"Celebrate: From Generation to Generation," Sermon on Deuteronomy 6:1-9 & Luke 1:39-56

Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Luke 1:39-56
“Celebrate: From Generation to Generation”

When I think of the lineage of my faith, I trace my faith to the faith of my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. All 3 who were or are extraordinary women of faith. Deeply involved in the lives of their churches, ever seeking to love God and neighbor as self, and teaching and passing on their faith. I am sure the line of women and men of faith extends beyond that, though I don’t know their names or their stories - I am humbled to consider myself a part of their faith lineage. I hope and pray that as I tell the stories to my daughter - the stories of the faith and the stories of how her great great grandmother, her great grandmother, her grandmother and mother have lived out the faith - I pray and hope that, one day, my daughter sees herself as a part of this heritage of faith too.

It makes me want to ponder the question with you today: Where does our faith come from?

Some can trace the lineage, the family tree of their faith, like I can.

Others may have come to the faith on their own or had a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or some other mentor or friend in the faith - blood relative or not - who they consider as a parent of their faith, teaching them the faith, passing it on to them.

Whatever the religious backstory of our family origin may be, when you become part of a faith community, when you claim Christ, God adopts you into a heritage of faith that stretches back to the beginning of creation. The faith story of Abraham and Sarah. Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Hannah, Samuel, Moses, Ruth, Esther, Mary, Joseph, Paul, Peter......and the names go on. They become your fathers and mothers in the faith - part of your spiritual lineage. Those who taught the faith, passed on the faith, from generation to generation, down to us sitting in these pews.

Has it changed over the last 2,000 years and surely the thousands of years before Jesus? Oh yes, and still - there is a thread - or many threads - tying us to them, them to us. As members of the household of God, we become a part of something so much bigger than ourselves and our families - we become a part of the tradition of the saints, all those who have gone before us in the faith, that great cloud of witness. We are a part of something so much bigger than us and in it, we are never alone.

Now - remember, this sermon series is called Celebrate! AND that is something to celebrate. We are a part of something bigger! We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

AND, our faith isn’t all about looking backwards about who came before us, the mothers and fathers of our faith, the stories they lived, the Scripture passed down to us - a very important part of our faith is looking forward.

Which, in part, brings me to today’s Scriptures - today we read what are, arguably, two of the most central texts in the Bible, the Shema from Deuteronomy and the Magnificat from Luke.

First, the Shema. Shema is Hebrew for “Listen” or “Hear” as in “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” This is an ancient prayer that has a very central role in the faith of our Jewish siblings. To help you understand its importance in the Jewish faith, to make a comparison for you, it is like the Jewish Lord’s Prayer - as far as the centrality of it for Jewish faith and practice. Many Jews pray it twice a day. They keep a tiny rolled up scroll of it on the doors of their houses. Some Jews will literally bind these words on their hands and on the foreheads as they pray. This passage of Scripture comes from Moses’s speech before the next generation enters the promised land. He didn’t want this generation to make the mistakes of their parents and those who had gone before them - instead respond to God with love, faithfulness and obedience. Indeed Shema means hear or listen but in a sense of letting something sink in. Let the Love of God sink in you that you love God so much that you remember it in the morning and in the evening, when you come and when you go, when you teach your children...This idea of reciting the faith, the prayer that the Lord in one and to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul, and might, is an integral one to both the Jewish and Christian faiths.

Now I want to pause a moment to acknowledge that the faith or religion of our children is a tender spot for many.

I know that people in this congregation have children who grew up in the church but have left the faith - and when we look at how the church in our world has hurt people, failed to live up to the words of Jesus, and missed the mark so many times - who can blame them? Perhaps your children have left the church but not left God - or left the church but not left the morals, ethics, and teachings that were instilled in them in Christian community - to love their neighbor and to care for the least of these.

Wherever your children are and for many of you, your children’s children are, in their faith journies, know that God loves them deeply.

