness of perceived powerlessness--we adopt xenophobic tendencies to fear those different than us; to scapegoat, to blame, to become more tribalistic, and surround ourselves with people we perceive to share the same values and the same characteristics. 
 
We are most vulnerable when we see the world in terms of scarcity rather than abundance; when we see people in the world as objects to be feared and despised rather than as beloved. And so we exploit the worst stereotypes we can think of about each other.
 
This country needs a concept of Love that serves to remind us all that we are more alike than we are different, that we are all members of the same tribe.
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
And before you and I start self-righteously nodding our heads, and pointing fingers at other people, or “the other side” (as if there are “sides” to humanity)—to the candidate and his or her supporters that we have deemed most hard hearted…what is that saying? When we point a finger, there are four fingers pointing back at us?
 
I have told you before that I come to church because I need to be reminded of this message daily:
 
I am not better. I am not better, smarter, more pure, more faithful, more right or righteous than anyone else, though if I’m being honest, I sure as heck think I am, most of the time. I come to confess the sin of pride and arrogance. I come to church to be reminded of how tiny my capacity for love really is, and without the help of God I am powerless against my fear, cynicism, and despair.
 
I come to church because I need a heart transplant.
 
So beloved, before we start thinking we are better because we are voting for the “right” candidate, or the “lesser of two evils”, or none of the above—and not the one who is a liar, a thief, a philanderer, a fool, we would do well to remember the parable of the tax collector we heard today from the Gospel according to Luke. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
 
First of all, let’s get the characters straight, because neither are beloved characters in the Bible.
 
The Pharisees are religious leaders of a Jewish sect generally scorned in the Bible for their hypocrisy. They are known to be strict in their adherence to the traditional and written law. They take their holiness seriously. So the Pharisee in our story was devout, and paid all of his tithes, and made moral behavior a way of life. This guy is kind of like the biblical literalist of his time—the guy who thinks if he follows all the rules, he will earn God’s favor. Sort of like the bible thumping, purity code enforcing, folks in our culture who want to wave a Bible in everyone’s face to prove what you are doing is morally wrong.
 
By contrast, the tax collectors in the Bible are generally scorned for their proud immorality. They are looked down on by the general populace, equated with sinners and pagans. And in addition, the tax collectors’ job was to collect taxes from the citizens, and no one likes to give money to the government, and they didn’t in biblical times, either. The tax collectors were rich, and they were known for often cheating the public they collected from. So this guy is the one percenter of his time—the ruthless elite billionaire who uses the working class to support his bloated lifestyle, and his vacations on the Vineyard.
 
In our story, the Pharisee goes to the temple to pray at the same time as the tax collector.
 
The Pharisee prays to God and says, in essence, “Thanks God for making me awesome. Thanks for making me great, and the other guy deplorable. Thanks for making me smarter, more religious, more generous and more likely to stay true to my wife and family than all the other bad people, especially this here tax collector.”
 
Basically, it’s a gloating prayer. The Pharisee is assured of his own righteousness, and God’s favor. “Thanks, God, for making me better than everyone else and loving me the best.”
 
After the Pharisee prays his prayer of praise, the tax collector prays a simple confession: “God, be merciful on me, a sinner!”
 
And Jesus says that the tax collector prayed the right prayer, because he was humble. 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
 
God is saying, in essence, “when you point your finger at someone else, there are four pointing back at you.” [God sometimes sounds like your nagging mother.]
 
And oh, Lord do we need to be humbled. We are all the Pharisees in this story, especially if you spend a lot of time posting political posts on Facebook. You KNOW I’m the Pharisee in this story…sometimes preachers preach the sermon we most need to hear.
 
What I hear and see everywhere I go, especially in the echo chambers we have created on social media, is the Pharisee’s prayer.
 
Dear God: thank you for making me a highly educated, perfect feminist who is staying woke about racism and recycling every day, and can spell and correct other people’s grammar. Thank you for giving me the heart to pick out my “coexist” bumper sticker for my Prius. Don’t blame me, I voted for Bernie. Amen.
 
