Luke 13:20, 21
 
            I imagine this was a week filled with bread making and baking for a few of you.  At the very least, I suspect many of us ate bread at our Thanksgiving meal.  Pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, cranberry bread, rolls of all different kinds.  I ate just enough bread at Thanksgiving that I was tempted to tuck this morning’s parable away in the back of my mind and not look at it again until next Thanksgiving rolls around. 
 
            Nevertheless, I stuck with this story because it feels to me like it fits on this Sunday after Thanksgiving and before the start of Advent.  Plus after hearing this morning’s story, I think we can draw some seasonally appropriate connections between baking bread and creating the kingdom of God. 
 
            One thing we can say for sure about today’s parable, especially after reading it, is that it’s short.  But let us not make the mistake of equating brevity with simplicity.  Because the parable of the Yeast or the parable of the Leaven, as it’s sometimes known, is among Jesus’s storytelling triumphs.  It’s mysterious, complex, insightful, and wonderful.  In the end, it is both short and sweet.
 
            Before we go further, let’s try and sort out what’s going on in the parable and then we can move on and explore what Jesus is trying to tell us.  We start by making note of the fact that the woman who bakes the bread in this narrative is the surrogate for God.  The woman represents a divine figure and her baking work is meant to be seen as God’s divine activity.  But in order to truly understand the parable, we have to appreciate the magnitude of the task the woman is performing. 
 
            In two short verses, the story indicates that the woman mixed yeast with three measures of flour to bake bread.  Three entire measures of flour.  Which would have been the ancient equivalent of one bushel of flour.  Or in modern terms, sixteen five pound bags of flour. 
 
            By the time the bakerwoman finished mixing and stirring and kneading all the ingredients together, she would have had just over a hundred pounds of bread dough sitting in front of her.  Not to mention a serious backache.  What we’re talking about in this story is a professional baker…a woman who makes a staggering amount of bread.  Perhaps as much bread as all of us in this sanctuary combined made in preparation for Thanksgiving.
 
            Still, the symbolism in the story doesn’t end with the bakerwoman.  The lump or the pile of dough the woman creates represents the world.  There is nothing special about it, at least by what we’re told.  The parable doesn’t talk about fancy flour or special ingredients or any specific instructions that might be required to make the bread.  What we have is basic, sticky, unbaked bread dough.  And there is an awful lot of it, meaning it’s not easy to handle or to get a handle on. 
 
Sort of the way things going on in our world are hard to handle and it’s sometimes hard to get a handle on what we have to deal with in our daily lives. 
 
In any case, the yeast in the parable represents the kingdom or the realm of God.  But we misinterpret the story if we assume that the yeast and the dough are two separate entities.  The story tells us that the realm of God is like the yeast incorporated into the dough or hidden in the dough. 
 
As anyone knows who has baked bread, there is no way to separate the yeast from the dough and still make bread.  The yeast works inside the dough to create bread.  Even if it’s theoretically possible to create the dough and then add the yeast at the end, I can’t think of anyone who chooses to do it that way.  The only plausible reason you would add yeast at the end of the baking process would be if you made a mistake and forgot to add the yeast in the first place.  And trust me, Jesus was not in the habit of telling parables about mistakes. 
 
So when we go back to the beginning of the parable we have a bakerwoman with one hundred and twenty-eight cups of flour in front of her.  To that huge quantity of flour she added the yeast, which she dissolved in water, along with any other ingredients the bread might have required.  Then the bakerwoman kneaded the bread until the yeast activated.  She waited for the dough to rise.  And finally she baked the bread. 
 
From a practical perspective, there’s nothing unusual about the procedure the bakerwoman followed.  But Jesus was interested in conveying a deeper message; God created the world like a lump of dough.  And when God created the world, God mixed the realm of God into the world.  There has never, ever been a time when God’s realm hasn’t been in the world.  What’s more, God’s realm cannot ever be separated from the world. 
 
