"The Need for Sustainability" - Repost of Blog by Iris Bloom of Protecting Our Waters

My good friend and sister-in-solidarity Iris Bloom of Protecting Our Waters has written this piece connecting the dots between the recent string of oil-and-gas accidents, shareholder capitalism, and the need to transition to nonfossil fuels.  Her analysis helps us see the deeper meaning of these seemingly disparate events and is beautifully written, concise, and compelling.  Iris has the long-view in mind here, and I encourage wide sharing of her post.

http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/natural-gas-pipeline-lights-up-the-night-sky-illuminates-need-for-sustainability/

A Sermon on the Sacrament of Holy Communion

The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade

January 19, 2014

Text:  John 1:29-42

[This sermon was part of Teaching Liturgy Sunday, Part Two, which focused on The Meal within the Gathering-Word-Meal-Sending order of Lutheran worship.]

“What are you looking for?” “Where are you staying?”     “Come and see.”

That exchange between the disciples and Jesus gives us a helpful framework for understanding why we worship, why we do what we do in worship, and what we can expect to encounter in worship.

Jesus asks: “What are you looking for?”      

The disciples respond with another question: “Where are you staying?”

Jesus responds: “Come and see.”

What are you looking for when you come to church?  There are probably as many different answers to that as there are people here.  Some of you are here because you enjoy the people who gather in the church.  You’ve known them for many years, perhaps all your life.  They are your friends and family, and gathering here at church is part of what makes up your relationship with them.  Your friendship and family-ship is fed by the faith you share.  And your faith is fed by the friendship and family-ships you experience in this place.

Some of you are here out of habit.  It’s just what you do.  You were raised going to church, it’s part of your routine, and you can’t imagine your life without it.

Still others are here because their parents or spouse dragged them out of bed this morning.  They like it once they’re here, but getting them here can be a struggle.

I’ve even heard people in this church - including young people – say they come here because it’s fun!  They like to sing the hymns.  They enjoy the fellowship hour.  They like the activities we do in youth group, the suppers, the way we reach out to the community, the way we help people.  They like the way we can laugh together, and how we can comfort each other when we cry.

What are you looking for?  Whether you are conscious of it or not, whether you admit it to yourself or not, on some level, in some way you are looking to encounter God.  All of those other reasons for being here are true and real and mostly good.  But on a deeper level, the deepest level, every human being at some time in their life longs to connect with the holy mystery of the sacred.  Call it what you will – the Divine, the Force, Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, the Creator – that awesome power that is beyond our understanding longs to connect with you, too.  You are looking for God.  God is looking for you.

“Where are you staying?” the disciples wanted to know.  They wanted to know where they could locate Jesus.  They wanted to know his dwelling place, where he resides.  They wanted an address and GPS coordinate.  They knew they were looking for the Holy One of God.  They knew they had found him.  Now they wanted to know where he lived so that they could have access to him, have a reliable place to find him.

Where do you find God?  Human beings can encounter that Divine Presence anytime and anywhere it chooses to manifest itself to us.  It may be at a holy site, in the darkness through a dream, in the birth of a child, in the physical embrace of two people, or standing atop a mountain or alongside the endlessly churning waves on the beach.  But here in this place of gathered people around the font and the table is the one place we can be sure to find God.  Why is that?  Because Jesus has promised to be here in these sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion.  And God always keeps God’s promises.

This is not to say that you are going to have an earth-shattering, mind-blowing lighting strike of God’s presence every time you come to church or hold your hand out for the bread and wine.  It doesn’t work like that.  And if it did, it wouldn’t actually be a sacrament.  It would be like an addictive drug that promises this super-sensory explosion of mind and body, but leaves you ravaged by its power.  And all you would want to do is get another hit of this God-drug.  You wouldn’t be free to go out into the world and live your life.

So that’s not how the sacraments work.  Instead, it’s like the steady, slow work of nurturing your mind, body and spirit over a lifetime.  Remember last week when I said that good preaching is like eating a good meal because it feeds you and keeps you strengthened for the long haul?  Well, communion is the actual meal.  It is God’s Word that you can see, taste, smell, hear, touch.

