Why God?

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, August 28, 2016.

Why God?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

August 28, 2016

Scripture: Jeremiah 4:4-13

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.

You know, sometimes when I read the lectionary selections for a particular Sunday my first reaction is to ask: "Who dealt this mess?" Well, that wasn't my reaction to this passage we just heard from Jeremiah, although some of my colleagues at the lectionary study group I attend thought it should be. So sure, the Jeremiah text comes to us from a very long time ago, around the year 586 BCE during the final Babylonian siege of Jerusalem that led to the Babylonian exile of the Hebrew people. Sure, it speaks of the biblical history of people quite different from us, and that history is even older than the setting of the verse itself in the sixth century BCE. Sure, it speaks of what our English translation calls "the LORD," by which it means not Jesus but the god the Hebrew people called Yahweh. It speaks of that god freeing the people and settling them in Canaan. It speaks of those people turning away from Yahweh and worshiping a Canaanite god named Baal instead. And of course I know perfectly well that God hasn't led me or us out of Egypt, at least not literally. I've never lived in Canaan, at least not literally. I've never worshiped Baal, at least not literally. None of those things applies to me and I assume not to you, at least not literally. Still, this passage spoke to me this week. How it did is what I want to talk to you about this morning.

Our passage from Jeremiah begins with that god Yahweh saying to the people: "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me?" (NIV) I can just hear God groaning: What did I ever do to drive them away? I brought them up out of slavery in Egypt. I kept them alive through the wilderness. I gave them a rich land to live in. Yet they turned from me. Their leaders don't know me and have rebelled against me. They turned to that false god Baal instead. My people have turned from me, the spring of living water, and turned to vessels that will not serve. What in my name did I ever do to them to deserve this? Nothing, that's what. Oy! These people! Whatever am I going to do with them? Well, very nearly wipe them out is what the people decided God did with them, but we'll leave that part of the story for another day.

Now I can hear some of you, or maybe I just hear myself, asking: What does all of that have to do with us? Well, I think it has a lot to do with us, or at least it raises an important issue for us. See, I don't think most people today are all that different from those people back in Jeremiah's day who turned away from God though God had never given them any reason to do it. We live in a highly secular age. We live in an age when untold numbers of people have turned away from God. All the research shows it. The fastest growing group of respondents to surveys about religious faith is the "Nones," the people who say they follow no religious tradition, that they have no particular religious faith. We live in an age of radical scientific rationalism in which our culture says that only facts are true and that if you can't prove it scientifically it isn't true at all. People just don't believe in God the way people used to.

Now, we can sit here and bemoan that reality, but doing that won't change it. It won't really help us do anything. I think a far better approach to that reality than bemoaning it is to try to understand it and how we might respond to it. It results, I think, from two different but in some ways related phenomena. The first is that rationalistic, scientific, fact-based culture that I just mentioned. There really is little or no room for God in that culture. That's a big part of the problem, but there's another part of it too.

See, God has given these people no real reason not to believe in God, but the churches have given people far more than ample reasons not to believe in God. For reasons I can only guess at, the Christian churches have done a bang up job of making both God and the Christian faith appear utterly unconvincing and even repugnant to huge numbers of people today. They have made God and the Christian faith that claims to speak for God rigid, legalistic, judgmental, exclusionary, and even bigoted. They have made Christianity radically anti-intellectual, rejecting the truths of science and ignoring the best theology that is available to them. They condemn people of other faiths. They relegate women to second-class status in the church, the economy, and the culture generally. They call for discrimination against non-Christians. They call for discrimination against people of whose humanity they don't approve. That used to be people of color, and in some circles it still is. Today however it is mostly LGBT people. These nominal Christians reduce the Bible to mere fact and insist that everything in it is factually true. Doing that makes the Bible not just unbelievable but in many aspects abhorrent, but they do it anyway. They condone violence, at least violence of which they approve, which is mostly violence against non-Christian people. They make the faith be all about how you get to heaven when you die rather than about how you live a whole, faithful, meaningful life in this life. If I thought that God were who most Christians make God out to be, I'd have nothing to do with that God. If I thought Christianity were what most Christians make it out to be, I'd have nothing to do with it. I sure wouldn't have devoted my life to it the way I have for nearly the last twenty years.

