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| Coventry Cathedral Baptistry |
Faithful God,
make our hearts bold with love for one another.
Pour out your Spirit upon all people,
that we may live your justice
and sing in praise
the new song of your marvelous victory. Amen.
As we progress through May we now find ourselves on the 6th Sunday of Easter. Soon we come to Ascension Day and then to the fires of Pentecost. But even as we look forward we need to live in the moment. The readings for this week can be found here.
As I look down the list I quickly realize that this is one of the (multitudinous) Sundays in the Lectionary cycle when I would find trying to find a unifying theme in the 4 readings a terribly frustrating process. Normally my response to those Sundays (which I argue make up the majority of the Sundays in a 3 year cycle) is to simply not try. I then choose which passages to read based on where the sermons winds blow me. However I know that some clergy, and congregations, find it important to read all 4 readings every week, even if they will not all be explicated in the rest of the service. What do y'all do?
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| WE ALL ARE! |
And then there is love. There is always love. At least that is what the author of 1 John would have us believe. He seems to use the word a lot. So does the Gospel writer in fact (if you believe they are different writers). And love is the commandment that guides our lives. And maybe that takes us back to the inclusion question raised in Acts. Hey! Look at that! I linked them all together!
Mind you I would be tempted to talk about the difference between servants and friends. A difference here based on the knowledge of the leader's goals and methods. So which are we?
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| Do we? |
Well I'll kick off as I had a sleepless night so had time to think about the passages. Actually I had linked them pretty much as you had RevGord. I am thinking along the lines though about the simplicity of our faith. We have clogged it up with so much clutter -- ritual, dogma, rules and regulations -- that we forget the basic charge - love one another and obey God's commandments.
ReplyDeleteThe Acts passage is yet another example: they were baptised and the Holy Spirit fell upon them. They didn't have to be a certain age, have a year's lessons (I'm thinking of confirmation classes here), have full understanding of what is happening. It was simple - love and obey, let the Holy Spirit do the work. I guess I'm also thinking in this way as I am introducing admission to communion for the baptised (not confirmed) in our church. It was done years ago but fell away. One of those I will admit to communion is a 3 year old who quite obviously won't understand it and I anticipate some resistance.
Rough and ready at the moment, but that's my train of thought. I look forward to the inspiration of others!
My answer to those who question the 3 year olds (or younger) who take communion is usually - - "You're right. They may not understand what you understand about the sacrament, but they most certainly understand a feeling of exclusion. I'd much rather err on the side of letting them know they are fully included and accepted in the church than on the side of telling them they are on the outside.
Deletesome of my favourite memories of ministry involve small children and communion. one is a boy, 3-4 at the time, and as he knelt at the table and I was serving him bread, his face showed joy and anticipation - he was 'there'.
Deletethe other a 4 year old girl wouldn't leave my side, so she came and 'led' communion with me. she held my hand and followed my actions. the congregation were amazed. this young girl has some developmental delay, and here she was recognising the importance of the moment, and offering ministry to the congregation - something many have commented on.
sometimes I think we confuse awareness and the ability to articulate that awareness or understanding.
Y'all are far more inspiring than I. As a lowly intern, someone questioned admitting children to the table, for exactly what you describe, that they couldn't understand what it meant. I said, without thinking how un-pastoral it would sound, "And do you understand what it really means?" Effective, but not very kind.
DeleteI've given that answer, too, Esperanza, and think in some instances it is perfectly acceptable.
DeleteEsperanza your reply is prophetic which is what we are also called to be. What I've told folk is that with all my experience in the church as both pastor and lay person I still don't understand what communion means yet I find joy in the mystery. Pearl downunder's stories illustrate this quite beautifully.
