Unworthy?

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, May 29.

Unworthy?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 29, 2016

Scripture: 1 Kings 8:22-24, 41-43; Luke 7:1-10

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

He thought he was unworthy. The Roman centurion I mean. The one who sent some Jewish elders to ask Jesus to heal the centurion’s servant. He says it himself. He says he sent others to Jesus with his request for help because he didn’t think he was worthy enough to do it himself. He says he not worthy to have Jesus enter his house. He thought he was unworthy.

They thought the others were unworthy. The Hebrews thought the Gentiles were unworthy. We didn’t have a passage this morning where we hear them say it. In fact, in the passage we heard Solomon says pretty much the opposite. But that passage reminded me of passages where they say it. They say it pretty clearly in the book of Ezra, for example. The stories of that book are set after the people returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. In it Ezra is a priest. He gets really distraught because he discovers that Hebrew men have married non-Hebrew women. He orders those men to divorce their non-Hebrew wives and to send them and their children away. The text of Ezra says that marriage to non-Hebrews has polluted the Hebrew race. It has polluted the very ground of Israel. The book of Ezra says non-Hebrew women are unworthy of being married to Hebrew men. They are unworthy even of being present in Israel. The text says the people agreed with Ezra about that. They, the Hebrews, thought they, the foreigners, were unworthy.

Now, if people thinking themselves unworthy of God, and if people thinking that people not like them are unworthy of God, these passages wouldn’t be worth preaching on the way I’m preaching on them this morning. But see, unworthiness is a real thing in our world today too. It can come in different forms. Sometimes we think we are unworthy, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of love, unworthy of help, even or maybe especially unworthy of God’s grace. Christianity has done a really good job at the very bad work of making people feel unworthy. We’re all nothing but horrible sinners, we’re told. We’re all captives of original sin, we’re told. Our faith isn’t strong enough, we’re told. We don’t pray hard enough, we’re told. Christianity has also done a really good job at the very bad work of making Christians think that all non-Christians are unworthy. We have the only truth, we’re told. Our way is the only way, we’re told. Other people are all damned if they don’t convert to Christianity, we’re told. There’s unworthiness all around us today. We’re not worthy. They’re not worthy. No one, it seems, is worthy.

Why do so many people think everyone’s unworthy? I’m not sure I know the answer to that question, but I have some ideas. See, it is very much in the church’s interest, or at least in what the church mostly takes to be its interest, to make everyone unworthy. The church making everyone unworthy gives the church immense power. You’re not worthy of God’s grace, the church says, but believe what we tell you to believe, do what we tell you to do, and don’t do what we tell you not to do, and your unworthiness will be cured. The church says we have the solution to your unworthiness. Turn you lives, and your money, over to us, and we’ll see to it that your unworthiness doesn’t land you in the hell you so richly deserve for an eternity of torment. It may actually be more in the church’s interest to empower people and make them realize what God really thinks about them than it is to make everyone unworthy. But for most of its history most of the Christian church has worked really hard at making everyone unworthy.

Well, here’s the truth of the matter. God doesn’t think you’re unworthy at all. God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy at all. It’s not that we’re all perfect. Far from it. The truth is: God doesn’t care if we’re not perfect. God knows we aren’t God. God loves us just as we are. God loves everyone just as they are. That’s the truth about how God sees us, not that we’re all a bunch of unworthy bums.

We see at least hints at that truth in this morning’s scripture readings. In our passage from 1 Kings King Solomon is praying at the dedication of the temple that he has just finished building. In part of that prayer he mentions foreigners. He says that foreigners will come to the temple because they will have heard of the mighty deeds of the God of Israel. Solomon asks his God to hear their prayers and grant them. Notice: He doesn’t ask God to make them convert to Judaism. He asks God to hear and grant their prayers just as they are. To Solomon these foreigners are not unworthy the way they would be to Ezra centuries later. They’re not Hebrews, but they’re not unworthy. They are precisely they not us, but that doesn’t make them unworthy.

Then there’s Luke’s story of the Roman centurion. He’s a military commander in the Roman army. He represents a foreign, occupying force in Galilee. He’s a Gentile not a Jew. He is presumably a pagan not a follower of Jesus Christ or even of the God of Israel. Maybe he’s not as bad a guy as many Roman soldiers were. After all, the Jewish elders he sends to Jesus say he loves them and built a synagogue for them. Still, he’s one of “them” He’s a Roman. He works for the hated foreign empire that has occupied the people’s land and oppressed them with its taxes. He thinks he’s unworthy. The story doesn’t tell us why he thinks he’s unworthy. Maybe he feels guilty about what the Romans are doing to the people. Whatever the cause of the centurion’s sense of unworthiness, this story tells us that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Jesus set out to heal the centurion’s servant. Would he have done that if the Jewish elders who came to him hadn’t said nice things about the centurion? I don’t know, but I sure like to think that he would have. Be that as it may, Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy.

There’s a great lesson for us in the way Solomon didn’t think foreigners were unworthy and Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy. See, God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy. No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. There’s no one God doesn’t love. Now, an awful lot of people never benefit from God’s love because they aren’t aware of it. They deny it. They even deny the reality of God. Well, that’s their problem. It’s not God’s problem. Everyone is worthy in God’s eyes. Yes, for an awful lot of us repentance is necessary before we can really accept and live into God’s love, but God’s love is always there. For everyone. There are no unworthy people.

Which raises a pretty important question for us. No one’s unworthy as far as God is concerned, but what about us? Is anyone unworthy of love as far as we’re concerned? Well, I can’t speak for you, so I’ll speak for myself. I don’t know that there’s anyone I think is ultimately unworthy of love, but there sure are a lot of people I find it very difficult to love. I mean, people do really terrible things to other people, to other creatures, and to God’s world all the time. It’s a whole lot easier for me to hate those people than to love them. At the very least I get mad at them and sure don’t much feel like extending love to them. I’d be surprised if there weren’t people you feel the same way about.

