John's Message

John’s Jottings, 9-8-09

2009-09-09T10:38:00.001-04:00

I hope you and your family had a good Labor Day weekend. Even though summer is not officially over, it is, for all practical purposes, over as we return to school and a more “normal” schedule for many of us.

Many of us have spent the summer enjoying life and seeking to slow down and get our bearings. The debate over health care reform seems to have gone off its bearings. Members of Congress holding public hearings about the various bills in Congress have been shouted down. Some commentators have purposefully misled folks about what is and isn’t in the various bills. Some have called the President Hitler. We seem to have gone off the rails rather than have a rational discussion of this important issue for all of us.

Like so many of the issues that confront us this is not an easy one and is fraught with much emotion. There are those who feel that the existing system is just fine and should be left alone. There are others who feel, just as strongly, that the present system is not fair and needs to be changed. Some favor “single payer” insurance while others see this as “government control.” What is a person to do?

How are Christians to confront this issue? I doubt there is a single Christian position on this issue. There are, though, certain Christian values that need to be taken into account including fairness, justice. No one should disagree about these. Throughout the gospels, Jesus singles out the least and the lowest and the lost for his special attention. Do the health care reforms being debated speak to such as these?

No matter how your feel about specific plans, as Christians we need to have a caring spirit as we pray for guidance as to how we can all have needed health care. There is no excuse for the explosive anger and seeming uncaring spirit that has been evidenced at some of these town hall meetings this summer.

Father Ed Polombus, pastor of the Church of the Assumption, here in Fairport, reminds us that as Christians we have the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He says:
“The whole sacrament means Jesus pouring himself out for others, giving up himself for others.”

We need to keep this in mind as we continue to watch and participate in this great national debate.

John

John’s Jottings

2009-08-31T14:22:00.003-04:00

“In the beginning was the Word…….”

The Gospel of John begins with this phrase. Word for the gospel writer was crucial. Through God’s Word the world was created and this Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. Christians speak of the Bible as the Word of God and each Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation, the Word taking on flesh.

We use a lot of words in our daily life. Some of them build up and some tear down. Our culture is word saturated and often we hear words used with no real meaning. The political and cultural debate, which goes on in our nation, has a tendency to take words and redefine them the way we want. For example, when “liberals” say the word “conservative”, they often mean: hardhearted, reactionary, fascist! When “conservatives” say the word “liberal”, they often mean: softheaded, bleeding heart, weak willed, naïve, socialist! Radical Islam translates into terrorist for many.

The political and culture wars affect the church also. Liberal Christians often label anyone to their right as fundamentalist, while conservative Christians often label anyone to their left as Liberals. How might we learn to live together and be in conversation about serious issues of faith and life without hurling anathemas at one another?

This is nothing new for the church. At the time of the Reformation, church leaders debated the same issues. Churches were splitting over issues which were not of prime importance for the faith.

John Calvin, the father of our Reformed tradition speaks of these issues in his
Institutes. He writes: “…separation from the church is the denial of God and Christ.”

“…non-essential matters should in no wise be the basis of schism among Christians.”

Of course sometimes it is hard to decide what is essential and non-essential. Calvin includes in his list of essentials: “God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God’s mercy; and the like”.

So many times, we major in the minors, spending inordinate amounts of time on issues that do not go to the heart of the faith. Consider the present time when churches split over the so-called “gay issue”. I’m not interested in starting a war on this, but only want to reflect that Calvin (and other reformers) seems to limit what is essential to the basics.

It is interesting that for many the issue, what I would call secondary issues, such as homosexuality have become as important as the belief in one God, the divinity of Christ and justification by faith! When people argue over whether to stay or leave churches and denominations this final quote by Calvin may be helpful:

“…if we are not willing to admit a church unless it be perfect in every respect, we leave no church at all.”

