2023.06.04 | Report Card Day
The primary text for today’s sermon is taken from the book of Psalms, chapter 8. The book of Psalms was Israel’s hymnal. It was a collection of our ancient ancestors' 150 favorite hymns that survived through the aural tradition, earthquake, wind, fire, flood, foreign invasion, and several general editors’ chopping blocks.
If you open your pew Bible to the exact center, you will find Psalm 100. If you thumb through the Psalms, you’ll notice that only the lyrics are provided for the songs. There are no notes for keyboard or woodwind instruments, and no cords for stringed instruments.
This lyrics-only version of the Psalms is similar to the slide versions of the hymns that Pastor Pepper prepares for Sunday worship and that Dawn Coburn makes magically appear at just the right time during the service.
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2023.05.28 | Your Manifestation of the Spirit
Pentecost, the day we remember and celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit, is lovely for three reasons, in my humble opinion.
First, Pentecost is lovely because it gives us an opportunity to use RED paraments on the Communion table, which in this particular case are the banners from my ordination in March of 2016, ordination being the second occasion in the life of Church where RED is the chosen color.
The second reason Pentecost is lovely is because it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Christian God. There is a diversity of traditions about the Spirit and some among us have spent more time learning about the Spirit while others have spent more time learning about Jesus. Our annual remembrance of the Spirit’s arrival gives us an opportunity to re-learn what the role of the Spirit can be in our faith life and in the creation of the church.
The third reason Pentecost is lovely is because it is, in fact, about love. Love of self, love of one’s own individuality, but also love of each other’s individuality and love for the entire community.
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2023.05.21 | When Will Thy Kingdom Come?
The Easter narrative culminates in the Acts of the Apostles with Jesus explaining that we followers of him are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and that today is the day to restore the kin-dom of God on earth.
His message is just that simple, and just that challenging. It’s easy to psych ourselves out by doubting our power and denying our ability or authority to change the things that can be changed. But every once in a while, we get our acts together and show up like the modern day apostles that we are capable of being. . .
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2022.05.07 | All In
Erstwhile Emory University Professor Emeritus Fred Craddock explains in his commentary on Esther that this OT book is technically an Israelite novella rather than a book, per se. The novella’s historical context was the reign of King Xerxes, who reigned over Persia (now known as Iran) from 485-464 BC.1 The names were changed to protect the innocent. Xerxes’ pseudonym in the Hebrew Bible is Ahasuerus.
This novella illustrates and affirms the ingenuity and faithfulness of the eastern Diaspora, who like the protagonist Queen Esther, persevered in spite of the persecution that they endured 400 hundred years before the birth of Christ.
This novella also serves as the basis for one of the lesser Jewish holidays known as the Feast of Purim, which celebrates Israel’s delivery from persecution. This holiday is usually celebrated during a 24-hour period in the month of March.
The name “Purim” for this holiday is derived from the root “pur,” which means “lots.” In the novella, King Ahasuerus’ lead military advisor, Haman, proposed that the date for a pogrom against the Jews be determined by casting pur (or lots). Hence the festival is called Purim.
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2023.04.30 | Sharing is Caring
How many of you recall reading Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree? I’m sure many of you do as it’s about to reach its 60th anniversary next year. It’s about a tree who loved a little boy. And a boy who loved a tree. He would gather and play in her leaves, he would climb her trunk, and swing from her branches. The boy eventually grew older and didn’t play anymore, but he did harvest her apples, and the tree, well she gave and gave and gave some more. You may recall that as the lad grew into an adult, he made from her wood a house and then finally a boat from her trunk and sailed away, only to eventually return to find a stump to finally sit upon in old age to find a last respite. The tree continued to give, even when there seemed there was nothing left to give. This is the nature of plants. “In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’” And as some experience, this is the nature of mothers, which is why many refer to nature as Mother Nature, and earth as Mother Earth.
This classic children’s tale intended for audiences along the entirety of the age spectrum, is worthy of continued reflection, on the nature of giving, but also on our nature of taking.
