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Rejoicing with Jesus - A Sermon by Alicia Rapp
By Administrator | September 21, 2007
Rejoicing with Jesus
Luke 15:1-10
September 16, 2007
I. We had a great birthday party for the United Church of Christ
here yesterday.
About 200 people from six churches gathered,
even as the storm clouds rolled in,
and then rolled away.
People were happy to make acquaintances or
renew old friendships.
Our regional conference minister, Raymond Hargrove,
was here, and our new conference minister,
Kent Siladi.
We got some excellent publicity in the Florida Today
newspaper and some people who have never
heard of the UCC got at least a hint of who we
may be.
By the end of the day, people were patting me on the back
saying what a great job we had done,
a fantastic party we had hosted…
and I just smiled…
…never mind that Scott was the one who had headed
up the committee, done all the organizational work.
I am so loving this Senior Pastor gig.
Of course, there was the moment when a man visiting
from the community here came up and introduced
himself to our church moderator, Ann Pierce,
mistaking her for the senior pastor.
You win some, you lose some.
Yesterday was a win, a celebration, a homecoming,
for all of us.
And we needed it.
We needed to have a party.
Celebrations remind us of our story,
remind us to laugh again,
to rejoice together.
II. All the pastors from the six neighboring churches were here.
On Tuesday, we were here, reminded of another story.
We sat in our clergy support group and
remembered that six years before,
we had arrived at our bi-monthly meeting in
shock, having just watched planes crash into
the World Trade Center.
Individually, we had each thought about calling in to
cancel.
We couldn’t come to a clergy meeting.
There was, obviously, a lot of work to be done,
preparation for evening services.
But what we needed in that moment was support
and prayer for ourselves.
Can anyone remember life prior to 9/11?
It is difficult.
Our story has changed so much since then.
Our story is now filled with rage.
III. At the party yesterday, I mixed and mingled with a
lot of people and I heard another story.
Some of them were old friends, catching up on where
life had taken them.
Others were people I’d never met.
In those conversations, I heard about loss,
even of the eventual death of one spouse,
from the hurricanes of 2004.
The storms of three years ago in Florida,
not to even mention Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana,
have forever changed our emotional and mental
geography.
And so we are people with a new narrative.
That story is one of fear and foreboding.
IV. Our little Bermuda triangle would not be complete without
the frightening third point:
the war in Iraq.
How did that happen?
we wonder.
We barely remember that our soldiers are also fighting,
and dying, in Afghanistan.
But somewhere along the way,
our president promised to rid the world of
all evildoers, and we believed him.
We bought the story.
Now it has become difficult to even have a civil conversation
about war anymore.
The politicians have made it a talking point for the upcoming
elections, somehow making dying on a battlefield
more abstract than ever before.
The theme this last narrative brings with it is confusion
and betrayal.
V. I overheard two mothers talking in an office last week.
One said to the other, “I picked my three year-old up from
day care yesterday and asked her, ‘did you have a good
day?’”
“She said, ‘Well, no one bit me or pushed me down.’
So I guess that means she had a good day.”
Is that where you have finally landed?
If you can get through the day without being
bitten or pushed down,
shot at,
lied to,
blown away,
well, that’s a pretty good day?
Here’s what I want you to know this morning:
that’s not your story.
It may be part of your life experience, but its not your
story.
Stories guide us, shape our beliefs, make us into the people
we will yet become.
We have, in this country, allowed our story to be changed.
By doing so, we have been filled with rage,
fear,
and confusion.
Our rage is most often directed at people we perceive and
want to perceive as evil and vastly different from us.
These are usually Iraqis or at least Muslims.
But in their absence, almost anyone who is different
will do:
bleeding-heart liberals,
stiff-necked conservatives,
homo-sexuals (I love saying that!—
they get the blame for everything)
criminals of all types,
illegal immigrants,
you have your list,
I have mine.
We’re angry, because that’s the story we’ve been told.
We don’t want these “sinners” to come home.
And we’re afraid.
I’ve noticed that some people have almost stopped breathing
at times.
What is it we’re waiting for?
The next storm?
The next shoe to drop?
Insurance rates to go up…or the insurance company
to pull out of Florida altogether?
“Hold on tightly to what you have, your money, your stuff,
because you never know…”
Isn’t that the story of fear?
And then there’s confusion.
This story is the worst of all.
Here is how this one tumbles out:
“I just want something to believe in.
Tell me what is true, and I’ll follow.
Draw a line in the sand.
Make it easy to choose:
weapons of mass destruction,
stem cell research,
prayer in the schools,
family values.
Just tell me what is right and what is wrong.
Then I’ll get in line and start marching.”
When these are our stories,
we end up filled with rage, fear and confusion.
We lose what is most precious of all.
We lose our very souls.
I have heard it over and over again:
“I no longer believe in God.”
Yes. I can understand that.
We’ve traded our stories to the devil.
We’ve traded our stories for a sack of lies.
VI. Here is our story.
Listen.
Jesus hung out with everyone, ate with all kinds of people:
Pharisees. Scribes. But also with tax collectors and
those who were considered sinners,
morally or religiously.
This was upsetting to the Pharisees and scribes.
And if you think about it, it makes sense.
The scribes and Pharisees, for all their power,
were under Roman rule.
Every day, a good day was one in which they didn’t get
bitten or pushed down.
Sometimes it’s hard, when you’re in that kind of position,
to not bare your teeth, or push someone else.
It kind of gets to be your story, when you live like that.
It’s push or be pushed.
So Jesus gave them a different story.
He gives us a different story.
Have we forgotten that?
Have we forgotten who we are?
Listen.
The Jesus story is that God comes and finds us…
when buildings fall,
when storms crash in and the lights go out
and water swirls around our feet,
God finds us.
God comes and finds us,
in the unmentionable horrors of war,
where one good human being kills another
good human being,
where night terrors begin and threaten never
to end,
God finds us.
The Jesus story is that God leaves the comfortable places,
the high and holy places,
and travels into the triangle of rage, fear and
confusion to bring us home,
to bring ALL of us home,
no matter who we are.
That is our story.
If, in the swirling vortex of stories that have begun to
suck us under and threaten to rule our lives,
you find yourself losing your very soul,
I want to call you home.
The Jesus story, our story, is that no one is so lost that
they cannot be found.
Even death itself cannot take away that story.
Only you can give it away,
trade it on the playground for something
else, in that place where a good day
is nothing more than not being pushed down.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready, so ready,
to laugh again, to sit down at the table with
my sisters and brothers and be home again,
and rejoice with God.
End of story.
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