Sermons
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Anytime's a Good Time For Freedom
08/22/10
Anytime Is a Good Time for Freedom
Psalm 124; Luke 13: 10-17
Squaw Valley Chapel, United Church of Christ
Olympic Valley, California
August 22, 2010
Art Domingue, Minister
Alexander Cruden, a layman, was the first person to create an index of every word in the King James Bible and where to find it. It was called Cruden’s Complete Concordance. And once it was complete Cruden knew he was worthy of England’s highest honors. He lived in anticipation. One day he was on a levee beside Thames when the king arrived to make Captain Barnaby of the H.M.S. Litchfield a Knight of the Realm. Cruden watched with great interest. Not a word was spoken. The captain kneeled, the king touched his shoulder with the flat blade of a sword and the Captain rose to kiss the king’s hand. It was over in a twinkling but Cruden noticed that immediately after the Captain hurried off to Buckingham palace to pay the appropriate fees. Honor seldom comes without appropriate fees. A few discreet inquiries and Cruden learned that the fees for being knighted totaled a little over 95 pounds. From the rest of his life Cruden never left the house without 100 pounds in his wallet. The money was never used. – cf. Edith Oliver, The Eccentric Life of Alexander Cruden, pg. 150.
Can you imagine living in such anticipation and never, ever, being called?
Another story: Evan Connell has written about a king of Thrace who received as a gift an exquisite vase; it was a work of extraordinary art. Immediately he broke it so that it couldn’t be broken by accident. Probably he had a lot of children and wanted to face the pain of breakage right away. – cf. The Compass Rose, pg 76.
It is stories like these; stories about expectation, anticipation that were the first thing that came to mind when I read the gospel reading appointed for this morning.
The story Luke records is of a woman who had lived with a problem for 18 years. She was stooped over, unable to straighten up. Some today might suggest that it was a lack of calcium that turned her body into a visual question mark. I wish we knew more about her. Did she, for example, go every Sabbath to the synagogue? Did she go hoping something would happen to alleviate her problem? Had she, over the 18 years returned home 936 times disappointed? Did she make any connection between the spirit that afflicted her and the Great Spirit she had come to worship?
The Rev Fred Craddock has told of the time he was acting dean at Phillips Seminary. A woman came to him and asked if he would be willing to accompany her to the parking lot? There was someone in her car she wanted him to see. He went with her and there, on the back seat of her car, lay her brother. He had been injured in an auto accident during his senior year at the University of Oklahoma. After 8 months in a coma he has regained some sort of consciousness but still needed care all of the time. The sister had left her job as a school teacher to care for him. Now all of their resources had been used up. She opened the door and said to Dr. Craddock, “I’d like for you to heal him.”
Dr. Craddock said when he recovered from the expectation, he told the woman, “I can pray for him. And I can pray with you. But I do not have the gift of healing.
So she got behind the wheel and asking: “Then what in the world do you do?” drove away.
Craddock spent the afternoon staring at pieces of paper and wondering what did he do that was of worth? He couldn’t forget her question. – Craddock Stories, pg 21.
What was in the woman’s mind when she came to the synagogue? Why does anyone come to worship? Are they fulfilling a duty? Offering thanksgiving for past graces? Do some come expecting that something could happen that very day, something by which God’s love and grace will be made manifest…. right here, before us all ? But if that’s our expectation how many times will we come if nothing happens at all? 18 years of disappointment boggles the mind.
As it turned out on the particular Sabbath being considered, Jesus healed the woman, everyone present was able to see. He said, “Woman you are free from your sickness.” She stood up straight and began to give God praise.
Luke is the only gospel writer who tells this story. It is not corroborated through repetition, but in recent years it has become a signature story for many women in leadership within the church. “Woman, you are free from your sickness.” They find in these words a universal significance – a call to worship for all of their sex - and I hope they are right. In 2004 when Amnesty International launched a global campaign to stop violence against women it was noted that while the world’s population was growing, the number of women was declining. In that year, 2004, there were 60 to 100 million fewer girls than boys in the world, all due to selective abortions, infanticide, gross neglect, uneven allocation of basic resources such as health care, food and education. That was in 2004 but I do not imagine that much has changed in 6 years. – From article by Teresa Berger in The Christian Century, August 10, 2004, pg. 19.
