“What Does It Mean to be MCC: New Community—New Love” 4-28-13

“What Does It Mean to be MCC: New Community—New Love”  4-28-13

God, your teachings show us that without love, our actions gain nothing.  Pour your blessed gift of love into our hearts, so that as we are made alive by your Spirit, we may know goodness and peace.  Grant us the gift of sharing your love with all your children in the world.  Speak to us and speak through me, today and always.   Amen.

                As you know, we are now only months away from the 2013 General Conference.  You will be well represented and if there are others of you still in deciding mode—let me remind you that you have only two days to register at the early bird rate.  So, as we prepare for the General Conference; and, because we have many new and old members and friends for whom MCC is a new experience, I thought it a good time to review or introduce what it means to be MCC.  MCC has four core values, Inclusion, Community, Spiritual Transformation and Social Action, and we will spend the next four weeks looking at each of those.  Then we will explore some of the other aspects of MCC beliefs as they relate to us as individuals and as a church.  These sermons will continue right up to the time of General Conference and should give us quite a good foundation for participating in and understanding all that is going on at the Conference. 

                As I looked at the scripture passages chosen for today, I was immediately drawn to the Core Value of—“Community” defined by MCC as “offering a safe and open community for people to worship, learn and grow in their faith…. We are committed to equipping ourselves and each other to do the work that God has called us to do in the world”.  This core value fits perfectly with Jesus’ words to his disciples.  Jesus, after washing the feet of the disciples and identifying Judas as his betrayer, gives these words to those disciples who are gathered around him.   “Since both I and God have been glorified, I will not be with you much longer.  You cannot go with me where I am going.  So, I am giving you a brand new commandment which will define you as my disciples.  Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.  This is the way people will know you belong to me.” 

                This is no easy love—no romantic love—and no tough love—eye for an eye kind of love.  This is a love your enemies love, a love even those who hate you love, and a love that is as strong as the God from whom we receive the ability to love in the first place.  In this modern culture, we throw the word “love” around to the point to where we have no true sense of the profundity of the love to which Jesus is calling us.  Rarely, do we even get close to loving with this kind of intensity or completeness; but, when we do, miracles happen.  Since we, as Jesus’ disciples are about the call to love one another, we create communities and we create a sense of community. 

                Now, it is important to differentiate between the two.  As purely a sociological term, a community itself may engender no sense of community at all.  It may be just a section of town or country that is somehow distinguished from another section.  These communities may be defined or described in positive or negative ways.  There was a time when everyone raised in the South knew exactly what it meant to be from the “wrong side of the tracks.”  New Yorkers have lots of communities—the “Upper West Side, SOHO, the Village, etc.”  The Villages may take the concept of “communities” to the extreme—people more often than not describing themselves as from a particular village or north or south of 466.  Jesus is not speaking of this kind of community; although, throughout history, communities of like-minded folks have often grown up around a sense of Christian discipleship.

                Jesus is describing a sense of community that is defined by a love so extreme that it mirrors the love that Jesus has for us.  This love brings with it a challenge that is not found in our casual, cultural definitions of love.  This challenge, according to Episcopal priest, Rev. Suzanne Gutherie is the “call to ever widening ever expansive circles of love”, the call “to live and die for love” and the call to love “embodying the equalities of gentleness and generosity”. We will know that we are maturing in love, according to Gutherie, because “our love and our actions have no boundaries.” Jesus, when he called it a “new” commandment was emphasizing the radical difference between this kind of love and the kind of love we usually experience in the world.

                Here is where we connect with the UFMCC Core Value of “Community”.  If the primary purpose of the value of community is to offer a safe and open place (physical, emotional, and spiritual) for people to worship, learn, and grow in their faith”, we must courageously ask ourselves how to do that.  We need look no further than Rev. Troy Perry’s experience in the very first days of MCC.   After it became clear that there was not only a need but also a desire to begin to add some organization to this blossoming new church effort, Rev. Troy says, “We decided upon such standard procedures as the one for communion. It would always be an open communion. We would always state that it was. We would extend an invitation for all to come to the Lord's table. We would prepare ourselves by an open act

of confession. We would ask for absolution, and it would be granted. We would then participate in the act of supping at the Lord's table, by taking bread dipped in wine. We utilized the books of worship from the Episcopal, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches as well as those that members of the congregation wanted considered. We experimented and we accommodated. Ours was a working church, an active, growing church. We knew that the worship of God comes from the heart. We felt that the diversity and the freedom and the real sincerity of worship would bring us together in unity. It has.”  This is, in its truest sense a description of how MCC would live into Jesus’ call to love one another. 