But see, here's the thing. There are other truths, better truths, that drive in the opposite direction from all of that. The God we know in Jesus Christ is actually nothing like how the most vocal Christians today make God out to be. God may judge like they claim, but God's judgment is always tempered with mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and love. God is love. God doesn't hate anyone. God loves all of God's people. Each and every one of them. God loves Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Baha'i people, secular people, atheistic people, all people. God loves good people and bad people. God is there for everyone. God drives no one away. People turn from God, but God never turns from people--any people.

Jesus isn't who Christianity makes him out to be either. He didn't come to get everyone in the world to believe in him. He came to reveal God's nature and will as love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. He came to teach us and to show us how God wants us to live. He came to show us that God is with us in unshakable solidarity with us in everything that happens in life, in the good and much more importantly in the bad. Jesus is not someone to whom to give intellectual assent. He is a model of divine life on earth. What a blessing Jesus could be if we would come to see him as the radical voice of God that he actually was rather than the bastion of ordinary culture and ordinary thinking that Christianity so often turns him into.

And there's even more. People today may turn their backs on God, but humans, all of them, need God whether they know it or not. God is the ground of our being and the center of our being. God is the center of the universe and center of each and every person living in it. God is the ultimate reality. God is the only reality that can give life meaning, and we humans are always looking for meaning in our lives and creating it one way or another. Turning to God in worship and prayer grounds us. It centers us. It orients us. It directs us in life and as we approach death. People may turn from God, but they never lose their need for God. They try to fill the void that abandoning God leaves. They fill it with material possessions, drugs, alcohol, wild entertainments, anything that they think will dull the pain and at least cover the hole; and it doesn't work. Only God can do those things for people even when the people don't know it and refuse to recognize the truth of it. Yet our denial blocks God and keeps us from living in the gifts of the Spirit that God always offers.

So why God? Because only God is the source of all goodness, of all good news, of all good thoughts, of all good feelings. Because we need God. We are never truly at peace without God. St. Augustine famously said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God, and he was absolutely right about that. The great tragedy of faith in our time is that God has never given anyone any reason to turn from God, but so many of the people who claim to speak for God have. We can do better. We must do better. We must proclaim Gospel, Good News, not religiosity. We must proclaim love not hate. We must proclaim freedom no legalism. Our faith must give our lives meaning and not just be about what happens when we die. If we will do that, our faith will survive. If we won't, it will die, and it will deserve to die. Can we do it? Will we do it? Time will tell. Amen.

Sabbath

This is the sermon I gave on Sunday, August 21, 2016, at First Congregational Church of Maltby.

Sabbath

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

August 21, 2016

Scripture: Isaiah 58:13-14; Luke 13:10-17

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.

You know, sometimes when you do something out of the ordinary, like, say, go to seminary, some things about that experience stand out in your memory more strongly than others. One of the things that stands out for me in my memory of seminary is how everyone told me every chance they got that I live too much in my head. Maybe that resonates with some of you too, for there is truth in it. Another thing that stands out for me is how many times we were told that when we’re doing ministry—any kind of ministry—we need to take a regular Sabbath day. Sabbath rest was a very big deal with those academic types at Seattle U, some of whom had ministry experience outside the university and some of whom didn’t. Their point is a valid one, not that either I or many of my pastoral colleagues are very good at heeding it. Ministry is stressful, or at least it can be. Ministry involves stepping outside yourself and being there for others. That’s not an easy thing to do for many of us. We need time for rest, for relaxation, for renewal. Sabbath time is one good way to do that. Take one day a week and set it aside, we were told. Turn off you computer. Turn off your cell phone. Do something you really love doing, as long as it’s not work. Or do nothing at all. Just sit. Just be. Be quiet. Be restored. That’s what Sabbath time is about as far as those good folks at the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry were concerned.

