Heritage Presbyterian Church

Love Grows Here

Sunday’s Sermon – Every Tongue Confess – Philippians 2:1-13, World Communion Sunday

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Believe it or not, good things can come out of Stewardship seasons. In 1934, Dr. Hugh Thomson Kerr, a pastor who had recently been the moderator of the General Assembly in 1930, had an idea that churches should be brought together in a service of Christian unity, so that everyone might receive both inspiration and information, and above all, know the importance of the church of Jesus Christ and remember that each congregation is interconnected with one another. He took this thought to the Stewardship Division at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1934, and they began to celebrate with such a service on the first Sunday of October. Two years later, World Communion Sunday was adopted by the US Presbyterian Church, and then it began to spread to other denominations and was endorsed by the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches) in 1940.  The pastor’s son, Rev. Donald Kerr, was a teenager at the time, but later noted:

The concept spread very slowly at the start. People did not give it a whole lot of
thought. It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because
we were trying to hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized
the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are
one in the Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ[i].

This morning, almost 100 years later, we join with brothers and sisters in Christ in different congregations, denominations, and countries to celebrate our unity. We can see glimpses of that truth here at Heritage. Last week, we welcomed several new members from different places, including Hilda Snyders, who comes to us from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. During the week, we met school children and adults who were evacuees from St. Croix and opened our facilities to them so they could have a makeshift school and activity time for their children and teenagers as they worked on what would come next for their families. Today at 11:00, we will be joined in worship by our brothers and sisters from Marietta Presbyterian Church, the Korean speaking congregation who meets in our original church building up the hill. In just a week’s time, we have several new examples of the wideness of God’s family.

World Communion Sunday is a wonderful witness to the entire body of Christ, and is a time for us to renew our energies and be inspired by the great cloud of witnesses that surround us, and have even gone before us. In a time where our society and world is full of division and argument, when threats of war lurk not just in the shadows, but in our news cycles, we need to know that we are not as disconnected and alone as it may seem.  World Communion Sunday is an affirmation that we are united by something far bigger than anything that could threaten to divide us.   Today is a reminder and a celebration of the faith and friendship we share through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is the perfect text to help focus us on this important point. It is written to a Christian community in eastern Macedonia with whom Paul had great affection. Throughout the letter, his encouragement and commentary are signs of a friendship and love with this group of believers in a way that is more affectionate than almost any of his other letters. In addition to this theme of love and care for each other, Paul continually encourages them to seek unity. Writer Monya Stubbs suggests that:

Paul lays out three levels of unity into which he hopes the Philippian community will grow stronger: (1) a unity of purpose or mission in living and proclaiming the gospel, (2) a unity around the principle of “other interestedness,” and (3) a unity of perspective where people understand themselves as mutually indebted to one another[ii].

For Paul, unity is related to actions and is a lived-out reality of our beliefs. In writing to the Philippians, he hopes that they will learn a pattern of thinking and living that is humble. He knows that this is a difficult thing to do. In fact, it can only be accomplished with the help of Jesus Christ himself.

Paul includes a beautiful hymn in verses 6 through 11 of our passage, one that was likely familiar to this congregation in Philippi, and helps illustrate the core elements of his message with a beautiful description of who Jesus is as an example and inspiration to believers.  Marcus Borg notes that, in Jesus:

Rather than being an article of belief, God becomes an experiential reality. . . .
God can be known in that direct and intimate way, not merely believed in[iii].

Through Jesus, humanity has a relationship with God that is defined by love. In this way, Jesus is the manifestation of the heart of God[iv]. Such a revelation, such a love, is meant to evoke a response in the Philippians, and in us. It should call us to worship. The very name of Jesus should stir in us something deep and profound, touching the places of deepest longing and sincerest hope. It should bring us to the place where we, too, bow down and worship, confessing with our loudest voice that Jesus Christ is Lord!

I love the phrase in verse 11 from this ancient hymn “every tongue confess,” because it reminds me that Christians have a variety of ways of professing our faith, which I imagine sounds like a beautiful symphony to God. We profess our faith in literal different tongues, using different languages to proclaim the same good news. Today, we hear words of Scripture, prayer, and praise in English and Korean, and join our voices in these and the other languages of our hearts to offer our worship to God. We also use different kinds of words and phrases to articulate and explain our faith. While the profession of Jesus Christ as Lord is what makes us distinctly Christian, we have many ways of explaining what that means. Leanne Van Dyk describes some of them in this way:

One person might say, “It means that Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior and, if I believe in him, I will have eternal life.” Someone else might say, “It means that Jesus is on the side of the poor and oppressed and we are called to join in the struggle for justice.” Yet another person might declare, “Jesus is the King of the world. We must follow Jesus and obey him.” Someone else might answer, “Yes, Jesus is King. But his rule is best seen in the suffering of the cross. We must turn upside down all our notions of power because of Jesus.[v]”

What would you say? How would you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord? Chances are, there would be as many different answers in this room as there are people. And I think that is almost always a good thing, because it means that Jesus Christ isn’t just some historical figure about whom we learn a biography or facts and figures. It means that Jesus is alive and well in our lives today, and has impacted us in ways that are deeply personal and unique. That is the power of God’s love, a God who is at work in each of us, even now.

The many ways we confess who Jesus is also means that we need each other in community to fully get a picture of God. Together with the stories of our scriptures, we can better understand the many dimensions and aspects of God that make our great mystery of faith. Through these understandings, we might hope to get a glimpse of Christ himself.

When I was a child at church summer camp, I remember learning a song whose chorus asks:

Have you seen Jesus my Lord? He’s here in plain view.
Take a look, open your eyes, he’ll show it to you[vi].

I sang it constantly, because I fell in love with the soprano descant, but also because it was a reminder of the ways we experience God in the midst of our lives. The verses speak of God in the sunset, and the ocean, and on the cross. By my favorite is the final verse:

Have you ever stood in the family with the Lord there in your midst?
Seen the face of Christ on each other? Then I say . . . you’ve seen Jesus my Lord[vii].

Today, on this World Communion Sunday, we stand in the family of God, and the Lord is here in our midst. We proclaim the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord to each other, as we join in prayer, lift our voices in song, and share in bread and cup. Look around you, brothers and sisters in Christ. The Lord is in our midst. May we see Jesus Christ on the face of each other, may we feel his presence, may we hear his name and bend a knee to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
October 1, 2017, 8:30 am service (11:00 am was abridged from this manuscript to allow for interpretation in Korean by Rev. Paul Lee of Marietta Presbyterian Church)
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[i] John A. Dalles, “Presbyterian Origins: World Wide Communion Sunday,” Originally printed in the October 7, 2002 issue of Presbyterian Outlook, http://www.wekivapresbyterian.org/articles/presbyterian_origins.htm, accessed 9/28/2017.
[ii] Monya A. Stubbs, “Philippians,” True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, Brian K. Blount, General Editor, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007).
[iii] Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, (New York: HarperOne, 1994).
[iv] Leanne Van Dyk, Believing in Jesus Christ, (Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 2002).
[v] Leanne Van Dyk.
[vi] “Jesus My Lord” by John Fischer, copyright 1970 by Songs and Creations, Inc., as printed in Songs, compiled by Yohann Anderson (San Anselmo, CA: Songs and Creations, Inc. , 1982).
[vii] Ibid.

Sunday’s Sermon – That’s Not Fair! – Matthew 20:1-16

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Being the oldest of three children is not always as glamorous as it seems.  On one hand, you tend to get a good bit of attention early on, and sometimes get privileges because you are the oldest. On the other hand, though, you’re the Guinea pig for your parents as they learn the ropes. This means, at some point, you will watch your younger siblings get to do things you never would have been able to do at that age. Somehow, they get to stay up or go out later, watch more grown up tv shows, and generally be way less supervised. And they never get in nearly as much trouble. Admittedly, as I observed my brothers growing up, multiple times I found myself exclaiming, “that’s not fair!!!”

That’s not fair could be the title of today’s story in our Bibles. It’s the exclamation of those who have worked all day, long and hard, and get to the front of the line to receive exactly the pay they’ve been promised, likely a small amount, but the going rate that was fair for a day’s pay. If you consider just their experience, such a cry seems odd. They came, agreed on a price, worked as agreed, and got their reward. So why are they so cranky? Because from the back of the pay line they have seen the landowner paying others, those who had worked far less. Based on that pay, they’ve come to expect more than was promised. Surely they had earned it. And yet, they only get the original amount promised. Just like those who arrived last.