Therefore, the realm of God is part of the world…it’s incorporated in the world.  The only thing is the realm of God is buried in the world somewhere.  It’s hidden from us.  And your job and my job is to knead the world and fold the world and pound the world down and work with the world until the realm of God becomes active.  Until the realm of God expands like yeast expanding inside the dough.  Until the realm of God rises up and emerges from the dough, transforming the sticky, unbaked lump into a wonderful, bread sized, bread shaped loaf ready to bake. 
 
If we understand the parable of the Leaven in practical terms.  And we have an understanding of what Jesus meant when he told the parable to his followers.  Then the only thing left to do is explore what the parable might mean for us at Wapping Community Church. 
 
To that end, I offer two interpretations.  To begin with, if the realm of God is hidden right here in this world, then it stands to reason the realm of God has to be hidden right here in Wapping Community Church as well.  And that surely sounds right to me.  Wapping Community Church is full of yeast…the kind of holy yeast that seems to me to bear uncanny resemblance to the realm of God.
 
Look, for example at the incredible generosity of this congregation during this holiday season alone.  The undergarments we dedicated along with our weekly offerings last Sunday.  Ken Johnson took four barrels full to the Manchester Area Conference of Churches on Monday.  The tags we are taking from trees in the Community Room to provide gifts and a measure of Christmas joy to children in need identified by Covenant to Care and shut-ins from this congregation who are unable to make it worship on a weekly basis.  The scarves we are collecting for our sisters and brothers at Foodshare.  All the gifts we give to our sisters and brothers during this Thanksgiving and Christmas season are holy yeast, signs of the realm of God unfolding in our midst. 
 
Think about all the people volunteering their time and serving in myriad ways during this holiday season here at the church.  All the people who watch babies and toddlers in the nursery and teach children in Church School during pageant season and advise junior and senior high youth as they get ready to go caroling to shut-ins.   The people who walked through the driving rain at the recent CROP walk over in Manchester, raising thousands of dollars for people who struggle to find enough food to eat on a daily basis.  Consider the people who make beautiful Christmas music through the choir, the people who make our church grounds beautiful as we move into cold and wintry days, and the people in the Sacred Dance group who will create beautiful movement in Christmas Eve.  The people who serve on boards and committees, making sure their holiday ministries happen joyously and effectively.  The people who usher and host Coffee Hours and work behind the scenes to create Advent Fairs and Craft Fairs and Cookie Strolls.  The people who continue to make phone calls and offer prayers and visits so that church members and friends feel supported and cared for as Christmas nears.   
 
All the ways people at Wapping Community Church are using their God given gifts and talents to serve one another and this community and brothers and sisters outside our church walls.  They are holy yeast...signs of the realm of God unfolding in our midst.    
 
And the more we work at that holy yeast.  The more we reach out to people in our congregation and our community and our state and our world, the more the yeast will activate.  The more this church will grow and expand.  And the more we’ll knead ourselves into a loaf of God’s realm right here in South Windsor, Connecticut. 
 
But the other fantastic thing about holy yeast is this…and it brings me to my second point.  The amazing thing about holy yeast is that God is working on the yeast even harder than we are.  So hard in fact that it doesn’t matter if we occasionally get bogged down in church details or caught up in church politics.  It doesn’t matter whether we get impatient or frustrated or discouraged once in a while.
 
It doesn’t matter because God created the world and this church with plenty of holy yeast in it for a reason.  God isn’t about to let God’s realm stay hidden and buried in the dough.  God’s going to keep kneading the world and shaping and working this church until God activates the realm of God among us.  And on that day when the dough rises and the realm of God breaks forth in the form of a loaf of bread, we will have God to thank first.  For God is the supreme baker.
 
Look around then and give thanks for the holy yeast among us.  And if we keep on kneading and working and praying and giving and witnessing and telling our story and reaching out together, we’ll have bread to stagger the imagination.  Bread enough for each of us to taste and see God’s realm in all its goodness.  Amen.

Interfaith Thanksgiving Service—Temple Beth Hillel
 
Psalm 128
 
            So much of what is written in Scripture is a celebration of God’s abundance.  It’s a theme that goes all the back to the beginning of Genesis where God blesses the world into being with God’s generosity.  With each act of creation, the divine refrain echoes, “It is good.”  And we can hear God saying, “be fruitful and multiply.” 
 
