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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44409439942562141362017-06-27T05:17:33.818-07:00Preaching and PonderingSermons and occasional writings of the Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot. (Note: The perspectives offered on this website may not necessarily reflect my employing ministry, the American Baptist Churches of New York State.)Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-2992813121150909012017-06-23T09:43:00.002-07:002017-06-23T09:44:24.052-07:00Installing a New Pastor: Planting Seeds in Earnest

Installing Rev. Perdue
FBC Cooperstown, NY

<o:p>Special occasion preaching is part of the call to ministry. We preach at life transitions most frequently (weddings and funerals) as well as for civic holidays (woe to the preacher who skirts a Mother's Day sermon too many years in a row!). Also, we preach for occasions rare yet wonderful: when a person is ordained to ministry or going into a new ministry call. </o:p>

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<o:p>It was my pleasure earlier in June 2017 to offer remarks at the installation of the Rev Joseph Perdue, recently called as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cooperstown, NY. Brevity is a virtue (and I am chief of sinners), so I decided to use a shorter scripture text that I think works well at the outset of a hopefully long and fruitful season of ministry for Joe and the congregation.</o:p>

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Hear now the Good News in brief---two verses to be exact!<o:p></o:p>

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The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.(Mark 4:26-27)<o:p></o:p>

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Two verses, and yet so much to unfurl and explore! On one hand, we have the image of the Kingdom, the very crowning glory of Jesus' vision of God made known in the world and yet it is like seed, to be tossed around willy-nilly. Jesus gives an image messy and unpredictable, far removed from the "cut and dried" understandings about following Jesus we often presume. <o:p></o:p>

Worse, contrary to our churchly habits and sensibilities, Jesus presents us with the image of a farmer who goes out, plants the seed liberally, and then saunters off until the end time.<o:p></o:p>

At this point, I hear from Kansas my old farmer father's voice calling out: "Son, what sort of fool does that?"<o:p></o:p>

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Admittedly, I have never met a non-anxious farmer, including my father. For farmers, something is always worrying you at the back of your mind: grain prices falling and rising (well, mostly falling), pests and pesticides, drought, deer turning your crop into a buffet, freak storms, too much rain, too little rain, flooding, hail, the bills coming in and not enough money to cover everything this month, and the list goes on. <o:p></o:p>

Every farmer goes through this, having that moment when you laugh at yourself. That foolish dream you had, thinking yet again you could plant a crop and turn a profit. Sigh!<o:p></o:p>

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For the church "with ears to hear", we have an unsettling thought. The Church that Jesus seeks to sow in the world does not fit into plans we alone devise, let alone for us to micromanage! <o:p></o:p>

The gospel will be planted where you least expect it, and trying to guess how it will flourish and yield a goodly harvest is at best guesswork and at worst presumptuous on our part. <o:p></o:p>

Where the Kingdom of God grows, there shall be a harvest and we have to learn how to live within the mysterious ways of God.<o:p></o:p>

But can we really handle mystery? Further, can we be in that mystery as a Church and live to tell about it?<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

In the splendid Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love, William is a young man seeking money, not literary awards. He writes plays for the theatres with their raucous crowds. Theatre was very much a rough and tumble experience in Elizabethan England. There is a new play needed, and the theatre manager insists that writer's block is not an excuse. He demands a script readied for the production of "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter", a comedy about love and a bit with a dog doing tricks. <o:p></o:p>

The film follows several characters as they rush around, trying to stage a play not quite written with a financial backer and his thugs threatening them with pain if there is no profit. A young woman disguises herself as a man so she can tread the boards. At the epicenter of this chaos is a young playwright named Will who seems too flaky to be the great Shakespeare. Will this end in disaster? Surely it will! <o:p></o:p>

Throughout the film, people ask the theatre manager Philip Henslowe what the play is about and more importantly when the play will be ready. Henslowe bluffs to buy Shakespeare and the company more time. When his financial backer storms in, ready to have his men beat him up, Henslowe begs for more time, claiming the theatre business is one whose "natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster". <o:p></o:p>

The financial backer asks, "So what do we do?" Henslowe replies, "Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well." "How?" the backer is incredulous. <o:p></o:p>

Henslowe replies, "I don't know. It's a mystery."<o:p></o:p>

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If we let them be, the parables confound and unsettle us, defying a quick or complete interpretation alike. In these seed parables, we get a cautionary tale about thinking we know the ways of God and how we should be God's people. We build our houses of worship, our traditions, our creeds, and still we have sacred texts that challenge and remind us of a faith more comfortable with welcoming children gladly, considering the lilies of the field, and scattering seed and letting things be. Or as Jesus said,

The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.<o:p></o:p>

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I suppose the Markan parable would ask to keep things loose and try not to tame the Spirit's movement. We certainly need to talk with one other. We need to pray and listen for God in the midst of our ministry and missional work. We need to work with purpose and hope, but at the same time, we are in God's hands, not our own. The future holds much possibility. So much Kingdom/Reign work is yet to come. God scatters seed abundantly. The harvest shall be abundant. Rather than pondering the future or undercutting its potential by our reticence to embrace it, we enter into the mystery that is God at work in the world. <o:p></o:p>

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 So, here we are, in the midst of a mystery. A long-time pastor retires. A period of search and call happens. A new pastor was called, arrived and has been serving here for a few months now. What form will this new season of ministry take? What will be different about it? What will come up as the newest experience of an old challenge? Will we grow, will we flourish, will we have so-so crop yields, will the future be anything like the past (a chronic question in every church), and can we handle a future that looks nothing like the past (a scary question for every church)? What happens next? What does the future hold?<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

 Hear the Good News:<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.<o:p></o:p>
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-38822266788142662742017-06-02T13:12:00.004-07:002017-06-02T13:32:34.614-07:00Adventures in Baptist History: William Sawyer (1821-1909)

What does an old Bible, likely given as a "presentation" Bible to a young person, tell us about the 19th century in the Capital District of New York?

Earlier this week, I received an inquiry through the local ABCNYS Association about a family wishing to donate a Bible to an area American Baptist congregation. They were going through an elder parent's household and found a number of Bibles. One Bible was clearly a family heirloom, given the name inscribed. Another Bible they found indeed had an inscription, but the family could not identify any connection to the family or any idea why the Bible had come into their loved one's possession at one time in the past.

The Bible in question has a handwritten inscription to a person for their attendance of the Sunday School of the Robin Street Baptist Church in Albany, NY. The date given is 1886.

Living in Albany myself, I knew already that there is no American Baptist (formerly Northern Baptist) congregation by that name any longer. Through some Google searching, I discovered the beginnings of a bread crumb trail about the Robin Street church, which indeed has closed. One thing I discovered via Google Books was a lead on the formation of the Robin Street church.

In a two volume book on the history of Albany, NY, I discovered Robin Street Baptist was part of the efforts of church planting supported enthusiastically by businessman and abolitionist William Sawyer (1821-1909). In this Albany retrospective, we read:

In religious preferences, Mr. [William] Sawyer is a decided Baptist. In 1840 he united with the Pearl Street (now Emmanuel Baptist Church) while Elder Jacob Knapp was assisting Rev Dr B.T. Welch. In 1871, he removed his church relations to the Calvary Church. His interest in the Sabbath School and mission work of the Baptist Church has been great and constant for many years.

To it he has given much time and toil and money July 29, 1866, the Kenwood Chapel which was started in 1864 was duly dedicated, Rev. Dr. Magoon preaching the sermon. This he gave to the Albany Baptist Missionary Union as a chapel for church purposes forever. On the day of its dedication the cars of the Albany Railway made the first trip to Kenwood. The Sunday School here numbers about 100.

The Robin Street Baptist Chapel was established by Mr. Sawyer in the German Baptist Church on Washington Avenue, November 4, 1866, and removed to the Robin Street Baptist Chapel into a building formerly used as a cabinet factory which he had purchased and remodeled for that purpose April 7 1872 as an Independent Sunday School. To its interests he has ever given his most watchful care. The school now numbers about 300. The Madison Avenue Chapel was purchased by him for Sunday School purposes in the spring of 1867. The school was started August 4, 1867, and placed in charge of the First Baptist Church. It has about 150 members.

Mr. Sawyer was one of the earliest and most active workers for the establishment of the Home for Aged Men, in soliciting subscriptions, organizing, and in selecting its location. He was a member of the first Board of Trustees. He has often addressed audiences of young and old in exhortation and textual discourse. His knowledge of the Scriptures, his zealous spirit, his nervous and rather eccentric manner, have made these addresses effective.

Likely some additional research as time allows will help me connect more of the dots about how this Bible came to be presented to a young person attending the Sunday School on Robin Street. Such efforts remind us that congregations come and go, ministry efforts in a community may ebb and flow, but the furthering of the Gospel is always in the hands of one generation passing the faith onwards to the next.

Returning to the Bible's inscription, I realized that the book was presented by William Sawyer himself!

We may not have a great statue or likely any real institutional memory about William Sawyer and his work among the churches in the area. Nonetheless, a presentation Bible mixed in with other odds and ends of a household yields a testament to sharing faith and spreading the Baptist witness in Albany, New York. The mission work of a Baptist layman comes back to life once more, offering inspiration for those who might think about being this generation's William Sawyer, sharing the faith with a new generation!

RESEARCH SOURCES: Behind the Scenes

To find out something regarding Robin Street Baptist, I referenced Google Books and found out about William Sawyer.

LINK: https://books.google.com/books?id=nWkJAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22william%20sawyer%22%20albany%2C%20ny&pg=PA648&output=embed

To discover Mr. Sawyer's date of death, I played a hunch about cemeteries in the area and discovered his grave at the Albany Rural Cemetery where many luminaries of Albany's past are interred. (For example, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur is buried there.)

LINK: http://albanyruralcemetery.org/ (I input William Sawyer's name and searched for a compatible date, knowing his birth date from the above source and seeing minor mentions of his name that he was still alive in the late 19th century. Sawyer lived into his eighties!)Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-16005968613534470062017-05-26T07:34:00.000-07:002017-05-26T07:34:11.403-07:00That Would Be An Ecumenical Matter

"That would be an ecumenical matter."

During the three year run of the venerable Irish comedy Father Ted, viewers around the world watched the exploits of three priests serving a small Roman Catholic parish on bedraggled Craggy Island. Quite readily, viewers learn why these three priests are serving together. Essentially, the Bishop exiled them to a place where they could not get into any more trouble than they had caused previously.

In one of my favorite episodes, the Vatican sends envoys to review the possible miracle of a certain holy relic on the island. Father Ted and Father Dougal (the middle-aged and young priest of the household) quickly realize they have an issue. How will the cantankerous, slovenly and erratic old Father Jack possibly be ready to meet the special visitors? After all, he sits in his chair (mostly), sleeps, grunts and drinks (or sleeps and grunts in his sleep after passing out from too much drink).

The barely verbal Father Jack is coached little by little to remember how to say socially acceptable phrases. Eventually, Father Ted tries to help Father Jack learn a phrase that would please the bishops but not require Father Jack to remember much more than that. They land on the phrase "That would be an ecumenical matter", which Ted observes is just enough to imply you are interested or are able to follow some arcane theological discussion some priests like to indulge in. Just respond with that phrase, he has learned, and others will consider you profound and wise.

(And hopefully leave you alone!)

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Baptist tradition has eschewed hierarchy and high structure. Nonetheless, many Baptists around the world recognize their love of local church autonomy can lead to isolation and missed opportunities for mutual collaboration and encouragement. While Baptists vary (cf. the "Heinz 57" ingredient list like nature of Baptists just in the United States!), we have local churches who are often relating to churches elsewhere of similar faith and order or common ground ministry and mission goals.

Saying "that would be an ecumenical matter" holds some amusing resonance when attending Baptist organizational meetings. While low in structure and lines of authority, Baptist inter-church fellowships (Associations, denominations, networks, etc.) can be a great gathering of different and divergent voices, people gathering around common affinities for mission and ministry more than events listed on "the official program" for plenary sessions, etc. Nonetheless, when such gatherings have discussions traveling down less engaging pathways of discussion, I think of old Father Jack grunting, "That would be an ecumenical matter."

(And for the record, Father Ted's advice translates well in my own context!)

I am quite pleased with a recent article from Dr. Neville Callum, the General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance. A pastor and scholar, Dr. Callum's writings on the Baptist movement and particularly the large network of Baptists embodied in the BWA are always a welcome discovery when he publishes in a journal or online posting. Recently, Dr Callum shared a word about Baptists and connecting together:

"From as early as 1644, seven Particular Baptist congregations in England stated in the celebrated Article 47 of what has come to be called the "First London Confession of Faith" that "Although the particular Congregations be distinct and severall Bodies, everyone as a compact and knit Citie in it selfe; yet are they to walk by one and the same Rule, and by all meanes convenient to have the counsell and help one of another in all needful affaires; of the Church, as members of one body in the common faith under Christ their only head."

Eight years later, the Abingdon Association in England affirmed the urgent need of Baptist churches "to hold firm communion with each other."

Over the years, churches existing in close geographical proximity have affirmed their inter-relationship and have developed patterns of cooperation deriving from their fellowship.
This has happened trans-locally in regions and nations and, with the passage of time, internationally, both at the continental and the worldwide levels.

More reflection needs to be given to the precise nature and meaning, not simply the purpose, of Baptists associating at the global level.

Baptist interdependency is capable of bearing the burden of the associational obligation that celebrated Baptist historian William Brackney had in mind when, writing about associations, he emphasized the need for Baptists "to learn again how to wrestle in love with difficult issues and to celebrate one another's successes and bear one another's burdens."

LINK: http://www.ethicsdaily.com/why-we-must-reclaim-baptist-interdependency-cms-23887

In his essay linked above, Dr. Callum notes the shortcomings of Baptist connections and the need for revisiting the nature of what we take for granted as the current form for those relationships and any implications they may have among Baptist bodies around the world. He reminds that even in our efforts to be radical Reformers, we are still part of "Church".

We have a "church" minded ecclesiology, yet that lowercase "c" is as much part of our theological heritage as it can be an impediment to following Christ's High Priestly prayer often cited in ecumenical circles, "that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,<sup class="footnote" data-fn="#fen-NRSV-26770a" data-link="[a]">[so that the world may believe that you have sent me." (John 17:21).

