April 25: Guest Sermon for Easter 4, Good Shepherd Sunday

Note: This sermon was preached by our seminarian, Ms. Rachel Daley. I am very proud to post it here.

Sheep abound in today’s lectionary readings. I don’t know why sheep should make such a special appearance on Easter 4, but there you have it - sheep at every corner.

Sheep appear first in the much-beloved Psalm 23. These sheep are living the good life -they go in paths where the footing is secure so they will not fall. These sheep eat from ideal pastures; they drink from the best waterholes - quiet and dammed up - where water is abundant and the sheep may satisfy their thirst without haste.

Then sheep in the Gospel reading. Jesus finds himself in yet another dispute with the religious leaders of the day. He won’t answer the questions they plant as traps, because the works Jesus has been doing speak for themselves. Jesus teaches about the sheep who have been given to him by the Father. Jesus’ sheep hear his voice - they recognize him even as he knows each of them by name. They follow Jesus in obedience, and nothing can snatch them out of Jesus’ hand.

The vision recorded in Revelation offers a glimpse of the heavenly worship of the Lamb who is also shepherd. The Lamb is surrounded by a multitude who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb so that their robes are now white. They wave palm branches and - with the elders and the four living creatures - they sing praise to the Lamb day and night. They no longer hunger or thirst or suffer under the heat of the sun - for the Lamb they worship is also their shepherd.

The Bible comes to us from a world where sheep and shepherding were commonplace. Sheep were an important economic commodity, and their care was entrusted to shepherds who found food and water and guarded them from prey. That much seems pretty obvious, but I still don’t really know what sheep are like. I don’t know sheep the way you would if your family’s livelihood depended on protecting them from predators and disease.

I do have a small connection - not to sheep, but to goats. For much of my childhood and early adolescence, my family lived in a farming community in rural Iowa. And before they sold it, my best friend lived on a small family farm. Can you imagine the love a pair of nine-year-old girls can have for such a place? The farm meant adventure, room to run, places to hide, contests of strength and endurance, scraped knees, calloused feet, and always enough dirt and foul smells to shock my parents when I returned home.

The farm was my personal petting zoo, with a rotating cast of pets, flocks, and 4-H projects. When a pair of goats arrived, the kids quickly took to naming and befriending them. My friend’s parents, I think, quickly repented of this decision. The goats were always eating, exploring and climbing. The goats were very difficult to keep contained and had a knack for testing and escaping from most enclosures. A favorite goat pastime, we quickly learned, is climbing on top of cars. To this day, any mention of goats will remind me of this pair standing so proudly atop the family station wagon. Not unlike we kids who roamed the farm, the goats were curious and independent.

Sheep, however, are not like goats. Sheep behavior more closely resembles the kind of scene I remember from the middle-school cafeteria. Sheep have a strong flocking instinct, they grow anxious if separated from the group, and they require the presence of at least four or five other sheep to maintain a visual link while grazing. In the case of sheep, flocking is an important survival strategy, because a group of sheep are more likely to detect danger early enough to have time to escape.

I have to be honest though, I don’t really like this sheep thing. I don’t like drawing a comparison between myself and an animal that instinctively follows the animal in front of it. Sheep are notorious for following - they will follow over the edge of a cliff and will follow to the slaughter. Sheep are vulnerable and in need of protection. We might use the word “sheep” to describe someone who is timid or meek, someone who thoughtlessly follows the crowd.

Isn’t sheep-like behavior part of the problem with the world? Too many are unquestioning followers of violent ideologies. Too many stand by silently while the weak and defenseless are trampled. Critics of organized religion say that the sheep metaphor is precisely the problem with Christianity. Christianity’s talk of meekness and mildness enforces social hierarchies, trains a mute and unquestioning following, and has silenced generations of women. We see this in the church abuses and cover-ups that are so often before us in today’s news. Too many have been trained to submit to leaders who were not worthy of their trust. When church policy conspires with male domination and rigid hierarchies to conceal rather than address situations of abuse, we start to wonder if such texts lead us very far astray.

In light of all this we must be clear that when Jesus talks about his sheep, he is not teaching mindless following, not instructing us to unquestioning submission. Jesus is teaching about radical trust and obedience to God. Despite the impression you might get from Sunday School pictures of a soft, fair-skinned Jesus cradling lambs, Jesus was hardly a pushover. I find it hard to imagine that anyone would have accused him of being sheepish. Jesus speaks about sheep as a metaphor, his real concern is the obedience of those who belong to him. The point is not the meekness of the sheep, but that they are trained to hear and respond to the voice of their shepherd. Jesus uses two verbs to describe his sheep: hear and follow. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me” Jesus says.

The sheep hear Jesus’ voice and they recognize who he is. The abuses of power remind us how important it is to follow a shepherd who is good and trustworthy. When the sheep hear Jesus’ voice, they know that he is the one who will lead them safely and will allow no harm to come to them. Obedience is automatic; with this shepherd you are secure and well-tended. For the people who have already been delivered by the power of this shepherd, there is nothing left but obedience.

The sheep hear and follow. Some tell Jesus, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus doesn’t really answer, because words will not evoke faith in those who have hardened their hearts. There is something mysterious and irreducible about faith; something that goes before explanation or understanding or decision. In Jesus’ words there is a sense that you are placed in Christ’s hand and on the path of obedience before you are quite sure what has happened. Belonging to this flock isn’t about your choice, but God’s ownership of you.

I like the idea of having the shepherd, but I wish I didn’t have to be the sheep. When it comes down to it, obedience to God runs counter to my instincts. I don’t believe that Jesus is telling us to be docile and passive, but I still don’t like being told where to go - even if by the Good Shepherd. I don’t think I’m the only one in this predicament. The shepherd image speaks to some of the things we most desire - like belonging and love and protection - like safety and being at peace with ourselves and with God. But then the sheep image speaks to some of the things we are most reluctant to surrender - like independence and pride and self-sufficiency. I would like to reserve the right to opt for the path that goes around the darkest valley, for example. That guiding staff is also a bit of a sore subject. Of course I need that gentle nudging to get back on the path. I could be wondering away from the rest of the flock or stubbornly headed toward danger. Maybe if I were a parent I would better understand how discipline and correction are really about love; maybe in time we can learn how much we need the love that we don’t always like.

Like many of us, I’m pretty attached to the myth that I can basically take care of myself and supply all of my own needs. This is strange, isn’t it? It’s strange that I would turn down God’s security, the protection and love of the Good Shepherd, for a glimmer of security - which is really just the illusion of security - when I am free to govern my affairs as I please. Though Jesus teaches that his sheep respond with automatic obedience; it seems that the surrender can be long, and that our wills are like beasts that will not be tamed, or like children who will not heed the voice that speaks out for their well-being.

Maybe that is why Psalm 23 is a song of trust that emerges, not in a moment of effusive piety, but in the wake of deliverance from a very real danger. Those words, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want” remind us of the trust and innocence of children, but I think this Psalm comes from a heart much older and wiser. It is not the blissful unconcern of youth, but a spirit that has been chastened by bitter experiences and continues to find communion with God. This singer is peaceful and childlike even in the face of danger. There is a wisdom that has learned that the staff is a comfort; knows that God’s guidance leads in right paths - through the paths that lead to salvation. Obedience is a gift. It comes not all at once, but slowly and often painfully. It comes as we know the power of God’s deliverance, the saving help that comes in the valley of shadow and darkness.

The Psalm begins on a hillside, and it ends in the house of the LORD. This is where God acts as a host, setting the table. In this sanctuary the people enjoy the goodness and the presence of God; their heads are anointed with oil. God’s saving help leads to the temple and to the table, because these are the places where God has revealed God’s saving power. Worship teaches us the trust of the Psalmist, the very fact of your presence trains you in obedience. This worship prepares us for the heavenly worship of the great multitude who, robed in white and holding branches, stands before the throne and the Lamb. This is a peculiar scene. But if we really desire the peace of sheep with their shepherd - not just the peace of being free from danger - but the peace of obedient communion with God - this vision is a hope and a promise. Those among the multitude are pure and bright, they celebrate the shepherd who has brought them safety and victory, and in obedience they direct their cries only to Christ.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Strong Love, Healthy Fear

Previously published in The Church Herald: Serving Members of the Reformed Church, March 2009, LXVI:3, pp. 24-25.

