@EUCC Sermons

Wanting to live, not die; wanting to thrive not just survive, these are the sentiments that inspired Isaiah, too.

Retrace the steps of Joe Buck’s life and you will find a trail map that resembles the treacherous path that Isaiah described. Joe’s military service and his fight with cancer are just two of the formidable and formative experiences that shaped his spiritual journey. These hardships tested and strengthened him, and his commitment to work for a better world. They taught him the necessity and the veracity of hope.

Joe, like so many other veterans whom I have known, became an ardent proponent of peace. Joe never forgot what it was like to be a medic on the battlefields of Europe and have to run from body to body trying to decide how to ration morphine, tie tourniquets, and choose which soldiers to carry back to the M.A.S.H., because there weren’t enough medics or time or doctors to save everyone who was wounded. These grim realities of war galvanized Joe’s commitment to work for peace.

I served in Upstate New York during the Gulf War. The younger generations dressed like beatniks headed to Peace Park for a Vietnam War protest. They were quick to organize marches around the town square, and they planted a peace pole next to the church entrance. Joe was solidly behind them. He regularly showed up with his votive candle and sturdy walking shoes ready to go the distance for peace—no matter how long and winding that road seemed to be--and he inspired others to do the same.

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While I do think that God sides with the vulnerable, I think that taking a literal interpretation of The Great Judgment is wrong. And, it’s wrong because the larger heuristic of the New Testament teaches that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our works.

New Testament scholar Douglas R. A. Hare, who is an expert on Matthew, has helped me understand that The Great Judgment is an apocalyptic vision in which the visionary imagines “all nations” gathered together on the last day, and that “all means all”--not just people who were affiliated with Israel.

If all means all, and Matthew says it does, then the “sheep” include Roman pagans who care for the most vulnerable, and the “goats” includes anyone who doesn’t care for the vulnerable--including so-called followers of Christ.

So The Great Judgment story prompts hearers to a life of self-assessment, and it encourages us to look for “sheep” and join their herd.

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I don’t know about you, but the Parable of the Talents has always been a bit unsettling for me.

I have empathy for the guy who buried his money in the ground. I was taught to be very careful with money, and even more careful with someone else's money. In addition, I was taught that being careful meant being conservative and that being conservative was synonymous with being faithful.

But, then, I was told this Parable of the Talents and its lesson seems to fly in the face of what I was taught. Rather than teaching the value of conservatism, and that conservatism is next to godliness, I hear Jesus teaching that we should “Go big or go home!” That’s right, Jesus teaches us to take bold, strategic risks. And, that, my friends, is a good thing, and it’s good news!

The Parable of the Talents invites us to ground ourselves in the knowledge that we worship a generous God who offers abundant blessings, rather than a stingy God who withholds favor.

Making this shift from a conservative approach to investing that fosters stinginess to a strategic approach to investing that leads to abundance requires that we accept more risk.

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So, in summary, Jesus advises his disciples that when waiting, they should live certain of, but not obsessed with, his return, prepared at any moment to be the light of the world that Jesus asked his disciples and the crowds at the Sermon on the Mount to be. Light, in fact, that glorifies God. Being prepared, therefore, is one half about lighting the way to the kingdom of heaven and one half living in hope of a better day, in hope that the kingdom of heaven will triumph.

In fact, some say there isn’t a better description of hope in the Bible. Hope is oil in your lamp. Hope is what helps you sleep when sleep is needed, hope is what helps you act when action is required, hope picks you up when your efforts to help those who suffer fail and you must endure longer.

Reflecting on this story, I think that regardless of how the election turns out, whether one’s candidate wins or loses, whether the map is blue or red or shades of purple, whether half the people are staunch Democrats and half the people are life-long Republicans, being prepared, truly prepared, means we who call ourselves Christian must have hope and be light by acting on behalf of that kingdom of mercy and compassion.

From today, we must worry less about 145 million who voted and how they voted and more about the 38 million people who live in poverty, earning less than $33/ day, the 27 million who do not have health insurance, the 19 million who do not have access to the internet, the 12 million or more who are unemployed, and all those who suffer mental illness, drug addiction, and live without housing, food, or assistance. And those are just the neighbors who live within the boundaries of our nation. As challenging as it seems, God calls us to be a light of mercy and compassion to the entire world.