“Come and see,” is what Jesus said to the disciples.  He bids them to follow him and experience the life of being a disciple in the world for themselves.  Certainly they witness earth-shattering, mind-blowing instances of Jesus’ power and miracles.  But Jesus knew that if they only focused on getting their “Jesus-high,” they would not be free to go out into the world and live their lives, doing the work he was equipping them to do.  So the sacraments of baptism and communion are the gifts of his presence that he gave in order to initiate us into this new life, and then to sustain us as we walk this walk together, build this kingdom together.

When you receive communion, you are literally “together with” Jesus.  That’s what communion means – “com” = with; “union” = joined or together.  You are together with Jesus in this sacrament because he promised to be here.  We don’t claim to know exactly how this happens.  As Lutherans, we are content to live with the mystery and trust in the promise. 

In addition to being together with Jesus, we are together with all the other Christians who gather around the table, both in this church, and in all churches around the world, with our homebound members who receive it at their bedside, with hospice patients who receive that small bite of bread and that small sip of juice as one of their “last suppers.”  Not only that, we are together with every Christian who has ever taken communion in the past – all the saints who came before us and now feast with God in heaven.  Not only that, we are together with every Christian who has not even been born yet who will take communion in the future.

When you come up and receive this “foretaste of the feast to come,” you are taking place in what’s called a “kairos” moment – a timeless, eternal moment that connects people across time and space.  When you think about it, it really is a mind-blowing, earth-shattering!

But I have to admit, when I take communion, I’m not always thinking so big and deep.  Often I’m just hearing the words “for you.”  And as much as I want to be selfless and connected with the universe and all of space and time, because I am a human being, it often just comes down to little ole me.  And sometimes I gasp thinking that all of this timelessness and spaceless-ness is concentrated in one little morsel, one small sip – for me.

What are you looking for?  We’re looking for God.  Where can we find God?  Come and see.  Amen.

A Sermon About Preaching

A Sermon on Preaching

The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade

January 12, 2014

Text:  John 1:1-18

[This sermon was part of Teaching Liturgy Sunday, Part One, which focused on The Word within the Gathering-Word-Meal-Sending order of Lutheran worship.  The video of the sermon can be found here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s44FIAoeXuA&feature=share]

Remember that sermon you heard one time that touched your heart so deeply, you felt that the pastor was talking directly to you?

Or how about the time when you heard a pastor preach and you felt your mind open in a way that freed you to think differently.  It just changed your whole perspective on things.

Do you know what was happening in those sermons?  God was communicating with you.  God was talking to you, working on you, inviting you into a new way of feeling, thinking, and acting.  Isn’t it amazing that God uses ordinary human words - ordinary human beings – to speak to us?

When we talk about “The Word of God,” preaching is part of that. The Word of God is a multivalent phrase, which means that it points to many different things.  For one, it means the actual “word” that God spoke in the beginning.  As we read in the first two verses of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.”  Thus “the Word of God” is also Christ, the Word incarnate, made flesh among us.  And more, “the Word” is also Scripture.  We proclaim that in and through these words in the Bible inspired by the work of the Holy Spirit and written by humans, as imperfect as they are, we can encounter God. 

Preaching, too, can be a means by which you encounter God.  In the preaching event we see all aspects of the Word come together.  God’s Word in Scripture is incarnated once again in the interpretation of the preacher and in his or her relationship with the congregation, which is yet another manifestation of the Spirit of Christ.  You and I are God’s Word, because we were spoken into existence as a Christian community by the words of Baptism and Holy Communion.  And when we gather around the font and table, and around words of Scripture, two things happen.  We read them, but they also read us.  They shape us as individuals and as a gathered people of God.

These Words in the Bible are not dead words of ancient times that have no meaning today.  This is not a museum book.  It is meant to be the living Word of God.  And it is through the ongoing, fresh and contemporary work of preaching that the Word comes alive in the speaking and the hearing. 

Good preaching should feel like a good meal, like you’ve been fed.  It should nourish your soul and your mind and your heart in some way.  Sometimes in a sermon you’ll be offered a taste of something you’ve never tried before, or something that is a little hard to chew.  You’ll need to trust that the preacher has the best intentions and your best interests at heart.  And good preaching over a period of time should offer a Word from God on many different topics, Bible passages, and theological themes.  Not every sermon is going to be a gourmet meal, or a bowl of your favorite ice cream.  But if it’s nourishing and has at least a little good flavoring, it will do wonders for your appetite for God’s Word. 