            Many of the Psalms, including the one I read a moment ago, survey the creation God made creation and catalogue God’s abundance in loving detail.  Always with an added measure of joyful thanksgiving.
 
            Throughout the Biblical narrative, human beings always have enough.  In fact, you and I have more than enough.  We may not always be aware of what we have.  Yet were any of us to add them up, the sheer number of blessings in our lives would keep us from getting very far in our counting. 
 
Unfortunately, the narrative you and I are tempted to live by, at least in this country, is a different story altogether.  It’s a story based on scarcity where it doesn’t matter how much any of us actually have.  Namely because in the end, there is never enough.  It’s a narrative that constantly encourages us to define what is sufficient as “something more than I have right at this moment.” 
 
            Does the narrative of “not enough” sound as familiar to you as it does to me?  I don’t want to gloss over the reality that we live in a land where there is not enough for too many of God’s people.   And part of our task in this season of Thanksgiving and throughout the year is to share what we have on an individual level and simultaneously work for justice on a systemic level so that all God’s people have what they need to live full and abundant lives. 
 
            At the same time, we do ourselves and our nation a disservice if we buy into the scarcity narrative.  Especially in light of the fact that we continue to live in one of the most prosperous countries in the history of the world. 
 
In a society where human beings think they don’t have enough, no one ever feels satisfied.  We start to believe that the blessings we need in order to live a good life are not only finite but somehow shrinking and we have to compete against those around us to gain what is ours.  As a result, instead of stopping to give thanks for what we have, we yearn for that which we can never attain.  And we doom ourselves to frustration and a sense of vulnerability and fear and failure. 
 
Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is one day in the year when we do well to look at this country and its people through the eyes of God.  Instead of listing what we don’t have, many of us take time on Thanksgiving Day to name what we do have.  Instead of complaining about what we perceive to be unfair or some kind of conspiracy where the deck is stacked against us, Thanksgiving reminds us there is something larger and deeper and more valuable at stake.  The love of family.  The companionship of good friends.  The fellowship of a good meal.  The powerful unity we feel when people come together around a table to laugh and dream and cry and remember and express gratitude…
 
I circled back this past week to a children’s book that I haven’t read for years.  It’s called Thanksgiving at the Tappletons’.  Have any of you ever read it?
 
The Tappletons are a family of wolves who gather for a traditional Thanksgiving feast and each member of the family is assigned responsibility for some part of the family meal. 
 
It’s a great plan, but each member of the Tappleton family has a major mishap that keeps them from fulfilling their responsibility.  Mrs. Tappleton, who carries a whole turkey in her arms, opens the door to her house to greet the mailman and watches the turkey slip from her grasp, down the icy walkway and into a nearby pond.  Glub, glub.
 
Mr. Tappleton goes to the bakery to buy pies for the meal but the bakery is all sold out so he asks the woman behind the counter to tie up two empty pie shaped boxes so it would look like he fulfilled his assignment.  And to top it off. Jenny’s mashed potatoes go flying out of the bowl and around the kitchen when she turns the mixer on too high a speed. 
 
So the Tappleton family sits down for their Thanksgiving meal and there’s nothing on the table.  No one can find the turkey because the turkey is in the bottom of the pond.  When he realizes what happened to the main course, Uncle Fritz’s stomach growls because he’s so hungry.  Next, the family hears about the mashed potatoes strewn all over the walls so they can’t be eaten.   And Uncle Fritz’s stomach growls some more. 
 
At this point, the family decides to skip the meal and go right to dessert, but the pie boxes are empty and Uncle Fritz is beside himself with hunger.  Whereupon little Kenny sighs and chimes in sadly.  “There’s nothing to say a prayer for.” 
 
“Nonsense,” responds Grandmother Tappleton, “there’s always something to say a prayer for.”  And here is her prayer.
 
“Turkeys come and turkeys go
And trimmings can be lost, we know.
But we’re together; that’s what matters
Not what’s served upon the platters.”
 
