Category Archives: Sermons

Archetypes Sermon Series, Epiphany, Sermons, Symbols and Metaphors

SERMON: Darkness Shall Not Overcome – The Universal Symbolism of Light

On the fourth Sunday after Epiphany (January 28, 2018), in a series of sermons on the great archetypes in the bible, the Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs reflected, and spoke, on the universal, multi-tradition symbolism of Light and the power to overcome those deep valleys of unknowing, uncertainty, fear, and even despair.

Others in the Great Archetypes series include Trees, Mountains, Music, and Water. (You’ll see those in the Recent Posts at the sidebar if they’ve been uploaded to date.)

Rev. Suggs began the sermon on the archetype of Light with the following:

“Far, we’ve been traveling far without a home, but not without a star.” ~ Neil Diamond, America

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” ~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Look to my coming, at first light, on the fifth day. At dawn look to the East.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Gandalf in Lord of the Rings

He says, “You are the moon of my life.” And she replies, “My sun and my stars.” ~ George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones, Khal Drogo to his Khaleesi

LIGHT …

… Is a powerful metaphor
 and a dynamic symbol in
 all parts of our culture.

Expulsion – Moon and Firelight, 1828, by Thomas Cole. {{PD-US}}

In paintings of every type, the artist plays an unusual dual role by painting light itself as an important motif in the picture and then by lighting the whole picture.

In stage and theater, the art of lighting can spell the pinnacle of performance or the death of dreams.

Throughout literature, authors depend on light to excite their insight. I have provided a few examples from various media.

Light permeates all of theological printing and speaking, and it is found virtually everywhere in the sciences.

Even a musical concert can be enhanced or ruined by the lighting. The solo spotlight on a piano performance. Or the lasers and the burst of flame at a rock concert. Or — and you’ll find this hard to believe — spotlights on preachers.

Light has pervaded our language:

Light at the End of the Tunnel. PD Image Segugio.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” an expression that we use when we’ve been trudging through something, and “Finally there’s a measure of hope at the end.”

In American politics, pretty much every four years or so, we have “The dawning of a new era.” Reagan got a lot of mileage out of “Morning in America.”

Or we hire an expert to “Shed light on the subject,” whatever it might be.

The imagery infuses our soul as well:

  • Starlight to a sailor.
  • Sunlight to a prisoner.
  • Moonlight to lovers.
  • Candlelight to a scholar.
  • The light of a campfire to old friends.
  • A light in the window to someone who is lost.
  • And a thousand other examples.

Here are some samples from the Bible. These are among the few equations of God:

“God is light.” It doesn’t say, “God is the light.” It doesn’t say, “God is a light.” It just says, “God is light.” God equals light. There is only a handful of other equations like this: God is spirit, God is bread, God is love.” ~ The First Letter of John, Chapter 1, Verse 5

Light Through a Stained Glass Window. PD Stockphotos.

The Letter of Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 2, Verse 15, speaks to the children of God, this is for you: “Shining stars in the sky.”

“Let your light so shine before others.” Don’t put a bushel basket over it. Let it shine the way the song says. ~ The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 16The first Letter of

Or in Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonions, Chapter 5, Verse 5: “You are children of the light, and children of the day.”

Preacher: I’ve Been Here Long 
 Enough, and You’ve Heard Me 
 Long Enough to Know That . . .

. . . many of the aspects of standard orthodox Christianity don’t suit me very well.

There’s an example with the notion that “God is light.”  So it says in The First Letter of John, and then in the Gospel of John he adds two more verses to it.

Now I want to put the three of them together, and you tell me what you think it means:

As mentioned, in his First Epistle, John says, “God is light.” But then, in the Gospel According to John, Jesus is recounted as saying, “I am the light of the world.”

Now bear in mind that he spoke problematically in Aramaic, translated into Greek, and then translated into English.

I Am the Light of the World, c. 1900-1904, by William Holman Hunt, St. Paul’s, London.

Fortunately, the linguistic construction is identical in all three languages. “I am” is both the belief of referring to “me” or it’s the name of God. Either he’s saying “I am the light of the world,” citing himself that he, Jesus, is the light of the world, or he might be saying, “God is the light of the world.”

To add to the confusion, a little later he says, “You are the light of the world.”

There’s a part of me that wants to take all this at face value and ask, “How are we to understand this?” And so I’ve got these three thoughts here — “God is light,” “I am the light of the world,” and “You are the light of the world.”

