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Sermon – March 22, 2009

March 25, 2009

On the Journey We Confess Our Sin

Lent 4, Year B ~ Numbers 21:4-9

Kenwood UMC ~ March 22, 2009

This morning our scripture from the Old Testament book of Numbers is one that can be difficult for us to make sense of. Some of the pieces of this text trouble us, and I wanted to begin today by setting some of those before us—and then explaining why we’re not going to tackle all the questions today!

In this text, we meet the Israelites during their wandering in the wilderness. This event takes place after they have been rescued from Egypt and delivered by God. And it takes place during the 40 years before they get to the promised land. But on this journey God has given them food to eat, water to drink and direction.

Nevertheless, the people get impatient, just like we would in that circumstance, and they grumble against God and against Moses. Now, here’s the part we struggle with—God sends poisonous serpents which bite the people so that many Israelites die.

What do we make of this God who sends serpents—how can we understand this kind of punishment? I don’t want to spend a lot of time unpacking this, except to say that clearly, the God of Jesus is not a punishing God. We don’t know why the Israelites perceived that God had sent these snakes—perhaps they stumbled into a den of poisonous snakes, and it was easier to blame God for sending them than to admit the hadn’t been watching where they were going.

But what’s really interesting for us today is what happens next. The Israelites come to Moses and confess their sin. And as a result, Moses makes a serpent of bronze which becomes a symbol of forgiveness and new life.

It is that act of confession that I would like to spend some time with today. Because the ability to confess is one of those practices that can draw us closer to God on our journey towards transformed living. Each week during Lent we’ve been focusing on one practice, and this week our practice is confession.

I am grateful to President Obama for knowing our practice for the week and giving us a great illustration on The Tonight Show this week. I don’t know how many of you caught this, but he was chatting informally with Jay Leno about his bowling skills—or lack thereof. He scored a 37 in a game he played on the campaign trail. For those of you who don’t know bowling, that’s bad. Really bad. And he told Jay that he’s been practicing on the White House bowling alley and he’s up to “Special Olympic” level now.

Ouch. You know what happens next. The Special Olympians get up in arms, the White House issues an apology, and Obama himself calls the head of Special Olympics. He says that he was wrong, asks for pardon, and invites Special Olympians to the White House.

That was confession. And make no mistake, it is hard to do. When we’ve done something wrong, it’s easy to want to brush over it, or forget about it, or hide it. You know, the special piece of china you broke when your spouse wasn’t home that has just kind of disappeared. Or the words you said in anger under your breath—only someone heard them.

When we confess, we let God know that we know that we’ve done wrong. And to do that we have to somehow state our confession. Now, if we were Catholic, and I know many of you grew up Catholic, that would mean that you confess to your religious leader. You will be relieved to know that Protestants are OK with going straight to God.

But I will say that an act of confession can be helpful. Having an intentional time or practice of confessing our sins makes a difference. Whether we mentally go over our day every night and talk to God in our heads, or whether we record our confessions in a journal, doing so regularly makes a difference. I have an accountability partner who is another clergyperson, and when we get together a couple of times a month, one of the things we do is try to confess our failings to one another. It’s important for confession to be personal and relational—between you and God or you and someone else. Because confession is about healing relationships—relationships with God and relationships with others.

God values confession. It is important to God that when we have not behaved as we ought to, we confess our sin—we acknowledge it. Why is that so important for God? Because when we fail to confess, when we just cover over the shortcomings, they grow and fester inside of us. And they become bigger than they are, more powerful than they should be. But when we admit them, when we come to terms with them, we are more able to feel God’s forgiveness and grace wash over us.

Earlier in the service, I broke some twigs during our corporate prayer of confession—corporate means we all do it together. You each have a twig for you to use now, as we enter a time of personal confession. I want to invite you to confess your sins to God silently, and to break your twig as a symbol that you are broken, that you are still on this journey of discipleship and still learning how to be faithful. I also want to invite you to take your broken twig with you when you leave worship today, as a reminder of the importance of the practice of confession.

Let us silently confess our sins before God.

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Sermon – March 15, 2009

March 25, 2009

On the Journey We Follow God’s Word

Third Sunday of Lent, Year B ~ Exodus 20:1-17

Kenwood UMC ~ March 15, 2009

Allie Finkle loves rules. She says that the “reason why is, rules help make our lives easier. For instance, the rule about not killing people. Obviously, this is a good rule.”[1] Allie is nine, and she is the main character in a series by Meg Cabot called Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls that my daughter Kate has just started reading.

Allie’s not so different from all of us. While we may not LOVE rules, most of us would acknowledge that they do help make our lives easier. Allie says she especially likes science and math because they have a lot of rules—“like the one about gravity….[and] like that five minus three will always be two.”[2] But she isn’t so crazy about the things there are not rules for—like friendship, for instance.

Allie kind of hits it on the head. Rules make us feel secure. They make choices easier, they make traffic flow, they make ordering in restaurants smooth. But, wow is it difficult when we get into those situations where there aren’t any rules. Like friendship. Or dating. Or marriage. Or faith.