Or maybe you never had kids - for a variety of reasons - but when we talk about teaching the faith to children, we are not just talking about children we birthed, adopted, or raised. We are talking about whole subsequent generations of faith. We all have a Christian moral duty of love to build the church for the future, to think about the next generation of believers in every decision we make.

A colleague recently told me that he had a parishioner tell him that her dream for the church was that it would last until she died and then, and I quote, “You can do whatever you want.” This woman voiced a sad reality that is the mindset of many people today - as the church we can get stuck looking back to “how it used to be” and wanting to go back there - but friends, the church is never going back there. Or we want what the church has to offer us now - but recognize with the struggles the church faces - the church of the future is a big question mark, a point of anxiety - or even that the church of the future needs to look much different from the church of the present and we *like* the church of the present so...make changes, sure...but not on my watch!

And these are pitfalls that we can so easily fall into but we do not need to get trapped in them because the church NEEDS to be looking forward. We are called to look forward. We are called to look towards the children and youth of today, and even the children and youth that will follow them, and boldly make the church be the church of the future, the church for them - trusting in God’s promises that no matter what church looks like, who it’s comprised of, if the institution stays or goes, if the building stays or goes, if this changes or that changes - trusting in God’s promises that God will be there for every generation.

Which brings us to our second Scripture of the day, the Magnificat, also known as Mary’s song from the Gospel of Luke. Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visits the house of her cousin Elizabeth. When Elizabeth sees Mary and affirms her and the child inside her, Mary bursts out into praise and song. It is a song of praise. And it is also a song of revolution, a song of challenging the status quo, a song where Mary imagines a more just and equitable world for the generations that are to come, from every generation forward - thanks to the child in her womb, based on trusting God’s promises, all that God has done, all that God is doing, all that God will do.

She sings “his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.”

Other translations use the word honor in place of fear. It’s getting at that wonder, awe, trembling that we have before the almighty God. It could be said, “his mercy is for those who love the Lord their God will all their heart, soul, and might - from generation to generation.”

Mary’s song is a song of JOY, of rejoicing - My soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” For Mary is looking not only at the past and the present - but is looking toward the future, hoping, trusting, rejoicing in all that God will do.

Today, we are called to rejoice alongside Mary.

Let’s do that, repeat after me:

My soul magnifies the Lord (repeat)
My spirit rejoices in God my savior (repeat)

We are called to look back, to know that great lineage of faith we inherit when we claim Christ and Christ claims us.

We are called to tend to the present - to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might - and loving our neighbor as self - so too our neighbors who comprise youth, children, and generations to come.

And we are called to look forward - having deep trust in God’s promises. And what do we call having deep trusts in God’s promises? The deep trust that knowing through God all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well?

We call that joy!

We look to the future not with anxiety or fear...but with rejoicing!

For we KNOW that God’s mercy is for every generation, the faith that passed on to us and the faith that we pass on.

God’s goodness extends in a long line behind us, to creation and before. God’s goodness is here now. God’s goodness extends to the next generation and to the next and to the next, until the last generation, and even then beyond.

Now that is cause for rejoicing.

Let’s end this sermon one more time with a repeat after me for all of God’s goodness and God’s promises:

My soul magnifies the Lord! (repeat)
And my Spirit rejoices in God my savior! (Repeat)

From generation to generation. Amen.

"Celebrate: A Community Rejoicing" Sermon on Nehemiah 8:9-12, 12:43

Nehemiah 8:9-12, 12:43
Romans 12:9-18
“Celebrate: A Community Rejoicing”
Preached Sunday, October 17, 2021

When I was picking out hymns for this Sunday and the first of three weeks on a sermon series called Celebrate, any guess on what I couldn’t get out of my head?