Meet Me in the Middle

2009-02-24T11:20:00.001-05:00

In the past, I have ruminated about the difficulty of "being in the middle" in the life of the church today. Now there is a new book which speaks to just this issue. The title is "Lost in the Middle? Claiming an Inclusive Faith for Christians Who are Both Liberal and Evangelcal". It is written by Wesley J. Wildman and Stephen Chapin and published by the Alban Institute. I have just finished reading some excerpts from the book and thought I would share some with you. Whether or not you agree, they are certainly food for thought.

The authors begin by describing what they call these displaced folks.

"They feel lost in the middle between the noisy extremes of religion and politics and long to feel at home right where they are. They sense that it is possible to ignore the oversimplification of left and right and, instead,move deeper into their faith."

How many of us have felt this way? I certainly know that I have, suspicious of the easy answer on either right or left, whether it is the political right or left or the religious right or left. If the answer is too easy, it is probably not right!

How might we come together and worship and serve alongside people who we disagree with on certain issues. Jesus certainly united different kinds of people in his ministry. Before God human distinctions fall away and all of us are recipients of God's free gift of grace in Jesus Christ. It is really not about us and our differences, but about God and God's love.

When we consider it to be about God, then we may be less judgmental in our opinions and causes. On the one hand we "see some Christians displaying a perverse form of self-righteousness and judgmental hypocrisy, while others don't seem to take their own faith seriously enough to identify a clearly communicable stand on key moral issues."

On the one hand we have those say "This is the way, walk ye in it", while on the other hand,everything is permissable. There must be a way that takes seriously the faith in which we live and move and have our being and yet at the same time is generous in its orthodoxy.

When we cultivate "the virtues of love,hope, gratitude, and wisdom, and all these to prevail over their impulses to avoid or attack the object of their discomfort", then we stay engaged"always looking for a way to make a positive difference."

I like to think that perhaps this might describe what kind of a church we are. If you are a member of First Church, what do you think? If you are looking for such a church, give us a try. Check out the rest of the web site and find out a bit more about us.

Perfection Reflections

2009-01-28T14:45:00.002-05:00

I had a few minutes to wait at the store the other day for a prescription and so I thought I would look over the magazine section. There is a magazine for every conceivable interest from crocheting to model railroads and everything in between. One thing you do notice, though, is how many magazines there are having to do with somehow trying to perfect this or that thing about us. There are diet magazines, spirituality magazines and of course, body building etc. etc. There is a kind of obsession with getting things right, whether or not it is our diet, or our exercise or our health. Perhaps we think that if we work harder we can somehow perfect ourselves and, who knows, maybe if we perfect ourselves we can live forever.

As well as seeking to be in the best shape, we also tell ourselves that, there is nothing we can't do, if only we put our mind to it. Sixty and more years ago, The Rev.Norman Vincent Peale wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking" and this book was a best seller. There have been thousands of other "self help" books since and all of them try and convince us that we can more or less control most of what comes our way. Now there is some truth to these claims, I know. We can do certain things that will affect the outcome and most of us don't just want to sit around and let life happen to us. But we need to be careful, lest we assume that in order to make ourselves acceptable we need to make sure we engage in certain behaviors. This temptation is particularly sharp in the world of faith.

There is a strain in all religion of perfectionism, the idea that we can be perfect, or perhaps that we need to be perfect. We are somewhat impatient with people who "don't get it right." I've been reading Marilynne Robinson's book "Home" recently. It is her second novel about the same people. It is set in Iowa in the late 1950's and has two elderly ministers as the center pieces of the book. One, Ames, is a Congregational minister, still preaching and the other Boughton, a Presbyterian, retired(not voluntarily) and sick, probably dying. Boughton's daughter, Glory, comes home to care for her widowed father. There is a successful, physician brother, who makes a brief appearance, but the real centerpiece is Jack, her alcoholic brother, who never made anything of himself, and who now comes home. All of these characters are what we would today call "dysfunctional". They are all tainted by this or that, creatures of their time and place and yet all, in their own ways, seeking to make it home.

