Constructing Community
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
The shock of betrayal that Jacob experienced the morning after his wedding resonates all too easily with us today. When Londoners learned that the perpetrators of the recent bus and subway bombings were probably British citizens, they were stricken with the same outrage and fear that washed over Jacob when he realized his father-in-law had duped him. If we cannot trust the people we name as family or fellow citizens, whom can we trust? If the legal structures of nationality and kinship alone cannot guarantee we will receive fairness and security from one another, what can? What constitutes a community? How can we create communities in which we can trust one another and speak truthfully with one another in spite of divergent interests?
When a filmmaker is killed in the Netherlands for criticism of Muslim extremism; when gossip ruins reputations and cripples honesty in North American churches; when Enrons and Plame affairs breed cynicism about our economy and government and undermine integrity in society, then it is evident that these old questions remain all too current. If the story of Jacob opens a problem we recognize, and presents some examples of how not to build a community, our New Testament lessons offer some perspectives that may point us in more helpful and hopeful directions.
It does not take much reflection to realize that trust is the sine qua non of worthwhile communal life. Without trust we will not enter into economic, political, or personal relationships of any depth or strength. Yet we have perennially encountered the problem of how to anchor our trust. It is with good reason that the biblical wisdom literature frequently advises us not to vest too much trust in our fellow human beings: quite apart from the limitations of human power to help (Psalm 146:3-4), humans frequently prove resoundingly untrustworthy (Jeremiah 17:9). The patriarchal narratives of Genesis suggest that selfishness, jealousy, fear, anger, and opportunism have been prone to trump our better nature from the very beginning.
Jacob, of all people, should have been more careful about the fine print of his contract with Laban. Having twice swindled his twin, and with the aid of his conniving mother deliberately duped his elderly father (chs. 25, 27), this lad should have had a long nose for devious behaviour. Yet he seems to have been blindsided by his uncle's sly switching of brides (29:23-25). The wedding night palm-off set the tone for the relationship between these two men over the ensuing years, a relationship marked less by forthrightness than by underhanded maneuvering for advantage. As suspicion and ill-will increased, Jacob eventually (ch. 31) found it necessary to leave -- and even this he could not accomplish openly, but he slipped away during Laban's absence, resulting in the uneasy truce of the Mizpah watchpost (31:44-54). Clearly, neither shared blood nor a contract constituted a sufficient basis for the trust and cooperation that we hope for in our communities.
Trustworthiness cannot be legislated, though many have tried. Totalitarian governments and societies of every political and religious stripe have consistently failed to produce the security they sought, though this has not discouraged repeated attempts. Far too many churches -- and, as the news often reminds us, other religious and quasi-religious entities as well -- function as miniature police states rather than as seedbeds of wholesome humanity. Whether it is the extremism of the Taliban or the everyday despotism of ecclesiastical gossip and "community expectations," religion, in its misguided attempt to coerce trustworthiness, too often fosters anything but, while also crippling the capacity to trust. Community can never be the product of coercion. It can only be built on freedom, on the choice of free people both to trust and to be worthy of trust. The precariousness of this enterprise cannot be willed, legislated, nor prayed away. This is a lesson we have extraordinary difficulty learning.
It is significant that the one we Christians hail as God's definitive revelation lived a life of vulnerability. He never had economic or political power, nor did he threaten or browbeat people as John the Baptist did. He spoke constantly of the kingdom of God, yet the manner in which he envisioned this realm of God taking hold in the world was remarkable. It is like, he said, the small, often frustrated, yet unstoppable organic processes of life: like yeast fermenting and replicating in a batch of dough, or like a sturdy mustard plant growing from a single seed (Matthew 13:31-33). Any baker or farmer can tell you that there are all kinds of conditions that will kill the yeast or ruin the crop; Jesus' famous Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9) indicates that he fully expected the realm of God to be frustrated in many of the places where it tried to take root. Yet if he did not demand ideal conditions or try to force the realm of God to take root (for if he did, it would not be the realm of God that would grow!), neither did he ever give up or imagine that this vision could be extirpated. He trusted in the pervasiveness of God's work; he continued to toss parables into people's imaginations, inviting them to glimpse God's future in the mixed evidence of everyday life, luring them to choose to participate in the world of God's intent. He did not promise security; he invited integrity (Matthew 5:1-12). His approach was not exclusive but inclusive (Matthew 13:24-30, 47-50). He did not preach or practice coercion, but urged and modeled love (Matthew 5:38-48). And, yes, he was betrayed.
It is this that sticks in the craw of good people. We know, after all, that nothing worth having can be coerced -- not love nor trust nor integrity nor any other important thing. These are all the yield of freedom. But with freedom also comes the possibility of abuse of freedom. And there will always be such abuse. There will always be Jacobs and Labans whose greed outweighs their concern for the rights of others or for the common good. There will always be the weak or the incautious who try to take illicit shortcuts to meet expectations. There will always be the rigid and the extreme who try to force others to live according to their own mold. And we are afraid of them. We are afraid of being hurt by those who abuse their freedom. We are afraid of being betrayed. And so we lapse into manipulative, dishonest, or coercive behaviour in an attempt to be safe.
Forget safety, says Jesus. Or, more properly, redefine it. Safety does not lie in avoiding the cross, in avoiding betrayal, in avoiding hurt. Safety lies in walking the dark road with God, and placing the outcome in God's hands. "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God," reminds Paul (Romans 8:28). "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" He then, disquietingly, answers this question by reeling off a daunting list of circumstances that would tempt most of us to suspect God had abandoned us. Yet none of this, he insists, can do lasting damage (vv. 35-39). Our place in God's love, and the eventual fruition of God's realm, are not damaged by any such setback (vv. 18-30). These things can be trusted; all else is secondary.
Within a Christian worldview, community is an aspect of the realm of God; it is something to be trusted as much against the evidence as because of it; it is something to be lived into, to be leavened by, in the trust that little by little it will grow and permeate the world. All the pounding that our yearning for community takes -- from terrorism to corporate scandals and all the rest -- though it may temporarily knock the wind out of our sense of safety, we are invited to regard as the kneading that works the yeast more thoroughly through the dough. We are invited to trust that the Spirit is still at work in us and others, that the realm of God is still viable, that trust and trustworthiness are still worth the risk, that they are still the treasure (Matthew 13:44) worth selling our safety to buy into.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: The London transit bombings showed Britons -- and us, if we'd forgotten Oklahoma City -- that common political citizenship doesn't in itself make for community in any real sense. The terrorists who were responsible for these assaults on the community were more deeply committed to their particular version of Islam more than to any secular structures. But the reaction of many Muslims in Britain -- including a recent fatwa condemning such acts by Islamic authorities in Britain -- shows a split in that religious community as well. And the reaction of at least one family to the news that their son was one of the bombers shows that close biological ties don't necessarily mean that people are really together.
