Luke 1:26-38

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.

Holy Mary Mother of God,
Prophet, Apostle, and Pastor,
pray with us now and at the hour of our death.

I have a special relationship with Mary.

I was baptized Roman Catholic at the age of 8, when my Dad married a Catholic.  So I attended remedial Catechism to learn the basics, like how to go to confession and learning the Hail Mary, prayer.

The language of the Hail Mary is from a Catholic translation of the Latin, or Vulgate version of Luke 1:28 – Gabriel’s greeting to Mary –  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Hail is an old English word that basically means, “Hey, Graceful Mary, God is with you!”

Then Luke 1:42, where Elizabeth (Zechariah’s wife) greets her cousin Mary as baby John leaps within her.  

42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

The usual version continues with,

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

I’ve adapted this prayer of my childhood, adding, “Prophet, Apostle, and Pastor,”  because I’ve learned through more intensive Biblical study that Mary’s leadership in the church was edited out by men who were trying to stop women from being in leadership in the early church, in order to make Christianity more acceptable to the Patriarchal Roman culture.

And I’ve changed my petition to asking Mary to pray with us instead of for us, because as Protestants we don’t pray to Saints.  But really, Catholics don’t pray to Saints either – they just speak about Saints the same way the apostle Paul spoke about Abraham and Moses – as ones who are alive in God, even though they are not walking the earth anymore.  Catholics aren’t praying to the Saints instead of God.  Catholics are asking the Saints in Glory to pray for them, since the Saints are closer in proximity to God.  

Kinda like asking your DS to put a good word in to the Bishop for your housing project!

I have a special relationship with Mary:

• Because of my Catholic upbringing.
• Because Mary was a mother who began her ministry career when her children were grown
• Because Mary was a woman in church leadership

But most of all, I relate to Mary because she was not in control of her life, and yet, 

Mary wrestles back her right to consent, her bodily autonomy, and her right to her very self, by answering a question she wasn’t asked.

Gabriel didn’t ask Mary if she consented to being impregnated by Spirit.

Mary took back her life by saying yes to God.

Mary didn’t choose to be born into the reign of Herod the Great.

She didn’t choose to live under Roman occupation!

She didn’t choose to live in a time of political unrest with Judean rebels protesting in the streets and Roman troops dragging people from their homes and businesses on the suspicion of association with the rebellion.

Mary most likely didn’t choose to be engaged to Joseph – most marriages were arranged between families at the time.

Mary didn’t sign up on Match dot com with a profile stating:

“Jewish girl seeking spiritual relationship with potential for birthing the Messiah”

Mary didn’t ask to be a central character in interesting times!

I mean,  Mary had political opinions.  One might consider her a rebel, at least in her views – just read Luke 1:46-55, where Mary is all about casting down the mighty and feeding the hungry!

But, Mary was just living her life, when God sends a messenger — Messenger is the literal translation of the word, Angel, by the way…

God sent a messenger to Tell, not ask, Tell, Mary that Spirit was going to be messing with her life.

And Mary said yes.

Mary said yes to a question she wasn’t asked.

Mary is kind of the opposite of the prophet Jonah.

You remember Jonah and the whale?

God tells, not asks, tells, Jonah to go to Nineveh – the worst enemies of Israel at that time, and give those enemies a message a grace.  A warning that they could repent and be saved.

And Jonah said, no.  

• Jonah said, I hate the Ninevites, so no I’m not going.
• Also, the Nivevites hate me and they’ll probably just kill me!
• And also, all my own people hate the Nivevites too, so they will all hate me if I go, and I get enough hate as a prophet already, so I don’t need more.
• No. Just no.

And being a prophet, Jonah knew that it’s hard to say no to God, so Jonah booked himself passage on a ship going the opposite direction, to try to avoid Spirit hijacking his mouth in proximity to any Ninevites.

And well, then there was a storm at sea and Jonah got swallowed by a whale who coughed him up like a hairball on the shores of Nineveh.

Have you ever noticed that God doesn’t really take no for an answer?

God is kind of like google maps.  Bridget,  I call the female voice of google maps, Bridget.

Bridget is like turn right in 200 feet.

And I’m like, no, I do not want to take the freeway today.

And Bridget is like,  turn right at the next road.

And I talk back to Bridget, that’s why I had to give her a name — “No, Bridget I do not want to take the freeway today”

And Bridget be like,  make a U turn.

And I’m like, no,  I can drive all the way down Stark street from here, I do not need to take 84,  84 traffic is always terrible!

And then there’s road construction, or a flooded street, or something on that end of Stark and I’m back to following Bridget’s directions.

Occasionally, I do know the area better, but, usually Bridget wins.

God always wins.

God always knows better than I do.

God always has a bigger perspective on what will work in the future and how every little thing in our lives connects to something else and something else and something else, until: 

• because we said yes to offering Rahab’s Sisters an office here
• and then Rahab’s Sisters needed a different place to operate out of, and we said yes, even though it meant getting used to sharing our building 
• and we realized we were tired of spending so much time on the building 
• And Rahab’s was looking to buy a building 
• So we thought what if we sell them the building 
• And Hacienda heard about it and said what if we build a new building with housing above
• And Rahab’s, being a good ministry partner brought that offer back to us 
• And we prayed and talked and prayed and talked and you said yes
• And we waited almost 6 months for the Cabinet to say yes.
• And none of this was my idea, or your idea, God is just doing a new thing.

I relate to Mary, because I am not in control.

I didn’t choose to live in interesting times!

I didn’t really choose to build affordable housing!

None of this was my plan!

I just said yes to God, because I don’t want to get eaten by a whale!

But seriously — I say yes to God because not just the stories of our faith teach us that saying yes to God is exciting.

But my own experience with God has taught me that when I say yes to God, God always has a better plan than I do.

How do I tell if it’s God or just me, or some other influence?

Partly because, as Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep know my voice.”  The more you say yes to God, the more familiar you become with God’s voice.

Partly because God’s messages are always in alignment with the teachings of Jesus.  Jesus is never going to tell us to hate our neighbors.

And mostly because God loves a Hail Mary moment.

God loves to make the impossible possible.

God loves to make small things exponentially more successful than they should have been.

God loves to raise up the lowly and bring down the proud.

God loves to feed the hungry and send the rich away empty.

And If you think I’m being woke – go back and read Luke 1:46-55, and Mary will set you straight.

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.

Holy Mary Mother of God,
Prophet, Apostle, and Pastor,
pray with us now and at the hour of our death.

Luke 1:5-13 NRSVUE

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was descended from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. 7 But they had no children because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

8 Once when he was serving as priest before God during his section’s turn of duty, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to offer incense. 10 Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.

Herod the Great, King of Judea, was an insecure and fearful leader.

Herod came from an important Idumaen family – the Idumaeans said to the the descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob, the grandsons of Abraham, who converted to Judaism when the victory celebrated at Hanukkah, restored Judea as an independent kingdom in 164 BC.  You can find that story in the Books of Maccabees, in a Bible that has those extra books.

Herod’s dad was chief Minister of Judea Under King Hrycanus II, but Herod’s Dad, and Herod rebelled against the King.  Herod went to Rome to ask for help from Mark Antony (yes that Mark Antony, from Antony and Cleopatra!) and in exchange for Rome’s help, Judea became a Roman province and Herod was named King of the Jews around 37 BC.  But then the Romans killed Julius Caesar and Antony married Cleopatra, and everyone was taking sides between Octavian (who became Caesar Augustus) and Mark Antony.  Herod chose Mark Antony.  So when Antony and Cleopatra died and Caesar Augustus became the Emperor of Rome, Herod was eager to curry favor with Rome.