Home here might mean home as in the sense of a place or it might mean eternity, or perhaps it means both. These characters are often irritating and you get angry at them. Why, you wonder, can't they get their lives in order? Why can't they understand how things have changed? A number of folks are reading this book and then commentating on it on line.One of the commentators just the other day had some enlightening things to say. Let me share them with you.

"All the characters in "Home" are losers. Dying, old preachers, son who is drunk, daughter who is a failure in her profession and her love affair. Yet they are all baptized, all struggle with Jesus, and maybe in the light of the doctrine of predestination are saints. We have become so accustomed to believing that behavior identifies a Christian rather than election. We have become so accustomed to believing that being born anew in Christ is to be a good responsible, caring, sensitive, justice seeking, peace loving person that it is hard for us to see Christ in Gloria who can't save anyone but who feeds the dying, bathes the weak, refuses to abandon the sinner,or it is hard for us to see Christ in the old preacher, who is not a peace, justice person, but a good 1950's racist, yet in his fumbling, bumbling way cares for his son and it is hard for us to see Christ in Jack who is an irresponsible drunk but had tried to bridge the racial gap" by marrying a Black woman. ....I wonder if we can see ourselves in Jack, Rev. A and B, Gloria? All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.This book is not about can do people. Can do people don't need Jesus."

Maybe we need to spend more time thanking God for all his grace to us than making sure we are "can do" people.Anyway its a thought.

Walking the Line

2009-01-08T11:55:00.003-05:00

If we are honest,most of us like yes or no answers. Life is so much easier that way. We know, though, that things never are as easy as we might like them to be; that life is much more nuanced than we may think it is. This is true in our political life and it is true in our religious life too.

Walter Brueggemann is a prominent Old Testament scholar,now retired, and is also an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He comes from a famous family in the old Evangelical Synod, the same from which another famous theological family, the Niebuhr's also came.

In a recent speech to some Presbyterians which Martin Marty speaks of in his publication "Context", Brueggmann speaks of two "escape hatches". The first one is a flight into absolutism which he calls "the conservative alternative". When we take this path, we make our systems into God and it is idolatry.

There is also another side which Brueggemann calls "the liberal temptation". This is the movement toward autonomy. You can see this in folks who speak of being spiritual but not being religious. "It enacts the self-contained self, unconnected to tradition or any other reality,unrestrained,uninformed,not related to anybody or accountable to anybody. It is in fact, atheism."

Both of these alternatives, according to Brueggemann, draw us into "a common life filled with anxiety and always as the edge of violence and brutality." The alternative is to embrace the biblical faith which is always dialogical from beginning to end and to embrace a God who always reaches out to people and calls them to reach out to each other.

The faith which we share is always more messy than the extremes of either end want to make it; it is a faith which is about relationships, our relationship with God through Christ and our relationships one with another in the family of faith which we call the church.

As we begin this new year, let us resolve to life in the midst of the "mess" which is both life in the world and life together in the church, relying on the God who is personified in Jesus Christ and whose love will never let us go.

Change

2008-11-05T09:37:00.002-05:00

Well,the election is now history and the United States has entered a new era. Americans have elected the first African American President. Indeed this is an historic day in the life of the nation,and really of the world.

My old friend and colleague, Herb Davis, who votes in Florida sent an e-mail on October 30 which made clear just how historic this decision is. He and his wife voted early. Here is what he said:

"The voting place was busy, number of young folks, black folks of all ages, some on walkers, some carrying children. I got a lump in my throat as I remembered 44 years ago Gabe and I and others were in Canton, Miss, trying to get African Americans to register to vote. It was a frightening, humiliating, dangerous experience and we were not very successful. Forty four years later I am voting for an American of African descent.Grace abounds. A number of the clerks were Black. Everyone was treated with respect. The kingdom has not come. We face enormous difficulties. It is a dangerous time but it is also a different and I think better place than 44 years ago."

I couldn't agree more.At about the same time that Herb Davis, Gabe Fackre and others were in Canton Mississippi, I along with others were in Cordele Georgia doing the same things, working with civil rights groups to register Black voters. My experience was also life changing. We spoke in Black churches and visited in Black homes, many with no running water or inside plumbing, to encourage men and women who had lived their whole lives on the other side of the tracks, to register and vote. I'm not sure how successful we were then,but the fruits of that work were seen yesterday.