Common political citizenship, religion, family -- none of those things provides an assured basis for community. What else is there? Economic ties certainly give no guarantee. Self-interest is built into virtually all economic structures and the old saying that there's no honor among thieves, while it applies only to an extreme form of economic partnership, makes the point clearly enough.
Genuine community requires that people have some concern for the welfare of other people. There has been considerable discussion and debate among scientists studying evolution about how altruism could play any role in the development and history of living things since natural selection plays a major role in the evolutionary process. If the name of the game is passing on one's genes to the next generation, why should any organism do anything to help another survive and pass on its genes? We can understand why there should be such altruism among close kin. Since an individual has 50 percent the same genetic endowment as its siblings (and increasingly smaller percentages with increasingly distant relatives), doing something that helps three siblings (for example) pass on their genes at the expense of one's own life (or procreation) makes sense.
But why should I be concerned about the welfare of someone in another tribe or on the other side of the world who is not a relative? Christianity and other religions say that we should have such concern, but the existence of trans-kin altruism is something of a scientific puzzle. This is not just a theoretical problem. As Philip Hefner has put it: "Trans-kin altruism is not simply a scientifically puzzling phenomenon, nor a regrettably neglected virtue; it is a central symbol and ritual of what human beings should be doing with their lives" (The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], p. 248). In particular, it is essential for the existence of genuine community.
Of course it would be ridiculous to suggest that Christianity as it exists in the real world has given a clear answer to the problem of achieving community or that the empirical church has given a great example of it. The Fourth Crusade, the seventeenth century's wars of religion, Northern Ireland -- there's no need to multiply examples. Still, there are two Christian insights that can be helpful here.
The first is connected in an important way with this Sunday's Second Lesson, Romans 8:26-39. Paul begins by speaking of the work of the Holy Spirit, and while the emphasis here is on the Spirit's activity in the individual believer, we can also reflect on the Spirit's work in the church.
All communities have a spirit, which can be thought of as the atmosphere or "field" which holds that community together and makes it something more than a bunch of individuals. (Pannenberg has emphasized the similarities between beliefs about the Holy Spirit and the field concept in modern physics, as well as the relationship between the Spirit and biology. See, e.g., Wolfhart Pannenberg, "The Doctrine of the Spirit and the Task of a Theology of Nature" (p. 123), "Spirit and Energy" (p. 138), and "Spirit and Mind," in Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993].) Thus we speak of a "family spirit" or "team spirit." The distinctive claim made for the Christian church is that its spirit is the Spirit of God -- which is why belief in the church is included in the third article of the ecumenical creeds.
If we just left it at that the claim would seem both triumphalistic ("We're the only ones who have the Spirit") and limiting of God (as if the Holy Spirit didn't exist outside the church). But in reality the Spirit possesses us, not the other way around, and Jesus compares the Spirit to the wind, which "blows where it chooses" (John 3:8). This claim about the church as a community of the Holy Spirit is a double-edged challenge to Christians -- a call to be more truly a community and to be the instrument through which the Spirit works to create wider community.
The fact that the church is spoken of in the New Testament as the body of Christ is also significant for our understanding of the type of community we are to be. Paul speaks about that in Romans 12:1-8 after the long discussion (chapters 9-11) of God's purpose for Israel that follows our Second Lesson.
Carlos Wilton responds: Your comments, Chris, remind me that we are living in an age of new tribalism. A half-century ago, at the end of World War II, many had high hopes for a true community of nations. The United Nations was founded out of such a dream, and there was a time when many believed that a new model of global unity was nearly within our grasp.
No longer. Every suicide bomb that tears apart a bus or subway car -- be it in London, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, or wherever -- reminds us of how fragmented the human family continues to be. While such acts may be a desperate cry of outrage on the part of the perpetrators (who feel they and their tribe have been discriminated against), the net effect of these reprehensible acts is not to bring about the dreamed-of unity but rather to further fragment it.
In his "Rumors" e-newsletter for this week, Ralph Milton writes of the persistence of tribalism:
In a tribal culture, your primary loyalty -- perhaps your only loyalty -- is to the tribe. Within the tribe it is wrong to steal. It is wrong to lie. It is wrong to kill. And it is expected that you will use any opportunity you have to help the people in your own tribe -- especially those within your own family. But a whole different set of values applies to those outside the tribe. Any way you can do them hurt and do yourself good is just fine. That ethical system more or less worked when people were born, lived and died in a specific tribal culture, and contact with those of other tribes happened only occasionally through trade or warfare.
Our situation today, of course, is very different. It's a truism that the world is shrinking. It is no longer possible for various human tribes to live in splendid isolation from one another. In a modern, cosmopolitan city such London, which has been described as one of the most ethnically diverse places on earth, the absurdity of tribalism is especially evident. The bombs that devastated underground trains and a double-decker bus took the lives of Muslims as well as Christians. Conceived as an attack on the West, in fact those bombings were an attack on the world.
A poignant story of a man who learned the hard way about the common kinship of all humanity is that of a Dutchman by the name of RenÈ Sch‰fer. Sch‰fer was a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. His captors had sentenced him to forced labor in a shipyard in the city of Hiroshima. Through years of harsh captivity, Sch‰fer had learned to hate his guards with a white-hot passion. He used to pray to God every night that the Americans would attack the city and destroy it, exacting revenge for his years of suffering.
In August 1945, Sch‰fer's prayer was answered. Hearing an air-raid siren one day, he dove into a ditch. A moment later, he heard the noise, saw the flash -- and felt the heat -- of the world's first nuclear weapon used in war. In the darkness and confusion that followed, Sch‰fer was amazed to find himself helping not only his fellow POWs who had been burned or blinded, but also his guards. Years later, he had this to say:
From the moment the bomb went off, you see, there was no hate left. It was a strange experience -- how hate can be turned to pity by a single bomb. There was even no difference for me between the Japanese victims and my friends. I felt myself a victim among other victims, not a Dutchman among Japanese. The bomb had killed all hate.
How sad that it took an atom bomb to blast away the walls of hate, to erase the dividing line between this man and his captors! But that's the way it is with prejudice -- the walls between Us and Them are not breached very easily.
Several years back, I remember reading a story of an American church leader who, as part of a traveling delegation, went to visit Christians in the southern Sudan. These people, of course, were -- and still are -- the victims of terrible ethnic persecution. The American visitor remarked on the fact that many of the Christian homes, humble as they were, had a cross mounted on the roof, above the entrance. It seemed to him that this cross put the inhabitants of the house at risk. When he asked his host about the cross on his house, his host told him, "That cross tells the world that I am a member of the tribe of Jesus -- and here, all are welcome."
