February 26, 2023
Be Curious, not Judgmental (Last Sermon)
Genesis 2:4b-25
Kerra Becker English
 
I don’t know how many of you are Ted Lasso fans, but for those who haven’t watched the show on Apple TV, it’s about an American college football coach who is hired to coach British soccer for  AFC Richmond. It’s intended to be a fish-out-of-water story. In it, Ted, the main character, played by Jason Sudekis, ends up in a dart match with the conceited ex-husband of the team owner. It’s a fabulous scene. And towards the end of the scene, Ted makes a speech about not underestimating someone’s potential. He says, “Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why – it used to really bother me. Then one day I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall there and it said, 'Be curious, not judgmental. ' I like that. So, I get back in my car and I’m driving to work and all of a sudden it hits me – all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out, so they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me – who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?”
The new and most likely final season of the show is coming out this month if that quote makes you curious. You can get the Apple subscription and binge all 3 seasons! 
But other than making a television recommendation, what I want to leave you with on my last Sunday of regularly preaching from this pulpit, is the quote from the middle of that scene, which may or may not be correctly attributed to Walt Whitman. “Be curious, not judgmental.”
Curiosity is probably THE most underrated spiritual value – and it is exceptionally important, from cradle to grave, for generating spiritual awareness. It is the spiritual gift that I think all humans are born with – though not all humans are blessed with the opportunities to use it successfully. Growing up in either a strict or a traumatic household can stifle curiosity and replace it with fear as the glue that binds the family unit together. My friends, it may be hard to get past such difficulties in early life, but it is possible. Curiosity can be developed at any and every stage of life, and it does wonders for undermining the hold that fear can have on us. 
Let’s start an exploration of curiosity by taking a moment to consider childhood wonder. Perhaps you can flash back to a time in your youth when you felt free and creative, when your imagination allowed you to handle some grand concept about the magnificence of life with an ease that might not even feel possible at your current stage of life. When you hear childhood stories about saints and mystics and the whole garden variety of spiritual leaders and secular innovators, there’s often a memory that highlights how well they are in tune with their very active imaginations. For Jesus, we have the story about him “forgetting” to go home with his family after Passover because he was lost in wonder quizzing the temple priests. In a class I’m taking now about the 16th century mystic, Teresa of Avila, her childhood story is about learning the word “forever.” The meaning behind the word set her to spinning and dancing and imagining what “forever” means in God’s eyes as she repeatedly said it over and over. Can you recall a moment from your childhood when curiosity “caught” you? Because it is caught more often than it’s taught – and it flows in surprising ways. Curiosity and its sister, wonder, are entwined in those moments that allow us to experience awe. And it is awe that allows us to become captivated by life itself or gives us a hunger to know more and more. 
Unfortunately, many of us have been led to believe that mature faith comes from having the kind of doctrinal purity that becomes certain about itself, and curiosity becomes a thing to leave to the realm of children. That kind of thinking is what leads us to see the second creation story from Genesis 2 as a curse rather than a blessing. The first creation story is that 7-day time table that has been frequently misused out of biblical literalism, but we have also been taught to believe that this one is about human error, Original Sin maybe even. We eat of the tree of knowledge and then we die. Do we really think that those who wrote down this story to tell the origins of human beginnings were the ones drinking at the bar after work and complaining about how life is crap and then you die? In case you didn’t catch it – when you read the rest of the story – Adam and Eve eat the fruit of this particular tree, and they don’t take a bite and keel over. They gain knowledge about themselves, about God, about the garden, about how hard life can be. That’s what happens to them.
So what is it that God is communicating here when God commands the man of the earth, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die?” Sometimes it helps to get curious about a text like this, to ask questions of it in your own mind, or ask a friend what they see in it. It also helps to ask how other traditions read this text.
I found out in doing so that there is a Hasidic interpretation of this text that goes back to verse 9 to think about the two specific trees that God puts in the garden – the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now what if the humans ate the fruit from both trees? The tree of life carried in its fruit the possibility of eternal life. The tree of knowledge is of course about knowing things and being able to interpret them as good or bad. Now pair immortality with being all-knowing and you have a pretty good description for what the ancients imagined the gods to be. This brings up a whole host of possible questions. Why would God create trees that would give creatures the ability to become like gods? Is gaining knowledge a sign of misbehavior or actually curiosity? How often is childhood curiosity condemned as misbehavior? Did they drop dead the day they ate fruit from that tree? The answer is no. But they did know then that they would die, that they were not going to be like God and live forever.
I like to think of humans as creatures designed with curiosity in mind. They not only work the land, but they name the animals, and then they forge social relationships. They are connected – to the earth, the beings, and each other. We are hungry for all kinds of knowledge, and our Presbyterian spiritual forefather began his tome on religious thinking with the quest for seeking knowledge, saying that there are two kinds of knowledge that people will be about in this world if they long to be wise and bear the image of Christ. John Calvin explains that any knowledge we gain about God or ourselves is useful, spiritual, and really the goal of all humanity. That doesn’t portray the apple-biting in such an unfavorable light now, does it?
A more learned curiosity that we gain with age and wisdom comes after many of those things we built into a prideful sense of certainty are challenged. We lose our innocence about the world. We are confronted with human suffering and the powers of evil still roaming about and causing havoc. We fear that the wonder we had as children that made us stop to smell the flowers or get lost in a conversation that was too big for us to understand but just big enough to make us want to know more are gone forever. That’s precisely when curiosity is most needed. We need to be imaginative exactly when the going gets tough. We can get stuck in the ruts of our own making and deem that the way it has always been is the only way that it can be. We can long for days of yore instead of being excited about the potential we see in tomorrow.
Curiosity is what allows us to be fully who we are in the present moment. Judgment tells us to hold on tightly to the past. Fear keeps us from being confident that the future is some place we want to be. Curiosity keeps us fresh and wondering. Curiosity is the breath of God flowing in us and through us. Curiosity lets us truly see the person in front of us, whether we have just met, or we have known, or thought we have known, this person for 40 years.
This Genesis 2 text, or really just the verses about eating from the tree of knowledge being a death curse, are yanked from their story on the first Sunday of Lent as a reminder that temptation is bad, that it’s linked to sin, that it causes all sorts of human problems. I would like to redeem that curiosity today in the mystical spiritual sense. Teresa, also known as Teresa of Jesus – the mystic I am studying now, imagines temptations as these reptilian creatures that are always nipping at our ankles to stay busy, or get distracted, or keep on tilling that soil and making your paycheck. They may entertain us for a moment – but they certainly don’t encourage us to get to know ourselves very well. They keep us blind to who we are or who we could be becoming. Those temptations are what distract us from the curiosity of the spiritual life, of getting interested in what lies beyond the veil of ordinariness and sets our soul to shining with the light of God that has always been within us.
My friends, humanity has tasted the fruit that makes us long to know more, and more, and more. So be curious. Get curious. Lose any of that judgmental edge that characterizes most of what is called religion today. Religious communities that will thrive in the future will need to be more interesting, more compelling, more authentic, and wondrous. And far more curious. Amen.

Transfiguration: Beloved Sunday
February 19, 2023
Matthew 17:1-13; 2 Peter 1:16-21
Kerra Becker English

We call this Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday before Lent begins, and it’s one that I usually don’t like to preach.
It feels too super-natural.
A little too showy.
Jesus with his face shining like the sun.
His outfit bleached and bedazzled to glowing white.
Moses and Elijah showing up for a prophetic reunion.
Disciples scrambling to make sense of what they’ve just seen.
It’s a moment they want to hold on to, and Jesus lets them know that they must let it go.
They can’t make it last.
And boy does Peter want to make that feeling last.
He says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will set up 3 tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
They could stay all day. Enjoy the visit. Get comfortable and get to know each other.
Then they get interrupted by a cloud.
Not just any cloud, but a brightly overshadowing cloud that speaks.
The cloud voice says this, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”
This is an echo from Jesus’ baptism.
And the second letter of Peter will repeat this cloud message in the re-telling of this story.
For Jesus received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The memory of majestic glory is there, and it’s solid.
It’s not at all dreamy.
Peter isn’t questioning if what he experienced was real.  
His letter goes on to say that this is the prophetic message fully confirmed.
A light shining in the darkness until the full day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
A proclamation. A prophecy. A message of the highest magnitude.
My Son. The Beloved. With you I am well pleased. 
Peter, or at least a scribe from Peter’s tradition says in this letter – “We heard the voice.”
That’s the big news.
Therefore, I’d like to rename this Sunday – Beloved Sunday.
Or maybe BE – LOVED Sunday. Know your belovedness Sunday.
Knowing that kind of love will change you.
Will transform you.
Maybe even make you look different to others.  
Knowing that God loves you, like a child, and is proud of you.
What could be more affirming than that?
The holiness that the disciples, Peter, James and John experienced on that mountain was a sense of the fullness of love exchanged between God and Jesus.
It certainly made an impression.
They wanted to hold on to it, to savor it, to box it up and keep it close.
The problem is that it doesn’t work that way.
The Holy Spirit is primarily defined by her capacity to be on the move.
A dove on the wing, a cloud brightly overshadowing, a voice, a feeling, a deep intuition.
Those things move in and through you.
The love remains, but the story that goes with it seems fantastical.
It’s interesting to make note of some of the overshadowing voices we are hearing about in our own world.
A Superbowl ad lets people know that “He gets us.”
At Asbury University in Kentucky – young people have been praying and singing and worshiping for days in a place with a long tradition of holy revivals.
We long for that experience of being known, and when we get a taste of it, we try to keep it hanging around.
I have both hopes and concerns about the big, big moments.
Who paid for that Superbowl ad? And what do they hope to gain from it? Will it do what’s expected or something else? What about the “things” I’ve paid for in terms of sustaining my own religious preferences? Is it the same that I want to financially sustain quaint churches and hear organ preludes and 4-part choir harmonies to let me know that God is near and present? Who am I to judge?
Will there be transformed souls motivated by love and justice that come out of the collegiate revival and work to change our world? Is my own faith as motivating?
I don’t have all the answers to those questions.
That’s what makes transfiguration Sunday such a hard Sunday to preach.
How do you explain the inexplicable?
That slice of time that seemed illuminated and transformative, which became the one that buoyed a lifetime of discipleship.
I have to give Matthew credit for telling the story, and I’m grateful to Peter for trying to help us understand it.
I haven’t gone into the biblical scholarship to make sense of the trajectory of putting these two scripture texts side by side, but I like to think that Matthew pointed out Peter’s blunder in wanting to set up tents to coax Moses and Elijah into staying around, and I like to think that Peter in his old age or represented by his followers gets redemption for remembering and re-telling the most important part of the story.
The most important part is love. Being loved.
The love of God is what assisted Jesus on the path to who he was becoming.
It shows up to consecrate his ministry and to confirm the leaders who will extend the mission so that Jesus himself can let go and fulfill his destiny.
God loved Jesus, so that Jesus could love the world.
Jesus loves us, so we can follow him in our wonder, and in our work.
I think it is absolutely essential to this story that others “heard the voice.”
It wasn’t in Jesus’ head or for him alone – more like at his baptism.
The message this time was specifically directed to those Jesus brought with him.
THIS is my Son, the Beloved.
With him I am well pleased.
Listen to him!
The disciples are being instructed, as are we, as listeners to the story.
The 2nd letter of Peter tells us that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but it did come through men and women moved by the Holy Spirit to speak from God.
Obviously listening for what God is saying to us is a matter of serious discernment.
A LOT of people are going to want to speak for God, to speak as gods.
To find God’s true voice is more of a challenge.
Prophecy here is a pronouncement of love, and appreciation, and trust.
Too often, prophecy is couched in belittlement. I know what God wants and you don’t.
To listen for those who are moved by the Mover (capital M), listen for love, and confirmation of goodness, and trust.
You can listen to Jesus – because he is loved, and good, and trustworthy.
Others will try to twist the message of Jesus. Be on the lookout.
Does the message glow with possibility?
Does the message align with the truth tellers of the past?
Is it so attractive that you want to hold on to it and make it a permanent fixture in your Spirit?
Can others hear it too?
Then it may be God’s cloud hovering overhead.
Trying to tell that experience to others may prove difficult.
That’s OK.
Keep the most important part in front of you: God loves. Fully. Magnificently. Majestically.
And if any of you talk to the liturgical calendar people, could we get a name change for this week?
Amen.