Note: the boat pictured is a South Bay oyster dredger, which only approximates the South Bay pound boat which I mention below.

I loved Joe MacMillan, and I feared him. I worked for him; he was my boss. I was afraid of him, but I would do anything for him. He was an important man in my life.

Joe had a fish market on Fire Island, New York. The village of Ocean Beach was a summer resort for New Yorkers. Ethel Merman and I. F. Stone were among our customers. I worked in the store with Joe and his two daughters, Jean and Betsy. We were three blond, blue-eyed teenagers from the Dutch town of West Sayville, on the south shore of Long Island, on the Great South Bay, and Joe would joke that he was a "converted Dutchman."

Success Story

Joe was Scots-German, from Patchogue. He dreamed of becoming a doctor, but he had to quit high school to work and support his mother and grandmother. One day, the story goes, he was hitchhiking on Montauk Highway and he was picked up by Esther Verspoor, a Dutch girl from West Sayville. They dated, and married, and her father got him work on the Great South Bay.

Joe was strong and smart. He was enterprising and hardworking, and he got accepted by the Hollanders of West Sayville. He fished and clammed and scalloped with them, and he learned the Bay and its bottom. He got to be known as one of the best baymen around. He became chief of the fire department (a big deal in West Sayville), and a deacon in the Reformed Church (for just one term).

He got a job at Whitecap Seafood in Bayshore, cutting fish and learning retail. Then Joe bought Al Klassen’s store on Fire Island and made it a great success.

There were no cars on Fire Island. Everything had to come across by ferry. The Bay was five miles wide. If you had your own boat you could cut your costs. Our boat, the South Bay, was a thirty-six-foot "pound boat," built in the 1920’s for emptying fish traps. It had a catboat hull, a wide beam, and shallow draft. It had a low deck for working the water, a big hold in front with a mast and boom, and a cabin aft. Its tiller was out back, old fashioned.

Lots of Love

I loved that boat. I loved its lines and its wood and its paint. I loved working on it and washing it down every night and getting out on the salt water twice every day. I figured I had the best summer job in West Sayville. We loaded the boat every morning, lashed it all down, and ran across the Bay, a forty-five minute trip. In the evenings, coming back, Joe counted the cash and did his paperwork and the girls and I took turns steering home. Mostly we’d perch atop the cabin and steer the tiller with a foot out behind. Vacationers would cruise by and stare at us like we were specimens.

I loved working in the fish market. The customers would be lined up at the door when we arrived. We’d often have to work straight through till afternoon without a break. Joe cut the fish, and the girls and I sold it and worked the grocery end and the cash register. We had to work hard, but he trusted us. If a customer complained, and we held our ground, just let the customer go too far and Joe would come over and tell the customer to get the hell out and never come back. Then on the trip home he’d want to know what really happened.

He had charisma. And he was honest. The regulars loved him. He was strong. He could lift a full fish box on his own. He knew the winds and tides of the Bay. He could navigate in bad weather with just his compass and his watch. He could swear to raise your scalp (though never with vulgarity) and he had a fierce temper. One Friday night we were making hamburgers in the back and he wanted a pickle and he couldn’t get the jar open and finally he just smashed the jar on the floor and took his damned pickle and walked away, and without a word we cleaned it up.

I loved him. I admired him. I spent the whole day in his presence. I helped him load and unload heavy boxes full of ice and fish. I helped him sell filet and clams and lobsters. I followed his instructions and watched his every move. I learned from him continually, and the more I learned, the more he let me do. He let us open clams and cut fish. The fourth summer, he went back to manage Whitecap three days a week, and he let his daughter Betsy and me run the store on the days he was away. On that Labor Day he handed me a bonus of a thousand bucks in cash.

I loved him for what he brought into my life by giving me that job. I loved him for his boat. I loved him for my being out on the water on mornings when the water was like glass and on other mornings when it blew so hard we had to hold on. I loved him for his knives and how he took care of them and his skill — six strokes to filet a bluefish. I loved him for the complexities in my life that he was at the center of. I loved him for what he had done with his own life.

Healthy Fear

And I was scared of him. I was afraid of him. I could not predict him. I never feared him hurting me, not in the least, nor did I ever experience him as unfair. But he was such a force and he was so free of me. I had learned, like many kids, how to manage my parents in certain ways. But Joe MacMillan was beyond my power to get what I wanted or even to influence. He was so totally his own man. For his own reasons he had asked me to work for him, and for his own reasons he was good to me.

One of the questions I get asked in my ministry is why the Bible says we should "fear God." People are troubled by this. How can "fear" be good? Mind you, it seems to me that "loving" God is even less comprehensible, but that doesn’t violate our biases.

Love and fear are both complex. Both are ethical as well as emotional, and actions as well as attitudes. I suppose they can occur in combinations that don’t make sense or are not good. But sometimes they do hitch up like strands of RNA, or like a Patchogue boy and a West Sayville girl. My explanations of how it’s good to fear the God you love are rarely convincing, but the combination does feel right to me. I learned that from Joe MacMillan.

Doubt-Full Faith: By Anonymous

This is a true testimony from someone at Old First. I asked if I could post it, because I think it documents that real transformation can happen in our lives, and it suggests what real transformation is like.

“That which does not kill you makes you strong.” I hate hearing that when I’m going through difficult times, and yet I think it’s true that overcoming adversity leaves us stronger than before. Similarly, exercise creates tiny tears in our muscles that, when healed, leave the muscles stronger.

So why have I been thinking that my faith is supposed to start out and always remain strong, without those pesky doubts sneaking in? I’m finally beginning to see that questioning my faith, and working my way through the doubts, leaves me with a stronger foundation, a surer faith.

For three years, ever since I found God again, I’ve been convinced that I’m not a good enough Christian because I so frequently have doubts. I also have a lot of trouble with the concept of prayer – I don’t know how to do it properly, I don’t remember to do it often enough, I don’t do it long enough. I get distracted and find myself thinking about all sorts of things, so that my prayers, rather than really ending, just sort of fade out. And I’ve been convinced that I’ll never learn how to do it. So what kind of Christian does that make me?

I never quite give up, though, and it’s finally paying off. During my recent experiences with recurring depression, I have wondered how a kind and loving God could allow me to suffer like this, and have at times been convinced that I’m not going to make it through to the other side.

I’m finally seeing some improvement that I think is going to continue – I see that as a reminder that I haven’t been alone in this, that God has been through it with me. He may not always work as fast as I think he should, but somehow things always work out in the end.

I can’t remember how many times in my life I’ve been convinced that some situation was hopeless, or dreaded facing something because I was sure it was just too awful to contemplate. I’ve been wrong every time. The next time I feel that way, I remind myself that nothing has ever been quite as bad as I feared it would be. Rather than taking comfort from that thought, though, I always answer myself by saying “Yeah, yeah – but this is the time it will finally be true.”

But this week I realized that I’m looking at my current unemployment differently. It’s been upsetting, and I really don’t know how things are going to turn out in the end. But, for perhaps the first time ever with such a serious situation, I have no doubt that things will indeed work out.

I have no idea how, but I know they will. Somewhere along the line, while I was busy doubting, the foundation of faith has gotten much stronger than I realized.

And somewhere along the line, I also seem to have opened myself to prayer. Last night I started out with my usual spiritual mumbling, got distracted, dragged my mind back to praying . . . .

And then I seemed to settle into the prayer, and was able to express myself more eloquently than I’ve been able to while praying. After some time I started to recite the Apostles’ Creed, as I often do. But this time was different – as I spoke the familiar words, I was nearly overwhelmed by the feeling of my heart swelling, a physical sensation that made it hard to even breathe for a brief moment. I have never felt so at peace, so sure that my prayers were being heard.