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2022.04.23 | Divine Companionship
Forty-two years ago this spring, my twin sister, Marlene, and I graduated high school, and decided to celebrate our last summer together by driving to Daytona Beach, Florida to visit our former pastor and his family who had moved there the year before.
Willie Nelson’s hit song, “On the Road Again,” was playing on every radio station in the nation. That song became our theme for the summer. Every time we heard it playing on the radio, we busted out singing it together. We’ve talked about this road trip so much, my nieces could tell it for us and make it sound like they had traveled with us.
Mar and I loaded up my Honda Civic with our suitcases and sleeping bags, a pup tent borrowed from our youth advisors, and a bag of charcoal and a pint of lighter fluid. We intended to eat cold cereal for breakfast, fast food for lunch, and camp and cook at KOAs for supper.
Our mother packed us a huge picnic lunch consisting of tuna fish sandwiches, grapes, and chocolate chip cookies. She also threw in two cans of pork and beans for supper. Unfortunately we forgot to pack a can opener.
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04.16.23 | Can Doubters Be Christians?
The protagonist in today’s gospel reading is a character commonly referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” Many of us identify with him because we are skeptics by nature, or we go through long periods of doubt about the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus, or a whole bunch of other things that we think we are supposed to believe.
If you’re one in that number, then this sermon is especially for you.
So that there are no surprises, I adamantly disagree with the assumption that doubting is incompatible with faithfulness. On the contrary, I believe that doubts and questions are essential to the development of a mature and authentic faith. They are grist for the mill. Asking and exploring questions are a way by which we can grow in the faith, rather them being evidence of a lack of faith.
Doubting and questioning also put us in good company with Jesus’ first followers and Christians throughout history.
Furthermore, the Apostle Thomas has been largely misunderstood in popular culture, and as a result, he has been inappropriately maligned for his willingness to articulate the doubts and questions that were, and often still are, on most people’s minds.
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2023.04.09 | Stolen Jesus
The way that John tells the story, Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. But when she got to the cemetery, she found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.
So she ran to Peter and John and told them that someone had stolen Jesus’ body, and she didn’t know where they had taken him. The two men ran back to the tomb with Mary in hopes of finding out what happened to Jesus’ body.
Grave robbing was a thing back then, so some--maybe most--of the disciples thought that Jesus' tomb had been ransacked and his body removed by thieves.
But according to John’s gospel, the beloved disciple had a different view. John reached the tomb first, went in, confirmed that the body was missing, but instead of assuming that his body had been stolen, John announced that Christ had risen.
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2023.04.06 | Saved from Sacrifice
Good evening church. I especially enjoy the Maundy Thursday worship service. The word “Maundy” is a derivative of Latin meaning “commandment,” in commemoration of Jesus’ commandment to “love one another even as I have loved you.” This service also commemorates the Last Supper. Jewish Passover began last night. Though our meal tonight has roots in the ancient Passover tradition, it is not a Passover meal. In tonight’s message we will journey from this table back to the beginnings of the Passover and before, examining the origins of its practice, and also a particular significance of Jesus’ death, which I hope challenges some of our notions of sacrifice and theologies of the cross.
Many of the interpretations that I will be sharing with you tonight are taken from two books. The first, Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, Jon Levenson’s book The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. The second book is from Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, Mark Heim, entitled “Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross,” from which this sermon’s title derives.
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2023.04.02 | Parade Ready
If you are listening or reading closely, you will note that the messiah is described as riding on both a donkey and a colt. Did you catch that point?
Perhaps you, like me, are familiar with the old adage: you can’t ride two horses. Now a horse is not a donkey, and a colt is not a mature donkey, but all three are beasts of burden. So we are left to wonder if Zechariah truly envisioned the messiah riding on both a donkey and a colt.
These subtleties in the Bible are lost on urban people, but country people like me know that you shouldn’t ride a horse or put any significant weight on the back of a draft animal until it’s at least three years old. You could injure the animal and negatively affect the health and growth of it.