It’s just not fair. And actually, that’s kind of the point of the parable, illustrated plainly in the conversation with the landowner, who reminds those laborers that he has fulfilled his promise to them in full; why are they resentful for graciousness shown to others? Jesus introduces this as an example of what the kingdom of heaven is like. Emile Deith, former president of Montreat Conference Center, used to greet conference attendees with a joke about such an image. He’d comment that “Montreat is a lot like heaven; you see a lot of people you didn’t expect to see.” The joke fit, reflecting the connectional, small world nature of the Presbyterian church, where you smile as you see friends you haven’t seen in a while in that holy mountain spot beyond the gate. But what if you said it as a summary of this parable: “in the kingdom of heaven you will see people who haven’t worked as hard or as long as you but get the same reward?” Well, that almost offends us if we’re honest. This parable rubs us. Something doesn’t seem right about it. That’s because we’re probably the most like those all day workers, and it’s hard to reconcile the gracious generosity of the landowner. We, too, might be equally envious and grumble a bit. So were many of the original listeners.
Commentator Patrick Wilson reflects that:

We may be entrepreneurial enough to agree that the owner of the vineyard can run his business any way he pleases, but we cannot rest comfortably with his payroll policies…. If the master is determined to be generous, why not pay those fellows who worked all day a bonus? That also would be fair. The way generosity gets passed around in this tale abrades our sense of justice[1].

Considering that this is a parable, and clearly the landowner is meant to represent God, we might quickly conclude the following: God’s not fair. The parable is great news to those hired at the end of the day, promised to be paid what was fair, and even to those hired midday, with the same unnamed but just amount promised. It’s harder to hear it as good news if we’ve been there all day. We take the exchange and salary for granted, not truly wrapping our heads around the gift that it is.

We are too close to ourselves, too wrapped up in our own skins, too bundled in our own terrible needs, to see truly what God gives us. What God, in goodness and generosity, gives us we are likely to assume is our due, something we have earned, a goodness we have fabricated for ourselves. We see other people more clearly than we see ourselves[2].

And in this context, our cries of “that’s not fair!” more likely than not expose our own warped sense of entitlement; or at least our privilege and our resistance to sharing it with anyone else.

The workers protest that in his decision, the landowner has made the later in the day workers “equal” to them, and you can imagine that word “equal” said with a dirty taste in the mouth. It seems the workers, and us, rely on systems of inequality in order to maintain our own sense of self-worth and value. Work is more than just earning a daily wage; it determines whether or not we are considered successful or a failure, superior or inferior. It is a source of division and competition[3]. And the landowner upsets the apple cart by showing generosity to everyone.

In my family, my brothers and I would jokingly compete for the title of “favorite child” with my parents. We used it as a tool of persuasion and a way to harass each other. It was a game to us most of the time, but also reflects a very real part of our nature to want to be the chosen one. That’s why this parable offends us so much I think. If the landowner, if God, is going to be extravagant and generous, why not towards us? We want to be the favorite children of God.

Here’s the thing- we are all “favorites”. In showing generosity to the other workers, the landowner wasn’t taking away from the first workers. He was simply adding to those who would be blessed. It’s not like God was giving out one pie, and dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces of pie because more people were there. Everyone was getting pie.

This parable reminds us that there is an ongoing tension between our sense of justice and fairness and our understanding of God’s radical and abundant grace. And it’s a story that plays out over and over again in our scriptures:

Jonah sat on the brow of the hill outside of Nineveh and pouted when God spared the city. The elder brother thought his father a doting old fool when his father invited him to join the celebrating at the prodigal’s return. The Pharisee at prayer thanks God that he is not like the sinful publican. Divine grace is a great equalizer which rips away presumed privilege and puts all recipients on a par[4].

Parables are meant to turn the mirror on us, and beg us to put ourselves in the story. No matter where we are in the payment line, this parable asks us to consider how we might respond to God’s grace, whether expected because of a relationship established long ago, or something that comes in the middle of the day or even at the last minute.

If we find that we are among the grumbles, this parable might just be calling us to check our privilege, and ask us why we are so guarded about others receiving the most basic daily needs. The landowner asks those who grumble to take a different perspective. The literal translation of the question he asks about envy reads “is your eye evil?” The struggle in the text isn’t about the transaction between the landowner and those later laborers. It’s about the struggle with the lens through which the original laborers are viewing the situation. Perhaps, if they can understand the true beauty of the grace shown to those they deem undeserving, they might realize that the same measure of unbelievable, unmerited, loving grace is what has been given to them all along as well.

Grace is something we talk about a lot, but never really know what to make of or what to do with it. Renowned Southern writer Flannery O’Conner wrestled with it in her fantastic short story titled “Revelation,” which details the scene of a well-to-do woman, Mrs. Turpin sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, passing deplorable judgment on those around her, not just in her head. After some time, a young woman finally explodes from the confines of her own chair and lunges after the protagonist, screaming that she is a “wart hog from hell.” The final moments bring Mrs. Turpin to consider what truth these words might be, even considering her charity to the less fortunate and church-going ways. She brings her wrestling to God. O’Conner writes:

What do you send me a message like that for?” She said in a low, fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. “How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?[5]”

Such a moment calls attention to the ongoing need for us to examine ourselves, to realize that perhaps we aren’t really as deserving of the privileges we hold, and instead are completely reliant on God’s grace alone. Such a revelation on our part will bring about some hard questionings about our own priorities and opinions about others. It will mean we have hard work to do. It will cause us to push back. As O’Conner herself noted:

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful[6].

But if we can get past our resistance, if we can get past the grumbling, we might just discover a better response to grace – gratitude. For what God gives to others, and for what God gives to us as well. That is what the parable is driving us towards.

And then, we can truly proclaim those words of the Psalmist that we called ourselves to worship with this morning:

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.

That’s not fair! May we have the faith for that cry to shift from envy to joy. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
September 24, 2017

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[1] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 2, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
[2] Patrick J. Willson
[3] Based on work by Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religions Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 394, as quoted in Charles Campbell, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlet and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
[4] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, “Proper 20,’ Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
[5] Flannery O’Conner, “Revelation,” http://producer.csi.edu/cdraney/archive-courses/summer06/engl278/e-texts/oconner_revelation.pdf
[6] Flannery O’Conner, as quoted by Skip Johnson, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 20:1-16,” Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 2, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

Sunday’s Sermon – The Hard Work of Forgiveness – Matthew 18:21-35

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What does it really mean to forgive someone? We often learn about it as a practice from a very young age, being taught from a very young age to say “I’m sorry,” and then “It’s ok. I forgive you” when something happens that hurts another person. But, as we get older and life gets more complicated, we discover there is far more to it than your cart bumping into someone else at the grocery store or even taking someone else’s toy away in the sandbox. The truth is that life sometimes hurts; not just in general, but in specific, tangible ways that cause us real harm, emotionally, mentally, and even physically. And when we are hurt, or when someone we love is injured, forgiveness is often the farthest thing from our first response. Sure, we hear the countless instructions to forgive, but when it comes down to putting them into practice, we balk. Perhaps because we don’t quite know what forgiveness really looks like, or how exactly we are to go about it.

That essentially is the question Peter is asking Jesus at the onset of today’s gospel lesson. His suggestion of seven times is no accident – that is the biblical signifier of what is complete or perfect. Peter, not surprisingly, wants to get it right. He’s not asking the Rabbi what the bare minimum requirement is to pass the class; Peter wants to ace the exam with a perfect score. Jesus replies, though, with an astronomical figure – seventy-times seven. This isn’t just math to get him to the number 490. It is the response that forgiveness requires something even beyond perfection. Let that sink in for a minute. The goal is the perfection of perfection; infinity times infinity. As Lewis Donelson puts it:

it must be beyond counting. Forgiveness becomes an absolute[i].

No wonder we have such a hard time doing it! However, there is hope in this initial response from Jesus; he indicates that forgiveness is not so much about a check-list or sticker chart or final exam, but instead is about ongoing discipleship. Put another way, forgiveness must become a way of life.

One illustration of this can be seen in the Amish community. Typically,  when we think about the Amish, our first images are of buggies, quilts, jams, and barn-raisings, or perhaps what we’ve gleaned from a reality television series; but an even better marker of Amish life and culture is seen in their practice of faith.

Amish people are likely to say that they are simply trying to be obedient to Jesus Christ, who commanded his followers to do so many peculiar things, such as love, bless, and forgive their enemies. This is not a picture of Amish life that can easily be reproduced on a postcard from Amish Country; in fact, it can be painted only in the grit and grim of daily life[ii].

Almost 11 years ago, on October 2, 2006, tragedy came to Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania as a gunman entered the local school, leading to a hostage situation that killed five schoolgirls and left five others seriously wounded.  It was a devastating time that rocked this small, close-knit community and brought about intense media coverage at the time. Almost as shocking as the violence, though, was the response from the families and community of the victims.

Even as outsiders were responding with compassion for the Amish community in the wake of the shooting, the Amish themselves were doing another kind of work. Softly, subtly, and quietly, they were beginning the difficult task of forgiveness. . . . Within a few hours of the shooting, some Amish people were already reaching out to the killer’s family[iii].

Some went to find the gunman’s wife, children, and extended family, offering words of sympathy and love and forgiveness. As cameras and bright lights shone in field interviews and questions came from tv hosts, the refrain was similar: the Amish insisted that they forgave the gunman almost immediately. A few days later, the community showed up at the gunman’s funeral, and even reached out with financial support for his family. Several weeks later they met with his wife and other members of his family at a local firehouse. In each of these, and the relationship-building instances that followed, the Amish community modeled an authentic and powerful witness of what forgiveness looks like. It almost sounds too good to be true; inconceivable to even those who consider themselves faithful Christians.

