Sermon:  “God’s Word at Work”

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

It was spring of 1993 – when I was pregnant with Jacob and working as a youth and campus minister at the church I had served as a seminarian, First Congregational Church of Berkeley – when I was attending my first Northern California Conference meeting after graduation.  I was 6 months pregnant, but at my height, people would take one look at me and say, “You’re due any day now, I can see.”  So I was HUGE! 

Anyhow, I was attending the Pacific School of Religion alumni breakfast, catching up with some of my old classmates for the first time since commencement the spring before. There women in my graduating class, of course, but ministry back then was still very much an “old boys’ network,” so the pastors who seemed to be doing the best job of schmoozing were two men who had come to ordained ministry kind of late in life, in their late 40s.  One had been a doctor before, the other a lawyer.  So there they were – just like me, in their first year out of seminary – but they in their suits and ties were holding forth at a table of their more prestigious and experienced colleagues.  They were comparing the size of their congregations and the enormity of their budgets and endowments.  They turned to me – and I looked like a great balloon in a red and black knit suit that was the best that I could do in my current state of health – and said, “So, Bryn, what are you up to these days?” And when I started talking about my little part-time youth and campus ministry job, you could see them instantly dismissing me from the competition for who was the most influential pastor in the room. 

Yes, it’s sad but in the world of empire and conquest, pastors can be just as petty and competitive as people in any other profession.   It’s a real shame, because it makes this advice of Jesus, to do what religious leaders teach but not what they do, very painful for pastors like me to hear.  Today’s gospel lesson, “practice what you teach,” is a challenge!  I think it might be a little easier for those of us clergy who serve in the United Church of Christ, because in the UCC we don’t really elevate our clergy beyond a humble call to be “pastor and teacher” of a local congregation. We have no bishops or cardinals – just regional ministers and conference ministers, whose job it is to connect congregations with one another and support churches and pastors with the resources they need for local ministries.  They don’t preside OVER churches, any more than local pastors do, because the UCC recognizes no other formal or official “head of the church” than Jesus Christ, the Lord we come to know and love him through sacred scripture and the worship and mission experiences of our local congregations. “What would Jesus do?” is not a rhetorical question for us – it is at the heart of our religious practice.  We mean it when we say “God is still speaking,” because we are always trying to listen for the Word of God in scripture, in prayer, and in community.  And then we try to put it into action.

This, we believe, was the mission of Jesus and his disciples – they were calling the Jewish faith community to action.  Today’s text begins the “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” tirade of Jesus that became a song in the musical Godspell. This marked the beginning of the end for Jesus, as his Jerusalem ministry set him up against the religious teachers of his time, leaders who were puffed up and tone deaf to the very real physical needs of their suffering nation – a people bowed down with the oppression of living under Caesar’s Empire.  Under Herodian rule in Judea, the wealthy and powerful made all the rules while ordinary people – farmers and trades people – were losing land, homes, and livelihood to steep taxation from both temple and government.  Instead of seeing to the needs of the poor, “the least of these” hungry and naked, sick and in prison – those whom Jesus will get to in just two more chapters – these Jewish authorities were tightening their grip on their people, getting more strict about doctrine, and enforcing regulations that controlled every detail of their religious lives.

But Jesus was calling them to get back to the basics of their faith – loving God by loving their neighbor.  He had just reminded them of their “great commandment” a few verses before, in Matthew’s chapter 22, the passage that was the parallel for the scripture lesson from Luke our youth shared with us last week.  It was a lawyer who had asked Jesus “What is the greatest commandment?” to which Jesus offers his famous reply, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength – and to love your neighbor as yourself.”  These two commandments summarize the whole law, Jesus says.  All the rest is just organized religion, the trappings of idolatry – smells and bells and decorative extras that God would prefer we do without.  Jesus says God just wants us to “love one another.”

This philosophy, in many ways, was not only at the heart of the original Jesus movement – where none of the disciples was old enough to graduate from a United Church of Christ young adult group – but at the heart of the Protestant Reformation and in many emerging, new churches today as well.  In every historical era, young people have grown impatient with gray-haired religious establishment types like me.   And I do admire their idealism – we should all try to get back to the basics of a Christian life and DO the faith as Jesus teaches instead of just going through the motions of worship and sacrament. What’s the point of learning about Jesus and talking about his life, if we don’t get out there into the world where Jesus wants lead us, into real discipleship? 

That’s why Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians rings so true to me, especially the closing phrase that I took as my sermon title for today, “God’s Word at Work.”  These words of the apostle Paul really do ring true to me, “¹³We constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you.”  I’m here to testify that it is true:  God’s word is at work in you, right here in the Congregational Church of Brookfield, and it is a beautiful thing to see!

Going through the usual fall cycle of Connecticut UCC events, I have to admit I am so proud of you, brothers and sisters in Christ.  You know what it is to put Mission first in your work together as a church.  Our Yankee Fair in might be the most obvious example, but we’ve just heard from Charlie Smart about his participation with youth from all across the nation doing mission projects together at our UCC General Synod in Tampa last June.  And of course, we’ve also been hearing this fall from our Men’s Mission Trip to South Dakota and just last week from our Senior High Youth Fellowship Mission Trip to Maine.  The Women’s Mission Trip has begun its fall pie-baking fundraiser for their trip to Rhode Island in January.  Next week we get to hear more from Brookfield Social Services about what we can do to help people in need in our own community AND we’ll get to hear about our new Oasis ministry to gay and lesbian teenagers. We are a church that puts God’s Word to work in the world.  That is just who we are. 

How is God’s Word at work in you?  What does Jesus call you to do in the building of the Kingdom of Heaven?  What is the role you feel called to play? 

I’ll tell you one role I have played – the “fool for God,” as Paul puts it in First Corinthians, chapter 1.  Going back to that church conference when I was “great with child,” there was a kind of ironic conclusion to the story of how I was kind of snubbed by those two men in my seminary class.  Not long after that school breakfast, I was walking through the retreat center and our conference minister stopped me to ask – “Do you think you could help us lead this evening’s worship service?”  Naturally, I was flattered, especially as he went on to explain that he wanted me to play God!  I wondered if he had heard about me from one of my professors, if I had been recommended because of some paper I had written – most likely, I thought, because I had written my master’s thesis about church drama, so I found myself secretly congratulating myself for that accomplishment.  I said, “yes,” of course, but as I stood there musing about which of my many excellent qualities might have led him to that inspired casting decision, he went on to ask me to wear the same outfit I currently had on.  He explained that he had been looking for just the right person to speak God’s voice from the burning bush, and he took one look at my bright red maternity suit and figured I’d be perfect in that role! Yes, my friends, it is true: “¹²All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

 

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1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

⁹You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. ¹⁰You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. ¹¹As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, ¹²urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. ¹³We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.

Matthew 23:1-12

23Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ²“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. ⁴They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. ⁵They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. ⁶They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. ⁸But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. ⁹And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. ¹⁰Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. ¹¹The greatest among you will be your servant. ¹²All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.