Given this fact, I think it’s unlikely that Jesus actually rode two animals in the first Palm Sunday parade. Instead, I suspect that he rode the donkey, and that the colt tagged along at its mother’s side. Here’s why:
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2023.03.26 | The Resurrection of Lazarus
Twenty-first century theologian, Margo Heath—whom some of you may know—once asked me a couple of questions that relate to today’s scripture lesson. Her questions were these: “Is there life after death? If so, what’s it like?”
Margo asked these questions as we drove home from a book group meeting at the late Barbara Lee Jackson’s home.
I considered my response for a moment as we lingered at a stop light near the I-580 on-ramp near Walnut Creek. Theologians have written great tomes on the subject of the afterlife. I was pretty sure that Margo wasn’t interested in a survey of their thoughts. She just wanted to know what I thought, and I only had the drive back to Hayward to provide it for her.
After I collected my thoughts, I said something like this: Yes, Margo, I believe that there is life after death, but I don’t believe we can know exactly what that experience is like until we get there. The best knowledge we have of heaven, on this side of it, is metaphors and similes. Then, I asked Margo what she thought.
Margo said, “I’m not really sure if there is an afterlife, but I’m trying to believe in it, just in case that matters.”
I’m not sure what exactly prompted Margo’s questions on that particular day. Most people ponder these existential questions at one time or another in their lives. But my hunch is that Margo was trying to figure out whether I was a pastor who she could take seriously or not, and this was her test for me.
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2023.03.19 | Who Sinned?
The Gospel Lesson today is rather long compared with the pericopes that the liturgical scholars have chosen for most Sundays in the lection. Public Information Officers (PIOs) would advise preachers to truncate these stories, because their audience has the attention span of a gnat. I get their point.
Now that Zoom is the not-so-new room for staff meetings, our employees have to discipline themselves not to roll their eyes when I start telling stories. They know that the Church has paid real money for our Zoom account, so the meeting won’t automatically end in an hour or less. Pity them.
I was raised in an oral culture. I’ve tried to adjust my communication style to match urban expectations, but as you know, I haven’t been successful. Here’s why.
If you don’t hear the whole loooooong story, you don’t hear the gospel, and if you don’t hear the gospel, you leave the Sanctuary or drop off Zoom still stuck in your sense of shame and blame that festers and fosters otherizing.
What is “otherizing”?
Otherizing is a term commonly used by my graduate school friends to describe the behavior of people who draw a thick dark line between who’s “in” and who’s “out,” between “us” and “them,” between the “washed” and the “unwashed.”
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2023.03.12 | What's Feeding You
Have you ever felt like your life was spinning out of control? I’m talking staying up to 3am studying for your third final, all happening on a Friday, you ran out of coffee 12 hours prior, and have but 18 cents in your bank account out of control. And you know you should have listened to your instructor more than you did. You know who you are. Or you're staring at an audit deadline and half your team is out sick.
Or how about parents of young children during a pandemic? Can I get an amen? Enough said there right? Sometimes we felt as though we were spinning around just as they were--and we’re still getting over that spin cycle. Speaking of spin cycles, I feel like this next GIF even better encapsulates what many of us are feeling like we have just gone through these past 3 years. We’ve all heard the simile employed of “I feel like an unbalanced washing machine,” but what about an unbalanced washing machine on a trampoline?! What’s up on the monitors probably does our experience a little more justice don’t you think? I’m getting some affirmation from the pews on this one. I see you.
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2023.03.05 | Born From Above
As a 12-year old, I became a Christian on the basis of today’s reading from the third chapter of the Gospel of John. Or rather more specifically, I became a Christian on the basis of John 3:16, which I was taught and memorized as:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
That specific wording is from the King James Version of the Bible and my childhood understanding was elementary. I was taught that if I believed that Jesus died for my sins, then I would live forever after death. Conversely, I was taught that if I didn’t believe that Jesus died for my sins, then I would not live forever after death.
My understanding was elementary because I came to it at Church camp, where it was pretty obvious that it mattered to the camp counselors whether we campers believed Jesus died for our sins or not. I remember a mini-sorting ceremony in our tent where I resisted being categorized as “unsaved.”
