Text: Jeremiah 1:4-19

 The opening chapter of Jeremiah narrates his call to be a prophet.  It’s told in the first person.  “Now the word of the Lord came to me.”  In typical Hebrew Bible fashion, it’s not clear how “the word of the Lord” actually came.  Whether it was through the voice of another person, a conviction heard inwardly, a message on the inside wrapping of a Dove chocolate.  What’s clear is that the call reaches the young Jeremiah, and sets the trajectory of his life.  The word of the Lord said, “I appoint you a prophet to the nations,” and this is what Jeremiah became.

A little over a year ago the chairs of the different CMC Commissions sat down together.  We asked ourselves the question: What do we need to be paying attention to?  What’s going on in the world, what’s going on in the congregation, what’s going on in our hearts, and might this point to some kind of overarching focus for the coming year?  After filling up a white board with input, and giving space for silent reflection on what we had heard from one another, a strong consensus emerged that we need to be talking about race.  Although we often hesitate to use this language, another way of saying this would be that through this shared discernment, the word of the Lord came to us.  The word of the Lord came to us, gave us a calling, and set us on a trajectory.

During the season of Lent we had a worship theme of Trouble the Waters.  We took a collective dive into the waters of white privilege, black lives matter, and a posture of antiracism.  This month of October will be a similar worship theme.  The prophet Jeremiah will be our tour guide as we ponder moving…

Text: Luke 16:19-31

A chasm has been situated between us
A breach between bodies
A rift resolutely rooted
A fissure fastly fixed
A schism surely set

There is a space between us,
A divisive distance drawing us deeper down
Roads so rutted by heels so rooted
Feet firmly fixed
Minds made immovable

A chasm has been fixed between us

And I find myself asking the question:
How does one measure the distance between heaven and hell?
Is it the length of space between Abraham’s bosom and the fiery lake?
Between a table sumptuously laid and a city gate where mutts take up residence?
Between fine purple linens and sores worn like patches sewn on a life barely holding itself together?

Anesthetizing amenities alienating us from any affinity with the afflicted.
Is it the price we pay for our paralyzing privilege?

A chasm has been fixed between us.

How does one measure this divide?
Is it the number of characters it takes to become unfriended?
Is it the number of votes needed or resolutions passed to prove our righteousness?
Is it the number of hours of silence that accumulate between us when all those unsaid words pile up like notes to a hymn about grace you swear you once knew?
Is it the number of miles between the concrete jungle and the open field adorned by stars you haven’t greeted in years?

A chasm has been fixed between us

How does one measure the distance between heaven and hell?
Is it the centuries worth of seconds unconsciously crammed between a stalled vehicle and shots fired? 
Or the nanoseconds it takes a mind to discern between a book and a deadly weapon? 
How does one measure how much fear has taken up residence between a 13 year old black boy and the trigger of a gun?

Which gun? 
Either one.

A chasm has been fixed between us.

But who owns this distance?
Who bears the burden of this breach?
Who is responsible for this…

Texts: Jeremiah 4:11-12,22-28; Luke 15:1-10

It’s our first Sunday back in this building which is feeling both familiar and new.  It’s the opening Sunday of the Christian Education year.  And it’s the fifteen year anniversary, today, of the 9/11 attacks.

Any one of these three could be the focus of a worship theme.  But with all three we have a full plate.

One of the most startling realizations I had this past week was that for all of our young people starting Sunday school today, 9/11 is an historical event.  Something to read and hear stories about, but not something they, you, experienced personally.  Even our high school seniors were just two or three years old when it happened.  Recent college grads were in their first years of elementary school.  The post 9/11 world is the only world you’ve known.  Fifteen years ago our country was the big kid out on the playground, and got sucker punched in front of everyone.  We’ve been hitting back ever since, uncertain how to heal.

I love how our lectionary scriptures keep us grounded in a bigger story.  A story that stands on its own, yet manages to speak something fresh into our time.  Today’s two readings share a common theme of loss, with Jeremiah anticipating an impending loss, and Luke offering parables that conclude in celebration, on the other side of loss.  Loss is something that happens at every level of existence, from the national loss of an event like 9/11, to personal loss – a sheep, a coin, a parent, an ability, losing our bearings, losing our religion, losing our mind.  Loss.

Civil rights veteran John Perkins is fond of saying that a leader is someone who is willing to enter into the pain of their people.  By this definition, the prophet Jeremiah was an exemplary…

While our sanctuary undergoes renovations, we held a joint worship service with our neighbors at North Broadway United Methodist Church.  For the sermon their pastor and I each talked about our own faith traditions and how our congregations are living that out.  Below are my portions of the sermon. 

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

You all have been such good neighbors to us this summer.  We have held both a regional conference and three Sundays of worship in your fellowship hall.  And it feels very fitting that we now get to worship together, so many thanks for that.

In my experience, people tend to have three main frames of reference for Mennonites.

The first, and probably most common preconception, is that Mennonites are kind of like the Amish.  We are Amish-lite.  Same great taste, but less filled with rules and regulations about dress and technology.  And this is kind of historically accurate.  Mennonites and Amish do share a spiritual ancestry.  The 16th century Anabaptists emphasized that baptism and the Christian life were to be arrived at through a conscious adult decision.  Anabaptist means “re-baptizers.”  At the beginning of the 18th century, Jacob Amman (Amish) believed his sisters and brothers in this stream of the church were becoming too lax in their enforcement of discipline, and that people who weren’t willing to be baptized as adults should not be considered “saved.” A new fellowship formed around his leadership, and the Amish, and the Mennonites parted ways…but we remain cousins.

A second association some people have with Mennonites is what we do.  Mennonites are active in disaster relief in the US and Canada, our Mennonite Central Committee has people serving around the world in community development and peacemaking efforts.  Mennonites were involved in helping initiate the current Fair Trade movement.  Some of you Methodists know us Columbus Mennonites through…

Text: Luke 13:10-17

 The great 16th century reformer Martin Luther characterized the human condition with the Latin phrase “homo incurvatus in se.”  I never studied Latin, but this is a good one for beginners.  It sounds a lot like its English equivalent.  Homo – Human.    incurvatus – curved in.    in se – on itself.  This is the predicament of our species, Luther taught, our sinful state.  Humanity curved in on itself.

This can be pictured fairly easily.  It’s visual.  It is bodily.  Rather than having one’s head up, eyes looking out, ears attentive, the body curves in on itself.  Incurvatus.  And we are stuck.  We can’t see beyond ourselves.  We can’t really reach out beyond ourselves.  We are curved in on ourselves.

And if this is the broken condition, then salvation looks like this:  Having one’s back straightened, one’s shoulders lifted, one’s head raised, eyes now alert, arms open.  Curved in à salvation.

I’ve been assuming these two positions at random times the last few days, partly to feel the difference between them, and partly because I overworked my back one day during the stay-cation portion of our vacation and am still feeling it.  The hidden cost of do it yourself house projects.

I once heard someone say that you know you’re getting older when you bend over to pick something up and you think, Now what else can I do while I’m down here.  I’m not that bad off – yet.

It just so happens that this week’s gospel lectionary has to do with incurvatus and standing up straight.  Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, the final time he will do this in Luke.   It’s the Sabbath, the day of rest.  And there was a woman there.  A woman whose name we never learn, identified only by her disability.  As Luke tells it, she had…