When the prayer is over, the Tappleton family opens the cupboard and pulls out liverwurst for sandwiches, pickles and canned applesauce.  Even more, they feast on the bounty of family and laughter and life itself.  It is a most amazing banquet… 
 
Whether you have turkey and pumpkin pie and all the trimmings on Thursday.  Or liverwurst sandwiches and pickles and applesauce.  Or whatever meal is part of your Thanksgiving tradition. I hope all of you will also feast on the bounty of family and friends and laughter and life itself. 
 
And remember two things.  In God’s world, there is enough.  And just like Grandmother Tappleton said, “There’s always something to say a prayer for.”  Amen.           
 
                 
  
   

Exodus 3:1-14
 
            As the story goes, when Handel finished composing “The Hallelujah Chorus,” he fell to his knees, beside himself and overwhelmed because he had seen God.  And the way Handel described it, the beauty, the power, and the majesty of God was extraordinary. 
 
            Centuries later, noted author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told the story in one of his books about watching a young boy his own age, around ten years old, being hanged by Nazi soldiers.  As the boy writhed in agony, one of the witnesses asked another, “Where is God?”  The response was silence.  Again, the witness asked, “Where is God?”  Still no response.  When the boy finally took his last breath, the witness asked a third time, “Where is God?”  And this time a fellow prisoner answered.  “God is there—hanging on the gallows.” 
 
            A God of power and beauty and majesty.  And a God who hangs on the gallows utterly helpless and lifeless.  There is a vast space between these two nearly contradictory images of God.  So who is our God, then?  Who is this God we follow, this God we serve, this God we worship?   
 
            In the beginning, the Bible declares that people were created as sons and daughters of God in God’s own image.  When life first took shape, human beings were formed as reflections of God’s possibility and God called us good.  Very, very good. 
 
            Why did God create human beings?  Was it because God was lonely and God wanted companions?  Was it because God needed human beings to help God grow and become God in all God’s fullness?  Was it because it’s simply in God’s nature to create?  Was it because God yearned to experience life so much that God decided to share life in us and through us? 
 
            Maybe one of those notions is most true.  Or maybe they are all true to some extent.  But way back in the beginning God created us in God’s own being so that we might move with God and be in God and feel loved by God, right here amid the pain and the wonder of the world God made. 
 
            From that creation moment on, human beings have been asking the question I’m asking in this sermon.  Who is our God?  Long before Jesus came into the world to embody God and live out God’s mission and give us a window into God’s identity, God was busy immersing Godself in human affairs.  And human beings, going back to the earliest stories in Scripture, have been trying to discover more about God all the way along…
 
            Moses was one of those people trying to know God.  As a leader of God’s people, Moses spoke to God through a burning bush in this morning’s Scripture lesson and asked God who God was.  So that Moses could be clear about God and report back to the people of Israel.
 
            If nothing else, Moses just wanted to know God’s name.  A small, but really important, clue to God’s identity. If Moses could only figure out what to call God then he and the people of Israel would at least know a little bit about what to expect from God. 
 
            Well, God responded.  But not with a long list of credentials.  And not with a speech indicating God’s power or transcendence.  In fact, to claim that God offered any sort of clarity would be a stretch.  Instead, God answered Moses with five simple words.  “I am who I am.” 
 
            Not much by way of transparency.  A more evasive, enigmatic reply from God would be hard to imagine.  It’s the sort of reply that would get a student in trouble if he or she was asked by a teacher.  “Who are you?”  “I am who I am.”  Smart aleck. 
 
            It’s the kind of response that wouldn’t go over too well with an employer in a job interview or a counselor in a private session or a judge in a courtroom.  To call the answer defiant would be charitable.  To call it rude would be more accurate.  Out in the wilderness, in the middle of a burning bush, Moses asked God to fill in the blank.  And God offered Moses a riddle in return. 
 
            I am who I am.  The only thing I can think of is that God was trying to make a point to Moses.  Frustrating as it might sound in today’s Scripture lesson, God refused to be pinned down and put in a box.  God was and is evasive and elusive.
 
            Our God is the kind of God who hung with a ten year old boy on the gallows.  And the kind of God who overwhelmed Handel with majestic splendor.  Our God will be battered and harassed and violated.  And our God will judge with righteousness those who batter, discriminate, violate and harbor prejudice. 
 
