For all the saints

Scripture. Revelation 7:9-17.  New Revised Standard Version

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom

and thanksgiving and honor

and power and might

be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 

For this reason they are before the throne of God,

    and worship him day and night within his temple,

    and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

16 

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

    the sun will not strike them,

    nor any scorching heat;

17 

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

******************************************************************

Good morning on this All Saints Day, a day known to most children in the United States as the day after Halloween, when there is a bag full of candy to be eaten.  (That is, there is a bag full of candy if parents have not confiscated most of it.). 

Today is also the Sunday before Election Day.  IF you are registered to vote but have not yet done so, PLEASE go vote.  It is your right and your duty as a citizen to elect the people in leadership in our city, county, state and nation - and to make decisions on Propositions.  So please, vote.

This year Halloween is strange.  Traditional door-to-door Trick or Treating was discouraged because of the potential for transmitting Covid19. Mind you, the numbers of children going door-to-door is much lower anyway than it was years ago because of the potential risk of running into someone who means the children harm.  Trunk or Treat has become popular - where a group of people, often from a church, gather in a parking lot with the trunks of their cars decorated and filled with goodies.  Malls and other public venues likewise provide places for kids to get candy and show off costumes safely.   Instead of going door-to-door, the children just show up where the treats are.   

The day after Halloween - All Saints Day - my family always headed to mass to  celebrate the 10,000 or so saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church, with everyone else who has died honored the next day, All Souls Day.   In Protestant churches, where we consider all who have accepted Christ to be saints, we honor all those who have gone before us.  Latinx families celebrate today as Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, with meals at their loved ones’ gravesides, sugar skulls, and parties.  It is a wonderful celebration.  Disney fans who didn’t know what it was learned when they watched the animated film Coco.  But however we celebrate, this is a special day in the life of the church.    It is appropriate that this passage from the Book of the Revelation to John be our focus today.

As John looks on, he sees a great multitude - so many people no one could count them all - from every nation and tribe, speaking every language - standing at the foot of the Throne, worshipping God and the Lamb of God.  An elder asked him who these people were, but John turns the question back on the questioner, who tells him that these are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal, those who have washed their robes and had them made white in the blood of the Lamb.

It is hard to know with this book just when John was visiting heaven in his vision.  If it was at the time he was living there not anywhere near that many believers in the whole world yet, never mind believers who have already died.  People who lean toward the idea of universal salvation point to this reading as a confirmation of their belief.  

On the other hand, given that we believe God is eternal, and heaven is eternal, it is quite possible his vision was of the far future, when this huge number of believers who have gone before seems much more reasonable to us.  After all, it seems to us that being washed in the blood of the Lamb means believers, Christians.  And given that his vision is of the End of Days and that hasn’t happened yet, it is reasonable to think this is a vision of the far future.  Far from John’s time, at least.

Mind you, that has not kept a huge number of false prophets from arising on a pretty regular basis and convincing people that the end is near, next week, or month from now, or on January 1, 2000.  Multitudes have believed them, and given away all their possessions, gone to the mountaintop with their prophet and waited to be raptured - or committed mass suicide. At best they are embarrassed, many are impoverished. People keep thinking they can see the signs . . .And I keep coming back to Matthew 24, when Jesus says very clearly that no one knows the day or the hour, not the angels nor the Son, but only the Father.  

But these, this multitude at the foot of the throne, these are those who have already gone through the great ordeal.  These have lived their lives and died.  They have suffered pain and loss. They have celebrated and loved.  How they died, or when they died, is less important than that they lived, ordinary human lives.  And life, all by itself, is an ordeal.  In the musical, Alexander Hamilton is eager to go into battle, to fight and die a martyr to the revolution.  General Washington tells him, “Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder.”

As Christians we are told, and we believe, that we do not have to grieve as others do, who have no hope. Even so, living with the grief of losing a loved one is hard.  And grief does not end. It may become easier to live with, but it is always a part of us.  It is part of the great ordeal that is life.  Oh, we get some encouragement when we hear,

  

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

    the sun will not strike them,

    nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Hearing these words helps us to know that our loved ones, our dearly departed, are well, and waiting for us.  Also helpful are our rituals around death and dying.  We gather at the bedside when the end is near.  Family comes from near and far.  We all come together for viewings and wakes and funerals and meals after funerals.  Sharing the stories of their lives, sharing our grief and our laughter, getting to see cousins or even siblings we haven’t seen in years, and their children and grandchildren.  All this is part of that ritual.  It is part of how we grieve.

But there’s this pandemic. Everything has changed.  We can’t visit our loved ones in the hospital.  We can’t have funerals the way we are accustomed to.  Even graveside services are limited to 10 people.  Large family gatherings are discouraged.  Flying is riskier than usual, so traveling to see our families in our time of grief is so much more difficult.  And so we must grieve alone. Oh there’s FaceTime and Zoom and Google Meet . . . but there are no hugs.  No gentle touch on our shoulder.   