Dear God: thank you for the gift to see an elitist who wants to take away my guns coming from a mile away. Thank you for making me a man who values hard work, not like those lazy welfare recipients. Thank you for reminding us that marriage is between one man and one woman and that Obama is the anti-Christ. Amen.
 
Guess what we all should be praying instead? God, be merciful on me, a sinner!
 
Let’s try it. “God be merciful on me, a sinner!”
 
We are not better. You and I are not better than anyone because we are voting for the “right person.”
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
We need God to reach into our chests and remove the heart of stone, and replace it with a beating heart of flesh.
 
A former presidential candidate was quoted in the news this week saying that “sometimes you put aside your Christian values to get the work done.” Nope. Nope. All the nopes in nopeville. Maybe the problem is that we have put our Christian values aside for too long.
 
Our Christian values consistently remind us that God loves everybody. GOD LOVES EVERYBODY. It’s time to start living like that is true again.
 
Please join me in a time of confession.
 
Dear God: We confess that we have put aside our Christian values of humility, forgiveness, justice for the poor, the foreigner, the stranger. We have put aside civility, kindness, loving our neighbors, and loving our enemies for too long. We have put aside our Christian values on both sides of the aisle, in all areas of public life, in all of our debates, in justifying our self-righteousness, and our disdain for one another—in internet comment sections and policies that hurt the poor and the working class, and rhetoric that condemns whole groups of people as wrong, or bad, or unworthy of dignity.
 
We are sorry and we humbly repent. We know that you created us in Your image to be glorious, but we are only human and doing the best that we can.
 
The Good News is that nothing can separate us from the Love of God. No matter how self-righteous we have been. No matter how many gloating prayers we have said. No matter how many times we have failed to repent. We are loved by a love that knows no bounds.
 
Beloved, we need to climb up on God’s operating table for a heart transplant so that we might notice signs and foretastes of the reign of Love on this earth. The reign of Love looks like audacious hope despite cynicism. The reign of love looks like the courage to admit that your enemy is your kin. The reign of love looks like seeing—really seeing-- everyone we encounter as beloved, especially the stranger and the enemy.
 
May our hearts once again beat for each other, and for the God whose love knows no limits.
 
Amen.

SERMON
“A New Heart”
for the Unitarian Society of New Haven, CT
on the occasion of Megan Lloyd Joiner’s Installation
October 22, 2016
 
Please won’t you pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts together find their way into the heart of God. Amen.
 
“A new heart I will give you,” our reading from Ezekiel says, “a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
 
We are in constant need for Love to reach into our chests, pull out our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. I think that’s why we come together in religious community:
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
And so it is an honor to be invited here on this most auspicious occasion…the installation of my friend the Reverend Megan Lloyd-Joiner to the Unitarian Society of New Haven. An installation of a new minister is one of life’s great heart transplants. It is making room in your chest for a new minister to love, and being bravely vulnerable enough to let her love you.
 
Megan, as you know, I was fairly recently installed myself--three years ago this week, in fact--at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. I was totally creeped out when colleagues referred to the experience of search and call as like falling in love, and installation as like getting married. It was my first installation, and truthfully my first marriage to my first husband didn’t turn out so well.
 
So in addition to creeping me out, this metaphor had ominous connotations to me. And that happily ever after view of installation suggests a certain naïveté that comes along with romantic love, rather than an eyes-wide-open process that comes along with discernment and the sober determination to make this thing work despite the known realities of church life.  
 
So I want to tell you today that installations are more like second marriages than first marriages. You’ve had a minister before, and you’ve had a congregation before, and you’ve already been together for a year so you already know that neither one of you is perfect. You’re not walking down the aisle moony—eyed like some 23-year-old couple who has no idea what’s awaiting them after the ceremony.
 