In response, a trio of professors worked to explore more about the notion of forgiveness and grace in the Amish community and the implications for the rest of us, interviewing dozens of Amish people from Nickel Mines and beyond.  They shared this work in a book titled Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, which inspired a Lifetime Movie a few years later. It’s worth a read or view as we consider our own theological understanding of forgiveness. One of their underlying questions was, given the importance of forgiveness in the Christian tradition,:

Did the keen public interest in the grace of the Amish stem from the fact that their forgiveness differed from other understanding of forgiveness, or did it arise from the Amish community’s willingness to practice what others only preach?[iv]

As they spoke with the Amish about forgiveness, they found a strong rooting in the community’s belief that forgiveness was an expectation for what it means to follow Jesus Christ. The most prominent citation given from scripture was the parable we read today from Matthew 18, often known as the parable of the unforgiving or unmerciful servant. It is a parable of extremes. Just as Peter and Jesus used big, epic terms in their exchange in the preceding verses, Jesus introduces characters with larger-than-life debts and responses. The concept of ten thousand talents was astronomical. Both “ten thousand” and “talent” were words that were the biggest units in Greek at the time. It would be akin to saying “a million bajillion” or some other inconceivable number. The amount that the servant owed was absurd. The concept of a master forgiving that amount of debt? Also absurd. Thus, the illustration shows a measure of grace in abundance. It is a seventy-times-seven kind of forgiveness of debt. In contrast, of course, is the response of the servant to the one who owes him a debt, comparatively miniscule at only a hundred denarii (a number you could wrap your head around – a denarii is a day’s labor). While we might expect a repeat of the grace exhibited to him, instead we see quite the opposite. And the lord summons the servant to make it clear that this isn’t how it works. Mercy, and grace, and forgiveness, necessitates the same.

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” These well-known words from the English poet Alexander Pope strike many as the right way to think about forgiveness: as something good but almost impossible to do[v].

In the face of tragedy, and other instances of loss and pain both intentional and accidental, the Amish seem to do the impossible. As the professors discovered in their research, it is largely because, for the Amish, forgiveness is a way of life. It is some of what marks them as a community, and is practiced in smaller ways, which makes the practice of it on such epic levels not as outlandish as it may seem. This fits with the understanding of the pattern that Jesus gave to Peter, a repeated, ongoing forgiveness, seventy-times-seven, might lead to an embodiment of it even in the most trying of circumstances. In order to embody this radical way of living, it might be good to try to name what exactly forgiveness is.

Forgiveness, on its most basic level, is a letting go. Many offer that it is a choice that we make, regardless of remorse shown. It is both psychological and social; it happens both internally within ourselves and externally as we engage with other people. Presbyterian minister, writer, and retreat leader Marjorie Thompson writes:

To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. It represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution, however fair such punishment may seem. . . Forgiveness means the power of the original wound’s power to hold us trapped is broken[vi].

Forgiveness is freeing, for more than just the one who might receive it. It is freeing for the one who does the forgiving. The benefits continue, too. Research shows that:

forgiveness is good for the person who offers it, reducing “anger, depression, anxiety, and fear” and affording “cardiovascular and immune system benefits.[vii]”

But, as with most things that are ultimately good for us, it’s often not the most attractive option unless we make efforts for it to become our pattern. Our nature seems to be to get sucked into our own anger and the need for revenge to settle the score. Such an attitude breeds resentment, which is when we re-live that anger over and over again. Incidentally, that’s one of the signs that you haven’t really forgiven – if you are re-living all of those emotions over and over again. Forgiveness calls for a release of those things that bind us. This is what makes it such a theologically important concept – when we let go of that resentment and anger and relinquish the grudges we have, we open up space – space to experience all of the other emotions present in our lives; space to experience grief if we need to grieve, joy and hope the in promises of a brighter tomorrow, and time to work through other things that prevent us from living the lives God intends for us. Most of all, forgiveness offers us the space to experience God’s grace and love more fully.

Let me be clear, though: forgiveness is not just “getting over it.” It is not pretending that some wrong did not occur or forgetting that it happened or acting like the harm done is ok by condoning or excusing it. And it most certainly does not mean putting ourselves in positions where we continue to subject ourselves to harm. “Seventy-times-seven” is not meant to be a number of times which anyone must endure abuse at the hands of another. Rather, forgiveness is naming the offense and declaring that it should not be repeated. Forgiveness is also declaring that the offense will no longer take hold in our lives any more. Forgiveness proclaims that mercy is what will define us.

I think that’s what Jesus was hoping for in his conversation with Peter and the following parable; that the lives of his disciples would be marked by mercy. That’s the example we find in the story of Joseph from Genesis, who even in the face of immense pain – his brothers’ violence and selling him into slavery – would not let pain or violence be what defined him. Forgiveness can certainly open the door to reconciliation and the restoring of relationships. In the instance of the tragedy in Nickel Mines, it did just that, as the community came together and continued to be in relationship with the gunman’s family, who they saw as victims as well. Such a move, though, can only come with a renewal of trust, which may not always be possible. If you aren’t able to get to that point of reconciliation, right now, or ever, that is ok. Focus your work on that of forgiveness – it may be more than enough for you to handle.  Even the Amish admitted that it was hard, excruciating work, repeating the refrain:

“We try to forgive, but we are human too.[viii]”

Forgiveness calls attention to our humanness at its most human. It reduces us to our most base of instincts, and challenges us with the hard work of responding in the way of Christ instead. Examples like that of the Amish, or the lessons taught by Jesus, can be daunting. They are big. Larger than seems possible. But we need such big images to begin to wrap our heads around the nature of God. And such seemingly unreachable examples might just be what we need to begin to take even a little step in the direction forgiveness calls. One opportunity at a time, then seven, then seventy times seven. May we, little by little, move more into the ways of God’s mercy. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford

September 17, 2017

———————————————————————————————————[i] Lewis R. Donelson, “Exegetical Perspective: Matthew 18:21-35,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)

[ii] Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, David L. Weaver-Zercher, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Marjorie J. Thompson, “Moving toward Forgiveness,” Weavings, March-April 1992, 19, as quoted by Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 18:21-35,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)

[vii] Clinical research of Psychologists Robert D. Enright and Everett L. Worthington Jr., as reported in Amish Grace.

[viii] Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, David L. Weaver-Zercher, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

Sunday’s Sermon: The Law of Love – Romans 13:8-10, Psalm 119:33-40

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How many of you would say you “love” the law, or at least rules? Are you sticklers for things like speed limits? Does it make you crazy when people are turning left at the intersection and don’t pass each other first, or don’t take turns at a 4-way stop? What about when watching sports? Do you find yourself explaining or arguing with other fans about technicalities, or try to beat the referees to the call? Rules and laws are something that we tend to have decided opinions on, sometimes strong ones, or at least deeply engrained behaviors, such as what speed we will travel in relation to the speed limit.  Admittedly, I am on one of the rule followers. I like structure and boundaries and order in my life and in the world around me. It makes me a good Presbyterian, with our detailed polity and systems and procedures. Rules and regulations bring me a sense of comfort and security. While I am absolutely willing to push back against rules that I don’t agree with, that generally also takes the form of following the system to change the rule, rather than just outright rebellion. When those around me aren’t following the same set of rules, I feel anxious and irritated. Yes, I’m the person that mentally counts items the person in front of me has in the 10 items or less line if it looks like it’s getting close. It would be fair to say that I love rules.

So does the Psalmist. The Psalmist writes a beautiful prayer about delighting and loving the law of the Lord. Such an ode to God’s instructions is comprehensive. At 176 verses, it is the longest chapter in the entire Bible. The verses assigned to us today from the lectionary cycle emphasize one of its major themes; the joy of following the commandments God has given, naming them as life-giving and uplifting. This is an acrostic Psalm, meaning each of the 22 stanzas (of 8 verses each) begins with a different letter, in Hebrew from Aleph to Tav, in English it would be from A to Z. Perhaps it could have been used to teach. One traditional legend in the Orthodox church, who actively uses this Psalm regularly even  suggests that King David used this Psalm to teach Solomon not just the alphabet, but an alphabet for the spiritual life. The Psalmist does a pretty good job in laying out the importance of the Torah, the sacred law of God’s people Israel. Verse 97 flat out says “Oh, how I love your law!” The Psalm is a beautiful poetic homage to God’s power and role as teacher, and gives us a clue as to how we are to relate to God as well. Verse 105 reads: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (verse 105).  The Psalm reminds us that one of the purposes for God’s laws is to have relationship with how we live our lives. If we truly love God, and love the instructions that God gives, we will live into them, with God’s help.

