@EUCC Sermons

Today, we join Roman Catholics and Western Protestants in reading and reflecting on the meaning of Christ’s baptism and the meaning of this sacrament in our traditions. When Christians speak of baptism, most think of water, and the main questions are: how much? a little, or a lot? And what, if any preparation, is required for baptism?

Concerns about the amount of water used and preparation required for baptism haven’t been completely settled in modern Christianity. But today most Christians agree to disagree, while quietly assuring themselves that they are right and the others are wrong.

One of the modern conventions associated with Advent and Christmas in the West is the practice of exchanging Christmas cards and letters among family, friends, and business associates.

I’ve noticed over the years that some of the Christmas letters that I have received seem just a little bit embellished when it comes to the positive stories, while the negatives are often understated.

Sadly many of these letters, which I think of as the “abridged versions” of a Christmas letter are authored by Christians, who seem to think that only good news is shareable, and that their annual Christmas letter has to reflect some idealized version of a life that doesn’t exist--at least not outside of someone’s imagination.

The Apostle Paul wrote his epistle to the Philippians from a jail cell in Rome. The overarching theme of Paul’s message in today’s passage is joy. I find the juxtaposition of Paul’s location in jail and his theme of joy more than a little ironic. How about you? I have been to jail a few times, and haven’t found it to be all that joyful. The first time I went to jail was in Advent 1988. I was fresh out of seminary, serving as Assistant Minister at the Old South Church in Boston. I went with a woman named Denise. Her husband was the Massachusetts Attorney General. I went because she asked me to serve on the Board of Directors of an organization that she helped found called “People to People.”

Paul’s style reminds me of the way that my mother’s parents used to talk to my sister and me when we were children--a tone that carried over into their letter writing to us when we were in college. Their comments were always complimentary and encouraging. Their words helped us believe that we could weather any storm. They pushed us to do greater things than we could have imagined. Their confidence and pride prodded us to be better people than we might have otherwise become.

Caiaphas was the High Priest, the leader of the Jerusalem Temple and the leader of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish law court. According to John, Caiaphas wanted something done about Jesus, because he contradicted the teachings and practices of the Jewish priests, but neither the priests nor the Sanhedrin had the authority to do away with Jesus. So Caiaphas turned Jesus over to Pilate.

According to John, Pilate saw Jesus as more of a religious heretic than a political threat, so he was reluctant to condemn Jesus to death. He knew that dabbling in religious matters could be tricky. Instead of making a definite decision about his fate, Pilate placed Jesus’ fate in the hands of the mob, who ultimately called for his crucifixion.

Today we observe All Saints Sunday, and the culmination of a week of remembering and giving thanks for the life and witness of those who have gone to God. The original celebration of All Saints Day in the Christian tradition was established by Pope Urban IV in the mid 13th century.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the first two hundred years that All Saints Day was celebrated, Christians observed the anniversary of the martyrs’ deaths at the place of their martyrdom. Because groups of martyrs frequently suffered and died on the same day, joint commemorations of the saints emerged. Eventually, other saints, not just martyrs, were remembered on All Saints Day.

All Saints Day (always on Nov 1) and All Saints Sunday (which we’ll celebrate on Nov 7 this year) are occasions when we pause with Christians around the world to remember and give thanks for those who have gone to God.

As we celebrate these occasions, we also have an opportunity to reflect on our individual and collective experiences of grief and loss, how we cope, and who and how we show up for others in times like these.

My sense as a pastor is that our individual experiences of loss are as unique as our fingerprints; and yet, there are also similar patterns in how we experience and respond to death.

For example, the death of a loved one may teach us something about ourselves. We may discover strengths that we didn’t know we had, or develop strengths that weren’t evident earlier in our lives.

Likewise, we may learn new things about our families and friends as we move through the process. Some families pull together and function in very healthy ways through grief, while others unravel.

Our “best friends” may not know how to support us and we may have trouble articulating our needs. Meanwhile, friends, and even acquaintances, may draw closer, and become very dear to us.

Consider for a moment your own experience of a loved one’s death. What have you learned about yourself through that process? What have you learned about others? Were there surprises? If you are like most people, the answer is probably “yes.”

These types of ruminations are echoed in the story of Ruth and Naomi, which is the primary text for today’s message.

Figure out how your behavior is contributing to the suffering of others, and stop it. Just stop it! And, what if we acknowledged the errors of our ways? What if we learned from our mistakes, and behaved differently? Then what?

I suspect that blind beggars and others who hover at the margins and the bottom of our society would say that we were healed of our blindness.

Some years ago I enrolled in and completed a certificate program in organizational development offered by the Business School at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.

The program was interesting and helpful for the work I was engaged in at the national offices, where I worked on executive recruitment and leadership development for our 475 UCC-related health and human service agencies. Many of the lessons that I learned in that program and during that job have been helpful to me in serving as your pastor.

That said, as I read and studied today’s gospel lesson, I could not help but notice how different Jesus’ approach to leadership development was and is compared with the best-practices approaches to leadership development that are taught in today’s most revered business schools.

Jesus' approach to leadership development was not only out of step with modern business approaches, it was contrary to the normative approaches subscribed to in the first century.

The First-Century Jewish Pharisees and Nero’s loyal legion were eager to trap Jesus in a debate that would divide his followers and conquer his reform movement, but they were never successful in doing so; because Jesus knew their laws better than they did, and he understood and offered divine grace, which the world couldn’t give or take away.

Most importantly, Jesus taught that the key to salvation was not by way of judgy doctrine, but through a spiritual disposition that was humble, and vulnerable enough to receive God’s grace and blessings.

News flash everyone: Jesus did not define his “in crowd” by how long they had followed him around or claimed that he was the Christ. No, instead, Jesus demonstrated with his words and his deeds that his people were those who affiliated with the least, the last, and the lost.

Jesus didn’t just make this claim with his words. He gave the disciples an object lesson. He spotted a child in their vicinity, he walked up to her, and wrapped his arms around her, saying: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

St. Francis of Assisi (whose feast day is Oct 4, 2021) famously said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

This is what Jesus was doing in Mark 9:36 when he took the child into his arms. He was providing his disciples with an object lesson. He was showing them--not just telling them--that if they wanted to be greatest in God’s kindom, they had to welcome the least, the last, and the lost.

God is not glorified by our silence. People outside this nation will never know that Christianity is not aligned with US imperialism if we do not open our mouths and counter that message.

People outside of our faith tradition will never know that there are Christians who follow Jesus, and who know that he is not the only way. As the Chinese proverb goes, “There are many paths up the same mountain.”

Our own children will not know that Jesus’ life and ministry mattered, and what it was all about unless we show and we TELL them.

To do that, we will have to come out Christian closets and dare to follow Christ’s example--no matter how queer we look to the larger culture--we will have to work through our anxiety and our religious baggages, because the alternative is not an option. Here that: the closet is not an option for us if we want this pandemic to end, the gap between rich and poor to narrow, and global climate change to reverse. It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard.