AMS sermon, 8-3-14, Stupid Is as Stupid Does

AMS sermon, 10-5-14, Feel the Sweep of It

AMS sermon, 9-28-14, Learned Anything Yet?

FRIENDLY PERSUASION    FINAL

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, September 7, 2014

 

“We Are All One”

It was a statement by Mary Cuddeback, one of our own members, quoted by Art at the end of his sermon last week.  Mary and Carolyn Blake had happened to attend a meeting of the Buddhist group that meets upstairs in our classroom building on the same day that the press were invited there, so they were included in a nice article last week.  We enjoyed excellent coverage of our Buddhist group, and Mary’s observation was in the paper at the end of the reporter’s article and at the end of Art’s sermon as he discussed the many spiritual groups that meet here at First Congregational Church.

I agree completely with Mary’s statement.  “We are all one.”  But I have a question for you, as well.  In the reading of the New Testament lesson from Matthew 18 this morning, and based on Art’s sermon of last week, why is it that we don’t all get along?  It’s a fundamental question; you’ve heard it many times.  We’re all one.  Then why don’t we all get along?  In the passage Jesus gives some interesting advice.  I don’t know about you, but it’s a little daunting, all this confrontation that’s going on.  You’re living in a community, and if a member sins against you, well right there, we’d have to figure out what the sin was, and that could be its own sermon.  But then we’d have to discuss what sin actually is and what that might mean.

An “Intervention Sheet” for a

Congregational Church?  No Way!

I’m teaching Genesis with the residents of the home where I work, and we were just discussing sin in general.  That word means, “missing the mark, not hitting the target.”  We could go on about that.  But if a member sins against you, the advice of Jesus in Matthew 18: 15-20 is that you should go to that person and, if he or she still doesn’t listen to you, then you take two or three other members of the congregation, and you have an intervention.

Who wants to sign up for that?  Can you imagine having a sign-up sheet out in the hallway?  Our Intervention Sheet.  Well, somebody sinned against me so I need two or three people to come with me on Tuesday – gotta let ‘em know – and then the intervenors will listen and the whole church. . . . We could do this on Sundays.  That could be part of our Sunday morning service.  Well, I don’t think so, right?  Probably not.

The Great Verse Divide

Art mentioned in his sermon last week that the great verse divide in the Christian community was one of the fundamental questions that arose in the days after the death of Christ.  You’ve got the disciples, the originals, and James, Jesus’ brother, in Jerusalem doing their thing, converting people but also going to the temple and keeping kosher, and that’s what you had to do.  And then there’s Paul, traveling around the known world, going to places like Greece, and he was converting what they called Gentiles, people who aren’t Jewish, so the big question started to come up, over and over.  It started to go like this:  James and Paul, Jewish Christian, Gentile Christian.  What do we do?  Ultimately Paul won that particular argument.  But to be honest, we’ve been arguing it and other disagreements ever since.

“Getting Along” Doesn’t Get Along Well

in Some Church or Denominational Disputes

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is for me a visual example of how we might get along but don’t.  According to some historians, this church was built on what might have been the location of Jesus’ grave after his crucifixion.  A big, ostentatious church was built on this site, and there’s a fancy slab where the Jews may have laid Jesus’ body after the Romans took it down from the cross, and then Jesus’ followers  laid it in the tomb.  Needless to say, the slab became very holy, as is the entire site.  The site is the very place where the Romans are thought to have crucified people.

Above the slab are three or four ornate lamps – kind of “churchy” lamps, not just ordinary light-bulb lamps but lamps that require oil and attendants to maintain them and fill them with fuel.  The Roman Catholics have a lamp, the Eastern Orthodox have a lamp, the Protestants have a lamp, and some other group does.  When you go and fill the oil in your particular denominational lamp, you are not allowed to touch the other three lamps, even if they’ve gone out.  Each denomination must go and fill its own lamp.  Is that ridiculous or what?  Why couldn’t the different groups employ one person as lamp-tender, I wondered?

The Great Carpet Debate

Why don’t we always get along?  I am reminded of the great carpet debate at First Presbyterian Church of Cape May, of which I was a part way back when I was still a member there.  It’s a beautiful church in a beautiful town.  Right down from the mall is this Presbyterian church on the corner of Decatur and Hughes.

At one point, our carpet was getting worn, and we had to replace it.  In favor of a new color, we had a blue faction, but at the time Cape May had green, so we had a green faction.  I was one of those in favor of keeping the carpet the same color, a very pretty green.  Then there was the blue faction because there was some blue in the stained-glass windows, and the colors would match.  And there was the red faction, who wanted the blood of Christ to be represented in the carpet.  The rest of us found that idea to be a little off-putting, that we had to have a bloody carpet.  It just didn’t seem appropriate, to be honest with you.

There was quite a debate, and it turned into quite a church meeting about the color of the carpet.  It was one of the longest debates we ever had.

In Literature, not Getting Along Benefits Plot

“Little Women” is one of my favorite childhood books, along with “Black Beauty.”  I loved both of them.  “Jane Eyre” was a third, but it was a little dour.  “Little Women,” as you know, is about four sisters growing up in the time of the Civil War with their mother Marmie.  It’s been made into a movie many times, the latest being quite a good one.  Poor Beth is the one who gets scarlet fever; it leaves her weak, and she dies before she turns 20.  At one point in the story, Beth says, “Birds in their little nest agree.”  But that’s not always true, is it?  The sisters do argue a lot among themselves.

If they didn’t argue, we wouldn’t have much of a story, would we?  I mean if it was just all sweetness and light between the sisters.  “I have an idea,” Jo would say, and Amy would answer, “Great, let’s do it.”  Not very entertaining.  Stories need action and tension.  Movies and books and plays often recount problems with people who don’t completely get along, this being essential to strong plot development.

