@EUCC Sermons

Today is World Communion Sunday. World Communion Sunday is not part of the traditional liturgical calendar and is not a practice of the ancient church. It is instead a modern commemoration, an idea that was cooked up by the Presbyterian minister Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1933.  He was hoping that by emphasizing the common sacrament of communion he could engender unity and demonstrate the interconnectedness of Christian churches, regardless of denomination.

His colleagues in the Presbyterian denomination thought it was a great idea and adopted it as a denominational practice by 1936, but it didn’t really take off as a national or worldwide phenomenon until the second world war, when it really felt like the world was falling apart. Kerr’s son recalls that, “It was during the [...] War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” (1)

In 1940 the organization that was a predecessor of the National Council of Churches, promoted the idea of celebrating world communion Sunday; The practice became widespread, and Today, World Communion Sunday is celebrated around the world. (2)

I’d like to introduce you to the gentoo penguin. I’ve never thought of myself as a big penguin lover, but I recently came across some interesting information about this particular species of penguin, and I’d like to share with you some facts. The gentoo penguin is the third largest of all of the penguin species after the emperor and king penguins, standing about 2 ½ feet tall. They are also the fastest underwater swimming birds. They can go about 22 mph which doesn’t seem very fast when you’re late for work, but it’s awfully fast for a swimmer. They are also able to dive really deep, and they even slow down their heart rate from 80 to 100 bpm all the way down to 20 bpm to allow them to stay underwater longer and dive deeper. They are mostly monogamous and they often bond for life.

There is actually a famous gentoo penguin couple, whom you may have heard about in the news lately. Their names are Sphen and Magic, and they live at the Sea Life Sydney aquarium in Sydney, Australia. They are a bonded pair that are both male. They have been together for six years, and they have actually raised chicks together. The keepers at the aquarium provided them with first a dummy egg to give them practice at parenting, and when that went well, gave them a foster egg to raise and hatch. They have been excellent parents. Sadly, Sphen died in the last couple of weeks, which is why you might have heard about them in the news. I love how this story teaches us about the wonderful diversity of creation, and that same-gender pairing is not unique to the human species. 

All of this is interesting about the penguins but there’s this last little detail that fascinated me the most and which I think it’s most relevant for our topic today. The gentoo penguins have an interesting ritual that they use during mating season; the scientists call it “pebbling.”

In the beginning.

In the beginning, Skywoman fell from a hole in the Skyworld. She fell for what seemed like eternity; eventually, she saw the world below was covered by oceans.

In the beginning, there was sky above and water below. Obatala climbed down from the sky on a golden chain and spread the sand he carried to create the earth.

In the beginning, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Creation stories from around the world are diverse and have great variation, but there is one motif that is almost universally common across many dispersed ancient cultures: the primeval waters. From the stories of the indigenous people who lived around the Great Lakes of North America, to the Yoruba people on the west coast of Africa, the Judeo-Christian tradition from the Mediterranean, and, as we have been learning this morning, to the Polynesian cultures of the Pacific Ocean, our origin stories tell of a world that began in water.

Not every creation story begins with a watery world, but so many of them do that folklorists and mythologists call the common image of a watery creation the “cosmic ocean.” In the beginning, there was water.

Today we are celebrating the 29th anniversary of Eden choosing to be an Open and Affirming congregation. For those you might be newer here and not familiar with the lingo of the United Church of Christ, Open and Affirming (or ONA) is the UCC’s designation for congregations, campus ministries, and other bodies in the UCC which make a public covenant of welcome into their full life and ministry to persons of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.

I think most of you know that I have a longer history with Eden than the almost-year that I’ve been your Designated Term Associate Pastor. In fact, I walked through the doors of the sanctuary for the first time in November of 1995– the very year that Eden voted to become Open and Affirming.

Many of you may also know that I’m one of those rare folks who actually grew up in the UCC. I was baptized, confirmed, and had my first experiences of worship leadership and diaconal ministry at Lemon Grove Congregational UCC in Southern California.

Despite these early experiences, by my mid-twenties and after a move to the Bay Area, I wasn’t really sure if traditional Christianity was still a good fit for my identity as a feminist and my decidedly nature-based sense of spirituality. I was having trouble reconciling my feminism with a faith tradition that was so rooted in the Patriarchy. I pretty much stopped attending church, except for a few times when I was invited by friends or family.

When I was a kid reading the stories in my Golden Press Children’s Bible—you know, the one from the 60s with the super Scandinavian Jesus—I usually translated myself into the male characters of the Bible. In my imagination, I identified with young Samuel hearing the call of God. Or as young David going up against the very scary Philistine warrior Goliath, with nothing but his slingshot. I don’t remember seeing myself in the lives of the women characters much, and this is probably because those women’s stories were more on the margins of the story, not front and center like Samuel and David.

Another reason is that I didn’t often hear the stories of the women preached from the pulpit or studied in Sunday School when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I was an adult and began to study the Bible more seriously that I found that the Bible— especially the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible—was FULL of wonderful, robust stories about women: Sarah and Rebekkah and Rachel and Leah; Miriam, Abigail, Ruth, Naomi, Deborah and Jael and Esther—the heroines and queens of ancient Israel.

Throughout the summer, we are exploring the theme of leadership as it’s expressed in the stories of the kings and prophets of ancient Israel. This month, we’re reading stories from the Book of 1 Samuel and the tales of Israel’s first king, Saul, and his rival and second king, David. Two weeks ago, we heard the story of God calling Samuel and pondered how God calls each of us and how we must each take up and live into that calling. Last week, we heard the story of how the Israelite people clamored for a King. The prophet Samuel told them it was a bad idea, that a king would conscript all their young people and take all their best livestock and crops in taxes, but they refused to listen to good advice, and Saul was anointed as the first King of Israel.

Because I’m a bit rebellious, today I’m doing a little off-roading and taking a detour from the lectionary text assigned for this week. This week, instead of exploring leadership from the perspective of a male figure at the center of patriarchal society, I wanted to take a look at a female figure from the edges of that patriarchal society and see what leadership can look like from the margins.