2nd Sunday of Christmas
January 5, 2020

 ⁷Thus says the Lord:
 Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,
  and raise shouts for the chief of the nations;
 proclaim, give praise, and say,
  “Save, O Lord, your people,
  the remnant of Israel.”
 ⁸See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,
  and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
 among them the blind and the lame,
  those with child and those in labor, together;
  a great company, they shall return here.
 ⁹With weeping they shall come,
  and with consolations I will lead them back,
 I will let them walk by brooks of water,
  in a straight path in which they shall not stumble;
 for I have become a father to Israel,
  and Ephraim is my firstborn.

 ¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,
  and declare it in the coastlands far away;
 say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him,
  and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.”
 ¹¹For the Lord has ransomed Jacob,
  and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.
 ¹²They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion,
  and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord,
 over the grain, the wine, and the oil,
  and over the young of the flock and the herd;
 their life shall become like a watered garden,
  and they shall never languish again.
 ¹³Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
  and the young men and the old shall be merry.
 I will turn their mourning into joy,
  I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
 ¹⁴I will give the priests their fill of fatness,
  and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, – Jeremiah 31:7-14

See also Ephesians 1:3-14 & John 1:10-18

One of our bedtime books is called Sometimes Rainby Meg Fleming. Its simple and beautiful poetry begins, “Sometimes drizzle, drip-drip drain. Sometimes picnic, sometimes rain.” The book takes you through a year highlighting the joy and sometimes frustration of the changing seasons. Sometimes picnic, but sometimes rain. In winter, sledding fun but frozen toes and sometimes boring but also full of wonder. In spring, “sometimes clear, bright and growing” but also “so much melt the mud is growing.” It has become a meditation for me on living in the moment with what is – sometimes picnic, sometimes rain – and, with every turn of the page, change. A new season, a new movement, a new shift in the reality of the world. With all the ups and downs of the seasons, with so much change, the book ends with the words, “Sometimes wandering, far or near. Always knowing someone here. Always ready. Stay or roam. Always welcome…always home.”

When we read this book Chanel often asks what the ending means: always welcome, always home – kids often ask the most poignant questions! What does it mean to be always home, to always know a sense of welcome even when change is constant and when the ground seems to shift beneath our feet.

We’ve just observed the passing of another year, a notable if ultimately arbitrary threshold, an opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and what we might want to do that is new or different in the coming year. The transition comes in the midst of a holiday week when school is off, and even some workplaces are closed. Many families and friends gather and travel. Routines are thrown off, which adds to the feeling of standing in a threshold, the place that is neither before nor after that is neither here nor there.

And here we are as a congregation standing in another threshold, another in-between time. After less time than we imagined when we first began our relationship as pastor and congregation, we now stand at another turning point as I prepare to move in a few short weeks to a new call and this congregation will once again be in a pastoral transition. You’ve done this before. Many routines will carry forward. But it is a time of change, a time when other routines will be thrown off. Just like the turn of the new year, this point becomes a marker along the congregation’s journey.

The Hebrew people whom Jeremiah is addressing in our first reading were also in a time of transition, a threshold of sorts. We’re not 100% sure exactly when these words were first spoken and then recorded, but it was sometime in the decades of their national, tribal identity falling to pieces as larger, stronger empires took control of their land, their way of life began to crumble, and their leadership often changed or faltered. Whether they were watching their neighbors fall and anticipating the day when they, too, would succumb, or whether these words were first spoken to those who had already lost their homeland and were living in exile in a foreign land, the words are spoken to reassure people living with change beyond their control. Not only had they been forced from their homes, they had been separated from their community and dispersed to various parts of the empire. They had certainly seen some die in the violence of the takeover. Their religious practice was difficult to hold onto so far from home, especially when their practice had been so tied to a sense of place that was now far away.

This time of transition, this liminal space, this threshold that is neither quite here nor there in the life of their people, is the context for God’s message of hope to them through Jeremiah: “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company they shall return here. With weepingshall they come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel.”

More easily said than believed, perhaps, when a sense of being home, of being settled, of being grounded in a place is thrown off. It can be challenging to hold on to hope when we are mired in the mess of transition. And let’s face it, the church in the 21^stcentury is in constant transition. Your Forward Leadership team just returned from a retreat that marks the end of the first year-long phase of this program that seeks to discern mission and ministry in a changing and challenging context. It’s a program with lots of questions and few clear, simple answers. Even for those of us who have participated in all the programs and retreats, and who have valued the work it has inspired, it can feel hard to find solid footing, to say, “Yes, this is it, we’ve figured it out.” I have enjoyed and been honored to do that work with you, but it’s ultimately the work of the whole congregation to sit in the questions together, to engage the struggle together, to talk openly and honestly with one another about what the future holds. It’s the work of the whole congregation to echo the promises God speaks through Jeremiah, to remind one another of the promises God has made to accompany you, even when things crumble around you, when things seem uncertain, when the path forward is unclear.

That promise that echoes is every one of our readings today is that we have been adopted as children of God. Sometimes there is rain on our picnic. Sometimes there is change we can’t control. Sometimes a pastor leaves before anyone expected. Sometimes death visits too soon. Sometimes empires crumble. Sometimes the rug gets pulled out from under our feet in any number of challenging ways.