Jo and Amy in particular are very different from each other.  Jo’s the writer, and she’s kind of eccentric.  She goes up to the attic and puts on a cap.  She’s the one based on Louisa May Alcott herself.  Amy’s a little vain, and she likes to paint.  She gets to go to Europe with Aunt March and so on.  The sisters are constantly at odds.

At another point in the story, Amy gets mad at Jo for not letting her go skating with Jo  and Laurie, so Amy burns a book of Jo’s personal essays, and she is furious when she discovers this.  These disagreements not only make for a more interesting story, but they make for a more believable one.  As sweet as “Little Women” is, it is believable and relatable.  We can relate to it because the characters are not perfect.

My title for today’s sermon comes from a movie, “Friendly Persuasion,” about the Quakers.  Have any of you seen it?  It’s a good oldie, but a goodie, right?  Gary Cooper plays a man named Jess Birdwell.  The Quakers, as you know, are very peaceful, loving people, basing their lives on the gospel.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  They take that Golden Rule, and they really believe it.  But the story itself is not completely peaceful.  The Civil War erupts, their daughter falls in love with a soldier, and so it goes.  Life isn’t perfect, even in “Friendly Persuasion.”

I have a similar problem with a book I was given.  Now I don’t want to offend anyone, but I always realize that, when you’re going to say something negative about a book, somebody out there loves it.

Anyway, I have a friend in Lancaster who sent me a book by a woman named Jan Karon, who wrote the Mitford series.  She said I would like the book because it’s all about an Episcopalian rector in a small town in North Carolina – perfect for me.  So she sent it to me, and I felt compelled to read it.  I liked it; I didn’t love it.  I didn’t find it very relatable.  It’s too perfect.  Everything works together for good.  The characters are constantly quoting the Bible.  Nothing wrong with that, but you know, Philippians 4: 13?  I had to look up that citation because I didn’t know offhand what it means.

I had read an article about Jan Karon and felt that her depiction of small-town life, wasn’t necessarily accurate.  Karon based her books on the work of a British author named Miss Read, a schoolteacher who in the 50’s wrote a series of books.  So I decided to get one from the library.  Read’s book seemed to me qualitatively better than Karon’s, although both are a little sweet.  But Read’s book is real and funny, while in my opinion Karon needs a better sense of humor, among other things, but her people are interesting because of their foibles and disagreements.

The “Clash of Civilizations”

In the Face of Humanity and Divinity

But the characters are undergirded by something.  “We are all one.”  What does being “one” really mean?  “The Clash of Civilizations,” a famous text that I had to read in seminary, is a very small book, but I recommend it to you.  When you watch and listen to the news, it’s kind of tough, isn’t it?  Groups like ISIS are everywhere.  And we know full well that they could infiltrate our lives here and in England and elsewhere.  The First World could certainly have members of ISIS among their own populations.

Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote the book, the full title of which is “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.”  Although published quite a while ago, the book was republished in 2011.  His thesis is still current – that this clash of civilizations is yet to come.  The East and the West are like two fists butted up against each other.  They’re fundamentally different from each other.

Yes, we’re all children of God, but we’ve got sharp differences in history, language, culture, religion, and the like.  The world is becoming a smaller place and therefore our interactions with each other are increasing.  The West is at its peak of power, bringing with it much resentment from the East.  And the gap between the rich and the poor is growing around the world.  We’ve got these fundamental differences, and they’re not going away anytime soon.

The Definition of Oneness Is All-Encompassing Love

Underlying all this tradition and culture, language and religion – and we know all that is real – is our humanity and our divinity.  We are all creatures of God, and therefore there is an essential oneness that undergirds all our differences.  It’s what is under the pews here.  It’s what brings us here.  It’s what makes us all one – all of us, as different as we are.

And what is that oneness?  What does it really look like?  What’s the word being used?  Love.  The Golden Rule.  Paul gives it to us again in Romans.  Jesus certainly repeats it.  You take those commandments, and they matter.  If you treat each other as you would be treated yourself, then you are obeying what’s called the Ten Commandments.  And that’s love.  In simple, short form, love each other as you love yourself.  And if you love yourself, you should love each other.

And then we’re reminded in the passage from Mathew, which is, as you know, a little alarming, where it deals with how to handle a confrontation.  But then Jesus ends it with, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  It kind of reminds us what’s here with us always.  Where there’s even a small group, two or three, we admit that would be a very small congregation, but where they are, there is God.  And you can take that word “God” and put love in it.  Where two or three are, there is love.

The Importance of Love Undergirding Our Community

That’s what undergirds our community here at First Congregational Church.  It’s Jesus Christ  and the love of God.  Even if we can’t always see it or feel it, you know that it’s always there.  I know some of your history, I know your history since I’ve been with you, since Art’s been here.  But we don’t always completely agree, do we?  We’re different people, and we have different ideas.  Maybe at one point we too shall discuss our carpet situation.  We too will also survive that trial because it’s love.  Love is always there, but people sometimes forget that, and the results can be tragic.

Rob Bell is a good example of remembering the importance of love.  He’s a former evangelical minister, who was pastor at a big-steeple, very conservative church.  He once put up on the bulletin board an article about Mahatma Gandhi, a great leader in India who used peaceful methods to achieve independence from the United Kingdom, and of course Martin Luther King, Jr., based his nonviolent resistance heavily on the examples of Jesus and Gandhi.

