Preparing for Lent: Update Reflection

I hope this season of Ordinary Time after the Epiphany is one in which the light of Christ is shining into your life, providing you with light to see the way, and even exposing things in your life that have been hidden.
Lent is rapidly approaching. Ash Wednesday is February 17th. Lent is the time that church prepares to recieve again the mystery of salvation. the preparation for the church's greatest feast Easter, where we remember that Christ for our sake passed over from death to life.- That Christ "..beat down death by death." As the Orthodox liturgy of Easter proclaims.

In preparation to receive again this mystery the church fasts, and engages in other disciplines, that are contemplative and encourage self-reflection. In Lent the church also identifies with the suffering of Christ, his temptation and overcoming of temptation and sin in the dessert. So Lent is a time to allow God to come and meet us at the point of our sin. God comes not to condemn us but to further liberate us from those things in our lives that continue to bind us, that we still hold on to even though they are destructive and bring death into our lives, our work, our relationships. In the day to day bustle of life these things can at times seem to be small things, and yet they are contradictions within ourselves as followers of Christ. Lent then is a time of grace where we can return to God, in those very places where we have run or hid ourselves from God. It is a time of grace to discover through the illumination of the Spirit areas of our life still bound to Sin and Death, which we have possibly never noticed before.

Allow God this Lent through Lenten disciplines of fasting and contemplation, through pastoral conversation and confession, to prepare you for receiving again the great mystery of our Faith. In this season after the Epiphany we have celebrated Christ as the light that shines in darkness. Lent encourages us to let that light shine into those areas of our life where we still cling to darkness. May the Life, Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ sustain us and embolden us as we face again our deep and persistent need for God's liberating love.

In Christ,
Larry Kamphausen
Pastor
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler
For announcements follow this link:
'Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler: Update'

Sermon 4th Sunday Ordinary Time, After Pentecost

Bellow is the outline of the Sermon I preached January 31, 2010. It is not the sermon I preached, and perhaps represents as much what I was still wrestling with as I entered the pulpit. I think my sermon as preached had more or less had two foci: Moving our identifying with Jesus to identifying with the people of Nazareth, so we could hear Jesus' word's directed at us. 2) Reading Paul on Love in light of the story of Jesus at Nazareth, emphasizing in away not found in the outline that this Love that Paul talks about is God, and not something we can work up in ourselves or own. I think the conclusion was more or less the same, encouraging us to accept the liberation of being dispossessed, even of ourselves, by Love. This is the Gospel and liberation. LEK