So let me suggest something to both you and to myself. When we start thinking someone is unworthy of our love, or if we think someone is unworthy of God’s love, let’s remember the centurion in Luke’s story who thought he wasn’t worthy. And let us remember that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Let’s remember Solomon welcoming Gentiles, who a lot of Jews of his time and later thought were unworthy, to the brand new temple he had built to God. Sure. There are people we don’t like. There are people we don’t approve of. That never means that God thinks they’re unworthy. So maybe we shouldn’t either. Amen.

Reflections on Congregational Polity

Reflections on a Congregationalist Annual Meeting

On May 13 and 14, 2016, I attended the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Association of Congregational Christian Churches at Warden Community Church in Warden, Washington. This Association is the regional body of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches to which my church belongs. The Pacific Northwest Association covers the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and it consists at this time of seven small Congregational churches. Two are in Anchorage, Alaska. Two are in Oregon, and three are in Washington. One additional church, a church in Enterprise, Oregon, has applied for membership in the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Upon its acceptance into the National Association it will become a member church of the Pacific Northwest Association as well. This Enterprise church sent representatives to this year’s meeting of the Association even though that church is not yet officially a member. All of the churches that belong to the Association are invited to send representatives to an annual meeting, always held at one of the member churches, and some of them do. The local church where the meeting is held is responsible for planning, hosting, and putting on the meeting.

I was, frankly, apprehensive about attending this meeting. I serve one of the Congregational churches that belong to the Pacific Northwest Association, namely, the First Congregational Church of Maltby in Washington State. I am, however, not myself a member of the church I serve, of the Pacific Northwest Association, nor of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. I belong to the United Church of Christ. I am a member of Kirkland Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Kirkland, Washington. My ordained ministerial standing in the UCC is maintained through a four way covenant between the Pacific Northwest Conference of the UCC, the Kirkland church to which I belong, the Maltby church which I serve, and myself. At the recent meeting in Warden someone said to me “I hear you used to be UCC.” I replied “I still am.” I have no intention of leaving the UCC, and my membership in and loyalty to the UCC explains why I was apprehensive about going to the National Association’s regional meeting in Warden.

Until several years ago Warden Community Church was a UCC church. It withdrew from the UCC. I don’t know exactly why it withdrew, but I have heard that it was because the church was dissatisfied with the UCC’s progressive stances on social issues, including but not limited to its Open and Affirming position with regard to LGBT folks. I am thoroughly committed to those progressive stances the UCC takes on social issues, especially Open and Affirming. I don’t want to endorse Warden leaving the UCC. Moreover, that church from Enterprise, Oregon, that sent people to our meeting has also left the UCC, to which it formerly belonged. I don’t know why they left, although I have heard that in their case it had more to do with the church’s perception of how the regional UCC body to which it belonged, the Central Pacific Conference of the UCC, treated it (or ignored it) during some recent difficult times the church was having than it did with Open and Affirming or other social positions of the UCC. Whatever their reason for leaving, once again I don’t want to endorse that decision. I love and am committed to the UCC, and, frankly, I’m not entirely comfortable associating with churches that have turned their backs on it. Still, I made the decision to serve a National Association church, and my church wanted me to attend that recent regional meeting. So I went.

My experience at the meeting was, I suppose, better than I was afraid it might be. It turns out that two member churches of the Association, First Congregational Church of Tacoma, Washington, and First Congregational Church of Anchorage, Alaska, are Open and Affirming. I knew before I went to the meeting that the Tacoma church is Open and Affirming and was pleased to learn at the meeting that the Anchorage church is too. Virtually without exception the people at the meeting seemed to be good, decent, nice people. I had no real problems with any of them. The pastors of the Warden and Tacoma churches are impressive men, each in his own way. I learned of difficult times several of the member churches have had in recent years, difficult times not dissimilar to the one my church in Maltby went through before I began to serve them. I was pleased to learn that the Warden and Tacoma pastors are well aware of the transition our culture is making from the modern to the postmodern world and what that transition may mean for the church. I’m quite sure that Ed Backell, the pastor in Warden, is theologically more conservative than I am, but he is an articulate, energetic, and entertaining man who, I don’t doubt, makes a good and engaging pastor. All in all attending the meeting was not a bad experience, although I can’t say that I got much out of it other than the chance to meet some people and learn a little bit more about the churches with which my church is associated.

I did form one strong impression of these churches and the denominational organizations to which they belong. The members of these Congregational churches are fiercely proud of being Congregationalists. They are strongly attached in particular to the autonomy of the local church that is a hallmark of Congregationalism. They give the impression that to them local church autonomy is all that Congregationalism is about. I didn’t hear much talk at all about Congregationalism’s history of taking progressive positions on social issues. There wasn’t much talk about Congregationalism’s value of individual freedom of conscience within a local church. I sensed that for these folks Congregationalism means local church autonomy and not necessarily much more than that.