“Celebrate Good times, come on, doo do doo do do do do doo”

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that earworm stuck inside your head let’s actually talk about the commandment to rejoice and to celebrate…

And yes, I said commandment! Joy is a fruit of the Spirit - joy is the deep seated trust in God that all shall be all, all shall be well, and all shall be well. One can have joy even when they are not happy and even in the darkest times of their lives. AND, signs of the moving of God’s Spirit in our lives are also levity, thankfulness, hope. When you have multiple people together who have deep joy, levity, a shared spirit of thankfulness, and hope - well, THAT is the recipe for a celebration! And Paul tells us that not only are we to weep with those who weep - a sensitive act of care, companionship, and love - we are also called to rejoice with those who rejoice! This is also an act of care, companionship, and love! Our burdens are lightened when we share them and our celebrations are multiplied when we share them! 

But sometimes us Christians can get a reputation for being a little bit of...um...sticks in the mud? Sour-pusses? Fuddy-duddies? You know what I’m saying. And by and large this does NOT characterize us here at Grace. We truly are a joyous and caring Christian community where we celebrate together and laughter comes easily when we’re together.

But still, we know the reputation that some Christians have, right? Those Christians that are always so serious about everything and about their faith? I mean, not to say that faith isn’t about serious stuff, right? Like, we talk about life and we talk about death and we confess our sins and we are constantly challenged and called out to do better...and many people take that to just be, you know - so serious. We can think of the puritans clad all in black with dour expressions, tight-lipped faces that are not amused...and for some, that puritanical attitude toward the faith and life has continued on.

And yes, we are called to consider serious things as Christians...and let’s think about what we believe about those things

Life - That we are called to have life and to have it abundantly. That in life we are to love God and love neighbor as self, to treat every person, especially the least of these, the hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, homeless, immigrant, to treat every person like they are Jesus...to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoicing...so that we may all have life and share in that abundant life together.

Death - That death does NOT have the final say! That Christ has rose again and defeated the grave. And Jesus is but the first fruit of the resurrection which we will all experience. That death has lost its sting and the grave has no victory of which to boast.

Confession of sin - That when we repent, we are forgiven. That there is freedom from all that holds us down. That we are loved, unconditionally.

Challenged to do better - we call that sanctification. That we know God wants our best from us and we are capable of reaching that perfect love where all we do is shaped by love of God and love of neighbor.

Wow. Instead of being all serious about life, death, confession, and being challenged to do better...it sounds like we have some things to celebrate! Right? Give me a “woo!”

When we remember all that God has done - promises made and promises fulfilled - and we remember all that God HAS promised and WILL fulfill, that is cause for celebration.

In the church we have seasons of fasts like Lent, we also have seasons of feasts like Christmas and Easter...but even in the fasts, Sundays are considered mini-feasts, mini-reflections of the great feast that is Easter. Because every Sunday is the Lord’s Day, a day to remember that Christ came, died and rose again. That Christ was resurrected and so too shall we be! Every Sunday, even on days we confess our sins and even on days when we are challenged and even on days we are mourning...Those Sundays, those Lord’s Days, are celebrations. Where we come together, to remember what God has promised, what God has done, and what God will do.

This is what the Israelite community does in the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a short book in the Bible, one you can sit down and read in one sitting - and it’s even shorter if you skim over the long list of names. Now, the book is about a small re-constituted community of Israelites after Judah was destroyed by the Babylons. This community is smaller than they were, they have fallen from power, they are in exile. And they have forgotten the commandments they were supposed to be keeping. Enter Ezra and Nehemiah - the two books in the Bible were originally actually one book and somewhere along the way they got split into two. Ezra and Nehemiah work for the King but their loyalties are with Jerusalem. Nehemiah has a vision from God to go to Jerusalem and have them rebuild the walls, a way to remember who they are and what God has asked of them.

And so the walls are rebuilt with some strife from without and some strife from within. And as the walls were finished the whole community of Israelites gathered together outside of them and Ezra took out the scrolls, the law. And he read them to all gathered. Not only did he read them, priests stood among the people and walked around and explained what the scrolls meant - they were interpreting the law, preaching, and teaching.