The election of Senator Obama is a sign to the world that this nation has lived out the words of its national creed "that all men are created equal". In the days ahead we,as a nation, face difficult times. Expectations are high for him, perhaps too high. God's kingdom will not come on earth with the election of Barack Obama, but this doesn't mean that we don't seek to make this a more just society and a more just world.

While we believe, as Christians, that we can't bring in God's kingdom, this doesn't mean that we don't seek to live out its values in our corporate and individual lives. May God be with our new president and with our nation as we move ahead.

"Quitting Church"

2008-09-24T14:17:00.001-04:00

“Quitting Church”

Terry Mattingly is a columnist whose work appears in Scripps-Howard papers. In a column just out he talks about a family friend, Julia Duin, who is a seminary educated who is a reporter on religion for the “Washington Times.” Julia was frustrated at the last church she attended before dropping out because she didn’t feel the service opportunities offered to her as a single woman worked out very well.

There was the altar guild, child-care work, greeting etc. As a journalist and frequent traveler she wanted more flexible commitments. She was a musician, so maybe she could play the harp before services or perhaps fill an occasional teaching role. Those things were not there for her and so after some frustrating years she dropped out.

To make a long story short, she found out she wasn’t alone and out of this came a book entitled “Dropping Out”. She talked not with new believers, but with those Baby Boomers who had been involved in church for twenty years or more. They had been there and done that, and they were tired. Some were sad and some were mad and some were both.

This is not just something that the mainline church is dealing with; not another book about the “seven sisters” of liberal Protestantism(Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church{USA}, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist and the Christian Church{Disciples}.

The membership totals in these churches has declined 20% or more; a trend shaped by falling birthrates, bitter doctrinal fights and an aging population. This new trend, though, encompasses huge evangelical churches like the Southern Baptist Convention which claims 16 million members but which 2007 reports indicate only about 6.1 million at worship on given Sunday.

What in the world is going on? There are clashing trends. Many say they are too busy; some are burned out and others are mourning the loss of the great churches they knew in the past.

At the same time, in recent years, mega churches have dominated the landscape. Here you find media friendly services with chatty sermons in huge auditoriums. Seekers have anonymity. Still in 2007 Willow Creek Community Church found out something interesting. Many older members said they are not spiritually stalled. What is going on?

Here is something crucial, I think, from Mattingly’s column:

“There’s another reality that is hard to put into statistics….Many believers have grown tired of quickie services, power point answers and pop lyrics. Many ‘quitters’ she interviewed were yearning for intimate, down-to-earth churches where pastors and people knew their names. They’d been born again. Now they wanted to know how to face the doubts and pains of daily life. They wanted real spiritual growth.”

Here is something to think about as we wonder what kind of a church we are or wish to become. Everyone wants to grow, but what does that mean? Is growth more than numerical? If churches like First Congregational seek to compete with mega churches we will always lose. Are we in a position to meet the needs of folks like Julia Dunlin? Think about it.

Edifice Complex?

2008-08-06T11:55:00.002-04:00

Edifice Complex?

We all know that churches are more than buildings. We use the phrase “go to church” which means, usually, going to the building in which the congregation is housed, but we know that the building is not the church. The church is the “whole people of God.” The church is the “Body of Christ”.

Still, lets be honest, the building is part of the equation. Apparently people associate certain styles of buildings with churches and other styles as not. Here is something from the July/August issue of Your Church magazine.

“A survey of nearly 1700 unchurched American adults earlier this year asked them to indicate their preferences for designs, based on four different church exteriors. Respondents indicated their preferences by allocating 100 points across the four images, giving more points to those they liked and fewer to those they didn’t. The clear cut winner: The medieval-style cathedral, which averaged 48 points, more than double the next-highest finisher, a white-steeple-and-pillar exterior.”