                We note what was most important to those pioneer MCC’ers.  The first, and it remains so for us as well, is that communion is to be freely available to all.  Every week you hear me say that there are no rules or regulations to which you must first adhere in order to be welcome. And every week I wonder if there are those of you who struggle to believe that it is so. Notice that the books of worship that were  utilized by those early worshippers were taken from many traditions. They “experimented” and then, in an act of love, they “accommodated”.   The “diversity”, “freedom” and “sincerity of worship” resulted in unity.  We, forty-something hears later, would do well to think on these things in the context of the community mandated by Jesus.

                Scott Peck, noted author of The Road Less Travelled, calls us to think about the phases of building community.  Community, he notes, is a set of conscious actions.  Peck gives us four stages of building community which I think apply to Open Circle and help us describe and analyze the growth TOWARD community by any young church or in any church when a sense of community has died and needs to be jump-started once more.  In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, Peck  lists 4 stages.  It would be interesting to take a poll and discover where each of you would place Open Circle. 

                Stage One, he calls “Pseudocommunity”.  This beginning stage is “when people first come together, where  people try to be nice, and present what they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics”.  We might, just might, be a little beyond that stage.  The second stage occurs when “people move beyond the inauthenticity of pseudo-community and feel safe enough to present their "shadow" selves”.  He calls this phase “Chaos” because it is a difficult stage to live through. 

                The Third Stage he calls “Emptiness”.  Moving beyond all those harried and hurried attempts to fix, heal, or change the chaos stage, this stage is visible “when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness, common to us all as human beings”.  It is out of this emptiness that True Community evolves.  Listen to his description of the fourth stage:  “True community [is] the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community”.   Peck describes this stage as “glory” and  it “reflects a deep yearning in every human soul for compassionate understanding from one's fellows”.

                As we express that yearning in our souls and embrace the yearning in others’ souls for “compassionate understanding” we become more truly the church that Jesus calls us to be.  A church built on the love that Christ calls us to embrace will not only be open and safe for all, it will be free from judgment and self-righteous refusal to embrace all who enter the sacred circle of faith we call Open.  As we learn more and more about the Metropolitan Community Church, may we use these experiences to also learn more about ourselves and our relationship with the love of our gracious and all-embracing God.  Beloved, love and let yourself be loved.  Amen and Amen. 

Earth Wisdom—God’s Hand” 4-21-13

God, Creator of all that is, remind us of our dependence on you and on each other.  Teach us compassion for the earth and give us the resolve to love your creation as much as you do.  Let us hear with our hearts and let me speak from my soul.  Amen

Tomorrow is Earth Day again.  The first Earth Day was held just two months before my graduation from High School and so I have been an adult throughout the history of Earth Day.  Sadly, some of the initial enthusiasm has waned for many of us just as the need for responsible care of the creation has increased exponentially.  I have chosen to tell you a fable on this the 43^rd celebration of our great planet.  You won’t find it in any books, since I just wrote it this past week.  But it is a fable, nonetheless, and could have been told from generation to generation of caring, compassionate individuals throughout time.  A fable means that not all of it is explainable by our rational minds; so, just for the next 15 or so minutes, suspend that skeptical part of your brain and listen with your heart instead.  This fable could be Christian, or Taoist, or Native American, or pertain to no tradition at all.  For the earth is quickly losing her ability to survive for all of us at exactly the same time.

                There once was a magical place where stars, planets, the sun and wind could all go to communicate.  Once there was a meeting called by Earth.  Earth knew that things were going wrong all over her lands and seas and called Sun and Moon to come for a summit.  Wind, not wanting to be left out, came along, too.  Rain hopped on the back of Wind so he could come as well. 