The word Sabbath of course comes from the Hebrew, and keeping a Sabbath day originated in the Jewish faith tradition. All three major monotheistic religions have their Sabbath days. The original Jewish Sabbath is Saturday, which actually goes from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday according to the ancient way of counting days. Sunday is the Christian Sabbath because that’s the day of Christ’s Resurrection and because Saturday was already taken by Judaism. Friday is the Muslim Sabbath day, probably because Judaism already had Saturday and Christianity already had Sunday by the time Islam came along. All three of these great faiths value Sabbath time. We Christians used to try to enforce the Sunday Sabbath with blue laws. I remember that most stores were closed on Sunday when I was a kid. Some states, I think including Washington, used to forbid alcohol sales on Sunday. Those laws have gone by the boards, but in theory we Christians still observe Sunday as at least a different day, even if it’s different only because we watch football rather than to go work.

Sabbath is a good thing. Hebrew scripture tells us over and over again that Sabbath is a good thing, an important thing. We heard it doing that just now. In our reading from Isaiah  we heard that if we honor the Sabbath by observing it “then you will find your joy in the Lord.” Isaiah says that honoring the Sabbath means not doing as you please, not “going your own way” or “speaking idle words.” In the Jewish tradition, and in the Christian one too, observing the Sabbath has meant not working. Genesis 2:2 tells us that God rested on the seventh day from all the work of creation. Just why the infinite God needed to rest may be a question, but that’s what Genesis says God did. In the Ten Commandments we read “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work” but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, “you shall not do any work.” Not working is what Sabbath came to be mostly about. I’ve even heard of Orthodox Jewish households that keep a Christian housekeeper around on the Sabbath so she can turn the lights on and off for them, since turning on the lights is considered doing work. I guess directing that person to turn a light on or off isn’t considered work.

So we’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath, I guess except we pastor types who sort of have to work on the Sabbath. But the thing is, Jesus was always getting in trouble with the Jewish religious authorities of his time because he kept violating that rule. We heard about him doing it in our reading from Luke this morning. In our passage this morning Jesus encounters a woman who has been bent over for eighteen years. I guess we’d probably diagnose osteoporosis or some spinal defect, although the ancient world said she was being cursed by Satan because they had no real understanding of actual disease processes. In any event Jesus heals her, and he does it on the Sabbath. The leader of the synagogue where Jesus did this healing is “indignant.” He quotes Exodus to Jesus: “There are six days for work.” So knock it off with the healing on the seventh day! There are lots of stories in the Gospels about Jesus healing or doing other work on the Sabbath and the Jewish leaders getting mad at him for breaking the Sabbath commandment.

I’m afraid that today many Christians read the way Jesus was always breaking the Sabbath law as meaning that we can just ignore Sabbath days. We can do whatever we want, and of course most of live doing whatever we want on Sundays pretty much the same as we do on every other day. Most Christians don’t take the Sabbath seriously any more. That’s probably because we just don’t want to, but we can read Jesus as having said that’s OK.

I’m afraid, however, that the matter really isn’t that simple. If we look more closely at just what it is that Jesus does on the Sabbath that gets the Jewish leaders so upset with him we see that he doesn’t do just anything. He doesn’t actually do anything to benefit himself. Mostly what he does is heal people who need healing. In our story this morning he seems to be saying why should this disabled woman have to wait until tomorrow to be healed when I can heal her today? She needs healing, and I can do it; so I’m not going to wait. I’m going to do for her what needs doing now. Her being healed is more important than some abstract rule about not working on the Sabbath.

There’s another story, this one in Mark, where Jesus tells us how he really sees the Sabbath. That one is at Mark 2:23-27. In that story Jesus’ disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, something that a strict interpretation of the Sabbath law prohibits. Harvesting grain is, after all, work. Jesus defends them by citing some obscure story about David, but then he says: “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” With those few words Jesus brilliantly puts the Sabbath law, and all religious law, into proper perspective.

