You're Not in Kansas Anymore

            Since I’ve moved to Smalltown, I have spent a lot of time learning about the history of this town.  At it’s founding in 1761 it was one of the best agricultural towns in our state of however the Blanky Falls running through our town helped Smalltown develop to become the home of our states machine and tool industry.   The manufacturing that this town produced was so vital that during World War II, our town was on Hitler’s hit list.  However after the war, the demand went down for machinery and tools and much of American manufacturing went overseas.  With the declining economy, the closing of businesses and schools and the falling of our population the life of our town has suffered.  As we look upon the empty machine shops and dilapidated homes through out Smalltown – we wonder if Ezekiel’s dry bones could be describing us. 

            This morning we hear a vision Ezekiel written during a period of Judah’s history known as the Babylonian Exile.  Before the exile the people of Judah were enjoying a Golden Age just like the glory days of King David’s empire.  However the dream was shattered by the brutal invasion of Judah by the Babylonian Empire in 597 BCE, 600 years before the birth of Jesus.   In an effort to demoralize the nation of Judah in the aftermath of the invasion, the king of Babylon to took away the cream of the Judean population and left behind only its poorest of people.  Along with the Judean king and many of the Judean leaders, Ezekiel, a priest who belonged to the aristocracy of Jerusalem was swept away in the first deportation.  Ten years later Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah revolted against the Babylonians and in return the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and deported a second wave of Judean leaders.  For the Judean exiles forced to live in Babylon the future seemed hopeless and they wondered if their nation and its history would disappear.  Some note that “The key symbols of Judean faith—Jerusalem, its temple, its people, and the Davidic monarchy—had been destroyed.  According to the theological rationality of the ancient world, many exiled Judeans assumed that their deity had been defeated by a stronger deity from Babylon. The people wondered if the Lord was truly lord and truly faithful.”[i]  It is within the context of exile and fear of the unknown that Ezekiel has his vision of the valley of the dry bones.
            Ezekiel is picked up by God and set down in the middle of a valley.  He looks all around himself and finds that it is full of bones.  Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and Ezekiel answers, “O Lord God, you know.”  Then God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones so that they may live and Ezekiel begins to speak.  There is a mad rattling and the bones came together one by one, then muscles and skin formed over the bones, yet the thing that made them alive, that animated them was the breath of God.  It was that same breath that brought the disciples to life on Pentecost morning, it is the same breath of God that brought a women’s prayer group to life.

In the early 1990’s in East Los Angeles in a neighborhood called Boyle Heights, a group of women formed a prayer group in Dolores Mission Catholic church.  The neighborhood that the church was located in was a war zone riddled with gang violence, drugs and prostitution.  Everyday there were gang killings and injuries.  Within the church itself there were members of eight gangs and so you can imagine the heart break these women felt over the fact that their sons were killing each other over such things as turf, drug trade and reputation.  Like the disciples in this morning’s New Testament reading the women were locked up in a room doing bible study together because they were too afraid to go out into streets for fear of their personal safety.  They prayed every night for the violence to end and studied the bible together for comfort and assurance. 

One evening they were studying the scripture about Jesus walking on water and calling the disciples out of the boat.  After their bible study they prayed together and as they prayed “one of their number -- electrified with a sudden sense of discovery and consternation -- shared with others what she saw as the parallels to their own predicament.”[ii]  This woman caught a spark of inspiration from this story and realized that their prayer group was being called to get out of their locked room and to “enter the violence saturated streets and…calm the storm together.”[iii] 

The other women looked at her like she was nuts.  “What are you saying?” They asked.  And she explained to them that “they were being called to walk together in the midst of the war zone of the gangs.”  And after a long discussion and more prayer and discernment that night seventy women began to walk the streets as a procession from one gang turf to the next throughout the Boyle Heights neighborhood.  When they encountered gang members preparing for battle they gave them food and offered to pray with them.  “Throughout the night, in eight war zones, the conflict was bafflingly, disorientingly interrupted.  People were baffled; the gang members were disoriented.”[iv] 

Every night thereafter the mothers would walk the streets and talk to each other’s sons.  Now the gangs were reluctant to engage in warfare because it was their mothers who were putting themselves in the crossfire.  The love that the mothers gave on their nightly walks made the gang members see that there really were people who cared about them.  Eventually the mothers called their nighttime walks, “Love Walks.”  Within a week there was a dramatic drop in gang violence.  Eventually through community organizing the mothers and gang members created a tortilla factory, a bakery and a child care center thus creating jobs and giving the gang members an opportunity to learn job skills.  Also the members of opposing gangs were learning how to get along through the community work that they were doing with their mothers. 