Bell happened to be walking by the bulletin board in the corridor one day and saw scrawled underneath the picture of Ghandi a startling legend:  “Gandhi’s in hell!  Reality check.”  That’s what a member of the church had written underneath the picture of Gandhi.  This desecration stopped Bell in his tracks.  It made him realize something about what he was preaching and the kind of theology his church was giving out.  Gandhi’s in hell?  How could that be?  Love.  Love is the only thing that matters.

And so Bell wrote a book called “Love Wins.”  The most important thing is love.  If love doesn’t win, then we all lose.

Amen.

JLA sermon 9-7-14 Friendly Persuasion.docxreedited

AMS sermon, 8-31-14, Controversy Over Boundaries

BRAVERY

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, August 17, 2014

 

Fighting Clerical Frump

Today’s sermon, “Bravery,” is Part II of the sermon I preached last week, which was entitled “Fear.”  It was all about fear, and now the flip side is “Bravery.”  Wearing the denim stole I have on this morning represents an act of bravery according to a blog I used to read on line.  It was devoted to urging ministers to dress better.  The writer, a woman minister, was fighting clerical frump, as she called it, because our profession is not known to dress well.  In fact, when I became a minister, I decided then and there to throw out my heels because I could get away with wearing flats, and no one would care since my shoes barely peeked out from under my robe.

“Hooray,” I thought.  I’m wearing sneakers right now because I have to, but one of the author’s blog columns was about this denim stole, made by an artist who sells her wares on-line on Etsy.  It’s a great site, and it has all kinds of artists who sell all kinds of things, from clothing to jewelry.  You name it.  If you’re looking for something handmade, you can go to Etsy, and you might be able to find it.  Some of the prices are outrageous, and for some of them you can get a bargain.

That’s where I found the artist, who was mentioned by the antifrump clerical lady decrying the observation that no one would ever wear a denim stole.  Oh, I would!  Especially here at our church.  I think it’s great.  Denim is the stuff of life, and we all wear jeans nowadays.  I’ve come a long way.  There was a time when I would not wear pants in the pulpit.  It was brave, the lady minister said.

The Violent Factor in Bravery

We can define “bravery” in many ways, can’t we?  Who and what is brave in this life?  Now you know I love movies.  Arlene and I talk about the movies every week.  Was it worth our time?  Movies on line.  Movies on TV.  Movies in the theater.  A lot of movies are about bravery.  About righting a wrong.  About doing the right thing.  And often, unfortunately, violence is a major part of that theme, isn’t it?  Maybe this influence derives from video games.

Movies, especially action movies, are becoming more and more frenetic, faster-paced, with lots of violence.  You might be misled into thinking that what is brave must be violent, in the movies at least.  Must one throw a punch to be brave, as characters so often do?  Is it in fact braver to walk away from combat, to choose your battles, as you do in daily life?  When is it brave to throw a punch?  When is it brave to grab an Uzi, like Sylvestor Stallone, and to  have a helicopter and all the necessary accoutrements of an inexpendable hero?

We’re so used to it that sometimes I have to stop and think, this movie is so violent it’s numbing, and what is it about, really?  What is really brave?  Bravery isn’t always violent.  In fact, it often isn’t.

Defining Bravery with Witchcraft and Wizardry

I’m a great lover of all kinds of movies.  I like adult films too, but I love “Harry Potter.”  One of that series was on TV last night.  I don’t care how many times I’ve seen it, I’d watch it again.  It takes me away for three hours in that magical world, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  I have made the trip to Harry Potter World in Florida and had a great time.  It was very crowded, but I didn’t mind because I took that amazing ride through the castle.

The end of the story was quite something.  It became more adult in focus, and it certainly had some violence.  As they were fighting, the students and Harry arrayed themselves against the ultimate evil in the person of Lord Voldemort.  The story makes plain that evil does exist, but it also makes plain that good is greater than evil.  Why is Harry Potter brave?  It isn’t just the fighting, right?

Near the end of the story, Harry has sacrificed himself.  Part of him must die because he’s got part of Lord Voldemort in him, and he has to die in the final confrontation with that person.  He ends up in a kind of heavenly way station, a train station that looks kind of like heaven.  Dumbledore was there for those who had died previously, and he tells Harry that he is a brave man.  What makes Harry brave?  He’s standing up and doing the right thing, even in the face of incredible evil.  Evil so scary you couldn’t name the name.

Hiccup Finds Bravery in Refusing to Kill Toothless

A more-recent movie that I loved is “How to Train Your Dragon.”  I talked a resident into watching this with me over at St. Louise, and there’s something about cartoons and old people.  They just can’t get into them.  There’s a certain level of distance between them.  It’s like, “Oh, it’s a cartoon.  I don’t like ….  That’s kid stuff.”  The oldsters grew up.  When they were younger, cartoons were for kids.  But there’s a kid in all of us.  Cartoons today are much more sophisticated and beautiful, and the story lines go deeper.

So I highly recommend “How to Train Your Dragon” as a really good film.  It’s has two major themes as I see them, number one being the bond between humans and their animals, which is really profound.  We have the responsibility to take good care of our animals.  The second major theme concerns the Vikings, who are depicted very loosely in this village.  They’re killing dragons because that’s what they know.  The dragons are evil and have to be stopped, and the Vikings feel duty-bound to kill them.

But along comes a young man called Hiccup.  What makes him great?  Well, he’s the hero of the story, and it’s important to know this because it dovetails with our Bible story, which follows.  Hiccup is his own person; he’s not the usual Viking at all.  He is the runt of the litter.  He’s meek; he’s not big and brawny.  He doesn’t want to kill things.  And when it comes time for him to catch the dragon that he names Toothless, he bravely opposes tribal tradition, opining, “I can’t kill it.”  He looks into Toothless’ eyes and says, “I saw that he was as scared as I was.  You know he’s a living creature, and I can’t do it.”  So the dragon becomes Hiccup’s pet.  And Toothless couldn’t be more charming or funny.  Truly, this movie is worth your time.