As one churchgoer said to another, “I may not remember every meal my spouse made over the years.  But I know I was fed nourishing food that sustained me day to day.  In the same way, I may not remember every sermon in detail.  But I know I was fed on the nourishing Word of God that sustained me week to week.”

Over time, a preacher develops a relationship with his or her parishioners that should help them develop their relationship with God.   Sometimes God’s Word, spoken by and through the preacher, will make your squirm by holding a mirror up to you and our world to show you how things really are.  That’s what Luther called “Law.”  But ultimately the purpose of preaching is to proclaim God’s presence, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit working in our midst.  You should hear Good News in just about every sermon.  That’s called “Gospel.”

Homilitician John McClure says that in the preacher’s proclamation of grace “God's will and power are identified not with what  . . .  is but with what will be.” [1]  This means that preaching engenders hope and cultivates faith, which is trust in God.  God’s Word in and through preaching helps us to imagine a new future and gives us the means and motivation to live as if that future is already happening now. As McClure says, “Anticipation of a new future grounded in faith in God conditions and motivates life.  The Christian life is one of hope, consciousness-raising, learning from and suffering with the oppressed . . . , hope for and involvement in the work of social transformation, and joy in the present, rooted in faith's hope for and vision of the future." [2]

That future has already been started in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  It is the promise of the resurrection that gives us the commission and power to preach.  “Go and make disciples,” says Jesus.  “Feed my sheep,” says Jesus.  “I am sending you,” says Jesus.

Come to God’s Word.  Be fed with God’s Word.  Be filled with hope and faith in God’s Word.  And be sent with God’s Word, the light of the world.  Amen.

McClure, John S. Other-Wise Preaching:  A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics. St. Louis, MI: Chalice Press, 2001.

---

[1] John S. McClure, Other-Wise Preaching:  A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics (St. Louis, MI: Chalice Press, 2001), 137.

[2] Ibid., 137.

Epiphany Sermon: Star Light, Star Bright

Sermon – The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade, PhD

Epiphany Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014

United in Christ Lutheran Church, Lewisburg, PA

Watch the video of this sermon here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNf76TTyi10

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.

There’s something about stars that have captured the imagination of human beings from the time they gathered around ancient fires, watching the sparks fly up into the darkened sky. 

Long before there were Kindles and iPods, televisions and movies, or electric lights of any kind to illuminate our nights, the stars were the only companions to humankind once the sun went down.  And so they would watch those tiny pinpricks of light, looking at them night after night, observing how they would seem to move slowly across the sky.  Soon they were seeing images in the sky, the stars becoming points in connect-the-dots pictures of great warriors, animals, gods and goddesses. After gazing at the night sky in and out of seasons, these early astronomers began to recognize patterns of movement, predicting the location of the stars according to the time of year.  They learned they could guide the direction of their travels by coordinating them with the stars.

They began to give names to the lights that were most prominent, and those names are still with us to this day – the planets we call Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on.  They assigned the names of these fixed stars to the constellations known as the Zodiac.  

And they saw a connection between the motions of the stars and planets to life here on Earth, a practice known as astrology.  They would try to make sense of the world around them, make predictions about significant human events by watching the signs in the skies.  When they observed something out of the ordinary, it caught their attention.

And so these wise men in Matthew’s story, also known as the Magi, were both astronomers and astrologers.  They were like early versions of scientists making observations, but they also tried to interpret the meaning of what they saw.  And in the year 2 B.C. when they saw the planet Jupiter, one of the brightest stars in the sky, pass very close to the star Regulus, “the King’s star” as it was known, they knew something amazing had happened among humankind.  Today astronomers can use sophisticated instruments and planetariums to reconstruct what the stars looked like in the sky on any given night in history.  And they know that over a period of eight months in that year Jupiter passed by Regulus three times, appearing to draw a crown in the sky.  And then in the ninth month, Jupiter and Venus – the two brightest stars in the sky – passed so near to each other in their planetary travels that they appeared to fuse into a single brilliant star in the sky.  