They are so fiercely proud of being autonomous that they lose sight of the other side of the autonomy coin. Yes, autonomous church are free to run their own affairs as they see fit, and for the most part that is a good thing. (Local churches are autonomous in the UCC, which has a very Congregational polity, too, a fact of which these folks seem quite unaware.) Yet the reality of the churches in the National Association seems to be that they are so autonomous that they are almost totally isolated. The National Association has national offices located in Wisconsin. I know that that office occasionally offers a modicum of help to a church that needs it, although, frankly, that help seems not to have amounted to much a few years back when my Maltby church badly needed outside help. There is no office of the Pacific Northwest Association. There is no Association staff. There are no Association committees. Some of the churches, especially the ones in Anchorage, are geographically remote from any of the other churches. The churches are left, for the most part, entirely to their own devices when they have difficulties with which they must deal. The most the regional Association could to for them is that perhaps one of the other pastors in the Association might meet with a church and offer whatever help he could ( I say he because all of the pastors in the Association at the present time are men). I sense, however, that these churches are so proud of being autonomous that they may not recognize a need for outside assistance even when they badly need it.

Let me give an example of what I find to be the shortcomings of these little churches belonging only to the NACCC and the Pacific Northwest Association. Three of the six churches represented at the recent meeting are without pastors. All three are in the early stages of a pastoral search. In that search they get no structured help from the regional Association. As nearly as I can tell the only help they get from the National Association is that that organization has a website where both churches looking for a pastor and pastors looking for a church can post information about themselves. In the UCC assisting local churches with their pastoral searches is one of the primary functions of the UCC’s regional bodies. It is not function of the National Association’s regional bodies at all, nor does it seem to be much of a function of the national organization. At our recent regional gathering two of the three churches that are looking for a pastor asked those of us who are pastors to meet with them to talk about the pastoral search process. They simply don’t know where to look for candidates. Pastor Backell from Warden suggested they look to the American Baptist Convention. I suggested that they look to the UCC. There’s no point in them looking to the National Association, for all it will give them is that website I mentioned, and these folks already know about that website. The National Association does not train persons for ministry in its churches. It does not ordain people to pastoral ministry. It does virtually no screening of people looking for a pastorate. It has no list of people approved for ordination nor of ordained people looking for a call. The three little churches at our meeting who are looking for a pastor are pretty much entirely on their own, and they seemed to be at a total loss about what to do.

Not long ago I had a brief meeting with one of my predecessors as pastor of the Maltby church. He said, with no prompting from me, that he thinks the Maltby church should join the UCC precisely because in the UCC the local churches get, or at least are offered, some significant help with pastoral searches. I couldn’t agree more. Every institutional polity of course has its pluses and its minuses. There is no such thing as a perfect polity. Yet the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches has gone so far in in the direction of local church autonomy that it consistently falls victim to the shortcomings of that polity. I believe in local church autonomy. I’m a life-long Congregationalist; but I have lived Congregationalism in the UCC, and we at least avoid some of the shortcomings of extreme Congregationalism. The National Association does not. In practice the churches of the National Association end up calling as pastor anyone who is available and willing to come. That, frankly, is why Maltby called me. I learned of Maltby’s vacancy through personal contacts, not because I was looking for a call or because the church found me through some process of the National Association. That, I suspect, is often how it often works with National Association churches. Frankly, in my opinion, that’s no way to run a denomination.

I am committed to serving my Congregational church for the foreseeable future, but I really worry about what will become of them when I eventually step down as their pastor. In their current denominational affiliation they will be as on their own as those churches I heard of at our regional meeting are today. In the recent past my church called a pastor who was affiliated with a very conservative local community church. He was a terrible match for them. He was a lot more conservative than most of them are. He was no kind of Congregationalist, throwing around pastoral authority in ways no true Congregational pastor ever would. He nearly destroyed the church. I fear the same thing could happen again. There is nothing in the polity of the National Association that could deter such a bad result of a pastoral search. The UCC’s pastoral search process of course doesn’t guarantee a good result for either a church or a pastor, but at least there are policies and practices in place that make a bad result less likely. In the National Association, there aren’t.

So at our regional meeting I met some good people. I met a couple of good pastors. I heard people speak authentically about their personal faith in Jesus Christ. All of that was very good. Yet I came away from the meeting with real concerns for my church and the denomination to which it belongs. I pray for good results for those three churches in our region who are seeking pastors. I pray for good things for my church once I leave. I wish I could be more confident that those good results would happen.

Transformed

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Pentecost Sunday, May 15, 2016.

Transformed!

A Pentecost Meditation

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 15, 2016

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

What happened to the first Christians that Pentecost day so long ago when the Holy Spirit came upon them? They were transformed, that’s what. They were changed in the very nature of their being. That’s what transformation is. It’s not just change. It is deep, radical, permanent change. Mere change can be undone, and it usually is. Mere change is superficial. Mere change changes appearances, it doesn’t change essences. Transformation is a change of a being’s essence, who that thing or person is in the core of its, his, or her being.

Look at what happened that first Christian Pentecost day. All of Jesus’s followers, not just the twelve but all of them, were together in one place. That aspect of the story tells us a lot about them, actually. At the time that this story is set Jesus has been crucified. He has risen from the grave. He has seen and talked with his disciples, and he has returned to God and is no longer with them. Yet his followers haven’t disbanded. That’s what usually happened in the Roman Empire when the authorities executed a popular movement’s leader. It’s what happened with the followers of John the Baptist after the Roman flunky King Herod executed him. It’s surely what Pilate thought would happen after he executed Jesus. It didn’t. They’re still together in this story that is set fifty days after Passover, which is fifty days after Jesus’ crucifixion. Their leader is gone, but they’re still together. They’re still together, and there aren’t very many of them. We know that because our story says that they were all together in one place. We’re not talking the Louisiana Superdome here. That place was presumably a house, or maybe only a room in a house, in Jerusalem. We may not be talking about more people than are here in worship with us today. Well, maybe a few more than that, but not many.