And there are so many more deaths this year.  As of Friday there have been 228,100 in the US so far this year from Covid19.   1,200,000 Covid deaths worldwide. That’s a lot of families grieving.  My friends and colleagues in places where Covid is  surging are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of deaths, and their feelings of helplessness.

And so we come to All Saints Day, bearing our grief and our confusion. Typically, any other year, the Table would hold small candles, lots of candles.  We would come forward and light one or more for the people we are grieving.  We might speak their names, or light the candles in silence.  We would come together to recognize and share our losses.

We cannot do that today.  What we can do, and will do, is have the Quarantine Qrew light candles for us.  As they do so, I would invite you to name your loved ones just as you would if we were together in person. If you can, you may light your own candles at home for your dearly departed.   And be comforted, for they are before the throne of God, worshipping day and night, sheltered from all harm.  And know that they will hunger and thirst no more, and God will wipe every  tear from their eyes.

Amen.

Giving is Loving

 

Matthew 22:34-46. NRSV

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

    until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 

46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

**************************************************************

Good morning!  I am back, all rested and relaxed from 10 days with no Facebook or other electronic disturbances.  I hope you all enjoyed the guest preachers the last two weeks. I certainly did.

Today is the last Sunday of our annual Stewardship Campaign, which we call Consecration Sunday because it is the day we bless the pledges we have received so far.  The Quarantine Qrew will be doing a special blessing later in the service. Most of the pledges received will be monetary.  Some will be a commitment to give time or talents to the service of God.   You might have noticed that I said we are blessing the pledges we have received so far.   That’s because, unlike your ballots in the elections, there is no due date for your pledge.  It is not too late to send it.  It will be accepted and added to the total whenever it gets here.

(And speaking of ballots - please vote.  It’s important.  Every vote counts. Vote for whomever you choose, just please vote.  This has been today’s public service announcement.)

The two greatest commandments.  Most of you are very well aware that on any given Sunday I will most likely mention these at least once, and probably also the commands in Matthew 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on.  It is said that every preacher really only has one sermon - and this is mine.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees. Two different schools of theological thought.   Sadducees did not believe in resurrection at the end of time, or an afterlife, or any kind of spiritual realm - angels and demons and so on.  They followed a very literal interpretation of scripture - if a law could not be found in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures) it had to be manmade and therefore non-binding.  The Pharisees accepted both scripture and oral tradition as authoritative, believed that all persons would be resurrected in their bodies on last day, that there was life after death, as well as angels and demons and so on.  They were both politically powerful, both were represented in the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of Judaism.  Their rivalry was so fierce that, if they were college football teams, they would be Army and Navy. 

So when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had shut down the Sadducees, well, you know, they had to test Jesus themselves, with the thought that they could catch him out with some legal question, cause, you know, they could certainly come up with better questions than the Sadducees.  They had no objection to his reply about the greatest commandment, but then he asked them a question.  Who is the Messiah - whose son is he? When they said David, he pointed out that David referred to the Messiah as Lord, and how could a king call the son of a king “Lord”?  This had not occurred to them before, obviously, because it totally stumped them.   Matthew tells us that “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”.  This certainly had to add to their dislike of and disdain for Jesus.  There is, after all, little that academics hate more than being shown up by someone without their credentials, their level of formal education - and Jesus was definitely not educated in the same way they were.

Jesus was nearly always respectful of others.  He didn’t laugh or make fun of the Pharisees or Sadducees when he pointed out fallacies and contradictions in their arguments.  He rarely called anyone names - unless he was really angry, temple courtyard table tossing angry.  In this way he showed them the kind of love that he kept talking about, which was to treat others as you would want to be treated.  To care for others as you would want to be cared for.  Helping the man on the side of the road.  Giving your last mite to the Temple, not out of obligation, but out of love.

Giving is loving.  You know that we sometimes have special offerings, to support our Regional Church, colleges and universities, the Pro-Reconciliation Anti-racism effort, or to help victims of natural disasters.  Those special, extra offerings help our larger church walk into God’s vision for the world, where there is no more oppression, and no one has to suffer alone, and hatred has been replaced with love.  The gifts we give to those special offerings are over and above our regular offerings so that God’s vision may be carried out on a much larger scale than just what we can do here, in Selma.  Our regular offerings help us to do our best work here, in this city, to combat hunger and to carry God’s word to the people who need to hear it outside our congregation.  Whatever we can give in love helps us to walk into it, and fulfill God’s vision.