With such a prayer, it is indeed always "an ecumenical matter."Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-70031014601947029772017-05-18T12:04:00.000-07:002017-05-19T05:54:14.307-07:00Mourning at ChurchSince the beginning of May, three congregations up in the Adirondacks have been in a season of loss and mourning their pastors. On Friday, May 5, 2017, Rev Linda Hoeschel died. Then on May 12, 2017, Pastor Joyce Bruce passed away. Both women served congregations in rural communities and provided splendid leadership during their time as ministers.

I write this column on the other side of these life transitions, responding to the needs of the congregations going through a very unique form of loss and grief. As I shared with Linda's two churches recently, it's one thing to go through the loss of a congregant, especially one who was engaged in the midst of the life of a local church. The loss and grief of losing a pastor is even more complex as pastors are woven into the fabric of a congregation. It's a shared loss as congregations are families in their own way, regardless of how many people are actually kin by blood relation.

When Jesus called together his first followers, some of these men and women were indeed related (the brothers Zebedee). Each person who followed Jesus navigated a challenge with their own biological family, as they would take leave of their kinfolk with no small measure of disruption to the "normal" life they led before hearing Jesus' call. Dropping your fishing nets to go "fish for people" continues to vex generations of Christians about what it means to hear and follow. Congregations can be a place where believers can gather together and learn together what the faith calls us to do. (I realize churches are also prone to circle the wagons and avoid anything that disrupts comfort, but I keep having hope that the Spirit works at ensuring our foundations are solid but our forms are not so set in ruts that we lose our way.)

Pastor Joyce Bruce

About my colleagues in ministry:

Pastor Joyce Bruce served the Jay Baptist Church in the upper Adirondacks for nearly twenty years. As a lay preacher, she provided her gifts and care to the congregation in this small town church. The church recalls its origins in a barn, using hay bales for pews back in 1798. The church has a long history of lay women preachers, as her predecessor served for many years before Joyce was called in 1996. For the past two generations, the minister of Jay Baptist has been a laywoman preaching, teaching and caring for the needs of the flock!

At her visitation hours on Tuesday afternoon, I brought words of greetings and thanksgiving for her years of service to one of our Region churches. Her family had musical instruments close at hand, and from time to time, they would take a break from greeting friends and family to play a bit on guitars, clarinets, or mandolins. A number of persons spoke about Joyce's own musical gifts, starting Sunday morning worship for many years with some "ragtime Gospel" at the piano.

Rev Linda Hoeschel

Rev Linda Hoeschel served a shorter season of ministry, called in March 2015 to her first called position with the shared pastoral call of the Village Baptist Church (Fort Edward, NY) and the First Baptist Church of Glens Falls, NY. Ordained in 2016, she was a second career minister, called later in life to prepare for the ministry. She was remembered throughout the May 12th memorial service and celebration as a person with great enthusiasm, care and love for her call and the two flocks who called her to serve.

After joining the Region staff four years ago, I worked closely with the Ft Edward and Glens Falls pastoral search. Like the congregation in Jay, NY, the ministry model for the two churches leaned toward a part-time model. Linda dove into the ministry of two churches, and even as her health challenges came from time to time, her sense of call and the drive to serve God and neighbor sustained her in remarkable ways.

Grieving a pastor's death is difficult. Remembering the minister for their gifts and graces, their strengths and their challenges--all of these things allow congregations to rehearse their beliefs in life, death and the Resurrection. We mourn and grieve differently in such times and at differing pace, yet churches can be a place of remembering well what death means for Christians. Such memory recasts the loss with hope, the sorrow with a foretaste of faith's promises being fulfilled in God's good End.

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Note: A resource on the unique situation of a pastor's dying while serving a congregation is the book "Speaking of Dying: Recovering the Church's Voice in the Face of Death" (Brazos, 2012). Learn more via this link: http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/speaking-of-dying/338880.Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-18257971037557263862017-04-29T13:07:00.001-07:002017-04-29T13:07:29.942-07:00Pilgrims on the Journey (Luke 24:13-35)

The writer Nora Gallagher speaks of being "outside" the church for many years, until she went to a place where she felt something different within herself about faith and being among others keeping the faith. Her wonderful line is that she came to the church "as a tourist, but stayed a pilgrim."

Over time, her time in church became less of attendance and became participation, and her faith less a matter of inquiry and more of belief. The beauty of her writing is not skill but of depth: the depth of belief and experience growing in the faith in the care of a congregation that did likewise.

On the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, two disciples of Jesus are walking back home, despondent with the news of the crucifixion and unaware of the Easter Good News. The Resurrected Christ joins them on the journey, yet the two disciples do not "see" him (an ongoing motif of the Gospels, where God's mighty works unfold in plain sight, yet people reserve their judgment to near epic proportions).

Hearing their woeful tale of belief crushed by the powers that be, Jesus engages in a time of "bible study" while walking alongside them. He guides them through the texts that speak of what God had in mind through the patriarchs, prophets, and other writings. Jesus walks them through these narratives so that when they have made the trip, they will see the Savior who weaves all of these threads together.

When I was in seminary, I helped with a congregation in transition. They had endured a church split, and the folks who "left" form fed a separate congregation. The immediate problem, however, was the fact that the newly formed group had no place to worship in. They were fortunate to find an old urban neighborhood church that had been turned in a community outreach center. The current occupants had kept the pews, pulpits, and the stained glass, so it was quite a good rental opportunity for churches in transition who came inquiring about space.

However, as the church folks settled, they realized that they were missing more than (literally!) a roof over their head. They had to create and recreate a number of things that they didn't realize one took for granted, including Sunday School curriculum. How could they teach the young children without what they used to have?

 I sat in on a Christian education meeting where they wondered what direction to go. I suggested that they could do something without spending any money. The congregation had these beautiful stained glass windows with a bible story in each one. And so the next Sunday, the children got led around the sanctuary of this old church, the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden, Noah's Ark (a crowd pleaser for the tots), Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac (not a crowd pleaser for the tots!). Moses on the mountain with the two tablets, and so forth. As they rounded the sanctuary, the kids were asked who this person was in the last stained glass. They said, "Jesus!"

That's the sort of work that Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, building up the knowledge among those who needed to be acquainted with the texts that led them to this point on the road to Emmaus. It's drawing close to evening by this point, and the disciples invite him to stay for dinner. Jesus consents, though he is ready to go on the way. (Another sly Gospel shorthand: if the disciples cannot "see" Jesus, they also cannot go "on the way" with Jesus either!) They gather at table and have a simple meal. It's when Jesus breaks bread that these disciples finally "see" Jesus.

For those perplexed why food and not words get the message across finally, read Luke and its companion, the Book of Acts. There is a great deal of eating that happens in these two books. There are scholarly books that trace the importance in Luke/Acts of the Christians and their meals, because in the breaking of bread, something so simple, the abundance of God becomes clear. In particular, recollect how Jesus breaks bread in the Last Supper, and notice the repetition here at Emmaus: Jesus takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it to them. In the Last Supper, Jesus foretells of his broken body in the symbolism of the last supper. In the Emmaus meal, the same words and actions are used. And over in Acts, when the early Christians break bread as part of their prayers, proclamation, and sharing in common, they call it not "suppertime" but "Church." And when it happens at that table in Emmaus, it's not just a meal. It's "belief!"

"Were our hearts not burning eagerly within us?" these disciples ask. This experience of the risen Lord prompts them to get up from their table and head back to Jerusalem. They went home despondent, and now they run back to Jerusalem with the news.

Pilgrims. You go to a church service, and you see them out there in the pews at worship. They might light a candle, read the pew Bible, or sit or kneel in prayer. They come in all shapes and sizes, all walks of life. But there's one thing that sets them apart from the tourists.

What is it that does that?

They have seen the Lord.Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-35485482982807986952017-04-24T13:22:00.000-07:002017-04-24T13:27:17.725-07:00The Way of Belief (John 20:19-31)

During my first year of college, an introductory course engaged students around questions of critical thinking. College takes your worldview and challenges your suppositions, convictions, and myopias alike. Other life experiences can do the same, a time when life challenges you to the extent you learn a new way of seeing things.

As part of this college course, we looked at an image of a young shepherd boy. Somehow, he has stumbled and fallen to the ground. As he picks himself up, he realizes that he has left his familiar meadow and the hillside full of sheep, discovering instead a strange and different world, a place where the unknown and fantastic lurks in a landscape of unknown planets and stars. The college instructor loved using this image as a teaching tool. The little shepherd has a choice now before him: does he crawl back to what he has known (the meadow and hills of a shepherd) or does he crawl forward into this strange and different world?

At the end of John's gospel, we encounter Thomas, crawling through the world in the valley of the shadow of death. At first, he denies what has happened (i.e. Resurrection) and lists his pre-conditions for belief. Yet when he beholds the cross-marked Risen Christ, Thomas decides to leap up and confess his faith that something new and different was happening.

"My Lord and my God!" is the resounding confession of the first Christian believers, the culmination of a theological narrative woven throughout the gospel by John, who tells us in the first chapter, "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known."

Belief is seeing the world beyond the obvious, seeking to see God at work in the world even when we feel as if God is absent or we obsess about the signs we expect, even demand, to see if we are to believe. Belief asks us to engage a worldview that surprises us anew and sends us off on journeys previously unimagined. As Raymond Brown translates Jesus' word to Thomas (and to us): "Do not persist in your disbelief, but become a believer".

This month, a number of commemorative events took place to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's speech against the Vietnam War. During the period from 1967 to 1968, King challenged the Johnson administration's ongoing war in Vietnam and the critical needs of the poor. King found the result of such prophetic vision resulted with immediate challenge from critics, ranging from the White House down to fellow religious and civil rights leaders. The advice was "stick with your field".

King rebuffed the criticism,
Before I became a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. When my father and others put their hands on my head and ordained me to the Christian ministry, it was a commission. Something said to me that the fire of truth is shut up in my bones. When it burns me, I must tell it.

King's social witness is part of that same Easter witness required of those who believe in Christ's resurrection. The gospel is not just a mere set of beliefs or a collection of wise sayings and tales given by a first century Jew from backwater Nazareth. The gospel is about being a believer in Easter, not just when it is time to break out the Easter baskets and enjoy the beautiful lily on the mantle. The Easter story should be deep down in you, words that confess Christ as Lord and God. The struggle to believe is mighty, for you wrestle with the life of faith all along life's journey. Yet, there is truth found in the resurrection that cannot be tamed, one that pushes us beyond the world as we know it, beyond a sense of inevitable fate.

Belief in Christ, rightfully understood, is one that dances with joy and burns deep down in our bones, knowing that there is a greater reality where God is made known.

Becoming a believer is what the Easter faith calls us to embrace. As John's gospel puts it at narrative's end, these things are written down so that you may come to believe. These words are offered to you so that you, who have never seen Christ as these disciples did, may believe and have life. Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-31004211949937827502017-04-18T14:19:00.003-07:002017-04-18T14:19:50.819-07:00Easter is always upon us

http://savannahnow.com/slideshow/2012-02-22/savannahs-civil-rights-movement#slide-1

For the first time in awhile, I had the opportunity to preach on Easter Sunday with two congregations in the Adirondacks. A piece of that sermon also made it into a blog post for Ethics Daily (www.ethicsdaily.com). Here's the part that I shared via pulpit and blog over the last few days:

Years ago, I was in Savannah, Georgia, for yet another Baptist meeting. Spreadsheets, memorandums, and documents to read, meetings to sit through, and then, the dreaded conference hotel meal: "chicken ala something" for lunch or dinner (and occasionally breakfast). However, at this meeting, I felt an earthquake.

Toward the end of the meeting, our committees boarded chartered buses and toured the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum. Recounting the history of segregation and the crucible of birthing civil rights in Savannah, the museum displayed many historical reminders of the era before and after the mid-20th century. In the midst of these exhibits was a collage of various signs created by protestors during the 1950s and 1960s. One sign stopped me in my tracks. The sign said, "We sacrificed Easter".

For years, the downtown Savannah stores practiced segregationist ways: no African Americans could sit at the food counter, yet the merchants still sold to the African American community, especially at Easter time, when the demand for "Easter best" clothes was high. Businesses made a bundle, but Jim Crow still ruled without question.

That is, until the black church leaders called for a boycott of stores at Easter. Soon, the businesses discovered that they faced either changing the rules or boarding up their stores from the loss of business. The witness of a group of disciples willing to speak truth to power made a lasting change possible in their town.

Again, I wonder what would happen if we stepped back from the overly familiar way of thinking of Easter (positively, the "fluffy fun" of Easter bonnets, baskets, and bunnies and negatively in many churches with the lament of "our pews are not as full as Easters long ago"). Instead, could we read this text and ask ourselves, "What does this story tell us we need to be seeing as we live out and share the gospel in this community?" Instead, could we let go and experience this text as a story powerful enough to shake the ground beneath our feet?

Easter is not just this one Sunday. Easter is the beginning and the end: the end of our world in its sinful and broken ways and the beginning of a gathering of disciples who do not fear but move forward in the confidence of a faith that summons us not to familiarity and indifference. Rather, we are told "go forth" as a community that can move forth, even though the earth be shaking, even though Caesar would rather have us not being the radical and contrary types that Jesus' followers are called to be, and speak and live as if Easter is always upon us.

Alleluia! He is risen! Let the people say, "AMEN."
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-90779367021411816882017-04-07T08:45:00.001-07:002017-04-07T08:47:52.489-07:00Following Jesus, Despite the Crowds

When we gather the children with palm fronds (and pray they don't start whacking each other over the head!), we engage in recreating the Palm procession of Jesus. It's wonderful, euphoric and full of beaming congregants watching the familiar drama unfold.

Ironically, what appears cute and photogenic is really more along the lines of political street theatre. What type of grown-ups are we if we do not tell our kids that this waving of palm branches is being faithful to a king who is unlike no other king or ruler they will learn about in school?

If we do things right, we will raise our kids what it means to be a follower of Jesus, who was unafraid of empires and "powers that be", speaking of God's sovereign claim to the world.

As Holy Week unfolds, we tell a story of colliding worlds; as the differences are drawn between the Roman empire/Jerusalem's political and religious elite and the Reign of God with its Servant King Jesus. The question for Christ's follower looms: can we give a witness when our world collides with the one proclaimed by the gospel?

In the mid-20th century, the unthinkable happened. A woman named Grace Thomas ran for governor of Georgia. Not only breaking customs about women running for high office, Grace also ran on a desegregation platform. She finished dead last.