• Herod was also not popular with his Jewish subjects. 
  Herod’s ancestry was of Edomite converts so that’s one strike against Herod.
• Herod’s mother was Persian, and Jewishishness is determined through the maternal line – strike 2. 
• Herod had helped topple the King of an Independent Judea and brought in the Romans — that’s a huge strike 3.
• But, Herod finished the 2nd Temple, which might seem like a good thing, except Herod refused to listen to the Priests about how the Temple was to be built — strike 4, and…
• Herod raised taxes very, very high to not only finish the enlarged Temple, but also to build himself two palaces, help fund the Olympic Games of 14 BC, and send more money to Caesar Augustus to keep himself in power — strike 5 — and why there’s so much complaint about heavy taxation in the Christmas story.
• Also, Herod divorced is first wife and disinherited his son, to marry Mariamne, the granddaughter of King Hyrcaus II, whom he had rebelled against, which did not make the Jewish people like him any better.

(much of the  history about Herod  is from https://historycooperative.org/king-herod-of-judea/ )

Herod was a deeply insecure and deeply fearful king.

• Fearful because he backed the wrong Caesar – Mark Antony.
• Very Fearful because his own people did not accept him or Rome.  So fearful that according to Flavius Josephus, Herod had a personal guard of 2000 soldiers to protect him from the Judean Rebels.
• So very fearful, that Herod murdered many of his own sons.
• So while there is no historical evidence of the Biblical account that Herod ordered the killing of all the babies, when he heard about the birth of the new king from the Wise Men, it sounds like something Herod would do.

In that political climate,  Zechariah is called to take his turn serving at the Temple.   Zechariah was a nobody.  Just an ordinary priest, who married a bit above himself, but he had no children, so people would have talked that maybe God didn’t like Zechariah and Elizabeth that much.  Back then, they thought that poor health or infertility was probably because a person had offended God.

So Zechariah and Elizabeth would have been afraid to travel to Jerusalem for Zechariah’s week of service at the Temple with Judean rebels attacking travelers on the roads.

They would have been afraid of the politics among priests as Herod often tried to meddle in the appointment of the high priests.

With no sons to help them make their living, they would have been worried about the high taxes in Judea.

And they may have wondered what they had done to offend God, what sin they had unknowingly committed, that was causing God to withhold the blessing of a child.

They were afraid, but they showed up anyway.

Showed up to serve God and to serve the people who visited the Temple.

They were afraid, but they showed up anyway and God met them there with hope.

Hope for a son – proof that God wasn’t mad at them.

And hope for a messiah  — an anointed one who would proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor and tear down tyrants from their thrones.

And as is so often the case when God gives us hope, they had no idea what God was actually going to do!

Zechariah and Elizabeth didn’t ask to live through interesting times anymore than we did!

And yet…

There they were and here we are.

In fearful times, it can be so tempting to hide, to distract ourselves with pretty things and entertainment.  It can be so tempting to say, “nothing I do, makes a difference,” so why show up at all?

And sometimes we do need to rest!

We can’t do everything!  

Boundaries are Holy!  That’s why God told us to take a Sabbath every week!

But when it’s our turn, like Zechariah, we can show up.

We can show up even when we’re afraid.

And those are often the times that God surprises us with hope.

It’s the week of Thanksgiving.  Personally my favorite food holiday because I am ALL about my Great Aunt Alice’s sausage Stuffing!  And the memories of spending the whole weekend with my cousins and eating as much as we wanted are happy ones.

In my household we celebrate Sweats-giving – where everyone gets new sweatpants and we all cook our favorite holiday dishes together, while listening to Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie.  Then that Sunday afternoon we get our Christmas tree.

But Thanksgiving is also a deeply problematic holiday.

I was taught as a child that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and Indians helped them survive the winter by teaching them about native foods, like corn and squash.  Sometimes we made construction paper pilgrim hats and feathered headdresses.  Sometimes we made a construction paper cornucopia and filled it with paper fruits and veggies, to celebrate the “First Thanksgiving” when the settlers held a big dinner with the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate having survived the first year.  And we’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving in America ever since!

The problem is, none of that actually happened like that.

The Mayflower did land in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  And they did hold a 3 day feast in 1621 that was attended by members of the Wampanoag tribe, however the tribal members only attended because the settlers were having such a wild party that they were shooting guns in celebration and since Ousamequin, leader of the Wampanoag Tribe had agreed to a mutual-defense pact, they showed up to help defend the settlers.  Once this misunderstanding was cleared up the tribal members did stay for the feast, but they were not actually invited.

There were also several other Thanksgivings celebrated by various colonies, however, since they were primarily dour Puritains, they celebrated with 1-3 days of prayer and fasting, not a good meal.

In 1789 President Washington did declare Oct 3 a day of Thanksgiving and prayer for “giving the American people the opportunity to create a Constitution to preserve their hard won freedoms.” (Thanksgiving: From Local Harvests to National Holiday, Smithsonian Institution ) 

Most of the credit for our annual Thanksgiving feast goes to Sarah Josepha Hale, Editor of Ladies Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book, who campaigned for an annual Thanksgiving holiday in her magazines by publishing articles and holiday recipes, and in letters to politicians as a way of combating the divisions in the country by coming together to celebrate a day of peace and unity. 

(https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2023/11/our-national-thanksgiving/ )

But is wasn’t until 1863, inspired by the Union victory at Gettysburg, that President Lincoln proclaimed that November 26th would be a national Thanksgiving Day, to be observed every year on the fourth Thursday of November.

So the Pilgrims didn’t invite the Wampanoag tribe, and the reason for the national holiday has a lot more to do with the United State’s ugly history of slavery and colonization than it does with gratitude. 

So for the rest of this sermon time, I want us to Center Native voices by engaging with the First Nations Version of Luke 1: 67 – 79.  

• Listen to how Native Americans name people.
• Listen to how Native Americans talk about God.
• Listen with ears that remember the genocide of Tribal children in Methodist run Indian Boarding schools.
• Listen with ears that remember broken treaties, missing women, and reservations that don’t have clean drinking water because our Federal Government is still breaking treaties.
• Listen, and read along if that helps you listen, for one word or phrase that stands out to you.  Just a word or a phrase, for now… we’ll move into some discussion later.

Luke 1:67-79 First Nations Version

67 Then, with a glad heart, Creator Will Remember (Zechariah) spoke these words the Holy Spirit was giving him to say.

68 “All blessings to the Great Spirit of the tribes of Wrestles with Creator (Israel)! For he has come to rescue his people from a great captivity.  69-70 Just as the prophets foretold long ago in the land of our ancestor Much Loved One (David), he has lifted up his coup stick to show his great power to help us,  71 to rescue us from the arrows of our enemies and all who look down upon us with hate.” 

He lifted trembling hands to the sky and cried out.

72-73 “He has given to us the same pity he has shown our ancestors and remembered the promise he made in the great peace treaty with Father of Many Nations (Abraham). 74-75 He has come to free us from the fear of our enemies, so we can walk all our days in his sacred and right ways.” 

Then he turned to his newborn son, and from deep in his spirit he spoke these words of blessing to him.

76 “And you, my son, will be a prophet from the One Above Us All. You will make a clear path for the coming of the Great Chief, 77 to show his people that he will heal our broken ways by cleansing us from our bad hearts and releasing us from our wrongdoings.  78 Because Creator is kind and gentle, he will come to us as the sunrise from above, 79 to shine on the ones who sit in darkness and in the land of death’s shadow, to guide our feet on the good path of peace.”

The First Nations Version is available at many fine booksellers, including Powell’s Books, so you don’t need to break your Amazon boycott to get your own copy of this beautiful transliteration of the New Testament.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

6 Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from every brother or sister living irresponsibly and not according to the tradition that they received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not irresponsible when we were with you, 8 and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it,w but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you. 9 This was not because we do not have that right but in order to give you an example to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 11 For we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. 12 Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. 13 Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 

This verse has been misused to justify doing the very opposite of what Jesus taught for centuries.

Jesus taught us to feed the hungry and care for the least of these, so where did the author of 2 Thessalonians come up with “anyone unwilling to work should not eat”?

First Thessalonians, that is, the authentic Paul’s first letter to the Christ Community in Thessalonica in northern Greece is one of the oldest documents in the New Testament.  

2 Thessalonians is fan fiction, written about 30 or 40 years after Paul was executed by Rome in the 60’s.

But it’s good fan fiction.  Somebody who really studied Paul’s style of writing, Paul’s word use, Paul’s typical letter format.