I’d like to think that I’ll never doubt again, and never feel awkward about praying. I know better than that, though. But perhaps I’ll move on to new and different doubts, giving me a chance to move on to a new and different faith. And if I lose the sense of ease I felt about praying last night? Well, at least I can pray to recapture it!

March 7, Lent 2, guest sermon

On Luke 13:1-9, preached by seminary intern Rachel Daley

Did you hear about the Galileans? The ones who came to offer sacrifices, and whom Pilate had put to death? He spilled their blood so that it mingled with their sacrifices. What did they do to get into trouble? What was Pilate’s agenda? We don’t know the particulars of this incident, but we know the type. Such violence can be politically expedient. Coercive power is needed to enforce laws, to thwart criminals, and to maintain order and justice. We are familiar with the abuses of such power which is too often used to silence dissidents, sow uncertainty and fear, or tighten the grip of a corrupt ruler.

Someone mentions the incident to Jesus, asking for a bit of political commentary, maybe a theological account of this sobering piece of news. What is Jesus to do? Philosophize about the right use of violence? Incite the crowd to righteous anger against the Roman prefect who has committed yet another injustice? Call down God’s judgment on irresponsible rulers? Offer comfort to a people badly shaken by Pilate’s violent whims? Assure them that the dead have passed on to a better world? These would be valid responses to the problems of violence. They are the impulses that give rise to ethics, political activism, prophetic critique, lament, and hope in a more just world. Each of these is part of the Christian calling and witness.

Jesus doesn’t say or do these things. He teaches about something else- an attitude that is costlier than righteous anger.

While called to respond to an act of political violence, Jesus lifts up an example of destruction that is outside of human control. Eighteen Jerusalemites were killed when a tower collapsed on them. Violence is deliberate and gruesome, but it is also accidental and indiscriminate. There is an element of violence in the world that is outside of human control. We try to control and limit destruction. Today this incident would be followed by an investigation into the practices of building inspectors, a suit against irresponsible contractors, and push for reform in building codes. The inevitable fact is that we make our lives within buildings that age and wear; we make our lives on plates that shift, war, and crash.

Are the victims worse sinners than everyone else? No! - Jesus says. We would probably say the same. The Galileans were victims of an unjust use of power. The Jerusalemites at Siloam were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is not true that suffering happens to the worst sinners while the righteous remain unscathed. The world is not mechanized. Violence and death are not distributed as punishment for sin. Jesus rejects the unvoiced suspicion that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad.

It is hard to live in a chaotic and unordered world. There is always bad news of the outbreak of war, the escalation of conflict, another report about the disastrous effects of climate change. It is hard to understand undeserved suffering. There is a lingering temptation to order and to mechanize. Do we ever interpret our safety as a sign of the superiority of our own way of life? Do we assume that wellbeing is evidence of God’s tacit approval? I feel secure because I live in well-constructed buildings. I live among decent people. My leaders are not perfect, but our government does not allow violence against innocent citizens. I don’t get mixed up with the wrong sort of people. I protect myself and my family. Self-satisfied security protects us from the demands of violence; it’s something that happens to other people, in another neighborhood, on another continent.

We know the woes of our troubled planet, but there is a tendency to locate such problems outside of ourselves. We philosophize and theologize, protest and complain, ignore and grow apathetic. In such action and inaction, we fail to address a fundamental truth. The truth is that the sin of the world is in us too. Sin is not something other people do. You can’t dismiss sin as a problem of those without education or good values. Sin is not limited to tyrants, corrupt politicians, and greedy executives. We can’t respond from a position of comfortable privilege or moral superiority.

Jesus won’t allow his followers to make this question of violence and death abstract - it is always personal. Suffering, corruptibility, and death are in us. The ache of the poor, the sick, and the fearful is our ache. The seeds of greed and selfishness that prompt war and violence are in me, in you. We share in the violence of the oppressor and the suffering of the oppressed. We are bound to those who have perished. We are bound in our common humanity; by the flesh and the weakness we share, by the inevitability that we will meet the same end. We are all equal in the face of death, equal in our need to repent of our part in evil.

The parable of the fig tree is a challenge to the comfortable. The tree has stood for several years and yet it bears no fruit. The axe is at the foot of the tree, but the gardener speaks up - Wait. Wait one more year. I will tend and nurture the tree, I will make one final experiment before cutting it down. It is warning. The barren tree still stands, but it has not escaped judgment.

It is tempting to grow comfortable while we are allowed to stand. That we do not see the end, does not mean that it is not coming. That we don’t yet feel the impacts of our lifestyle on the environment, does not mean we will be safe forever. That war begins in a distant land does not mean that it will always so far away. Prosperity and security give us no advantage before God. Rather we will be called to give an account of how we have acquired and dispatched such gifts.

Jesus has one word for the self-satisfied, the despairing, the indignant: Repent. Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did. Jesus takes these events as a call to redirect the heart and life toward the purposes of God. We don’t need to abandon our rage and sorrow, but we do surrender them to a God whose anger and lament over violence is more fervent and more faithful than our own. Repentance means to make confession of our part of violence and our complicity in violent structures. We confess the things we have done and left undone. We confess that we have been unjust and indifferent while pursuing our own security in a violent world. Repentance is the category through which we interpret and respond to painful events. Repentance itself is painful as we realize that sin and death cut to the core of our being.

Jesus expects that the fig tree will bear fruit. John the Baptist preached about the fruits of repentance. The crowds asked him what he meant and he said- Anyone who has two coasts must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. Then he told the tax collectors not to collect more than the amount prescribed, and told soldiers not to extort money through threats or accusations. The fruits of repentance are to be just and fair, and to give to the one in need.

John the Baptist does not tell the people to take up an ideology, does not launch a campaign under a grandiose slogan like World Peace or End Poverty. Those are worthy efforts, but they are not repentance. They keep the issues abstract and allow us to circumvent the problem of our own sinfulness. Repentance is a turn from selfishness to ethical concern for neighbors. The fruit of repentance is in ethical patterns of assistance, honesty, equity, in the prudent and moderate use of material possessions. The logic of these small acts is that repentance must be personal and physical, because sin and suffering are personal and physical.

I think it’s really hard to get this right. Jesus warns us against getting too comfortable. Do we then live in fear, expecting violence and judgment at every turn? Jesus reminds us of our sin. Are we then plagued with sorrow about our part in suffering? Jesus us tells us to repent. Do we then shoulder responsibility for every pain and sorrow? Must we earn God’s favor through the sincerity of our confessions or through many good deeds? No, this mandate would twist Christ’s message into its opposite. Christ’s work is a free movement of God’s love toward humans.

Have we forgotten where Jesus is? Have we forgotten where he is going? He is on the road. Some time ago he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He has embarked on a path that leads to violent death. In taking this journey, he has already put on the suffering of the Galileans and the Jerusalemites. He has taken up the sin of the crowds, the abuses of unjust power, the ache of a turbulent, crashing world. He himself will die at Pilate’s hands, even while bearing the sin of those who put him to death. He carries your sin, your suffering and the hurts of a world that are too great for you to bear. A word of fear and guilt has nothing to do with this good news. Christ’s teaching is sobering, but it is given by him who takes sin and suffering upon himself, and so it is not without hope. His message exhorts us to watchfulness, but never to despair.

Guest Homily: Ash Wednesday

By Rachel Daley, our seminary intern

Winter is the quietest of all seasons. Large summer barbecues give way to quiet evenings at home with only our closer friends. The cold makes things quiet. Carefree youth may venture out for the occasional snowball fight, but the sensible will pass their time in the warmth indoors. The snow makes things quiet too, muffling the noises of a hectic world. The earth clothes itself in subdued grays, whites, browns, pale blue - shedding, for now, its blazing greens, reds, and yellows.