The spirit that pushed these women from their locked room out into the streets is the same spirit that brought the valley of the dry bones to life, and it is the same spirit that brought the disciples to life on Pentecost morning.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t come in quietly as a ray of light, or a dove or an angel with a halo about its head.  It comes in as a mighty wind, a tornado like force that blows the windows open, blows everything off the surfaces of the room and sweeps everyone in the room off their feet.  The appearance of the Holy Spirit is unsettling, causing disruption and confusion rather than calm.  Then “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them.”  And “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the spirit gave them ability.”  Then filled with the Holy Spirit they went out into the streets to preach the good news about “God’s mighty deeds and power.”  It is through the church that the Holy Spirit breaths dry bones to life.  In her book, “Unbinding the Gospel:  Real Life Evangelism.” Rev Martha Grace Reese states, “Church is an igniter of faith, an instigator of growth that affects your whole life.  Thinking extraordinary new ideas about surrender of self, healing of bodies, addictions, marriages, wounded souls, and surviving others-these thought come to mind when members of great congregations hear the word church.”[v] 

With the prophecy of Ezekiel something wonderful happened.  The spirit of God swept through the exiles and they started to make plans for the rebuilding of Jerusalem.  Ezekiel’s vision became their expectation.  They began to hope and what was previously unimagined became reality.  History was made by envisioning alternative possibilities and acting on them as if they were inevitable.[vi] 

Ezekiel’s vision speaks to us today by telling us that restoration is always possible through the spirit of God.  The spirit of God is blowing through the aisles and hallways and classrooms and assembly rooms of First Congregational Church bringing dry bones to life.  See visions, dream dreams, go out and prophesy.  Let the mighty wind of the Holy Spirit sweep us off our feet and carry us into the world.

May it be so.

Amen.

            A while ago you all embarked on a prayer ministry called triplets.  Groups of three were picked at random and these groups covenanted to gather every so often for the sole purpose of praying for each other.   The stories that I’ve heard about these prayer groups were quite enlightening.  Although I don’t know what you all prayed for specifically, you cherished these gatherings because in them you all shared with each other your celebrations and concerns.  In these meetings you shared each other your testimonies of faith.  When you lifted up to God the appreciation you felt for the joys in your lives, you were testifying to the feeling of God’s power in all things.  When you asked for God’s help in the tough times, you were testifying to the helplessness that you felt and your faith in a power that is greater than yourself that can make a way out of no way.

            Then for a few moments you would bow your heads and begin to pray for each other.   Whether spoken aloud or in silence the prayers that you lifted up to God came united from all your hearts.  However, how does it feel when you are the one that is being prayed for?  How does it feel when you hear someone praying out loud for you?  Some of you might say you feel comforted, vulnerable, grateful, honored, humbled, maybe awkward yet grateful that a group of people care for you.  When we are being prayed for, “we are not in control as we listen to people prayer for us.  They, not we, are the ones doing the asking, and God not we, is the one answering the prayer.”[i]

            In this morning’s gospel reading we hear Jesus praying out loud for his disciples in front of them.  This scripture comes from the farewell speech that Jesus gave to his disciples just after the last supper and before he is about to be arrested and killed by those who feared him.  Imagine if you will how the disciples were feeling at that moment.  Maybe they were feeling awkward, vulnerable, even grateful yet frightened.  After all, the leader whom they had given up their lives to has just told them that he will be leaving them.  Yes Jesus did promise them that the Holy Spirit would come after he has left, yet the disciples had no idea what this would look like.  Instead I imagine they stared at Jesus with wet eyes wondering what Jesus wanted them to do.  

            However Jesus was done giving them instructions.  He had already given them their “to-do” list.  He had told them to abide in his love, just as he abided in God’s love.  He had told them to hang on to him because he is the true vine and in grafting themselves onto him as the branches, they will bear the true fruits of discipleship.  He had made known to them everything that God has told him and gives them his final commandment, that they love each other just as Jesus had loved them.  That in this way the world will know that they are Jesus’ disciples by the way they love each other. 

Now Jesus is switching to prayer, not only on the disciples behalf but on our behalf too.  He is interceding for us before God praying for our belief, our unity and our love.  Jesus prays that we will have the same close and abiding relationship with God as he does.  However, this prayer isn’t just about our relationship with God; it is also about our relationship with each other as believers in Jesus. 