Wait, there are rules for faith! We just read them a few moments ago. The ten commandments. Those are our rules. Follow those, and we’ve got it made, right? No more questions.

If only it were that easy. First of all, some of those commandments are harder than they look. Honor your mother and father—what if I’m an orphan. Or if my mom or dad aren’t really deserving of honor? And, you shall not murder—does that apply to the spider I squashed with my shoe this morning?

Sometimes faith involves a little more than rule following. But I would also argue that the ten commandments are not just rules for us to follow. That would be far to simple for this God we worship. The ten commandments do more than just tell us how to behave. They remind us that we are in a relationship, a relationship with a God who loves us and can show us how to find a life of righteousness. You sang about that this morning, right kids?

And that brings us to our practice for this week. Here at Kenwood this Lent, we are examining a different practice each week, a practice which can help us draw closer to God on our journey of transformation. And this week our practice is to obey—to obey God’s life-giving Word.

Now, there are a couple of assumptions in that practice—the first is that we know how to obey and the second is that we find God’s Word life-giving. Let me touch on each of those for a moment.

For those of you who have trouble with obedience—I’m right there with you. I’m glad it was taken out of the wedding vows before I had to do that myself. But as I have gotten older and hopefully wiser, I have come to understand that obeying a loving God is very different from obeying rigid rules, or obeying an authority you don’t entirely trust.

God is completely trustworthy. And God’s rules are full of love and mercy. Obeying them does not have to be a burden, but something that gives us life. That’s one of the reasons we chose to include a bit of a different reading of the commandments this morning alongside the more traditional reading. And that reading was focused not on shall nots, but on celebrates. Celebrate love, celebrate images of God, celebrate God’s name, celebrate the wonders of God, celebrate those who love you, celebrate by seeking life in each person—celebrate. I can obey rules that invite me to celebrate. Those rules can truly become a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

And when I celebrate, I discover that’s God’s rules, God’s Word, is life-giving. Now, I specifically used the term God’s Word because I want to push us this morning beyond the Ten Commandments. It is way too easy to follow the Ten Commandments and say, OK, I’m done. God’s Word, as it is found in the Bible, is far more rich and complex. And following God’s word requires time and study. But when you devote time and study to God’s word, you begin to discover that it is a source of life.

If you do not currently have a practice of following God’s word through regular study and formation, I want to invite you to discover one. I’ve placed a few resources on this table up here for you to take a look at—I will be glad to help you order one if you are interested. I would also encourage you to think about a long term study of scripture, through Disciple Bible Study, Companions in Christ or other classes which begin here at Kenwood each fall.

The closer we draw to God’s Word, the more we learn about it, the more it illuminates our path. And the more it lights up our path the more it becomes a source of transformation in our faith journey—and the easier it becomes to obey. I invite you to pursue the practice of discovering a relationship of obedience with God’s word as part of your Lenten journey.

Our hymn of response affirms our belief that God’s word is a light on our journeys of faith. It is number 601 in your red hymnals, “Thy Word.”

[1] Meg Cabot, Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls: Moving Day (New York: Scholastic, 2008), p.1.

[2] Ibid, p. 2.

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Sermon March 8, 2009

March 10, 2009

On the Journey We Make A Deal

Lent 2, Year B ~ Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Kenwood UMC ~ March 8, 2009

PRAY!

I have not had a good week with contracts. Those folks who are in Disciple Bible Study with me on Thursday nights know this, because I had encountered the last straw just before I arrived to facilitate Bible study. It had started last weekend with a bad customer service experience with a damaged product which needed to be returned to the store. We had entered into a contract—we paid money, the product should work. We had made a deal, and the provider wasn’t holding up their end of it. My experience with broken deals and contracts continued throughout the week with the cable television provider, the cell phone provider, and the company from which we lease the copier here at Kenwood. At every turn, I found myself thinking, wait a minute, we had an agreement here, and you are not living up to your end of it.

We have a lot of contracts in life. Each week one of my kids has a spelling contract. We enter into a contract when we purchase or rent a home, or buy or lease a car. We enter into a contract when we get married. We understand contracts.

But did you know we have a contract with God? Yes, that’s right a contract with God. Actually, the Biblical word is not contract, but covenant. A covenant is similar to a contract—an agreement between two parties to each perform certain duties. But a covenant—at least a covenant with God–is also a little different.

The difference with a covenant with God is that God, thankfully, has a better customer service record than Comcast or AT&T or even Ukrops. God always keeps God’s end of the bargain—and that is to love us unconditionally and fully. For Abraham and Sarah, that live took the form of promising them a great family—a seemingly impossible promise to fulfill. So impossible that it makes Abraham and Sarah laugh.

Can you identify with them? Can you think of a time when you have behaved in such a way that it was laughable to you that God might still love you? I think we can all identify with that. We’ve all had times when we’ve acted in ways that are so out of step with God’s desires for us that we think, “whoa, I’ve really messed up. No way God can love me now.” I have to be honest and say that I had a couple of conversations this week with customer service departments when I was not exactly nice and pleasant and, well, “Christian” in how I was speaking to people. I was angry.