At face value, the only conclusion I can come to is that there is a linkage between our physical being — who we are as homo sapiens, as organisms — and divinity.

There’s a linkage, an identity linkage, that either we want to deny it or ignore it or just set it aside and never preach on it, but it’s there in the background.

A Series of Archetypes:
 Here Are Two Lessons
 from the Notion of Light

We’ve been looking at deep archetypes that run through scripture, and this is the third in a series.

We looked at trees two weeks ago; we looked at mountains a week ago; the notion today is light; and next Sunday it’s music. I’d like to offer two lessons from this notion of light, pervading its way through the scriptures but beyond the scriptures, infusing their way into every facet of human existence.

Read the rest of this sermon:

Download PDF of The Darkness Shall Not Overcome – The Symbol and Metaphor of Light in Christian Scripture

Featured Image Credit: Beam of sun light inside the cavity of Rocca ill’Abissu at Fondachelli Fantina, Sicily. By Fediona; Creative Commons via Wikimedia.

Sermons

SERMON: Baptized By Beauty

In this sermon, the Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs explored the major symbolism in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech given the day before Dr. King was assassinated.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968.

In that speech, the Rev. Dr. King told a story about how, several years before that, he’d gotten stabbed by “a demented black woman” while at a book-signing in New York City. The Rev. Dr. King said,

“The only question I heard from her was, ‘Are you Martin Luther King?’ And I was looking down writing, and I said, Yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital.”

“It came out in The New York Times the next morning, [and the way in which they worded it was that,] if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later . . . . they allowed me to read some of the mail [which included the letters he received were those from the President, the Vice President, and the Governor of New York, but there was one from a young girl that he said he would never forget.] It said simply:

Dear Dr. King,


I’m so happy you didn’t sneeze.

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March on Washington. National Archives, NAID-542069.

The Rev. Dr. King noted that he, too, was glad he hadn’t sneezed, because if he had sneezed, given the proximity of the knife wound to his aorta, he wouldn’t have been alive to witness a few key events:

“I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting-in they were really standing up for the best in the American dream.”

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel.”

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.”

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to help lead the five-day march in 1965 from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”

Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry, Ireland. Image courtesy of World Heritage Ireland.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis, Tennessee, to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.”

“And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?”

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.”

“And I don’t mind.”

The Rev. Dr. Suggs in his post-Epiphany sermon, goes on to explore the major symbols in religious and spiritual traditions — the pilgrimage, the often arduous climb to the mountaintop being symbolic of the spiritual journey itself.

Rev. Suggs shared,

Rainy Season in the Tropics, by Frederic Edwin Church. PD via Wikimedia.

“Mountains are more than just their primal metaphor for our spiritual quest, more than just a reminder of that beyond, especially when we are so totally engrossed in our world. The mountain also beckons us, encourages us, calls us, draws us toward the higher plane of the spirit.”

“Trees remind us of our nature, that we are both flesh and spirit, both earthly and heavenly. Mountains call us higher. The view of creation gets better the higher we go.”

Download and read the full Baptized by Beauty (I Have Been to the Mountaintop) sermon here.

 

Advent and Christmas, Sermons

SERMON: Childermas – The Holy Innocents: When Jesus Became a Refugee

UCC’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Art Suggs, shared this about Childermas:

“In 33 years as a pastor, I’m doing something right now that I’ve never done before: I’m preaching on a passage and a topic generally ignored or avoided.

Rubens, Massacre of the Innocents, 1610–11, PD-US. The Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario.

December 28 or 29, depending on the Roman Catholic or Orthodox calendar, is the relatively minor holiday feast day called Childermas.

In the same way that Christmas is Christ Mass, a mass celebrating the birth of Christ, Childermas recognizes children, but specifically the children who were massacred by Herod.

The significance of it comes from one line I read years ago, where it said, “The significance of the day is that it is the day Jesus became a refugee.”

Massacre of the Innocents, 1611, by Guido Reni. {{PD-US}} Wikimedia.

“Imagining the fear that Jesus’ parents must have experienced, the Bible says that Joseph was warned in a dream about Herod’s intention to kill male babies two years old and younger.”

“But in a day prior to mass communications, how would one know, if you lived in Bethlehem, that such an order had been given?”