Jeremiah 1:4-10 - Psalm 71:1-6 - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 - Luke 4:21-30
Dispossessed by Love
I) Introduction coming home and coming out
a) What perhaps strikes us first about this story, what strikes me is, that this story (that spans these two weeks), is a story of the difficulty of coming home and asserting one’s identity. Even the pain of coming out to family and the rejection that can follow.
b) All of us probably have stories of leaving and then coming home changed and presenting this new self. The pain and the rejection may very from story to story but it is a common story in our culture. (Fish out of Water, and coming out in the midst of religious hostility against being gay, bisexual, transgender Queer) Though what is a stake also varies depending on the degree that self is acceptable or in conjunction with family societal expectations.
c) But what if this isn’t about Jesus coming home and asserting his identity as Messiah, or at least prophet. What if we aren’t standing with Jesus in this story but with the people of Nazareth?
d) What if this story isn’t about us, but about God who comes and disrupts what we think is our own - our own identity, our ownership? Even if that identity and what is proper to us was won with a great deal of pain and struggle for liberation. What if this story dispossesses not only those people of Nazareth but we who seek to own ourselves, our beliefs our identities? What if this dispossession is the Gospel, the Good news?
II) The story in its context
a) Lets back up- From the side of the people of Nazareth isn’t Jesus being just a little harsh?
b) Crossan and patronage in the ancient world, and the phrase “Is this not Joseph’s Son?”
c) It is likely there was an expectation that Jesus should stay in Nazareth as prophet and miracle worker and messiah, to the benefit and under the control of his village and clan.
d) Jesus is then saying that they do not and cannot own him or the work of God, this is proclamation and the kingdom of God is not for their benefit.
e) The anger of those of Nazareth is that Jesus words dispossesses them of what is rightfully theirs, and thus of himself and of the Kingdom of God.
f) They were Israelites, people of God, surely they had ownership of these good things, and the messiah was one of their own, surely this should come back to them. Jesus said no, the kingdom of God dispossess all of everything.
III) Jesus says God decides where and to whom a prophet goes, no one owns a prophet of God, except God.
a) The proclamation of the Day of the Lords favor, of release to the captives, sight to the blind, is an invitation to be dispossessed by love.
b) This day of the Lord’s favor is the Jubilee, the 50th year in which the economy is in retrograde; everything reverts: If your father or grandfather bought land, that land was to return to the family who originally owned it. Captives, those who were indentured because of debt were freed and released from their debts; it assumes that systems of economy even ones more or less ordered by God, would devolve into situations of injustice. Ownership is put into question, and it asserts God is the only one who owns.
c) Jesus confronts our attempts to possess even our own identities. So that we may be open to true freedom, to the liberation that comes not from knowing who we are and owning our identities but by accepting that we are loved and being possessed by that love that will set us free from all economies of ownership, even that of our identity.
IV Love as dispossession
a) Paul, moves from gifts and the nature of the body of Christ to the essence of it all –love. Not romantic love, but a love that is in fact quite beyond us.
b) Love is patient… does not seek its own way…. If we have love what else do we have – nothing.
c) Love the Love of God, asks us to hold nothing in remainder, to save nothing, to retain nothing of our own, but to surrender all to Love.
d) We own nothing not knowledge, not our faith, all we have is Love which is impossible to possess, who of us can claim to have hold of this Love Paul says that without it we are nothing. We could have everything, but we have nothing without Love. And if we have Love there is nothing else, we have let go of everything, even our own way, what is rightfully our identity, our way of being.
e) Love dispossesses us of all we seek to hold onto so tightly. Only in this dispossession is there true freedom, actual liberation.
IV) In accepting the love that liberates we find we own nothing.
a) Nazareth thought because they were the people of God and of Jesus’ clan that they had ownership of what God was doing, and that they should retain exclusive rights to the coming Kingdom.
b) Jesus says their identity is meaningless. The kingdom of God the Day of Jubilee of the Lords favor sets free and is good news because there is nothing to own, it disrupts any sense of ownership or identity. It Breaks the bonds, heals all blindness and lameness, and enriches the poor precisely because it is the activity of Love, this self-giving of God to alls. Here is liberation and distribution of goods.
c) Not because it takes from some and gives to others, but because it dispossesses everyone, that they may be possessed by Love, by God.
d) God is this love, God is patient, kind, God does not seek God’s own way, but the freedom of all, God endures all things…
e) And God did so most visibly and clearly in Jesus Christ.
f) We are not to identify with and own Christ, but we are to be possessed by this love and be released from all those things we grasp after, all our possessions, they are released in love to God, and God sends and distributes to whom and to where God wills. This is the freedom of love.
g) If we seek to posses ourselves, or all faith and knowledge, we will find that we have nothing unless we find that we in love possesses nothing not even ourselves or our faith: Through this dispossession we find we have in Christ all things through a love that is not our own, but which has taken hold of our hearts and minds and selves, so that all we may become in the life of the Spirit is this all encompassing self-giving love, that owns nothing and yet has everything.

Sunday school and childcare this Sunday

There will be no children's Sunday School or childcare this Sunday Janaury 31, 2010.