I guess not all ministers will tell you this, but I happen to love second weddings. I love second weddings because you get the feeling all parties know exactly what they are getting themselves into and they are doing it anyway. That’s brave to me.
 
A second wedding is a festival of audacious hope. It’s a celebration of resurrection. And on some level everyone is shocked--especially the couple themselves--that they are going to be doing this thing all over again. Their hearts are shocked back into beating. There is the collective feeling of love conquering cynicism and fear palpable in the gathered crowd. Everyone present knows that the couple are about to trust their newly transplanted, tender hearts to someone else, even though they know all too well how hard it is going to be, and how much it could hurt.
 
There is nothing “little” about walking gently on the war-torn pathways. But there is something brave and beautiful about it.
 
Megan and New Haven: this is a brave and beautiful day.
 
Most of life is like a second wedding if you and I are lucky—a life well lived provides multiple occasions for our hearts of stone stilled by the death that always comes along with change, to be replaced by beating hearts of flesh, re-started by love.
 
And man. You and I have been watching this presidential election unfold and we know that this whole nation needs a new heart right now, re-started by love. This nation needs God--or whatever your name is for the most holy thing--to reach into our chests, pull out our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh.
 
We need a national heart transplant.
 
And before we all start self-righteously nodding and pointing our fingers at the candidate and his or her supporters that we find to be the most hard-hearted, that goes for all of us. What is that saying…whenever you are pointing a finger, there are four pointing back at you?
 
When I was in college, I had bumper stickers. The kind you would imagine any lefty 19- year-old to have. I didn’t even have a car, but I had bumper stickers. I put them on my dorm fridge. They said things like “I’ll be post feminist in the post patriarchy” and “Coexist” and “My other car is a broomstick.”
 
The one that I’m most embarrassed about said this (and I humbly repent):
 
“The road to hell is paved with Republicans.”
 
I am embarrassed, because what a ridiculous thing to think, and how diametrically opposed to my universalist theology. My beloved grandparents were all Republicans, and many of my friends growing up in the great state of New Hampshire were, as well. At least half of the progressive Christian congregants at the UU/UCC church I serve currently are Republicans, too. I adore them. And they are all loving and generous people, who want the same things I do: happiness, freedom, a loving and healthy family, community. We are more alike than different.
 
But I grew up Unitarian Universalist with lefty parents during the Reagan years. I believed that Republicans didn’t care about the poor, didn’t care about justice for the oppressed, didn’t care about my rights as a woman.
 
Conservatives are taught similar stereotypes about liberals like me, as well. Liberals are lazy, they want “free stuff”, they want to police all of our words for political correctness so that we can no longer have free speech, they want to punish people for being rich.
 
And so on.
 
Well, what a bunch of bologna sauce that all is. We can’t even hear each other over the din of the echo chambers we have created.
 
My seminary professor, Dr. Wesley Wildman, said to us once that "If your concept of love serves only to re-enforce your own political ideologies in your church than you might as well go bowling."
 
We need to expand our concept of Love to include not only the least, the last, the lost, but the Republican, the conservative Evangelical, the gun-enthusiast, the Trump-supporter, or whomever we are currently referring to as “nasty” or “deplorable” instead of God’s name for us all, which is “Beloved.”
 
You and I are in need of a heart transplant.
 
Unitarian Universalists tend to envision religious and political change as something that needs to happen “out there” in the world. We rarely consider that perhaps the deepest change needs to occur within ourselves.
 
I don’t know how many of you are parents, and just had this experience this fall, but if there is anything that strikes fear in my heart, it is parent night at my kid’s elementary school.
 
I walk in to that crowded gym filled with parents of kids my kids’ age, and immediately freeze, and my heart turns to stone.
 