The other churches were Church A which is described as “typical looking suburban church.” This averaged 18 points. You can see such buildings all around the area. Look at the church at the corner of Five Mile Line Road and Plank Road in Penfield.

Church B is described as “white steeple-and-pillar church.” This church averaged 19 points. Church C is described as “A fresher suburban look”. This has a few more frills but it only averaged 16 points. “The runaway winner: medieval style architecture, averaging 48 points.”

What might all this mean? I suppose you could say that the people who responded didn’t know anything about what the church was all about and incorrectly identified it with a certain style of building. After all, isn’t what goes on inside what is important?

On the other hand, you might look deeper into this and ask the question: is this response really about a feeling which sees a certain kind of architecture as more connected to history and the holy than the more up to date models.
Is the church just about “what’s happening now,” or is its connection to what has gone before something of importance? Do people see in the medieval style a kind of mystery which is missing in the others? Here is an interesting question. Does the preference for the medieval style indicate an openness on the part of the unchurched to a church which is connected to an ongoing tradition and way of life? Interesting questions as the mainline churches seek to reverse a downward trend.

July 7, 2008

2008-07-07T10:19:00.003-04:00

Flag waving

Today is Independence Day and I had the opportunity to ride in the parade with our church float. It was great to see our young people sitting in the trailer pulled by Dave Coon’s truck. They were excited about the work they are going to do in the next week at Reach Work Camp. They shared their enthusiasm with the crowds lining the parade route. It was a wonderful experience.

The two candidates for President have been talking about patriotism over the last week or so. There has been a lot of back and forth between the two political camps about what it means to be patriotic. When you think about the word, what thoughts come to your mind?

As I think about the word I think about who and what we are as a nation; where we have been, where we are and where we might be going. Patriotism is more than flag waving. It is fine to wave the flag or to wear a flag pin, but true patriotism goes much deeper as it seek to understand what it is that holds us together as a people.

Let me suggest that being patriotic means that we cherish the ideals on which the nation was founded; those things spoken of in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We take seriously these things and seek in our individual and corporate life to live up to them

Patriotism is not the personal possession of any one political party or candidate. True patriotism draws people from various ways of thinking together and seeks to have dialogue about who and what we are as a nation and a people.

Christians have a special responsibility to understand that the Sovereign God we worship and adore in Jesus Christ is not a national god. Our Hebrew ancestors tried to make it clear that the God they worshipped was larger than the nation of Israel (although they sometimes backslid on that proposition!) The Sovereign God judges people and nations by his righteous will.

This Sovereign God calls us to worship and adore Him above all else. This doesn’t mean that we don’t also love our native land and what it stands for. It does mean that no nation can ever be confused with God and that all people and nations stand under God’s judgment and grace. When we understand this, then we can wave the flag for all its worth.

John

2008-06-20T10:59:00.001-04:00

What Gets Us Through?

The recent sudden death of Tim Russert got me thinking. All the words written about him in the last week have made clear how important his faith was to him. It wasn’t the accolades he won, the money he made, the famous people he interviewed that made him who and what he was, but rather the faith which he espoused.

Commentators reminded us that he was the product of a working class family in South Buffalo and that rather than trying to lose that identity as he moved up in the world of politics and journalism, he treasured it. It made him who and what he was. Tim Russert’s Christian faith, lived out in the Roman Catholic Church gave him the resources for traveling the road of life.

The words of the Bible read each week; the spiritual presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist; the catechism memorized, these are what sustained his journey. He was part of a community of faith which was not only local but world wide, which stretched back into time, built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. The history, the story, the words and the actions of this community carry us through the tough times.

I remember hearing about a woman who was in New York City on September 11, 2001. Her hotel overlooked the twin towers and she saw the planes hit and the towers burn. The words of Scripture, the prayers she had learned as a child all came back to her and enabled her to struggle through this terrifying ordeal.

When the times are tough and the going is rough this is what sustains us; not the accolades, not all the activities we are engaged in; not position or prestige; not all the fleeting things of this life, but the words of faith which have been passed down through the ages and the sure and certain knowledge that as the “Heidelberg Catechism” puts it: “not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.”