But the issues discussed in 2 Thessalonians are the issues of the second generation of Christians, not the first generation.

There’s 2 main topics in 2 Thessalonians:

1. Why hasn’t Jesus come back yet?  The original disciples really thought Jesus would return during their lifetime, so it was kind of a big deal when all the Apostles were dead and Jesus hadn’t returned.
2. If Jesus isn’t coming right back, then how do we find a sustainable way to Be The Church?  

The early church practiced a share economy.  If you were a member of the Way and your fellow member needed a loan you were required to lend them money.  If your fellow member was hungry you were expected to share your food.  The authentic Paul advised people to not get married or have children, because Jesus was coming really soon and he didn’t think it would be fun to have kids during the apocalypse. 

The early church wasn’t worried about tomorrow, because tomorrow, Jesus could come!

But here they were, the Church in Thessalonica around 90 or 100 AD and Jesus hadn’t come yet. 

So maybe there was a letter written to the early church leaders by the folks in Thessalonica, asking something along the lines of:  Jesus hasn’t come yet and the working folks are getting upset with the folks just sitting around and waiting for Jesus to come.  Please advise?

So maybe this Pauline fan fiction was written to respond to a letter from the Christ Community in Thessalonica.   

Or maybe 2 Thessalonians is a sermon written by the leader of the Church in Thessalonica in the form of a letter from Paul?

We don’t know.

A fairly common 19th and 20th century interpretation of this passage is based on the idea that since Jesus hadn’t come back yet, the share economy of the Church wasn’t working very well.   Even progressive Christians like Marcus Borg describes the situation as, freeloaders within the Church who were taking advantage of the share economy of the Church, but not contributing. (Borg, Evolution of the Word)  The idea being that some folks were just sitting around waiting for Jesus to come, while others did all the work and provided all the food.

And that interpretation got twisted into the popular phrase:

“he that will not work shall not eat.” 

2 Thessalonians verse 10 does not read:  “he that will not work shall not eat.”  

That’s not anywhere in the Bible, that’s part of the rules of the James Town Colony delivered to the colonists by Captain John Smith in 1609.  Here’s the full quote:

You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.

The problem in James Town was that there were some folks who felt that manual labor was beneath them, but the colony would literally not survive without everyone pitching in!

There are those who try to use Captain Smith’s version of verse 10 to justify a compassionless world where only those who are gainfully employed deserve to eat.

But not even Captain Smith advocated for that!  

At least Captain Smith made an exception for those who are disabled!

Another interpretation is grounded in the writings of other early church apostles.

This interpretation proposes that the rich church members were the busybodies mentioned in verse 11 of our reading, telling everyone else what to do, but not doing anything themselves.  The rich were unwilling to work and expected the poor to serve them in the Church, just as the poor served them in everyday life.

 1 Corinthians chapter 11, an authentic letter of Paul, recounts a story where the rich people were coming early to the church potluck and eating all the good food they brought before the poor people were able to get off work.  Paul gives them a talking to about sharing the Lord’s Table by waiting for everyone to arrive before anyone eats.

James, chapter 2 also addresses this kind of dishonoring of the poor (James 2:6) by expecting those who are poor to do all the work of serving at Church because the rich donated the food.  James reminds the people that the Kingdom of God is not the Roman Empire and that the poor of the church do not need to show extra honor to the rich, because, after all, the rich treat them badly during everyday life!

Jesus also speaks to the reversal of privilege in the Kingdom of Heaven in the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31.  A story that Jesus made up on the spot to challenge some rich religious leaders who were mocking Jesus for his economic views.

Jesus tells this story:

There was a poor man named Lazarus, who lay outside the gate of a very rich man’s mansion.  Lazarus was so hungry he couldn’t even get up and the rich man’s dogs would lick the sores on Lazarus’ body.  (I know, eww Jesus, that’s gross)

So Lazarus dies and is carried away by angels to be with Abraham.

The rich man also dies and is tortured with flames in Hades because… he didn’t get rich by being nice!

So the rich man looks up and sees Lazarus sitting beside Abraham in the good place, and the rich man calls out to Abraham and says,

Hey Abe – send Lazarus down here to drip water into my mouth with his fingers, because I’m kinda tied up.

And Abraham says,  “Child….”

And when I read this I hear it in the tone of voice of a Black Preacher where that one word “Child,” just drips with, “you have got some nerve to be asking me to tell Lazarus, whom you didn’t lift a finger to help, to be commuting to hell and using his literal fingers to help you, now that you are experiencing the consequences of your actions!”

But in Jesus’ story Abraham says in Luke 16:25, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.” 

Which brings us back to this second interpretation that the writer of 2 Thessalonians was not telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or starve.

Perhaps the writer of 2 Thessalonians was telling those busybodies who were unwilling to lift a finger to help those in need by at least doing their share of the work of the church, were not worthy of a seat at the Lord’s Table?

I kinda think that maybe it was a little bit of both.

Both folks who needed to stop just waiting around for Jesus to come.

And folks who needed to stop being irresponsible busybodies thinking the poor should be waiting on them inside the church, just like it was out in the Roman Empire.

But I lean more towards the second one because Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets talked a lot about how it is unjust for the rich and the powerful to store up more treasures on earth than they could ever use, while they fail to pay a living wage to the workers who are the source of their wealth.

Which brings us to today.

Because we’re going to share in the Lord’s Table – communion – in just a moment.

The early church was really strict about who got to receive communion – only baptized members in good standing were allowed — because communion was not just a sacrament, or a reenactment of the last supper to them.  

Communion was a pre-enactment of the Kingdom of Heaven.

They believed that when Jesus’ reign would come and God’s will would be done on earth as it is in Heaven, that everyone would eat.

That ideas like wealth and status would no longer matter in the Reign of Jesus.

When Jesus’s Reign comes it won’t matter if you’re Jewish or Greek, man or woman, young or old, gay or straight, Cis gender or Trans, dog or cat lover.

Everybody belongs in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So the Communion Table – the community potluck that the Baptized would share together was a Table where Christians would recommit themselves to working towards cooperating with God to bring God’s reign to earth.

A table where divisions like Wealth, Race, and Gender did not belong.

But what we have learned in the centuries since then, is that we are not better than the Pharisees, who mocked Jesus’ radical economic ideas.

Systems of hierarchy, economic injustice and bigotry are how the world works.

And it’s hard to take seriously what Jesus said about helping the stranger, when we live in a world that teaches us to fear one another.

But Jesus welcomed Judas to the Table, knowing that Judas was going to get Jesus brutally executed.

So this table is a Table where everybody eats.

Because we change hearts and minds not by excluding them, 

but by actively inviting people to the table where everybody eats.

Actively inviting people to be a part of a sharing and caring community.

Actively teaching people who serve too much to learn holy boundaries and do less.

And actively teaching those who do too little to care for their neighbors to experience the joy that comes from helping others.

In our Methodist Tradition, all are welcome at this table…

Haggai 2:1-2:9

1In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai, saying:

2″Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say: 3Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?

4Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the LORD; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, 5according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.

6For thus says the LORD of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, 7and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts. 8The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the LORD of hosts. 9The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts, and in this place I will give prosperity, says the LORD of hosts.”

Today’s sermon is the stories of 3 faith communities.  

Two United Methodist Churches and the faith community in Jerusalem in 520 BC.

The first Community closed because they had to do it their way.

The second community got stuck for a while because they got distracted by life.

The third Community said yes to God and God did things they did not expect!

The First Community is North Mason United Methodist Church.  North Mason was the first United Methodist Church that I served in, and they are the reason that I am a Methodist today.  I served there as Music Director when my daughter was 3 years old, so that was 22 years ago.  I will never forget the day that I made an announcement at the end of worship asking for volunteers to support a Kazoo Marching Band program at the Boys and Girls Club.  Yes, I thought that up all by myself.  Yes.  I’m still that crazy.  Anyway, I asked for folks to come talk to me up front after worship if they were interested in helping, and this little church, who worshiped 50 on a good Sunday, surrounded me with support!  I literally could not see the walls because nearly every member of that little church crowded around me to support my wild idea to direct a Kazoo Marching Band.  