The Apostle Paul had a lot of ideas about how that looked in the first century, and his writings can help inspire us today, to consider how we are applying those ancient laws captured in our sacred texts to the world we know. Throughout his letters, Paul wrestles with what to make of the law in light of the grace shown in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He wants to be clear that the early church understands that their actions are not going to be what makes the difference to their salvation – it’s the grace of God that does that. Nevertheless, though, what they do does matter. Repeatedly he calls God’s people to live in ways authentic to the faith they profess. This is especially true in his letter to the Romans. Our text today from Romans 13 is the heart of Paul’s treatise on Christian ethics, the integration of life and faith. David Bartlett offers that:

Roman 1-11 spells out the first part of the commandment: “How do we love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength?” Clue: have faith in Jesus. [Then,] Romans 12-14 shows the various ways in which we live out the second part: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. The summary is itself good news[i].

In these verses, Paul emphasizes a well-known refrain, made clear in Leviticus (19:18) and by Jesus himself with the giving of the Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:36-40). If there is only one thing that we are to remember about how we are to live it should be this: the law of love. This is the identity marker for us as Christians, what makes us who we are.

It is easy to misinterpret this law. Our first inclination is to get wrapped up in the Hollywood and Hallmark illustrations of a saccharine-sweet and unrealistic set of amorous feelings for the whole world. We treat love as an emotion, something we’re just supposed to feel, that makes us all smiley and happy because, well, we just love everyone. Sometimes, this becomes a hypothetical ideal that we can never really achieve, much like a notion of “world peace.” But Paul doesn’t mean for it to be inaccessible. He uses the Greek word agape for love in this passage, which is not the kind of doe-eyed mushy stuff sense of love. Rather, it is a love that is related to doing things for the benefit of another person, an unselfish concern for others and willingness to seek the best for them. In Paul’s instructions, the law of love, he is calling for love that has tangible signs. It is:

the difficult task of real love for real people who are met in everyday life, not theoretical love for humanity as a whole[ii].

For Paul, love is about action, not just emotion. Love needs to be a verb, THE verb, for how we live as those who delight in God’s law and seek to fulfill it.

Right now in our world, I think LOVE is what is at stake, and how we respond to it will make all the difference. As those who believe in the life-changing power of the love of God through Jesus Christ, we have to live like it matters. We have to follow the law of love. And in times when love is threatened or challenged, that is even more important.

Just over a year ago, in the wake of the senseless and heartbreaking attack on PULSE nightclub in Orlando, Florida, one Tony Award winning speech broke through some of the darkness with words of light. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a composer, lyricist, playwright and actor, won several awards for his creative work in Hamilton, including Best Score. Take a moment to see how he thanked and inspired the crowd [start video clip around 1:40]:

[I’m not freestyling. I’m too old. I wrote you a sonnet instead.

My wife’s the reason anything gets done.
She nudges me towards promise by degrees.
She is a perfect symphony of one.
Our son is her most beautiful reprise.
We chase the melodies that seem to find us
Until they’re finished songs and start to play.
When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day
This show is proof that history remembers.
We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.
We rise and fall, and light from dying embers
Remembrances that hope and love last longer.
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love;
Cannot be killed or swept aside.
I sing Vanessa’s symphony; Eliza tells her story.
Now fill the world with music, love, and pride.
Thank you so much for this]

In the face of struggle and tragedy, love is what is going to make the difference.  Love is what brings us together in community with each other. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor,” Paul writes (Romans 13:10). It’s not a trick we have to figure out. Look around you. Those are your neighbors. Think about another person, another group, as far away as you can imagine. Those are also your neighbors. All of God’s children are your neighbors. That means everybody. So, wherever we are, there will always be neighbors around, and with them there will be countless opportunities for us to embody the law of love.

You can do it here in our Sanctuary – consider our youngest worshipping neighbors, the ones who sit on the steps with me each week. Love is being the body of Christ to them, and not just saying they are welcome here, but creating a space in our Sanctuary for them in the PRAYground where they can engage in worship in meaningful ways to them. Love is greeting them, passing the peace, asking them what they learned about God today, or even what they might teach you. The law of love means that everything we do in relation to our children in this place comes from love- our love of them, our desire of them to know God’s love through us and through hymns and scriptures and sermons and communion, and most of all, our hope that they will develop a love for Jesus here.

Opportunities for practicing the love abound for our lawmakers. Right now, they face the monumental task of working together across party lines to address critical issues of immigration for those who arrived in our country as children. They are charged with financial decisions about debt ceilings that impact aid given to hurricane flooding victims and countless other programs. We need to pray for their conversations to be filled with love so that they can work together, and that love will infuse their decisions. And we need to act, to encourage our representatives to create rules and regulations and systems that practice the law of love for our neighbors.

And the law of love is already at work in many places.

The law of love is up the hill – as cars drove through our parking lot yesterday and were filled with produce for the mobile food pantry. As donations of clothing are examined and tagged and displayed as a store-like shopping experience to bring dignity to those in need.

The law of love is in Texas. Do you know about the Louisiana Cajun Navy? (https://www.facebook.com/LaCajunNavy/) It’s an informal, ad-hoc volunteer group of private boat owners who assist in search and rescue efforts. They formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and resurfaced last year after flooding in Louisiana. Two weeks ago, they lined the highways heading towards Texas with bass boats, johnboats, air boats, and other shallow-draft craft that can navigate flood waters to bring relief and rescue. The motto on their facebook reads “We the people of Louisiana refuse to stand by and wait for help in the wake of disasters in our State. We rise up and unite and rescue our neighbors!” A similar sense of fellowship is happening here in Georgia, as those from the coast evacuated up 75 and find welcome and shelter.

The law of love is in the responses of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, too, not just in Texas and those in the path of Irma, but in other places impacted by flooding, including the South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Malawi, Columbia, and Peru. PDA’s work also extends beyond natural disasters, providing relief and support to refugees, war-torn places, those struggling with famine and hunger and more. Our fish banks and offerings to One Great Hour of Sharing at Easter help support these ministries, and there may be opportunities coming for us to take part in their relief efforts.

This is what fulfilling the law of God looks like. It’s not rigid and legalistic, stuffy or boring; it’s engaging and active, alive and full. It is love as a verb. In big and small ways, there are moments where you can practice this kind of love, a love of action, that actively promotes the well-being and good of another person. Any other person. When we love our neighbors, we fulfill the most core aspect of the law by which God intends we live. And when that happens, I think it’s more than just us who are delighted. God is as well. May it be so. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
September 10, 2017

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[i] David L. Bartlett, “Homiletical Perspective: Romans 13:8-14,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).

[ii] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, and James D. Newsome, “Proper 18,” Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).

Sunday School at its Best

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When you grow up as the daughter of the pastor and Christian educator, you tend to log a lot of hours in Sunday School. I have countless memories of wonderful dedicated volunteers who taught me the love of Jesus throughout my life. They read to me, played and did crafts with me, helped me learn memory verses, and taught me songs of faith that I am now singing with my own child in the mornings on the way to preschool. In all of this, they surrounded me with God’s Story, and an appreciation of the ways God’s story was ongoing in my own life.

Sunday School at its best, though, came for me in high school at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, as I got to know Mrs. Judy during my sophomore year. While many teachers assumed that as the PK I knew all of the answers to the lesson’s questions (and often they weren’t totally wrong), Judy assumed I had questions. She created space for me and others to be who we were in that moment, complete with all the struggles we had as we wrestled with our understandings of who we were and who God was.  She allowed me to be me, free from any labels of assumptions at a time when I needed it the most. And, as a result, I was able to grow in my faith, deepening my relationship with Christ and finding a fulcrum in the balance of faith and uncertainty.

At its best, our time together learning in faith is an opportunity for us to be our most real and authentic selves, bringing the tough questions of our world and lives and allowing our responses to them to be shaped by the Word of God. This is what happens each week on our church campus during Sunday School (and at other times through Bible Studies and Presbyterian Women Circles) as brothers and sisters in Christ meet to wrestle with our questions together. Our conversations are strengthened by our diverse experiences, and we want you to be a part of them. When you do, I think you will find that often you will both have something to offer and something to learn. Join us. There is room for you at the table.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
September 2017 Newsletter

Sunday’s Sermon – Transformed – Romans 12:1-8

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“80 percent of life is just showing up.” This well-known quote, often attributed to actor and director Woody Allen, indicates the importance of presence in life. And it makes sense, after all, you can’t get ahead if you aren’t there to receive it. In times of crisis, a friend’s simple presence is often worth the most. A child or teenager in a school production or sporting event will scan the crowd for a familiar face to cheer them on. Showing up matters.

“Present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice” Paul writes. It’s the ancient version of this quote, reminding believers of the importance of showing up for God. Here in Romans, Paul lays out that how we engage our physical selves is a reflection of our faith. He puts it in terms that believers in Rome would understand, referencing practices of sacrifice. But, instead of a specific animal brought to the temple, Paul calls it a “living sacrifice,” a phrase that plays on what is known with something new. For Paul, our presence is not some sacrifice that ends in death, but instead is a consecration or dedication to the will and work of God that is live-giving. It marks renewal and wholeness, and is even included in many of our communion prayers as a sign that we wish to be made new by God at Christ’s table. And so we present ourselves, freely and openly, trusting that when we show up, God does too.