I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you how this congregation’s story will turn out. Part of me wishes I got to spend a little more time on the journey with you to wherever that is. I wish I could at least leave you with some clearer answers. But that is not God’s promise. God’s promise is that wherever you go, however far you wander, whatever surprises you, discourages you, threatens you, whatever befalls you for good or ill, that you are always welcome and always at home in God, as a member of God’s family. John says “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Paul in Ephesians says “God destined us for adoption as children…we have obtained an inheritance, having been destined according the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.” They both echo Jeremiah, “I have become a father to Israel.”

You are children of God. The ground may shift. Your world may, in fact, crumble. It might rain on your picnic. Winter might bring frozen toes. Spring showers might bring muddy days. But none of that can change that there is a place for you and for everyone in God’s family – a home that you can rest in wherever you go and whatever comes your way, a place set for you at the table to be renewed and refreshed for the journey, a place where you are always welcome and always home.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

First Sunday of Christmas
December 29, 2019

¹³Now after the magi had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” ¹⁴Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
  ¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
 ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah,
  wailing and loud lamentation,
 Rachel weeping for her children;
  she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
  ¹⁹When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ²⁰“Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” ²¹Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. ²²But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. ²³There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”- Matthew 2:13-23

Imagine with me, as theologian Serene Jones does in her book Trauma and Grace,* a conversation on a hill outside Jerusalem a few decades after our gruesome gospel reading in which Herod orders the slaughter of innocent children. Imagine on this hill…it is late afternoon on a Friday, just before the Sabbath is to begin. It is year 30 in the Common Era, give or take a few years. Two women cross paths on the road. Both are weeping. At first they do not look at one another because each is consumed in her own grief. But something causes them to pause, look up. Maybe it is that each recognizes the weeping of another mother who has lost her child.

One is Mary. Her son has just given his final breath. Crucified for claiming to be God’s flesh on earth, for provoking and threatening those in power, for his commitment to unconditional love. But to Mary, he is the one she birthed in a lowly stable, the one she nursed and cared for. The one she loved and cherished. She had been treasuring the wondrous and mysterious things that had surrounded his birth and his life, pondering them in her heart. And somehow she is not entirely surprised by this ending, though it rips her to pieces. Her grief is new and raw.

The other woman on this hill might be any one of those unnamed mothers whose grief is older but still sometimes raw and always painful, grief that has been carried long like a weight that will not be sloughed off. She is one of the mothers of children slaughtered by Herod in a fit of fearful rage at the idea of another king born in his own kingdom. We might call this woman Rachel, after the matriarch of the Hebrew people named in the quotation from Jeremiah in the gospel reading today – the one who died in childbirth and who from her grave weeps for all her children – the ones faced with famine, the ones sold into slavery, the ones wandering in the desert, the ones exiled to a foreign land – that’s where Jeremiah picks up her weeping – and now she weeps for the young infants slaughtered in and around Bethlehem by a tyrant afraid of an infant whose unusual if small bunch of supporters claim as a king. Rachel weeps for her children says Matthew, quoting Jeremiah, refusing to be consoled, for their children are no more. For grieving parents, for Mary or Rachel or any of the unnamed women who lost their children to famine, disease, war, or genocide, there is no word, not even a word from God, that will console them. There is no way to undo, to go back, to feel better. There is no reason, no platitude, no divine plan, no making sense of tragedy of this scale, no making sense of tragedy at all.

These two women whom we imagine meeting on the hill outside Jerusalem, they are relevant to us not only as figures of history but also as stand-ins for all the weeping and grieving that has taken place since and which continues to take place today. Millions of refugees await permanent homes in Kenya, Jordan, Sudan, Pakistan, at our own country’s southern border and even in present-day Bethlehem, many of whom have lost children to war or famine or the flight from unspeakable violence. Parents are separated from their children by economic hardship and cycles of abuse and addiction they cannot break out of. Gun violence continues to rip children away from parents, even at the places that are supposed to be the safest. Children are still sold or taken into slavery. Global epidemics arise faster than cures can be discovered and distributed, and children still die of preventable childhood illness. Climate change is only accelerating famine: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.”

There is no divine plan that explains this violence. There is no word of consolation that makes it better. There is only weeping on the hillside. But these two women are not alone. There is another mother with them on the hillside whose weeping joins theirs. It is the holy parent whose love for their own child crucified on a hill ruptures the very heart of God. It is the holy parent whose love for their own children killed in Herod’s senseless rage ruptures the very heart of God. It is the holy parent whose weeping for all her children who have died will not be consoled. There is no divine plan that explains the violence, no divine word capable of consoling the grieving parents. There is only the presence of a God, weeping and inconsolable at the pain that we cause one to another in this world.

Christmas is not only about the birth of the infant Jesus, it is about the incarnation of the divine in the midst of human pain and suffering. It is about God as the mother of all creation, weeping inconsolably at the pain that exists in the world. It is about God manifest in ourmidst, weeping ourtears with us. It is a day, a season, like Good Friday and its companion Easter, that can hold in its breadth the pain and suffering along with the seeds of resurrection.

Christmas is about that incarnation in Jesus beginning to grow into fullness, that incarnation bearing the weight of those tears in the world in ways that blossom into healing for the broken, forgiveness for the sinner, peace for those at war with each other, and even resurrection that Jesus imparts to the child of Jairus, the child of the widow at Nain, and for Lazarus, who is someone’s child. Christmas is only the beginning of that story unfolding, the tiny spark of God’s incarnation in all of history.