Marshall Johnson responds: Eric R. Rudolph has been given two life sentences for bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998, an attack that killed an off-duty police officer and left the director of nursing at the clinic half-blind and maimed. Rudoph also pleaded guilty to three bombings in Atlanta, including one at the 1996 Olympics. At his trial he was proud of his violent acts, quoting the Bible after his sentencing:
"As I go to a prison cell for a lifetime, I know that 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' "
What does God require of us in our walk through life? A few, like Eric Rudolph, believe that God wants them to bomb abortion clinics. Others believe that they will be rewarded with eternal paradise if they commit suicide in the attempt to kill others. And many Americans believe that we should use our mighty military power to impose our will on other peoples. How can the desire for a proper walk with God turn to fanaticism and evil?
It is curious how certain periods in history are marked by similar patterns of thought and feeling over vastly different cultures. The early twenty-first century is unmistakably marked by the rise of fundamentalism -- sometimes violent fundamentalism -- in far-flung places in Islam, in parts of Hinduism, and in American Christianity. It has now become necessary to legislate against hate groups, some of them with religious affiliations.
In the biblical tradition God has given us workable guidelines to avoid such extremes and to cultivate a more healthy religion and a better way to live. Two principles provide a firm and workable foundation. The first is from the Old Testament prophet Micah. After rejecting the importance of sacrifices, he asks, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8). A blend of justice (dealing fairly with all classes of people) and kindness (willingness to bend the rules in order to bring hope and healing) is a worthy and workable basis for right living -- along with walking humbly with God.
The other basic principle is the Golden Rule as Jesus taught it: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). Jesus adds, "For this is the law and the prophets," thereby asserting that this principle encapsulates the totality of God's demand on us. In our passage through life, there is no better guide. We can be confident in heeding the advice of the prophets and of Jesus -- and leave all else to the grace of God.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton:
Our duty is not to see through one another, but to see one another through.
-- Leonard Sweet in A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe
***
The new survival unit is no longer the individual nation; it's the entire human race and its environment. Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize.
-- William Sloane Coffin
***
Barth had an interesting dream. Someone said to him, "Would you like to see Hell?" and he said yes. And then he saw a lonely man sitting in the desert. I think that is the danger Barth viewed for modern men and women. He believed that the practice of the Gospel meant to create togetherness among "others." Humans, by nature and the grace of God, are fellow human beings. It is dangerous to be alone. We must learn to live with the "otherness" of others. That is an important point for our time.
-- Eberhard Busch, speaking of Karl Barth
***
One of the truly shocking passages of the gospel is that in which Jesus indicates that there is absolutely no substitute for the tiny, loving, caring, reconciling society. If this fails, he suggests, all is failure, there is no other way. He told the little bedraggled fellowship that they were actually the salt of the earth and that if this salt should fail there would be no adequate preservative at all. He was staking all on one throw.
What we need is not intellectual theorizing or even preaching, but a demonstration. One of the most powerful ways of turning people's loyalty to Christ is by loving others with the great love of God. We cannot revive faith by argument. But we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it. If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society of genuine loving friends, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably priceless and powerful. A wise person would travel any distance to join it.
-- Elton Trueblood
***
A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself. That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: "I make God visible." But others who see us together can say: "They make God visible." Community is where humility and glory touch.
-- Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey (New York: Harper Collins, 1997)
***
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
-- Booker T. Washington
***
If the God you believe in hates all the same people you do, then you know you've created God in your own image.
-- Paraphrased remark of Anne Lamott, cited in The Christian Century, 7/12/05, p. 6
From Chris Ewing:
In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
-- Henri Nouwen
***
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
***
Ten Commandments of How to Get Along
1. Keep skid chains on your tongue. Always say less than you think. Cultivate a low, persuasive voice. How you say it often counts more than what you say.
2. Make promises sparingly, and keep them faithfully, no matter what the cost.
3. Never let an opportunity pass to say a kind and encouraging word to or about somebody. Praise good work, regardless of who did it. If criticism is needed, offer it gently, never harshly.
4. Be interested in others -- their pursuits, their work, their home and families. Make merry with those who rejoice, and weep with those who mourn. Let everyone you meet, however humble, feel that you regard him or her as a person of importance.
5. Be cheerful. Don't burden or depress those around you by dwelling on your minor aches and pains and small disappointments. Remember, everyone is carrying some kind of burden, often heavier than your own.
6. Keep an open mind. Discuss, but don't argue. It is a mark of a superior mind to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
7. Let your virtues, if you have any, speak for themselves. Refuse to talk of another's vices. Discourage gossip. It is a waste of valuable time, and can be extremely destructive.
8. Be careful of another's feelings. Wit and humour at another person's expense may do more damage than you will ever know.
9. Pay no attention to disparaging remarks. Remember, the person who carried the message may not be the most accurate reporter in the world, and things become twisted in the retelling. Live so that nobody will believe them. Nervous tension and bad digestion are common causes of backbiting.
10. Don't be too eager to get the credit due you. Do your best, and be patient. Forget about yourself, and let others "remember." Success is much sweeter that way.
-- Source unknown
***
It is reported that the newspaper counselor Ann Landers receives an average of 10,000 letters each month, and nearly all of them from people burdened with problems. She was asked if there was any one of them which predominates throughout the letters she receives, and her reply was the one problem above all others seems to be fear. People are afraid of losing their health, their wealth, their loved ones. People are afraid of life itself.
-- Paul Lee, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations (Garland, Tex.: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996)
***
God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
-- 2 Timothy 1:7, KJV
***
In Or Out of Water
All the water in the world
However hard it tried
Could never, never skink a ship
Unless it got inside.
All the hardships of this world
Might wear you pretty thin,
But they won't hurt you, one least bit,
Unless you let them in.
* Paul Lee, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations
***
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
Theme: A maturing faith compels us
* to recognize old and new truths (Matthew 13:51, 52);
* to clarify what constitutes community (Genesis 28-31);
* to acknowledge that humankind has a history of betrayal and duplicity within and between clans; and
* to manifest another way to be in the world -- the kingdom of God, like a seed, a pearl, yeast, truth (Matthew 13:31-52).
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on 1 Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 105 and 128)
Leader: On this day we have gathered, as our ancestors did, to enjoy Holy Presence and to read stories which restore our hope in human endeavors and in Divine goodness.
People: We are glad to be among God's people, glad for Creation and its beauty.
Leader: We know that God has led faithful people through all sorts of dire circumstances like deep waters, barren deserts, and long times of uncertainty.
People: Thank God for the patriarchs and matriarchs of our pasts who attempted to journey with the Holy One.
Leader: Like Solomon, we need wisdom to continue our journey.