But, as another clichéd phrase goes, “showing up is half the battle.” For Paul, there is more to embodied faith than just physical presence. It also involves an opening of the mind. This week, my yoga instructor began class as always by calling our attention to deepening our breath as we centered ourselves to begin our practice together. She indicated an essential part to yoga is the combined presence of body and mind, encouraging us to be both physically present and mentally present in the space. She explained that in doing so, we would be able to do more than if we just mimicked her poses with our own bodies. By thinking about what we were doing, we would be able to do more. She’s right, of course. It’s one thing to sit on a yoga mat or in a pew, for example, and another to make the mental effort to sit tall. Try it with a bit of mindfulness in the next few moments: elongate the spine, imagining space between the vertebrae, like a string is pulling you up from the top of the head, while your shoulder blades are being drawn down away from your ears. Can you feel the difference even with just a bit more awareness? The body and the mind are connected, and at their best work together as a team.

In order to be our most faithful selves, we need to wrap our minds around things in new ways, ways that push and challenge us to better examine ourselves, our communities, our nation and even our world. We have to do more than just show up; we have to think about it, too. It is easy to fall into the trap of just going through the motions without really engaging our minds. This is especially true when it comes to our worship. We like to be lulled and comforted. And sometimes that’s what we need – a sanctuary from all the chaos and conflict that is happening in our world, a haven from the shouting pundits and not-so-funny memes and arguments in the comment threads.  But I don’t think that’s what Paul had in mind for the early church, certainly not in Romans. If anything, the Roman church had a very persuasive argument for the need for shelter and separation from the world. They were under attack, persecuted by the Empire, forced into hiding because of very real risks. But even then, perhaps especially when the world was at odds, Paul called them to reflect on the ways of the world so that they would not conform to the evils that surrounded them, but could be transformed by the renewing of their minds – something that happened in the context to true, authentic worship within the body of Christ.

A seminary friend posted a genuine question earlier this week, asking “how important is it to you for current events to be addressed specifically in worship?” The responses varied, but all seemed to point to the fact that our time together of worship should include wrestling with the issues of the world, not as partisan or policy debates, but rather in relationship to our understanding of what it means to be part of the kingdom of God. We must hear the words of Scripture not just as ancient texts, but as the Word of God here and now to us in our context, too. We have to trust that the church, particularly in our worship, can be a place where transformation can happen; in fact, we need to come expecting it. Otherwise, we will only experience a temporary escape without any real toolset for what we encounter outside of these walls, and are likely to fall into patterns of old ways and old thinking, conforming to the world as we blend in. Paul insists that God is calling us forward, into a new transformed way of being in which:

We must be ready to challenge those parts where the present age shouts, or perhaps whispers seductively, that it would be easier and better to do things that way, while the age to come, already begun in Jesus, insists that belonging to the new creation means that we must live this way instead[i].

We have to be a people who embody, body and mind, what it means to live with Jesus Christ as our Lord, not anyone or anything else. Worship can be a place where we find a balance point of human initiative and divine intervention as we grapple with the concerns of our day and seek to understand what the will of God is in the midst of it. When we are transformed, we are able to be a true witness to the work of Jesus Christ.

The beginning point of that witness starts with us. It starts with our honest and humble admission that we are prone to conforming to the world’s standards for life and that through our conforming, through our inaction, and through our silence, we have been complicit in the escalation of discord and disharmony within our society. This is a part of the renewing of minds that has to take place within us to live into our identity as the transformed body of Christ. As I have reflected on the role of racism in my own life over these past few weeks, I discovered a scale which was developed in July by psychologist Cristi Demnowicz[ii] as a way to illustrate and identify the racial bias we all experience on some level.

It resonated with me in a humbling way, reminding me that I can’t just talk about the issues of racism in our country as if I have not been a part of them. No, I have never donned a hood or openly discriminated against a person of color, but that doesn’t mean I have not been racist. As I scanned the chart, I identified with moments of awareness, in which I have noted that my experience as a white, heterosexual cis-woman has been largely privileged and different from what many who are not in these majority categories find. But as I looked at some of the other phrase descriptions, I had a lump in my throat as I realized how I have been guilty of saying, or at least thinking, things far more towards the side of racism than I would like to admit. And so, I confess, before you my brothers and sisters in Christ, that I have been and sometimes still am, racist. And I am praying for God to work through that and renew my mind and lead me more into modeling Christ’s love, just as ardently as I am praying for that to happen in the hearts and minds of those who are at every point on this spectrum. And I am extremely grateful to be able to do this hard work in the context of a faith community. Transformations, big and small, don’t happen alone.

The second part of today’s reading reminds us that God’s work isn’t just a solitary event of internal change. It is an act of community. As such, we are reminded to not get too big of a head, but instead consider what our transformed selves might offer. We have been transformed for a reason; to be a part of the body of Christ in the world. During the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had this to say about our work:

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men [sic] willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right[iii].

Paul invites us to participate in that through the genuine giving of ourselves as a living sacrifice before God, opening ourselves in body and mind to the work God might do in us, with us, and through us. Our passage begins with Paul begging his listeners to action, using the words “I appeal to you.” The word in Greek, parakalo, is closely related to the word John’s gospel uses to describe the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. This is not just some command. The language exudes invitation. Paul is encouraging his readers, and us, to respond to our faith by offering ourselves to be transformed by God and engaged in the work of God’s kingdom. Romans 12 is a call to action for the church in the present age. It starts by showing up. It continues by trying to wrap our minds around the issues of our world and the holiness of God’s will for us in it. It leads us into being the body of Christ. And it places us in the position to renew our commitments as followers of Jesus Christ.

Our church history is rich with such moments. In the 1980s, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa put together a formal statement of faith, something we call a confession, that began with a letter which said, in part:

We are deeply conscious that moments of such seriousness can arise in the life of the Church that it may feel the need to confess its faith anew in light of a specific situation.  We are aware that such an act of confession is not lightly undertaken, but ONLY (to be undertaken) if it is considered that the heart of the gospel is so threatened by it to be at stake.  In our judgment, the present situation in our country…..calls for such a decision.  Accordingly, we make this confession not as a contribution to a theological debate, nor as a new summary of our beliefs, but as a cry from the heart, as something we are obliged to do for the sake of the gospel in view of the times in which we stand…….Therefore, we speak pleadingly rather than accusingly.  We plead for reconciliation, and call for a process of soul searching together, a joint wrestling with the issues, and a readiness to repent in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ[iv].”

These words introduced Belhar Confession, written in response to the horrors of Apartheid that also presents ringing truths for us today. When sin threatens to corrupt the fabric of our society; when evil creates division among God’s children, constructs systems, and condones hostile actions and attitudes which demean and degrade the worth of any person or group and incites violence and destruction, the Christian community must respond by reclaiming what it is that we believe and who we are as followers of Jesus Christ. It can only happen if we are presenting ourselves to be transformed by God and working to find our place in God’s community.

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to take part in this joyous thing God is offering. Hear Paul’s words in verses 1 and 2 as an encouragement and a charge to you in these moments, made fresh to our modern ears by Eugene Peterson’s adaptation in The Message:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you[v].

May we be transformed in this way. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford

August 27, 2017

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[i] N.T. Wright

[ii] http://racismscale.weebly.com/

[iii] Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet Classics, 2000), as quoted by Kirk Byron Jones in his essay “Homiletical Perspective: Romans 12:1-8,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 3, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).

[iv] The Belhar Confession, https://www.presbyterianmission.org/resource/belhar-confession/

[v] Eugene Peterson,“Romans 12:1-2,” The Message

Sunday’s Sermon – Tough Conversations – Matthew 15:10-28

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“We need to talk.” These four words are a call to attention and have the potential to immediately strike fear in the ears of the listener. Rarely do they mean something positive. “We need to talk” is not often followed by “I love your new haircut” or “I want to give you good news.” Instead, “We need to talk” is followed by the delivering of difficult news: it is the classic introduction to a break-up conversation, a revelation that you have been caught red-handed for some transgression, an indicator that you have done something that is out of bounds, or bad news is going to be delivered. It indicates that something big is happening and a tough conversation is coming.

“We need to talk” should be the header of the second half of today’s text in our Bibles. A woman presents with an urgent plea, shouting for Jesus to help her daughter, and what follows is perhaps one of the toughest conversations recorded in our gospels. And it almost doesn’t happen. The response from Jesus and the disciples initially is silence, ignoring her cries. And when Jesus does respond? It isn’t pretty. In fact, it almost doesn’t sound like Jesus at all. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It is at best a brush-off, a sending away of this woman who does not merit his time or attention. Such a statement is counter to our most basic understanding of Jesus. Where is the Jesus who says “let the little children come to me” and who seemed to pause at every bend in the road to speak to people, much to the disciples’ dismay. Where is the Jesus who stops when a woman who is bleeding touches the hem of his coat, taking time to respond to her needs and offer healing? The one who doesn’t send the crowds away, but instead tells the disciples to give them something to eat? I would like that Jesus, please. Because what we have seems far from it. Then, he makes it worse, not just insinuating, but flat out calling the woman a “little doggie,” a diminutive, derogative term, not worthy of what is given to the privileged children (to be read as the people of Israel) at the table. This is not the Jesus we put on Sunday School classroom walls. In fact, it’s a presentation of Jesus that will get under our skin and make us frustrated and exasperated. It seems callous, mean, and coldhearted. These are not usually words we put with our Lord and Savior.