Authenticity is important in bravery.  Hiccup finally claims his place in the tribe as a dragon whisperer, and eventually he will become the chief.  He is doing the right thing.  He’s also doing the right thing by being himself.  That’s totally against the customs of the rest of his tribe, including his dad, and that is the sign of his bravery.

Jesus’ Mettle Challenged by a Canaanite Woman

Our scripture lesson today is from Matthew 15: 21-28, and it’s repeated in Mark.  This lesson is unusual, as you might have noticed, in that it is a lectionary passage for the Protestant church, but it is not included in the Roman Catholic lectionary.  The RC skips it.  You might wonder why.  Well, let’s review it a little because it’s completely unique.

Jesus and his disciples have gone to the other side of the lake known as the Sea of Galilee.  Last week’s sermon was about fear because, as the disciples were crossing the lake by boat, they ran into a terrible storm.  Jesus met them by walking on the water, and the storm died down after Jesus and Peter, who tried but failed to duplicate Jesus’ miracle, both got back in the boat.  Then they all sailed to the other side, which is biblical code for the Canaanite side, the Gentile side, the non-Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee.

There, they ran into somebody called a Canaanite woman.  Being a Canaanite, you know from your Bible that, all the way back to the time of Moses, this was the enemy.  But she seemed to know right away who Jesus was.  She implored Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  The woman is a foreigner.  She is non-Jewish.  On all levels, she is not supposed to talk to Jesus or his disciples.  She is not supposed to go anywhere near them, yet she braved all of that because her daughter was ill.

And how did Jesus and his disciples react?  Jesus had just been preaching that what defiles a person is not what you put into your mouth, speaking of kosher rules, but what comes out of it – deceit, envy, fear – comes from the heart.  Here, Jesus is being totally racist.  It’s the one story, really, where he appears not only as human but also as a disagreeable human.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  And the disciples are going, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”  Screaming in our ear, we don’t know her.  But she perseveres.  She kneels in front of Jesus, “Lord, help me.”  And what does Jesus say to her?  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Kneeling, She Wins the Face-Off

Some commentators have tried to soften that up.  “Jesus would never call anyone a dog.”  That’s been kind of an epithet forever, right?  I love dogs, but when you call a person a dog, it’s not a good thing.  Some commentators have said Jesus meant puppy, like a term of endearment.  That is not so.  He is not saying, “Oh, you little puppy.”  He is saying, “Dog.”  He is saying, “You are lower than a Jewish human being.  I will have nothing to do with you.”  Jesus is saying this.

You might understand why the Roman Catholics try not to bother with this passage.  It is, as scholars say, problematic, although it is showing Jesus at his most human.  But even Jesus had his bigoted moments.  He needs correction here, and he gets it from her when she says, “Yes, lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”  Wow!  That’s something!  She is great!  She’s not giving up.  She’s totally authentic.  She’s breaking every societal rule and she turns the argument on its head.  She’s besting Jesus in polemics.  How often does that happen?  No Pharisee, no scribe, no leader of the Jerusalem temple can do this and does not do so in all the gospels.

Yet a Canaanite woman does it.  She wins the war of words.  “Woman, great is your faith!”  “And her daughter was healed instantly.”  So this story has quite a bit to say, but we don’t know her name, just her nationality.  She was incredibly brave.  She was herself, and she pushed until she earned healing for her daughter.  And Jesus said, How “great is your faith!”  He doesn’t say that often with the disciples.  He more likely says to them, “You’re not getting it yet?”  “O you of little faith,” he has just told Peter, who sank in the water.  To the Canaanite woman, he said, How “great is your faith!”

Bravery in Real Life

Just a couple days ago, there was an article in the paper about a woman reporter in Ukraine writing about the government, but what was really going on was that she was writing about Russia.  Talk about bravery.  I wanted to bring this up because all of us, I’m sure, have been affected on some level by the death of Robin Williams this week.  Often celebrities die and it doesn’t affect me directly.  Lauren Bacall was agreat actress and a beauty, and I noticed her passing.  But Robin Williams committing suicide at 63 was heartbreaking.  Like many of you, I grew up with him and loved him without really knowing him.  So I feel really bad, all the more so because I’ve experienced a suicide in my own family.  I know what Williams’ kids went through.

It takes bravery to age serenely.  Maybe especially in America, where the emphasis is on being young.  However, I work with people, all kinds of people, including my residents at the homes.  Day in and day out, they face aging, and some of them have a very rough road.  Facing that road is true bravery.

I don’t know if everyone can look upon what Robin Williams did as bravery.  Some do, and in my opinion that act was brave.  Yet I think that accepting a diagnosis like Parkinson’s and trying to go on is much more brave.  For the sake of his family and for his own sake, I’m truly sorry about Williams’ suicide.  I do wish him peace, finally, but I think he wasn’t at peace with himself in life.

People in the mental health field have done studies indicating that serious clinical depression has been linked to Parkinson’s as well as to Type 2 Diabetes, and there are other serious diseases that go hand-in-hand with depression.  It’s real.  Sometimes it ends as Williams did.  It’s brave to admit depression, and it’s brave to admit you need help.

Happiness Found in Dark Times

There’s a young woman whom I read about who spoke at her family’s funeral.  Maybe you’ve heard of her, Cassidy S.  She was 15, and she lived in Spring, Texas.  Unfortunately, her aunt got divorced, and her ex-husband, Ronald Lee Haskell, was very angry about that, so angry he snapped.  He took a gun and went to Cassidy’s house, where he killed her father and mother and her four younger siblings on July 9^th.  Cassidy herself was shot, but she lived and played dead.  Haskell left the house, and she realized that he was going to her grandparent’s house, so she called them and got them out of the house.  Then Cassidy called the police and told them who had committed the murders.

