Scott’s Away So No Sermon Post For Today
By Administrator | May 18, 2008
Rev. Scott Elliott is on vacation this week so there is no sermon post for this week. Look for a post next week.
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Holy Spirit, Mother of the Church
By Administrator | May 11, 2008
Holy Spirit, Mother of the Church
a sermon based on Acts 2:1-21
May 11, 2008 at Palm Bay, Florida
by Rev. Scott Elliott
We hear in the Pentecost story (which was just read) that the early followers of Jesus are gathered and this “sound like the rush of a violent wind is heard.” It is not a violent wind, but, sounds like one.
And we also heard that metaphoric tongues “as of fire” seem to rest upon each of the apostles.
This aberration that appears like violent wind, but is not violent wind and “as of fire,” but is not fire, is the work of the Holy Spirit who has shown up and appears to be indescribable without reference to metaphors. “Like” this or “as” that.
This indescribable Spirit fills all the apostles and they began to speak and be heard in other languages.
The sound that is made by the Holy Spirit does not bring out the neighbors. Nor do the fire-like tongues that rest upon them.
What brings out the neighbors is the sound of the apostles speaking in languages in a way that was bewildering since everyone in the crowd could understand what was being said in their own native tongue.
Some in the crowd were confused. Some were amazed. Some were perplexed. Some asked what it meant. Some sneered that the Spirit-filled apostles were drunk – filled with spirits alright, but of a different sort.
Whatever the folks who were present witnessed no one seems to be able to explain what happened or how it was that lowly, mostly illiterate, Galileans were communicating in ways understandable in any language.
The Lectionary reading for today has only a part of the sermon that Peter preaches. In a portion of the sermon mentioned in today’s reading Peter tells the crowd those speaking strange languages “are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.”
Peter goes on to explain that
and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Today we are going to consider for few moments a portion of that sermon, a theme, a thread that is woven throughout what Peter has just said. Quoting Joel, Peter notes in no uncertain terms that God “will pour out [God’s] Spirit upon all flesh.” All flesh. Not just followers of Jesus. Not just the gathered. Not just Jews. Not just men. Not just free men. All flesh. Everyone.
And the portion of Joel that Peter quotes spells this out in a remarkable way. Sons and daughters are to prophesy. Young and old shall have visions. Even the lowest of the low in the culture, both male and female slaves are to have the Spirit poured out to them and they too shall prophesy. Can you hear how nobody’s going without the Spirit? It’s going to being showered on everyone. All of us.
This matches exactly what we know about Jesus and his radical embrace of everyone. Jesus’s community was open and all inclusive. His radical egalitarianism, as John Dominic Crossan puts it, was about absolute equality “deny[ing] the validity of any discrimination . . . and negat[ing] the necessity of having any hierarchy . . .” 1. Crossan asserts that what Jesus’s practice of radical egalitarianism exemplifies – and calls us to – is a “just and equal world.” 2.
Listen carefully to Jesus’s famous words from Matthew (5:43-38) you’ll hear that no one is left out of who we are commanded to love: ” You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus commands this because his teachings to his followers – whether we like it or not– was and still is that God loves everyone even our enemies, and we are supposed to love everyone too.
The gist of last week’s sermon –at least the way I heard it– was that the story of Jesus ascending to heaven with the promise of the Holy Spirit to come was like waiting for a baby to be born. Jesus ascension leads to a transition period for the followers of Jesus, a period similar to labor pains and the process of birth leading to a newborn.
The bodily Jesus has done all that he can, but, must go and the followers must find their way on their own together and with God’s presence coming through them, not through the historic Jesus. Remarkably what they are awaiting the birth of happens in today’s story: the birth of the Church, the newborn reborn Body of Christ.
The Pentecost story is all about that birth of the Body of Christ (the Church) through the Holy Spirit’s action in the followers of Jesus.
As I pointed out Peter puts in his sermon a note from the Old Testament book Joel (2:28-32) that God says “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”
Joel was originally written in Hebrew and the Hebrew word for spirit is “ruah”3 (roo-ack). Ruah is a feminine word expressing female gender. In English we don’t ordinarily give genders to things, except sometimes in words ending in “ess,” like actress, or better yet goddess. When we hear “ess” in these words we think female. That’s similar to how feminine words are meant to be heard in Hebrew, So “ruah,” Spirit, in the Old Testament conveys a female attribute to God.
There is, in fact, a growing body of scholarship which asserts that the early Christians also understood the Holy Spirit to have a feminine nature. 4 We know this not only because they started as a Jewish sect using Jewish texts and theologies, but, also because early Christian writers like Jerome in the fourth century claimed the Holy Spirit was expressed in feminine gender. 5
Another example is a third century Coptic Christian book called The Acts of Thomas which portray Thomas as “invoking the Holy Spirit as ‘the Mother of all creation’ and ‘compassionate mother.’” 6
Now, this is not some off-the-wall concept by your pastor or a twist of a Hebrew phrase. In the Eastern Orthodox Church “Spirit was always considered to have a feminine nature. She was the life bearer of the faith.” 7.
Not only that, but as I have mentioned up here before and in classes on the female images of God, the Bible often refers to female images of God. For instance we know that both males and females are created in God’s image which necessarily means there is no getting around the fact that God’s image includes the feminine.
In fact when God first appears giving birth to the earth in the Genesis 1 she appears in the female ruah – Spirit– form.
You can hear this particularly well in the King James version of Genesis 1:2 “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit (ruah) of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The Spirit of God is a like a mother eagle moving over the face of the waters.
It is natural to think of a female image of God at the birth of the world. It’s natural also to think of the Spirit of God giving birth to the Church as female.
There are other female birthing and mother images of God in the Bible. In Isaiah 42 (14) God says “I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp I will pant.”
Later in chapter 49 (15), in reference to concerns about being abandoned, God refers to God’s self as a mother, answering: “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb?”
Psalm 22 (9) refers to God in a midwifery image “it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.”
In Hosea 13 (8) God is a protective mother “like a bear robbed of her cubs.”
We can also hear Jesus refer to God in a mother image. In Luke (7:35) Jesus asserts that wisdom (another feminine word) “is vindicated by all her children.”
And later in Luke at chapter 13 (34) Jesus unmistakably refers to God as acting like a hen, a female animal protecting the children of God, pulling her brood close beneath her protective wings.
I suppose by now most of you have figured out where I am headed with this. I am pointing to a natural link between Pentecost and Mothers’ Day. Today the religious and secular holidays converge! Pentecost, the day we remember the Holy Spirit– a female person of the Trinity– gave birth to the Church falls on the very same day as Mothers’ Day, the day we remember the female person who gave us birth.
Last week I mentioned that just before Jesus leaves the apostles they want to know if he is going to do that Messiah–warrior thing and restore the kingdom of Israel. They want the stereotypical manly macho resolution: conquest and peace through violence. Jesus, The Prince of Peace, promises something else completely: baptism by the decidedly unmacho feminine aspect of God, the Holy Spirit. Why? so that Jesus’s followers can be Christ’s witness for peace and love to the ends of the earth.
This will probably come as a surprise, believe it our not, the story of the Pentecost is a mirror opposite of the story of the Tower of Babel.
Remember in Genesis 9 mortals have been told by God to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” In Genesis 11, though, mortals decide to go against the commandment to fill the earth by settling instead on a plain in Shinar.
After settling they start making bricks out of dirt or dung and then decide to build a tower, very likely meant both as a male fertility symbol to the Babylonian gods, as well as to avoid being scattered to the ends of the earth.
This settling down to mess around with a towering fertility idol, as well as to avoid God’s command to fill the earth, as you might imagine, does not set very well with God. A fertility symbol reaching into heaven is a defilement, a desecration, a pollution, a rather profane intrusion into God’s abode.
So God comes down to earth, knocks the symbol completely down and forcibly, but, non-violently scatters the builders by confusing their language so they could not understand each other. Making babblers of the builders of Babel so that they will do their duty and fill the earth..
Can you hear the contrast the Pentecost story offers to the Tower of Babel?
Echoing Genesis 9 Jesus’s command is for the apostles to witness Christ to the ends of the earth. The apostles are told to go wait in Jerusalem. And unlike the mortals in The Tower of Babel they do what they are asked to do.
