It has been a year! I started preaching for you at the end of last summer, just after Labor Day. I finish this year at the beginning of summer, just after the summer solstice. So much has happened, so many lessons learned. Let’s review a little bit of this brief history together. Before we begin though, I must tell you, I was new at preaching when I began. Yet every sermon was a lesson for me from God. It felt that I was to tell you some things along the way, but the main message and the main lessons were for me. So I have to thank YOU and thank God for this journey.
The musical Rent is about a group of young people who go through a year of relationship shifting. My favorite song from it is called “Seasons of Love”, written by Jonathon D. Larson, and the first words are:
Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets In midnights, in cups of coffee In inches, in miles In laughter, in strife In five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes How do you measure a year in the life?
I guess I would measure this year that we had together in worship services. My first time preaching, we were downstairs in the fellowship hall where it would be cooler than in the sanctuary. I had been asked to preach for the rest of 2022, but I wanted to be sure you felt I was a good fit first, so I committed to a month. After the service, Tracey came up to me and said, “We like you! Can you stay through December?” Obviously I said yes.
The second service, our first one that was to be hybrid, and the first in the sanctuary, we were just about ready to begin when all of the power went out, remember? A squirrel had given up his life in the electric chair. We would not be able to do the hybrid service. Also, the congregation was saying we couldn’t do church at all:
There were no lights. I said, let’s lift the curtains and let in God’s light!
There was no projection. I said, move forward so you can see.
The computer won’t work. I said, my laptop at home works for 2 hours without being plugged in.
No matter what the issue, the show could go on! And so it did, and it has continued throughout the year despite various pitfalls.
In today’s scripture, Jesus tells us that we, as his students, are important, but that we cannot expect better treatment than he was given in life. So, we have to live our lives in the best way we know how, knowing that some people may call us Dungface! LOL!
What lessons have we learned this year?
Some of the most profound came from the book, God Got a Dog. We looked at how God is in the everyday man, woman and child, and has emotions like glee, companionship, and pride in God’s work. Although it was a children’s book, I think it is safe to say that all the adults looked forward to each new story, too.
The first Sunday I was with you was the anniversary of 9-11. The scripture included how we must love our enemies. I said, “I try to see people and events as God wants me to, although I fall short often! I find that following the path of Jesus means looking at all people in non-judgement, by remembering that the sun shines and the rain falls on everyone. Following the Way means holding evil and good, as my human eyes see them, holding them both at the same time, and working to find balance.”
The second Sunday I preached, I spoke about lessons I was learning from the women of Uganda. How ironic that the last sermon I gave, last week, was also about Uganda! Anyway, this is what I said: “These women do not have money as their master. They worship daily, and constantly are praising God. They are grateful for every little thing in their lives, and truly believe these things are God Given.”
Along the way we explored some religious terms, like sin and heaven and hell. According to some contemporary religious scholars, sin can be defined as turning away from God. For example, when we exercise our free will, knowing somewhere in our mind that it is not God’s will, we are sinning. That could be very simple and not shameful, such as grabbing a Pop Tart on the way to the office, when turning toward God would be setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier, preparing a nutritious breakfast, saying a blessing, then carefully and mindfully eating it. In other words, sinning is acting in a normal mindless human way. Heaven, then is what is experienced here on earth when we are acting in accordance with God’s will. All that we do brings peace and love into the world. Our life is heavenly because we are not pushing against anything, we are flowing with it. When bad news happens, we deal with it without anxiety or fear. This is Heaven.
The opposite, Hell, also occurs on earth. It is when we are in a state of depression, fear or anxiety, and are pushing against what is. We don’t accept events and are angry. The turmoil that is created inside us is the Hell that we have created, here on earth.
We have meditated and prayed to find the love of Christ in our hearts. We have prayed for many others, including and especially for those who have died this year. Some were congregants of this church, others were friends or relatives. We also prayed for those affected around the world by gun violence, climate change, poverty, illness and more. We have prayed for ourselves and our circumstances. We pray for the future of this church, and we pray for the future of our world.