February 12, 2023
Love Poetry
Song of Songs 8:6-7, 1 Corinthians 13
Kerra Becker English
(Notes on Love - a thank you love poem)

Love is stronger than death.
Love is patient, kind, and truthful.
This close to Valentine’s Day, one might think that love could be bought with flowers and chocolate.
But the love poetry of scripture reminds us that even if a person were to offer all the wealth of their house for love – it would be utterly scorned.
And that when all else comes to an end, love remains.
I wanted to talk about love today because being in this congregation for 10 years has renewed my belief in Christian love in a time when it has been desperately needed.
Too much hate has been spun as Christian truth, and too many platitudes like “thoughts and prayers” have replaced the fortitude needed for love to flourish.
As Mr. Rogers taught – love is an active verb, like struggle.
It requires us to fulfill the Presbyterian ordination vow of seeking to serve with energy, intelligence, imagination, and most of all, love. And even if you’ve never been an officer in the church, the congregation promises to pray for those who make that commitment. No one gets ‘out of’ the baptismal contract to keep seeking to bring more love into the world.
I don’t know where it all got spun that Jesus’ main goal in being a human on earth was to save us from our sins, when it seems very clear from his own words that what he came to do was to teach us how to love. He outlines the pathway to salvation, to wholeness in no uncertain terms. He tells us that that love is now and has always been the foundation of religious law – that all the law flows from loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
None of us do that perfectly, but as a keen observer and participant in the life of this congregation, you have taught me some things about Christian love that I’d like to share with you. This is my Valentine to you, observing your love poetry in action.
Here’s what I have learned about love from being your pastor.
Love is.
Love is hospitality.

• Praise to the Potluck, sharing meals matters, and there’s even a great story in John’s gospel about Jesus smoking some fish (maybe to put on a bagel) for his disciples even after his resurrection
• Hosting “outside” voices well – Doug Ottati, Peter Mayer, all the Lenten Series speakers
• Welcoming Alaskans – what a weird coincidence?
• Thinking about transportation in Metropolitan Richmond
• Interns – of every kind (Think Genesis 1)

Love is Compassion.

• Working with the town on the hotel crisis (first thing I stepped into)
• Food pantry – Susan takes the time to talk to people who show up in the office
• Hosting AA FOREVER – like almost from its inception
• Seeing you serve in EVERYTHING town related
• Collecting for Charles when he was going through cancer treatments as our intern
• And what my friend Patrick calls life-cycle events – weddings, funerals, baptisms, welcoming new people

Love is Seeking Justice.

• Support of the Congo ministry (though Flo wouldn’t have it otherwise)
• Presbyterian Women’s projects – Hanover Safe Place, Adopting a young woman through working with Rebecca Glazebrook
• Ashland area clergy – Prayer walk, You know them all and see their ministries as part of our collective Christian witness in the community

Love is Friendship and Fun.

• Ash Grove retreat that has included many friends over the years – included not just your friends, but made my friends from Tennessee your friends – Christy and Brandon
• Sunday school classes – where we got to know each other’s stories
• Seeing you dance and sing and play all over town – where else but the Center of the Universe is there a town Variety Show – I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks

Love is Forgiveness.

• I know there have been times I have messed up. I appreciated it when we’ve been able to talk it through. In a 10 year relationship, there will be times of hurt, or times of making mistakes. I own those. But I also feel like you learned how to work with my quirks and accept me for me, which isn’t always the case for pastors. Sometimes the community wants to mold their pastor into a particular image. Here, I have been able to feel more fully myself – and I hope that’s a gift you will extend to all the guests who come to fill this pulpit, and to the next pastor who comes to walk alongside of you in ministry. Show them grace, and it will return back to you.

Love is kindness.

• College students – letting them study you!
• Choir – mini church within the church – they say when you sing you pray twice – you also show love for those who have aged through the years, with students who’ve shown up and sung with you, for kids who sit next to adults who bring them
• Harsh words are rare here – not that they never happen – they have – but there’s not a culture of acceptance of ugliness (That’s how church “should” be but sometimes isn’t)
• When I came here and had to interview with this Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, rather than it being a welcome into the fold, it felt like a test that they wanted to make it extra hard for me to pass. It felt like extra trauma on top of having served a difficult congregation prior to coming here. The members of the team who offered me this job were gracious, supportive, and compassionate to me as we navigated that process together. You have the ability to do that again – as we say good-bye, God is preparing the person who will come here to say “hello.” Show your next pastor the kindness you showed me. You may not be able to fathom how much that meant to me.

Love is a place and a people.

• I am believing more and more that answering God’s calling is less about finding a job, and more about having the right place and people find you. You found me. And I am grateful for that.
• This is where the line from “Here I am Lord” always gets to me and usually makes my eyes moist. I will go, Lord, when you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart. I may be going, but the love remains. It always does.

Thank you, genuinely, from all my heart. I love you, and have learned about love from you. Amen.
 

Salty and Lit
February 5, 2023
Matthew 5:13-20
Kerra Becker English

Today you have a picture of me on the front cover of your bulletin. It is the picture that my mother chose to put in for my Senior year ad in my high school yearbook. Why she used that little kid picture of me in a coat and hat is beyond me, that is, unless it was to mirror the senior picture I had taken that same year in my fluorescent pink ski jacket. It was the late 80’s after all when ski movies were all the rage.
Next to the picture, cheesy as it sounds, she added the code for an accompanying Bible verse, which was part of the reading for today – The first line of the ad said, Matthew 5:14-16. It’s the part that reads: “You are the light of the world…and… Let your light shine before others.” Next to the biblical code, she simply wrote, “Keep on shining, love Mom, Dad, and Laurie.” Perhaps it’s good that treasures like that end up in boxes in the attic – far, far away from any light of day.
What she didn’t include, but could have, was to add verse 13 as well. She could have just as easily said, “Stay salty.” I do love that Moms of high school seniors can come to see the glorious light in their children, when what I was REALLY like at the time was probably more on the salty side, with an strong aptitude for eye rolling. I was exceptionally talented at backtalk. Call it a gift! I argued any time I wanted to get my way, which meant I argued about everything. My vocabulary was colorful and, truth be told, occasionally mean-spirited – though I held back a bit more than what I hear as a mother today. Different era of acceptability and all.
Perhaps she was hoping for one without the other. More about the light, less about the salt.
Oddly though, whenever this verse comes up for worship or for study, I always have a mind’s eye glimpse of that Yearbook ad. Even as locked away as it was deep, deep in the attic, I managed to find it so I could show it to you. It made me laugh to read again her own midrash on the text.  Keep on shining. Now that part, I kind of forgot. It reminds me that even in her more serious moments she always tried to turn toward the slightly silly. It fits.
The other bit I’ll share this morning is to tell you that long ago biblical affirmation when I was stretching toward adulthood functioned as a blessing, as a premonition and a confirmation of who I was to become in this world, and in today’s language, it conveys attitude, and a particular kind of Christian persona. Matthew 5:13-16. Yeah, you know me, I’m salty and lit.
The salty part continues to allow me to have an edge of irreverence about my faith. I don’t want it to be too pristine or God-forbid, flavorless. As one of the ministry forms that I read during my interview days put it. That particular job wanted to call a leader with a “hermeneutic of suspicion for the status quo.” To question. To be a skeptic. To be suspicious when things are tied up too neatly and wrapped with a bow. That’s one way to embody being the salt of the earth. That salty edge has served me well on occasion, and as I’ve grown and matured, my ability to “season appropriately” and not either too timidly or too aggressively has taken a much better form.
Now “lit,” since I’m about to unpack for you, will never be cool again because I’m a grown up, and I’m saying it from a pulpit no less. Ryleigh warned me yesterday that it was already something no one says anymore.  But “lit” has two different connotations in current slang for those uncool enough to still be saying it. Yes, it can mean drunk or intoxicated. I am aware. And doing some searching, I learned that it’s been used with that meaning since the 1910’s, for over a hundred years. It isn’t new. However, in recent use it has come to mean exciting, or excellent. It means really good. So good that it is lit up.
Salty and lit. Yes, I hope to carry both as an attitude and way of life, a way of life Jesus is preaching about. So how does Jesus use this in his sermon? Is it still relevant for us now?
Oh yes, I believe it is. And I’m going to tell you something now that would make for a stupid argument on the news. The most important realization to identify about these verses on salt and light can be found in the pronouns. That’s right, the pronouns matter. They especially matter because you don’t see in English what is easy to identify in the Greek.
When Jesus is saying here is that - YOU are the salt of the earth. YOU are the light of the world. Those are second person PLURAL pronouns. It means, in southern, Y’all. He’s talking to the disciples, to the crowds, and by virtue of the sermon being handed down thanks to Matthew, he’s talking to all of us. You, all of you, are salt, are light. Now John’s gospel uses a different pronoun and has Jesus say multiple times, “I am the light of the world.” Which is also true. But I LOVE that Jesus is calling us out here. We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world.
Therefore, it isn’t just that I got a “keep on shining” message from my Mom, Dad, and sister and other’s didn’t. We who follow where Christ is leading us are meant to be as essential as salt, as wondrous as light.  
Jesus is helping us build our sense of righteousness, not by being better than everyone else, but by following the commandments as God gives them to us and encouraging others to do the same. He invites us into an attitude where we are contributors, where we are making the difference in this old world because we care about it and its people. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about doing good. There’s a difference in those approaches. The Scribes and Pharisees that rub him the wrong way are about their own perfection in the truth, rather than being about the guidance and care of others. We all know those who claim the faith, but lead others astray even as they self-promote their own righteousness. To that, Jesus says, “Cut it out. It certainly won’t make you great in heaven.”
Jesus’ sermon is just the best. This part was one of my Mom’s favorite texts, and it’s one of mine too. I am delighted that it’s less about the rules and more about the attitude you carry with you in the world.
You, Jesus says, ALL OF YOU are meant to salt this earth with your bravery and your kindness. You, ALL OF YOU, are meant to shine your light in this world – especially when it feels like too many candles are being snuffed out. Be the light, not only for yourself, but as an example to others.
The ritual of lighting the candles the way that we do in worship comes specifically from this text. The light comes from the back of the sanctuary as a reminder that our doors are open to the world, and after worship we carry the light back out with us to let us know that though we tend our light in this place, it isn’t so that it stays here, it’s so that we will be able to carry it with us, wherever we go.
As my Mom would tell you too if she could – Keep on shining. As I, as a Mom and as your pastor, would also remind you – Stay salty.
Jesus is counting on us to listen to his voice and to grow in love for God and for each other. Amen.