Moreover unlike the Babel story we do not have the graven image of a male fertility symbol, but rather mortals awaiting the Holy Spirt, an actual female image and the Mother Nature of the One God.
And sure enough the Holy Spirit descends not to tear down anything or to cause babbling but to undo for the faithful the confusion and babble created at Babel.
Why? because the mortals obeyed God this time and are prepared to got to the ends of the earth as Christ’s witnesses. Those who are filled with the Holy Spirit can speak so that all may understand.
Now we don’t know if the apostles that first Pentecost actually instantly learned to speak the many languages of the people gathered. While the story certainly suggests that they did literally speak languages instantly – and we are free to believe that it is historically true– but we can also choose to see the story as symbolic of the Church and its Spirit-filled followers speaking a universal language.
The small Jewish sect of Jesus’s followers as Church begins to reach out to the world spreading the Good News to the ends of the earth. And the Good News is in it’s essence that God is Love. And Love, well Love is a universal language.
At our core we all want love and we all want to love. And this core love has since humanity began been symbolized in Mother love. We can see a picture of a mother lovingly holding her child from anywhere in the world or history and it does not matter what our respective native tongues are, the language of that motherly love transcends all language barriers.
It is a universal language. A mother plus the loving embrace of child everywhere means love. That’s why Mother’s Day is so popular. Culturally Mom’s mean love. And we, we love Love!
Can you hear how the love in the Pentecost story can be heard to include God’s motherly love for us with the birth of the Church through the Holy Spirit, and a motherly embrace upon Jesus’s followers even after Jesus ascended?
There is more.
This story holds another form, another universal symbol of Love. The promise woven throughout the portion of Peter’s sermon we heard earlier where God claims God “will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” All flesh. On everyone. Sons and daughters. Young and old. Male and female. Slaves and free.
Pentecost is more than the birth of the Church. It is the promise that through that Church –through the continuing Body of Christ– no one will be without the Spirit. All are loved. It is the aim Jesus began his movement with: radical egalitarianism. Universal love looks like Jesus’s call for absolute equality, a call that denies the validity of any discrimination, negates the necessity of any hierarchy. 1.
Pentecost is not just about the birth of the Church and God’s motherly love for us. It is about a call to a “just and equal world” to the ends of the earth. 2 Love for everyone, not just by God, but by God’s images – us . . . BY US– too. That’s a notion that transcends all language barriers.
That’s the Way Jesus taught us.
That’s the Way the Holy Spirit our Mother image of God set the Church off toward at the start and still calls us toward today.
May we all listen to that Mother Spirit this Pentecost, this Mother’s Day. AMEN.
ENDNOTES
1.Crossan, John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, (1994), 71.
2.Ibid., 74.
3.Ibid., 39.
4. Hurtak, J.J. The Holy Spirit: The Feminine Aspect of the Godhead, located on the Internet at http://www.pistissophia.org/The_Holy_Spirit/the_holy_spirit.html; see also Santini, Steven, The Feminine Gender of the Holy Spirit, located on the Internet at http://www. geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3827/family.html. 5. Santini at p. 2.
6. Hurtak at p. 2.
7. Ibid.
Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008
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Ascension:A Pregnant Pause for Change
By Administrator | May 4, 2008
Ascension: A Pregnant Pause for Change
A sermon based on Acts 1:1-11
May 4, 2008 at Palm Bay, Florida
by Rev. Scott Elliott
Exactly twenty-six years ago on May 2 (the day before yesterday), Nancy and I had been happily married for just over three years. We were at that time a couple without children and we had lots of time to share and enjoy together in marital bliss.
Exactly twenty-six years ago early yesterday that was about to change, because Nancy, my best friend, love of my life, wife and soon to be co-parent went into labor with our first child. We had been taking Lamaze classes for weeks and all our training and anticipation was now supposed to go into action. My job was to be with Nancy, time and log contractions, help coach Nance with her breathing, comfort her and feed her (of all things) shaved ice.
Nancy’s job list may sound shorter, but I had no desire to swap places with her. She was (in ways I have never quite come to grips with) charged with the task of extracting an eight pound, eighteen inch, living, breathing, human being from her body . . . without any smoke or mirrors or pain medication.
Although I did not want her job, I did want to be there for the magic of it all. This was the stuff of real magic.
I mean, for weeks it was clear that there was something miraculously growing in her tummy. The beautiful bulge; the magnified thump-thump-thump of the little heartbeat; the little feet that kicked me through her belly and just the anticipation of that baby in my life had caused me to fall so in love with that unseen being that I spent hours reading and singing and talking to our unborn child.
Early (I mean way, way early) in the morning for a fellow who managed a restaurant until 2 AM. I was awakened with the news that baby was on the way. I dutifully timed the contractions and soon we hurried over to the hospital only to be turned away by a gruff nurse. We were, she barked, “too early.”
So we went home and Nancy was in labor all day with pains too far apart to go back to the hospital.
In fact, Nancy later confided that she asked the gruff nurse when her shift ended and then determined she was not going to go back while that nurse was on duty! So I have never been too sure whether Nancy or Mother Nature caused that labor to go on for more than 24 hours!
At one point while we waited we went for a walk and Nancy stopped to use the restroom at a local bakery. The owner casually asked me as I waited “When is your wife due?” I made the mistake of telling her “Actually she is in labor right now.” That poor owner began to pace and look nervously toward the restroom and kept asking over and over in a shaky voice if she should go in and check on Nancy; if I was sure she was alright. The owner was so shaken up I wished I had thought of a cover story. I am convinced that when Nancy emerged and we safely exited the bakery that it was one of the happiest moments in the history of that establishment, or at least in the owner’s life.
Sometime in the early evening – after the gruff nurse’s shift– we decide that surely by now it must be time. So back we went to the hospital, and this time they let us stay. We had a beautiful birthing room with a rocking chair and place for me to sleep, as well as Nan and the baby.
The baby must not have heard that the gruff nurse was gone because she stayed in the womb for another twelve hours. I was so tired it would have been nice to go home and sleep. Of course, I didn’t. I had to stay and be with Nancy and wait for the promised new life.
For hours through the night I dutifully logged contractions until it finally dawned on me that neither the doctor nor the nurses cared about my contraction log. Once I figure out that my notes meant nothing (I think they were supposed to keep me otherwise occupied) I dedicated myself solely to being in the moment with Nancy– and let me tell you it was long and hard on her. I may have been tired, but as you can imagine she was exhausted somewhere way beyond fatigue.
So we eventually reached a point where our aim for hours was to get just through each moment, each contraction. There was no past or future only the given moment. This went on for hours and that experience of getting through a rough time, a moment at a time, was a very valuable lesson that I have leaned on many times since.
After some twenty-six hours of labor at last this wee little bloody being with long wet hair, sparkling eyes, a high piercing cry and a magnet for my love came into the world and into my life.
At that instant my life changed. I don’t just mean because Nancy and I were no longer a couple but a family. And I don’t just mean because I had this long day that ended with the joy of a new dad walking on air that morning twenty-six years ago today. I mean my whole life was changed, instantly filled with new life and new love for this little newborn.
It was quite an experience. All that waiting for nine months did not even come close to the intensity of anticipation we experienced that long laborious day of labor. It was like a slow arduous unwrapping of one of the greatest gifts ever. That anticipation was almost as hard as the work –well, I doubt Nancy would agree with that, but you know what I mean.
Today is Ascension Sunday in the life of the church. It may seem counter-intuitive that a day with “Ascension” in title can be related to a story about anticipating a birth, but it can!
As you heard from the Lectionary reading the resurrected Christ had been hanging around with the apostles speaking about the Reign of God and he told them toward the end of his forty post-Easter days that they had to stay in Jerusalem to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This” he said “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The apostles had asked Christ if he would be doing the Messiah Warrior-King thing. You see the Messiah had been expected by many to lead an army to “restore the Kingdom of Israel.”