The internal monologue in my head sounds something like this: “There are so many people. I have no one to sit with. They all know each other. They don’t like me. Maybe they think I’m a freak because I’m the town pastor. Maybe I am a freak because I’m the town pastor. Oh, man, here comes the PTO. They are not going to even bother asking me to volunteer this year because I’m such a deadbeat parent. Why do they hate me? They must be Republicans, that’s why. God Robin, get your stuff together. Look down at your phone, and maybe no one will notice you. Or if they do, at least you’ll look like you’re busy with more important things to do.”
 
I wonder if this is something like the internal monologue of the folks who walk through the doors of our congregations. I wonder who retreats into their smartphone or their knitting or their book or puts on some other armor. Fear keeps us so small and numb and guarded and alone.
 
We need a heart transplant because Love is the only antidote to fear.
 
Have you all heard of the elementary school buddy bench? This was a simple idea someone had to eliminate loneliness and foster friendship on the playground at recess. A school builds a bench, and labels it the “buddy bench.” If a kid is feeling lonely and has no one to play with, she can sit on the buddy bench. If another kid sees her there, he comes over and sits down next to her, and keeps her company, maybe even asks her to play.
 
My kid’s elementary school installed a buddy bench on the playground two years ago and unveiled it during their annual peace pole celebration I attended. I looked up from my phone long enough to cry, my heart shocked back into beating.
 
[I wish they had brought the buddy bench into the gymnasium on parent night, but they left it outside trusting the adults didn’t need it. But man, do we need it more than the kids or WHAT.]
 
Sometimes, when I pray, I pray for the kids on the buddy bench. I pray for the kids that go to sit there…the vulnerability it takes to be that brave, trusting their tender hearts to someone else to take care of. And I pray for the kind kids who go and sit with them, leaving their other friends behind to care for someone who needs them. And I pray for the kids who don’t have the guts to sit there, too.
 
I pray that all of us can be like those kids that sit on the buddy bench. They are brave and kind in a way that you and I are often too scared to be.
 
We need a heart transplant.
 
Beloved, we need a heart transplant so that we might notice signs and foretastes of the reign of Love on this earth. The reign of Love looks like audacious hope despite cynicism. The reign of love looks like the courage to admit that your enemy is your kin. The reign of love looks like seeing—really seeing-- everyone we encounter as beloved, especially the stranger. The reign of love looks like these vulnerable souls sitting here in these pews, trusting each other and your new minister with your tender hearts.
 
Unitarian Society of New Haven: you have been given a new heart today. May it beat for each other, and for an aching world that needs your love.
 
Amen

Preached on October 9, 2016
by Rev. Robin Bartlett
at First Church in Sterling, MA
Sermons are meant to be heard. You can hear this sermon and Toly Klebanov singing Over the Rainbow here.

READING FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION (Revelation 21: 1-7)
 
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
 
5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ 6Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

Sermon
 
You and I think of heaven as an other-worldly place that we will get to some day. A “somewhere” place. Some of us Christians, in fact, are quite fixated on what happens in this life, only insofar as how it effects the next one. Some of us think that we need to be “good” to get there. Some of us think God is so good, that we will all get there someday regardless of whether we are, come hell or high water. Excuse the pun.
 
Perhaps that it is why it is interesting that our text from Revelation this morning does not suggest that we will go to be with God somewhere else one day. In this apocalyptic text, an old world dies and a new world is born. God comes here to earth to be among us. God makes all things new right here where we already are.
 
A new heaven, and a new earth.
 
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
 
I bet some of us don’t like that idea. We are always looking for a better place to go that is outside of this world—from colonies on Mars to an other-worldly heaven. And for good reason. The world we live in can look terrifying and broken, much of the time.
 
Right now, we are watching the unraveling of the most disgusting presidential election I have seen in my lifetime, the coverage of which has overshadowed Haiti. There are 900 dead in Haiti from Hurricane Matthew, and a subsequent cholera epidemic, and tens of thousands homeless. While many Christians might pray for God to wipe every tear from their eyes in an other-worldly heaven, perhaps a faithful response in addition is to send money to help rebuild. An even more faithful response might be to urge our lawmakers to do something to save our planet. Climate change will continue to effect the most vulnerable populations of the world until the powerful do something to ease the suffering of the powerless.
 