January 29, 2023
Blessed Are You
Matthew 5:1-12; Micah 6:1-8
Kerra Becker English
Recently I discovered the “How to Build a Happy Life” podcast with Harvard professor Arthur Brooks.
With a title like that, the producers acknowledge that many of their listeners are looking for a formula for happiness – when just “one” formula doesn’t exist.
The same could be said of the Christian life - many search for the one formula, or the best strategy for getting it “right,” when a singular way isn’t enough.
Brooks’ podcast looks at a variety of pathways to happiness through sociological and scientific lenses, asking what “is” possible to know about those who live seemingly happy lives.  Trust me, if there really were a formula – there would only be one episode, right?
Luckily for the longevity of the podcast, there are multiple pathways to happiness – through healthy romantic partnerships and fun friendships, through caring for your physical well-being and spending time in meditation. Happiness comes in many different forms, and the most surefire way to not have it is to relentlessly pursue it for its own sake. That’s the paradox of happiness.
We wish it were simple, but it’s not. Life is complicated. Relationships are messy. Though there isn’t a foolproof way to make our lives golden, that doesn’t mean we quit trying to come up with one. We are meaning making creatures, so we still want answers, even if we don’t have a ready-made solution by the end of a 30 minute podcast or a 20 minute sermon.
So, in the episode I listened to on Friday, Brooks talked about how our culture of success teaches us to love having the things, to use people as a means for getting the things, and to center ourselves as the pinnacle of the known world which leads to worship that is no larger than our own self-orbit. That sounded familiar. It’s called, in the Christian world – idolatry – and it generally means loving the wrong things, or loving the right things in twisted ways - like taking our fellow human beings for granted and having a narcissistic adoration of ourselves rather than an appropriate level of awe for the Divine.
Instead, Jesus taught his followers, and therefore he also taught us to love God and love others as ourselves. He also told us to quit worrying so much about stuff. Give away your possessions as often as it is asked of you. That’s crazy logic according to most folks.
Brooks then noted that the key to happiness is an inversion of that cultural model. Not sounding that different from Jesus, he claims that happiness is a result of loving other people, using things for good purposes, and worshiping the Divine.
I like it. It’s a modern take on much that we can learn from our own faith tradition.
The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures certainly liked exactly these kinds of inversions. They use them all the time to show us the really real among the things we usually think of as real.
Let’s switch to Micah’s text.
God is angry. “The Lord has a case against his People.”
God seeks justice, resolution, perhaps even compensation in the form of changed hearts.
Sometimes, God even seeks destruction and punishment when people have strayed too far.
Micah proclaims that the Israelites have forgotten how God had delivered them.
Now that they had their own land and had experienced some of their own prosperity, they were in a position to want more, to expect more.
They want the success that the world gives. Well, surprise, surprise.
They even start to think God wants things too - burnt offerings, oil offerings, more stuff, more proof that God chose the right people to bless.
But that’s not what God wants. Not in the least.
God wants justice, kindness, humility.
God wants us to look outside of ourselves.
God wants us to want healing and wholeness for all.
What does the Lord require of us?
What is the strategy for living a faithful life?
Is it making the required number of sacrifices?
Heavens no.
It’s to seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly.
Worship God, love people, don’t be a jerk.
It’s another abbreviated formula I guess, but one that makes a lot of sense even as hard as it is to fully put into practice.
The strategy is to just live differently, perhaps even completely opposite, from what everyone else is telling you the key to winning at life is. Got it?
Of course, Jesus has his motivational speech too.
This sermon manuscript, the ONE fully articulated one that still exists, is precisely a strategy for living the blessed life.
Happiness. Faithfulness. Blessing.
How do I get to live a good life? The one God wants me to live?
Human beings have always wanted to know. How do we do this living thing – right?
The beatitudes are an inverted model as well.
Jesus is asking us to think differently about what it means to be blessed, or happy, or to be doing what God wants from us.
We perceive ourselves as blessed when we are the strong and mighty, that blessings abound for the well-loved and satisfied among us.
The world tells us that the “blessed” days are the prosperous days, or the relaxing vacation days, the Instagrammable days.
Jesus preaches this differently.
To be a follower of Jesus is to be perpetually dissatisfied.
To always feel like the world is a little bit off.
We are blessed when we know that the way things are is not the way they should be.
That’s the strategy for living a Christian life.
A relentless pursuit of the better.
This pursuit cannot be only for my own betterment, but it is the anticipation that the Kingdom of Heaven is going to show up.
In fact, these qualities that Jesus lifts up aren’t ones that we generally welcome into our lives.
Who wants to be poor, or sad, or meek, or perpetually dissatisfied?
Who wants to be merciful to those who’ve wronged us?
Who wants to keep room in their hearts ONLY for God?
Who wants the unenviable job of making peace in a conflicted environment?
And who, in their right mind, would seek out to be reviled or persecuted?
Jesus says, Blessed are you – when you are in these places.
If this is Jesus’ weird strategy, what exactly are the results we can expect?
It’s fully based on the eternal rewards of the Kingdom of Heaven, not on the petty prizes doled out in the kingdoms of the here and now.
The framework of the beatitudes is around the expansiveness of a Kingdom that is spiritually accessible, not materially accessible.
There are promises that those states of being aren’t perpetual, and that’s a comfort.
Those who mourn will be comforted.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.
Those who don’t ravage the earth for control will inherit it in all its beauty.
To feel connected to others and to our planet is to feel both pain and joy.
Then to be merciful as God is merciful, to purely love God is to know, really really know who God is. You will see God.
If you act on behalf of peace, you will be called children of God.
Love God. Love others. Let the desire for stuff go.
Jesus will talk more about the things later in this sermon, but for now realize that people will use you, or at least try to. If you see your own power in those systems, you have already changed the game. You are not a victim when you are persecuted or reviled. You can rejoice, knowing that you are in the company of God’s prophets, and that you are seeing the world rightly – not wrongly.
My friends, preachers come and preachers go.
Some are gifted with words, others struggle to get their points across.
What is most important is that they are tirelessly repetitive about the message.
There’s nothing new to see here. There never has been.
It’s all just re-packaging.
Living a good life. Living a faithful, blessed life will come from loving God, loving each other, and respecting yourself.
Don’t love your stuff too much.
Don’t make your God too small, or let God look too much like yourself.
It won’t be easy, but it will be your window into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Amen.

Called – to Follow
Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-25
January 23, 2023
Kerra Becker English

When I started the course at Richmond Hill for becoming a spiritual director, the first lecture that Ben Campbell ever gave forever changed how I understand the spiritual process known as “call.” Up until that point, my Presbyterian background had accidentally taught me that a call equals a job, and given my background and education, it was also supposed to mean a PAID job in the church. For Presbyterians with a slightly broader understanding, it might also mean that you are called to serve on Session, but the definition, as I understood it, had become quite narrow. The question, “Are you looking for a call?” had come to mean, “Are you actively searching for a job?” And if you still listen to Presbyterians talk about that word, most likely that’s what you will hear them describing. Call was never meant to be just a yes or no question. Do you want this job, or this role, or not? Watch out for that when you are seeking your next pastor!
Even back in the day when my theology mentor Doug Ottati taught about calling in a broader sense in seminary it was to harken back to a book he loved – Richard Baxter’s “The Reformed Pastor” that has a section in it about how a variety of jobs can have a Christian calling to them. You can be a Christian lawyer, or banker, or business-person. That’s a slightly broader definition if you talk about call as how you live your life according to Christ’s purposes – but it still involved primarily questions about how you do your work. It is the productivity curse of American culture. Like it or not, we tend to believe that you are what you do.
Spiritually, I think we deserve a better definition, or at least a far more complex definition of what a calling is. The scripture readings for the weeks following Epiphany in the lectionary have a pattern to them that is helpful to know. Once we skip in Jesus’ life from infancy to adulthood in the Christian year, the next steps are to get him baptized, hear about his temptation, and send him out to call the disciples and get to work. It moves the plot along quite nicely and is exactly how the story goes in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus experiences this ritual at the river that brings him into a direct experience of God’s love, he is tested and sent on a quest, and in that quest he both confronts his demons and finds his friends. This is the pattern of a call story.
First you experience both connection to God and distance from God. Then find your place and your people. And maybe after all that – THEN you will know what work there is for you to do in the world. Of course, it isn’t so neat as all that in messy human lives, but there is a sense in which call comes in 2 parts expressed through 4 inner spiritual processes. That’s where my Ben Campbell notes from the RUAH Spiritual Direction course come in handy. Those two parts, as Ben taught them, are ingrained in my brain forever. The two parts of a calling are “location” and “vocation.” We miss something significant when we neglect that our location has everything to do with how God will call us before we ever decide how God might be using us. The good news is that Matthew’s gospel especially takes good care to describe it for us.
Jesus “made his home” in Capernaum by the sea. Did you catch that? Given that my upcoming move will draw me closer to Virginia’s bay and coastal shorelines, I did not gloss by that detail at all.  This text is meant to echo the one we also read from Isaiah. Prophets and messiahs, and even ordinary saints like you and me are called to live out our lives of faith wherever we make our home. He heard the echo of the same calling that Isaiah heard to shine light, and bring joy, and break the chains that bind humankind. Therefore, in his home by the sea Jesus begins to hear and tell his truth, “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.” He is filled with the compelling nature of this message, and takes his walks by the water until he meets the fishermen whom he will draw on this journey with him. If he had plopped himself down in Jerusalem first, his disciples would have been a whole different cast of characters. Location is the context where we find ourselves, whether we’ve been plopped into it by circumstances or whether it feels deliberately chosen. Interacting with our location, the surroundings, the people, the culture – that is how we are meant to discover our authentic selves.
Now, living in a global society with such ease of transportation, more than ever before we have come to believe that we choose our own adventure, that we could go anywhere we wanted to go, live anywhere we wanted to live, and maybe even be anything we want to be. I guess in some ways that’s possible, but in other ways that isn’t fully true. We are born – in a particular time and place. That place and its people will shape who we are, and who we might become, whether in adulthood we adopt and remain in the familiarity of our hometown, or bolt from it in a desire to be free. Our location is truly about where and how we find ourselves in time and space. The Bible makes significant points to talk about land almost as much as it talks about people. We would do well to remember that.
Though Christmas is the time for catching up on Jesus’ genealogy and backstory, Matthew describes his call as beginning at the moment of his baptism. Which brings me to 3 of Ben Campbell’s 4 inner spiritual processes that signify the transformation that can be explained as a calling. One is the process of prayer. Opening oneself to the spiritual dialogue. Allowing the kind of trust that says that prayers are not just the mutterings of the human mind, but true conversation. We pray. God listens. We listen. God reveals compassion and love for us. Two is having knowledge of God. Notice I didn’t say believing in God. We can assent to things we don’t truly know. Knowing God is being able to say that God is involved in my life- in the nudge, the voice, the intuition. God isn’t a thought in my head. God is a character in my story. And then the third inner spiritual process is the quest for and process of inner healing. It’s being sent out or called close. It’s in the searching just as certainly as it is in the discovery. It’s recognizing the demons who mock us and befriending the companions who will journey with us. Jesus already knew the message he was to carry – but to carry out his quest, he needed help. We’ll get to the fourth inner process in a moment.
When we get to this text in the Christian calendar, we think of this story as the “call of the disciples” and it is, but it is also the affirmation of the call of Jesus himself. He has to experience his own moment of calling – before he can invite anyone else to join him. But when he does, an intimate relationship develops between Jesus and with those he asks to follow him. Choosing whom we will follow in and of itself a calling. They had to trust in what Jesus was doing. Jesus put his trust in God alone.
In hearing our own callings, Christian discipleship asks us to do both. We listen for God’s call as individuals AND together, we follow Jesus. Hearing God’s call may be felt as a disruption to our normal routine and it will always have elements of a quest, or at least will open us up to a lot of questions. 2022 was a year of such questions for me. The heavens didn’t open up with exact clarity of purpose, but I knew I was feeling a strong desire to seek broader conversations about the church and what my purpose might be in serving in it. That’s where the fourth inner process, and the idea of discerning our vocation comes in. For Christians, it’s asking, how are we to follow? What nets do we leave behind? What energy do we bring to the next task? How can we be on the journey with Christ to shine light, bring joy, and break the cords that bind us? What is the message of repentance telling us about the nearness of the Kingdom of God?
In all the conversations I had – all the seeking – all that asking – all the prayer - and in all the Zooming, traveling, and interviewing - rather than that ending up with a yes or no decision to make about a particular job, I’m finding myself called instead to make a home by the sea. Odd. I could say that I didn’t think that’s how our call system was supposed to work. It isn’t what the Presbyterian job search in all its bureaucratic splendor is designed to do, that’s for sure. But in God’s plan, it makes perfect sense. The quest part is still ongoing, and I don’t know quite what that will mean for me, even now. And yet I discovered so, so much in the asking, especially about myself. I know the gifts I bring and the intent God has for using them, even though I don’t know what I will be doing “professionally.” I gained a great deal of hope for the church as I met with some amazing people who love Jesus and care about the church as much as I do. I also felt alarming fear for those times when I encountered the corruption that reminded me that the church is a human institution as mired in sin as any other aspect of the world. But what I am feeling now is that I’m being guided home - again. I’m being found by Jesus along the shoreline. Jesus is beckoning “Come, and follow me.”
Take a moment, if you would, to look not at me – but up above me. Of all the stained-glass windows I’ve seen in my day, the one in this sanctuary speaks to me over and over again. As it shows Jesus’ hand extended to us, I always see in it a “come and follow me” message. Here in Ashland, back in 2012 when you offered me the opportunity to be your pastor, I didn’t just find a job, I found a home. Location matters. Vocation follows. That’s when the healing begins. Matthew takes us one step further in Jesus’ journey after he finds his group of disciples. He says that then Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. He found his mission. He found his purpose. AFTER he made his home.
This congregation is special in that many of you have stories, not just of living here forever, but of discovering home in this place. Hold on to that. When you find the place and the people that you can call home – then you will have the support in place you need to let God’s light shine through you. Just like the light shines through this window to bid us to walk with Christ in all our daily tasks. May your spiritual home continue to bring you joy and free you for service in the nearby Kingdom of God. Amen.

