16th Sunday after Pentecost - Can you relate?

Jeremiah 18:1-11, Philemon 1-21

Today's passage involves the potter and the clay and how the potter sculpts, smashes and reshapes. The Philemon passage talks about Paul's advocacy for the returning of the slave Onesimus to his owner, Philemon. I use the analogy of Handel's Messiah, when the aria talks about Smashing the Clay into pieces. Sometimes in life we need to be smashed into pieces, so to speak. God is the potter and we need to be the moldable clay. When we follow Christ and the example of Paul, we become this reshapen pieces, taken apart and putting back together. Through activism and acknowledging others as equals in Christ, we create an environment of inclusivity and love. Can you relate?

All in a day's work

I remember when I was in 8th grade. We were required to read a certain amount of time during our Language Arts classes each week. Readers' Digest was my continued favorite. There was a section called "All in a day's work." So, I suppose I should talk about mine. Today I had 3 interviews - one with a supervisory role, one with a chaplain and one with an extension minister. They all seemed to be impressed with my questions. For the DS and campus minister, both are United Methodists. For many years one was single and to my knowledge the other has always been single. I like being single at least now but the question will always come up, especially when I am older, "So why aren't you married." One conjecture is that because I am a male, I will have a harder time. Congregants will be apt to try to set me up with someone, probably true. But appropriate responses are, "Marriage is a calling that I don't have." Or, depending on the context, a question could be, "Why do you ask?" I also asked what constitutes clergy effectiveness. I was deeply impressed and grateful for the focus on the Gospel. Making disciples, garnering faith and edifying faith of others should be a primary focus but also to develop leaders. I further talked with the chaplain who is ordained in a Baptist tradition. How can one be faithful to the Gospel and not able to proclaim it? In many cases, it's witnessing through actions and presence. A course in pastoral care yielded a deeper interest in calling. There are also interfaith components that I think I would struggle with. They're much rewarding food for thought!

Our Baptismal Covenant

I'll soon be preaching again - July 25. The object of my sermon is to focus on baptism as something communal. My scripture focus that day is a passage on Colossians that Paul writes to the Church at Colossae but a further passage from Genesis about the command to move on and not look back at the foreboding Sodom and Gomorrah. Paul outlines misbehavior and implies a moving on. Through our baptism we are raised with Christ. Through this coinciding resurrection, Christ's cosmic act becomes real and we're called to life anew and told not to look back. Paul's words weren't finger pointing at individuals: it was to a group. It's the promise and goals to those people that we're called to share as Christians - it's our baptismal covenant.

Holy Fellowship

I've moved to Crozet for the summer to intern at a church, about which I am very excited! I was on my way back from Norfolk earlier this week and stopped at the Cokesbury store in Glen Allen. I came across small scriptural/devotional journals. At Annual Conference last week I acquired a UMC Book of Worship. On page #581, there is a "litany" for a Love Feast. The Love Feast or Agape Meal if you want to be technical is a centuries-old tradition. John Wesley himself experienced it when he was in the company Moravian Christians. They introduced him to the concept of a Love Feast, that is to say, a meal of fellowship modeled after the Disciples' meal time together. A suggested scripture is from Luke, it describes the Dinner miracle. A few weeks ago I was watching yet another sermon from Duke Chapel in which Sam Wells talks about a time when he met an elderly Anglican priest, whom he described as "the wisest person he'd ever known." The priest told Wells to set up a table and anytime he ate from it or did work, he should think of it as a sacrifice. More specifically, mealtime was a time of Eucharist. As Jesus commanded the Disciples, "Do this as often as you meet." In following this example, anytime that Christians fellowship together should be a "Eucharistic meal." In the company of others, when we celebrate our faith in Christ and use our time together as a witness to others. Maybe in those circumstances we can have a dinner miracle as the early Jews and Gentiles did, before "Christian" developed, and they experienced a miracle by Jesus. By celebrating this love feast, I am able to have a Discipleship experience through Christ and an honorarium to my heritage as United Methodist but also as an appreciate for my denominational Moravian friends. For modern a modern Moravian, coffee and sticky buns are used right in the middle of worship service. What a better time to celebrate this occasion we call a Love Feast!