North Mason UMC taught me the meaning of Sanctifying Grace.  

We have 3 types of Grace in Methodist theology.

• Prevenient Grace – pre, meaning before.  We believe that God loves us before we love God.
• Justifying Grace – Which refers to the knowledge that we are saved, or justified – which is to say:  now we know that God loves us.
• Sanctifying Grace – which means that now that we know we are loved, we start to live like we are loved.  So we practice neighbor-love.

North Mason was a plucky little church who didn’t just talk about love, they practiced love in their community.

Which is why I was so surprised to find out that North Mason UMC closed a few years ago.  But also, not surprised.

I remember a memorial that I was a part of, as the music director.  The memorial was for one of the founding members of the church.  A “self-made”  man, who had defied the odds and taught himself how to walk after surviving polio as a child.  A man who made a lot of money in his business ventures.  A man who donated a lot to the church, and expected to influence the choices of the Church in return for his money.  

His family insisted that we play a recording of Sinatra singing My Way, at his memorial and it seemed apt.  Everything had to be his way.

That was the other side of this grace-filled little church.  

They wanted to serve.  

They wanted to be involved.  

They wanted to welcome new people.

But they wanted to do it on their terms.

It’s just that their way – which was to recreate a nostalgic version of the past – 

 was not God’s way, in that time and that place.

So now.  North Mason UMC is no more.

Our second Faith Community is Jerusalem sometime between mid-August and mid-December of the year 520 BCE, which is when the book of Haggai was written.  Forgive me for Geeking out a little bit over how precise the dating of this book is!  The date is important because it gives us the context that isn’t in the book!

Here’s the back story!

The nation of Judea was conquered by the Babylonians and the first Temple was destroyed in 997 BCE.  Then the Persians conquered the Babylonians, King Cyrus told the Jews they could go home and rebuild their city and their Temple in 538 BCE.  

During the Reign of Cyrus the people had begun reconstruction of the Temple, but for some reason they stopped.  Maybe they got distracted. There was a lot to rebuild, homes and markets and streets and bakeries… all the necessary stuff of life.  And as happens, life went on and the next thing you know it’s been about 10 years since construction halted and the Temple is still an unfinished construction site in 520 BCE.

So in chapter 1, the prophet Haggai feels called to ask for a meeting with Governor Zerubbabel Ben Shealtiel and High Priest Joshua Ben Jehozadak at the Temple construction site, to tell them that God has noticed that while they are living in fine houses, God’s house – the Temple is lying in ruins.  Haggai feels called to tell them nothing is working well because the Temple is in ruins. 

This is why your harvests are failing. 

This is why no matter how much you have, nothing feels like it’s ever enough.  

Nothing will be right until you finish the Temple!

It seems like what Haggai is saying is that your lives feel empty because you are spiritually empty without the Temple.  But the Temple was more than a place of worship.  

The Temple was a soup kitchen.

The Temple, like most Temples that practiced animal sacrifice, was an all day, every day, BBQ and soup kitchen.

Except when people sacrificed to Athena or Baal, only the rich person who made the sacrifice and the priests ate.  

When people sacrificed at the Temple, everybody ate.

The Prophet Ezekiel, who was present for the destruction of the Temple, wrote a description of a new plan for the second Temple in Ezekiel chapters 40 and following, where Ezekiel just like our foremothers in the faith, imagined a new Temple kitchen that was 3 times the size with big ovens to bake bread and multiple stew pots, so that all the small offerings could go into the soup.  Like the 2 birds that Mary and Joseph sacrificed to celebrate the birth of Jesus, because they couldn’t afford a lamb, all those small offerings would go into the stew pots, so that there was always soup and bread available to anyone who was hungry, at the back of the Temple.

So by not finishing the Temple, the people had not only forgotten God’s House. They had forgotten the People’s Table.

Without the bread and soup and BBQ, the widows and orphans, the poor and the disabled, were going hungry.

In our reading for today,  Haggai calls Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua to meet in the abandoned construction zone of the Temple and remind them that when God wants to do something, God provides.  God is going to shake down the nations for the money to get the construction project going again.  It’s time for them to release their fear, to be courageous and trust that God.

It’s not about doing it “my way,” because if we’re doing it my way, I don’t know how to build a new church any more than Haggai knew how to build a Temple.  But if we’re doing it God’s way, then God will provide.

So the people got unstuck, and after a 10 year pause Temple construction began again, and the Temple that Jesus walked in was built.

The Third Community is a little United Methodist church in the Desert Southwest Conference, that I learned about at the conference I went to in Vegas.

This is the story of how they went from a little congregation of 5 faithful saints, with a little building that was falling apart around their ears, who were struggling to pay ¼ time clergy salary, to being fully funded and having a full time appointment!

It began with the Cabinet telling them that since they were struggling to even pay ¼ time salary for a clergy person, that their church would have to become a part of a Ministry Cooperative.  A Ministry Cooperative is where several churches share one or more clergy together, like Open Door Ministries in Salem.

Some churches get defensive when the Cabinet tells them they have to share their Pastor and jump to the conclusions that maybe somebody doesn’t like them, or “the Conference” is trying to shut them down.  But these faithful folks, all 5 of them, knew what their reality was.  

So they approached collaborative ministry with an attitude of prayer.  They met with their Pastor and had conversations about their reality and tried to dream about the future, but they just didn’t know what to do.

But God was already at work in their community, through the Mayor of their small town.  You see, there had been an influx of immigrants seeking asylum from Venezuela, so the Mayor asked all the churches in town to help with sheltering the asylum seekers.  These 5 faithful Saints had been in prayer for a few months when the Mayor’s call came, so they said yes.

And they were the ONLY CHURCH in town who said yes.

So they sheltered about 20 asylum seekers in their building, and the people from the city and the other nonprofit organizations who worked with these 5 faithful saints, began to dream of more permanent housing.

That led to a connection with an affordable housing developer, who proposed a land swap where the affordable housing build got the back lot of the church to build 9 units of housing in exchange for building the congregation a new, energy efficient church building.

This faithful congregation of 5 saints, also stewarded a parsonage that they had rented out for 20 years without any maintenance, and it was an absolute mess, so through all the friends they were making in the community, they managed to sell their dump of a parsonage that happened to be in a desirable neighborhood for $1.2 mil!

So this little church of 5 faithful saints, because they said yes to God, when every other church said no, is getting a brand new building and is having a full time church planting clergy couple appointed to start new vibrant ministries in a brand new ministry space that is flexible, with a big kitchen, no pews, showers, and a rule that all furniture must be movable by one person, so that it’s easy to reconfigure the space for whatever ministry God surprises them with next!

All because they said yes to doing it God’s way.

So I sat there in classroom 8 of the education wing of Henderson United Methodist, in a suburb of Los Vegas, thinking.  I need to share this story with my church!

I need to tell them that we are not the only ones with whom God is doing a new thing!

Church, I want to honor the fact that it’s not easy letting go of something we love.

These walls are soaked with the prayers of the faithful Saints who have come before us!

All the non-church folks who visit this sanctuary comment on what a good “feel” this sanctuary has.

But God is doing something here.

Something similar to restoring the soup kitchen at the back of the Temple.

Something very similar to giving up a beloved old building so that people can be housed in Arizona and new space can be made for ministry.

Something that I did not plan or imagine.

Something that I don’t even know how to lead you in, but God does.

God does!

And today, after worship, you get to vote on it.

So lets be in an attitude of prayer.

God, may your will be done, not my way, God, but your way be done.  Amen.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-4;11-12

1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

2 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. 4 Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.

11 To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today we celebrate All Saints Day.

As Protestants, we don’t canonize Saints as people with a special level of holiness.

We believe that everyone trying to follow God, however imperfectly, is a Saint.

Those who have gone before us…

All of us gathered here…

Those who are yet to come…

We’re all Saints.

We are the ones whom the author of First Thessalonians prayed for.  