Acts doesn’t tell us much more about them. I think maybe we can assume that they really didn’t have a clue what to do. Yes, they had seen Jesus risen from the grave, and they’d seen him rise into heaven; but all he’d said to them before that happened was something enigmatic about them receiving the Holy Spirit and being his witnesses in the world. Awfully vague, don’t you think? I’m pretty sure they did. They were such a small group of people. The Romans had executed their leader, and for all they knew the Romans might be coming after them next. They were probably together to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Pentecost, but I imagine they were wondering what in heaven’s name they were supposed to do next.

Then it happened. The Holy Spirit came upon them like the blowing of a violent wind and like tongues of fire, and all of sudden they weren’t the same people that they had been before that happened. All of a sudden they knew how to talk to people who spoke many different languages. All of a sudden instead of being a small group holed up in some house they had attracted a crowd. All of a sudden instead of cowering inside that house they were out talking to the crowd. All of a sudden Peter is their leader and their spokesman. He’s out there quoting the prophet Joel to them about people receiving the Holy Spirit, seeing visions, dreaming dreams, and prophesying. It’s hard to imagine a more radical transformation in that little group of frightened people.

Yes, I think they were transformed not just changed. We see their transformation in what they did that Pentecost day, but that’s not all we know about them. We know that they went out into their world spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire and probably even beyond the Roman Empire. That was odd. That was unique. That was dangerous, and many of them paid for their ministry with their lives. Going from a scared little bunch of perplexed people to being people who changed the world isn’t just a change. It’s a transformation. When the Holy Spirit came upon them they became the Church of Jesus Christ, and they were willing to lay down their lives for him if that’s what it took to spread his Gospel to people who so badly needed to hear it.

These people’s transformation gave rise to the Christian church. We are its direct descendants. Yet theirs isn’t the only transformation in the history of Christianity. The Christian church has been transformed many times throughout its history. It was transformed in the early years when it went from being a group of more or less isolated communities to a larger institution overseen by people called bishops. It was transformed, for better and for worse, when it became the established religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE. It was revived by the Scholastics in the High Middle Ages. It, or at least part of it, was transformed by the Protestant Reformation. Transformation has always been part of the life of the church.

Folks, it still is. Today Christianity is undergoing another transformation. Just what it is transforming to isn’t entirely clear yet, but this much is clear: What has been no longer will be. The churches of Christianity as it has been since the Reformation are dying. We can even see that happening in our little church here. Not that I think we’ll die anytime soon or even that we necessarily must die, but look at us. This church has never been big, but it’s been at times considerably bigger than it is today. Old fashioned churches like this on just don’t draw many people today. I don’t like that reality any more than I suspect you do, which is to say not at all. We may not like it, but the signs are all around us. Mainline churches like this one are dying. Even the supposedly successful Evangelical community churches that have help up longer than the mainline churches have are beginning to lose membership. All of that tells us that the Christian church is in the midst of another transformation, for transformation always entails the death of what was.

When an institution like the church finds itself in the midst of a transformation that it didn’t want, didn’t ask for, and doesn’t like, it has basically two choices. It can be transformed, or it can die. It can discern the signs of the times, welcome them, and adapt to them, or it can pretend that nothing is going on or that things will just get better. Then it dies. That’s because change can be undone, but transformation can’t. Folks, I don’t much like saying it, and I’m pretty certain you don’t like hearing it, but here’s the truth. The First Congregational Church of Maltby can be transformed or it will die. Not today. Not tomorrow, But eventually, and not all that far off in the future. That’s just how it is with churches like ours today.

So what does the transformation that will keep us alive look like? I wish I knew. I wish I could just spoon feed you an adequate answer to that question. I can’t. I am convinced that the answer isn’t for us to become more conservative, for the conservative churches won’t survive. I don’t think the answer is as simple as adopting some of the fads of contemporary culture—projected hymn lyrics, repetitious praise music, simplified theology that challenges no one. No, none of that.

So what? Well, I have a few ideas of what some parts of a transformation might look like. It may mean updating the style of our music to something that appeals more to young people. It definitely includes a focus on mission outside these walls. It includes becoming inclusive of people the Christian church has typically excluded, for our culture is moving beyond old prejudices and old fears to a way of life that accepts everyone the way God created them to be. An exclusionary church will be a dying church. It includes being really intentional about being more than a social club. Not that I think that’s what you are, but many churches devolve into that. It includes being really intentional about following Jesus Christ not just as our ticket to heaven but as our model for how we are to live our lives here on earth. It means acting not with the purpose only of saving the church but with the purpose of truly being Christ’s witnesses in this time and place. That means being witnesses to the power of the life of faith. It means being prophets of peace through nonviolence for the whole world and justice for all of the world’s people. The transformation that is under way isn’t about simply conforming to the norms of our culture, for from Jesus’ time to ours Christianity properly understood has been radically countercultural. The transformation that is under way calls us to be more countercultural, not less, about the things that really matter, things like trust in God, care for God’s world, peace, and justice.

Overwhelming isn’t it? Yes it is, but times of transformation are never easy. A faith that follows a crucified Savior surely must know that God never promised us an easy path. Jesus’ yoke may be easy and his burden light as he said, but they’re easy and light only because God is with us when we bear them. God knows the path is steep and full of obstacles. Yet in Christ Jesus we know that God is always with us on that path. To pick us up when we fall. To bless our successes and forgive our failures. To be there at the end welcoming us to our eternal home with God. With trust that those things are true we can do it. We can do it, that is, if we’re willing. If we’re willing first to be changed, then to be truly transformed. Are you? Am I? I think our remaining time together will tell. May God be with us as we struggle with transformation. Amen.

Sermon "Would We?"

This is the sermon I gave on Sunday, May 8, 2016.