My grandfather, a Canadian, might suggest that winter makes us stronger. When he remembers the hardships his family faced, he tells me that they survived because of the strength of his mother, my great-grandmother, Kate Pike. To explain the source of her unyielding determination, my grandfather will say, “Well, she was a Newfoundlander, you see.”

Newfoundland is a large island in the North Atlantic Ocean known for long, brutal winters. My great-grandmother came from a place where winter was not peace and tranquility. Winter was a battle against ice fogs, freezing rain, and of course for the many who were fishermen, rough seas. After such adversity, Kate Pike was not to be undone when life proved difficult.

Though I don’t always like winter, I’ve come to think that it is a necessary part of life. However, that view may represent the sensibilities of my Canadian ancestors and you are free to disagree. Preferences of weather and climate aside, we certainly do need times of quiet and solitude. Nor can entirely escape the dark, quiet times, times when we struggle for our very survival.

As Christians we have set aside a season for silence and self-examination. We call it Lent, and like winter, it can be a difficult time. We’re something like the Newfoundlanders, perhaps, made strong through centuries of cold, dark struggle.

Like the chill of winter that keeps us inside, Lent is a season to shut the door to the world, to tend to our souls, to pray from the secret recesses of our hearts. We withdraw from religious displays and the ostentation of the streets to be alone with our Father. We seek out solitude and refuge from our noisy, demanding world. To those who would pray rightly Jesus commands, “Go into your room. Shut the door.” Examine your private room, turn over its contents, cleanse the heart of all invasions and interruptions. Pray secretly, earnestly, with single-minded striving for God your Father.

Lent is not like the beginning of winter when we are more inclined to relish the falling snowflakes. Those were busy days of sparkle and holiday cheer. We greet Lent in the middle of winter, as the fresh, shimmery snow turns to dirty slush. Where I grew up in the Midwest, days and weeks and months will pass without a trace of sunshine. By mid-February, the collective consciousness grows cranky; the winter blues set in. The days take on the monotony of the cloudy, grey skies above us, we long for warm air and bare feet, everyone is living at the edge of their skin. Lent coincides not with our December eagerness for snow angels and igloos, but with our tired February spirits that yearn for the day we will step outdoors without a winter coat.

Lent is a time when we remember the weakness of our own bodies. We meditate on the dust from which we were formed. Traditionally it has been a time for fasting or for doing without some luxury we enjoy. We fast so that by denying the body, God might feed the soul.

Now try explaining that logic to my childhood friend Amanda Wilwert. She complained that Lent did nothing except increase the general irritability of her household as her parents stayed clear of soda and chocolate. Certainly the fasting Jesus describes seems out-of-sync with today’s world. Christ would teach us that the path toward spiritual growth does not bypass our physical bodies - their discipline or their weakness. We give up the earthly things that rule us so that hearts may hunger for God alone. In the frayed nerves and noisy stomachs that a lack of food, caffeine, or sunlight might induce, we begin to realize how desperately we need God to sustain us.

This season reminds us that our bodies are ash, lifeless without the breath of God’s nostrils. We remember our limitations and our dependence, and, yet strangely perhaps, these limits are a comfort to us. We are dust, dependent on God in all ways, even for our very righteousness. We seek to do what is right, but when we do good with the right hand, the left hand knows and we congratulate ourselves. Jesus commands us to a righteousness that is not concerned with itself, so habitual as to be unaware of itself.

True righteousness gives for the sake of the one in need, prays out of need and for communion with God, fasts to glorify God alone. Of such goodness we are not capable, even our best efforts are imperfect and stained with sin. Repentance comes not so much in striving, but in weakness. Repentance takes root as we abandon the pretense that we will ever deserve God’s grace.

Even so, there is so much grace. Christ promises that in the cold, silence of winter, God will make your heart new. In struggle, in doubt, and in hunger, God will feed and comfort you, will meet you with the force of a sharp, winter wind. Let your heart draw near to God in repentance, that in this Lenten season God may plant the fruits of gratitude and righteousness.

What is Passionate Spirituality?

Here is a working definition for Old First: Passionate spirituality is receiving the power of God in the Spirit of Jesus for transformation of our lives, yielding love and joy.

Why this? The phrase "passionate spirituality" comes from the program called "Natural Church Development" (NCD) which we are using at Old First. This program measures the health of a church by means of eight categories. The goal is to measure your church to find out which of the categories it's weakest in, and then address that category.

Three years ago, we determined we were weakest in Small Groups, so we addressed that. This last time around we determined we are weakest in Passionate Spirituality, so we are addressing that.

But what does that mean, Passionate Spirituality? It's very hard to define. What's the difference between spirituality that's passionate and spirituality that's not? What's the difference between passion that's spiritual and passion that's not?

Well, I doubt my definition is the best one, but I don't think it's a bad one, and at least it's a place to start, so I offer it. Once again, Passionate spirituality is receiving the power of God in the Spirit of Jesus for transformation of our lives, yielding love and joy.

Daughter of the Regiment

Am I the only one not convinced by Diana Damrau's performance of Marie in the "Daughter of the Regiment" at the Metropolitan Opera? I mean, I enjoyed it, this Saturday afternoon, on WQXR, and of course, I didn't SEE it, so maybe I shouldn't even say anything, but from what I could hear, it sounded to me like a lot of forced funniness.

What a great voice, yes, but when you watch Damrau's performances on Youtube of, say, Glitter and Be Gay, she always seems to try too hard.

Ja, ich weiss das du Deutsch bist, aber, "Lighten up."

Juan Diego Flores has that wonderful light tenor voice in his role as Tonio (with the famous nine High C's), and it would seem to me that the Marie should be as light and delightful as the Tonio.

Ah, everybody's a critic.

What to Pray for Haiti

Here in Brooklyn we have a very large Haitian community, and we meet up with Haitians everywhere. So I have been asking the Haitians I talk to for one name to pray for, and that means that now I am praying for Alfred, Margaruite, and Desiree. Aflred is the uncle of one of the custodians at Congregation Beth Elohim. Margaruite is the aunt of a friend.

Desiree is family of the woman who served me coffee at the Burger King at the NY Thruway rest stop yesterday. Her accent sounded Haitian, and I could see she was having a bad time of it, so I said to her, "You've lost someone, haven't you," and she said yes. So I'm praying for Desiree.

I don't know what specificially to pray for. That's okay, cause I don't know the people personally. I just repeat their names. To the God who created the world which has tectonic plates which have to move and cause earthquakes.

We're all stunned and numbed, of course. Some people are saying that some good will come out of this for Haiti, such as better buildings (when rebuilt), massive investment, and new attention from the world. Maybe. Maybe. I have no idea.

After 9/11 in New York we could blame the Terrorists. But where can we go with our anger over the death and destruction in Port-au-Prince?

I can't explain it, I can't justify it, all I know is that it drives us all into the depths of our faith and the deepest realities we know. I find that it doesn't shake my belief in God one bit, but it forces us beyond our limits and to the face of God.

It's not that I blame God, or even that I hold God responsible. I mean I do hold God responsible for creating this world with physical and chemical laws, and I thank God that the laws of nature are binding, and I know that the rock formations in Haiti were just obeying the law. So in a sense I do hold God responsible for this earthquake and also for allowing us the freedom to live our lives. So this does not at all cause me to lose my respect and honor for God.

By now you have been revulsed by Pat Robertson's idiot words about "the pact with the devil." (What is this guy like at home?) It wasn't the French they kicked out, it was their slavery. Their slavemasters were the ones, if anyone, who had made a pact with the devil. Not that the phrase makes any real sense, but for a Christian people to keep slaves and use slaves and support slavery as acceptable is, as the Bible says, "to make a covenant with death."

So where should we go with our anger? Well, it might be better to turn our anger against the inequitable effects of the political-economic systems which we support and which give us comfort and profit but which have their grinding underside and their usual victims. We have met the devil and he . . . is us?

But more important than that, I'm guessing that the people who are busiest in the work of relief have the least time to get angry or to look for someone to blame.