Christ had a very interesting answer to this inquiry. “It is not for you to know the time or periods that [God] has set by [God’s] authority” and then Christ tells them that soon power from the Holy Spirit was coming not to accomplish what they expected, but to baptize each of them personally so that they would become witnesses for Christ “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, “and to the ends of the earth.”
After Christ said this– with the apostles looking on– we told that Christ “was [then] lifted up and a cloud took him out of sight.”
Most folks focus on this miracle of Christ ascending in a cloud when considering this story. But I wonder if just as miraculous is Christ’s answer to the question about Messianic power; where Christ tells those early followers of Jesus that they are to be directly given power from the Holy Spirit. Christ tells them that soon they will receive a great gift: the ability to wield the very power of God, and consequently they are to be Christ’s witnesses to the very ends of the earth! That is some miracle, some bit of magic to await.
In Luke the apostles have been hanging around with Jesus all during his ministry. Then he is taken away from them by Rome’s cruel execution of him. The apostles are grief stricken, frightened, at a loss as to what they will do without Jesus.
Then the resurrected Jesus miraculously shows up in their lives hanging around with them in what had to have been a great post-Easter bliss.
And what happens next is what today’s story of the Ascension seems to really be about. Pardon the pun but it is about a pregnant pause, a transition from the bliss of the marriage of the resurrected Christ with the apostles to the reality of next greatest thing to come. What’s coming is at this point in the story is a surprise for the apostles.
Nancy and I never peaked at the gender of our children in vitro so we never knew if we were going to have a boy or a girl. It was always a surprise, a part of the anticipation.
Our first newborn was a girl whom we named Tristan Robin and she has grown up to be one of the people I admire most in the world. She is full of compassion and a sense of justice and kindness and so much Love and Grace that it is awe inspiring. Not once in her life has she ever stopped being amazing to me. Nor has a day gone by that I did not somehow miraculously love her more! When I think of her especially during prayers it is always a Spiritual high. That little bitty baby, celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday today, has become one heck of a human being.
Christ was careful upon preparing to ascend not to reveal fully the surprise of what was coming for the followers of Jesus. Christ tells them vaguely that something exciting, something miraculous is coming from God for them and then leaves. Today’s story ends with the apostles waiting for the great gift Jesus promised.
The gift that is coming is the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, a day we celebrate next Sunday. A day that commemorates the Holy Spirit descending upon the early followers of Jesus, birthing, as it were, the Church. Jesus goes up-and-away and the Holy Spirit comes down and upon Jesus’s followers and we get the birth of the Church.
We will talk more about Pentecost next week–which this year falls on Mother’s Day.
Coincidence?
I think not!
Today’s Biblical passage is in one sense about how the apostles’ experience of the loss of something – Jesus’s human-like bodily presence– is a part of the birthing process of something else – the Church, a new and continuing forever Body of Christ.
In another sense the passage is about pain involved in the process of the birth of the church. The bliss of sharing and enjoying three years as Jesus’s disciples, the apostles spending time alone with Jesus was coming to an end and it had to have been painful.
Jesus like a birthing mother certainly dealt with the physical pain, but, the disciples like a caring a co-parent had to watch helplessly as that pain occurred.
Then there was the added pain of grief and sorrow at the death of Jesus who in a very real sense died in this birthing process.
And now in today’s story, after getting Jesus back for forty glorious post-Easter days, Jesus is bodily leaving his followers by ascending into heaven.
You see the disciples up to this point have merely been Jesus’s followers, a great thing but the power of God has mostly been coming through Jesus and they have depended on him for their bliss and teachings. This was true not only while Jesus was alive, but even as they grieved his death and rejoiced in the surprise of his mystical still-with-them-ness before he ascends.
Jesus must ascend for the apostles– Jesus’s followers– to continue on not as blissful followers married to the historic Jesus, but as Church. Another aspect of God – the Holy Spirit– must descend upon them so that they can be not just followers of Jesus, but, become themselves two or more gathered in his name as Church– acting as the very Body of Christ meant to continue on through history.
The hands and feet of Jesus alone cannot make them Church. They need the Holy Spirit to descend and jolt them into being the Body of Christ, Jesus’s continuation on earth.
The Texts for Preaching commentary puts it like this:
Ascension is an interim time, a period– not unlike Advent– between promise and fulfillment, The disciples of Christ are called to live faithful and obedient lives and to remember that the wonder of God’s love and presence revealed so radically in the cross and the open tomb still has in store fresh surprises of joy. The disciples of Christ are called to witness, little realizing how the Spirit lurks to transform all that they do into magnificent occasions for the outpouring of God’s love. In this manner the Ascension points to Pentecost and to all the marvelous ways of the Holy Spirit of God. 1.
Now some argue that the second coming of Christ occurred already with the birth of the Church. There may just be something to this, at least symbolically. At the end of today’s reading two angels, men in white robes, suddenly appear and ask as the apostles gaze up after Jesus: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
In next week’s scripture text we learn that the Holy Spirit came in the same way Jesus left descending from heaven. Thus giving birth to the Church – the very Body of Christ!
Can you see how the Church as the Body of Christ can be understood as Christ’s return to earth? The Second Coming? Pretty interesting to think about.
Today we remember the glorious anticipation and pregnant pause between Jesus’ followers’ experience of him in a human bodily form and Jesus’s followers miraculous ability through the gift of the Spirit to reanimate the Body of Christ by creating – through Jesus’s followers– the Church.
The newborn reborn Body of Christ has at its best grown up to be one of the greatest and most admirable gifts every given by God.
Done right church is full of compassion and a sense of justice and kindness and so much Love and Grace that it is awe inspiring.
It has been, and still is, world altering. Not once in the life of the church – when truly acting as the Body of Christ– has it ever stopped being amazing.
That thing that the followers of Christ await becomes one heck of a Holy place. Church.
You are sitting in just such a place.
A place that alters the world through Spirit-filled followers of Jesus.
A place where the Body of Christ through the Holy Spirit alters lives filling them with new life and new love.
Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Texts for Preaching, CD-ROM pages 311.
Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008
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Living Under the Influence of Shalom
By Administrator | April 27, 2008
Living Under the Influence of Shalom
A sermon based on Acts 17:22-31
April 27, 2008 at Palm Bay, FL
By Rev. Scott Elliott
One of the first words in today’s Lectionary reading from Acts is Areopagus (are-e-op-ah-gus). A word that is easy to stumble on and I have had trouble saying on occasion.
Are-ee-op-ah-gus. It was the name given to an open air place just outside of Athens, and it also came to mean a place where a council would hear public debates and issue verdicts.
So this is a story about Paul appearing before a council to make a case that the teachings he’s brought to Athens are not just babblings, but grounded in intellectual concepts and authority.
Basically, the council Paul is appearing before wants to know which Paul is more akin to: a loopy street prophet or an itinerant teacher with knowledge of prophetic truths.
The council is curious to learn what Paul is teaching to Athenians. And there is a sort of set process to validate religious claims in Athens at Areopagus. According to tradition Paul needs to demonstrate (1) that he represents a deity, (2) that the deity wishes to reside in Athens and (3) that the deity’s residence in Athens will benefit the Athenians.
The Lectionary starts today’s reading at this demonstration. Paul introduces himself as an authorized representative of God, the God a shrine in Athens referred to as “the unknown God.”
Paul claims that he can make known to them “the unknown God;” that the unknown God is in fact the One who made all of creation and that this God transcends residence in shrines like those in Athens and accordingly requires no Athenian residence. Moreover, this one God is not seeking admission into the Pantheon –God is already everywhere.
Paul argues that what God seeks is for humanity to seek God– the God– this One God who is as close as where we are. Paul argues that like Greek poets claim, it is in God that “we live and move and have our being.”
And he goes on to note that not only is God as close as where we are, but, we are also God’s very offspring! And Paul claims that God seeks for humans to change their ways – to repent as it were– so that we can be judged in righteousness through one whom God raised from the dead. 1
The Lectionary cuts the story off, but, at verses 32 to 34 we learn that Paul’s demonstration resulted in some of the council scoffing at the resurrection of the dead, others wishing to hear more, others still who “joined him and became believers.”
I have to confess that for years I really did not like Paul. He grated on my nerves. I heard out-of-context his letters and understood him to be sexist and homophobic, a zealous Christian and someone I was sure I would never have had anything in common with. In other words I too have scoffed at Paul.
