June 3, 2018
Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Stretch Out Your Hand
Mark 2:23-3:6
He has hardly gotten started, at least according to Mark’s Gospel. Jesus has hardly begun his ministry. It’s only Chapter Two and yet people are after him, watching him, waiting for him to go against the grain, make a change, do something different. The religious authoritieswere all over him. They followed him into the synagogue because they just knew what he was going to do – he was going to cure somebody. If he did that then they had him just where they wanted him to be...in trouble. We in the church know that doing things differently can get you into deep trouble. “There is not some special place or time for God’s healing presence,” Jesus could say. Every moment, every place is open to the possibility of love. You might say, love has no zoning rules.
But change, especially a change that holds up a new world view, canbe disquieting to people. This is a time in our world for monumental changes – especially for churches. Not every church member agrees with all the changes or how fast they are coming but we in the United Church of Christ have come together in agreement about some basic ideas about who we are as a church. We believe that everyone is born into a world that God called good and, as such, we know that our mission is to work for that truth to be visible and real in the lives of all people. So, we proclaim our goal: “A Just World for All.”
And, on our way to that “Just World” we will surround ourselves with three great loves: “Love of Neighbor. Love of Children. Love of Creation.” When we share those loves we become the church together. Isn’t that what Jesus was all about? Jesus was simply loving the world in the moment of its need. The man with the withered arm certainly felt that love. How do your church neighbors feel your love? How do the children in your community know you love them? How does the green earth and the blue sky know that you love it? It’s one thing to say that you follow Jesus and love the world but what do you do about it? How does the world know you love it unless you show it? What happens when there is no special place for love of neighbor, but every place and time holds in it the opportunity to express love.
What about a laundromat? In 2010 Ebenezer UCC in Sheboygan Wisconsin began a ministry to provide quarters and sandwiches one evening a month at a local laundromat to help families who need the support. Where in your community is there an unattended need for the love of Christ? Remember, the love of God cannot be zoned.
June 10, 2018
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Will of God
Mark 3:20-35
People often talk about their church as their family, and it certainly can be that for people. We take care of each other. We share food. We go on trips together. We visit each other when we are sick. We pray for one another. These are all the warm and obvious ways we understand family. Jesus, however, ups the ante on his understanding of family. Jesus says that his family are those who do the “Will of God.” If Jesus was a bona fide current member of your congregation figuring out the Will of God (WOG) would be easy. You could just ask him. Today, however, there are many people who think they know exactly what that the WOG is, and all of them can’t be correct…can they? Even within our churches people disagree about what WOG looks like. But Jesus says that’s the only way you know who are in your family. What’s a church family member to do?
We could throw our arms up and say that since we can never know for sure about the WOG we shouldn’t even try to figure it out. But figuring it out, at least trying to, is what being a Congregationalist is all about. We are each of us called to interpret and study and discern God’s will for ourselves to be the best of our ability. Sometimes congregations call themselves to discern God’s will about their vision for the church or where God is calling them. Sometimes individuals or small groups get together in the same sort of discernment. It’s not a frivolous journey to take with others. It requires commitment and sincerity.
In service to small groups and congregations, the United Church of Christ has developed a resource for churches, small groups and individuals called a DISCERNMENT TRAVELOGUE. You can find it at the UCC resources section of ucc.org. Your Pastor may have some materials as well. Getting together with others in search of answers to life’s big questions, the direction of your own ministry, or the ministry of your congregation is an opportunity to develop deep spiritual bonds with people. The biggest commitment is agreeing that no one knows the answer before you start. Then, stepping out on that discernment limb together, is an adventure worth having. At some point, you’ll understand what Jesus meant about family. You may not uncover certainty but the WOG will feel more like a solid path under your feet and one that you travel with others. And, the congregational part of our heritage will glow with appreciation.
June 17, 2018
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Flourishing
Mark 4:26-34
Father’s Day
We talk about seeds a lot in the church. Faith and Mustard seeds. Scattering seeds as a parable about the kingdom. There is the harvest of the righteous. Agricultural metaphors and images jump across the pages of the Bible pointing to a land and a time when the rhythms of life revolved around harvests and planting. Flourishing was as visible as green shoots and wind blowing through a wheat field. The natural world fed people. Food was not presented in a box with plastic wrapping or in a can but right outside your back door, under your feet growing by your own hand. Rural congregations get to see their food growing every spring. City congregants must travel or wait for the weekend farmer’s market to taste and see the freshness that nature offers.
