Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Isaiah 9:1-7

Sermon audio:

One of my friends, Scott Spence, is also the pastor of a UCC church. He sent a message this week asking how I was handling this text, since both our churches use this schedule of readings called the Narrative Lectionary. We’ve preached on Isaiah, chapter 9, but it’s usually in a different context. It’s usually read alongside another story, famous for its shepherds, stable, manger and baby. Scott asked what I was thinking about preaching this week because, he said, “I just keep wanting to preach a Christmas Eve sermon.”

Scott might be a month ahead on the calendar, but it’s easy to understand the connection to Christmas. This is the very text set to glorious music in Handel’s “Messiah”, used as foreshadowing for Jesus’ birth and sung so frequently in the holiday season. But Scott’s getting ahead of himself is a more profound impulse also. There is a deep current of forward movement, of anticipation, in the Christian faith. We are always looking ahead to the fulfillment of God’s promises. Christianity looks around at the world as it is and proclaims that there is more than meets the eye. Not this only, or this, or this, but that off in the future, envisioned with the eyes of faith and held in the heart. It’s the sense of ultimate hope depicted at the end of the Bible, in those words of Revelation promise so often read at funerals: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” The Christian faith is lived with future tense.

We get that future faith from our Hebrew ancestors, including the prophet Isaiah. He too looked around at the world of his day and looked ahead to something else. The two Hebrew kingdoms of his day, split by civil war, would not be divided forever. The foreign adversaries with boots of war and garments soaked in blood would not prevail forever. Listen to the future tense with which Isaiah prophesied here: “there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish.” God “will make glorious” the lands of Palestine. Isaiah can see the light of tomorrow dawning though the times he lived in were bleak as midnight.

Except for this. If we start studying the grammar of Isaiah’s prophecy, we’ll recognize that future, present and past tense get all mixed up. The future is being realized even now, and has been realized already! So Isaiah says, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”; “on them light has shined”. He says to God: “You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy.” “You have broken” the yoke of burden, the bar across shoulders, the rod of the oppressor. Isaiah recognizes God’s action in the past, raising up a savior—in this case likely a military ruler, though Christians connect the prophecy to Jesus. “A child has been born for us, a son given to us.” But the future fulfilment is not yet realized: “his authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness.”

Isaiah shows us what is sometimes called “the now and the not yet” of Christian faith. God is present and active right here and now, but the full realization of God’s promise is not yet at hand. We hold with one hand “in the sweet by and by when I die”, and in the other hand “down on the ground while I’m still around”! The faith that there is more to come carries us through seasons of heartsickness when all seems in trouble. Yet the promise of God’s manifesting right here and now can keep us from being “so heavenly minded that we’re of no earthly use”. “Now” and “not yet”—held in faithful balance with one another.

This season in the church’s life feels full of such promise and realization. With Thanksgiving Sunday and all the gratitude that we extend this week, we number the blessings of the past year: abundance in capital campaign generosity, growth in worship, Spirit and members, those in need of care held with perpetual love and prayer. Over coffee and conversation each week in Bible study and at fellowship time, we name the brokenness of the world as it is, yet also point with gladness to what hopes are being born anew in it. Our confirmation youth—on an urban retreat this weekend—have experienced firsthand how hard it is to live in poverty in Minneapolis, yet also volunteered to make it better, serving food and cleaning at a homeless shelter yesterday. The Divine Design Task Force has been meeting with possible architects this week, interviewing candidates to help us remake our entrance and narthex to be more welcoming and serviceable. We are counting the blessings of the past and acknowledging limits of the present, while building with our pledges and hopes for the future. We are practicing both the “now” and the “not yet” of our faith.

Listen in closing to these words of wisdom in a hymn by Natalie Sleeth, which sees the future in the present moment.

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Faith that God holds the future is what gives us hope in the present moment, while knowledge that sees God among us even now spurs our participation to join God in making the best possible tomorrow. This is the faith that we inherit from Isaiah, Jesus and all our ancestors. This is the faith that we live by, pulling us into tomorrow. This is the faith by which we share every good thing. This is the faith that helps us trust the promise of Christmas Eve, even in the days before Thanksgiving. For such faith, we give all thanks to God. Amen.

 

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: 1 Kings 19:1-18

Sermon audio:

I had a friend in college who worked as a personal care attendant at a local nursing home. She was going to be a nurse, and at this position learned firsthand some of the hardships that come from being in that caring profession. Conversations at the nurse’s station let her in on some of the less rosy parts of the job. So that year for Halloween, she went as the “inner nurse”. She wore a pair of scrubs inside out, and wrote on it all the things that nurses might want to say but that they keep inside for the sake of maintaining a cheery disposition. For example: “Living the dream!…said no night shift nurse, ever.” “I’ve seen it, smelled it, touched it, heard it, and stepped in it. All of it.” “Only two things are guaranteed in this life: death and staying after shift to finish charting.” “For someone who’s short of breath, you sure do talk a lot!”