And upon hearing the reading from the book of Moses, the people wept.

Why did they weep? Perhaps they wept cause of how far they had strayed. Perhaps they wept because of how much they had lost. Perhaps they wept cause they remembered the way things used to be.

But then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and all the Levites - the priests - told the people:

“This day is holy to the Lord your God. Don’t mourn or weep…Go, eat rich food and drink something sweet and send portions of this to any who have nothing ready! This day is holy to our Lord. Don’t be sad, because the joy from the Lord is your strength!”

And the people had a great celebration! After many days of celebration the people gathered together, communally confessed their sins, then dedicated the wall and celebrated some more!

They were to celebrate because they had received the law. They were read from the scrolls and called to remember who they were, who God was calling them to be, all that God had already done for them and all yet that God had promised to do for them!

God is not done with us yet and God keeps God’s promises!

Now there is a reason to celebrate!

And today we say the same thing here at Grace. Actually, say it with me, repeat after me:

God is not done with us yet! (repeat!)

And God keeps God’s promises! (repeat!)

Grace, today and over the next 2 Sundays, for the rest of the month of October, we are going to be in a season of celebration. In addition to a sermon series on celebration, we are going to be celebrating ministries in our church AND where we are feeling those ministries are being called to grow - and how through your faithful stewardship of your prayers, presence, gifts, and witness you can work alongside God in this church to better live out our mission to invite all into a joyous and caring Christian community.

After such a hard, well, almost 2 years. And a pandemic that has rocked us and isn’t done with us yet - it is more appropriate than ever to celebrate. To come together and remember all that God has done - and all that God will do.

So come on - celebrate good times come on, doo do do do do dooo

Amen.

Call to Worship based on Shema & Magnificat

L: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!
P: I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and might.
L: Give thanks for this amazing love which has been the faith of our mothers and fathers, and theirs' before them.
P: His mercy is for those who honor him, from generation to generation.
L: We keep these words in our hearts, reciting them to children, talking about them when we are home or away, when we lie down and when we rise.
P: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
L: We rejoice for God's love spans from the beginning of time to the end - and beyond.
P: Let us celebrate God's love in worship!
All: Amen!

"What Impossible Thing is God Calling You To?" Sermon on Mark 10:17-31

Mark 10:17-31
“What Impossible Thing is God Calling You To?”
Preached Sunday, October 10, 2021 at Vermilion Grace UMC & livestream

One of my all-time favorite sitcoms is How I Met Your Mother. I’ve probably watched it through a dozen times - except the last season, that was awful. One of the main characters is Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris. A womanizer who, admittedly, probably just needs a lot of therapy, and always wears a suit - he never backs down from a challenge. He has several catchphrases in the show. One is “It’s gonna be legend, wait-for-it, dary! Legendary!” and the other “Challenge Accepted.”

Half the time he isn’t even being challenged - he just takes it upon himself to try and do something crazy - most of the time using downright outrageous or absurd methods of picking up women. Other accepted challenges are things like, talk your way out of a speeding ticket, touch as many items as you can in the Natural History Museum, and even, to cheer up a friend.

If you could say one thing about Barney Stinson it’s that he never backs down from a challenge and always accepts them with enthusiasm.

That’s not quite the case with the man who approaches Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. Now, throughout today’s sermon I’ll be calling him the rich, young ruler although we don’t get those descriptors from the Gospel of Mark. We know he’s rich cause he had many possessions. We get young from the Gospel of Matthew and Ruler from the Gospel of Luke. And in our minds, we have come to know him as the rich young ruler.

And the rich young ruler gets issued a challenge by Jesus, “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

His response is not an enthusiastic Barney Stinson style, “Challenge Accepted!” Instead the text says, “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

And this rich young ruler is often shamed, looked down upon, given as an example of what not to do because he did not enthusiastically and radically change his life and follow Jesus at the drop of a hat. But really, could you blame him? If you were told today that in order to live out your discipleship you had to x, y, and z - for example - sell all you have - give all the money to the poor - uproot your life to follow an itinerant preacher - could you REALLY say your response would be leaping for joy? An enthusiastic “Challenge accepted?” I think the rich young ruler is a more realistic portrait of what it can be like to wrestle with the hard things that Jesus asks us to do.