But around the country, in many cities our UCC churches are cultivating a love of creation and a recognition of the gift and labor that food represents by developing a part of their property as a community garden. The Kimball Avenue United Church of Christ is in the middle of Chicago and it has a plot of land on a busy street corner which is now dubbed “The Oasis.” Rows of tended vegetables, raised beds, honey bees, paths and a labyrinth are the result of cultivated partnerships with the community, local businesses and an afterschool program. Since they began the garden in 2013 more than 200 high schoolers have participated in maintaining the garden. The garden is open to everyone. What a way to love creation and your neighbor and children!
Many miles from Chicago, in Arvada, Colorado the Common Earth Community Garden began its garden cultivation in 2016 as a partnership between the First United (UCC) church of Arvada and Denver Urban Gardens. The mission statement of the garden says:
Common Earth Community Garden is established togrow and distribute
vegetables, provide a source ofwholesome food to local food banks, provide
nutritional and cultural education for youth, a placeof fellowship for multigenerational families, andoutreach to our diverse neighbors on this sharedcommon earth.
Besides garden plots, the space will include a gazebo, picnic facilities, a meditation bench, and beehives. Perhaps an inclusive way to express our three loves is by gardening.
It certainly is a way to cultivate your church’s neighborhood in more ways than one.
June 24, 2018
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the Boat Together
Mark4:35-41
Open and Affirming Sunday
How can Jesus sleep so soundly? There’s a raging storm blowing all around them and the disciples can’t get over how he can sleep so soundly. They’re all in the same boat. If the ship is being tossed by waves they’re all getting seasick…except Jesus. When they wake him up he stops the storm and goes back to sleep. One gets the idea that the storm was not that threatening after all. Sailors around the world and throughout history have bonded around boats and the sea. Storms are part ofthat experience. Clearly the disciples were landlubbers.
In our denomination’s history, we have played a part in the ongoing ministry to people who make their living on the sea. In 1820, a Congregational minister, Rev. Ward Stafford spoke eloquently to the people of Boston and began a push for a special ministry to seafarers that eventually became the American Seaman’s Friend Society and the Mariner’s Church by 1830. This organization was, at its inception, an ecumenical affair bringing together Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational leaders to develop and found a rooming house and an ongoing ministry to the people who work in our maritime industry.As we can tell from reading the opening chapters of Melville’s Moby Dick there were mixed feelings along the coast of New England about the moral rectitude of whalers and sailors. Melville’s hero quickly learns that there is a great variety of men that take to the sea. Our churches took on this ministry recognizing that Jesus called us to be welcoming to those society cast out.
Through the wars of the twentieth century this ministry has endured along with the ups and downs of the shipping industry. Today it is called The Seafarers Friend. It is still ecumenical and is a part of our denomination’s heritage of reaching out to the underserved and welcoming all from all parts of the human family.
It is Open and Affirming Sunday, another ministry of our denomination. A ministry that is much younger than seafarers but represents a continual broadening of our understanding of extravagant hospitality. Open and Affirming churches are those that especially welcome Lesbian, Gay, bisexual and Transgendered people as part of the Body of Christ. As of 2012 there are 1000 churches in the UCC that have voted to be Open and Affirming. Our UCC history is full of moments when congregations and leaders identified special ministries as part of our identity, outreach and evangelism. We are indeed in a boat together with others.
July 1, 2018
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Healing Powers
Mark 5:21-43
One of the saddest lines in Mark’s Gospel is when Jarius, the father of a dying little girl, is told that his daughter is dead and he should leave Jesus alone because there is nothing more to be done. Can you imagine the despair and hopelessness of that moment for that father? He has traveled far to find Jesus and convince him to come and heal his child yet his trip was for naught, or so the crowd would tell him. They wanted him to leave her for dead. How many children in our world do we leave for dead? How often do the reasonable sounding crowds tell us that there is nothing we can do?