A few years later, she ran again in 1962. As the Civil Rights era was gaining momentum, her platform of racial tolerance was still unthinkable.

 On a campaign stop in Louisville, Georgia, she deliberately chose the town square for her remarks. The town square was once a slave market in times past.

Telling her story, the preacher Thomas Long recalls:

As she stood on the very spot where slaves had been auctioned, a hostile crowd of storekeepers and farmers gathered to hear what she would say. "The old has passed away," she began, "and the new has come. This place represents all about our past over which we must repent. A new day is here, a day when Georgians white and black can join hands to work together."

The crowd stirred. "Are you a communist?" someone shouted at her.

Grace paused in midsentence. She said softly. "I am not."

"Well, then," continued the heckler, "where'd you get all those [blasted] ideas?"

Grace thought for a minute, and then she pointed to a steeple of a nearby church. "I got them over there," she said, "in Sunday school."

 (From Long's book Preaching From Memory to Hope, p. 19-20).

Hosanna...praise be....Hosanna....Lord, save us.....Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna.

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An oral history interview was conducted in 1979 with Grace Thomas. Listen to her reflections via this link:  http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ggdp/id/5330 Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-56083308187768877272017-03-29T12:42:00.001-07:002017-03-29T12:42:38.739-07:00Remembering Dr Hazel Roper

Burying the saints is part of ministry. I have long become accustomed, though not numbed from the familiarity of being part of a funeral service where a beloved congregant, family member or friend has died and the people of God gathered for the holy task of burying a beloved one. Presiding or officiating as a pastor at funerals is particularly difficult when you have to manage your own grief in the midst of this sacred yet fraught moment. I find such work keeps us connected to our core beliefs, as clergy are tasked with leading people to remember that we are dust at best and this life and its pain and success is fleeting.

On Monday, a difficult yet joyous day happened at the Calvary Baptist Church of Lowell, MA. A sanctuary full of mourners gathered together to say farewell to a beloved family member, friend, colleague, mentor and veritable legend. The Rev. Dr. Hazel Roper lived out her ministry in local church pulpits, around the table with churches all around upstate New York and advocating for clergy and churches in the sometimes difficult discussions about clergy compensation, clergy pensions and everything else that most of us struggle to speak about, let alone discuss frankly about "money and church" matters.

Hazel Roper excelled in pastoral ministry, whether in local church or denominational work. I count myself as one of the many pastors who benefited from her keen insight, firm resolve and wise ways. She assisted a congregation I served with understanding the complexities of clergy pay and pension, something that when I myself retire in the 2040s will be most thankful got started years ago with her skillful advising. She kept in touch after I moved into the Regional ministry work with upstate New York churches myself, working with a number of congregations in pastor searches and other needs where Hazel's interactions years ago created moments of clarity during conflict and challenge. Indeed, as I told her once, I could work with healthier churches in the present day thanks in part to the helpful and insightful work she did with pastors and congregations. Indeed, I have heard it said in recent days that Hazel is considered the reason some churches remain in better shape all these years later, thanks to her careful work in the 1990s and early 2000's.

As I passed word to colleagues about Hazel's unexpected passing, I kept hearing stories of mentoring conversations. A number of clergywomen serving today give thanks to Hazel as a mentor, an inspiration and an exemplar of a determined Baptist woman called to serve God and the Church through ordained ministry. A pastor at the funeral gave a brief testimony, simply saying Hazel was her example and a "she-ro" of the faith.

When the family offered their memories, it was noted that Hazel was a long-time member of the Lowell church, going back to her childhood. When she retired decades later from ministry, she served again as a lay leader, providing her talents as the church moderator. When the Calvary church burned when Hazel was nine, she offered the pastor her piggy bank's contents to help rebuild the church. Fittingly, memorial gifts in her memory are suggested for the present day church's roof repair fund!

As I listened to the many words of testimony given by family and friends, congregants and colleagues, I noticed the two stained glass panels flanking either side of the altar area. To the left, the traditional image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, benevolently tended the sheepfold. On the right, the image was of Jesus kneeling in prayer with his gaze heavenward, most likely in that moment alone in the time just before his betrayal and death. While such images are overly familiar subject matter for stained glass, the two images paired well with the liturgy and testimony unfolding in the altar area.

As we journey through the Lenten season, I ponder mortality and what it means to live a life of significance. Hazel left a legacy that is like faith itself, a matter of things seen and unseen. As the call went forth that day earlier this week, we have the challenge to raise up more Hazels to serve Christ and God's people. Her legacy is already enriching the lives of people who attend churches who are healthier for her ministry work years ago. Her legacy lives on in the women and men she encouraged to stick out ministry's most difficult moments or when vocations seemed too distant to be "ours" to accept and undertake.

When somebody asked how the funeral went, I said, "It was the best type: you laughed, you cried, you listened to the Good Word and good words and then you went downstairs for a great big meal." How else should a Baptist be remembered than a rousing time to sing, to give thanks to God and to be nourished by the memories and table fellowship afterwards?

Thanks be to God!

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Dr Hazel Roper's obituary appears via: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lowellsun/obituary.aspx?n=hazel-a-roper&pid=184705560&fhid=2434

A retrospective on the occasion of her 50th year of ordained ministry appeared in 2014: http://www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_26183585/living-historyJerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-46540594032222646792017-03-24T12:30:00.001-07:002017-03-24T12:30:20.811-07:00Wandering the Park and Facing the Future

In Albany, New York's Washington Park, you will be able soon literally to "tiptoe through the tulips" with the annual Tulip Festival. If you like tulips, Washington Park will be laden with many beautiful beds of tulips. They crown a Tulip Queen and the festival weekend provides all manner of amusement and enough fried foods to make a cardiologist weep.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

In the midst of the Park, the great fountain will be soon home to pennies and quarters tossed in, the screams of joy as children splash in the waters (especially on a hot summer's day) and undoubtedly, more than a few youth and grown-ups who decide to give in to their own urge to splash in the waters as well!<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

When I first visited Washington Park, I noticed the beautiful statuary all around the fountain's center.  From a distance, I wondered if it was Poseidon with his trident upraised and attended by his court. As I got closer, I realized that it was a different scene being recreated.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

I knew what the subject of the fountain was thanks to years spent in Baptist Sunday School. The fountain recreates this moment of Moses striking the rocks with his staff and the waters pouring forth. For many around the statue that day, some likely had no clue at what inspired the fountain's subject matter.

As an obviously religious person (the robe is always a dead giveaway at church, isn't it?), I found myself wondering how the generations of Park visitors saw this same fountain. Surely when it was dedicated, it was with great pride and common knowledge of this story from Scripture. But today, with the Capital District ranking highly (and nearby Vermont the same) with a distinct "religiously disinclined" or "nones" populace, did the fountain in Washington Park resonate with mere aesthetics (for it is beautiful) and really not with the biblical text inspiring its creation?<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

For all of us, those who see Poseidon, those who see Moses and those who just go "cool fountain" and move on through the snow banks today (wishing for the tulips sooner than later), I say "Welcome to 2017!"  This is the context every local congregation (American Baptist, Christian or otherwise) deals with on a day to day basis. The brave faith communities are the ones who understand it, mourn the change and then look for ways to move into the challenges such a time as this presents.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

When I visit congregations, I find that for many, there's a very offensive four letter word that I likely get into trouble for bringing up. The word is (and I hope your ears will not burn as I utter it): RISK.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Risk is what makes a church or any other organization do something other than feel left on the sidelines by change. Change comes at us, change rushes past, without looking to see if we've reacted to it. Change, after all, is not the "enemy". It's part of the world we live in. How we decide to engage what change brings, well, there's the big question.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Most of us would enjoy church if it were more like the park we can visit in Albany. A stroll, a bit of leisure and beautiful fountains and tulips appeal far more than church business meetings, balancing budgets and counting attendance. Yet that park is also the creation and ongoing commitment of a city to keep up the park, plow the snow, plant the tulips and repair the fountain when Moses strikes the rock yet the piping underneath is being difficult and requires more of a plumber than a patriarch to bang upon it.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Church is about brick and mortar (and if you are a Trustee, you pray for the brick and the mortar each night as you remember the last time pointing had to be done and the bills and headaches that followed). Church is about the worship services that happen (and if you are involved with worship, you know it comes with the weekly wrestling match of getting a sermon to come together, preferably before 3 AM Sunday morning, and the difficulty of getting everything "just right" to help the gathered worshippers sing and pray together, unless a snow storm rolls through the night before). Church is about the little stuff that makes a person feel connected enough to move from being a visitor to becoming a member (and even learning how to pitch in with committee work, while praying that a term on a church board is for three years, rather than a life sentence).<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Church is a lot of things, but it's more than all of this. It's also about evangelism, outreach and being part of a community and its needs. You've undoubtedly heard this over the years in various forms and with opinions about what was tried and what failed. Indeed, you may have heard the people and Moses and thought to yourself, "Are sure that was back in ancient times? Some of it sounded quite familiar and hits close to home!"<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Every congregation has its ups and its downs. How it learns to thrive, how to become more resilient to challenge (and in fact even energized by taking the punches and rolling with them as well) will be a matter of learning how to risk and live to tell about it.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

What the future holds is uncertain and involves a decision about what risk you are willing to explore. But remember that whatever each person has on their hearts and minds, whatever each person here wishes to say out loud at the meeting (or outside in the parking lot afterwards), each of us has the blessing of this story about Moses, the people and a rock that sprang forth with water. God is with us, even when we think God has given up on us (or we've just given up on our own).<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

I'd like to think that the church can be that park where much toil and effort happens by the work of many hands willing to engage in the mundane tasks of day-to-day needs as well as the short moments when tulips are admired briefly over a weekend. Churches are places where much good can come even from people wearied or worried by the circumstances at hand. For God is the God of abundance, and with that hope, how can we not move from grumbling and wanting to being given the refreshing sustenance of holy waters that lift us back up and out into the desert once more, knowing that indeed, there will be a Promised Land?<o:p></o:p>
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-30922971157300173402017-03-17T10:37:00.001-07:002017-03-17T12:58:13.643-07:00Making Baptist life faithful and alive

Last week Baptist ethicist Robert Parnham died. Many Baptists around the world have shared their lament at his passing and much thanksgiving for his life and work.

I met Robert a couple of times over the years, and I have been a contributor to the Ethics Daily website for years. Without a doubt, Robert offered his keen intellect and deep faith to the task of encouraging Baptists to think and act out the implications of following the Gospel.

Recently, Ethics Daily carried a recent blog post of mine. They tagged the article to identify it along with other articles about "Baptist life". Looking at the other articles similarly tagged on Ethics Daily show the stories of Baptists involved in a number of needs, local and global. You learn of Baptists learning to explore faith within and well beyond the four walls of the local church.

Read these articles via: http://www.ethicsdaily.com/section/columns-on-baptist-life

Once you have explored these essays and articles, you can see the ongoing legacy of Robert Parnham, faithful Baptist, and be inspired to go and do likewise.

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Note: For the articles I've contributed to Ethics Daily (since 2005--wow, has it been that long?), click this link: http://www.ethicsdaily.com/search.php?search=Hugenot&location=-1
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-12709220708549745852017-03-03T10:59:00.001-08:002017-03-03T10:59:54.176-08:00Entering into Lent: Life Awaits

This past week, I was part of three different meetings. Each was unique in that the conversations were specific to a set of questions and quandaries. Each was quite similar in that the groups gathered around each table earnestly wanted to seek God's will in the midst of a time of challenge.

Sometimes my work is to bring resources. I shy away from suggesting that I, or anyone else around the table, will have "the" answer or worse, a "quick fix". Instead, I advise the slower, the patient, the less anxious, the less immediately understood way forward. (Admittedly, such work is a tough sell, especially when I'm feeling the need for expedience or anxiety drives more than I care to admit.)

As we begin Lent, Christians have the opportunity to examine the spiritual life and decide what priorities have to be claimed or reclaimed, what practices and habits should be given up, and how to learn these things with a spirit of humility and provisional grace (for others as well as ourselves!).

Thomas Merton offers a prayer that I often share with groups when conversations come to an end. I share it with you:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-26832912687218384512017-02-24T09:28:00.001-08:002017-02-24T09:28:23.247-08:00When Glory Overwhelms (Luke 9:28-45)

Can any image do justice to this text?