Listen again to the words of Jesus’ prayer:

 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17: 20-21)

            That they may all be one.  In order for us to understand the poignancy of these words, we have to understand the audience to whom this text is directed.  We remember that the early Christians to whom the evangelist John was writing to were just expelled from their church home, the synagogue because of their belief that Jesus was the messiah.  They had to carve a new church community and a new church home for themselves.  They already knew that this farewell speech comes before the drama of the betrayal, trial and crucifixion of Jesus however they hear it knowing the victory of Jesus’ resurrection over the power of death.  For this community who are trying to make a new way, the words “that they all may be one” are of great comfort to them and when they hear, “As you Father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that they may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21) they are hearing Jesus’ great desire for all to be one in him and in God.  

            “That they all may be one” is the motto of the United Church of Christ.  In 1957 leaders from the Congregational Christian denomination gathered with leaders from the Evangelical and Reformed denomination to form a new denomination, the United Church of Christ.  They sought to heal the divisions of the church by being a “united and uniting church seeking renewal through the vision of Christ’s prayer ‘that they may all be one that the world might believe’”[ii] 

Ever since the founding of the United Church of Christ, we have sometimes struggled to articulate our identity.  Some have perceived us as not having a strong theological stance because the United Church of Christ believes in testimonies of faith rather than tests of faith such as doctrines or creeds.  Others feel that we are too loose on our interpretation of scripture because we recognize the Bible as written in a specific historical time and place yet it speaks to us in our present condition however the interpretation of scripture is not limited by past interpretations.  As one of our forebears states, “There is more truth and light to break forth from God’s holy word.”  Some wonder at how we can remain one denomination when “each congregation or local church is free to act in accordance with the collective decision of its members, guided by the working of the Holy Spirit in the light of scriptures.”[iii]  We are a denomination that believes people of faith can be able to live together with their differences and yet find unity in the Christian message which comes down to the greatest commandment, the love of God and the love of neighbor. Unity does not demand conformity rather it demands love. 

In these past weeks, I have had the pleasure of getting to know groups of you in our neighborhood getting acquainted meetings.  At these meetings you have shared with me and each other what makes us strong as a faith community.  One of those things is that we have a diversity of theological views within our community and we strive to recognize our differences while living with each other as a church.  And yet this church has not tried to be all things to all people.  There are some stands that we have made that have been uncomfortable for some and yes some have left our community. But on the whole, in spite of our differences, we continue to be united, abiding with each other, hanging in there with each other, sometimes even putting up with each other because our bottom line is the ethic of love.  We first and foremost seek to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds.  We seek to love ourselves, respect ourselves, take care of ourselves because we are creations of God.  And we seek to love our neighbor just as much as we love ourselves for it is in this way that we make God’s love is made known in the world.  “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.  I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25-26) 

May we all be one.

Amen.

            What does it mean to be a friend?  There are many kinds of friends, we have childhood friends, school friends and work friends.  We have BFFs (best friends forever) Frenemies (the enemies you keep close) and party friends.  Then there are our Facebook friends, many of us are familiar with the social networking site Facebook where we can find people, send them a friend request and if they accept, we are linked to each other through the magic of status updates.  I myself have 386 friends on Facebook, many of which I entertain with pictures of my kitty and status updates such as, “I’m writing a sermon, I’ve just written a sermon, and Now I’m going to take a nap.”  It would be easy to that I am the most popular girl in the world but for the most part these friendships are not real.  Some of my “friends” are people I barely knew in high school and college.  I even have an ex-boyfriend as a Facebook friend.  I’m sure he was relieved to see how prominent Beloved is on my profile because it proved that my break-up with him was really not about him.  Now I am not knocking Facebook, through Facebook I’ve been able to stay connected to folks from all over the world, see their kids grow up, join them on their vacation adventures and even join in the of their struggles in their lives.  But the connection that Jesus is calling us as his friends is much deeper than the small space that a Facebook status update can provide.

This morning’s gospel reading is a continuation of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples on the night before Jesus died on the cross.  Within this text we hear these words over and over again in this text:  abide, love, commandment, and friend. 

Last week we explored the word abide, which can mean remain, hang in there, put up with...and today we hear Jesus say “As the Father loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love”  Is Jesus telling us to put up with his love?  It sounds ridiculous to us because we think of love as a feeling, a strong affection and personal attachment for something or someone; however Jesus wasn’t talking about feelings.  The Greek in which the gospel of John was originally written in had different words for different nuances of love.  Philio was the word used for the love between friends, Eros was the word used for romantic love.  The word that Jesus used for love was agape, which is a special kind of love that is different from the love shared between friends or lovers.  With philio and eros there is a give and take.  Agape on the other hand is a self-sacrificing love that is unconditional and given freely.  Now while there are unconditional elements to philio and eros love, Agape love is more difficult than other loves because it calls us to love in spite of not because of.  It persuades us to share of ourselves not because it is to our advantage, but because it will advantage others.  To love in this way is to be for another and to act for another, even at cost to oneself. 