Contempt
Luke 18:9-14 (Only in Luke)
October 23, 2022
Rev. Kerra Becker English

If I were to go with the EASY way to preach this text, I would plan to talk about humility.
I would wax eloquently about the power of heartfelt prayer to set us right with God. 
Who doesn’t want to see in themselves the humble sinner justified through their own tears and self-depreciation to receive God’s mercy and grace?
We are the humble who will be exalted, right? Right?
The other part of that equation isn’t written for us. It’s for other people.
And yet, we are warned about the one who prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”  
Surely, we don’t pray – like that.
In this section of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is teaching about prayer.
But he’s also teaching about human intentions and motives.
Jesus is certainly insightful in how he approaches the crowd before him with just the right story, and yet it is his biographer Luke who lets us, the readers, know important specifics about who was listening.  
The audience is made up of a certain type of people: ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
Lately, I find myself being drawn into these seemingly minor details that Luke puts into his gospel.
Today, when social scientists ask the general population to come up with “feeling” words, they generally come up with three: angry, sad, and happy or as an easy way to remember, the mad, sad, glad trio. Our vocabulary for feelings doesn’t go very far.
Therefore, to have Luke give us a psychological profile of the group Jesus was addressing is a bit surprising. More than 2000 years ago, did they understand people and their drives better than we do?  
Luke identifies a very specific emotion – one we don’t talk about often – but one that also has a lot of power to do harm.
The identified listeners thought of themselves as righteous and regarded others with contempt.
Contempt.
That’s specific. And relevant in our own context of internet trolls, divisive politics, and what seems like heightened dissatisfaction with our human relationships.
I think we can figure out why contempt is a destructive emotion, but it also carries that edge of superiority that delivers a psychological rush in the moment. It may not exactly feel good, but it certainly feels powerful.  
Social media algorithms and news outlets are counting on that exact feeling to show up because it sells. If your news content of choice can get you fired up – you’ll keep coming back. The old journalism saying was, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Make people troubled, or better yet, make them mad, and they will keep coming back to feel more and more justified in how outraged they are. Turns out that we like feeling that we are better than someone else.
Feeling superior in one’s religious beliefs or political views has been around for quite some time.
Facebook, and Twitter, and every single media outlet knows that you will spend more time on their platform if you are feeling outrage than you will if you only watch cute kitten videos and hear good news stories. Your time spent is simply more money in their executive pockets. That’s why it’s so hard to get ethical boundaries in place even around hate speech and flat out lies. Those things, by design, increase our contempt for others we deem as not like us – which is how propaganda against a designated “out” group can be so successful.
We may WANT to be the example of humble prayer – and that’s a good thing – keep at that.
But it’s crucial that we recognize these forms of the Pharisee’s prayer in ourselves so that we can approach God humbly and with genuine regard for our own place in the world.
My study Bible reminds me that when Jesus is talking about prayer in these passages in Luke, it is about a whole life stance, not just what we do in the moment that we start out with, “Are you there, God? It’s me Kerra.”
Contempt is not only a bad form of prayer; it is a dastardly life stance to embrace.
I have learned the contemporary view on contempt from listening to the researchers from the Gottman Institute. The institute was founded by a married couple, John and Julie Gottman who have honed their science of relationships to the point where, with 90% accuracy, they can tell from a short observation of a couple if they are headed for divorce.
Know what the best predictor of a failing relationship is?
Contempt. The language of contempt is a relationship killer.
It’s the worst of their “Four Horsemen” of communication strategies, a play on the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Now, we all probably engage each of their four negative coping strategies to some degree, and they are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.
Human relationships are complicated, and we are prone to react in negative ways when we are tired or stressed rather than those times when we can be more responsive and calmer in our dialogues with one another.
Contempt though – is about putting the other person down so that we feel better about ourselves.
It’s the prayer: “God, I thank you that I’m not like those other people.”
Now, I confess that I prefer to be right, or perfect, or at least blameless in any given situation.
But I am human. I can be wrong, or scattered, or know full well that whatever situation I find myself in that the fallout from it is my own fault – completely.
What I hope NOT to do is project that I am better than anyone else as I go through my own struggles in life.
To strive for a growth mentality is to be honest and to be balanced.
My mistakes are human. But my successes are too.
I’m probably going to have a human sized share of both.    
 In the Gottmans’ book, “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail” John Gottman writes, “What separates contempt from criticism is the intention to insult and psychologically abuse your partner. With your words and body language, you’re lobbing insults right into the heart of your partner’s sense of self.” (Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown, p. 127)
This is the degree of attitude that Luke is describing here. Those listening were full of contempt for the people they thought were beneath them. The Pharisees, and those like them, despised sinners and tax collectors. They were labeling others and putting themselves above those labels.
They were, as the Gottmans describe it, using insulting or abusive language that communicates superiority.
Though the Gottmans studies marriage, their research can easily apply to religion as well. Self-righteous religious folk of almost any faith group will set themselves apart from thieves, adulterers, and rogues, and they may have a favorite group to insult like the tax collectors. They tithe. They show up at religious events. They are putting on a show for God to show not adherence to the faith but superiority to others. See God – how I’m better than all those other folks.
It’s an easy trap to fall into from a religious standpoint. If you find your faith values to be important, and you act on them, when you see others not doing so, you might feel justified in putting them down. It’s why I’m more likely to feel contempt toward Christians who believe or do things differently than I do than I would judge someone of a different faith or no faith. I expect other Christians to follow Jesus – with the implication – like I do.
The good news though is that Jesus, and the Gottmans, give us ways to understand ourselves beyond the temptation to contempt. Jesus gives us the example of humble prayer, the prayer that takes seriously our own sinfulness rather than just pointing out the sins of others. Our stance in prayer matters.
The Gottmans have a similar resolution for contempt. Rather than blaming others, it’s important for us to describe our own feelings and needs, to take responsibility for ourselves. To express our own needs in a positive way rather than pointing out what the other person did to us – that reduces the feeling of contempt in us and allows others to be responsive rather than defensive or simply cutting us out of their lives.
Prayer is not only about the words we say when we talk to God, it’s how we live our whole lives in relationship to both God and neighbor. For Jesus, there is a right way to approach God and it’s with humility, not with personal exaltation. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Prayers of persistent widows and tax collectors will be heard, and God will act with justice and with mercy. Open your heart to others. Speak clearly of your own needs without blaming and labeling. It’s a basic kindness, and a loving way to follow Jesus. Amen.

October 16, 2022
Luke 18:1-8; Jeremiah 31:31-34
Having Courage to Pray Always
Kerra Becker English
Jesus told them a story about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.
Stories are the perfect way to go here.
We don’t need stories to remind us how difficult life can be.
We know that from living.
We need stories to remind us that grace abounds,
That goodness can win in the end,
That persistence pays off,
That the arc of time is bending ever so slowly toward justice.
Jesus also clearly indicated that we need prayer.
This story is about praying through the hardest times.
It’s about not giving up.
It’s about grit, and courage, and resilience.
Words that get a lot of attention these days.
I’m a fan of Brene Brown’s book “Daring Greatly.” The title for that book comes from a Theodore Roosevelt quote apropos to today’s reading. Roosevelt said:
“Its not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man wo is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
Our protagonist in this story is no gladiator in the center arena,
Though she does keep standing up to fight again after each battle.
Rather, she is a widow. Presumed poor. Presumed powerless.
She is up against a judge who doesn’t care one bit about her fate.
Jesus doesn’t tell us she went to see the wise judge, or the kind judge,
She is up against the unjust judge.
An oxymoron - one would hope.
A Judge is supposed to weigh all matters according to what’s right or fair,
But this Judge has his thumb on the scale.
I’ve read the story.
The judge doesn’t listen to her because it’s the right thing to do.
He listens to her because she won’t leave him alone.
Jesus makes his point.
The list of things for us to pray about never ends.
And if we get real serious about prayer, it only gets harder as we get closer to the world Christ asks us to imagine.
What I’d like for us to do is make this story about prayer, and pray, right here, right now.
Today, we are going to pray this story.
We are going to imagine ourselves persistent in prayer.
We are going to imagine ourselves with the courage to face off with power.
Pray always, Jesus says, and do not lose heart.
As I pray – I’m going to leave some space for silence and for the opportunity to pray your prayers out loud.
We are going to pray with the story – so each prayer that we are going to pray has a focus.
Then when I say, Jesus says…
You will respond with, “Pray always and do not lose heart.”  
 
The world can be hard and unfair.      
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.
 
Those with earthly power may neither fear God, nor have respect for humanity.    
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.

Our accusers judge us wrongly.
 Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.
 
Achieving justice can take a really long time.
 Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.

When you are right, speak up.
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart
 
If they don’t or can’t hear you, speak your truth again.
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.

God will hear you both day and night.  
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.

The path of persistence is a worthy path.
Jesus says:      
Pray always and do not lose heart.

Pray for faith to be found on earth.
Jesus says:
            Pray always and do not lose heart.