People: Like the Psalmist, we express our emotions and our hopes to the living God expecting to be heard and to receive strength.
Leader: Praise God!
PRAYER OF ADORATION / THANKSGIVING (based on Psalm 105 and 128)
Creating God, your imagination awes us! All around, we see the intricacies of nature. Thank you for the rules which make human life in community do-able. Thank you for hands that work and hearts that love, for relationships that empower, and for the many ways of gracious living. For this hour, we rest from our labors and our daily concerns; we turn our minds to your truth and to your loving presence. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
Genesis 28: "O God Of Bethel, By Whose Hand." DUNDEE
Genesis 31: "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." RANDOLPH. It might be interesting to comment in the bulletin that time and interpretation have changed the meaning and the context of the "blessing" Laban and Jacob give to each other.
Psalm 105: "O Day Of God Draw Nigh." ST MICHAEL
Psalm 128: "How Happy Is Each Child Of God." WINCHESTER OLD
Romans 8: "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go." ST MARGARET
Matthew 13: "We Plow The Fields And Scatter." NYLAND. The third stanza would work well as the offertory doxology.
"Bring Forth The Kingdom." Marty Haugen. Stanzas 1, 2, 3 are images from Matthew: "You are seed, salt, light...."
Community: "Ubi Caritas." Taize
"When God Restored Our Common Life." Ruth Duck
"God Weeps." Shirley Erena Murray and Carlton R. Young
"God, How Can We Forgive." Ruth Duck
"Unsettled World." D. Sparks and Hal Hopson. This song is "confession" and speaks of faith and community.
CALL TO CONFESSION (based on Romans 8:26-39)
During these moments, we take time to notice what is floating around in our heads and hearts. Sometimes it takes a while to articulate our disappointments and needs. Sometimes we must depend on the Spirit giving us the words and the groans. Pray with me.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Living God, our hearts are transparent to you. Our words seem inadequate when we are in pain from our own hurtful attitudes and harmful behaviors. Words seem inadequate when we acknowledge that our lifestyles diminish the earth's resources. Words and hope seem inadequate when we hear people crying for food and shelter. Set us right with your love; free us from privilege without responsibility; send us with hospitality and service to make your kingdom tangible. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE (based on Matthew 13:33)
In Jesus we see God's creative love for individuals and for the world. God's love -- God's kingdom -- is like yeast: goodness expands and nurtures everyone! You are invited to participate with this heavenly yeast!
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE: Praise Ye the Lord (LOBE DEN HERREN), stanza 3
Praise ye the Lord! O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him!
Let the amen Sound from His people again;
Gladly for aye we adore Him.
AN AFFIRMATION (based on Matthew 13 and Romans 8)
God is creating in and around us, manifesting goodness for our neighborhoods.
The words of Jesus encourage us to participate with the creating God in transforming the human heart so that an hospitable society may evolve.
Holy Spirit empowers us to expand our understanding of Divine grace and our experience of Divine acceptance.
We journey together toward spiritual satisfaction; we are not alone! Thanks be to God!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (based on Matthew 13)
Our minds are open; our hands are giving;
Our feet are ready to do generous deeds.
The plates will hold the tangible gifts we offer God.
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Spirit of Holiness --
We are your people! Our talents and time are yours.
Thank you for who you are making us to be. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
God of Jesus and Mary,
We are grateful for the ways you are with us in times of joy and sorrow. We look at our world and we are sorrowful. Do you weep at all the children dying before they grow old? Do you despise the personal and national games we play around human need and greed?
Open human hearts to the ways profit has become more important than people. Let your reign of goodness come now to our global village.
God of Jacob and Rachel,
How easy it has become to betray our brothers and sisters; how easy to deny the options others present; how easy to dismiss the possibilities of a peaceable kinship with all peoples. We pray for ourselves; release us from prejudices old and new. We pray for leaders of nations and religions; we pray for an enlarged vision of divine grace; we pray for an elastic experience of holy love. Since genesis, duplicity and oppression have set humans against one another. Free this world from warfulness. Let commonsense and fairness overcome selfish ambition.
God of Yesterday and Today,
Remember that you have made us from the clays of the earth. Every now and then we notice how fragile we are. Give us strength to endure our bodies as they decline in agility. Heal us from the inside out. Surround us with undeniable Presence as we grieve our losses.
And when we rejoice, let our joy be contagious!
God of East and West,
We are grateful you came to earth in Jesus of Nazareth and continue to teach us your ways. Birth coming generations into loving homes; help us be wise adult companions with all children and empower us to mentor them in the journey toward you. Amen.
BENEDICTION (based on Genesis 28 and Matthew 13)
Look around you. The family of God is close by.
Notice that you have options in your relationships --
You can be like Jacob and Laban or like Jesus and Mary.
You can practice honesty or you can hide the truth.
You can hoard the generosity of God or you can share it.
Go from this place remembering that the Holy One
Invites you to be like
Salt in the stew,
A pearl of lustrous beauty,
Yeast in crusty bread.
Go, empowered to make Christ present in this world.
A Children's Sermon
Heaven's pearls
Object: pearls or a pearl
Based on Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever been shopping with someone? (let them answer) Some people spend a long time looking at all the choices. Maybe they can't find exactly what they want, so they don't buy anything that day. But when they do find something that is just right, they can be filled with such happiness. Jesus told a story about something that fills people with happiness once they find it.
Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is the best place God ever created. It is filled with love to begin with and everyone in it is filled with love. Secondly, it is a place of no trouble. It is also a very beautiful place where everyone is healthy and without worry.
Jesus told a lot of stories about the kingdom of God. He told the fisherman one kind of story that they would like, he told another story to farmers and still another one to merchants or businesspeople. He wanted everyone to know what a special place it was.
One day he had a group of people together that liked jewelry. Do you like jewelry? (let them answer) There was a shop owner, maybe a jeweler, who was always on the lookout for the perfect pearl. Do you know what pearls look like? (let them answer) That's right and do you know how they are made? (let them answer) Pearls come from oysters. A pearl usually begins when something has gotten into the oyster's shell that does not belong there. Day after day the oyster works to get rid of it, in the process it helps the pearl grow. Some of the pearls that come from oysters are the most beautiful pieces of jewelry in the world. I brought along a string of pearls (show it) so that you can see how beautiful a real pearl is.
Jesus says that when a jeweler sees the perfect pearl, it fills him with happiness. He rushes home and gathers all of his valuables so that he can buy the perfect pearl.
The reason Jesus tells this story is so we know how perfect the kingdom of heaven is. It is worth more than all of the money in the world, more important than all of the jewelry in the world, and it is worth more than anything else in the world.