Christmas is only the beginning of the story that nears its fulfillment some 30-odd years later on a hill outside Jerusalem, a hill just within view of the one where two weeping women cross paths. It is on that hill that God does bring to completion a plan – not a plan for consolation but a plan for resurrection. There is nothing that can make us feel better about the violence, nothing that can soften this harsh text, as much as we might want to just a few days after Christmas. But there is, present in the dying one, present in the grieving one, the God of life who is working out resurrection. There is the beginning of the promise for us now.

It is Christmas, still. Which is why we remember that we have within us both the presence of God weeping with us in our sadness, pain, and grief, but that we also have the seeds of resurrection in us, waiting to grow into fullness – through the cross, but ultimately on to God’s new life for us and all the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*This imagined conversation which Serene Jones writes is not copied here but it is the basis of what I share in the first paragraphs of this sermon in my own words. She takes it further and discusses the rich dimensions of the imagined encounter and what that means for our understanding of trauma and God’s grace. It begins on page 107 in the first edition of her book Trauma and Grace.

First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2019

[Jesus said,] ³⁶“About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³⁷For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son-of-Man. ³⁸For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, ³⁹and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son-of-Man. ⁴⁰Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴¹Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴²Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ⁴³But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and would not have let the house be broken into. ⁴⁴Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son-of-Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” – Matthew 24:36-44

Imagine those times you’re driving down the highway, traveling some normal, appropriate speed, or if you’re me, maybe even pushing the speed limit a little, and seemingly out of nowhere a car comes racing past weaving around traffic like a bolt of lightening. Even a careful driver would be hard pressed to notice it coming and only some kind of superpower of sight could make out the license plate before it zooms on.

It’s the kind of experience that can make your heart skip a beat, the kind of thing that leaves you a little startled or rattled. It can make you hyperalert or so distracted you can’t focus again for a minute. It can even make you question what you just saw, your perception of reality, and forget where you’re going.

Like a thief in the night, Jesus says, is the coming of the kingdom of God. Or…maybe like a speeding car. No one knows when it is coming, not even Jesus. Just like the days of Noah, he says, when all but Noah and his family were surprised by the flood that swept them away. Like two workers in a field, one swept away the other still plowing along. Like two women grinding meal, one swept away the other left grinding away.

Popular culture and lots of misunderstanding has amplified this passage into something people call the rapture, the idea that on some future day the faithful will be swept suddenly into paradise while the rest are left to their own devices in a world of suffering and pain. But not only is Jesus not clear about which ones get swept away and why and how and to where, he’s also not laying out a systematic theology of a rapture. He’s admitting that even he doesn’t know when this thief in the night is coming.

What Jesus really wants to say about the coming day – about which know one really knows anything – is to be prepared. Hmm…you might ask, then, how does one prepare for something that comes speeding up so fast you aren’t even sure it’s really there? How can you prepare for the unexpected?

Sometimes our Advent preparations end up being about our attempts to create something picture perfect. If it isn’t the lead up to a perfectly cooked Christmas dinner eaten by a harmonious family surrounded by Martha Stewart quality décor and the perfect gift for everyone on your list, then maybe it’s the idea that somehow through our preparation, by our Advent devotion or prayer or repentance or whatever we try to do, that we could somehow bring about our own and our loved ones’ happiness and health. I think in these church year seasons that lead into big festivals we can sometimes consciously or unconsciously begin to feel as if we must work our way toward God’s kingdom, bring ourselves up to the level of preparation that would tip the scales toward whatever our idea of the coming reign of God looks like. Subtly we take on responsibility not just for creating the perfect holiday but creating the perfect world. But that’s God’s work. Ultimately this season is more about attentiveness to the surprising ways that God appears when we least expect it.

Now that doesn’t mean our preparation, our waiting, doesn’t come with some work to be done. If we were to draw from our Isaiah reading this morning, one key preparation would be to beat swords into plowshares. For the prophets, this time of readiness sounds not like jingle bells but like the clanging of iron being molded by the blacksmith’s hammer. It’s the sound of war being turned not just into peace, but into community. It is not just the destruction of weaponry that Isaiah calls for, but the coming together of warring factions into communities that have the capacity to produce food to nourish one another. Instruments of harm become instruments of food production and community. That can sound a little pie-in-the-sky in a world filled with violence, but consider these modern examples of Isaiah’s call lived out…

Activist Pedro Reyes in Culiacan, Mexico, the city in that country with the highest rate of gun deaths has collected 1,527 guns and turned them into 1,527 shovels which will be used to plant 1,527 trees in the city.

In the 90’s there was a project in Russia to turn uranium from nuclear warheads into the kind of uranium that could power local communities.

Or an artists’ collective in Palestine that has taken shards of broken glass from bombings and other violence and turned them into artwork to promote peace and tell the story of their communities.

Or think about all the ways that people who have experienced violence and harassment have turned that into the power of community. When a few years ago there was yet another wave in the news of men who abused and harassed women, most of whom were not being held accountable, it launched an international movement of women who said, “Me, too!” It made more space to speak the truth in public, it developed more networks of support, and it started, at least a little bit, to bring about greater accountability. I think there’s a bit of turning swords into plowshares, there, too.