I'm also praying (I really am) that God will speak to me in my own life for how best I can do my part. Why don't you do the same. (And donate. See the entry below.)

Reformed Church Responds to Haiti Earthquake

Reformed Church World Service

has responded with an initial contribution of $10,000 to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

How You Can Help
Pray for the people of Haiti, especially for those who are injured, homeless, or have lost loved ones. Pray also for the hundreds of rescue workers and disaster recovery personnel.

Donate to provide water, blankets, temporary shelter, and food to the tens of thousands who are homeless. Send contributions, designated "Haiti Earthquake," to Reformed Church in America, P.O. Box 19381, Newark, NJ 07195-1938 or, in Canada, to Regional Synod of Canada, 201 Paradise Road N., Hamilton, ON L8S 3T3. To donate by credit card, call (800) 968-3943, ext. 247 or go to the Haiti Earthquake Donation Page.

Assemble hygiene kits and baby kits and ship them to Church World Service. Detailed information on creating and shipping of kits is available at http://www.rca.org//page.redir?target=http%3a%2f%2fwww.churchworldservice.org%2f&srcid=8667&srctid=1&erid=183834.
Check for updates on the RCWS website: rcws.rca.org.

"The people of Haiti have urgent needs rights now," says David Dethmers, coordinator of Reformed Church World Service, "basic needs of water, food, and shelter. We make this contribution on behalf of the members and friends of the Reformed Church in America, confident that in the longer term we will be able to do much more."

The initial support will be directed through the RCA's partner, Church World Service (CWS), which has staff permanently placed in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and therefore is able to mobilize quickly. In the early days of the response, CWS will be providing blankets, water, and hygiene and baby kits.

In a conference call with CWS communions on Wednesday afternoon, Donna Derr, director of emergency response programs for CWS, highlighted the urgency of the need for donations to address the crisis in Haiti.

"We are emptying our warehouse in Maryland," she emphasized. "We're intending to ship over 25,000 hygiene kits and several thousand baby kits. That's almost everything we've got. There's a desperate need to replenish our supplies. I urge churches and individuals who are seeking a way to help to put these kits together and ship them to us as soon as possible."

RCWS Partners with Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

On Friday, David Dethmers will travel to Haiti with a delegation from CRWRC, the relief and development arm of the Christian Reformed Church. "It's a sign of the growing relationship between our two communions," Dethmers says. "Within hours of hearing about the disaster, we were in communication with each other. Very quickly it became clear that it made sense to travel and work together."

In Haiti, Dethmers will meet with a wide variety of local partners of both Church World Service and CRWRC. He is also hoping to meet with the RCA's new partner in the Dominican Republic, the newly emerging Reformed Church in the Dominican Republic. The recovery in Haiti will be a long one. "The goal of the trip," he says, "in addition to encouraging and supporting RCA partners in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is to listen to local partners, developing a mid- and long-range strategy that will support the Haitians as they plan and implement their own recovery and plan their future."

Parrots On My Street

One morning last week, when it was "ridiculously cold" (in the words of WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon) I noticed a pair of Monk Parrots in the tree outside our building on Seeley Street.

These are two of Brooklyn's famous feral parrots. They're also known as "Quaker Parrots."

Well, at last they've arrived on my street. I've seen them in Greenwood Cemetery, of course, and at Brooklyn College, and at City Island, and last year near the Fort Hamilton F stop, but this was the first time I saw them on Seeley Street. I'm assuming they're expanding their territory.

They are an invasive species. But I love them. Their energy, pluck, and intelligence. Tropical birds who manage to survive and even flourish in this foreign environment. And it was so flippin' cold outside!

They're quintessential New Yorkers. Immigrants making it. They belong in Brooklyn, don't they? I guess they have as much right to be here as any of us do.

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

This morning I am working on my sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany. The gospel text is the story of the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns the water into wine. I am reminded of an event in my own life.

I am quite content to be a parish pastor. But for most of my life it had been my dream to become a seminary professor. Twice I got very close. In 1991 I was one of the finalists for a position in teaching liturgy at the University of Toronto.

In the final interview with the search committee, one of the theologians asked me something like this, “I wonder if you could teach our students some new traditions and new kinds of sacraments. I am thinking of a kind of sacrament that is not violent. You know, Holy Communion uses violent symbols—the broken bread for a broken body and the poured out wine for bloodshed. What would you think about teaching a non-violent sacrament?"

I remember not answering right away as I tried to figure out what I would say.

Then the theologian added this: "What about teaching a sacrament where we all ate fruit together?”

At that point I knew I would not get this job. But I did control myself—I did not say, “You mean like in the Garden of Eden,” or “I wonder how the fruit feels.”

Inventing new traditions is not my gift (or my desire). And as for the violence (maybe they were testing me because I was American), the violence signified by broken bread and poured out wine, well, it’s not the violence itself, but that we find ourselves in the middle of violence and brokenness and grief, the reality is that our lives are constantly poured out.

The tradition of Holy Communion is so powerful because it allows us to accept the reality of our lives and our suffering, and to believe that God meets us there, and goes through it with us. It is the acknowledgment that we are violent, and that God comes through our violence to bring us peace, that God passes through our mournfulness to bring us joy, and that Jesus wept so that we might laugh.

Oh how we fantasize of getting back to the Garden. But there's an angel with a sword of fire in the way. "It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." And, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." You know what I mean?

The Annual Rick Moody Christmas Quotation

As Jessica Stockton reminds me every year:

"Why is it that the worse the Christmas service, the closer we get to the idea of Christmas?

Children's services, with children running aimlessly in the aisles in lamb costumes or dressed as wise men, neglecting or refusing to say their lines, why so much closer to the idea of Christmas?

What is this thing about Christmas, the paradoxical tendency of Christmas, that the more heartbreaking it is the closer it seems to get to the point? Why is failure and awkwardness so human and so natural at Christmas?... Why is it that desperation is closer to God?...

At the same time, what about the Mean Estate stuff, what about Mary lying in bad circumstances? Why is it that the no-room-at-the-inn part is inevitably moving, even when you are skeptical about the whole thing?... And why an ideology of the neglected and left out and miserable and disinherited and lonely and poor and ill and exiled, anyway?...

And why is it, meanwhile, that singing is the thing that enables me to understand this, why is it that singing makes the Christmas holiday what it is, what it can be, what it ought to be?"

- Rick Moody, Christmas 2006

Book Drive

Our Deacons are really at it.

They're also conducting a Book Drive to benefit African Refuge's After-School Program.
African Refuge is a non-profit org. on Staten Island offering aid to West African refugees. Due to a 14 year civil war, many Liberian children have missed one or more years of school. They need a library for their after-school program. We can help them build it. Please bring your 'gently read' or new books to Old First (7th Ave.&Carroll St.) on Sunday, Dec. 13th from 3:00-7:00pm. The books should be for readers age 5-17. Adult-level books also welcome.

Christmas Carols

Come Sing for Peace!

Old First Christmas Carol Sing-along

Please join us for a SING-ALONG of all your favorite classic carols.

Suggested donation
$8.00/familes $15.00

Proceeds support our mis­sion in Africa in the work of Debbie and Del Braaksma as they teach trauma-healing, reconciliation and trust building to people who have previously only known war.

December 13, 2009 5.00pm
Old First Church 7th Ave & Carroll St. Park Slope

Sermon for November 15, Een Goed Begin

Colonial Service 2009

Mark 13:1-8

Een Goed Begin

Exordium Remotum:

Geliefde gemeente, dames en heren, mensen en kinderen. The exordium remotum was the preview of the sermon. My text is from Mark 13. Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

Now hear it in the Statenvertaling that was heard by us till 1824. En wanneer gij zult horen van oorlogen, en geruchten van oorlogen, zo wordt niet verschrikt, want dit moet geschieden; maar nog is het einde niet. Want het ene volk zal tegen het andere volk opstaan, en het ene koninkrijk tegen het andere koninkrijk, en er zullen aardbevingnen zijn in verscheidene plaatsen, en er zullen hongersnoden wezen, en beroerten. Deze dingen zijn maar beginselen der smarten.