Do you remember in 2015 the photo of the little Syrian boy named Aylan? His dead body washed up on the beach of a Turkish resort. There he was, this three-year old, curled in a ball, and lying on the shore,dressed in a little red T-shirt and blue shorts. His family and he had boarded a small boat as refugees from a terrible war. Their boat overturned and he and his brother and his mother died. It was heartbreaking and overwhelmed all of us with a sense of helplessness and despair – just like Jarius. But Jesus tells us not to leave the children of the world for dead and there is always hope.
In the United Church of Christ that hope is born and grows in our three great loves, especially our love of children. In Wisconsin the Middleton Community Church, a UCC congregation, has reached out to the children of Bhutanese refugees. Bhutan, a small country, is squeezed between India and China. In the 1990s the Lhotshampas, one of the three major ethnic groups in Bhutan, were forcibly deported from the country. For almost two decades they were stuck in camps in Nepal and by 2008 they were beginning to be resettled. Some of them came to live in Wisconsin. Members of the Middleton church volunteer on Tuesday nights to read to the children of those refugees from Bhutan at the local public library.
These refugees came through official channels but there are also children coming in every day from Central America who come alone.They come here fleeing violence and terrible danger. They come without adults and they come alone. In 2014, 57,000 such children came across our borders asking for refuge. What kind of terror and threats to life would push a child into a hostile world and a dangerous journey to ask us for help? The UCC immigration task force has resources for congregations to respond. You can find them at ucc.org. Are there children that the world has left for dead living in your community? This plea is from the website bhutaneserefugees.com:
“Here I am a refugee but I don't want refuge.I want the wings to fly.”
July 8, 2018
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sent with Power
Mark 6:1-13
Jesus goes home. Nazareth is where he grew up. One might take for granted that they would welcome him with open arms but they don’t. The hometown boy doesn’t get a brass band. Indeed, they hardly know him.
Our churches are often like that. Sometimes we don’t get recognized in our communities. Perhaps our neighbors take us for granted or don’t even know what we do or who we are, or who we have become. The new Local Church Profile is a resource for self-study produced for the use of congregations who are in the process of searching for a pastor. But it is also a useful tool for churches to evaluate where they are in their ministry and where God might be calling them. The Profile (LCP) has a section for helping churches ask questions about who they are and where God is calling them. It also has a section that asks churches to observe who their neighbors are and to ask questions about how their neighbors view them.
Did you ever think of that? How does your community view your church? Do the people in your hometown recognize the things you do? What do your neighbors think goes on behind your walls? Do they know what you believe? Have you cultivated relationships with other organizations in your community? How do other churches or other institutions see you? Do they know you at all?
Some of our churches have thought about their relationships with other organizations and have reached out to their community. Those relationships are with a variety of partners.In Naples, Florida the United Church of Christ there considers the Neighborhood Healthcare Clinicand Dental Surgical Room a mission partner offering financial support and volunteer opportunities. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa the First Congregational Church United Church of Christ partners with the Johnson School of the Arts, a magnet school across the street. In Hudsonville, Michigan the UCC congregation has many community partnerships. Some of these are youth oriented and they include: Kids Hope USA, Intramural basketball, Head Start, and a diaper bank.
If your congregation was to develop community partnerships where would you begin? With whom would you partner to make your presence felt and reach out to your community? You might begin with the UCC partners in Service program at ucc.org, or you could just look around and see who is next door serving your neighbors. Be known in your hometown!
July 15, 2018
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
God-Inspired Joy
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Did you know that dancing was good for you? Good for your health. Good for your mind, andyour entire wellbeing. Dancing is not just for joy anymore. Did you know that there was an American Dance Therapy Association? Dance therapy assumes that the body and the mind are connected. In that way movement increases our emotional and physical health. Could it be good for our spiritual health as well?
Churches have included dance as part of our worship experience for decades. Our worship times at General Synod have been frequently graced by dancers and movement. Liturgical dance groups are often a part of a congregation’s youth programs such as the one at Second Church of Plymouth UCC in Manomet, Massachusetts. Their dance group participates in worship, is for first graders to middle schoolers and includes drumming. Can you imagine the energy they share? How good it is for them to learn that moving is an expression of prayer. At Covenant United Church of Christ in South Holland, Illinois their youth ministries include dancers called the Alpha to Omega Steppers. They rehearse regularly on Saturdays. In their mission statement, it says they are organized to, “provide our youth the opportunity to develop, discover, and praise God through spiritual dance and to “Step to Jesus” with one sound serving one God.”