            God will experience the wonder of giving birth.  And God will have a mastectomy.  God will be disabled.  And God will complete a triathlon.  God will win and God will lose.  God will be down and out, suffering and dying.  And God will burst free and spring to life.  God will be who God will be. 
 
            The second we think we have God figured out, God surprises us.  While we are busy searching for God in the fire and the earthquake, God appears in the silence.  And while we are meditating quietly by a pond near our house, God shouts words of protest out in the street.  Just when we think we have God pegged, God calls us forth into some unknown place. 
 
            All of which presents a challenge.  It’s hard to follow a God who is an enigma.  A God who is mysterious and puzzling and sometimes bewildering.  When God says, “I am who I am,” it’s tempting to shake our heads and say “whatever’ and walk away. 
 
            Then again, if we hang in there with the mystery, God may push us towards greater growth and deeper faith.  If we always imagine God as light, God moves us towards the God who comes to us in darkness.  If we avoid change, we might miss God’s invitation to pursue an unknown possibility. 
 
            If we see God only in our own colors and shapes and styles and ways of life, we blind ourselves to God’s presence in people of different colors and shapes and styles and ways of life.  If we look for God only in the magnificent and the extraordinary, we overlook God in the unremarkable places in our lives.
 
If we constantly run from death in an effort to hold onto life, we miss out on God’s blessings promised to us when we age and learn to let go.  If we only seek God in sacred places and religious traditions, we avoid seeking God in the secular worlds of home and work and office and classroom and community. 
 
            In the meantime, we return to the original question.  Who is this God whom we know through the story of the burning bush as “I am who I am?” And what about you and me, made in God’s image and reflections of God’s being?  What does it mean for us to say, “we are who we are?”
 
            For any one of us to be a godly person, I want to lift up four qualities that lead us close to the heart of who God is.  First, we need to be people of wisdom.  The wise person, like God, knows that there is more to life than our own microcosm.  A wise person looks out and around and sees a world full of beauty and a world full of terror and can live in the tension between the two.  Moreover, a wise person works for the good of the whole and not simply for the narrow, self-defined good. 
 
            Second, we need to be people of passion.  If wisdom allows us to see the scope of God, passion enables us to see the depth of God.  People who live with passion are people who dive in, immersing themselves in life.  Passion is what allows us to find our energy, our courage, and our motivation for living fully.  And passion is what moves us beyond the false contradictions we construct in order to realize that God, for example, is present in the kitchen, the classroom, the hospital, the prison, and the church sanctuary.  
 
            Third, we need to be people of justice.  A person who is aware of their birthright and responsibility to be God’s instrument in the world cannot sit idly and silently by.  We are compelled instead to stand up and be accountable.  To do everything we can to build and then nurture a climate in which all people can be who they are.
 
            Finally, we need to be people of prayer.  Prayer opens us up to the power and the presence of God.  Without prayer, wisdom becomes nothing more than “intellectualizing” or trying to comprehend God in our minds without ever drawing nearer to God in our hearts.  Without prayer, passion becomes nothing more than restless activity or trying to do something simply for the sake of doing it without being grounded in God.  Without prayer, justice is doomed to disillusionment because prayer allows us to see beyond what our eyes can see. 
 
Without prayer we get stuck in the frustration and the rage injustice produces.  And with prayer, we know because we hear from God that something is going on.  Something new is stirring and moving and coming to life even if we can’t see it with our own eyes. 
 
            Wisdom, passion, justice, prayer.  As we practice each of them, even in a world full of contradictions, you and I come closer to the godly people we are.  And when you and I know better who we are we also know better the God who sometimes feels like an enigma.  Amen.         

Ezekiel 36:26                                                  
I’d like to begin today with a poem from the book: Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows. Meister Eckhart was a mystic, a priest , a theologian, a friar in a monastic community who lived in the14th century. He wrote during a chaotic time when his fellow friars were hunting heretics for The Inquisition. It was a time when original thinking and daring theology were unacceptable. Somehow Meister Eckhart survived these times, although he was close to being called a heretic for thinking outside the box and lucky for us his writing survived. He didn’t write poetry per se but his prose and manner of expression are poetic at the core, at least that’s what these authors thought and so they take the essence of his writing and turn it into poetry.
 