That word smarten is not accurate to the Greek. The better translation iweeën, "labor pains." The famines and troubles are the beginning of labor pains—the most painful of pains, yet not pains of death, but of new life. The doom in these words is not doom and gloom, but doom and dawn, doom and gladness.

The pain is the pain of conversion and repentance, what the Heidelberg Catechism calls "the dying-away of the old nature and the coming-to-life of the new nature." We are to see our lives as a daily breaking-down and daily new beginning. So my topic is Een Goed Begin. From the proverb, "Een goed begin is het halve werk," a good beginning is half the work. They began here began well, but their work is only half finished, and there is very much for us to do.

The rest of my exordium remotum is announcements. I welcome our visitors today. Thank you for coming. We are marking the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Hendrick Hudson which opened up the colony of New Netherland, the ground in which forty-five years later our church was planted. I invite you to our colonial dinner with its historic menu, and let me thank you in advance for your donations at the meal.

I thank our committee who prepared all this, especially Lois Wingerson, and our kitchen volunteers. I thank our voorlezer and voorzanger Hans Bilger. I thank Jennifer Nelson and our children for learning the psalms. The psalms are all we sang in church for 200 years, unaccompanied, but churches with organs were allowed to hear improvisations on the psalm tunes before and after the service, which Aleeza Meir has given us today.

Our psalms and our liturgy date from 1563, which we know our children to have memorized. In 1792 we added an English service, with this translation of the Liturgy, and the Dutch and English overlapped till 1824, which means that we prayed in Dutch for 205 years after Henry Hudson! The liturgy ends with "Gedacht de armen," "Mind the poor." We do. Please take a grocery bag and bring it back next Sunday with food for the poor. Now, let the congregation pray. Laat de gemeente bidden.

Predicatie:

When the first Dutch settlers came to Brooklyn, half of them were ethnically something else than Dutch, but they were all becoming Dutch in language and culture and religion, and they would maintain that language and culture and religion for 200 years. For the first few decades they were outnumbered by the Native Americans, the Canarsees. The settlers called them the wilden, the wild ones, not wild and crazy but wild as in the state of nature, like the wildlife in a nature preserve. That they lived in a state of nature does not mean they left no imprint on the land. Their trails through the woods were easily followed, and the clearings they had cut in the forest for planting their crops, and then abandoned, were easily discernible in the various stages of regrowth. But when the Dutch cleared the trees they made it permanent.

That’s the difference. The aboriginal imprint on the landscape was as passing and organic as nature itself, like the passing of the seasons, the rising of spring and the falling of autumn, the wealth of summer and the dearth of winter, seasons of plenty and seasons of hunger. But the Dutch, although at first they lived more like the wilden than like their relatives in Europe, they had a different vision of the world.

They had a vision of a future, of a continuing orderly development, of well-ordered fields and stout barns and solid houses, a vision of human life abstracted from nature sufficiently to offer insulation from the cold and protection from hunger, a vision of life which the Canarsees considered curious and unnatural.

That vision extended to commerce and civics and religion. After Pieter Stuyvesant established our church in 1654, our very first services were in a barn, doubtless without windows, and it must have struck the Canarsees as crazy to pray to the God of Heaven from inside a barn (unless, of course, they had learned that the Lord had been born in one). But the congregation in that barn will have had a vision of a decent church of stone on stone, and in twelve years’ time they built it.

What that church looked like we do not know—the picture in your bulletin is only one historian’s guess. We do know that ten years after it was built one Dutch visitor described it as a "small and ugly little church standing in the middle of the road." Eight years after that our small and ugly little church became the home of that communion beaker, right there, our avondmaal beker from 1684. Four times a year that beaker was put out on the table in that ugly little building, and the people drank the holy wine from it. On that very cup, 300 years ago, there gleamed the reflected light of the interior of our first building. Wouldn’t we love to be able to still discern what was reflected there, but light has no memory; light is always of the present.

In 1766 that building was torn down, and its stones were included in the walls of the new and larger church, and that beaker reflected that new interior. Forty years later that building was taken down, and what happened to its stones we do not know. They built a new church of bluestone over on Joralemon Street, and that beaker reflected a third interior.

The membership grew so great that after only thirty years they took down that bluestone church and they built a great new edifice in the classical style. Our congregation swelled to more than a thousand and then it gradually dwindled, and that great edifice lasted only fifty years, and its stones too were taken down, and we built this great place here, for a thousand again, but we never had more than two hundred.

This building we have used the longest of any so far, by twenty years, but who’s to say how long before its stones too come down? What will be reflected in our beaker a century from now, and of what sort will be faces of the folks who drink the wine around the table?

Why are doing this today? Why does a church participate in these Five Dutch Days celebrations? For some of the same reasons that a school or a museum or a gallery or consulate may do this, but the driving motivation for a church has to be the motivation of love. The Love of God. For us to love as God loves and to love what God loves has to be under the surface of what we do.

Let me remind you of the love that’s just under the surface of our two scripture lessons. The Ten Commandments were summarized by our Lord Jesus as "Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love thy neighbor." And in the gospel lesson the love is hidden in the image of the pain of childbirth. Childbirth comes from love and goes towards love. It comes from the love of father and mother making love, and it goes toward those two lovers increasing their love by sharing their love with a third, their child. The pain of childbirth is the most painful of pains but it ends in the most joyful of joys, the beginning of a life, which depends on our love just in order to stay alive.

We have this joy at childbirth in spite of everything we know about the reality of life. This child will have her share of trials and troubles. She will do some things she should not do and she will not do some things she should do. We shall have to forgive her of something or other, and we will need her forgiveness back. She may reject what we teach her and rebel against what we hold dear, but we will love her. And if we love her we will not reckon her points against her but will be always ready to begin again. There is pain in the love, not just at childbirth, but all through love and even in the joy, for love remembers, but always begins again.

What we do today we do for love. We love our tradition and our history and our Dutch connection in all its reality both good and bad. We have to forgive it and be forgiven by it. We love what our ancestors in this church began, and what they built, even what they built was as passing as Canarsee clearing in the forest. The stones went up and came back down, but we judge it was a good beginning, and we continue to build the work, even if our own stones come down in the future that God has for us. We will feel the pain, but we should not be dismayed, for the pain is the signal of the birth of whatever new beginning that God has for us.

How impermanent our history has been. Three locations, five buildings, stones put up and down. And yet there is that cup of Jesus’ love. How many hands of the faithful have held that cup and put their mouths on it and drunk from it.

I don’t know the last time that wine has been inside that cup. It is such a priceless and fragile artifact that I would not dare to have us drink from it today. But its surface still contains the light. The light which we believe to be the robe God, and the sign of the splendor of God’s glory and God’s grace.

That light is ever present because, as Einstein taught us, light is the constant of the universe. Everything else is relative and passing, but light is constant. E=MC2, light is what reconciles energy and matter, the light of God’s grace is what reconciles all to which we put our energies and all we think that matters. And by that light upon the cup we can read the promise of the wine inside the cup, we can recognize the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice and the atonement for our sins, and we can discern the new wine of the wedding feast, the gift of always a new beginning, of reconciliation, of truth and reconciliation, of forgiveness, of healing and resurrection, of the conversion of our old nature into the new nature, of the conversion of our sin into righteousness and our weakness into strength and our pain into childbirth, of the conversion of our fear into hope.

By the constancy of that light, that light that shone upon the Canarsees in their ceaseless round of years, and then upon the Half Moon as it sailed up the river, and then upon the settlers as they cleared their fields and built their humble homes, that light which came in through the windows of five successive buildings, by the constancy of the light of the gospel of God, we can believe the promise that in the love of God there is an enduring significance to every passing thing that we have done and yet may do.