I saw Cody’s Wish win; he is a thoroughbred named for the young boy with a terminal disease, who was inspired by this colt. His unlikely win plus recent loses in other national news, inspired this: “In the Psalm reading for today, it says the LORD “is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity”. We should not judge what is good or bad, because we cannot know all of the information from all the events past, present and future. So, we can be winners. By just being, and letting God alone judge."
We have gone through high seasons of the year, including Advent leading up to Christmas and Easter. During Advent we looked at hope, peace, love and angels. Christmas Eve, surrounded by candles, we considered going from darkness of the womb into light. This was part of that sermon: “Jesus the Christ is many times referred to as the Light. He himself declared “I am the Light of the world”. By reading and doing our best to understand his words and how they relate to our lives, our pathway forward along our spiritual path is lit by the example of his life. His teachings show us the way; the way out of darkness, the way out of fear, the way into light, love and acceptance, the way of forgiveness, the way to be reborn.”
Once in January we each shared our favorite place on earth, and almost everyone said it was near a body of water. We thought of how much we cared for this place, and our home, Mother Earth. We vowed to take care of her, and made a promise to reduce, reuse or recycle. Hopefully many of us made a lifelong change at that time.
We then looked at wisdom, and how we could apply our wisdom to saving the planet. “So, what is wisdom? Perhaps it is matching our will and our behavior to God’s will. Perhaps it is living a life that is mostly free from guilt. Perhaps it is doing what we can to ensure the best future we can provide, even if it is only based on what one person can do. Perhaps it is seeking solutions, and finding them in our heart, instead of out there somewhere outside ourselves.” Hmmm, something to think about.
We looked at the beatitudes from the sermon on the Mount, considered Jesus’s most important sermon. “The message, then, is that we are blessed when we are suffering, because then we are open to God, God’s Light, God’s Love. When we are comfortable and happy, we don’t need God, and easily forget. Forgetting God has a term – sin. Usually, we suffer in some way, and then repent – which means think about God or rely on God’s love to get us through, and then we are comforted once again.
“It is a cycle. A never-ending cycle at that. Suffer, return to God for comfort, be comforted. Suffer again, turn to God, receive comfort. Again and again.”
When discussing how to be a light in the world, I said, “One thing cannot exist without the opposite. There is no darkness without light. And no light without darkness. They simply cannot be. You cannot know happiness without sadness. Or joy without suffering. Also, notice this: you cannot know suffering without joy! And you cannot know sadness unless you also have experienced its opposite, happiness!”
In February we looked at what is “church”. My answer: “We are a church. Our mission is to act out God’s word in the world. The church is necessary. Often, there is nowhere else to turn. The church is the hands and feet of God, just as we are.”
We looked at the temptation of Jesus by the devil. “As I look deeply into this problem in our society, I see that we as the majority of working people in the United States, need to help ourselves and our neighbors, by naming this addiction to the false God of greed and selfishness that pervades corporate and governmental thinking. We may need to cut back on our hours given to “The Man”, and instead, give to our neighbor and the earth. We need to turn our back on the devil and return to God.”
We looked at addiction. “If we can admit that we are not perfect, that something is controlling us, and when we can open our eyes and our minds enough to see it and admit it, then there is a death – of our old self, of the addiction. A new life is then available to us. Being in recovery is also salvation, and also enlightenment, according to Richard Rohr, the modern Franciscan Friar. And according to Jesus, of course. He always spoke of opening our eyes and ears to the Truth and the Love of God. And to give up our addiction to rules and knowledge of what we think is right and wrong.”
When exploring addiction, we also meditated and listened to poetry and scripture to find God’s peace and love within. “This, my dear friends, is sanity. This is peace. This is what we were created for, in my humble opinion: to find God. Not only on Sundays, not only in church, not out there somewhere, but in here, in our own hearts. We can use breath to find God. We can listen to scriptures and poems to find God. All we need to do is to Let Go and Let God.”