Sermon Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10 * Psalm 71:1-6 * 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 * Luke 4:21-30

This week of prayer for Christian unity has been unsettling time of prayer for me. I do not know what has been stirred in you by God this week or if you . For me I was unsettled by having this years theme of this years Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, "You are witnesses of these things" came into conversation with Paul on the Spirit and the nature of the body of Christ. What follows is my own attempt to articulate how I have been unsettled, and hope to invite your own reflections and offerings of your own experiences of prayer for Christian unity to come in conversation with my own experience, the theme, and these text before us today.

The beginning of my discomfort is in the very fact of praying for Christian unity, for in so doing we admit that we remain in a state of disunion. Then In speaking of being witnesses, we speak of our desire and our sense that although we are divided as Christians we have something in common at our core, and that our witness to these things we hold together is compromised by this disunity. Paul uses the metaphor of the Body, to give us an understanding of the nature of the church, the nature of Christ. Through Baptism and the life of the Spirit we are one body, Christ’s body. Yet, this whole passage as an exhortation means that we can live in contradiction to the unity we are given through baptism and the Spirit. In the unity of baptism and the Spirit we are empowered to witness to the things of Christ: his life death and resurrection. And yet this week of prayer for Christian unity should give us pause, in terms of our own spiritual health, and our being formed by the nature of the Church Paul explicates for us in Corinthians. If we are willing to remain content with our own particular witness, whether of our own individual journeys of faith, or as journey tied to a particular denomination, are we not in a sense giving priority to our own “giftedness”? And doesn’t even the various schemes for seeking unity and understanding between Christians keep us divided, if it stops at merely seeking to understand each other and work together? In our attempt to find ways to work together across institutional barriers and barriers of belief, or to work towards convergence in the area of doctrine and belief, and even to work towards ecumenical congregation are we assuming the need to get along rather than assuming we need to be conformed to the Spirit and our Baptism. Yet this week isn’t the week of focus on the work of ecumenism but of prayer. In this we admit that the unity of being witnesses of the life death and Resurrection of Christ, of truly being the church is Spirit directed and Spirit gifted reality into which we must be formed by God. I want to suggest that this sort of prayer should open ourselves up to God showing us the ways in which we all uphold the state of disunity, and the ways we abandon the Church. For our disunity is a sign that we have walked away from the truth of our Baptism and our Spirit filled lives in the Church. This is the urgency of Paul’s address to the Corinthians. We must not remain in the sense of sufficiency of our separate witness and distinctive ways of proclaiming Christ, for to do so is to walk the path of schism. But the hope of this week and of our texts is that we don’t have to work harder Rather we must be opened up to the reality of the church as Spiritual institution and organism.

Our Corinthians passage challenges any notion that Christian unity is coexistence, or acceptance that we all truly believe in Jesus even though we differ and at times contradict one another in our beliefs and actions. What is imaged for us of Christ, the Church, is a great symmetry and an organism made up of parts that cannot survive or even exist apart from the whole. Thus our unity as Christians as based upon the preceding reality: the unity of the Body of Christ, the Church. Granted we could miss this mystical reading of the Body imagery and read Paul’s words as exhortation to just get along for one must not overlook that Paul’s teaching is also about diversity. However I think in following the diversity path we miss that the difference Paul speaks of is not of human origin but of divine origin, of the Spirit. Paul’s use of the metaphor of the Body challenges our current language of diversity that is for the most part a tolerance of separate coexistence. A body isn't a confederation of interrelated differentiated sovereignty's, but an organism that is dependent on the right functioning of every part and member of the organism that has no possible existence outside that organism. For a body to functioning fully and properly each and every member not only needs the others but an integration in the whole.. We aren't to view our giftedness as a reason to separate from others, rather we are to see that we all equally need the other.