As he did so often, with what he says here he turns the standard expectations and interpretations of his day on their head. The Jewish officials who criticized Jesus for helping people on the Sabbath had forgotten why God had given them a Sabbath law in the first place. God had given them that law because generally speaking observing Sabbath is a very beneficial spiritual practice. It really is. Sabbath is a time, as Isaiah told us this morning, not to look after our own affairs but to be about God’s work. It is a time to remember that God is God and we’re not. It is a time to rest in the presence of God, to let God embrace us and to feel that divine embrace. It really can be a renewing and reviving spiritual practice.

Now, I don’t mean to disrespect anyone else’s faith. I have some idea how important strict Sabbath observance is to many Jewish people. They say that the Jews kept the Sabbath, and the Sabbath kept the Jews. It held them together as a community in times of oppression and even attempted extermination. Thank God for that. But Jesus had a somewhat different take on the matter. To him keeping the Sabbath was important, but caring for God’s people was more important. He never wanted us to make any religious law so absolute that it kept us from caring for other people, or for ourselves for that matter. Caring for people in need was always more important to him than was any religious law. Compassion trumped law for him every time. For Jesus, love was more important than legalism, and it needs to be more important than legalism for us too.

So, by all means keep the Sabbath. By all means live as much as you can according to the will of God. But always understand: The will of God is that God’s people be loved, cared for, healed, nourished, protected. When observing the Sabbath accomplishes that goal, and it often does, then by all means keep the Sabbath. But when a woman bent over needs healing on the Sabbath, heal her. Don’t wait. Don’t say I can’t do anything because it’s the Sabbath. That’s what Jesus did. He healed her. He didn’t wait. Compassion trumps law every time. That’s the way of Jesus. That must be our way too. Amen.

Pilgrim People

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, August 14, 2016.

Pilgrim People

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

August 14, 2016

Scripture: Matthew 18:20

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.

Ever since I came back from the 2016 Annual Meeting of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches in Detroit last June I have wanted to talk to you about what it means to say that we are a Congregational Church. Today, after worship, we’ll have our annual church picnic. That’s a time of fun and relaxation when we just enjoy being together as a congregation of God’s people. So I thought that maybe today would be a good time to talk with you a bit about our being Congregationalists. Yes, I know that for some of you that identity either doesn’t mean much or doesn’t matter much. I also know that all the research today says that people generally don’t care nearly as much about denominational identity as people used to. Still, this church was founded one hundred thirteen years ago precisely as a Congregational church. We still call ourselves a Congregational church. Perhaps you have noticed how in our narthex (you call it the foyer) we make a bit of a big deal out of our being Congregationalists. Congregationalism in this country goes straight back to the Pilgrims who sailed to the New World on a ship called the Mayflower in 1620. We have a sort of tapestry of the Mayflower on our wall out front. We have a few pamphlets sitting on the table out there about being Congregationalists. They have the titles “The Congregational Way of Life,” “The Biblical Basis of Congregationalism,” and “ What It Means to be a Member of a Congregational Church.” We have a line from an early Congregationalist covenant up on the wall too. If a visitor pays attention she will promptly realize that somehow Congregationalism is kind of a big deal with us. It’s kind of a big deal with me too. I’ve never been anything but a Congregationalist, albeit I’ve lived most of my church life in the United Church of Christ. But belief among many National Association people to the contrary notwithstanding, the UCC is thoroughly Congregationalist in its structure. So I’m a UCC Congregationalist serving a National Association Congregational Church.

OK. We’re Congregationalists, but just what does that mean? Congregationalists point to the verse we heard from Matthew as the biblical basis of Congregationalism. For us the Holy Spirit is present in and among the people, not in some rigid hierarchy of clerical authority. Congregationalism is a free church tradition that goes back to the Church of England in the late 16^th century. I know however that while I’m an historian most of you aren’t, so maybe that doesn’t matter much to you. So let’s approach if a different way.