But does that mean God breaks God’s end of the bargain? When we get angry, when we stop coming to worship, when we pull away from God, when we do things we KNOW are not in keeping with a Christian lifestyle, does that mean God forsakes us, or stops loving us? No. That’s what’s so amazing about this covenant God makes—he keeps it no matter what.

And even though God never breaks his end of the deal, we certainly do. And the sad thing is, when we break our end of the deal, the only people we are hurting is ourselves. We are driving ourselves farther and farther away from the One who loves us with an everlasting love. His love doesn’t stop—we just stop being able to feel it. And that, my friends, is why the practice of keeping our end of the covenant is one of the ways we can draw closer to God this Lenten season.

And that leads us to the inevitable question—what is our end of the covenant? Well in our scripture today, God lets Abraham know what his end of the covenant is. When Abraham is ninety-nine years old, God appears before him and says this, according to Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible called The Message: “I am The Strong God, live entirely before me, live to the hilt! I’ll make a covenant between us and I’ll give you a huge family (Genesis 17:1-2).”

There it is, our end of the covenant. Life entirely before me. Live to the hilt.

OK, that’s a contract a lot heftier than agreeing to two years of a particular cell phone service, or even heavier than agreeing to a 30 year mortgage. Live entirely before me. Live to the hilt.

Matthew Henry, an English clergyman living in the late 16 and early 1700’s, comments on this scripture and invites us to observe that “to be religious is to walk before God in our integrity; it is to set God always before us, and to think, and speak, and act, in every thing, as those that are always under his eye…. If we neglect him, or dissemble with him, we forfeit the benefit and comfort of our relation to him.”[1]

What exactly does that mean? When we live entirely before God, we give ourselves wholly to God. We understand that our lives are lived not out of what we desire or want, but what God lovingly desires for us. And we try to live our lives listening to God’s deepest desires for us. When we do not listen—well, we find ourselves distant and absent from God. And that distance and absence is usually painful.

Now, friends, this living entirely before God is not something that happens overnight. It is a process, a process lived out over our entire lives. There will be seasons when we feel very good about our life before God. And seasons when we feel not very good at all. But God always invites us back into the process, back into the relationship, back into the covenant. God never closes the door on God’s love for us.

And so this second week of Lent, I want to invite you to participate in the practice of covenant, of living your life more wholly and completely before God. And to begin, I want to invite you to turn with me to page 607 in your hymnals, where you will find a covenant prayer modeled after the one which John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, used in his life. I want to invite us into a time of silent centering, and then to all say the prayer together.

[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Volume 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy. Genesis XVII. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.Gen.xviii.html

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Sermon March 1, 2009

March 10, 2009

As The Journey Begins We Gather to the Promise of the Rainbow

Lent 1, Year B ~ Genesis 9:8-17

Kenwood UMC ~ March 1, 2009

Each summer our family vacations at the same beach. We’ve gone there since 2003, and so it is a place our kids, who are 8 and 5, have grown up with. The journey there is always very exciting, but also very tedious, as journeys can sometimes be. And as we get near the end the anticipation is building. We have learned that it is helpful to have a sign, some sort of a marker so that everyone ones we are about to embark on the vacation journey, we are about to reach the beach. For us, that sign has become the bridge going over to the island. It’s a lot like the bridge going over to Nags Head which many of you may be familiar with. And when we reach that bridge, we put down whatever book we are reading, or whatever movie is on the DVD player, we turn down the radio, we open the windows and smell the beach air, and together as a family we experience that sign that tells us our vacation journey is about to begin.

Friends, our journey of Lent is about to begin—in fact, it has already begun. It started on Ash Wednesday, last Wednesday night, when we gathered here in the sanctuary to begin to come to terms with how we are separated from God. And this journey that we will share together, over the next 6 weeks, will be an experience of moving—sometimes forward, sometimes, backward, sometimes round in circles. But as we learn about ourselves and our relationship right now with God, we will not stay the same. And it is our hope that by the time Easter rolls around, we will be transformed.

But in order to be transformed, we are going to have to allow ourselves to change—to be different. So to accomplish that we are going to be looking at practices each week which can shape or transform us as disciples of Jesus. We don’t assume that transformation happens—that you just say, OK, God, transform me, and there you are. We assume that we have to do some things—change some behaviors—in order to open ourselves to transformation.

Now, I want to be clear that no one is going to force you into these practices. This journey is something you have to want to embark on. You have to feel the tug of God on your heart, inviting you to go closer. But I hope you will take the risk, I hope you’ll take the first step because I believe that the invitation is coming from God to all of us.

So, today, we begin by looking at the practice of gathering. Gathering, you say? The scripture was about the aftermath of the flood. There was no one left to gather with. Yes, there were. There were those on the boat. Noah and his family. The animals, two of every kind God had created. There was, in fact, quite a group to gather together—quite a noisy, smelly, raucous group.