If that costume opened my eyes to what nurses go through sometimes, today’s Scripture is a similar glimpse into the prophetic life. We overhear the prophet Elijah’s harried and overwhelmed self-talk, or what we could call the “inner prophet”. Elijah is on the run from King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, really feeling sorry for himself. First he lays down under a shrub and asks to just die, but God sends an angel to feed him. Then he marches through the wilderness forty days and nights to get to the mountain of God. Finally he gets to Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. This is the mountain of Moses and the Ten Commandments—this is God’s home.

And sure enough, God finds him there too. “Hey, Elijah, what are you doing here?” Then Elijah’s self-centered “inner prophet” complaint comes pouring out. “I have been very zealous for you, O God. The Israelites have done all sorts of terrible things to your prophets and your name. I’m the only one left of all your prophets, and they’re hunting for me right now.” Poor Elijah—he’s practically hysterical.

And then God does a most interesting thing. God says, “Hey, stand here and pay attention, because I’m about to come by.” Elijah is going to get the chance to see God, in the same place that Moses once saw God. Elijah knew what to expect when God showed up. This is Yahweh—who led the people of Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. There could be lightning, thunder, and a great storm—it might be a burning bush, or fire from heaven. It would surely be the greatest thing Elijah ever experienced.

A great wind comes up, so great that it breaks rocks open and splits mountains, but God is not in the whirlwind. And then an earthquake shakes the whole land, but God is not in the earthquake. There is a blazing hot fire, but God is not in the fire. Finally after all of these incredible experiences, there comes a sound of sheer silence. Then Elijah lifts his mantle—his prophet’s robe—and covers his face. It is a fearful and holy thing to come into God’s presence. For Elijah, God is not in all the fancy pyrotechnics. God arrives in the sound of sheer silence.

Silence can be a pretty powerful experience, especially when everything else has been noise. How often do we truly find silence in our lives? If your life is anything like mine, it’s not often. And not all silence leads to Elijah’s kind of spiritual encounter with God. His is a deep kind of silence, restful stillness after all the over-the-top activity has stopped. It’s a kind of peaceful awareness, watchfulness because God is going to show up. It is nothing less than the holy appearance of God. This is why retreats are so important to the spiritual life. They are a break from all the hustle and bustle in our lives, a chance to step back and pay attention, because God just might show up. It’s another reason for coming to church—it’s a regular spiritual practice of stillness, centering ourselves to be aware of God’s presence. Sometimes, we are like Elijah: on a mission, or running from something, or caught up in the fire, the wind, and the earthquake. We need periodic times of silence and stillness, to balance out all the other activities that can distract us from the things that matter most.

Now this is not to say that all silence is created equal, or that silence is good all by itself. Sometimes silence can be oppressive, such as silence about sinful injustice. Silence around the ecological dangers of our consumption habits. Silence around the inequalities that women face in our society. Silence around the ways corporate greed takes advantage of human need. No, silence is not always good in and of itself.

For silence to be divine rather than deadly, it must lead into something more. Holy silence, like that which Elijah experienced, begins with stillness, but it doesn’t stay there. This kind of silence is preparation for the sake of action. It involves stepping back from all the other noise in our lives in order to listen for God’s call underneath everything else.

The Hebrew phrase for what Elijah hears is a bit ambiguous. The translation we read from renders it “the sound of sheer silence.” But other translations call it a “still, small voice.” The Hebrew word qol can mean either “sound” or “voice,” so both translations are right. Deep within the silence, there is a still, small voice of God. Divine silence helps us hear God speaking about where God wants us to go next. Notice that Elijah does not stay in the silence. He is commissioned and sent out again. By the end of the passage, he hears God say, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.” There’s a list of the kings Elijah is to anoint, and a promise of seven thousand others who are faithful like Elijah. A new call comes out of the silent encounter with God, and a gentle reminder that Elijah is not in fact all by himself in the work.

Such clarity and purpose awaits us too, and while it’s on its way we are invited to rest in the silence. The silences between the sounds here, and in the gentle bread and cup that will be passed through the pews. The silence of putting your feet up at the end of a long day of service. The quiet stillness of telling stories to children at bedtime. It may be as simple as deep breaths while sitting at a stoplight. Or even the tiny break for breath in the middle of a sentence.

Trust that these times of silence have God written all over them. Let them be a pregnant pause, a chance for us to hear the voice of God. Something new is coming to life inside the silence. There is a still, small voice—God’s call that gives us strength to go out again. May God find you with the sound of silence. Amen.

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Exodus 16:1-18

Sermon audio:

“We live here now, though we always meant to leave.” So reads a line in Gillian Wegener’s poem entitled “Chorus”, which describes how that which is at one time strange becomes home. She continues:

We never meant to stay.
This place was marked as just for now, as stepping stone,
as temporary on our well-drawn maps.
But for one reason or another, years pass
and we find ourselves hot-stepping with jobs and kids
and this and that and a million little possessions.

I love the way that she describes how inertia anchors us down. Anyone who has ever moved parents after forty years in one house knows this is true. Addresses quickly become habitual, then the only place that’s ever felt like home. Wegener captures the magnetism that familiarity possesses, because you don’t know when, as she says, “various wayfarers… will stop for lunch and find themselves staying for years’ worth of dinners.”