The Magi knew that this occurrence was nearly unheard of, and so they were compelled to follow where that star seemed to lead them.  And that is how they came to be in Bethlehem of Judea inquiring about a newborn king.  They were overjoyed to find the home of the child called Jesus.

His parents, however, were most likely perplexed by the sudden visit of these strange Magi from distant lands.  Star or not, imagine how strange, how disconcerting it must have been for Joseph and Mary to open the door to their home and find these foreigners standing on their door step.  The author Elizabeth Berg in her creative imagining of that scene in her book The Handmaid and the Carpenter describes how Joseph was very suspicious of these strangers, with their odd clothes, their foreign language, and their different looking faces and skin tones.  He wanted to keep these foreigners out of his house, away from his family.  But they insisted on giving his newborn son gifts befitting a king. 

Many of us would have reacted similarly to Joseph.  We are taught to be suspicious of strangers.  We are told that foreigners are not to be trusted, that they are out to get us or take what we have.  Reams of newspaper pages and scads of blogs are written about why strangers from other lands should not be welcomed, why they should be kept out, and the harm that they are doing to us.  We build walls and establish policies, construct entire bureaucracies and schedule segments on our talk shows concerning what to do about the foreigner.

And yet in this story in Matthew’s Gospel, the message is simply this:  the foreigners have a gift to give. They offer gold, frankincense and myrhh.  But even more importantly, they share important information about Herod’s intention to destroy Jesus.  With these gifts of knowledge and priceless goods, Joseph is able to escape with his family and keep them safe.  The wise men, of course, also receive a gift – simply seeing the Christ child, the one whom the star pointed to as the King.

How do you react when you encounter the foreigner, the stranger who looks different from you, practices a different religion from you, has a skin color different than yours, comes from a place far from where you and your family live?  Our first tendency is to pull back, recoil, put a barrier between us and them.  Use derogatory names, tell crude jokes about them, pass laws against them.  We want to protect ourselves from what we are afraid of that we project onto them. 

You’ll notice many stories in the Gospel of Matthew about what it means to encounter the stranger, the one outside of your circle.  Keep an eye and an ear out for these stories this year as we read through his Gospel.  Because the people in Matthew’s circle were very worried about the wrong people getting in and messing things up.  They were very concerned about keeping themselves safe, pure and protected from outsiders, foreigners, immigrants, strangers.  So here in this second chapter, he sets the tone for what it means for humankind that this baby King has been born into the world.  Matthew shows us that even the stars in the sky are leading us to practice a radical hospitality, to trust in the God who created the planets and stars circling in their nightly eternal dance, to open ourselves to someone new coming into our circle and bringing us unexpected gifts.

I’ve seen that happen in this congregation.  Ever since Garrett Baker led the series this past summer on “Our Neighbor’s Faith,” people have been curious to learn more about those who practice different religions than ours.  

We’ve had a Muslim woman prison chaplain in her hajib telling us about Islam, what we share in common, and what is different.  We’ve had Jewish students and a Jewish professor talk to us about their faith. We had a woman talk to us about Unitarian Universalism.  And in the coming months we’ll be visited from people of the Sikh, Buddhist, and perhaps even Hindu faith. They are different than us, outsiders, foreigners.  And yet the light of Christ shining in this place has drawn them here.  Each of those who have visited with us so far has told me how much they have appreciated their visit – the  questions, discussions, and hospitality from those they met in the forums.  They may not worship the Christ as we do, but they can certainly see the light of Christ through us, opening the way to new understanding, connections, and perhaps even friendship. 

And I know some of you have received the gifts of wisdom that our neighbors of other faiths have offered.  One of our members attended the session about Judaism and gratitude and shared with me later how much the presenter’s words had meant to her.  She even wrote them down, and they became like a beacon of light for her, a star guiding her through a difficult road in her life.

From the heavens, from the point of view of those stars, our differences would not be visible, any more than we can notice distinctions between those planets at such a distance.  Our Earth is simply part of another constellation, a green and blue orb swirled in vaporous clouds.  And yet on this planet, God created life and saw fit to enter that life in all its messiness, all its beauty, all its danger, all its wonder.  Who knows, maybe some other being light years away is looking at us, making a wish upon our star.

