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In 2004, Pastor Brian was the recipient of the McConkey Award in Homiletics, a preaching prize through Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
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The sermon is central in our worship because we believe that God speaks to us in a special way through preaching. Weekly sermons are published on this page, and each sermon will remain here for a period of two weeks. You can request transcripts of any sermon from the church office. Some writing is meant to be read, and other writing is meant to be heard. Sermons are definitely the latter; they're more for the ears than the eyes. But they are reprinted here in hopes that our e-parishioners, and others, might find inspiration and direction from them. Be sure to read the Scripture text that goes with each sermon.
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“Made Strong to Endure” / Colossians 1:9b-14 / 11 July 2010 So I was driving down Forest Road 119 last weekend, that little-used dirt track that skirts the outer perimeter of the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area. And four sleepy-looking young adults with an equally sleepy-looking dog hailed me, asking me to stop. I did stop, and they said, “Man, can you give us a ride back to the Rainbow Gathering? We’re kind of lost.” Lost, and headed the wrong way on the one road that goes straight into the gate of the Rainbow Gathering? I got the picture. Their judgment was impaired. Even the dog looked stoned. Well, I didn’t have room in the car for four people and a dog, but I directed them to turn around and follow in the dusty wake of my car. One of them thanked me and said, “Hey, I’m lovin’ you, man!” And we all made our ways toward the colorful, flag-lined entrance of the Rainbow Gathering, where a huge, handwritten banner read, “Welcome Home.” As you know, I maintain a hiker’s blog about the Allegheny National Forest. Mostly, I just publish photos of trees and rocks, panoramic vistas and streams. And I do write-ups about different backwoods treks that I recommend. There’s often a little bit of history thrown in, as I explore abandoned town sites and search out the remains of old, long-forgotten lumber camps. The blog has picked up quite a following, but I mostly just keep it for myself; it’s a photo journal of my woodland discoveries. But since the website has attracted a pretty large readership, and since it purports to be a blog about the ANF, I felt the need to do a little bit of coverage of the national Rainbow Gathering that was taking place right here in our forest. And though it has always been my policy not to publish photos of people on the blog, I packed a camera and traveled out to snap a few pictures of the Rainbows. The first picture was that big banner, “Welcome Home.” At first I didn’t feel at home. In fact, I felt conspicuously un-at-home with my checkered, button-down, short-sleeved shirt, the kind that a middle-aged man wears, my baseball cap, and my fanny pack full of granola bars and sunscreen. I must say, I haven’t often felt so old and unfashionable while trekking deep in the forest. I hiked past many hundreds of cars from all over the country, a good many from California and Washington State. I felt a little tinge of unease as I hiked past “A-Camp,” the big canvas pavilion at the outer perimeter of the Rainbow Gathering, the only spot on the site where alcohol is permitted. I thought the characters looked unsavory, dreadlocked, tattooed, wiry people with a tough, earthy look. But much to my surprise, each person who locked eyes with me…smiled. They were genuine-looking smiles, not forced or unnatural. Nothing about these people was unnatural. And some of them cried out, “Welcome home!” Others simply said, “Hey, man!” A few even asked, “Where you from, dude?” I could hear drumming in the distance, faint but clear. It made me feel like I was back in Africa to hear those primitive drums echoing through forest trees, pounding deep and ominous, resounding through glen and dale. The large clearing where the activities took place was nearly a three-mile hike from the gate. And as I made my way down the well-worn track, I passed many Rainbows, most of them outgoing and friendly, and none of them drunk or stoned. The further I traveled along the path, the louder the music got, and the more Rainbows I met along the way. It became tiresome having to greet every person I encountered. I’m not used to so much smiling. So I eventually just started staring at the beautiful scenery and ignoring the people. There were tents, and lean-tos, and even a few earth-shelters known as debris huts. The hills were crawling with people, encamped in the wilderness like a Civil War battalion. I could go on about the ornate, handwritten signs that showed the way to the pit latrines, or the Rainbow lectures, or the shared campfires where anyone was invited to come and boil their drinking