These are just some of the big and small ways that people are preparing for the coming of Christ by beating swords into plowshares. Over time these things do gain power and momentum and open up new ways of being together in the world. Yet none of them alone or even all of them together can fix all of human history or change entirely our human capacity for violence and our susceptibility to pain and suffering. What they can do, besides making small inroads to the kingdom of God, is begin to help us see something new. They begin to help us see new possibilities. They begin to open up hope for us. They call us back to the promises God has made to come to our world again and again. They remind us of the promise of God not to abandon us. And they remind us that sometimes the kingdom of God is sneaking up on us and sometimes zooming right past us before we even begin to realize it.

If only we could see all these ways in which that happens every day in the world. It’s easy to hear about the coming day of the Lord and look around at the state of the world and land solidly in a state of despair. Even if we aspire to the kind of peacemaking work that is part of God’s kingdom, even if we prepare our hearts and our communities and our planet for the resurrection life God has promised us, we find ourselves inevitably falling short.

Except that despite all that, sometimes the grace of God comes flying up so fast that we aren’t prepared for it and we aren’t quite sure what it even was, except that is disrupts our life in ways that reshape us going forward. Sometimes grace wells up within us or flows around us in ways that surprise and startle us. And maybe more than anything, those moments heighten our awareness if only for a bit. Even fleeting moments of grace, things that in retrospect seem small, can be enough to make us sit up and stay prepared for more to come. That’s what Advent is about – the power of God to race in and surprise us in ways that heighten our senses, perk up our awareness, and develop our preparedness for the coming kingdom of God, that will surely speed into our lives when we are least expecting it and in the most surprising of ways.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Christ the King Sunday
November 24, 2019

³³When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. ³⁴⟦Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”⟧ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. ³⁵And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” ³⁶The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, ³⁷and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” ³⁸There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
  ³⁹One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding Jesus and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴²Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” – Luke 23:33-43

Ok, don’t settle into your pew to listen just yet. I’m going to ask you, as you’re able, to get up and move. I want you to hear this sermon from a different place in the room. If you sit on this side, move to that side, or if you sit in the back move forward. When I say go, find a different spot in the room to sit. I know some of you have roles that require you to sit somewhere in particular – it’s ok, you can go back after the sermon is over. Ready? Go.

…Now. Look around you. This room is a bit narrow and the seating options only so many – the effects might be more dramatic were we in a bigger room. But do you notice anything different? Do you notice anyonedifferent? Does it feel different?

The forward leadership team has been practicing this kind of exercise around our church building – outside and inside, we’ve been trying to put ourselves in the shoes of a visitor to our community. What do they see? What do they notice? What does that communicate about who we are? And we’ve noticed that when we stand in a different place, look with different eyes, we start to notice some different things. Maybe you noticed today when you came in that some things were rearranged in the gathering area outside our worship space. The Forward team wondered what it would be like to look at that space a little differently. When we start to question the things we do every week, suddenly we start to see new things and it starts to spark new ideas. Maybe we’ll like it, maybe not – nothing is permanent, but together we’re going to try standing in a different place.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It’s the church festival and title for Jesus after which our congregation is named. It’s this day that we wrestle with just what it means that Christ is king. And I think the way we understand the kingship of Christ depends on where we sit:

Those who experience oppression might from their position see the kingship of Christ as the military victor who has the power to turn the tables on oppressive leaders, hold back unjust armies, and set free those who have been literally enslaved or imprisoned. Those who experience relative comfort and wealth might see Christ the King as the steady monarch who protects and sustains the kingdom. Those with chronic diseases, pain, or injury might see Christ the King as the universal healer who rules even over the things that destroy and ravage our bodies. Those who feel wronged by others might see side of kingship that is responsible for meting out judgments and justice that will serve everyone and bring all things into alignment with the values and principles of the kingdom. Those whose focus is primarily on what happens after we die might see Christ’s kingdom as a heavenly realm beyond our earthly troubles, while those whose focus is on bringing the world as we know it closer to God’s way of being might see more clearly Christ’s rule over our lives now.

All of these have some merit. None is a complete picture alone. And there are many more dimensions to this than can be named right now. But where we sit matters. We see things differently and experience things differently depending on where we sit in the world. And that includes who and what we understand God to be.

But it matters, too, where Jesus sits. Today we might be tempted to imagine Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father, the Biblical and creedal language that places the resurrected Jesus reigning from heaven. Perhaps we imagine a gilded throne and jeweled scepter. At least I do, even if I don’t mean to. I wonder that when we see Jesus sitting on such a throne we can’t help but see God as judge of our actions, as one to whom we must prove ourselves worthy, one who is perhaps distant and even sometimes seemingly unattainable. Christ enthroned in heaven is powerful, important language – Biblical language! – to describe the rule of Christ. But not the whole picture.

In our gospel reading today, Christ is not on a gilded throne, but rather hung from the cross with criminals hung to the right and to the left, one taunting, the other begging. In this day that is supposed to bring together all the understandings of Jesus that we have explored in the course of the church year – the infant in the manger, the emerging rabbi, the miracle worker, the healer, the forgiver of sins, the advocate with the poor and outcast, the dying one, the resurrected one, the sender of the Holy Spirit. On this day that is meant in some ways to pull all those threads together into the power and rule of Christ, Jesus is on the unexpected throne of the cross.

Of all the places to choose for a throne, Christ the King chooses to rule from the place of the crucified. This is the position from which God sees the world, the lens through which we, too, are invited to view the kingdom of God. It is the opposite of our world’s understanding of power. God’s crowning moment is placed among criminals, suffering and dying. This says something about who our God is. Of all the ways in which God operates it is at the cross that we as Christians turn first and foremost to understand the nature of God. God moves from the heavenly throne to the manger, to the margins, to the cross and tomb to see the world from our perspective, to join us in our struggle, our pain, and our dying.