A horrible thing to live through, yet she was incredibly brave.  At the funeral, Cassidy quoted Dumbledore, of all people, the head of Hogwarts in the film “Harry Potter.”  She said, as Dumbledore had said in the face of great evil, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”  Cassidy then gave the symbol for love.  J.K. Rowling heard of her remarks and sent the girl a letter and a package just the other day.

Sometimes in life, we know that extraordinary bravery is required.  Like Cassidy.  Like a firefighter or a police officer on the job.  Or the doctor or nurse in the ER.  Like a relief worker in Nigeria right now, not leaving his or her post in spite of the dangers of Ebola.  Like a reporter covering stories that he or she knows could lead to their deaths.  Like a whistle-blower at a company.

You and I may never face anything like these stories, but bravery is required in our lives also.  To light that light in the darkness.  To speak up when it’s hard.  To confront a friend who’s going down the wrong path.  To be ourselves, totally and completely in a judgmental world.

One must remember to keep the light on.

Amen.

JLA sermon 8-17-14 Fear.docxcommentedon

SOWERS, SOILS, AND SEEDS

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, July 20, 2014

 

The Problem with Chestnuts: Hard Shells and Awful Taste

You’ve heard today’s Scripture lesson before, I know, the story from Matthew 13 about the sower, the seeds, and the soils.  This is what we call a “chestnut” in preaching because it is a parable you’ve heard many times.  It’s kind of like an Easter sermon:  It’s hard to do something new with a subject you know so well.  Most of us have heard it preached in one particular way, with which I don’t especially agree.

Chestnuts make me think of roasting chestnuts in Manhattan.  When I moved there, I bought my first roasted chestnut from a street vendor.  Have any of you ever done that?  They smell so good, and then you eat one.  Ugh, oh dear!  I never did that again.  They smell really good, and they’re part of the Christmas experience at Rockefeller Center, but take it from me, don’t buy them.  They’ve been sitting in that fire pit for 20 years or so, and that’s exactly how they taste.

This is the problem with preaching “chestnuts.”  They’re really hard, and you’ve heard them many times over.  How to hear them anew?  How to hear once more about the sower, the seeds, and the soils?

If you noticed the signboard out front, it doesn’t reflect the full sermon title.  It’s either sowers and seeds or sowers and soils.  We have reached the limit of the number of S’s that we have for use on the signboard.  Our sexton, Cindy, called me in the middle of the week:  “What are we going to do?”  And I said, “Let’s take a word off.  It’s okay.”  There were more S’s needed (twelve for two signs) than we have in our letter case (ten).  But I wanted to talk about all three elements of the parable, which is why I came up with this title, “Sowers, Soils, and Seeds.”

Different Roles for Different Stages

We all know there are multiple roles we play in life, depending on what stage we’re in, where we are, who we’re with, and what we’re doing.  Life changes, and roles change too.  I once heard a children’s sermon on this subject, and the pastor used hats.  Think of all the different hats we wear in our lives, sometimes several at once, subject to how busy we are and how many irons we have in the fire.  Life can be pretty complex.

Once in a while I think about childhood in summertime, and as I’m trudging back and forth to work, those days come to mind.  Do you remember how endless summer seemed, how carefree?  But I know it wasn’t.  I know children have stress.  It’s different from the stress of adulthood, but it’s often the result of trying to please adults or parents.  Today, of course, kids are really busy in summertime.  Lots of them go to different schools or camps for special activities or join various sports teams that require regular attendance and practice.  For many children, their time seems more highly programmed than in the past.

For lots of us, though, looking back through the lens of midlife, it seems as though we had an endless amount of time in summer to lie on our backs and watch the clouds, as with time, go floating by.  When was the last time you did that?  It’s relaxing to gaze at cloud formations and try to discern what they look like.  Skipping around and throwing stones and walking through the woods and collecting flowers – they are all melded into a wonderful time of year.  We weren’t at all bored by the end of August, I remember.

In August the thought of the relentless approach of schooltime may have seemed to some like the flip side of childhood, but some of us generally loved school.  It was very structured; I liked that.  As time went on and we dispersed to various colleges, we loved the fact that, even if you had a horrible class, which was sometimes the case, it eventually came to an end.  It was nine weeks of feeling horrible, and then it was over.  Then you’d begin again.  Being a student has been one of my principal roles in life, and it still lingers on.  So it is with everyone.

Work is also a good thing generally, at least for me.  Like school, it gives us something to do, a purpose, a structure.  In my case, it’s the nursing home and assisted living, in addition to my responsibilities here at First Congregational Church.  You know I work at the homes Monday through Friday, and I now have the additional duty of leading services there on most Sunday afternoons.

A Prescription for Just Sitting:  Get Up and Go

Do you like to visit nursing and assisted-living homes?  I ask because there are plenty of people who don’t, even though I myself spend a lot of time in that situation.  For me it has become my world, but it’s not a place most people like to visit.  When asked why, they tell me, “Oh, Janet, it’s so depressing.  I don’t want to end up there.  I don’t want to end up sitting in a hallway or worse.  I don’t want to be reminded that’s how life can end.”  These remarks are true; we don’t like such negative thoughts about our own ending.  Truth to tell, many people actually fear them.

But not everybody is just sitting around.  We keep the residents very busy if they can physically or mentally do an activity.  We try our best to get everyone active and involved, and in fact people are more socially involved in assisted-living facilities than they were in their own homes, especially if they have a physical ailment and can’t get out.

