Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is from In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen

Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” From that heart come the words, “Do you know me?” Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus’ heart is a knowledge of the heart. And when we live in the world with that knowledge, we cannot do other than bring healing, reconciliation, new life and hope wherever we go. The desire to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say with our whole being to our sisters and brothers of the human race, “You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid. In love God created your inmost self and knit you together in your mother’s womb.”

SECOND LESSON

The first lesson is from the Gospel of John, Chapter 17, verses 11 through 19

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy One, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

This Week's Sermon

Date: May 24, 2009

Title: Comings and Goings

Message Delivered By: Rev. Joe Mc Murray

Many challenges face preachers who prepare themselves week after week to deliver what they hope will be insightful and powerful sermons. Sometimes they preach with subtlety, sometimes with humor, and sometimes with fire and brimstone. Any good preacher must continue to study. It’s one thing to demand from your congregation that they change with the times – it’s quite another to practice what you preach.

One way to continue to study and learn is to establish relationships within the broader religious community—like-minded colleagues, sometimes from different faith traditions. In this way, you share stories, learn new approaches, and have a better sense of one’s view about life and the world. Sometimes, however, competition ensues, and that can mean trouble.

This is what happened to a Catholic priest, a Pentecostal preacher, and a Rabbi, all who served on a clergy committee in northern Michigan right at the border of Canada. The group met monthly, but these three clergy would get together weekly for coffee and to talk shop.

One day, someone at one of the meetings, a newcomer, came up with something new. He said that preaching to people wasn't really all that hard. The real challenge would be to preach to a different form of life – say, a very independent animal – like a bear. The conversation became rather heated and controversial after that, and the three decided to meet for coffee the next day to continue the conversation.

One thing led to another and the three clergy decided to experiment. They booked a trip to Canada, pledged to find a bear, preach to it, and then attempt to convert it.

Seven days later, they gathered together – at the hospital – to discuss their experience.

Father Flannery, whose leg was in a cast, was on crutches, and had various bandages on his face. "Well," he said, "I went into the woods to find a bear. When I found him I began to read to him from the Catechism. I must tell you that that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap at me and scratch me.
So I grabbed my holy water bottle, sprinkled him and, Holy Mary Mother of God, he became as gentle as a lamb. In fact,” he bragged, “the bishop is coming out next week to give him first communion."

Pastor Susan spoke next. She was in a wheelchair, with an IV drip hanging above her. In her best oratory she claimed, "Well, friends, I went out, found a bear and I began to read from God's holy word! The bear wanted nothing to do with me, at first, so I took hold of him and we began to wrestle. We wrestled down one hill, and up another until we came to a creek. Now you know in my tradition,” she said mockingly, “we don't just sprinkle with a little water! So I dunked him and baptized his hairy soul. And just like you said, he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus together!"

They both looked down at the rabbi, who was lying in a hospital bed. He was in a body cast, in traction with so many tubes, you didn’t know which were going out and which were going in. He was in very bad shape. The rabbi looked up at them and said, "You know, looking back on it, it may not have been a wise thing to start with circumcision."

Eric and I are so grateful that we’ve been received so well in Key West.
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Will you pray with me? God, may our hearts continue to open to you. May we accept your invitation to know you more deeply and love you more completely. Help us to guide the world as you would guide us, as Jesus would have guided us. And may my words and all of our thoughts be filled with honor and praise to you. Amen.
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Today’s scripture is written in the past tense after Jesus’ earthly life had ended. Jesus words indicate how he had nurtured and cultivated the disciples’ sense of righteousness, their understanding of his work on earth, and their eternal promise to serve God by serving God’s people.

Jesus spoke about who the disciples had been. They were untried—green when they started out. They were unready when it was their time to follow Jesus. Yet Jesus took them as they were, however unprepared, and turned them into disciples – followers – teachers – carriers of a new tradition he was to introduce that would eventually become the early movement of the church.

Jesus compared their future work to the work he had done, to the groundwork he laid for them. Jesus left the disciples with big shoes to fill. They inherited a movement that had only just begun. It was, if you will, like a “start-up business” and the owner left before it had really taken hold. And now, the disciples, the caretakers of the business, had no experience how to run it on their own. But they would learn.

With Divine guidance they grew the Christian movement. They opened many “franchise businesses” and over the centuries, Christianity flourished—sometimes positively, sometimes negatively—and its numbers, for the most part, have grown.

However, when Christianity as a movement had given way to negativity; those times it promoted war and upheaval or when it failed to speak out against unjust military action; when it represented the worst of hatred and prejudice, placing its enemies on trial for heresy and witchcraft; when the scriptures had been used to justify racism, misogyny and homophobia; when the church abused its teaching by holding up doctrines that promoted classism instead of humility and a preferential option for the poor; when the hierarchy of the church allowed sexual predators to hide behind its skirts; in all these ways, and others I have not mentioned, it’s safe to say that the church had, at least in those instances, separated itself from its greatness. It had separated itself from the one whose spirit, whose principles, whose ethics, and whose faith started it in the first place. It had separated itself from God.

The same is true of others—other prophets, if you will—those who claim to be prophets speaking the divine word of God.