Because Paul, Silvanus and Timothy didn’t write 1 Thessalonians, it’s another Pauline Fan Fiction letter, but it’s a good one.

But I bet that the real Paul, Silvanus and Timothy did pray for us and all the Saints to come.

Wild huh.

But it also makes sense.

I think back to all the people, living and dead, who have influenced me, and they all had flaws, and things they weren’t so good about, and yet, they made a difference in my life and my faith.

I also think about our forebearers in the Faith who contributed both wonderful and terrible things to Christianity.

Like, Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran Church.  Luther wrote beautiful and important theology about the expansiveness of God’s Grace… and Luther was also deeply antisemetic. 

Or our own founder, John Wesley, whose “Method,” was to actually practice neighbor-love towards the poor, the prisoner, the child laborers, the factory workers, instead of just talking about loving our neighbors…and Wesley was a terrible boyfriend and husband.  He excommunicated his ex-fiance for marrying somebody else, and he and his wife separated shortly after their marriage because there was just no living with that man! 

The Saints that came before us were deeply flawed and also deeply holy.

And so are we.

We are all in need of God’s grace, and we all have a calling to offer the world.

So I’m going to ask you to think about some of the Saints, famous or not, who have influenced you.  

I’m going to give you a minute to think.

Now turn to a neighbor or 2 and share what you remember about the Saints who formed your faith?

I’m going to ask you to share something about what your neighbor said, so listen well!

Let’s bring up our online friends, so they can share too.

What do your neighbors remember about the Saints who formed their faith?

It’s interesting what we remember and what we hear, isn’t it!

As most of you know by now, we are in the process of trying to build affordable housing — we’ll be having a congregational vote on that next week, but more on that later…

I have loved asking our older members what it was like the last time this Church decided to tear down their building and build something that better met their ministry needs?

I ask them,

What do you remember about that time?

Spill the tea!  Tell me about the drama!

Who said what?

Who did what?

Who do you remember about that time?

The story is that in the mid- 1950’s the congregation’s faith was growing so abundantly that they no longer fit in the old white church.

It was too small and didn’t have enough space for all their Sunday School classes. The old white Church just didn’t meet their needs anymore, and this is a small lot, so they had to tear something down to make room for anything new.  

So they raised the money, they tore it down, and they built… this!

A big sanctuary, and lots of Sunday School rooms downstairs for all the kids – with those cool little slidy windows for delivering snacks.

And storage rooms and bathrooms, although why aren’t there any bathrooms on the same level as the Sanctuary?

And a full on bank-style vault to store old papers in… I mean, it’s really cool… but why a bank-style vault?

They dreamed it, they funded it and they built it!

It’s interesting to me that nobody seems to remember any drama!

I haven’t heard any stories of people who left the congregation because they wanted to keep the old white church.

Or stories about arguments over the carpet or the kitchen.

Or stories about paint color drama.

I was beginning to think that generation were truly the greatest generation!

I just kept hearing how so many of them donated their time to work on the building.

How they put in a time capsule under the plaque on the front of the building.

How much they loved one another and how their families were all friends.

The stories of who taught Sunday School and who served in the nursery.

And then I heard about the car.

Apparently a certain Saint owned an auto-body shop?

Please correct me if I’m wrong!

And this certain Saint may have decided to help the Congregation save on cement costs for the foundation by “contributing” a car frame to the foundation.

And then I started to hear about the people who did not feel welcome.

The people whose differences were just not considered acceptable by mid-twentieth-century standards.

And then as time went on, I heard about people who weren’t happy about what that one Pastor said that one time…

Or people who wanted things to stay the way they were in 1956, despite the fact that it’s not 1956 outside anymore.

The truth is that the Saints who built this building were not any more or less Saintly than those who came before them or we who come after them.  They were simply faithful to their calling in their time.

They were willing to support their Pastor in meeting new people in the community, rather than only taking care of members.

They were willing to give up what was no longer working – a building that was too small and had the wrong spaces for the ministry they were being called to do.

They were faithful with what they had – their time, their expertise (or not so expertise! – have you seen the wiring down there!), their prayers, and their witness.

They were faithful in responding to all the changes and challenges of the post- WWII world they were living in.

Their faithfulness was their gift to God.

And now, about 50 years later, God is calling us to be faithful to respond to the changes and challenges of this post-pandemic world.

And honestly, I thank God for you, siblings in Christ.

I see your faith growing abundantly!

I see the love that every one of you has for one another expanding like a group hug to include people that the 1956 youth group never would have imagined would ever go to this church!

Not only do I boast about you, but our District Superintendent holds you up as an example of Congregational Development because of Haven Dinner and She is so delighted with our collaborative involvement in our small church coalition:  East Portland In Connexion – known as EPIC!

Saints — I see you faithfully stepping up every week.

Working hard to hold this old building together just one more year until we can tear it down and build something that fits the ministry we are being called to do now!

Creating new groups like the Sewists, and adapting old groups like the group formerly known as United Methodist Women to respond to the real issues of our lives today.

I see you glorifying the name of Jesus by practicing what he taught us – to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially the neighbors who might be considered the Least of these.

I see you supporting your Pastor, me, in being out in the community in different ways than what worked in 1956, because you know that it’s 2025 outside the  church, so it needs to be 2025 inside the church!

I believe that future generations will remember you as faithful.

Luke 17:11-19 NRSVUE

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Back in the 1900’s, when I was a teenager, when somebody said the word, “foreigner,” my first thought was the late 70’s early 80’s rock band, Foreigner, who’s hits:

Urgent (urgent, urgent, emergency!)

Cold as ICE, and

I Want to Know What Love is

Which all seem like important discussion topics here in 2025.

God help us!

But in First Century Judea, when Jesus walked the earth calling someone a foreigner was a serious religious distinction.

Biblically, the distinction between foreigners and God’s people is explicitly stated in Deuteronomy chapter 7, as a part of Moses revealing what we now call the 10 commandments, which are in chapter 6.  So according to the author of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people:

• Do not make any treaties with the people already living in the promised land
• Do not intermarry with them!
• The directions given in Deuteronomy 7:5-6 for dealing with foreigners are: “5 But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.”

So.  According to Deuteronomy:

We don’t negotiate with foreigners…which means no peace treaty, just total war.

We don’t marry foreigners…so their children don’t matter.

Hulk Smash foreigners.

Yikes!

When did this start?

If you look back before Moses in the Bible, the Family of Abraham is just one family, so they definitely married outside the faith.  So what happened to make them so anti-everybody else?

First of all, Deuteronomy is not a Live at 5 reporter’s account of what happened.  

Most scholars agree that  Deuteronomy was written and edited by many people over time.  The earliest writings dating from the time of King Josiah around 621BC with the later writings from the return from the Babylonian Exile during the time of the Prophet Nehemiah, who wrote extensively on his campaign to get all Jewish men to cast out their foreign wives and children.

Exodus chapters 20-23 is an older, but still not an eyewitness reporter account of the giving of the commandments.  And while Exodus 23 does have a passage in Exodus 23:20-33 that says that God is going to displace the Canaanites, Hittites, and the other peoples from the promised land, and the Hebrew people are not supposed to make any treaties with them…  

Exodus 23:4 also reads:  “When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back.

And more importantly Exodus 22:21-24 reads:

21 “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. 23 If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; 24 my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.”

In Exodus we’re returning lost animals, and doing no wrong to resident aliens and in Deuteronomy we’re smashing and burning foreigner’s stuff.

That’s quite a contrast between the Exodus version and the Deuteronomy version isn’t it?

When people criticize the Bible for being contradictory, this is the kind of stuff they are talking about!

As United Methodists, we take the Bible seriously, not literally, therefore we know that only the Tablets themselves were carved in stone by the hand of God.  

The Bible was written by people.  

The Bible was written by many people, in different places and times with different theological axes to grind.  Sometimes Prophets were writing at the same time and arguing with one another on what they thought God was up to.

As United Methodists we believe that the Bible is inspired by God, but not written by God, and certainly not infallible in translation and editing!