See the home of God is among mortals!
 
The Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie as a kid. I bet it was a lot yours’, as well. We watched it every year when it was on TV. When I was really young, my family and I only had a black and white TV. Color TVs had been invented, but we couldn’t afford to buy one. I remember the first time I saw The Wizard of Oz on a color TV. Do you remember? It was old technology, even in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. But it was still magical.
 
In the beginning of the film, everything is in black and white in boring old Kansas. Dorothy is listless and angry because a mean old woman takes her beloved dog, and no one seems to have time for her, and she feels powerless. She dreams of going somewhere else, somewhere beyond the moon, beyond the stars, somewhere over the rainbow.
 
It sounds like the way some people think of heaven—somewhere over the rainbow, where dreams come true, where troubles melt like lemon drops….somewhere out of this world of pain and mourning and crying and death, out beyond even the stars. It’s a place where one dreams of going.
 
And then she gets her wish. A tornado comes, which feels like the end of the world, and Dorothy’s house flies into the air, over the rainbow, and ends up in the merry old land of Oz. It lands on wicked witch, destroying some evil in the process. And when Dorothy walks out of her door, everything is in color.
 
And once Dorothy arrives in this idyllic place, this place that is beautiful and in technicolor, what’s notable is that she wants only to go home. She wants to be back on the black and white farm with the people who love her, despite their imperfections. She wants to be back in Kansas, even though there are weather events there like tornadoes that scare everyone and make them feel like the world is ending. And mean women. She never wants to look any further for her heart’s desire than her own back yard again. “There’s no place like home,” she says as she clicks her heels.
 
And when Dorothy comes back home, she sees her old world with new eyes. I am a God who makes all things new. Even the familiar, even Auntie Em and the farmhands.
 
Perhaps revelation simply points us to a new way of seeing our home.
 
Greg Carey says: “Revelation does not imagine the saints escaping this world for a heavenly reward. On the contrary, the saints inhabit a brand new world created right where they live. … This new world hardly represents an escape from everyone else and their troubles. When Revelation says God has come down to dwell with mortals (21:3), it means it… Revelation envisions a renewal, not an escape.”
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
Do you all remember that Belinda Carlisle song from the ‘80s, Heaven is a place on earth? OK, I know not all of you were children of the ‘80s, but would you just indulge me and sing along if you know it? “ooo, baby do you know what that’s worth? Ooo, heaven is a place on earth. The say in heaven, love comes first, we’ll make heaven a place on earth. Ooo, heaven is a place on earth.”
 
I think that’s good theology! I sometimes sing that in my head when I recite our mission statement —which includes the words, “committed to creating heaven on earth.”
 
People ask me a lot what that looks like, or what that means—creating heaven on earth. In fact, we are building a whole retreat around the topic in March so that we can define it for ourselves. And I’m sure it means different things to different people here. “Ah, yes, this Cape Cod vacation is like heaven on earth.” Or, “this apple scone from Clearview farm tastes like heaven on earth.”
 
But heaven on earth is a practice, an embodiment, not a thing or a feeling or a place.
 
In Hebrew, one definition of heaven is “God’s dwelling place.” Our scriptures tell us that when God could no longer be contained by the heavens, the heavens came to earth in the form of a baby boy. God was born in human flesh in the person of Jesus. Jesus said, “in me, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus tells us in Luke that the Kingdom of God is within each of us. Heaven is as close as your own body and breath, as you are God’s dwelling place.
 
See the home of God is among mortals!
 
Creating heaven on earth is an insistence to live differently than the culture tells us we should in response to this grace. It’s an insistence on consistently seeing the old world we live in with new eyes.
 
Do you remember the words to the Hallelujah Chorus? For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
|: Hallelujah! The kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, And He shall reign for ever.
 
There are two kingdoms—the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of this world.
 