“Woman you are free from your sickness!” In recent years some women have been coming to worship with expectations that here they will hear of freedom. “Woman, you are free from your sickness!”
But no good deed goes unpunished. As soon as Jesus had healed the woman the keepers of the Synagogue’s Constitutions, Covenants, and Rules – the CC&R’s - informed Jesus that he couldn’t do what he had just done. It was against the rules. Healing is work and work is forbidden on the Sabbath!” These officials had their own set of expectations about worship on the Sabbath. They came every week not only to praise God but to demonstrate their personal freedom; to show that they were not slaves to their work. Unlike their ancestors who, in Egypt, were forced to make bricks everyday of the week, they could observed one day of leisure. There was nothing so important that it could not wait until that one day was over. See… I am not an automaton!” It was this sense of individual freedom that made the Sabbath so precious to them and they were absolutely right.
When Christians moved their Sabbath allegiance to Sunday nothing changed. Our ancestors also were eager to have it be different from every other day. It was their declaration of freedom from secular dominance and still is…. freedom from computer compulsion. Freedom from office desk. Freedom from whatever drives you and needs to be kept in its place by saying “Not today!” Sunday is a day to remember that we are God’s children as unique and as special as the day we were born or baptized.
The leaders of the synagogue were right but Jesus was right too! There is no time that is not a good time for freedom. To become a slave to Sabbath rest is no improvement over being a slave to Pharaoh’s work-a-day demands.
“Woman, you are free from your sickness.”
Did the woman come to worship anticipating that there she would be set free?
It happens you know. During this hour no matter how well Tim and I have planned what is going to happen freedom, occasionally, breaks out. It happened a few times last Sunday. At the end of the sermon I saw Guthrie Swartz consult with his wife, Betty. During the collection of the offering he asked my permission to speak and then he announced that he and she had just decided to offer a challenge gift to reduce the church debt – They would put up $25,000 and pay whatever of that amount was matched by members and friends of the church. And that was not the only surprise. I am told that when Beau Smith Rholen was lifted at the end of his service of baptism he surveyed the congregation as if a prince surveying his adoring subjects. And then, when the hour was almost over, Mini grabbed on to the hem of my robe with her mouth to tell me it was time for the service to be done. Freedom happens here, it breaks out often in worship. Why don’t more people know it?
On the first day of January 1863, all slaves living in the continental United States were declared to be free. The document enabling this has come to be called the Emancipation Proclamation. In the words of one historian:
The word spread from Capitol Hill out around the city, down into
the valleys and fields of Virginia and the Carolinas, and even into
the plantations of Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama. “Slavery
Legally Abolished!” read the headlines, and yet… the greater majority
of the slaves in the South went right on living as though they were
not emancipated. That continued throughout the Reconstruction
Period….
One Alabama slave… when asked what he thought about the actions
of the President to the north replied: “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout
Abraham Lincoln cep they say he set us free. And I don’t know nothin’
‘bout that neither.” – cf. sermonnotebook.org – Luke 13: 10-17.
Our story this morning is about one woman’s emancipation and I’m hopeful that by telling the story the word might get out. Do we come to worship anticipating displays of freedom? It seems Jesus and God enable freedom, even here.
Those In the Know
08/15/10
Those In the Know
Luke 12: 41-48
Squaw Valley Chapel, United Church of Christ
Olympic Valley, CA
August 15, 2010
Art Domingue, Minister
Despite what you may hear in a court of law, ignorance is an acceptable excuse. We have this straight from Jesus. It’s in the Book! A worker who does not know what the master expects and ends up doing that which deserves some punishment, will receive very light punishment.