water. There were big, shared kitchens where any person alive could step up and ask for a meal and be met warmly with a free Vegan dish made of tofu or lentils. And at the main clearing—a huge, open field surrounded by hemlocks—the real fun started: people drumming, and chanting, and meditating, and standing in line at the “Information and Rumor Control” table or the enormous message board. A huge banner picturing a transgendered Hindu-looking character read, “Welcome to eternal life.” There was a huge circle dance that looked somehow Celtic or druidic to me. Everyone in the circle stomped three steps to the right, jerked forward with a shout, then stomped three steps to the left and jerked forward with a shout. It looked like ancient, pagan line dancing…except that pagans don’t like lines; they like circles. A guy in a white turban and saffron robes prayed on a little knoll overlooking the sight. Children played, people of all descriptions milled about, some dressed and some not so dressed. Some looked as plain and as unassuming as me. There was something almost Pentecostal about the scene, ecstatic and spiritual. Then, I turned around and went home. I tell you about that experience because the pictures and articles I put on my blog earned me a spate of emails, and even a few comments on the blog itself, from grateful Rainbows. They wrote to tell me how happy they were to read such positive coverage from a local. (Apparently they’ve gotten some bad press in past years.) One of them, a woman named “Sun,” told me that they say, “welcome home” because it’s the one place where they can go every year knowing that everyone will be welcomed, everyone will be accepted, everyone will be seen as a person of worth. People aren’t defined by how they look, or how much they earn, or what they do. And though I’m surely extrapolating on her words, it seemed to me that the concept she was reaching for is what Jesus simply called “the kingdom of God.” A place where everyone matters. And they use their vacation time to go there every year because it gives them strength for the year ahead. Do you have an event or a place like that? Maybe it’s not a yearly event; maybe it’s monthly or weekly? Is there a group of people who help you to have enough joy and fortitude to live out your days meaningfully? My parents used to go to old-time campmeetings that served the same function for them as the Gathering does for the Rainbows. And I think the local ministerial association is supposed to be that kind of thing for me: a place to kick back with people whose life looks much like my own, to share our burdens, share our joys. Meetings of presbytery are supposed to be like that, too. And how about weekly worship services? Does the fellowship that we share here in this room give us the strength to endure all the disfellowship, and the isolation, and the anonymity that we live with week-by-week? Does this place make us strong to endure? In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul writes, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.” It sounds like a pretty ambitious prayer, a tall order to fill: strength, the ability to endure—everything—with patience, and joy, and thanksgiving all at the same time. The people reading Paul’s ancient letter were a much-hated and misunderstood tribe. They got worse press than the Rainbows; those early Christians were accused of the highest crimes imaginable: they were called unpatriotic, treasonous, and because of Jesus’ words about his body and his blood, they were even said to be cannibals. These people needed strength to endure. And you, here in your pew this morning, most probably in your regular Sunday spot. It doesn’t always show when we smile and pass the peace, but each of you—each of us—brought our own small bundle of worries here with us today. We don’t share that bundle easily. But it lingers as the emotional backdrop of our lives; those worries color our reaction to every person we encounter and each sacred word we hear. Each of us has come as people enmeshed in relationships that are badly broken. We’ve come filled with anxiety about health issues, or family issues, or financial problems. We’ve come with deep, longstanding doubts that sneak up on us when we’re weak, kicking at our frailest places, trying to make us weaker. We’ve come here with self-esteem issues, and anger issues, and fear, fear, fear. We’ve come here with questions about the future, and what’s fair, and how much we can endure. You need strength to endure. And I need strength to endure. For deep down, we know that we have all been called to be people that we’re scared to be. We need strength. And this should be our place to find it. I’ve been entertained and a little bit dismayed by a friend of mine who has spent the past week at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Actually, he’s not a “friend” in the ordinary sense. He’s a Facebook friend, which is not the same thing. But he’s the pastor