2008-06-06T08:54:00.003-04:00

I just returned this past Wednesday from the annual convocation of the Mercersburg Society.This year we met at Princeton Theological Seminary. "What society", did you say? What in the world is the Mercersburg Society?" Good question. The name comes from the little Pennsylvania town of Mercersburg, where in the mid 19th century, the German Reformed Church(one of the four predecessor denominations which later came together to form the United Church of Christ)had their seminary.Mercersburg was not a big city and still isn't. Today on that campus sits Mercersburg Academy,an expensive prep school.
Out of this very rural place in the mid nineteenth century came the Mecersburg theology, a way of thinking about the Christian faith which stressed an organic faith and the importance of the Eucharist and the faith of the un-divided church (pre-Reformation).This opened the way for the modern ecumenical movement and contributed to church union. All this from a tiny little ethnic seminary in rural Pennsylvania.

The society is committed to taking the insights of the Mercersburg theology and putting them into practice in the life of the church today. It is not about some antiquarian interest in a liturgy which came out in 1856, but using the insights of the Mercersburg theologians for the life of the church today. We see the fruits of this thinking especially in the worship life of the church; worship grounded in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the Lord's Supper as the "innermost sanctuary of the whole Christian worship." The language may be different and the music different, but the ultimate purpose and meaning of worship is the same: to give glory and praise to God and to build up the Church of Jesus Christ. If you want to see what the Mercersburg theology is all about take a look at hymn #225 in our hymnal, "Jesus I Live to Thee." That says it all. Look also at John chapter 15.

So much for Mercersburg.
Princeton is a wonderful university town and it just so happened that when I was there, the university was in the midst of reunions and graduation and so the town was filled with both somewhat moth eaten old Princeton Tigers and bright and fresh new ones. If you want to feel younger, hang around a college town. There is a lot of talk today about how to stay young. Let me suggest that one way is to be around people who are younger than you are. Young people challenge us to think anew. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but they are usually interesting. As the church moves forward the retaining of the young is a priority. Everyone knows this. I have never heard of a church that didn't want to have younger members. Well maybe there might be a few. Let me suggest that the way we do this is to challenge young people to grow in their faith and to move outward in mission and ministry. We do this already in our youth ministry and in a concrete way in our mission trip for youth. We also do it in the more formal Christian education ministry. I really believe that young people today want to be challenged as well as supported in their faith journey. They make us better people and we hopefully do the same for them, and we do it all together in the family of faith, the Church.

Up, Up, and Away

2008-05-07T18:58:00.003-04:00

In the summer of 1967 one one of the popular songs playing on all the radio stations was "Up, Up and Away". It was catchy and light and just right for a warm summer day's listening pleasure. We all know that we don't live in a "three story universe." What really is up anyway? You could get a headache thinking about such things.

The Bible assumes such a universe and so, some folks, dismiss biblical stories based on such thinking. They are short sighted. The story of Jesus' ascension is one such story. The church has, from its beginning, celebrated the ascension of Jesus on the fortieth day after Easter.
This festival celebrates the fact that Jesus is not some kind of tribal god, but lord of heaven and earth. Harvey Cox who has taught for many years at Harvard says: "The early church's belief in the Ascension can be read as its refusal to allow its Lord to be localized or spatially restricted.The Ascension in its simplest terms means that Jesus is mobile. He is not a Baal, but the Lord of all history."

I mentioned in the sermon yesterday(May 4) a quote. It came from the great theologian Karl Barth at the beginning of the second world war. He said: "When the lights are going out, its good to know who is in charge." Indeed it is! We Christians believe that in the midst of a world which often seems at loose ends and upside down, there is one who is in charge and that one is the Lord of all history, Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God.

So, don't worry about the physics of what is up and what is down,or how Jesus ascended up to heaven when we don't know what up is. The truth of the ascension is so much more than this. Its good to know who is in charge.

John