It’s this perspective that shapes God’s understanding of us and our world. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hold us accountable, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hold cosmic power and bring about justice. But it does mean that God receives our taunts and rebukes, our anger and accusation from the place of understanding the depth of brokenness from which it comes. And it means that God receives our pleas to rest with Christ in paradise from the understanding of how desperately we long for God’s redemption and freedom. God sees us not as the broken ones we are, not as criminals whose value is diminished by our actions, not as subjects to be ruled or overpowered, but fellow sufferers standing with Christ at the threshold between life and death, afraid and in pain, longing for hope and wholeness, love and grace.

God moves places to rule from the cross to join us, to see us, to be in us. And from there through tomb and resurrection God comes here in bread and wine to dwell in us. To make us another throne for Christ the King. In sharing Christ’s body, we become the place where God comes to sit. God comes to see us and see our world – our joys and our pain and our hope and our struggle. God joins us there and accompanies us through death into life. And that, is how God chooses to be, how God chooses to rule, how God chooses to be powerful, how Christ chooses to be king.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

23rd Sunday after Pentecost
     with Celebration of Holy Baptism
November 17, 2019

⁵When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, ⁶“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
  ⁷They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” ⁸And Jesus said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am the one!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
  ⁹“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and country against country; ¹¹there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
  ¹²“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before rulers and governors because of my name. ¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify. ¹⁴So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; ¹⁵for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. ¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and family, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name. ¹⁸But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹By your endurance you will gain your souls.” – Luke 21:5-19

The question is not “if” but “when.”

It is not if nations and empires will crumble, but when. When will another nation become powerful enough and motivated enough to topple us? When will our nation’s deeply embedded sins of greed, pride, and racism cause the pillars to crumble from within? When will ways of life we hold dear cease to be possible?

It is not if the world will end, but when. Advancing climate change and the possibility of nuclear war threaten to bring human communities to their knees within our lifetimes. Things have gone extinct before and humans are not immune to the forces of nature. If we survive that long as a species, eventually the sun will collapse and consume.

It is not a question of if we will mess things up, but when. Before we all go to bed tonight, I guarantee that each of us will have done something that is less than ideal. An uncharitable thought, a comment meant to push buttons of someone in our household, a failure to care for someone in need. After we have confessed sins and received forgiveness, we do not wonder if maybe this will be the last time, but rather we trust in the grace of the invitation to return again, knowing that we will need it sooner than later.

It is not if we will die, but when. Will it be sudden and unpredictable, the swift death of a massive stroke with no prior physical symptoms, or a sudden accident? Will it come from cancer or heart disease? Will it be with a sense of fulfillment and peace or with regrets and missed opportunities?

On this day of baptism, I would love to talk about happier things. When A—’s family asked if we could have the baptism today, I hesitated, only because I knew that the second-to-last Sunday of the church year brings dark and apocalyptic scripture texts. And I considered changing the texts to something better suited to baptism. But as I read them over a few times, I began to see the promise of baptism all over.

Baptism is for exactly these texts. Maybe especially for the baptism of an infant. Because we look at this baby, any baby, and we rightly see hope and promise, potential and joy. But the question is not if she will encounter hard things, painful moments, lasting struggles, and unanswerable questions, but when. She has a loving – and large! – family and a community of support. Her parents will no doubt protect her from all manner of things as well and as long as they can. But even though I don’t know what her struggles will be, I know that no one, not even the cutest infant, the most loved child, escapes life entirely unscathed. Not if, but when.

Jesus, in this text that comes from his final days in Jerusalem before the cross, when resurrection is still a somewhat abstract idea, yet to be embodied by God-made-flesh, invites his followers to look beyond the beautiful temple, the symbols of power and prestige, the sense of trust they have in the world as they know it. He reminds them what deep in their bones they already know, even if they aren’t ready to acknowledge it: that one day it will all come to nothing. There will be wars and insurrections, earthquakes, and powerfully frightening signs. There will be persecution and prison, even or especially for followers of Jesus. Not if the forces of evil will seem to prevail, but when.

So one of the things we are going to do together as part of the baptismal rite this morning, is that we are going renounce evil. I know that sounds like something a little too spiritual or a little too out there for some folks, but we’ve reclaimed in our baptismal rite an ancient practice that three times renounces the forces within us and around us that rebel against God, against love, against peace, against hope. We will stand together and say that we know how powerful those things are, how certain their presence is in our lives, and that God, whom we will then affirm in the three parts of the creed, is more powerful than anything that stands in the way of God and God’s love for us and God’s love for the whole world. That’s what God’s promise is about in baptism, the protection Jesus speaks of – not deliverance from all struggle, but the protection of the love that is stronger than it all for every breath of life and more.

And then there will be water and word, the heart of baptism. Words simple and powerful like the words God used to speak creation into existence. That same God, that same power speaks to A—– today and echoes in the room so that each of us can hear the promises spoken into existence again for ourselves. And water that will not literally drown this precious child of God, but enough water to remind us of the life-giving water that nourishes us and all creation and the power of water to shape and re-shape even the hardest of rocks and the tallest of mountains – a wonderful image of baptism if we will let that promise and power drip slowly over us throughout our lives, shaping and re-shaping us like rocks slowly shaped by water.