October 9. 2022
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19
The Untouchables  
Kerra Becker English

An American Untouchable – Isabel Wilkerson, in Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, p.21-22
“In the winter of 1959, after leading the Montgomery bus boycott that arose from the arrest of Rosa Parks and before the trials and triumphs to come, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife Coretta, landed in India, in the city then known as Bombay, to visit the land of Mohandas Ghandi, the father of nonviolent protest. They were covered in garlands upon arrival, and King told reporters, ‘To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.’
 
He had long dreamed of going to India, and they stayed an entire month, at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. King wanted to see for himself the place whose fight for freedom from British rule had inspired his fight for justice in America. He wanted to see the so-called Untouchables, the lowest caste in the ancient Indian caste system, whom he had read of and had sympathy for, but who had still been left behind after India gained its independence the decade before. 
 
He discovered that the people in India had been following the trials of his own oppressed people in America, knew of the bus boycott he had led. Wherever he went, the people on the streets of Bombay and Delhi crowded around him for an autograph. 
 
One afternoon, King and his wife journeyed to the southern tip of the country, to the city of Trivandrum in the state of Kerala, and visited with high school students whose families had been Untouchables. The principal made the introduction.
 
‘Young people,’ he said, ‘I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.’ 
 
King was floored. He had not expected that term to be applied to him. He was, in fact, put off by it at first. He had flown in from another continent, hand dined with the prime minister. He did not see the connection, did not see what the Indian caste system had to do directly with him, did not immediately see why the lowest caste people in India would view him, and American Negro and a distinguished visitor, as low-caste like themselves, see him as one of them. ‘For a moment,’ he wrote, ‘I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.’ 
 
Then he began to think about the reality of the lives of the people he was fighting for – 20 million people, consigned to the lowest rank in America for centuries ‘still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty,’ quarantined in isolated ghettos, exiled in their own country. 
 
And he said to himself, ‘Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.’

In that moment, he realized that the Land of the Free had imposed a caste system not unlike the caste system of India and that he had lived under that system all of his life. It was what lay beneath the forces he was fighting in America.”
 
Let that story settle in for a minute.
Even after slavery ended, the ongoing trauma of having been an enslaved people did not.
Those whose families had benefitted from slave labor found novel and horrific ways of keeping the hierarchy that they knew intact.
They feared a loss of power, so they used tactics of terror to keep the power structure in place.
According to records maintained by the NAACP, the last lynching in America occurred in 1968. 1968!!! -  a mere two years before I was born, and I dare say that some of you may have memories of 1968.
Especially in southern states, laws were put on the books to make it hard for black citizens to vote, or own property, or even be in the same restaurant or use the same water fountain as their white counterparts.
It was 100% legal to do many things we would find repulsive by today’s standards.
Just a reminder – you have to teach people to treat others this way.
It may be in our nature to compare and contrast ourselves with others, to determine the familiar from the unfamiliar, but a unified structure that demeans a specific group of people over time is not only oppression, it is the creation of caste, a determination of who is clean or unclean, safe to be around or untouchable.
 
Caste is defined a social structure that ranks people in a hierarchy according to differences in wealth, status, religion, or in the specific case of the United States, race.
As Isabel Wilkerson researched her own family’s history, she discovered, like Martin Luther King, Jr. that the United States is built on the framework of a caste system – one that has parallels to India in terms of favoring the wealthy elite, and to Nazi Germany in terms of determining the value of a person based on a particular characteristic like race or religion.
These kinds of hierarchies didn’t just show up in the 20th century either.
They’ve been around for centuries, and yet we have not figured out how to eliminate them.
Neither the value of freedom, nor the commitment to progress has done much to change this game we keep playing.
There may be some here today uncomfortable that I’m talking about how we have come to rank other people in terms of societal value.
Truthfully, I am uncomfortable and sweating a bit up here too.
I’m not immune from those times when I think I’m either better than, or not good enough depending on what room I find myself in.
But what can be learned, I believe, can also be unlearned.
Spiritual truth tellers, like Jesus, are the ones who will help us change our own perspective.
I would love to think that such spiritual truth tellers would help us change the world.
I want God to swoop in and make it different, like permanently and perpetually different.
AND…I’m not going to hold my breath for that day to come.
But what Jesus does is tell stories and care for people in ways that remind me that I’m supposed to be different because of who God is in my life.
That’s so, so much harder, isn’t it?
 
Today, I read our Jesus text from Luke from the most recent translation of the NRSV which tells us that as Jesus entered the village, 10 people with a skin disease approached him.
Do you remember growing up reading the text that way?
Me neither.
This is the story of the 10 lepers.
Lepers.
Guess what?
When you hear the word LEPER, I bet you hear it like I hear it.
It is a reminder to stay away, that this is an untouchable group, not a group you want coming up to you as you get into town.
The Bible consistently denotes lepers as unclean.
Leper is meant to be a slur.
Like the other slurs that you know.
Yes, the ones you know about black people.
Yes, the ones you know about Jews.
And the ones you know about the gay community.
Jesus was approached by 10 members from the lowest caste of his time.
They come to Jesus, and they ask for God’s mercy.
When you have been repeatedly demeaned and dismissed for who you are,
what else can you ask for?
Jesus sent them to the priests – the ones who had the power to declare them clean or unclean.
On the way, their lesions healed, their disease disappeared.
The priests had no choice but to change their status in the community.
Here’s where the sermon usually begins – one of the 10 comes back to say thank you.
We clergy have used that as the guilt trip of gratitude.
See, kids, better write your thank you notes for those birthday gifts. 
This time through this text, I’m noticing something different.
I think it’s because we’ve been sticking around in Luke’s gospel.
This is a message, not for those who are healed to grovel in gratitude.
It’s for the priests to see their role more clearly.
It’s for them to remember that they were once slaves in Egypt, that God has restored their freedoms, promised them wholeness.
God delivers.
God delivers whether we pay attention and give thanks, or whether we grumble in the desert.
God also notices when we have made ourselves a bit too comfortable sitting in the seat of judgment over others.
Jesus restores all 10 lepers to their value and worth.
This is our reminder too that the freedom and the worth that we have does not come from human hierarchies, it comes from God.
This is a reminder that we are made fully in the image of God – which means that sacredness resides within.
This is also a reminder that society will try to teach us otherwise.
John Calvin used the depravity of human beings to teach us about God.
If everyone is equally messed up, completely unworthy, lower than a worm when it comes to our ability to compare ourselves to the goodness of God, then we are all in the same circumstances together.
I am a leper and I am a priest.
I am the one being judged and the one doing the judging.
Today, I want us to think about the other 9.
Nine out of ten times, I too forget that my worth and value, that my freedom and sense of inner peace are gifts from God.
Those moments of pure connection – the world cannot give them and neither can the world take them away.
But one time out of ten, the overwhelming feeling of being made whole, of being able to be my purest self, the one that God can see, that does spark gratitude of immense proportions.
Jesus wanted the priests to remember that feeling, to not get so bogged down in doing God’s work of judgment and correctness that they forgot how to have joy.
All, ALL these texts in Luke repeat that conclusion.
The lost get found.
The prodigal son gets welcomed home.
Debts are forgiven.
The leper becomes clean.
So celebrate and throw a party.
When the Reverend (the priest) Martin Luther King, Jr. first heard one of the Untouchables identify him as an American untouchable, it felt like an insult. Then he realized they had much in common, and to free their own minds and demand real justice became a common goal.
We all have ways in which we are the leper, the untouchable, the lost.
We all have ways we judge others just like the priests and scribes.
Jesus reminds us that we are all God’s children, all beloved community,
All given the chance to walk each other home.
Will that knowledge change the world? I don’t know.
Will that knowledge change me? I can only hope. Amen.

October 2, 2022 (World Communion Sunday)
Lamentations 3:19-26; Luke 17:5-6
Faithfulness: Great and Small
Rev. Kerra Becker English

Great is God’s faithfulness.
God’s steadfast love never ceases.
God’s mercies will never run out.
God’s provisions are both abundant and wonderful.
A little gratitude for God’s faithfulness can be perspective altering.
This story that begins from a place of deep lament and despair - out of affliction and homelessness - can turn toward a quiet hope for the future – with God’s help.
God’s got this. Right?
Right.
But what about my faithfulness?
How big is it?
Not that big probably.
I’d like more of that sure confidence please.
Maybe a little more trust.
If I’m honest, maybe a bit more power.
If I had more faith, maybe I would be more perfect.
Maybe getting to a perfect faith isn’t meant to be the goal.
But the apostles close to Jesus and his capacious faith were also left wanting… more.
Jesus, who, like God, is also BIG on steadfast love and unending mercy
confronts the apostles with his incredibly bold teaching about sin and forgiveness.
Let me share with you the few verses that come before the request from the apostles we just read:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for sin are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come! 2 It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 Be on your guard! If a brother or sister sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 4 And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” (Luke 17:1-4)
He told them, there will be occasions where you sin,
            and by sin here I think he means that we will fall short of doing the most loving thing.
We all sin. It happens. On bad days, or from missed opportunities, or whatever.
We fail to show the largeness of the love of God.
He doesn’t say if, but WHEN we fail, Jesus reminds us not to take the others down with us, especially those who are child-like.
Don’t set a bad example.
That’s solid advice.
Try to teach your children to do better.
He also says to forgive others.
If someone close to you sins, you’re supposed to tell them that you noticed,
not pretend like you didn’t see a thing.
Then, if they repent, forgive them.
It all seems hard. Impossible really.
To be that open, that vulnerable, that understanding.
To forgive all those times is either a mark of amazing love, or foolish futility.
It is in that context that the apostles turn and ask Jesus to increase their faith.
If we are going to be in the business of God’s mercy, we are going to need HELP.
H.E.L.P. Help.
Humans aren’t like God.
At least not every day.
Jesus, you better be bringing us some increased faith, some extra faith, some faith we didn’t know we had before.
I’m not sure we’re going to make it in this plan you’ve proposed.
MAYBE I can forgive those people out there, the ones I don’t know all that well.
MAYBE I can try to put on my best behavior in front of kids.
But then you want me to forgive a brother, a sister, a parent, a child, a partner, a friend?
Those are the hardest ones, Jesus.
We want to hold tightly to those grudges.
And this faith you are talking about means that we have to let them go.
Then Jesus addresses his apostles with the words we know,
but sometimes don’t know how to explain,
“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Faith the size of a mustard seed.
The faith that moves mountains and mulberry trees.
The faith that is bold enough to demand obedience.
The faith that none of us are sure we have.
It’s not a shock to be told we have less faithfulness than God.
That’s a given.
It might not even surprise us to think of our human faith as small.
That’s realistic.
But to think of it as mustard seed size seems insulting.
These are the apostles we’re talking about here,
the ones who left livelihood and family to follow Jesus.
But the translation from Greek to English is a bit ambiguous.
Is it that we might not EVEN have faith the size of a mustard seed -yet?
Or is it SINCE we have faith, even faith as tiny as a mustard seed,
 we can do these amazing things like uproot a whole tree and have it throw itself into the ocean?
It’s a slight, but possibly important issue of translation that I’m not linguistically gifted enough to weigh in on.
Nevertheless, what I do think we are meant to learn from this question and Jesus’ answer is two-fold.

• The seed of faith is always about potential. Seeds are a sign of what we “could” grow to become, and
• Faith is about movement. Faith obeys the call to get up and do something. Moves mountains, uproots mulberry trees, sends Abraham and Sarah to a new place, inspires Mary to say “yes” to mothering the Divine. You get the point. Faith is active.