Ignorance works. It’s an acceptable excuse. But there is a problem. Is there anyone here who can truthfully admit to being ignorant? (Note: several hands went up. All of them the hands of ministers)
There have been times when I wished I was. For example, in the 11th and 12th grades when the libido was very loud, I remember thinking “What if I did not know better?” A friend, S____ B____, regularly regaled me with stories of his promiscuous adventures. He made sleeping around sound like fun. But even then I could not pretend to ignorance. I had been listening – at home – in church – at youth group – and what I’d heard had made sense; that a lasting relationship is not found through promiscuity.
I remember the endless round of summer work and winter study – work and study – and dreaming about chucking it all and sticking out my thumb and letting others pay for the gas while I saw the world. But I was not ignorant. I had heard from one of my favorite people, the minister in my home-town church, that his favorite verse in all the Hebrew Scriptures was that found in the prophet Micah:
You know, my friend, what God requires of you: to do justice,
to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)
And no matter how I worked those words – twisted them - I couldn’t bridge the gap between what God required of me and sticking out my thumb.
What I was struggling with were the pole attractions of duty and desire. In the late 1950’s duty was losing its audience. Self-Actualization was the cutting edge and being true to yourself, and finding the real you. “If it feels good, do it!” But I was not ignorant. I had met the gold standard:
You know, Art Domingue, what God wants of you: to do justice,
to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.
Ignorance may work for some, but long before I began imagining its advantages I was in the know. I’d heard the word about morality, purposeful living and the supremacy of love.
If you are with me thus far…. If you can identify in the least with my experience then you’ll know that what was left for me was a choice between rebelling against the best I knew or swinging with it. Any pretense of “Gee, I didn’t know better” would have been pure sham.
It was in seminary I that I first came across the words of Nicholas Berdyaev. I wrote them down as a potential motto for my life…. Berdyaev described a disciples as one who could be “As relaxed as an arrow in the hunter’s bow.” Disciples are people sent, people going forth full of the knowledge of what God wants them to do, and it is possible to relax in that knowledge secure that what we know will prove to be for the best.
How do you envision yourself? Are you ignorant of what the master wants? Or are you in the know? Does it feel safer to remain in the camp of ignorance? To say, “Until I can completely understand verse 39, or have learned Latin so as to be able to read verse 41 in the original, I cannot profess to knowledge?
Or do you claim to know enough to be able to side with God in most decisions? We’re not talking infallibility here, but knowledge enough to dare decisions.
It is my belief that all of us are in the know; that as a group we are as well informed as any in history: informed as to what works and what does not. We know – deep in our being – without question or quibble – that it is wrong to use another person for experimentation; that it is short-sighted to live for nothing but personal gain … we know this and the only thing that could be lacking is the resolution to do what the Master requires. Ignorance may be an excuse; knowing, never.
And I live in hope for a resurgance in the esteem of duty.
For a number of weeks this summer I had a shadow – a six year old shadow by the name of Jacob. We were joined at the hip. His favorite question was “Can I help?” If I was preparing breakfast he’d pull a stool up to the counter and want to break the eggs and stir the batter and put the pancake dough in the pan. If I was carrying groceries in from the car he’d want to carry the heaviest bag. For Jacob duties were a joy – it made him feel like valued helper and God help me if ever I were to indicate that his help was not needed or sufficient or of worth. Little wonder that Jesus said to one inquirer, “If you want to know what God wants, look to the child.”
Duty, living by the best we know, need not be drudgery but joyous service, “relaxed as an arrow in the hunter’s bow.” Feigning ignorance is never as rewarding as discipleship.
“We know what the Lord requires….” No longer the innocent….
Beyond the Reach of Moth and Thieves
08/08/10
Beyond the Reach of Moth and Thieves
Isaiah 55: 1-3; Luke 12: 32-34
Squaw Valley Chapel, United Church of Christ
August 8, 2010
Art Domingue, Minister
I recently read a meditation by Elizabeth Meyer Boulton, who works at Old South Church in Boston. She was thinking about the life of her grandmother, Nellie Caroline Meyer.