DeleteSadly I'm not preaching this week but the idea of "friendship" is one that I have written and spoken a lot about. St Aelred of Rievaulx wrote about the spirituality of friendship, including rewriting a portion of John's Letter: "God is friendship. He [sic] that abides in friendship abides in God and God in him" (He was writing in the 12th century). As a relationship that carries some inherent equality Mary Hunt and Joan Chittister and Carter Hayward have written about the potentially radical nature of an ethic of friendship. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell extends that to friendship with our bodies and with the earth. I get excited just thinking about preaching about that Gospel text and the idea of friendship with God. I've got an old blogpost about Aelred and Gospel friendship hereif it might be of interest to you. Will be praying for all of you preparing to preach this week and hoping that our revgals and pals friendships inspire you in your writing!
ReplyDeletePerhaps this has already been used or explored by some, but with all this talk about being friends with God, I keep thinking about how facebook has changed our understanding of what it means to be friends. I wonder if there's a way to use facebook as a metaphor or a positive or negative (maybe both) example of what friendship really is. It seems to me that in this day and age, we can't assume that everyone has the same definition or idea of what friendship is.
DeleteJen
Jen, I've been thinking along similar lines. Facebook has even changed the way we use the word "friend." We use it as a verb now - I friended her on Facebook. We also made up its opposite to use as a verb - she unfriended me. I find that I will sometimes clarify in conversations that I am Facebook friends with someone - either indicating that that is all we are (not real-life friends) or to indicate that it means something more than just real-life friends (we were friends in high school, we found each other again online, now we're Facebook friends).
DeleteI mentioned this book in comments on a previous RevGal blog post (AtM last week), but I am really looking forward to reading the book "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle. There is a great 20-minute TED talk that she gave on the subject earlier this year. You can see it here
Morning, Ya'll. My live Lectionary study has busted up due to difficult schedules so may I join this bunch? I find the individual study not only boring, but rather fruitless.
ReplyDeleteJemma, I think that friendship is the one prevailing element of Christian life that we have forgotten. And since I studied with Carter, I am going to have to go back and find my note from her classes low many years ago. 8>)
I also want to bring out how important the Acts passage is to the history of Christianity. It is what moved Christianity from the realm of an ethnic religion to a world religion. The inclusiveness of baptism rather than the 2 tiered system of Judaism of the 1st and 2nd centuries--circumcised and 'God Fearers' worked but the message of Christ's inclusiveness was what brought so many of the 'God Fearers' to Christianity.
I don't think I am actually preaching, but I do a bible study on the lessons. To be quite frank, I don't think I have ever preached on the Acts reading in 30 years, so I might really dwell on that.
But the Gospel sums it all up.
Jemma, I want to thank you for your comments - they've helped steer me in a different direction than I thought I was headed, and I'm excited about it! I was going to preach the Acts passage, but I'm really captivated by the theme of friendship in the Gospel lection, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about personally lately. It's also a theme I haven't touched on in my preaching in way too long (whereas some of what this Acts passage touches on was already preached this past Sunday when my husband preached Acts).
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, a few days ago, I wasn't "feeling" any of these texts, but after reading the comments here today, I kind of want to preach all of them! - they are so rich. But I'm going with the Gospel.
Btw, here's a fun video that tells the whole story of the Book of Acts in 3 minutes. :)
I've been preaching Acts, along the theme of "Christ is risen! What next?" all through the weeks after Easter, but it's hard to figure how to do this week's after the last one. They aren't very different, unless you want to get into a lot of technicalities about the nuances of the meaning of baptism. Which I suppose is one way to go. I also struggle--well, wait. Really I don't struggle with preaching on Mother's Day. I struggle with mentioning it in a way that keeps me out of trouble with the people who want to hear it and with the people who wish it would go away, acknowledging that at different times in my life I have been both of those people. Jesus is on friendship in the gospel lesson, which is very touching, but how does that stack up with the professionalized, boundaried ministry we are supposed to practice?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I did a great outline of themes for Advent through the end of April, and now that's over and I'm apparently dog-paddling. Note to self: Next time do a whole year.
My stewardship series continues this week with talking about saying thank you. Why do we do it and why, even if we are good at it as individuals, we as church bodies sometimes fall so short. May link with Mother's Day--which has essentially left behind its roots and become all about saying thank-you. Will link with the Gospel because saying thank you is an act of love.