Would We?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 8, 2016

Scripture: Acts 16:16-34

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever found yourself in a place where it was hard to hang onto your faith? A place that caused you to lose faith in God? A place where you found you couldn’t trust God? Here’s a confession: I have. Maybe you don’t like hearing your pastor say that. Pastors are supposed to have rock solid faith, right? Pastors aren’t supposed to have doubts, right? Well, here’s the truth of the matter. We pastors are every bit as human as anyone else. Yes, maybe we’ve studied theology more than most people. Maybe we’ve spent more time with and learned more about the Bible than most people. Maybe we’ve been taught more about prayer than most people. Maybe we’ve been entrusted with the leadership of a faith community. That may all be true, but here’s the thing. All that doesn’t make us one whit less human than anyone else. We are as subject to doubt as anyone else. Maybe more so actually, because we spend more time thinking about God and our faith than most people. More so, maybe, because we’re acutely aware of doubts that maybe even we think we shouldn’t have. So yes, I have times when I doubt. I have times when it’s hard to trust God. Not all that often, but it happens.

So I was quite powerfully struck by our reading from Acts this morning. In that reading Paul and his co-worker Silas are in the Greek city of Philippi. We hear that Paul angered someone, who may have been a leading citizen of the city, when he exorcized a demon out of a girl because the girl kept following him around repeating the same thing over and over again for days on end. It seems he did it for rather selfish reasons, not to cure the girl but because he was so annoyed at her. In any event, she was a slave, slavery being something the Bible just takes for granted by the way. Her owner made money off of her possession by the demon because the demon gave her the power to predict the future. So this slave owner had Paul and Silas arrested and hauled up before the local authorities. He accused them of causing public trouble. The crowd turned against Paul and Silas. So the magistrates had them flogged, then threw them in prison in stocks. It must have been a physically and emotionally most painful experience for our heroes. Flogging is a terrible thing to do to any person, as is throwing them in prison unable to move because their feet are clamped down in stocks.

If all that happened to me, I suspect I’d be angry. I’d be angry at the girl’s owner. I’d be angry at the crowds. I’d be angry at the magistrates. I’d be angry at the jailer. I might even be angry at God. After all, I’m imagining myself in Paul’s place here, and Paul had been doing God’s work. He had been preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was about the work of bringing people to God through faith in Jesus. And what does he get for his efforts? Arrest, flogging, and imprisonment, that’s what. Surely not the reward he was expecting for his holy work!

Now, Paul’s human. He got fed up with the slave girl who was pestering him the way any of us would. But when he’s arrested, flogged, and thrown in prison, does he get angry? Does he lash out at his accusers and oppressors? Does he curse God and abandon his faith? Absolutely not. When, with his friend Silas, he’s shackled and locked in the deepest part of some miserable ancient prison, what does he do? He prays. Now, our text doesn’t tell us what he prayed, what he said to God, or whether he said anything at all. It does tell us that he and Silas sang hymns.

Now, once again our text doesn’t give us any details, but I can’t help but think that they were singing hymns of praise to God. I think that what happens next in the story suggests that that must have been what they were singing. A miraculous earthquake happens. The stocks in which Paul and Silas were locked spring open. The door to the prison spring open too. As far as we know there’s only the one jailer on duty, and he’s asleep. There’s nothing to stop Paul and Silas from just walking out of the prison and hightailing it out of town. Don’t you think that’s what you would have done? I’m afraid it’s probably what I would have done.

Paul and Silas didn’t. Why didn’t they? The answer is: their faith. Their faith in God led them first of all to trust God in whatever happened to them. Then it led them to love their enemy. It led them to be concerned for the jailer, who surely would have been blamed for the prisoners’ escape and punished for it, perhaps with his life. That’s clearly what the jailer thought would happen to him when he thought his prisoners had fled, for he was prepared to kill himself rather than face the consequences of their escape. So Paul and Silas stay. They stay sitting in prison when they could have escaped. They do it to protect the man who was in charge of keeping them in jail. Then of course they convert him to faith in Jesus Christ.

That’s good of course, but it’s Paul and Silas staying in jail out of concern for him that really strikes me about this story. There is a powerful lesson for us in that part of the story. There is a powerful challenge for us in that part of story. Let’s take the lesson first. The lesson, I think, is that it is precisely in the worst times of our lives that faith can help us the most. Maybe I’ve told you my personal story of that truth before, but even if I have I’m going to tell it again.

Some of you know that my first wife Francie died of breast cancer. It happened almost fourteen years ago. We knew her death was coming, but even so, when it came I was devastated. It was easily the worst time of my life. I was devastated, and I had what many might find to be a strange reaction. I was at home with Francie when she died. Through my tears of that evening I had one very strong yearning. I wished that I had my robe and stole at home with me. I wanted to put them on. I wanted to wrap myself in the symbols of the faith. I wanted to clutch the symbols of my Christian faith and my Christian calling for comfort and strength. I didn’t have them at home. They were at the church in Monroe that I was serving at the time. I did have something else. I had this cross that I’m wearing this morning and that I wear most every time I lead worship. Francie gave it to me the day I passed my Ph.D. dissertation defense and became Dr. Sorenson for the first time. It has her initials, my initials, the date of my dissertation defense, and a Russian word that means essentially congratulations engraved on the back of it. So I put it around my neck like it is right now, and I held it tight. It helped. It helped in part I suppose because of its connection to Francie, but mostly it helped because it is a symbol of Christian faith. It is a symbol of Jesus Christ. It represents all that faith offers us in those most difficult times of our lives. It helped get me through. I don’t know how I would have survived Francie’s death without faith, and this cross is a symbol of that faith. In the worst times our faith can give us the greatest strength. When all seems lost it can give us hope. I think maybe that’s what Paul’s faith was doing for him in those stocks in a prison cell so very long ago. Yes, like I said a moment ago hard times can destroy faith; but they can also strengthen it. The hard times in my life have strengthened mine. I hope that maybe the hard times in your lives have strengthened yours.