                Earth began the meeting with her opening statement:  “I am Earth.  I am Giver and Receiver.  I am Healer and Recreator.  I am Lover and Protector.  I am Hope and Love; and, I am very, very frightened.  My people—those who live and play and fight and love all over my great planet are going to die.  They might not die today; but, they will die.  And, they will die at their own hands.  They no longer love me and they no longer love each other.  They only love themselves and want what is best and greatest and most costly for themselves and care nothing for the rest who simply don’t count.”

                Sun replies:  Mother Earth, I call you “Mother” because you have birthed an entire planet.  Mother Earth, tell us more of what ails this wonderful planet of yours.  We want to help, but we must first understand what you have traveled this great distance to tell us.  Speak, Mother Earth, we only want to hear and comfort your pain.”

                Mother Earth speaks again:  You see,  it began innocently enough.  My earth people went about their own ways—tilling the earth, killing only the animals they needed to eat, fishing the seas for food.  And, then, my people began to invent tools.  These tools allowed them to travel from their places of birth.  Immediately, they began to see lands that they thought to be better than theirs.  They began to make claims on the neighboring clan’s lands and resources.  And then, the fights broke out.  At first, they were small and pretty well contained.  A few people were killed; but, most of the time they were able to work it out.  But, the farther they traveled, the more they saw.  Before long, people were fighting people from all over trying to get control over as much of my precious fields and forests as they could. 

                Then they began to use the resources they found on others’ lands to create energy.  Less and less did they depend on the roaring power of rivers or even the wild might of Wind.  Nothing could satisfy them.  On and on it went for generations and generations.  Rain, here, can tell you what happened to her sweet waters.  Rain spoke up, “The awful chemicals of these energy plants polluting my water, making it unsafe to drink or even bathe in.  Not content with what nature would give them, they used fertilizers which seeped into every aspect of the land—eventually ending up in my raindrops waiting in the clouds.  We call it pollution and this is how it spread until finally there was little land left pure, and animals, birds, and fish began to die off faster than we could keep up with.  Now we have lists that we watch—species on the verge of extinction.  Every once in a while, someone will step up and try to save a particular bird or fish, but mostly the list gets shorter and shorter as the list of already extinct species continue to grow.  You tell them, Wind, what you were telling me just the other day.

                Wind shakes off the howls of a hurricane in progress and says, “I travel the earth and all over I see signs that Earth here is in big trouble.  You should see the hillsides and mountain tops where strip mining has claimed the incredible beauty these lands once held.  It break my heart that my gentle breezes now drift across forests who have no trees to enjoy me because they have been cut down for housing developments or shopping centers.  And my farmer friends struggle to make ends meet, so many of them are giving up and selling out to devious corporations who care nothing for the land as long as it produces what they need to sell.  Sometimes, I pull myself back up into the clouds and just sit and weep. 

                Moon interjects:  “And, as I watch the tides of Mother Earth’s great oceans, I see less and less beach for the tide to play upon.  So much development—who needs all the houses and hotels anyway?  Why the other night I was looking for a quiet place to shine my gentle beams across a vast expanse of beach and had to travel for miles to find one.  The oceans themselves no longer reflect my beam with purity and brightness.  Trash and oil spills destroy the fragile borders between water and land and my beams are mired down in the filth. 

                Sun sighs and says, “It is time to consult the Great Spirit, the One who created us all.  Great Spirit—we call on you to come and speak with us.  Our hearts are heavy and only you can help our precious Earth now.  We know you made her and love her.  Come now, and save her. “

                Great Spirit is suddenly there in the midst of them.  You can’t really see Great Spirit, but you always know when you are in the presence of Great Spirit.  “My creator’s heart weeps, too”, Great Spirit began.  “I placed Earth so gently in motion and watched as paradise unfolded.  You are right, Earth, once my people had the means to see other lands, jealousy and envy took over.  My people want more than they need and we must work together to help them understand the damage they are doing to their home.” 