In the 1950s and ‘60s with the threat of nuclear war looming, Nellie stockpiled
her basement with cans of tomatoes, tuna and bean salad. During the shortage
of the ‘70s, she filled her cupboards with sugar: brown, refined and raw. When
the energy crisis came, she became obsessed with keeping the needle of her
Buick’s gas gauge above three-quarters of a tank.
Every other day she would wait in long lines to fuel up. (Her husband, the
author’s grandfather) never could understand this and one day he’d had
enough. “My goodness, Nellie,” he said. “Do we really need to wait in line
for gas again? We’ve got three-quarters of a tank.”
Every member of the family can recite Nellie’s answer - word for word – the
answer has become a family legend: “Of course we have to wait in line. We’ve
got to get that gas before the hoarders do!”.
But today long after these careful accumulations, Nellie lives in a nursing home and stockpiles nothing but remembrances.
If you ask her how she’s doing she’ll tell you she has everything she needs:
people who care about her, a warm bed and the inexhaustible grace of God.
It’s enough. She has cast off all her possessions. The thieves and the moths no
longer come around…. – Christian Century Magazine, July 27, 2010 pg. 21
In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus suggests this is an enviable position, being in a place where “the thieves and moths no longer come around.”
But I am still undecided about the value of things. Any visit to Costco reminds me that I don’t want to live a life that takes toilet paper quite so seriously. Spending one day, even half a day in the Reno big boxes feels like a gross misuse of time and opportunity. My heart is not in it. But then I can spend all day looking at books without a whimper.
I try to remember that people are different; that God created the difference and then pronounced it good. This past Tuesday, Alex, my 9 year-old granddaughter and I were poking around in the Village. She had had a wonderful time bungee jumping on the trampolines but I was ready to move one and was trying to steer her toward the car when she saw a sign: “Look Grampy! A sale!” With determined step and a smile on her face she marched into Plumpjack Sports and was instantly lost to a world of Uggs. Do you know that brand of Australian boots that look as though they had been designed by Eskimos? “Ugh,” expressed my thoughts of the moment but Alex was transported to that same place I find in a second-hand book store. There – among my books - I am susceptible to moths and thieves. What if someone turns down the corner of a page – don’t they know that’s vandalism? Or spills coffee on the cover or borrows a book and forgets to return it...? I can forget a person’s name two seconds after I’ve heard it but I remember every book ever loaned and whether it has been returned.
And I know books don’t last. Kindle and devices similar to it threaten to empty the shelves. Thieves and moths won’t bother with books someday.
I have heard Isaiah’s question, “Why do you spend money on that which doesn’t last?”
Still I am undecided. I have seen efforts to thwart moths and thieves go too far.
Early in my ministry I was hired by the Overseer of the Poor in Lower Waterford, Vermont to conduct a Funeral Service for a recluse. This man had been so successful in distancing himself from society that he had died several weeks before anyone noticed. This recluse, suspicious of others, had done such a good job of protecting himself from fickle relationships that no one came to the service except the Overseer of the Poor and minister who had to be there. Here was the exact opposite of the accumulating life….and equally as undesirable.
At funeral or memorial services I often say something such as "blessed are those who have loved enough to be vulnerable." The only way we can avoid being vulnerability is never to love at all. What a deprivation that would be. That we loved a person proves to be our greatest strength when we lose a person for loves never dies. Moths and thieves are powerless before its strength.
And wasn’t this Jesus intention? Leading his friends to a place where moths and thieves can no longer break in or destroy…? Have you found such a place?
It was about 8 years ago that a grandson broke a family heirloom. He was grabbing for something and knocked a favorite platter to the floor, a platter that had been handed down in Joanne’s family for four generations. I was far more disturbed more than she and I saved the pieces hoping someday it might be repaired. Recently I came across those pieces taking up space in a cupboard. I remembered my anger at the moment it was broken. That felt so stupid now. What is a platter compared to a life? In that moment, in that insight, the power of thieves and moths diminished. Have you had such an experience?
Jesus said “Lay up for yourselves treasures that neither thieves nor moths can destroy. Look to your heart to discover what those treasures are.“ Have his words ever informed your choices? It is time for you to speak.