The Transfiguration of Jesus. How do you describe such a powerful scene? Is it all "Hollywood" with bright lights and everything's a soft, just out of focus blur? Or, is this scene best left to the imagination of the audience, with the film maker only opting to focus on the stunned faces of Jesus' disciples?  However you picture it, probably it was just like that as well as something far greater. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in divine glory. You will forgive the Gospel writers if they try to use words to capture what happened that day. You just cannot capture the moment.
<o:p></o:p>
Vague attempts at describing the Transfiguration of Jesus might be as follows: overwhelming glimpses. Sounds a bit like an oxymoron: seeing more than you can handle but in just a brief, fleeting moment. But perhaps that's for the best. In the biblical texts, any time you encounter even just a moment of God's presence, the experience just cannot be tamed into easily recountable words or images.<o:p></o:p>

Nonetheless, when one encounters God, there is good reason to speak of the experience. It may come in the oddest of moments or at the most appropriate times, yet you know that in the midst of things, you have encountered God. The best way to enter into the Transfiguration narrative is to hear about those times when God has been experienced. You might call them "mountain top moments" or "God sightings" as a pastor I know used to call them. <o:p></o:p>

The writer Robert Coles shares a wonderful story of an argument he once had with Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Day was an advocate for the poor and the church's calling to identify and live with those in need. Dorothy Day was also a person accustomed to staring down her opponents (bishops included). A formidable servant of God is the best way I would put it after reading her story! Thus, an argument with Dorothy Day would be quite memorable. <o:p></o:p>
Coles and Day were arguing about how the spiritual life really worked. Coles said that he pressed Day on how she knew spirituality worked. Dorothy Day explained that we live long, secular days and experience short sacred moments.
<o:p></o:p>
In the religious world, "secular" is a word that we tend to use as "the opposite of something that is sacred." Day had experienced in her own life this knowledge that no matter how long things went on that seemed mundane or not necessarily out of the ordinary, there were always times, even if brief, when you experienced something unmistakably evident of the sacred at work.<o:p></o:p>

Of course, there is another dimension to experiencing "sacred moments." When we are suddenly in the midst of such a spiritual time, it is more than just feeling. The Bible tells of many times of mere mortals experiencing time in God's presence. The most intense of these experiences is called a "theophany". When Moses stands before the burning bush or Isaiah is taken up into the highest heavens to be called as a prophet, again, words seem so shallow to capture the moment. But look at any decent Bible dictionary, and you'll read about theophanies as always ending, no matter where they occur, with a call to serve.<o:p></o:p>

Jesus took these disciples up the mountain to pray. As you will remember, Luke's talk of the prayer life of Jesus is always on the fervency of Jesus ' prayers. Jesus withdraws to pray not because of being overwhelmed but because of his connection to God. Jesus invites his disciples to a life not fraught with duties and obligations, but one of passion, and devotion even if it is shaped by sacrifice and simplicity.<o:p></o:p>

The disciples fall asleep and miss out on the beginning of the transfiguration of Jesus. They wake up to see Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus, and Jesus caught up in divine glory. As they scramble to their feet (and their brains are a little scrambled too!), they start trying to figure out how to mark this occasion. Peter even suggests that they set up a marker to commemorate the event.<o:p></o:p>
Then the divine voice rumbles from above: "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" And suddenly all that talk of drawing up a holy monument goes to the wayside. The disciples fall silent. Their first response is not to speak. They are overwhelmed by the Holy. <o:p></o:p>

Yet, in true human fashion, as soon as they are silent before God, the disciples start trying their best to come up with something to explain the moment. Sometimes, God cannot be explained, yet we will exhaust ourselves trying to explain God and God's ways.<o:p></o:p>

To make sense of the Transfiguration, or any moment that is God-suffused, we need to wrestle with the "so what?" question. We see a brilliant sunset, receive a wise word at just the right time, or experience a moment that suddenly makes sense of the knot our life seems to be in. To experience God is not about "feelings"; it is about "knowing" that God is prompting us to something beyond our imaginings. The disciples are overwhelmed by the moment, confused by the moment, and even try to make sense of the moment by offering to build something commemorative. Then the voice of God speaks, and they realize that there's something much bigger going on. In the true fashion of a holy experience, they realize that words just cannot make up explaining what has taken place. <o:p></o:p>

The brilliance of the Gospel traditions, Luke and Mark alike, is evident here. When the disciples descend to the places down below the mountain, Jesus and the disciples are asked to help people in need. The call to serve is made quite clear when the disciples come down from their high places and encounter the needs below.<o:p></o:p>

One error that the Church often makes is keeping faith all about the high moments. Over the centuries, Christians have tended to put their energies into building big monuments that are commonly called "church buildings", "cathedrals" or "church campuses". We do this for the glory of God, yet we tend to forget that the church is really about people, not buildings, and if we are ignoring the needs of people around us, we are missing the gospel that Jesus preached and modelled. Even when affirmed by God, Jesus did not ignore the needs awaiting him down below.<o:p></o:p>

The healing of the child at the bottom of the hill symbolizes our own call to be disciples who can have these "God sightings" AND know how to live out a life shaped by the call to serve God and tend the needs of this world. We must remember that even in the blessings and joys of encountering God at work in the little and big things of this congregation's life are indeed blessings and joy, but they are also calls to serve. <o:p></o:p>Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-51630343220613405042017-02-16T09:09:00.002-08:002017-02-16T09:16:40.307-08:00Explorations in Baptist history: Adam Clayton Powell Senior

Rev Dr Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
(1865-1953)

In the history of New York City churches, surely the Abyssinian Baptist Church is among the great congregations to rise up and minister to the urban multitudes. Among their past ministers, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. is among the most visionary, leading the church to move to Harlem to replant the congregation in the midst of the neighborhoods changing rapidly with the influx of African Americans moving into the City as part of the Great Migration in the early 20th century.

Among those Powell influenced was a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose worldview was reshaped by hearing Powell's sermons and experiencing the ministry of Abyssinian during his brief sojourn in the United States. Certainly, many biographers connect Powell as a main motivator of Bonhoeffer's decision to return home to Germany as part of the resistance to Hitler and Nazi Germany. [A more in-depth study of the Bonhoeffer/Abyssinian connection is found in Reggie L. Williams' Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Baylor University Press, 2014).]

Powell was not without his detractors. In his award-winning book The New Abolition: WEB DuBois and the Black Social Gospel (Yale University Press, 2015), historian Gary L. Dorrien recalls Powell's challenges within the congregation and among his fellow African American Baptist clergy. Early on, he dealt with a faction of the church that wanted to bring back his predecessor, even going as far as to ensure the provided clergy housing was in a building across from the church and with a working brothel in the apartment above. The church was resistant to his vision to relocate the church out of mid-town Manhattan, even as Powell rightly predicted the shifts of the City's African American populace to Harlem.

As part of the social gospel movement of his time, Powell envisioned the church far more engaged in the community and dealing with social needs and challenges. Holding a meeting for potential stakeholders, Powell found stiff resistance among the one hundred black Baptist leaders, including "one minister [who] delivered a fifteen-minute tirade against the idea of a community center before asking what it was" (Dorrien, 438). Powell's vision of "a place where the people of the community could learn things and be together" did not match many clergy's vision of the church as a place for evangelism alone. All but eight of the visiting African American pastors declined further involvement with this project, leaving Powell primarily dependent on partnership with the then predominately Euro American organization the Baptist New York City Mission (presently known as the American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York, one of the ABCUSA's most diverse Regions).

Powell would found a food pantry, create programs and grow Abyssinian's presence in Harlem throughout his ministry. Nonetheless, the lack of support from his fellow pastors must have been painful. He did not seek further outreach to his black church colleagues for the next eleven years (Dorrien, 438).

While the social gospel is often associated readily among Baptists with Walter Rauschenbusch's body of writings, Powell incarnated the precepts of a progressive and evangelizing ministry in his many years at Abyssinian. Perusing the website of Abyssinian's current day ministries and mission, the legacy of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., is well evident (www.abyssian.org).

Powell credited his ministry and pastoral passion to the experience of growing up in difficult circumstances. At nineteen years old, Powell was living hard and playing hard as a miner in Rendville, Ohio. A chance encounter with a powerful preacher on a Sunday morning "sent an arrow of conviction to his heart" (Dorrien, 426). He credited his rediscovery of faith as a key element to his rising up from a troubled youth and becoming a pastor.

Particularly, Powell credited the mentorship of G. M. P. King, President of the Wayland Seminary and College (later known as Virginia Union University). Under King's influence, Powell recalled:

"To me, [King] possessed the magnetism of the polestar. His life radiated beauty, goodness, courage, honesty, truth and love. These virtues cannot be taught by words. They can only be imparted by a life which possesses them in abundance." (quoted by Dorrien, p. 427).

Exploring the life and legacy of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., we discover how a good mentor helped a young person connect with the ways that move many, not just the one, forward. Influenced by such a "polestar", Powell multiplied the gospel message through the many ministries coming out of Abyssinian and into the neighborhoods around Harlem and well beyond.

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NOTE: For more on the Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson conducted years of interviews and a great deal of research to author her Pultizer Prize winning book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of the Great Migration (Random House, 2010).

Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-14875586323132502122017-02-10T08:13:00.000-08:002017-02-10T08:15:22.027-08:00Learning to Breathe Again (Psalm 146)

<o:p>This Sunday morning, I am the guest preacher at a church in a time of pastoral transition. Led by a very able interim minister, the church has benefited from the careful time of being in discernment about its future and processing how it understands its identity, mission and its past history. </o:p>

<o:p>As a Region staff member involved with the pastoral search and call support to the church, I thought about the best text for the Sunday morning service with such a context outlined above. I opted to share a sermon around the 146th Psalm that calls us to praise and to remember to Whom we have our very breath--if we remember to breathe!</o:p>
<o:p></o:p>

When I moved from Kansas City to Bennington, Vermont, years ago for a new pastoral call, I joined the local Choral Society. It was the first time since college to be part of a choir singing really more demanding material. After the first night, I came home exhausted. We rehearsed for two full hours. While it was stimulating and engaging, my feet hurt from standing, my voice hurt from singing a few notes I had forgotten how to reach up above the comforts of the bass clef.<o:p></o:p>

One of the key elements of singing is whether you can breathe well. Finding the pitch, being able to carry a tune—these are helpful, but you also have to be able to breathe so that what you are trying to sing has adequate support. Good breathing skills are needed to sing, but they take practice, and that night in September, I realized how out of practice I had become with these skills. Nonetheless, to be able to keep up with the demands of singing the music well, you have to improve your breathing skills.<o:p></o:p>

When the psalms speak of praise of God, the ability to breathe is part of the act of praise. Praise and breathing are intertwined in the Psalms, and for good reason. The Hebrew Scriptures remind us, particularly in the Psalter, we breathe only because God has given us breath. <o:p></o:p>
  As the Creation narratives unfold, the book of Genesis refers to the wind and breath that enlivens Creation as that of the Spirit of God being imparted. Without God's activity, Creation has not come alive. In Genesis 1, the winds that move over the waters and the very act of bringing to life the first human is about God breathing life into Creation, humanity included. (Even the Hebrew word used for wind or breath as well as describing the Spirit of God, called by Christians as the Holy Spirit, is breathy in its pronunciation: ruach.) <o:p></o:p>

Thus, the 150th Psalm calls out, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord" reminding that all of Creation breathes together the same breath of life. Thus, the 140th Psalm's vision of God as "provider of all" refers to death as when God's breath is taken away such is the Psalter's notion of how dependent we humans are on God. Thus, the melancholy of the 144th Psalm as it refers to humans as those "who are like a breath; their days like a passing shadow". The Psalms come from a theological worldview that ties breath and life together as gifted to us by God. Thus, in turn, the act of praise comes about because we have breath, and especially when the created finally remember with all due reverence the Creator who has given us the breath! <o:p></o:p>

The failing of humanity, however, as the 146th Psalm puts it, is when we falter in remembering from where our praise and breath comes from. Psalm 146 gives a criticism here that should be noted: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day, their plans perish." The Psalmist offers a contrary word to the way things tend to work in this world. It is in God alone that we find our hope and trust.<o:p></o:p>

See the first two verses of Psalm 146. These are the type of verses of the Bible that you encourage people to memorize and keep close to heart: "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long." (Ps. 146:1-2) If you are able to keep these praises close to heart, and these "princes" or "powers that be" at arm's length, you have begun to live a more authentic life, getting away from those things that may seem to sound good now, but later and inevitably run out of air.<o:p></o:p>

The psalm turns us away from the foolishness of this world and reorients us to the way of life that helps us breathe again. The spiritual life is not just for emergencies only or the deeply pious. The Psalms are to accompany you by the bed stand, the dashboard, the cubicle at work, the places where you find a moment's respite, just as they have been there for ancient Israel and all those generations afterward who seek wisdom. In reorienting ourselves back to God, we remember that the only gift we have in this life, the only asset is life itself. What we make of it can be wonderment as well as disaster, but we are better off starting with the simplicity of the Psalm, geared to that which helps us breathe and give due praise rather than disdain or disregard to God.<o:p></o:p>

In my exploits of rejoining a choir, I found myself assigned to sing one of the solos during one of the programs. For most of us who sing but have no designs at being a professional, it's not just something you go out and belt out like it is American Idol. I found myself obsessing about number of last minute things. Moreover, I pray the worst not to happen: the unmanly thing of having your voice crack. The most important thing to remember: breathe. <o:p></o:p>

I started with the Choral Society as a way to have something beyond the church on a weekly basis. (Pastors need something like that. Some find it on the golf course. Others find it in the choir room.) Most weeks, I found myself dragging on the way there for a Monday night practice, wore out still from Sunday and frankly sometimes I found myself sometimes pondering, "Should I just go home and hide?" or worse, "Should I go back to the office and keep working?" (For others, you might find this a familiar conversation with yourself regarding going to the gym.)<o:p></o:p>

However, I kept going, just to give me something that does not involve the rigors of parish life. Ironically, the group sang mostly sacred music, but it is nice just to concentrate on the music without having to think of leading worship, answering email, and figuring several impossible parish matters out before breakfast, because the choral rehearsal is able to turn me back to praise. <o:p></o:p>

During most Monday rehearsals, I would go home with my feet hurting, my back hurting, my voice is weary, but at choir, I find myself breathing more easily. The same could be said for the work of ministry: feet hurt, back hurts, voice weary, but if I can learn to breathe, I'll find myself leaving behind stress and the seduction of "getting things done" or worse, trying to be "the best". Instead, I might just find myself getting around to the most important thing: praise.<o:p></o:p>

One other deft movement within this Psalm is also noted. While the Psalmist appeals to the individual to turn away from the tempting personal gain thought to be found in this life, the Psalmist reminds us of whom God is. It is not enough that God's people get themselves straightened out and reoriented to their own little journey in faith. It is also about being able to praise God, the One who is steadfast in support and care of those otherwise marginalized, usually by those same "princes" or "powers that be". The thing to keep in mind about the "powers" that try to get us to run our lives by their desire is this: they may not last, but their policies and practices can create a world of hurt for the less fortunate of the world that lasts sometimes over the generations. <o:p></o:p>

The God of Psalm 146 is deeply concerned with those who are less fortunate in this life: the oppressed are given justice; the hungry are fed; the prisoners are liberated; the blind are given sight; the righteous vindicated; the widow, the orphan, and the sojourner are tended. This is the song that ancient Israel and all the generations thereafter are called to sing. As Water Brueggemann says when ancient Israel, the community first called to this psalm's performance, takes up the Psalm of the day, "Israel sings, and we never know what holy power is unleashed by such singing". This sort of praise music is not for the faint of heart! <o:p></o:p>

God is not like that puff of air that disappears. God is steadfast, or "keeps the faith forever". Steadfast is a word that the Psalmist uses that you do not use lightly in the vocabulary of the Hebrew Scriptures. To be steadfast means to be undeterred and unshakeable. Again, the Psalmist revels in the irony of human life: we chase all manner of things, only to find that they, and even ourselves, are like a puff of wind. God, the very wind of Creation, is the only stability, and so, again, the Psalmist says, "Pay attention to what God cares about. It might tell you something."<o:p></o:p>

I encourage you to talk to one another about ways that you feel God calling you to breathe together as a church. When you catch your breath, it's often because you are winded, but it also helps you return to a time where balance can be restored. When a church has a pastor depart, it can be a time of breathlessness—anxiety, nerves and residual feelings left unprocessed as a pastor departs and the "what's next?" questions mix together. During your transition with Pastor Bill, he has encouraged you to think about these concerns and feelings, work through ways to address short-term and long-term needs, and to feel strengthened by the transition and its opportunities for change more than frightened or overwhelmed by them.<o:p></o:p>

You have done this because you have remembered to breathe. You have done this because you remembered to breathe together. You have done this because you know from Whom your very breath comes.