But it turns out that Paul is not such a bad fellow. I hear him in Galatians (3:28) as standing for equal rights when he wrote “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” I have long been for equal rights and it turns out now that I am also a zealous Christian.
As I was preparing for this sermon and considering the text it dawned on me that Paul and I have a lot more in common than just being zealous for Christ and for equality.
As today’s text indicates Paul understands God not to be just out there up in heaven and inaccessible to creation, but, understands God to simultaneous be “Lord of heaven and earth . . .” to transcend creation while at the same time being “not far from each of us”
God is so close in fact that Paul claims – in that famous saying we hear here a lot– that it is in God “we live and move and have our being.” I have come to understand God in this way too.
God is not just up there somewhere reaching in to stir an earthen pot when petitioned for help or when God wants to otherwise interact with creation. Rather God is always in the here and now soaking us through-and-through like water surrounding and saturating a sponge.
I take great comfort in knowing that God soaks us all; is what we move around in, what we live in, where we have our being. Truly all we have to do is grope in front or behind or to the side or even inside of ourselves and there is God.
God is bound by no shrines.
God is not attended to, nor made, by human hands. Nor is God “an image formed by the art and imagination of mortal.”
God is Love; boundless, every-where-ness Love.
That’s the intellectual, the theological, the thinking side, of spirituality that I find myself in accord with Paul.
But, I also share what I am going to call a “mystical” side with Paul. I have rarely shared this story with anyone, let alone a gathering of folks, because it is really quite “woo-woo.”
You know “woo-woo,” it’s a west coast colloquialism for new-agey sounding mystical experiences. Supernatural stuff. Stuff that is hard to believe, hard to get our minds around.
For most of my life I have considered myself a man of reason, I still do, but this stuff, this mystical side, defies ordinary reason and accepted logic (at least for me).
And so, honestly, I have hesitated to disclose this in public before, but, it is an integral part of my story and affects how I understand God and so, of course, it affects how I preach and therefore what you hear at church most Sundays. So please prepare yourself for woo-woo.
Paul in his earlier days, as a young man, was an ardent persecutor of the followers of Jesus. Acts 9 tells us he was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”
Then “a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard [Jesus’s voice asking him why he was persecuting Jesus and the voice that was Jesus’s told Paul what to do].”
Paul was blinded by the light for three days and eventually his sight was restored (we are told “scales fell from his eyes”) and he converted, was baptized and became an apostle and the greatest missionary in all of Christina history.
First, let me get this out of the way: my mystical experience is different from Paul’s in a lot of ways. I did not breathe threats against followers of Jesus. Nor was I blinded by the light. And of course I have not become the greatest missionary ever–and chances are I never will. Despite what I may daydream about I am not even close to the Saint that Paul was.
But like Paul a pivotal moment in my conversion story was a mystical experience with light that I cannot logically explain. A light that I believe was Christ coming to me just as I was wandering away from Christianity in my teens.
I was eighteen to be exact. I had left the church and I had bad feelings toward it – as I have mentioned before– and like a lot of folks I thought Church was full of anger against others.
In one of the churches that I had attended a few years earlier I had dated a young woman and had become close to both her and her family. By the time I was eighteen, although we had not dated for a couple of years, I still kept in contact with the young woman and her family.
One night I had a very intense and what I can only describe as a mystical dream. I dreamed a man was in a room at the top of Sather Tower at University of California. The man was dressed in khaki clothes and he was attended to by people in lab coats. His heart was outside his body in an aquarium connected to him by what looked like tubes.
During the entire dream the whole room and everything in it was bathed –absolutely soaked– in a warm yellow golden glow. The glow exuded utter love, peace and joy. The glow ceaselessly and effortlessly permeated everything– including me.
I have to stop here and point out that there really are no words that can do justice to the feeling of that light. I have since come to think of “Shalom” (God’s ultimate peace) to mean for me what I felt from that light. Otherwise the best I can do is say it was God’s utter love, peace and joy. And I have never felt anything like it before or since.
I kept thinking as I was dreaming that this dream is so clear and vivid it must be extrasensory, you know psychic. Woo-woo. I heard the voice in my head telling me that I had to remember this dream.
After I was oriented in the space of the dream I watched the man and his heart all the while feeling exuberant with that Shalom feeling (it was quite a high).
While all of us in the room were under the influence of Shalom suddenly the people in lab-coats rushed to the aquarium to tend to the heart. It was at this point that I awoke with a start. I looked at the alarm clock and noted its time.
I told my mom and my best friend the next day about the dream wondering aloud what it could mean?
Two days later I learned that my young woman friend’s father had died at the very same day and the very same time that I was dreaming. I learned that he died of a heart attack. This father had often dressed in khaki clothes.
See, I told you it was woo-woo.
The knowledge that I had this dream at the same time that this lovely man died scared me. The dream did not scare me. I did not want it to ever end. It filled me with Shalom. What scared me was the idea that someone dying had been able to enter my mind ghostlike – and I have never been to keen on ghosts, let alone unauthorized access to my head.
I decided the dream must be a message for my friend that her dad was bathed in love, joy and peace as he died. I went to the grave side with the family and met with my friend a few times shortly after the death, but, I did not bring up the dream. It did not feel right. It was too weird, and frankly it seemed inappropriate to bring it up in light of her loss and overwhelming grief.
I decided I would tell her when I felt right about it. I moved from that town and have never seen my friend since, but a few years later I decided to write her a letter at her old address (where her mom still lived) and tell the story. After I wrote the letter I figured I had done my duty to the dream.
But that dream stuck with me through all the years I went without a church, always reminding me in no uncertain terms that God was peace and love and joy that permeated everything.
After I came back to church and embraced Christianity, I began to see this mystical dream in a much different light.
I began to understand that this dream was not just to get a message to my friend (or maybe not even to do that), but a vision for me to cling to and experience and continue to learn from as I wandered without church, and then to continue to appreciate and learn from as I re-found church and went deeper into my faith.
Indeed, I still learn from it. I see it now as an incredible, perhaps once in a lifetime, gift from God to keep me connected to the Sacred as I was leaving the church, even to teach me new things all throughout my life. Maybe even to one day help me find my way to seminary and become a pastor.
From this gift I understand that Shalom light, that I was bathed in that night, to have been a vision from God, a visit by God. Why God chose to give me that gift I do not know, but I carry it with me and cherish it deeply. That vision is an integral part of my story and journey and affects how I understand and relate to God.
You see, I don’t understand God as a person far, far away that we pray to. I understand God to be as close as where we are; to be in you and in me; to be in our breath and in our very existence; to be pure Love and Joy and Peace; to be Shalom.
When I started going back to church I was surprised to read that Paul –that fellow I used to dislike– understood God exactly as I did, as the Greek poets did, as the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.”
I cannot tell you how to visualize God. I cannot even tell you all that God is. I can tell you that for a moment in a dream scales fell from my eyes and I experienced being in a very Sacred presence. That presence was not some old dude with a beard on a throne but, rather Light. Light that flooded me and filled everything with Shalom.
Looking back, I can say that since that dream my life has been incremental movements to try and be closer and closer to living fully under the influence of Shalom.
As I wrote the last sentence that I just spoke, a new lesson from the dream dawned on me: Boiled down the Gospels – all that Jesus did and taught– all are about just that, trying to move self and humankind closer and closer to being fully under the influence of Shalom.
You do not have to depend on my tale of woo-woo, my weird mystical dream to know that God’s right here, right now inside and outside of each of us calling us to Shalom. Paul and Jesus and all the Gospels tell us the same thing.
And if you just look, really look at yourself you can see that it is true too. You, the person beside you, me, this whole building and the world out there are soaked with God.
And it’s a good God.
The One God who is Love itself.
The God who calls us to Shalom.
This week, this day, may each of us take a step closer toward Shalom, that glorious enveloping Light of Love and Joy and Peace.
Amen.
Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008
—- Endnotes—-
1. The paragraphs of this sermon outlining the Acts 17:22-31 pericope are based on a general descriptions of Acts 17 found in the New Interpreter’s Bible Vol X at p 244-246.