of the Presbyterian church in a nearby village [!], and he’s attending the General Assembly—the huge, denomination-wide meeting that happens every two years, where all the business of the church is decided and all the official decisions are made. It’s like a presbytery meeting, except that all 173 presbyteries are present. It’s a Rainbow Gathering for Presbyterians. Except it’s always held in very comfortable convention centers, never in the forest, and—apparently—“peace” is in relatively short supply. For, unlike the Rainbows, who have a live-and-let-live approach, Presbyterians hold to a time honored tradition of arguing about our differences. And after all these years, we’re still arguing over the place of homosexuals in the life of the church, whether we’re supposed to read the Bible literally or figuratively, whether we should support the Israelis or the Palestinians, and how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop. This Facebook friend is sitting in on the highest, holiest gatherings of our church and sending out little secret Facebook messages that say things like, “Long day today at GA.” “I wonder what we’re having for lunch.” “Hey, who can think up a caption for this picture—of two dogs in scuba diving gear?” And yet, he admits that, though the meetings are grueling, sometimes dull, sometimes tense, he senses the movement of God’s Spirit among God’s people. And it gives him hope for the future of the church. Strength to endure—with joy, with patience, and with thanksgiving! The funny thing about strength is that it only comes on an as-needed basis. It comes the moment you need it, and it leaves just as quickly. You can’t store up strength for tomorrow, for it comes from outside of you, and it can only be used fresh. But strength does come, for those who come here seeking it. Strength is not the same as force, or influence, or might. Your strength will be content to bear you up, but power is never content until it has beaten others down. What gives you strength to be the person you are called to be? What gives this church strength? Centuries ago, all the Iroquois tribes had gathered to discuss the growing threat of white settlers on their lands. They were family, but they fought long and hard about the solution to the problem. When the arguing became especially bitter, Chief Cornplanter is said to have stood up. He took a single arrow and he snapped it in half. He said, “If we do not stand together, we will be broken one-by-one.” Then he took a bundle of six arrows—the number of tribes in the confederacy—and tried to break them over his knee but could not. It is the coming together that gives us strength. This place—more than any Rainbow Gathering—should be the place where everyone is welcomed, included, valued, maybe even celebrated; for this is the closest thing we get to the kingdom of God on earth. When you enter these doors bearing whatever secret burdens that encumber you, it is the supportive, caring relationships that bear you up, giving you strength to carry on. Good preaching is nice, but it’s a frill. Fine music is inspiring, but it’s a luxury. No, it is the coming together in openness and in love; that gives us strength to endure everything—everything in our lives—perhaps even with patience, and with joy, and with thanksgiving. Amen.
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“Only One Thing” / Luke 10:38-42 / 18 July 2010 “Martha, Martha,” Jesus says, “you’re worried and distracted by many things. There’s need of only one thing.” Those are pretty compelling words, if you ask me. All you need is just one thing, one single, solitary thing…except that Jesus never gets around to telling Martha what that “one thing” is. What do you think it is? Well, clearly Martha’s wish to be a good hostess—which seems like a noble enough endeavor to me—is not “the thing.” I wonder if Martha Stewart is named after this biblical Martha? My mother would have been a wonderful Martha Stewart if life had allowed it. But alas! What with five children at home, four of them boys, and with her working the nightshift fulltime at the local hospital, entertaining guests was not a regular feature of life at our house. My mother had all she could do to drag herself out of bed every day at 4pm, then run a few errands before spraying her hair down with Aquanet, and pulling on her white nurse’s stockings and driving twenty miles to work. She also had a knack for losing her stethoscope and making herself late to work while she looked for it. Mom owned a decent set of delicate, rose-patterned china for entertaining guests. But over the years it fell victim to my brothers and me, slowly, piece by piece. Anything fragile at our house was toast. Plates, cups, dishes, glasses, lamps. A thing had to be tough to survive. By the time the last of us moved out, my mother’s china set had one remaining saucer and one remaining teacup. And they only survived by going into decades of hiding on a high shelf where they