                Great Spirit continued, “I will call special ones among my people who will be my hands, and I will wrap my hands around them bestowing all the power they need to heal their home.  They will be my people and I will protect their land.”  Earth said, “Thank you, Great Spirit, I now have hope—hope that it is not too late.”  Sun said, “I will help by shining extra bright on the places that need my sunlight to regrow the plants and nourish the animals.”  “And I will help the oceans to recover by regulating my tides to dissipate all the garbage that now is in the water”, said Moon.  Wind added, “And I will be ready to blow and blow when the people begin to build windmills to harness the power I have in my gusts.”  Rain jumped up and said, “My raindrops will help reduce the poisons in the land and replenish the forests when people plant new trees.” 

                Great Spirit led Earth, Sun, Moon, Wind, and Rain in a great psalm of rejoicing.  Just as the psalmist said:  “Everyone, make a lot of noise, joyfully.  Worship the Great Spirit with gladness and sing as loudly as you can.  Know that God is our God, our creator—therefore, everyone belongs to the tribe of the Great Spirit.  People belong to the Great Spirit and the Great Spirit belongs to the people.  Be thankful for this and other great miracles.  The Great Spirit will always be here and all the generations to come will still have the Great Spirit to protect them.”  There was singing and dancing and the whole sky lit up with the energy and power generated by their joy!  Earth would be saved because people would care—simple enough for us all to understand. 

Of course, we all know that fables are only fables and rarely come true.  May God help us all.  Amen and amen!

After Breakfast 4-14-13

Holy and wonderful God, we come into your presence cautiously, suddenly not trusting ourselves to say the right thing.  Like Peter, we want you to know that we love you.  Show us how to show you and the world.  Like Peter, we want to say the right thing, but we hesitate, wanting to be sure of ourselves.  Help us to know that our sureness comes from you, our confidence, your gift to us.  Let us hear, and let me speak your word.  Amen

                You may have noticed that we have a very long gospel reading this morning.  So long that it took two people to read it.  And, at first, they seem like two completely different unrelated stories.  But one phrase lets us know that we are to read these stories as connected—intimately so—the first story taking place early in the morning and the second “after breakfast”.  After breakfast, what a telling phrase.  We often divide our days according to meal times and the disciples did as well.  Let’s look briefly at what happened before breakfast.  I remind you that we are in the portion of the gospel writings which take place after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Peter is a man of action—sometimes unthinking action, but action, nonetheless.  You will remember Peter from the Transfiguration—wanting to build a monument instead of simply enjoying the moment.  Peter, the same man who jumped up and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane; and, Peter, who claimed to love Jesus and, yet, just as Jesus predicted, readily denied that he was one of the disciples when fear took over.  This Peter is not an easy going kind of guy.  Inner reflection is, more than likely, not his strong suit.  And, yet, we all like Peter; probably because in Peter we see a little bit of ourselves.

 Several days have transpired since Jesus’ miraculous resurrection.  However, not much has happened that would give Peter a very good idea of what is supposed to happen next.  He has to do something—he can’t just sit around and wait for things to develop.  So, not so strangely, he goes back to what he was doing before he met the man, Jesus.  He decides to fish—night fishing at that.  Several of the other disciples, probably other fisherfolk, also go with him.  Now commentators are divided on why Peter went fishing.  Some have suggested that Peter and the others, in their feelings of failure as disciples of Jesus went back to what they used to do as if their years with Jesus had never happened.  Others suggest that Peter, for once in his life, was saying that now that Jesus was alive again, he was willing to wait and see what happens next.  In this case, going fishing may have acted as a simple form of relaxation and peacefulness.  A faith that has begun to allows Peter to develop a more balanced approach to life.  This explanation seems to make the most sense.  After all, they have all seen the risen Lord; and, while they may be somewhat confused, they have no reason to desert the movement once and for all.