Perhaps we can find out what is going on by turning our attention to the woman, who isn’t given name, but is described by her ethnic identity. In the version of this story that we find in Mark’s gospel, she is labeled as a gentile, specifically a Syrophoenician (see Mark 7:24-30), identifying her as an outsider. But Matthew’s gospel takes it one step further, identifying her differently, with the label of Canaanite. Such a marker is significant, and would have been especially so to those in the 1st century. You see, it is a biblical reference. There were no Canaanites living in the first century, so:

The label evokes historical conflicts and thus defines the woman in terms of age-old prejudices a first-century Jewish audience would understand[i].

Such tension was inherent to the cultural context of the day, and it reveals a very sobering mirror to those listening, including us. We like to think of Jesus as above all of this, but here we see him at his most fully human. And in this picture of Jesus, we might see ourselves and our own prejudices revealed. We certainly feel the tension that comes in difficult conversations with those with whom we would prefer not to associate.

The writer of the gospel of Matthew places this encounter in a strategic place in the gospel that sets the stage for the woman to enter. After all, Jesus has just finished telling the scribes and Pharisees that it isn’t a strict adherence to purity laws or dietary regulations that makes one part of the covenant; it is the interplay between what is in the heart and the words that come from it. The Canaanite woman’s plea becomes an illustration of this instruction, without losing the inherent tension. It isn’t meant to be an easy application. It is supposed to catch the readers off guard and ruffle their feathers. As pastor Michael Lindvall notes:

Matthew doubtless framed the story he had borrowed from Mark in a way that would help his readers grapple with the tension between those members of his community who understood the gospel of Jesus to be the way for Jews to be faithful Jews and those members who believed that the gospel was intended by God for the whole world. That Jesus effectively articulates both perspectives in this passage served to name the tension and to recognize the truth inherent in both viewpoints[ii].

The struggle in this story, then, is necessary for it to be powerful, because it sets the stage for a new narrative to happen that changes understandings, for both Jesus and the disciples, and the listeners to the good news.

The woman persists. When things are difficult, when disparaging remarks are made, when attempts are there to silence her voice, when the harsh realities of the world are spoken in plain language, the woman does not shy away from the tough conversations that need to happen next. She addresses her need once again, engaging in a sharp and provocative response to Jesus that pushes against all that stands between her and the grace and mercy she seeks. She kneels at his feet and speaks again. Even the dogs get the crumbs. These words, spoken truth to power, along with her faith, enact real and meaningful change. Now we see the Jesus we have come to expect: “Great is your faith!” and healing for her daughter seal the moment.

Lewis Galloway offers that this story “wakes us up from our biblical slumbers” and puts us outside of our comfort zones. He argues that we need to see the Canaanite woman not as an annoyance, but as what he calls a “divine disruption” meant to teach us something. He maintains that:

Disciples of Jesus learn and grow when they brush up against people whose lives, needs, dreams, and struggles are different from their own. The effect of such a relationship is like the effect of sandpaper on a piece of rough wood. It smoothes out the undisciplined edges of life and makes his followers serviceable for some new purpose[iii].

For the first century believers, this story reveals a very rough spot in their understanding of what it mean to live as disciples of Jesus Christ, particularly in contemplating who could or could not be a part of the salvation offered by the Messiah. And Matthew gives them a tough conversation to help illustrate his point and open them to new possibilities. The totality of these verses would have been sandpaper to those who heard it, and it should be the same for us today.

Brothers and sisters, we need to talk. There are countless things happening and going on in the world that prompt us to have conversation with one another. But more often than not, we are silent or dismissive of those things that disrupt our lives and beckon our attention. The issues that have been raised in the wake of what happened in Charlottesville last weekend are not new. They are simply the most recent instance or example. Almost two and a half years ago I was serving a church in Baltimore and watched the news stunned with scenes that were only a few miles from our house. These tensions weren’t new either. Baltimore is a city with a long history of racial tension and struggle that still has implications on a daily basis for its residents. Many tough conversations had already been happening, but these events sparked an opportunity for more people to become a part of sustained conversation about what had brought the area to this breaking point, and what could be done about it going forward. If the news cycles are going to constantly be disrupted by tragedies from the same sin of racism and the same challenges it presents in our country, we need to be less dismissive of them and instead listen for what God might be trying to tell us. Maybe we can embark on these tough conversations before it becomes another headline.

I learned this week about a man who has, for over thirty years, made tough conversations his mission. Daryl Davis[iv] is an accomplished rock musician, with a resume that includes playing piano with the legendary Chuck Barry. But beyond the stage, he engages in tough conversations. Namely, as an African-American man, he has made it an objective in his life to have conversations with and befriend members of the Klu Klux Klan. He has been featured on many newscasts and last year was the focus of a documentary about this work titled “Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race, and America[v],” which you can find on Netflix, among other places:

His story is fascinating, as he reveals that his guiding question is and has always been simple: “How can you hate me when you don’t know me?” He models a very different way of engaging issues of racism around the country, which has led to several dozen KKK members leaving the clan, and leaving him with their hoods and robes. He seeks to enact change by establishing dialogue, saying “when two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting.” His work is provocative, and not without controversy or criticism. It has certainly given me a lot to think about, along with many “sandpaper moments.”  But, there is one thing about which there is no question; Daryl Davis is willing to have some tough conversations.

Friends, it does not take much for us to be put in positions where we might have some tough conversations. Look around you in this space. We are, by my accounts, what you would call a “purple church.” The political and ideological positions of those who sit in our pews cover virtually the entire spectrum. And that makes it hard, particularly when tensions escalate around us and even within us. Frankly, it’s easier when those around you share your viewpoints. But writer Diana Butler Bass notes that there is great potential for congregations like us. She notes that:

Purple is more than a blend of red and blue, a right-left political hybrid with no color of its own. Purple is an ancient Christian symbol. . . . Christian purple – the color of repentance and humility – represents the kingdom birthed in the martyred church, unified around a crucified savior, and formed by the spiritual authority of being baptized in a community of forgiveness. . . . For Christians, purple is more than a blending of political extremes, a mushy middle. Purple is about power that comes through loving service, laying down one’s life for others, and following Jesus’ path[vi].

Purple, it seems, might have something to do with the vision set forth by the Psalmist in Psalm 133, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” It is a psalm that expresses the deep longing and hope for reunification of the Northern and Southern kingdoms. It’s something that hasn’t yet happened, but is yearned for with all of the psalmist’s being. And I believe it is something we yearn for as well. The only way we can possibly get there is to actually talk to each other about it. Even if that is tough.

Tough conversations take many forms. In the case of Daryl Davis, it comes in the way of establishing friendships and simply listening. That’s a great place to begin. In fact, you don’t even necessarily have to talk about those “hot button” issues with each other at first. Just get to know each other’s story. Then, as the friendship develops, you can delve into those deeper waters. In the case of the Canaanite woman, tough conversations come by stripping away pretense and naming difficult realities that push boundaries and place the woman at risk. It’s the proverbial “speaking truth to power,” and is a type of honest engagement that has the ability to bring about lasting change. Both are different methods, but both faithful ways of embodying a faith that allows us to be fully present with each other. Our work right now is not in the easy. It’s in the difficult, heartbreaking, soul-searching, seemingly impossible work of having tough conversations with each other.

Today’s text reminds us that we are called to engage in the tensions and difficult conversations of our time. As people of faith, I would encourage us to try to make these tough conversations ones that are theological. The issues we wrestle with in the world, particularly those of equality and justice, need the theology and love of Jesus Christ infused into them. That’s the model of the Canaanite woman and Jesus. The woman evokes theological terms like “Lord” and “Son of David.” The tough conversation she brings wasn’t just a hot-button issue; it was a crisis of theology. Her begging wasn’t just to have her daughter healed; her begging was a persistent insistence on being included in the love and grace and mercy offered by Jesus Christ. That must be the root of all of our approaches as well.

The work of faith is hard. Tough conversations are all around us. May we not be silent.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford

August 20, 2017

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[i] Marilyn Salmon, “Commentary on Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28,” The Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=125, accessed 8/17/17

[ii] Michael L. Lindvall, “Theological Perspective: Matthew 15:21-28,” Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 2, Chapters 14-28, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

[iii] Lewis F. Galloway, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 15:21-28,” Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 2, Chapters 14-28, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

[iv] http://www.daryldavis.com/#

[v] http://accidentalcourtesy.com/

[vi] Diana Butler Bass, “Not Red, Not Blue…Purple Churches http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/godspolitics/2006/11/diana-butler-bass-not-red-not.html#t3xkWVFOMuoMdpGe.99, accessed 8/17/17.