I feel that the force of Paul’s indictment against us in his language of the body of Christ, is reinforced if we think along side this metaphor the reality of what is needed to truly be witness of Christ. When we receive gifts from the Spirit, whatever they may be, we are so gifted for a purpose of bearing witness to Christ. Thus in speaking of the Spiritual reality of the church as organism and institution we must not for get that we exist for and as Christ. Thus the unity of our witness is that we witness to the singular work of God through Christ in the world. My own denomination will often speak of our contribution to the building of the Kingdom of God which also goes on beyond our borders. Yet, this in practice means that we celebrate and witness to the ways we believe according to our denominational distinctive we are accomplishing the work of God in Jesus Christ. This way of speaking and thinking fails to question how our identity may stand in the way of the work of Christ and the Spirit and may impair the witness to the life Death and Resurrection of Christ as that which establishes the Kingdom of God in the world; bringing release to the captives, bringing sight, and hearing and healing to all in need. Are we in our separation whether based in denomination or personal identity, or race or class truly joined to the work of Christ and the coming Kingdom of God? It is one thing to claim this, it is another for it to actually be. The challenge of our being called to be witnesses when Christians are divided and content to remain in separation, is that it is very possible we aren't witnessing to the work of God in Christ in the world. In our current states of separation we are perhaps at best witnessing to our own pet projects within the larger work of God, and at worst witnessing to our own agenda with little or no relation the God’s reign and work. Given the force of the metaphor of the body and the need to not witness to our opinions or positions, I am challenged that we need make our hearts ready to receive and be formed into the church, the Body of Christ. Hopefully that is what this week of prayer of Christian unity is doing and has done in we who have so prayed. This is a challenge because I am unsure this is what I want.

I will admit that I am challenged by my own words, and it is a challenge to my self as an ecumenist and those of us here who are members of this ecumenical congregation as much to anyone here who identifies strongly or in part with a particular denomination. We are Christians but more important than our being of the same religion is that we are part of the Body of Christ, the Church. If we cling to a certain distinctive, or find ourselves separated by our opinions how then are we the Body of Christ? True we all may be baptized into Christ and able to claim some form of faith in Jesus Christ, faith and the sacrament of Baptism cannot be belittled, but are we in our current life and way of being Christian truly living into the fullness of our baptism and faith? Am I? In what ways do I resist the unifying work of the Spirit, and mistake what I have been given as the defining fact of my spiritual life? Am I, are we, living into our baptism or contradicting our baptism? And are we perhaps doing both at once? These are hard questions that this time of prayer set aside to seek God for Christian unity has brought up for me. I wonder if I, and we really desire to be the people of God, members of Christ's body or if in the end other identities prove more important in our day to day lives of faith? Are we going to truly allow the Spirit to bind us together to form us as the Body of Christ, or do we in fact in subtle ways resist? Does the fear of needing to get it right or the fear that we may have missed it keep us from truly seeking God in this matter? Are we praying for Christian unity in truth? Are we asking God to reveal to us our separation from Christ? Finally I can’t but see that all our separations (not just denominational or doctrinal) separate us not only from each other but from our head, Jesus Christ, and thus from the Church. This is why we seek God in prayer, for we must confess our known and unknown participation in divisions from the Body of Christ. Such division inevitably means that we have hidden from ourselves the fullness of Christ and the Spirit in our lives and the world. Even so the Spirit gives to us; Christ binds himself to us, and beckons us to live into the unity of our faith and baptism. We are continually invited by our baptism to allow the Spirit to form us into the Church, into Christ. Amen

Sermon Epiphany Sunday

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
All our Longings

As we enter a new year, what are your longings? What do you long for. One expression of our longings is New Years resolutions. In general they tell us about our longing for better selves and thus I think a better world. In particular if you mad New Years resolutions, how do they express your longings, do they somehow touch upon your deepest longing? On this Sunday of the Epiphany I wonder what sort of longing was there in these magi of our gospel that they'd leave on a journey of some cost and time, with the dangers of travel of the day, or wayside robbers, or border crossings, carrying considerable wealth with them, not for trade and further wealth creation but simply to offer them to a child whose birth was announced by a star. Are we like the Magi, have we gone in search of Christ out of a deep longing seeking Christ out at great cost? Who are these Magi and why do we remember them on a feast called epiphany, the manifestation?