ReplyDeleteAt Children's Time we will give thank you tokens to our children and youth program leaders. During the sermon I will include a time of thanking people for all they have done -- like by naming roles/activities rather than individuals to avoid missing a name.
I'm doing the gospel. It's the opening Sunday of my pulpit supply olympics---12 preaching commitments in 16 weeks (and yes, I would still fill the remaining four if I could)--and Acts just felt like, well I guess it feels like coming into the middle of the story? In any case, I committed to the gospel.
ReplyDeleteI've been puzzling over how to approach it quite a bit and then got an email from a former classmate who informed me that she had used a story from my blog in last week's sermon. I really don't like it when that happens--and have even put a note on the blog saying as much. Annoyed, I read the sermon, and then decided that the lemonaid in the situation is that the story she used could be a good springboard for this week's sermon. So here we go....greater love hath no (wo)man than this....
Ha! I haven't counted mine, but I'll see if I'm matching your Olympic prowess. It's exhausting, but fun. Mine wouldn't all be at different places, some repeats.
Deleteok, I am clearly procrastinating. I'm in the mist of a 14 of 19 Sundays stretch. But this Sunday is off, for some reason. Leaving me at loose ends about where to worship that will not be all Mother's Day all the time.
DeleteOh, and Martha, I refuse to acknowledge mother's or father's day in a sermon. I do make mention in the pastoral prayer--usually acknowledging both those that find it painful and those that find it joyful. Maybe that would work fo ryou?
ReplyDeleteI think the only way I've used it in a sermon is as an excuse to talk about Mother language for God, with the exception of a sermon I preached three years ago using our own Wil Gafney's translation of Proverbs 31 (to show off I learned something on Continuing Ed!). I definitely use the Pastoral Prayer in an attempt to touch all the bases, or alternatively a litany.
DeleteI'm working with a semi-sustainable sermon on John and 1 John. I say "semi" because while I didn't like it so much the first time around, I remember it being received well. I tweaked it up about a year later for a women's conference, and I've been working on it again this week already. It's getting better. I am just not feeling the Easter texts in the lectionary for this year. I remember the same struggle 3 years ago when I put them together into a love series. That was more helpful. I've been doing what Martha just called the dog paddle this whole season, my plan ran out at Lent. It's not a happy swim, so I'm HOPING that by using this sustainable sermon maybe Wednesday and Thursday can be partly dedicated to making a plan through the summer to get me out of this mess.
ReplyDeleteSo, all that said, I'm looking at the command to love. It seems weird to me. Love is usually thought of as a feeling, maybe a gift, but mostly this mushy-gushy, spring up from inside, uncontrollable and certainly uncommandable thing. (How's THAT for a completely made up word?) But still, Jesus commands it, so maybe it's something different. Last week I had a straight up simple sermon stating love is the center of all this - - faith, gospel, mission, church, everything. It's about love. So this week I'll talk about how love is an action. Love isn't just something we feel, but it's commandable, because it's what we are called to do not when we feel like it, but when it's necessary - - Love is justice. Love is peacemaking. Love is God's work in the world.
I very really deal with Mother's or Father's Day beyond a prayer in worship, but I think I might bring in the origin of Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day -- out of love for her family and for humanity, she hoped to unite mothers for the cause of peace.
"Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
"We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
Maybe that's the kind of love that Jesus is commanding - a kind that doesn't come with butterflies in the stomach and rose-colored glasses. Maybe he has to command love, because the kind of love he's talking about is hard to commit to doing.
I don't know if this is the place to post this question or not. I'm a longtime lurker here and appreciate everyone's wisdom. A few years back, maybe 2008, someone here posted a lovely prayer for Mother' Day that was inclusive of everyone. I used it that year and received many positive comments. But I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone remember the prayer? It may have been the Sunday Prayer or posted in the Saturday sermon prep as a link. Thank you! Annie
ReplyDeleteSince I spent a lot of time on the incllusive nature of God's grace and the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, last week, I think I'm going to focus on the inclusive, non-hierarchical nature of friendship as Jesus explains it in the Gospel.It is pretty remarkable that the one who has the power and authority to judge still draws us close in friendship rather than choosing to keep distant...which leads us to his love, so abundant, so constant. Somewhere there's a sermon in there, but it's still pretty embryonic.