Nowadays bingo, lessons of one kind or another, musical performances, trivia games, Bible study, and the like are all right down the hall.  Friends too are right down the hall.  The residents don’t eat alone; they’re really not living alone.  And should one get into some kind of difficulty such as a fall or an ailment, there’s also a nurse right down the hall.

I’ve come to realize that in some ways these facilities are a great place to be.  They’re much safer and more socially active than in a private home.  You’re less alone.  The residents and I talk about that a lot, what stage of life they’re in and what roles they’re playing.  They still have some hats to try on, although the kinds of hats they wear change from time to time.

Life is less physically active for the residents in many ways, and they’re doing less than at a younger age.  That’s a problem.  A lot of us have physical ailments that get worse by sitting too much.  We have to force ourselves to get going.  When you have a home or an apartment, you’ve got to get up and do the things you must do, even if you’re hurting.  This actually helps how we feel.  Got to make the bed, got to make the meal, got to clean.  It’s actually a good thing.

For most of my residents, however, they don’t have to do such chores.  They sit more, so it feels worse when they actually do move.  Depression is also a problem for the elderly.  It’s been estimated that a good 80 percent of the residents I work with are clinically depressed.  And why is that?  Much of the cause of nonclinical depression is that the residents are not doing enough, and I think that the main contributing factor is that they don’t feel they still have a purpose in life.  Their roles have declined, so why are they still around, they ask themselves.  Many of the people I talk with are afraid to reveal such feelings to me.

We have five or six people who are over a hundred years old, and they say to me, “What’s the deal?”  “Where’s God in this?”  “I’m not supposed to be here, but here I am.”  How to deal with that kind of attitude is something I have thought about during my entire time at Elizabeth Church Manor.  It’s been eleven years now, and it’s tough.

How do you give people the gift of purpose in their lives when they are limited in their physical or emotional ability to be active participants in their own lives?  You think about what they can do and try to let them do it.  Take your hands off, exert less control, and let people do what they can do because it really does matter.  Having a role, however small, helps people.

Sowers, Seeds, and Soils – All Are Roles for Us

Our parable today is a famous one, as mentioned at the outset.  I deliberately didn’t read the entire excerpt, but there’s an explanation.  The disciples turned to Jesus and asked, in essence, What does that paragraph about the sower really mean?  Jesus gives an explanation, but I don’t buy it, not really.  Jesus rarely gives an explanation for his parables.

When Are We Like Soils?

He does it twice in Matthew, and this is the orthodox church talking.  Here’s what it means:  You’re all soil, and you’d better be good soil because I’m the sower, giving you the word of God.  It’s all going to depend on whether you are good soil or not.  Is the seed going to bounce right off?  If that’s the case, if you’re a concrete path or you’re choked with thorns or you’ve got rocks, then you’re done.

Well that’s really nice.  Thank you, Jesus.  Let’s move on.  Let’s hope for good soil.  That’s the way it was preached to me when I was a kid.  You know I was a Baptist.  Then it was always presented in a very matter-of-fact way:  Be good soil or else.  Be the one that’s chosen, be the elect or else.  Two ladies are in a field; they’re both working.  Then the end comes, and one’s gone.  Don’t be the one who remains.  As a Baptist, we heard this over and over.  We even watched films that were scarey for a kid.  People on a plane, and boom, the end comes.  Hopefully you’re either up in heaven or you’re not on that plane.

So are we soil, stuck in that role?  Or can we in fact cultivate ourselves?  That’s what we do to our soil.  As you know, I’m not good at gardening, but we can take the rocks out of our soil.  Take the thorns out, make sure the seed doesn’t get on the path.  But what if we’re all three?  What if life is more complicated than simply being a type of soil?  Just a responder, just a passive participant in life, responding to the seed that’s being flung at us?  What if we’re sowers?  Or seeds?  Or sometimes we’re all three at once.

At different times in our lives, there are different symbols.  Remember, Jesus taught in parables, and parables are symbolic.  He talked about something very earthy, very practical.  Here’s something I think you can relate to:  Sowers, soils, and seeds.  But he also talked about life and people and roles, the roles that we play.

When Are We Like Sowers?

The classic image, of course, is that Jesus is the sower, giving us the seed, and we’d better respond.  But I think we’re sowers too.  At many times, we are giving out a message, maybe all the time.  We can think about the message in a minute, but we’re always sowing something, aren’t we?  Giving something out, something that’s coming from inside.  Is it love?  Is it irritation?  Is it hate?

What is it that we give out in our words, in our tone, in our time, in the things that we do, in the things that are important to us and the people that we spend time with, in the work that we do, and in the play?  We’re constantly sowing.  Hopefully, it’s love and grace and kindness and mercy.  Hopefully, it’s the slow word and not the quick, irritable word – something we all work on every day.

I have two rocks in my home.  One is new, and it says “Faith,” of which I always need reminders.  The other rock, which I’ve owned for years, bears the word “Patience.”  So I’m stuck in a hard place, between “Faith” and “Patience.”

I’m always working on the kind of seeds I’m sowing.  Think about how the seed is sown:  In the old days, the sower carried a big bag filled with seeds, which he scooped out by the fistful or with a trowel.  Then he went whoosh with his hand, scattering the seeds in a careful semicircular pattern on the ground.  That’s not how we sow today, is it?  When one seeds a garden, it’s done more carefully.  Dig a hole, and place the seeds so the plants are a certain space apart and are not overcrowded.

Once again, I’m not very good at this if you see my garden, but the old-time sower obviously required more seed per yard of coverage.  Whoosh.  The seed goes everywhere.  We’re not stopping to judge who is receiving the seed.  It is sown to everyone.

When Are We Like Seeds?