“A rumor would likely spread that a male baby would grow up to become King of the Jews, and he would usurp power from Herod. The word would spread one family at a time, and hopefully it would spread faster than Herod’s goons could move from house to house.”

“Learning of the decree, one person telling another, do you fight?”

“No, you cannot outweigh the forces of evil, so you either hide or flee, and Joseph and Mary chose to flee.”

Nativity Grotto Star, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. PD-CC Mark87 via Wikimedia.

Rev. Suggs went on to speak of the Church of the Nativity and his visit there in 2005 — the Grotto of Christ’s birth, as it’s called — and how there are two sides to this story.

On one hand (or side), this story is only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, leading “some scholars (to) suspect that the lack of supporting backup is what’s called a “contrived fulfillment of prophesy.” They’re trying to make that linkage (between Moses and Jesus) in the Gospel of Matthew. Perhaps flim-flammers are supporting a specious story to make it look as though Jesus was a second Moses. So that’s one side of the story,” said Rev. Suggs.

“The other side of the story is this. I wouldn’t put it past Herod to give out such an order. Get a load of this: He murdered three of his sons; he murdered his mother-in-law; he murdered his second wife; he murdered his brother-in-law; he murdered what is estimated at 300 military commanders.”

Flight into Egypt, 1542, by Jacopo Bassano. {{PD-US}} (Toledo Museum of Art)

“And as well, he murdered an unknown number of Pharisees; they didn’t bother to count because they were not as important as the military commanders. But you can bet it was more than 300. So would he give out an order like this? You tell me.”

“What I asked myself to think about on this Sunday morning is why we’re looking at this notion, this story that’s happily ignored in our scriptures.”

“Who in their right mind wants to preach on two grottos, the false story of the Nativity and the killing of babies? I haven’t wanted to do that for all of my career, but something snapped this year, and I thought this might be the time to look at it.”

In the full sermon, Rev. Dr. Suggs shares why the world is still a brutal place for children … and why there is profound, statistically proven reason for hope.

Download and read the full Childermas: When Jesus Became a Refugee here.

Advent and Christmas, Sermons

SERMON: Advent 3: Blessed Are We – The Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth

For the third Sunday of Advent, FCC’s former assistant pastor, the Rev. Janet Abel, shared the stories of Mary and Elizabeth, the visit between a very young and pregnant Mary and St. Elizabeth, her older cousin who is pregnant with Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist.

Rev. Abel noted that the third Sunday of Advent was traditionally known as Joy Sunday, symbolized by the pink candle on the Advent Wheel — pink symbolizing love, of course, and Mary.

Rev. Abel shared what intrigued her about this visit — a pregnant Mary, in a time when women didn’t necessarily travel in that way.

“I want to focus on this extraordinary visit. Why would Mary leave home to travel a long distance to visit her cousin Elizabeth?” she wondered.

The Visitation, c. 1528, by Jacopo Pontormo. PD via Wikimedia.

Reviewing the story as it appears in Luke 1:39-56, Rev. Abel pointed out that the distance between Nazareth and “into the hill country … into a city of Judah” that was close to 100 miles (130 or more kilometers) — a big deal to travel that distance, in that condition, then.

“What concerns me here — what concerns us — is not “did this really happen this way?” or to get so caught up in how these two women — one too young and one too old — get pregnant.”

But rather that “There’s mystery here, and meaning; meaning especially, because Luke’s story is our story.”

“Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord”

“And blessed are we who believe … believe that we the beloved by God are full of grace and chosen by God.”

The Madonna of the Magnificat, detail, 1483, by Sandro Botticelli. PD Wikimedia.

Rev. Abel continued,

“The Magnificat is the song that Mary sings in response to Elizabeth’s and John’s extraordinary greeting.

These words echo the prayer of Hanna — sung way back when she’s finally pregnant with Samuel — a woman like Elizabeth who waited so long for her prayers to be fulfilled.

Mary’s song isn’t just about herself but about the world, about justice, about the last being first … finally.

It’s about wrongs being righted …  finally. About this world that we see, and hear on the news, and see on television, and being reminded that that’s not all there is.

God chose these two very ordinary women to bear extraordinary beings into this world.

That’s what Christmas really is: bearing the extraordinary, the Divine, into this tired, work-a-day hopeless world.

And this world becomes full of hope, and promise, and love, because God chooses us too — you and me — to bear the extraordinary, the Divine, into our worlds.

