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News & Happenings
September 5 Sunday Worship at 10am
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Pastor Eric Fjeldal's May 2010 Sunday Sermons
Pastor Eric's sermons are presented here in reverse chronological order...in other words, the most recent sermons are at the top of the list, working backwards through time.
May 23rd: "Closing The Distance"
Speaking to the graduating class at Case Western University, Richard Lerderer shared the following advice; "Let there be no distance between who you are and what you do." When I read this I thought, these are good words to live by. The only problem is there is a distance between who we are and what we do. Sometimes this distance can be so great that we are left wondering what do we need to close this distance; to bridge the gap.
The Pentecost story reminds us "each heard in his or her native language." I have come to understand this as each one hearing in the language of his or her need. Not their want, their need. The word they or we need to hear from God. This begs the question, "What word do you, we need to hear from God?" Is it a word of comfort, a word of challenge, or a word of hope? I ask because depending on where we are and what is happening in our lives our need can and will be different.
While the word we need to hear does change, one thing remains constant; as people of faith we know we need to hear God's word. The challenge is discerning what that word is. It is difficult to discover amid all the voices which is the voice of God; for that is the voice that equips and empowers us. It is the voice that takes us from where we are to where we could be as we seek to close the distance between who we are and what we do. Fredrick Buechner offers us some insight as we seek to discern God’s word.
"There are all kinds of different voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the challenge is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God calls you to, is the kind of work that you need to do and that the world needs to have done. The place God calls you to, is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. (Wishful Thinking, pg. 95)
This place is not necessarily a safe or easy place. Often it is a challenging place because it is a growing place. It is a place where the Spirit is at work and helps us come alive as we move closer to God and who God calls us to be. I believe this is part of the reason why we come to this place, to worship together as a community of faith. I believe each of us desires and wants to live his or her faith more fully. We want the Pentecost experience. We desire to stir into flame the gift of God that is within each of us. We want to be among those through whom God' Spirit is at work; those who understand that Pentecost is not an event to be remembered but at happening to be experienced again and again.
In the Pentecost story we hear again these words from the prophet Joel. “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions and your old shall dream dreams.” These words remind us that the Spirit working is about change, growth and inclusion. It is not about what was, but rather about what can be as we seek to close the distance between who we are and what we do. We close the distance when we open ourselves to the work of the Spirit. Carl Gregg describes the work of the Spirit this way.
The Spirit is at work wherever there is community.
The Spirit is at work wherever there is gratitude.
The Spirit is at work wherever there are "sighs to deep for words."
The Spirit is at work wherever there is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control",
for these are the fruits of the Spirit.
The Spirit is at work as the "whole creation groans in labor pains" birthing new life.
The Spirit is at work wherever "young people prophesy against injustice"
and "see visions" of hope & wherever elders still "dream dreams of a better world.
(taken from a Faith Forward blog at Patheos)
This tells me we close the distance when we remember God is in control because God is the one who sends the Spirit. God is the one who speaks, telling us what we need to hear. Our role is to be open enough to listen, that we might rise above the cynicism of those who mock and seek to exclude.
Pentecost is a story about inclusion. Each heard in his or her native language, the language of need. So we need to ask ourselves:
Do we prevent others from hearing in their language?
Do we mock? Are we cynical? Do we seek to exclude?
We need to ask these questions because in the same way the Spirit touching the Apostles makes it possible for us to know God today, the Spirit touching us means we are called to make it possible for others to know God today and tomorrow. As our litany reminds us, it is not about what we receive. It is about what we pass along as we "witness away to the ends of the earth."
Desmond Tutu describes beautifully what the experience of Pentecost affirms.
"We are made for goodness. We are made for love.
We are made for friendliness.
We are made for togetherness.
We are made for all of the beautiful things you and I know.
We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders.
All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all.
We are meant all, all to belong to this family, this human family, God's family.
(Forward: Forgiveness and Reconciliation)
Through Pentecost God's Spirit enters the distance between who we are and what we do and invites us to close it. God does this by speaking to us in the language of our need, our native language.
The question for us is not just what do you need to hear from God. It is also are we willing to be open to experience Pentecost so that we can hear what we need, that we may allow God to stir into flame the gift of God which is within us. Amen.
"A Pentecost Litany"
L: Therefore, I urge you to stir into flame the gift of God which is within you…
P: For God did not give us the spirit of timidity, but of power and love and wisdom.
L: Stir us again to flame.
P: Light fires in us that purify our hearts, sustain our beliefs and strengthen convictions.
L: Light fires that burn against injustice, apathy and neglect.
P: Light fires that melt our hardness, open our hearts and heal our divisions.
L: Now God is the Spirit.
P: And where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom.
L: God gives us freedom.
P: Freedom to live and act in the Spirit.
L: Freedom to see beyond the letter of the law.
P: Freedom to speak a sensitive response.
L: Freedom to see pain and respond with healing.
P: Freedom to see want and respond out of our abundance.
L: Freedom to see hunger and starvation and respond with our bread.
