Rev. J.T. Smiedemdorf
Plymouth Congregational Church Fort Collins, CO An Advent sermon related to Luke 3:7-18 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” 15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. Our tradition puts us in a strange predicament this morning. While the darkness grows deeper in our hemisphere as the season of Advent lengthens, and while the prophet join exclaims “You brood of vipers,” we are asked to light the Advent candle of joy. Now joy makes sense if I am excitedly and confidently drawing near to the light and the delights of Christmas Day. As a kid that was certainly the case, waiting for special once a year smells, songs, presents, and treats to eat. But our story brings us not to such delights, but to John the Baptizer. What do we do with John on this Advent Sunday of joy? John: the Wildman in the wilderness. Rough clothing, rough diet, rough speech: You brood of vipers! And….. the wrath that is to come! Maybe John is like that crazy uncle on Thanksgiving that you have to invite because he is family. Disruptive to domestic peace and pleasant conversation, but there he is right in the middle of the story. What can John say to us today? What could John possibly say to us about joy as we journey toward the manger? The history of Advent might help us get started on this riddle. As early as the fifth century, Christians prepared for Christmas with a 40-day fast. Advent was a season of penitence, self-examination, and repentance. Now in the earliest years of the church, the only church season was Lent, itself a season of fasting and prayer and the traditional color was a deep purple, signifying repentance and suffering. Lent was a solemn season due to the impending crucifixion of Jesus. Yet there was always a twinge of hope and joy in the Easter story. So, on the third Sunday of Lent, the Christians broke their fast and had a feast to signify this hope and joy amid the sadness. Pink became the symbol of this day; priests began to wear pink vestments as a reminder of the coming joy of the resurrection. The third Advent candle, color pink, was selected to be a reminder of this ancient practice of Lent. Advent is a kind of mini-Lent. If there is any war on Christmas, it is a subtle but significant initiative to limit and alter the ‘holy-day’ to focus on family nostalgia and domestic pleasantries, to cultural quirks and consumer crescendos. This focus drains the gravitas out of the story. Those cultural expressions are fine as far as they go, but they won’t go far enough to get us to a meaningful or vital or resilient faith. Indeed, the true meaning and power of Christmas is difficult to access with this limited focus and also from the place of guaranteed comfort and privilege. And so is true joy. It also is difficult to access from comfort and privilege, from naïve notions of joy and desires for pleasantness. Paula Cooey, Professor of Religion at Trinity University in San Antonio says, “… joy is more complex than most theories of feeling allow. For example, for ethically mature adults, if not for everyone, joy cannot be experienced innocently. It is experienced instead against the backdrop of the knowledge of the suffering and violence that characterize much of human life. Thus, while one can imagine, …. what it might mean to experience sustained pain in the absence of joy, it is almost impossible to imagine experiencing joy while ignorant of the coexistence of suffering. Tragedy and joy coexist.” This is where the prophets come in. It is Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann who reminds us that the prophetic imagination is about an alternative consciousness, an alternative narrative to the one of the Empire whether that empire be Roman, British, Russian, or American. That story is about the freedom of God, the inbreaking innovation, the new birth and life lived anew. The prophetic imagination is about a faith in the new life that is needed to overcome forces of death, the forces that are draining life. For John, the new life is about dying to the old ways that do not serve life and being born into a new one. Baptism is that passage and metanoia, turning around our lives, is its purpose. We see this in John’s response to those who said what must we do. He tells them to live differently, honestly, in good and just relationship to others. Father Richard Rohr calls this baptismal way a spirituality of descent. And that kind of descent cannot occur if our joy is facile or naïve, merely pleasantry and happiness in moments of good fortune or insulated comfort. Like labor pains of birth, and the descent and death of going under the water in baptism, the prophet knows that hard truth has to come. The forces of death, our unjust and life draining ways, must be seen and named. Even a prophet as eloquent as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of the fierce urgency of now. There are moments of fierceness and urgency. There are times when it is time to face a difficult reality in ourselves, in our nation, and in our world. The prophet names and confronts the hard truths that need God’s transformation. Such a moment came at the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016 where bands of the Lakota and Dakota peoples live. After quietly rejecting an oil pipeline proposal that would have sent the pipeline under the Missouri River upstream of the mostly white city of Bismarck, the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved to go further south, crossing the waters upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation. In 2016, youth of these nations began a nonviolent effort to stop the construction of the pipeline, even