We can never know the whole significance of what we do, we cannot stand far enough away from it in time and space to read it in the light at the source of the universe, but we put our trust in the promise of the light and of the blood and of the wine. Our hope for the future is not empty, its solidity is God’s promises, which are more solid than stone and more constant than the earth. And when we believe these promises, this old church may ever new be born again.

Copyright © 2009 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Ruled By Children

Park Slope is a "utopian commune ruled by children." So says John Hodgman as quoted in Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Too true.

I read this to my wife this morning, and she laughed. "That's great," she said, and then, "You know, I think when people stop worshipping God they start to worship their children. And that's more burdensome."

Ja, and it generates more guilt than any other religion I know of, along with oppressive legalism. I am continually amazed at the guilt and legalism of the Park Slope cult of children. I fly for refuge and relief to the lighter and more pleasant ease of Calvinism.

The worst part of it is the poor kids. The last thing they want is to be in charge. And yet they are never in charge of their own little lives, being so ceaselessly watched and constantly taken care of. But that is what one does with something sacred. Like the Masai with their cattle in East Africa.

On Sunday mornings, as I walk to church through Prospect Park, I often pass a "soccer school" for toddlers. Their parents dress them up in soccer gear and pay some hip jocks to teach their kids how to kick the ball, and then they watch them like medical students at a surgical theater and applaud them when they kick the ball near the goal. Those poor sacred kids.

The Kids Are Getting Ready For Dutch Day

Eric is learning Psalm 42.

You think it's easy? Here's the lyrics (it's antique Dutch of 1563):

Als een hert ghejaeght, O Heere,

Dat verssche water begheert;

Also dorst myn siel oock seere,

Nae v myn Godt hoogh ghe-eert.

End spreeckt by haer, met geklagh:

O Heer waneer komt die dag,

dat ick doch by v sal wesen,

End sien v aanschijn ghepresen.

Seeking water, seeking shelter,
gasps the thirsty, weary deer;
So my soul, in days of trouble,
longs for God’s refreshment here.
In this stressful course of life,in its loneliness and strife,When, say I, will God deliver;
is his mercy gone forever?

The Menu for Dutch Day at Old First

On Sunday, November 15, after church, is our Colonial style dinner, as our congregation might have eaten it centuries ago. We will eat it in that style—entirely with wooden spoons!

The menu is based on recipes from an authentic cookbook of the period,
De Verstandige Kok, (The Sensible Cook)

Spÿskaart (menu)

Gerecht schotel (main course) Beef with Ginger, Chicken with Orange

Groenten (vegetables): Stewed Cabbage, Belgian Endive, Leeks

Brood (bread): Pumpkin Cornmeal Cakes, Rye and Wheat Bread

Nagerecht (dessert): Almond Tart, Pear Tart, Spanish Porridge, Zoete Koek

Eet smakelÿk (bon appetite)

For information and reservations, see the webpage.

Beth Elohim our Guests for Yom Kippur

The plaster started falling from the ceiling of the synagogue of Congregation Beth Elohim, a block away from us, just in time for the High Holy Days of Yom Kippur. They had a problem, but Rabbi Bachman knew that all he had to do was ask . . . .

So Old First has been delighted, thrilled, and gratified to host this congregation in our building for their Yom Kippur services. (You can read all about it in the newspapers. Just Google "brooklyn church synagogue".) And they filled the place. Our own Old First volunteers worked like crazy on Friday and Saturday to get the sanctuary ready for 1200 people.

Rabbi Bachman said in his sermon for Yom Kippur: "God did this." We say "Amen."

Old First on Dutch Television

The Dutch television network NOS came to Brooklyn as part of the Henry Hudson 400th Anniversary festivities. They visited the New Utrecht graveyard and also Old First, where they interviewed Melody (my wife). I was in South Africa, so I missed it all.

My Other Career

I don't know why these photos got posted in reverse order, but the top one should be the last one. This is from the Jinglebell Jamboree of 2008, the community holiday concert at Old First. That's Ethan Schlesser and myself. I'm the Garfunkel to his Simon. We're performing his song-and-dance number, "At the Jinglebell Jamboree". He's at the piano, and behind us is our band, the Bilger Family Band (they're "The Band" to our Bob Dylan; ha ha.). That's Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough Presient, who's our chief fan.

Ethan wants to do this again. Well, it brings out a part of me I had put behind. The last time I took stage was at the Sayville (Long Island) High School musicals. In 1970 I was the first tenor in the quartet for The Music Man. In 1971 I was Marryin' Sam in Li'l Abner. Strange, in that role I played a renegate preacher. Hmmm.

New Hope Saints Paint

Here's some more photos of our young saints from Powell, Ohio. And you know what, they also donated the paint!

Sanctuary Renovations

These are the wonderful young people from the New Hope Reformed Church of Powell, Ohio. Thirty high-schoolers plus eight adult sponsors. Working hard and with love. This is their second trip to Old First, as part of our Project Samuel program. Four years ago they painted the Lower Hall.

Elaine Beery is the interior designer at Old First. The photos are by Jane Barber of barberdesign.com.

They will have made a great beginning. There is much more to do, it's a huge sanctuary. Thank you for your inspiration and your love.

Looking Forward to Lent

A guest posting by Jessica Stockton, member of Old First, and author of Book Nerd.

I've realized this year how much I look forward to Lent. I didn't grow up observing it – it wasn't much emphasized in the California Mennonite Brethren Church, and I think I learned about it from my Catholic friends. It sounded a little weird to me, as it probably does to most people.

It was actually a French cookbook that deepened my understanding. Amid the decadent recipes for Easter cakes and meats, the author mentioned that in traditional French and European culture, Easter was following on a long cold season where no one had eaten meat, eggs, or milk. This was a kind of medieval detox, she suggested, that made the spring Easter feast all the more enjoyable.

I hadn't thought before that about how seasonally appropriate Lent is, or was in a culture more connected to the seasons. Food was scarcer as stores ran out, so we tightened our belts. It's not doctrinal, but it's a wise strategy of the church, to deal with of the most difficult time of year and use it as a way of understanding sin and suffering.

Coming from the mild weather of California, this part of the year in the Northeast has always been especially difficult for me. It's been so cold for so long, and it seems to be getting colder, and it seems there's so much more winter still to come. I chafe against the weather, frustrated and angry and indignant. Lent is a way of accepting the darkness and the cold as right and appropriate for its time. I look forward to Lent because it makes sense of the darkness.

My temperament tends toward optimism, even in the face of opposition. And my job involves a lot of smiling, making people comfortable, and speaking enthusiastically about whatever I'm presenting. Lent allows me a break, at least internally, from my own cheerfulness, even my own optimism. It is a time to recognize that I am broken, that the world is broken, and to sit with that knowledge for forty long days. The dead, cold natural world, and my own body made of dust that shivers and aches, reflect the state of my own selfish, ashamed soul in need of redemption, and whole fallen world. Lent acknowledges not only my imperfections and my debts, but my sorrows and my fears and my embarrassments. And it is both pain and relief to acknowledge these things.

When I was a child I loved the mystery of Christmas, the anticipation of Advent. It was a break from the casual blandness of everyday life, an implication that there was a deeper and more meaningful world that required solemn preparation. I love Lent and Easter increasingly as I grow older, as perhaps a greater, a more grown-up mystery. With its focus on the death that precedes the resurrection, it can only resonate if you have had time to understand suffering, to see death. I appreciate the chance to participate in this mystery, the long preparation for the day of the Lord.

And when Easter arrives, all that joy and optimism comes rushing back, fresh and real. We are saved, we are brought to life, each of us clothed in glory as the earth breaks forth into blossom. And we have been saved all along. The sun does shine in February, and Christ's salvation isn't dormant during Lent. But it is good to live mindfully through the mystery of darkness, so that we can be dazzled again by the light.

A Hymn about the Transfiguration

This is by Rev. Kathryn Davelaar, the incumbent at the Reformed Dutch Church of Claverack, NY.