And then the oil and the light. Oil for healing balm in the face of all the struggle that is yet to come, marked in the shape of the cross. An embodied reminder that we are one with the body of Christ, which suffered with us, among us, for us, ahead of us. A reminder that God has even walked the way of death that we might trust God as we one day walk that way, too, right into resurrection. And light for vision to see – vision to see beyond the beautiful temples and seemingly strong symbols of power and protection to the reality of the world. And also light to illumine hope in the face of destruction, love in the face of hate, life in the face of death. Light to see what is possible because of God even when our vision is cloudy and dim.

And my personal favorite part of baptism, which is hard to pick, because – clearly – I love baptism! : The prayer for the Spirit. That prayer names what is already true, that God has instilled even in this little one among us today a “spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence, now and forever.” A—–, you are going to need that Spirit which is already breathing in you with every breath. You, people of God. And me. All of us need that Spirit to face what comes our way. The Spirit to give us words when our own speech fails us. The Spirit to guide us when we are lost. The Spirit to embolden us when we cannot find the courage within us. And the people of God affirming, “Amen,” to it all and welcoming this one into the body of Christ, so that together we are encouraged, together we serve, together we discover God’s mysteries among us.

The question of God’s love for us is not an “if,” but an “always, no matter what.” In baptism, we have an affirmation of the power of God’s love for this child, for all of us children of God, who so desperately long for renewal and hope and resurrection. With water and word, today, every day, we celebrate the promise of God. And together we go out into a world of struggle and pain to be the body of Christ again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Stewardship Sunday
November 10, 2019

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by. – Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ – Luke 10:25-42

What time is it? Since last week’s time change, I’ve been asking that question a lot. The button to change the clock in my car is broken, so it’s an hour off now. And with a young child at home who doesn’t yet tell time, the hour shift has thrown off our schedule just enough that I’m constantly pausing to think about what the “real” time is versus the time on the clock. It’s like I’m still stuck in the transition phase between one time and another. What time is it exactly?

The wise writer of Ecclesiastes says that there is a time for everything. But how do we know what time it is? Is this the time for joy or mourning? The time for planting or harvest? The time to seek or to lose? For silence or speech? For birth or for death? What time is it exactly?

So often I feel as if we are caught between different times. When something happens that we want to celebrate, how do we hold also those who mourn the very same event? The church and, therefore, pastors are often invited into moments that celebrate birth or marriage but also sometimes in the very same day tending to brokenness and despair, death and pain. When Jesus comes to dwell among us, is it time to sit and listen like Mary or time to be busy with preparations like Martha? How do we know what time it really is?

In the parable that Jesus tells before he visits Mary and Martha, there is a person in need, someone literally lying on the side of the road. He needs wounds bandaged, he needs rest, he needs safe shelter. He needs someone to come alongside and journey with him. Ultimately he needs a safer road to travel on. The priest and the Levite surely wouldn’t disagree with the idea of helping him, but for whatever reason they have decided that it is not the time to share what they have. It is the outsider who comes along who shares what he has, he empties himself to provide for the one in need, because he recognizes that when a neighbor is in need that it is the time to share ones gifts even if it means great risk to oneself. He recognizes something about the moment and responds. He gives more than is expected and perhaps realizes, when he is confronted by his neighbor in need, that there are gifts he had that he hadn’t even realized were there, gifts his community needed. The Samaritan man realized that it is always time for helping a neighbor in need.

We have been given tremendous gifts. While we often feel as if there isn’t enough – not enough time or money, not enough energy, not enough compassion, not enough of whatever it is we wish we had more of, we believe in a God who gifts us as individuals and us as a community in exactly the ways we need it for the present time. Sometimes we don’t have what we think we will need tomorrow. Sometimes we don’t have the same gifts that we used to have. Sometimes we aren’t sure what we’re supposed to do with the gifts we have. But for now, this moment, this time, God has provided what is needed and we have a tremendous opportunity to share those gifts, not just at church but throughout our lives. It is such an incredible joy to discover the ways in which the things God has given us to share go out into the world. I wish for all of us that we have that experience of joy and blessing of seeing our gifts shared and received by others.

That’s true for our church, too. The gifts we have today are not the gifts we had 10 or 20 or 50 years ago. Not better or worse, but different. They may not feel like the gifts we think we shouldhave. And yet we do have gifts, we have neighbors in need, and, like Mary and Martha, we have the presence of Jesus come to dwell among us. It requires some difficult discernment work to figure out just what time it is and just how to match those gifts with what the world needs. And somehow, like the Samaritan who gave away what he had without any anticipation of return, we have to trust that when we send those gifts out from our congregation and into the community that they will sprout and grow in ways we may or may not get to see the results of.

But what allows us to be generous with who we are and what we have is that Jesus has come to sit among us. Jesus comes as the stranger, the neighbor in need, the trusted friend. Jesus comes in scripture and song, water and word, bread and wine. And we welcome the very presence of God in our midst as we extend that welcome every week to one another and to the community. That’s what we mean when we talk about our WHY statement: To welcome everyone so that all may experience God’s love in community. Whatever time it is now, that’s something that can inform and empower our work. It’s who we’ve been and who we want to be at the same time. And together we have the privilege of sharing our gifts and seeing what God will do with them next. Because God is holding all times and moments together at once.