So the next time you see someone with beautiful pearls, I hope you are reminded about the jeweler who sold everything he had so he could buy the perfect pearl. As Christians we will give away everything else for being with God in the kingdom of heaven.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, July 24, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-
When a filmmaker is killed in the Netherlands for criticism of Muslim extremism; when gossip ruins reputations and cripples honesty in North American churches; when Enrons and Plame affairs breed cynicism about our economy and government and undermine integrity in society, then it is evident that these old questions remain all too current. If the story of Jacob opens a problem we recognize, and presents some examples of how not to build a community, our New Testament lessons offer some perspectives that may point us in more helpful and hopeful directions.
It does not take much reflection to realize that trust is the sine qua non of worthwhile communal life. Without trust we will not enter into economic, political, or personal relationships of any depth or strength. Yet we have perennially encountered the problem of how to anchor our trust. It is with good reason that the biblical wisdom literature frequently advises us not to vest too much trust in our fellow human beings: quite apart from the limitations of human power to help (Psalm 146:3-4), humans frequently prove resoundingly untrustworthy (Jeremiah 17:9). The patriarchal narratives of Genesis suggest that selfishness, jealousy, fear, anger, and opportunism have been prone to trump our better nature from the very beginning.
Jacob, of all people, should have been more careful about the fine print of his contract with Laban. Having twice swindled his twin, and with the aid of his conniving mother deliberately duped his elderly father (chs. 25, 27), this lad should have had a long nose for devious behaviour. Yet he seems to have been blindsided by his uncle's sly switching of brides (29:23-25). The wedding night palm-off set the tone for the relationship between these two men over the ensuing years, a relationship marked less by forthrightness than by underhanded maneuvering for advantage. As suspicion and ill-will increased, Jacob eventually (ch. 31) found it necessary to leave -- and even this he could not accomplish openly, but he slipped away during Laban's absence, resulting in the uneasy truce of the Mizpah watchpost (31:44-54). Clearly, neither shared blood nor a contract constituted a sufficient basis for the trust and cooperation that we hope for in our communities.
Trustworthiness cannot be legislated, though many have tried. Totalitarian governments and societies of every political and religious stripe have consistently failed to produce the security they sought, though this has not discouraged repeated attempts. Far too many churches -- and, as the news often reminds us, other religious and quasi-religious entities as well -- function as miniature police states rather than as seedbeds of wholesome humanity. Whether it is the extremism of the Taliban or the everyday despotism of ecclesiastical gossip and "community expectations," religion, in its misguided attempt to coerce trustworthiness, too often fosters anything but, while also crippling the capacity to trust. Community can never be the product of coercion. It can only be built on freedom, on the choice of free people both to trust and to be worthy of trust. The precariousness of this enterprise cannot be willed, legislated, nor prayed away. This is a lesson we have extraordinary difficulty learning.
It is significant that the one we Christians hail as God's definitive revelation lived a life of vulnerability. He never had economic or political power, nor did he threaten or browbeat people as John the Baptist did. He spoke constantly of the kingdom of God, yet the manner in which he envisioned this realm of God taking hold in the world was remarkable. It is like, he said, the small, often frustrated, yet unstoppable organic processes of life: like yeast fermenting and replicating in a batch of dough, or like a sturdy mustard plant growing from a single seed (Matthew 13:31-33). Any baker or farmer can tell you that there are all kinds of conditions that will kill the yeast or ruin the crop; Jesus' famous Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9) indicates that he fully expected the realm of God to be frustrated in many of the places where it tried to take root. Yet if he did not demand ideal conditions or try to force the realm of God to take root (for if he did, it would not be the realm of God that would grow!), neither did he ever give up or imagine that this vision could be extirpated. He trusted in the pervasiveness of God's work; he continued to toss parables into people's imaginations, inviting them to glimpse God's future in the mixed evidence of everyday life, luring them to choose to participate in the world of God's intent. He did not promise security; he invited integrity (Matthew 5:1-12). His approach was not exclusive but inclusive (Matthew 13:24-30, 47-50). He did not preach or practice coercion, but urged and modeled love (Matthew 5:38-48). And, yes, he was betrayed.
It is this that sticks in the craw of good people. We know, after all, that nothing worth having can be coerced -- not love nor trust nor integrity nor any other important thing. These are all the yield of freedom. But with freedom also comes the possibility of abuse of freedom. And there will always be such abuse. There will always be Jacobs and Labans whose greed outweighs their concern for the rights of others or for the common good. There will always be the weak or the incautious who try to take illicit shortcuts to meet expectations. There will always be the rigid and the extreme who try to force others to live according to their own mold. And we are afraid of them. We are afraid of being hurt by those who abuse their freedom. We are afraid of being betrayed. And so we lapse into manipulative, dishonest, or coercive behaviour in an attempt to be safe.
Forget safety, says Jesus. Or, more properly, redefine it. Safety does not lie in avoiding the cross, in avoiding betrayal, in avoiding hurt. Safety lies in walking the dark road with God, and placing the outcome in God's hands. "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God," reminds Paul (Romans 8:28). "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" He then, disquietingly, answers this question by reeling off a daunting list of circumstances that would tempt most of us to suspect God had abandoned us. Yet none of this, he insists, can do lasting damage (vv. 35-39). Our place in God's love, and the eventual fruition of God's realm, are not damaged by any such setback (vv. 18-30). These things can be trusted; all else is secondary.
Within a Christian worldview, community is an aspect of the realm of God; it is something to be trusted as much against the evidence as because of it; it is something to be lived into, to be leavened by, in the trust that little by little it will grow and permeate the world. All the pounding that our yearning for community takes -- from terrorism to corporate scandals and all the rest -- though it may temporarily knock the wind out of our sense of safety, we are invited to regard as the kneading that works the yeast more thoroughly through the dough. We are invited to trust that the Spirit is still at work in us and others, that the realm of God is still viable, that trust and trustworthiness are still worth the risk, that they are still the treasure (Matthew 13:44) worth selling our safety to buy into.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: The London transit bombings showed Britons -- and us, if we'd forgotten Oklahoma City -- that common political citizenship doesn't in itself make for community in any real sense. The terrorists who were responsible for these assaults on the community were more deeply committed to their particular version of Islam more than to any secular structures. But the reaction of many Muslims in Britain -- including a recent fatwa condemning such acts by Islamic authorities in Britain -- shows a split in that religious community as well. And the reaction of at least one family to the news that their son was one of the bombers shows that close biological ties don't necessarily mean that people are really together.
Common political citizenship, religion, family -- none of those things provides an assured basis for community. What else is there? Economic ties certainly give no guarantee. Self-interest is built into virtually all economic structures and the old saying that there's no honor among thieves, while it applies only to an extreme form of economic partnership, makes the point clearly enough.