ReplyDeleteRe Moother's Day, I will mention it in the Prayers of the People, but it will talk of all manner of motherly love as well as the yearning in the heart of those who cannot be mothers.
Since I spent a lot of time on the incllusive nature of God's grace and the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, last week, I think I'm going to focus on the inclusive, non-hierarchical nature of friendship as Jesus explains it in the Gospel.It is pretty remarkable that the one who has the power and authority to judge still draws us close in friendship rather than choosing to keep distant...which leads us to his love, so abundant, so constant. Somewhere there's a sermon in there, but it's still pretty embryonic.
ReplyDeleteRe Moother's Day, I will mention it in the Prayers of the People, but it will talk of all manner of motherly love as well as the yearning in the heart of those who cannot be mothers.
With the Acts passage about water and the Gospel imagery of "bearing fruit," this gardener's mind went in a pretty obvious direction... you can read the sermon I preached three years ago over here. (I'm going in a slightly different direction this time around, but it was poignant for me to revisit this message in light of a certain denomination's recent exclusionary policy-making... I'm feeling very thankful to be in a Church that does NOT "withhold the water" from anyone!)
ReplyDeleteLast Sunday the discipleship discussion topic was Growing in Worship, and we looked at this week's readings. the theme they came up with is JOY. so I am looking at Joy.
ReplyDeleteMother's Day - raises a some issues for me as well.
here is the litany I posted last year.
I couldn't get that link to work, but I found your litany! Here it is. Love that. Thank you so much for sharing it with us!
DeleteThat litany is beautiful. Please may I use it?
DeletePat and others, you are welcome to use or adapt this to fit your situation. I wrote it while I was at college. fortunately I had a helpful field ed placement, and I was encouraged to think of how I could 'manage' Mothers Day, when it is a time I find difficult.
DeleteMothers Day is a challenge but it's also an opportunity to look at mothering and the mothering nature of God and what happens when the prevailing notions of something either don't apply or are really hurtful. I'm going way out on a limb this Sunday using the alternative Lord's prayer from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer and a hymn about Mother God, Mother Christ and Mother Spirit from "Voices Found".
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that this is the last Sunday I'll be hearing John for a while. That man needed a good editor!
Thanks, Jemma, for the friendship suggestions. I think Sallie McFague also does something with friendship and God.
Thank you RevAlli! I thought I was alone in my exhaustion with John. It's killing me!
DeleteOur lector did a very good job with the reading from 1st John last Sunday, but by the time he finished there was actually a little sigh of relief that all the "love" and "beloved" was done with... Count me in as one who finds it a little too much, at least all in just a few chunks.
DeleteSo, I think what my sustainable sermon needs in the beginning is a good story of someone not choosing who they love. An example of that reality
ReplyDeleteI sort of thought they would be easy to come by today, particularly in light of the NC vote. I don't need to be a story about a homosexual relationship, but I'm not afraid of it being one if that makes sense. I think that sort of real life account, though, would be a good start to where I'm going.
ReplyDeleteHey, Rev Gal Sisters and Brothers, I'm working on an idea and need some help. "Lay down one's life for one's friends" seems like a high--maybe even impossibly high--standard. kind of like "sell all you have and give it to the poor". Can you think of other impossibly high standards the Gospel holds? If so, please reply to this post. I'm imagining setting up a straw-man argument and then leveling it. Could use some help.
ReplyDeleteInviting in all the riff-raff (for so they are presented) to the feast when the first invited won't come. Honestly, who among us would really go to those extremes?
Deletebe holy and I am holy
DeleteMy sermon came first as a blog-post cum meditation cum letter to friends that just evolved. I will post it Sat.
ReplyDelete