In the kingdom of this world: money reigns. In the kingdom of this world, only the strong survive. In the kingdom of this world, the marketplace determines who you are. In the kingdom of this world, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is a value. In the kingdom of this world, there are tribalistic in-groups and out-groups, and categories of human and sub-human. There is violence and death.
 
In the upside down kingdom of heaven where Christ reigns, to become rich, you give your money away.  In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to get back at your enemies, you love them. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to become a leader, you become a servant. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, to truly find life, you die to self. In the upside down kingdom where Christ reigns, all people are called beloved children of God, and treated as though that is true. Love wins, life wins, in this upside down kingdom of heaven.
 
So, we create heaven on earth when we practice the principles of Love. And look for new life among the rubble of the old. We practice heaven on earth by feeding people, giving our money away, loving our enemies, becoming servants, lifting up the lowly, visiting the prisoner, and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.
 
Revelation envisions a day of renewal of the earth home we inhabit, not an escape: a new heaven, and a new earth.
 
My colleague Jake Morrill refers to this as the day “society will be re-ordered from the transient structures of Empire to the enduring and sustaining ecosystem of love.”
 
Beloved, our commitment to create heaven here looks like this: searching for signs of the enduring and sustaining ecosystem of love amidst the structures of empire. I think our job is to see our own black and white world with new eyes—to look for God peeking through the curtain. To envision a renewal of our current world, and not an escape from it.
 
It is our job to see the home of God among mortals.
 
Can you see it?
 
You and I woke up today on this beautiful fall morning and we looked upon the radiance of fall leaves turning the trees red gold yellow orange purple amazed because no matter how many falls we have lived through in New England, it still doesn’t cease to dazzle us.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This morning your dog licked your face, you had a hot cup of coffee, and you drank it in a warm kitchen.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This month, you needed comfort and were comforted.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This month, this year, you celebrated however many years of sobriety, or cancer remission, or parenthood, or single parenthood: this month, this year, you celebrated the day your life began again.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This month you forgave—truly forgave—an enemy, and a weight was lifted off of your chest.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This week you were forgiven again when you didn’t deserve it.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
This year you loved with wild abandon, not worrying about what that would mean for your future broken heart.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
Yesterday you watched people who came to lift the rubble in Haiti, to care for the dead, to comfort the mourners. An ecosystem of love built among destruction.
 
See the home of God is among mortals.
 
Mechtild of Madgeburg says that “The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw—and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things.” May we see God all things in God and God in all things. May we see ourselves and each other as a home for God. May we see the earth we inhabit as a home for God. May we experience someday and somewhere as here and now, because there’s no place like home. They say in heaven, love comes first. We’ll make heaven a place on earth.
 
Amen.

By Rev. Robin Bartlett
Preached on October 2, 2016
World Communion Sunday
at the First Church in Sterling, MA
Sermons are meant to be heard, not read. Listen here.

READING FROM THE EPISTLES (2 Timothy 1: 1-14)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.
 
For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
 
SERMON                                                             “Guarding the Treasure of Faith”  
 
 I can’t tell you how many people I talk to from this church who are distressed when their teenagers tell them they “don’t believe” in God anymore. This is a developmentally appropriate sentiment, and never a cause of concern for me as their pastor. They are still held in an infinite web of love that will never let them go. But it is something that we parents panic about for many reasons. We panic about everything from the salvation of their souls, to the strong desire for our children to be in a community of people who love and protect them. Some of us give up and stop making them go to church, as if the only reason to go to church is unwavering belief in God. Anna Keating says she needs to go to church because she needs to bow down before a mystery and say thank you. I think we all need that.
 
We also sometimes beat ourselves up when our teenagers say this to us because it must be our fault. We wonder if it is because we have failed, or the church has failed, to properly convince them of God’s existence. Maybe we didn’t read enough of the Bible as a family. Maybe we read so much of it that we bored the faith right out of them. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have rock bands in our church, or maybe it’s because we didn’t convince them that our faith was serious enough.
 