But I think it is significant that they gathered before God before they went running willy-nilly off the boat. You know they had to have been excited. Dry land. Finally. After 40 days and 40 nights. The possibility was ahead of them that they might get more than 3 feet of distance between themselves and another creature. But before they begin to spread out, they get off the boat and build an altar, in Genesis chapter 8. And here in chapter 9 we see that God has been pleased by this, and that God makes a promise to them never again to destroy the earth. And God gives them a sign—not only for their hope, but for God to remember. It is the sign of the rainbow.

It was really important that they all received that sign together. It wasn’t one person telling the others about it, or the giraffes filling the elephants in on the news. They all saw it—they heard God say: this is the sign of the covenant—this rainbow is a sign of my promise. There was not going to be a mix up, because they had heard it together.

There is something about gathering, gathering with our community of believers, that strengthens our discipleship. We are not created to relate to God all by ourselves, but to relate to God within the context of a community of believers. And as we gather, as we worship, as we seek God together, we find strengthen in our relationships. And we are able to affirm for each other when and how we see God working in our community and in the world.

We gather at this table for another sign, not a rainbow, but a meal. And once again, something ordinary, something God has already created, takes on new meaning when we gather to receive it. In our gathering we invite God to be present, we invite God’s grace to be known to each of us and to the community.

As we begin this season of Lent, let us gather together. Let us be with one another as companions on the journey. Let us hold one another accountable, confess to one another, move forward with one another in faith. May God’s mercy and grace wash over us, and may we draw closer to God through the power of drawing closer to one another. Amen.

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Sermon January 18, 2009

January 28, 2009

Known and Loved

Second Sunday After the Epiphany ~ Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18

Kenwood UMC ~ January 18, 2009

You can’t run away. You can try. I did, when I was about eight. I can’t remember what I got upset with my mom about, but I packed my bags and decided to run away. My grandmother, who was visiting at the time, was horrified when my mom said, OK, and started to help me pack. But I couldn’t do it. All I could do was try.

We can try to run away from God. We can try and try and try. But no matter how hard we try, we eventually come face to face with that unavoidable truth—God knows us better than anyone. No matter what we try and hide or disguise, God sees through it all. God has known us from the beginning—from before the beginning.

God knows us. A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial — a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?”

She responded, “Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a rising big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, “Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?”

She again replied, “Why, yes I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He’s lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can’t build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him.”

At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, “If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt!”[1]

God knows us. Whether we like it or not, God knows us. But, you know, we should like it. Because there are lots of people in this world who think they know us—but don’t. There are lots of people in this world who want to know us for all the wrong reasons—what we can do for them, how we can enhance their lives.

But God? God knows us just because we are. And, God loves us just because we are.

Sometimes it takes something momentous for us to realize God knows us. A life or death diagnosis that leaves us fighting for health. A job loss that leaves us grasping for professional identity. A terrifying moment that strips us of all that we use to identify ourselves. All of these are situations where it becomes very clear that God knows us—and loves us.

One of those moments happened this week for the 155 crew and passengers of US Airways flight 1549, which encountered trouble during take-off. We presume that was trouble related to birds in the engines. And that trouble led to a miraculous emergency landing in the frigid Hudson River with no loss of life.

Passenger Alberto Panero said that immediately, he smelled smoke.

“All of a sudden, the captain came on and said brace for a landing, and that’s when we knew we were going down,” he said.

As the plane headed down toward the river, the cabin was mostly silent, he said.

“After he told us prepare for impact, it was pretty evident we were not going to make the runway.”

At first, it felt like the plane was gliding, [another passenger, Fred] Berretta said, as if no engines were working.

People started praying, and there was a lot of silence, and the realization that we were going in was really hard to take in at that moment,” he said.

“I think a lot of people started praying and just collecting themselves,” Berretta said. “It was quite stunning.” He said he was expecting the plane to flip over and break apart, but it didn’t. “It was a great landing,” he said. [2]

You have to wonder what they were thinking. It’s a “life flashing in front of your eyes moment” if there ever was one. And maybe in that moment when it seemed like all was lost, they were thinking of loved ones and lost opportunties and missed chances. But in the next moment—the moment when they realized all will be well—they were thinking about how lucky they were and how much they were loved. Not only by their families and friends, but by God, the God to whom they prayed while desceding to the icy waters, the God who they might not have totally bought until that moment, but the God who has known them since the moment they were knit together in their mother’s wombs.

And did you hear what came next? Praise. “It was a great landing” said passenger Beretta. The pilot is praised for a heroic act. Mayor Bloomberg of New York hands out keys to the city. Praise. Praise and thanksgiving.

And that’s what disciples do. The first response of every disciple, the response to being claimed in the waters of baptism, is the response of praise. We see it in the Psalm. The psalmist writes

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

Why does the psalmist know how wonderful God’s works are? Because he has had one of those face to face moments, one of those moments when he has realized that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot run away from God. God knows him more imtimately than anyone ever will. And that is not a source of fear, but a source of praise.

God knows us. Our shortcomings. Our potential. Our unrealized moments and our real moments. And God loves us. In spite of everything and because of everything. We are known and loved. We belong to God.