The light that you radiate as a Christian should be one that shines with peace and hospitality that simply glows.  And as a parishioner shared with me in a quote last evening, “Your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God.”  When people encounter you at church, at the dinner table, in the waiting line, in the office, in the car, on the Internet, anywhere on this planet, whether you are a stranger traveling or a host welcoming: receive the gifts offered to you with graciousness.  And let the light of Christ shine in you so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.  Amen.

 

Sources: 

Levy, David H., “Star of Wonder,” Parade Magazine, December 23, 2001, pp. 8-9.

Berg, Elizabeth, The Handmaid and the Carpenter, New York, NY, Ballentine Books, 2008

Book Review: Resisting Structural Evil and Flight Behavior

ECOPREACHER HAS NOW MOVED TO PATHEOS.COM!

To read Leah Schade's joint book review of:

Harnessing “The Butterfly Effect”:

A Joint Book Review of

Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda 

and

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver 

CLICK HERE:  
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/04/butterfly-effect-joint-book-review/

Green Shoots from Dead Stumps

Sermon – The Rev. Leah Schade

Advent 2, Dec. 8, 2013

Texts:  Isaiah 11:1–10, Matthew 3:1–12

Do you sometimes feel like you’re surrounded by nothing but dead stumps and cold ash leftover from the hot fires?

There are women in Afghanistan whose hands and lips and noses have been chopped off, burned off with acid because their actions were judged immoral.  There are children hobbling around on wooden legs because they’ve got nothing but a stump left from when they stepped on a leftover war bomb as they were playing in the field.

There are literal stumps all over our deforested globe, from the rainforests of South America, to the Appalachians in Pennsylvania  – millions of acres of what used to be beautiful, lush, green, thriving communities of plants and animals, now just clear-cut, burned out acres either mined for air-choking coal or being prepared for the monoculture of a single crop to feed a too-fast growing human  overpopulation.

Sometimes the axe cuts closer to home. The strong tree that used to be your job – bearing you good fruit, a steady paycheck, meaningful work, the feeling that you were making an important contribution to this world, providing you stability and friends, and something constructive to do with your time.  Now just a stump, cut down by the corporate axe, or maybe your own mistakes – and the branches that supported that good fruit are gone up in smoke.

The beautiful tree of a relationship you thought you could count on.  Maybe your mother or father, maybe a brother or sister, maybe a son or a daughter, maybe life partner or a dear friend.  That relationship used to bear good fruit.  Affection, nurturing, laughter, good advice, a shoulder to cry on, a good swift kick in the butt when you needed it, but most of all a steady, strong love that sheltered you like the branches of a tree in summertime.  And now, you look and there is just a stump.  Maybe the person betrayed you.  Maybe you said and did some hurtful things.  Or maybe the axe of death just came out of nowhere and chopped it down.  Now there is nothing but a stump. 

The Israelites knew something about dead stumps. 

Our reading from Isaiah was written at a time when the Israelites were in exile.  They watched foreign invaders come into their homeland, burn their city to the ground, take all the precious holy items from their temple, and then tear it down to rubble.  They watched soldiers kill their babies and rape their wives, sisters and daughters.  They watched their bravest men cut down, clear-cut to make way for the forcible removal of the few who survived the siege.  They watched their sons and daughters taken away, blown to the wind like ashes left from the fire. 

They watched their king, a descendant of David, dethroned and killed.  They watched their whole world fall apart, burn to the ground, and get chopped down by the blade of the axe.  Imagine the depression they must have felt, living in chains, far from home, laughed at by their captors, mocked, ridiculed, teased about their God who seemed like nothing but a dead stump. 

And then, like a voice crying out in the wilderness, comes a prophecy from Isaiah:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
²The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

³His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth (NRSV)

Isaiah is saying to his fellow Israelites – do not lose heart!  There is one coming who will lift us up out of the ashes, who will restore hope to our people. 

There is a place in Huntington County, PA, where my father and I used to go hunting in the woods when I was a young girl.  One fall morning we walked down one of our favorite pathways, expecting to see the familiar greens, oranges, reds and yellows of autumn.  But instead we saw only black and greyness.  A fire had gone through the area just a few weeks before.  I was shocked and heart-broken to see the charred remains of leaves, young saplings, logs and undergrowth. I felt like I was standing in a burned out graveyard – with only stumps remaining like headstones memorializing the life that had been. “It’s gone,” I cried.  “Oh, it’s gone forever!”