What it means to be Congregationalist is suggested by the very name of our tradition. The word Congregationalist points to the local congregation as the basis of the Congregationalist tradition. In Congregationalism the local congregation of Christian people is pretty much everything. Our congregations are wholly autonomous. There is no institution or person outside these walls that can make us believe anything or make us do anything. There is no institution or person outside these walls that can make us not believe anything or not do anything. It’s all up to us, a local church in the Congregationalist tradition.

Yet there is a bit more than that to being a Congregationalist. Over the centuries Congregationalism developed two other strong elements to what it means to be Congregationalist. One of them is individual freedom of conscience. Perhaps you have noticed that we don’t recite any creed as part of our worship. That’s because we don’t believe that there is any test of Christian faith that a person must pass in order to be a Congregationalist. Yes, we are a Christian tradition, but just what that means is up each member of the church individually. That’s a strong part of being Congregationalist.

Another is Congregationalism’s strong tradition of standing and working for social justice. Congregationalists ordained the first Black man to be ordained in a predominately white denomination in the late eighteenth century. Many of the leading Abolitionists were Congregationalists. When I was in Detroit we visited First Congregational of Detroit, a church still proud of the fact that it served as a final stop on the underground railroad helping runaway slaves escape to freedom in Canada. Congregationalists ordained the first woman to be ordained anywhere since New Testament times in the 1850’s. Congregationalists were prominent in the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That was a movement that read the Gospel as being largely about social justice for all people, and by the way I think they were right about that. Some Congregationalist congregations both in the National Association and in the UCC have led the way working for the equal rights and dignity of LGBT people. If you don’t know what that means, ask me after the service. So to be Congregationalist means to value local church autonomy, individual freedom of conscience, and Christian social justice work. All of which does indeed add up to being kind of a big deal.

Beyond that, we Congregationalists tend to make kind of a big deal out of our direct historical connection to those Pilgrims who landed in what today is Massachusetts nearly four hundred years ago. We Congregationalists tend to think of ourselves as Pilgrim people. Lots of Congregational churches name themselves Pilgrim Congregational or Mayflower Congregational Church. We’re proud to be the descendants of those first Pilgrims to land in North America.

Ok, we’re a pilgrim church, and we’re pilgrim people. But when I was at that Annual Meeting of the NACCC in Detroit recently I heard someone say some powerful and disturbing things about what it means to call ourselves a pilgrim church and pilgrim people. At that Annual Meeting there is always what they call “the Congregationalism lecture.” It seems to function like a keynote address for the meeting. This year it was given by Rev. William Lange, a Congregationalist pastor in the Southeast Michigan Association of the National Association, the group that hosted this year’s Annual Meeting. Rev. Lange said: Pilgrims are people who are going where they’ve never been before. Pilgrims are people who are doing something they’ve never done before. He said: Don’t harp on the Mayflower if you’re not going someplace you’ve never been before. And don’t harp on the Pilgrims of 1620 if you’re not doing something you’ve never done before. That’s what true pilgrims do. They go someplace they’ve ever been before, and they do something they’ve never done before. That’s mostly what I remember from Rev. Lange’s talk, and I think those are powerful and challenging words for us Congregationalists.

So let me ask you something and ask myself something: Are we going someplace we’ve never been before? Are we doing something we’ve never done before? I actually am doing something I’ve never done before. I’m serving as pastor of a church that is not a UCC church and that is not Open and Affirming, and believe me, that reality sometimes presents me with some pretty significant challenges. But what about us as a congregation? Are we going anywhere we’ve never been before? If so, where? Are we doing anything we’ve never done before? If so, what? I guess you did something you’d never done before when you called a dyed-in-the-wool UCC guy as your pastor a little over a year and a half ago. But beyond that, are we going someplace we’ve never been before? Are we doing something we’ve never done before? Or do we just put pictures of the Mayflower in our narthex and leave it at that?