The paragraphs of this sermon outlining the Acts 17:22-31 pericope are based on a general descriptions of Acts 17 found in the Vol X at p 244-246.
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Reflecting God’s Image
By Administrator | April 20, 2008
Reflecting God’s Image
a sermon based on Genesis 1:24-31
April 20, 2008 at Palm Bay, FL
By Rev. Scott Elliott
Most mornings before I come to the church I light a candle in a darkened room for morning prayer and meditation. The candle tends to be a visual focal point for me during this contemplative time, but, it’s also more than that.
The candle is, as one of my seminary professors used to tell us, “a symbol of the Spirit beyond ourselves.”1 Or as we note in our Bible Study and church meetings the lit candle reminds us that Christ is in the room present with us.
In seminary the candle I lit during my morning prayer time stood by a mirror. And over time I came to think of the candle’s reflection in the mirror as an apt symbol of how humans are images of God. The three dimensional candle representing God and the candle’s reflected image representing God’s image in each of us.
The reflected image in my mirror was a clear image, but as clear as the reflection was it could never be the same as the original. The reflection could only be seen, other dimensions of the source candle could not be experienced through the image. It could not be touched or smelt or heard to sizzle and pop; and it did not give off anywhere near the same heat as the candle did. But the image did reflect the beautiful light and it enhanced the glowing power of the candle making a big difference in how I saw and experienced the room. And the quality of the mirror made all the difference in that regard.
I often think of that candle and its reflection as a good example of how Christians should strive to be in life: reflecting the image of God as best we can, as clearly as we can, to bring as much of the God’s Divine Light into the darkness of the world.
I look at Jesus’s life, his words and acts in the gospels, and I see a human being who figured out how to be a crystal clear image of the light of God and shine it brightly in the world. So bright, that even light years away in history it is still illuminating, still radiant, still dazzling in our lives.
Unfortunately, the rest of us usually don’t so clearly reflect the image of God as Jesus did and does. As Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians “we [tend to] see now in a mirror dimly.” The images of God we reflect can often be dim and hard to see.
So what do we do? Well, ideally we work hard to clean up our lives, the reflective source of God, so that we more closely mirror, more clearly reflect the image of God and bring more of that Divine light within out to brighten up the darkness.
And the good news is that Jesus has shown us a Way to do this through spiritual practices.
Spirituality is the Holy Spirit calling us to make our reflected image of God brighter and better by participating, as Jesus did, in God’s presence and work in the world. 2 Spiritual practices are the processes we use to answer the Holy Spirit’s call to do this.
Put a little differently Spirituality is the desire to better reflect God’s image for the betterment of ourselves and creation; and spiritual practices are the methods we use to do that reflecting.
Marcus Borg, in his pleasant to read book The Heart of Christianity, notes that spiritual practice is about “[p]aying attention to God, [t]he formation of Christian identity, [n]ourishment, [c]ompassion and justice [and l]iving ‘the way.’”3
So, for example, by attending church and being involved in our church community or by studying and immersing ourselves in day-to-day Christian living we pay attention to God and form Christian identity.
Church nourishes us and helps us grow through worship, community, shared journey and joint outreach with, and for others. Most of you attend church regularly or participate in community so you do this already. But the more we do it the better!
Also when we pray through words or through meditation (reflecting on something) or contemplation (silent attention to God) we also nourish our souls. Most of us do this practice too, at least at church, but we could do this more and as a consequence not only grow as we do so, but also help our community and the world grow as well.
Acting as God’s hands and feet in the world through charity and social reform and transformation are ways that we practice compassion and justice in the world. Borg notes, aptly, that we do charity and reform a lot better than we do transformation of society, which is a huge part of what the Reign of God is all about – and what Jesus modeled for us.
At any rate, we can never do enough compassion or justice work in the world, and we are called and called and called to do more to help God’s creation.
All of the practices I have mentioned are a part of living the way that Jesus taught us. When we do them the mirror gets a little less dim; our reflection of God gets brighter and the world cannot help but be a better place because of it.
You probably remember Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5 (14-15) that calls us to keep our lights out from under bushels and other dim places so that we can reflect God in our images and “let our light shine before others so that they may see [our] good works and give glory to [God] in heaven.”
But Jesus did not just talk he also walked the walk. He paid attention to God. He attended synagogue, was involved in his faith community and he not only worshiped God, but shared the journey and reached out to others. Jesus prayed and he certainly embodied God’s hands and feet in the world through charity and social reform and transformation 4.
And we can – indeed we must– tie this into the part of today’s scripture that follows the declaration that we are made in God’s image. In particular the part in the New Revised Standard Version of Genesis 1 verse 28 where God said “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” This verse is especially important to consider this week as we commemorate Earth Day, a day that we consider this great sphere of rock and water and air and life that we live and move and have our being in.
Some have argued that Genesis 1:28 means God gave the earth to humanity to do as it wants. But “having dominion” and “subduing” the earth in the context of the text and ancient Hebrew means no such thing! The New Interpreter’s Bible commentary puts it like this:
The Message, a popular paraphrase of the Bible by Eugene Patterson puts Genesis 1:26-28 in this caretaker light. Listen to Patterson’s take on those verses – he captures the meaning nicely:
a popular paraphrase of the Bible by Eugene Patterson puts Genesis 1:26-28 in this caretaker light. Listen to Patterson’s take on those verses – he captures the meaning nicely:
God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female.
God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” 7
In Psalm 24 it is declared, not that the earth is human kind’s, but, that “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it . . .” In Job (chap. 39-41) God proclaims the glory of creation and that it is of God’s making and oversight.
We know that Jesus and the New Testament writings deal a lot with justice and kindness toward humankind, but Jesus and the New Testament also give us guidance on how to understand and appreciate and care for creation.
One of my favorite sayings of Jesus is found at Matthew 6:28: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” It’s clear from this verse that Jesus not only had a poet’s deep appreciation for creation, but, was quite enamored with it. This is not surprising most of Jesus’s ministry took place outdoors on hills and plains and lakes and seas. Jesus was an outdoorsie kinda guy.
And even in Jesus’s more general theology about love it is not hard to discover a sense of environmentalism by simply asking some basic questions like:
Can we love our enemies if we give them bad air to breath and fouled water to drink?
Can we love God if we destroy that which is God’s, that which God made good and promised not to destroy?
Is imposing pollution on generations to come doing unto others as we would want them to do unto us?
This gibes not only with Acts 17 which tells us that it is in God that “we live and move and have our being, ” but, Psalm 139 which asserts God is everywhere:
If the Bible is accurate and God is where we live and move and have our being, if God is in everything, then is fouling any part of creation – the very dwelling place of God – a proper reflection of the image of God?
As we prepare, as images of God, to commemorate Earth Day this week the ultimate spiritual question is: As caretakers of God’s creation are we acting in a manner that reflects the image of God?
If your answer is “No.” Please take some time this week to do some spiritual practices around the matter. Consider how you might better reflect the image of God, a little clearer, a little brighter when it comes to care of the earth. Recycle. Walk or ride a bike. Use less energy. Avoid Styrofoam. Don’t litter. Go outside and at least do this: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, [and cherish that] even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ”
Amen.
Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008
—–Endnotes—–
2. This is a paraphrase of Dr. Tye’s “working definition of spirituality”also taken from her Educating for Spiritual Formation course at Eden
3. Borg, Marcus, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 2003), 188.
4. The ideas in each of the last four paragraphs were heavily influenced by the Marcus Borg reading from The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 2003).
5.Borg, 188.
6. New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol 1, p. 346.
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Wonders & Signs by Awesome Blemished Beings
By Administrator | April 13, 2008
Wonders & Signs by Awesome Blemished Beings
a sermon based on Acts 2:42-47
April 13, 2008 at Palm Bay, FL
By Rev. Scott Elliott
When I first looked over today’s Lectionary text I thought that I would focus on the part where everyone sells their properties and “distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”Being raised in the dive-under-the-desk-and-hate-anything-that-smacks-of-socialism Cold War Era I have always found this passage quite interesting. There’s a huge message there, not promoting communism, but about how much Love the early church had and how dedicated they were to one another, so much so they put all they had on the table to be distributed to all in the community.