Gwen was a a tiny, white haired bundle of energy.  A pillar of church. From the time she was in college right up until the day of her death, she devoted nearly all of her time to doing social justice work.  She was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, and the Farmworkers movement, and the fights for Women’s rights and Gay Rights.  By profession a teacher, by inclination a lifelong learner, she attended classes, workshops, and lectures on pretty much everything.  If there was anything at all happening at the church, Gwen was there to help out.  One day she told me that she and her late husband had stopped tithing decades earlier.  After I stopped mentally freaking out - because I couldn’t imagine them giving less than the full 10% - she said that they gave so much of their income to the church and other charitable organizations that, as school  teachers with 4 children, the IRS had trouble believing it.  When she said they were not tithing, what she meant was they were no longer limiting themselves to 10%.  Giving is loving, and Gwen may have been the giving-est and the loving-est person I ever met.

June once told me that she gave 20% of her retirement income to the church, but admitted she had very few expenses - she lived with her sister and brother-in-law who supplied pretty much everything she required.  She wasn’t well enough to do much else to help out, so she gave as much money as she could so the congregation could continue doing God’s work in our community and beyond.  Giving is loving.

As for me. . . At that time I was lucky to be able to give 2%, maybe as much as 5%. It was expensive to live in Southern California, and I was over whelmed with debt - student loans, medical bills and credit cards.  Today my situation is much better but then I simply could not give more. I know many people share that reality, especially right now in the middle of a recession.  Giving is loving.  We can only give what we have to give.

Eusebio had very little.  His income as a dishwasher did not stretch far enough for first and last month’s rent, so he slept in the doorway of the church until he had saved up enough for a deposit on a room.  He spent many hours every week cleaning up and fixing up anything around the outside of the church that needed attention.  He even re-painted the stripes in the parking lot with paint he found in a dumpster.  No one asked him to do these things. This was his gift, his pledge, given in love and gratitude, so that the congregation could focus on other things.  Giving is loving.

Because we love God, we want to do those things that are required of us.  We want to love our neighbors as best we can. In love and gratitude we want to give our best - our finances, our gifts and talents, our time, our willingness just to show up.  The gifts we give, no matter what those gift might be, will help us to walk into God’s vision for the world, a world where justice is tempered with mercy, God’s peace fills every heart, and God’s love is shown to all persons.  Let us then, give as generously as we possibly can, let us give our very lives to God - for giving is loving, and we are commanded to love.

God’s Plan

 Scripture.  Isaiah 5:1-7 New Revised Standard Version     

5 Let me sing for my beloved

    my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.

2 

He dug it and cleared it of stones,
    and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
    and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
    but it yielded wild grapes.

3 

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
    and people of Judah,
judge between me
    and my vineyard.

4 

What more was there to do for my vineyard
    that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
    why did it yield wild grapes?

5 

And now I will tell you
    what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
    and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
    and it shall be trampled down.

6 

I will make it a waste;
    it shall not be pruned or hoed,
    and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
    that they rain no rain upon it.

7 

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
    is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
    but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
    but heard a cry!

********************************************************************

Message God’s plan? 

It is one of those Sundays again.  You know, the kind of Sunday that has a bunch of different things going on that we are supposed to be paying attention to.  It is Reconciliation Sunday, when we pay particular attention to the Anti-Racism, Pro-Reconciliation emphasis of our denomination - and take a special offering for that program.  It is World Communion Sunday - the one Sunday a year when Christians around the world celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, even those who only celebrate once in a very great while.  In case you hadn’t heard, we have a special service planned for 12:30 this afternoon on the front lawn of the church where we will all share in the Lord’s Supper - with individual communion sets, wearing masks and appropriate distancing between your lawn chairs.  But we will all be in one place together for the first time in over 6 months!    

And it is the first Sunday in Stewardship Month.  It is also the Sunday before I take a week off because we are having awesome preachers the next two weeks!  Our Regional Minister Toni Bynum will preach next Sunday and Terrell McTyer, Minister of New Church Strategies for our General Church the following week.  You can bet that I will be glued to our YouTube channel during worship those days!  I am really looking forward to hearing both of those sermons!  

In the reading we heard this morning, Isaiah speaks to the people and tells them a story about a man with a vineyard, who did everything exactly right to make the vines grow and be exceptional.  But they didn’t.  They were like wild grapes. So he abandoned the vineyard.  He asks the people of Judah to judge whether he had done the right thing.

Clearly, Isaiah is not talking about an actual man with a vineyard.  Rather he is telling a story much like the one that Nathan told David, after he committed adultery with Bathsheba - the story about the rich man with many sheep, and the poor man with only one.  But the rich man stole the poor man’s one sheep - so what should be done?  David said the rich man must be punished severely; Nathan pointed out that he was the rich man with many wives, while Bathsheba had been Uriah’s only wife.