God’s Holy Mountain We Ascend

the tune is WIE SCHÖN LEUCHTET

God’s holy mountain we ascend, where truth and love together blend;
how fair God’s holy dwelling!
God’s people, we assemble here in holy love and childlike fear,
all clouds of hate dispelling.

Refrain:
With Christ, in Christ,
interceding, ever pleading our salvation.
Father, hear our supplication.

Upon God’s mountain fairest heights, God’s chosen people Christ invites
to enter here God’s dwelling.
Where once the loaves were multiplied, where heaven’s manna God supplied,
all loves Christ’s love excelling.
Refrain

Christ lead us to this holy hill where you fulfill your Father’s will
in perfect expiation.
Here we recall that festive meal that Christ these mysteries may reveal
in joyful celebration.
Refrain

Windows and Worldviews

Every Sunday an angel comes into our church to comfort and encourage me. This angel comes through the east Rose window above the balcony in our sanctuary. I have written about this angel in an article which the magazine called Perspectives has just very kindly published. You can access this article on line by going through this link to "Windows and Worldviews."

A Form of Daily Prayer

Are you looking for a form of daily prayer? Maybe you want to pray, but you don't know what to say. Try the "Daily Office," as it's called, which exists in many different forms, from simple to complex. For a relatively simple form, which is also very contemporary, let me direct you with this link to the Northumbria Community in Great Britain. Click on "Pray the Office." Thank you to Paul Miller, a friend of mine from St. Catherines, Ontario, who introduced this to me.

(And thank you Amy. Oh, I remember with what wonder my brother and I contemplated our first pomme grenate ("seedy apple") when my mom brought it home from the grocery. I think I was nine. I should eat one every morning, and use it as rosary.

Sermon from Three Years Ago: Eminent Domain

Note: This coming Sunday our preacher will be Rev. Dr. Carol Bechtel, the president of General Synod. So I am posting the sermon from three years ago on the texts for Proper 24, Exodus 33:12-23, Psalm 99, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22.

Last June the Supreme Court made a controversial ruling on the issue of Eminent Domain. The ruling allows government to take your private property, against your will, and sell it to some other private owner the government prefers. Bruce Ratner was happy. I wasn’t. I read the arguments. They’ve cancelled one of the main points of the American experiment since 1776.

You know I lived in Canada for a while, and I got used to seeing a picture of Queen Elizabeth displayed in every public building. Even in the hockey arenas, there on the wall of the Blue Line Club where you drink your beer between the periods, her face looks out, the very image of serenity and sovereignty. It’s not the same in the US. The face of the president is not the image of sovereignty.

Who has sovereignty over you? What has sovereignty over your life? What in your life has eminent domain? How much of your life is in whose domain? And whose domain is eminent?

Well, who takes the first cut of your paycheck? You may have noticed that the IRS does not have pledge-drives and fund-raisers. The government has no need for Consecration Sunday. It’s not just that your taxes come out before your tithes and offerings, it’s that your taxes come out before anything, even yourself.

The proportion of where your money goes is not only a measure of what you value, it is also an indicator of what has power over you. You can judge by what happens to your money not only how much freedom you really have, but also how eminent in your life is the domain of Caesar and how eminent is the domain of God. We may highly value God, but how much functional power does God’s sovereignty really have in our lives? Does God mind coming across so weak?

The taxes to Caesar were especially hateful to the Jews. Their taxes supported a government they considered illegitimate. Worse, Roman money in itself was sinful, because the coins bore the image of Caesar, and broke the second commandment. Worse yet, the Caesars were claiming divinity, and their taxes supported a violation of the first commandment.

So if Jesus is really the Messiah, that is, the candidate for the true King of the Jews, then the question they ask him is legitimate, it’s a matter of public policy, like you would ask Fernando Ferrer. Jesus' answer might strike you as a politician’s dodge. He doesn’t answer directly. He doesn’t say it’s right or wrong. He leaves that up to his listeners. He turns it back on them.
He asks them to produce a coin.

And notice they are able to. Right there is the indicator that they participate in the Roman economy. It means they accept the benefits of Roman rule, no matter how much they rail against it. That’s why he calls them hypocrites. He’s saying, "Oh cut it out." Get real, stop being so self-righteous. Like Caesar is really the problem here.

He turns it back on them. He calls them to self-examination. That’s the impact of his response. Examine yourselves: How much in your life belongs to God, and how much in your life belongs to Caesar? Then act accordingly.

But how about if both claim everything? How about if God claims everything? How about if God says that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it? Last month I was talking to the president of the synagogue in Bay Ridge, and he repeated what I’ve often heard, that Judaism is not just a religion, it’s a way of life. It’s a total way of life, because God claims everything.

So if it’s to his fellow Jews that Jesus says, "Give to God what is God’s," then that means everything. You can separate church and state, but you can’t divide religion from everything else in life. So what’s left for Caesar?

But how about if Caesar claims everything? I mean Caesar had power over them of life and death, he had eminent domain. The Jews were not even citizens, they had no civil rights, even in their own land, and a Roman soldier could kill any Jew with impunity. They still had the temple only because the Romans tolerated it for political expediency, and when just a few decades later it was no longer expedient Caesar destroyed it.

In our own day it’s not so much that Caesar claims everything, it’s that Caesar gets to determine how much God gets. In the separation of church and state, who sets the boundary -- the church or the state? The IRS demands to know how much you give in tithes and offerings, but the church never asks how much your taxes are.

We need to separate church and state. But we cannot divide the claims of God. The kingdom of God claims eminent domain. The Jews are right, this religion is meant to be a way of life, and the whole of our lives belong to God.

What Jesus calls us to is dynamic interaction. How much of the world belongs to God? The taxes I pay to Caesar, I pay as a servant of God. How much of your world belongs to God? Every day you can ask yourself, how much of my day belongs to God? How much of my life belongs to God? Do you see that as life-giving? Can you intuit that it’s actually liberating, because it makes every other claim on you just expedient?

That’s the payoff, that’s the benefit if everything in your life belongs to God, it means that your life is not compartmentalized, it means there is a wholeness to your life, it means you don’t have different sets of rules for different relationships. The world outside of you won’t like this, but inside you are whole and complete, you are in unity with yourself, and no matter what claims they make on you, your nation or family or boss or whatever, most deeply you are free. If you belong to God, then you are more free, that is, depending on what this God is like.

So what is this God like? This God really does claim everything, but not in a way that some Christians seem to think -- that our response requires fundamentalism or the religious right or Christian America. This God is a god who does not push his eminent domain or force her claims of sovereignty. Of course we would sometimes prefer it if God would act a little more powerful, especially if God could help us out with our churches and our institutions, maybe a little more cash, for example, but that is not the way of God. The face on this God’s coinage is the face of Jesus Christ. And that makes all the difference in God’s approach to power.

There is a novel you might read called Silence, by the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. The story takes place in 17th Century Japan, when the Christian church there was exterminated by the Shogun’s government. A Portuguese priest is captured and put in prison with a whole village of Christian peasants. The soldiers offer him a deal: they will not torture the villagers if he will recant his faith. He can do that by stepping on a picture of Jesus’ face. In oriental terms the face is everything. But he’s a priest, he’s taken vows, how can he deny his Lord, precisely in the hour of trial, like Judas Iscariot, like Peter? The soldiers lead him out before the other prisoners, and put the picture of Jesus on the ground before his feet. Suddenly the face of Jesus says to him, "Step on me. Go ahead. Step on me. I accept it."

The face of Jesus represents a God who does claim everything, but who claims it in the way of servanthood and sacrificial love. That’s not so thrilling, not so heroic, not so exciting. Not unless you’re thrilled to offer hospitality, and heroic in reconciliation, and excited by love and understanding, even to sit down with the Romans, and pray for Caesar, as awful as he is. That seems to be the way that Jesus establishes his eminent domain, by preparing a table in the presence of his enemies, and inviting them to eat with him.

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Tradition

I just had an article published in Perspectives, A Journal of Reformed Thought. This is the theology magazine of the Reformed Church. You can read it online here.