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2023.02.26 | The Temptations
The Temptations. When I hear the words, “the temptations,” I confess, I often think first of one of my favorite Motown groups, not the temptations of Christ. And for good reason.
The contributions that The Temptations have made to American music are hard to overstate. Last fall (Oct 30, 2022), The Temptations celebrated their 60th anniversary as a performing artist group. Who can match that? Their staying power is without peer.
Billboard magazine ranked The Temptations #1 on their list of Greatest R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of All Time, and listed them among The 125 Greatest of All Time Artists.
In a similar vein, Rolling Stone magazine named The Temptations among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and in September 2020, the editors of Rolling Stone magazine named the Temptations the “the greatest black vocal group of the Modern Era.”
In my humble opinion, The Temptations--and The Supremes--are among the greatest performing artists in the modern area. Period.
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2023.02.22 | Be Reconciled
As the Senior Pastor here at Eden Church, I spend a tremendous amount of time on reconciliation--but not in the way that you might imagine.
Those in our congregation who grew up in Roman Catholic traditions may think that I spend a lot of time hearing confessions like the priests in the parish where you grew up. But that is actually not the case.
Protestants don’t have a formal liturgical practice, which is now known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation, like the Catholics practice. Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformer, liberated us from the notion that a penitent needed to make their confession within earshot of a priest, and then pray the rosary, and be absolved by a priest in order to get right with God. Nope. Luther taught us that every penitent is fully capable of going directly to God with our confessions and requests for forgiveness.
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2023.02.19 | Discerning Truth
Today’s text describes a mountaintop experience known as “the Transfiguration.” This was the occasion when Jesus and his closest disciples slipped away from the City of Jerusalem for a short retreat. They needed a break. But make no mistake, this was no cushy weekend get-away. Opposition to Jesus’ ministry was growing. Things were getting a lot harder for Jesus and his people.
Imagine the scene: a high mountain outside of Jerusalem, where three Hebrew prophets (Moses, Elijah, and Jesus) appear together. Peter, one of the disciples, was awed by the experience and offered to make three booths: one for Jesus, one for Moses, and another for Elijah.
Peter made this proposal because booth making was a way that good Jews celebrated a special blessing that they had received, and thanked God for it.
As they were talking, Matthew explained, a cloud overshadowed the group, and a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”
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2023.02.12 | Choices & Commitments
Today’s reading from the Book of Deuteronomy is a story within a story within an even larger story.
The innermost or most literal story is the story of what Moses told the ancient Israelites immediately before they entered the promised land after 40 years of wandering the wilderness.
In an extended sermon, Moses reminds them of their history and their special chosen relationship with the Lord their God. He reviews the 10 Commandments given to them at Mt. Horeb (which is called Mt. Sinai in Exodus), and provides them with a legal code to guide their conduct in their new land.
While the legal code is extensive and detailed and often harsh by our standards, Moses cushions the law with a good deal of psychological pleading for the people to understand the importance of remaining faithful to the God who has brought them out of slavery in Exodus, who has given them food and water when they thought they were dying, who has given them military success when they were under attack or attacking others and who has now brought them to the very edge of a bountiful land — a land again and again as being filled with milk and honey.
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2023.02.05 | Salt & Light
Today’s scripture is taken from a section of Matthew’s gospel known as the Sermon on the Mount. The Matthean community was primarily comprised of Jewish-Christians and Gentiles who were familiar with the Jewish religion, so Matthew explained who Jesus was and what his ministry was about, in reference to Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures.
Jesus was, in the eyes of Matthew, “the New Moses.” Like Moses who received and delivered the Ten Commandments to the Jews, Jesus received and delivered the eight Beatitudes to the disciples.
At the time when Jesus walked the earth, Israel had been under foreign occupation for almost 600 years. Imagine trying to figure out what it meant to be a Jew in your homeland when it had been ruled by foreign occupiers for almost 600 years. How does one show up faithfully in that context?
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