using their bodies as necessary. Not unlike John the Baptizer, they proclaimed the fierce urgency of now and, like John, organized a prayer meeting around the waters. My wife and I went there at the end of October 2016 to help in any way we could. We prayed. We trained in nonviolent resistance. We bore witness to the courage of those standing up to the empire and supported them as best we could. I had never been to a war zone, but this time of being present in the camp and on the front lines showed me the incredible and heartbreaking truth of the funding, weaponry, equipment, and intimidation that the system of empire can bring to bear on those who attempt to interfere with its purpose. A joy based on Christmas decorations and carols on the radio is not enough to meet with hard truths; the complex reality of life or the power of empire. Enter the prophets like John. Such hard truth prophets like John the Baptizer, Malcom X, Angela Davis, and Dolores Huerta are not always received well. But they are necessary in our Advent story and for the coming of the new birth. And, yet, these hard truth prophets are not without joy. Their joy is of knowing, feeling, and acting for the alternative vision of God. Even in the face of empire, even in the growing darkness, they let that deep and complex joy, what theologian Cornel West would call subversive joy, fuel their service and their lives. The result is the sweet fruit of living differently. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” John said. Let me be clear. At my house, we will be decorating a Christmas tree and gathering family. We will listen to the soundtrack of Charlie Brown Christmas and watch some annual holiday Christmas movies. I will be baking a cherished family cookie recipe. I am not against these things. I enjoy these things and I hope you do too in your own way. I am simply reminding all of us that these things are not the Christmas story of our faith. The journey to the manger includes the wild prophets of the wilderness, calling us out to the river, to be immersed in hard truths, and then rise anew into lives bearing the sweet fruit of God’s inbreaking Realm. Even amidst a growing darkness there is a pink candle of joy to light and a new birth of life to wait upon. AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more
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Rev. J.T. Smiedendorf
Plymouth Congregational Church UCC Fort Collins, CO Colossians 1:15–20 (The Message): We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in Christ and finds its purpose in Christ. Christ was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, Christ organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body. Christ was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—Christ is supreme in the end. From beginning to end Christ is there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is Christ, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in Christ without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of Christ’s death, Christ’s blood that poured down from the cross. For the word of God in Scripture For the word of God among us For the word of God within us Thanks be to God Pope Pius XI 1925 It was 1925. Mussolini had been the leader of Italy for three years; and a rabble-rouser named Hitler had been out of jail for a year and his Nazi party was growing in popularity. The world lay in a great Depression: a depression that would become far worse over the next fifteen years. This is what Pope Pius XI saw in the world. This is why he inaugurated in 1925 what we now call Reign of Christ Sunday. At that moment, amidst the rise of anxiety and authoritarian figures, the church needed the image of Christ, the wounded and crucified one, the humble servant, the healer, the prophet of peace and justice as the One Seated on the Throne. At that moment, the world of Christian faith and maybe the world as a whole needed a reminder of what a true leader looked like, what power was for, and where it came from. In such a time, Pope Pius XI amidst all of those new dictators and false values in the world, proclaimed Christ is Sovereign of the universe. That proclamation can and should be made again today for we too live amidst actual and would be authoritarians seeking worldly power, promising to quench human fear and anxiety by bringing a certain kind of law and order, punishing the troublemakers, those ‘others’ who are the cause of our anxiety and struggles. Humans here and all around the world can still be tempted by the simple solution of blame, separation, and domination. Powers of death I believe the apostle Paul would see this movement toward the authoritarian as the powers and principalities of death at work. That is to say, they threaten the very fabric of Life. Last Sunday, we affirmed Life Over Death, focusing on the acceptance of and wisdom in our mortality. We affirmed that Life (capital L) holds our personal death and even overcomes it beyond the ego self. This Reign of Christ Sunday, we affirm something even bigger: that the Christ power of Life overcomes the powers and principalities of Death themselves. These powers of Death might use our individual fear of death to control or threaten, but their drive and their consequence is not merely about individual mortality, but about the Death of Life itself. Operating with dominant power over others and expecting and enforcing the acquiescence and oppression of many including the earth, the powers of Death act against God’s intention for Creation, the very Life principle of interdependence of all, and the soul’s longing for freedom, connection, and wholeness. Indeed, when