Look, God is as close as our breathing whether we believe in God or not, so I don’t know why we worry so much about belief, as if whether or not we believe makes a difference to God. It’s not up to us to convince children of the existence of God, but to nurture their faith in what’s true. I care more that they know that God believes in them than I care about whether they believe in God.
 
But I think this is an age-old concern, that our children will grow to guard the treasure of faith passed down to them. I don’t think this began with the advent of soccer practice on Sunday. That is why I love Paul’s letter to Timothy that we heard today.
 
Our reading from Paul’s epistles is a letter that he wrote to Timothy, a young mentee who is like a son to him. Paul wrote this not long before his death, and during his final imprisonment. He was being thrown in jail all the time for being a dissident; a Christian. Paul wrote this letter at a time of extreme political unrest and persecution of Christians. It seems that the Roman leadership at the time believed that the Christianity Paul taught had turned the world upside down. And so Paul was kept alone in prison without visitors, and made to suffer immensely. So much so, that he knew his death would be soon. This letter was his attempt to sing the Lord’s song as his tormentors mock him, as the psalmist writes.
 
This budding early Christianity Paul was advocating was a radical ideology with serious political ramifications. It was an ideology that suggested that the last should go first, the hungry should be fed, the meek would inherit the earth, the rich would be brought down from their thrones, and the poor would inherit the kingdom of God. No wonder it was a threat to those in power.
 
So, on death’s door, alone in prison, Paul writes this letter to this young man, Timothy, who he loves. In the letter, he reminds Timothy why this faith matters. He implores him to guard the good treasure of faith entrusted to him by his grandmother and mother. He makes the argument that keeping the faith of your parents alive is part of your job as a human.
 
Treat this faith like a treasure passed down to you, no matter how dangerous it is, he says. No matter how many people believe you will turn the world upside down with its power. He says “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of love and self-discipline.” He implores Timothy to guard it, hold to it, suffer for it. It is his birthright.
 
Man, this is not what happens today, is it? And meanwhile the world is being torn down to its foundations, like Jerusalem in our reading from the psalms.
 
I read an article this week called “They’re Not Coming Back: The Religiously Unaffiliated in the Post Religious Era.” Which reminds me of the book title from the ‘90s all young single women read called “He’s Just Not that Into You.” They’re not coming back. The article was all about how the millennials, the biggest baby boom in American history who are now well into adulthood at age 18-38, and famously unaffiliated with faith traditions, are never coming back to church. 66 percent in the survey cited in this article claim that “religion causes more problems in society than it solves.” The article said, in a nutshell, to give up trying to woo these millennials, you out of touch old people. He’s just not that into you.
 
I read these articles every day and it’s so demoralizing for a pastor. My husband is a millennial, and I got him to come to church this morning! Who else is a millennial in the congregation today? Ha. Take that, mean articles.
 
St. Paul says to Timothy: “I am reminded of the sincerity of your faith; a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now, I’m sure, lives in you.”
 
According to the latest pew studies, almost half of our adult children are no longer affiliated with the faith of their parents. Of adults who leave the church altogether, reasons cited are rarely a lack of belief, or atheism. Instead, reasons cited include: too many Christians doing unchristian things, the harm done by the Christian church to the gay community, religion being a source of divisiveness instead of unity. In other words, Christianity is no longer turning the world upside down—it has become the religion of the establishment used to oppress and harm. And after years of being the dominant culture, Christianity got rich, hypocritical, and boring. Leonard Ravenhill said, “If Jesus preached the same message ministers preach today, he would have never been crucified.”
 
Ouch. And yes.
 
So I think about all of us parents and grandparents and great grandparents who are trying hard to figure out if passing down this faith is really worth it. And I think to myself, “man, if we don’t think this treasure of faith is going to turn the world upside down; if we don’t feel like it’s worth suffering for, no wonder we aren’t skipping soccer practice to go to church.”
 