Let's sing our praises to the Lord! AMEN!
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-69299239418113646852017-02-03T08:03:00.002-08:002017-02-03T08:04:21.431-08:00Wise teachings to ponderReading the Sunday Gospel text, I recalled two different stories that have some connection with one another.

In the Matthew reading, Jesus is offering the crowds his Sermon on the Mount. Just after he gives the Beatitudes, Jesus says,

13"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16, NRSV)

In my ruminations, I recalled a bit of rabbinic lore that I believe has some parallels to the Gospel reading:

The rabbis tell a story about a student asking a teacher when it is dawn.

The student asks, "Is it dawn when you can see well enough to tell a sheep from a dog?"

"No," the rabbi said.

"Is it when it is light enough to tell one kind of tree from another?"

"No," the rabbi said. "It is when you can see the face of a stranger and recognize it in the face of a brother or sister. Until then, no matter how light it is, it is still very dark."
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-20397804079663469462017-01-28T16:42:00.000-08:002017-01-28T16:42:16.073-08:00Church and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) If you were to survey most Christians, I would imagine the Sermon on the Mount would rank up there as one most remembered of the gospels. Jesus has a crowd gathered, eager to hear his teaching. The scene could not be more appropriate: Jesus ascends to a place where he can speak to the masses. The little cues of Matthew's narration set up what is about to unfold. Jesus assumes the posture of teacher, sitting down, attended by his disciples, and then what sounds like a minor detail: he opens his mouth to speak. This phrase cues Matthew's reader that Jesus is one who speaks with authority, just like the "greats" who have gone before.
 Speaking with authority is a difficult concept for us nowadays. We live in the midst of a 24 hour news cycle, where matters of public discourse get turned into the grist mill of news commentary and pundits battling ideological differences, and then Stephen Colbert and others end the night, poking fun at the pundits. (They do not want for comedy-worthy material from either side of the fence.)
 Authority does not carry much weight. We live in a time of distrust that any authority has much good to say, or if it sounds good, such talk needs scrutiny. We look for bias. We presume a subtext at work. We frown, arms folded, skeptical that much good can come of this political speech or that ideological way of thinking.
 Jesus has gathered for a multitude with very little distrust. In fact, he seems to be rather harried with the adoration and praise. He has started his ministry, gathered some disciples, but the groundswell of people interested in hearing more and receiving his healing touch is overwhelming. He has struck a deep chord among the people of rural and coastal Galilee.

 Fast forward to the end of this story called "gospel", however, and you find that Jesus is alone, walking (as best he can) towards another place, one called "Golgotha", or that is, "the place of the skull". The crowds that are around him are mostly hostile. The disciples are nowhere to be found.
 It could be said that what he says up there on the Mount is the first of many things that will not sit well with his detractors. It is said that he is too controversial, too against the grain. It angers them enough to the point they conspire to get rid of him.
 Some people, called Christians, say that Jesus spoke with authority, unlike any other.
The Sermon on the Mount is part of that unusual message of Jesus. In these nine short sayings, Jesus begins his task of imagining a different sort of world. Imagine if you will that a major political speech began not with a critique of Wall Street, but with a story from a soup kitchen, or if a Congressional panel interviewed peace activists, rather than military generals, about the defense needs of the country. Yeah? I know, it sounds pretty far-fetched. While it is not part of the world as we know it, the Beatitudes proclaim it gladly.

 Here, we find that different world of the Beatitudes at work. For example, the grief-stricken are given promise of comfort. The earnest humble type will be received gladly into God's kingdom-reign. Those who live in fear of persecution will have safety. And the list goes on…..
The Beatitudes are an extension of what Jesus was first saying as his ministry began: "Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near". The crowds have gathered as Jesus has brought hope to the rural, mostly forgotten places of Galilee. He is willing to share this teaching beyond his "faithful" inner circle. Everyone is welcome to hear this word, yet the response will be mixed. Can we live in such a world as Jesus' beatitudes put forth?
 With Jesus' teachings, there is an innate tension between the present and the future. How will we be comforted from our grief? How will we feel vindicated when the world seems against us? How do we manage when there's not much hope to be found around us?

 The Beatitudes have a curious grammar. On one hand, Jesus names people who "are" in a certain predicament or live in a way less desirable to others (i.e. do you really want to be known as "meek" when the culture says, "be strong!"?). In the same breath, he draws them into the future, a much brighter, hopeful time. How hopeful is this future? It is astonishing!
How so? Let's again look at the meek. Imagine the quieter, less competitive type as the person ahead of you in the line to Heaven's gates. It goes against the story (or perhaps better said, myth) of life as we know it that you need to be aggressive and competitive to get ahead. Yet, Jesus says those who are not the best players of that sort of game, or who choose not to be, are the ones who "get ahead" in God's realm.
 In these beatitudes, Jesus is reshaping our expectations of what the future holds. For those who feel like perpetual students of "the School of Hard Knocks", there will be a reckoning, and for once, it will be one you want to come about! The burdensome issues of the present shall give way to a future where the playing field is level, and a truly peaceable kingdom, one remarkably unlike Rome, shall reign.
 The grammar of the Beatitudes is subversive. We are given a vision of the future as God will bring it about. Jesus also intends for those hearing these beatitudes to work in the here and now as if that future is the pattern we follow in our present day actions. We live as a people who decline to give in and let the "lesser" folks or the forgotten or the bereft or the condemned or the unjustly treated be left to arbitrary treatments. The Beatitudes swing back and forth between "what will be" and "what we need to get things to be".
 In our most common English translations, the Beatitudes describe various people in crisis getting their liberating word about God's future for them by being called "blessed". In truth, the concept underlying the Greek word Jesus uses (Gk. makarios) is better translated as "esteemed" or "honored". The persons who have already lost the most stand to gain greatly, not only in alleviation of their predicaments or impoverishment but in their standing in the kingdom that shall last: the kingdom of God. "Esteemed are those who grieve" or "honored are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" places a different spin on the Beatitudes. The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann claims that such teachings of Jesus highlight the gospel's belief in "the dignity of the poor" (The Way of Jesus Christ, pp. 99-102). When Jesus pronounces blessings upon the vulnerable, he also provides a word about how strong the "weak" shall be when the Kingdom of God draws near. Without these esteemed and honored peoples, the Kingdom/Reign cannot live up to its potential (cf. Moltmann, 101-2). Such a far cry from the world where those perceived as "weak" are marginalized or tossed aside.
 A few years back, I became acquainted with a pastor who serves an American Baptist congregation in Florida. The church named itself the "Church of the Beatitudes". It is known as one of the few ABC/USA congregations in Florida. It is also known for its commitments to the community, social justice, and its stand with those less fortunate. Over the years, the congregation has grown into the name they chose all those years ago. They became who they called themselves to be. They endeavor to be the followers that Jesus was looking for when he gave these beatitudes long ago.
 Sometimes, we Baptists name our congregations based on a variety of factors. "Second Baptist" can mean they were the second one to form, or in many cases, the first one to split off of the "First" Baptist congregation. (We have a habit of church planting by way of church split.) Other times, we name a church based on a neighborhood or a community name (I used to serve a Kansas City congregation named Brenner Heights.) A few Baptist churches are named after noteworthy people (i.e. there are more than a few "Judson Baptist Churches", so named after the renowned missionary).
 Curiously enough the same challenge is given to each congregation, regardless of its name or even its denomination. For those who follow Christ, the question arises about the Beatitudes: will you be part of the proclaiming of Christ's word? Do you live alongside those considered inconsequential by larger society? Is your faith community a place where dignity is understood to be granted without exception by God, and not by whatever prevailing societal politics or ecclesiastical polity might say? Each congregation that follows the gospel has to ask itself whether or not it is also "a church of the Beatitudes".Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-46631311747508504592017-01-20T08:29:00.001-08:002017-01-24T12:22:45.454-08:00Adventures in Repenting (Matthew 4:12-23)

"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."
These words of Jesus come at the end of a very long introduction to Jesus and his identity as the Son of God and Messiah. Up until this passage, Matthew's gospel has been largely about "setting the stage": a lengthy genealogy with all those names from the Bible, meant to show Jesus as the culmination of God's long involvement and investment in human history, as told by Israel. (Really, that list is one of those passages we all hope isn't scheduled the Sunday when you have to read scripture. As we used to say back home when lists of tongue-twisting names came up in the readings, we would say, "And there were people".)

After the "begats and begots", then it seems a bit like Christmas, telling the story of magi wandering over the territory and Herod conniving to assuage his insecurities about competition, if it weren't for that dreamer named Joseph who navigated the difficult social and political challenges of a miraculously pregnant virgin wife in a stone-throwing society and a royal court not beneath slaughtering innocents to protect the king's petty fears.

Then it's the pyrotechnics of baptism, as John the Baptist chastens the masses with his call to conversion and then gets a shock when it's time to baptize Jesus. It's not just every day when the heavens open, a dove comes down and James Earl Jones does the voice over. Toss in forty days and forty nights of testing and temptation out in the desert (dude with pitchfork included), you'd think the prelude is most of the story, yet the gospel is just getting underway.

Jesus steps to the center of the stage and in one short sentence, summarizes what has come before and what is just about to unfold. The agenda and the tone for the gospel are set in these ten words, inviting those who listen to consider a new way of looking at the world and themselves. These ten words constitute a challenge to those 'kingdoms' of the earth that their power and interests are not the timetable that Jesus and his followers will be living out their lives. It's the beginning of a story that continues to this day, the story of Jesus and those who would follow him.

Despite what you might think, the first word, repent, is all about a journey getting underway. When I hear the word, I usually think of how the word is used among those who I would call the "evangelically strident", Christians who use the word with a bit of edge in their voice. When living in Kansas City, I would see them occasionally at a prominent traffic stop, walking up and down the street with microphone cords trailing back to small amplifiers. The word "repent" was oft-used in the 30 seconds one might spend waiting for the light to change, and your lane of traffic just starting to get underway. Such fervor really did not make much of an impression on most people waiting in traffic. They sat there, trapped by the red light, trying not to make eye contact with the street preachers, perhaps cranking up their car stereo to drown out the preaching.

The word "repent" gets a bad rap, thanks to the sometimes artless ways the word is communicated. Shorn of interpretative baggage usually framed by images of "sorrow and remorse", the New Testament word "repent" by itself is quite a powerful word, as the word Jesus uses in the gospels (Gk metanoia) means "to change the direction of one's life" ("Matthew", New Interpreter's Bible). Such a concept asks much of the believer, yet such a concept can be that lifeline we have been looking for, a word that gets in edgewise of the "stuck" feelings we have about our lives, or when we dare to engage possibilities previously unexplored in our lives. To repent is less the image of the penitent coming forward at a revival's altar call. To repent in the metanoia sense means that you've decided to go a different path with your life. Repenting means you ain't going back to the way things used to be, and you couldn't be more satisfied with this new direction.

Could we think of "repenting" as the best thing that ever happened to you? I recall a guest preacher at our seminary chapel. As he spoke of repentance as "change", he would talk about things that kept us down and then through a positive change in one's life, how one could feel renewed or unburdened when making good choices about how one lives life. He flourished it with a little leap in the pulpit, left to right, speaking of ways one lived before and then after repentance took place. Making that leap, that change is indeed an occasion for feeling like life has stopped getting too heavy for its own good. In joy, we can change our attitudes and habits, our sense of feeling stuck or unmoored. Repentance is the beginning of an adventure you would not have found yourself on otherwise. To repent is literally a transformative act

For the Christian believer, to repent means turning one's life to the way of Jesus. Rather than wearing oneself down running the well-trodden path of the rat race, the Christian seeks to trace her way through the contours and questions of the gospel. Reading one's way through Matthew's gospel, you encounter a variety of people who decided to follow Jesus rather than stay in the midst of what they knew, even those things in life they were most comfortable doing. Matthew gives up tax collecting, a life of easy money by extortion and graft, taking up the way of Jesus, who said "you should love your neighbor as yourself" and that the poor are the most blessed in God's eyes. (Don't we all wish the IRS repented in such a manner?) Peter's headstrong attitude is given a test when he realizes he cannot walk on water.

Repentance stretches a person, as you continue down a path that you could not have previously imagined. To choose repentance, the decision to reshape one's life, is necessary if one is to choose Jesus. Over the next few Sundays, we'll hear the Sermon on the Mount as our reading from the gospel. As we shall see, teachings that seem "simple" will ask very hard questions of persons as they live in the tension of the world's ways and the ways of Jesus.

This mindset is needed if you are to live in the kingdom of Heaven. To live as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is to live in tension with the kingdoms of the world, especially those to whom you would otherwise claim close allegiance. Matthew's gospel warns a follower of Jesus about maintaining a too-familiar relationship with the kingdoms of Herod and Rome.

This kingdom of heaven shall be a different sort of reign, where local demagogues (i.e. Herod who just hauled John the Baptist off to certain misery and death) and even the ones ruling from Rome are going to be declared second fiddle to this movement called "the kingdom of Heaven". Jesus selecting fishermen as some of his first followers demonstrates the "otherness" of the Kingdom of Heaven raising up those that the Empire and Herod's court exploited and disregarded.

In turn, those following Jesus' way are called to be just like him, living out his teachings and calling others to do likewise. The disciple will be not only evangelizing the good news, the disciple will be the example for why Jesus' teachings matter. In other words, a repenting and faithfully following Christian has many difficult choices to make about how to live faithfully in the world.

Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas suggests that we have a choice: are we admirers of Jesus or followers of Jesus? Admirers might like Jesus from afar, yet followers are the ones who take up the Cross and follow the way of Jesus. To illustrate, Hauerwas recounts a story from Clarence Jordan, a Baptist who worked for desegregation in 1950s era Georgia.