The Magi are fascinating and mysterious characters who only appear in the Gospel of Matthew. We know relatively little about exactly who they were, Matthew simply says, Magi, wise men, from the east came to Jerusalem, having seen the star at its rising. We aren't even told how many there were, they are among the nameless faceless Characters of Scripture. They make an appearance and mysteriously slip away to avoid King Herod. They appear and melt away, and they witness to the appearing of god in Human flesh, and worship the Christ Child in Bethlehem and that is their story. Over time their story has been filled out, Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar, sometimes to show that they are representatives of the nations they are seen as being of different nationalities or races.

Much has been written about these Magi, wise men, the story even captivates atheists and agnostics. The author and humanist atheist Isaac Assimov spends considerable time on this passage in his own commentary on Scripture. He examines the various explanations of who these Magi were and what phenomenon the star might have been. He even gives his preferred explanation before finally saying that it really doesn't matter, its all quite academic because the Magi and the star where all inventions of Matthew to show the fulfillment of this prophesy in Isaiah 60. And yet something in Asimov can't quite ignore these Magi, and these 12 simple verses of Scripture, he is captivated by them; Asimov had his longings, for a better humanity, the cessation of war, for the growth of goodness. There is something about the search of humanity and its longings in the story of the Magi coming to worship the Christ child.

Asimov is not entirely wrong, there is a purpose that fits with Matthews telling of the story of Christ and it is important to Matthew that Gentiles appear here. It is true that Gold Frankincense and Myrrh are all symbolic, and that what sort of astronomical phenomena this Star that appeared in the east, what these Magi from the east followed is of little importance; Or at least of little importance compared with the importance that these Magi are Gentile witnesses to the birth of Christ. The magi come, they are Gentiles, they represent the nations, and probably are seen in Matthew and certainly in the Tradition as the fulfillment of the prophesy in Isaiah 60 we have read. Gentiles come inquiring about the birth of the Messiah, and the religious leaders in Jerusalem scour their scrolls and give the answer but don't seem to think that these Gentiles really know anything.

One thing we long for in our culture is inclusion, and this story of the wise men and the understanding that this is seen as the beginning of the inclusion of the Gentiles and thus the precursor to Paul's gentile mission and proclamation that the people of God includes Jew and Gentile. We in our longings are tempted to make a principle of radical inclusion out of Paul's mission to the Gentiles and the story of the coming of the Magi. If the primary issue for the story of the coming of the Magi and Paul's mission is about inclusion, then the mystery Paul proclaims, the Gospel, is reduced to our own longing for acceptance and inclusion. We then become identified with the correct interpretation of the Gospel and the Gospel becomes a reflection of ourselves and our longings. And then we can ironically exclude those who we believe are not about radical inclusion. We in the end don't actually escape the distinction between whose in and whose out, even when we focus on inclusion. But the Gospel isn't about principles, it is about a story, it is about God and our response to what God has done. It is true that God includes all, the invitation is to all, but the lesson here is not that we need to be radically inclusive. Rather the message here is that we need to accept the invitation our selves. In the end the radical inclusion is that all are invited to come to Jesus Christ, the one who will turn no one away, but there is also the reality that one can refuse to come. Much of our culture longs for inclusion, longs for equality and no boundaries. Yet we don't stop and examine the source of our longing, the source of the boundary lines drawn, and of the ways we simply are limited and thus exclude others. We hide ourselves from the ways in which even our attempts at radical inclusion exclude those who do not agree with our sense of inclusion and exclusion. When we make the Gospel about this we make the Gospel about ourselves. And in all the grandeur and Mystery about these wise men, the story isn't about them at all, or the Scribes and Priests in Jerusalem or Herod. Rather this is the story of the appearing of God in a small helpless human being!