I think we’re seeds as well as sowers.  Sometimes we’re receivers, but other times we’re the actual thing that’s being planted in someone else’s garden, and for good reason.  It has been said that we’re in a specific place and time for a reason.  Certain residents and I are there at the same time.  We intersect, and sometimes we grow in each other’s lives.

The following quotation is from Macbeth, not one of my favorite Shakespearean plays.  I took a course and had to read them all, but that one is particularly bloody.  Macbeth goes down the path of murder and keeps going until he himself is killed by Macduff.  Banquo is the good guy.  He dies early on, but not before the king has said to him, “You are dear to my heart,” to which Banquo replies, “If I grow on your heart, let the harvest be your own.”  Beautiful imagery, using seeds and sowing.

I believe we are planted in different places for good reason.  We blossom in certain soils.  In others, we don’t, perhaps because we hit a concrete path or some rocks or thorns, and so we move on.  But we’re here because we’re supposed to be here, blooming in each other’s gardens as congregants and as members and friends of First Congregational Church.

When are we soil?  I think we are soil.  We are receivers as well as givers as well as the thing itself.  Sometimes I think we can be the garden path, hard as a rock.  And the seeds we’re getting aren’t going to make it.  They’re just going to bounce right off the rocks.  Why is that?  I think the garden path and the rocks and the sower are all pretty much related.  We’re sometimes too distracted to play the role that’s needed of us at the moment.

So Much to Learn and to Receive

There are times when I have to work at my role.  In the afternoon when it’s really hot, and I must go to a resident’s room and sit there while he or she starts talking, forcing myself to think, okay now, really listen carefully.  Yet I’m still thinking about going to the store after work to get half-and-half, eggs, and whatever else is needed.  Now the visit’s over, and I haven’t been there.  I’ve been on the garden path, and if the resident was planting a really wonderful seed, I missed it.  It’s not going to blossom in my life because I wasn’t there to hear it.

Of course we’re never supposed to do that.  We must not be distracted but rather present, open to all, represented by the good soil.  We must be soil to the sowers and seed and to the residents.  It can be depressing to go to a nursing home or an assisted-living facility, but there’s so much to learn and to receive there.  As some of you have undoubtedly done, sometimes I have had to force myself to go and have talked about the feeling that you must force yourself to go:  I’ve got to go to Wilson, I’ve got to go visit, I’ve got to go see Mrs. Jones.  I don’t really want to, but when there, I slow myself down, take out the rocks and thorns and then listen.

Working at these facilities, I have received so much more than ever expected, and sometimes the seeds I’ve received have truly blossomed.  There is so much wisdom, so much experience, so much love to be found in these homes.  The residents need visiting; they need your time; they need you to stop and be good soil for their seeds.  They are good sowers in that moment, and they still have a role to play.  We have to be open to it; we have to take the time.

If it’s true in the nursing home, it’s even more true in the hospital.  And in the pew, the supermarket aisle, the desk, the neighborhood, everywhere.  As a caregiver, you’ve just got to slow down.  That’s really the thing that allows us to receive more and to be gracious about it.  And when we’re giving out, we’re both sowers and receivers.  It’s wonderful when you know someone’s really receiving, hearing us, taking the time.  And it’s as true here in the congregation as it is anywhere else.

Sometimes in our lives, we are caregivers.  A lot of us are way more comfortable in that role.  Have you ever been a care-needer?  Not as comfortable, but there are times when you need to receive and not give.  We need to allow ourselves to receive.  Frankly, I have trouble even hearing a compliment.  Sometimes it’s deflected:  “Is that a new blouse?  I love that on you.”  “Oh, this is old.  You’ve seen it a million times.”  I’m a garden path, bouncing your seed right off.  I don’t let it in, yet people want to give.

The adult and the child.  A lot of us have been there.  You have roles to play.  When you were a child, as in summertime, you needed care from your parents, and it was given.  Then one day, it happens, it changes.  The roles are reversed.  You’re giving the bath or you’re making the meal or you’re bandaging the knee.  You’re the caregiver, and they’re the care-needer.  Love you forever, and you realize that this is life.

Our roles change, but they’re all needed and necessary.  We’re all soils, seeds, and sowers.  We’re all three.

Amen.

We Are Not Alone

A Sermon by the Rev. Janet L. Abel
Preached on Sunday, July 13, 2014

 

What Jesus Didn’t Say

We are not alone.  A great passage of Scripture and one of my personal favorites is the excerpt from Matthew 11: 28 that I just read (NRSV):  “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens.”  There are times in our lives when we know that this excerpt hits us in a special way.  We need these timeless words.  Other times we may be less vulnerable and less receptive to them.  So what makes a burden heavy?  By its very definition, a burden is always heavy.

Here’s what Jesus didn’t say:  Come unto me all you who are skipping with happiness.  Come unto me all you who have not a care in the world, you who are completely happy.  Know that this invitation is issued to those who have some burden they are carrying.  The weight of the world is on their shoulders.  In the Greek – which I often bring up since I suffered through an entire year of Greek – it translates as “all those who toil and having been laden.”

We’re all toilers at something at some time.  Thankfully, however, work doesn’t always feel like toil, does it?  Every job, inside and outside the home, can sometimes feel like toil, and at other times it’s a blessing.  Aside from the obvious, work has seasons, like life.  At times work is wonderful; it gives us purpose, something to do, and it goes well.  At other times it really feels like toil.  It’s both, a little like toil, nothing major.

You know I have two cats at home.  One, named Steve, is two and a bit of a character.  We’re close, and I occasionally joke that Steve is my fiancé.  People at work are confused because I sometimes wear my mother’s diamonds.  When he’s bad, which is frequently, I take the ring off.  This morning when I got up, the curtains were on the floor, with the curtain-rod brackets down somewhere on a chair.  I thought, that’s just great!  The last thing I wanted to do was to hang curtains before going to work.  But I did.  It was a bit toilsome, but not bad.