Blessed are we…always.

Amen.”

Featured Image Credit: The Visitation (painting) by The Visitation, 1491, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, depicts Mary visiting her elderly cousin Elizabeth. PD image, Wikimedia.

 

 

Advent and Christmas, Sermons

SERMON: Advent 2: Beneath Lies the Seed

In the second sermon of the Advent Season 2017, the Rev. Dr. Art Suggs explored the world and culture into which Jesus was born, and the main pillars of Imperial Rome that defined the culture.

Rev. Suggs shared why the historical context mattered, and why the message ushered in by Jesus was such a threat to the established order. He said,

“Religion — War — Victory — Peace, in that order. You worship the gods. You go to war with their assistance. You are victorious with their help. And you obtain peace because of their generosity.
It is what is called the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome.

Also on that temple is the phrase “Victory with peace secured on land and sea.”

What I have recounted for you is classic history written by the winners.

It does not ask the opinions of the Syrians or the Jews, nor of the Egyptians or the north Africans, nor those on the Iberian Peninsula, not the Gauls nor the northern tribes of Brittania or Germania.

The Victorious Advance, 1873, by Peter Janssen. PD Wikimedia.

All around the empire, in a complete circle, peoples, tribes, nations bent into submission by overwhelming force. Pax Romana because you dare not fight back.

And into that, we celebrate the birth of one who wasn’t afraid, eventually given the real title of Prince of Peace. One who taught a very different message.

The whole point of that history is to show the difference between the two messages. What should I do if someone strikes me? Turn the other cheek. If someone harms me or insults me, should I forgive them? Yes. What if they do it again? Forgive seventy times seven times. Make this part of your soul. “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Learn to love. It is primary, central, foremost. It is the principal, essential spiritual directive. Even my enemies? Even those who hate me, harm me, despise me? Especially love them. As you can see, Jesus taught a different way of peace.”

Download the full sermon (PDF) – Beneath Lies the Seed

Featured Image Credit: The Consummation: The Course of Empire, 1836, by Thomas Cole. PD Image, Wikimedia (NY Historical Society).

Advent and Christmas, Sermon Transcripts, Sermons

SERMON: The Overture – Why Does the Christmas Story Matter?

Why does the Christmas story matter?

Because Jesus was teaching spiritual freedom in a time of brutal occupation and slavery, where there was no sense of justice for oppressed peoples.

As Pastor Art notes in the sermon, “So this cute story, with animals and angels, and wise men and shepherds is at the root of a parabolic overture to a deeper and grander story of spiritual freedom and spiritual healing for all of us.”

Read the full sermon – The Overture (12-3-17)

Featured Image Credit: The Holy Night, 1867, by Carl Heinrich Bloch. {{PD-1923}}

Christianity 2.0, Sermon Transcripts, Sermons

SERMON: Christianity 2.0 – Part 2: Changing From Battle Metaphors to Evolution

Cave entrance, Naracoorte, Australia. {PD} Burningwell.

In the second sermon in his series on Christianity 2.0., on October 29, 2017, the Rev. Dr. Art Suggs (a.k.a. Pastor Art) started with a provocative excerpt from Brian McLaren’s book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That are Transforming the Faith.

As the title of this sermon suggests, Pastor Art’s sermon delved deeply into some of the stickier questions that confront and invite spiritual growth among contemporary Christians — including one questions that changed the life and ministry of a Michigan mega-church pastor.

Read the full Christianity 2.0 Sermon Series here (PDF)

Christianity 2.0, Sermon Transcripts, Sermons

SERMON: Christianity 2.0 – Part 1: The Spark That Lights the Fire

The Rev. Dr. Art Suggs started his Christianity 2.0 sermon series this way:

“As a Senior Pastor,  I am convinced that the Church Universal is in need of, and is in deed in the midst of, a new Reformation.

The Church in conversation with the world religions, and especially with the multiple branches of science, finds itself in need of an upgrade.

Redefining divinity, humanity, and the relationship between them, is now the prime directive for our time.

Previous understandings are clearly inadequate.

Therefore, my attempt at Christianity 2.0. It is time to install an upgrade .”

Oh, and Martin Luther? He had some issues with the Church and its rules in his time, too.

Read on for more intel and inspiration on Christianity 2.0 – Part 1:

Christianity 2.0 – Part 1: The Spark That Lights the Fire (11-19-17 Sermon)