these powers reign, there is not the Love that heals and connects, but the fear that divides and the distrust that separates and discourages. When Caesar or Mussolini is on the throne, nuclear winter and ecological collapse are on the horizon, genocide and apartheid (subtle and overt) are nearby, while idols, entertainments, and distractions seek to mute underlying depression and disempowerment. The same will happen when consumerism, militarism, materialism, and tribalism are the reigning powers. Ernst Becker, Denial of Death, Terror Mgmt Theory In his Pulitzer Prize winning book of the early 1970s, The Denial of Death, Ernst Becker claims that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality. Our basic survival instinct, our drive to exist as a distinct person is challenged by the impossibility of bodily immortality. Humanity is able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through an "immortality project" in which one creates or becomes part of something which one feels will be part of something eternal; something that will never die, giving one the feeling that one’s life has meaning; a purpose; significance in the grand scheme of things. Becker argues that the conflict between immortality projects which contradict each other (particularly in religion) is the wellspring for the destruction and misery in our world caused by wars, bigotry, genocide, racism, nationalism, and so forth, since an immortality project which contradicts others indirectly suggests that the others are wrong. I don’t think Becker was suggesting that immortality projects are necessarily bad things, but that they are necessary and that they can become bad. Our inability to find peace with the paradox of meaningful life and inevitable death creates trouble. If, in our deep angst about death, our deep identification with our ego drives our immortality project, we may drive that ‘project’ right over someone else. The Nazi’s were a collective expression of the German anxiety of national death, a terror of not surviving the traumatic times of and after World War I and that became a reason to inflict terror. Their immortality project was known as the Third Reich was supposed to last for a thousand years. The powers and principalities that Paul talks of take over human immortality projects and empower the reign of many anti-Christs known by tragic names in our present and past, names of infamous leaders, and by the names of ‘isms’ that steamrolled over people and planet. The writer of today’s Scripture poem, the hymn we heard in Colossians proclaims another Sovereign power, another head and heart of all things: The Eternal Sovereign Christ presence that was witnessed and worshipped. In its time, it was practically subversive to claim another Sovereign power other than Caesar and Rome. More importantly, it was subversive to not live the way of Empire where might makes right, where you get yours first and defeat your enemies, and where the desires of the few eclipse the needs of the many and of Creation. Our invitation of faith on this Reign of Christ Sunday is to do the same, to be subversive in that way, to let Christ Reign. Not Christ as a mascot for our team, for our tribe. Not Christ as figurehead. Not Christ as our Caesar. But the Way of Christ to be our Sovereign authority, the author of our days, the shaper of our ways of being and being together. Our Sovereign is not an emperor, not a CEO or conventional leader, but a wounded healer, a prophet of truth to power, a radically welcoming gatherer of the marginalized, a devout student of the Great Mystery, and a peaceful warrior of the soul surrendered to service. Does this sound all too lofty and pie in the sky? Christ as Sovereign? Maybe. Faith can seem that way sometimes, a kind of foolishness. History has much to suggest Caesar and Caesar’s ways and values are still in charge. It doesn’t seem like Christ is Reigning. And yet the invitation of faith remains, to let the Way of Christ Reign, even to trust that it has already begun. Listen again to the passage, from the New Revised Standard version, “God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the realm of the beloved Son, in whom we have redemption” Past tense. It has been done. It is the power of Resurrection where the Way of Life conquers even the empires and ways of death. Today is the conclusion, the end of our annual cycle of telling the sacred story of Jesus as Christ and of the call of Christ Jesus to the people. And what an appropriate end toward which we journey; the Reign of Christ in our lives and societies. Let me be clear, not the reign of Christians or of one religion, tribal and dominant. Not a rigid and punishing theocracy. Not a culture of conformity. Instead, our prayer is like our final song in today’s worship: V 1 Lead on eternal Sovereign, we follow in your way; Loud rings your cry for justice, your call for peace this day: Through prayerful preparation, your grace will make us strong, To carry on the struggle to triumph over wrong. V 2 Lead on eternal Sovereign, we follow not with fear, For in each human conflict your words of strength we hear: That when we serve with gladness, you will not let us fall, Our trust is in your promise that love will conquer all. V 3 Lead on eternal Sovereign, till sin’s fierce war shall cease, And all your saints together will sing a hymn of peace; Then all in your dominion will live with hearts set free, To love and serve each other for all eternity. AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more
Rev. J. T. Smiedendorf
Plymouth Congregational Church Fort Collins, CO Isaiah 65:17-25*
What do you want? I mean what do you really want?