[1] Homiletics Online, January 15, 2006, Soulift.

[2] CNN.com accounts of the crash of flight 1549.

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Sermon December 14, 2008

December 16, 2008

Rejoicing In Hope

Third Sunday Of Advent, Year B ~ Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Kenwood UMC ~ December 14, 2008

This season we’ve been talking about hope—how to have hope in the midst of a world where it is sometimes scarce. And that task of talking about hope, of believing hope, of creating hope has often been the task of the prophets. The prophets of the Old Testament have both held God’s people accountable for their mistakes, and also offered a new vision for what is yet to be.

We find this new vision in Isaiah today. It is a vision of these words written behind me—liberty, good news, comfort, glory, salvation. It is a vision of a better time, and a Savior upon whom God’s spirit rests. And we heard this good news interspersed with headlines from our world, and the despair and mistakes and corruption of our world. This is the same way that Isaiah’s people would have heard his news—in the midst of despair and mistakes and corruption.

The question before us today is, how do we respond? How are we able to rejoice in hope, to celebrate the ways that our Savior is coming into the world to bring liberty and release, to usher in a reign of peace. We have an image of one possible response on our bulletin cover today. It was drawn by Luke Saunders, who is 3. Luke is going to have a baby brother in the next couple of days. Back in November in Children’s Church, children were asked to draw images of rejoicing in hope, and this is what Luke drew. Without any conscious thought or planning, he drew what I believe is an image of rejoicing—of color and movement and expression that demonstrate joy.

We will all demonstrate joy in unique ways this Advent season. And sometimes it will not come as easily to all of us as it does to a three year old. I want to share a story with you this morning about one member of our congregation and her journey towards rejoicing this season.

Many of you have come to know Joyce Lachut over the last year as she has gotten involved at Kenwood. You know her as friendly, caring, compassionate and enthusiastic. You probably know that she has a large family, and is from upstate New York. But I am willing to bet that there are some parts of her story that many of you do not know about.

Joyce has spent the better part of the last decade caring for her husband who died in 2006 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. She moved to Virginia in 2007 to be closer to some of her family who had relocated to this area.

If you are familiar with Alzheimer’s and related diseases, you know that when you are caring for someone in advanced stages that you have to be careful with their physical environment. Moving furniture, moving their bedroom, anything like that can cause horrible confusion because they often cannot see well and cannot remember the changes. That includes putting up a Christmas tree. So Joyce did not have a Christmas tree in her home in either 2004 or 2005 while her husband was alive. In 2006, and again last year, in 2007, she could not bear to put up a tree, because her grief was too raw, too fresh. The tree’s presence only reminded her of her husband’s absence.

But this year, she put up her tree. She got out all the ornaments that she had moved down here from New York. She got out the nativity. And in her home she erected this symbol of the season—a symbol of hope. She relates that she had to sit down and weep after putting it up, but she also realizes that this tree is a symbol of how far she has come, of the rejoicing she is able to claim now, rejoicing which was absent for many years.

Joyce’s headlines were sickness, caregiving, Alzhiemer’s, death, moving. We all have different headlines. We all have different realities that define us personally. We are all a part of a community, a nation and a world with headlines that we share as reality. And we all have a reason to hope. Christ is coming. The light of Christ is being revealed in our world and in our lives even now. We can rejoice. We can look beyond the present reality to the words of Isaiah. We can turn away from the cruelty of the headlines and we can give the world a gift—the gift of a new reality, a reality born in hope and defined by love.

Dedication of our hearts at 11:00.

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Sermon December 7, 2008

December 12, 2008

Messengers of Hope

Advent 2, Year B ~ Isaiah 40:1-11

Kenwood UMC ~ December 7, 2008

I just signed up for Twitter this week. Twitter is a free service that links people through text messaging on their cell phones…I am thinking that I may regret telling you all I signed up, now that I think about this….but at any rate, you “tweet” or write short messages to people who follow you answering one simple question: “What are you doing?” For instance I might twitter right now, “leading worship at Kenwood.” Twitter is a messenger that helps people keep up with one another.

Messengers come in many different shapes and sizes. The come in the form of the postal

worker who puts mail in your mailbox. They come in the form of the employer who calls you into the office to tell you about a policy change. They come in the form of the person who sends you an instant message or a text message. I could go on and on….

But messengers are not always messengers of hope, are they? Sometimes they are messengers of doom and gloom. So how do we recognize the messengers of hope among us? The words of the prophet Isaiah this morning give us some clues.

This passage from Isaiah contains words spoken to the Israelite people when they are in exile. Their homeland has been destroyed, they have been separated from all they know, they are in financial and emotional ruin. It is not too farfetched to make the leap from those people to people today, feeling in exile because of financial uncertainty, job loss, deployment to remote parts of the world, and many other reasons. What kind of message does Isaiah offer to the exiles?