So why am I stubbornly still here, even though so many of my peers in my age group are not? Why do I desire to pass this faith down to my children?
 
My answer is BECAUSE THE TREASURE IS STILL THERE, and still worthy of being guarded.
 
The other day, I sat down and wrote my daughter an epistle of my own about why this old faith still matters and is worth handing down. I wrote this for all of you who sometimes wonder if this faith is true enough to guard, or still has any wisdom for any of us. I wrote this for all of you who wonder if this faith is still capable of turning the world upside down, or if it should.
 
Dear Cecilia:
 
I’m sure that you think it is strange that I am raising you in a rather old fashioned tradition here in 2016, as a preacher’s kid no less. I’m sure you wonder sometimes why it is important that you come to this place with its hard seats, and its old music, its words from a text that are hard to understand, and its sometimes boring preacher, as you are quick to remind me.
 
I know that not all of your friends have to do this on Sunday. And I know that you believe as I do that there isn’t just one truth about God. I know that you aren’t always sure that there is a God at all. You always tell me that you have no proof for God’s existence, but you know that Santa Claus must be real because your parents would definitely never give you an American Girl doll.
 
But here’s my proof of God’s existence, and all the proof I need: you were born. You are here. And I am here, and we are here together. And we need each other and God because this world we live in has no end to its majesty. And it has no end to its suffering.
 
Christianity is one way that I have found to excavate beauty from brokenness, as Marlon Hall says. And this is one of the most important tasks of living on this earth.
 
So I am raising you in this faith tradition of your ancestors, this sincere faith that lived in your parents and grand parents and great grandparents simply because it is one way that I have found to understand a truth about God in the small amount of time I have on this earth.
 
The treasure of this faith is simply and not so simply this:
 
God loves all people, even that kid who teased you for all of third grade until you cried.
 
God loves all people, even you, and your mother and father and sister and brother and step mother and step father, despite all the mistakes they have made and have yet to make.
 
God loves all people. This is the hardest truth of the Gospel, and the thing that will save you. It’s the treasure that I want you to guard because this treasure is better than your weekly allowance or any American Girl doll.
 
This treasure of faith rekindles the gift you have to help the kid on the playground who is being teased for being different. Your faith should wake this up inside of you.
 
This treasure of faith rekindles the gift you have to know you are not the only person in the world who matters. Those over 100 children that were killed in Aleppo this weekend in bombings and live in a daily nightmare matter just as much as you do. And your faith should wake this up inside of you.
 
This treasure rekindles the gift you have to know that black children who are shot down in the street for holding a bee bee gun or “looking suspicious” matter just as much as you do. And your faith should wake this up inside of you.
 
And I bring you here to this old church because you deserve to be in a place where you are told about the love of God every day, and shown it. I bring you here because you deserve better than what the consumer culture has to offer you. You deserve to be awakened out of your media-fed self-absorption. You deserve a sacramental theology. You deserve to sing the songs of the saints. You deserve to learn and tell this Christian story as your own, because it is, whether you reject it or not.
 
At its best, this place can help to rekindle the light of God inside of you. The Church is the only place I know where a billionaire drinks from the same cup as a homeless man. That’s what the love of God affords us, and that’s the deepest treasure there is.
 
-Mom
 
It’s world communion today, the day that Christians around the world, whether they live in great comfort or great poverty, whether they are young or old, whether they believe a little or a lot, will belly up to the same table to be reminded of God’s love for the whole world. The words of institution are recited in thousands of different languages, and songs of praise are sung, or played on the organ, or whispered so that the powers that seek to oppress their faith cannot arrest them. But the word carry the same reminder.
​
This meal is our reminder that God has room for all of us—that the treasure of our faith is worth guarding. In this sacrament we are guarding together, in worldwide communion, a faith that can still turn the world upside down, a faith still worth dying for. A faith that reminds us that God has love for all of us. May it be so.
Amen