We are moving into a social season of intensified appeals to want. Advertisers will increasingly try to entice your wants, shape your wants, even redirect your wants. Although what is most powerful is when an advertiser can get us to see their product or service as a fulfillment of a want we already have, especially a deep want, a deep intangible want. It’s not just a car, it’s security and reliability. It’s not just a truck, it’s power and manly status. It’s not just a toy, it’s happiness. These are the deepest wants, the intangibles, the deep ones that have to do with meaning and purpose, values and identity, love and acceptance. Something that is offered to us as a community of faith is the journey into life giving depth. It’s not that living life in a sacred manner might not involve the delight of a desired product or service, a needed new car, a comforting massage. It’s that there is a call of faith to living into a depth that sees through the illusory or shallow aspects of stuff and amusements into what is of lasting or life-giving value, what we really deeply and truly desire and need. A faith of resilience and wisdom knows that there are things such as enough, and such as when and where, and such as first things first, and such as beauty and truth. Such a way of life knows when it is the right time for a new car or a massage. From the place of the soul, the question of what do you want can also be phrased, ‘what do you long for’? In your heart of hearts, for what do you long, for yourself and for others? Or even what do you dream and desire for the world to be? I like that term desire. I have a sense of desire as calling forth something that we feel in the body, something deep in us. And deep want is the place to which we are faithfully invited when we consider the identity and the expression of being a steward. Stewardship is more than just our October theme. It’s an ‘always theme’ of being a person or a community of faith. Next Sunday, Consecration Sunday, we are asking for each of us to pledge a contribution for 2022 so we can plan responsibly for our ministry and mission in 2022. Yet, all of this occurs within the larger, ‘the always’ context of faith and stewardship, the context of valuing and trusting and serving something greater than ourselves. Some years ago at a church retreat, the congregation I was serving summarized that something greater as the flourishing of life. We could call it the Realm of God, or the Body of Christ, or Shalom, or justice, peace and the integrity of Creation. Isaiah called it a “new heavens and a new earth.” We could call that kind of something greater a faithful vision of what we really want, what inspires us, touches us, and calls us to celebration and action. This talk of of vision and hoping for something reminds me of the book Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. This book has a subtitle: How to Face the Mess We are in without Going Crazy. In it, Macy invites us into facing the global environmental crisis by viewing hope not as a feeling based on a prediction of what will happen, hope based on a likely outcome, but into hope based on desire, based on intention, based on our highest vision of what we want for the world, what we most deeply value becoming real. Out of that vision of value and deep desire, we act out our hope. Our hope is active in our living out of and into the vision of what we deeply want. As noted by Macy in Active Hope and by others in the field of change, starting with the end in mind may be the best way to begin. Starting with what we really want, starting with a deep imagining of what we want to see happen. We can do that now. Perhaps for Plymouth Church, perhaps for Fort Collins, perhaps for Colorado or for all Creation. The Strategic Planning Team has offered a vision of five years forward. Review their vision. And you can move into the future perhaps 10, 20, or even 50 years. Close your eyes and see if it deepens your imagining. Imagine with all your imaginative senses what it is like to have our deepest hopes come to be. In positive terms, not imagining what you don’t want or what isn’t there, but focusing on what you do want and on what is there, imagine what you desire for the flourishing of life. What is that like? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you touch and taste? What do you hear? Those who research this process encourage us to set aside “the how” in this phase of the process and just focus on the what. When we have filled that positive picture up, we take time to feel in our hearts the desire for it and the joy in its coming. Only then do we ask the question, how did we get here? The imagination is used to trace backward in time the steps that led to that change until we come back to the moment in which we stand. We come back to the now moment and are able to more adequately act with effectiveness to move on the path toward that greater something we seek. I can think of instances in the life of churches I’ve served and even my own life where I couldn’t imagine how I would get to somewhere or some way, but those churches did and I did. Somehow the vision did manifest. With a focus on the vision and persistent steps, and sometimes with unexpected gifts and graces, the new was and is birthed, even the hard-to-believe "NEW." This morning’s sacred reading from our Scriptures is an example of vision, a description of what (Third) Isaiah understood God really wants to have happen with human beings; to have fairness for those who labor, that they be rewarded with adequate fruits of their labor, that people are healthy and live full life spans, that there be an end to violence. Described beautifully in images that we can use to more deeply enter this reality, this desire, these images invite us to see elders and children together, to taste fruit and feel the shade of the vines, to hear the pounding of the swords into plowshares (Longmont UCC). And, here and now, as much as ever, we are called to have a vision of the Realm of God, a place where there is balance in the relationships of humanity and in Creation so that we see polar bears walking on plentiful ice, and hear the songs of songbirds aplenty, and see the sight of whales breaching, and of students filling classrooms in productive learning, and of workers performing jobs with good pay and benefits, and smell good nutritious luscious food in the air, and hear the sound of music and laughter. If our prayer that heaven may come upon the earth is to manifest, we must be on the path of stewarding our individual and communal lives, and that includes feeling and holding that vision of what we truly deeply want: the flourishing of life that the God of Grace and Justice wants for Creation. What do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine that vision of what God wants for the world? What vision do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine what God wants for Plymouth Church? What can you do with your time, talent, and treasure to help manifest it? May we be about the business of vision, the imagining that opens us and guides us and sustains us being vital, joyful, and wise stewards of the life that we have received. Amen. AuthorJ. T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more
*Isaiah 65:17-25 (Third Isaiah, back in Judah but struggling)
17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity;[a] for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord-- and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord. For the word of God in Scripture For the word of God among us For the word of God within us Thanks be to God |
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