Jordan led a group of people committed to racial integration, living as an intentional community in Americus, Georgia. When his religious community experienced some legal problems, Jordan approached his brother who was a lawyer. Jordan's brother refused as it might harm his law practice and his political aspirations. In their argument over the matter, Clarence pointed out that the two of them joined the Baptist church on the same Sunday when they were boys. Clarence wondered if his brother had missed something along the way about Jesus being his Lord and Savior. Jordan wanted his brother to answer this question: Do you just admire Jesus or do you follow Jesus?  (Cf. Hauerwas, Matthew, p. 57).

A man walks down the shoreline and summons fishermen to follow him. They leave their lives behind and follow. Were these fishermen in their right minds? What sort of religion asks for such commitment without it veering off from "faith" to some type of fundamentalism or cult-like behavior?

How do ordinary folks like you and me claim to follow rather than admire Jesus? The gospel narrative offers puzzling questions and leaves unsettling questions within us. Is it bravery or bravado that one makes when choosing to follow Christ?

How does one repent and live to tell about it?Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-3417225134891049912017-01-13T06:10:00.002-08:002017-01-13T06:10:29.042-08:00Remembering the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.This Monday, the legacy and witness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is celebrated as a civic holiday around the United States this Monday. And it's more than "one day" alone. For many churches and other religious and civic groups, the "MLK Weekend" is a time for advocacy, prayer, marching and initiatives promoting volunteerism and community building.

From my earlier days as a bookstore clerk, I know early January is the target date for many publishers to release their latest "King" related book. Such releases are timed to educate and help readers enter into the tumult of the Civil Rights Era through the lens of scholarly retrospect and the efforts of a multitude of biographers and writers inspired by King to engage his thought while offering contemporary critique of what parts of the "Dream" have yet to be realized or are in danger of retrogression.

Personally, I gravitate toward reading again the modern epistle to America written by Dr. King while sitting in a jail cell. The "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" speaks like the rest of the King corpus of sermons, interviews, writings and speeches: searing words meant to evoke the prophets of old while not letting today's generation off the hook (that of King's day and those we live these days). Here is one of the many links to the full letter online so you can read it as well: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

In particular, I recall a section where King engages in a matter of rightly remembering the past. Too often, we tend to yearn for nostalgia and forget how things really played out, especially for those marginalized by the victor's narrative. King preaches to the choir here, calling his fellow Christians to remember rightly:

"There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century...."

Powerful words from the 1960s continue to summon the Church and society alike. Ponder with me what it means to be part of the faithful these days. And do not keep Martin's legacy "past tense" (or worse yet, only remembered once per year with a service of worship or honored by just a single day of service). Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-28124074453920919962017-01-06T07:42:00.001-08:002017-01-09T06:24:27.158-08:00The Difference of Being Baptized (Acts 10)

Stained glass panel,
First Presbyterian, Nebraska City, NE
SOURCE: goo.gl/BImSJe

 The baptism of the Lord is a day set aside to recall the story of Jesus' own baptism. I find it remarkable that Baptists, of all the different Christian traditions, have not kept this day as a day to celebrate in worship life until fairly recently.

 After all, the day celebrates the importance of baptism to the New Testament church, and our very name as a tradition comes from our historic commitment to baptism as "believer's baptism". That is, we affirm the baptism of persons by immersion and at an age where the person makes his or her own decision to believe in and follow Jesus. Observing the day in the Church year given to remembering this ritual so closely tied to our history and heritage is a most appropriate and fitting thing for Baptists to do.

 That being said, while we are a people who have been seeking an understanding of "church" patterned after the ways of the New Testament church, we have made some adjustments over the years.

 Today, it is more customary for a person being baptized by a Baptist church to be baptized inside. (An Episcopal friend from college claimed the Baptists have "holy hot tubs".) Previously, many churches I have known had a history of outdoor baptisms down the way, even during the Northeast's cold, "cut a hole in inches-thick ice" winter. (Of course, if one wanted to go "old school" and be baptized in the river this month, it would be a test of discipleship….)

 Baptist churches differ when it comes to membership, some who welcome Christians baptized in other traditions and even by the "other" way of baptism (i.e. "sprinkling"), and other congregations steadfast in their practices that you must be baptized by immersion only to be a member. Ironically, while the Baptist tradition can be described as a people in search of the New Testament church, we might forget that the churches of the New Testament era were constantly being surprised by the Spirit, whom sends the faithful often in varying directions. What seems "settled" can be "unsettled by the Spirit of God.

 That's where we find Peter in today's reading. The confident leader is tossed into the deep end of the unexpected. In the gospels, Peter is lifted up among the disciples, told by Jesus he is "the rock" upon which the Church will be built, a central figure in the gospel stories. Yet, here is the "rock" himself, an original follower of Jesus, finding himself less the sure church leader and more like his earlier days, when thinking himself able to walk out onto the waters. Indeed, he's in the middle of a situation that has thrown him into the deep end.

 Our reading today is just one part of a longer story about Peter of the inner circle and the one that should have been the odd man out: a Roman centurion. Cornelius has become a God-fearer, that is, someone who has taken great stock in the religious beliefs of Israel. Hearing the gospel, Cornelius wishes to follow Jesus and be baptized. Indeed, he wants his entire household to become baptized.
 The problem? He is a Gentile, aka "an outsider" or in more modern terms, "the other".

 Now, Peter, the great confident orator at the Day of Pentecost, finds himself fumbling for words. What he has taken for granted (the faith is only for Jews and not non-Jews, i.e. Gentiles) was not the final word. Even a gospel is spreading to the ends of the earth, the Church's boundaries are being tested.
 Reading Acts 10, we hear first of Cornelius when the centurion sends word that he would like to have Peter come to his house. Peter is a bit puzzled, though he is told that Cornelius is a friendly person to the faith. Up on the rooftop, Peter experiences a strange vision. In this vision, a sheet descends from the sky, and Peter sees a variety of animals. A voice tells Peter "to kill and eat" what he sees. Peter is hesitant, as among the animals are those that he does not eat to keep religious purity, or kosher laws. Three times, this vision comes to him. Each time, Peter hesitates. How could this be?
 Now at Cornelius' home, the puzzle pieces are starting to fall together. God has brought together this Gentile from Rome and this one-time fisherman from backwater Galilee. Cornelius is not to be left out of the gospel's good news. What had been a "given" about the faith was not "the last word". Again and again, as the Church finds its identity in the book of Acts, the Spirit keeps shifting the direction of the early Christians, unsettling what might have been thought settled once and for all.
 So it is now with Peter, beginning to do what is familiar (preaching the gospel) while learning on the fly what is changing about the faith. In fact, Peter admits as much. In the Greek text of Acts 10:34, one scholar renders Paul's words: "In truth, I am grasping that God is no respecter of appearances" (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina, Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, p. 188). Here, the book of Acts emphasizes how Peter "is just now grasping or coming to understand" (p. 191) the implications of what is coming to pass. It is one thing to realize what God is doing. It is quite another to realize that it changes what you have taken for granted.

 Peter, whose mind had been stretched by the parables and teachings of Jesus, is now experiencing another challenge, brought to bear on his own sense of the boundaries of faith. Gentiles could express faith in the God of Israel, the same God whose prophets claimed would be drawn to the light of Jerusalem's glory, yet deep down, Peter shared a degree of religious skepticism that Gentiles had much worth beyond these lofty ideals. Now, the visions coming to Peter and Cornelius alike were the beginnings of a greater dream: the gospel that goes well beyond the understandings of the faithful. Writing in the mid-20th century, Southern Baptist scholar Frank Stagg observed, "There are those who continue to say that Peter opened the door to the Gentiles. It would be closer to the truth to say that the Gentiles opened a door to the larger world for Peter." (Quoted in Barr, et al, The Acts of the Apostles: Four Centuries of Baptist Interpretation, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009, p. 486).

 Over the centuries, the story of Cornelius and Peter has been a wonderful tale of evangelism and a cautionary tale for the faithful. The gospel goes forth, even if the "Church" lags behind out of disregard or disdain. Baptist history is likewise a testament to the contrary word of the gospel to the sometimes reticent body of believers to open the doors too far, lest "those people" get in.

 On one hand, Baptist history reminds us of how severely early Baptists were considered outsiders and made to feel unwelcome by other Christians for holding less popular beliefs and practices. An early Free Will Baptist traveling evangelist John Colby, a native to Vermont and New Hampshire, traveled across New England and subsequently "out west" (back then, the "frontier" was Indiana) on preaching tours in the early 19th century. In his memoirs, Colby recalled a particularly one preaching engagement where most of us would have left discouraged. Persons showed up to make his visit to a certain neighborhood very difficult, including locking one place he was to speak to a crowd and then hiding the key. Colby's opponents did not wish to let this preacher come into their town, as Baptist evangelists were not considered legitimate enough clergy bringing a message deemed worth hearing.

 In the midst of such difficulty, Colby persevered, recalling earlier that same week when he had the pleasure of baptizing four young men who heard his word gladly. On that occasion, he referred to Acts 10:34-35. While his memoirs do not record his sermon that day, Colby recalls that he felt empowered to speak "with more than common freedom of mind", a remarkable witness to the Spirit who kept his spirit moving forward, in times of great success and times of great adversity. Colby's memoirs witness to Acts 10 as a text about Christians learning to welcome the gospel, even as some within the Church find themselves struggling to grasp that God is more inclusive than sometimes "the faithful" can envision. (This excerpt from Colby's story is referenced in Barr, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 475-6.)

 As we gather this day to recall the baptism of the Lord, Baptists celebrate what makes our tradition's name so important: the call to follow Jesus and to be baptized ourselves, to give continuing assent to the way of Christ. Baptists celebrate baptism as a turning away from our sinfulness and living out our lives as faithful witnesses to the gospel. So it is that we find ourselves in the midst of a local congregation, yearning to be with other believers and involved in the task of working together to serve the Lord. Baptism signifies our desire for new life in Christ while it also levels the playing field that the world (and yes, even religion itself) prefer to keep more of an obstacle course that only the "right type" of people can traverse. Bradley Chance, a contemporary Baptist biblical scholar, notes that in Acts 10 "the system of categorization" has changed. Previously, it "would have discouraged Peter from associating with the 'other' peoples" (quoted Barr, et al., The Acts of the Apostles, p. 501). What does it mean to follow God with such an expansiveness to divine welcome and inclusion? Such a story from Acts 10 should be remembered, not forgotten, when we feel challenged by the stranger at our gate, the person who does not readily appear to fit in with "us" (and therefore is known as one of "them").

 The baptism of Jesus points to the new order being brought about in the Kingdom-Reign of God. The gospel is given to the whole world in all its diversity, bringing together into one body the many. In the search for "New Testament church", we might find ourselves looking for some sort of "good ole days when things were better", when in reality, the book of Acts shows us that even in our earliest days, the Christian faith was being schooled by the Spirit of God, who knows no partiality and presses us to keep our vision of "faith" and "church" ever flexible, ever humble, and ever expanding.Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-74145986252345003482016-12-27T07:46:00.002-08:002016-12-27T07:54:39.597-08:00Navigating the World (Matthew 2:1-12)

Years back in The Christian Century, religious commentator Rodney Clapp whimsically recounts his experiences with a Tom-Tom GPS unit. Global positioning systems (GPS) can be a travel aide for long car trips and the directionally challenged. Like all technology, the GPS units can create complication while designed for ease of use. Clapp tells how the Tom-Tom GPS is capable of leading him right to his destination as surely as the GPS "got [him] lost in a tangle of new lanes and one-way streets in harborside Miami. And for a long, amusing stretch of rural Texas, it pictured [him] rocketing at 80 miles per hour through rivers and across wheat fields parallel to the highway on which [he] was actually traveling."

For his amusement, Clapp reprogrammed his GPS to speak with the voice of British comedian John Cleese. When making a turn, Cleese instructs, "At the next exit, bear right, beaver left". Upon arrival Cleese says, "You have now arrived at your destination and are on your own—I will not carry your bags".

Rodney Clapp writes, "Even as we jet over oceans and view live TV transmissions from the other side of the world, we are more parochial than the ancients in one way. We have lost the sky." Clapp notes how the US Navy no longer teaches celestial navigation, or sailing by the stars. We twenty-first century folks have precision technology to figure our bearings, though in the process, Clapp fears "we have lost our attention to the sky". In his essay, Clapp recalls how the sky was so integral to generations past. He notes various stories about the constellations told by ancient Greeks, medieval Europeans, and Native Americans. The stars engaged the human imagination in ways Clapp feels is dissipating as GPS units keep our gaze on latitude and mileage, rather than searching out the Little Dipper for directions as well as wonder.

Clapp wonders, "Could the Magi have located the Christ child with modern navigational technology?" In one sense, yes, they could have programmed their GPS to guide them from somewhere in Persia, where it was presumed they traveled, to Bethlehem, provided they knew that was where they would wind up at journey's end. The GPS could have told them which way to ride their camels, even where to find a decent inn while on layover in Jerusalem. The GPS could even insult them in the voice of John Cleese: "At the next exit, you will arrive at your destination—the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, God Incarnate, yea, verily, the only begotten son of Almighty God. And, please bear in mind—I will NOT carry your myrrh."

In answering Clapp's question, the gospel writer Matthew responds a polite "no". The Magi made their travels as a sort of religious pilgrimage. They did not know where this star would take them, only that their readings of astrological signs and portents suggested royalty was about to be born. Such a worldview sounds a bit archaic to us, the stuff of legends, which speaks to Clapp's observation. In today's world, Matthew's readers presume a world where precision navigation is the norm, and the Magi's trip might strike a twenty-first century reader as a wild goose chase.

The story of the Magi asks us to think about the ways we see the world. One person can see a star and look away with indifference. Another person can write poetry. See Robert Frost's poem "Take Something Like a Star", wherein the poet beholds a star and starts trying to understand the star, eventually chastened to reverence by the star's ability simply to be

"Say something!" the poet demands. The celestial response is terse and enigmatic. "And it says, 'I burn.'" Thus, the poet rails,

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

The poet soon realizes there is something more to be learned from a star than he first thought possible. He writes of the star:

It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
to carry praise or blame too far,
we may take something like a star
to stay our minds on and be staid.

Matthew's gospel makes it clear this is a devotional journey. The Magi model the reverence due the Christ child, providing a subtle counterpoint to Herod's paranoid jealousies. The wise men travel from a far distance, while Herod prowls his throne room. The Magi are outsiders to the religious worldview of first century Judaism, yet they, not the people, and certainly not their king, are the ones paying homage. The Magi arrive to pay their respect, whereas Herod uses the full might of his court to reign death down upon countless innocents, as he fears the Magi's word that competition has been born somewhere in his territories. While Herod sees nothing good has come of this, the Magi fall on their knees and as the King James Version puts it, "pay him homage".