A message of comfort and a message that looks toward the future. Let’s take comfort, first. Isaiah acknowledges the suffering of his people, the long term of exile they have endured. And he speaks tenderly to them, offering a word of comfort. When people are in exile we begin with comfort. We don’t begin with blame, we don’t begin by telling them to snap out of it. We begin with comfort. We acknowledge their pain and tell them we know they are hurting.

And from comfort Isaiah moves toward painting a picture of the future. A voice is crying in the wilderness with a message of hope. And the word shall is the important word in that message. Every valley shall be lifted up, uneven ground shall become level, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Messengers of hope know that their job is to paint a picture of a new future, a new reality. And that picture shows what shall happen—not what might happen, or what could happen, but what shall happen.

There’s a certainty in that shall, a certainty that the future will happen, a certainty that implies that we can trust this messenger. And that is what people in exile need to know—not just that hope might be present, but that hope is present, that a new day is coming.

We have a challenge this morning. It would be easy for us to say we need to look for messengers of hope. It would be easy for me to lift up some messengers of hope in our world today. What is more difficult, and more important, is not to look for messengers of hope, but to become messengers of hope. If we believe that Christ is coming and brings a new future, a new kingdom, then we can become messengers of hope. If we believe that the baby who was born in Bethlehem makes a difference, and ushers in a new era of hope and salvation, then we can share that message of hope. We can be the ones who speak to those who are in exile in our community and our world. We can be the messengers who say to ShyAnne Shane and her family, the day is coming when you shall feel better and your dad will be able to go back to work. We can be the messengers who say to the one who is out of work, the day is coming when you shall have a new job. We can be the messengers who say to those who are afraid, the day is coming when you shall be secure.

In this Advent season, as you prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth, let your heart be changed by becoming a messenger of hope. Proclaim hope on Twitter or Facebook, in your Christmas cards, in your phone conversations or over coffee or lunch. Proclaim the promise of a new future, and I can promise you that the more you proclaim it, the deeper you will believe it, and the easier it will be to live into it.

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Sermon November 30, 2008

December 4, 2008

Looking for Hope

Advent 1, Year B ~ Mark

Kenwood UMC ~ November 30, 2008

You are checking into a hotel in a foreign country, on a routine business trip. Suddenly masked gunmen burst into the lobby, and you take refuge with others in a ballroom. You wait, in the dark for 6 hours, hearing gunfire all around you and waiting to be rescued. Finally, the group smashes through a glass window and shimmies to the ground on curtains when they realize the building has caught fire. These are people looking for hope.

You have worked for your company for 5 years. Economic times have gotten tough. You keep hearing rumors of trouble, difficulty making payroll. You watch stock plummet. And one day you come into work knowing in your heart that today is the day. Before lunch, you and 699 others are let go. These are people looking for hope.

You have known this day was coming. For months you have watched your beloved family member, knowing they are slipping but not quite being able to put your finger on it. You’ve watched the behavior change, the symptoms increase. But today is the day where you know, beyond a doubt, that you must get them to the doctor. This is a family looking for hope.

This is a world looking for hope. Each of these situations is real, each has happened in the last month in our world—and most have happened more than once. And everywhere I turn I hear hopeless words. People shake their heads at the economy. People shrug their shoulder at governmental unresponsiveness. People stop responding to stories of poverty and violence because they are too difficult to hear and truly absorb. It is almost too much to bear. We find ourselves walking around with this sort of uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs waiting for what is next. That’s hopelessness, friends. It is a feeling, a reality, a way of life.

It’s a feeling that’s a lot like the Jewish people in the time of Christ. They were worn out, burned out, shut out and out of luck. And into that hopeless existence came Jesus, saying to them that after days of darkness and angst there will be a coming, a coming of the Son of Man. After those days a new day will dawn. We don’t know when that new day will come. We have no way of predicting it. Jesus simply tells us to be watchful for it.

But in order to be watchful, we have to believe it will actually happen. We have to have hope. We have to believe that this time of darkness and loss is not the end. Brothers and sisters, we have a choice. We can choose to live another way, to live as people of faith. Now, making that choice is not logical—but hope is not logical. We don’t think our way into hope. We don’t plan our way into hope. We live into hope.

If, this Advent season, you really believe that God’s salvation is coming into the world, then live like you do. Refuse to surrender to the discouragement and hopelessness of the world around you and chose hope. Chose to live into the new reality that God has promised. Choose to look for that reality every moment of every day. Be a person who looks for hope.

How can you look for hope this Advent season? Change your mindset. Refrain from telling people how terrible the economy is, and tell people how you believe that there will be an end to this downturn. Refrain from watching or reading the news obsessively to hear of the stories of loss and angst. You know, I find that the more I read about the terrible things that are happening, the more convinced I become that they are terrible. When I am able to step back—and by that I do not mean to ignore what is happening in the world but to put it in proper perspective—well, they are not nearly as terrible any more.

Take time to share hope with friends and family. Take time to tell them you believe God will bring better days ahead. Take time to share hope by investing in hope if you are able—giving financially to those in need, spending time with the poor or the sick, adopting a Fox Holiday Sock or a Salvation Army Angel.