This we find reflected in the acts of these Magi from the east our own path to Christ. They see a sign in the sky most likely because they are astrologers, their culture and their faith tells them that the stars can tell them about things happening in the world and in the spiritual plain. A star appears and they interpret it to mean that a very special person has been born a king, who deserves their tribute though they are not from his nation, or people. He is but an infant, he has no real authority, no claim on them, they are not Jews, and yet they recognize something. I'd like to think something in their longings recognizes that what will satisfy is other than what they long for, is other than the particular things they long for. And so they go. They travel they follow this star, or rather they follow its meaning to Jerusalem and submit to the other. They have seen the star but they don't claim to know all there is to know, they consult those among whom God has already worked. These Wise men, these men of great wealth wisdom and supposedly power, they can demand audience with the leaders and the powerful; they have an audience with Herod. They simply offer what they know and ask for more wisdom from those who should know, who are already the chosen ones. And when these answer they go and they come to the Christ child and offer great wealth, gold frankincense and myrrh. Surely such a great travel and a great offering shows a deep longing and yet an admitting that their longing pointed here to this one, Jesus Christ. We are not told why, only that the magi came. We are to be the magi. We are not those who should seek to include but those who should seek to be included. Our longings should point us here. What is your star that have you followed it to Christ, and what is your gold Frankincense and myrrh that you are to lay at Jesus' feet. Have you accepted that you are fully included in God's people, that only in so being joined to Christ is their any satisfaction of your longings.
We are not asked by this story and Paul's Mission to the Gentiles to have unbounded expansive hearts, rather we are asked to have a heart that longs to come and worship the Christ, Jesus the Lord. Allowing that longing to expand our hearts and announce to all the invitation and that God has come in our midst and we are to worship. No one will be turned away but not every one will come. This is not about whose out or whose in, nor if we are including enough people, or have too close boundaries, or if we have a firm center but open boundaries. All those things are about us, we human beings, or our communities. Rather Epiphany is about the manifestation of God in human flesh to all. The Magi left their community to come into the community of the Christ Child, and it lead them home by another way. Our longings may be the beginning but they are not where we end up. We will come home but it is by another way.. We will find ourselves taken way from the path of our longings, away from ourselves to our true home in God. We are transformed but not by tearing down boundaries, but allowing the expansive love and invitation of God to so permeate our selves that we invite all to come and see and worship with the Magi.
The manifestation of Christ is the fulfillment of all our longings. This is why the Magi come bearing the most expensive of gifts. They lay themselves, and all human longings and fears at the feat of the Christ Child, God the word made flesh. Today, and everyday, we are invited to do the same as the Magi. We are, to lay our very selves at the feet of Christ, to give ourselves over to this manifestation of God that reveals both God and our true humanity. In this our lives our world is illuminated, all else is darkness, a great darkness. Come lay yourselves your longings before Christ as gifts. This is what we do , with bread and wine we offer all we have all that humanity has, all its longings and potentiality all the gifts of the world and they are transformed taken by God and given back to us as the life giving flesh and blood, of Jesus Christ. Let yourself long deeply, let your deepest longing and sorrow come to the surface before Christ and receive back the only thing that will satisfy and fulfill all your longings, Christ and God's own self. Amen.
(Following the sermon members of the congregation are invited to bring some token or symbol of their longings and place in a basket sitting with the gifts of bread and wine and will be carried to the altar in preparation for communion. paper is provided if that symbol or token is something drawn or written.)

Christmas Services

Have announced this elsewhere but forgot to put it here.
We have joint services with Immanuel and St Elias.
Christmas eve Service:
5;45 p.m. Prelude music with viola, horn, trumpet, and organ.
6:00 p.m. Festive Holy Communion with candle-lighting.

Christmas Day:
10:30 a.m. Festive Holy Communion.

No Sunday School

This Sunday December 20th and the following Sunday (The Sunday after Christmas) December 27th we will not have childrens Sunday School. Our Sunday School Will resume Sunday January 3rd, 2010.