Genuine community requires that people have some concern for the welfare of other people. There has been considerable discussion and debate among scientists studying evolution about how altruism could play any role in the development and history of living things since natural selection plays a major role in the evolutionary process. If the name of the game is passing on one's genes to the next generation, why should any organism do anything to help another survive and pass on its genes? We can understand why there should be such altruism among close kin. Since an individual has 50 percent the same genetic endowment as its siblings (and increasingly smaller percentages with increasingly distant relatives), doing something that helps three siblings (for example) pass on their genes at the expense of one's own life (or procreation) makes sense.
But why should I be concerned about the welfare of someone in another tribe or on the other side of the world who is not a relative? Christianity and other religions say that we should have such concern, but the existence of trans-kin altruism is something of a scientific puzzle. This is not just a theoretical problem. As Philip Hefner has put it: "Trans-kin altruism is not simply a scientifically puzzling phenomenon, nor a regrettably neglected virtue; it is a central symbol and ritual of what human beings should be doing with their lives" (The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], p. 248). In particular, it is essential for the existence of genuine community.
Of course it would be ridiculous to suggest that Christianity as it exists in the real world has given a clear answer to the problem of achieving community or that the empirical church has given a great example of it. The Fourth Crusade, the seventeenth century's wars of religion, Northern Ireland -- there's no need to multiply examples. Still, there are two Christian insights that can be helpful here.
The first is connected in an important way with this Sunday's Second Lesson, Romans 8:26-39. Paul begins by speaking of the work of the Holy Spirit, and while the emphasis here is on the Spirit's activity in the individual believer, we can also reflect on the Spirit's work in the church.
All communities have a spirit, which can be thought of as the atmosphere or "field" which holds that community together and makes it something more than a bunch of individuals. (Pannenberg has emphasized the similarities between beliefs about the Holy Spirit and the field concept in modern physics, as well as the relationship between the Spirit and biology. See, e.g., Wolfhart Pannenberg, "The Doctrine of the Spirit and the Task of a Theology of Nature" (p. 123), "Spirit and Energy" (p. 138), and "Spirit and Mind," in Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993].) Thus we speak of a "family spirit" or "team spirit." The distinctive claim made for the Christian church is that its spirit is the Spirit of God -- which is why belief in the church is included in the third article of the ecumenical creeds.
If we just left it at that the claim would seem both triumphalistic ("We're the only ones who have the Spirit") and limiting of God (as if the Holy Spirit didn't exist outside the church). But in reality the Spirit possesses us, not the other way around, and Jesus compares the Spirit to the wind, which "blows where it chooses" (John 3:8). This claim about the church as a community of the Holy Spirit is a double-edged challenge to Christians -- a call to be more truly a community and to be the instrument through which the Spirit works to create wider community.
The fact that the church is spoken of in the New Testament as the body of Christ is also significant for our understanding of the type of community we are to be. Paul speaks about that in Romans 12:1-8 after the long discussion (chapters 9-11) of God's purpose for Israel that follows our Second Lesson.
Carlos Wilton responds: Your comments, Chris, remind me that we are living in an age of new tribalism. A half-century ago, at the end of World War II, many had high hopes for a true community of nations. The United Nations was founded out of such a dream, and there was a time when many believed that a new model of global unity was nearly within our grasp.
No longer. Every suicide bomb that tears apart a bus or subway car -- be it in London, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, or wherever -- reminds us of how fragmented the human family continues to be. While such acts may be a desperate cry of outrage on the part of the perpetrators (who feel they and their tribe have been discriminated against), the net effect of these reprehensible acts is not to bring about the dreamed-of unity but rather to further fragment it.
In his "Rumors" e-newsletter for this week, Ralph Milton writes of the persistence of tribalism:
In a tribal culture, your primary loyalty -- perhaps your only loyalty -- is to the tribe. Within the tribe it is wrong to steal. It is wrong to lie. It is wrong to kill. And it is expected that you will use any opportunity you have to help the people in your own tribe -- especially those within your own family. But a whole different set of values applies to those outside the tribe. Any way you can do them hurt and do yourself good is just fine. That ethical system more or less worked when people were born, lived and died in a specific tribal culture, and contact with those of other tribes happened only occasionally through trade or warfare.
Our situation today, of course, is very different. It's a truism that the world is shrinking. It is no longer possible for various human tribes to live in splendid isolation from one another. In a modern, cosmopolitan city such London, which has been described as one of the most ethnically diverse places on earth, the absurdity of tribalism is especially evident. The bombs that devastated underground trains and a double-decker bus took the lives of Muslims as well as Christians. Conceived as an attack on the West, in fact those bombings were an attack on the world.
A poignant story of a man who learned the hard way about the common kinship of all humanity is that of a Dutchman by the name of RenÈ Sch‰fer. Sch‰fer was a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. His captors had sentenced him to forced labor in a shipyard in the city of Hiroshima. Through years of harsh captivity, Sch‰fer had learned to hate his guards with a white-hot passion. He used to pray to God every night that the Americans would attack the city and destroy it, exacting revenge for his years of suffering.
In August 1945, Sch‰fer's prayer was answered. Hearing an air-raid siren one day, he dove into a ditch. A moment later, he heard the noise, saw the flash -- and felt the heat -- of the world's first nuclear weapon used in war. In the darkness and confusion that followed, Sch‰fer was amazed to find himself helping not only his fellow POWs who had been burned or blinded, but also his guards. Years later, he had this to say:
From the moment the bomb went off, you see, there was no hate left. It was a strange experience -- how hate can be turned to pity by a single bomb. There was even no difference for me between the Japanese victims and my friends. I felt myself a victim among other victims, not a Dutchman among Japanese. The bomb had killed all hate.
How sad that it took an atom bomb to blast away the walls of hate, to erase the dividing line between this man and his captors! But that's the way it is with prejudice -- the walls between Us and Them are not breached very easily.
Several years back, I remember reading a story of an American church leader who, as part of a traveling delegation, went to visit Christians in the southern Sudan. These people, of course, were -- and still are -- the victims of terrible ethnic persecution. The American visitor remarked on the fact that many of the Christian homes, humble as they were, had a cross mounted on the roof, above the entrance. It seemed to him that this cross put the inhabitants of the house at risk. When he asked his host about the cross on his house, his host told him, "That cross tells the world that I am a member of the tribe of Jesus -- and here, all are welcome."
Marshall Johnson responds: Eric R. Rudolph has been given two life sentences for bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998, an attack that killed an off-duty police officer and left the director of nursing at the clinic half-blind and maimed. Rudoph also pleaded guilty to three bombings in Atlanta, including one at the 1996 Olympics. At his trial he was proud of his violent acts, quoting the Bible after his sentencing:
"As I go to a prison cell for a lifetime, I know that 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' "
What does God require of us in our walk through life? A few, like Eric Rudolph, believe that God wants them to bomb abortion clinics. Others believe that they will be rewarded with eternal paradise if they commit suicide in the attempt to kill others. And many Americans believe that we should use our mighty military power to impose our will on other peoples. How can the desire for a proper walk with God turn to fanaticism and evil?