“Increase our faith,” they say.
Make it bigger.
I think Jesus is saying to the apostles, you already have everything you are going to need.
You ARE the seed, with all the potential to die to the shell around you and grow into all your possibility and potential.
You ARE capable - of moving even the most stubborn system with the light of God’s love within you.
With just a little faith – the mountains MOVE.
It may be slower than you think, but those tectonic plates shift.
With just a little faith – the tree is lifted up, roots and all.
Families can change, and oceans of tears baptize the newness that can emerge.
Increase our faith, we pray.
Perhaps our faith doesn’t need increasing or perfecting.
Maybe it just is.
Maybe it was in us all along.
It could be dormant – waiting for a moment to grow, or change, or move.
But when that moment comes, we can be ready for it.
Or we can marvel at it.
Faith my friends – moves mountains.
Faith – is weird enough to imagine a tree being uprooted and walking itself into an ocean.
Jesus can come up with some strange metaphors sometimes, at least ones strange to our hearing.
Great is God’s faithfulness.
But dare I say that human faithfulness is pretty awesome as well.
Because we participate in the faithfulness of God, maybe a little can go a long way.
What will you do this week to nurture your own little mustard seed of faithfulness?
How can you grow, or change, or move in the direction of God’s love?
Really let this question seep into your prayers and watch the faith within come alive. Amen.

September 25, 2022
Abraham: Tour Guide to the Afterlife
Luke 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:6-10
Rev. Kerra Becker English

Welcome everyone.
My name is Abraham, and I am happy to have you join me on this guided tour of the afterlife.
People ask me all the time how I got this job.
Well, in my life on earth, I always thought it would be fun to do some traveling when I retired.
When I was 75 and still hadn’t gone that far from home, God said, pack up your suitcase and grab your wife, I’m going to take you on the journey of a lifetime.
I looked out my window hoping God had an RV parked out front to make the journey a little more fun.
That wasn’t the case. It was going to be a walking tour and a lot of tent camping.
We would end up getting a lot of steps in, me and my wife Sarah.
I’m glad I packed both pairs of sandals.
That’s not all that happened either.  We became parents on that trip.
God promised us that travel would be an adventure and a blessing.
And it most certainly was. 
I am so glad you decided to come on my tour today.
I hope God will also give you an adventure and a blessing.
But I have to ask before we get to our destination,
“How many of you have you ever been to the Holy Land before?”
Back in my day – we just called it – the land.
Sure, I guess it was holy. It was home. It was where life happened.
But I can’t believe all the Holy Land Tour companies that are around today, can you?
Those places are crawling with tourists of every kind.
It’s kind of like Disney too, where every ride has a gift shop.
Every venerated site has its own holy trinkets, water from the Jordan River, olivewood nativity scenes, dead sea salts, rosary beads, tree of life jewelry. Religious tourism is a bustling industry, so watch how you spend your money.
You can find tchotchkes for every Jew, Christian, and Muslim if you check out all the vendors trying to make every tourist feel like they’ve been on a deep and faithful pilgrimage.
Maybe that’s also why they let me give the tours here in the afterlife.
All manner of believers recognize me.
I’m not all that different from the mouse in Florida, I guess.
Father of all faiths. Patriarch of all patriarchs. Founding ancestor of the Abrahamic religions.
Yes, they were all named after me when you lump the three big monotheistic faiths together like that.
They all know me as the original traveler, willing to uproot everything to go where God wanted me to go.
So, I suppose now that you are on this tour with me, you want to know where we are exactly.
We are in the afterlife.
You there, question from the back.
Is it heaven or hell, you ask?
That’s a good question.
You know that the journey is largely what you make of it, right?
Some folks can find creative ways to enjoy an 8-hour plane delay,
And some are furious if their traveling companions are even 5 minutes late.
In part it’s a matter of perspective.
Most of the folks who think they know all about the afterlife before they ever get here
end up being surprised at what they find.
Jesus likes telling stories about the afterlife, and his followers, well, they eat those stories up.
But most of the time – he’s just handing out a few crumbs to inspire curiosity.
You really can’t really know a place until you’ve been there for yourself.
But you can prepare yourself ahead of time for what lies ahead.
A good tour guide will have exactly two rules.
The first rule is: Plan ahead.
The second rule is: Be flexible.
Then to have an intention with your travel plans gives you eyes to capture a vision about the place.
Like God promised me descendants, Jesus promised his followers eternal life.
The joke was on us though, right?
I thought that maybe it was up to me to make that promise come true.
Sarah did too, even to the point of giving Hagar to me in hopes of a child from that union.
Together, we ended up with many nations-worth of descendants, and yet those descendants don’t always get along with each other. Siblings, am I right?
Maybe you think it’s up to you to earn your eternal reward.
I guess that’s part of it.
What you do with your life now has something to do with the spiritual life beyond.
But it’s also about a way of seeing.
When it comes to heaven or hell, what do you see?
What will end up being a reward or a punishment?
Today, on our tour I want to show you what Lazarus saw when he showed up.
This is Lazarus, the poor. Lazarus, the hungry. Lazarus, the sore-infested beggar.  
His life had been hardship on top of hardship, a living hell.
But the instant that he died, angels surrounded him, and carried him home.
For a guy who never had a home, we made him feel like he owned the place,
without a care or worry in the world.
I got to see him soon after his arrival, and the hug he gave me was the kind that melts your heart,
ya know.
It’s like the dreams of a beach person who lives hours away from the shoreline.
They get there, and smell that salt air, and hear the waves lap against the sand,
And all is well with the world.
That place, the one that makes you feel most you, and most alive, and most treasured.
Lazarus finally found it, and we spent a lot of time together wondering about how some land becomes Holy, and other places become desecrated.
Even afterlife land.
Because afterlife land treasures are glimpsed in the world you are in right now.
But that rich guy, the one who stepped around or over Lazarus every day, was building his own afterlife as well.
He made my past mistake of thinking he had control over the outcomes of his destiny.
We do and we don’t, right?
We have opportunities to shape our world, but as my good friend Paul wrote to Timothy,
“There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. For we’ve brought nothing into this world, and we’ll take nothing out of it.”
The rich guy imagined he could take everything with him - hitch the U-haul to his hearse so to speak.
He surrounded himself with things that he loved and had no regard for the hardships of others.
When he died – he landed in the dirt – buried, not only literally, but figuratively he was buried in regret.
His regret did not meet the category of remorse though.
He wanted was Lazarus had.
His afterlife was Hades, as in, hotter than Hades. And all that heat was making him thirsty.
Through the burning fire of his choices, he caught sight of me and Lazarus hanging out together,
And called out for mercy – my mercy. Asking me to dip my finger in water and put it on his burning tongue. Gross.  
As if the tour guides are at your service for any and every request.
That’s not my job, by the way, to let every stupid tourist do every stupid thing.
I’m trying to help them acclimate to their surroundings, not make it exactly like they have it at home.
Not every town in the world has a McDonalds!
But anyway, he thought he could get my help.
I had to explain the rules.
“Child” I called him a child because he was acting just like one.
“Child,” I said, “remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”
He had already missed the bus.
There was no getting back to what he would like to have.
No refunds for jerks.
Well, that’s company policy, but I rather like it.
You’ve heard about what happened next.
He thought I could go to his other corrupt brothers with a warning.
Like that would even work.
You can’t help people understand somewhere new if they are blind to where they already are.
I wasn’t trying to be difficult, just obvious.
They had heard of Moses and the prophets before.
Jesus wasn’t the only one trying to help their communities learn how to live with grace.
I love how Jesus finishes this story.
He’s really a good tour guide too, letting people discover the truth about a place for themselves.
He had heard me say a million times that anywhere you go, you still bring yourself with you.
That is to say, that if they haven’t listened to Moses and the prophets by now,
I could return from the dead, and they wouldn’t listen to me either.
Oh I know. Jesus eventually would make that sacrifice, showing them so much more.
But still – the tour guides are listened to only so much.
We can only be helpful to those who pay attention, who make the effort to learn and grow.
Otherwise, it’s just a trip, just a venue change.
For me, I like to pay attention to the music of a place.
The angels sing – a lot. And sometimes your earthy musicians strike that chord, with words or a tune you just rest into because it feels like home.
I heard one of those songs the other day by an artist who had felt the presence of Jesus.
In Pokey LaFarge’s song about his own afterlife musings, the refrain says, “There’s always more.”
Maybe he had heard this story.
The rich man, he never thought there would be more, so he had to have everything here.
But for Lazarus, there was more, and more, and more.
Grace says, there’s always going to be more, more than you could have ever imagined.
Travel can open you. Or travel can make you afraid.
Allow yourself the possibility to see more.
Then follow the tour guide rules.
Plan ahead.
Plan to be generous, and loving, and kind.
Plan for justice. Prepare for freedom.
And Be flexible.
You never know who you might see walking around with me in the afterlife.
May it be someone who reminds you what a good friend you were here.
Thanks for joining me on this tour.
I hope it’s been all that you expected, and more.
Remember, this is a tour we will all take – one day.
So, for now, aspire to godliness and be content with what you have been given.
When it is time for you to make this journey, all you take with you is you. Amen.

September 18, 2022
Luke 16:1-13, Proverbs 19:4-6
Don't Make Me Preach This!
Rev. Kerra Becker English