            “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”  (John 15:10)  Some note that it is interesting that the word commandment shows up frequently in Jesus’ farewell speech in the Gospel of John, yet there isn’t the ethical and moral instruction that are seen in gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  What are the commandments to which Jesus is referring to?  These are not the Old Testament rules, ordinances and purity laws; these are not even the Ten Commandments.  In this text the word commandment is repeatedly associated with love. 

[i]  “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”  (15:10)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (15:12)

“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (15:17)

Jesus states that love is not the motivation for keeping the commandments; it is the very content of the commandments.[ii]  The agape commandment means loving without the expectation of being loved back.  It means giving out of what you have without strings attached.  It means giving to folks just because they are children of God.  It means giving not to make yourselves feel good, but rather giving just to contribute to the good of all humankind. 

Now Jesus gives his commandments to his followers in the spirit of friendship.  We hear Jesus saying, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (15:15)  Jesus says this because servants are expected to obey their master, but friends not required to obey.  We know that if you ask a friend to do something for you, they will help you not because they are supposed to, but because they want to out of love for you.  Jesus is not forcing the disciples to follow the commandment of love but is compelling to love each other in the same way Jesus has loved them.  It is through this kind of love that Jesus has made God known to them and Jesus appoints his disciples to make God known to the world through the way they love.  Jesus reminds his disciples that they did not choose Jesus, but that Jesus chose them, all without regard to their position, resources or access to power.  Jesus befriended fishermen, tax collectors and prostitutes, the religious authorities, the gentile and the Samaritans so that all may share in God’s love.  This is not just a mere friend request that Jesus shoots out into cyberspace in hopes of an acceptance, rather it is a call to accept a commitment to living in state of being that loves and respects everyone just because they are a child of God.

What does this mean for us in this time and place to live out the commandment to love our neighbor in the spirit of agape?  When our neighbor is just like us or familiar to us, it is easy, but when they change to someone different from ourselves, it can be a challenge.  In the past few months I have heard stories of how the town of Smalltown and this church have changed through the years.  At the height of Smalltown’s economy, this congregation enjoyed a membership so large, that you had to have two services to accommodate all the people who attended.  Our neighbors inside and outside our walls were the movers and the shakers of the town of Smalltown.  However when the machine shops closed and the town declined, it seemed like the church declined with it.  The people who occupied these pews on Sunday mornings moved on to other places to find work and others may have left because they lost faith.   The environment surrounding our church changed from a booming main street to a low income neighborhood where many of our citizenry living in subsidized housing.  I’ve heard frustration over how impoverished our town has become.  We did not choose the state of our economy, the lack of opportunity, the high level of poverty and all the problems that come with it but through circumstances out of our control it seems like it chose us. The question that lies before us is what does God want us to do about it? 

God has blessed this church with many resources so that we can go out and be a blessing to others.  There are many people who are struggling who not only need to hear the good news of God’s love but also need to learn how to earn a living, sustain themselves and to parent effectively. The mission field that surrounds our church is vast.  Without regard to how it will benefit us, we are called to reach out to these folk, to go to where they are so that they can know God’s love through the extravagant welcome of our church.  In this community of faith they will be friended, loved and cherished not because of what they can do for us, but because of who we all are – beloved children of God and friends of Jesus.  May it be so.  Amen.

Today the largest growing religious group in the United States is the “I am spiritual but not religious” group.  As a matter of fact a full 22 % of New Englanders claimed to have no religious affiliation whatsoever.  Interesting that this region of the United States which was founded by the deeply religious Puritans and Pilgrims has now surpassed the west coast as the least religious region in America.  Is this dismal news?  Is this the disintegration of our New England church tradition as we know it or is this the revelation of new opportunities for evangelism?  In my ministry I’ve attended many conferences and workshops exploring how mainline churches can reach out to the un-churched people.  For the first time in the 62 generations that have come to pass since the beginning of the Christian Church, we have a generation of people, mostly 35 and under who were not raised in the church.  When asked about their faith life, these folk say, “I am spiritual but I am not religious.”  These folk long to have a connection with something which is greater than themselves, something that lets them know that they are accepted, that they are loved.  But they are disillusioned with organized religion because they believe it to be exclusionary and narrow-minded and so they look for spiritual sustenance in the religious and self help sections of the bookstore.