Well, that picture of the Mayflower in and of itself doesn’t make us pilgrims. Our Congregationalist tradition calls us always to be looking for new ways to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Congregationalist tradition calls us always to be asking “What next?” Where is the Holy Spirit sending us now? What new Plymouth Rock lies in our future? What new Mayflower is going to take us there? Those, I think, are the most important questions before us in these days. I pray that we may explore them together and together find the answers. Amen.

Come to the Table

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, August 7, 2016.

Come to the Table

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

August 7, 2016

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

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.

We’re going to do something different here this morning. I know, churches don’t like doing things different. That’s why in my line of work we call the phrase “We’ve never done it that way before” the seven last words of a dying church. But you can’t say that this morning because I’ve been told that you have done it this way before. I’m talking about doing Communion by what’s called intinction. For those of you who don’t know, here’s how it works. We aren’t going to pass plates and trays around in the pews like we usually do. Rather, two of our folks, Lisa and Jeff, will be standing up here at the head of the center aisle. One will have a plate with pieces of bread on it. The other will have a cup filled with grape juice. I will invite you to come forward down the center aisle, take a piece of bread from the plate, dip it in the cup, consume it, then return to your place by one of the outside aisles. It’s really simple, yet because we haven’t done Communion by intinction in my time with you perhaps it would be good for me to talk a bit this morning about the sacrament of Communion and why I like doing it by intinction.

Communion is the oldest ritual of the Christian tradition. We just heard Paul’s account of Jesus instituting it from 1 Corinthians. That means the our tradition was doing Communion, or Eucharist, which is its more formal name, at least since the 50s of the first century CE and certainly longer than that. This sacrament goes all the way back to Jesus himself. Paul said it does. Three of the four Gospels say it does. (The fourth one, John, doesn’t mention it at all.) Different Christian traditions understand it differently, but as far as I know all of them celebrate it in one form or another. Coming to the Lord’s table is one of the few things all Christians do, and many see it as a sign of the underlying unity of the Christian church.

Different Christian traditions understand the sacrament of the Eucharist differently. Roman Catholics believe and teach that when the sacrament is properly performed by a proper priest that the bread and wine (the Catholics use wine) become the real body and blood of Christ. Some more Unitarian types of Christians see the sacrament only as a way to remember Jesus, for at the Last Supper he said “Do this in remembrance of me.” We in the Reformed tradition, and that includes the Congregationalists, tend to see the sacrament more as a symbol of the presence of Jesus Christ among the people. The bread and wine, or juice, remain bread and juice, but they point beyond themselves to the reality of God and Jesus Christ and bring that reality visibly into our midst. On occasion the power of the symbols of bread and juice have become very real to me as I have presided at the sacrament. When they do I feel the presence of Jesus in my very bones, and know that he is present with us and in us. That, frankly, is why I love presiding at the sacrament. I hope you love participating in it too.

OK, but why do it by intinction? Well, for me there are a couple of reasons to do it this way. The first, very practical one is that doing it that way makes setting up for the sacrament and cleaning up after it a whole lot easier than is getting that little bit of juice into all those little glasses. Moreover, you’ve been using disposable plastic cups, which frankly isn’t very environmentally responsible. Intinction solves those problems.

But there’s another, more powerful reason why I like doing the sacrament by intinction. As part of the Communion liturgy, after I’ve said the prayers and the words of institution, I always say “The gifts of God for the people of God. Come, for all things are ready.” But when we pass plates and trays in the pews no one except the servers actually comes. You all just sit there. You don’t come to the gifts of God, they come to you. Yes, you still receive them, and I suppose that that’s what’s really important; but the people receiving the sacrament basically just sit there.

When we do Communion by intinction, when I say Come, you (or at least most of you) actually get up and come. For some of you that is physically or emotionally difficult. That’s why I will be available to bring the elements to you in the pews for anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to come forward. There’s no reason to be self-conscious about that. I’ve done it many times before, and we want everyone who wants to partake to be able to partake. But I trust that most of you will stand up, move to the center aisle, and actually come forward to receive the elements of the sacrament. That’s what I love about doing Communion this way. Each of you individually and the congregation as a community of God’s people makes a choice, makes a commitment, to come to the table. The people move, they come to receive the blessing of the sacrament. I find that movement to be a powerful symbol of the commitment of the Christian community to its Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I hope that those of you who do come forward will feel the same thing as you stand and move to receive Communion.