This season, look for hope. But do one thing more—become the hope you are looking for. Become a part of God’s plan of hope and salvation for the world. Expect that it is happening, and live into that expectation. Love, the Lord, is on the way.

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Sermon November 23, 2008

November 24, 2008

How Do We Work Together?

Christ the King Sunday Year A-Off Lectionary ~ Romans 8:18, 28

Kenwood UMC ~ November 23, 2008

On Wednesday I flew down to Atlanta to participate in a research project which my seminary is conducting. I flew down and back that day, and got into Richmond about 11:15 Wednesday evening.

Now, I would not say that I am a frequent flyer—but I usually fly a couple of times a year, often enough to be familiar with airport security procedures and know to wear slip on shoes and not take the bottle of water through security.

There’s a common experience that we all share when flying, and no matter how long ago you flew, I think you are going to identify with this moment. The flight ends, you’ve landed and taxied to the gate, the fasten seat belt sign has gone off, and all of the sudden everyone on the plane is filled with the same feeling—this flight is over, and it is time to get off the plane.

Now what you’ve got in this situation is a lot of people, one very narrow aisle, and one door. And even though we are all strangers, and some of us are on our way home and some are not, some are here for business an some for pleasure, at that moment we all share one goal that we have to work together to accomplish—getting off that airplane.

And what you see is people letting one another out into the aisle, people helping each other with carry on baggage stowed in overhead compartments, people telling the flight attendants thank you—people working together.

It grieves me that people who do not know one another can work together to get off an airplane, but not to relieve poverty, care for the sick and dying, or feed the hungry. These are the sufferings of the present age which Paul speaks of in Romans.

And if we, as a global community, or even as the county of Hanover or city of Richmond are going to accomplish any of those things—which I think Jesus would want us to work toward–we are going to have to set aside our differences and work together. And often one of the things which gets in the way of working together is a fear or resistance to working with people of other faiths.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about the reality of living in a world of multiple faiths, and finding evidence in Scripture that this has always been a reality for God’s people. We’ve discovered that God created the entire world and called it good, that God has promised that all nations of the world will be blessed. And those promises of scripture indicate that we need to work together with people of other faiths.

But friends, we do a lousy job of it much of the time. Just in the last 2 weeks in Henrico County we’ve seen an example of our failure. The Muslim community wanted to develop a mosque on an undeveloped area of property in Northside. Zoning had to be changed in order to do it. Recent zoning changes of a similar nature had been granted to Episcopal and Catholic congregations. When the Muslim community met resistance from the Henrico County Board of Supervisors, the interfaith community came out in force. Protestant and Catholic clergy and laity, Jewish rabbis and laypeople all wrote letters and petitioned the supervisors to let the Muslim community build. But the rezoning failed, 3-2.

Why? We could all speculate. But I suspect that it has to do with the extraordinary difficulty we have as a society in working together with people of different faiths.

Paul says “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Do we love God? Can we honestly believe that Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs love God? If we do and if we can, then we also have to believe that when we work together on the goals we have in common, we will work together for good.

To do that we have to set aside a need to prosteletyze or convert people of another faith to our faith. And I think that’s OK. You see, I am far more worried about the faith life of the hundreds of thousands of non-practicing people out there than I am worried about the faith life of a practicing Muslim. We will still have plenty of work to do sharing out faith in other areas. For this area—work with people of other faiths—we don’t need to worry about conversions—just conversations.

In order to work together we also have to set aside our fear, and that is very important in a post 9-11 world where we have been conditioned to fear. Are there radical Muslims out there? Sure. But so are there radical Christians. Remember the Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, also responsible for abortion clinic bombings in Kansas? Or Randy Weaver who sequestered his family at Ruby Ridge? I don’t know of a faith out there that does not have some radical element.

But those radical segments of faith are so small that we cannot afford to label all people of faith by that example. What we also cannot afford to do, given the desperate situation of our world, is build walls that isolate us from one another. We must work together.

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Bono, the leader of the rock band U2, has also been a leader in global efforts against poverty and AIDS in Africa. In 2006 he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., a gathering of people of all faiths hosted by members of Congress. He gave a stirring speech about the need for all faiths and all nations to work together to address issues of AIDS and poverty in Africa. Here, in part, is what he said,

“…whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists—most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives. Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.

I mean God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill…I hope so. He may well be with us in all manner of controversial stuff…maybe, maybe not. But the one things on which we can all agree, among all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and the poor.”[1]

I am clear, as a Christian, when I read scripture, that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to reaching the poor among us. And I am also clear that if we are to do it, we will have to work together—regardless of the faith we practice, all faiths with a heart for the poor can work together. We can work together for justice, for mercy and for peace. And I believe that when we do that, if makes God’s heart very, very glad.

[1] Bono, “On the Move”, 2006. A Speech given at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., February 2006.

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Sermon November 16, 2008

November 21, 2008

Will They Be Saved?