So I purchased this book a few weeks ago and have pretty much been reading the same poem found on page 3….I guess you can say I’m meditating on it…or it has become my prayer perhaps, but I’d like to share it with you today…it is also printed in your bulletin should you want to use it in your prayer time in the weeks to come.
 
Opening the Heart’s Door
 
Ours is not the work
of seeking You here
or there where we
 
think you might be,
but of opening
the heart’s door,
 
and when we do this
You cannot resist
coming in, since
 
our opening and Your
entering are one: You
knock and wait, and
 
when we open we
find that You were
There all along and
 
Will not leave us.
 
First of all, as an amateur visual artist I immediately got a picture in my mind of “the heart’s door” You can just see that right? A door to the heart and maybe its swung wide open or maybe it’s tightly shut and locked…perhaps somewhere in between.
 
In my spiritual direction training the question “what is the state of your heart?” was a question often used to begin our gatherings. We’ll explore that later in this sermon.
 
The late Marcus Borg professor, theologian and author writes about the heart in his book “The Heart of Christianity” He says:
 
“The word “heart” appears well over a thousand times in the Bible. Most often, it is a comprehensive metaphor for the self. It covers much more than does the metaphorical meaning of “heart” in contemporary English. In our usage, the heart is most commonly associated with “love”, as in Valentine hearts; courage as in brave hearts and grief as in broken hearts. But in the Bible, the heart includes these and more: it is a metaphor for the inner self as a whole. “
 
Some of the scripture he quoted includes the one I use today….A new heart I will give you and  a new spirit I will put within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
 
Others include passages from the psalms….create in me a new heart (psalm 51), Search me, Oh God, and know my heart (psalm 139) and then from 2 Corinthians  “The God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts.”
 
I won’t go on, the point is there are many….the heart is important in the Bible.
 
SO, Borg goes on the talk about the human condition (some would call it sin) and how do we free ourselves. Closed hearts would be the condition that separates us from God and open hearts bring us in union with God and transform us. The poem I began with says that right? It says our opening and God’s entering are one…and that God is there always it’s we who close the door!
 
Borg asks the question, What is it like to have a closed heart? He’s asking in a sense what are the symptoms of this condition. He names things like blindness and limited vision, he says it affects the mind causing us to be self-interested for one, he says a closed heart lacks gratitude, is insensitive to wonder and awe, a closed heart forgets God and loses track of the mystery always around us, A closed heart lacks compassion is insensitive to justice and that’s just to name a few…it’s a serious condition really. And each of us would have our own list of how closing our hearts affects our well being…affects our faith…and shuts God out.
 
Ezekiel uses the image of a heart of stone. It’s a good image I think, we can imagine the hardness….I mean imagine if your heart actually turned to stone…first it would be so heavy in your body and well it couldn’t sustain life could it? So, God wants to give a heart of flesh so we can live into the fullness of our humanity and our hearts can be broken open and contain and spill out love, compassion, peace and justice…in other words,  we can be the people God creates us to be.
 
Yet, all of us, everyday…sometimes multiple times in a day closes our hearts….harden our hearts…it’s our human condition. I think the first step is awareness….knowing when your heart is closed so that you can open the door and make room for God.
 
So, let’s take a minute here to examine our hearts and step away from the sermon for a guided meditation…. Begin by closing your eyes if you’re comfortable if not just bring your gaze down….don’t try to force anything to happen and if nothing happens that’s fine no judgment….take a few deep breaths….breathe into your heart center… and begin to notice what is the state of your heart? Is the door open….shut tight? Is your heart heavy or light? Sad? Content?
 
What do you think are the things that close your heart?  Now imagine that the door of your heart is closed. What does that feel like?(pause) Then begin to open the door ever so slowly and imagine that God now enters the space that was closed…what does that feel like? How do you imagine living with this open heart? What might you do differently?
 
 Stay for just a minute with this presence of God filling your heart space,  maybe healing the broken places…..and then, when you are ready come back to this space…this holy place….and gently open your eyes.
 