But we also look to scripture for guidance in difficult times like this!

And when scripture is saying two very different things about how  we should treat the foreigner among us… well, we know exactly what happens because we’re living through that right now.

A perspective that has been helpful for me, is from Professor Emertis of New Testament, John Dominic Crossan. Crossan wrote a little book called, “How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation.”

The main idea of Crossan’s book is that the Bible is not only a discussion between the various authors and editors, but that the Bible is a discussion between God and Humanity.

God demonstrates the value of hospitality to foreigners (often translated strangers) when Abraham welcomes the strangers who turn out to be Angels.

But then people are like – the Egyptians were totally mean to us, so we get to be mean to foreigners like them, right?

But then God says,  “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” You know how awful it is to be treated that way, and don’t do it to others!

But then people – the authors of Deuteronomy write their own version of the story that totally justifies oppression of foreigners.  Because they wanted to re-establish Temple Judaism.

But then God, through the Prophet Isaiah calls the foreigner Cyrus, the Anointed One who saves the Jewish people.  Because Cyrus told them to go home and rebuild their Temple and cities.

Then people – the Prophet Neihemiah tells all the Jewish men to divorce their foreign wives and cast out their foreign children.  While rebuilding Jerusalem under the rule of Cyrus.

Then God shows up subtly in the story of Ruth, the Moabite – a foreign widow of a Jewish man who converts to Judaism and who ends up being an ancestor of Jesus.

And in today’s reading, God godself, Jesus honors the Samaritan – who were the people who constructed the sacred pillars for worship (the ones Deuteronomy says to smash!) rather than going to the Temple. The Samaritan foreigner is the one who gives glory to God.  

The Samaritans who were actually the descendants of the people of Northern Israel who were not carried into the Babylonian Exile.  People whom the writers of Nehemiah and Deuteronomy may have considered to be their religious competition.

But Jesus doesn’t see the Samaritans as the religious competition.

God isn’t insecure like we are.

Jesus extends the invitation to participate in the Kingdom of God to, “whomsoever will.”

Or as the Apostle Paul, and this was the actual Paul, not Pauline fan fiction, wrote in Galatians 3:28:  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Lamentations 3:19-26

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

19 The thought of my affliction and my homelessness

    is wormwood and gall!

20 My soul continually thinks of it

    and is bowed down within me.

21 But this I call to mind,

    and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

    his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

    to the soul that seeks him.

26 It is good that one should wait quietly

    for the salvation of the Lord.

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

    God’s mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in Them.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Them,

    to the soul that seeks them.

26 It is good that one should wait quietly

    for the salvation of the Lord.

This declaration of hope in the middle of an entire book of Lamentations is like a bright blue patch of batchelor’s buttons flowers in the midst of a field of manure.

Tuesday was a manure kind of day for me.

When my feet hit the floor my left ankle was sore.  Did I sleep wrong?  On my ankle?  How???

Then I had my shift at the Federal Courthouse doing accompaniment, and there were so many people on the court docket that I chose to stay an extra hour, which was fine, but being on alert, scanning the area for ruffians in gators, is intense.  

And Google translate was not being my friend!  A young man asked me if I was government or something, and in the process of using google translate to explain that I am a Pastora here to protect you from Immigracion thugs – well, I didn’t realize that thug would translate to murderer!  

So sorry! 

Did not mean to scare you!

Let’s try, Immigracion jerks… jerks translates into Idiots!  

Much better!

After my 2 hour shift that turned into 3 hours on hard pavement,

I limped back to my car with my ankle tendon still hurting.  

$19 for parking!  

Sigh.

And went to work.

I just didn’t have the creative energy to write my sermon, so I figured I’d work on my homework for the MBA in Nonprofit Administration that I was telling you about last week.  Remember how I told you that the Fundraising class I’m in is kinda uncomfortable for me?

Well, it’s not just because we’re talking about money.

I got an email from my Fundraising Professor telling me that she had taken my post down because she felt that my response to the discussion prompt was not humble enough.  And she sent me a post by another student as an example of how she would like me to post.

The post that she held up as an example was a fellow clergy student, posting how he does not know anything about how to receive donations of complex assets. and that he doesn’t even know if his church finance team knows anything about donations of complex assets.  I love that for him!

Complex assets, by the way, are things like – donations of stock, real estate, or even a harvest of soybeans.

I was surprised by the idea of a donation of a harvest of soybeans, because the only crops I’ve ever seen donated are hazel nuts or strawberries that were packaged and sold in the community.

But, I am quite familiar with donations of stock, real estate and even a Charitable Lead Trust – where the Trust is willed to a series of family members until the last one dies and then the church gets what’s left.

And, might I say, Church, that your Finance Team, and your Board are very smart and experienced and do a great job managing donations of complex assets!

In my original post, I addressed the lecture and readings on the topic of donations of Complex Assets from the point of view of how we already handle those assets according to United Methodist policies.  But  apparently that’s bragging!  She wanted me to pretend that my Church isn’t awesome and that I don’t know anything about complex assets.  Apparently it’s arrogant of me to be an experienced Pastor.

This is not the first time she has taken down or edited my posts, but it will be the last, because this class ends this week.  Hallelujah!

Then… after editing and resubmitting my work, and copying the head of the program on all that nonsense, because that’s what one calls academic censorship and I’m not having it…

Then… my beloved daughter Gwen is mad at me because I overcooked her noodles.  

I’m sitting at the table at 8:30 at night, finally eating dinner when she thrust a cold, leftover, gluten free noodle under my nose and demanded that I taste it.  (I thought it tasted fine.)

Then she proceeded to ask, with barely restrained rage, that I NEVER cook her noodles again, because I ALWAYS overcook them.  And noodles should NOT be a liquid, which I thought was a little overstated, because it was still noodle shaped, just rather soft.

So, I apologized and promised to never try to cook her noodles again.  

I get it.  

She had gotten home from a long day at work, which takes a lot out of her as she lives with chronic, constant pain, and she was looking forward to leftover gluten free noodles, one of the few things she can eat with her Crones disease, and she likes her noodles al dente.  Mushy noodles were just too much to deal with while tired and in pain.

I know that.  So I don’t argue, I just apologize.

I’m sorry that I made my baby girl’s day harder.

And that’s on top of all the usual stuff.

You know, the erosion of Trans and women’s rights.

People starving and dying in Gaza.

Troops being deployed to our city.

Climate change…

Tuesday was just a manure filled day.

But then my husband got home and suggested that we go swimming, because Tuesday was the last day of the community pool being open.  

And yes.  

It was cloudy and cool and sprinkling.

But the pool is heated and it’s not like the rain was going to make us wetter.

So we swam in the rain.

And my Very Patient Husband quietly listened until my annoyance had run its course.

And we swam laps and looked at the heavy clouds backlit by the glow of the moon.

And there was some peace in the steadiness of the rhythms of creation.

There was mercy in the rain after a long, dry summer.

There was reassurance that tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow; 

the sun will rise again.

There is love between people, even people who overcook the noodles.

Love that flows like water unceasing, 

from God our source, through us and among us…

Love that cannot be stopped, even by death.

Hope flowers like bright blue bachelor’s buttons.

Not in spite of the the field of manure,

but because of it.

Hope blossoms ever more brightly among that which needs to be composted.

That which needs to be apologized for.

That which needs to change.

And now, a judge has ordered the deployment of troops unconstitutional.

And the head of the program acknowledged that my professor had engaged in academic censorship and gave her a talking to.

And the sun is shining.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

    God’s mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

new every morning;

new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness, Oh God

Great is your faithfulness.

1 Timothy 6:6-19 NRSVUE

6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, 8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

This month I’ve been preaching a sort of loose sermon series catching you all up on the things Spirit has been up to in my life over the summer.

The first Sunday,  September 7th, I shared about my experiences doing Clergy Accompaniment at the Federal Courthouse and the ICE Facility, and talked about the origin of the term Woke, from passages like Romans 13.

September 14,  I talked about Paul’s instructions in Romans 14 to not judge one another on how we each live out our calling from God.  Remember friends,  Boundaries are Holy!