It’s easy to tell the difference, really. God’s presence demands that humilty be present. There is a knowing, an understanding when God speaks to us. The voice of God does not always emanate from famous people or well-known people. It does not always come from within a large room filled with people. It is often over coffee or dinner with only one or two people present. Sometimes, no other human being is present at all. Sometimes it comes through something we’ve read, or a a streaming video we’ve seen or a music file we’ve heard on the internet.
Henry Nouwen says that to know Jesus’ heart is to know the heart of God. How do we know for sure when something is of God—truly of God? Sometimes, we just sense it—we just know. And if is a strong feeling, it is always cloaked in love and tenderness.

Yet there are many things that leave us wondering sometimes, “Where is God in all of this? Where is God’s voice? Who is it that claims God’s voice? Who is it that claims they speak to us in love, even though there is little proof of it in their words?”

Is God’s action in the world present simply because people claim they represent God? Or is God’s action distinguishable by the loving nature that must accompany it for it to be real and to be from God?

We all have heard those who claim they are representatives of God or that they alone carry God’s message. Publicly they may exhibit the qualities or essence of wisdom and greatness, while privately, in the presence of friends and loved ones, they exhibit behaviors such as jealousy, pettiness, anger, rudeness, cynicism – even hatred. So they claim they are one thing, when in actuality they’re something very different.

They may actually believe something about themselves that does not match with reality and does not equate with other people’s experiences. Usually there is something deep that prevents them from seeing the truth. And if they are truly unconscious about these truths, there is something within them that refuses to know the truth.

There are also people who actually know themselves to be spiteful, hateful, disrespectful, and unpleasant. These are people who are adrift with the potential for evil to overcome their hearts. A façade is put before us in an effort to conceal another agenda.

For the past 10 weeks, I have represented MCC in negotiating the coming storm that was the Phelps visit. A lot of words were exchanged, emails were flying, ideas were coming fast and furious. And the result of all our meetings, talking to one another, all the emails and negotiating and asking questions was a safe and peaceful day in Key West for its children and its citizens.

The KWPD, the School Superintendent, and city and civil leaders deserve a lot of credit for keeping the peace and for letting Key West show other communities that if we really do work together, if we really do stick together, we can overcome any message of hate with messages of love.

We gather here every Sunday. And each time we do, we pray the Lord’s prayer. We do so not only because of what it says, but because of who Jesus was and who Jesus is to us still. And we honor that relationship because of what Jesus did and the example he set; the legacy he left for us to follow.

Jesus claimed to speak for God in his earthly ministry. He described himself as a Child of God, a surrogate for God, even the embodiment of God. And by the way he lived, the words he used, who he cared about, who he spoke for, what he believed and what he represented to everyone who knew him—even those who feared the power he had, for he did have power in the truth—everyone knew him as of God.

In today’s gospel there are four “appeals” if you will – four requests by Jesus on behalf of his disciples and the extended Christian community.

The first is to protect them from evil, which Jesus said had a clear and definitive purpose on earth – evil divides us into false race, class and moral divisions that take us away from the ultimate unifying teachings of Jesus – the teachings of love.

The second appeal implores Christians to model their relationships in the same way that Jesus related himself to God – that Christian community unite as one; that they remain focused on the importance of what they have in common – their faith. We can so easily become lost in the intricacies of doctrine and dogma, which have nothing to do with faith.

The third appeal is that joy be spread among the Christian community – a joy that Jesus brought that all could reach salvation; that no one would be left behind; that God’s love was and is accessible to every person – to sinner and saint, poor and wealthy, homeless and housed, unemployed and employed; because God’s love – God’s joy – has no boundary.

And the fourth appeal is Jesus’ request that the church be blessed on its special mission – a mission that flourished because of its uniqueness in the world – it offered humankind a new way, a new path, another access point to God. While the church itself is whole, the uniqueness of its purpose and its people gives it a special role to play in delivering the message of God’s grace.

In the early days of Christianity, those who followed the teachings of Jesus for several centuries after his death were persecuted for their beliefs. They were persecuted for aligning their principles with humility in the days of butchery at the hands of the Roman Empire. They were persecuted because they spoke of the love of Jesus, who was murdered because of the perceived threat his teachings would impose on established religion and a corrupted government.

They were persecuted because of their duty to righteousness and truth and their love of God as lived out in their Christian faith and values, and as practiced in their relationships and in their culture.

Isn’t it ironic that even today, many are persecuted because they claim the same sense of the duty and righteousness of Christ. They worship the same God that Jesus intimately called “Father.” They live, or at least try to live based on the ethical teachings of the scriptures, particularly the life-giving texts of the gospel which claim that the greatest commandment is to love one another.

Yet they, too, are called blasphemers and false prophets because they, as a community, do not fit into someone else’s theology – someone else’s narrow interpretation of how God could possibly have created them as they are to love each other as they do. The “they” is us – all of us. Because of the ways we love, the ways we live, the ways we support one another – we are told that God’s love for us is blasphemous – that we are an abomination – that we are, somehow, though we were created as we are by God – unworthy to speak God’s name.

Let us pray for our world, that all hatred perpetuated in God’s name be exposed for what it is – evil that threatens the very foundation upon which our moral and ethical duties lay – a foundation which is planted in God’s unconditional love for us, as shown to us through the gift of Jesus Christ, our brother.

And let us pray for our community that tries so desperately to remain faithful to God always, and faithful to the love of Jesus and to his teachings that we know so well – if we but have love for one another – we will be joyful for all of life now and all new life that is to come.

May we with pride and righteousness continue the legacy of Jesus, and with humility, serve as Christ would serve – with love in our hearts always.

May it be so. Amen.