I mention this was what I thought about focusing on so that I could tell you a string of communist puns (Please bear with me). You see I’ve been Stalin so I could say: Early church table Lenin got Marx on it at pot lucks, and that Jesus’s early follower’s cats cried “Mao” just as our’s do. If I wasn’t Russian to get to the rest of the sermon I’d also play the Engels about Castro oil and good China.
Although I really did begin this sermon looking to the communalistic nature of the early church, as often happens, I was pulled down a path I did not expect by what I like to think is the Holy Spirit (whom I want to be sure you do not blame for those really bad puns!).
The words that stood out to me and pulled me to another path are “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”
The apostles referred to here, are the twelve disciples. The disciples are revered in the New Testament and by the church today, but, they also appear in the Gospels as folks who blunder and betray and don’t get a lot of what Jesus preaches. In other words, the disciples act human in the gospels. They follow Jesus, but, they make mistakes.
Peter, arguably the greatest disciple, is a good example of this. He does not always get Jesus’ teachings. He argues about Jesus washing his feet. He loses faith walking on water and so plunges in. Knowing Jesus’ message of love and non-violence he still cuts off the ear of an arresting officer. Peter’s warned he will deny Jesus, is adamant that he won’t, and then sure enough he does, denying Jesus three times the night of his arrest. Peter sees the empty tomb, but, does not get that Christ is resurrected until Jesus appears to him. He argues with Paul about letting Gentiles into the early church.
In the Gospel stories Peter appears to be, well, like us. He makes mistakes. The other disciples are like us too, lives blemished with mistakes, missteps and failings, but, nonetheless followers of Jesus full of heart and love.
While the apostles are certainly blemished and human we hear in today’s reading that they managed in all their humanness to literally live awesome lives. Doing wonders and signs so inspiring that the early church members essentially put in the offering all that they owned to be distributed to all and given to those in need.
“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”
A human being and modern disciple of Jesus, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, has been in the news a lot lately. He’s a preacher at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Trinity had eighty-seven members when Rev. Wright was hired in 1970. When he retired earlier this year the church had eight-thousand members. Trinity is located in the impoverished south side of Chicago. Under the leadership of Rev. Wright, Trinity UCC has done much to inspire awe with wonders and signs being done by Jesus’s followers in our day and age.
Listen to this list of some of the wonders and signs Trinity United Church of Christ has done and continues to do. The development of: senior citizen housing ministries, child care center ministries; AIDS/HIV ministries; hospice care ministries; rights for GLBT ministries; inmate and inmate family ministries; ministries providing food and financial support for the poor and unemployed; ministries that have provided over half a million dollars to the Negro College Fund, half a million dollars to seminaries, a million dollars in college scholarships; over one and a half million dollars in seminary scholarships.
What amazing wonders and signs!
And with all those resources being shared it sure sounds like Trinity United Church of Christ has been living about as communally as a congregation can in a big city in modern America, doing great things through Christ.
In addition to leading a church to do awesome ministries, Rev. Dr. Wright himself is a pretty amazing fellow on his own. He is a former marine. He served on a medical team that cared for President Johnson. He has four degrees, and nine honorary degrees. He has published books and articles. He has mentored hundreds of ministers and ministers-in-training.
And he has preached in excess of two-hundred thousand minutes, in about two-thousand sermons.
His preaching is in the African American tradition and laced with much liberation theology.
The African American tradition often includes sermons with fiery rhetoric.
Liberation theology tends to focus on God’s call to liberate the oppressed.
Both liberation theology and the African America church tradition also often result in prophetic sermons, sermons that criticize the status quo in an effort to move, not just the gathered, but the powers-that-be away from corporate sinfulness toward God’s way of justice and righteousness. Rev. Wright is a preacher of this vein.
And you have no doubt by now heard short snippets of his sermons. One angrily referring to America being damned, another to chickens coming home to roost in 9/11, others asserting mistreatment of minorities in America.
I have heard a number of these snippets and have found some of the fiery rhetoric in conflict with my own theology that God is love and does not side only with the oppressed, but, with all of humanity.
I note, though, that I have the same sort of disagreements with fundamentalist preachers who claim God has damned America or sent catastrophes into the world, because of liberals or homosexuals or whatever group they dislike.
You see I do not understand God to be one who damns anyone, or a loving being who otherwise would lash out or oppress any human, or group of humans– in America or anywhere else. So I have trouble with sermons that suggest God is a punishing God, and not just in sermons by fundamentalists, but, even by UCC pastors like Rev. Wright.
But the few snippets which we’ve seen of Rev. Wright’s sermons– that you and I may disagree with– make Rev. Wright at the very worse, blemished and human, like the rest of us. And they certainly do not take away the awesome wonders and signs he has led Trinity United Church of Christ to achieve and the lives and community he and they have changed in the process.
And you know what? In the United Church of Christ, congregations get to pick their pastors and pick their theology. And if eight-thousand members at Trinity United Church Christ found in Rev. Wright a leader to guide them toward experiences with God, well, in our denomination, that is their choice. It is their call, not ours, not the national United Church of Christ’s.
It’s not our call any more than it is for us to tell a more conservative UCC church that they have to be open and affirming of Gays or that they cannot understand the bible literally, or that they have to hire women preachers.
Or to bring the matter home we would not want another United Church of Christ or the national office –or for that matter the media or the American public who do not attend here– telling us what we must or must not do theologically as church. Nor would we want them telling us which qualified person we can or cannot have as a pastor!
And we certainly would not want to have snippets from our pastor’s sermons be held against us, like some in the media and many in greater America seem to want to do with Barack Obabma one of Trinity United Church Christ’s members.
Oddly I have not heard anyone trying to hang the words of other candidates’ pastors upon them. Why then Barack Obama? I suppose one could argue it’s because he’s a black man from a black church who’s motto is “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” Maybe so. But I suggest that it may have to do, at least in part, with the fact that a United Church of Christ church is at the heart of the controversy.
We may not be putting all of our possessions into the offering to share as the early church did, but, like Trinity UCC in Chicago, other churches in the UCC have been doing wonders and signs for years. And it is counterculture to do so. We stand out in how we do church.
Listen to this copy from an advertisement that the national United Church of Christ recently ran in the New York Times:
With all Christians, we rest in God’s amazing grace and hear God’s voice in the words of Scripture. Yet, the UCC is unique to some because we do not require uniformity of belief. We are a church of open ideas, extravagant welcome and evangelical courage. Our passion for democracy extends to both government and church, where decision-making rests within each congregation. We support liberty in our pulpits, just as we affirm the individual conscience of our 1.2 million members to agree, disagree and wrestle with life’s biggest questions in a spirit of love.
Our story is this nation’s story. We are the people of the Mayflower. More than 600 of our 5,700 congregations were formed before 1776. Eleven signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of UCC predecessor bodies. As early abolitionists, we came to the aid of the Amistad captives and founded hundreds of schools across the South after the Civil War. We were the first mainline church to ordain an African-American (1785), a woman (1853) and an openly gay pastor (1972). We were also the first to form a foreign mission society (1810). Our multi-ethnic membership includes persons from every immigrant group, as well as native peoples and descendants of freed slaves.
Our unity is not dependent upon uniform agreement, but in our shared allegiance to Jesus Christ. Ours is a risk-taking church, because ours is a risk-taking God.
People in the prophets of old’s day, people in Jesus’s day, in Peter’s day, did not like to have their ways challenged, and it has ever been thus. And so attacks on the churches and our pastors in the history of the UCC and its predecessors are not uncommon– are not new.
How could you support abolition of slavery? They asked.
How could you ordain a black man? They asked.
How could you ordain a woman? The asked.
How could you form schools for blacks? They asked.
How could you back civil rights? They asked.
How could you ordain a gay? They asked.
We have agreed, however, to be in relation with one another. And just like that super conservative uncle or that ultra liberal aunt that you argue with at family gatherings, we don’t abandon or give up on one another or stay away from the gatherings, we get together again and again maintaining our differences and rejoicing in our diversity.