The Magi see above the petty world of Herod the mysterious hand of God at work in the world. To travel so far and to carry such extravagant gifts is not an act of checking out the competition. The Magi did not subscribe to local religious customs themselves, but they knew an event of great significance was unfolding. As part of Matthew's gospel, their presence in the narrative reminds that even the outsider or those persons society deems contrary can see something new is at hand.

When the Magi find themselves at their long-awaited destination, they celebrate the little child. Most folks would find it puzzling, such a journey to find greatness ends with a wee boy in a backwater town. The magi started out upon their journey searching for a king. They found the current demagogue in Jerusalem, a bully whose moodiness kept an entire city on edge. Others might wonder why the Magi opted to risk Herod's wrath by failing to report back as requested and heading home. In the graceful words of the King James Version, a vision prompts them "to go home by another way".

This story of the Magi's long, strange journey offers a redemptive word. We are journeyers along the path of life. In our daily lives, we navigate all manner of terrain, some not even remotely geographical. We navigate our identity as persons of means (some, much, and not much), as persons who live in this country and may or may not see the global privilege U.S. citizens enjoy at the expense of other countries. We are people who live on varying footings with those around us, as no one enjoys a completely level playing field in society. Our gender, racial/ethnic or social identities cause us to find doors open or closed to us on a regular basis. Some people help us get where our dreams hope to go. Other people take pleasure in hindering us. We travel miles to achieve things in our lives that others simply find right at the taking at their first opportunity. Add to this mix our journey of faith, and it gets even more complex. Faith complicates things as our religious values often ask us to take detours or roads less traveled (a little homage to Frost there). Sometimes, our beliefs embolden us to go places off the map. Like the Magi, our faith can prompt us to go home by another way.

The gospel itself welcomes the earnest outsider like the Magi reeking of frankincense or another one with an aching back from lugging a chest of gold. The gospel welcomes an earnest mother who says "yes" to God, despite the public shaming sure to follow. The carpenter Joseph who dreams like his namesake in Genesis and likewise follows those dreams with due reverence. The gospel helps us see where the truth lies in the world: that riddle called Jesus. A baby who sleeps, eats, learns to crawl then toddle, who all the while is God incarnate.

For the first time, we see a pathway unfolding before us, one not on any map produced by Rand-McNally or calculated by GPS. Whether swaddled in the manger, spinning a parable before the multitudes, eating and drinking with his beloved at table, Jesus offers a new pathway through this world, a new map for how we are to live in this world and treat one another. In hearing these narratives, we learn to see with new eyes. We see the futility of those who have worldly power as well as the magnificent vulnerability of God found in Christ Jesus.

Some might call it a wild goose chase.

Others might say that we have found our bearings, heading for home.Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-22010967866333785442016-12-16T12:29:00.003-08:002016-12-16T12:29:59.283-08:00Advent 4: The Guy Off in the Corner (Matthew 1:18-25)

Where does Joseph fit into the Nativity story?

 It should have been different. By "different", actually it should have been the predictable way. This way, well….it was not the most commendable of stories to get around town. A young virgin finds herself in a family way, and well, people start talking about all manner of things. "Virgin birth" is most decidedly NOT among the suggestions. Instead, it's a bit of a scandal, a whisper campaign about to get underway. It is improper, inappropriate, and most importantly, difficult to explain away.
 I wonder about Joseph. He's been around town for years, yet right now, he feels as if under friendly fire. He's the subject of curious stares, hostile looks, and the occasional salacious and conspiratorial wink. He does not return any of these jibes or criticisms. Instead, he holds his head high.
 So, is he a proud man or a fool trying desperately to save the remaining shred of dignity and decorum he has left?

 The Bible is rife with stories of rogues and scoundrels. Jacob, the trickster, occupies much of Genesis, getting in and out of trouble with as much talent for getting out of it as he does getting into it. Abraham, the great patriarch, is a complex figure. Read the whole Abrahamic cycle of stories and you'll find a guy that might look good in a Sunday school quarterly but really is not that out of place with the great flawed figures of other literary works. The list could go on, but we need to keep our "G" rating for the Sunday morning worship service.

 Among this checkered history of the people of God and the reality God still used these people, despite their failings and flaws, Joseph really is a dull figure. He does not have any great faults or failings. In fact, he's an astonishingly graceful character, not wanting any fuss and more important, any harm to come to this young woman now on the cusp of public shunning.
 Joseph wants to do the right thing. He'll likely take heat for it. The conservatives in the community will be likely disparaging him around the clock as if a hapless politician in a modern cable news channel's crosshairs. He's going to lose face, but he has decided quietly in his own way that it's all right.

 Yet alas, we tend to forget Joseph in the manager scene.

 When I worked for Cokesbury (back in its long gone brick and mortar days), we would assemble several Nativity sets for display (and hopefully purchase) to show our customers. We tried our best to offer a variety of Nativity sets from around the world, each beautiful in their own way, the product of hard working artisans getting a better deal through a Fair Trade cooperative.
 I remember well the great debate the store staff had over one such Nativity set from overseas. We unboxed the set and realized that each piece was hand carved stone, and not one piece had a great deal of detailing. Thus, was this lump of stone a shepherd or a king? Poor Joseph, though, was the hardest to identify. He had no staff in hand or crown on his head. Instead, Joseph was deemed to be the only piece that did not seem to have any other purpose than to be "the odd man out" in the Nativity of roughly fashioned angels, sheep, shepherds, kings, and animals.

 It can be an odd situation in life: being the honorable type that still goes without notice. The little guy tends to be lost in the shuffle, the guy who just does the right thing year round because that's the way he's wired. There's no desire for attention or credit. No, that type just quietly makes sure that the good is taken care, regardless of the time or season.

 Garrison Keillor celebrates that type of person in his ongoing stories of life in small town Minnesota. The typical Minnesotan in Keillor's stories tends toward a near allergic reaction to pride, attention, or notice. The "look at me" tendency of our human nature appears to be replaced by the raspy voice of an old Lutheran waving off the cheers with a word of "Ah, shucks, guys, it was nuthin', don't ya know" and then he passes you the plate of lutefisk.

 The story of the birth of Jesus could have ended before it started, primarily in the shunning of Mary, or worse, the type of punishment common in the day's culture, which again, once described, goes beyond the "G" rating we tend to classify "Bible stories" under.

 Yet it is Joseph and Mary alike who say "yes" to the call of God to bring into the world the Christ child. Despite the rigors of pregnancy and childrearing, despite the tenuous navigation of a culture's purity understandings, this couple works through a difficult situation. The old spiritual sings, "Mary had a baby", and the gospel writer responds, "And Joseph and Mary raised him right!"

 At this point in the Advent season, you know Christmas is just around the corner. Perhaps you just got around to putting up your tree. Others may be so busy that they do not realize that Christmas is just next week. (And retail stores are standing by in hopes you will come by and buy them out of everything!)
 For pastors, the Fourth Sunday of Advent can seem the less important item on the "To Do" list with all of the other Christmas festivities to help plan and lead. I remember spending more time figuring out how to wrangle unruly kids for a Christmas pageant than I did for a sermon one year. Bringing peace to the Middle East may be easier than dealing with a six year old shepherd ready to use his staff over the head of a wise man.
 I remember sitting in my pastor's office, trying to figure things out, and there sitting in a chair was the Fourth Sunday of Advent. She looked rather calm, just sitting there and grinned at me real big.
 I could not understand why the Fourth Sunday of Advent looked so serene and pleased with itself. "Why are you so happy? Don't you see that I'm in the middle of a great big week? I have a sermon to preach, and yet there's countless other things taking up my attention right now. Can't you tell I need help?"
 Advent 4 just laughed. "Did you look at the Matthew reading yet?"
 "No, I'm too busy. Got to get things done."
 "Well, make sure you read that passage," this Sunday said. "You'll thank me." Then, it went back to reading its magazine.

 Later, I sat down during a quiet moment in the office and pulled out a Bible. I found the passage for Matthew, and I could see why the Fourth Sunday of Advent looked so serene.
 There, in the midst of a story about life seeming to go haywire, off the map, or getting dreadfully difficult, the angel of the Lord appears. In the midst of the seeming chaos and turmoil, the angel tells what this baby ought to be called.
 "Call him Emmanuel, or that is, God with us."

 God with us….In the midst of life, in the midst of trying times and challenge, in the midst of mourning a loss that we likely bear for what is best described as a season, the faith we try our best to keep revolves around this radical assumption that God humbly(!) dwells with us.

 God with us….Nothing, not a thing about human life is exempt or beneath the Christ. Indeed, Jesus knows the fullness of being human just as surely as he was divine. Jesus does not check out early or take the easy path around pain and suffering. Jesus even dies. Talk about God with us!
 The story we tell of Jesus is shaped by the pattern of life, death, and resurrection. We might forget that story's full "arc" (i.e. to understand Jesus is to understand that he does not ever check out of life experience). Preacher Fred Craddock has quipped, most of us, when we think of life and death, we hope that when our time comes, we can call in sick (Sorry, we're not coming in today!) or take an incomplete on the test.

 I suspicion if there's any good connection between the gospel reading and the harried pace of this week, with its mourning and its scrambling to get everything "just right" in time, it is this assurance that God is with us, no matter what might befall or bedevil. After all, Jesus did not exempt himself from the fullness of life. He lived, he cried, he got angry, he hungered, he mourned, he dreamed, he spoke out, he loved his family and friends.

 I know that we tend to look at a child and say (sometimes with delight, and sometimes with disdain), "Yep, he's just like his mother", or "Yep, she reminds me of her daddy". I know poor Joseph does not get much credit (after all, he only appears around Christmas, then just disappears from the gospels after the first chapters). I think, though, that there's something of Joseph in Jesus, not that it would be DNA. Instead, we see a bit of that dreamer, who always sought out how to do the right thing, how to open his heart and mind to God's good intent, with trust, obedience, and a whole lot of concern that he managed to do the right thing.

 In the midst of the Advent season, nearing the Christmas Eve celebrations, in the midst of family gatherings, in the midst of times of mourning, loneliness, or hardship (cause the holidays do not exempt us from such experiences), we are a people in search of what it means to live life well, or at least how to get through today or this week.

 And the fourth Sunday of Advent, perhaps overshadowed by the holiday rush and the rush to get things done, just politely reminds us: "Don't forget: What you are feeling now is not lost on God. In fact, God decided to get down in the trenches with us.

 When the angel says, 'call him Emmanuel', the angel meant just that."Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-11442670780104958522016-12-09T18:43:00.000-08:002016-12-11T05:57:42.945-08:00Advent 3: Singing the (Advent) Blues (Matthew 11:2-11)

A recent Broadway play begins with its first scene depicting a conversation between an old man and a young woman. The young woman is applying to be the caretaker for the man's aging and very difficult wife. Interestingly, the old man appears only in the opening scene. For the rest of the three hour drama told in three acts, the old man does not appear again. Why that happens would be giving away much of the plot that is about to unfold. Suffice it to say, despite the brevity of his appearance on the stage, the old man sets the tone for the play about to unfold.

Likewise, John the Baptist appears at the beginning of the text, the wild eyed and boisterous herald of the Messiah. It is great fun to read these texts, as John electrifies the Gospel early on. When he roars about "broods of vipers" or growls about the unrepentant being tossed aside, he leaves the audience wide awake. He sets the tone, and then Jesus begins to take center stage.

 Today's gospel is somewhere in the middle of the gospel. Jesus is spinning parables, performing healings, and his ministry gaining notoriety. Then the gospel writer brings the lights up on a side stage, a little set with a chair and a small wash basin. Slumped in the chair, the figure is the image of defeat. As the lights come up, you realize it is John the Baptist, though not as you remembered him from earlier.

The firebrand John the Baptist sits now in jail, the prophetic spark seems near extinguished. He spoke a powerful word; he baptized the multitudes, even baptized Jesus himself. Yet, here he is, the forerunner, nearing the end of the race.

 Look closely at this once charismatic figure. Is there a tin cup in his hand, that type you can clink on the bars and yell for the guard to remember to feed you? No, John seems to be the model prisoner, a model one if you are the warden, who wants to keep his charges in line. John makes very little conversation. He sits there in his cell and just seems to be waiting. Not much to look forward about. The ink has dried on what shall come to pass. The king has ordered his death. What more is there to say?

From time to time, his disciples appear, trying to bring a bit of food, some fresh water. They try their best to bring something even more nourishing: words of encouragement. They offer these words of support, yet John sits there impassively, that distant look on his face.

There's grimness to that look, yet it is with us, more often than we care to admit. It settles into our minds, which is worse than some illness that lingers in the body. The mind works on just a few points, not willing to see beyond the dull future that seems unstoppable in playing out. Impassive is the best description of the look as well as its effect: nothing good shall come my way.
I find this passage an odd choice for the "third" Sunday of Advent. This is the day we light the "pink" candle. Two purples and then the pink candle means we're almost in the home stretch.

The reason the Advent candles are three purple and one pink goes back to the tradition when Latin was the predominate language of the Church. On this particular Sunday, the service would begin with the words: "Rejoice (gaudete) in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice." In the midst of Advent's call to a penitential frame of mind and devotion, the Church would give itself time to celebrate anticipatory joy. The "rose" candle, as it is more formally known, is a beacon in the midst of Advent's more downbeat practices, calling the people to ready themselves for the coming season of joy.

So why does John appear today, off in jail and away from the giddy crowds watching Jesus in the midst of his ministry with his parables and healings and sly ways of infuriating his religious opponents? Why should we hear something so dreadful: a prophet broken, feeling discredited, off in the lonely place, awaiting a certain fate? This is not a joyful image. The only words John seems able to muster are ones formed by his discouragement: "Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" I imagine we've all had that moment where God seems so distant, or that moment when God seems so detached, or that moment when God seems so absent. John's question comes out of a place of searing honesty. Is there really a point to this? Belief is easy when life is lively, but when pain, suffering, marginalization or death loom, the believer is tested in ways that crumble the quick and easy answers and the questions pile up.