Last week, I talked about how the word we translate as salvation, sothe, has a much larger meaning of holistic wellness and how salvation is something we participate in here on earth as it is in heaven.  And I shared the hilarious story of my Great Aunt Alice’s funeral. O Jerusalem!

All of these sermons are available on the church website if you’d like to take another look, or missed church that morning.

In July, I traveled to South Dakota to begin the Practical Church Leadership program at Dakota Wesleyan University.  Practical Church Leadership is basically ?’s of an MBA in Nonprofit Leadership designed for Pastors actively serving a congregation.  I signed up for this because it has a year long Applied Project where we learn how to use Project Management tools in our church setting, and they did not teach us how to  manage a Housing Project in Seminary!

So I applied for some scholarships and the program is very reasonably priced, and if I keep going next year, I’ll have a Masters in Business Administration in Nonprofit Leadership in July 2027, and more importantly, I’ll have access to experts from the College of Business to help us navigate this whole Housing Process!

I always have 2 classes, the year long Applied Project and another 7 week topical class.  My current topical Class is Financial Resource Development.  And it’s really pushing all of my money issues buttons!

First of all,  I want to issue a “Not A Trigger Warning,” because this is NOT a Stewardship Sermon.  I will NOT be asking you to give more, or to fill out a pledge card, or to consider moving towards tithing.

One of my money issues, as a Pastor, is that it genuinely makes me sad when I hear people say that they think their church only cares about their money.  I have also been in churches where I felt like I was just a “giving unit,” to them, not a beloved child of God, and I just don’t want to do that to anybody.  So I very rarely do a direct ask for money.

For me, Stewardship really is my favorite spiritual practice.  Tom and I have tithed our entire 32 years of marriage, not out of a legalistic or fundamentalist reading of the Bible, but because giving away 10% of our income is so delightfully, radically, countercultural.  It’s so countercultural that we have, in fact, been audited by the IRS twice for, and I quote, “excessive charitable giving.”  I find it deeply ironic that a nation that prints, In God We Trust, on our currency, finds tithing suspicious!

When we give, whether to the church, to charities that serve the poor, or to political campaigns that are seeking justice, it makes me happy that we are pulling money out of the systems of consumerism, capitalism, and patriarchy that reduce beloved children of God into units of labor, units of consumption, and units of dependants.  

Believe it or not, Tom and I are not members of the Socialist Party!  We enjoy giving our hard earned money away to causes that support the belovedness of all people, because we find joy in following the teachings of Jesus.

We’re not socialists, we’re Christians who actually read the Bible!

Today’s Bible reading is from First Timothy.

It’s important to realize that First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus are “Fan Fiction.”  Paul did not write these letters, because Paul was dead at the time they were written, sometime around 100-120 AD.  We know it was written before 125 AD, because Polycarp alludes to 1 Timothy in his book, Letter to the Philippians, which was published sometime between 125-135 AD.  There’s a lot of inaccuracies in the first and early second century timelines because the Romans literally lost track of time in the midst of a series of military coops.

At any rate,  First Timothy is fan fiction, which explains some of the blatant sexism found in other portions of the letter.  The authentic Paul wrote letters to the women he placed in church leadership, so clearly he wasn’t sexist, but Roman culture was extremely sexist, and we are all influenced by our culture!

However, there’s still some good stuff in First Timothy especially about our relationship with money.  The early second Century Church had grown enough that there were rich people in the church.  The Jesus movement very much started out as a group of people who were at the bottom of the economic ladder.  The first disciples were primarily working class, poor people, disabled people, women, and slaves.  So the Second Century Church didn’t quite know how to deal with success.

So the author of First Timothy is writing fan fiction for fellow Pastors, as if Paul was writing a letter to Timothy as a young leader.

In our reading for today, the author is trying to help us understand that money is not evil.  Money is just a tool that should be used for food and clothing and the basics of life.  But the lust for money and the love of money can plunge people into ruin and destruction.

I feel like the misunderstanding of this good teaching has caused a lot of money issues both within the church and in people’s everyday lives.

Too many people forget that verse 10 reads, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  Verse 10 does NOT read “money is the root of all evil.”

This inaccurate reading combined with the also inaccurate idea that being content means that being content with poverty and suffering is somehow godly is exactly what Karl Marx was complaining about when he called religion, “the opiate of the masses.” 

Unfortunately Marx doesn’t seem to have read the Bible to find out that it doesn’t actually say that!

But when people think that being content with poverty and suffering is somehow holy, and that money is evil, that belief can be used to shame them into not asking for fair wages, not asking for safe working conditions, not joining a union, and even not taking a promotion because they have been taught to view bettering themselves as a sin.

What is actually written in First Timothy chapter 6 is that as followers of God, we are to shun wandering away from the faith in our pursuit of wealth.

The other problem with this bad interpretation where money is considered evil is that then we don’t want to talk about something evil in Church, right?

Which puts us as believers in a little bit of a pickle, because the secular world is dominated by money.

I absolutely believe in the pursuit of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.  But my mortgage company does not accept them as valid forms of payment.

We live in a world where we need money.

And where money and our relationship to money massively impacts our lives!  But somehow we’re not supposed to talk about this very important part of our lives at church?

And then outside of church, we’re not supposed to talk about money either.

You’re not supposed to talk about how much you make with your coworkers.

You’re not supposed to talk about how much things cost.

You’re not supposed to comment on how rich people use their money…. although it seems perfectly acceptable to criticize how the poor use their money.

We’re not supposed to talk about money, and yet, in our culture, we are expected to admire those who have the most money, and despise those who have the least.

One of the guest speakers in my Financial Resource Development class posited a theory about the meaning of this cult of silence around money.

He said that people are typically silent before their God.

That just as Job and Elijah were silent when God appeared before them, this culture is silent before money.

We are afraid to question the evil that is done for the sake of money, because:

Money is the God of our culture.

So many of us have been left feeling divided by the silence of the Church when what we need is a healthy conversation about money.

We need to have money to survive – just physically survive in this economic system.

But we want to be good followers of God.

And Matthew 6:24 says that we cannot serve both God and money.

So how do we live as Christians in this money worshiping economic system? 

Look at verse 17 and following.

Money isn’t evil, it’s just not something to put your trust in.

We need to keep our focus on God’s abundance and be rich in what really matters.

• Doing good, 
• loving our neighbors, 
• And, going back to verse 8, IF we have more than enough to cover the basics, sharing what we have.

But if we don’t have enough to be content, then asking for more and working for more, in order to get the basics covered, is not worshiping money.  It’s just the daily grind of trying to keep body and soul on speaking terms!

So let’s not be silent about money.

Let’s be honest about money.

Money is not our God.

Money is not evil.

Money is just a tool.

A tool that we can choose to do good with.

Good for our own lives and good for the lives of others.

John 3:13-17 NRSVUE

13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Trigger warning.  This sermon mentions child abuse.  I won’t be going into any details, so it’s still suitable for all ages.

It’s kind of an odd thing for a Pastor to say, but I am the Black Sheep of my family of origin.  As in, when I entered the church for my Great Aunt’s funeral, the whole room went silent and all eyes were on me.  As if I was going to grow a second head, or breathe fire, or say something really uncomfortable.  Probably the last one… I mean, if I was going to grow an extra body part, I’d choose to grow another arm, wouldn’t you?

I didn’t… say or do anything uncomfortable, that is.  I also didn’t grow any body parts or breathe fire.  

It was still a weird day.

The center aisle of St John’s Lutheran Church in Salem, Oregon, is very narrow.  

Too narrow for the rolling cart that is usually used to transport the casket to the front of the church after the viewing.

So the male members of my family took on the job of pall bearers.  Three short men on each side of the casket, shuffled sideways down the narrow aisle, but the aisle was so narrow that they didn’t really fit.  So each time they shuffled past a pew, each of these short men would rise up onto their toes to shift their behinds over the backs of the pews.  

Shuffle, shuffle, lift.  

Shuffle, shuffle, lift.