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Sadly, human history is filled with examples of potentates blaming their victims for problems that they create or are unable to alleviate. But the good news for us as Christians, which we celebrate today, is that suffering is not our purpose. Death is not our end. There is a life beyond this life, where even death itself has died. And, until we arrive at heaven’s gates, and experience that peace that passes all understanding, we continue to experience a mixture of happy/sad days.

All Saints Day provides us with a special occasion to carve out and create a safe space for us to acknowledge these facts, and to attend to our grief so that we might also express our gratitude for those whom we have loved and lost, and experience the hope that comes through faith that our loved ones have gone to God, and where they have gone, we will one day go too.

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Moses mentored and commissioned Joshua, but the two were cut from very different cloth. Moses led the Israelites like an 18th century wagon train leader on the American frontier, while Joshua led the Hebrew people into Canaan like a 15th century Spanish conquistador landing on the shores of a continent they colonized. Moses was a nomadic shepherd. Joshua was a charismatic military leader.

Both prophets had to unite and inspire their people, and both faced a myriad of unanticipated challenges. But the challenges that each faced were very different. Moses led indentured slaves through the wilds of the Wilderness, while Joshua had to turn a band of shepherds into soldiers to conquer Cana. Both leaders were successful in their roles, because their respective gifts and graces for leadership were well matched for times in which they were called to serve.

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The prophet specifically asks God to grant him a specific blessing. That blessing was for God to show his “glory” to Moses--so that he might have more credibility with the people. But what does that mean? What does it mean for God’s glory to be revealed?

The term is multivalent. Based on how it is used both here, in verse 18, and in Exodus 16: 6-7, it seems that God’s glory is equated with God’s “aura,” with God’s radiance or with a light shining around God’s face. So that’s what Moses asks for. He asks to see God’s radiance, God’s face. But, as it turns out, he doesn’t get what he asks for.

On first blush, God declines Moses' request and counters with the offer to send an angel to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan, but God refuses to continue on the journey with the Hebrew people.

But Moses perists.

God counters with a reminder that the Hebrew people were a mess. They wouldn’t follow a leader if their lives depended upon it. So it would be better if God just sent an angel to lead them, and they parted company while the relationship was still amicable.

Moses agreed with God that the people were unworthy of the blessing that he had requested, but Moses repeated the request anyway--perhaps as much for his own sake as for the sake of the people.

Finally, for reasons that are not entirely clear, God compromises and tells Moses that if he stands in the cleft of the mountain while God passes by, God will reveal his backside to the prophet. Moses was not entirely satisfied with the deal that God proposed, but he accepted it.

Moses stepped into the cleft of the rock, and God did as God said. God revealed his backside to Moses, and the prophet went back to “herding cats” in the Wilderness, and God led the way to the Promised Land.

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Consider for a moment this modern case study of power, punishment, and mercy that is playing out in the State of Florida. You are probably aware that depending on what State you live in, committing a felony could result in a temporary or permanent suspension of your right to vote. You can also probably guess how that makes a person feel about their role in our system of government, where voting determines everything from the quality of the school your children attend to your very right to die. From 1838 to 2018, individuals convicted of felonies in Florida lost their right to vote for life. Completing their prison sentence, their parole, their probation was insufficient for restoring their fundamental right of citizenship.

Two years ago, Floridians passed a Constitutional amendment allowing felons, except those guilty of murder or sexual offense, to regain their voting rights after completing their sentence. It was estimated that 1.6 million people in Florida, roughly 8 to 10 percent of their population, would have their right to vote restored.

Then, one year ago, in 2019, the Florida State Legislature adopted legislation requiring ex-felons to pay all outstanding fees before regaining their right to vote or be punished for voting, thus creating statewide chaos and fear, as an estimated 774, 000 people sought to pay and register or simply gave up on seeking their restored rights either due to the complexity of tracking down those outstanding fees, lack of money, or fear of making another punishable error. Some claim that the Legislature’s action is blatant voter suppression, particularly aimed at black, Democratic voters, but I focus on it here as an example of how integral each of us are in public conversations about power, punishment, and mercy.