I’m not going to lie. There’s a significant temptation to just skip over this parable and preach something else this week. I know a lot of preachers who are doing exactly that and for very good reasons.
The point of this parable is difficult to detect, AND Jesus is talking about the kind of things that make for uncomfortable conversation: like the temptations of money, and the inherent inequalities of the workplace, and the deceit that seems necessary at times for trying to survive in a completely unfair world.
But if we take the time to really look here, maybe it’s not that Jesus is being obtuse.
Maybe it’s that Jesus knows human nature a little too well.
Luke has a political spin on his narrative.
Each of the gospel writers do.
Luke’s is all about a cultural revolution, a reversal of the status quo that is coming through Jesus. 
My study Bible remarks that, noteworthy to Luke’s gospel, is its unrelenting interest in the marginalized and dispossessed.
Remember the Magnificat, Mary’s protest song where the hungry are filled and the rich are sent away empty? That’s Luke.
Remember Jesus’ big sermon, in the Luke version? Jesus preaches, “blessed are the poor” AND “woe to those who are rich.”
Luke isn’t the only gospel writer who will let us know that you can’t serve both God and dishonest wealth, but Luke attaches that saying to today’s parable.
Let me take a brief aside here for a translation note - the older English word Mammon that you may have heard in church growing up implies a feeling to go with the word wealth, a feeling that adds a greater impact than saying wealth alone. It implies a moral slant, that this is ill-gotten wealth, or wealth that could take the place of God in our hearts because it implies an unhealthy attachment to such riches. Therefore, in modern English the case can be made that we should probably add a few qualifiers to this saying, or at least be aware that the old translation might be better. “You can’t serve both God and Mammon.”
You can’t be about making greed driven money – and serve God too.
So, who exactly might be doing that?
As this parable continues in the same speech from the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal Son, we still have the same audience, who has just heard three parables about the need for celebrating whenever the lost gets found or the errant son comes home.
This parable opens next with “then Jesus said.”
Jesus was still talking, though this time, he spoke directly to specific members of his audience – “then Jesus said…TO the disciples.”
But who else is listening besides the disciples? The same audience as last week: sinners, the tax collectors, and YES, a bunch of Scribes and Pharisees. The same crowd.
Among this crowd, Jesus turns to address the disciples so they will hear their own charge in this parable, but since this is Luke telling the story, we should also be tuned in to expect revolutionary language. What is the change taking place? And how will this change speak to those on the marginalized edges of life? There will be the old way, and then Jesus’ suggestion for a way forward.
The old way is going to imply that there has been an injustice, right?
And when there is an injustice, Luke is going to tell us how Jesus wants us to “stick it to the man.”
But “sticking it to the man” is culturally driven. Who is the identified oppressor that needs brought to justice?  We need to unpack the character equivalencies in this narrative. Who is Jesus talking about when he calls out the shrewd manager?
That’s when I turn to the biblical scholars who have done the homework for me. It helped this preacher greatly to read Alastair Roberts’ commentary on this passage from the Political Theology Network, so I’m going to lean heavily on his work to interpret this parable. I’ve linked it to the sermon on the Facebook page if you want to read further.
The “shrewd managers” of course are those who have been charged to keep the Master’s affairs in order.
Who might that be?
Well, the scribes and Pharisees certainly though of themselves as the keepers of the Master’s Kingdom. So let’s presume the shrewd managers are the religiously higher ups, those in that gathered crowd who thought of themselves in charge of religious truth.
Then, what if the Master accused them of doing it badly? So much so that they were about to be fired?
Jesus implies exactly that with this parable. Indirectly, he is accusing them of squandering the money they receive as offerings and using it to gain power and influence for themselves rather than doing God’s work. They’ve been caught.
And Jesus tells THIS story of squandering right after telling the story of the Prodigal Son who is also accused of squandering – but in ways that they would find shockingly offensive. They are the elder brother in that story poo-pooing God’s graciousness. But when they are accused of being the squanderers of the money entrusted to them, it looks a little different.
Jesus is building up to a big gotcha moment. It’s brilliant oratory, in a speech that benefits Luke’s ongoing perception of the movement Jesus is creating.
Those who are offended by the petty offenses and foolish decision-making of the prodigal son are guilty of collecting money from the masses and squandering it for their own wants and desires.
You know what happens next, right? We have to ask ourselves if we know of any equivalents taking place in our own tradition. Who is Jesus speaking to now?
Luke makes it easy to look at the scribes and Pharisees as the bad guys, but we have to hear the message for ourselves as well. How have Christian religious leaders done the same thing – raised money with tithes and offerings only to use it to enrich those who gain their power from the church? When do such leaders need to be fired?
Just think for a moment about the vast amount of accumulated riches from the height of the Roman Catholic empire, or the many personal mansions of Joel Osteen, or for that matter, ponder the resources sitting in the Presbyterian Foundation, an example of the millions of dollars that sit in Protestant endowments – just so they will grow – for the glory of God’s kingdom?
The temptation of religious institutions to squander or to hoard away our resources is not in any way new.
It’s very, very old. And it’s very, very human.
But Jesus doesn’t stop this parable with “You’re fired” – get out of here.
He gives the shrewd manager an out – turning toward praise of their shrewdness.
When the manager is aware that they no longer have a job with their master, but the debtors haven’t heard this news yet, he quickly goes to all of them to settle their debts, slashing what they owe, and in the process making them quite happy.
The shrewd manager joins the debt forgiveness business, knowing that these grateful people will then take him in when he has nothing left of his career.
That’s how you build friends in the Greco-Roman world! Again, checking the historical notes, my study Bible notes tells me that the exchange of money created, maintained, or solidified various forms of friendship. Jesus was well aware of the currency of relationships.  In this setting, the same note says, Jesus’ address to the disciples and other religious leaders was counsel to “make friends” with the poor, with those who would not be expected to return the favor. That aligns with Luke pretty well, don’t ya think?
Take all that shrewdness, Jesus says, and use it for the good without expecting anything in return.
Jesus then goes on to do one of his parable explanations for the stupid, for those who didn’t catch the nuance of his story.
That might be us.
Not because we are so stupid, but because we need the point made clear.
In case we didn’t understand the story fully, he says:
Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful in much;
And whoever is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much. 
If you then have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 
No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and wealth. 
I happen to think this is a message specifically designed for those who ask for money in the name of the Master, or as I do when we collect the offering plates, for the sake of God’s kingdom work.
Of course, Luke will go on to describe the Pharisees as “lovers of money,” but I dare say that in our contemporary world there are plenty of people who view Christianity in the same light, and with reason.
Have you ever heard someone say, “the church only wants me for my money?”
Ugh. I know I have.
One of the ways we measure a successful church is by how much money they HAVE,
Rather than by how much they are giving away to those on the margins of life.
I say this as one who stands to benefit from the generosity of church goers quite personally in fact. The disciples were in the same circumstance. They too would benefit from the generosity of believers, and yet they were also the new religious leaders being charged with handling the affairs of their master, Jesus, differently.
Jesus himself lived in part on the graciousness of others, even if he built a cabinet or a door frame every now and then to put food on his own table.  
Nevertheless, he expected others in the religious realm to make the same commitment to generosity, to be wise stewards when possible, and shrewd stewards when necessary.
Allow the debtors a break. Reduce what they owe. Especially when it is readily available and yours to give. We who are Jesus followers celebrate the return of the lost, and Lord knows, friendships can be made by alleviating suffering. 
“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”
That’s how Jesus teaches the disciples to pray in Luke’s gospel.
It isn’t a forgiveness quid pro quo. It is an action descriptive of the one doing the praying.
We FORGIVE everyone indebted to us. Period.
Canceling debts is a big, big deal – for the followers of Jesus.
Well now. That sounds a bit – familiar.
I am pleased to report that among Presbyterian religious leaders, in the Presbytery of the James, recently church debts were canceled for four small churches that would have been paying on what they “owed” the Presbyterian Loan Program forever. In one case, one of the debts was ALREADY 120 years old. One of the churches didn’t even know these debts existed they were so far off the books. And unsurprisingly, these debts were incurred by the marginalized, by our black congregations that had to borrow money to have the resources to build their churches. In doing this, we chose to act according to Jesus by way of Luke’s revolutionary picture of grace.
This is just an example – but it’s a responsible one – a Jesus following one.
That prayer, the one we pray every single Sunday in church, is not just to say because we’ve always said it. It is a reminder of what we ought to be doing in the world. Forgiving debts is a part of that. It was then and certainly is now.
Amen.

September 11, 2022
Psalm 119:169-176; Luke 15:1-10
What to Pray When We’ve Gone Astray
Rev. Kerra Becker English          
 
I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a controversial statement.
Jesus takes sides.
And when Jesus takes sides,
he doesn’t necessarily take the side of the religious or even the righteous.
You can be flawless in religious purity and completely wrong at the same time.
Jesus understood that.
So, before we get into this parable that describes the lost sheep and the lost coin,
let’s look at a really important detail about the context of Jesus’ delivery of this message.
He was speaking to a crowd where there were obviously two “sides” present.
They are named.
Who is listening to Jesus at EXACTLY this moment?
On one side, all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to listen to him.
Got it?
Tax collectors.
Luke could have lumped them in with the other sinners but didn’t.
The tax collectors were agents of Rome, doing the dirty work of the Empire.
Collecting from the poor to fund the lavish lifestyles of the rich.
It’s a familiar story.
These are the middle-management folks who are just doing their jobs,
but they are doing jobs they hate, for people they may hate even more.
Jesus is intriguing to them – so they show up to hear what he has to say.
Then you have your average sinners.
These are the people like you and me who aren’t perfect and know it.
They are merchants, and farmers, and artisans, AND a smattering of the intentionally marginalized poor.
These tax collectors and sinners are just people.
The basic, ordinary people whose voices often go unheard and certainly go underappreciated in the various machinations that seem to rule the world.
That’s one side.
Then there’s the other side.
The hoity side.
The presumptuous side.
They want to hear Jesus for other reasons – to see if he is one of them, or not.
The Scribes and the Pharisees have voice enough to demand that Jesus answer their question.
And the question is, “Why do you welcome and EAT WITH sinners?”
Why are you having lunch with those kinds of people? When you could be lunching with us?
This group despises the first group, considering themselves far above the peasant riff-raff.
For a wannabe spiritual leader to try to speak to both sides at the same time is career suicide, right?
How are you gonna speak to a “purple” church?
That’s how the question gets asked nowadays – presuming that the sides are defined as the deepening chasm between “red” and “blue” America that makes for an uncomfortable purple.
What I wonder, is how DOES Jesus speak to the purple church, when purple is the color of angered faces whose hate is directed at any and all of those considered the sinful “lesser than?”
That’s what Jesus is doing here.
He’s about to speak to a mixed crowd, a crowd that includes a subset of people who want him to conform to their ways or shut up, and a crowd who is desperately hungry for a word of hope.
It’s an impossible audience.
Walk away Jesus – Run if you have to!
You will not “win” here.
But we know Jesus, don’t we?
He’s going to open his mouth.
In this case he will speak boldly.
The story of the lost sheep goes viral.
Everyone knows some version of it.
But he will also speak cryptically, just a little bit sideways to buy himself more time while the religious elite are left scratching their heads.
You would think he would speak TO his questioners to prove himself,
But instead, he speaks TO the people in such a way that the purple-faced religious purists will overhear his retort to their jab.
He may be telling a story about sheep and a shepherd.
But it becomes quickly obvious that sheep are just a stand in for people.
The shepherd cares more about the one lost sheep than the other 99 already in his fold.
The woman with her savings of silver sweeps and cleans, looks under the couch cushions and behind the refrigerator, checking absolutely everywhere until the one lost coin is found.
Then – it’s a party.
Full on rejoicing.
The people normally dismissed as not really worth the bother are celebrated upon their return to wholeness.
By the shepherd, by the diligent woman, and even more so, by God, the loving parent.
Sinners aren’t evil. Jesus will deal with intentional evil differently.
Sinners aren’t worthless. They are valued deeply in God’s eyes.
Sinners aren’t deserving of punishment. They are deserving of God’s restorative love.
Sinners are human, people just like us. Perhaps lost. Perhaps wandering away. Perhaps caught up in systems that give them very few choices about how to be in this world.
Sin – according to scripture – gives us an opportunity to return to God,
To remember God’s commandments and rejoice that God invites you to come back
Over and over again.
Sin isn’t without consequences.
We get caught up and we mess up. That’s for sure.
But it’s not the end of the world when we do.
It isn’t a cause for clutching pearls and asking someone why they have “those kind of people” over for dinner.
That’s getting our righteousness wrong.
 
To hear that story AS a tax collector is to be mentally freed from the trap that has you stuck.
To hear that story AS one of the sinners is to be given an amazing gift.
It matters which side we align with to understand how we will hear that story.
To hear that God will search for you until you are found -
To hear that God will sweep out every corner
and clean under every piece of furniture to find you –
How does that make you feel?
Special?
Valuable?
Beloved?
Free to be who you are?
Confident that you are something more than the labels others put on you?
There’s a reason Jesus talks about finding the lost as a cause for rejoicing.
To feel “found” by God is to have a literal miracle happen in your life.
It is remarkable.
It is humbling.
It is terrifyingly amazing to find out that your “sin” isn’t what defines you.
God loves you for you.
You don’t have to earn God’s favor – it just is.
In searching for echoes of this parable in other parts of scripture,
I came across the last verse of Psalm 119 – which happens to be the longest psalm in the Bible.
The last verse reads: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek out your servant,
for I do not forget your commandments.”
So, if you go back and read that whole poetic prayer, which includes a stanza for each letter of  the Hebrew alphabet, beginning at “alef” and continuing with at least 8 lines per letter to its ending verse about being the lost sheep found by God,
you will find it FILLED with rejoicing.
Exactly what Jesus was talking about.
It is the praise psalm of all praise psalms.
It rejoices over God’s goodness to be found in God’s steadfast love,
God’s ever relevant word,
and God’s live giving commandments.
It describes quite accurately the human condition that struggles with sin and hates what is evil.
It is the prayer of a person who has encountered illness and oppression,
death and disappointment,
and YET can still find hope in God’s abundance.
Let me just say, Jesus didn’t mind stealing good material when he saw it.
AND he knew that the Scribes and Pharisees would know that psalm from A to Z – so to speak.
He was talking to them too. They weren’t left out.
He was reminding them of how to pray when life gives you hardship and frustration.
He was asking them – indirectly – to remember how to rejoice.
They knew how to judge. That was apparent.
I can hear this parable that way too – as indictment for my judgey inside voice.
Was he reminding them how to invite a friend to lunch?
Was he reminding them how to love the law without all the rigidity?
The psalmist writes, “I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.”
The law isn’t the problem. It never was.
And yet -
The application of the law in angry and judgmental minds creates classes and bigotry.
Following the law shouldn’t be a chore or a tool.
Following the law is like tasting the sweetest honey, or the finest wine.
It is a joy.
God’s law is a blessing.
When we lose sight of it, God will come looking for us.
How awesome is that?  How awesome is that?
Amen.