The Seasons of Life Include Both Toil and Rest

Life has its seasons, and, like life, work is sometimes toil and sometimes not.  The second half of the invitation is for all those who are carrying heavy burdens.  What might those burdens be?  What is it that can make life heavy?  But burdens are a fact of life, aren’t they?  A burden is a load that we’re given or that we take on.  We can assume a burden either way.  It can result from a diagnosis of disease, from a job that ends with no other job in sight, from a new job that’s just beginning, from a new term of office here at the church, from a family member who’s in trouble, or from any one of hundreds of other causes of a new burden.

I have a friend for whose husband we prayed for a long time.  He died in early May.  Then just a couple of weeks ago, her sister came to my friend’s front door at 5:30 in the morning – you know that’s not a good sign – and told her that her grandson had been in a serious car accident.  He lingered between life and death for weeks in the ICU, and it felt too heavy for my friend.  She was being handed too much, on top of grieving for her husband.  She was additionally burdened with worry about her grandson, not knowing whether he was going to make it or not.

Sometimes we’re given too many burdens at once.  It’s been said that we’re not given any more than we can carry, but that’s not true, is it?  Occasionally we get too much.  And then there’s the thing itself that happens, the cause of the worry and anxiety that surround it.  That too is a terrible burden.  Sometimes I think it’s often worse than the thing itself.  Anxiety and fear cut us off, isolate us.  That’s also an awful burden.  I had been thinking about illness itself, but isolation is one of the worst things about being sick.  Whether mentally or physically, we feel cut off.  We feel as though no one understands what we’re going through when we’re ill.

A Prescription for Rest

“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Oh, that word “rest.”  That’s a much more agreeable word, isn’t it, than “burden”?  What comes to your mind when I say the word “rest”?  What is your favorite image of rest?  I think there’s nothing more restful than lolling about in a hammock on a summer day, when you should be doing yard work.  If you come to my house, you can tell I’ve made my peace with weeds.  I’ve decided that they deserve as much of a chance at life as do plants.

There’s something about hammocks.  I sleep better there than almost anywhere else.  My couch also comes to mind when I think about rest.  It faces the TV, the stereo, and the fireplace.  I love my couch, I really do.  And as I get older, I have to tell you, there are times when I’m toiling that I picture my couch and can’t wait to get home to it.

Vacations are a special treat in these summer months.  A lot of you have been away or might be going away.  Beach or mountains, camp.  Swimming and grilling, picnics.  Good sleep at night is good rest, and that is a blessing when we realize that insomnia deprives some of us of sleep.  That’s a burden, not being able to sleep.  And after a good rest on vacation, there’s less pain on sitting or standing.  Some of us know what that’s like on a daily basis.  And perhaps the ability to rid ourselves of anxiety, of fear, of isolation.  That’s no easy thing to do, is it?

“Take My Yoke Upon You”

In the three last verses of Matthew 11, Jesus is getting at how to do just that.  Don’t we all want to hand over our burdens?  Don’t we want to worry less?  Don’t we want the load of what we’re carrying at least to feel lighter?  But frankly, we can’t always hand off what we’ve been handed in life.  It’s our load to carry.  But Jesus said to us, “Take my yoke upon you.”  Excuse me?  When I first read that, I thought, “How does that lighten our load?”

And what is a yoke anyway?  You’ve seen it in the movies, or maybe some of you know from a farm what a yoke is, how oxen are yoked together.  It’s a big two-piece wood-and-metal contraption that curves over the base of the necks of a team and under their necks, against which the force of drawing is exerted by their shoulders.

And Jesus is saying, here, are you heavy-laden?  Clunk.  Sounds odd, doesn’t it?  How does that lighten our load?  Well, two oxen wear that yoke so they can pull and plow more effectively together.  Their load is theoretically cut in half.  Not only does it keep them together, but it also spreads out the burden of whatever it is they’re pulling, the plow or the cart.

In a similar manner, humans can bear their burdens more effectively by working together.

In the Ancient Near East (ANE, shorthand for the time period in which Jesus lived), during the old days of Israel and the Middle East, this mechanism was used on human beings in order to control them as prisoners or slaves.  You’ve probably seen that in the movies too, when actors wore those wooden contraptions with their arms attached to them.  It’s not a pretty image to think of these things in use on humans, even in the early days of our own country.

A yoke was a symbol of control, ownership and service, and early on it became a mark of slavery, which was common.  Marks or brands were also used to identify slaves.  Earrings too, as well as tattoos.  Forced economic or political labor was known as “bearing the yoke,” as Israel bore the yoke of Imperial Rome.  Is that the kind of yoke that Jesus meant?  “Take my yoke upon you.”  I don’t think so.

The Yoke as a Symbol:  You’re Never Alone

So what Jesus really means is that we’re never really alone.  Our heavy burdens can make us think so, but Jesus is right there because we are all connected.  And if we feel that connection, for that’s what the yoke represents, then we know, deep in our soul, that we’re never alone.  We’re all here to help carry each other’s burdens.

And that’s why our last two hymns today are “Abide with Me” (you’re right here with me) and “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”  Take my yoke upon you, and there you will find rest for your soul.  What kind of rest is that?  It’s not just putting our feet up, is it?  Not the kind we get from lying on a beach in Hawaii.  But it’s the kind of rest we feel inside, no matter what is going on in our lives.  The knowledge, the sure knowledge that all will be well and we that have nothing to fear.  We are never, never alone.

So “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” says Jesus.  “You will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Amen.