So, we’re going to try it this way this morning. I hope you find it a meaningful experience. Whether you do or not, please let me know your thoughts and feelings in the matter after the service. We don’t have to keep doing it this way, or maybe we can do something like I’ve seen other churches do and alternate each month between trays and intinction. How we do Communion is less important than that we do it. Still, I hope you will give Communion by intinction a chance. I like it. I hope you do too. Amen.

Being Human

This is the sermon I gave on Sunday, July 31, 2016.

Being Human

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 31, 2016

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 1:12-14, and 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

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.

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Or in an older, I think more famous translation: “Vanity of vanities.” All is vanity. Not vanity in the sense be being vain about one’s appearance, of preening in front of the mirror too long and fussing too much about your clothes. No, rather vanity in the sense of everything is in vain. Nothing is worthwhile. Everything is pointless or, as the NIV has it, meaningless. Don’t you find it odd that there are verses like the ones we just heard from Ecclesiastes in the Bible? I do. The author here, who calls himself the Teacher, says “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after wind.” He thinks everything we humans do is meaningless basically because in the end we all die. We’re mortal not immortal. We are finite not infinite. We live only for a time, not forever. He says “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.” I die, my things remain, and the people who inherit them might be fools. Whether they are or not, I pass away and lose everything I have worked for. So it’s all meaningless. I once led a Bible discussion group on Ecclesiastes. My concluding comment to those folks was: “This guy needed Prozac.” I mean, he’s really depressed, and he’s depressing. Nowhere in the book of Ecclesiastes does it get any better, although it does have the lines Pete Seeger made famous about to everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season. Still, the book is a real downer.

It might be odd that they’re there, but those lines we heard are in the Bible. So I guess we have to figure out why they’re in Bible and whether or not they can mean something for us even though on their face they just sound odd. To be perfectly honest, I think the only reason Ecclesiastes is in the Bible is that it claims to have been written by King Solomon, which it almost certainly wasn’t. Still, there it is, so it must have something to say to us.

And actually I think that it does, although it certainly doesn’t say it directly. The author of these lines is depressed and thinks that nothing in life has any value or meaning. Perhaps we should ask: Why does he feel that way about human life? I think we get an answer to that question when he talks about how he must leave everything for which he has worked behind when he dies. He says: “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.” This supposed Teacher’s big problem is that he knows he is mortal. He knows that he will die, and the world will go on without him. He won’t be able to keep the things for which he worked forever because he won’t live forever. I hear in his depression the cry of one who can’t deal with the fact that he is mortal. Because he will die he thinks that his life, and all life, is meaningless.

I’ve got to be perfectly honest with you. I sometimes feel that way too. I mean, let’s face it. Our human mortality is something we all have to deal with, and for many of us dealing with it isn’t easy. It may not lead us into the kind of depression we hear in Ecclesiastes, but it can be hard to deal with nonetheless. I will die. Will anything I have done then have any meaning? Maybe, but more likely not. I think that those of us who are authors or painters or composers maybe do what we do because we hope that our writings or our art or our music will survive us and still have some meaning for at least some people. Or maybe that’s just true of me, for I know that it is true of me. Being mortal is rough. That means that being human is rough.

Being mortal is sometimes so rough that we humans get really good at forgetting that that’s what we are. Take the guy in our passage from Luke. He has produced more crop than he can fit into his barns. So he’s going to tear down his barns and builds bigger ones. Then he’ll think he has it made. But God calls him a fool because he has forgotten that he is mortal. And God asks him a question very reminiscent of Ecclesiastes: “Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” The implication is clear. Whoever that is, you fool, it won’t be you. The author of Ecclesiastes was way too aware of his mortality, and it depressed him. The man with the barns wasn’t aware of it enough, and it made him foolishly self-satisfied.