P: Freedom to see injustice and oppression and respond with our anger.
L: Freedom to see death and respond with life.
P: Freedom to give and not count the cost.
L: Grant us the power of your Spirit, that we may bear witness for you.
P: Grant us the power that crumbles barriers and overcomes suspicion.
L: That conquers fear and overwhelms hatred.
P: That we may indeed be witnesses, away to the ends of the earth.
L: Therefore, I urge you to stir into flame the gift of God which is within you…
P: For God did not give us a Spirit of timidity, but of power and love and wisdom.
May 9th: "Family, By Birth and By Choice"
John 14: 23-27
"Peace" and "family"; most people don't think these two words belong together. Being a child, a sibling, a spouse, a step-parent an in-law are some of the most challenging and rewarding roles of our lives. This is so in part because in these roles we are at our most vulnerable. Every insecurity, doubt and failure is present and exposed. This is why when it comes to families we need more than ever the peace that passes human understanding and the grace and healing that accompany this peace.Mother's Day and the Festival of the Christian Home is how the liturgical calendar refers to today. This Sunday always brings to mind a piece that Robert Fulghum wrote that invites us to be honest about family dynamics. It also affirms three truths that apply to all of life including families.There are people who love us dearly, but just don't know how to show it.Just because someone does not love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you all they can.Just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don't love each other; and just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they really do.Fulghum tells a story about preaching on one particular Mother's Day when he was foolish enough and honest enough to ask some questions. I have taken four of those questions and adapted them to apply to all of us. The questions were: How many of you find yourself involved in hypocrisy of the most uncomfortable around Mother's and Father's Day?
- How many of you don’t like or hate the parent you are?
- How many feel like you really don’t know your mother or father?
- How many of you find these holidays painful because of thoughts and memories of such matters are adoption, abortion, divorce, rejection, alcoholism, alienation, abuse, sorrow, loss and words like step-parent and in-law? (pg.102 It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It)
Needless to say these questions created an awkward situation, not because what Fulghum said had no truth, but because it did. Commenting Fulghum wrote, "The congregation sat very still, and it was clear that a lot more truth than they or I wanted to deal with was among us. I looked at them and they looked at me. The look was pain. (pg. 102)
We cannot hope to address this pain until or unless we trust in the peace that passes human understanding; for this peace allows us to address our fears.
Deep down we know that none of us is the parent we want or think we ought to be. I suspect we are not the child we wanted to be either. We can all think of things we would have done differently. So how do we make our peace with it all?
Jesus was clear; the Holy Spirit is knocking waiting to be let in. When we let God's love, grace and mercy in healing begins. When God is truly present a different perspective begins to emerge; a different way of seeing others and ourselves.
Welcoming God in won't make our personal situations all better, but God’s presence can make our situation and us different. We can begin to accept ours and other's imperfections and open ourselves to the possibilities that accompany such acceptance. All of this enables us to recognize our role and responsibility in our relationships and learn by God's grace to make peace with whom and what we are. This is how God's grace helps us in our personal lives.
When it comes to the greater world and our place in it, the peace that passes human understanding can also heal and help us. We all know the definition of family in our society has and is constantly changing. As the prayers we share in today remind us, families come in different configurations. This can make people uncomfortable. It is also true that the societal issues of today complicate family life. Two of these issues are; the fanatic pace so many live and how we let society's definition of success threaten to consume us. We are so scheduled and busy that "down time" does not exist. How often do you sit down as a family and eat dinner? We are desperate to stay connected to our children and too often do so by having mini-conversations with them as we drive them from place to place, activity to activity, event to event. Add to this the economic struggles and pressures so many families are facing and the other needs and concerns that seem to be increasing. Before long it becomes very tempting to say, "It is not my family's problem." and begin to pull back, to pull away in an attempt to escape. It is tempting to choose to focus on me and mine hoping to assure our peace of mind.
The problem with this is the pseudo-peace of mind is not the peace God offers. Pursuing this pseudo-peace does not allow us to experience God's peace. God's peace is not the absence of noise, trouble and hard work. God's peace is an awareness of being connected to something greater than ourselves and the ability to draw on that connection as we address the issues of our lives and our world.
One of our roles as Christian is to affirm our and our family’s connection to the greater world, God's larger family. Jesus' call to love one another comes right before this morning's scripture passage. The message is clearly proclaimed to love God and Christ is to love one another. This means working for others well being. The connection is clear. God cannot dwell in our homes and our hearts if we deny this responsibility. God cannot dwell there, not because God is punishing us, but because we are not welcoming God in. God's peace requires God's presence.
"Peace" and "family"; these two words do belong together. They do and will when God is a part of who we are, not in some tangential way, but at the heart and core of whom we are and what we do. God brings a peace that passes human understanding; a peace that sustains us not when nothing else can. This peace empowers us to move beyond our fears, doubts, insecurities and failings. It allows us to make peace with what is unfolding before us, right here, right now in our families of birth, our families of choice and the family that is created when we affirm our place as children of God. Amen.