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Whether the Ten Commandments are familiar to you or not, and whether one version is more familiar to you than the other likely depends on whether you were raised in the Christian faith and, if so, which tradition you were raised in.

Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Lutheran and Calvinist Protestant traditions each have their own respective catechisms, which all list the 10 Commandments, but they don’t all list them in the same order, and they definitely don’t interpret them in the same way.

Students of Western history understand that much blood was shed and many European boundaries were altered on account of differences in the faith values expressed in these catechisms.

So even if you could care less about the order, content, or different interpretations of the 10 Commandments, you might just pause for a moment today and appreciate that the Commandments and their differing interpretation have mattered--not just to the ancient world, but the Renaissance period in Western Europe.

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According to the book of Exodus, our Hebrew ancestors regularly put this wilderness wisdom to the test during their 40-year sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai. Our ancestors were on a journey without a map, headed to a place where they had never been, and along the way, they encountered numerous obstacles, not the least of which was the lack of shelter, food, and water. And this lack of life-sustaining essentials caused them to frequently ask the question, “Is God with us?

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On Wednesday morning, I woke up coughing around 4 am to the distinct smell of smoke drifting through our house. Having experienced a house fire when I was 12 and having lived through the Oakland firestorm of 1991, I was up like a shot to sniff out every door and window, to check the news, and to close the windows.

It was agony to imagine what another week of excessive heat was going to be like with closed windows.

After months of the outdoors being our only respite from sheltering in place, we’ve been driven indoors by the heat and now, this, our ability to cool the house at night was being taken away.

For months now, and especially this week with the heat and smoke, I’ve been feeling a bit like the other 11 disciples in today’s scripture reading must have felt when Peter stood up in the boat in the middle of a storm and attempted to get off and actually walk on water.

Think about it: in the most placid of waters, the most dangerous moment for any boat, canoe, kayak, sailboat with more than one person is that moment when someone decides to stand up, get off, dive off, or disembark. I was once in a sailing class where the entire class was flunked and told to sign up for another class because we couldn’t properly handle what we should do when an idiot diving off the boat caused it to keel over. More than once, Lia and I exhausted ourselves trying to right our kayak after one of us did a crazy disembark at Lake Tahoe.

Of course, for the eleven disciples, the boat situation and Peter’s decision to disembark was much worse than anything I’ve encountered.

Look at what’s happening from their perspective: they had already had a tough day. After listening to him teach for hours, Jesus had commanded them to feed a crowd of over 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fishes. It worked out okay but it was stressful and scary.

Then Jesus had taken them to the shore and gone off by himself to pray. They had boarded a boat and headed across the sea of Galilee, but found themselves helpless in the middle of an overnight storm with wild wind buffeting their boat here and there.

When Jesus came walking toward them, they rightly thought he was a ghost rather than their teacher, a situation that Peter decided would be best rectified by asking for supernatural proof in the form of his being able to walk on water just like Jesus.

I’m sorry if I sound a little irritated by Peter, but for heaven’s sake, if we’re in a boat, in a storm, looking at what could potentially be a ghost, it isn’t exactly the best time for someone to stand up, get off the boat, and try walking across the water.

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Consider for a moment the question, “What can we learn from Jacob’s family reunion described in Genesis 45?”

One lesson that we can learn is the importance of looking at “the big picture.” In the big picture, Joseph realized that his family was starving and that his father was still alive, and that while he had a million legitimate reasons to hold a grudge against his brothers, and to pay them back for what they had done to him, Joseph gave his brothers what they needed. He granted them grace, and he gave them food and shelter. He was reunited with his family and the familiar things from his home culture again.

A second lesson that we can learn from Joseph is to focus on the future, rather than dwell on the past. In particular, we can learn how to focus on the future that God envisions for us, rather than the past which cannot be changed. Focusing on the future does not mean that we forget the past. It does not mean that we forgive without being asked for forgiveness, or without our treaspasors exhibiting amendment of life. Instead, focusing on the future means keeping our eyes on the prize, keeping our eyes on the upward call of Christ (Phil. 3:4). Focusing on the future reminds us that we have been called to a life of repentance and reconciliation, rather than rage and revenge.