But can you blame them?  We hear in this morning’s lesson from First John that God is love and that because God loved us first we ought to love each other.  But then we hear of churches and denominations splitting over one or two controversial issues because they refuse to acknowledge their differences while living together as a church.  Many of the workshops I’ve attended show us the latest and greatest in Christian worship, church branding and evangelism but there was always something missing in the discussion.  Where was the good news of God’s all inclusive love for all of God’s creation?  While a church can have the latest and the greatest in technology, praise music and program but if it does not abide in God’s love, it is nothing.

In this culture of rugged individualism we are told that it is up to us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and to solve our own problems.  In a lot of ways churches have fallen into this same trap.  Rather than staking our communal lives in the perfect love that God has for us and abiding in it, we get caught up in our fears and think that it is totally up to us to grow and sustain the church.  However this is not God’s way.  In this morning’s gospel Jesus tells us that we cannot do it alone.  Abide in me Jesus keeps saying, just as a branch cannot bear fruit disconnected from the vine, so too we cannot do anything without connecting to Jesus. 

We remember that Jesus’ relationship with God is as a child of a parent who cares very deeply for his children.  Through his ministry Jesus has prepared us to have that same kind of experience of God.  In the gospel Jesus tells us “I am the true vine, ….abide in me, as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” (John 15: 1a, 4) 

But what does it mean to abide.   I found a delightful definition of abide in a sermon preached by the Rev. Lillian Daniel at the UCC General Synod several years ago.  She states, “’Some people translate it as ‘If you remain in me, and my words remain in you…’ When you remain somewhere you stay there. You're not just visiting. You're not dabbling in Jesus.  Notice the scripture does not read, ‘If you abide with me for an hour on Sundays and my words abide in you for an hour on Sundays, ask for whatever you want…What’s another way we use the word abide, How about this one?  I cannot abide that smell!  I cannot abide that behavior.  [I cannot abide your sense of humor.] In other words I can’t stand it or I can’t put up with it.  If we listen to the text this way we hear Jesus saying to his followers, ‘If you put up with me, and I put up with you ask for whatever you wish.’  In other words it’s going to be a relationship.”[i]  And this is not a short term relationship that Jesus is asking for, it is a lifetime commitment.  And as many of us know who have had long term relationships, it will not always be smooth sailing.  Daniels continues, “Sometimes we'll be living together like newlyweds, other times we'll be putting up with each other, because the life of faith is not easy. Sometimes there will be sacrifices as we abide together.  Jesus told us that on the cross.”[ii]

What I hear Jesus is saying is this, “Hang in there with me, as I have hung in there for you.  Just as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it is hanging from the vine, neither can you unless you hang in there with me.” 

                This morning’s text is the midst of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples after the last supper and before he is about to be killed by those who feared him.  So why is this Good Friday text being read after Easter? So that we can hear this text in the same way that the original audience of this gospel story heard it.  The early Christians whom the evangelist John writes to were part of the Jewish community but in conflict with them because of their belief that Jesus was the messiah sent by God to be the embodiment of God’s grace and love.  They were expelled from their church home and so they had to carve a new church home for themselves. They were persecuted for their beliefs.  What this newly formed community needed was comfort and assurance and John provides it for them by recalling Jesus’ farewell message to his disciples. They already knew that this farewell speech comes before the drama of the betrayal, trial and crucifixion of Jesus however they hear it knowing the victory of Jesus’ resurrection over the power of death.  For a community who are trying to make a new way the words, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15: 5)  are of great comfort.  They are hearing that it is not up to them alone to bear the fruit (make disciples) but rather in hanging on to Jesus, the disciples will be revealed to them. 

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.  He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” (John 15: 1-2)

            In the gospel we are assured that God is in charge, and that if we abide in God we can ask for whatever we wish and God will do it for us.  This means that we ask for things from God’s point of view, especially as we contemplate the future of our church.  Rather than asking, “Does our church have enough financially to survive?”  Let us ask, “God has blessed us with these resources, how does God want our church to use them for the growth of God’s kingdom here on earth?”  Rather than asking, “How much do we need to grow the church membership in order to sustain ourselves?” let us ask, “Who needs to hear the good news of God’s love and what can we do to make our community a welcoming place for everyone to hear this message?”  And most of all rather than asking, “What’s in this church for me?” let us ask “God what do you want me to do in this church?” 

May it be so.

Amen

              As we journey together as a community of faith you will find that I am a bit of an academic. As I have said to you before, I love to pick apart the gospel stories word by word to figure out what they were saying back in the day.  The joke in my household is that there are biblical scholars who write fifty page articles on one word in the bible, I’m the person who reads them, what I like to call beach reading.

                       “You are witnesses to these things.”

(1) David Lose "Witnesses" www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=579