Holy Conferencing

I've traveled to Norfolk, VA today for the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. The first night is always a Eucharistic service in memory of ministers and their spouses who have died in the past year. I learned that a minister acquaintance-friend of mine passed away in February. A time of remembering is very important. Grief isn't evil, even though it can be quite difficult. When I think about the remembrance that we give Christ when we celebrate the Last Supper, what grief did the Disciples feel? Maybe grieving and honoring the fallen saints is very Christ-like. Didn't Christ visit the fallen saints and bring them into the Kingdom? As painful as mourning and grief are, they're natural human emotions. Expressing them is difficult and I had a rather difficult time holding myself together. Maybe such is to be expected? I don't know. What I will say is that in the midst of the rewards and frustrations of Annual Conference, remembrance is always first - when we remember the life and purpose of Jesus and the commands and virtues of the Holy Spirit that we are given. As I attend the somewhat grueling meeting at The Scope, could be a time to "scope out" a memorial of the Wesleyan Heritage that shapes me as a Christian and what's important to me in my life as a Christian. After all, when we as Christians - specifically United Methodists - gather together, Holy Conferencing is meant to occur.

Back to Lynchburg

I was at Chestnut Hill UMC in Lynchburg today (Year C - Trinity Sunday). It's Memorial Sunday so part of the service as an ode to the United States and veterans; which, as someone who has military in the family as well as countless ancestors, can appreciate. My grandmother came. She has a habit of counting things I learned: 22 veterans came up front for recognition, there were 12 in the choir and 9 children for time with children. The attendance was much bigger than what I am accustomed to. I was told ahead of time that some introductions would be made: one of which was for a Vietnamese family that the church had sponsored and invited into its life. The husband talked about how glad he was to be at church today. He said that he and his wife/family were able to escape Saigon 2 hours before it was ceased. My sermon today went longer than I realized but no one minded and many people want me to come back. I was able to define the Trinity as "the Fullness of God," wisdom that the Holy Spirit I am assuming gave me because I had to explain the Trinity somehow. It's not the easiest Doctrine.


I was thinking a bit later though about the purpose of the Holy Spirit. As for the couple who missed the Fall of Saigon in 1975 by two hours - just in the nick of time. I think that's the Holy Spirit works. In the toughest times, as John says in his Gospel, the Holy Spirit leads to truth. He guides and comforts and advocates. I'm not saying that for the people who didn't escape Saigon that for some reason the Holy Spirit didn't "guide them too." In the case of the couple, there is a mystery as to why they got out and others didn't. I'll never know why. But what I will say, as someone who wants and hopes to witness more to others, that even in the midst of hell and chaos, there's a guide that always wants to be step ahead in the process. And, for the record, I'm speaking more generically than John Wesley's "prevenient grace."

My sermon topic was the fullness of God via the Trinity. How Proverbs uses "she" for the antecedent Wisdom. God speaks through the voice of a woman. Images are used of birth pangs and the use of words like womb and virgin. These are all feminine terms that describe elements of God. We experience the fullness of God when we remember all of those attributes and the terms that are used in the Old and New Testaments: Elohim, Abba, Almighty God for the fatherhood role. We should think of Father, Son and Holy Ghost as being umbrella terms that encompass so many other things. All of these things fit under the Doctrine of the Trinity; the completion of which makes for the fullness of God.

Editorial: Pentecostal courage

Editorial: Pentecostal courage

Shenandoah Association UCC Experience #3

So today (Day of Pentecost - Year C) I went to Christ United Church of Christ at Conicville, near Mt. Jackson and St. John's United Church of Christ, Hamburg, near Edinburg described as a "two point charge," language with which I as a United Methodist am very familiar. They're both toward the heart of Shenandoah County, an Ode to which I've posted below. I arrived at the first church, Christ, at 8:59, for a service that started at 9! I suppose I felt a bit of panic like the Disciples did on the Day of Pentecost. I didn't have time to put on my white robe and cincture so I put on my black one that zips up the front. Christ is located on Senedo Road. With a little digging it turns out the Senedo were a branch of the Iroquois Native American tribe.