The response Jesus sends back is not the most expected. "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
In this response, Jesus offers a glimpse of the gospel being brought to bear on the world. It is not the conventional answer hoped for in certain understandings of the Messiah's coming prevalent in the day. People thought the Messiah would bring about a political and military upheaval which would restore Israel. Even after his resurrection, Jesus contends with his disciples' hope for something great to happen. Instead of dominance and power, Jesus gives them the call to go out in his name and share his word.

Now here in Matthew 11, we get a foretaste of what this gospel story is about. We learn that God has indeed come, and the Messiah is about the work of God. The ways that the story plays out might not have perfect endings as we would want for ourselves, yet in the end, the gospel story points to an ending that shall surpass the old story of "life and death". The gospel plays out in a world well acquainted with the jailhouse blues, yet the Resurrection beckons with a different song, soaring above our longings and our loathing, and our angst in life and our cries in the night.

Two stories of belief in the midst of remarkably difficult circumstances give witness to this faith:

Gardner Taylor, long considered the dean of African American preachers, recalls the difficult days he spent with the family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. In late June 1974, the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta was in the midst of worship when gunshots rang out. A gunman aimed for King, yet it was Mrs. King, the church organist, who was killed in the gunfire.

As Gardner Taylor and other colleagues came from around the nation to support the King family, Taylor recalls the way the Ebenezer Church members pulled together with its singing hymns of faith, led by the choir who had been in the midst of the tragedy just a few days before. The church resonated with hymns of faith, sung in full knowledge of their loss, yet giving testimony to the beliefs that helped them make sense out of yet another tragedy in their congregation's life. That same week, Taylor was a visitor to the King family home. He recalls:

Midst the tall Georgia pines, in the King family home, touched with the strange stillness of death, I
sat with Martin Luther King, Sr., on Tuesday evening. He bit his lips and said, "They killed Martin, [my other son] A.D. is dead, and now they've killed Bunch [his wife's nickname]. " He stopped awhile. Then he said, clutching my hand, "A.D.'s third son came to me the other day, and he said is going to preach [or, that is called to ministry]." Then he looked at me and said, "They won't be able to kill us off." (Gardner Taylor, Fifty Years of Timeless Treasures, Words of Gardner Taylor, vol. VI, Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2002).

 Even though one chapter seems to come to a close, the Christian faith affirms there is more to the story. Belief can be shaken, souls can be troubled, yet in the midst of life when it comes crashing down, the gospel claims life's heartache is not the last word. Our lives will have an unfinished quality to them (i.e. we will still know failure and loss, pain and suffering), yet our trust in the greater framework of Christ's life, death, and resurrection offers a hope far more resilient than we might lead ourselves to believe.

 Another story of hope and joy in the midst of tragedy comes in the writings of Dietrich Bonheoffer, a German theologian. Branded an enemy of the state for his writings and his efforts in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonheoffer spent the last years of his life as a political prisoner of the Nazis, executed just days before Allied forces liberated the camp.
 In the midst of his imprisonment, Bonheoffer wrote prodigiously, keeping up with his theological writings and his correspondence with friends and family. A collection of his letters and papers from this period of his life continues to attract new generations of readers. These writings are particularly powerful, given Bonheoffer wrote in the midst of a prison sentence with full knowledge that his time was not long for the world.

The editor of new critical edition of this body of "prison" writings observes that Bonheoffer wrote during his time of imprisonment with "concern [for] a future of a humanity beset by oppressions, violence, and war; his desire was that the next generation would inherit not only a more faithful and relevant church but also a more humane and just world" (John W. de Gruchy, "Theology for Dark Times: Rereading Letters and Papers", Christian Century, October 19, 2010, p. 33).

During his incarceration, Bonheoffer was asked to write prayers for his fellow prisoners to use during the holiday season. One of these prayers is particularly powerful:

Lord Jesus Christ, you were poor and miserable, imprisoned and abandoned as I am. You know all human need, you remain wth me when no human being stands by me, you do not forget and you seek me, you want me to recognize you and turn back to you. Lord, I hear your call and I follow. Help me!

(Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer Works, Vo. VIII. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010, 195).Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-89268004938516755072016-11-30T16:07:00.001-08:002016-11-30T16:07:14.819-08:00Take and Read: Book review of Love Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life by Henri JM Nouwen

Looking for a Christmas present for your favorite clergy person or other readers of devotional writings? May I suggest this new book collecting letters from Henri JM Nouwen, among the 20th century's most endearing Roman Catholic writers whose ministry and witness reached across ecumenical and religious/not so religious lines.

This book review will appear in print in early 2017 for "Sharing the Practice", the quarterly journal of the Academy of Parish Clergy (www.apc.org).

Take and read!

Nouwen, Henri J.M., Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life. Gabrielle Earnshaw, editor. (New York, NY: Convergent, 2016). ISBN #978-1-101-90635-4. $24.00.

Henri JM Nouwen occupies an appreciable part of my devotional reading in college and seminary. I count his book "In the Name of Jesus" among the most helpful in my early days of discerning a call to ministry. His journals and writings welcomed many Christians (and a number of not so religious persons) into his journey as a person seeking God's love, embracing his own vulnerability and finding where he might find his deep calling and the world's need connecting. <o:p></o:p>

After his death in 1996, his writings remain in print with a few "new" works culled from his writings and talks. His literary legacy is being furthered by this new series of books featuring his correspondence with various persons, some well-known and others just drawn by his writings to send a note and ask his thoughts and counsel. His generous spirit and gregarious approach to life resulted in a high volume of letters returned from friends and strangers, offering his thoughts personally with no thought to using a form letter or citing his schedule for not being able to respond personally.<o:p></o:p>

Nouwen retained every piece of correspondence, resulting in over 16,000 letters, postcards, faxes and greeting cards gaining his response and later the challenge for archive preparation and this new series of publications. When Gabrielle Earnshaw began her work with the Nouwen papers, she dealt with this incredible volume of mail. Fifteen years later, sixty-five linear feet of material is now archived at St Michael's College at the University of Toronto in Canada. Future readers of Nouwen's correspondence are indebted to Earnshaw's careful and labor intensive work and St Michael's College's willingness to be the custodian for this correspondence to be available to scholars and others interested in reading the material first-hand.<o:p></o:p>

This first volume is arranged chronologically into three eras: 1973-1985, 1986-1989, and 1990-96. The letters chosen for this collection revolve around Nouwen's correspondence around spiritual life matters. Whether it is a parent grieving a child, a friend dealing with a health ailment or a colleague pondering some form of spiritual quandary, Nouwen's letters are engaging, as if sitting across the table from his correspondent face to face. (NOTE: Appropriately, the letters published within the collection have been cleared for publication and public dissemination.)<o:p></o:p>

Nouwen shares his own wrestling with matters, temporary and ongoing, practicing his vulnerability as much as he spoke about it. During the 1970s, he wrestled with vocation, spending time back in his native Holland (only to opt to return to the US permanently), receiving a tenure track position at Yale Divinity School (yet wrestling with whether or not he should enter into monastic life as a Trappist) and wearying himself with a heavy speaking schedule (while pondering if he should spend more time withdrawn in order to pray and to write).

The collection of letters trace Nouwen's journey already in his previously published works: seeking a place to call his home that also summons him to be the "Henri", the "self" most desired by God. As most readers know, a tenured Yale professor, temporary monk and missionary later in Latin America, would land in the midst of the L'Arche Community in Toronto, living as a priest to a community of disabled adults and their caregivers, living in community with one another. The letters collected herein speak to that struggle as well as the contentment he eventually finds.<o:p></o:p>

For most clergy, such internal arguments go on for years, shaping vocation or perhaps stunting it. Nouwen keeps his tensions in perspective, wanting to be erring on the side of what God might be calling him to do. In a side note in a 1979 letter, Nouwen shares, "I think I am going to buy myself Butler's four volumes of the Lives of the Saints; the best way for me to get over my endless distractions is to look at God through the mirror of his saints. Maybe later I will receive the grace to speak to Him and be with Him more directly" (p. 37).

Reading through Nouwen's letters will be a matter of perspective of what value the reader has for this collection. What letters of Nouwen speak to me will be different for other readers. Some may come to this volume finding the letters marginally of interest. Others will find a great treasure trove of spiritual wisdom with tic marks and marginalia as an insight resonates from a letter written decades ago. Yet the beauty of Nouwen's writings is that he has a good word for any reader, religious and otherwise.<o:p></o:p>

I look forward to future volumes of this remarkable series of Nouwen's correspondence. Even twenty years after his passing, Nouwen continues to tend souls and offer insights into our lives even as he was wrestling with what mattered most in his own.<o:p></o:p>
Jerrod H Hugenothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4440943994256214136.post-26547767938206649902016-11-27T16:29:00.001-08:002016-11-27T16:29:33.034-08:00Advent One: Liberating Eschatology (Matthew 24:36-44)

When you looked at the sermon title "Liberating Eschatology", perhaps there was an unfamiliar word: "eschatology". It is a theological term, a word that helps define the faith. The "…ology" part is easy enough, meaning "the study of", but then there is that first part "eschat..." that we have to address. Oddly enough, "eschatology" is better translated as "the study of the End". The early Church had a variety of views on what would happen, and quite honestly, many of the New Testament writers presume that "the End" would happen very soon, that is, in their lifetime, or soon enough thereafter. Two millennia later, we are around, looking at these texts and wondering how to "read" them appropriately.

In the hands of some Christians over the centuries, to speak of the End has become the seedbed for some increasingly bizarre theories about what will happen. Over the centuries, stories of destruction, desolation, and the Devil have framed a way of belief for some Christians. Other Christians look at these texts and consider them less relevant, perhaps the "odd texts" that we skip over as we read our Bibles. Should the church bother with "eschatology"?

I suggest that we must talk of our beliefs about "the End", but we must recognize that with all matters of interpretation and belief, we exercise a degree of humility. There have been too many instances (past and present) of excessive interpretation and malformed belief, but to say that our faith can be fine without talk of "the End" is to do even more harm to one's faith and practice. This morning, let me help "liberate" eschatology a bit so we might hear the Gospel text (and others like it) with due reverence.

Let me offer two stories along the way with some commentary:

A few years ago, I was standing in line to check out at one of those warehouse stores like BJ's. Just behind me, I heard a young woman read aloud the name of a book she picked up. It was the latest volume of the Left Behind books, a series of books about the apocalyptic end and the return of Christ. Ever the curious sort, I turned around slightly to see what she would do next. She read a little bit of the dust jacket's description of the book, and she wrinkled up her nose a bit, "I don't need that scary stuff!" She tossed it back where she found it: upon a pile of the same book, five feet high, sitting on one of those heavy wooden palates that require a forklift to move them. I thought, "Apparently, some folks do need that scary stuff".

My observation is this: anxious times often produce anxious eschatology. The Left Behind series began publication in the years leading up to the millennium. The books reflect a certain take on eschatology, but an undercurrent of fear informs the writers, their plot reflecting a belief that something ominous is coming. As a friend who takes this line of thinking seriously said, "What good is the future? It will be all over soon!"

Putting my own cards on the table, I am skeptical of eschatology derived out of a place of deep fear, as such interpretations have a degree of resignation creeping in. Thus, faith becomes an affair of watching and waiting, but with an edge of disregard for much of anything in the here and now. It can be understandable that such a view can be attractive, especially to persons for whom the suffering and brokenness of this world seems to be pervasive, or when world events are reaching critical (or that is your perception). Nonetheless, fear-suffused belief does not ultimately lead in a good direction.
So, what should we do if we wish to claim eschatology as part of our belief but not freight it with the wrong baggage?

Another story to help us along the way:

Once, I discovered a store with a large collection of bumper stickers for sale. While I never use them, I enjoy reading them. The box held a few political slogans here (your choice of red state or blue state politics to skewer), a few stickers protesting or supporting the War in Iraq there, and a few promoting just about every social cause imaginable. In the back of the box of bumper stickers were the ones with religious themes, including one that read: "JESUS IS COMING! LOOK BUSY!"

Eschatology is more rightly concerned with the return of Christ and the drawing to a close of this present age. Rather than trading upon the edge of these texts (especially those of Revelation with its terrible battles), the better path is to go back and question the friend who said, "What good is the future?" A good response is to say, "The future is in God's hands. What more could we want?"
However, the bumper sticker's sarcasm highlights the question that goes without asking when people speak of eschatology. Rather than keep up appearances ("look busy!"), eschatology beckons to the Christian believer to take up a way of discipleship that is expectant as well as tethered down to the ground as the body of believers called Church, Christ's visible reminder of Christ's reign being at hand. We are called to a faith that says, "Jesus is coming! Live faithfully!"

In this passage from Matthew 24, if you read through the lens provided by AM radio preachers, you see a passage about "the Rapture", a New Testament idea that the faithful will be taken up into God's embrace, which has been laden with a lot of modern era interpretation. If you read this text through the lens of fear or anxiety, you miss what Jesus is really saying. Jesus affirms that the "Father" alone knows when the End shall come. Thus, live as if it will come suddenly, but do not try to ask questions or find answers about these matters. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas observes, "Jesus tells [his disciples] how they must learn to wait in this time between the times" (Matthew: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, Brazos Press, 2006, p. 204).

The friend who said, "What good is the future? It will be all over soon!" misses the invitation to be a disciple living fully in the way of discipleship. To hope for God's end is part of faith, to wait expectantly is part of faith, but to give up or grow idle or withdrawn is a distortion of faith. It is as misfortunate as the people who spend their time feverishly looking for "the End Times" at hand in the latest headlines of the New York Times or the latest chapter in a book that predicts this political movement or incident is the lynchpin of the doom about to unfold. Hauerwas says,

Jesus is trying to help the disciples understand how they must live when their questions should not have been asked and cannot be answered. Or put differently, Jesus is trying to help the disciples live when his life must shape any questions to be asked. (Hauerwas, Matthew, p. 204)

You and I deal with the various types of baggage that this holiday season (or perhaps just this week alone) seems to have piled on our backs. In the midst of the cacophony of life as we know it, we are summoned to discipleship by the Son of Man, whose very appearance shall be the end of what we know and fear and bring about the peace that eludes us, even in our modern delusion of such things being solved by policies, superior military strength, and power.

We abide by Christ's call to live the life of faith well, shaped by a belief that Jesus is indeed Lord of our lives. We are called to humility that God alone knows when these things shall draw to a close. We live in trust and abundant hope that when this day comes to pass, we will be found in the midst of the work of Christ, faithful 'til the End.Jerrod H Hugenothttp://email@example.com