Each of us has an experience, not only of our gifts being used and shared, but an experience of the gifts and opportunities of this community of faith. And so as we think about what time it is here at CTK – what has been and what is next – I’ve asked three members to share their experience of what this congregation has meant to them and their hopes for sharing our gifts in the future…

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

20th Sunday after Pentecost
Reformation Sunday

⁹Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” – Luke 18:9-14

Outside on the street every Sunday evening in Northampton, Massachusetts, rain or sun, wind or snow, blazing hot or blistering cold, there is a worship service and meal. It’s called Cathedral in the Night, and it’s one of our synod’s mission starts that has been going for 9 years in collaboration with the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church. It is a church without walls, which gives it a particular capacity to welcome people who haven’t found a home in traditionally walled churches for one reason or another.

Most weeks the worshipping assembly includes some regulars, some newcomers, some who hang around the edges with varying degrees of curiosity, people of varying socioeconomic status and varying degrees of sobriety, and some folks from a church with walls who help bring the food and join in worship. There are a number of folks experiencing homelessness or on the edge economically, but that’s just part of the community. It’s a broad tent (metaphorically speaking – they only bring out the literal tents when it’s raining). Maybe it’s because there is no defined inside and outside they have the ability to hold more than a lot of congregations can manage to hold.

I imagine you can find both the Pharisee and the tax collector in that gathering every week, and a lot of people in between. Because I’ve been enough times to talk with some folks and learn a few of their stories, I know there are some people who look like they aren’t very engaged. They are not by their exterior appearances engaging in worship. But they have a profound understanding of God’s grace, a deep appreciation for what is taking place in worship, and a deep capacity to do God’s work in the world. These are sometimes folk that have complicated histories. These are sometimes folks, like the tax collector in the parable, that other people don’t expect to see in church.

And I know that sometimes folks show up with food in hand and explicitly or implicitly pray the prayer of the Pharisee. Sometimes it’s with a tone of arrogance. And perhaps that’s how we imagine the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable – one who thinks himself better than others. Maybe. But often the folks I know who pray that kind of prayer offer it simply as an expression of gratitude that their life is easier in some capacities than it is for others. It’s still distancing. It still sets up us and them. But the intention isn’t nasty or exclusive. They have done and are doing good things. Andtheir faith and love of neighbor has room to grow.

And maybe it’s easier to see in a church without walls, but I think every worshipping assembly has some mix of folks praying all sorts of prayers. People who, like the tax collector, are complicit in exploitation and empire but who grieve their wrongs honestly, whether they have the capacity to change or not. And people who, like the Pharisee, have a genuinely admirable history of following God and living out God’s love, but who perhaps sometimes forget to make room for other experiences. And people who carry all kinds of pasts, and all kinds of prayers, all kinds of hopes and all kinds of regrets. And each of us finds ourselves falling into one or another of those categories sooner or later. If not the overly-religious one, then certainly the repentant one who comes back longing for transformation whether we name the prayer to God or not.

And God absolutely welcomes the prayers of regret from those of us who have sinned, that is, from all of us. That’s what we do in proclaiming absolution every Sunday, proclaiming the forgiveness God has already enacted for us in Christ. But if this parable leaves us walking away praying a prayer that goes anything like, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee,” then we’ve missed the point haven’t we? A lot of interpretations of this parable leave us critical of others – the self-righteous ones, perhaps the overly religious ones. With these texts falling on Reformation Day we could easily fall into some kind of celebration that we aren’t like those other Christians, whichever ones we want to choose today, and pray that thankfully we are the ones who understand grace and forgiveness properly. And we’d get Jesus’ parable, and the whole of Jesus’ message all wrong in doing so.

Some scholars have suggested that there is an ambiguity in translating this parable. Most translations say that the tax collector “went home justified rather than the other.” Perhaps the Pharisee’s pejorative prayer did not leave him justified that day despite his upright life. But the ambiguity in translation is that it might well also read that the tax collector “went home justified alongside the other.” What if this isn’t about one person being better than the other, one prayer better than the other, one religious practice better than the other. What if this passage isn’t about trying to be right or holy or justified by who we are or what we do. What if instead this passage is about the wide tent that God spreads to hold our diverse and complicated worshipping assemblies? What if the point is that bothworshippers are flawed yet bothfind themselves standing in the temple and whether they realize it or not, whether they understand why or not, God’s big tent of grace spreads over them just the same.

At Cathedral in the Night there’s this phenomenon in which every once in a while someone who’s been hanging out on the fringes slowly starts physically moving closer to the communion table. Over time some folks gravitate closer or farther from the center table, and somehow they all find a place because God’s grace isn’t defined by walls or border or geographical distance buy by this expansive tent that is always stretching farther and wider to encompass all our human flaws and foibles. And it’s a tent that somehow gives a little shelter to those who aren’t quite sure they’re ready for a full embrace from the divine, respecting when people need a little space even from that grace-filled invitation from God.

And in the big, wide scope of God’s church on earth we have many different denominations, many different ways of worshipping and gathering and calling ourselves church. And some of us are more like the tax collector and others more like the Pharisee and others some other flawed figure unnamed in this parable. And somehow God’s big tent of grace spreads over it all. That’s what Reformation Day needs to celebrate – that the Re-formation of the church isn’t all about correction and division but the ever-expanding way in which God’s grace covers us. It’s about a church that has no walls and the capacity to expand ever-larger.