“Not forever,” said my father.  “Look,” he said, pointing to a mass of blackened debris on the ground.  He got on his knees and I joined him.  Jutting up out of the darkness was a green clump of grass.  A little further on, we noticed shoots of a young sapling coming up out of the burned ground.

“It will take some time,” my father said.  “But just you wait.  When we come back here in the spring, things will be growing.  By next fall, you’ll see just how well a forest can recover from something like this.  In a few years, the new growth will have taken over and animals will be able to live here again.”

And he was right. I kept coming back every year and noticed how the color of charcoal receded and the colors of a living forest returned.  Though some of the trees forever bore the blackened scars of that fire, the forest restored itself to a verdant, life-giving, life-sustaining ecosystem.

It took a long time for the Israelites to see their recovery.  It would be a generation before they were allowed to return to their land, to their home.  And when they got back, they were devastated by what they saw.  But the words of Isaiah kept ringing in their ears, because he proclaimed the words of their God reassuring them that life would return to their people and to their land.

Their history constantly reassures them of the power of their God to heal and to restore and to make all things new. 

            Didn’t God restore the earth for Noah after human sinfulness brought on the devastating floodwaters?   

            Didn’t God strategically place Joseph in Egypt to feed his family in Egypt when a devastating drought fell on the land of the Israelites?

            Didn’t God drive back the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could leave behind their lives of slavery and oppression?

            Didn’t God lead them through the desert places and send manna when there was no food and tell Moses to strike the rock when there was no water?

            Didn’t God take Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones and show him how his Spirit would gather the holy remnant together and join bone to bone, create muscle and connective tissue and skin and hair and restore the community again?

            Didn’t God do all this and more?  Then why are you cast down, O my soul?  And why are you disquieted within me?

            Why are you standing there looking at your burned out, cut down stumps and crying?  Why aren’t you looking for green shoots?  Why aren’t you hearing the words of your God – “This devastation is not forever.  Look – see even now, I am restoring something new in your life.  Just you wait, when you come back around to this next season, you will see a change.  By next year, you’ll see just how well you can recover from something like this.  In a few years, you’ll look back and though you will still be able to see the scars, you’ll see just what I am capable of restoring and healing and recreating in your life.”

            Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you depressed within me?  Why aren’t you going out to proclaim to the world the prophecy of Isaiah?:

⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb,  The Taliban shall live with the Afghan women and not harm them and shall treat them as equals worthy of respect.

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,  the soldier shall play with the child in the fields because there will be no more hidden bombs because war will be no more.

the calf and the lion and the fatling together, The ecologist and the corporate developer and the ecosystem together shall find a way to co-exist that honors all life and puts boundaries on human consumption and learns to live within a sustainable way of life.

and a little child shall lead them.  A little child born two thousand years ago in a little town of Bethlehem, a tiny green shoot coming out of the chopped off, burned out stump of his ancestor Jesse.  A little child named Jesus shall lead them.

⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, the evil powers that overcome relationships will recede and they will graze upon the things that sustain like honesty and respect and faith and mutual upbuilding.

 their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  Corporations will no longer feed on the flesh of consumers, on the flesh of their employees, hunting them like lions and devouring them until there is nothing left but bones.  Businesses will learn to see their work as service, to turn from their sinfulness and be led to value even the lowest employee with a sustainable wage.

⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  People will no longer die of diseases caused by toxic chemicals spewed into the air or poured into the water.  Children across the globe will no longer die of dysentery because they will all have access to clean water and good medical care and healthy, nutritious food.

⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;  They will no longer cut off a mountain at its roots just to get to the coal buried deep inside.  They will no longer clearcut forests and uproot natural lands and build dams that flood whole communities just to make money from selling electricity.

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.  The earth is already full of the knowledge of the Lord and seeks to teach us how to live equitably, sustainably, peacefully.  The waters of the sea seek to teach us how to renew and restore, calling on the power of God to cleanse all the earth from toxic sin.

¹⁰On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples;

See the risen Jesus standing outside the grave with his scarred hands and his pierced feet

And the angels calling from heaven, He is Risen – Look he stands! Like a green blade rises from the buried grain.  He stands like a green shoot coming up out of the dead stump.  He stands like hope shaking off the dirt and rubble and the burial clothes from her body and rising up once again. 