Focusing on the big picture, and focusing on the future, means that Joseph (and all of us) can create a new dynamic, rather than repeating an old one. I am reminded by Joseph’s story of a declaration that my mother often made to my sister and me on the occasions when we would really get into it with each other. Both of us would try to explain that the other was at fault for starting the fight. Mom didn’t even listen to our arguments. She simply said, “I don’t care who started this fight. I only want to know who’s going to end it.”

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Hughes’ opening question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” has been echoing in my head daily since the Shelter In Place Order was announced:

What happens to a dream deferred? What happens to a child who doesn’t have a digital tablet at home, a WIFI connection, and sufficient bandwidth to participate in distance learning classes, or who doesn’t have their own study space to focus on their studies?

What happens to a dream deferred? What happens to a child who misses meals because his school is closed or her parents don’t have a car or gas money to drive to a food pantry?

What happens to a dream deferred? What happens to a child who is confined to a bedroom for days on end, because someone in the house is in isolation? What happens to children who are left without adult supervision, because their parents have to choose between work and homelessness?

What happens to a dream deferred? What happens to a high school graduate who is admitted to a selective university, but whose family has to choose between rent and tuition? What happens to a cosmetology school graduate who can’t open a shop because of COVID-19, and what happens to a university graduate who got all A’s but can’t find a job in the down economy?

What happens to a dream deferred? What happens to a DACA student--a “Dreamer”--who is repeatedly subjected to the bully talk and the bully walk of our nation’s president, who scapegoats them in an effort to rally his base for the general election? What happens to asylum seekers whose cases are frozen in court, who can’t get public benefits or apply for a job because they don’t have a Social Security number?

This past Friday morning, a reporter on NPR interviewed a panel of educators, doctors, and child welfare specialists exploring what they thought would be the impact of the pandemic and economic losses on the children who are growing up in the midst of this pandemic.

The responses ranged from mixed--depending on a variety of social factors--to very grim. One educator in particular expressed the concern that those who are children now might one day be labeled “the lost generation,” as a result of suffering the downside of social disparities related to their race, class, nation of origin, health status, and special needs.

It doesn’t take any effort to feel discouraged or to worry in these times, even if we are not among the “extremely vulnerable” groups in this pandemic.

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“While it isn’t pleasant to think about God as an opponent, if each of us is truthful about our spiritual journeys, we can probably think of a time when we at least wondered whether God was for us, or against us, in a particular struggle.

Modern psychologists add a further layer of interpretation to Jacob’s story by exploring several psycho-social possibilities for understanding what this wrestling match was all about. Perhaps you can relate. Maybe Jacob was wrestling with his feelings about Laban who had tricked him, sort of like how Jacob had tricked his twin brother, Esau.

A further possibility is that Jacob was wrestling with unresolved guilt about cheating his brother, and harboring all of those icky feelings in his heart for the past 20 years.

No matter which interpretive lens we peer through, or how many lenses we employ, in the end, perhaps we agree that Jacob not only survived his twenty-year ordeal, but he was changed by it.“

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What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for love?

My oldest and dearest friends won’t even blink. They’ll tell you without hesitation that the craziest thing I ever did for love was to fall for someone who was about to leave for Indonesia for two years--and I told her that I’d wait for her.

So that the GenZs in the congregation can better appreciate how crazy this move was, I will explain that I made this decision before modern technology had come to rural East Java where Stephanie lived. That’s right: there were no phones, no TVs, no Internet, no Facebook, no Snapchat, and no Zoom. Imagine that!

Stephanie and I wrote letters to each other using real paper and ink pens, not texts or emails. I bought aerograms in packets of 30. Aerograms are pre-stamped, self-mailing letters made of light blue paper with dark blue and red trim.

I made sure that I always had enough in stock to write at least one letter every day. Nowadays, I can’t even think of when the last time was that I wrote a letter. (Neither can my mother.)

Twenty-eight years ago, by comparison, I wrote Stephanie as many as seven aerograms a day. She kept everyone of them, including the aerograms that she sent to me. I called them “love letters.” She calls them “field notes.” (She’s a cultural anthropologist.)

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