So here, for your consideration, is what I take from these stories. We humans struggle with being human. We want to be gods, and sometimes we think that we are. Especially, I think, in our dominant American culture, we ignore our mortality. We pretend death doesn’t exist. Many of us are quite a bit like the man in Jesus’ parable with his bigger barns. We think that if we lay up enough earthly treasure that we’re set. Material wealth, yes. Spiritual wealth? Not so much for far too many people today.

The Bible understands how we want to be gods. In the story of Adam and Eve God doesn’t expel the two transgressors from the Garden of Eden because just because they disobeyed his command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God expels them not so much for their disobedience as for what God fears may be the consequence of their disobedience. Genesis says “the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” Adam, and presumably also Eve even though Genesis doesn’t mention her here, has already become too much like God for God’s liking. God is going to make sure that Adam doesn’t become fully God by doing something that would make him live forever, and God’s going to make his people’s lives hard enough that they will never think that they’re gods.

See, the Bible knows that as long as we’re mortal we aren’t really gods. It also knows how much we really want to be immortal gods and not mortal creatures. The Bible knows, and God knows, that if we ever got the chance we’d turn ourselves into gods in a heartbeat. That’s sort of what the man in the parable does with his bigger barns, or at least that’s sort of what he thinks he’s done. He’s stored up enough wealth that he thinks he has nothing to worry about. He’s forgotten that he has one big thing yet to worry about, namely his death. God calls him to remember it, but apparently after it is almost too late for him to do it.

Here’s what we humans so often want to forget. God created us as mortal beings not immortal ones. And not only that, but God called and calls us to live freely, fully, abundantly the mortal life that God has given us. God doesn’t want us to be like the author of Ecclesiastes, so overwhelmed by his mortality that he thinks life has no meaning. Neither does God want us to live like the man in Jesus’ parable, concerned only about earthly wealth and not at all about the things of the spirit. God wants us to accept our condition as creatures, then live lives that make that condition meaningful not meaningless.

How do we do that? Well, God has given us a perfect model of how to do that in Jesus Christ. Jesus was mortal too, you know. He knew he was mortal because he knew he was human, but he didn’t spend much time fretting about it. He didn’t run from it. He didn’t hide from it. He accepted his mortality, and he lived a mortal life more filled with meaning than any other mortal human life ever has been or ever will be. He knew that even his death could have cosmic meaning, and it does.

So how did Jesus live his very mortal human life? For others, that’s how. In the stories we have about him in the Gospels it doesn’t ever appear that he did much of anything for himself, with one exception. More about that exception in a moment. Mostly, he lived for others. He lived to teach others. He lived to heal others. He lived to reveal the nature and will of God to others. That, folks, is how we live a truly full, finite human life. By not living it for ourselves at all, but by living it for others. By living it for those who don’t have enough. Those who don’t know that God loves them. Those who are lonely or are lost. Those who need a hand out or a hand up. Those like the author of Ecclesiastes who think their life has no meaning. Those like the man with the bigger barns who have forgotten what life is really about. That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what God calls us to do too.

Now about that exception: Jesus did, or at least tried to do, one thing for himself. He went away, or at least tried to go away, to pray. The one thing he wanted to do for himself was strengthen his spirit by strengthening his connection with God. Yes, he was God, but he was also human; and as human he needed to tend to his spiritual life just like we do. In his seeking time to be with God in prayer he showed us the way every bit as much as he did in the other aspects of his life. Thanks be to God!

So, folks, we’re human. All of us. Every person on earth is human. That means we’re all mortal. Our lives will end one day, but that doesn’t mean our lives are meaningless. Ecclesiastes is just wrong. All is not meaningless. Or at least all is not necessarily meaningless. God gives our lives meaning and calls us to create meaning in our lives and in the lives of others. God calls us to embrace our humanity, as fragile and as mortal as it may be. God is always there to help us do it, too. Our task isn’t to become gods. It is to become fully human. To become human like Jesus was human. No one said it was easy, but with God’s help I think we can do it. Amen.