He stands!  And you stand because he lives in you and he breathes in you and he has baptized you and he has restored you and he has given hope to you and he is resurrecting you.  He stands!  And you stand!

The nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

People from all over are going to look at you standing and they’re going to say, why do you stand, when you should be collapsed on the ground, why do you stand, when your world is falling apart and your body is falling apart and the axe is lying at your roots and there’s nothing left of you but a sad old stump, why do you stand?

And you’re gonna say . . .  and you’re gonna say .  .

Because Jesus stands!  Because Jesus lives!  Because Jesus has restored all things!  Because Jesus is in me and Jesus stands!  And his dwelling  . . . his dwelling shall be . . .. his dwelling shall be glorious!!  He stands!

 

Advent Sermon – Paying Attention to What Really Matters

The Rev. Leah D. Schade

Advent 1, Dec. 1, 2013

Matthew 24:36-44; Romans 13:11-14

View the video of this sermon here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-rHJBaMv3o

There they were – the faithful followers eagerly awaiting the coming of God’s Kingdom.  They stood gawking up at the sky with a calendar in one hand and a stop watch in the other.  They were giddy with an excitement that had spread far and wide.  Surely, the time was almost upon them – the end was almost here!

Am I talking about the disciples with Jesus?  No!  I’m talking about the followers of Harold Camping who had convinced thousands of people that May 21, 2011, would be the end of the world as we know it. 

Family Radio Network, the company that sponsored Camping, had a huge countdown clock on their website.  They spent millions of dollars advertising about the end-of-the-world.  No matter that the 89-year-old man had been wrong before in his 1994 end-times prediction.  This time he was sure he had gotten it right.  The hype was unbelievable.

And then the hour arrived - 6:00 on May 21^st came and went.  No earthquakes rumbled across the planet.  No fire fell from the sky.  The planet kept on spinning as it has done for billions of years.  One of Camping’s devoted followers stood in the middle of New York’s Times Square, after having spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world, nearly speechless with confusion and disbelief.  “I can’t tell you what I feel right now . . . I don’t understand it.  I don’t know.  I don’t understand what happened.  Obviously I haven’t understood it correctly because we’re still here,” he said.[1]

Well, he’s in good company.  Because Jesus himself said he didn’t even know when the end of the world would occur.  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  Strange that even the Son of God did not claim to know the end of time, but Harold Camping, like so many apocalyptic fanatics before him, were so sure.

Of course, we all breathed a little sigh of relief on May 22.  I called a friend of mine that day and said jokingly, “Oh, I’m so disappointed to get hold of you.  I thought for sure you’d have been taken up in the rapture by now.”  And we had a good laugh.  But then then we soberly reflected on a deeper reality.  The world actually did come to an end for tens of thousands of people on May 21, 2011.  In fact, 70,000 people died that day.  That’s approximately how many people die every day on the earth.  Endings are a natural part of life.  What is distressing is how many of those deaths were due to human cruelty and systemic evil.  In fact, 7000 of the people who died on May 21 suffered from entirely preventable maladies such as malaria, water-borne illnesses, infections, and hunger – all in the poorest places on earth.  People in those areas don’t get hyped up about global cataclysmic catastrophes.  The end of the world has already swept through their villages, lives and bodies, with or without Harold Camping’s predictions.

The real sin is just how much money was spent on this end-times campaign for absolutely no reason.  “Family Radio spent millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message.  In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.”[2] 

I know their motivation was to save souls for Jesus.  But if you really want to save souls, you need to spend that money on saving their bodies first.  All those millions of dollars could have been invested in the things that Jesus does call us to do:  feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and help all those who are most vulnerable. 

The other reality is that the end is coming.  Maybe not today.  Maybe not next week, or next month, or even in the next few years.  But and end is coming to the way of life as we know it.  The sun melting the polar ice caps because of the depleted ozone layer; hurricanes and climate changes are wreaking havoc on the earth.

  People are indeed scared, and with good reason.  Always the next terrorist attack looms on the grey horizon.  Always the random act of violence or the planned military attack of so-called enemy nations threatens our peaceful existence. 