May 2nd: "Loved and Accepted"
Acts 11: 15-18; John 13: 34-35
Most of us have heard our fair share of sermons on "loving one another." Generally they have to do with responding to the needs of others; doing acts of mercy and compassion that help make the world better. Fredrick Buechner describes it this way.
In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion but an act of will.
When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling.
On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to sacrifice for their well-being
even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end,
even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone.
While we don't always do it, we have a sense of what loving one another involves. We equate love with having compassion and doing acts of mercy as we respond to the least, last lost. This understanding tells us that love equals making life better for others as we act with justice, love tenderly and serve one another.” (We Are Called, FWS 2172) This is an important part of love, but it is only one part. We do need to be compassionate. We also need to love ourselves, because as William Sloane Coffin reminds us love is the gift of oneself (Credo, p.21). This means we can't truly love others if we don't feel good about ourselves.
It is easy to misinterpret the call to love self; in part because of distorted societal messages about self-care and loving others and in part because of our own agendas. This is why these words from William Sloane Coffin are so helpful.
What a wonderful thing it would be if once and for all
we could lay to rest the notion that it is a virtue to love others
and a vice to love oneself.
For what is vicious is not self-love but selfishness,
and selfishness is more a product of self-hate, than self-love.
All forms of selfishness are finally forms of insecurity,
compensations for a lack of self-love. (Credo, p.21)
Walking humbly with God (FWS 2172) makes it possible for us to love ourselves. Our knowing that we are genuinely loved leads to genuine love. Self-care comes out of the experience of grace that is being loved and affirmed by God. This frees us from the trap of trying to prove our worth. It frees us from the temptation of wanting and needing to be needed.
I believe we are here today because we desire to be channels of God's peace. We want our lives to be more like the words from the Prayer of St. Francis. We want to be better able to love our neighbors. We want to love ourselves more completely. More than just being good, nice, honest, decent people, we want to know God's peace. So how do we?
The simple answer is to trust more fully in God's grace. How do we do this? I have a plaque in my office at the parsonage that I look at every morning. It serves as a reminder of the way I want to try to live every day. I don't always succeed, but I do strive to live what it says which is live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly and leave the rest to God. Trying to live this way falls under the category of "easy to say, hard to do."
The Epistle reading for today is Acts 11: 1-18. It is a story about the difference between being tolerant and being accepting. In this story the Jewish Christian were criticizing and questioning Peter for eating with Gentiles, an unclean people. Peter’s explanation is simple. "Who was I that I could hinder God?" Upon hearing these words those who were challenging Peter fell silent and began to praise God.
This story leads me to ask, "How often do we hinder God?" How often do our attitude, belief, bias and prejudice hinder God? The answer is more times than we care to admit! Every time we decide someone is not worthy of God's love; or that because they do not meet our criteria, we automatically assume they cannot possible meet God's so God cannot work through them and God's Spirit cannot fall upon them, we hinder God.
We live in very intolerant times. For too many, their first reaction is to attack, criticize and condemn. This is true regardless of the issue, but there are some issues that intense the reaction. We know what those issues are. They include the issues of same sex unions, immigration reform, finance reform, health care reform. In the midst of this it is tempting to think that if we are tolerant that is good enough. The message in this morning’s scripture is it is not good enough. We need to move beyond tolerance to acceptance and hospitality. We need to move beyond fear to inclusion, for that is what it takes to be channels of God's peace.
Moving from tolerance to acceptance is a process. It takes time. What god requires is that we enter this process. That is what loving involves; striving to accept others for who and what they are and empowering and encouraging them to move toward who they can be. This is the very thing God does with and for us.
The Acts passage ends with the critics being silenced, an "aha" moment. An "aha" moment is a moment when we get it; a moment where it sinks in. As you read the book of Acts you quickly discover that such moments don't last. As you look at human history and our personal histories we know these moments do not last. This is why it is a process; why we cannot give up on those "aha" moments. If God does not give up on us, who are we to give up on others or ourselves?
The Invitation to Communion says it continually. Hospitality is evident in the words: God in Christ invites to his table all who love him, who seek to live in peace & harmony with one another.
This invitation is extended to all, not to some. It is extended when we are journeying with God and when we are not. It is present at those moments when we have a pretty good idea what faithfulness and discipleship look like, and when we don’t have a clue.
All of this is possible because God loves us unconditionally and continually. God doesn't say:
"Love me and I will love you."
"Do it perfectly and then I will love you."
"Do it this way and then you will be loved."
God simply loves us and all people, meeting us where we are and inviting us to join in the journey to where we can be.
I believe God has given us the ability to take this journey. We can all go from where we are to where we can be. All it takes is a willingness to ask the question Peter asked; "Who am I that I can hinder God?", as we seek with our words and actions to love others as God loves us. For in so doing all may know that we are his disciples; not because doing so makes us look good. We do it because by doing so, God's healing message of acceptance, love and hope live on. Amen.