Sunday’s Sermon – Get Out of the Boat – Matthew 14:22-33

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Seven years ago I took an amazing trip to Guatemala. In addition to some time spent volunteering at Cedepca, my friend Dania and I took a vacation north to the highland region of the country.

 

Part of this trip included a visit to Tikal, incredible ruins nestled in the rainforest which was the capital of a conquest state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya with architecture that dates back as far as the 4th century BCE. Similar to the pyramids in Egypt in scale, Tikal is larger than life and almost unbelievable. We soon found ourselves at one of the largest temple ruins, Temple 5, where visitors were invited to climb to the top.

Dania quickly dismissed the idea, but I jumped at what I imagined might be a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She agreed to wait and held my bag as I made my way to the base. Because the steps were very narrow and worn, the only way up and down was a wooden staircase that was more like a ladder, affixed to the crumbling ruins.

I began to climb. The structure began to shake. I looked up, following many tourists who were ahead of me. My grip tightened. The ladder creaked. About halfway up, the movement on the stairs slowed and my stomach got pretty heavy. Then I made a critical mistake – I looked down. I have a relatively healthy fear of heights, and in just a few moments convinced myself that this was the most foolishly dangerous thing I could have ever possibly done, and surely I was moments away from slipping and falling without anything to stop me but the people and stones below. I became almost paralyzed with fear. But I was also in the middle of a ladder with nowhere to go but up.

So I held on for dear life, praying I could figure something out. Then, I noticed something ahead of me at the top of the stairs. An older gentleman was being encouraged by his family to complete his climb. With their help, he reached the top, and then, pressed tightly against the wall of the ruins, began to encourage me. He helped me take the last few steps, and then find a spot next to him where I wouldn’t fall off the ledge and could take in the view. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In moments, he had become my best friend. He shared how important it was to him to follow his grandchildren up and take in this sight. He was 70 years old, but this was his first visit to Tikal. We marveled at the view, and at the people down below. We discussed how we could avoid having to go back down those wooden stairs. The storm inside me calmed. And eventually, with his encouragement again, I was able to return safely to the ground. We celebrated together.

   

 

Moments that take us outside of our comfort zone have the potential to be exhilarating moments that are exclamation points on the adventures of our lives. Our gospel reading today is not exception, featuring an overeager, passionate disciple who makes a pretty dramatic leap.

Peter is perhaps the most enthusiastic disciple. When Jesus asks for something to happen, it is Peter who has his hand up first to volunteer. He may not get it right all of the time, ok, a lot of the time, but his effort is inspiring. He is what we might describe as being “on fire” for the Lord, and he wants to be a part of everything that Jesus is doing right away. You know how dogs get all excited when their owner comes home, racing towards them with tails wagging? That’s Peter when he sees Jesus coming on the water.

To be sure, Peter’s decision to jump overboard was pretty foolish, particularly in the midst of a storm. It’s the very definition of “throwing caution to the wind.”  As Pastor Andrew Foster Connors notes:

You do not step out of a boat in the middle of a storm. You batten down the hatches, put on your life jacket, hunker down in the belly of the boat, and pray that the waves do not get any bigger and the winds to not get any stronger. . . . The safest way to avoid getting hurt seems to be to stay in the boat: 92 percent of the disciples do exactly that in this story[i].

Most of us would stay in the boat, too.  And in this way, the boat becomes a metaphor for how we try to keep ourselves safe, comfortable, and sheltered, particularly when things are rough. Our boats are numerous, and they are literal and physical as well as spiritual. Writer and Pastor John Ortberg identifies them to us in this way, saying:

Your boat is whatever represents safety and security to you apart from God himself. Your boat is whatever you are tempted to put your trust in, especially when life gets a little stormy. Your boat is whatever keeps you so comfortable that you don’t want to give it up even if it’s keeping you from joining Jesus on the waves. Your boat is whatever pulls you away from the high adventure of extreme discipleship[ii].

Most of us would stay in the boat, but not Peter. Peter embraces the call to discipleship and hears Jesus’ invitation to come. He anticipates that something exciting is going to happen. And, like a child standing on the side of a pool wanting to jump in, he yells out to Jesus “are you ready?” asking permission to take the leap.  Jesus responds with a simple command, “Come,” urging Peter to join him. And that simple invitation is all it takes to get Peter walking on water.

What would it take for you to walk on water with the Lord? That is one of the questions John Ortberg asks in his popular book. In it, he offers that God often calls us to get out of the boat in a variety of ways, and he identifies four indicators that can help us identify God’s call and motivate us, too, to get out of the boat.

First, he identifies the indicator of fear. Those things that cause us the most anxiety and nervousness, he argues, might be the places God is most calling us to grow. Second, he suggests an indicator of frustration in our lives that comes with the gap between the fallen reality and our sense of God’s desires. These are the moments where we might be prompted to action as we try to reconcile the world as it is with the world as we believe God intends. Third, there is the indicator of compassion, those things that tug at our heart strings and compel us to respond with demonstrations of love and care for one another, both strangers and friends. Finally, he speaks of the indicator of prayer, recognizing that we may not always see the path clearly, but that through prayer we might uncover deeper understanding. He suggests a minimum of a six month daily commitment to prayer as a way to invite reflection and discernment. All of these indicators work both individually and together to help us get a sense that there is some presence, the one we know to be Jesus himself, who desires that we get out of the boats we have constructed for ourselves and instead try to walk on water.

Yesterday, in Charlottesville, Virginia, thousands of people were motivated to get out of their boats of comfort and speak out in the face of hate and injustice. Among them were hundreds of clergy and other Christians who joined together to bring message of hope and light to the darkness on display by those who were gathering in outrageous displays of the sin of racism and white supremacy. As I watched the news unfold, I was numb. I heard stories and saw countless pictures and videos, some of which were from seminary classmates and colleagues who were sharing them firsthand, and my heart became heavy. It was a day full of sobering moments. I firmly believe they were doing the work of witness, the kind of get out of the boat discipleship work that Jesus calls us to do. And at the same time, I found myself glad to be so many miles away, distanced from the reality of it being a decision I would make myself. I would like to think that if this had happened here in Acworth, or Marietta, or Atlanta, that I would have gotten out of the boat and been there, too. But just the thought of it engulfs me with a sense of fear that might have kept me silenced and on the sidelines. But then I read Peter’s story again, and hear Jesus calling us out of the boat, even in the midst of a storm. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the storm of racism in our country is real, and it is not just isolated to Charlottesville, Virginia.  We must be attentive to the calls placed on us to get out of our boats and dispel hate with that love of Jesus that does not discriminate or favor. Overcoming fear, naming frustrations with broken systems, speaking with compassion, and praying can motivate us into active work in Jesus’ name. We must look outside the boat and see where Jesus is calling us to go. There is work for each of us to do.

Stories like this put us on the edge, and prompt us to action. Getting out of the boat means taking a risk, trusting in something bigger than we can see, in a radical act of discipleship. But doing so can be terrifying, as illustrated on the silver screen almost twenty years ago by Harrison Ford in the classic Indiana Jones trilogy. Consider this, the final of 3 tests as Indy seeks the Holy Grail as he tries to save his father’s life:

Getting out of the boat is a leap of faith. Fortunately, we aren’t just stepping off into thin air, nor are we being completely thrown in the deep end without help. Jesus is there, calling to us and encouraging us to step out. And if we get scared and start to sink, Jesus is there to hold us up so that the waters will not overwhelm us. After all, he is the one who has come to us saying, “don’t be afraid,” for the great I AM, the one who spoke over the waters of creation, through the burning bush, in the words of the prophets, has also come to us in the flesh, and over and over again demonstrates the power over the chaos that threatens to consume us. Jesus doesn’t just appear when the waters have been calmed; Jesus has the power to walk with us over the stormy waters, and gives us the abilities to do things beyond anything we could ever imagine. And all of this is possible with just a little bit of faith. The little faith that is the size of a mustard seed and can still move mountains (see Matthew 17:20). The little faith that gets Peter, and us, out of the boat. Looking to Jesus, may we be willing to take a step overboard. Amen.

~Rev Elizabeth Lovell Milford

August 13, 2017

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[i] Andrew Foster Connors, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 14:22-36,” Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 2, Chapters 14-28, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

[ii] John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, (Zondervan, 2001).

Lord, Hear Our Prayer

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In the midst of this weekend’s events in Charlottesville, as people of God we are called to pray, and to consider how (not if) God is calling us to respond in our own lives. Below are several resources that offer words of prayer and longing for a God of justice, peace, and love, to infiltrate the hate in our world and fill it with love.