All of the UCC operates on the biblical model of covenant. We are not bound to one another by coercive authority, but rather by persuasion, as listening caring partners to a mutual covenant. We honor and respect one another even as we disagree. All the while trying to hear and respond to God’s call, being faithful to God in all that we do.
I know this will come as a surprise: pastors are not perfect. Their words are not always right. So the risk also includes that clergy will make mistakes and UCCers will take heat for it from those outside the family, especially those who find threatening the United Church of Christ’s awesome signs and wonders– those trail blazing ways for Christ.
There are times when it is appropriate for pastors to be removed from the pulpit for what they say, but, by and large that is the congregation’s call no one else’s. We don’t have to agree with Rev. Wright and he does not have to agree with us.
Jesus knew Peter was flawed, but, worked wonders through him. Jesus knew that the only tools available for God’s work on earth are human beings and that humans make mistakes. Those mistakes though do not negate blemished humans, like Peter, like Rev. Wright, like you and me, from doing wonders and signs.
And know this: Rev. Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ have done awesome wonders and signs, so has our denomination the United Church of Christ, so has Riviera United Church of Christ.
No matter what others may say, may each of us continue to do God’s great and Holy work– despite the blemishes we have.
Amen.
Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008
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Gathering, Word & Breaking Bread
By Administrator | April 6, 2008
A sermon based on Luke 24:13-35.
April 6, 2008 at Palm Bay, FL
By Rev. Scott Elliott
I have no sense of direction. None. This was not such a bad thing in Oregon where mountains and hills give those of us with no sense of direction a sense of where we are. I could always tell I was going north when the mountains were on my right and south when they were on the left.
Here in Florida my lack of a sense of direction is a problem. I am not sure if you have noticed it or not, but Florida is flat. I mean really, really flat. I am not sure, but I think sometimes from the causeway it’s so flat that I can see Tampa.
The Florida flatness means I have nothing to quickly judge direction with, so I spent a goodly portion of time when I first got here getting, well . . . lost.
Interestingly enough I learned that when I came to a place to turn invariably my intuition on which way to go was usually wrong. So for awhile I began to choose the way I did not think was right, and as weird as that was, it worked.
But it was taxing on my mind, not to mention my ego, to choose what I sensed was wrong in order to do what was right. If you think that it was mind bending to just hear that said aloud think how hard it was on my brain!
Now hear me loud and clear it’s not Florida’s fault that I have no sense of direction.
In fact, one time in Oregon when we first bought our property I was out in the woods trying to locate survey markers. I started at one and headed towards the other marching through dense old growth. After awhile I eventually came upon a marker, at first I was relieved, then I realized it was the same marker I had started at. I had gone in a circle.
What is really embarrassing is that a few weeks later with kids in tow I did the same thing again.
On the spiritual side of things I had in some ways an uncannily similar wandering and discovery, even choosing to go against my sense of direction. I started out as a Christian and then left that marker in my life to wander some twenty years on the path of life without Christianity, in fact my intuition was to wander as far from it as I could.
I always felt connected to God and creation before and after I wandered, but not the God of anger and vengeance and exclusion that I felt I had left behind at those first churches. I had become an atheist to that God of anger and hate.
The God I communed with in the wilderness was the God of Love.
I had no other name for that God as I wandered.
One day to my great surprise – and against my sense of where I thought I should turn, I visited a church. Ironically, I soon found myself back at Christianity. I had come full circle. My wandering ended.
In that church I learned to sit with the scriptures and listen for God’s call from the nooks and crannies of stories.
I learned that gathering with two or more magnified the experience of my– of our– God of Love.
I learned to break bread at a mindful meal known as Communion where God can be experienced in the basics of life – food and drink and community gathered in Love, in the name of God.
I learned that the God of Love who walked with me for twenty years in the wilderness could be called Christ, and my eyes were opened and I recognized Jesus for what he was; the best Way to walk with God for me. He became in my eyes truly Jesus-the-Christ.
We all have to go through a wandering in some sense. For some it takes a short time, for others (like me) decades, for still others it can be a life time.
Walking with God is important. We are often reminded in this place that Micah 6 tells us that what God requires of us is “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God.”
But it helps along the Way to know more about God. And it helps to know how to do justice and love kindness and how to walk humbly with that glorious God of Love. Such knowledge enables us to sense and experience God who is always there walking with us.
Today’s scripture reading is about two of Jesus’s followers walking on the road to Emmaus. We are told elsewhere in scripture that where two or more are gathered in Jesus’s name he is there. (Matt 18:20). And sure enough these two apostles were gathered walking together – on Sunday– focused on Jesus and the fascinating fact that his tomb had been discovered empty by Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James and other women; and that those women were told by angels that Jesus had risen.
Some read and hear today’s story as history recorded, that is a factual account of an event that occurred. Others read and hear it as metaphor. The point of the story is whether it is history or metaphor, the point is what you walk away from it with. What does it teach? Or what can it teach?
Many have heard this story as not just about Jesus’s resurrection and appearance after death, but as a story that teaches us how to be church.
The followers of Jesus after his death symbolize– or instruct by example– how to be church and consciously experience Christ in our presence.
The story teaches us what it takes as church and members of a church community on our walk with God to have our eyes opened, our disbelief dispelled, to recognized Jesus Christ as The Way for us as church and as individuals to more fully experience God.
We can walk humbly with God and do justice and love kindness on our own as I tried to do for twenty years, but this story suggests that it takes more to fully experience God and to do as much walking and justice and loving of kindness that we can. I have found that to be true.
For Christians it takes (as Cleopas and the unnamed disciple learn) Christ doing some things with us and for us along The Way.
Before those walking with Christ discover who he is in the story we are told “beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”
Can you hear how the United Church of Christ motto “God is still speaking” is an echo of this verse? Along the Way we must allow Christ to interpret scripture for us and listen to what Christ is speaking to us, how Christ is interpreting for us. How God is still speaking to us today.
God can be experienced and mediated through Scripture, but it certainly needs interpreting. We have to take into account not only the context in which the particular text was written, but Christ’s overarching teachings that God is love and that we are to love our neighbors and ourselves and God.
And traditions of the Body of Christ (the Church) aid in our interpretations as well.
So does how Christ speaks to us today through our own reason and experiences as we walk along the road of life with Christ.
Since we are called by Jesus to love and to see God as love; Scripture, tradition and our own experiences must be interpreted in ways that reflect Christ’s call to know God is love, and teachings to love God, ourselves and others. We do just that, here, each Sunday.
Hearing today’s scripture reading in this way we can understand that we are on our own walk with the risen Jesus to our own Emmaus with Christ guiding us through Moses and the prophets and all the rest of scripture. Simply put, it is through the risen Christ that Christians must comprehend scripture.
But Cleopas and the other disciples do not discover they are with Christ through his interpretations of scripture alone. They have to also affirmatively show Christ hospitality, invite him in. Remember? They stop and Jesus is about to leave them until “they urged him strongly, saying ’Stay with us’. . .”
All who are Christian must do this. We have to invite Christ not only on the walk with us, but to stop and stay with us in our homes, in our lives, in our community. So that our lives are Christ’s lives. So that our community home is Christ’s house– Christ’s church.
And it is important to note that Cleopas is not alone when he discovers who Jesus is. He is with another gathered on Sunday, two or more in Jesus’s name, as church. We certainly do this too. There is no church if there is but one person. People must be gathered to make church, church.
And what is the act that finally brings those gathered to recognize Jesus? Sharing bread at the Lord’s Table together. The experience of taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and giving it mediates the Scared. We, of course, also do this at Riviera United Church of Christ by reenacting Jesus’s table practices. A Sacrament Jesus taught us.
Unlike the Roman table practices that dictated who could come and break bread and drink wine, Jesus’s table “is a table without controls, a table without boundaries. It represents a community in which all are welcomed, into which all may come.”
At Jesus’s table the Reign of God comes into being – if only for a few minutes– because at that table in this church all are equally loved and entitled to spiritual sustenance and a place at the table. Justice and kindness, as well as nourishment are served.
It has always been, and always will be, that at God’s table in the here and now “[n]o one is exempted. Everyone is invited. Women as well as men, prostitutes as well as Pharisees.”