They Didn’t Know
Mark 4:30-32; 1 Samuel 17
Kerra Becker English
Presbytery of the James

Thanks to generous support from this Presbytery, This Fall, I will be welcoming my 11th small church ministry intern to work and learn with us in Ashland. As a regular part of the internship, I assign students a book written by my seminary colleague Steve Willis called, “Imagining the Small Church: Celebrating a Simpler Path.” In the book’s introduction, I love that Steve is quick to say what his book is NOT. He says, “The book boasts no ten or fifteen steps to a successful small church. Instead, I hope to encourage you to give up on steps altogether and even to give up on success, at least how success is usually measured. I also hope to help the reader imagine the small church differently; to see with new eyes the joys and pleasures of living small and sustainably.” My hope is for this sermon do the same – upend the assumptions you may have about church success and allow all of us gathered here to imagine the small church and the pastors who lead them differently. Paraphrasing Jesus’ question from the reading: “With what do we measure the success of the church? What metrics do we use to describe it?” As Presbyterians, we tend to be less chatty than some other denominations about the number of souls we’ve saved, and yet we still measure our vital statistics in butts and bucks. How many people attend and how much goes into the plate? The Presbytery wants to know. The Office of General Assembly Statistics wants to know. Get in your annual report in early and get a gold star – right? Larger numbers must mean more success, and dwindling numbers means failure, or maybe even death. How in the world will we keep people coming to church? My hunch is that somewhere you’ve heard the rumor that the Presbyterian church, or perhaps Christianity itself, is dying, that if we don’t start growing soon, we will pass from simply being irrelevant to being non-existent. That sounds scary, and it has been selling books and workshops to anxious pastors for all of the 25 years I’ve been in ministry. Friends - there is nothing new under the sun. Will we grow or will we die? That question gets posed as if the numbers are the ONLY story of the church’s relevance. And the next move is then to ask already stressed-out pastors, “What steps are YOU going to take to save the church? Here’s where Steve and I agree 100%. There are no steps – other than one foot in front of the other. And there is no solution – only a deeper dive into the vulnerability of BEING the church wherever it is we happen to be planted. Jesus isn’t the one calling us to save the church. Let me propose instead that Jesus calls us to bury the church, over and over and over again. Jesus is so good at asking those questions that will challenge our thinking about who we are as his followers, even as we struggle to see where he’s leading us in this 21st century world, “With what shall we compare the kingdom of God? What parable shall we use for it?” The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like a profitable corporation.” The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like a sold-out auditorium.” The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like receiving a huge financial windfall.” The answer was, “the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” A What??? A MUSTARD SEED. The kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that is buried so it can grow. Then when it does grow – it becomes a home, a nest, a habitat for a variety of birds who will come and go as they please. If we want to grow like the kingdom of God, like the community of the faithful that Jesus was talking about, we cannot let those articles about being a dying church scare us. Fear not, my friends. We have to embrace that the church will hold a thousand funerals for what “used to be,” and do so willingly. If Christians can’t talk about, let alone, embrace the power of endings to give rise to something new – what’s the point of the Passion narrative exactly? This is our story. This is where we shine. They thought he was dead. They buried him. Jesus may have told his followers a thousand times that the ending was necessary, purposeful, essential to the story, but they didn’t really know, couldn’t actually imagine that he would rise again. I remember, early in my ministry with Ashland when we had this conversation about being a dying church. They were looking at the numbers, and as is the case in most small congregations, the numbers painted a grim story of limitations. Only a few more years of a paying a full-time pastor and they would face immediate financial struggles. The money they had from the sale of the manse was finite, and wouldn’t last forever. There were no children actively involved in the church. They were discouraged. We might die. But I asked them, if you are going to die anyway, don’t you want to die BEING the church? We had plenty of assumptions we had to bury about success. But as we buried them, we didn’t know that what we were really doing was planting seeds of faithfulness, of trust in the living God to do something with our resources. They couldn’t afford a full-time pastor – but they did plant the seed of continuing with a part-time pastor who was also parenting and studying to become a spiritual director. They weren’t drawing in families with kids – but they did plant the seed of welcome for the single women retiring to Ashland on their own to find home and community among friends. They felt like there were so many things they couldn’t do – so I simply said - don’t do them. Instead, we will build partnerships with other congregations and become friends among our colleagues in ministry. It’s more important to be what you can be. Be the church. They didn’t know that in letting go of past expectations, they were flinging mustard seeds everywhere. As we continued to face new challenges, we started to think about success in new ways. It wasn’t the same old metrics or the same old script. To boost your numbers or fail as a church. The growth was in spirit, in authentically embracing what we could be, not fuss about what we couldn’t be, not worrying so much whether or not more people were going to show up with open hearts and open wallets. Let me tell you – giving your congregation permission to scrap Vacation Bible School when no one has the energy for that is incredibly freeing! Valuing productivity and proliferation as what it means to be “successful” amplifies a cultural message, not a spiritual one. For our small churches to not just exist but to thrive – we have to quit sending congregations the message that their numbers are what tells the story of their ministry. That message becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, and churches that are told they must do and be everything for everybody in order to be valued exhaust themselves and can end up overextended and find it necessary to close. If God has planted them where they are – who are we to stop them from celebrating the kind of organic growth that allows the local birds to make their nests and learn to fly? Small churches don’t need saving by folks who think they know better how to be the church. Rather, they need open-minded support and encouragement to live by the parable that Jesus gave us for understanding the kingdom of God. Be like the mustard seed. Bury the church as it “used to be” and watch what might grow up in that place. As we use our imaginations today to envision the kingdom of God measured in mustard seeds, I also want to use this pulpit today to lift-up and recognize those who are serving as pastors and leaders of small congregations, so that these frequently unseen servants of God might be fully seen. I know I often feel invisible in the same way David appeared invisible in this familiar biblical story about David’s courage to show up in defense of God’s people. David, as was presumed, was no match for the giant Philistine. Saul thought he was “just a boy.” His big brother Eliab thought he should have stayed home with the sheep. And the military leaders thought he asked stupid questions. He didn’t have the training and he was too small to even put on the armor. David was utterly dismissed. But who showed up in defense of God’s people? David showed up in defense of God’s people. Small church pastors aren’t often recognized for their courage to take on giants or skill with a slingshot. But I can tell you, they’ve been tending the sheep like nobody’s business. Those servants may not be the first person that comes to mind when clergy are invited to headline leadership conferences, and yet they have an eclectic range of clergy skills that may include slinging chicken at the annual barbecue, keeping their own aging computer going even as Zoom and livestreaming made it gasp and wheeze, or being experts at navigating today’s maze of insurance options from the menu at the Board of Pensions, to the healthcare marketplace, to making sure their family has adequate coverage through their spouse’s benefits. They may be doing more than you can imagine by also working their side hustle or managing a full-time job while doing congregational work AS their side hustle. So, this amazing thing happens from being fairly good at a whole variety of things. In it, your sheep come to know you. Your congregation sees what lengths you will go to stave off bears and lions or direct them to living water. They see how you love them – and they sometimes know how hard they can be to love. Many of us who are clergy have been taught self-care skills through seminary that dictate that intimacy between a pastor and their congregation should be of some sort of professional grade. In the small church – you don’t always get the choice to remain professionally aloof. Small church pastors, especially the ones who allow themselves to be known, are incredibly vulnerable to the emotional plight of their people, even as they seek the courage to engage the world and its dangers. And I find that the REALLY good ones are even willing to sling a few stones if they have to. I dare say that biblically God seems to like it when the underdog gets their shot. There’s joy in being able to say, “I’ve got this” when no one else thinks you’ve got this. Perhaps behind the scenes, listening to the varied questions and stories of small church pastors might offer us creative insights for imagining the future church – as we celebrate – as Steve calls it - “a simpler path.” Together, we can then scrap and fight as David did, for what’s truly important – alongside of our people, knowing that they are really God’s people. Then it won’t matter if our resources are limited or our situation difficult, God will give us courage and remind us that we have been saved from the paw of the lion and the claws of the bear before. And God will go with us again. The world in its powers tries to tell us what’s important – wealth, popularity, strength, visibility, authority. Yet God uses weakness and poverty, insignificance and smallness to make a point that God’s kingdom is wholly unlike earthly kingdoms in about every possible way. When the world tries to tell us that the church is dying, are we going to get scared and try to save ourselves? I hope not. Those who try to save their lives, as Jesus said, will lose them. Will the vanity of wishing for cultural significance bury those church relics that no longer matter? Oh, I hope so. For those who give up their lives will save them. I say – may we be planted deep and covered up with good soil. The headlines have been greatly exaggerated – the church is not as dead as it looks – but we repeat and learn this pattern of faithfulness each time we have the wherewithal to tend to the idols and presumptions we need to bury. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and beloved contemporary Christian mystic sums it up this way, he says: “A church that has been humbled by disruption and decline may be a less arrogant and presumptuous church. It may have fewer illusions about its own power and centrality. It may become curious. It may be less willing to ally with the empires and powers that have long defined it. It may finally admit how much it needs the true power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. That’s a church God can work with.” Together, Presbytery of the James, let’s be, as Rohr describes it, that humble church God can work with. To do so, we must listen to those on the margins as Jesus did, to not be afraid to befriend the least, the last, and the lost, to walk alongside those who are far from the centers of power and traverse the periphery of society. We have heard a calling in this Presbytery to be fully Christ-centered and partnership based, to follow Jesus where he leads us – which very well might be out of our churches and into the world. That may not save any of our churches in the forms we now know, be they small or large, but I can guarantee that God’s kingdom will come the more we set ourselves to planting mustard seeds and using the weird collection of skills God has given us. Amen.

Charge & Benediction:
I’d like to leave you with a quote that originates from a line by Greek poet Dimas Christianopolos. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” My friends, “With what WILL we compare the kingdom of God?” A seed? A mustard seed? SO… Whenever your face hits the ground and the soil smells musty in your nostrils, Whenever you hear that you are too small, too inexperienced, not good enough, Whenever the cloud of Good Friday looms, and Easter feels so very far away, Remember that you are seeds. You are seeds. Being planted, watered, and grown exactly as God intended. So - Go – and may the Lord go with you. Take courage. Be not afraid. Raise your slingshot against those who align themselves with imperial power, and strength above all. When God is for you, who can go against you? God did not withhold anything from us, not even God’s beloved Son. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? No, none of these things. In all these things we are more than conquerors through the holy one who loves us - more than we can imagine. Amen.