couldn’t be reached. In recent years, my sister has been gradually finding pieces of the same china set online and purchasing them as gifts for my mother…now that there’s nobody around to use the plates as Frisbees. Sometimes mom would call home very early in the morning before she left work, while we were getting ready for school. She would say, “Okay, you boys, the house better be spic and span when I get home.” And so, we learned tricks to make her think that the house was actually cleaner than it was, optical illusions, really. Did you know that, if there’s a cluttered table in the middle of a messy room, all you have to do is clear off the tabletop, and the whole room looks a lot better? If a kitchen is full of dirty dishes, it’s best to clear off the counter, and stack them all in a corner. That way, when mom comes trudging in from a long night at the ICU, she’ll glance at the kitchen counter, see nothing out of place, and go to bed contented. Shoving things under the couch was also effective. Shoes, toys, dishes, clothes. Now, of course, my mother was aware that our housekeeping mostly consisted of optical illusions. And so, on her days off, whenever someone would call to say they were coming over, the first thing she would do was to pull the couch out away from the wall and start sorting through all the things we had hidden there. And inevitably, her visitor would arrive to find the couch at an odd angle, and my mother sitting on the living room floor, amid a mound of shoes, and toys, and clothes, trying to get the place deep-cleaned before they arrived. We just had such very different perspectives about what really mattered. My brothers and I thought a presentable house should be good enough. My mother felt like a hypocrite asking her guests to sit on a couch that concealed an unsightly mess. In defense of my brothers and me, my mother’s friends didn’t come to see how clean her house was. They came to spend time with her. Some of those visitors would get down on the floor with her and help her clean. And yet, despite the fact that she was a creative cook and had a nice (albeit dwindling) set of china, my mother never got the chance to be the hostess that Martha tried to be. Mary and Martha probably didn’t have children. You know the famous story of Mary and Martha. Mary is sitting out in the living room, just visiting with Jesus, while Martha is scurrying around the kitchen, being the dutiful hostess. When Martha complains, well, it seems as if Jesus is a little bit hard on her. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. There’s need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.” Ouch. He might as well have said, “Martha, Martha, you’re such a Type-A personality. I’d rather hang with Mary because she’s so much more easygoing.” And yet, when was the last time someone said your name twice? “Martha, Martha.” Whenever you hear your name said twice, like that, it’s usually with a note of tenderness and affection. I don’t think Jesus was scolding Martha. I think he was inviting her to take off the apron and come into his presence. I think he was telling her that he would rather sit and be with her than to be impressed by her culinary skills. “Let’s just send out for gefilte fish; I came to be with you.” There is need of only one thing. It’s so hard to see the thing that really matters. And what is it? What is that one thing? I guess in some ways, I’m a little more like Martha than old even-tempered Mary because I’m usually quite convinced that I need many things. And I am worried and distracted by all of them at once. Aren’t you? Here’s how it usually goes down for me, and it’s probably not too much different for you. I show up at my office at 9am, and the most pressing matter for the day is to make a very important phone call. I’ve put it off long enough, and it’s become urgent. But I find yesterday’s mail in the box, since our postal delivery in this part of town doesn’t arrive until around 5pm most days. And so I have to sort through the junk mail, and the office supply catalogues, and the financial things that go straight to Lori’s desk, and there are a few items that demand my attention. So I sit down to take care of that. But as soon as that task is done, I’ve got to make that phone call. In the meantime, someone comes by the office to talk about music for next week’s service. And then there’s a phone call from someone asking for help with her rent. And by the time I get back around to making the phone call, it’s time to hurry home for my lunch break to relieve the morning baby sitter and whisk the kids off to their afternoon baby sitter. And after lunch, I get back to the office and lift the receiver to make that phone call, but the dial tone has a stutter to it, which—with our new phone system—means I’ve got messages to retrieve. And so I listen to my messages, and there’s somebody in the emergency room, so I hurry off to the hospital. And by the end of the day, I still haven’t