St. John's didn't start until 11. In-transit I was zipping up my garment bag only to have the zipper pull right off! I suppose finding a new one is a venture I will have to have some time soon. Christ United Church of Christ seems like a redundant name. Actually, both St. John's and Christ were German Reformed churches and just kept their names after the 1957 merger to make the United Church of Christ. St. John's is a bit bigger than Christ. There is a balcony but no one seems to use it. I asked about the history of the building. The one in which I preached today was built in 1891 but prior to that the congregation met at Zion Lutheran Church, a few miles or so at the most, since the late 1700s. At St. John's, in distant history, men sat on one side of the sanctuary and women on the other. This was the second time I've had some experience with a "historically Lutheran" church, as the Glade Church building was Lutheran at one time as well. Today is Pentecost. Pentecost has formed the base-word for Pentecostal, a word that resonates with many especially in America. I was reading an article late last night but it was a bit too much to include in a sermon today with everything else that I had had planned. I managed to email it to myself though and hope to use it in the future:

http://www.ucc.org/news/editorial-pentecostal.html

The writer is right. I think of myself as being a Pentecostal at heart but Pentecostal, in a land as "evangelical" and prosperity-doctrine enriched as it is, Pentecostal can have a very different meaning. Neither I nor the writer are talking about taming snakes or drinking poison nor speaking tongues. Personally, I have no problem with the practice of speaking in tongues but keep those snakes away from me! The point he makes with which I most definitely concur is - the Holy Spirit isn't something to be afraid of and we can't water it down and only think of it in our liturgy. The Holy Spirit is very alive and very real. It is something we should enjoy.

Shenandoah Association UCC Experience #2

On Sunday I went to St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ of Middlebrook (Year C - Ascension Sunday), near Staunton. It was started as a Reformed Church in the late 1700s and over time became part of the German Reformed, then Evangelical & Reformed now United Church of Christ. It's brick and is a remodeling of the original. A number of years ago the church experienced a fire and in another incident a fire was set via arson. Upon its discovery profanity was found to have been put on walls in the sanctuary. Apparently a few years ago that was a pattern to a few church in this area. It may have been in response to the UCC's "Bouncer Ad." No one knows. I had the opportunity after the service to talk to person afterward. I asked him what he thought of my sermon. He said it was good but that I shouldn't bring too much homework into pulpit. I didn't quite understand. So we talked some more. He said, "People can get information from anywhere but what they are often seeking is advice." In retrospect I think I understand more of what he meant. In my own experience of interacting with others, I've always been told not to use "I" in sermons, "unless it's about something you've done wrong." I sought this person's further being sagacious. He told me about an article from Christian Century magazine not long ago about "not dwelling on 'I'" but instead that it was ok to use it if doing so will make the sermon more relevant to your audience. That advice is serving me well especially since next week is Pentecost.

Shenandoah Association UCC Experience #1

So on May 2 (5th Sunday in Easter, Year C for lectionary followers), I went to Glade Church. It's a smaller church that is a suburb of Blacksburg, It started out in the early 1900s as a Lutheran Church but in the 1970s was sold to a local Baptist church, part of the SBC, as a mission church. The congregation "antithetically" to the overwhelmingly conservative majority resigned unanimously from the Southern Baptist Convention and became a constituent body in the Alliance of Baptists, an association of progressive and affirming churches. Over the course of a few years the congregation decided that it further needed a denominational affiliation and was accepted into the United Church of Christ. The church sanctuary is very pretty. All wooden. The walls are white and are adorned with original artwork. On the alter was a small quilt. Each time a new person or family joins the church, he or she brings a scrap of fabric and it is sewn onto everything else. The church is very progressive which was a new experience for me. When I think about that quilt it reminds me of the construct of the Body of Christ for believers. We're all pieced together. We don't all seem the same or have the same talents but by virtue of Jesus we're all sewn together. I like the practice and I know that that church is very meaningful to its local community.

I take pride in the fact that a week prior, Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign preached there. I stood in the pulpit that a nationally-recognized figure had just stood one week prior. I feel a great sense of pride in it.

http://www.hrc.org/about_us/2638.htm