Let us pray:

http://pda.pcusa.org/pda/resource/charlottesville-prayer/

http://www.franpratt.com/litanies/2017/8/12/litany-for-charlottesville-va

A Prayer from the Streets of Charlottesville from Seminarian Lauren Grubaugh

A prayer for Charlottesville

Sunday’s Sermon – What’s In Your Lunchbox? Matthew 14:13-21

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It is that time of year again. Both Cherokee and Cobb counties are back in school. All this week I saw wonderful pictures of first days, from sweet little kindergarteners starting their journey to bittersweet posts about a senior in high school’s last first day. And among these pictures was one from a friend who said she had almost missed packing her children’s lunches this summer; complete with the picture you see on the bulletin cover this morning. So I asked for a few more examples, and some proud parents shared these, complete with encouraging notes. (I should also note that several indicated they should just send me a shot of some lunch money in hand). Somewhat surprising to me, not much has changed, with school lunches since I was packing them just a few years ago. There are some standards that have stood the test of time. As I shared with the children a few moments ago, Little Debbie snacks were always a highlight for me, along with Capri Suns and other special treats. For class field trips I often got to have a Lunchable, a prized selection to be sure. Now, I was fortunate to grow up in a home where lunch was always available, but the best ones were the ones my dad packed. I’m not sure if he realized he was packing for a child, or just wanted me to have lots of options, but whenever he packed my lunch, it was full, almost double what I really needed. I always had a snack for the way home, and usually a few things that could be saved for the next day on top of that.

Perhaps that’s the kind of lunch that was unpacked on the hillside that day long ago when the crowds followed Jesus. That’s the end image, after all; baskets overflowing with leftovers, twelve baskets of them, after more than 5,000 people were fed (the 5,000 just accounted for the men, so you might imagine how quickly that number climbs when you add in women and children who surely would have been present, too). But that image doesn’t match the presenting problem at the beginning of our story, as the disciples come to Jesus and remind him that they are in the middle of nowhere and the people are getting hungry. There isn’t a McDonald’s on every corner, or even food trucks popping up for the large gathering. And, from the context here, it appears that no one had really thought about provisions for themselves when they began to listen to the great teacher. And hunger doesn’t seem to dissuade the crowd. This is significant, as one commentator suggests:

Perhaps there is some hunger of the soul that causes people to continue to pursue Jesus even after their stomachs start growling[i].

Such a situation reminds us that there truly is something compelling about what Jesus is offering to the crowds. It also sets the stage for a miracle to happen.

This is among only a handful of stories that is captured by all four gospels, and aside from the Resurrection, is the only miracle, which tells us it must have been of some importance to the early church. Some even suggest that this story was told as a regular part of the church’s gathering to celebrate communion together. Many of us are most familiar with the version in John’s gospel, which features a little boy bringing his little lunch forward to share. But here in Matthew’s account, we find some different distinguishing features that highlight a different aspect of the story, namely, what it means to be a disciple.

The disciples go to Jesus to fix the problem, and his response is not immediately to just make food appear (which clearly God has the power to do, as evidenced by countless stories in Scripture, with God giving manna in the wilderness as a prime example). Instead, he simply instructs the disciples to give the crowd something to eat. Apparently one answer to “What Would Jesus Do?” is tell the disciples to do it. Jesus doesn’t just function like some sort of holy vending machine. Instead, he gives the disciples agency and calls upon them to use their skills and abilities to be a part of the solution. They have come up with the five loaves and two fish, and it doesn’t take a mathematician to see that those numbers aren’t going to add up. The need was too great, and the resources were too few. I’m sure the disciples thought it was a hopeless cause. What they had wasn’t enough.

Even as Jesus’ disciple, it’s easy to feel like what we bring to the table isn’t enough. Sometimes it’s the result of humility, but often we express very real feelings of inadequacy, particularly when it comes to doing things that involve our faith. We are afraid of saying yes to teaching Sunday School, even to children, because we “don’t know enough about the Bible,” despite reading it and coming to church for years. We shy away from singing in the choir because we don’t think our voice is as good as everyone else’s. We hesitate to volunteer to help with the mobile food pantry because we don’t think we’re strong enough to do anything. And, of course, it’s true with things outside of the church. We don’t speak up often enough when we witness injustice because we don’t think we’re eloquent enough to say anything worthwhile. We stay sitting or pressed against the wall at a wedding reception because we are convinced that we have two left feet and our dance moves would embarrass us. We avoid pictures because we don’t think we look good enough in the moments we want to remember; or we apply filter after filter to cover up our distorted sense of reality. We stay silent in the midst of a friend’s grief or crisis because we think there’s nothing we can do to help. You get the idea. Like the disciples, we look down at what we have and determine that it’s not enough.

Unless. Unless Jesus, the Messiah, God incarnate, could take what we have, even if it’s a meager amount, and do something more with it. What if this story is about more than just a little lunch? What if it’s about all of those things, those inadequacies and small portions, and how God can transform them into something amazing? Jesus’ first miracle in the story was to encourage the disciples to get away from their small thinking and instead consider that what they had could be more than enough. With a blessing from Christ, even what was small could be multiplied. Jesus was inviting the disciples to be a part of the miracle. Likewise, God is entrusting us to be a part of the miracles God is doing each and every day.

Answering this call means looking at what we have in our own proverbial lunchboxes, and considering what it is that we might be able to share with the world. Yes, on one level I think this is absolutely about food. The biblical narrative and gospel witness are full of calls to feed the hungry, and we know all to well that there are countless lunchboxes in our world, even in our own community, that are left far too empty. Later in the service you’ll hear more about some of the ways we as a congregation are working within our community to change that circumstance for many children. So the giving of our tangible and physical resources does matter. When we have leftovers in our lunchboxes, we are called to share them.  If you can, add in just a few items to your grocery cart each week to donate to our food pantry; anything helps, and some of our most needed items each month are listed on the back of the bulletin. If you’re picking up school supplies, or just walking by the display the next time you’re at Target, maybe get a few extra things for a local school, too. In doing this, you are taking the blessings you have been given by God, and allowing God to multiply them and bless others. And that’s a pretty big part of being a disciple.

But the sharing doesn’t just have to be about the things we can hold in our hands. God has given us countless gifts that aren’t tactile, but need to be shared. Consider the gifts and abilities that you have. Maybe you’re really organized and good with numbers, or you love to paint or draw. Perhaps you’re particularly handy and love working with your hands, or you have the ability to quickly get to know people and develop relationships. Maybe you find it easy to talk about your faith and pray with others, or you have a knack for writing and communicating in creative ways. Whatever it is, find ways to share them, in this community and beyond. Don’t just leave the work to others that might be “more” qualified than you. Trust them to Jesus in a spirit of prayer, and see if just maybe he might be calling YOU to use them to be a part of what God is doing in the world, reaching out to others in compassion and love. Don’t leave those gifts in your lunchbox.

Do you know what happens if you leave something in the lunchbox too long? Especially in this Georgia end of summer heat? It spoils. It smells. It becomes unrecognizable and likely inedible. It ends up wasted in the trash. The same is true of the gifts we have if we just tuck them away in a box, never to see the light of day. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have baskets of leftovers than a lunchbox of spoiled remains.

Friends, God has packed our lunchboxes full. We have more gifts and skills and abilities than we realize. Even if all we can look down and see is two fish and five little loaves of bread. God sees something bigger, and God can do big things even with the smallest gifts. As disciples, we continue to go to Jesus with the problems of our lives and our world, and Jesus responds time and time again not just by waving some magic wand and fixing things, but by engaging us and working through us to make incredible things possible; things like an entire hillside full of people fed. Our job is to open our lunchboxes and share what’s inside: with God, with each other, and with the world. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
August 6, 2017

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[i] Dock Hollingsworth, “Homiletical Perspective: Matthew 14:13-21,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
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Benediction: from Saint Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Food Pantry

Food distribution has been changed to the 1st Saturday of the month at 10:00 am and the 3rd Wednesday of the month at 12:30 pm.

The next Drive-Up Food Pantry is scheduled for Saturday, May 3 at 10 am.  Accurate pre-registration is strongly encouraged to ensure volunteers pack accordingly.
Please sign- up here!

For other pantry locations, go here
or text “FINDFOOD” to 888-976-2232

Church News

Volunteers are needed to help pack family boxes on Monday, April 27th and Monday, May 19th at 10 am in the Fellowship Hall. We welcome all volunteers.  

Food Pantry distribution volunteer opportunity Saturday, May 3 registration here!

Worship Live Streaming and archives can be found by clicking the appropriate link under the worship tab.

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Upcoming Events

Worship

Sunday Schedule

9:00 AM
Responding in Faith Sunday School Class
     via Zoom with Barbara Jessee

9:15 AM
Bible University Sunday School Class
    with Dr. Tom Scott
Hybrid format (in-person & via Zoom)

Connections Sunday School Class
with Mark Bixler
Hybrid format (in-person & via Zoom)

Youth Bible Study (Room 8) 6- 12th grade

Kids Club – (Room 7)
Biblically-based Faith Formation Activities for Preschool – 5th Grade
Praise Kids Music on the 3rd Sunday of the month.

10:30 AM
In-Person Worship and Livestreamed via   YouTube.

Youth Group – the first and third Sunday of the month from 5-7 pm during the school year.