The experience of Jesus’ table is so powerful that to Jesus’ followers in today’s story that first Easter afternoon they did not just remember Jesus, they recognized and experienced Christ in the room with them. Ever since, Christians have gathered together and reenacted Jesus’s open table.
We will be celebrating those table practices here again today, gathered in Jesus’s name where at Jesus’s table unmediated access to God, community and spiritual foodstuff is available to anyone.
Communion can work on a number of levels. The images of the bread, body, cup, wine and blood can serve as mindful metaphors. The Bread of Life. The Body of God. The Cup of Blessing. The Spirit of God. The Life-blood of Creation.
The Lord’s Supper can also be understood as symbolic of the sacrifice Jesus made for us by laying his life down in such a powerful way that he lives on even today, his life of love and broken body and spilt blood long vindicated by God.
At Riviera United Church of Christ we insist that Communion is a reenactment and presentation of God’s open table where anyone – anyone– is welcomed and valued just as they are.
Not all churches celebrate Communion as God’s open table. Some close it off, but that is not the table we share and know and love as a Sacrament that mediates experiences of God’s presence.
I found an open table at the United Church of Christ I wandered into in Oregon. And Christ was there interpreting scripture, too, in a house that was open and hospitable, with two or more gathered in Christ’s name. But it took me more than a day in that place to have my eyes opened and recognize Jesus as the way for me. I think I went about two years before I felt comfortable enough to take Communion and a while longer before I felt I could call myself Christian and be baptized into the family of Christ.
As you have probably gathered by my presence up here, my return to Christianity firmly “took” the second time around, it took a long while, but it “took,” by God. And because of it I have had the greatest mid-life “crisis” ever known. I left practicing law and became a pastor in this beautiful place, in this love-filled church! It’s been an amazing blessing!
Today’s scripture reading reminds me that church would not have took for me, nor for any of us who call ourselves Christian if we did not have our own road-to-Emmaus-experiences with Christ.
We all have walked with Christ.
We all have had scripture interpreted in light of Jesus’s resurrection by Christ’s very presence with us.
We all have gathered two or more in Christ’s name in a hospitable place that invites not just us, but also Christ into a welcoming space.
We all have reenacted, remembered and celebrated Communion as God’s open table.
And we do all these things still.
When Cleopas and the other disciple experienced these things, they recognized and experienced Christ in their very presence– and they had Church.
Today here in this place if you have not already done so you may find that you have reached your own Emmaus. Break bread with us.
This “church is composed of those who have been led beyond disbelief to faith by the gracious revelation of God” 2 through the presence of Christ on the walk, resurrection inspired interpretation of scripture and in the breaking of bread at God’s table.
Won’t you join us?
All are welcomed and valued here as an equal child of God!
Amen.
Endnotes
1.Texts for Preaching, CD ROM, p. 280. CD ROM, p. 280. 2.Crossan, John Dominic, The Birth of Christianity, San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, (1998), 86.
3. Fiorenza, Elisabeth, In Memory of Her, New York: Crossroad Publishing Co. (1983),121.
4. Texts for Preaching, at 281
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No E-Sermon Posting for March 30, 2008
By Administrator | March 30, 2008
The text of the March 30, 2008 sermon at RUCC will not be electronically posted. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Please check back next week when the sermon postings will resume. Or scroll though and read one of the many sermons posted from the past.
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An Easter Worship Drama
By Administrator | March 23, 2008
JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY
a worship drama based on John 20, 21 using NRSV
by Rev. Scott Elliott Copyright ©
Easter 2008
The actors playing Mary, Jesus, Peter and Thomas should be in period costume. The narrator is a minister. Peter and Thomas being the play in the audience. Mary and Jesus are off stage. The Narrator begins the play:
Okay I am going to help you out. Your first line is about to appear on the screen. CHRIST IS RISEN!
CONGREGATION: He is risen indeed.
NARRATOR: Great job. Now listen here is your first musical cue now look up and sing…
For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
Peter and Thomas run out the aisle them came in on. Mary gets up to look in the tomb again. She picks up the cloth that Peter dropped. She mimes seeing the angels as the narrator indicates she see and hears them.
ANGELS: (offstage voices) Woman, why are you weeping?
MARY: They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.
NARRATOR: When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus, she thought he was the gardener.
JESUS: Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?
MARY: Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.
JESUS: Mary!
MARY: Rabbi!
JESUS: Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
NARRATOR: Mary Magdalene the first to see Jesus risen went and announced his resurrection and all that she experienced to the disciples.
Mary exits exclaiming with great astonishment and joy
NARRATOR: He then showed the disciples his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord:
CONGREGATION: Cheers! Yea! Woo-hoo. Yeeha! Yipeeyaaye! Etc.
JESUS: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
NARRATOR: When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
JESUS: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
Jesus backs away off stage
So the other disciples told him
CONGREGATION: We have seen the Lord.
THOMAS: Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.
To Thomas in his seat.
THOMAS: My Lord and my God!
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples.
DISCIPLES: We will go with you.
NARRATOR: They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
DISCIPLES: No.
JESUS: Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.
NARRATOR: So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.
THOMAS: It is the Lord!’
NARRATOR: When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards. When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread.
JESUS: Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.
Come and have breakfast.
NARRATOR: Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ’’Who are you?’’ because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. When they had finished breakfast Jesus said to Simon Peter
JESUS: Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?
JESUS: Feed my lambs.
JESUS: Tend my sheep.
PETER: Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.
JESUS: Feed my sheep. (Peter sits. Jesus addresses the congregation) Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go. . . Follow me.
237 “I Come to the Garden Alone”
CONGREGATION: He is risen indeed!
NARRATOR: Just as Jesus shared a meal on the beach that day we remember Jesus’s meal practice today. We are going to have communion in just a minute. When we are done with communion we will sing “He Lives, He Lives” and let’s really belt it out. Christ and his disciples are are going to serve communion today.
JESUS: This Communion Table is open to all.
MARY: It does not matter who you are, where you have been, where you are going or what you do or do not believe.
THOMAS: This church invites everyone to worship with us and anyone who wished is invited to partake in this Communion Supper.
PETER: All are welcome here, there are no questions asked, no beliefs required, no discrimination enforced.
JESUS: All who know God’s love. or seek to know such love, this table is set for you.
MARY: Please join me in prayer. Glorious God, we humbly beseech you to prepare our hearts for this spiritual feast and bless with your Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and drink.
In an attitude of humility, we offer ourselves at this table, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice to you. May we receive with these symbols of Christ’s body, the cleansing of your forgiveness and fresh strength for the journey.
Empower us, that your love may flow through us, and touch all who are in need.
For the gift of Easter and your child Jesus and all that he did and does for us we give thanks. AMEN.
NARRATOR: On the night that Jesus was apprehended, on the eve of his death, he took bread.(take bread hold it up) And when he had given thanks (silently pray for a moment) , he broke it (break bread) saying:
JESUS: Take eat, this is my body broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.
NARRATOR: In the same manner, Jesus also took the cup after eating and poured it out (pour out cup) saying:
JESUS: This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink of it in remembrance of me.
THOMAS: Today we will serve the bread and have you come forward and take and eat it. We invite you to do this with us. Remember that anyone can take this bread
PETER: Our tradition is to also pass out the juice and hold it and drink together. Remember this cup is for anyone who wants to take it. Actors pas out the juice.
NARRATOR: Please pray with me. God of Easter and love and new life pour your Spirit into this bread and into this cup and into all who are gathered here today, so that we might know your love and remember Christ’s call to love and to forgive others and ourselves. Amen. Come to this table, for all things are ready.
MARY & THOMAS: Take eat this amazing bread of life!
PETER & JESUS: Take drink this wonderful cup of blessing!
MARY: May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of Christ Jesus, our risen Savior.
JESUS: And the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Redeemer, and Comforter be among you always.
ALL: Amen.
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Link to FloridaToday’s Coverage of Our Palm Sunday Service
By Administrator | March 16, 2008
Here is a link to some cool photos and a video starring Our Band’s song on the FloridaToday’s Website: http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
The blog entry below this one has today’s sermon.
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