They have fished and fished and fished all night.  Now, I am not a huge fan of fishing although I like to fish occasionally; but, there is nothing more boring and frustrating than fishing for hours and catching not a single fish.  So these men are bound to be getting tired of Peter’s ‘bright idea’ of a fishing expedition.  Suddenly, someone from the shore speaks to them just as we might speak to those coming in from a fishing trip, “Catch anything?” or “How’s the fishing in this spot?”  They tell this stranger that they have not caught a thing.  “Don’t bother to stop here,”  they might say, “There’s not a dang fish in sight anywhere.”  The stranger says, “put your net in on the other side.”  They do, and lo, and behold, they catch so many fish their nets won’t hold them all.  Enlightenment dawns—this is Jesus telling them where to fish!  They cry out, and impetuous Peter, jumps up, wraps  himself in a towel and swims off toward Jesus.  The others, left to manage the fish, make their way slowly to the shore.  When all arrive, Jesus has a fire going and prepares breakfast for them all. 

Now comes our time shift—“after breakfast” Jesus engages Simon Peter in a conversation that makes us all nervous.  Jesus says, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  Peter responds,  “Yes, Master, you know I love you.”  Jesus says, “Feed my lambs.”  He goes on to ask a second time, “Peter, do you love me?”  Peter assures him that he does love him.  Jesus says, “Shepherd my sheep.” Then he asked a third time, “Peter,  son of John, do you love me?”  Ok, Jesus had gotten to Peter now and Peter was upset.  With more than a little frustration and hurt, Peter answered, “Gee, Jesus, you know everything there is to know—surely you know that I love you. “  Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”  Then Jesus makes a somewhat strange prediction about the end of Peter’s life which many take as a forewarning to Peter of the way he was to die.  Finally, Jesus said, “Follow me.”

I don’t know about you, but I can feel the disappointment in Peter’s heart as Jesus seems to question his commitment to him.  Although Peter clearly believes that this is the case, I’m not sure that it is.  What if Jesus is merely giving Peter a commission of sorts; that is, describing his ministry.  The three responses are these:  1) Feed my lambs, 2) Shepherd my sheep, 3) Feed my sheep.  Now lambs are baby sheep.  For those of us who have never seen the inside of a barn, baby sheep are called ‘lambs’ until they are 12 months old.  So, in the first case, Peter is to take care of the children—whether physical children or spiritual children is not clear.  Secondly, Peter is to shepherd the whole flock—this includes all sheep regardless of age, gender, color, or health.  Finally, Peter is to feed the sheep of this huge flock.  Now, at the risk of making too much of a metaphor, here is where the two parts of the stories begin to coalesce and make sense to me. 

Prior to their encounter with God in the person of Jesus, Peter and the others are trying to make it on their own.  They accomplish little to nothing even though they are skilled and experienced fisherfolk.  All of a sudden, divine help appears—call it insight or understanding or whatever feels right to you.  Now you would think that experienced fisherfolk would have thought to cast the nets on the other side all by themselves.  This has always bothered me about this story.  Why in the world did they need Jesus to tell them to try the other side—this would have been as natural as fishing itself was to them.  I don’t think they needed Jesus to tell them to fish on the other side of the boat.  I think that it was an encounter with the divine that they lacked, even longed for.  Jesus, in his simple suggestion, tells us once and for all that his wisdom is about living and living in right relationship with God.  In my mind, the appearance of Jesus is not at all about “The Divine Guide to Fishing”; no, it is about being willing to change when an encounter with the divine calls us to modify our paths or journeys.

Secondly, Jesus prepares breakfast for them.  Up and through breakfast this story is all about Jesus ministering to the disciples.  “After breakfast”, when all have feasted on fresh fish and whatever else was to be had, then—and only then—did Jesus ask Peter about his commitment to him.  I think that it is important to note that Jesus fed the disciples first and then called them to care for all the people who would follow.  The message is clear to us who are working in the church.  Allow daily encounters with the divine to feed you and then feed others.  This is an old truth; yet, few—including your pastor—faithfully abide by it.  We can try; and like the fisherfolk, keep our heads down toward the water looking there for signs that we are succeeding.  Or we can relax; maybe even rest in the boat—keeping an eager, yet calm, eye toward the shore.  As we age, both physically and spiritually, we learn more and more that this is about God and not about us—or to be more precise, there is no substitute for looking to your encounter with the divine for help, guidance, and sustenance.  And as we relax into the knowledge that the Divine Source of all being will meet us when we look up toward the shore, we will be far more ready to hear and act on the command to care for the people of God—all the people of God.  Amen and amen