It is curious how certain periods in history are marked by similar patterns of thought and feeling over vastly different cultures. The early twenty-first century is unmistakably marked by the rise of fundamentalism -- sometimes violent fundamentalism -- in far-flung places in Islam, in parts of Hinduism, and in American Christianity. It has now become necessary to legislate against hate groups, some of them with religious affiliations.
In the biblical tradition God has given us workable guidelines to avoid such extremes and to cultivate a more healthy religion and a better way to live. Two principles provide a firm and workable foundation. The first is from the Old Testament prophet Micah. After rejecting the importance of sacrifices, he asks, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8). A blend of justice (dealing fairly with all classes of people) and kindness (willingness to bend the rules in order to bring hope and healing) is a worthy and workable basis for right living -- along with walking humbly with God.
The other basic principle is the Golden Rule as Jesus taught it: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). Jesus adds, "For this is the law and the prophets," thereby asserting that this principle encapsulates the totality of God's demand on us. In our passage through life, there is no better guide. We can be confident in heeding the advice of the prophets and of Jesus -- and leave all else to the grace of God.
Related Illustrations
From Carlos Wilton:
Our duty is not to see through one another, but to see one another through.
-- Leonard Sweet in A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe
***
The new survival unit is no longer the individual nation; it's the entire human race and its environment. Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize.
-- William Sloane Coffin
***
Barth had an interesting dream. Someone said to him, "Would you like to see Hell?" and he said yes. And then he saw a lonely man sitting in the desert. I think that is the danger Barth viewed for modern men and women. He believed that the practice of the Gospel meant to create togetherness among "others." Humans, by nature and the grace of God, are fellow human beings. It is dangerous to be alone. We must learn to live with the "otherness" of others. That is an important point for our time.
-- Eberhard Busch, speaking of Karl Barth
***
One of the truly shocking passages of the gospel is that in which Jesus indicates that there is absolutely no substitute for the tiny, loving, caring, reconciling society. If this fails, he suggests, all is failure, there is no other way. He told the little bedraggled fellowship that they were actually the salt of the earth and that if this salt should fail there would be no adequate preservative at all. He was staking all on one throw.
What we need is not intellectual theorizing or even preaching, but a demonstration. One of the most powerful ways of turning people's loyalty to Christ is by loving others with the great love of God. We cannot revive faith by argument. But we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it. If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society of genuine loving friends, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably priceless and powerful. A wise person would travel any distance to join it.
-- Elton Trueblood
***
A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself. That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: "I make God visible." But others who see us together can say: "They make God visible." Community is where humility and glory touch.
-- Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey (New York: Harper Collins, 1997)
***
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
-- Booker T. Washington
***
If the God you believe in hates all the same people you do, then you know you've created God in your own image.
-- Paraphrased remark of Anne Lamott, cited in The Christian Century, 7/12/05, p. 6
From Chris Ewing:
In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
-- Henri Nouwen
***
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
***
Ten Commandments of How to Get Along
1. Keep skid chains on your tongue. Always say less than you think. Cultivate a low, persuasive voice. How you say it often counts more than what you say.
2. Make promises sparingly, and keep them faithfully, no matter what the cost.
3. Never let an opportunity pass to say a kind and encouraging word to or about somebody. Praise good work, regardless of who did it. If criticism is needed, offer it gently, never harshly.
4. Be interested in others -- their pursuits, their work, their home and families. Make merry with those who rejoice, and weep with those who mourn. Let everyone you meet, however humble, feel that you regard him or her as a person of importance.
5. Be cheerful. Don't burden or depress those around you by dwelling on your minor aches and pains and small disappointments. Remember, everyone is carrying some kind of burden, often heavier than your own.
6. Keep an open mind. Discuss, but don't argue. It is a mark of a superior mind to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
7. Let your virtues, if you have any, speak for themselves. Refuse to talk of another's vices. Discourage gossip. It is a waste of valuable time, and can be extremely destructive.
8. Be careful of another's feelings. Wit and humour at another person's expense may do more damage than you will ever know.
9. Pay no attention to disparaging remarks. Remember, the person who carried the message may not be the most accurate reporter in the world, and things become twisted in the retelling. Live so that nobody will believe them. Nervous tension and bad digestion are common causes of backbiting.
10. Don't be too eager to get the credit due you. Do your best, and be patient. Forget about yourself, and let others "remember." Success is much sweeter that way.
-- Source unknown
***
It is reported that the newspaper counselor Ann Landers receives an average of 10,000 letters each month, and nearly all of them from people burdened with problems. She was asked if there was any one of them which predominates throughout the letters she receives, and her reply was the one problem above all others seems to be fear. People are afraid of losing their health, their wealth, their loved ones. People are afraid of life itself.
-- Paul Lee, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations (Garland, Tex.: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996)
***
God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
-- 2 Timothy 1:7, KJV
***
In Or Out of Water
All the water in the world
However hard it tried
Could never, never skink a ship
Unless it got inside.
All the hardships of this world
Might wear you pretty thin,
But they won't hurt you, one least bit,
Unless you let them in.
* Paul Lee, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations
***
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Worship Resources
By Julie Strope
Theme: A maturing faith compels us
* to recognize old and new truths (Matthew 13:51, 52);
* to clarify what constitutes community (Genesis 28-31);
* to acknowledge that humankind has a history of betrayal and duplicity within and between clans; and
* to manifest another way to be in the world -- the kingdom of God, like a seed, a pearl, yeast, truth (Matthew 13:31-52).
CALL TO WORSHIP (based on 1 Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 105 and 128)
Leader: On this day we have gathered, as our ancestors did, to enjoy Holy Presence and to read stories which restore our hope in human endeavors and in Divine goodness.
People: We are glad to be among God's people, glad for Creation and its beauty.
Leader: We know that God has led faithful people through all sorts of dire circumstances like deep waters, barren deserts, and long times of uncertainty.
People: Thank God for the patriarchs and matriarchs of our pasts who attempted to journey with the Holy One.
Leader: Like Solomon, we need wisdom to continue our journey.
People: Like the Psalmist, we express our emotions and our hopes to the living God expecting to be heard and to receive strength.
Leader: Praise God!