The way to opening our hearts is to put ourselves in places where we know we feel God’s presence….maybe it’s during worship…could be a hymn sung, a prayer spoken, a sermon preached, maybe it’s during a walk in nature or looking out your window, or maybe it’s time in prayer and meditation…whatever it is go there often. It makes room for God.
 
The world feels like a pretty harsh place these days. Violence is all too common. Disagreements are mean-spirited and far from civil, people are firmly planted in their camps sure they are right about everything….we’ve closed our hearts…it is affecting our vision, our minds are closed…we can’t seem to come together. It’s overwhelming, so I think, the place to begin is with your own heart…what is the state of your heart? Let’s keep that question at the forefront of our minds and hearts…Let’s keep examining our hearts everyday and see if  we can’t swing the door open wide and imagine what God might do in and through us.
 
Let me end as I began with the poem:
 
Opening the Heart’s Door
 
Ours is not the work
of seeking You here
or there where we
 
think you might be,
but of opening
the heart’s door,
 
and when we do this
You cannot resist
coming in, since
 
our opening and Your
entering are one: You
knock and wait, and
 
when we open we
find that You were
There all along and
 
Will not leave us.

​“Expanding the Table”
November 5, 2017
 
Galatians 3:23-29
 
             Two weekends ago, Rev. John Pavlovitz, noted author of the blog, “Stuff That Needs to be Said,” spent a weekend with our brothers and sisters down at First Congregational Church in Guilford, Connecticut.  And here is some of what John Pavlovitz wrote on his blog page after spending three days with our sister church.
 
            The article was titled, “Why You May Want to Try Church Again…”
 
            “This weekend I was invited by a Connecticut church to host several conversations on faith, politics, and the bigger table over the course of three days. 
 
            Because of the disparate audience the blog has found, many people who showed up on Saturday morning would never otherwise walk into a church.  Some hadn’t been to a house of worship outside of the odd wedding here or there, while others had been estranged for years or even decades from their former faith community.  Many came with more than a bit of trepidation.
 
            But something amazing happened after the first gathering concluded: many of these reluctant prodigals stayed; returning the next day for services and remaining for coffee afterward.  They hung out for our afternoon conversation, made plans to have dinner with strangers, and talked about coming back on another Sunday. 
 
            I spend a lot of time with people who’ve given up on the Church, and who’ve done so for good reason.  They have experienced discrimination and ostracism in local faith communities, been pushed to the periphery because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, for the color of their skin or their theological deviations.  They might have endured emotional or perhaps even physical violation.  Maybe they’ve simply reached the final straw from a politicized, weaponized religion that seems to nurture inequality and bigotry…
 
            But today, in the wake of my time with new friends I want to say something different.  I want you to consider another option.  I want to suggest that you may want to go back to church—and here’s why.
 
            All faith communities are not created equal or identical…and there is beauty happening everywhere.
 
            Chances are, even in a community where basic theological tenets are seemingly diametrically opposite your religious convictions, there will still be people who are less rigid, more open, and willing to learn; those committed to hearing other’s stories and serving people in need and transforming their communities and being a source of goodness in the world.  You might find affinity despite your surface differences.  You might cross paths with someone in whom you find a surprising kindred spirit—and you might alter one another’s stories, and the world as you do…
 
            There are faith communities where LGBTQ men and women are fully celebrated, where women are valued as leaders, where divides of race and economics are reached across, where theological deviations are warmly welcomed, where hospitality is offered to all. 
 
            Yes, you may want to keep staying away from the Church—or you may want to try one more time.  It might be the day you find yourself home again, or for the first time.”
 
            If you read more of John Pavlovitz’s blog posts or if you have a chance to pick up a copy of his new book, which I started reading recently, A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community, you may not agree with everything Pavlovitz writes.  Chances are also good, however, that you will find what Pavlovitz writes provocative.  As I read his material, I find what Pavlovitz says both inspirational and aspirational. 
 
            On this day in the church year when we dedicate our financial pledges for the upcoming church year, it seems appropriate that we also celebrate communion together.  Through the commitments we make this morning towards our common good and through the bread and cup we share, the theme of this morning is all about expanding the table. 
 