But no matter how much we try to distract or protect ourselves from it  -- bad things are going to happen.  There was the flood of the typhoon in the Philippines and Hurricane Sandy before that and Hurricane Katrina before that, and many more catastrophic weather events to come. 

And at some point, the world as you know it is going to come to an end.  You will get the news from your doctor that will change your world. You will lose your job or retire. Your relationship with who you thought would be your life partner will end.  Your friend or family member will die.  You will die.  

Two women set out for work in the morning.  One comes home in the evening, one does not.  Two men are making supper, one collapses suddenly, one is still standing.

But there is a fine line between being prepared and being worried to the point of distraction.  It’s very easy to tip from having a healthy concern about the future, to reacting with fear about what might happen.  And our culture and the consumer machine around us feeds on this fear, reaping an incredible amount of wealth from our intangible feelings of worry and dread.

So what are we going to do with this?  How do we live with the reality of the end times in whatever form they come?  Well, look again at our Scripture from Luke and Acts.  Jesus instructs his disciples to “keep awake.”  The Greek word is “gregorio” and it means to keep watch, to pay attention, to wake up. 

How do we do that? 

Our Buddhist friends have a word for this.  It’s called “mindfulness.”  It means being in the moment, attending to your life, keeping your attention on the people and tasks before you.  It means putting aside those things that are trying to distract our brains from paying attention.

In our consumerist culture it is becoming increasingly harder to do this.  It saddened and angered me on Thanksgiving that the one day that has been respected as sacred time in our country has now been violated by stores opening as early as 6 p.m. for shopping.  Thanksgiving was the one interfaith Sabbath day in our pluralistic society – a day regarded as holy, set apart from the frenzy of acquiring more and more.  But a line was crossed this year, and not even that day is sacred anymore.  How are we supposed to pay attention to the things that really matter – family, friends, serving the community, and simply resting – when we are distracted by blaring announcements of “incredible store-wide savings”!  Not to mention all the workers who are forced to choose between their jobs and their families when the corporate demand for “more” violates their sacred time.

Christians, this is where our message becomes countercultural and will be regarded with hostility by many.  Our Scriptures are very clear that there are values that ground us to the love of God and hopeful expectation for the coming of Christ.  St. Paul reminds us to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, [to] live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not by giving in to extreme sensual pleasure or disregarding the sacredness of time and space, not in fighting or desiring what others have,” (Romans 14:12-13, paraphrase).

I invite you to live your life differently this Advent.  Instead of succumbing to the cultural and consumerist expectations of spending hundreds of dollars on presents, that you talk with your family and friends about giving the gift of “presence” instead.  Presence – meaning spending time together, talking, listening, walking, creating, doing something that does not require the exchange of money. 

It may feel awkward at first, and you may even feel like you’re letting people down or copping out.  But remember – it is not God who is telling you to put thousands of dollars on your credit card.  It is not Jesus who is demanding that you worship at the altar of the mall.  It is not the Holy Spirit who is guiding you to aisles and aisles of prettily-packaged goods all waiting to disappoint as soon as the wrapping is thrown away.

St. Paul says, “Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh to gratify its desires.”

People like Harold Camping and advertising executives have a great deal of money to make from our feelings of inadequacy, our fears, and our insatiable desires for more.  Camping convinced his followers to give him their money to secure their place with God.  Our capitalist society convinces its followers to give their money and acquire so many material goods with the false hope of securing their future and keeping the end away.

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that is the relationships we cultivate that matter.  Our relationships with our friends and family, our co-workers and people at church, and especially those who suffer who I don’t even get to see.  My relationships with them matter too.  I want to live my life paying attention to them, honoring them, treating them as bearers of Christ.  When I do that, I am much less afraid of the end.  I am filled with joy of the Holy Spirit!  I don’t care whether it’s Harold Camping or or my doctor or my next-door-neighbor who tells me that the world is coming to an end.  I’m going to say, help me pay attention, Lord.  Show me how I can praise you.  Show me how I can serve your people.  Show me how I can be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Show me how I can be ready for the coming of Christ.  Amen.

---

[1] McKinley, Jesse, “The only rapture was in the anticipation,” Philadelphia Inquirer; New York Times News Service, Sunday, May 22, 2011; A4.

[2] Ibid