PRAYER OF ADORATION / THANKSGIVING (based on Psalm 105 and 128)
Creating God, your imagination awes us! All around, we see the intricacies of nature. Thank you for the rules which make human life in community do-able. Thank you for hands that work and hearts that love, for relationships that empower, and for the many ways of gracious living. For this hour, we rest from our labors and our daily concerns; we turn our minds to your truth and to your loving presence. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
Genesis 28: "O God Of Bethel, By Whose Hand." DUNDEE
Genesis 31: "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." RANDOLPH. It might be interesting to comment in the bulletin that time and interpretation have changed the meaning and the context of the "blessing" Laban and Jacob give to each other.
Psalm 105: "O Day Of God Draw Nigh." ST MICHAEL
Psalm 128: "How Happy Is Each Child Of God." WINCHESTER OLD
Romans 8: "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go." ST MARGARET
Matthew 13: "We Plow The Fields And Scatter." NYLAND. The third stanza would work well as the offertory doxology.
"Bring Forth The Kingdom." Marty Haugen. Stanzas 1, 2, 3 are images from Matthew: "You are seed, salt, light...."
Community: "Ubi Caritas." Taize
"When God Restored Our Common Life." Ruth Duck
"God Weeps." Shirley Erena Murray and Carlton R. Young
"God, How Can We Forgive." Ruth Duck
"Unsettled World." D. Sparks and Hal Hopson. This song is "confession" and speaks of faith and community.
CALL TO CONFESSION (based on Romans 8:26-39)
During these moments, we take time to notice what is floating around in our heads and hearts. Sometimes it takes a while to articulate our disappointments and needs. Sometimes we must depend on the Spirit giving us the words and the groans. Pray with me.
COMMUNITY CONFESSION
Living God, our hearts are transparent to you. Our words seem inadequate when we are in pain from our own hurtful attitudes and harmful behaviors. Words seem inadequate when we acknowledge that our lifestyles diminish the earth's resources. Words and hope seem inadequate when we hear people crying for food and shelter. Set us right with your love; free us from privilege without responsibility; send us with hospitality and service to make your kingdom tangible. Amen.
WORD OF GRACE (based on Matthew 13:33)
In Jesus we see God's creative love for individuals and for the world. God's love -- God's kingdom -- is like yeast: goodness expands and nurtures everyone! You are invited to participate with this heavenly yeast!
CONGREGATIONAL CHORAL RESPONSE: Praise Ye the Lord (LOBE DEN HERREN), stanza 3
Praise ye the Lord! O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him!
Let the amen Sound from His people again;
Gladly for aye we adore Him.
AN AFFIRMATION (based on Matthew 13 and Romans 8)
God is creating in and around us, manifesting goodness for our neighborhoods.
The words of Jesus encourage us to participate with the creating God in transforming the human heart so that an hospitable society may evolve.
Holy Spirit empowers us to expand our understanding of Divine grace and our experience of Divine acceptance.
We journey together toward spiritual satisfaction; we are not alone! Thanks be to God!
OFFERTORY STATEMENT (based on Matthew 13)
Our minds are open; our hands are giving;
Our feet are ready to do generous deeds.
The plates will hold the tangible gifts we offer God.
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Spirit of Holiness --
We are your people! Our talents and time are yours.
Thank you for who you are making us to be. Amen.
INTERCESSORY PRAYERS
God of Jesus and Mary,
We are grateful for the ways you are with us in times of joy and sorrow. We look at our world and we are sorrowful. Do you weep at all the children dying before they grow old? Do you despise the personal and national games we play around human need and greed?
Open human hearts to the ways profit has become more important than people. Let your reign of goodness come now to our global village.
God of Jacob and Rachel,
How easy it has become to betray our brothers and sisters; how easy to deny the options others present; how easy to dismiss the possibilities of a peaceable kinship with all peoples. We pray for ourselves; release us from prejudices old and new. We pray for leaders of nations and religions; we pray for an enlarged vision of divine grace; we pray for an elastic experience of holy love. Since genesis, duplicity and oppression have set humans against one another. Free this world from warfulness. Let commonsense and fairness overcome selfish ambition.
God of Yesterday and Today,
Remember that you have made us from the clays of the earth. Every now and then we notice how fragile we are. Give us strength to endure our bodies as they decline in agility. Heal us from the inside out. Surround us with undeniable Presence as we grieve our losses.
And when we rejoice, let our joy be contagious!
God of East and West,
We are grateful you came to earth in Jesus of Nazareth and continue to teach us your ways. Birth coming generations into loving homes; help us be wise adult companions with all children and empower us to mentor them in the journey toward you. Amen.
BENEDICTION (based on Genesis 28 and Matthew 13)
Look around you. The family of God is close by.
Notice that you have options in your relationships --
You can be like Jacob and Laban or like Jesus and Mary.
You can practice honesty or you can hide the truth.
You can hoard the generosity of God or you can share it.
Go from this place remembering that the Holy One
Invites you to be like
Salt in the stew,
A pearl of lustrous beauty,
Yeast in crusty bread.
Go, empowered to make Christ present in this world.
A Children's Sermon
Heaven's pearls
Object: pearls or a pearl
Based on Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever been shopping with someone? (let them answer) Some people spend a long time looking at all the choices. Maybe they can't find exactly what they want, so they don't buy anything that day. But when they do find something that is just right, they can be filled with such happiness. Jesus told a story about something that fills people with happiness once they find it.
Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is the best place God ever created. It is filled with love to begin with and everyone in it is filled with love. Secondly, it is a place of no trouble. It is also a very beautiful place where everyone is healthy and without worry.
Jesus told a lot of stories about the kingdom of God. He told the fisherman one kind of story that they would like, he told another story to farmers and still another one to merchants or businesspeople. He wanted everyone to know what a special place it was.
One day he had a group of people together that liked jewelry. Do you like jewelry? (let them answer) There was a shop owner, maybe a jeweler, who was always on the lookout for the perfect pearl. Do you know what pearls look like? (let them answer) That's right and do you know how they are made? (let them answer) Pearls come from oysters. A pearl usually begins when something has gotten into the oyster's shell that does not belong there. Day after day the oyster works to get rid of it, in the process it helps the pearl grow. Some of the pearls that come from oysters are the most beautiful pieces of jewelry in the world. I brought along a string of pearls (show it) so that you can see how beautiful a real pearl is.
Jesus says that when a jeweler sees the perfect pearl, it fills him with happiness. He rushes home and gathers all of his valuables so that he can buy the perfect pearl.
The reason Jesus tells this story is so we know how perfect the kingdom of heaven is. It is worth more than all of the money in the world, more important than all of the jewelry in the world, and it is worth more than anything else in the world.
So the next time you see someone with beautiful pearls, I hope you are reminded about the jeweler who sold everything he had so he could buy the perfect pearl. As Christians we will give away everything else for being with God in the kingdom of heaven.
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The Immediate Word, July 24, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-