Today is all about breaking down the walls that divide us.  Reaching out to one another and welcoming one another with open arms and genuine, heartfelt hospitality.  Calling those who are strangers and those who have been estranged to share together the feast of Jesus Christ.  Engaging one another in conversation and in singing, in sacrament and in remembering.  All in the name of a Savior who reminds us we are children of God through faith.
 
When we set foot in the building this morning or share the communion elements or come forward with our pledge cards near the end of this worship service, we don’t do those things in order to earn acceptance.  Acceptance is a given.  You and I are bearers of God’s image and beloved just as we are without alteration.  In Christ’s church, in this church, there is no inside and outside. 
 
Can you and I take time this morning, then, to see God through the lens of one who is beloved, rather than one who is beloved with strings attached?  Can we imagine this morning not as a test in which we try to understand God, but rather as an opportunity to notice God?  Can we seek Jesus this morning not because we are trying to escape judgement and punishment but rather to try and discern the best way to live in the world? 
 
The Christian faith is not about running from something horrible but rather running towards something extraordinarily beautiful.  And you and I are never enemies of God.  You and I are created in God’s image and made of the same stuff God is made of… 
 
Of course, it’s not quite enough to believe in expanding the table.  We actually have to build a bigger table.  For in the end, building and expanding is what Dedication Sunday and Communion Sunday are all about.  Not just imagining a table big enough at Wapping Community Church to seat and accommodate all God’s people.  But rolling our sleeves up and doing the hard work necessary to make it happen.
 
A little over a year ago on October 21st, 2016, John Pavlovitz wrote another post for his blog, “Stuff That Needs to be Said.”  And the title of that article was, “The Kind of Christian I Refuse to Be.” 
 
 “For too many people,” Pavlovitz claims, “being a Christian no longer means you need to be humble or forgiving.  It no longer means you need a heart to serve or bring healing.  It no longer requires compassion or mercy or benevolence.  It no longer requires you to turn the other cheek or to love your enemies or to take the lowest place or to love your neighbor as yourself…it no longer requires Jesus. 
 
And then Pavlovitz ends his blog post with a pledge which I repeat this morning.  I don’t repeat it because it’s easy or because I think we have achieved everything in it.  I repeat it instead because I think it offers important food for thought about who we strive to be as individual Christians.  And I believe it gives us some important clues about how we go about building a bigger table here at Wapping Community Church as we strive to follow Jesus Christ  
 
I refuse to be a Christian who lives in fear of people who look or speak or worship differently than I do.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who believes that God blesses America more than God so loves the world.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who uses the Bible to perpetuate individual or systemic bigotry, racism, or sexism.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who treasures allegiance to a flag or a country or a political party, above emulating Jesus. 
 
I refuse to be a Christian who is reluctant to call out the words of hateful preachers, venomous politicians, and mean-spirited pew sitters, in the name of keeping Christian unity. 
 
I refuse to be a Christian who tolerates a global Church where all people are not openly welcomed, fully celebrated, and equally cared for.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who speaks with holy war rhetoric about an encroaching enemy horde that must be rallied against and defeated.
 
I refuse to be a Christians who is generous with damnation and stingy with Grace.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who can’t see the image of God in people of every color, every religious tradition, every sexual orientation.
 
I refuse to be a Christian who demands that others believe what I believe or live as I live or profess what I profess. 
 
I refuse to be a Christian who sees the world in a hopeless spiral downward and can only condemn it or withdraw from it.
 
I refuse to be a Christian devoid of the character of Jesus; his humility, his compassion, his smallness, his gentleness with people’s wounds, his attention to the poor and the forgotten and the marginalized, his intolerance for religious hypocrisy, his clear expression of the love of God.
 
I refuse to be a Christian unless it means I live as a person of hospitality, of healing, of redemption, of justice, of expectation-defying Grace, of counterintuitive love.  These are non-negotiables.   
 
On this Dedication Sunday when we offer our pledges and break bread together and look towards a new church year, we dedicate ourselves as well…to making a bigger table in the name of Jesus Christ here at Wapping Community Church.  Amen.