Because in the end it isn’t about their prayers. It isn’t about their good deeds or bad ones. It isn’t even about their having come to stand in God’s temple on earth. It’s about the grace of God that stretches and yields to accommodate every last one of God’s creation. It’s about the welcome that churches have the capacity to extend and the capacity to receive as we go about the work of God, as we go about our beautiful and imperfect life of prayer. Because God has already done all that needs doing, and we’ve been invited to find joy and rest in our place in God’s tent.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

 

 

19th Sunday after Pentecost 
October 20, 2019

²²The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female slaves, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶Then the man said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹Then Jacob asked the man, “Please tell me your name.” But the man said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there the man blessed Jacob. ³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. – Genesis 32:22-31

There comes a time sooner or later when all our scheming and all our striving and all our holding it together just doesn’t work anymore. A time when we stare down the future and it looks bleak or at least more than we feel like we can handle. Plagued by our past and daunted by our future, we wonder where God is, what God is up to, and whether we can go on from here.

This is Jacob. A trickster literally from birth, he’s been through a lot. He stole his brother’s blessing and had to flee from home. He wanted to marry someone whose father made him work seven years only to trick him into marrying the sister, instead. So he worked another seven years for the one he wanted to marry. Jacob then tricked the father-in-law back over some sheep, and so he’d been on the run again. Now he’s approaching his estranged brother who has an army of 400, perhaps ready to enact vengeance for past wrongs. He sends his family and flocks ahead and is alone by the river as night falls in a place that is in between places. He is neither here nor there geographically, emotionally, relationally. It is a dark night of the soul for Jacob if ever there was one.

Our own stories may or may not be quite as convoluted. Our own trickery may be more subtle. Our own dark nights less clearly defined. But we know what it is to be awake at night and wrestling with God. Maybe our wrestling looks like wild pounding on God’s door to demand we get our way. Maybe it looks like beating oneself up for past wrongs or questioning one’s decisions. Maybe it looks like planning out the argument you’re going to have or want to have with the person who is your enemy. But whether of our own making or of forces beyond our control, or more often some combination of the two, we all know what it is like to look at what is behind and what is ahead and feel lost, alone, afraid, to be unable to see a way forward.

It would be nice to say that God always swoops in with answers, with comfort, with the ability to teleport out of our sticky situations. It would be nice to say that being in relationship with God made all that easier, simpler. But sometimes what being in relationship with God means is a late night partner who will wrestle right along with us. Jacob, alone and in the place-that-isn’t-yet-a-place, finds a man who wrestles with him all night. Neither seeming to gain ground, neither giving up. As dawn approaches, Jacob demands a blessing before they let one another go.

And there is where faith makes a difference – not a release from the struggle, not a removal of the problems that still have to be faced, but the conviction that there is a blessing to be had somehow in it all. I don’t think the blessing is some sort of prize for having struggled and won. That would make for a somewhat manipulative and sadistic kind of God. It is not that we must struggle to earn a prize at the end, whether that’s a blessing, or joy, or eternal life, or whatever. I think it’s more that in wrestling with God in the midst of our most troubled nights, there is blessing that happens in the process of the struggle.

Jacob limps away from this night of wrestling with the divine marked not just with a blessing but with a limp and a new name. He walks perhaps the rest of his life with a limp from this encounter, a reminder of what it is to wrestle with God. It is not to come away unscathed, but to have striven with the one who can instill blessing and then to carry that struggle out with us into the world. Wounded and blessed, we are made healers for other wounded ones in need of blessing in the world.

But Jacob also walks away with a new name, a name that becomes a stand-in name for all of God’s people for generation after generation – Israel – God contends, or, perhaps, one who struggles with God. This is a name we have come to associate with a country and all the geopolitical struggles that surround it and that are embedded in its complicated history. But if we can set that aside for a moment, it is an incredible name for the people of God, isn’t it? Ones who struggle with God. The ones God engages in the struggle. There are times I’d rather rest from the struggle, yet it’s a name I resonate with – not “one who has all the answers about God,” not “one who does all the things God said we’re supposed to do,” not “one who is always strong and brave and fearless,” but “one who struggles with God.”

What an invitation to us! We are invited to struggle with God. We are invited to question and ponder. We are invited even to push back. We are invited to make demands of God. We are invited to make peace with the struggle and with the assurance of blessing somehow mixed up with it. And we are invited to go out again into the world to mend relationships, to live anew, to experience life all over again.

And what’s more, we are invited to do that together, in community. Today we are celebrating the culmination of a process to think about our “WHY” as a congregation. And it’s full of wonderful words, like “welcome” and “God’s love” and “community.” But sometimes we have to wrestle out what that’s all about. Sometimes a wide welcome makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes being in community is challenging. Sometimes we lose track of what it means to experience God’s love. Sometimes this congregation will not live up to its “why.” But the promise to us is blessing in the midst of it.

In a few moments, as always, you are invited to this table. We will take bread, bless it, break it, and give it away. You are invited to hold out your hands, to open your mouths to receive Christ’s body into yours. And in doing so we together become the body of Christ. And then just like God did with Jacob, God takes us, blesses us, breaks us open, and uses us to feed the world, to welcome our neighbors, to be the ones in our blessedness and in our brokenness to help others experience God’s love in community. This is the life of faith, the life lived in baptismal promises, the life of wrestling with God. And we are invited to demand that blessing and to discover it emerging in the midst of our most challenging struggles and our most difficult journeys.

-Pastor Steven Wilco