That I think is the lesson in this story for us, but I said here that there is also a challenge for us in that story. Here’s what I think the challenge is. Let me use myself as an example again. By the time Francie died I had been practicing my Christian faith pretty actively for over twenty-five years. I had not only been a church member who attended worship regularly. I had gone to seminary. I gotten had a call as a Christian pastor. I had been ordained to the ministry of Jesus Christ. I hadn’t stashed my faith away in my attic only to drag it out when I thought I needed it. It was at hand, ready to give me its comfort and support, because I was no stranger to it, and it was no stranger to me. Paul had been practicing and living out his faith too for a long time before he got thrown in prison in the story we heard this morning. That’s challenge for us. This story challenges us to keep our faith active and alive at all times in our lives. It challenges us to practice our faith even when we don’t feel any particular need or desire to do it. And it challenges us to remember our faith in those times when it would be so easy to forget it, so easy to give up on God. Paul met the challenge. Would we?

Of course I know that you aren’t seminarians or ordained ministers. I know that none of us is the founding Apostle of Christianity the way Paul is. That doesn’t matter. We can all practice our faith every day. We can all pray every day. We can all come to church every Sunday. We can all study the Bible and other great works of Christian faith. So let’s accept the challenge so that we can reap the blessings of our faith. Let’s all be not just Christians but practicing Christians. If we will do that, our faith will indeed get us through whatever comes our way in life. Thanks be to God! Amen.

How to Read the Bible

This is a piece I wrote for the adult ed. group at the church I serve. We were studying the book of Amos, and we say that it contains both profound truth for us and some assumptions that we do not find to be true for us. Someone asked how to read the Bible for the truth that's in it. This is what I wrote in response to that question.

How to Read the Bible for the Truth That Is in It

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May, 2016

As we have considered the prophetic book of Amos during our Sunday morning sessions we have discovered a perhaps surprising thing about the Bible. The Bible contains profound truth for us, but it also contains assumptions and understandings about God and a great many other things that no longer ring true in today’s world. How are we to deal with that reality about our sacred texts? That is a profoundly difficult and profoundly important question for all believers today. I wish there were an easy answer to it. There isn’t. One truth remains, however: Nothing excuses us from doing the hard work of discernment when it comes to the Bible. We won’t all find the same truth in it. The Bible speaks differently to different people in different contexts. That being said, here are some considerations that I find to be important and helpful in answering the question of how to read the Bible.

1.      Begin by understanding that the Bible was written by, in, and for an ancient world that was very, very different from our world. The Bible’s human authors operated in their own cultural-linguistic context. That context is not our context. The ancient men (unfortunately, as far as we know they were all men) who wrote the Bible understood God, humanity, and nature differently than we do. That doesn’t mean they were stupid. It means their world was different from ours. Therefore, as we read we must look for assumptions that lie behind the text (or that may even be expressly stated in the text) that we do not share. For example, in the case Amos one of those assumptions is that every geopolitical event on earth is the direct result of some intention and act by God. Amos saw the threat Assyria posed to Israel to be a threat of God punishing the Israelites. We don’t, or at least I don’t. I see it simply as the functioning of the geopolitical dynamics of empire. Look for a biblical author’s assumptions, then ask if you share them or not. There will be some we do share, and many that we don’t.

2.      Understand that reading the Bible doesn’t require you to set aside your own context. For example, reading the Bible doesn’t require you to ignore modern science. It doesn’t require you to ignore modern understandings of human nature and human psychology. If the Bible is to remain alive for us it must speak to us as we are, just as it spoke to our ancient forbears in the faith the way they were. Here’s an example: Genesis 1 assumes that the earth exists in a bubble surrounded above, around, and below by water. See Genesis 1:6[1] We know that that is not the earth’s physical reality. We don’t have to pretend that it is when we read Genesis 1. Our knowledge of the cosmos leads us to read Genesis 1 differently that its original audience did, at least with regard to its description of the physical universe, yet our more advanced knowledge doesn’t make Genesis 1 false on a spiritual level despite our knowing that it is false on the physical level.

3.      Don’t get hung up on facts. We live in a world in which truth has largely been reduced to fact. It was not so in the world that produced the Bible. Before the modern era, that is, before the mid-seventeenth century, people may have understood that things in the Bible that sound like facts are factually correct, but factual truth was not their primary interest in the Bible. They looked more for what they called allegorical truth. We’d call it metaphorical or mythic truth. Try to find a truth that speaks to you behind the facts recounted in the passage you’re reading.

4.      Don’t lose the forest for the trees. It is so easy to get stuck on the minutiae of the Bible, so easy to spend a lot of time wrestling with little details of a story that may be causing us trouble. Leave that work to the scholars. Look for the bigger picture. There are several big themes that run through much, though not all, of the Bible. Those themes include God as a God of grace, love and forgiveness; the theme of emancipation from whatever it is that is holding us in bondage; the theme of return home from an exile separated from God to the eternal peace of life with God; the theme of forgiveness of sin, which appears in both Testaments of the Christian Bible both before and after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Passages that speak to those great spiritual themes are likely to be true. Passages that contradict those great spiritual themes, and there are a lot of them, are not true.

5.      Don’t read something into a passage the isn’t there. Not every passage in the Bible is about Jesus. When Psalm 23 begins “The Lord is my shepherd” it’s talking about the Hebrew God Yahweh not about Jesus. Know what your preexisting assumptions and understandings about the Bible are. Try to put them aside to see what is really there.