We looked at our will versus God’s will. “And yet, to go to God, to ask for help, to face these things and look them in the eye is to walk the Way with Jesus. It is having the courage to walk through the fire with help. To surrender rather than hold it all in. To cry and moan and feel the despair, then to shed some of that hurt. To be cleansed and baptized by the tears and grieving. Then to turn back to the everyday life with the memory of God’s love holding fast during that time. To build resilience, so that the next time it happens, because it will, it won’t hurt so much. This is the spiritual journey. A journey of faith, of love, and surrender to God’s Will.”
Easter Sunday I described my path of understanding who I believed Jesus was and is. “I went through a metamorphosis of my own, first from not believing Jesus existed, to believing he was a teacher or prophet, to being able to look at his life and death as a metaphor to learn about my own living, to finally, believing that he is God incarnate, miracles and all. His life and his death and his resurrection, all are miracles to me. They hold love, peace, and especially hope. Will the real Jesus please stand up? Which is real? Whichever you believe in, is the truth for you. You do not have to believe in the same Jesus that I do.”
We meditated on time and scripture about the future in Heaven, and the future is now. “Heaven does not have to be pearly gates. Heaven does not have to be angels flying around singing on clouds. Your favorite place is what brings you closer to God, and you can come here by using your breath and your imagination. You become whole when you engage your body, your mind and your soul. It is in the present moment that you can be with God, with God’s love. So, as the scripture said, the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole. So, when does it all happen? Now. Let go of regret about the past, since it is past and there is nothing you can do about it. Let go of worrying about the future, since worry does nothing constructive and is only destructive to your body. Should you desire, you can practice this meditation any time. ANY “time”.
In response to the many incidences of gun violence, we turned to scripture for advice. The conclusion was that “Once we relax, once we feel peace and love again, we give thanks. It is through remembering who we truly are, as children of God, that we are then grateful. We can then complete our promises to God – of living a life of service, as God’s hands and feet.”
One Sunday, we looked at scripture including the story of The Good Samaritan. “Who is the neighbor? The neighbor is anyone. The neighbor is everyone! And when Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, he is saying that you MUST love yourself. The foundation of loving all of humanity is loving God with every bit of your life – your heart, your soul or spirit, your body or strength and with all your mind. Every minute of every day. So then, in the passage we read that Sunday, we can begin to see what this life would look like, where we actually live the life that God has asked us to live and to live the life that is imagined as a new world, based on God’s Will and God’s Love.”
So many lessons over the year: heaven is created when we match our will to God’s will. We are God’s hands and feet. We are all one. The love of God is inside of us, not out there. We are responsible for our own happiness. Peace can be found through meditation, prayer, and sacred readings. Jesus is the Christ and the love of God, made for us, to teach us about suffering and surrendering, and obtaining hope, peace and love.
One last lesson. Today’s scripture said, “Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now. Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in God’s hands.” So, here goes…
In the beliefs of this church, we understand that we are an eternal soul. We saw how we are made of energy, and Einstein told us that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So, the energy of Love that we are, and the energy of Love that created us, is all the same thing, and exists forever. We are all children of God. Now, when we speak of ourselves, we usually mean our body, or this one human life. So what are we, really? Eternal soul, or mortal human life?
What if, when this one life is over, and our body dies, our real self, the eternal soul, returns to the realm of God? And all that we are now gets deposited into the knowledge of the Universe? What if angels and spirit guides and God are visible once we let go of the limitations of the body? These are inquiries for later, something I am leaving you with to ponder on your own.
The song, Seasons of Love from Rent, reminds me that we are now entering the season of summer. This verse is how I want to end this year with you, my friends:
In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
or the way that she died
It's time now, to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let's celebrate, remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the lessons, my friends. Amen.
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