made that urgent phone call. And I haven’t gotten my sermon written. And tomorrow’s a Saturday, and I have to help my wife with her yard sale. Your life’s worries and distractions are probably similar enough to my own. They’re not who we are, but they do occupy the bulk of our time. And in taking up so much time and emotional energy, sometimes they start to seem like an end in themselves. The tasks accumulate and build into stress, and stress is really just another name for fear. The fear of failure, the fear of shame, the fear of appearing inept, the fear of being seen as a sloppy hostess—like poor old Martha long ago. What fear licks at your heels and keeps you drowning in busy tasks to hold it at bay? The worst thing about fear is that it makes you forget who you are and what you’re about. Our worries and distractions can become an end in themselves, and when we’re living amidst their swirl and the bustle, we run the risk of using up our energy putting out fires. A life needs a purpose, a guiding vision, a sense of meaning that gives order and cohesion to all the seemingly disjointed tasks that fall to us in the course of a day. Only one thing! Not many, just one. What is it? Well, Jesus never says what that “one thing” is, but I don’t think he was trying to be mysterious. I think it’s just really hard to put that one thing into words. You see, it’s nothing but a posture for living. What was Mary doing out there in the living room while Martha was busy lifting the lentil stew and stuffing the knishes? Martha was fixed on her task, while Mary sat open and receptive. Martha had an agenda; Mary had none. Martha was stressing herself out preparing a meal that wasn’t even the main purpose of Jesus’ visit. Mary was resting in the presence of Jesus. Do you see the difference in those two postures for living? One has hands full, scurrying from place to place; the other has hands open, waiting to receive. The one, single, solitary needful thing is a posture for living that only comes from rooting all your busy tasks within the context of a deeply rested soul, anchoring your identity in a living relationship with God, your Source. God is about relationship; God is not about heaven and hell, rules, punishments, and rewards. But how do you reshape your “posture for living” from one of busyness and agendas to one of receptivity and rest? Kirk Byron Jones, a guru on the spiritual life, lectured at my doctoral program in Rochester. He puts it this way: “If you can be still enough, long enough, there is a place within, on the other side of silence, where love lives.” He offers an acrostic for a quick, instant way to begin to reshape your posture for living. This is not quite as good as a daily twenty-minute workout of meditative prayer, but it’s accessible and easy to memorize. It’s your morning BREW (B-R-E-W), but you can use it at any time of the day or night. “B” is for “be still.” Be perfectly still for about five minutes, if you can spare that much time. If you only have three minutes, then be still for three. Don’t move, except if you get an annoying itch. You don’t have to pray or close your eyes, just stop twitching and shuffling, tapping your fingers and flapping your jaws. Be still. “R” is for “receive God’s love.” You need to pick a mental image for God’s love just washing over you all around you, above you, beneath you, like standing under a waterfall, or being carried in an ocean. This is God’s love; just receive it. “E” is for “embrace yourself.” You’re the person God made you to be: uniquely fashioned for specific tasks, uniquely loved. Accept who you are; embrace yourself, with a literal embrace if that helps get the point across. And finally, “W” is for “welcome the moment.” You don’t know exactly what this moment in life might bring, but the moments you’ll get are numbered, each of them worth noticing, treasuring, and welcoming. B-R-E-W: Be still; receive God’s love; embrace yourself; welcome the moment. You might want to scribble this acrostic on your bulletin; you can memorize it in no time, and you can use it anywhere, but use it often—at least once a day—so that it can reshape the way you understand yourself and the world, the way you perceive yourself and your many tasks in life. Let it reshape your posture for living. “Martha, Martha” or “Brian, Brian,” or insert your own name here…twice. You are worried and distracted by so many things. Maybe you can’t pray, but you can be still. Maybe you can’t string pleasing words together into a nice prayerful sentence, but you can receive God’s love. Maybe you can’t do much about the troubles that you face, but you can embrace yourself. Maybe you can’t change the way the world is, but you can welcome the moment that God has placed in your lap, for there is no guarantee of another, and it contains in its short breadth a grain of eternity. There is need of only one thing: a whole new outlook on life. Amen.
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