Now this text, this text is not an easy text to deal with. As Jesus’s request to the man was not an easy request to hear. I read a preacher say this about today’s Gospel reading: “The first thing to say about this text, and hopefully not the last thing to say, is that there’s pretty much nothing we can do but manage it.”

And people have tried many ways of managing it or explaining it away or trying to make the challenge, request, invitation an easier one to bear. I have heard many of these in Bible studies and from the pulpit and I am sure you have to. Let’s take a moment to revisit these common ways of “managing” this text, as offered by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson in her commentary on this passage:

“The rich young man didn’t actually keep the law, so that business about giving up his possessions was just a way of calling his bluff.

Nobody can actually keep the law, hence nobody can give up everything, either; it’s just a rhetorical device to call our bluff, and once we grasp that, we’re off the hook.

Giving up everything was a command to this particular rich young man, but only to him. It makes no claim on anyone else...

It was a real command, but it applies only to the rich. All of us can think of someone richer, so by contrast we don’t qualify.

Then again, the disciples infer just the opposite: everyone is rich (presumably because even the poor can think of someone poorer). Luckily, Jesus gives us the ultimate divine out: we can’t do it, but God can. Whew…” Off the hook.

“Or, if we’re still in the game at this point in the story, we can point to our paltry efforts at discipleship like Peter did, at which point we get rewarded with a hundredfold of everything. As long as we somehow “give up” everything we’ve got (preferably in our hearts — you know, like, detachment from material things as an act of spiritual self-will) we’ll get something better in return. Invest a penny, earn a pound...It’s a brilliant act of” scriptural “contortion to get Jesus to sound like a prosperity preacher.”

Now, not all attempts at understanding this text have been efforts to get around it, to find a loophole or exemption. The rich, mystical tradition of the desert fathers and mothers was founded, in part, by trying to take this invitation to sell all and give to the poor, to follow Jesus by giving up all worldly possessions, to take it seriously. During the very start of Christendom, the desert fathers (and mothers too although these women did dress like and pretend to be men) they were disturbed by the mingling of empire and power with Christainity, of Constantine making Christianity the religion of the empire and going from persecuted to persecutor - rich, wealthy, lavish persecutor at that. And so, they took to the desert. Living in little cells, spread out monastic communities in which they spent their time in prayer and meditation, living in harsh and extremely impoverished conditions. And from that, we have great wisdom and teachings that were passed down. So too with monastic movements that take a vow of poverty, although maybe not as extreme as those who took to solo life in the desert - much richness and mysticism has come from those striving to give up all they have to lead a life following Jesus.

And also, we recognize that, well...we aren’t all made to be monks and nuns and live out in the desert.

So the question is, how do we “manage” this difficult teaching of Jesus with our reality without completely dismissing it?

The ending to the rich young ruler’s story is the key here. The fact that the ending...isn’t really an ending. He went away shocked and grieving...yes. And...what does he do next? What did he decide? Does he stay sad the rest of his life? Does he decide that Jesus was just being hyperbolic and goes on living his life unchanged? Does he make a small change, placating himself and telling himself it’s enough? Does he, after a period of grief about this major life change and a period of discernment, sell all he has, give it to the poor and follow Jesus? Was he at the foot of the cross? Did he become an evangelist? Was he a faithful member of the early church?

His story in Scripture is left open-ended. Much like how Mark also leaves the story of the women at Jesus’s empty tomb.