6.      Use a good study Bible. The good study Bibles I know that use only one translation use the New Revised Standard Version translation not the New International Version, but their study notes should be helpful whatever translation you primarily use. I have not found what I consider to be a good study Bible with the NIV except The New Interpreters Bible, a twelve volume scholarly work that uses both the NRSV and the NIV and that is both cumbersome to use and very expensive. (A retiring pastor friend of mine gave me his, which is the only reason I have it.) A study Bible won’t answer all of your questions, but it will answer some of them.

7.      Trust your experience of God, and don’t let anything turn you from the God you know and love. You will find passages in the Bible that do not speak of that God. Don’t worry about it. Those passages just mean that some ancient author had a different understanding than you do. Be open to having your beliefs challenged. Be open to leaning more about God every time you turn to the Bible, but don’t take any passage in the Bible as universally true just because it’s in the Bible.

8.      Finally, but perhaps most importantly, look to Jesus. The Bible contains a great many different voices. Those voices often contradict each other on a great many issues. How are we to decide among them? One way for us Christians to decide among them is to use Jesus as our guide. Does something, anything, in the Bible reflect the God of love, compassion, forgiveness, and grace that we see in and through Jesus? Does something, anything, in the Bible reflect the care for and welcome of the poor, ostracized, scorned, and marginalized that was a hallmark of Jesus’ ministry and teaching? If so, it speaks truth to us Christians. If not, it simply isn’t true for us. It isn’t true for us because it contradicts the ultimate revelation of God that we see in Jesus. Don’t look to the Old Testament to predict Jesus. Look to Jesus to interpret both the Old and New Testaments.

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[1] The NIV here uses the word “expanse.” The NRSV uses the word “dome” in its place. I suspect that the NRSV is truer to the Hebrew original here.

Report on the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference, UCC

This is a report I have written on the 2016 Annual Meeting of the UCC's Pacific Northwest Conference that was held April 29 to May 1, 2016. I wrote it for the church I serve, the First Congregational Church of Maltby which does not belong to the UCC.

A Report on the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference

of the

United Church of Christ

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

The First Congregational Church of Maltby

May 3, 2016

I attended the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ on April 29 and 30 in Wenatchee, WA. Of course I am well aware that the First Congregational Church of Maltby is not a UCC church. I, however, hold ordained ministerial standing in the UCC, the Maltby church is party to a four-way covenant with me, the UCC church that holds my UCC membership, and the Conference. I am required to attend my Conference’s Annual Meeting as a condition of my ordained ministerial standing. I thought that perhaps some of the people of the Maltby church might be interested in learning a bit about the UCC by learning some of the details of this year’s Annual Meeting. So read this report if you’re interested. Ignore it if you aren’t.

To be perfectly honest, these Conference Annual Meetings have gotten pretty routine for me. I don’t always get much out of them. This year I kept wondering how some of you would have reacted to what you would have seen there. Thinking about that question at least made the meeting a bit more interesting for me than it might otherwise have been.

The theme of the Meeting was “Out On a Limb,” stressing our need for discovering new ways of being church. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things you would have experienced had you been present at this meeting:

·       A gathering of a couple hundred people at the Wenatchee Convention Center. They were ordained clergy, commissioned ministers, and lay representatives of a bit more than half of the 82 churches of the Conference.

·       A love of God, openness to God’s grace, and openness to the workings of the Holy Spirit in new ways among us. You’d have heard a deep faith in the same God you know and love.

·       What radical welcome and acceptance look like. Most of us there were white, heterosexual, and clearly identified by our birth gender both physically and psychologically. There were also among us Black and Brown people (sadly not many, but a few), gay and lesbian people, bisexual people, and transgendered people. We take this diversity for granted, and no one even comments on it much anymore except when a few people publically expressed their thanks that the UCC accepted them when their former churches rejected them simply for being who God created them to be.

·       A commitment by the larger church to issues of social justice, including economic justice, environmental justice, and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity.

·       Nervousness about the future but a growing openness to new ways of being church in a changed and changing world.

·       Some pretty tedious (but this year mercifully brief) business meetings concerning the Conference budget, election of officers and committee members, and an amendment to the Conference’s bylaws.

·       News from the Conference’s two wonderful church camps, camps we claim are the best church camps in the whole UCC. Our Conference Minister has told me that if any of you want to attend any activities at the camps you’ll be welcome. Ask me if you’re interested in knowing more about the camps.

·       Presentations by the Conference’s new Minister for Congregational Vitality about the work she will begin among us in September.

·       A presentation by the Rev. Mike Denton, our Conference Minister, including remarks  about how the world of the church is changing and how we need to change with it. Mike is a really good guy and a fine Conference Minister. We’re lucky to have him.

·       A regional church body having money problems and declining membership in the same way so many of the local churches are in all of the mainline denominations.  

·       An enthusiastic reception of a new Samoan church in Anchorage, Alaska, into the UCC. (In the UCC that’s done by a regional body like our Conference, not by the national bodies.) Wow, the folks from that Samoan church sure can sing!

·       An opportunity to participate in a broad range of workshops on issues important to the larger church and the local churches.

·       Worship experiences led in part by a visiting UCC clergy person who writes contemporary praise music with progressive, open and affirming theology. I must admit his music didn’t do a lot for me, but perhaps different music is one way we need to be open to our changing world.

·       A pretty pathetic excuse for a dinner served by the Convention Center. The lunch the next day was better.

·       An opportunity to sing in the choir put together for the closing worship service on Sunday morning. I’ve sung in that choir several times before, but this year I came home on Saturday evening to be with you Sunday morning, so I didn’t participate.