Isaiah says to the people of Judah, God gave you everything, everything you could possibly need to be an excellent nation.  A righteous nation, where all the people were cared for, where no one was oppressed, where God’s will was the will of the leaders - not greed or lust for power, but the desire to serve God’s people as they were commanded to do. And you aren’t doing that.  My people are crying out.  They are hungry, and sick and mistreated. Should God abandon you, as that man abandoned his vineyard?  God had a plan, and it didn’t happen the way it was supposed to - you all did not follow the plan.

We, humans, can mess up God’s plans in a heartbeat.  We might like to think that God’s plans are carved in stone, but there’s that pesky free will thing.   All we have to do to derail God’s plan is think about ourselves first, and not God.  All we have to do is put the love of money first, not the love of God.  Meanwhile, God waits for us to do what is expected of us . . which I imagine is as frustrating to God as watching an update load when we have something important to do on our computers.

———-

We will spend this whole month talking about Stewardship, which can easily translate into Preaching about Money.  It is, and not. 

When we were talking over the theme for our Stewardship Campaign, it was pretty clear to us that we need to look at giving in a different way.  Not giving to the budget, but giving to God’s mission and vision.   I know some of you will say God doesn’t need money and you are absolutely right.  God does not need money.  But if we are expected to feed the hungry and heal the sick and bring hope to the hopeless, and end every kind of oppression - if we are expected to do these things to carry the Good News as God has commanded us to do, planned for us to do - We need money to provide education and materials and work space and storage space for the people doing that work.

See here, God  does not complain that there isn’t enough lamp oil in the Temple, or that the quality of the incense has gone down.  God complains because God’s plan is not being brought to fruition. God complains because the people of Israel have been given every advantage and pretty clear directions on how to live, how to take care of each other.  The harvest expected from the Chosen People was justice, but God saw bloodshed.  God expected righteousness but heard the people crying out under the weight of oppression. 

God did not just tell the people of Israel to tithe, but also how the gifts they gave to the Temple were to be used, and a good portion of it was intended to care for the poor, the widows and orphans, and the strangers among them, the sick and hungry.  God told the people how to take care of each other, knowing that if they followed directions the harvest of righteousness and justice would be bountiful.  It wasn’t just the leaders who were told how to do these things - it was all of the people.  All of the people are responsible for acting justly, with mercy, compassion and generosity.

Here’s the other piece about Stewardship.  Stewardship is also about people doing the work.  A vineyard cannot thrive no matter how much is spent on setting it up. It requires workers to care for the vines, to make sure they are watered, and no pests are threatening the grapes.

A congregation can be rolling in funds - they can have enough money to buy up all the land around them and build education wings and start a coffee shop inside the narthex and buy the pastor a private jet - but if the people do not go out to serve those who need their help, that congregation is not fulfilling God’s plan.  So Stewardship is two things - giving from your wallet, and giving of your gifts and talents - of the things that bring you joy.  When Liz and her helpers prepare a meal for the Christian Cafe, or when Karleen picks up the food to distribute at the SMART Center, or when Jordan spends half his week making sure this worship service is planned and music selected and recorded and all the different parts spliced together and finally uploaded so you all get to participate - they are doing things that bring them joy.  When Jennifer goes out with the Selma Beautification team to pick up trash and make our city a better place to live, when Alan goes out with the teams that count the homeless, when Omar and Jessica staff our table at a Bringing Neighbors Together Block party - they are doing things that help the people in our community.  Laurie plans and teaches our Children’s Church, Aubrey educates all of us about chronic illness and mental health issues . . .they are sharing what they are passionate about as a service to God’s people. When any of us speaks out against any kind of oppression - racism, homophobia, sexism, economic oppression - we are working toward a world where God’s justice is done.  We are working toward fulfilling God’s plan.  IF you have a thing you love to do, or a thing you would love to try to do, write that on your pledge card and we will find a way for you to do that thing to serve God’s people.

God provides everything we need to produce a fruitful harvest of generosity and justice and righteousness.  We are showered with gifts in abundance.  It is true that right now, in the middle of a pandemic and an economic recession, many who were doing ok before suddenly have no job, and no way to earn a living.  People who were doing ok before are suddenly finding themselves depending on food distributions to feed themselves and their families.  This is the reality we are living in.  And this reality means that some who could give before cannot right now.   Not money, anyway.  God’s gifts are not all financial.  For those who cannot give from their wallets, this is the opportunity to give from your hearts.  To reach out to someone who is alone, and let them know that they are not alone.  Share your passion for justice, or teaching, or music, to help heal the hearts and spirits of the depressed and tired.  Share the gifts, which God gives in abundance, so that all the world might come to know God’s love and compassion.

God’s plan for the world is for it to be a place where following God’s will is the rule, not the exception.  In order to bring that plan to fruition, God has showered each of us with gifts that know no ending.  Let us use those gifts and follow God’s plan for us, providing that bountiful harvest of righteousness and justice that God desires.