27th Sunday After Pentecost, Off Lectionary ~ Genesis 21:9-11

Rev. F. Elizabeth Givens

Kenwood UMC ~ November 16, 2008

It was the first day of February, 2003. By then Space Shuttle flights had become routine, something we might notice on the news but not usually a huge deal. Until….until the space shuttle Columbia disentigrated upon reentry over Texas killing all seven crew members aboard. Many of us remember the search for debris, the investigation of why the tragedy happened, the focus on the insulating foam which had peeled off during lift off and punctured a hole in one of Columbia’s wings.

But do you remember the crew? And do you remember that the group of heroes was incredibly religiously diverse? We might be most familiar with the faith of the Baptist, the Roman Catholic, the charismatic Christian, and the Episcopalian who died on that tragic day. But did you know about Ilan Ramon, the son of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was an Israeli astronaut on the mission, and now a hero in Judaism? Or Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-American who grew up in a household with Sikh and Hindu influences, and attended Hindu temples in the San Francisco area. Or Laurel Clark, a practicing Unitarian Universalist, who wrote in an e-mail to her mother on that shuttle flight “Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness.”[1]

All seven faithful people died on that ill-fated day. All were hailed as heroes, scientists and astronauts who had followed their dreams and all done great things for the advancement of humankind. And their story brings home what can be a sticky question for us as Christians. Were they all saved? Or to put it another way, are they in heaven?

I often have people come to me asking that question on a more personal level, as they have a close friend or family member of another faith whom they care about deeply, but wonder whether they will be in heaven or be saved. It is a very personal question and one which can be very troubling for us as Christians.

I want to begin by talking about what it means to be saved. Salvation, for us as Christians, is what Jesus has done for us by covering our sins and dying on the cross. What we are offered in salvation is a right relationship with God—no matter how badly we’ve messed up, we can have our relationship with God restored. That is the offer of salvation. But in order to receive it, we have to do something. We have to have faith.

So, for us as Christians, salvation is the gift made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus, which we receive through faith. But does that mean that someone who does not know Christ and who does not have faith in him cannot have salvation and receive the gift of eternal life in heaven with God?

There are three common answers to that question. The first answer is, no, someone who does not know Jesus cannot be saved. That is a view called exclusivism.

Another opposite view is a universalist view, which says that God will love and save everyone, no matter what.

For me, and what I understand about God, both of these views are somehow incomplete and not helpful. I am grateful to my colleague Adam Hamilton, pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas for some of the writing he has done on this subject over the last few years for helping me clarify what I think about this.

I have to start with what I know about God. The Bible teaches us that God is love. That’s the most important way we understand and explain God. And characteristics of God which are a close second to love are justice and mercy. And it seems to me that a God of love and mercy would not exclude good, faithful people from salvation. It also seems to me that a God of justice would not extend salvation to a completely unrepentant sinner—for example, Hitler.

So I believe when we wrestle with this question, we have to look at these charasteristics of God—love, justice and mercy. And then we have to ask ourselves—is there any place in Scripture where it seems that God reaches beyond those who believe in Jesus to extend love and mercy and justice?

And the answer is yes. This story from the Old Testament which we shared today is one of the most powerful of those instances. God has promised Abraham that all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed through him. All the nations of the earth.

And then Abraham and his wife Sarah have trouble conceiving, and his first child is Ishmael, born to Hagar, one of the couple’s slaves. A few years later, Abraham and Sarah miraculously conceive, and have Isaac. Isaac and Ishmael play together as brothers….until Sarah has a fit of jealously and insists that Abraham send them out into the wilderness to fend for themselves. This scripture reports that Abraham struggles with the decision, but does as Sarah asks only after being reassured by God that Hagar and her son will be cared for by him. And as they go into the wilderness, there is a remarkable story of God saving them from starvation, and promising Hagar that he would make a great nation of her son. This would ultimately be the nation of Islam.

Here we get the clear message that God’s love is for all nations and all people. Not just the descendants of Isaac, but also the descendents of Ishmael. That message is reinforced in the New Testament when Jesus extends his message beyond the Jewish people to include non-Jews, or Gentiles. The clear and consistent message is, God loves those who are faithful—not just Jews, not just Abraham’s children through Ishmael, but ALL who are faithful.

And I think that brings us to a place of understanding. Salvation, as we understand it, comes through Christ. But salvation can also come to those who are faithful believers in other traditions. There are Muslims who have a much better prayer life than I do, and Hindus who are more faithful in serving the poor. And they have never had a chance or opportunity or persuasive means to receive Christ as their savior. But I believe that our God, the God of Abraham, and the God of Jesus Christ, is big enough for that to happen. In the words of Billy Graham in a Newsweek interview, “It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who will not….The love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves the whole world no matter what label they have.”[2]

Our hymn of response is about how we have received out salvation—following Jesus. Our prayer is that however salvation comes, those who are faithful will never turn back from a way of life which is holy.

[1]“Seven-Heroes,Seven- Faiths,” http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2003/02/Seven-Heroes-Seven-Faiths.aspx?p=1

[2] Adam Hamilton, “Will There Be Hindus in Heaven?” in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, Nashville, Abingdon, 2008; p.111.

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