·       Me functioning as parliamentarian, mostly behind the scenes, with a Conference Moderator who is a delightful person but how has no clue about proper parliamentary procedure.

·       A chance to meet some really great people, both clergy and lay people, who make up the UCC in our area.

Plans for next year’s meeting have not been made yet because of some unusual and unfortunate circumstances in the planning process. Still, at some time next year I’ll have to go to another Conference Annual Meeting. Thank you for you cooperation in giving me that time away.

Who Are We? Part 2

This is my sermon from May 1, 2016. It continues the theme of the week before. That sermon is just below.

Who Are We? Part 2

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 1, 2016

Scripture: Acts 16:9-15

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In my sermon last Sunday I raised some questions about just who we are as the First Congregational Church of Maltby. I said that I see a certain parallel between the context of the earliest Christians who struggled with the question of whether the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also for the Gentiles and our context in which Christianity is becoming a minority voice in a largely atheistic or agnostic society. This morning I’m going to look at that issue again and raise some more questions about it. Please bear with me. This is important stuff.

Now, I know as well as anyone how different the world of the New Testament was from our world. Still, when I read our passage from Acts for this morning I was struck again by what may be an important parallel from the world that story of Lydia discloses and our world. This morning I want to work with that parallel to see what issues it might raise for us.

In that story a wealthy woman named Lydia hears Paul preaching. She accepts his word about Jesus Christ and has herself and everyone in her household baptized. The text says that she was “a worshipper of God.” Now, I think that our text means that she was what is more commonly called a “God-fearer.” In the first century CE in the Roman Empire God-fearers were Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, who were attracted to Judaism but who hadn’t converted to that faith. There were communities of these folks around the synagogues in all of the major cities of the Roman Empire. Philippi, where Lydia lived, was such a city. God-fearers were people who were attracted to Judaism’s monotheism and its ethical teachings but who couldn’t accept all of the Torah law which Judaism taught and to which it adhered. They participated in the life of the synagogue and of the Jewish community but never became Jews themselves. These are the people among whom the new Christian movement spread most quickly. It seems that most of Paul’s converts were from these God-fearers. It makes sense to me that Lydia was one of them.

As I read this story last week something occurred to me. The Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were surrounded by people who were, I think we can say, spiritual but not Jewish. Today our Christian churches are surrounded by people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. They are for the most part spiritual but not Christian. I wondered whether the way the Jews of the synagogues and Paul and the other Christian missionaries of the time related to the God-fearers could teach us anything about how we Christians and our churches might relate to the large number of spiritual but not religious people all around us.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have an answer to that question; but as is so often the case with me, that question raises a lot of other questions that I think we would do well to spend some time with. In particular, the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were not willing to give up the law of Moses in order to make the God-fearers full members of their communities. The God-fearers couldn’t accept Judaism’s kosher dietary laws. Even more importantly, the men among the God-fearers could not accept Judaism’s law of circumcision. So a barrier remained between the Jews and the God-fearers. They got along together. They lived and probably even worshipped together, but they never fully overcame that barrier. Paul came along and said you can get everything you love about Judaism without obeying the Torah law by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. A great many God-fearers did.

Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. It offered one God instead of the multitude of gods and goddesses of Greco-Roman religion. It offered a God who cared how God’s people live and who instructed the people in how to live, which the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses never did. It offered a God who wished only blessing for God’s people. Yet the barrier of the Torah law remained. For the Jews it was nonnegotiable.

It seems to me that Christianity has a great deal to offer our spiritual but not religious countrymen sort of in the same way Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. We offer the one true God. We offer a God of love, compassion, and forgiveness. We offer a tradition rich in spiritual practices through which we find and live our connection with that God. We offer community, something most Americans sorely lack these days. We offer an ancient and proven spiritual path that connects people with God and God with people.

Yet some barrier remains between us and the spiritual but not religious folk around us. I’m not sure just what constitutes that barrier. I suppose it may vary some among the people who have rejected Christianity without ceasing to consider themselves to be spiritual. I can suggest what some of those things may be. The insistence of most Christians that one be able to recite one of the ancient creeds without mental reservation in order to be Christian. A rigid biblical literalism that most people today with knowledge of science, the techniques of critical study, and inquiring minds can’t accept. Rigid notions of sexual morality that most Americans today can’t accept. An insistence on using obscure language about the Incarnation and the Trinity that doesn’t make much sense to many people today. There are many things about American Christianity today that a great many people who believe in God and seek a relationship with God just can’t accept.

Which raises a very important question for me. The Torah law was, and is, Judaism’s nonnegotiable. What are our nonnegotiables? What are we willing to give up or compromise in order to make our faith more accessible to spiritual but nonreligious people today? What can we give up? What can we not give up? What can we give up and still be Christian? What would cause us to cease to be Christians if we gave it up?

Folks, those are major questions before the Christian faith today. The world is changing. The world has changed. The church is changing. The church has changed. Some people say those changes are a major shift in culture that isn’t going to go away, the kind of shift that only happens every 500 years or so, the greatest change in the church’s context since the Reformation. They say that the Christian faith must deal with that change if Christianity is to survive, and I suspect that they are right. I’m not sure I can answer my questions even for myself, and I’m sure I can’t answer them for you. They are, however, really important questions. They are questions we cannot avoid wrestling with. Throughout our history the Christian faith has adapted itself to very different and changing cultural contexts. We’re being called on to do it again. Sometimes that reality makes me say “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.” Still, the reality remains. I pray that in our time together we may do some wrestling with those questions. The whole Christian church must wrestle with those questions if it is to survive in the postmodern world. I’m ready to do it. Are you? I hope so. Amen.