Continue reading “Manna in the Wilderness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 1:1-2:4a

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When was the last time you cut open a ripe watermelon? Not the pale pre-cut cubes you get in plastic at the grocery store. I mean a whole huge melon, dark-green from the late summer sun and heavy with juice? Sliding a sharp stainless steel knife into a perfect round melon, you are Galileo, discovering otherworldly beauty. As the sides of a fresh watermelon fall open on the cutting board, the dark pink inside turns itself out for all the earth to marvel at. An aroma of sweet summer rises from the cut, hundreds of black seeds lie hidden in orderly rows, the ripe sugars are already almost in crystal form, and an ample rind provides green armor for the treasure within.

Continue reading “God’s Good Creation” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11a

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Labor Day weekend carries bittersweet emotional significance. This weekend marks the close of official “summer” in our culture. We’re accustomed after Labor Day to look for leaves changing, temperatures dropping, and farmers harvesting. Though some schools have already started fall classes, this time still marks the customary divide between summer and school. For those fortunate enough to have the time and money, now is the last best chance to enjoy luxurious summer vacation before the industrious frenzy of fall activities sets in. Even those of us still in town this weekend enjoy time to rest and catch our breath, but the seasons are changing and the calendar is as well. Labor Day specifically honors and prepares for the season of work, by pausing work for an extra day in many—though not all—positions.

Continue reading “Blessings in the Seasons of the Year” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Matthew 5:1-12

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The community organizer and activist Harvey Milk served as a San Francisco city supervisor in 1978. He was the first openly gay politician in California, and before his assassination he made a name for himself as a happy warrior enlisting people in the causes close to his heart. If you remember this time, or saw the film a few years ago about his life, you might remember his signature phrase. At the beginning of rallies and public speeches he would start out, “My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you!” Continue reading “Blessings in the World” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Psalm 42:1-8

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In C.S. Lewis’s children’s classic The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund is one of four children who hide in a closet, then discover that it’s a secret passage to a mythical world. The other three children fall in company with talking animals allied with Aslan, a powerful lion described by Mrs. Beaver as not safe, but good. Edmund, a mean, greedy and selfish boy who goes through the wardrobe by himself, is recruited by the evil White Witch to betray his friends so that he can have all the Turkish delight candy he wants. Eventually, his deceit is uncovered, he realizes all the wrong choices he has made, and he is rescued by the forces of good. However, then he must come face to face with Aslan, the fierce lion who knows how Edmund’s betrayal endangered everyone. Edmund finds himself at a threshold moment between his past nastiness and whatever waits on the other side of this fearsome encounter. Continue reading “Blessings in Threshold Moments” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture readings: Psalm 148 Luke 12:27

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The famous UCC theologian Reinhold Niebuhr used to say that pastors should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. So I’ve brought both today: a Bible from my bookshelf, and today’s Star Tribune. This week, the newspaper is thicker than the Good Book! It might be that I chose a travel-size Bible, and this is a Sunday edition, but it’s also the case that the news this week has continued its overflowing pace.

Continue reading “Celebrating God’s Presence in the Extra/Ordinary” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture readings: Psalm 113 Matthew 6:11 Today’s poem: “The Way It Is” by William Stafford

Sermon audio:

I woke up this morning on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Javen and I have spent the last few days there with his parents, celebrating his dad’s birthday and retirement. It was a magical trip, filled with great food, leisure time, pleasant company and incredible scenery. Today as with the two previous mornings, I got to sit in stillness outside our cabin, warm coffee in hand, listening to quiet lapping water and birdsong as the majestic sun started its ascent from azure blue water into cloudless sky. On the North Shore, it’s only natural to gaze in wonder at the cosmos and say along with the psalmist: From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised. Continue reading “Celebrating God’s Presence in Each Moment” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: John 13:1-17

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Last Thursday night, I joined Bob S. and Becky P. for one of our volunteer nights in Ainsworth Park with Perspectives. The three of us met other volunteers to register youth, give out Gatorade cups, and serve hamburgers at this weekly free summer activity. Kids of all races and ages milled around in a high-energy community spectacle—making crafts, shooting hoops or playing lawn games while parents, grandparents and other adults assisted wherever we could. We had more than enough volunteer help, so Becky and I joined Bob in starting a kickball game on the dusty field. We dug out bases, chose the best ball and hollered for kids to join in. We might have looked a little desperate at first—three adults and nobody to play with—but in a few minutes kids started lining up to kick the ball. There followed almost two hours of running, catching, bunting, coaching, and cheering, with more than twenty kids ranging from 4 to 18 years old. We managed to keep only a minimum of order, but it was better that way. Nobody got too hung up on field positions, rules or score—the biggest conflict was who got to pitch next. Youth joined and left their teams with no warning or notice. By the time we were done, I’d tripled my daily exercise goal, gone hoarse from the shouting, and caked my dress shoes with dust. To be honest, I was also a little embarrassed that Becky and Bob saw how much I’d gotten into the game! I’m supposed to play the part of mature adult here, right?

Continue reading “Lifting” →