Extravagant Joy

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 6:25-33 and 2 Corinthians 8:1-12:

When I was serving churches in New England, I was attending a clergy meeting, although I don’t remember the purpose, but one of the other clergy there was serving a church that had a sizeable homeless population in their neighborhood that they served. And so he was talking about that, and said that during a worship service he saw one of the homeless men put a couple of dollars into the offering plate, and he went out and stopped the plate, took the money out and handed it back to the man and told him he didn’t need to make an offering. My response to that was “who do you think you are that you would stop him from giving.” Now I understand all the other arguments that could be made about someone who is homeless needing the money more than the church. Or perhaps he felt like he had to make an offering. That he would stand out if he didn’t put anything into the plates. But the flip side of all of those is our need or desire to give. That even though the man did not have a lot of money, and perhaps even what he put in was all he had, but that he was going to give because of his blessings. He was going to give out of his abundance, as Jesus says of the widow in the Temple who puts in her only two pennies, rather than trying to preserve from a sense of scarcity. I don’t know, but I do know that we all need to have the opportunity to be able to give, because giving is not a requirement, it’s an opportunity, and a response to what God has already done for us.

That was the story that came to mind this week as I was working on the passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In the letter as a whole Paul is trying to rebuild relationship with this church that he established and clearly thinks so much of, but they have come under the influence of a group that Paul facetiously calls the super apostles. But before he gets to them, he returns to a topic that he had actually been addressing to them before and that is taking up an offering for the church in Jerusalem. While the Corinthians had originally begun to do that, it appears they stopped, although why is not clear, and so Paul is giving them an example of the other churches, and notice that it is plural, in Macedonia, which is north of Greece and is possible the churches in Philippi and Thessalonica, although that’s speculation again. But what is striking is what Paul says about these churches. As they were suffering some unknown affliction, that they were still filled with abundant joy and gave out of their extreme poverty an offering overflowing “in a wealth of generosity.”

Blinded

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture was Genesis 27:1-29:

One of the common ways that God is referred to in scripture, especially in the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible is as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Some have argued, however, that God might be better referred to as the God of Abraham, Rebekah and Jacob, as Rebekah plays a much bigger role in scripture than does Isaac. Although we might also use all the matriarchs names in there as well. Last week we heard the story of Abraham getting Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife, in which Isaac is not involved until the end, and Rebekah is one of the primary actors throughout that entire story. And then we have today’s story, in which while Isaac is involved, but, again, Rebekah is the mover and driver of the story. In fact, especially in comparison to Abraham or Jacob or even Rebekah, we know very little about Isaac or his life, and have few stories about him as a character.

But what we do know is that after they marry, Rebekah remains without a child, just like Sarah, which obviously endangers the promise God has made to Abraham and to Isaac that they will have descendants more numerous than the stars. And so we are told that Isaac prays to God for assistance, and after twenty years of marriage, Rebekah gets pregnant with twins. But, they are wrestling and struggling with each other in the womb, which also presages next week’s passage of Jacob and God, and so Rebekah goes to seek guidance from God, and God tells her that there are two nations struggling within her, and “one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” It is striking that this oracle is given to Rebekah and not to Jacob, and it also appears that perhaps she does not tell Jacob that she has received this bit of information, because we are told that while Rebekah loves Jacob, who is the second born, that Isaac loves Esau.

Worry Not

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 6:25-34:

Today we conclude our series looking at the things that Jesus told us not to do.  We have looked at not fearing, not doubting; not sinning and not judging, and I would encourage you, if you missed any of those, to go watch them on our website or YouTube page.  But today we conclude by looking at Jesus’ injunction not to worry.  Now when I was putting this series together, my wife Linda, and the mother of our daughters, asked what I was going to be preaching on after Easter, and so I told her, and she said to me, “On Mother’s Day you’re going to preach on how we shouldn’t worry,” and I said “yes,” to which she said, “do you think that’s a good idea because worrying is what mothers do. It’s who we are.”  Well obviously I didn’t listen to that sound advice, and I have been worrying about it ever since, but I didn’t move it because I thought that if there is a group who is worrying all the time, then perhaps this is the message we need to hear, and if I’m wrong, please tell Linda that she was right which will be the best Mother’s Day present she will get today.

But, just like with the other “nots” we have covered, Jesus is not really telling us not to worry about things in this passage.  Indeed, there are troubles that can occur in our lives that it might be legitimate to worry about, but it’s a matter of what we consider worry worthy, and what we do with that worry, or really what that worry does with us, and this does tie into Mother’s Day.  The creation of today as a holiday came about from two movements, one of which comes from Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, who after the end of the Civil War called for the creation of a day for mothers to gather and be honored and call for peace and the end of war.  The other movement was from Anna Jarvis, who instituted the first Mother’s Day in her Methodist church, in honor of her mother who was a nurse during the Civil War, and later an advocate for peace and women’s health issues.  It is this anti-war piece that I think ties into this because there are good times to be worried, as every mother does, and one of those in when their children go off to war.  One mother at a church I served told me, after her son was sent to Afghanistan, that for the first time she truly understood Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing, because that is what she had begun to do.  So, if you have worries, that are okay, but it’s what we are worried about and how we handle that worry that makes the difference.