Shuffle, shuffle, lift.

We’re all standing as the casket slowly processes. 

Shuffle, shuffle, lift. 

Shuffle, shuffle, lift.

And I’m thinking… If Aunt Alice was next to me, she would have been making the most inappropriate comments!  It was all I could do to keep a straight face.

By that time in my life, I had already been a Church musician for many years and been a part of many services, so I knew that something going sideways is very normal for services.

But then, it went further sideways.

Do you remember those old preprinted funeral bulletins that would leave a blank space for you to type in the person’s name and pronouns?  They used one of those, that’s fine, it was the mid 2000’s, but many churches were slow to adopt computers.   But I didn’t know you could actually do that verbally…

So this Pastor who sounds Rev Lovejoy from the Simpsons, gets up to welcome the mourners and says,

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the life of, Alice Christine Dahlen.  We come together in grief, acknowledging our our loss of, Alice.

May God  grant us grace, that in pain we may find comfort, and sorrow hope, and in death resurrection…

And on and on he went. Every dang time her name came up in the liturgy, it was the verbal equivalent of “insert name here.”

I could practically hear the Times typewriter font.

By this time, I am trying so hard not to laugh out loud that I’m shaking with repressed laughter.         

Fortunately I sat in the front so my family couldn’t see my face.

Then the organist began to play.

Something you may not realize is that being a musician is a very physical job.

I play flute, guitar, auxiliary percussion, and piano – very badly.

I have carpal tunnel, so bad that my hands go numb while playing guitar, and I’m only 53.

Alice planned her own funeral, decades beforehand, and she asked that the old organist be brought back to play for her funeral.

The old organist was in her 90’s and, as many organists do, she had severe arthritis in her hands and feet.  Playing a pipe organ is a whole body workout.  The base notes are played with your feet and there is no sustain pedal, so you have to hold down the keys to keep the notes sounding.

Combining arthritis, age and the full body workout of playing a pipe organ meant that she played very, very, very slowly.  Which was understandable.

But then, Alice had also requested the old soloist be recalled from retirement.  As a singer,  I can tell you from personal experience that as we age, we lose range and we lose control of our pitch and vibrato. 

Alice had chosen that old chestnut, “Oh Jerusalem,” and friends, those old musicians did their very best.  I mean, they gave it everything they had left.

The soloist warbled, “Jer-uuuuuuuu – sa -lem.  Jer-uuuuuuuu – sa -lem.”

And I just could not hold it in any longer.  I covered my face with my hands and I laughed so hard under the cover of the booming organ that that whole pew shook.  I heard someone say,  “look, she’s crying so hard that she’s shaking!”

I’m glad they assumed that.

By the time the service was done, I was laughing so hard that I actually did cry from laughing so hard, so quietly.  Alice had a great sense of humor. She would have loved her funeral!

Fortunately, after that pew shaking performance, my family left me alone.

You see, the reason that I am the black sheep of my family is because I and my cousins are survivors of child abuse.  I did grieve very hard for my Great Aunt Alice, because she took me in when I moved out of my parents house at age 14.

I became the black sheep when my daughter was born.  I told my family that I would not allow my uncle, the pedophile, around my children, so either he could come to family gatherings or I and my children could… well, they chose him.

In their eyes, you either towed the family line… that line being, all families have their problems, so get over it.  Or you were out.  So because I would not accept child abuse as normal, I was out.

This idea of dualism –

People are either right or wrong.

People are in or out.

People are bad or good.

People are saved or unsaved.

Dualism is problematic.

Because it doesn’t make space for the complexity — the nuances of life.

Or the nuances of faith.

Our reading today is from the gospel of John.  The gospel of John was not written by the Beloved Apostle, but it was written in Syria, around the year 90 AD in a community founded by John the Beloved.  

The gospel of John is full of metaphorical and allegorical language, as the authors, we think there were at least 2 authors, seek to “give flesh” to deeply spiritual ideas.

And poetic language is really, really hard to translate.

Today’s reading contains two of the most problematic translations in the book of John.

If you look at verses 15 and 16 you will see the phrase, “eternal life.”

The Greek phrase that is often translated “eternal life,” actually reads something closer to, “the life of the age to come.” (Borg, Evolution of the Word, p307)

That Greek phrase, “the life of the age to come,” means basically the same thing as, “God’s Kingdom Come.”  It represents the hope that God will transform our lives through faith and that our faith will transform the world.

Our United Methodist Mission statement expresses a very similar idea.

“To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”

Basically, to know God, that is, to be a disciple which means “student” of Jesus, is to enter into the life of the age to come.  To live according to God’s Reign here on earth as it is in heaven, like we say in the Lord’s Prayer.

That changes how we read John 3:16 doesn’t it. Makes it sound more like this:

16 “For God so loved the world that They gave Their only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but enter into the lifestyle of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

Also the word that we usually translate as Believes  ???????? (pisteu?n), has a little bit more meaning to it.  It does mean to believe, but also to put your faith in, or put your trust in.

So we might more accurately read John 3:16 as:

God loved the world so much that God sent Their only Son, so that everyone who puts their faith in him will not be a part of this death-dealing way of life, but enter into the lifestyle of the Kingdom of Heaven here on this earth.

The essentials are still there — God loves everyone so much that anyone who is willing to be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven is welcome.  But the definition of believe is expanded and the concept of “the life of the age to come,” is put into more modern language.  We’re still talking about Heaven, but also this life too.

The second problematic translation in this reading is in verse 17.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

???? (s?th?) — healed, well, cured, saved, wholistic wellness)

The word in question is saved, or ???? (s?th?) in Greek.

So the is a word that is pregnant with meaning.

It is often translated as healed, well, and cured, as well as saved.

The concept of sothe is wholistic wellness.  Being well in mind, body and spirit.

Being spiritually, socially, physically, and mentally healthy.

So these verses aren’t just talking about the afterlife.

John 3:13-17 are talking about All of Life.

Life here on earth becoming like life in Heaven.

Which doesn’t mean that all of our problems are supposed to go away when we put our trust in God.

I wish, but no.

It means that we change when we put our faith in God.

Our values change.

Our words change.

Our behaviors change.

And when we change, we change the world around us, for everyone.

It was only by putting my trust in God that I found the courage to hold boundaries with my family of origin.  And those boundaries were costly.

I never spent another holiday with my family of origin again.  And my grandmother took all my pictures down off her walls.

But multiple generations of child abuse ended with me.

My children grew up safe.

Because safety for children is a part of the values of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But they grew up with only Tom’s side of the family as their extended family.

And I became the Black Sheep of the family, because in their minds, the only option was to either accept that abuse was normal, or reject the abuse which they defined as rejecting them.

They couldn’t see the third way that the Kingdom of Heaven offers, even though they believe in God.

They couldn’t see that I could both love and protect my children and not want my uncle around them.  That I did love my uncle, who was actually a really good uncle to me, and know that he couldn’t be trusted around my children.

Life is complex.  It’s nuanced.

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

We can love people and still hold boundaries.

People can not be ready to put their faith in God and still be welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus didn’t come to condemn anyone, but to save everyone.

And sometimes we just don’t get it.

We just can’t hold that much complexity.

We can’t escape the dualism of in groups and out-groups until we come face to face with God.

On the day that my grandmother died, I was at home with my children and I smelled my grandmother’s perfume.  She always wore Oscar de La Renta perfume.

My husband Tom, is allergic to perfume, so I was hunting all over the house, trying to find where this smell was coming from.  

Did one of my kids get into my box of perfumes?

Where is that smell coming from???

Finally I ceased searching and came to a stop in front of the living room window. 

I could feel my grandmother’s presence so strongly.

I could feel, without words, that she loved me and that now she understood my choices.

There was no sense of judgement or apology.  No right or wrong.

Just love and understanding.

She could see clearly now, and everyone was loved and understood, including me.

Then the smell of her perfume was gone, and so was she.

I found out the next day that she had died at that time.

God did not come to condemn anyone.

God came that everyone might find wholeness…healing…wellness…salvation.

Even the people we don’t understand in this life.