Mark 16:5-8 reads:
"As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

Now, people have been so uncomfortable with Mark ending in such an open-ended way that throughout the ages people tacked endings on to the Gospel of Mark. There is the shorter ending and the longer ending and scholars will tell you that those endings were written later. The earliest manuscripts don’t have them - and Mark was likely the first of the four Gospels to be written. It ended in an open-ended way as if to say to the reader:

If they didn’t tell anyone - and obviously they did, right, cause you’re reading this Gospel, but it’s a rhetorical device to say - if they didn’t tell anyone then it’s on YOU! What are you going to do with the knowledge of the resurrection? Go and tell people! Spread the Good News that Christ is Risen!

And here, Mark could be using that same rhetorical device.

He went away shocked and grieving, but then what, now what? You write the ending for yourself...how will YOU respond to Jesus’s call?

Now, we are often led to believe that if we don’t answer all of God’s calls for our lives with the enthusiasm of Barney Stinson - an immediate “Challenge Accepted!” that we’re not being faithful. That we aren’t good disciples. But that’s simply not true and frankly, that’s not how most of us respond to God.

Even the disciples, who did leave all they knew to follow Jesus, were perplexed and shook by Jesus’s teaching here. And in the Bible, time and time again, the disciples mess up. They have to be corrected. They drag their feet at getting it right. They mess up. They’re clueless - and YET they DID go on to spread the Gospel, to preach the resurrection, to form the church...they even went on to giving up their very lives for Jesus.

We can see that even the disciples were on a JOURNEY in their lives to accepting Jesus’s invitation for them. It took time for them to be all that God was asking them to be.

So what journey is the rich young ruler on? We’ve already explored some of the options as to how his story could end...and even more importantly, what journey are YOU on?

The disciples said Jesus was asking for a hard thing, an impossible thing - who could do it? Who could be saved?

Do you ever feel like God is asking you to do a hard thing? Even...an impossible thing? Something that...leaves you shocked and grieving cause you don’t know if you could ever accept Jesus’s invitation.

It doesn’t even have to be a “big” thing - it can be big or small, depending on how you define it...

Is Jesus calling you to forgive; to confess, to say you’re sorry, to make amends; to get sober; to live a more simple life; yes, to give more of your money and time; to adopt; to foster; to take that volunteer role; to make that life change…

To somehow better serve God - to uphold the whole law of loving God and loving neighbor as self

Or to give up something in your life that is holding you back from love of God and love of neighbor - like the rich young man with his many possessions…

Perhaps you have heard God calling you to do this and have said, “No, no, God….it’s impossible. It’s too hard.” Perhaps you’ve heard God calling you to do this and you’re grieving cause you don’t think you could ever do it. Perhaps you have not yet allowed yourself to listen to what God is calling you to do or who God is calling you to be because you’re afraid of what God will ask of you. Perhaps you’re somewhere in the journey...Wherever you are in this, know these 3 things:

1. God is asking this of you out of love.

The line that strikes me most in this passage that is so easy to just gloss over is, “Jesus, looking at him, LOVED him, and said…” Jesus looks at you with love too. And if Jesus is truly inviting you to do a hard thing, an impossible thing, it is out of love.

2. What seems impossible is possible with God.

“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’” Jesus will be with you in this, walk alongside you, make it possible.

3. Feelings of grief or dismay or shock or...anything are valid.

Answering God’s call for your life might be a journey. Reactions of those who answered God’s call in the Bible run the gamut from “Challenge accepted” to “went away grieving.” You are not alone in your journey. The rich young ruler’s story is open-ended. And so is your’s.

And so is this sermon. My open-ended question to you is this:

“What impossible thing is God calling you to?”

Amen.

Call to Worship based on "To God Be the Glory" and Romans 12

L: Rejoice with those who rejoice!
P: To God be the glory!
L: We recount God’s promises fulfilled.
P: Great things our God has done!
L: We come together in praise, thanksgiving, and celebration.
P: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
L: Let us worship the One who causes us to rejoice in hope.
P: Let the people rejoice!
All: Let us worship - to God be the glory! Amen.